How a Soccer Coach Built a Legacy Beyond the Game

If you're passionate about something and you feel that you can impact the community, go out and dare to fail.

“Like if it works out and you're successful and you keep persevering that you”

could, you know, live the life that you've always dreamed of.

Patrick Letz is a sports entrepreneur, educator, and the founder of Crab Kickers. He helps young athletes build confidence, character, and a lifelong love of the game through positive coaching, skill development, and community focused soccer programs. Most areas did not have that beginner program where children couldn't just see you, they like soccer.

You had to commit for like a full year where our programs are eight, eight weeks long, and they're only an hour long, so even if the kid isn't passionate about soccer, it's only eight hours out of their, like, the most important piece for me is that I want to be known first and foremost as a good father, and that my kids grow up that they felt that they had a good childhood.

That I feel like my business stems from that, because I want to make them proud of me, and I want to... It spans the goal, like a super high school, internet Elvis, and today Apple is going to reinvent the fall.

It's not over, I'm telling how we're...

The living your legacy podcast, for those who live to leave a legacy. Welcome back to another episode of the Insight Success Podcast. I am your host, Jason, and I am joined today by Patrick Letts. Now, Patrick, we just finished recording your legacy makers episode.

“How are you feeling now on the other side of that episode?”

I'm feeling good. It was a little nerve wracking, answering some questions, and it's the lightest hammer action of it. Yes. You step into the studio and it's like, "Okay, all of these things are pointed at me."

Let's calm down, but what we did get to talk about a lot in your episode was something that you and I share, which is love for soccer, right? You have a passion to love for soccer, I have a passion to love for soccer. I almost went, I almost went completely off script, and me and you could have just been talking, and shop about soccer the whole time.

Speaking of which, who's your club, who's your team? Full of them. Full of them. I actually have a tattoo right here, you're like, "Wow." So you're more dedicated than me, I'm a Chelsea guy, but you're way more dedicated

than I am. I just have a closet full of jerseys. I've been a Stanford Bridge twice. Oh, man. What was the environment like it?

It was amazing.

“So the first time was when I was working for DC-9, we hit our end of the season sales goal,”

so they sent us to London for five days, and they included a ticket. It was our song on Chelsea, December, 3rd, 2006. And it was on-re was playing for them. It was when, "Oh, I can see the guy's knee area on-re. What?

What did you?" I can see the play, I can see him, but his name's drawn up blank, but for Chelsea, he hit a ball with the outside of his foot, and it was Benlin-Win, Chelsea, had Droga. Oh, yes, he was. Yeah, that was a droga.

It wasn't drawing with his, "Oh, I can see his face, I can't think of his name, but he had the ball outside of foot." It looks from the camera angle, it's going wide, and then Benzin's curve is right in.

It was, it was an amazing goal, and then I went with a couple of friends, a couple of years

ago, and my body was going to get tickets, because I had bought tickets to South Hampton and I had already had tickets to nodding him for us to play full-room at Craven Cottage, and they moved the match to the day we were flying home, and we couldn't move our plane tickets. So I'm like, man, I missed out, and that was when full-room destroyed nodding him for us five nil.

So then in the said, my buddy was like, "All right, we'll get tickets, we'll find Chelsea has a home match, go to Stanford Bridge, and he's like, "Why can't find three tickets together?" You guys had directly challenged, so you guys get a ticket together, and then give me, I'd find a single ticket, and then if we get separated before we get on the tube, I'll

find my way back to the hotel, and then we'll meet up there. So they spent more money per ticket on theirs, and they were in the corner. My ticket was apparently bought from a seasoned ticket holder that couldn't make it, so I'm right behind the goal, like three rows up, and then we don't recognize you, we don't recognize you, so I started talking, they're like, "Oh, you're American," and they're like,

