How to Run a Youth Soccer Club for 7,000 Kids

[0:00] Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. And again, I'm Devansh. I'm the host. I'm the founder of Waresport. But again, if you want to learn more about me or Waresport, you can search us up on Google. This conversation is all about Matt and his soccer club. So I'm super excited. And Matt, can you introduce yourself to the audience, who you are, what you do? And yeah, let's get started with that. Absolutely. Yeah. I am. My name is Matt Arrington. I'm the director of soccer at DC Soccer Club. We're based out of Washington, DC. We are going on our 50th anniversary, which will be next year, 2027. So we've, we're the longest serving soccer club in Washington, DC. We serve anywhere from, from 6,000 to 7,000 different kids in the city every year. 7,000, you said?

[0:59] Yeah. So, yeah. So we've got about what, just over a thousand playing travel soccer and then anywhere from, you know, four to 5,000 playing rec soccer in any given season. So yeah. That's, that's incredible. I guess. What, how did you guys reach to 6,000, 7,000 people? Like that's a big scale. A lot of clubs start, a lot of clubs fail. What has been behind your guys' growth and maintaining that number and getting, I'm sure you're still growing. Like what's the secret sauce to your guys' growth? Yeah. I mean, if you, if you look at like our, our travel program alone, I mean, you know, if you go back even just six or eight years, it was, you know, we had maybe three or 400 players and then that increased to five, 600 players.

[1:52] And now we're up at just over a thousand players. So we've seen this increase over time. And I think first off, longevity is definitely a big, big component there. You can't discount that. We've been around a long time. We provide very good programming. We provide very good communication and access for everybody of every level in this city. And so I think that definitely helps, right? Having the name recognition, you can't discount that by any means, but I think particularly if you look at like our travel side and the growth we've seen in travel soccer and our number of teams and our players over the last few years, I think a lot of that's tied to, again, the quality of programming, the quality of people we have in the organization. We have a very high standard of communication within our club that we take a lot of pride in. We have a lot of kind of templated mechanisms that we have that our coaches are responsible for communication, that our directors are responsible for communication.

[2:51] And I think that plays a very big role because ultimately when we communicate effectively, I think it not only attracts people to our club, but it also keeps those in our club feeling a part of things and happy with things. And even if it's challenging information, like a kid maybe moving from a higher level team to a lower level team, you just want people to be honest and clear and transparent with you as to why something's happening. And I think we do a really good job of that. I think it plays a big role in our growth and our size. Now that's incredible. And by communication, you mean internal or you also include, I guess, branding components to that, the external communication, as if like how you guys are portraying your club on Facebook, Instagram, any other social channels.

[3:40] So like could you, I guess, go because the reason why I'm asking is based on even my conversations and my interactions with clubs, even using very sport, communication, I think alongside payments is the biggest hurdle, if anything. So I guess what makes your communication unique. I know you mentioned transparency, but like what goes behind that? What channels do you guys use? Any tips for other clubs looking to make their communication better? Yeah, so different parts of that answer. First of all, I am primarily talking like internal, right? How we communicate with our current players and our families, our staff, our coaches, etc. Then there also is, of course, external communication. We definitely utilize all the different social media channels, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.

[4:35] We actually have a dedicated person on staff who is in charge of social media marketing. He's in charge of our newsletter and plays a part as well in updating our website. It's very important to have somebody who is a professional in that realm handling that. It's certainly not new information by any means that there is an enormous, not only value in that, but importance in that to make sure there's consistency in messaging, there's consistency in branding and imagery and marketing, etc. So we definitely put a big focus on that between his role and our CXO's role within the club. It also helps as well when, for example, if I come from more of a soccer area and I come to our social media marketing person and I say, hey, I want you to post all these things. We have tryouts.

[5:28] We need more players for this team. We have this program upcoming. We have camp, all this kind of stuff. And he can go, hold on. Here's the plan. Here's how we're going to do it. He'll space it out. He'll organize it because he understands, obviously, the mechanisms and what works in terms of social media marketing and marketing in general, where we don't want to be inundating our audience with information where then it just becomes noise. We want it to be impactful. So it's good to have somebody who specializes in that. The other part of that answer is just internally, one of the things that's really important is we don't want communication for our coaches and our staff to be a burden, which it often can be. So what we do is we actually create templates, in a lot of cases, to provide our coaches for a weekly email to the team or a preseason email to the team, etc.

[6:21] And they can take that template, utilize it, fill in where they need to. And that way it saves them a lot of work, saves them a lot of effort, and also creates consistency and communication. And so those details, I think, make a really big difference in terms of our effect on communication. And so far, it's been successful. I think there's still room to improve and we're constantly having the conversation, but it definitely sets us up with a good starting point. Yeah, well, that's great insights. And again, as I mentioned, even for this podcast series, I've interviewed, I think, four other club directors. One thing that I guess is standing out with how you guys are running is more, I can sense more professionalism versus the others. I don't obviously mean to say the others are not professional, but what I sensed from others was they're more volunteer-led, where they're sort of juggling communication alongside. Whereas you guys hired a professional person who knows what it takes to run social media communication. You guys have templates, so it feels much more structured, much more organized. And hence, you guys have 6,000, 7,000 people.

