Paul Variano: Welcome in. This is the Coach's Board, the playbook for modern youth sports. I'm Paul Variano, and every episode we sit down with someone who actually runs this game. My guests today are the co-founders of 6Tool, and for the first time in this show, there are two of them. The first one spent the better part of a decade in professional baseball. He walked on at Northwestern, he pitched independent ball, then in the Kansas City Royals organization, all the way up to Triple-A, and he did it with a fastball in the 70s and a nickname to match, Disco. And while he was still playing, he taught himself to write code. He built software from the clubhouse, went on to build it for a living, and picked up a master's in psychology from Harvard along the way. He is the CEO and co-founder of 6Tool, Chris Hayes. The second one came at the platform from the stands. He's a seasoned enterprise sales executive and a baseball dad who raised two sons who went on to play college ball. He watched them come up through travel ball, the showcase circuit, and recruiting, and noticed something. Kids were getting bigger, stronger, and more polished every year and understand the game less. He's the one who turned that observation into a company. He is the co-founder of 6Tool, John Rosen. Together, they built what they call the Sixth Tool. Five tools get you noticed. The sixth one, the brain, wins games. 6Tool is a quiz and video platform that shows coaches and what their players actually know about situations, strategy and rules, and then teaches them the rest. Play the clip, know the play. Chris and John, welcome to the Coach's Board.

Chris Hayes: Thanks for having us, Paul.

John Rosen: Thank you very much, Paul. This is fantastic. Thank you.

Paul Variano: Well thank you both for coming on and here's why I wanted the two of you Every coach I know has that moment. A kid with real tools makes a decision on the field that makes no sense. And you realize nobody ever taught him the game. We spend thousands on velocity, exit velo, showcases, and almost nothing on whether a 12-year-old knows where to throw the ball with one out and a runner on second. You two built a company on that gap. I want to know how you got there, what you've learned about what kids actually know, and what a coach can do about this. Chris, I'm gonna start with you. Because your road here isn't a normal one. You walked on at Northwestern as a backup infielder who could bunt. Nine seasons later you pitched at Triple-A. Take me to the start of that. How does a guy throwing in the seventies get a pro career?

Chris Hayes: A lot of luck, lot of, a lot of good breaks. it was definitely an unlikely path. I loved playing and I look back now and I feel like because I was so passionate about it and I was really into, knowing everything about the game and making smart plays, I was just the kind of guy that in general Was able to stay on the maybe not on the starting lineup card, but stay on the team. I walked on at Northwestern. By my fourth season there, we were light in the bullpen. can I pitch a little bit? I dropped down to where I had a lower arm slot, and had a decent year there. Didn't get drafted, but then went to an open tryout with the Royals and they had like two hundred people at this tryout. I just happened to be the one lucky guy that they signed. spent a bunch of years with them and got up to Triple-A and always along the way, squeaking by, well enough to not get released or not get cut from the team in college.

Paul Variano: you must have had a lot of free time, or at least thinking, what if you do get cut? What's the next thing from there? in the middle of those nine seasons you picked up coding. what made you pick it up? Was there something about baseball that gave you that, incentive or that purpose with coding?

Chris Hayes: I had done computer science undergrad. it was an interesting time. in 2005, if you graduate from Northwestern with a computer science degree, all of my classmates, it was like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and they were just crushing it. for me, I'm like, geez, I'm making nothing in the minor leagues here. I gotta do something with my life too. I knew how to code at that point. I had done it in undergrad, So I just had a company that did freelance software development. I had customers from, churches to small businesses that needed websites or, custom built web applications, all that kind of stuff. That I'm old enough that this was before, the first iPhone came out. So there were no apps. I would just go out for batting practice, at At two PM or whatever, we'd come in, we'd have, two hours between, batting practice being done and the start of the game and I was the guy sitting in my locker just coding. did that all through my career just trying to make ends meet essentially.

Paul Variano: That's awesome. I think so many people are doing so many side hustles these days But in addition, you continued your education. I think about 6Tool as an education platform, why did you decide to go, get a master's in psychology and does that tie somewhere into 6Tool?

Chris Hayes: It absolutely does. I feel like it's part of the origin story. I'll tell this version of the story quickly. It's gonna have to be probably the G-rated version, because the actual version of this story

Paul Variano: Ha ha.

