How to Grow a Youth Soccer Club to 3,000 Players

[0:00] Hey, guys. Welcome back to the series of podcasts that we've started. This is the third episode. And I'm here joined by Peter. Again, I'm Devansh. I'm the host. I'm also the founder of Waresport. But again, as I keep saying, this is not about Waresport. So I want, if you want to learn more about Waresport, you can go Google us, go on our website. But this next 30 40 minutes, it's all about Peter. And I'm super excited to learn more about Peter. But Peter, just for the audience, could you quickly introduce yourself where you're from, what you run, and anything that sets up the context? Yeah, so my name is Peter Stogsdill. I am the executive director for SDSC Surf in San Diego.

[0:51] I've been in this position for the last five years. But I've been with this club for anywhere from well, it was kind of a couple of clubs that have merged together. So I've been a part of this program since 1995, as like a director of coaching. And then we merged with another local club here in the area in San Diego in like 2010. And so I was a part, you know, on the leadership team for that and then became the executive director just about five years ago. Incredible. That's kind of my, my coaching journey here. Yeah. And you mentioned you, your club joined another local club. So how many athletes do you guys have right now in your program? On the competitive side, we have probably around 1200 kids, maybe 1250 kids on the competitive side, if you include some of the really little ones that are playing sort of competitive soccer.

[1:58] And then we have another, we have two recreational programs. And there we probably have another 1500 to 2000 kids that run through that program. So, so yeah, we're looking at around say close to 3000 between 2 ,500 and 3000 kids. So yeah, that's incredible. And obviously 3000 kids or athletes just don't come overnight. So would you love to share, you know, some strategies, anything that has helped your club grow? And again, I guess the base of that question starts from what does your club stand for? What are you guys, you know, really building?

[2:47] How have you built it? Have you guys reached till 3000? Again, you could think it more, both theoretically, and both business perspective. So I would love to pick your brain on both sides. Yeah, so I mean, part of that growth, through the time has just been the growth of youth soccer in the area. You know, at one time when I first started, no one played U7, U8, competitive soccer, I think that started at U9 or U10. And all of Southern California, there were, you know, you go to state cup and there was maybe eight teams, 10 teams, 12 teams in state cup or something like that. And now, you know, you've got in Southern California, just the growth has just been phenomenal.

[3:41] So some of that, I think is in large part just to how much soccer has grown in the area, or overall. And I think some of that has been, you know, on our part, putting together good programs. You know, we're very responsive to the families in our area we wanted to provide. Well, I mean, you know, Surf's motto is the provide best of the best experiences. But that's even before we were a part of Surf Nation, that's been part of our motto all along was, you know, provide good experiences for our players and their families. You know, be responsive to them, treat the kids well, provide good coaching, provide good opportunities for development. And then also provide opportunities for, you know, to help your competitive kids who want to go off and play in college, provide opportunities for those kids and just have a, you know, just kind of be on top of things from top to bottom.

[4:45] And I think we've always done a good job of that. And that has helped us kind of grow that way. So I mean, that's been a large part of the growth. So anyway, I mean, that's probably most of it, I think. Yeah, anything, I guess, unique you guys have done in terms of maybe the way you market your club, maybe the way you guys sell your club, because so many soccer clubs are starting off, a lot of them fail. I've spoken to a lot of soccer club directors who start, and then, you know, they realize it's not easy to build a soccer club. And maybe after a few months, you know, they fail. So any business side of the things that you guys have really dragged, again, marketing or the way you sell, you touched on keeping communication with families, that could be an aspect of sales. But how would you respond to that?

[5:44] I don't know, I think we've been we have a good team, we've had a, you know, the game has changed so much. So we started off as a neighborhood or community based club, right. And down here in San Diego, we were part of Rancho Peñasquitos and Rancho Bernardo, and, you know, two local communities, where a lot of a lot of great soccer players have come from, you know, and, and soccer was always the main sport in these areas or in these communities. And so we had a good team of volunteers, you know, parent volunteers, board members who put in a lot of time and put in a lot of work developing it. I know now soccer has changed to a point where a lot of these clubs are they're no longer community based clubs, they're LLCs, and they're, you know, they're, they're businesses, and we've never really looked at it like that.

[6:47] We're still responsible, too. But we've gotten it to a point now where the soccer people run the soccer part of the organization. So we don't have people who aren't experienced in the game, running things, like people who are involved in the game are the ones running things. So and we still have, you know, business people that help us, you know, we have a social media director who runs all of our social media. And so she does all that stuff. And that's a large part of where we do our marketing. Is it Facebook? Facebook is your primary? We use Facebook and then Facebook's actually pretty small Instagram is where we have most of our most of our advertising, I mean, through our website, but Instagram is like, we're posting something, multiple things daily and always doing stuff on Instagram. And I think that's where most of it is.

