Pitch Deck Draft

 

 

BIO

My name is Barry Buss, and I’d like to welcome you to my new program, First Ball To Last, an Emotional Intelligence Program for competitive tennis players.

Many of you are familiar with my story, which is chronicled in detail in my recent memoir, You Can Get There From Here.

 

For those who are not, here are the Cliff Notes

In the spring of 1983, as an 18-year-old freshman playing for the defending NCAA champion UCLA Bruins, I walked onto the court 22-0. I'd won my first 22 dual matches, tying Jimmy Connors' record for consecutive wins at UCLA. I was on the cusp of breaking every single-season record in UCLA’s storied history.

A year later, I quit the team, dropped out of school, gave back my scholarship, and lived in my van, drinking and drugging my life away, wondering what had happened to me.

 

Well, what happened had been happening all along. I was living the tennis life with undiagnosed and untreated emotional problems that I dangerously began to self-medicate at the age of 14. These conditions would plague me for much of my adult life until I finally got the help I needed.

INSPIRATION 

The inspiration for First Ball To Last came to me on a book tour I was on for said memoir. During a Q and A session, I was asked if there was anything that could have been done to help me back then as an aspiring tennis player battling teenage addiction and a variety of emotional problems. And my answer was no. What happened to me was 40 years ago. There were few, if any, programs or services available then for talented, troubled teens like myself.

Then she asked me, 'What about today? What if you were to show up today, talented yet troubled on and off the court with all the same problems you had 40 years ago? Are there easily accessible, adequate resources to keep young, promising lives like yours from spiraling out of control? Unable to answer her at the moment, her question vexed me. Upon returning home, I began to research the situation. And sadly, though things are better than they were (pretty low bar), my answer would still be no.

So, I've taken it upon myself to create the program I and many other emotionally struggling athletes would have benefited dramatically from during our playing days.

 

 

Slide 1: Title Slide

First Ball To Last (FBTL)
An Emotional Intelligence Program for Competitive Tennis Players

“Throughout my career, I've seen all the major movements in tennis, from popularity to professionalism to advancements in coaching technique equipment and training. The next major movement in tennis will be the emotional health and wellness of its competitors. FBTL's positioning to be a leader in this space could not be better.

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Slide 2: The Problem To Be Solved

The Emotional Toll of Competitive Tennis

• The tennis journey is uniquely long and demanding, the environment stressful and ever-changing

• Burnout, dropout, anxiety, and performance stress are rampant, with poor ROI across all levels of the sport.

  The ability to navigate the challenging emotional environment of sustained competition and demanding daily training often determines a player's level of success

  Yet tennis as a sport has left the emotional development of its players to chance, with traditional emotional support systems, parents, coaches, and peers uninformed, inconsistent, and frequently counterproductive

  Today’s competitive tennis environment lacks a proactive, easily accessible emotional health and wellness program

 FBTL plans to be the first and the best in this space”

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Slide 3: The Solution

FBTL: First Ball To Last, an Emotional Intelligence Program for Competitive Tennis Players

 
FBTL A subscription-based app and platform delivering emotional intelligence tools, training, and support for tennis players for competitive tennis players of all ages and levels

Teaching all the facets of Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Awareness, Emotional Regulation, Identifying Emotional triggers and troubleshooting, All with a focus on spiritual and character development while managing effectively the most important relationships in our playing lives.

The Primary concept behind FBTL is to build the ideal player. I've identified numerous qualities the best and healthiest among us embody and developed a program to educate players about these traits, hoping they will incorporate them into their lives. Traits like perspective, composure, work ethic, confidence, character, and dozens more... Qualities that are not just performance-enhancing but life-enhancing as well, so when we hit our Last Ball, players will have an unshakeable foundation for life, applying what they've  learned to life's next challenges, be they education, career, family and relationships. We may never play like Rafa or Serena, but there's no reason we can't conduct ourselves like them in all our affairs.

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Slide 4: Why Now

Market Analysis: Nothing like this exists anywhere on the market today. There are no direct competitors in this space, and no apps currently exist that bring the entire tennis experience directly to a player's smartphone via a subscription app. The potential here is enormous and immediate. 

Unique Value Proposition: Direly needed; nothing in the marketplace even comes close. An entertaining, inspiring informative program like this is well overdue. The ability to have clean, valuable information at one's fingertips to be applied at a moment’s notice.

Parents and players alike will go to great lengths to improve their games. This will be a tremendous, affordable product presented sharply to a hungry, starving customer base who will try anything if they believe they’ll improve.

I love the tagline: FBTL, a year’s subscription, all for the cost of a private lesson.

If you haven't noticed, Tennis is hot again, with the USTA announcing just recently that tennis participation numbers reached a new high at 25.7 million players, the 5th consecutive year of annual growth, with much of that growth (45%) in players under 21 years of age 

• 25.7M active tennis players in the U.S. and growing

• 800K+ ranked UTR competitors globally

• Mental/Emotional health is front and center across all sports

• Parents and coaches actively seek tools to support emotional development

• No direct competitor in the tennis space. First-mover advantage.

  We’re ready to meet a generation demanding tools for both performance and well-being.

 

 As a tennis coach for nearly 40 years now, one consistent takeaway from my profession is that parents, especially tennis parents, will go to great lengths to support their kids' athletic dreams. USTA has announced a goal of 35 million players by 2035, investing vast resources to continue building the game. That tells me Tennis is healthy and expanding, providing FBTL with an expanding pipeline of future clients.

