About this episode

The episode discusses modern community-led growth strategies with Juan Luis Ramirez from Tennis One, focusing on influencer outreach via Instagram DMs.

In today's episode, I chat with Nelson and Juan from Tennis One, a tennis coaching academy in Auckland, New Zealand, that's building itself into a lifestyle brand rather than just a service. The GTM story here is unlike anything else on the show: Juan runs an influencer outreach operation entirely on Instagram DMs, targeting micro to macro influencers between 5K and 50K followers whose content naturally aligns with the Tennis One lifestyle, offering them free coaching in exchange for content creation. The reply rate is 60-80%, and the first seven months produced nothing—then one influencer said yes, and the snowball effect took over. Mission Bay Tennis Club just won the 2025 New Zealand Tennis Club of the Year award, and inbound brand partnerships now come to them rather than the other way around. Juan's background runs from waiter in a Colombian restaurant in Takapuna—where he consistently outsold every other staff member on the monthly special—through an IT degree he pivoted away from, into tech sales startups, and eventually into GTM engineering at Tennis One. Nelson's take as the business owner is straightforward: one specialized person who can contact influencers effectively…

People in this episode

Host: Saurav Gupta

Guest: Juan Luis Ramirez

Topics covered

• community-led growth
• influencer marketing
• tennis coaching
• lifestyle branding
• business strategy

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tennis One, Mission Bay Tennis Club

Products: Instagram

Places: Auckland, New Zealand, Colombia

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