Awarepreneurs interview - Ron Patel

Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to AwarePreneurs, the world's longest running social entrepreneur podcast. If you could take a moment and hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps our guests help more social entrepreneurs, help more people, and it costs you nothing. Thank you so much. Today our guest is Ron Patel, and our topic today is a community building organization disguised as a pro soccer team. I was just saying to our guest, I've never interviewed a leader from a pro sports team before, but I'm super excited about this. Ron Patel is president of New Mexico United, the USL professional soccer club in Albuquerque. He co founded the club in 2018 with majority owner and CEO Peter Trevisani, and as VP of Sales, has helped drive league leading attendance and merchandise while shaping a strong community brand. After leading a sports and Entertainment Group in McAllen, Texas, he returned to New Mexico in 2021, became the chief business officer in 2022, and was named president in January 2024.

Earlier, he founded Just Dine in in 2006 and expanded it through mergers to seven Western markets and exited after its 2015 acquisition by Grubhub. Patel also founded Albuquerque Soul in 2013 and helped lay the groundwork for New Mexico's first professional soccer franchise in United. Ron, welcome to awarepreneurs.

Hey, thanks, Paul. Appreciate the long introduction. I got to shorten that.

No problem. And thanks for being open to a crazy idea of doing a social entrepreneur podcast for a soccer team. This is awesome.

No, no, I love what you do.

Rot. When you and Peter in 2018, you had a sense that New Mexico would rally around a soccer club and that this soccer club could be pretty unique in its design to win hearts, in your words, before winning matches. Tell us a little bit about that origin story.

Yeah, look, I got to give credit where credit is due, and that's Peter. His creativity is second to none. So I think I was coming at it from a stance of, I grew up in England. Soccer runs in my blood. I wanted to create a professional soccer team for New Mexico, a state that is often underestimated, a state that's often, you know, we're told we're not good enough for the things that, like, the bigger cities have. And so we need more things that are positive and creating positive outcomes for people. And I thought that soccer could do that. You know, Peter came from the finance world, which you think he would be all about the spreadsheets, but honestly, I remember the day Peter told me, ron, sometimes you just gotta ignore the spreadsheets.

Because honestly, Paul, the spreadsheets didn't make any sense. It told us not to start a professional sports team in New Mexico. But the reasons he wanted to do were the same as, I think, as me, as the community. And he had been in a world of finance that was more transactional, but obviously relationship based, but wasn't focused on the community of New Mexico. And he loves living here just like I do. Neither of us are from here, but we're both considered adopted New Mexicans. And he brought the creativity. I brought the soccer side.

I had the small business experience. He had grown an enormous business and took it to new heights. And, you know, I didn't have the money to get it started. I needed folks that did. And Peter and the other owners came in and that, you know, we were doing it for the same reasons. It wasn't to win a championship, even though we want to and we strive to and we will lift a trophy for New Mexico. But that wasn't the reason we started it. It's not the reason I show up to work every day.

It's not. It's got nothing to do with winning games. It's. It's all about winning in our community and creative positive outcomes for. For New Mexicans.

Great. And we're going to ask you about some of those positive outcomes and go deep into that before we do that. You had to get this thing off the ground. Right. And as you were looking at the market, you know, New Mexico is a relatively small state. We only have about 2.1, 2.2 million the entire state, and historically, you know, one of the less robust economies in the U.S. right. So there were some hurdles you had to overcome, whether it was about, you know, pro soccer in New Mexico, a small population, an economy that, you know, people don't always.

Sometimes people are spending the majority of their, you know, their income just to get by. How did you start to address some of those early hurdles about soccer in New Mexico? How you were going to, you know, earn enough to keep this social enterprise running?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think, you know, the hurdles were. They were tough when you looked at the spreadsheets like I alluded to. I mean, there's no Fortune 500 companies in New Mexico based here. Right. There's no company that's just going to cut us a check for a couple million and just say, here, let me float you for a couple years so you can get this off the ground. Young people were leaving New Mexico faster than they were coming here. And it's just it's often a state that we've had all these different sports teams, that we have a graveyard now, really of sports teams, which is sad because I love sports and I love community.

And so instead of saying, you know, let's just, you know, whine about why there's no Fortune 500 companies here, why don't we shift our focus to what we do have here, which is thousands of small businesses, and be a team for them? You know, instead of, instead of complaining about the Mexicans that are leaving, let's put our focus on the ones that chose to stay and the ones that continue to choose to stay and give them something to be proud of. And instead of focusing on that graveyard of sports teams that have been gone, let's focus on what will really keep people connected to it. And as with any business that you've talked to business owners from all industries that are socially aware, it's really about, are you connected to your community? And obviously, business is about acquiring and retaining customers, but that's transactional. With this business, it's all about how do we. There's a metric out there, economic development metrics all over the place as to why a state or a region or a city can attract new businesses and build economic development. But there's really no metrics out there that talk about the economics of hope. And hope is something that's so powerful. And if you can give people hope and if you can give people a sense of community and a sense of belonging, the sky's the limit as to where those other economic development metrics can go.

