 Basketball is such an awesome sport but sometimes I wonder if we are providing kids with the best way to enjoy it. Speaking from experience of being a parent of three basketball playing kids and taking what I hear from so many people that I speak with about basketball, I think we've got a few issues with our current five on five model. First of all, having your child play on a basketball team can be really expensive. There's the team fees and then the admission fees just to get into the tournaments to watch your kid play, holy moly. And then if the team travels, you've got all of those expenses, maybe even flights and hotels and eating out, I guarantee you that there are some kids who love to play basketball but they don't get to because it's too much of a financial strain on their families. Second, being part of these teams is a significant time commitment. You've got several practices a week and then you've got all those tournament weekends that can eat up your whole weekend. And let's be honest, some kids on the team just don't get the opportunities in the games to do very much because the game revolves around a couple of star players. How many meaningful in-game opportunities are kids 8, 9, and 10, some teams have like even 11 and 12 players on the team. How many meaningful in-game opportunities are those kids getting? And are those players getting stuck in a role that doesn't develop or doesn't allow them to develop into well-rounded basketball players because their team needs them to play a certain position? And I have one more issue with basketball right now. Kids pretty much only play basketball in very structured situations where there's always a coach coaching and evaluating and there's also such a focus on winning. So I see a lot of mental stress, a lot of pressure, which is kind of sucking the fun out of a really fun sport. So what if there was another way to do youth basketball that alleviated some of these negative aspects or at least gave kids and families a little break from them? Are you ready to think outside the box just a little bit here with me? I want to share with you a three-on-three basketball league model that we, my husband and I, I'm Kristi Hilly by the way, and my husband Mike, have been using since 1997. And every year this grows and grows for us. We currently are running 36 leagues this year and we will have over 15,000 kids participate in our three-on-three leagues. So here's how it works. Kids sign up as a team of three to six players and they get to play with their friends, which oftentimes doesn't happen with five-on-five because they're trying out for teams and might make different teams. And we also don't allow any coaches. And the teams are going to play two half-court three-on-three games per day or per night and the league runs for either four weeks or five weeks. Now what's really nice for families, if they have more than one child who plays basketball, all of their children are playing basketball at the same location at about the same time. So parents don't have to divide and conquer and figure out who's going to go where and miss their kids' games because they can just go to one gym and see them all. Obviously, with three-on-three, every player is going to have so many more in-game opportunities, both offensively and defensively than they would in five-on-five. And every player really is involved in all the action. There's no hiding. We actually did a pretty in-depth case study on this a few years ago and it was pretty wild how significant the differences between in-game opportunities for kids between their three-on-three and their five-on-five games. Our three-on-three leagues are really manageable for busy families because we don't have any weekly practices and there's no traveling out of town for their games and there's no like two or three-day tournaments. It's just one day a week and they're really in the gym for about an hour because we schedule their games close together. And our three-on-three model is also super affordable. It's easy for families to say yes to in their budget. It probably works out to be about $60 per player and we don't charge admission fees to watch the games and we don't require any uniform purchases and there are no coaches that we have to pay. So like I said, all of this might sound a little outside the box but it's such a great basketball opportunity for kids whether they're beginning basketball players or really advanced players. It's just so doable for families to say yes to. The past few years I have been working with people who want to bring three-on-three basketball leagues like ours into their community and this has been an amazing business for my husband and I and I'm really excited to work with people to help them learn the business. Some of the people I'm working with are doing this as a way to generate some extra income. Some people are doing this to add three-on-three basketball to their current basketball business whether they're a trainer or a coach. Other people are doing this as a way to generate revenue for their programs kind of like a fundraiser and it's working for a lot of people in a variety of situations and I'm just here having a blast helping people get this going in their communities because it's so good for kids and our business just keeps getting bigger and bigger and there's no reason that other people can't be doing this too. So you can go check out what we're doing here in Minnesota with our business. It's called Midwest 3-on-3 so go to Midwest3on3.com and you can see what we're doing. You can also check out how I'm helping people all across the country get their leagues up and running by visiting 3-on-3hoopshub.com and I also want to invite you to join my Facebook group, Run Your Own 3-on-3 League for Basketball Entrepreneurs. This Facebook group is where we're sharing tips and videos and stories and pictures and tools, everything that you could need to get your 3-on-3 league up and running. So I'm going to leave some links below this video. I hope to see you inside the Facebook group and I look forward to helping you.