"How'd you get this ticket?" That's usually, for whatever his name was, say, "My buddy bought it, they're sitting over there in the corner, they bought it for me," and they're like, "Who do you support?" I was like, "Josey, I had to say, "Josey," because I didn't want to do this." You don't want to run all up at Chelsea, because even in the air, because our hotel was in

Chelsea, and I went to the gym, and I was lifting out, and my sleeve down a little bit, and a guy came over and was like, "You might want to keep that tell me what we can." So let's talk a little bit about your legacy makers episode. What can people expect to learn from what we just recorded?

and people saying, "No, that it won't work, to still persevere and going through that," and

“like an ups and downs in the business and in personal life, and things you can't control”

and keep going forward. I had COVID, and then going through a divorce to deal with, well, growing the business, keep taking action. I say this to people all the time, but take imperfect action. Even if you don't have the plan right, even if you don't have all your ducks aren't in

a row right at that particular moment in time, just take action, do something in the direction of what it is that you're trying to do.

Because if you're waiting for a perfect moment, it'll never happen.

It'll never come in, there's no such thing as perfect. That perfect moment, it's not out there on the horizon somewhere where your idealistic brain is trying to put it. One thing I really enjoyed as we were going through your episode, you were giving me sound bite after sound bite, which make sure you tune in to Patrick's episode, because he was

dropping bombs left and right, but one thing I really enjoyed was how much of your business is predicated on being a good father and creating something that your kids can be proud of. Talk to me a little bit about that legacy fuse.

“I feel like that's the most important piece for me is I want to be known first and foremost”

as a good father, and that my kids growing up, that they felt that they had a good childhood, and then that I feel like my business stems from that, because I want to make

them proud of me, and I want them to see that I've fought through these things and still

grow business. Cold weeks ago I was taking my kids to school, my youngest Emma, she's five, and she was like daddy, I want you to take crab kickers all over the country, and so I was like, oh, that's awesome. And now it's going to happen.

And then Mason who's seven, he was like, yeah, dad, he's like, we're going to take it all over the world. I was like, that would be awesome, and I was like, do you guys want to run crab kickers when you get older? They're like, yeah, we want to run it, we want to run it when you die.

I'm like, okay. Now, I will jump in here and you said this a couple of times in the episode, too, but you don't have to make your kids proud of you, I promise you they already are, I promise you it's already there for them to be even knowing the name of crab kickers at their age and just knowing like how much work you're putting into it, your kids are already proud of you.

You've done enough, everything you get to do now on top of it is just icing on the cake. But while we're on the subject of crab kickers, I want you to just kind of give the audience a bird's eye view, what is crab kickers, what do you guys do, and how did the idea come about it? Yeah, crab kickers is a beginner soccer program for 18 months to 12 years old.

And we do a clinic style where parent will sign up for a certain day in certain time in whatever location they want, and that will be what they do for that eight weeks. And we do a spring, summer, fall winter program in pretty much every area we do winter. After we don't do his main location just because the access of indoor and or space and it's cold up there.

It gets cold here, we're glad we're down here, they got snow yesterday and oh, we're at Florida.

I don't even know what snow is, I've never even seen that.

And there they get snow, some of the school started late today because it's snow, so at least it's nice down here. I've never had a snow day in my life, man, I consider myself blessed for that. But I will say I do have family in West Orange, New Jersey and so I've gone up there to visit them during the winter, snow is beautiful, man.

When it's not beating your door down, but snow is such a, in my family, we don't get that at all. We don't have any concept of, in my family, we get like three days of sub-60 degree weather. That's pretty much it.

But the winter's, it's nice up there, but you can't play soccer out in the cold. So I want to just kind of touch on, there was this thing that we kept bringing up during

“your episode, but it's something that I think that you, you do a great job at as a business”

owner, which is identifying and need and meeting that need in your community, right? So when you started crab pickers, there wasn't a beginner's program for kids that didn't know if they liked soccer yet, but just wanted to kind of dip a toe in. And so you saw that name, you had already had a background in professional sports. So you were like, you know what, I can meet that need.