Chris Hayes: is very inappropriate, but I'll leave

John Rosen: Hahaha

Chris Hayes: out the inappropriate parts. My very first professional outing, I definitely had imposter syndrome. I was like, I don't belong here. all these guys were drafted and good I was a walk-on, that whole thing. And so my very first outing, I won't tell pitch by pitch, but within like six pitches it was bases loaded, nobody out. And it was a tie ball game. And my heart's going a million miles an hour. I'm like, I don't belong here, etc. Our pitching coach comes out, and I'm thinking to myself, thank goodness, a professional pitching coach is gonna come and he's gonna fix me and tell me what I need to do better, And he comes out to the mound and he just stared off in space for a while, and he told the most inappropriate joke that I can't repeat here. I wish I could.

John Rosen: Hahaha.

Chris Hayes: But he just told this joke, and then he walked off back into the dugout. And I was so mad. I was like, dude, I need to know, am I pulling off? I go like strike, strike, strike out, double play ball, and we get out of the inning, just like that, And I'm sitting back in the dugout and I thought to myself, I didn't get any better between those two things, Between those two events, between that mound visit and before, But my mentality shifted. It was a really funny joke. so despite my anger with him,

John Rosen: Ha ha.

Chris Hayes: I was also laughing and I just went boom,

Paul Variano: Ha ha.

Chris Hayes: boom, boom. And I think that started for me understanding that so much of what we wrestle with sports is not always tinkering your mechanics So many times it's your mindset. then I had a mental coach who was fantastic all throughout my career. I feel that really gave me an edge. when I got out of playing, I was still doing the software development, but there was always in the back of my head, maybe I'll get into mental coaching or performance coaching, that's why I then did that grad program afterwards.

Paul Variano: I love that. So it sounds like you've got the baseball, you got the code, you got the education, but what you didn't have yet was John. John, Tell me your background. about watching your sons, and then how you and Chris got connected.

John Rosen: I became their stepdad, and we just became baseball crazy. We live probably about 25 minutes away from Nats Park and we're always watching baseball. they started playing and, and they loved it. we got through the little league and travel ball and everything else. Cooperstown, we went through the whole enchilada, if you will, with, showcases, everything else. My older son was a left-handed pitcher and, we Didn't know anything about Perfect Game at the time, but we went down to a Perfect Game tournament. Maybe his first three weeks into his freshman year and he hit like 82 on the gun and all of sudden we realized, as a left-handed pitcher, three weeks into your high school career hitting 82 do you think your kid is good enough to play at the high school team? then do you think your kid is good enough to play? Maybe in college or whatever, but you go through that whole thing. we found out pretty quickly that he was probably a D1 prospect early. that was an interesting scenario. My younger son was very academic and not nearly as athletic as my older son. he took a different route. he went to a D3 school, but it was a much later recruiting process. the tournament schedule was a different world In a lot of respects. Throughout that process, you start coming to some realizations. then when you get to sit in the stands in college and you're thinking, all right, well, the cream rises, let's see what happens here. then you're watching some games and you're realizing that these kids just didn't understand the situations that they were in. baseball is not a sport where you can, in basketball, If your point guard dribbles in the corner, you can call time out and rescue him. That's not what happens in baseball. You're at the sole discretion of a right fielder who's got a great arm, but thinks that he can throw at home when he really needs to be throwing to second to keep the guy who just hit the ball at first base, keep the double play in order, let the run score because even with a great throw, he's safe by eight feet. But the kid who hit the ball goes to second base and now the winning run is at second base and the double play is out the window. those are the types of things that these kids weren't understanding. it became evident when you peel back the onion as to why, because most of these kids to get to college all knew that they had to run, a sub-7 60-yard dash. Your exit velo needs to be certain amount. Your spin rate needs to be this if you're a pitcher or you're Your fastball needs to be a certain miles per hour. They all knew the physical stuff to do it. the majority of their games that they felt were important were showcase games. high school was great and they tried to win in high school and everything else. but that was maybe 20% of the games that they ever played every year because, you go right from the high school season to a pretty healthy summer travel ball season all over the country, going to different tournaments and everything else. on a weekend, might have literally, seven or eight games and all these kids are vying for innings you can go five for five and lose 12, nothing and feel pretty good about going back to hotel, taking a shower and going to meet your teammates at

Chris Hayes: Mm-hmm.

John Rosen: Outback Steakhouse For dinner, hey, this is great, but you lost 12 nothing, but it doesn't matter. those are the types of things that became obvious in my mind. we've got to do something because there is something here. We just didn't know the form it was going to take. It took a couple iterations.