[7:36] It has to be that organized, right? Otherwise, the systems are going to fall apart. Without a doubt. I mean, without a doubt. And I think it's very easy to look at a soccer club, a youth soccer club as just a club, right? And just this vehicle for sport and for kids to play, et cetera. And it is that. But it is also, at the end of the day, an organization that takes just that, right? It takes being organized. It takes having clarity in roles, clarity in responsibilities, clarity in communication. Ultimately, yes, you are providing a service to these kids because you're passionate about it and you care about it and you want the kids to have a good experience and learn and grow in the sport and take all the things that sports provides you and translate it to real life as they grow up.

[8:32] But ultimately, you need to make sure your schedules are in a line. You need to make sure that you're communicating schedules. You have logistics taken care of with your fields. And we know in the game is this weekend. And well, what if it rains tonight? How do we get that messaging out in an effective manner in a timely manner? I mean, just things like that. And you want those processes to be clear and formal. You don't want them to be random. You don't want to be sitting in the room when it starts thunderstorming outside and you and I, Devansh, are like, well, who's sending out the message? You, me? You know what I mean? These systems and processes matter just like they would in any organization. So if you do them well, again, people value that and they recognize it and it makes them want to stay a part of your club. They appreciate it at the end of the day. So it's the least we can do from a service perspective.

[9:21] Yeah. It's again, if I may rephrase with your permission what you were saying, there's a more proactive approach than reactive. Yes. So before anything happens, you're prepared that if scenario A, B, or C happens, this is how we're responding. So in that moment, you don't crumble apart. You know exactly what you were supposed to do. And I'm so sure at the end of the day, there still might be some hiccups, but you're probably more prepared than many others who don't have processes established. That's the hope. And at the end of the day, we make mistakes just like anybody else. And a part of communication as well in developing trust is you own it when you make a mistake, right? Or you own it when something wasn't done, as well as it should have been. And so that's again, where that transparency and communication comes out where you say, Hey, listen, like we recognize this was an issue.

[10:15] We recognize there was a mistake here. We acknowledge it. And this is what we're going to do to try to fix it. You just as important as being proactive. And you, since we're mentioning, we're talking about communication, do you guys use a multi channel approach? Or is it like, do you have a primary mode of communication, which it seems is email for you guys? Generally, it's email, right? We also have like a chat mechanism through, you know, the current software that we use. And we try to use those platforms to make sure we're hitting everybody specifically in a situation where an alert needs to be sent out a cancellation, you know, a change in schedule that's sudden, etc. But generally speaking, we run everything through email, any larger modes of communication or larger messages that need to go out.

[11:15] Yeah. And how is AI? AI is obviously a big topic. Less talked about in youth sports, I think, depending on the age of the club director, the coach, AI adoption varies, some like it more than others. Right. So I guess you personally and your club, what do you guys I guess, individually or together think about AI? Are you guys using AI? Is AI helpful? Is it saving any more time? So like, what's your take on AI and implementation of AI? I think AI is definitely helpful, right in certain in certain certain arenas. I mean, if if you know, I'm putting together presentation and, you know, need data, or if I need help refining a presentation, the actual design of it, obviously, I can put that into an AI platform and get assistance there without a doubt.

[12:13] We were exploring utilizing AI specifically in like a chat bot form for our website, just so we can more quickly direct people or provide answers for information that currently exists on our on our website. Right. If that saves somebody an email that gets sent to us, they can just punch it in and they can say all the tryouts for this team these dates, these times, these locations. Great. That's super helpful, and saves everybody time. Where I can't see it being utilized truly effectively, I think it can it can it can do a job and check a box. But where I think ultimately it falls short is we're dealing with with with kids, we're dealing with children of parents, right? And obviously, that is an extremely sensitive and important relationship and something that we have to recognize and take care of.

[13:12] So when I get a message, or any of our coaches get a message about a kid in a club from a parent, and let's say it's something like my kids having a really hard time, or my kids not getting enough playing time, or it's a unique situation, you could absolutely put that into obviously an AI agent and get a nice answer that, you know, answers all the questions in the email or creates kind of this, quote unquote, empathetic response. I feel that those really do need to come from the person, right? I feel like that's somewhere where AI should not be utilized, because we need to tie in the context of a child and their experience with us and the experience maybe the parent is having as well, we need to tie in empathy from from our position to understand where that parent or that child is coming from.

