E132: Brendan Roslund and Sam Hudspith

Richard:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eComOne. Welcome to episode 132. It's a double whammy in this one. We have Brendan Roslund, CEO, and Sam Hudspith, Director of Narrative from goalkeeper.com. Now, when we say niche down and focus deep, this is the one for you. This episode couldn't be a more refined niche, a business that's all about goalkeepers. You won't actually believe what these guys are up to in this one. Innovation all the way. If you enjoy this episode, hit the subscribe or follow button, wherever you are listening to this podcast. You're always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now, let's head over to this fantastic episode.

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Hi there, and welcome to another episode of eComOne. Today's guests, we've got two people on the pocket today. Very rare occasion is Brendan Roslund, Chief Operations Officer, and Sam Hudspith, Director of Narrative at Goalkeeper. How you doing guys?

Brendan:
Doing great. Thanks for having us on.

Richard:
Good. Brilliant, brilliant. Well, I think, first of all, it'd be good for you guys to introduce yourselves and tell our listeners how you got into the world of e-commerce. I don't know if you want to go first, Brendan.

Brendan:
Yeah, no stress. Thanks, Richard. So, about two years ago, we were all on a video call. One of our associates had acquired the domain goalkeeper.com, and prior to that, Sam was running the goalkeeping blog as well. And prior to COVID, I had gotten out of the technology space and got into private security for large events. And with COVID happening, those disappeared right away, and I ended up filming a TV show for kids and football. You would say we're here in the UK football, but in the States it's soccer. Just out of a set I built in my house that got picked up by an agency and an app there and then we started going forward.

We all met up and we had the domain goalkeeper.com and we were like, "Okay, now we should do something with it." And it's been a journey since then, and that's where I met Sam as well. And just so everyone knows, Sam blows my mind because he has wisdom beyond his years. He's only 18. He's a fresher at Oxford right now, and he has been helping run our editorial team and everything else going on during that time as well. So, Sam, I'll let you introduce yourself there and give your perspective.

Richard:
Thanks, Brendan.

Sam:
Yeah, no. Cheers, Brendan. I mean, it's been a really interesting 18 months or so. So, I became involved in the goalkeeper.com project a little bit after Brendan and met him for the first time in August last year. And obviously, as he's alluded to, all of this stuff was going on alongside academia. So, you are A levels and then obviously going to university and studying something totally different from any kind of e-commerce or business related degree and balancing that with everything business related to goalkeeper.com.

So, I essentially, lead our narrative team at the moment, which is pretty much editorial, social media, podcast, and a bit of brand development that's kind of chucked in on the side there. But I mean, I think we do a really good job making sure everything is quite centralized and things are very interconnected. So, I've been very lucky with the guys that they've given me a great opportunity. I think we're all capitalizing on that at the moment. Bring a kind of real mix of that experience, but also more youthful perspective that can then be built up by the kind of knowledge and basis that the guys can provide.

Richard:
So, you bring a whole different perspective from, I'm thinking there's all sorts of things spinning around now because I've also got an 18-year-old son, who was about to start in six months, his first year at university in business, international business. Obviously, he's not had been given a place yet, but it's only a matter of hopefully months. Yeah, interesting. Juggling first year, fresher year and then what will be, obviously, it'll start getting a little bit more difficult. The studies, I'm sure and then, obviously, you're working with Brendan and the team on the side. So, that brings all different sort of challenges, doesn't it, that you come across in the coming months. But yeah, good for you. Good for you.

So, I'm really intrigued. How did you get, utilized goalkeeper.com? How did that come about in terms of the domain name? You said that, you got that domain or you got that business. How did that come about?

Brendan:
Yeah, so that's a great question. It was held by a company in the States and one of our board members now was with them and as part of an exit package, they were given the domain, and everything related to goalkeeping. And so, they realized at that point, "Hey, I'm not a marketer. I'm not a technology specialist. I don't know what's going..." They're not a writer. And so, we started building out our leadership team and our leadership team, six out of the seven of us are actually goalkeepers. So, that kind of works out, right?

Richard:
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, that's a serious stat, isn't it? I bet there's no other company in the world that's got that stat.