Paul Variano: it sounds like Chris has more of the web development, the previous professional playing experience, and you approach it more from a coach, a parenting perspective, a recruiter, how did you come about building 6Tool? What brought you together to decide to build this and how do you divide up what you are building

Chris Hayes: the way we met was totally random, but a former teammate of mine, who had played for the Nats for a little while and when I was in Triple-A with the Royals with him, he connected John and I and he had coached John's sons coming up. that's how we met. in terms of splitting it up, My oldest kid's 14, my oldest baseball player's 12, I'm not quite yet into the full travel ball and Perfect Game John's very helpful in that side in understanding that world and understanding it from a parent who's been through it. That's invaluable. John has no clue the difference between a zero and a one on a computer. So

John Rosen: True.

Paul Variano: Mm-hmm.

Chris Hayes: So the the separation of duties there is pretty easy in that regard. I love you, John. But

John Rosen: That's pretty easy.

Chris Hayes: it's been really nice with our backgrounds, towards the end of my career, I ended up having Tommy John surgery. While I had Tommy John surgery, I founded a video social media network that You would share six-second videos with your friends. If you liked them, you'd swipe them right. If you didn't,

John Rosen: Hmm

Chris Hayes: you'd swipe them left. It didn't take off. It was 2011, so it was too soon, I think it was even before Vine and Instagram But the nice thing was I had learned how to build, full apps at that point and do the startup space within technology. that background's been invaluable to help build this out. what we do now is we, talk about what's this gonna mean for our end user? What do the parents want? What do the players want? We know so many coaches and people in the space that, we have great connections and advisors there in terms what do the coaches want? we really try to, have a very end user focus to say, okay, what can we provide to the user that is gonna be, easy for them? It's gonna allow them to With as little friction as possible, get the information that they need and develop a habit within youth players this is something that they're focusing on. as John mentioned, everybody cares what their 60 time is, everybody cares what their exit velo and spin rate and all those things are. It's our job now to build the metric that they're gonna be measuring against, that they're also gonna care what their baseball IQ is. that's our guiding light, our North Star.

Paul Variano: you talk about the end user, and I've used the app, I had an opportunity to take a quiz. it presents yeah, it I got a hundred percent, I got a five out of five on it.

Chris Hayes: Impressive score too, Paul.

John Rosen: Nice.

Paul Variano: it presents you situations, strategies and rules. Are there certain particular themes you're finding when talking with end users as it relates to particular situations, strategies, rules around baseball, and maybe even other sports?

Chris Hayes: I'll take it from the micro first and then zoom out to the macro. a perfect example that we like to use is it's a random Tuesday at 10 a.m., we'll send an email to a coach to say, hey, 72% of your players don't know the infield fly rule, That coach gets that. Guess what? We got practice tonight, or maybe practice is tomorrow. Let's talk about it, That's option A. Option B is the coach finds out that his team doesn't know the infield fly rule when the ball's in the air. And everybody's screaming and there's base runners all over the place, and it's chaos, I like to think of that perspective to say, okay, how much better of an experience is it not only for the coach, but for the players too, this is where then from the macro perspective, what John and I really like to focus on is that one of the members of our team had this line months ago that we have hung on. we're building and providing confidence to players, Because I think we've all seen for a 12 year old, you I've got a son who's 12 years old who plays, I coach his team. There's so many times where a ball's hit and everybody just starts screaming because they're excited. throw it here, or you got it, get back, get back, get back, Those types of things can be really stressful for a kid, in a world where, baseball is competing with TikTok and Minecraft and, other video games, In that sense, there's times where baseball can be really stressful for a player, A lot of times it's kind of slow and then all of a sudden there's action and now it's really fast. What we want to do is provide kids a baseline to the point where when that action happens, instead of being crazed about it, they're excited because they're like, Ooh, I know this is the infield fly, and that runner from first doesn't have to leave, and I'm the shortstop, and I can now, do this and tag him. that's what we want to build is that confidence and that

John Rosen: you.

Chris Hayes: better understanding in the sport. Because I think, there's that old, Red Barber quote: baseball is dull to dull minds. That's maybe a little bit cruel, but We would like

Paul Variano: Mm-hmm.

Chris Hayes: to build sharp minds that really understand the sport. And now those plays and that action is something that a kid really has a baseline level of confidence when it happens, to where now, I can't wait to get out on the field for this next inning. I hope the ball's hit to me because if something, if this, this or this happens, it's gonna be really cool and all the fans and parents and teammates are gonna be high five.