And so we've chosen to focus on that. And granted, look, we run a business, okay? We're a for profit entity. We have to mind our revenues and expenses and all that. But we've chosen to do different things. And I'll talk about that, I'm sure, later in the show, but how do we overcome these things? I think was really with our focus on who are we doing this for? You know, we talk about our why, of course, and why we're doing it, but really it's who is this for? And it's for New Mexicans. You know, New Mexico, we call it Call center. And we're often transferred to the international department. And that's funny sometimes, but then it's like, come on, guys, New Mexico's a state.

Like, we're one of the 50 states. How do you not know that? Some person on the east coast doesn't know that. And so as that builds up, there's like this chip on the shoulder of a lot of New Mexicans. And. But there's something to be said about the pride of New Mexicans, and I think that's what we've been able to do a good job of, I guess tapping into is the pride that people have for this beautiful place that you live and I live. And we love this state. And it's something that really not a lot of businesses have truly tapped into is the pride of the state. So I don't know if I really answered your question, but it's a story.

It does. So you leveraged who lives here. The question was, how'd you get through some of those early challenges? And what I hear you saying, Ron, is you really tapped into who's here and that sense of, even though there's challenges of living in New Mexico, I've lived here since 1993. I've lived here longer than anywhere else in my life, so I'm familiar with some of those challenges. Right, but you took a assessment of who's here and who's engaged. And rather than saying, oh, well, we don't have a fill in the blank, you know, corporate mega company, he said, we've got people who care. We have businesses that care, we have schools that care and we're going to lean into that. Is that fair to say?

It's very fair to say. We've got a rich culture in New Mexico. And first of all, when you look around, I'm looking around right now at the blue skies outside. It's, you know, it's almost October when we're recording this and, and it's gorgeous outside. It's still 80, 80 degrees. The Sandia Mountains are just beautiful. And you've got this beautiful place. There's a lot of art here, there's a lot of food, a great craft beer culture in New Mexico, craft cocktail culture.

And I think it's one of the best kept secrets in the world. When people come visit us, they're like, wow, I didn't expect this. And it's. Yeah, it's beautiful here. And so how do we take that and put that into a sports enterprise? And that's what we've been trying to do.

Cool. So I want to get into. I'm going to. I usually joke about picking a word. I think our word that if we like asked AI to count the word community, how many times it gets mentioned in this episode, it's going to be a few, right?

Sure.

So we're going to go more into that in a second. I heard you use it a few Times, Ron. But let's go back to we're a gritty social entrepreneur podcast and going back to that early challenges. So I love what you were saying about leaning into the community and who is here as opposed to who's not. And then there's that question that a lot of social entrepreneurs want to know. How did you finance this dream? So talk to us a little bit. Like, what kind of financing mechanisms did you use to get this off the ground?

Yeah, we didn't use any, any debt instruments. It's. It's all with. With private owners. There's an ownership group of about six people all. All of whom either grew up here or have raised their families here. Again, it was never about winning championships or even about making money, for that matter. Obviously, there's a model where with the long term value of the franchise, the ownership group can enjoy a return on their investment.

But sports is not a cash flow business. There's a joke that the number one way to make a million dollars in sports is to start with 10 million. Right. And so the owners did it for the right reasons and the same reason that I alluded to earlier. And so it was financed with private equity from. Not private equity firms, sorry. With equity from private investors that are all citizens in this community that want to see a better quality of life and felt like soccer had the ability to do that. We have this unique ethos is how do we marry art and sport? I think a lot of that comes from Pete's influence from he was an early investor with Meow Wolf and was involved in their area 15 growth into Las Vegas.

And Pete being a Santa Fe residence and being a huge fan of art, he's huge into immersive theater too. That's one of Pete's passions. And soccer really is a form of immersive theater, I'll tell you. And I think a lot of our, A lot of our brand, a lot of our business, you can see Pete kind of stamped on it. And that's just one of the things I love about working for the guy is I've never had someone like be able to get the best out of me the way he does. And a lot of it is just his passion, his genuine love for the state of New Mexico, which I share with him in that.

Yeah, beautiful. So let's dig into this community piece and that full disclosure, I'm not a objective, you know, interview here. I love going to United games. I also love how you show up in the community. I'm going to tell a story, just maybe give Listeners, a sense of. I remember when the United was kind of getting up and going, you're already up and doing some of your smaller iterations, getting it up and going. And I remember you were scaling it up in terms of marketing. And I remember one of your ads said something.

Oh, there's two area codes in New Mexico, right?

Yep.