And as the business went on, people kept bringing new needs, hey, I'm going to add that to the business and meet that need, talk to me a little bit about the mindset behind that. And that's, at any walker life, like if you, if you're passionate about something and you can fill a need that that can help you be successful and make you feel like you're

not working. I love what I do. I don't feel like I'm, I work. Some probably 9% of the time, I don't feel like it doesn't feel like work. And it was able to find that need when I was trying

impact the youth. And I saw that need that that most areas did not have that beginner program

“where, like you said, like the children couldn't, couldn't just see if they like soccer.”

Like you had to commit for like a, you know, 45 month time period or you had to commit for a full year where our programs are eight, eight weeks long. And it's, and they're only an hour long. So if, you know, even if the kid isn't passionate about soccer, it's only eight hours out of their life for, for so about two months worth of time versus having to commit for four or five months. And they hate it right off the bat. Then you got to keep

going and more if you give it to like a club, then it's the monetary existence as well. Kind of just touching on soccer and in of itself, like creating a sports, creating a business around sports, has it obviously has its ups and downs in that, you know, you're going to get the kids that come in that, you know, they, they're just getting a taste of soccer. They might not, they might not love it, right? What is your, what do you do when

you get kids that you can tell? They're not super enthused about it, but they're here to have a good time. Like, how are you creating that environment where kids can feel like,

“oh, I'm just here to have fun versus, oh, I'm here in this coaches yelling at me and I got”

to run all the time and I'm doing suicides up and down the field and this is in that, how are you creating that environment? So, like, for our curriculum that we, because of our curriculum based, I developed a curriculum that our coaches use and follow, we don't do, like we have like the three, like no else. And they're like lines, laps, or lectures. So they'll get in. We typically start off with like, we'll do free play. The coach has a

bag of balls, they'll dump the balls and like, free place to kids can come out and kick

the ball around scoring. It helps them get comfortable. And especially that first week,

they do it a little longer than the first week than they do the other weeks, but it allows the kids that might be nervous coming out or they don't want to separate from their parents, they're like, roll out a ball, like, come, come kick a ball, kick it and go, they get comfortable. Like, so we don't do, like, last, we don't do sprints, so we don't do anything like that. That was, that was the, that was the number one thing that kept me out of trying

to do soccer when I was like super young. I was like, if you make me run one more time, I want to run home. Yeah. Yeah. So like our, our coaches, like, the only time that they don't have a ball at their feet is when, so we'll do, like, our free play where they drop the ball, then they kick all the balls in the goals and then they do like their stretches. So call man's stretching and then they get into ball skills. So every kid, no matter

their ability, we'll be getting the same ball skills. They'll learn, like, do toe taps, side to sides or rolls, do pullbacks. And then the older ages will add like a few more tougher skills. And that's where in the older age groups, we see the biggest gap. Because we have

some kids that have never played soccer before that they want to try it out. And then

we, there's some instances where we have kids that should be playing club soccer. And we even talked to the parents, like, why aren't you playing club? They're like, no, we like your aspect. We, they get their soccer fix. They come out once a week. We do have some parents that don't sign up for two sessions in the same season. They get their soccer fix. And they're like, oh, we're allowed that we can still do other things. We can, we can

go swimming. We can play basketball. We can do baseball. And we can actually have a family because some of the kids in our seven nine and 10, 12 year old program have played club before. And they just didn't like the aspect of practicing three, four nights a week, tournaments on the weekend, games like always traveling, never home over commitment to it. And just it's hard to ask a kid, especially at that age to commit so hard to

win one thing unless it's really there. Think, but you, you kind of brought up an interesting point there, which is when you do have, in those older age groups, when you do have a kid where you can identify talent and say, like, this kid should definitely be playing at a club level. You are having those talks with the parents