John Rosen: That is big because as a travel baseball dad we used to joke, all of the parents used to joke about how we'd spend literally thousands of dollars on hitting lessons or pitching lessons and fielding lessons and then you go down to LakePoint and your kid gets exposed on a play that he doesn't understand the game. that's every parent's worst nightmare. all of a sudden there's 12 coaches there to see your son play because he's a prospect and all of sudden he gets exposed because he doesn't understand a situation that maybe these coaches feel like he should understand the one thing about college is you feel like you're going to get an awful lot of development. It doesn't really happen. so you need to be as prepared as you possibly can be. But the idea is that, We are selling confidence. We are selling the idea. We've all been on a baseball field when we're younger and just like, jeez, I hope the ball doesn't get to me right here because I don't know which way I'm gonna go. I'm not exactly sure what the situation is. that's stressful for kids and that affects their opinion of the game. Because it isn't constant movement and you might be out of position playing soccer first, but second, but you can get back into position and go. With baseball and softball you're sitting around and say, there we go. there's a play. now you've got to make the right decision. that is something that we take very seriously is the idea that we would like to be able to create a better experience for kids playing the sport because there's a lot of reasons why these kids don't have the baseball acumen that we would all wish they had in previous years. that feeling is something that we would like to be able to help alleviate.

Chris Hayes: it could be as simple as for, young age youth players. what bases can you run through? you can run through first, but you can't run through second. When do you slide? When do you not slide? When do you lead off or when do you get a secondary lead and do you tag? Do you know do you go halfway? When is it a tag play, a force? And then all the way as advanced at the higher levels to, if it's a double cut, if it's not, who's the lead guy in the double cut? footwork at first base if the throw's up the line here, all those things that aren't necessarily like, okay, here's how you load, and here's where you want to be at the point of impact when you're hitting. it's less of the how in the mechanical side of things and more Why are we playing no doubles? Where do I stand on no doubles? those types of things. I just wanted to answer specifically kinda like what are some of the scenarios that we cover.

Paul Variano: And thank you for sharing that, Chris, what this really reminds me of, it sounds like an SAT, but for baseball. walk me through what an actual kid sees on their screen or their phone. are you directly selling mostly to coaches? Are you selling mostly to clubs? Is it mostly to parents? Where does that funnel go?

Chris Hayes: the experience distilled down is for a player. They download our app Apple or Google Play Store, and then they'll have an interface where it'll show them, some challenges or quizzes that are available to them, They'll click on it, we'll have a screen where it shows a little scoreboard like you have on TV. There's runners at first and second, there's two outs, there's full count. And then there'll be a little video that'll show, a clip of a big league game, with that exact situation. And then they watch, the ball gets hit to right center, and then the video pauses and it'll say, Where does the shortstop go? And then there's different answer options for them. there's different formats. We can do multiple choice, we can do matching, we can do, where should the throw go on this? And you tap on the screen and tap here's where the throw should go on the field, that's the experience for the player. They then can go through and they can review that. we'll show them what the correct answer is. they can then learn from that too. From the coaches and the parents perspective, they're then getting emailed reports of who knew what answer and who didn't. they can also then log into the app and see, their reports and pull all those things. If you've got multiple children, you can see how's this kid doing versus this kid and see all the graphs

Paul Variano: Wow, it sounds like such an innovative product. It sound like my study that I did for my SAT with all the different resources that you mentioned, geared towards baseball and something I thought about going back to my time in high school and studying for the SATs was it's not built into your curriculum You have to spend time out of your day, add on this time to Study for this other exam I think about in this sense, a travel player, they have a couple practices a week, games. is there certain amount of hours over a given month? What is the pathway that you've seen has been the most successful in using 6Tool?