[7:41] I think Facebook the younger kids are more involved in Instagram and the Facebook is for us older people. And so that's probably not followed as much. But our following on Instagram is continually growing. And so we're always trying to keep going with that. So we do have good people who run, you know, our, do our registration handle our team managers, our volunteer support, we have somebody, you know, he's part time, but he's a former administrator with Coca Cola, he runs our he runs our admin or our accounting. And so we have good people that handle the business side of it. But then all you know, my guys and my team are the ones who make all the soccer decisions. And, and so we try and be, you know, make good decisions that are in the best interest of the families in our club.

[8:35] But in the end, we're making, you know, what we feel are good soccer decisions. And so that's helped us run what we feel is a pretty good soccer club that makes, you know, good choices, based on soccer, but also good choices of what's involved with our community, because we are still, you know, our club is based on our communities, we have two or three communities that feed into our club. And that's where we get most of our young kids coming from that. And those are the ones that we're beholden to, most of all, is to, you know, build from within. And then, you know, we also draw kids from outside of our communities to help the teams get stronger. Yeah, no, that's, that's great. I'm at three, two or three things stood out to me. One is, I again, as part of this podcast series as well, I've been speaking to a lot of club directors who heavily rely on Facebook, because they say that's where the parents are, who ultimately have to pay the check or the cash.

[9:35] You here mentioned you guys focus more on Instagram, because that's where you're, I guess, athletes side of the people live, which is a very different approach. But I guess, yeah, that was just very interesting to me. One is, I guess, more where the buyers, one is more the actual users. So you guys are more after the users, then I guess the buyers, users attract the buyers in a way for you guys. Yeah, I mean, I still think parents are involved in Instagram. I mean, I know I get go down the rabbit hole, you know, I'll sit there bored at night and start scrolling through Instagram. Oh my god, I gotta go to bed. I'm wasting too much time here on Instagram and scrolling. So I think there's still plenty of adults who scroll through Instagram, especially.

[10:25] I mean, parents are smart. Nowadays, they know when tryouts are coming up. So they know, you know, okay, let's start. That's when they're starting to look at, they're probably looking around a lot longer before tryouts. But you know, that's when they're looking at Instagram feeds, probably Facebook feeds, also websites, all that kind of stuff. So we just try and keep that stuff up to date, fun, entertaining for the kids. We're trying to do some things now to step that up even more. But that's where we're trying to get that engagement with outside audiences through mainly through our Instagram. But that's kind of what we've seen anyway. Well, that's that's good to hear a fresh perspective. And another thing that I noted down is you mentioned from how you're sharing the story seems like a lot of it is attributed to being at the right place at the right time, Southern California, increasing trend.

[11:22] And I think technology helped you guys scale that because there must have been so many others as well at the right place at the right time, but only you guys, you know, made it to the scale. So I guess I'm coming to what technology has played in your growth. It has made every it's good and bad, right. So it has made everything we do a lot easier. We run several tournaments for the club. And I personally have one that I run every summer. And I remember the days of, you know, when we first started that tournament, we were creating the schedule a couple of weeks ahead of time and and mailing it to the teams who were playing in the tournament.

[12:16] And we had 300 teams coming to play in a tournament. We were actually mailing the schedule to people back in the day to where now, you know, we're using AI technology to create a tournament schedule in a matter of 45, 50 seconds. What do you use? No, it's no, it's one of my friends tournament software is he's gonna kill me for not remembering the name of it right now. I'll get it to you in a second. It's MatchPro AI. And it's a great tournament software. And it uses, you know, it creates it really got the uses the AI and creates a schedule with no coaching conflicts in a matter of 40 about 40, 45 seconds.

[13:06] And which is, you know, crazy when you think about it, because you know, we've got coaches coming to tournaments who coach three and four teams, and I could spend days creating a schedule. And this thing can do it in, you know, a matter of minutes or seconds. So, you know, it's made a big difference there. It's made a big difference in your registration systems, your financials and how you're collecting How do you guys, how do you guys run the registrations and payments? So we are, we use PlayMetrics, PlayMetrics platform. Yeah. And so that's where we pretty much run everything registration wise through there. It's a great, great software that we've been really happy with. And that allows us to reach our parents directly right away, they register through there, they get all their practice schedules through there.