Brendan:
Exactly. Our one non-goalkeeper is, we call him our fractional CTO. He is a dear friend of mine, Chris, and he's currently one of the architect at an ETL company that's funded by Google and they're catering to the hedge fund market and moving data around for them. So, very overpowered there. So, that's why he is only fractional with us. But we knew we needed somebody of that expertise level, we needed a midfielder. He is a midfielder by trade, he loves football. So, we brought him on, and he's been awesome through the project and helped guide us at a couple crucial steps.

Richard:
Brilliant. So, you've got the e-commerce side, but you've also got the agency side. How does that work? What's the most of your time split, 50-50 and tell us a bit about the agency side as well?

Brendan:
Sure. So, the agency side arose mutually with everything we're doing with the goalkeeper.com portfolio because if we're going to go do this. Let's build in, one of my favorite buzzwords is parallel structures because if we build something, we may as well ensure that we can allow it to encompass mutually beneficial businesses structures alongside it. And so, as we've gone and done everything for goalkeeper.com. For starters, that portfolio started off at just a couple businesses.

Now, the goalkeeper.com portfolio is at six businesses, and happy to say they all close the year on the black, but it's just everything we're doing from there has gone really well. And I don't think we're done yet. So, our studios is called TLA Studios, and that's just a fun play on words there. Richard, any idea what TLA stands for, or did Carrie Ann already spill the beans there?

Richard:
I should know this. No, I've got nothing.

Brendan:
No stress. It literally stands for Three Letter Acronym. So, we're just very tongue-in-cheek with everything we do. We're in technology. Cool. We're in technology, we're either moving data, or we're moving pixels around.

Richard:
Yeah, it's the other things. It's either SCL, PPC, CLV, FAQ. Oh no, not FAQ, but yeah, I get it. Yeah.

Brendan:
Totally. It's like, "Oh, what's that TLA mean?" And then, people are like, "What?" "Yeah, that three letter acronym, what's that mean?" Come back to earth a little bit. And that's one thing I think as we've gone through and started on this journey, we had to become the who that knows the how. And so, digging through all of the marketing language of everything that's out there in the market right now is a behemoth task. And for anyone that's just getting started out there, at least find somebody to ask some questions because there are all those TLAs. There's all these promises, and then you have the... Every business you go to is going to have a relationship between product, development, and marketing, and sales and what's actually available versus what the sales team is pitching to you is generally going to not be congruent.

So, there's a whole game to be had out there and we like to rattle around our vendors as we come into them and make sure that look like beyond your toes, we're not going to pay your SAS prices. We're going to come in here and we're going to understand that each one of us here is accountable for this relationship. And I think that's what the goalkeeper.com portfolio, we ended up with BigCommerce and they were the ones that really put forward a good foot on the partnership side. And then, we've developed a great relationship with their team there and been very happy with that after we've gotten past that initial friction.

Richard:
Yeah, I mean we talk about BigCommerce a lot. We've had a few of the team on. We've got an episode, I think it may be launching one side of your episode. So, the head of marketing there. We've had a few other senior leadership on and obviously it's a platform and a team that we are very close to. So, yeah, I would say you picked a good partner there. That's my take on it.

Brendan:
Yeah. I'll tell you something funny about our evaluation as well. We took meetings with Shopify and the Shopify rep who met with us. And by the way, my head's shaved now, Sam will tell you, four or five months ago I was living in Costa Rica on the side of a mountain. I had hair down past my shoulders, big beard. I decided, since coming back out of the jungle, I should clean up a little bit. But I took a meeting with the, I want to say he's sales. I'm not going to say his name directly, but he's sales for Shopify and I knew him. I went to uni with him, and I actually attended a party at his flat in school, and this was in the United States and the party was getting a little rowdier than it should have been. And he was at the door, and he was aggressively telling the police they couldn't come in.

Probably crossed a couple lines because the cop then proceeded to chokeslam him into the ground, and that's how I started the call with him, "Hey, man, last time I saw you, you got chokeslammed into the ground." And so, the Shopify rep was just totally uncertain of what to say and then I explained, and I was like, "Yeah, I don't look the same. I didn't always look-"

Richard:
Who is this guy?

Brendan:
... "stuck on an island." Yeah, yeah, so...

Richard:
Yeah, all change, isn't it? I believe it or not, I had hair halfway down my back when I was doing my travels, but that's a long time ago.

Brendan:
So, Sam, you still have time?

