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In today's episode, we help Court plan his organic content strategy for his youth sport coaching website. FULL TRANSCRIPT Jocelyn: Hey you all. On today's podcast, we help Court take his youth sport coaching business to the next level. Shane: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast, where life always comes before work. We're your hosts Shane and Jocelyn Sams. We're a real family that figured out how to make our entire living online, and now, we help other families do the same. Are you ready to Flip Your Life? All right. Let's get started. Shane: What's going on everybody? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. It is great to be back with you again today as we talk to another member of the Flip Your Life community, and I'm really excited about this interview because this is a guy after my own heart. This is a coach. Jocelyn: Is there something I should know? Shane: A sports coach ... No! Stop saying that. No, no. I mean we're just attuned in our souls in the sports coaching world, Jocelyn, because my heart is only for you, baby. All right, in our podcast today, we want to welcome Court. Court, welcome to the show, man. Court: Hey, thanks guys. This is really an honor to be here. I really appreciate it. Jocelyn: We are excited to talk to you today. We know a lot about the coaching world. We have been sports coaches- Shane: Oh, so deep into it. So deep into it. Jocelyn: Sports coaching wives for a long, long time before we started doing online business, so we totally get it. So tell us a little bit about you, your background, and how you got started with your website. Court: Yeah, so real quick, I grew up playing sports. I played everything. If it had a ball. I played basketball, football, baseball, golf, and when I went to college, I went to Kansas State University and had an opportunity to work with the football team there, and I started as an equipment manager, and I worked up to being a student assistant coach. And I really had a passion for that, and I thought that's what I wanted to do after graduating, but I think Shane kinda what maybe you discovered. The pay was not good- Shane: No, it was not. Court: And I knew I was gonna have to move all over the country. Didn't wanna do that, so I decided to, my undergrad degree was in education, so I became a English and Journalism teacher and I coached football and track for about 13 years. And then about five years ago, I went through a divorce and I realized spending time with my kids, I was spending more time coaching. Practice was going until 7:30 every night, and then my kids were already in bed. Or on weekends I was working all weekend and I wasn't able to spend time. So I stepped away from coaching, stepped away from teaching, and took a new job in the business world doing social media. So I really have a background there in marketing and social media. Court: And then when I started coaching my kid's kindergarten soccer team a couple years ago, I said, this will be easy. I've coached high school. I've coached college. This will be no problem at all. And I realized it was a whole different world, and I'm sure you've probably experienced the same thing. So that's what led me to, I said, other moms and dads need support and help to figure out how to coach their kid's teams. So that's what kind of led me to come up with this idea to start youthsportscoaches.com. Shane: Awesome. Yeah, and it's funny, your story is so- Jocelyn: I'm wondering if you guys are the same person. Shane: I know, right? It sounds so familiar, and because I look back at our journey and where we are now compared to where we've been in the last 15 years, right? And there were really two things that happened to us that I think started our Flip Your Lives journey before we even knew it was started. One of them was exactly what you said when we were like chasing the success ladder, and it doesn't matter if you're trying to be a college football coach and climb the ladder, or if you're trying to be in the corporate world and climb the ladder. Even if you're in like a government job and you're trying to move from teacher to principal or whatever, right? Shane: There comes a point when you're chasing success when you look over and say, I haven't seen my wife or kids in a few days, right? And you start questioning, is that worth it? And I can remember me and Jocelyn sitting down and I had a chance, I had a good friend of mine that recommended me for a job, and I literally had a job at Bowling Green University, right? We were in West Virginia at the time, and I had it. No, I was at Eastern Kentucky at the time, and he calls me, and he's like, you don't even have to interview it. I've already told him you're the guy for the job. You just have to show up. Shane: And this was a big job. It was a good job. But me and Jocelyn looked at each other and we said, do we really want to go down this path? Like what about having kids? What about seeing each other? This is committing to, I'm in this now and it's my full time career, right? Now I'm working 12 hour