[14:03] And again, while that could be maybe synthesized through an AI platform, I do believe that that that human touch is is can't be replaced. Yeah, no, that's that's good to know. You mentioned a few things that we we have added. So recently, on our website builder, we've added in a chat bot exactly what you were saying. So you can enable it. And then you can feed it all the FAQs and a bunch of like questions, pre context. So anytime someone asks a question, it can obviously do that. And the other thing that we're doing, again, I want your perspective on this. Sure, Matt. So we have an AI component. So we offer email, SMS, WhatsApp as, you know, streams of communication. What we've done is there's an AI chat bot, which on the back end, it runs on ChatGPT. But again, most of the people don't care about it.

[14:57] What we've done is given the ability for a club director to first sort of teach that AI how they speak. So it sort of understands your way of speaking. And the second thing is it's context aware that AI also has data to player development, attendance, XYZ things. So as you were speaking about it, I was self evaluating, like, we also have an AI. Do you think that sort of partially solves what you're talking about, if it has the context, plus it can learn how you communicate? I think, yeah, I won't debate by any means AI and where it's going. I mean, I think, obviously, these models are getting smarter. And I think maybe the model you utilize and could do exactly that over time, right?

[15:46] Learn the context, learn to show empathy, understanding of the situation, etc. I would then worry almost on the other side of that, where then, okay, if I'm sitting in the chair needing to provide a response to this, to this email or this message, if I then source that through AI, do I then miss out on the opportunity to better understand the situation. And often that comes through, you know, much like, you know, data shows that kids better understand things when they write them down versus typing them. You know what I mean? You know, do I then miss out on that context, the understanding of the situation, and then therefore, yes, I've saved myself some time, but I've also lost in the size of connection, understanding, really, having depth to helping to resolve this situation, I may come into it later on and now be lost. You know what I mean?

[16:46] Or not having the full information that I need to make a decision or understand this parent or kid. I'm just in the awe of how thoughtful your answers are. Thank you. Yeah, because I am continuously having this, because I'm building and I'm speaking, so I'm constantly thinking about the role of AI. And everybody almost agrees that, you know, it saves you time. But nobody brought up this point, which makes 100% sense to me that even if AI was good at it, at the end of the day, if you're a coach, you are the one on the field with that player. Yes, AI is not there to feed it. So in, I guess, if you give too much stuff over to AI, which you can do, you wouldn't know how to communicate with them in person. So almost like anti-smartness, like you're losing context by letting AI handle everything, which is like, I'm gonna think about this as even after the podcast ends, but that's a pretty good insight. Yeah. If we use GPS for anything, then we're gonna end up losing our sense of direction, you know.

[18:01] So it's not to say there isn't value in the tool, there absolutely is. And I think, you know, I'm by no means somebody who is opposed to utilizing technology. I think it plays a really important role and helps us advance, but it's always about how do we connect it with the human aspect? Because at the end of the day, to the point you just made, coaching, working in this type of industry, there's certainly, you can certainly treat it away where you look at things just from a numbers standpoint. And it's like, how do we get the most kids? I mean, we started, right? How many kids we have at DC Soccer Club, you could just look at it from a numbers perspective and say, ah, we added numbers, that's success. But ultimately, what's success for us is when we have a kid who graduates from our oldest team, and they reflect and say, we had a really positive experience here. They maintain contact with their coach after they leave.

[18:52] Their parents say, hey, you know, you made my kid a better person through this experience, good, bad, or in between. And that's where the real connection is. The quality of service we provide, the interactions we have in human connection the other day, it's all relationships. Yeah. And that is something I can never replace. No. Yeah. No, I don't believe so. Yeah. And as I'm, again, still thinking about this whole conversation, I think maybe we could differentiate between the categorization of communication, like if it's more repetitive questions that don't have to do with any emotional performance aspects, I think maybe we can let AI handle it. But the example that you gave where a parent is like, why isn't my child playing? It doesn't have an objective answer.

[19:46] It's subjective, I guess, based on the circumstances, context of the club, goals of the club, coach's relationship with the athlete. So I guess that part should still remain human led. But maybe as you yourself mentioned, like maybe having an AI bot on the website where people ask repetitive questions, maybe what uniform we need to wear, like that AI could handle. But it's good to think about the limitations of AI. I'm going to take that away. It's going to be a big quote. Thank you. Thank you for that. But I guess communication is one aspect. So you guys are not non-profit, right? You guys are for profit organization. We are non-profit. Oh, you are non-profit. Okay.

[20:37] How, and I, again, ask everybody this question, how have you guys come up with the pricing model? So what's your pricing model? Like, what are different ways that you guys make money? Again, I don't need like margins, like over, overall, like what are different streams of revenue for you guys. And part B of that question is someone starting a new soccer club. Marketing is still relatively easier to do. Sales, you know what to do. Pricing is something that a lot of people are stuck with. They don't know like if they're underpricing over pricing. So how would you say someone prices their programs? So what you guys do and then what they should do? Sure. So we generate revenue through a few different streams. Obviously, there's rec soccer, which is we try to keep it a very low competitive price. So it's again, accessible to everybody.