Sam:
Well, I'll spill the beans when I was about 12, actually 12 months, way too late. No, seven or eight. I went for the kind of, yeah, rugged look, we'll put it. But no, when Brendan decided to-

Richard:
Grown a beard.

Sam:
Yeah, little bit. No, not with a beard, just with the hair. But no, the Orlando Bloom beard is still in development. But no, Brendan, when you decided to come back in sort of western civilization after leaving the jungle in Costa Rica. It was a change I suppose, but that's a story for another day I think.

Brendan:
Yeah, totally.

Richard:
Oh, brilliant. So, BigCommerce, obviously, they've got a huge network, huge partner network particularly and obviously, they're sort of guys that are on the frontline. We both mutual friends of ours and obviously great bunch of partners. So, I think it's quite a cool story and you've obviously got this amazing domain and it's on the start of a journey, but, obviously, then very quickly use them, you're building and built of the sort of sub-brand off that and then you've got the agency side. I think it's a cool story and one that I'm looking forward to following because it's... I've been in this game for far too flipping long to be fair, but many, many years. It's quite a common thing. My agency came from me running stores, so I ran stores for seven, eight years, I guess. I can't remember now, somewhere there. It's about 12 years I had that business, but it was a retail business and distribution.

Then I started a store, five years into that, run that store and then multiple stores for the next seven, eight years and sold up business and transitioned at the tail end of that into agency. But really just mates that I work with saying, "Can you do some SEO?" I'm like, "No." And then, I did do it. And then, our agency's 13, 14 years old, but there's been interesting conversations in our business just yesterday, day before about relaunch or launching e-com stores again. There's a couple of people in the business who want to do them with me. We did some serious numbers back in the day. Well, it was a long time ago. We were doing about well, I'm trying to remember now, about 15, 16 mill a year of different stores, different things. That was probably 12, 13 years ago.

So, in today's money it was pretty good, I think back then. But it's quite a cool, we see it a lot. Agencies that have got a side gig or the other way round and just, which way will it go? Where will it go? Will goalkeeper go like a thousand times bigger or 10 times bigger than the agency, or you get obsessed with building BigCommerce stores and next thing you've got some prize clients, some bigger clients, bigger clients. We've got people on that have done million pound builds on BigCom before, and so you don't need too many of those to have a serious business.

Brendan:
No, no, and we've got clients lined up afterwards. Everyone's just waiting to see when we push the big red button to launch everything there. I mean, it's an intrusive question I guess, Richard, is what platform did you build your first e-com site on?

Richard:
Wow. Now, that is a platform that was. So, my first store was just like an Excel, it was just code. So, that wasn't e-com, that was just a Excel sheet online where you saw pricing and then you would visit my shop, my physical shop. That's how long ago I did it, but my first e-com store was built on a platform called Actinic.

Brendan:
Okay.

Richard:
Actinic. And everyone's like, "What the hell is that?" Yeah, exactly, exactly. I don't even know if it exists anymore. I shouldn't say that out loud. Sorry, Actinic. I'm sure you're still doing well. But yeah, I had about four, five store. No, four stores on that over the year, over that sort of five, four, five, six-year period. And we were selling computers, mainly the computer business. I had about 1,500 products on that store and that was the main business. And then, I had offshoot businesses that would sell digital photo frames was a big one for us, TV stands was pretty good as well, in a different lifetime.

So, we've got two sides of the business. So, let's dive in and let's dive in and say, so the football side, obviously, World Cup's been all over the... Obviously, when this episode airs, the World Cup would've died down a bit, but it's been a crazy few weeks or really great, amazing few weeks. Obviously, football as whole or soccer, depending on who's listening, unbelievable. But obviously, you're focused on goalkeepers and goal. Why was that? Obviously, you've got the domain, I'm guessing that's a huge part, but tell us a bit more about that.

Brendan:
Yeah. I mean, I was a goalkeeper growing up. Was in and out of the US national theme system growing up. And then, I'll spare everyone the story, right as my career, I was here in the UK and right as my career started to really grab traction and that very same night got man on the match, this, that and the other. I got some really tragic family news, and it was an awful roller coaster of a day. But then, goalkeeping and goalkeepers we're often and still are kind of an afterthought in everything. And if we can be goalkeeper first on everything we do, I think that we're going to really empower a whole group of people around the world then it's awesome. So, the one thing about goalkeepers that's interesting that I can share here is you're never on the field at the same time as another goalkeeper that is on your team.

