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- [00:00]
Patrick Letts
Dream big and dare to fail. 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 live the life that you've always dreamed of.
- [00:13]
Narrator
Patrick Letts is a sports entrepreneur, educator, and the founder of Crabkickers. He helps young athletes build confidence, character, and a lifelong love of the game through positive coaching, skill development, and community focused soccer programs.
- [00:26]
Patrick Letts
Most areas did not have that beginner program where children couldn't just see if they like soccer. Like, you had to commit for like a. Where our programs are 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 life. 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. I feel like my business stems from that because I want to make them proud of me and I want to.
- [00:56]
Podcast Promo Voice
It spans the globe like a super high cold Internet. Elvis Preston is going to reinvent Leon. It's not over until I win. The Living youg Legacy podcast. For those who live to leave a legacy that's extraordinary. The impossible has been. Oh, that is sensational. Jordan Open Chicago with the lead. You said Paul is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream.
- [01:30]
Jason Hamilton
Welcome back to another episode of the Inside Success podcast. I am your host, Jason, and I am joined today by Patrick Letz. Now, Patrick, we just finished recording your Legacy Makers episode. How are you feeling now on the other side of that episode?
- [01:46]
Patrick Letts
I'm feeling good. It was, it was a little nerve wracking, answering some questions and it's, it's
- [01:51]
Jason Hamilton
the light, camera, action of it. It's. You step into the studio and it's like, okay, all of these things are pointed at me. Yeah, let's, let's calm down. But what we did get to talk about a lot in your episode was, which is something that you and I share, which is a love for soccer. Right? You have a love. You have a passion and a love for soccer. I have a passion and a love for soccer. I almost went. I almost went completely off script. And me and you could have just been talking shop about soccer the whole time. Speaking of which, who's your, who's your club? Who's your team?
- [02:21]
Patrick Letts
Fulham.
- [02:21]
Jason Hamilton
Fulham.
- [02:23]
Patrick Letts
I actually, I actually have a tattoo right here. Like, wow.
- [02:26]
Jason Hamilton
So you're. You're More dedicated than me. I'm a Chelsea guy, but, like, you're way more dedicated than I am. I just have a closet full of jerseys.
- [02:32]
Patrick Letts
I've been to Stanford Bridge twice.
- [02:34]
Jason Hamilton
Oh, man. What was the environment like?
- [02:37]
Patrick Letts
It was amazing.
- [02:37]
Jason Hamilton
Both.
- [02:38]
Patrick Letts
The first time was when I was working for D.C. united. 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 Arsenal and Chelsea, December 3, 2006. And it was. Henri was playing for them. It was when. Oh, I can see the guy's Jerry.
- [02:56]
Jason Hamilton
Henri. What?
- [02:57]
Narrator
What?
- [02:59]
Patrick Letts
I can see the. I can see the play. I can see. See him. But it was. His name's drawing a blank. But for Chelsea, he hit a ball that with the outside of his foot and it was Bennett.
- [03:08]
Jason Hamilton
When Chelsea had droga.
- [03:10]
Patrick Letts
Yes. It wasn't Drogba. It was. Oh, I can see his face. I can't think of his name, but he hit the ball outside the foot. It looks from the back camera angle is going wide and. And bends in right in. It was. It was an amazing go. And then. And then I went with a couple friends a couple years ago, and my buddy was going to get tickets because I had bought tickets to Southampton match and I had already had tickets to Nottingham Forest to play Fulham 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 Fulham destroyed Nottingham Forest 5 nil. So then instead, my buddy was like, all right, well, we'll get tickets. We'll find there's Chelsea has a home match go to Stanford Bridge. And he's like, well, I can't find three tickets together. I'm like, well, you guys are directionally challenged. So you guys get a tickets 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. And then they're all like, we don't recognize you. We don't recognize. 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, I'm like, 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, chelsea. I had to say Chelsea because I didn't want to.
- [04:42]
Jason Hamilton
You don't want to rile up a
- [04:43]
Patrick Letts
Chelsea fan because even. Even in the area. Because we were. Our hotel was in the Chelsea area, and I went to the gym and I was lifting out and my. My sleeve got up a little bit and a guy came over and was like, you might want to keep that.
- [04:53]
Jason Hamilton
You might want to keep that covered. So let's talk a little bit about your Legacy makers episode. What can people expect to learn from what we just recorded?
- [05:04]
Patrick Letts
I really feel the overall gist of my episode was, you know, starting an idea, even with competition and people saying no, that it won't work. Just still persevering, 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. Like I had Covid and then going through a divorce to deal with while growing the business.
- [05:31]
Jason Hamilton
Keep taking action. I say this to people all the time, but, like, take imperfect action. Like, even if it. Even if you don't have the plan right, even if you don't have, you know, 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.
- [05:49]
Patrick Letts
Because if you're waiting for a perfect moment, it'll never happen.
- [05:51]
Jason Hamilton
It's never coming. That's. There's no such thing as perfect. That. That perfect moment is. It's not. It's not out there on the horizon somewhere where your idealistic brain is trying to. Trying to put it. And one thing I really enjoyed as we were going through your episode, you just kept going. You were giving me sound bite after sound bite, which, you know, 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 you. 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 piece.
- [06:30]
Patrick Letts
Yeah, that's. I. 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 like they had a good childhood. And then I feel like my business stems from that because I want to make them proud of me and I want to them to See that? I fought through these things and still grew a business. A couple weeks ago, I was taking. Taking my kids to school, and my youngest, Emma, she. 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 awesome. And then.