505 and 575. Right. So one of your early ads, or at least one of the ones that caught my attention, was whether you live in the 505, which is sort of Santa Fe, Albuquerque, northern New Mexico, or 575 Las Cruces in southern New Mexico. New Mexico United. Right. Whether you like red chili or green chile, which is our state question. I happen to be a red chili fan, but I like green chili, too. Whether you just got here last week or your family has been here for generations, New Mexico, United States like that way of an inclusive invitation to come take part in the United.

Now, that's been part of the intention from day one, hasn't it?

Yes, it has. And I appreciate you saying that. You know, we, we built the brand because we started the business without knowing what the name of the team was going to be. So when we came out as a business, we said, hey, we're us only. Mexico usl, the league that we play in, and New Mexico, the territory that we represent. And we're going to name the team with the help of the community. And so we took suggestions for months. We got all kinds of crazy ones, from the Chupacabras to the Roadrunners to just New Mexico FC and all these women.

But New Mexico United kept coming up over and over and over and over again. And when we looked at what's our mission, we said, our mission is to bring New Mexicans together in ways they've never been brought together before and to create positive outcomes for New Mexicans. And obviously, notice there's not the word soccer in there. That's our mission statement. It's on our wall. It's on all of our corporate branding. For internal stuff, I do an orientation with every new employee, intern, full time, part time, no matter what, head coach for an hour on their first day when they get basically mission training from me, talking about what our mission is, what it means, and how it's different here. If you've worked for another soccer team or another sports team, this is a little different.

And we use that in the interview process to make sure we're bringing the right people in. But back to the branding, it was very intentional as to we need to be with. We need to have the right people kind of leading the charge for us because for this thing to work, it can't be us putting the spotlight on us and leading the charge. Which sounds strange because most sports teams like to just market, hey, look how great this player is and look how many goals we scored and this and that. We, what we do is we try to take that spotlight and turn it back on our fans. And they're fans, by the way, Paul. They're not customers. The second you call them a customer, it puts a dollar sign over their head and the relationship becomes transactional.

Fans are people that support us and we work for them. So ironically, that's what we tell our staff in their first day in orientation is, you don't work for me. We usually do it in the second floor of our retail store with a window that looks down to the retail store and I point down to the store and, and for the fans that are in the store saying, you work for them and they're your boss. And that's the day we lose that mindset, is the day that new Mexicano will start to change. And so as long as I'm in charge in leadership position, I'm going to make sure we don't lose that mindset. And really the club belongs to New Mexico. And that's why when we came out with the branding and the stuff that you saw, it has to be that way because I'm just a steward of this thing. It's going to be here for 100 plus years.

And so my job is to steward it the right direction and to make sure it's, it's being ran correctly and responsibly. And then I'll pass it on to someone else who'll pass it. There'll be new owners. The owners will, will eventually one day pass away or pass, pass on their share to someone. And the club will just. The club will be the constant that's always here, but the people will, will come and go. So I think that was why we were very intentional with, with how we.

Branded it beautiful to some extent. Ron, you've already addressed some of this, but I want to go a little deeper about creating a culture where this kind of community orientation and the impact that you're wanting to have there and then the business results that keep New Mexico United afloat as a, you're not a nonprofit. Right. You're a for profit business disguised as a community, you know, organization. Right. So some of it is being very intentional about who you hire and how you onboard them. What other things can our listeners learn about creating a culture where this kind of community impact is so deeply baked into the DNA? How can they learn from what's gone well? And also any failed experiments about, you know, you had a sense it might help the culture, but it turned out not to work very well in terms of your community focus.

Oh, that's a big question there. Well, we've never made mistakes, Paul. I know what you're talking about.

Oh, really? Oh, gosh. Okay, cool. I should take lessons from you because I've made a lot of them.

Exactly. No, we fail forward. We. A couple things, really. You know, one, every year we get together. Our staff works all year long, and pretty much every weekend, whether it's. We have a home game, it's on the weekend usually, or if we have a road game, then we're hosting watch parties or going out and doing stuff for the team. So at Christmas time and the holiday season, we actually give our staff about 10 days off.

And then when they come back after New Year's, we do a what we call a winter summit. We get all of our staff together, and typically we go over, you know, here's what the ticketing department did last year, and here's what the corporate partnership department did, and here's what our merchandise sales were, and here's profits and here's revenues, and here's it, right? Last year I said, you know what? I got to change this up. This is not us. And so I spent about a week. Because I'm a total geek, as you know, and I spent about a week tracking all the events we did and all the stuff we did, interaction with people and with kids and. And I tracked the number of smiles that we.

You're such a geek.

Yeah, I am. We tracked the number of smiles we generated in the state of New Mexico and everything from our TV broadcast to how people watch it, how people walked in our retail store, how people came to our games to. To the free clinic we did on the Zuni Pueblo, and to the soccer camp we did, you know, in the winter. And. And we calculated that we generated 975,000 and some change. I don't have the number in front of me. Smiles. And so I said, all right, I challenged the team, like, this year, I don't want to hear about revenue.