“and saying, hey, look, because I think in that age group, you're kind of trying to”

figure out, like, where is, if there is a talent here for a sport, where does my kid fit? What sport is it? What are they passionate about? So what kind of conversations are you having with parents when, you know, their kid is clearly talented, but they're in sort of this intermediate kind of mediary phase with it. Oh, and not just even the talent of kids, but like all are kids like, we, we

let parents know that if you're aging out of our program, if once you're at six years old, if you don't want to continue on with the seven nine or 10, 12, or if you're

in those programs, and you want to try, like, a high level record club, we always

tell them, like, let us know, like, I've been a part of different clubs, and I know pros and cons of all the clubs in our area, like, some are really big, some are small. Do you want to be in a giant club where you're just a number? Or do you want to be in a smaller club where you know everybody, even the leadership? And it also really comes down to the coach too. Like, I have a lot of relationships built over the years, so

I know a lot of the pros and cons of each club, so I like lay that out for parents. Like, what are you looking for for your child? What's your child looking for? What are you looking for in a coach? Like, why are you, are you comfortable with, you know, a coach that I,

but during games, they let the players play. They're not yelling. They're not joystick coaching.

“Yeah. And I try to say, that's where your child will develop more. You're, as I always”

frame to like, if you're looking for a club coach, you want to coach that's going to say, hey, the, you know, look at it like school practice is like our, you know, classroom stuff, and the game is the test. So I let the kids go play. He's like, I'll direct a little bit, but not, not telling kids where to go everything. And then he's like, oh, I, after the test, I can see like, oh, what do we need to work on the next, the next practices? So try to gauge

that with the parents and try to give opinions and, and I also tell a parent say, like, oh, my, some, there's some parents are like, my kid's not very good. He's not going to be

“on my, I always tell him like, you don't know at that age at that age, they could be like,”

I was like, I was like, for the first time, four or five years, I played club soccer. I don't know why

when I wasn't playing for my dad, like, my other coaches, like, why they kept me on the team, because I was the worst player on the team. And, but, but the coach, the coach was like, one of those ones is like, you know, keep developing. He working hard. You, it'll click for you. And, and out of my club team, I was only one of five to play at the college level. So that's, that's super interesting because in, in, I guess in the club culture down here in Miami and when I say

club culture, I immediately start thinking about like going out to the club. But like in the soccer club culture down here, like, they're really just waiting out, like, they're trying to find the best of the best. But in that, it's interesting that that coach's kept you on and said, you know,

it just keep developing. It'll click. That's something that I've never really experienced here,

because I played soccer at, like, pretty much every level coming up, you know, I played when I was a kid from, like, the age of, like, five to, like, nine. And then I played in middle school play in high school. But, you know, really, like, if a kid's not good, that's it. They're getting cut from the team. And that's, that's super interesting that you mentioned that. As we're sort of getting into the wrap-up for this part, I want to just kind of touch on some of the lessons that you want people to

“learn from your story. What are some of those lessons? And the key, I mentioned the episode, like,”

one of one of the favorite quotes of mine that I have in my office is a dream big and dare to fail. And I, you know, as anybody, like, you want, if you're passionate about something and you feel that you can impact the community, whatever, whatever, walk of, you know, that passion is, you can, you know, and you're dreaming about it in your constantly, like, you know, go out and dare to fail. Like, you, you, you'll be in the same spot if you go out and you take that chance that, you know,

you'll be in the same spot you are now. But if it works out and you're successful and you keep

persevering that you could, you know, live the life that you've always dreamed of.

Dream big and dare to fail. I love that quote and I'm also stealing that for you. I'm going to put that up on Instagram today. But for all of our viewers here, that is another episode of the inside success podcast. Make sure that you guys check out Patrick's episode of Legacy Makers, which should be dropping is sometimes soon. We don't know when this episode will come out, but it will come out probably right before your official Legacy Makers episode drops. But with that, I'm Jason Hamilton,

your host and that is another episode of the inside success podcast. We'll see you guys in the next one.