[14:02] You know, everything we do goes through PlayMetrics, and it's been great. So that's made things a lot easier, a lot quicker. And, and that's where I think parents nowadays, you know, they want things, they're not as patient, maybe none of us are really, you know, we want things quicker, you were so used to things being so fast on a computer, then we want that information faster. And now, you know, 10 seconds from now is too late. And so that's helped us, you know, provide better service for the parents. And is there an app? Is there an app component as well? PlayMetrics? Yeah, they could. Yeah, they have it all. And I can do, I can be down at the soccer fields. And if it started to rain, or something like that, I can close all the fields that day from, you know, my phone or wherever I'm at.

[14:53] So that's made it a lot easier to, you know, on the downside of that stuff is when you go on vacation, you're still reachable by phone, and you still have work to do, you know, it's never off, you're all you're always on, but that stuff. So it's good or bad. You know, I mean, it's primarily good. But you know, there are those times where you wish it didn't exist. 100%. I have so many questions. I guess we mentioned how technology has helped. And I'm also building right in the same realm of technology. How do you think we, whether it's Waresport, whether it's PlayMetrics, right XYZ, or more companies out there, what do you think takes it from where everybody is to 10 levels up 100 levels up? Like what are the gaps, I guess you still see in the market, where you or parents or anybody in your team spends time on that you think, you know, if there was no, like, if you were on my side, if you were making Waresport, yeah, what would you add, if again, time and money was not a constraint? man. Um, that's a good question.

[16:13] I'm okay. I don't, it would be tough. I mean, so much now happens so quickly. Yeah. I can't think of like, what's missing from that tool. It seems like every day there's stuff that comes up. Or is there anything like visionary that, you know, just maybe seems impossible. But if you were like, if this, and it doesn't have to be, I guess, you know, just club management, like in general, anything, as a coach, as a club director, anything that you do that sucks up a lot of your time. You know, I think actually where it's making progress for me, there's a lot of things that eats up time. And that's, you know, it's just some of the daily rigors of the of the business. But, you know, scheduling, because I still, I always did scheduling for the club.

[17:14] So I still kind of do a lot of that stuff. I'm not all the executive directors do, but that's something that for me, I kind of like doing scheduling allows me to hide away for a little bit and focus on something. And that's how my mind works is in scheduling realm. And so things to help speed up scheduling, which I know, obviously, you know, you've got AI coming in on tournament scheduling, I think it'll start happening more with practice scheduling and stuff like that. So that, that would be a good area. I was talking to somebody now where, you know, you have AI that can write all your, I spent a lot of time writing emails and AI can now write emails in your, you know, tone and voice and everything like that, which I think is insane. But I've heard that that's really good.

[18:05] I might need to start looking into that here one of these days to save yourself from answering. I mean, AI starts, AI starts answering email. I mean, oh my gosh, that's going to be all I've said, I think. Yeah, no, I, that's crazy how you how you mentioned it. So we two weeks back launched this concept of AI employees within Waresport. So they not only I guess tell you what to do, but they do it on your behalf. One of them is an AI communications employee. So again, it has access to all the contact forms, your email, you can instruct it on how to answer, you can pre feed it, you know, how you respond to other mails, and it takes care of everything. So yeah, you were just mentioning it. We launched it two weeks, two weeks back.

[18:55] Really? It's really cool. And it's really scary. We got Terminator coming to life here someday, huh? It's a little scary to see what's gonna happen. Yeah, I and I talk again, I speak to a lot of club directors, I think needs to be a I guess, if you think from the other perspective, if you save all that time, you can put that time elsewhere. So how I see AI is, I get very irritated when not just like in sports, but in general, in personal life, like people using AI, they can do something that used to take 10 hours and 30 minutes. But what about that nine hours and 30 minutes that you saved? Yeah, they're playing games, or they're watching a movie, like, I use AI so much in my life, but that time that I'm saving, now I'm doing 10 extra things versus doing that one thing faster. But I think even I guess from your perspective, like it could really free up some time that you could reinvest in coaching or taking the club from 3000 to 6000 members.

[19:59] Yeah, one day. Yeah, for sure. And I have to, I think I need to get used to utilizing some of that stuff. I think for me and my generation, we're, you know, learning all of that stuff. And for the the young men or women coming up through the game, now it's it's simple and easy, and no problem, they're used to using it. And I think I need to learn how to use that stuff better. I'm not bad, but I could be better at it. And yes, that might well learn to save some time and then be able to do. But I got into this, because I love coaching. That's why I'm involved in soccer. I didn't do this because I wanted to start a business or be an admin, or anything like that. I love coaching. I love being out on the field and working with kids and doing that kind of stuff.