- [07:01]
Jason Hamilton
And now it's going to happen.
- [07:01]
Patrick Letts
And then Mason, who's 7, 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 like, do you guys want to. You guys want to run Crab Kickers when you get older? They're like, yeah, we want it. We want to run it. We want to run it when you die. I'm like, okay, yeah, now I will.
- [07:15]
Jason Hamilton
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?
- [07:52]
Patrick Letts
Yeah, Crab Kickers is a beginner soccer program for 18 months to 12 years old. And we do a clinic style where parents will sign up for a certain day and certain time in whatever location they want, and that'll 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, winter. We don't do as many locations just because the access of indoor indoor space. And it's cold up there in Baltimore. It gets cold here. We're glad we're down here. They got snow yesterday and.
- [08:20]
Jason Hamilton
Oh, we're in Florida. I don't even know what snow is. Yeah, I've never even seen that.
- [08:23]
Patrick Letts
Oh, man, they get snow. Some of the schools started late today because. Because of snow. Hey, so. So at least it's nice down here.
- [08:31]
Jason Hamilton
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, like, during this, like, during the winter. Snow is beautiful, man, like when it's, you know, when it's not beating your door down. But like snow is such a, the wind. In Miami, we don't get that at all. We don't have any concept of my. In Miami we get like three days of sub 60 degree weather. That's pretty much it. But the winters, 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, 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 a need and meeting that need in your community. Right. So when you started Crabkickers, there wasn't a beginners program for kids that didn't know if they like soccer yet, but just wanted to kind of dip a toe in. And so you saw that need. 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 you new needs. Hey, I'm going to add that to the business and meet that need. Talk to me a little bit about the, the mindset behind that.
- [09:47]
Patrick Letts
And that's at any walk of life, like if, if you are passionate about something and you can feel a need that, that can help you be successful and make you feel like you're not working. Like I love what I do. I don't feel like I work some probably 90% 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 to figure out something to do for the rest of my life where I could work in soccer and impact the youth. And I saw that need that most areas did not have that beginner program where like you said, like the children couldn't to see if they like soccer. Like you had to commit for like a, you know, four or five 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 for 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, or if you commit to like a club, then it's the monetary expense as well.
- [10:52]
Jason Hamilton
Kind of just touching on soccer in and 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 gonna 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 and this coach is yelling at me and I got to run all the time and I'm doing suicides up and down the field and this, this and that. How are you creating that environment?
- [11:33]
Patrick Letts
So like, for our, for our curriculum that, that we, because we're curriculum based, I developed a curriculum that our coaches use and follow. We don't do like, we have like the three, like no. Ls, no 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 plays. The kids can come out and kick the ball around, score. 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, it might be nervous coming out or they don't want to separate from their parents to like roll out a ball, like come, come kick a ball. Kick it and go. They get comfortable. Like I said, we don't do like last. We don't do sprints, we don't do anything like that.
- [12:12]
Jason Hamilton
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'm gonna run home. Yeah.
- [12:23]
Patrick Letts
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, 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 called man's, the stretching. And then they get into ball skills. So every kid, no matter their ability, will 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 talk 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 will sign up for two sessions in the same season. They get their soccer fixed and they're like, oh, we're allowed, 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 life. Because some of the kids that have, in our 7, 9 and 1012 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 weekends, games like always traveling,
- [13:35]
Jason Hamilton
never home, over commitment to it. And just. It's hard to ask a kid, especially at that age to commit so, so hard to one thing unless like it's really their thing. 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, hey, 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 does, if, 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?
- [14:24]
Patrick Letts
Well, and not just even the talented kids, but like all our kids, like we, we let parents know that if, if you're aging out of our program, if once you're at 6 years old, if you don't want to continue on with the 7, 9 or 10, 12, or if you're in those programs and you want to try like a, 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 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. I usually try to point them to the coaches that are, you know, they run their training sessions, but during games, they let the players play. They're not yelling. They're not joystick coaching.
- [15:23]
Jason Hamilton
Yeah.
- [15:23]
Patrick Letts
And I try to say that's where your child will develop more. You're. As I always framed it, like, if you're looking for a club coach, you want a 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. 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 parents say, like, oh, my. Some. There's some parents who are like, my kid's not very good. He's not going to be. I'm like, I always tell him, like, you don't know at that age. At that age, they could. I was like. I was like, for the first, probably 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 who's like, you know, keep developing, keep working hard. It'll click for you. And. And out of my club team, I was only one of five that play at the college level. So that's.
- [16:27]
Jason Hamilton
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 nightclub. But, like, in the soccer club culture down here, like, they're really just weeding out. Like, they're tr. They're trying to find the best of the best. But in that. It's interesting that that coach kept you on and said, you know what? 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 5 to like 9. And then I played in middle school, played in high school. But you don't 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 pod, I want to just kind of touch on some of the lessons that you want people to learn from your story. What are, what are some of those lessons?
- [17:30]
Patrick Letts
And the key I mentioned the episode, like one of, one of the favorite quotes of mine that I have in my, my office is 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 and you're constantly like, you know, go out and dare to fail. Like you, you, you'll be in the same spot if, 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.
- [18:14]
Jason Hamilton
Dream big and dare to fail. I love that quote. And I'm also stealing that from you. I'm gonna 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 sometime 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.