Chris Hayes: in general, as fast as possible. this generation is used to, a five or six second TikTok and go to the next one, we like to try to distill it down as quick as possible. give you like bite sized chunks, for a player, it'll depend organization to organization. some organizations will wanna have, Content that's, three times a week. Every Monday we get a base running quiz. every Wednesday we get something on cuts and relays, and every Friday it's on situational hitting or something like that, For somebody who downloads our app, it's typically about a question a day. so if you get on there, maybe you have a three question quiz available to you and then, later on in the week you're gonna get another push notification of there's another quiz available. So that's the cadence. There's endless topics within baseball and quite frankly any sport. But we find that's a sweet spot. We don't want to make this something that's long or feels like it's, an arduous process. It's gotta be quick hits and then get that information out to the coaches and make sure that we're teaching the kids the right answers. and Paul, on your previous question, you asked who are the customers we have a couple different models. an individual can download 6Tool for free and you can start. You get limited access in terms of how many questions you can answer and But we do have a free model for people to get on there and you can learn it at a little bit of a slower pace. You can then upgrade to, 6Tool Premium to then be able to go a little bit quicker with your learning. But then also for organizations, we have a model where they can essentially purchase 6Tool on behalf of their players and then it's a per player cost that's very nominal to depending on how much you want it typically it falls between 10 or 20 bucks a year. so for $10 or $20 a year for a player you're gonna get a year's worth of content where we'll send out quizzes on your behalf. And the players can then 12 months out of the year even if your organization only plays, for 12 weeks or something like that. We'll send out those quizzes for twelve months to stay top of mind for the players.

John Rosen: The other cool part about that particular module is, let's say on a Sunday night, they get five questions. On Monday, the coaches get the results. On Tuesday, we send out an email to every parent that's about their child. little Jakey got four out of five right. This is what he got right. This is what he got wrong. This is what his strengths were over the course of the last couple of quizzes. But the idea is that it's a constant. You're including the parents in. The process which is a big deal because they just feel they're part of the whole thing and all these travel programs are getting criticized these days because they don't develop kids the way parents think that they should. Well this is living proof that they are. at the end of a season they can have an individualized report from XYZ travel organization that says little Johnny took 12 quizzes This is what he got right, this is what he got wrong, this is what we went over in practice. And on that email it says, what the whole team did, maybe little Johnny got 80%, well the team got 60%, and 45% of those kids got question number three wrong. Well guess what we're going over in practice? We're going over question number three. it really gets everybody involved in the process and allows them to, helps coaches. Coaches with the smaller age kids that they're volunteering their time. They may not know an awful lot about baseball, but they're taking the quizzes alongside the players as well. And it's helping them, become more baseball knowledgeable.

Paul Variano: It sounds like you both had a vision from the get go of what 6Tool what you wanted it to be and what was really the mission providing that value back to athletes, baseball players and not having those situations happen, I hate to use the word clowning, but you make a mistake in front of, what could be twelve Division I recruiters. you could be the strongest, fastest, highest batting average, OPS, exit Velo, but if you don't know what to do in a game, nobody's gonna trust you to go back out there. in your vision for this company, at one point you did sell a portion of the company to another organization. Would love other founders who are listening to this podcast, that's something that they're, looking to do at some point. anything you can share on that experience.

Chris Hayes: we're in a really good spot today in terms of, where we're positioned and where we're going but I don't at all want to make it seem like this has been a perfectly linear road, when we first started we had this idea and this vision, and the goal I love how you said the SAT, we wanna have something that as a player, you're gonna have on your recruiting profile, you're gonna have your 60 time, your exit velo, and your IQ score brought to you by 6Tool. I think that's gonna really elevate the game to a level where kids really, start to value the mental side of the game in addition to those physical tools, that was our vision all along. To get there, we originally thought, let's build a platform that coaches can use, that coaches can create. Content and it was essentially a learning management system that a coach could go in and say, here's how I run bunt plays, or here are my signs, or here's how we want to run cuts and relays. we built out that engine to empower coaches to create these quizzes and then, assess their players, The little phrase I like to use is every coach loved it, some coaches bought it, and no coaches used it. And

Paul Variano: Yeah.