The USTA League numbers are estimated at 600,000 adults competing annually in the USTA League system. Again, a vast untapped market of competitive tennis players would benefit immensely from FBTL.

In addition to the USTA, there are 154 tennis federations worldwide. A successful, smooth-functioning program would undoubtedly attract the heads of these Federations.

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Slide 5: Product Overview

FBTL App Experience

Each Section will have its own Video Channel, delivered by a major media/playing figure from the tennis industry, produced by Creative Director and filmmaker/photographer Rex Miller

• Teaching Academy: Monthly Teaching modules + assessments. Building a Player's Immune System

• Power of Daily Routines: Teaching the Practices of Meditation, Mindfulness, Mantras and Affirmations, Visualization, Daily Check-Ins and more. Checking our Vital Signs routines.

• Pep Talk Library: Emotional regulation tools for every imaginable playing scenario

• Emotion Racket: Unique to FBTL.. A tool to take our emotional temperature before training and matches. 

• The Player's Box: Player, Parent and Coaching content to help manage these crucial relationships

  Character and Spirituality Work: To manage the most important relationship, the one with ourselves

  A Testing Sections: Where we chart our progress before and after subject material presented 

• Gamified experience, badges, and mentorship tracks

• Personalized coaching & mentorship options

“Performance-enhancing and life-enhancing—FBTL: the private lesson our emotional development always needed but never got.”

 

Attention is currency. Though I am and will always be the brains and inspiration behind FBTL, if we want FBTL to be successful, I should not be the face of this project. It is imperative to create an eye-catching, attention-capturing presentation. I'm a 60-year-old guy on an iPhone doing a Zoom call with no media training. I have communicated with many talented, creative, influencer-media types with whom I look forward to collaborating on content creation and presentation. In these modern media times, how content is presented is just as important as the content itself.

My vision is for a slick studio set akin to the Tennis Channel with all the bells and whistles of attention-capturing presentation with a telegenic, articulate, media-savvy motivational speaker type who can deliver the content in a passionate yet playful tone. This material can run a little dry. A stylish, sharp, playful presentation will be necessary for success.

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Slide 6: Traction & Validation

• App development was the first hurdle.

  I've designed and worked hard to develop a no-code app with simple functionality. We're not creating a video game, so I tried to get the look and flow down and was pretty successful. Most of the flow, content, and layout are done, which is the most challenging aspect of APP design.

• Website being professionally redesigned for Beta test group committed: 100+ junior and adult players

  Book to be published by end of year... First Ball To Last: Emotional Intelligence Program for Competitive Tennis Players.. Will get program much exposure. 

• UTR-approved to run FBTL-themed events. Important exposure and revenue generator. 800k UTR ranked players...Can run numerous events simultaneously nationwide, 

  Multiple Endorsements and interest from key tennis figures:

• • Patrick McEnroe

    Conor Casey

    Murphy Jenson

    Jim Grabb

    Tennys Sandgren 

  • Dick Gould

  • Kelly Jones

• In communication with President of United States Tennis Association about implementing my program within their Organization

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Slide 7: Go-To-Market Strategy

Grassroots to Global

• Grassroots: UTR events, coaching conventions, social media, tennis academies, all my extensive connections/contacts in the tennis world, Book and Book tour, all media and podcasts

  A realistic rollout plan would be an intense end-of-25 membership/marketing blitz, hitting the ground running on the first day of 2026 with a strong first-quarter push, with all the energy of Christmas, a new year, and the beginning of the new season with the excitement around the Australian, Indian Wells and Miami events.

  A well-orchestrated rollout... A high-profile player to be the face in commercials, a TC ad blitz, tennis influencer types to push it out over all social media, and tour players past and present doing cameos within the content, we would make a big splash in an industry dying for innovative content. We'll have a few years’ head start on any possible competition. If we go hard early, we can discourage imitators from entering the field, thinking they could do better.

• Influencer Marketing: Player endorsements, parent ambassadors

• Media Push:

  • Tennis Channel / ESPN ads

  • Nationwide Book tour for First Ball To Last

  • Tennis influencers as faces of FBTL

  • Player cameos in-app content. One degree of separation from all the sports biggest names

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Slide 8: Business Model & Financials

• Annual subscription model: $9.95/month  99/year = cost of 1 private lesson

• Scalable app infrastructure

• Optional add-ons: 1-on-1 coaching, premium content, partner integrations

• App dev cost: ~$50-150K for professionally polished APP

• Early-stage revenue from events and initial subsriptions

  Not to get ahead of ourselves, but I've spoken with colleagues in the golf/baseball/Pickleball soace and they would love a program like this.  

Projected 3-Year Targets:

• Year 1: 10,000 subs = $1 million gross

• Year 2: 25,000 subs = $2.5 million gross

• Year 3: 100,000 subs = $10 million gross

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Slide 9: Team & The Ask

Founder: Barry Buss

• Former NCAA standout (UCLA), memoirist, coach, speaker

• 40+ years in tennis with lived experience in emotional recovery

Key Needs:

• $500K seed investment

  • App design & development

  • Studio-quality content production

  • Marketing & influencer partnerships

  • Hiring media-savvy presenter/face of FBTL

“I’m the brain. Let’s find the face. And take FBTL to the world.”

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Slide 10: Closing Slide

The Time is Now

Tennis is ready. The world is listening. The next frontier isn’t physical—it’s emotional.

FBTL is ready to lead this movement and change the way athletes grow, perform, and thrive.

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