[21:34] Within a rec soccer environment, again, you're looking at mostly volunteers. They're all in practice a week at a local park field. We try to keep things, you know, regional or neighborhood based, for lack of a better word for each of those teams. So it's really community oriented, community focused, and again, open for everybody to have access to. We don't want any barriers there. Is that like per session based or do you guys like charge one amount for x number of sessions or something? So you pay seasonally, right? So basically, we have a fall season, we have a spring season. We have like a winter futsal season that we do, right?

[22:24] Slightly adapted. But you can sign up for each one of those separately. There's no like annual commitment. If you look at travel soccer, now you're stepping up a level, you're stepping up your level of commitment in general, right? So you have more practices, more games. There's more things that you're expected to be present for. There's a winter league that you need to participate in, you train over the winter, etc. That's an annual commitment. And we look certainly at what our expenses are, right? We have to cover fields. Oftentimes, yes, we're utilizing local departments of park and rec fields. But we're also going to private schools, we're going to local colleges where we can rent space.

[23:13] Those fields are more expensive, right? We have to pay coaches, right? The cost for coaches and their salaries is expensive. You kind of run down this list, and then you formulate a price from that. We also look to obviously be competitive with the other clubs in our area. So there are certain clubs who will share information, some publicly, some privately, but we by no means obviously want to price anybody out. So we try to stay in alignment with obviously what we can make affordable and also what falls in line with the other clubs. And then aside from that, we also generate revenue through programs, clinics, camps, summer camps, all that kind of stuff as well. Within all of that, we also have a very, very large budgeted financial aid package. So we provide financial aid to families in all of our different departments.

[24:06] That basically just comes through an application process. You go through our system, you see what you qualify for, and then we'll essentially apply that to your registration and your fees before you finalize your registration so you don't commit it to anything. But I mean, just like last year alone, we did something in the region of like $300,000 in financial aid for families in our clubs. So we really focus in on making sure money is not a barrier to families participating in our program. That's amazing. You mentioned a big thing that is obviously required for soccer. Is a soccer field. I think I'm very uneducated about this and someone else might else be. When you're starting a soccer club, what's the process of finding fields? Like if you were to break it down in the simplest steps, is it based off of connection so you know that XYZ place is owned by XYZ person? Or do you go on Google on Google Maps and you search and then you book? So I guess, again, from a layman's perspective, how do you get venues?

[25:24] How do you book them? And what's your contract or what's your relationship with them formally? So the way it works, there are two different avenues. There's the public avenue, there's the I can reach out to the departments of Park and Rec. I can reach out to DC public schools. Those are two public entities and say, I would like to rent fields. They would direct me to their formal application process where there's essentially there's a date before the fall. There's a date for the winter, the spring, the summer, etc., where you can apply for fields. And you put in your application and then essentially they will provide you with access to whatever they have available.

[26:13] Now, some of their permits are also tied up through historical use. There is some of that. So again, we've been around for 50 years. There's a number of fields in the city that we've been using for a very long time. We utilize heavily with the number of players that we have. It's important for those local communities that they have kids who play in our club, they have access to those fields. It's important that there's consistency, so on and so forth. That's an application process. Very straightforward. You can see on like their respective websites. Then there's the private process where if we reach out, there's a number of universities and private schools within the city. We may reach out to any of them and say, Hey, do you rent your fields? Can we have access?

[27:01] And that is oftentimes they'll have like a formal contract. You'll have a rental agreement, but it's much more direct. It's cut and dry. And it's one of those things where the public route is generally very affordable and then the private routes are generally way more expensive. But again, different processes. Generally, if you work for the private school, you're talking to one person, they're in charge of the fields, you cut a deal and you sign a contract and you move on. How much of the budget goes in the fields? Yeah, it can vary drastically. If you were just utilizing public fields, you'd be paying next to nothing on an hourly rate.

[27:53] You could be paying in some different counties, you know, $10 an hour, $15 an hour for a field. Very cheap, very cheap. But if you're going like a private route, you could be paying up to 350, 400, 450 an hour in some places for use of their fields. So it varies drastically. And it's always hourly based? In the vast majority of cases. So you would essentially like, you know, again, you look at a fall season. And if you can map out, hey, you know, we need four nights a week, Monday through Thursday from 6pm to 9pm. We need that from August 15 through December 9, whatever the date may be.

[28:45] It's also a great don't map out a contract, they'll add up all the hours and then you have your fee. Wow. Yeah, I think. Yeah, I guess a lot of it comes down to the zip code and public or private, but that's pretty helpful. So many questions, but I don't want to spend all the time talking about the club. I want to get to know Matt as well. How long have you been involved with this club? What drives you every day? What makes you driven to soccer? Tell the audience more about yourself, Matt. So I joined DC Soccer Club. I'm in my third year now. Prior to that, I was at DC United for five years. I was at Seattle Sounders for two years and Howard University for five years as well.

