Make More Money.
I have a friend who coaches five teams. Five. He goes from game to game to game on Saturdays and Sundays — during state cup season in Northern California that's ten games a weekend. I genuinely don't know how he applies himself professionally to any of them. But when you ask him why he does it, the answer is simple: he needs the money.
That's the ceiling most coaches hit. You get paid per team. You want more money. So you take on more teams until you're burned out, invisible to your own family, and giving every squad a version of you that's running on empty.
The alternative isn't easy, but it's smarter. Here's how I think about it: two categories of opportunity. Budget, and non-budget.
Budget: Work Already Being Paid For
Walk around your organization and look at who's getting paid to do what. Somewhere in your club's operating budget there are roles that either nobody is filling well, or that are being done by someone outside the coaching staff who has no relationship with the game.
Registration. Behind every well-run club is a good registrar. Player registrations often include a small per-player fee for whoever processes them. If you have the patience and the bandwidth, that's money sitting on the table.
Field operations. Someone lines the fields. Someone sets up goals for weekend games. Someone trims the grass around the posts that the big mower doesn't get. These are paid tasks, usually done by someone with no stake in the club. If you're there anyway, could it be you?
Player passes. Printing, laminating, and organizing passes for games and tournaments is time-consuming admin that usually falls on someone who doesn't really want to do it. Offer to take it on.
Referee assigning. This requires a course and a certification, but once you have it, you get paid every time a referee is assigned to a game through you. It also means you build relationships with referees — which is worth something on its own.
Social media. Look at your club's Instagram. If it's mostly trophy photos and blurry action shots, that's not a brand — that's a bulletin board. A club that communicates its philosophy, shows its coaches working, shares player development moments, and builds a genuine presence is more attractive to families than one that just posts results. If you can do that — collect content, write captions, build the story — there's a case for getting paid for it. Start by offering to do it for a month for free and show them what it can look like.
Age group coordinator. If your club has three or four teams in the same age group, those coaches are often working in silos. An age group lead who connects the coaches, coordinates the training concepts, runs occasional combined sessions, and creates consistency across the programme is incredibly valuable. It rarely exists because nobody thought to ask for it. Propose it.
College and high school guidance. Parents of older players have a lot of questions about what club soccer means for high school recruitment and college pathways. If you have experience in that world, or you're willing to build it, there's a role there — and it's the kind of thing directors know they should be offering but never have time to set up.
Non-Budget: Create What Doesn't Exist Yet
I sat with a director of soccer recently and in the hour we were together, he received forty emails. Forty. In one hour. That person is putting out fires from the moment they start until the moment they stop, and the things that could genuinely move the organization forward — the things sitting just outside what's urgent — never get touched.
Your opportunity is to see what they can't.
Holiday camps. Black Friday, winter break, spring break — parents need somewhere for their kids to be, and a well-run soccer camp fills that need. Most organizations know this but nobody's directing it. If you step up, you manage the curriculum, the logistics, the staffing, and you take a percentage of the registration revenue. The club doesn't have to front anything they weren't already going to spend.
Goalkeeper training. Every club knows it needs this. Most clubs don't have it. If you don't have goalkeeper-specific expertise yourself, you become the director — find the specialist, manage the programme, market it to families, and take a coordination fee. You don't have to be the goalkeeper coach. You have to be the person who makes it happen.
Refereeing. There's a significant referee shortage in most regions right now. In Northern California, they've opened crash courses to get more people certified quickly. If your game is at noon, you could referee the nine and the ten-thirty, earn the assignor fees, and still be in your coaching kit by kickoff. It's genuinely one of the most underused options available to coaches.
Game analysis. Clubs are buying Veo and Trace cameras and then not really using them well because the coaches are too busy. If you can film games, clip specific moments, and send coaches two to three minutes of relevant footage tied to what they worked on in training, you become invaluable. Coaches love having the evidence. They just don't have time to find it themselves.
Early-age programming. Most clubs start at seven or eight. Four and five year olds are already moving and playing and ready to learn. Saturday morning, eight to eight-forty-five, structured play and introduction to the ball — the club takes a registration cut, you take the rest. You're building the pipeline before it even exists anywhere else.
The Mindset Behind All of It
What I've seen kill coaching careers is the acceptance that this is just how it is. The director says there's no money in the budget. The club doesn't have extra roles. The only answer is another team.
It isn't.
Look at your organization the way a new investor would. Where are the gaps? What's being done poorly or not at all? What are parents asking for that nobody's providing? What would reduce stress for the director so much that they'd happily find a way to pay for it?
You don't have to wait to be offered a role. You can create the role, demonstrate its value, and then make the case for being compensated for it.
Coaching more teams isn't a career plan. It's a sprint toward burnout. The coaches who build real income in this industry are the ones who see the organization clearly and show up with solutions.
Find the gap. Fill it. Ask to be paid for it.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 64 — Make More Money!
@LeeDunneSoccer