Zach sits down with Joe Price, the co-founder and general manager of Grown Up Sports, to talk about GUS Leagues, and Joe shares a few physical wellness tips for professionals, particularly people of color.

Check out GUS Leagues!




Read the articles mentioned on the show:

Why Your Chair Might Be Killing You

Office Exercise: Add More Activity to Your Workday

The Future of Wellness at Work

The Future of Employee Wellness




TRANSCRIPT

Zach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach, and you're listening to Living Corporate. Now, look, Ade and I have had several guests on the Living Corporate platform. We've had, you know, celebrities, musicians, authors, CEOs, but we haven't had my brother on the show. In fact, to be more specific, we haven't had my brother-in-law on the show, okay? And today we actually have a special guest, Joseph Price. Joe, what's up, man? How are you doing?




Joe: Hey. I'm doing well, Zach. Zachary. How are you?




Zach: I'm doing great, man. So look, today we're talking about wellness, and I think it's just a really great fit for you to be the guest to talk about wellness because of your background, your current passions, and just your level of expertise in physical and personal health. I mean, I'm not saying that you're, like, a doctor, but I'm saying, like, you got--you know what I'm saying? You've got some credentials.




Joe: I am not a doctor, that is correct. [laughs] Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm happy to chat a little bit about what I do and my experience in the space.




Zach: Man, that sounds awesome. So look, without further ado, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?




Joe: So for the sake of the podcast professionally, I own and operate an organization called GUS Leagues, which stands for Grown Up Sports Leagues. We're an adult sport and social club. We're based in Houston, Texas. Adult sport and social club means we essentially facilitate sports leagues, tournaments, some corporate wellness and other fun activities around town. So a little bit of sport, a little bit of social, and that's what I do by profession.




Zach: That's awesome, man. So look, as you've already alluded to and as I said at the top, we're talking about physical wellness for corporate professionals. Let's talk a little bit about what physical wellness means to you. And I recognize that's a very broad statement, so, you know, you can take that and kind of wax poetic however which way you want.




Joe: Yeah. So physical wellness obviously can be pretty broad. What drew me to the space specifically is that I'm into team sports. It's what I've done for fun. I've fostered community throughout my childhood, adolescence, and adult life, and I think that type of engagement is still something that people should do as they get older, and it's a good way to connect with other adults that sometimes can be a useful way to connect outside of just happy hours, drinking, getting dinner. You know, there's a way that you can improve yourself and still connect with people as an adult, and that's been a good way for me and something that I promote to our companies, to our friends, and how I personally connect with people. So that's the part that speaks to me about what we do. I still think it's very important--a good way for people to connect, period.




Zach: Man, nah, straight up, and you're absolutely right that every time--well, let me not say every time, right? You don't want to speak in absolutes, but more often times than not, especially in consulting, when you talk about kicking it with somebody or, like, doing something fun, it often revolves around getting a drink, getting something to eat, right? Especially in consulting. They talk about, like, the consulting 15, right? Like, you pick up weight just traveling and eating out all of the time, and so I think that you're 100% right that finding other avenues to connect and build relationships as opposed to kind of, like, staring down a plate of food or staring in-between a bottle. So let's talk a little bit more about Grown Up Sports, right? Like, what's the story behind the company? Why the name? All of that. Just talk to us a little bit about it.




Joe: As I alluded, we do grown up sports, and I--we'll just give you a little bit of background about how we even came to call ourselves that, 'cause I find the story interesting. We--me and my business partner, John, started this company about seven years ago. I know John because we both played intramurals at the University of Texas in Austin. That's where we went to undergrad. He worked for RecSports, was a sports management major, and he actually interned for a company that was similar to ours that was based in Austin and helped them with their original expansion out to San Antonio, and so this is something that he was passionate about from when he was forming a passion about anything. So when he was, like, 21. That was his focus. We both moved to Houston. He came here for law school. I came just to start my professional career. My family is from Houston. And we were looking for a similar community to that that we had when we were an undergrad playing intramurals. Couldn't find anything that we felt met that need in the space, and so--he had been wanting to do that for quite some time. We decided--so a little bit of background about me. I was working with an education technology start-up on the side, helping them with an expansion in Houston, so I had a little bit of entrepreneurial experience, and so when he was looking to start this he was looking for a partner, and he comes to me with the idea. We go through his business plan. I tell him it's awesome. I don't have time for it. Some situations arose that made it seem like the time was right, and so we decided that we would try to start this company, and then we decided we wanted to start it--we're both basketball guys, and so this was during the time when the NBA was on a lockout--