I don't want to hear about this. I don't hear about that. I want to hear how we're going to get to a million smiles.

Nice.

And we said, that's the new goal. So we have a smiles tracker that's a Google sheet that we update. We're on pace right now to hit the million smiles. Hopefully we finish out the year strong. But it's a new way of. It's a new KPI, right, that most people are going to say, what the hell are you talking about? You're crazy. But you know what? If you generate the smiles a the rest I, you know, holistically, I believe takes care of itself. But really, if you're generating that smile, that means the purpose, the people are interacting with you in some form, whether that's an event.

They need a ticket to get to the event. Right. And they need a jersey to wear at the event so the business will happen. So I think that's a good example of how we've created a new KPI. That is the number of smiles in terms of mistakes. We encourage failure and we encourage failing forward. So we have a policy in our office. It's not in our employee handbook, but it's an unwritten policy, and it's called the three dumb ideas a day policy.

And everyone in the office is entitled to three dumb ideas a day. They can just put up on the board and they are not subject to any ridicule whatsoever. You're not allowed to. Now, if they've used over their three, then we can start making fun of you, Paul. But if you're under your three for the day, and some of our most creative ideas have come from this policy, and so it's always a joke, hey, here's my first one of the day. And it encourages employees to think differently. They feel entrepreneurial. Like, as you alluded to in my intro, I was.

I'm a recovering entrepreneur. I've owned six businesses in my career. Three of them, by the way, failed miserably, which would be for another podcast. I can tell you all my mistakes there, but a couple of them have done well. I've sold them, and then one turned into New Mexico, United States. But being able to come up with dumb ideas, which, by the way, that most of them aren't dumb, they're actually really good. They're just outside the box. So it challenges our people to think differently and to think crazy and then encourage them not to have fear of what someone might say about their dumb idea, it's worked quite well.

Great. Well, you're probably part psychic, Ron, because I was going to ask you about impact metrics and how you do that. So One of your KPIs is the smiles and tracing those. So we got that. But Tell us more, especially about the non soccer KPIs, like, sure. How you know, a community organization, that's great. And if I'm listening, I'm like, wow, this is really cool, but what does that mean, a community building organization disguised as a soccer team? Like, how do I know if I'm having the positive impact that I want as a soccer team, given that, you know, people are sitting in the stands having a good time and cheering really loud and getting the benefit of being in a very inclusive environment while they're doing that. But yeah, like you're a geek.

I knew you'd have some thinking about what are you tracking that helps you articulate the impact you're having. And if somebody's listening, wanting to learn from what you're doing. Yeah. How can you help them if they have an out of the box community focus?

Yeah. So obviously the smiles is my number one metric, but I think my close number two is number of children visited. And so last year we visited over 5,675 kids, whether that be schools, hospitals, community centers, parks for like clinics and stuff like that. And not one of those kids paid or parents paid for us to visit them. Those were all community visits. And so we do a couple things. When we sign players to New Mexico United to play for the team, we build into their contract a minimum of 10 community appearances that they have to do. Some players negotiate more because they love it and they've played for us before and they're like, all right, I want more.

We'll pay them a little more to do it. And so we're happy investing that money a little bit more. And I'm just going to use an example. Daniel Bruce, the Englishman, who is basically like an adopted New Mexican. He married a New Mexican woman. He's here for life. And so he has 20 in his contract, I believe. And so having those appearances in there are great.

And then we create these on field experiences for kids post match. And it's a way we tie it into revenue as well. So I hope this helps answer the question as well, is the number of dollars we help fundraise for nonprofits. And so last year we helped fundraise over $50,000. You're like, wait a minute, isn't that you donating money to them? And it is, yes. But the way we donate it is through ticket sales. So they get a unique link that's a group ticketing link, that kid, let's say it's for their youth soccer team. And their youth soccer team is a part of A club that's got 10 teams in it.

Each team gets their own unique link. Those kids then go out to their janitors, their neighbors, their teachers, their aunts, their uncles or cousins and gets them to buy tickets. Every ticket that we sell through this link, we donate $5 back to that kid's youth soccer team. We do it with the Girl Scouts and Cheer and Yaffle. And then every kid that participates in this program gets a chance to come on the field, post game, to meet players. And so when you've been at the games, Paul, after the game, all those kids that are on the field, they're not just kids, random kids who grabbed off the street. They've actually participated in a fundraising campaign to generate money for their nonprofit. And then we gamify it and we put the teams that are competing against each other.

So the teams that sell the most tickets get to have enhanced experiences during the game. So one small team of kids will walk the players, the home team out, holding their hands as the players walk out. If we get a second really good team, then they'll walk the away team out. It's not our team, but it's still professional soccer players. And the kids geek out. And then if we scout some more for that age group, then, yeah, we have a kid on each side of the player. So the players walk out with. Instead of, you know, 11 players and 11 kids, it's actually 11 players and 22 kids that walk out.