days, and we decided at that moment that we were gonna go into high school or teaching or whatever to do that. Because we just said hey, I don't want to go and not do, be able to ever see you again. We gotta go a different direction to find some more time. And it's funny because then you get into high school, and you're like, I'm spending more time with everybody else's kids than I am my own kids. Jocelyn: And you're getting paid even less. Shane: Even less to do it, right? Court: Yes, and that's what I figured out too is I think coaching football I made $3,000 a year, but you know it's a year round thing. I mean, it's summertime all- Shane: It's like a $1.30 an hour is what it is. Court: Oh, it's even less than that. Jocelyn: If it's even that. Shane: I mean it's absolutely ridiculous. And- Court: And so yeah it's just not worth it. You don't see your kids. You don't see your family and you're working with other people's kids all the time, which is great, but- Shane: Oh yeah. There's a place for it. I'm not saying that. You know what I'm saying? Jocelyn: And you know what? I have a lot of respect for people who do it. Shane: Yes, and I still step up and coach sometimes today reluctantly, although whenever anyone asks me to coach anything locally, like any kind of teams, I'm like, I'm retired. Sorry. I'm not going. But then the other day, I- Jocelyn: No, we end up doing it though. Shane: I ended up doing it anyway. I was at basketball practice the other day, and the coach, his son did something to his tooth and they had to take him to an emergency dentist, and I'm standing there looking around. I'm like, give me the ball. And I coached basketball for two hours. It's ridiculous because once you are a coach, you're the default coach. There's still this old guy that sits in the front of my church, and whenever I walk in he always goes, hey Coach Sams. How you doing? I'm like hey, Bob. Haven't coached in ten years, but whatever, you know what I'm saying. All right, so let's talk about youthsportscoaches.com a little bit- Jocelyn: First of all, I love this idea. Shane had actually talked about it years ago. Shane: Oh yeah. Jocelyn: Like wouldn't it be cool if- Shane: Because I coached tee-ball for the first time, and I thought the same thing you did. These are kindergarteners. It's gonna be simple. I've handled college people with egos and everything- Jocelyn: But then you realize that it's like herding cats. Court: Yes. Shane: Yes, and they beat you into submission mentally by the time you're through with practice. SO what do you use on youth sports coaches, like what are you teaching? What are you talking about? Is it fundamentals of the sports? There's a lot of youth sports. Or is it more like just the mindset of it? Court: Well, this is exactly, I only started this probably a month and a half, two months ago, and so I'm still in the building stage, and that's one of the things I want to talk about is when I started coaching soccer, I did probably like what most parents do. I went to YouTube, and I just started searching for videos, and they were scattered all over. A lot of them were for older kids and didn't really apply to kindergartners. And so, and I would watch other parents struggle at practice not really knowing what to do, and it just basically became throw the ball out there and let's scrimmage for an hour, which it doesn't do anybody any good. Court: So my idea, and this is what I'm debating right now, is there's lots of sites out there where they go a mile deep and an inch wide in one sport, and it's the super competitive teams that travel. That's not what I want to talk to. I want to talk to the dads and moms who are just getting started and they're like, it's herding cattle. I don't know what to do. I need basic drills. I need practice organization. I need to know how to organize my team in the preseason. They've been thrown into this role either voluntarily or someone kind of asked them to do it, and they just need help and guidance. Shane: Yeah. And- Court: So that's where I kinda am, trying to figure out what my model is. Shane: Yeah, that's cool. Even stuff like, one of the key words you said there was organizing practice. Dealing with parents, figuring out who's bringing the juice packs on Saturday to the game, right? Like stuff like that that people just aren't equipped to do, they need somebody to show them how to do that. Jocelyn: I was gonna say how to start your team's Facebook page. Should I start a Facebook page? All of these things, I think are really important and things that people probably leave out. I feel like probably actual mechanics of the game, drills, things like that, those are kind of covered, not necessarily for your age group, but I feel like maybe those other things get kinda left out. Shane: Yeah, for sure. It's easy to find out how to kick the ball into the goal. It's hard to figure out how to handle all of the logistics that go along with being a youth sports coach. Jocelyn: All right, so before we dive into nuts and bolts here, let's talk a little bit about what is going on inside your head as you're