And now, we are in kind of a cheesy, cheesy sense. There's six of us and so as we work together, it's fun to see how each goalkeeper personality, because goalkeepers are known for having those weird personalities. And so, how each of us behave there and then push forward. And also, it's interesting because I like to say goalkeepers are the mob in the sense that we all know each other and so we can transverse the entire football market very quickly and rapidly, working in the goalkeeper space. And so, that's been a lot of fun there and I know during this World Cup, it's the loudest time of media within the football space, I would say ever most likely. And so, we were like, "Sure, let's launch a podcast."

And so, Sam's been a part of that as well and it's been really good. Our goalkeeper.com, we're not selling anything other than if you want our children's book. We wrote an illustrated children's book, you can actually have it for free, the digital copy. And it was kind of our hello world and a little bit of poetry for our experience in the goalkeeping space. But yeah, Sam, you can talk about a little bit like the media side of things there.

Sam:
No, definitely, Brendan. I think, Richard, a really important thing to remember is that in all walks of life, I think people just want to be heard. And goalkeepers are the position that, although often have to be the loudest, are never heard. I mean, in that sense, in terms of retail, in terms of media, if we can justify what we're doing to ourselves as goalkeepers, and we can justify it to goalkeeping. If we can justify it to goalkeeping, we can justify it to ourselves as well. And that's all because we have, at one point, been that consumer. So, everything we do is interconnected. Our media is all in tandem with what we're trying to do on the e-commerce front, what we're trying to do on the membership front, with education, with Goalkeeper-XG, the data science that Brendan's alluded to. There's no divorce between any of those constituent parts.

And by doing that, I think we'll really encapsulate a combined number of voices that all had very, very similar experiences. And as it may you know, I speak about justifying what we are doing. We can be confident that we are there for goalkeepers as goalkeepers. And I don't want to go and start using buzz phrases and buzzword. I think that's overdone in copied marketing generally. But I do think it's important to remember that we are dealing with a group of people who in the sports space are often just left behind us as Brendan has said. And to be able to put number ones as number ones in what we're doing is something that I think is quite special to us and that hopefully shows through in what we're trying to do, especially in the voice that we put forward.

Richard:
I never thought of football like that, but now you obviously you've both said that, and as I don't play, I've never played, but you're out on that pitch. And as a goalkeeper, like you say, you're the only one on that team, whereas there's another, however many out there playing as a team, but you're probably the one that's getting shouted out or the one that's get... And then, you go back to just your perimeters like, "Yeah, just me here as the goalkeeper." Whereas, what you're building is this community aspects where as, probably somebody that's not heard, I don't know, I don't want to put words into your mouth, but they're not as, yeah, there's another however many on the pitch of the different other players. But with your business and your community, obviously, it's all goalkeepers.

So, it's like, "These are my people." And you're building again, and we talk a lot on the podcast about community and building the brand around the community. Well, obviously, that is a brilliant, brilliant area to focus on. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm excited to see where it all goes. So, in terms of then growth then, what would you say now new? So, you've got the book and then that's out there, but in terms of accelerating the growth now. The next sort of phases, what have you got planned?

Brendan:
Well, I want to say never, but spend a dime on Google Ads or anything like that. I believe in being value first in everything we do. And so, rather than going and spending anything on marketing, one of the businesses we spun up, we call Goalkeeper-XG, and in that we found... Sam actually connected us with the, I'll say the world's best data scientist goalkeeper. He is a Cambridge, PhD astronomer and-

Richard:
He's a goalkeeper.

Brendan:
... and he's a goalkeeper.

Richard:
Where do you find these people?

Sam:
We've got our methods, Richard, we've got our methods. Don't you worry about that.

Brendan:
Yeah. And so, with that, we are rewriting the stats conversation because typically in football stats it's been really interesting. We've only had this business going for, I think, this is our 14th week and we're courting multiple clients. We've already landed a couple football associations. And so, those football associations are looking to provide value to their constituent members and clubs are looking to understand how to transfer market, get the most out of the transfer market because goalkeepers are becoming more and more expensive. They're looking to make their goalkeeper training actually accurate to what they need to do on the field. And a lot of goes back to the goalkeepers are misunderstood, but we were talking with a team the day that they were to play in the Champions League and the goalkeeper team was telling us we need a way to tell our coach how the goalkeeper's actually performing with no bias.

