• Aaron Byrnes is starting a standing pickleball meetup for players in and around Newport Beach, open to anyone who wants a game.

A local game, not a private one

California, USA, Sep 05, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Aaron Byrnes has played pickleball for years, alongside sailing and travel as one of his regular pursuits. He decided this year to turn a personal habit into something local players can join.

Starting this season, Byrnes is committing to a recurring pickleball meetup for people in the Newport Beach area. The idea is simple: a regular time, a regular place, and an open invitation to players who want a match without needing an existing group of friends to show up with.

“Most people find pickleball through someone they already know,” Byrnes said. “I wanted a version of it where you don’t need the connection first. You just show up and play.”

Why he is doing this now

Byrnes spent his early career in construction, then moved into import and export work, a business built on reading people as much as reading numbers. He describes both worlds as places where relationships form on the move, not in advance.

“In my business, you meet someone once and you figure out fast whether you can work with them,” he said. “Pickleball is the same thing in miniature. You play one game with a stranger and you know.”

That instinct is part of why he is putting his name behind a meetup rather than just showing up to public courts on his own. He wants a standing group that other players can count on returning, week after week, whether or not he personally makes every session.

What the meetup will look like

The plan Byrnes has laid out is straightforward:

• A fixed weekly time slot, kept consistent so players can plan around it.

• Open sign-up, with no membership fee and no skill minimum.

• Rotating partners each session, so players are not stuck with the same matchup every week.

• A short warm-up period before games start, aimed at newer players who want to get comfortable before playing points.

Byrnes says he is keeping the format loose on purpose. “The second you add too many rules, people stop coming,” he said. “I want people showing up because it’s easy, not because they feel obligated.”

Beyond the court

Byrnes treats pickleball as one part of a broader pursuit of staying active outdoors, alongside sailing and time on the water. He has said in the past that fitness and being outside are routines he protects, not extras he fits in when there’s time.

He also plays pinochle and follows poker and other games of chance, activities he has described as close cousins to his import and export work: reading a room, weighing risk, deciding when to hold and when to fold. Pickleball fits into that same instinct, though he’s quick to say the stakes are lower.

“Nobody’s losing money on a bad serve,” he said. “That’s what makes it fun.”

What comes next

Byrnes plans to keep the meetup running as a standing commitment rather than a one-time event. He says the measure of success isn’t attendance numbers, it’s whether the same faces keep coming back and whether new players feel welcome enough to return a second time.

“I’m not trying to build a tournament circuit,” he said. “I just want a place where showing up is the whole point.”

He has not set an end date for the meetup and says he intends to keep it running as long as people keep showing up to play.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Aaron Byrnes

Aaron Byrnes built his career in import and export, following earlier work in residential and commercial construction. Byrnes is a pickleball player, sailor, and avid pinochle player, and he splits his time between Newport Beach and Phoenix, Arizona.

• REI Accelerator, LLC is launching a public awareness campaign to help multifamily investors spot the warning signs of unsafe off-market sourcing before capital is committed.

Why this campaign, now

Georgia, USA, Sep 05, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — REI Accelerator works with investors who are trying to source apartment deals outside the open market. That work runs through virtual assistant teams doing cold calling and lead generation, plus capital raising support for investors building partner networks.

The company has seen a pattern across the investors it coaches. People rush toward off-market deals because they hear the phrase and assume it means a discount. It does not always mean that. It means the deal has not been tested by a broker process or public listing, and that carries its own risks if an investor does not know what to check.

“Off-market only sounds safer because fewer people have seen it,” said a company spokesperson for REI Accelerator. “The number of eyes on a deal is not the same thing as the quality of the deal. Investors need a way to tell the difference before they wire money.”

What the campaign covers

The campaign is built around three checkpoints REI Accelerator asks its coaching clients to run on any off-market apartment lead, whether it came from a VA calling campaign, a broker relationship, or a direct owner conversation.

Seller motivation. A real off-market opportunity usually has a specific reason the owner wants out: an estate situation, a partnership split, deferred maintenance the owner does not want to fund. Investors should ask why the property is not listed, and be cautious if the answer is vague.

Verified financials, not owner summaries. REI Accelerator tells investors to treat any owner-provided income statement as a starting point, not a source of truth. Rent rolls, actual bank deposits, and utility bills tell a more honest story than a one-page summary.

Independent underwriting. The company’s coaching model pushes investors to run their own numbers separate from whatever the seller or a wholesaler provides. If two independent underwriting passes land far apart, that gap is the warning sign, not the average of the two.

Who the campaign is for

The campaign targets two groups. The first is investors doing their own cold calling and direct-to-seller outreach who may not have a system for qualifying what comes back. The second is investors relying on virtual assistant teams for lead generation, where deal flow can increase quickly without a matching increase in vetting discipline.

REI Accelerator has built VA recruitment and management services specifically for this second group. The company’s position is that more leads without more structure just moves the risk earlier in the pipeline instead of removing it.

“A cold calling team can hand you ten leads a week,” the spokesperson said. “That is only useful if the investor behind those leads has a process for saying no fast to the nine that do not work.”

How the campaign will run

REI Accelerator plans to distribute the three checkpoints through its coaching program, its mastermind community, and public content aimed at investors researching multifamily strategy. The company is not charging for access to the checkpoints themselves. They are meant to function as a first filter, not a replacement for full underwriting.

The campaign also reflects a broader theme in the company’s coaching philosophy: speed without a checking system is not an advantage. REI Accelerator has built its programs around done-for-you services paired with accountability structure, on the reasoning that access to more deals only helps investors who can tell a good one from a bad one quickly.

The company plans to keep the campaign active as an ongoing part of its public education content rather than a single announcement, given how often new investors ask the same questions about off-market sourcing when they first start looking at apartment deals.

To read more, visit the website here.

About REI Accelerator, LLC

REI Accelerator, LLC is a real estate investing coaching and services company based in Columbus, Georgia. Co-founded by Jonathan Cronin and Larry Kite in 2022, the company works with investors pursuing multifamily and apartment deals through one-on-one coaching, capital raising support, off-market deal sourcing, and virtual assistant services for cold calling and lead management. REI Accelerator describes itself as a faith-based company built around accountability and execution for investors scaling their portfolios.