And then the kids are a little older. If they sell more, they become the ball kids for the game or ball managers. So there's, there's kids that you'll see in pink T shirts, which, by the way, are sponsored by Taco Cabana. Of course, you got to get sponsors in there too. And the walkout kids are sponsored both by Toyota. So they're in red T shirts with the Mexican added and Toyota on the back. But then the ball managers, those are the kids. When the ball goes out of bounds, they throw the ball back into the player.

They've earned that as well. So they're raising money for their club. We're getting the benefit of being able to donate money back to a great cause. It causes five sections of my stadium to not even worry about my sales reps selling those. So the kids are our sales reps. I got an army of 300 sales reps every game going out to sell those tickets. And the kids get an experience. I remember when I was six years old, I grew up in England.

I met Alan Hansen, who was a defender for Liverpool, and I am now 45 years old. I still remember the meeting I had with Alan Hansen when I was 6 years old and his Scottish accent that I couldn't understand a thing he said. But he sat at this desk that my dad took me into, and I'm envisioning it in my head right now. I couldn't tell you anything else I did when I was six years old, but I remember meeting Alan Hansen, the defender from Liverpool. And that's the type of experience as we give these kids. Is there some kids? It's a once in a lifetime experience to meet a pro soccer player. And every game we get to do this. And so, yeah, the kids with the smiles.

But then I can tie in the metrics of all right, how much money are we donating? Nonprofits. That's not just us cutting a check. Right. And we do some of that too. Right. But you know, we get hit up by 20 nonprofits a week, we'd go out of business. And we donated to everyone that said yes. But we find a way to bring value to the nonprofit organization and in this case, youth soccer, and then give these kids an experience they'll remember for a lifetime.

I love it. A little healthier than selling chocolate or, you know, cookies. Although I like chocolate and cookies.

Right. We can do both.

Yeah, that too. But I didn't know. I've seen those kids walking the players out, and I didn't know that there was that kind of purposeful connection. That's awesome.

Yeah, like, it's, like it's okay. I'm sure there's people that listen that need to hear this, like, it's okay to do good and generate revenue at the same time.

Absolutely.

You know, yes.

Cool. So let's do this. In a moment, I want to come back and say, well, does this all work in terms of keeping it afloat as an enterprise? And also some things that you might want to share, some lessons you've learned. We're creating a very skillful organization that's having impact at scale and what you can teach some of our listeners who are founders of their community driven organizations. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Are you feeling stuck growing your impact business? You're not alone. Most social entrepreneur founders hit the same three roadblocks. Number one, too many priorities.

You're spread thin, working hard, but not moving the needle. Number two, capital. Figuring out how to raise the right kind of money feels overwhelming. And third, business model, fog. You want to make real impact and Generate profits. But the path forward isn't clear. After 18 years coaching thousands of impact leaders and 300 deep dive conversations with the world's top social entrepreneurs and investors on awarepreneurs, I've seen what actually works. That's why I created my 90 minute strategy sessions.

Together we'll cut through the noise, identify your best opportunities and map out three to seven clear action steps. You'll also get two weeks of implementation support so you can have guidance beyond the call. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start growing with clarity and competence, check out the link in the show notes. Welcome back, everybody. I am here with Ron Patel and our topic today is a community building organization disguised as a pro soccer team. And one of the things I wanted to give people a heads up. You know, if you're in New Mexico, you probably have heard some of the, the successes, Ron, but it turns out this all is working as an enterprise. Right.

Like in the league that United play in, y' all have been recognized as some highest attendance and you've had some real successes just in terms of your record these past few years. Like it's working as a soccer business and as a soccer team. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, I mean, I don't like to brag, but I am proud.

I know, but we're entrepreneurs, Ron. Just give us, you don't have to brag, just give us the data.

Right, sure. So, I mean, look, I'm proud we're always top three in attendance and, and in a league where we're not the biggest market, like we're, you know, this is Albuquerque, New Mexico. We're, we're not, we're not a big market in general. But like, what are some of the.

Other cities that you're in the league with?

Yeah, we're playing against, you know, Phoenix, Orange County, San Antonio, Oakland, Louisville, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Miami, Lexington, Kentucky is probably a similar size. El Paso, similar size. Colorado Springs, similar size. But we're definitely in the bottom, you know, 20%, I'd say, in terms of market size. And that's one thing I learned early on is market size. Yeah, you can use it as a, as a crutch whether it's big or small. But ultimately we all, we all influence the outcome of our own businesses. And it's what we choose to focus on and why we choose to do it and who we choose to do it for that really determines if we're going to be successful.

And I mean, we've made plenty of mistakes, I mean, trying to do things too confusing, like making things too confusing for people does not work well. You want to make things simple. So we've tried to simplify some of our processes over the years, but yeah, top three in attendance every year, top two in corporate partnerships, and then since our inception, we've been number one in merchandise sales every single year by a country mile, actually. So that continues to this day.