And as goalkeepers, we have to pick up the mistakes of all the 10 people in front of us. And so, the score line may or may not accurately reflect a goalkeeper's performance because we just have to deal with it no matter what comes at us. And so, with what we're doing with John's models is, and I apologize if John ever listens to this, I'll get some of it wrong because his models are incredibly complex, but they categorize every single movement and every single action a goalkeeper does on the field, and they assign a probability value that we call Goalkeeper-XG. So, it's totally from the goalkeeper's perspective, whereas the rest of the stats providers out there just take the field player perspective and just add a negative one on it. And so, we're having great traction with that. And then, to pair that and spread the word, we looked at creating a hyper flexible web app for education and storytelling.

And so, we just got some new updates on that yesterday and so that will be launching in 2023 as well. And we're looking forward to working with different FAs and clubs, whomever it might be to use this to start to spread the word and educate the next generation of goalkeepers. And that's tough because people will be like, "Well, you can't use data to do all that." And I'll be the first one to say, "Yeah, you're right with that." I have had a data science bit of a background as well, but what we can do is look at, "all right, here's the best model of goalkeeping that exists in the world. And we look at all the events that happened that have happened and that is the best set of assumptions for going and creating physical program, physical training programs, actual training programs, everything there going forward.

So, it's just like a little grain of sand to go make the pearl because you've got to go and put all the love and effort into training your goalkeepers on the field. You can't just hammer them with data, that'd be awful, but we're going to be using that and working with some really interesting people going forward there. So, super excited with that. And then, our learning app, we've given it a name and it alludes to Schrodinger's cat, actually. So, it's called frame thrower and then the tagline with that is open up and find out.

And so, we're very excited to see where that goes and the opportunities that brings. We've had multiple sales directors come and want to sell it already. BigCommerce is excited to connect us with some people there and then we were chatting with somebody yesterday and he's connected to a bunch of universities and he's just like, "You need to get this to them ASAP." So, really excited with that build and our team's done a great job there.

Richard:
Yeah, it's not very often you hear the word data scientist and goalkeeper in the same sentences, I don't think so. Yeah, that's interesting things you're do in there. So, we've got the data scientist side, we've got the app side, the storytelling side. So, in terms of your customers then. It's more likely the FA, the bigger clubs, the bigger sports scientist, would that be fair or...

Brendan:
I think you've got footballers, right? And then, you circle everyone who's involved in goalkeeping. I've been involved with sports and sports tech long enough to say a lot of sports tech companies just get too over faceted with hyper targeting everyone involved, parents, coaches, admins, players, all that. Okay, I really want to use a tagline to describe our ethos right now, but I'll edit it a little bit.

So, before being good or even being great, let's start by not being crap. And so, that's our ethos and how we operate. And so, we're going to go provide the FAs with assistance however we want to there. We'll provide clubs with assistance at different levels. Sam just had an interview with the club yesterday that's then turned into an opportunity, they're in the Premier League here, so that was Sam's first sales call. So, good job, Sam.

Sam:
There's been a lot of interviews, but the sales part of it is a new dynamic that's coming in.

Richard:
So, Sam, you've been working on the content side particularly then. We'll talk about that a bit more, what you've been working on there and what the plans are there.

Sam:
No, indeed. I mean, it's multimedia, Richard. So, we're talking about everything for editorial all the way through to extended video production. And as I mentioned before, it's not disconnected from anything else that's going on in the organization. All the different constituent parts are still interlinked and that's why our narrative and our voice is really important in being consistent, to be kind of underpinning in there to gain that trust amongst goalkeepers. But likewise, we have to have the flexibility and what Brendan's alluded to in terms of the customer base, in terms of the apps, in terms of the data science, is that we're covering a massively broad range of user personas. And some people might say, "Well, actually you're doing loads. Well, you just want to focus in on one bit." But I would say, "Well, actually we're going and finding out what works and what doesn't work and what people want to get here, what people don't want to have here."