Chris Hayes: it was just that. as a volunteer, little league coach, you've got your nine to five, you've got your family, you've got everything else going on. Do you really then have time to go in and create these quizzes in that process, we had to pivot and say, let's as an organization, let's us build out all of this content. Let's try to find as many commonalities as possible. We're not gonna teach every bunt play the exact same way that every coach in America teaches the bunt play, But guess what, John, can tell stories of so many times where a coach will call and say, My kids came to me and said, Hey, they asked this question on 6Tool, and there was something, they mentioned something a little bit different than how you teach it, coach. The coach isn't mad about that. He's thrilled. He's like, my God, you guys were paying attention, you listened to me, and you're doing your stuff on 6Tool, those conversations are so valuable to coaches to have those things be top of mind for a player, we really had to pivot and say, okay, let's take this engine that we built, this Ferrari engine, let's say, that, is gonna run this learning management system. And now we're going out and we're building the content that's gonna go in there for everybody as well. In that process, we had a group, they were a great group that, were gonna help us bring this to scale. And I think just some of the challenges that we had in terms of, who we were trying to target as our target user right off the bat and the product market fit, the stars didn't quite align, But John and I are both, pretty stubborn and do see this as being something that it's hard in the course of a podcast to, try to convey but genuinely both John and I just love the sport and quite frankly, deep down we're like a little bit worried about it, 'Cause it's like this next generation of players, I was The kid that was so obsessed with baseball IQ, But if you turn back the clock and made me 12 years old today, I would be on TikTok and playing Minecraft and playing MLB The Show and watching two clips of Misiorowski throw 117 and Shohei Ohtani hit a ball 700 feet. that's all I would think about baseball today, John and I really do want to build a company, and obviously the TAM for this is huge, and youth sports are. Blowing up and you know all of that, but we do genuinely want to, build something that's gonna make the game better and make this next generation of players love it more, play better, be more confident, have something that's accessible to them that doesn't cost $10,000 to try to increase your exit velo by three miles an hour, there's all those things that we really genuinely do want to do. in that process, it just came to a point where it was what we were doing before wasn't quite working correctly. we did get really fortunate that, somebody close to John was able to help us reorg and get the company back in our corner and now we're going forward with new leadership which I think is really gonna help empower this,

John Rosen: Right.

Chris Hayes: next phase of 6Tool.

John Rosen: One of the things I want to mention is one of the guiding lights. we want to have a great business and we will. everybody tells us that we've got something that nobody else has and we're awesome. That's terrific. But I've gotten three or four phone calls, similar phone calls, they start out where a dad and his son are driving to a travel tournament four hours away. The son is in the backseat with his his headphones on, and he's either watching videos or playing a video game or listening to music or whatever. And the dad is in the front seat listening to a podcast. And it's a very individual experience for both of them. This one particular... Person, his dad, found me, he found out who I was, he called me directly and I was like, I was very, very surprised. He was almost in tears. I was like, what's going on? He said, I want to thank you because We started out, pulled out of the driveway and it just so happened that we were talking about the 6Tool quiz that my son took. And I was trying to understand what his thought process was on a specific question. and he said, It was the question. He got the question wrong, but I understood where he's coming from. And that then started a conversation that lasted three hours and 55 minutes before we got to the ballpark. And it turned into everything from, like, baseball to, like the family. And different things, he said, we never had a conversation like that. And it all started because it opened up through the question. And I was like, that's amazing. that's just an unintended consequence of what we built, but I feel very proud about that.

Paul Variano: I love that. parents at the end of the day when they engage their kids in youth sports, there's a natural feeling that they're living a little bit of their lives through their kids. in terms of other sports, just 'cause I see so much relevancy, not just for baseball and softball, any visions, on other sports?

John Rosen: just yesterday we were talking with an entity that came to us and they have all sorts of content for field hockey and they want to use our learning management system to download their content and their curriculum for field hockey and white label it. And move forward with teaching girls how to play field hockey. Paul, we were talking and field hockey is a type of a sport where you'd probably pick it up in middle school and there isn't a lot of outside. Ways to learn field hockey. it's not on ESPN every afternoon or whatever. so, if you're picking it up in middle school, because that's when you're able to really play it, this is a really good spot for everybody we can be the conduit to these girls learning. Field hockey and the parents can understand that and the coaches can understand what the learning gaps are and it's a win-win for everybody. there's about 30 or 40,000 girls that we might be able to help out within field hockey. But there's all sorts of sports as well. Chris, you can talk to flag football and some other things that we're talking to as well.

Chris Hayes: the other thing that we dumb lucked into, is timing-wise, if videoing youth sports were a stock, pull everything out of NVIDIA, pull it out, whatever you're invested in, pull it out of that and put it into youth videos. Because, there's so much in this space now, and everybody's iPhone is, quite frankly, better than the cameras they used to shoot movies on back when we were kids, the amount of video that Is going to be generated in, the next year and the year after that is gonna be astronomical, we're lucky in that sense that we're gonna be able to benefit from that. The other thing is these other sports, if you have a kid who's really good at field hockey, You're gonna send that kid to a field hockey camp to improve their skills What I like to think is that 6Tool isn't in competition with that camp. Because that camp is teaching the mechanics, they're teaching the basic skills of the game. We're complementary to that camp because, as that camp, you have the kid for three hours and you're gonna focus on, stick skills and pass, all those types of things, But that camp could use 6Tool to supplement what they offer. I'm hoping we can position this in a way that we do have the opportunity to ride the coattails of some of the current infrastructure in these other sports. But then also benefit from, this new wave of video capture

Paul Variano: thinking what can parents, coaches, players be doing right now that could help. what's advice you would give to the athlete, that may be looking to have a tool like this?

