For more than a decade, Michael helped schools across the UK appoint their Heads and senior leaders. He has worked with hundreds of current and former school leaders and came to understand the pressure they’re under - and the single question that guides the best of them: what’s the right decision for the pupils?

His co-founder, Joe Murray, arrived from a completely different world. An unfulfilled investment banker, he then turned entrepreneur and spent 25 years building companies - one of them from his bedroom into a £100m+ business. He’s a self-confessed data-geek but his hard-won lesson wasn’t that numbers are everything, it was that working with and motivating people is equally important; really understanding numbers is only half the picture.

Joe also happens to have played padel in Madrid 25 years ago - long before it was fashionable, and long before he’d have called it a business.

The same destination

The idea clicked when they put three simple facts together: schools have land, schools want more to offer their pupils, and schools are under financial strain. What if Hi Padel could fund and build high-quality courts - potentially at no capital cost to the school - with pupils playing by day and the community playing in the evenings and at weekends?

But what really united them wasn’t the model. It was that they ask completely different questions and need both answers:

• Michael asks - “Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could change these lives?”

• Joe asks - “Can we actually make this work?”

Passion without discipline tends to fail. Discipline without passion rarely achieves much. Hi Padel needs both - which is why Joe cheerfully describes the partnership as “raw passion, with relentless analysis”.

Their ambition isn’t “how big can we make this?” It’s “how many lives can we change?”

What they won’t budge on

For all their differences, there are things neither will compromise. Safeguarding comes first, always - a school is never treated like an ordinary leisure venue. The courts have to be high-quality and built to last. Promises get made carefully and then kept. And everyone involved has to genuinely believe in it, because - as they put it - schools can always tell the difference.

Looking back, I think that’s what Hi Padel is really about. Not simply building places where people play sport. Creating places where people connect - where strangers become friends, and where schools become stronger communities.

That’s the letter they hope a Head might write to them one day. Not about revenue - about a pupil who found a sport they loved, a parent who made friends, a school that became a little more woven into the life of its community.

Two friends. Different strengths. One purpose.

Michael Stephens & Joe Murray, Founders of Hi Padel.