 Hey guys, welcome back to the make money coaching sports show. My name is Leonardo. I'm the assistant manager here at make money coaching sports. So today is the third part of a four part series of where I talk about how to build or how to start your football academy from scratch here in the UK. So my first piece of advice is if you're watching this video and you might be a bit confused about what exactly I'm talking about, go back and watch the first two videos where I talk about how to identify your niche and also how to build your perfect client profile. Those two areas will be really important and once you've watched them and gone through that, this third video will make a lot more sense. So today we're going to be talking about probably the most important part of this four part series and that is recruiting new players into your football academy. So every day coaches reach out to us, they reach out to our company and they ask, how can I get more clients or how can I get more players into my training program? Now, this is something that if we're going to be completely transparent, if you don't have clients, then you don't have a business. So recruitment is the most important part of any business, whether you're in sports or whether you're in any other type of industry. If you're not constantly recruiting, if you're not constantly bringing in new customers, new clients, then your business won't become sustainable. So for a football academy and for a football academy owner, this is the most important part of the business is the recruitment of clients and of new players. Now, what a lot of business owners tend to do is they understand, okay, yes, I need to bring in clients on a regular basis, but what they tend to do is they tend to bring anyone in. And in the short term, that's fantastic because it's going to bring in more income, it's going to generate more revenue. But if you're just bringing anyone into your ecosystem and into your business, in the long term, what will happen is your business will start to become affected. Okay, because if you bring 10 new clients and they end up becoming really hard to manage, they don't show up to sessions or they mess around during your sessions. The parents are very difficult to work with. Also, what's going to happen is those 10 new clients, they might be with you for 30 days, 60 days, or if you're lucky 90 days, and then you're back to square one where you have to find 10 new clients again. So even though the recruitment stage or the recruitment part of this is going to be, I want it to be a slow process where we're filtering maybe one or two per month, or maybe one per week, we want to make sure that they are your perfect clients, right? They're players and their families that are good for your business. And you know that when you bring them in, they will be there and they will be with you for 90 days or over three months. They're going to be with you for the long term. So how do we recruit new players? Now, the most important thing is when I started my business, when I started my football academy, there's two main things that I looked at. Right? Number one is building partnerships. Okay? So how do we build partnerships in our local area where we can partner with either a club or an organization or even other coaches who have access to players? Now, what we don't want to do is we don't want to go into a club or an organization or to another coach and say like the intent is not to steal their clients or to steal their players. Okay? Ultimately, what we want to do is we want to go into these organizations, these clubs, or work with other coaches, and we want to add value. Okay? So something we want to do is we want to research what are these clubs or organizations not doing? What do they not offer? What do they not have? Okay? So this might be strength and conditioning training. This might be mental training. This might be confidence workshops for their players. Right? So what are these organizations not doing that you can come in, do for them, add value and ultimately build a long term partnership with where they can refer clients or they can refer parents to you and then you ultimately make money, generate revenue and start to build and scale your business. Okay? So that's the first thing. And then the second one is referrals. Okay? So once we build those partnerships, once we built that, or we're slowly building out our client or our customer base, how can then we build a system inside that where we're getting referrals every month or every quarter and other parents are talking about us and referring other parents, like-minded parents, into our academy. Okay? So these are things that we're going to talk about in upcoming videos. But in this video, I want you now to remember, so the third bit is when you're starting your football academy from scratch is the most important bit is now how do we recruit new players every single month into our program. Okay? And the two main things I look at is how can we build partnerships with local businesses, local organizations, local clubs, who have access to parents and to players and how can we go into these organizations and add value to their already existing program where they appreciate what you're doing, appreciate what you're offering and what you're giving to them. And in exchange, they're sending either parents or players to work with you. And you can even come up with some sort of agreement where you get a commission of every client that they send your way. Okay? So that's the first bit. And then the second thing is once you start to build your customer base, your clientele, how can we then create a referral system inside our business? So inside our academy where we're constantly bringing in new like minded parents who can then constantly refer other like minded parents into our academy. So that you start to build a really strong and solid customer base where you're working with your perfect client and clients that are going to be with you in the long term. Okay? Not customers that are going to be with you maybe a week, two weeks, a month, two months, but ultimately customers that are going to be with you for over six months or even a year. Okay? Now, in my academy, the average, and I say this really, really proudly, but the average customer retention in my academy has been two and a half years. Okay? I've got some clients who I'm still working with, who have been with me for now going four years. Right? That is not normal. Okay? And I'm going to be upfront and say that is not normal in today's market. Today's average customer life cycle is, you know, especially in this type of industry, your customers are going to probably be with you for maybe 60 days. 60 days, if you're not providing value, if you're not transforming and if you're not getting great results, then ultimately after 60 days or maybe 90 days, they're going to start looking for somewhere else. Okay? So that is why it's really important that when we do bring in good parents, good players into our academy that they are the right type of clients. Okay? They're the type of clients that you know that if you get them great results, they're going to be with you for the long term. And if they're with you for the long term, they're going to recommend or refer other like minded parents into your academy as well. Okay? So stay tuned in the next video. I'm going to touch on the fourth most important area when you're starting your football academy from scratch here in the UK. Okay? So stay tuned and I'll see you in the next one.