[20:50] But I was also with our leadership team, I was also one who was good with the computer or good admin and that kind of stuff. So I kind of fell into an admin role. And, and now admin takes up a lot of time in the coaching, I don't have as much time to go out, do coaching and stuff like that. So yeah, I think I need to do a better job of learning to use AI to my advantage more so that I have more time to go out and coach and be out on the field, because that's what I truly enjoy. Yeah. Any other, I guess, trends that you see not related to technology necessarily, in general, like where is soccer headed to, according to we just had the World Cup wrapping up earlier this year? Where do you think soccer is headed worldwide in the US?

[21:40] I mean, I don't, I don't know, I could say worldwide, I think. I didn't want the World Cup to end when it was here. It was like, and when it was over, it was sad days that it was over, you know, it was when the US got knocked out, really sad days. But I mean, I like watching France play France is amazing to watch play Spain, I enjoy watching, you know, I just enjoy watching the top players and seeing it was fun, you know, watching. Yeah, watching those teams play was, you know, it was a lot of fun to see them play. So as far as sorry, I interrupted you. Yeah, no, it's okay. As far as watching. So from a World Cup perspective, I think that was really big here in the US, I think, but we always the US always supports big events like that. But I don't know, you had a feeling going places and watching the US play, it just kind of captured the whole nation. So I'm hoping that that keeps playing off of it.

[22:39] And then watching this last round of friendlies that they hosted seeing all these young kids come out on the field and just tear it up was, you know, was outstanding. So I think that I think the future for the US looks bright. And, you know, I know it's hard to read anything into, you know, this cycle, very now, you know, post World Cup. But hopefully, all those young players play out, and you're going to see an even stronger US side and in the towards the 2030. So I think that's exciting. It was a lot of really exciting actually watching all these young guys last week play. So that was fun. Yeah, no, that's great. And I guess we just asked you about us worldwide. Where do you see your club in the next five years? Like, in maybe not five years, maybe let's say 2030.

[23:33] We hope on a podcast again. Where do you want to be then versus now? Like, what are, I guess, your goals, your ambitions? Where do you want to take the club? I think there's a few things that, you know, we're currently working on with our coaches, I think. Well, I mean, from a competitive perspective, you know, on the boy side or an ECNL. Yeah, bless you. On the boy side, we're an ECNL club this past summer, we sent, you know, two, two boys teams played in the ECNL national championship match. And I think, no problem, bless you. I think from that perspective on the boy side, we'd like to see our boys always be in a position to be super competitive like that, where we're, you know, bringing in top players from around San Diego, and then competing at that high level.

[24:30] And then our girl side has been progressing through the GA, the Girls Academy. They've gotten off to a great start this year. And so, you know, we have a couple teams that were in the playoffs last year. And so we're hoping that, you know, that grows. And so I'd like to see us be where in that four years time in 2030, where, you know, we have our teams competing at that highest level, you know, they're there now, but now let's be successful and be winning at that highest level, I would love it to go and see some of the kids who played in our program to be able to go and buy tickets or hopefully have them give me tickets to go watch them play, you know, whether it be in a World Cup match or, you know, professionally in the MLS or the NWSL or something like that, and see some of our kids be able to reach for those dreams. So I'm hoping that we have some of those kids, we have a few kids who've done really, really well, and that are playing, at least from the boy side that are playing in the MLS, or, you know, in some of the like couple kids, getting call ups to the youth national team, stuff like that. So hopefully those kids will keep progressing along those lines, we'll get to see because right now everything is about winning and parents, you know, that's probably the downside of where the game has grown in the last few years, or maybe 10 years is, you know, people looking for college scholarships at under nine or under 10 or something like that, and not being, you know, patient or realistic.

[26:12] So that part of the game has changed quite a bit. Yeah, incredible. A lot of wisdom clearly shows you have so many years of experience. Last question, I guess, Peter, and then, you know, we can wrap up. I, again, the audience I envisioned watching this podcast could be existing club directors, but also new club directors who want to start their own club. Could you lay out step one, step two, step three? Like, what are the first few steps? Like, say I want to start a soccer club now, right? Never been in a soccer club before, nothing. So to a layman who wants to start a soccer club, what advice or what are the first few steps that they should take to start a club?

[27:11] Man, I would say before, I think, and it's maybe not the the fun answer, but if you're going to start a club, you've got to know you have a place to play and practice and field. So location when you a location because in Southern California, that's not easy to do. It might be easier in other areas to go find land or, or whatever, but in Southern California fields are at a premium. Right. And so I would say that that would be one. Another would be to make sure you have good people with you. You know, I think trying to be a one man show and run a club is is difficult. You have to have good people that you trust to help you with the financial part of it and registration and communication, all that kind of stuff.