And I think by opening yourself up and being willing to say to everyone in the goalkeeper space, and this not doesn't just go for goalkeeping, but to really any other niche industry. If you want to come and work with us and you want to come and find out, then we are going to work. We're going to welcome you with open arms, because at the end of the day, we are only going to go further with more people involved that are buying into the ethos that Brendan's alluded to. And we're lucky that we can come at that from a goalkeeper perspective with our own experiences and ground our narrative there. But at the same time, we talk about the agency side of things. Brendan's alluded to all shredding as count things like this and we're taking a slightly non-linear approach I think in these kind of narratives that we're putting forward.

So, as I mentioned, everything we do is part of one bigger, bigger idea and it's just how we then break that down and make sure it's accessible to different types of people at different levels. So, obviously, if we're talking to an FA or a Premier League club. They still have the same understanding of goalkeeper speaking the same language and being part of the same vibe and ethos. But if we're then presenting that similar idea to someone who's playing grassroots Sunday league at nine, 10, 11, 12. Again, it's the same feelings that underpin it, but obviously we can't go start talking massive technical detail there. So, I think we do a good job of splitting that up. At the same time, making sure that we're still staying true to the overarching ethos.

Richard:
No, I love that. I think like you say, there's the passionate mums that are with their eight, nine, 10, to 15-year-old sons that are ultimately, they've got the very similar. They're in the same space as the other guy that's running the however managed 50 billion, trillion club. Obviously, what he's looking for and the sort of, there's obviously different commercial aspects, maybe not so much commercial definitely on the FA side, but there's that more of that emotion. So, I want my son to do well. He loves this. We are creating a community where my son feels part of it.

Well, yeah, he's not going to spend like 300 grand on some app maybe, but the reality is there's a massive market out there, isn't there? And I think that's great that you're just trying these different things. I'm really excited to get you guys back on this show in 18 months, 12 months because obviously some of these things you're talking about. Just on their own, just talking about a data scientists side of goalkeeping and all the data behind an app or potential app or some really, really exciting things there that just on their own. We've done a lot of episodes with different store owners that have built an app and then the app has been the focus of that episode and the focus of their whole or our team in their business. But yeah, you're going to get some crazy data this next few months, aren't you? And it's going to be very interesting few months ahead.

Brendan:
Yeah, it'll be really interesting. And I think just putting a button on the customer segment conversation we were having. In my perspective, having been in sports tech before, we have what is a shrinking user population or a shrinking demographic of kids actually in sports. If I believe correctly, the latest number that I showed were football is not growing anymore. It's at a stable level. You might have a couple percent plus or minus five on that, but you have an increasing number of businesses going to target these families, especially for their dollars. And so, I think there's an issue with that. And so, we take extreme care with that. Back to our ethos there, but we're going to ask a lot of questions of the industry. For the first one there will be what's actually on your hands as we're selling goalkeeper gloves, but, yeah.

And then, the other side of it is having been in the data science space and this app space before and so far we've taken a very data minimalist approach to gathering that data. And I've enjoyed that because it's been refreshing, it's been not creepy. When you talk about some of the edge processing tools to localize intent and experience to a mobile device, you're like, "Holy cow." Way to go to overcomplicate, trying to take some fun tokens from somebody by being, I guess not as creepy but still creepy on a localized edge processing version. But let's just provide value in other ways and be there for them so that's been part of the discovery for us as well.

Sam:
I think also, Brendan, just to add on that, you know say that as football is plastering to an extent in terms of a certain level of the game. We, obviously, are also seeing massive, massive commercial growth and I think as with a lot of walks of life, how far can that gap increase between someone who is playing grassroots? So, at the end of the day, that's where everyone starts and that's where the stall, bulk of support for football as a global phenomena is coming from. So, we can't keep cutting those people down and keeping them away.

I think a lot of companies perhaps don't do this intentionally, but I think there's just lack of awareness really of who their real user persona, who their real target persona is. Because you can split people into segments and split stakeholders into segments and stuff, but actually you're never going to sustain fundamentally the massive commercial gains that are coming. And the people that want to make those gains, that's all well and good, but they can't do it without remembering that the people at the bottom, fundamentally holding that up to a large extent-

Richard:
The gap just gets bigger, doesn't it? Yeah.