starting this. So everybody has some type of fear or something that holds them back. What is yours right now? Court: It's probably a little bit of imposter syndrome maybe that you guys would say, and like I said, there's lots of coaches out there that go really deep into this. My background is, that I think I can bring to the table, is that organization and the logistics that you just mentioned. How to bring in those parents and see the value in it because I worry that people won't see a value and wanna put their money where their mouth is for this type of product. Shane: Sure. It's interesting you say that because whenever you come from a higher level, what we perceive as going down to a level, like we know the value of organization because we've been on a football field with 100 players. If you're not organized by the minute and practice, you've got problems. And that's not what we're saying you're going to bring to these youth coaches, right? But it is block time, organizing, getting logistics. Shane: One of the things that we did on our tee-ball team is, because we had a technology background and an organizational background in sports coaching. I was still a defensive coordinator in high school when I coached this tee-ball team. Is we had a Facebook group that we set up the day that we started coaching that baseball team so that we could coordinate with everybody there, and people loved it, because they knew what was going on. So it was the only team they ever knew what was happening, because we communicated with them, right? Shane: But when we go down, we're like, are they gonna get this, nobody else is doing this. Are they gonna understand? And that'll be part of your marketing is bringing people in in what they do understand, like they understand looking up drills. That's why people go to YouTube and say, they don't type in soccer practice. They type in soccer drills, right? You'll use those kinds of methods to bring people in and then it will be your job to explain the value through your marketing so that they will put their money where their mouth is. Jocelyn: And honestly, I think you're thinking too small. I see this as more of a system that you sell to cities, to organizations who do youth sports- Shane: Oh yeah. We got- Jocelyn: Maybe the churches. Because here's the thing. Shane: Yeah, that's true. Jocelyn: What is the number one problem that organizations have when they're trying to do youth sports? They don't have enough coaches, right? Shane: Coaches. Jocelyn: Okay, so if you could sell this to them as hey, I have this system and all you have to do is tell the parents, okay, we have the whole system. We have practice plans for you. We have organization plans for you. All you have to do is show up and follow this script. Like how much easier would that be? If somebody came to me, as a parent, and said, hey, look. We really need coaches, but you're gonna have to figure everything out yourself. I'd be like eh, no. That's too much to do already. Shane: But how much does Upward Basketball or something need this? Like I coached Upward Basketball last year, undefeated champions. I'm just saying. But anyway, I coached Upward Basketball, but there was a lot of, they did their best. Everybody did so good. It was for the kids. It was for a good reason, but it was confusing. And there was a lot of confusion with coordination and communication and things like that. And Upward gives you some things, but it's mostly drills, right? But it's not how to get your parents together, how to organize practice, how to take them out to pizza, stuff like that. And you could just go to an organization that already has 100 teams and be like, hey. Why don't I just, 20 bucks a team? You got it. Boom, there's two grand. Shane: So yeah, that's a really good idea, Jocelyn. There's a lot of things around this I don't think you're even seeing, and you just have to explain it. You gotta convey it. Everybody says, man, I just wish people would see the value in this and buy it, when they really need to say, it's my job as a marketer to tell them the value and convince them to buy it, right? So- Court: Well, you guys are in my mind. Yeah, you guys are in my mind. I had a conversation with a local rec commission about this, and they were really interested, and I told them I needed beta testers right now to get in and help me figure things out. And they're like, yeah, our parents don't know what they're doing. We tell them just to go to YouTube but they don't wanna coach because they don't feel like they know what they're doing. So you're exactly right. I'm already thinking that. My question is how do I make those sales without just cold calling people. I don't know how to get them into my sales funnel. Shane: I gotcha. I gotcha. So are there any technical things that are holding you back besides mindset? Number one, please don't let imposter syndrome hold you back because you have coached college football, right? You have coached in high school. You know what it's like to organize a large group of people and from a coa…
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