Founder and Director, since July 2021
AFC
A youth soccer development club in south Orange County. I started it with 3 clients a month before college, kept growing it as a full-time student and goalkeeper, and I still run it.
The videos that went viral
The high-production content we used to go viral with, from @afc.elite. The five videos on this page have over 9 million views on Instagram. They play here from our YouTube.
How it started
On day zero, all I had was a passion for coaching, a gymnastics coaching job that taught me how to deal with athletes, and 3 clients. A month later I started college as an NCAA athlete.
I grew AFC all the way through college. My days were 14 hours, counting training, school, homework and work, on top of games in the fall.
By the time I got out of college, I was making six figures within that business, and I've continued to pursue it full time.
What I built
- Book a session in three clicks
We used to spend hours on scheduling, every single day on the phone, figuring out who we could book in. Now you can book a session in three clicks and pay out a coach in four.
- Groups built by level
Every software I tried was built for a gym, where anybody can book into a time slot. All our groups are reserved and based off the level that works for everybody in that group, so we built it to work that way.
- Prepaid packs and a money dashboard
I started out accepting Venmo and Zelle, and I had no way to track it. Now families buy packs and tokens up front, and I have a dashboard that actually shows how much money is coming in, which I never had before.
- No more ads
I ran Facebook ads and got fully booked out, but had the most churn I've ever had, because the coaches didn't like the clients they got. I haven't done ads since. I brought back our loyal families that want to improve, and it's been the best sessions we've ever had. Elite now starts with the Assessment Pathway: three sessions, a written report and a decision.
- Five coach levels and one standard
Five levels: Apprentice, Certified, Growth, Senior and Leadership. Every coach signs the Coach Standard before running a session and learns from our curriculum handbook, because I have to make sure they can coach to the standard that I coach.
- Our own booking platform
I went through four booking platforms and every one made me do more work than I needed to do. This summer we replaced them with our own, built with Trevor Kist. It runs our booking, wallets, check-in, coach pay and report cards.
What I'm still working on
I think the biggest thing I've messed up on with AFC is not creating structure, and when there's no structure, there's no alignment.
This summer I left for three weeks, Rome, London and Spain. The sessions still ran and coaches got paid, but someone on my team had to carry a lot of it. Too much still goes through me, and that is not how this business is going to propel forward.
The business side, on my YouTube
