As I sit here writing this blog today the Football Fun Factory have over 80 Superstar Head Coaches delivering our unique programmes in their local community around the UK. These communities are spread far and wide from Exeter to Kilmarnock in Scotland to Cardiff and Swansea in Wales to Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland not forgetting our latest Head Coach on the other side of the world on the Gold Coast in Australia, quite a spread I think you’ll agree.
Now every single one of the team have had a completely different journey to join our team and of different timelines of making it all happen, but every single one has gone through the exact same process which I’m very proud to say I have played a part in. Now my role at the Football Fun Factory is to head up the Discovery Phase of our franchise opportunity which is a hugely rewarding role that allows me to meet new people on a daily basis, learn more about them and talk in detail about my favourite subject which of course is the Football Fun Factory!
And in today’s blog I’m going to talk about what that process looks like from first having an awareness of the FFF (which is pretty much always on social media!) to becoming a Head Coach and running a franchise, sometimes this is a quick process and sometimes it’s long process which is governed completely by the coaches personal circumstance and timeline. The process always starts the same way and that would be to arrange a zoom call with yours truly which must be quite an attraction if I do say so myself!! (I’m obviously joking!)
The first call is really relaxed, and as I said earlier it would be an opportunity for us to get to know each other a little better and for the coach to ask any initial questions they may have from the information they have already received and any questions in general. These calls vary in length from around 20 minutes to an hour with coaches having a varied number of questions to ask. After the first call the coach is offered the opportunity to receive some information and to book up a follow up call around a week later. Should they choose to do so they receive our Community Performance Tool which gives more information of our business model and a good understanding of what the numbers look like that sit behind the business.
On the second call I try to give as much time as possible to the coach as there are usually plenty of questions about the Community Performance Tool, the more questions the better as this always shows the coach has taken plenty of time and effort to review the tool. Again call 2 is usually around 30 minutes to an hour depending on how many questions there are and of course me waffling on when I answer them!! If the coach still has a really strong interest in our opportunities the next step of the process is arranging a coach observation which is without doubt my favourite part of the Discovery Phase!
The coach observation is where the coach comes and visits us at a convenient date for them at one of our Football Fun and Development sessions or at one of our Football Fun Camps. I will send over a session plan and they will deliver the session. As I say this is my favourite part as I love introducing them to James and Jonny and seeing a passionate football coach do what they love most, of course there are always a few nerves but we try to alleviate that and make it a really relaxed environment.
After the session we offer some feedback to the coach from the session and the whole discovery phase experience and hopefully receive some feedback from the coach on how they have found the experience. Then a two way decision is made on what the next steps will be, from our side it will either be offering the coach an FFF franchise or offering the coach a development plan to come on board at a later date. Some of the coaches that are offered the development plan have completed it and become highly successful Head Coaches and some have decided the opportunity is not right for them. Which is absolutely fine. The most important thing to us is that every coach that starts the Discovery Phase has a positive experience, finds out as much information as they need and never feels any expectation or pressure about moving to the next stage without feeling ready.
So that in a nutshell is what the journey of our Discovery Phase looks like, if you were to ever think that our opportunities are appealing to you I’ll look forward to seeing you on the other end of a zoom call!
Last July we held our inaugural franchise conference, this event saw us bring together a number of our FFF Head Coaches for a day of
What’s all this about football introducing a new Blue Card that will see players sin-binned for ten minutes if they receive one? At the FFF