Chris Hayes: Now having played in college, played in pro ball, and knowing so many, former teammates who coach and recruit one thing I wish I could go back and tell my twelve-year-old self is if I was pitching and, a guy it happened to be it was called a grand slam. It was clearly foul. It was 2007 in Kane County, Illinois. I'm clearly over it. But stressing over your stats is not what gets you recruited or not. I thought whether or not I had a 3.1 or a 2.7 ERA. Was so important as to whether or not I was gonna be able to get recruited or play someplace or get at the next level, the reality is as a recruiter, those specifics aren't really what's making, sure, if I had a 7.8 ERA in high school, I wouldn't have played in college, performing well is important, but from a recruiter's perspective, what will get you noticed at a showcase is Did you make a great read on a batted ball? Did you throw to the correct base? Did you make a really smart play? when coaches are seeing a full day of so much action on the field, at the end of the night when he's putting his head on his pillow, he might remember and be you know what? when it's a conference game and it's a late game, I want that kid on my team, If he hits .270 and I could have recruited a kid who hits .292. Guess what? I want the gamer who hit .270, what I would say is as much as you can, and it's really hard. I'm just some old bald guy just, blathering away here, But as much as you can, if you can

John Rosen: You're not wrong.

Chris Hayes: if you can if you can focus on these things and talk to your coaches, be respectful about it. if your coach says, hey, you have to cover third here, well, why? how come you know this person can't be, Who's covering second? those types of things, as much as you can, have those conversations and think about that, whether it's in 6Tool or not, I hope that you, try out 6Tool and have a great experience. those types of things I think are what keep you in the lineup. if my story is, inspiration is too strong of a word because my story is not, you know, but whatever. You know, like I was just

John Rosen: You are a cautionary tale.

Chris Hayes: Yes, thank you, John. That's the word, cautionary tale. I was just able to stay in a lineup, if I could go back and tell myself something, it would be that, those types of things will really stick out to coaches. they will get noticed and those are gonna be the things that cause a coach to say, I want that kid. I want him in the lineup and I want him on my team or her.

John Rosen: one other point to that is we talk about this quite a bit is, you go to a showcase and you see five short stops lined up taking ground balls and they're all doing their thing. they all do the prancing and everything else that seems to be, in vogue these days. inevitably you see three or four kids that are probably 20 pounds heavier than the other two kids that are short stops. You go, wow, those kids have been in the gym. There's nothing that you can't tell whether a kid is a student of the game or not. Just by looking at, at a showcase, there's just no way you can. you might fall in love with a kid who is great. he's got all these physical tools, but he's going to run you out of three innings a month. And you're going to want to pull your hair out. Your head is going to burst into flames. that's what we're hoping to avoid and lift the game up because We've had a lot of conversations with different entities that should know this step, but they have told us that they've lost probably the last two generations of kids because they just don't understand the game the way they actually should. that affects fans, it affects baseball's boring or softball's boring because they had a pit in their stomach while they're out there playing shortstop and they don't know, hoping the ball doesn't get hit to them. Or if it doesn't get hit to them, it's a pop fly. Because they know that the first thing they gotta do is just catch that pop fly. That's it. If it's a ground ball right or left, now there's a decision that has to be made. That's a problem. Now I gotta hope I A, catch the ball and then B, make the right decision. Those are all stressful things for kids. that's how they grow, but you also wanna put them in a situation where they at least have a chance to succeed. And that's what 6Tool does.

Paul Variano: I love it. I'm hearing a lot of themes around resiliency, confidence, curiosity. I think that's a lot of what's missing from youth sports these days is that intersection of those different things. I think what you're building with 6Tool, is something that allows for that opportunity, to occur. before we wrap up, we do have rapid fire here. five questions. I'll ask the both of you. Let's start with John, and then we'll go to Chris. first question, best ballpark you ever played in or watched a game in?

John Rosen: I had a very dismal Division II career so it's not like there's a lot there. I would say the best ballpark I've ever been to on a consistent basis is Fenway Park.

