Week four - community-centred development

There are 139 days between now and the end of the year. Since returning to the country in July, and marking six months since leaving my school position in August, I’ve set these 139 days as my own, self-imposed, litmus test: 

can we build, lead and grow a successful and sustainable educational project?

It’s no secret that my long-term ambitions lie beyond the goalkeeping, football and sporting world, but helping people and communities to be the best version of themselves through education and development - in whatever context that might be - is something that I’m committed to working towards and learning about. 

The vehicle, therefore, that must be put at the centre of all of our activities is the community which we seek to serve. It’s spelt out through our manifesto and mission statement, but some areas of the project’s development so far have made that a difficult combination and balance to meet. How can we continue to keep the business financially sustainable, whilst remunerating the educators for their time and having the greatest impact possible on the overall goalkeeping world? 

We’ve produced loads of great free content, and I hope facilitated opportunities for coaches to hear different perspectives and develop themselves. However, the time and effort that has gone into the courses perhaps hasn’t had the overriding impact on the goalkeeping world that it could have. They are some great resources, but haven’t hit any number of impressions to cause any kind of ripple in the goalkeeping world.

We're really excited that we’ve found a way to make that happen, and extend the reach and longevity of all of our Goalkeeping Intelligence content.

Perhaps it was a decision and conclusion that we should’ve reached earlier, but we’ll be pivoting the Goalkeeping Intelligence platform away from one-time purchase courses (although this option will still remain, with a heavier remuneration for the educators so that they can take ownership and autonomy over their own courses) and instead focusing on a two-tier subscription service.

We’ll be partnering with The Goalkeepers’ Union, and producing a membership opportunity that will include podcasts, audiobooks, training ground content and more. It will still all be framed under the umbrella of developing ‘critically-thinking goalkeeper coaches’, and this will have to be drawn out through skill in design of the online learning interfaces and platform, as well as the affordances offered for debate and discussion from the different opinions posed.

At the same time, we’ll then be collating all of the courses into a premium membership, too, where learners - for a much more accessible price - will have access to all of the courses on the Goalkeeping Intelligence platform, as we continue to develop them in tandem with leading coach educators.

The pivot will allow us to ensure that we put the community at the heart of every decision, both content and strategical, that we make, with the guarantee of stable and recurring income, as well as a clear and defined service of providing our community with the best possible goalkeeping content on the best possible goalkeeping platform. 

With this in mind, it adds great clarity and objectivity to my personal mission, and makes black and white what success looks like; there are 139 days to make it happen.

To make the success that the project and goalkeeping community deserve, every one of those 139 days will play their role in developing content, unity and engagement. This week has been spent putting the final plans in place around paperwork and frameworks for our agreements with educators, how we communicate the changes to the community and also beginning the initial preparation for the subscription service interface. We’ve got two more weeks of developing this behind-the-scenes infrastructure before we hope to be launching.

In the meantime, it’s time to dig in, put in the long hours, take all the lessons we’ve learned so far and amplify all the principles of a subscription model that we’ll be working hard to grow over the next four months.

Come Christmas, we, and I, should have a clear idea of whether we’ve got things right, and great learnings and reflections whatever the conclusion is. The challenge, pressure and accountability is there - we’re all looking forward to the journey!

Yours in goalkeeping,

Adam.​