[28:09] And so make sure you I think that's important in any business you have is make sure you always are surrounding yourself with good people and people that you trust. And then let's see, place to a location, good people, and then just make sure you have a good financial plan in place. I think that's going to be important because club soccer is expensive and there's you know, you've got bills to pay. So making sure you have a good financial plan in place. And then you know, make sure you're doing it. I still think that to be involved in coaching soccer, it can't just be about business. It has to be about the game. You have to have a passion for you have to have a passion for the game. You have to have a passion for working with kids and and teaching.

[29:02] And then finding those coaches who are passionate about not just the sport, because it's one thing to be passionate about the sport. And it's a whole other thing to be about passionate about teaching the sport to kids, right? And that's what this is about. It's about teaching. And not not every pro player is going to make a great coach. And just because you're passionate about the game doesn't mean you're going to be a great coach. I think you have to be passionate about teaching the game and knowing how to bring things down. So I think knowing, you know, making sure that that's why you're getting into it is because you're passionate about teaching kids a game you love. And then making sure you have good people and a place to play and a good financial plan, all that stuff. I think those are probably some of the more important things if you were to start a club. And I guess just finishing off this, how do you get your first client so you have a location, you have good people, you have a financial plan, and you are passionate? How do you get that first athlete or first 10 athletes to be on the ground taking coaching? I mean, I think maybe, well, I'm thinking it's going to be hard if you haven't been in this area, it's going to be hard if you don't already have like a built in clientele. Like, if you're not already a coach that has a couple of teams that you work with, and then you decide to break out on your own.

[30:30] And I can't imagine that happening in Southern California, I think it would be really hard without it. But otherwise, I think you have maybe, maybe you're starting with putting together some privates for ages and you're doing clinics and stuff like that, where you bring in, you start to develop a clientele of kids and word of mouth. And then for sure, you really got to be on your game at teaching, right? You got to be really good, because there's a lot of great coaches in Southern California, and I'm sure across the country, but I mean, I know in Southern California, there's a lot of great coaches who do a great job. So, you know, you got to be doing something special to get these kids to buy in these families to buy into what you're doing. And then from there, maybe you start with a team or two and you work your way up from there. Maybe you have, you know, you start meeting some other coaches that are really good and you bring some of those guys in to work with you and start combining some teams in there. And you would rate word of mouth as the number one source at the beginning, even above social media.

[31:38] I mean, you can go out there. I mean, I guess you're going to maybe you're going to advertise on social media, your clinics that you're going to start or something like that to try and get a few. But ultimately, I think it's going to be word of mouth. You know, people, hey, this guy's doing this guy's my kids working with this guy. He's phenomenal. They do a great job. You know, maybe you want to bring your kid over here and start working with him to on the side and go from there. I mean, yeah, there's going to you can get it from social media, but ultimately to start getting kids, you've got to be you've got to know what you're doing. You got to be good with those kids. And because then, you know, parents are they're savvy enough to know, you know, who's good, who's not good and what you need to know where they're going to take their kids. So amazing.

[32:33] That was that was a heck of an episode, Peter. I have taken a lot of notes, there were a lot of learnings. And I'm sure it's going to translate over as more and more people listen to this. So thank you so much for taking the time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I hope you didn't get bored. I was I was learning a lot from you. I guess it's I keep saying last question real last question. If you were on my side, again, building their sport, what would you give me? What advice would you give to me in how I grow it? So I guess how do I, you know, reach out to more club directors like yourself and others and sell them. So I guess, again, because you've been on that side, if you were to come on this side, how would you sell the software?

[33:33] What's the number one thing, I guess, like, what, how do I get someone's attention and someone's trust to believe that Waresport, you know, could be the platform that they use to scale? Um, I mean, I think in the end, it becomes about relationships a little bit like you start to develop some relationships with coaches or directors, and then have a good product, you know, make sure you know, your product is a good product that's really going to help them make their lives easier and what it's going to do. And keep those relationships strong. And then sooner or later, you know, if someone's gonna, you know, you start getting into one or two clubs, and then you can use them as references with other clubs. But I think that's, to me, so much of the business is, you know, relationship oriented and, and then also having a good product that, you know, is gonna, you know, is gonna make people's lives easier.

[34:36] That's, you know, how we ended up changing what we were doing. So I think that's probably, I would say that's probably the best advice I can give on that. Well, thank you for that. And again, is there if people wanted to know more about your club, is there a website or anywhere that they can go? Yeah, so our, our website is San Diego Soccer Club .org. And our Instagram handle is at San Diego Soccer Club or at SDSC surf, or VR Instagram handle and Facebook. I'll find it. I'll put it in the links. Yeah, sounds good. Thank you so much, Peter, again.