So it's really working as an enterprise, listeners. Top one merchandise, top two corporate partners, and top three attendants. And when we're talking a city like Phoenix, we're talking a city that's like 7x the market, not 10% bigger, 7x bigger or something crazy like that.

I think once people ask how have we done it in a smaller market, in a market that's not supposed to work, I think we've taken what people perceive as disadvantages and we've turned them into our advantage.

Yeah, absolutely.

And that's what we've been able to do. So I mean, to anyone listening, what are ways you can do that in your business? What people think, you know, oh, that's a disadvantage for you. How do you flip that on its head and make it an advantage?

And as somebody who's sat in quite a few games over the years, Ron, there's a word that I think a listener would be hard to understand what your business results and your impact results without thinking about the word belonging. Right. When I sit in a united game, you know, if I look to my right, there might be a multi generational family, you know, who's immigrated from Africa and over to my left you might see family from Mexico and the cowboy boots and the hat. And then you might see a New Mexican family that's been here for nine generations. And, and you know, I might be sitting next to somebody I know from the startup world and I'm a very pale white guy, right, in my mid-50s, and there's a group of us startup people and you might see somebody else who's like, you know, a crew of military folks from Kirkland Air Force Base, right. Like it's, it's hard to understand how you've gotten to that kind of attendance. Again, remember listeners, we only have 2.1 million people in the entire state. And the vocabulary that people use in New Mexico is we are the first majority minority state.

I don't love that language, but that's how people talk about it. In other words, we are the first state that is a majority non white population. So you couldn't get these results without bringing in by definition of who Lives here, a very diverse group of humans to support this. And there's that sense of belonging that at least from the outside, I would say you couldn't understand the business results and the impact results without thinking about belonging. Is that fair to say, ron?

No, it's 100% accurate.

And how do you do that in 2025 when there's so much polarization and people are not necessarily leaning into difference and welcoming difference, but you all are at a time when that's getting more and more uncommon.

I think it's meeting people where they're at is what we do well. Right. We don't wait for people. You mentioned that we covered the whole state. I appreciate you saying that. We're not Albuquerque United. Right. We're New Mexico united.

And one thing we do is we meet people where they're at. We're the fifth largest state in the union by area. Fifth largest state. It's a huge state. But as you alluded to, we've only got 2.1 million people. So we're very spread out. And so even going back to year one, before we kicked the ball, I remember driving with our first head coach, Troy Lesane, to Farmington, New Mexico, about a two and a half hour drive from Albuquerque to do a free soccer clinic for 20 kids. Because we wanted to just let people know in Farmington, we're here for you.

And then the next weekend we did the same thing down in Roswell, home famous for the aliens and the 1947 Mac Brazel alien encounter and did the same thing. We drove down there with one of our other coaches. And by the way, I'm not a coach. So the coaches do the clinic and then I run off and I go meet the mayor and I go meet the head of the chamber of commerce, tell them to come back out for a photo op with the kids. Hey, this team is for you. And we started doing that early on and we haven't stopped. I think I alluded to earlier, we've done a clinics on pueblos which are, you know, in New Mexico for your listeners that aren't from here. New Mexico has 23 different Indian tribe, Native American tribes.

19 of those are Pueblos and four Indian nations. So 23 different organizations that are that. That habitate tribal land which obvious it was their land before ours. So I think meeting people where they're at, not just physically, but I think emotionally and mentally, yes, there's plenty of reasons for us to be divided right now. And it sucks and we all hate it. So we say all Right. How do we bring people together? Let's forget about our differences. What God you pray to, what your sexuality is, Red or blue doesn't matter.

We can all agree that that was the worst call that a referee has ever made in their lives and come together. And I love the example you gave the people that you sat around. I remember walking down the concourse one time and seeing this guy in a business suit next to a woman with blue hair. I'm like, these two would never be caught dead hanging out together. But there was a big thing with the referee, and then they both stood up, looked at each other. It was almost like that scene from Stepbrothers where they're like, did we just become best friends? And that's what sports has the power to do, I think when done correctly. And when I say done correctly, I don't mean by winning. You know, being the New England Patriots and winning seven Super Bowls, they do a good job of that.

No, no disrespect to New England, but I think it's by meeting people where they're at. Soccer is the most inclusive sport. But being, you know, we go, we go an extra step beyond whether it's the indigenous community. For our Indigenous peoples night, we have our Hispanic Heritage night coming up. That one's an easier to do in New Mexico than most other states. But then, you know, we had our ASL night for people that were deaf and hard of hearing, where we gave every usher in the stadium that was like helping you to your seat, little notebook so that they could write and communicate with people that weren't able to talk or listen. We have a shirt. It's our most best selling T shirt ever.