Sam:
Yeah, indeed. Yeah. So, that very simple analogy, which applies to politics, applies to lots and lots of different things. It's nothing groundbreaking analysis wise, but I think it's just something to keep in mind that people often don't keep in mind.

Richard:
Yeah, when I think about my kids are nearly out of school now, but their football's never been a big. They're not that interested in it and that's just their choice. But then, I think actually when you're saying that the schools that they're at, it doesn't seem to be a big thing either and which is probably, there's obviously a lot of different sports within school, but then when I think about my age group and the people that work for me. They're a lot more interested in sport, sorry, football, whereas my children's generation or the people that I know. There's a lot of kids I know, they don't seem to be that interest, not like you say, there's definitely in the circle that I'm in seems to be definitely the gap has got bigger over this last, I'm sort of comparing probably a 20-year gap between the 20, 30-year gap between the two generations potentially. But yeah, I wonder where that all more needs to be done potentially. But then there's a lot of other sports in school, isn't it, that people are interested in, so yeah.

Sam:
I suppose it's not only necessarily just with the football, Richard, I think it's a question of connection between people generally when we talk about the agency side of what we're doing and that kind of expands further away from just football. There's a case to be made and a case that we are going to be making, of making sure that people are just connecting with each other on a personal basis and coming away from things that we think in the modern day have to underpin that.

Now, technology is a fundamental part of our lives and it's a fundamental part of why we're having this conversation today. But at the same time, it's often supplementary to what is at the core of these relationships. And when we talk about TLA and what we're doing there, part of the reason that we refer to it as a Three Letter Acronym is because it's what you can make it. That's what people can come in and think for themselves about and discover for themselves about what they need, what they want to do and forge that relationship as a deeper connection with, even though it's in a commerce setting, it's still being done on quite a human level. And when we come out to the conversation about kids and sports, it's not just football like you say, but there's a case to be made for just generally kids coming together and coming up high as hard and so and so forth.

Richard:
Hundred percent isn't it that team piece that we know, it just translates to everything in a business doesn't it as well? As you go through school and then it's like, okay, your skills to talk to people, your group, how you work in a group, in a group setting, how you work on a project together. Obviously, at university if when you start uni, straight away that you're put in different groups and whatnot and if you.

Fast forward 50 years and we're not playing many team sports and we're used to sitting on a computer with a headset on and not interacting really with people, that's quite scary, isn't it? Because when you think about that is, what is exactly happening, isn't it? Less and less team stuff going on if we're not careful and more and more doing what we are doing. But we obviously we're interacting, but when we're not recording this. We're probably sat here staring at our apps and that's, I've been sat here probably like you have about nine hours today I think doing various things. Have I had an actual conversation outside this room with anybody will today? I think a little bit, but it's quite scary, isn't it really?

Sam:
Well, it's all making us think, isn't it? I suppose that's the one thing we could take from it now.

Richard:
I guess that's there, shows that more and more firms are ditching the office, full remote, but we made a decision to actually invest more this year. Well, coming into next year into a new, we're actually having new office, new office space been built for that reason. I'm a massive believer in that interaction piece. Yeah, we've got the flex. People don't have to come in every day, that's not what I'm saying. But we have a base that we encourage people to come in, if they can, that are local. Obviously, we are spread out quite a lot, but we'd have our core team within 20, 30 miles of our new office space. And I've found that that's been a big part of our semi success I think of our business this last year or two. Whereas I've seen a lot of agencies that have ditched the space, gone full remote.

Yeah, of course some have done very well, but then I've heard a lot of stories and a lot of people I personally know and ex-employees that are really struggled working from home permanently because of that interaction piece and it's, yeah, I would not like that personally. I think, I'm definitely don't know what you want to call it, but I am there very much people, face-to-face. I like my days at home, which is where I am today. This is my home office, my home peace. We've got the similar setup in the office as well, but I like a good mix of both. But if it was just purely on my own 78% to 90%, 100% of the time, which is if you're not doing these team pieces. It very much can be, can't it? It's quite scary actually, I think 50 years from now.

Sam:
Yeah, no and I think, Brendan, we've had that privilege of having a core team based in the UK but also really extensive contract to freelance network around what we're doing and that's global. That's not just around the UK. On the content side, for example, we decided to transition to a freelance writer pool in the summer and part of the reason for that was purely for perspective. So, widening the kind of ideas that are coming in, the kind of experiences that are feeding into the voice that we are providing. But I think, also, from a strategic point of view, Brendan, you can talk further about the kind of expertise that we've been able to source in a very resourceful manner, from combining both in person working and a local team, but also having that more extensive network.

