Don't Ask a Club What They Have. Tell Them What You've Got.
I've been on both sides of this conversation.
I've been the coach reaching out to organizations asking if there's anything available. And I've been the director of coaching on the other end of that email, looking at a name I don't know and a license level on a resume and thinking — well, we've got volunteer parents coaching teams. What do you have that they don't?
The honest answer, most of the time, is: not enough.
That's not a criticism of the coaches sending those emails. They're trying to get involved, they've put time and money into their coaching education, and they genuinely want to contribute. The problem isn't the intent. It's the framing.
The Cold Email Problem
Here's what the typical message looks like: Hi, I'm a coach with a B/C/grassroots license and X years of experience. Do you have any teams or opportunities available?
On the receiving end, that message creates a very short thought process. The director checks the team list, checks the coach list, sees everything is filled, and says no. Or they forward it to an age group coordinator who does the same thing and forgets about it by the end of the day.
And that's the end of it. Not because the coach isn't good. Because the question only opens doors that are already visible.
The problem with asking "what do you have?" is that you're putting all the work on the director to solve your problem. And directors of coaching don't sit around waiting to solve other people's problems — they're too busy solving their own. Managing parents, managing boards, managing field access, managing coaches who are burning out or underperforming, managing league registrations and tournament applications and the guy who's supposed to be lining the fields but isn't showing up. That's the job. And into that chaos lands your email asking what's available.
It's not that they don't want to help. It's that you haven't given them a reason to stop and think about you.
The Goalkeeper Coach
Here's what the better version looks like.
A coach reached out to me when I was running things in San Francisco. She's a goalkeeper. She'd pursued her coaching licenses seriously, taken goalkeeper-specific education in the UK, played the position herself. And instead of asking what we had available, she reached out and said: I can see you don't have any goalkeeper training for your players. No camps, no clinics, no regular sessions. I'd love to change that. Here's what I'm thinking.
That's a completely different conversation.
I didn't have to figure out what to do with her. She'd already done it. She'd looked at what we were offering, identified a gap, and arrived with a solution to a problem I hadn't even formally recognized yet. We built a Goalkeeper Academy together. It started small, we trialed it at the end of a season, it landed well, and then we grew it. Players got specialist coaching in a position that usually gets completely ignored at recreational level — where "goalkeeper" just means whoever drew the short straw and is hoping nothing gets past them.
She created that. I didn't post that job anywhere. She made it exist.
What Your Strengths Actually Are
Most coaches, when they think about what they offer, think about their license and their experience on the field. That's the floor, not the ceiling.
Think about what else you carry.
Are you a specialist with a particular age group? One coach I worked with reached out asking if I had anything available, and the honest answer was: not obviously, no. But I had a conversation with him rather than just saying no, and eventually got to the fact that he was at his best — genuinely his best — with five to eight year olds. Little programs. Early development. He knew what he was doing in that space in a way that most coaches don't. So we built something around that and gave him a programme to own.
That never would have happened if he'd just sent the initial email and waited for a reply.
What else can you offer beyond the pitch?
Can you write? Can you build a curriculum? Can you manage a social media page in a way that actually reaches families? Can you handle tournament applications, league registrations, Team Snap admin — all the things that eat up a director's time and that nobody in the organization particularly enjoys doing? Can you film training sessions and games? Can you edit footage into something useful for coaches or players?
These things sound like they're adjacent to coaching. They're not. They're valuable, and in most clubs they fall into a gap, and the director knows they fall into a gap but doesn't have the bandwidth to fix it. You showing up and saying "I can take this off your plate" is not a small thing.
The Sacramento Republic Experience
When I got involved with the Sacramento Republic, I didn't arrive asking for a role. I arrived and said: I'll pick up the cones. I'll make sure the balls have air in them. I'll fill the water bottles when the trainer is getting overwhelmed with taping players up. Just let me be out there.
No expectation of pay. No expectation of a job offer. Just the offer of being useful in exchange for the experience of being in that environment.
That's how you get your foot in rooms that don't advertise openings. Not by asking what they have for you. By showing them what you can do and making the cost of taking a chance on you as low as possible.
The long game is obvious: you build a relationship, you demonstrate your value, you're in the room when something does open up. But even if none of that happens, you've gained experience in an environment you wanted to be in. That's not nothing.
Write Them Down
Here's the practical version of all of this: before you reach out to anyone, sit down and actually write your strengths out. Not just your license. Not just your years coached. Your actual strengths — the specific things you're good at, the age groups you're best with, the areas of the game where you have real knowledge, and the things you can do behind the scenes that a club actually needs.
Then look at the club you want to approach. Spend twenty minutes understanding what they do and what they're missing. And then reach out with: here's what I see, here's what I can offer, here's how I'd do it.
That's not a cold email anymore. That's a proposal. And proposals get read.
The question isn't what a club has for you. The question is what you've got for them.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 68 — What Are Your Strengths?
@LeeDunneSoccer