It's the state of New Mexico with the word United signed out on it. And I've worn that shirt all over the country, all over the world, actually. I actually even traded that shirt. One time we did a soccer jersey trade in real time. I was in Clearwater Beach, Florida, and this guy is like, that is a beautiful shirt, man. He's like, my. My little brother is deaf. Can I have that shirt? And I was just wearing that T shirt, so I just traded shirts with the guy.

That shirt I've worn, I've bought replacements for it, but I've worn it all over the world. And so they're just the little things that we try to do to meet people where they're at, make them feel welcome, and let them know that, yeah, we've got a lot of differences. But you know what? For the next 90 minutes, we. We can all be focused on New Mexico coming together and remember what our mission statement was. Bringing New Mexicans together in ways they never experienced before, creating positive outcomes. That's what we do.

Beautiful. So you've been at it for a while now, Ron. And as you think about, like, we, by definition, we're a social entrepreneur podcast. And this idea of building community, bringing people together, especially in a time of a lot of divisiveness, given what you've learned, if you were going to make some suggestions for a founder that wanted to build this kind of community in another city, maybe not with soccer, maybe some other mechanism of bringing people together, but what are a couple of suggestions you'd have for people who are wanting to have a community focused brand and in these divisive times? And on the other flip side of the coin, what are some things you'd encourage them not to do at all costs?

Don't make it about you. Right. I always think back to when I started my first business and I would hit, like, the networking scene and all the events I would go to, and I always called him Billy. Business card would run up to you. Like, he was like, he was an Olympic athlete in a relay and he was running with the baton to try to give.

How many could he hand out in the shortest amount of time?

Right. With his business card. Exactly. Don't make it about you, make it about them. And in the networking world, most of the people I ended up doing business with weren't the people that were at the networking event. I focused on building the relationships with them because they were my referral source. And then every time they ran into someone that I had trained them to say, hey, you should meet Ron, they would then introduce me. So I'd say, the thing not to do is don't make it about yourself.

Yes, you have to talk about your business. Yes, you have to talk about what you do and the impact. But there's a time for that and there's a place for that. And I think if you lead with serving others, it gets a whole lot easier, man. Like, nobody likes to be sold stuff, but people love to buy stuff, right? I don't. I hate being sold stuff, but I love buying things. And so let's put people in a mindset of warmth and welcoming. And I know it sounds warm and fuzzy, but it's true.

Like, that's what we do is we meet people where they're at, we make them feel welcome, we talk about why we want them to be a part of our family, which is, you know, our Our fan base. Not customer base, fan base. I think maybe look at your vocabulary, too. Like, we. We determined we didn't want to call people customers or clients. Right. There were fans. And that's really changed the mindset of every employee in our front office.

We have a retail store as well, where people can walk into the retail. It's on Central Avenue, Route 66, the original Route 66. You can walk in and buy a shirt or a scarf or a hat or whatever. We got all these cool things that we sell. But there's also a window up on the second floor that you can look in and see a meeting actually happening in the retail store, which is a cool kind of immersive nature about it. But, yeah, I think those are. I think most of that stuff I've already mentioned, but I think look at the vocabulary you're using. Look at the vernacular.

Make it about them, not about you. There'll be time to talk about you later. Right. That's always been my approach. And shine the spotlight on your fans, or whatever you call the people you're doing business with. If there's a way to shine the spotlight on them instead of you first, it's a lot easier road to. Yes. When it comes to signing a contract or pulling out a credit card or performing a transaction.

Yeah.

Beautiful. So, Ron, y' all have accomplished amazing things, right? Number one in your league with merch, by far. Number two in terms of corporate partnerships. Number three. Top three in terms of attendance year after year. Right. And it's only been since 2018ish. Right.

So give us a. Like, a little bit of coming attractions as you look ahead. Let's say it's coming to the end of 2030. Right. So five years from now, what is the New Mexico United brand like? What's the franchise doing? How have you grown on this success? Yeah.

So our biggest hurdle is not having our own facility. So we play in a rented facility. It's a baseball stadium. And it would take a whole other podcast episode to explain all the things we have to do to ready a baseball stadium to play soccer in and then turn it back to baseball. And so having our own facility, a stadium, has been at the forefront of our minds for a long time. We've been working on it now for over four years. And so in five years in the.

Road, too, along the way. Right.

Quite a few speed bumps, a few brick walls.

Some community meetings with people who have very strong opinions.

Fair to say, you know, they're sweet people. I've actually gotten to know them literally. It's 11 households that have been holding this thing up for, for three years. And I know most of the households, they've seen pictures of my daughter. They, I've, they've. They're great people. We just disagree on this one point. We've won all of our appeals in the courts, and now it's the, the 11 households that are on this lawsuit with the city.