Brendan:
Sure, I mean, if you're around agency types enough, you will quickly understand that everyone is using Geoarbitrage to some extent, to boost their margins in some aspect and we do that as well. We use Nearshore, our team is based in Argentina, so they're very happy today. They may have gotten in a little late, but it's all good. A funny thing they told me is due to, I think the last number I saw was they have 90% inflation down there. The government was giving away... I'm not going to get, the government was basically giving away free money to buy a new TV ahead of the World Cup to buy popularity from the populous. So, if Argentina wins, it'll look brilliant.

So, going with what Sam said, we have designers in Australia, we have a strong team in Costa Rica as well. I was able to connect with some people there. Another thing that sets us apart, with us as an agency, is we're getting deeper and deeper into children's media. This is Waves and Wiggles, another thing that we support there. And there's kind of that underpinning of science to everything we do, including the goalkeeper.com portfolio with our astrophysicist. And it's really been great to make these connections because sport is one of those things that does just cross borders. And I think that's what we're most excited about with goalkeeper.com is to meet and hear all the stories of goalkeepers from around the world. I mean just today we were chatting with some people in Holland and who knows what next week will bring, it's quite fun.

So, yeah, but we try to be responsible in our use of go arbitrage. And then, there's some accents I am just not going to put up with. No, we don't need to go further than that but, and our development team in Argentina is great enough to help me with my limited Spanish as well, so.

Richard:
Brilliant. Well, guys, it's been an absolute pleasure. I think I am looking forward to getting you guys back on in 12 months. I want to hear all about this journey. So, I like to leave every episode with a book recommendation to our listeners. I think we're going to get two book recommendations off this one because there is two of you. So, what book would you recommend, Sam, to our listeners?

Sam:
Well, I'm going to be absolutely shameless and first and foremost say The Keeper's Call. This is our children's book at goalkeeper.com. It's a homage to all things goalkeeping. You know, Richard, it's a good question. It's one that I have should have thought about more when you sent have your list of questions. But I would say rather than give you one recommendation 'cause I can't do that right now, I would say just read widely.

Don't just read about e-commerce, don't just read about marketing, don't just read about business, read fiction, read history, read politics. Because the more you learn, and this is coming from someone who's at university and still having to discover these things at a place that's as unique as Oxford. The more you know, and the more you can buy into and the more ideas that you can find. It's only going to help you in every area of business and e-commerce coming so expansive, sorry, excuse me, so expansive. That I think it's really important just to carry on pushing your horizons.

Richard:
I think that's brilliant. 'Cause I was a shocking reader when I was a university, to be fair. Absolutely shocking. Literally, I'm unbelievably bad. And then, set up my businesses if you like. And then, it was like, "Ah, okay." The knowledge I have out of 150 pages might equate to a 20-round investment on a, whatever it may be, so yeah. And then, Brendan?

Brendan:
This is my kind of go-to as far as how I like to communicate is with pictures. So, this goes into our flamethrower app as well there. So, The Diagrams Book by Kevin Duncan. I love that. And we'll flip to the last little diagram here. I also have two as well, but this is quite a nice little flow chart there if you can see it. Yeah.

Richard:
Yeah, you're going to have that on the wall in the office one day.

Brendan:
Yeah. Yeah. And then, the other one that'll be kind of going out in 2023 is Waves and Wiggles. Shameless plug, but we're trying to, with these connect, I would say the two user bases we're trying to connect there is a scientist who works at CERN with a kid in a classroom and connect that and give some wonder back to reality in the universe.

Richard:
Lovely, lovely. We'll link all that up in the show notes. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. Best way to reach out to you guys. What would that be? For the listeners that want to find out more about what you're doing.

Sam:
Very simple. Email us. Sorry, Brendan, email sam@goalkeeper.com, brendan@goalkeeper.com or reach us out on social media.

Richard:
Brilliant. Well, thanks for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure. I'll see you again soon. Cheers.

Brendan:
Likewise.

Sam:
Cheers, Richard.

Brendan:
Appreciate it. Thank you.

Richard:
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