[29:36] That is like the quick snapshot of like my coaching and director career or my career in youth soccer. I ended up moving from DC United to DC Soccer Club just because it was very close to my heart. DC Soccer Club was the first club I actually ever played for when I was a little kid. It's close to home. I saw that there is a ton of potential in the club and its organization. I saw the direction it was moving in and was very impressed in terms of the structure that had been put in place by the executive director and those around him where I was like, you know, this is an interesting project and it felt like the right time to make a change. I'm deeply invested in soccer growing and improving in our region in what's known as the DMV, right?

[30:29] DC, Maryland to Virginia. I grew up playing here. I played college here at George Mason University. I went away for a few years and played in Italy in the lower leagues there. But then I always knew like this was going to be home. Like this was I was going to come back here. And so when I came back, I started coaching, started gaining more experience and then it essentially led me to those different opportunities at the college level and the professional level. How do you rate yourself as a coach? How do I rate myself as a coach? I'm somebody who I take pride and confidence in my ability because I've invested a lot of time in it. I've done the work to get my licenses. I've done the work to learn from those around me.

[31:19] You know, that's 15 years of coaching now and being in that industry. But with that said, I still sit here and I feel like I still have so much to learn. And I often find myself whenever I enter a new environment or, you know, I'm coaching my four year old daughter's team right now for, you know, one night a week because it's a good way for her and I to spend time together and her to learn the sport. And I tell you what, man, coaching four year olds is the hardest thing I've ever done. You know, I've coached at the U at the U17 and U15 level at the MLS academies with DC United and worked with guys who are pros and guys in college work with some four year olds and then talk to me about who you are as a coach. So I'm learning a lot. And I'm still learning. And that's what keeps me connected to the to the sport.

[32:09] So I just like being around people. I like working with with kids. I like working with people who also want to learn and get better. Yeah. Well, that's I'm assuming you're getting to be a lot more patient teaching the four year olds. Yes. And also understanding one of the things you learn, I think very early as a coach, both through experience and through licensing courses and working with, you know, coaching instructors who are there to challenge you, is you learn not to force things. So when you go to a session, or you're running an activity, and you're like, this isn't working, and you try to adjust it, and it's still not working where the players aren't responding. You learn to blow your whistle, tell everybody to go get water, change what you're doing. You know what I mean? Like, don't fight it.

[33:00] So I see that a lot with the four year olds where maybe I'll try to do something a little too structured, and the kids will be running in different directions, you know, wrestling each other. And I'm like, Okay, we got to do something else. Time to change it up. Don't try to fight it. That's and honestly, I want to expand that conversation into just leadership. Sure. Oftentimes, when you're I'm a leader, I have my team at Waresport. Even beyond it, any anything that I do, you do in life, if you're in a leadership position, there are often times when the team might not be getting the outcomes or results that you want. Right. And there are oftentimes you as a coach or as a leader are thinking, what are we missing? You keep giving them motivation sessions. Something doesn't work out. What do you do?

[33:53] Or what have you learned? As I guess, you know, a tip or trick? How do you get the team who's underperforming to start performing? Like, what are I guess, first few actionable things? Is it just changing or trying out new approaches? Or is there some like other mental stuff? Like, how would you approach that scenario? I think generally, I look at it from a perspective of I need to understand what the problem is first. I think oftentimes, you know, we talked about reaction versus anticipation, right? We can react to a problem that may not actually be as big as a problem as we think it is. So it's giving yourself time to fully understand what the problem is, what the issue is. Once you have an understanding of it, then diagnosing it, right? Okay, well, why is this problem occurring? Like, what is the the what's what's what's preceding it?

[34:43] Right? Is it a personnel issue? Is it a structural issue? We don't we don't have the ability to support this thing that's causing a problem. Once you diagnose that, then you can start figuring out the solution is right. So for example, if we see just look at soccer in general, let's look at the game, right? If we see that there's a breakdown in our ability to build out from the back from our goalkeeper to play our center back to then go forward and advance the ball. It's not working. Well, why isn't it working? Is it something the opponent is doing? Is it something that we are not doing as a team? Is it a personnel issue? Right? Is it the kid who we're playing the ball to when we give it to the center back, he doesn't actually have the technical ability to receive look up and play the pass, particularly not when he's under pressure?

[35:35] Or is it a structural issue? Is our center back actually standing in the wrong place, so that when he receives the ball, he doesn't have the time or the space to then be able to make a decision and play forward? Hey, maybe we just need to move him 10 yards back or 10 yards to his left. And now we resolve the issue. Right? If it's a personnel issue, no matter where we put him, he doesn't have the ability, or putting him in a situation where he's going to fail. And that's not fair to that kid, to a certain extent, right? A little bit of failure is okay, a little bit of struggle is okay. But ultimately, you want to put players in areas where they can also have some success or some area where they can grow and develop from that. So maybe that kid's not a center back. Maybe he's actually better at left back. You know what I mean? Based on his skill set and his ability, etc. So I look at the same, I think about the same type of thing in a business or an organizational setting. Are we putting people in areas where their strengths and their characteristics suit the job that they're doing, right?