It's very complicated and boring. We don't need to get into it. But the question was, where is it in five years? We are in our own facility within the next five years, which just allows us to create more smiles, which allows us to deepen our impact, which allows us to bring more people into the family of New Mexico United and enhance the game day experience. You've been to the games. It sounds amazing. That's in a baseball stadium. It's not designed to keep sound in. It's designed to just be kind of open air, whatever.

Right. A soccer specific stadium that we're going to build is designed to keep that sound in, to be intimidating to the opponent. You know, when we have 12,000, which I think was our biggest game this year was about 12,000 people. Our average, by the way, is 10,000 over the last seven years, but we had 12,000 this year. It sounded like probably 15, 16, 17,000. You put that in a soccer specific stadium, I guarantee you it sounds double, like 25,000. There's something about new Mexicans coming together. We haven't had a ton of positive things to cheer for.

And so when we get these things to cheer for, it's like the pride just comes out that much more intensely. And I think you can tell by the amount of merchandise people wear at the games. There's black and yellow and turquoise too everywhere. Everyone's got merch. It seems like three out of four people have merch on. And obviously that's great for our merchandise sales, but it's also great to show the power of the brand and the reason they're so connected to the club. I always say we go like, we go three to four levels deep emotionally with our fans. And so when we start losing games, it's so funny.

We've actually seen an increase in attendance because people are like, we got to get out there and support them. And we had a slump recently where we didn't win a game in a month. And it was like. And we don't play every day or like baseball, like we play, you know, on average one every seven to 10 days. But our fan, our attendance went up when we were losing games. Like, I don't know if this is a great business strategy to lose games to increase attendance, but. But it's because we've got our tentacles in so deep, right? And it's all genuine. It's not.

We're not. You know, there's the word community. It's not just community by checking boxes. It's community by. One of our four core values, by the way, is action that I teach. Our core values are hard work, humility, action, and diligence. And so one of our core values is action. And we talk about.

We don't just check boxes around here. We show up for people. We show up for New Mexicans when it, when it matters the most. And I always say we're kind of like the white blood cells. We go to where we're needed, and that's what. What causes. To create our own foundation. So we have a 501C3 that's a separate organization, and we jokingly call that the, the white blood cells, where they go, where there's a need.

Love it. Ron. I could hang out with you all day and you're busy. Our listeners are busy. So as we start to wind down, if there's something we didn't cover and you think it's important or there's something you want to leave our social entrepreneur listeners with as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?

I think it's, you know, I'm, I'm an entrepreneurial geek, and so I think I share a lot in common, probably with some of your listeners, too. I, you know, I've been the guy that, that, that had to cut the checks and paid myself last. And I never forget that feeling. When I started my first business, you know, I realized I could only afford to pay myself $100 a week. So every Friday, I would log into Wells Fargo and I had a business partner. We would pay ourselves $100 each, and I would pray that there was $200 in the bank. And some weekends there were, and some Fridays there weren't. And I remember just transferring over 50 and then waiting till the credit card funds came in from the weekend on Monday, Tuesday to transfer over the other 50.

And you never forget what that feels like. And you advance in your career and your business and you have success. But don't ever lose the drive, the morals, the reasons you became successful. When you do become successful, don't ever lose those, because the day you take it for granted or you start to get cocky, it'll change the way you do. Business and your fans, or if you call them clients or customers, that's fine, will notice. And so in some instances, don't ever change. In other instances, obviously change is necessary to evolve the business. But I never forget that feeling.

So I just wanted to share that. That drives me every day. My lifelong dream when I was in my early 20s was to go see England and play in the World cup. And I was able to do that. And I spent $700 on a ticket to see them play in the 2006 World cup in Germany. I still have the ticket. It's framed. It's in my office at home.

And so I hold on to the things that motivated me to get here. And definitely when I talk about humility, one of our core values, we, we remain humble at all times as an organization. And I try to do so individually. And, you know, I don't feel like I have to work a day in my life. And I think that's, that's what a lot of your listeners hopefully share with me on, on that is that they feel that same way too.

Beautiful. Ron, if somebody wants to get a hold of you, what would be the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, LinkedIn. Ron Patel. I'm sure the spelling's in the, in the episode here, but it's Ron. R, O, N, P, A, T, E, L. Pretty common last name. I think there's a phone book for us in India that's just my last name. But yeah, ron Patel on LinkedIn is the best. I'm on all the platforms.

I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook as well. Sure.

So, listeners, I'll put a link to Ron on LinkedIn as well as the New Mexico United site. Ron, thank you so much for saying yes to this crazy idea of talking about a soccer team as a social impact organization. It was awesome.

Hey, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it and looking forward to the episodes in the future.

So, listeners, if this episode stirred something in you, please share it. We want to get as much traction for people doing good work as possible. And also if you're ready to develop a bold strategy for your impact business, whether you're navigating uncertainty or stepping into something new, please check out my strategy sessions. The link is also below. Until next time, keep working for positive impact and letting your values guide your business.