Paul Variano: Chris.

Chris Hayes: I've played in a bunch, but the one that stands out to me was Dayton, Ohio. When I was in Low-A, you're playing in a bunch of, kind of podunk towns and small parks. I remember we got to Dayton and they sold that thing out every night with, you know, 7,800 fans I just remember that was the first time I was like, wow, I've played in ones that were, Probably much bigger and much nicer than that.

Paul Variano: John, the one rule most parents in the stands get wrong.

John Rosen: I think there's a lot of runner interference that everybody gets confused at. I think that's the big one is whether it's defensive interference or runner interference or when that happens and when that doesn't happen.

Chris Hayes: I think weirdly, I'm gonna take your question in a different direction, Paul. I would say the one rule is you want your kid to sign up next year. just what whatever that means. If that means, put your arm around them when, it's a bad game, or find the one thing that they did well today. so much of parents we feel like we have knowledge that we want to impart into our kids. So in a situation it's like, you should have done this or you should have done that, There's a time and a place for that potentially, but I think the one rule is, be a spectator, be a fan, be their biggest fan and hope that they sign up for the sport next year.

Paul Variano: That's awesome. I love that answer. Game situation: the infield fly?

Chris Hayes: And the infield fly.

John Rosen: fly. There you go.

Paul Variano: All right, well we will be releasing this podcast during the World Series. what are your World Series picks?

John Rosen: the Rays have been customers of ours, so I'm gonna go with the Rays.

Chris Hayes: Yeah, I'm gonna go Rays too. Brewers are a fantastic team. I was so happy that both of those teams made it because I think they just sorry to do another plug for 6Tool. I feel like if you could pick two teams in the major leagues that play like 6Tool ball, it would probably be the Brewers and the Rays. So it's been quite the playoffs and quite the season for us. I feel like they've been the best baseball teams all year round. Sorry to kinda make that a shameless plug, but yeah, I'm gonna pick Rays.

John Rosen: Ha ha.

Paul Variano: I completely agree. I see what you're saying, the tacticalness of it, that smart baseball play. Maybe a lot of other organizations similar to the Rays should get on the 6Tool wagon. one last question just because we have talked about baseball so much, is there a sport that near and dear to your heart outside of it?

Chris Hayes: I'm a huge college football fan. I grew up a Northwestern fan. Both my parents went there, I went there. college like every Saturday or now for some reason on Friday nights with the Big Ten sometimes I'm watching college football.

John Rosen: I love college basketball, college football. I love the NFL. I love all the sports, I love playoff hockey, playoff hockey is tremendous.

Chris Hayes: Yeah.

John Rosen: I have a hard time with the, the Colorado Avalanche against the Chicago Blackhawks in November. But when it gets to the playoffs, I feel like everything goes up a notch. but I love all the sports, but I love college basketball. Now with NIL, I'm just trying to get used to that whole ecosystem. generally speaking college basketball.

Chris Hayes: And I'll just say from the youth space, my kids have started playing flag football. It's a phenomenal sport. I love it. I'm like so into flag football now too.

Paul Variano: Awesome. Well, Chris Hayes and John Rosen, co-founders of 6Tool, before we let you go, where can people find you and if they want to reach out to you? How can they contact you?

Chris Hayes: 6-tool.com. So like the number six and then the minus sign and then tool dot com. That's probably the easiest way to find us. We have all our socials and everything on there and describe what the app does, who it's for, and take you through

John Rosen: Right.

Chris Hayes: that process.

John Rosen: we have a $10 assessment. So parents, they, if you want to understand where your child may or may not be it's a $10 assessment. It's very quick. It's very easy. The kids, enjoy taking it. it's not something that's like an SAT-type stressor. All we're trying to do is identify what your child doesn't know. it's a very easy, quick. Price point, but then you also understand you have a pretty good idea of what your child doesn't know and then also where they stand compared to other kids their age that took that quiz as well.

Paul Variano: Awesome. Well Chris and John, thank you. This was a great one.

Chris Hayes: Thanks, Paul

John Rosen: Thanks, Paul.

Paul Variano: And if you're building for youth sports or you're the one getting pitched, I want to hear what you're running into. Thecoachsboard.com. Pull up a chair. That's it for today's podcast. And thank you for listening. If you've enjoyed today's guest interviews with John Rosen and Chris Hayes from 6Tool, listen in for next week where we dive in with Alex Laird from Sporting Founders. Be sure to hit that subscribe or follow button.