[36:37] Or their roles and responsibilities? So oftentimes, we look at a problem and it's not that, oh, the person isn't working hard enough, or the person isn't trying hard enough, or etc. It may just be that that person's skill set does not suit what's being asked of that responsibility. And so it becomes, in my eyes, I always try to look at people in terms of who they are, what their strengths are, their characteristics, etc. And then put them in areas where those strengths and characteristics can be exploited, exploited in a positive way, right? How can we maximize those strengths and not put you in positions where you're going to fail? If I have someone who's really strong administratively, I'm not going to go ask them to coach kids on the weekend. I'm going to ask them to handle scheduling, logistics, communications, etc. And vice versa.

[37:32] You know what I mean? So again, I think it's identification, understanding characteristics and strengths and putting people in areas where they succeed. And then when you have a problem, maybe it makes it a little bit easier to diagnose what the issue was and figure out how to fix it. Well, how do you, I guess, if say you identified that maybe the issue is just motivation, but I guess motivation, lack of motivation also comes from a structural problem, as you write, or can maybe they're just in a spot where their strengths aren't being utilized and they're not getting results. As you said, maybe they need to move 10 yards back. And because they're in that spot where something is happening and they're not getting results, they're feeling demotivated.

[38:26] But okay. Anyways, how do you think if it's a genuine motivation issue, how do you handle it? Like what's your way of motivating someone? Is it like, yeah, what's your way of motivation? My way of motivation is through communication and understanding. Like I need to understand who you are. I knew that's there because it's easy for someone to sit there and be like, Oh, I need to understand what motivates you. And I'll ask you too much. What motivates you? Well, money, you know, making people happy. Who knows, right? Whatever it can be. Yes, like that may help you understand, okay, well, how can I help motivate this person? But I think there's things much further below the surface there, where if we can understand people on a deeper level, we can build a connection with people on a deeper level, we can get them to understand that something they're doing is part of something larger than themselves, right? Whether it be part of a team structure, or an organizational structure, etc. And I think more times than not, when you, that person then understands that, and then understands that you are invested in them, right? And that you are there to support them.

[39:41] And that, even if they fail, they have your trust, etc. I see more times than not, those people then start to excel, right? And success is a part of that, allowing that person to have some success, allowing that person to also fail. And no, it's, hey, it's all good. That's part of the process. How long you let them fail before it's a red flag or before you stop. And it's like, now this is too much of failing. So what's Yeah, well, how do you define that? I think it's situational. I don't think you can define it. I think you can. I mean, if you work for like some, you know, large corporate organization, I'm sure they have stuff written out. That's, you know, there's many strikes in your ammunition. And I think when you're working more closely with people, when you're, you know, at the same level with them, and having these conversations on a day to day basis, ultimately, you will have an understanding of who that person is, and how they operate. And maybe that helps in that process of like, man, this person's really struggling, like, you know, failure, failure in our industry may be, you know, oh, man, these, these kids are having a really negative experience with this coach.

[40:58] Oh, man, this coach is like, not providing proper feedback for his players and the families. Oh, man, this coach missed his session or showed up late, right? It's, it could be things to that effect, in which then we need to have a conversation with that person, ask them first, hey, what's going on? You know, is there something else happening that we're not seeing that we can help with? Is there something to give us context to this situation? If there is, then we can obviously try to help remedy the situation at that point. If it isn't something that effect, and it's just this person, let's say being careless, okay, well, let's try to create a support system here. Maybe we pair you up with another coach within our organization as a mentor, right? Maybe our technical director comes out and, and helps you out a few sessions, maybe we try to adjust your schedule at different times and locations, so it's more accommodating, and it can help you get there more easily.

[41:53] Now, if we try to make those efforts, and then we're still seeing the issues, then we need to have another conversation, right? And I think it would be very unrealistic and maybe not truthful, right? If I were to sit here and be like, ah, well, we try to make it work for everybody, we're here to support, there's always, there's always a certain line, right? At the, at the end of the day, we have to, our focus is on the players. Our focus is on the kids having a positive experience. And if we try to support somebody as much as we can, to help them provide that, and they're not able to do so, or not willing to do so, then we have to have a conversation about, hey, listen, this may not make sense for either of us, this might, this might not be the right industry for you. You know what I mean?

[42:40] And there absolutely is a point. But again, it's situational. It's case by case. Yeah. There's so many questions in my mind, but I also don't want to take more time than I promised you. So maybe, you know, I have one last question, but I think maybe I, we need to do an episode to sometime in future. Sure. No problem. I feel like you have so much wisdom and experience around the mental side of things. I'd love to touch that even more. But anyways, I guess coming towards the end of this, and I was just looking at, I didn't realize it's been 15 minutes of us chatting. Yeah. Obviously, I now come from a technology background. Right.

