Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Gillem.
Hi Jeremy, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My name is Jeremy Gillem. I’ve been with i9 Sports for almost 19 years (August 2008). I began as a referee for flag football and for about a year, officiated flag football, basketball, and soccer. After a year of getting to know the business I began managing our most prominent sites and helped on the backend with marketing and season preparations. I managed for 7 years as I worked through high school and 3 college degrees – an undergrad in corporate finance, a masters in finance, and my MBA. As I completed college and post graduate studies, I bought into the business and took over operations completely. At the time we were just servicing the North Raleigh and Wake Forest Areas with about 2,000 kids coming through our programs each year. I worked to develop the area into the 3rd biggest i9 Sports franchise in the nation and world with about 12,000 kids coming through our progams, and most recently sold that business in July of 2025 to put one of my operator’s family into business for themselves. In about 2018, I began buying up neighboring i9 Sports franchises that were struggling or the owner wanted to go a different direction with their lives. We took over South Durham and Chapel Hill in 2018, Greensboro and Kernersville in 2022 as well as Pittsburgh Pennsylvania in 2022. We bought North Durham, Youngsville, Franklinton, and Burlington in 2024, and South Wake County including Cary, Apex, and Holly Springs as well as Southern Raleigh in 2025. Over Covid time period when i9 Sports businesses were shut down, I invested us in a mobile smoothie and coffee organization called Maui Wowi. We serve at local events with as many as 50,000+ attendees at the Raleigh Convention Center. We serve at Koka Booth summer concert series. We did a few seasons at UNC Chapel Hill Football. We serve at Wake Med Soccer Park for the NC Courage Games. We are serving at NC State Football Games beginning this fall. I also got us into the business of Roasted Nuts, Fudge, and Popcorn, and we serve Nutty Bavarian Roasted Nuts at DPAC for over 220 shows each year. Most recently I have partnered with the biggest i9 Sports owner in the network and am helping to oversee his operation of 12 more i9 Sports territories in the Texas area. My passion is in team development, whether that be my team of employees and staff, my team of volunteer coaches, my team of parents that want their kids to develop their character through sports, my team of community partnerships throughout my reach, or simply just coaching more teams of kiddos over the years than I can count. I love to see the kids grow up and become contributing members of society, connecting closely with families from when their child is 3 years old and beginning sports to helping to employ them when they reach the age of 15-16, to when they go off to college playing sports or not, and when they come home to earn money over the summer selling our smoothies and etc. at local concerts and other events. I take a lot of pride in the impact I can make in the community, and I am so grateful to know all the families of the thousands of families that have participated with me over the years. I look forward to growing my footprint and continuing to make a difference in our community and in our youth, and I look forward to continuing to enrich the lives of everyone I come into contact with. BRING ON THE FUN!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Plans never go as planned, and there are always ups and downs in any business endeavor. Our biggest challenge is always to maintain the most positive relationships with the venues we rent fields/courts from and the challenge of staff turnover due to them growing up and moving into a different part of their lives or not being the best fit to provide our customers the experience they deserve. COVID had it’s obvious struggles for all small businesses and had us shut down for about 6 months. We have faced scrutiny, challenges in maintaining a positive culture at our leagues for the sake of the kiddos, issues with mother nature allowing or not allowing us to play due to weather, issues while trying to scale a business and provide outstanding customer service along the path of rapid growth. We have faced challenges with vendors including the tariffs placed on some of our goods. In the world of small business, us entrepreneurs work many hours alone, so finding the way to remain motivated and ambitious whether we are having a good or bad day, how to fend off competition, and how to properly manage corporate relations from above. There are challenges every day, but I believe they mold us and do not break us, and these challenges provide opportunities every day to continue to learn, personally develop, professionally develop, and create and produce the life of our dreams. We have learned how to persevere through down years and how to remain diligent with fundamentals during peak years. We have learned how to navigate the business community and how to make a true impact on the next generation to come!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I would say the magic word here is GRIT. Everyone faces challenges, but how we respond to challenges and the character we display through those trials and tribulations is what’s most important. Facing our fears, doing the scary and challenging things, facing hardship and challenges head on and learning to be as responsive to our customers as we can, knowing you can’t always please everyone and tough decisions must always be made. I was a numbers guy in my education and am fascinated by how numbers do not lie, they always tell the true story. I’m known for being a captain, a leader, a task-oriented people lover who finds extreme joy in letting my inner child out with the kiddos on a court or field. I’m proud of every employee on my team and have worked hard to develop them into better leaders. I’m proud of the community I’ve built and love that almost anywhere I go around town, I know people through the connections I’ve built over the last 19 years. I will outwork 99% of people and I do not shy away from a little competition in games and in life. I am here to stay and I am here to make a difference in thousands and even hundreds of thousands of lives!
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
My advice starting out is that if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and so you must surround yourself with people that challenge you, that know more than you do, and you must learn to like being uncomfortable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://i9sports.com
