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?