[43:31] So for my knowledge, my help, what do you think are existing gaps opportunities that you see? Again, we don't need to name X, Y, Z softwares. I'm one of them. Where do you see as an industry, what are the gaps, challenges or the flip side? If there was no constraint on time, money, technical knowledge, how do we take this to 10 X? Like what is something we can do magical that you guys are still spending so much time on? Just, I guess all I'm interested in is problem. It's my duty to find a solution. But yeah, what are the gaps? What are the challenges that still exist?

[44:21] I think there's a very broad, I think there's a problem or an issue or something that I think the youth soccer industry and this may carry over into other sports as well, I don't know, are all trying to improve or do better. I think it's giving individual player feedback. There's a lot of technology, for example, that's coming out utilizing AI doing video analysis, right? We take the footage from a game, we upload it into this platform, AI spits out what it thought the player did well, didn't do well, etc. There's a little bit of apprehension with that, for example, because you're like, well, hold on, that's not now coming from the coach, right?

[45:10] That's coming from that kind of this AI's brain perspective that's been loaded or developed within it to understand these are the good soccer actions, these are the bad soccer actions. So there's that, is there a better way to do that? Because at the end of the day, for a coach, especially if they have two teams, for example, that is an extremely time consuming task to be analyzing video, breaking down individual highlights or lowlights, and then providing feedback. Especially when many of these coaches have other full time jobs on top of coaching, right? It's very challenging to do. you look to the next piece, which is actually providing that written feedback for those players, right? Which itself takes time, right? But you also don't want to speak in generalities, which is something that I think a lot of, I'll say us in general, the sports industry is guilty of, right? You want to be able to give really specific feedback, acknowledging both that it's probably mostly going to be subjective at the end of the day, because it is very hard to tie data and statistics and something objective into that feedback.

[46:28] Just because so many of these companies lack the resources, us being one of them, to be able to do that. So you are very much relying on what the coach sees and what he says and what he remembers for that player. So it's a very imperfect process. And then you also have to think about what your scale is. If we have a scale of one to five for every single category, well, is five Lionel Messi? And one is a kid who's never played soccer before? Well, then you shouldn't ever give a kid a five, right? You know what I mean? So it's creating understanding. Is a rating system the best way to give feedback to a kid? Is written feedback the best way to give feedback to a kid? There's no straight answer to it. And I think it's something that every club is doing differently or uniquely, but adversely somewhat the same. Because it's all kind of the same at the end of the day. And I've talked to 100 different people about this, people at different clubs, different levels, and everyone's got their own way of doing it.

[47:35] And all of them are just, I think, okay. And maybe there's not an answer to it. I don't know. But that's the big one that sticks out to me. Well, so one of our best, I guess, selling features is player development tab, where coaches can configure their own rubric. And then at any given point of time, they could come in and leave sort of like a rating rating, or it doesn't have to be based out of an X number, it could also be just a numeric stat or score, along with notes, and any other images, videos, and over a period of time, it makes a bunch of graphs data on that player. And in a click of a button, you could export a personalized PDF report. So this is what we already have. Maybe I'd love for you to see it sometime.

[48:28] I'd love feedback on that. But anyways, why I'm bringing that up is, I added that because when I was building Waresport, a lot of club directors were mentioning, this is a gap that most other softwares don't have. So I was very quick to add it. But now, the whole ratings thing that you said, now I'm myself wondering, I have that feature in my software, and clubs are using it. But what does that out of five or out of 10 mean? Yeah, like, is five perfection? And if you give someone a five, are they perfect? And how do you define perfection? Because as you said, like, nobody obviously at a youth level is Messi. So they're definitely not perfect. But then how do you still continuously justify growth? Like what makes someone go from a two to a three?

[49:21] you also can't make it out of 1000. Because then everybody's always going to be way behind. Yeah. So I don't know, that's that's a brilliant perspective. And I'm maybe I need to be part of thinking how we maybe change the way we think about development. Because again, I think and I'm thinking out loud, yeah, many people will say that text based thing could be very subjective. And that's why like, we try to quantify things because it gives you a concrete judgment of and context, right perspective. Like I can't say this is small. This pen is small. What I'm saying is this is smaller than something else. Sure. So until exactly so I, it's, I don't know why.

[50:12] This is a very great perspective. And I think I want to go back to the clubs that are using our tool and ask them this question, like, what makes a five or five? And what makes a 10 a 10? Yeah, I mean, so we utilize, just to give a little bit of insight into what we do, behind the scenes. And we're very, we're transparent with this with the families and stuff as well. But we rate every single player in the club. We rate them every single month, once a month. And all of that information is confidential, right? But we do we let families know everybody like, hey, we're doing this because just for example, when we get to the end of the year, we have tryouts, I don't want a decision to be made on any single player in our club based on three hours of tryouts in one week. Correct.