Zach: Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.




Joe: Yeah, and so what you're seeing on ESPN at the time is a bunch of leagues, and we wanted to start with a basketball league. Leagues that are becoming popularized with these big names, and it's, like, the Goodman League, the Drew League. You know, something that has a name that pops, something you want to [?], like, name our company. We really wanted to do, like, recreational leagues in Houston, and so we had a name, that was Houston Rec Leagues, and then as we started thinking a little bit more long-term it was like, "Oh, that sounds a little bit limiting." So, you know, [had] a moment of clarity if you will [?], and it's like, "What could we name our company that rolls off the tongue?" And it was like, "We need something that's gonna pop and speak to people like the Drew League," and so I was thinking of what we were planning to provide, grown up sports. GUS. GUS League. You know, "It's gonna--it's gonna roll off the tongue. People are gonna love it," and, you know, it doesn't really work like that, but that was kind of the motivation behind why we [?] named it that, and it also gave us the opportunity if we ever wanted to expand our horizons to other geographic areas that it's not so limiting in scope as Houston Rec Leagues might have been.




Zach: I love it.




Joe: So that's a little bit about the name, yeah. And even our motivation--so this was--for me, this is how I make--[?] my closest friends, you know, I know 'em through sports. How I met my business partner, I met him through essentially, you know, our company, but for college students and intramurals. So this was just a natural thing for us to do, and it's nice that we've been able to find a way to make some money off something that we actually--we use the product ourselves, and we were looking for a need--the need was something that we were trying to solve for ourselves first and foremost.




Zach: Man, I love that. And, you know, it's funny, you talk--and you talked about, like, it doesn't really work that way, but GUS does roll off the tongue, and it's interesting because as someone who lives in Houston, it feels like almost every other person, especially, like, before I joined the current firm that I'm at, like, everyone is either--they've either heard about it or they're a part of it. If I'm with somebody and, like, I can tell that they play basketball--you know the type, right? Either it's their walk or their build. I say, "Do you hoop?" And they'll be like, "Oh, yeah. You know, I do some intramural stuff. It's, like, an adult intramural." I'm like, "Oh, okay. Have you heard of GUS?" They're like, "Yeah, that's what I meant." I'm like, "Oh," and I remember after, like, the fourth or fifth time I was like, "Dang, this mug is real." Like, it's just super funny, but, like, anybody I see somebody with, like, that sore walk, you know what I'm talking about? Like, with the--you know. The limp--




Joe: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, our knees are aging faster than the rest of us for sure. 




Zach: It's funny, but it's not funny at all. But I'll see it, and I'm like, "Oh, okay. He probably hoops," and I just--I mean, there's a strong percentage, man, and they'll be like, "Oh, GUS." It's--like, it's smooth, to your point. You talked about building up this business with John, and there was a point in time where you were building this up while you were actually in business school. Like, can we talk a little bit about what that was like?




Joe: So I went to the University of Michigan for business school, got my MBA. 




Zach: [Go] Blue.




Joe: Go Blue. Ooh, I appreciate that. And the reason I--I wanted to go to business school for a while before I went and didn't have necessarily a reason, a compelling reason. Like, I didn't know that I necessarily wanted to expand the career that I was in, if I was doing it to grow within the ranks of my current company, but after we started GUS--me personally I have always had ambitions to start a company, manage a company, be--have som