[51:01] Combined with the memory of what the coach recalls from the last nine months, right? Because that then becomes a very, maybe bias or unfair mechanism to rate and place a player for the upcoming year, a kid might come and have a lights out tryout for three hours, right? The two sessions that week and you go, whoa, this kid's really good. Yeah. But you're not tying in the context of maybe who he was playing with at the tryout, who was around him, maybe he's just had a really good week, which then would discount what happened over the last seven or eight months prior to that. So we have a very simple and it's extremely subjective. And we're transparent about that. The coach goes in with every single one of his players once a month. And he goes, this is my rating for these kids based on the level of this team.

[51:55] So within this team, this kid is a five. Within this team, this kid is a two, right? And so what that does then is once we get to that tryout period and that team placement period, we can then look at that data over the last nine months or eight months or whatever and go, okay, this kid was very consistently a three. He's at the right group, he should stay in that team. This kid was very consistently a five. He should move up a level. Right. And so it helps us answer those questions with a larger dataset, which again, we acknowledge is very subjective, but it's better than, in my opinion, three hours of tryout over the course of one week to make a decision on a kid. Correct. So the scale is then not universal. It's in your club's scale. So five is not Messi.

[52:45] Five is the best player on your team. Correct. And everybody else in comparison and that best player also changes over time. Someone else comes better. So he becomes the benchmark. So it's almost, I guess, internal benchmarking, what you're trying to say. I don't know if you've heard, and maybe this already exists in soccer. I don't know. Again, I watch soccer, but not educated enough about soccer. In pickleball and tennis, there are concepts of UTR, DUPR, which is like a universal rating mechanism. So in that rating you could, so if we applied it to soccer, what that means is there's a genuine rating scale where you just play a bunch of games and based on those games, even a Messi is on that scale. And even a person who has never played is on that scale.

[53:39] It does something like this already exists in soccer, like a universal rating system or not. There is, but it's more team oriented, not player oriented. And so there is actually a lot of debate around it. And it was called like a GotSoccer rankings. GotSoccer is this platform that does a lot of registration and stuff like that. And basically, yeah, it would give different leagues, different tournaments. They would have like a different level of points attached to it. So if you won this tournament and you won the championship game, you would accumulate all these points and your team's ranking would move up. If you beat a team that was a higher ranking, you would get X amount of points and move up. You know what I mean? And that's how these rankings would be developed both within your state, regionally and nationally.

[54:36] That's somewhat since really lost its value because larger leagues like the MLS have started MLS Next, their Academy League, EC &L, the Girls Academy League, they've gotten away from that. They're like, we don't use that. We manage, you know, they're not really rankings, but we manage our standings and stuff within our leagues independently. But that sort of thing did exist, but it does not exist on an individual player level. And I guess that makes sense because, again, from another perspective, at the end of the day, soccer is a team sport. So I guess as long as the team is winning and you had reasonable contribution, because sometimes I'm assuming it's harder to evaluate individual contributions in a game because you might be a credit because visibly he's the one who caused the score to go one up or two up.

[55:38] Whereas a defender, it's almost like, I guess, I guess there must be, there are stats like how many things you've defended, goalkeepers, how many, but what I'm trying to say is that I'm sure there's like some indirect layer of contribution or maybe without a doubt. And when me and you are playing, maybe just us being together on the field, we have some like bond that each of us being there motivates the other and some motivation, some something. So I guess harder to quantify that in a sport like soccer. If Leo Messi is on your team, if you're a center midfielder, you're going to have way more assists at the end of the year than if Leo Messi is not on your team. Exactly, exactly. You know what I mean? So like he is going to make you better, both subjectively and objectively. But if Leo Messi is not on your team anymore, and you have me playing at the nine, I'm going to score way less goals.

[56:39] And that means you're going to have way less assists. So all of a sudden, you're not as good. So yeah, it's imperfect. So should the only metric of individual player feedback be their contribution to the team? I don't know how you would define that, but maybe. I'm just thinking out loud, but because I guess there was a way to quantify your, if there was a scale of 100%, 100% means 100% of the effort put by the team to win. If you could attribute maybe 20% of the victory is attributed to Matt, 10% to Devansh. Maybe in future, we'll have a way to, I guess, quantify the impact through computer vision or something. That sounds like something you're going to have to take on, not me.

[57:31] I shall, but I think it was a brilliant conversation, Matt. Very effortless. I loved speaking to you. Very grateful that you came for this podcast and I got to learn a lot from you. Again, there are still so many things that I had written down that I didn't get to touch on, but it's a good thing. We had a banger of a conversation. So anytime I appreciate you making this work and having me on and obviously let me know when you want to do round two, I'll make time for it. Sounds good, Matt. Thank you so much for your time and we'll be in touch. Sounds good.