Marcus Walfridson Oct 3, 2024 Building Paradise: Creating the Brand ↓ What is the first or second thing you see when you think of a soccer team? That’s right, their logo. What does that represent for you? The entire club, or as in the case of FC Barcelona, maybe more than a club? Their famous tagline of “Mes que un club” is synonymous with their logo and their brand. But in my world, every club is more than just the club. For me, a club represents the community in which it finds itself....
26 days ago • 3 min read
Marcus Walfridson Sep 12, 2024 Building Paradise: Finding Players ↓ The most common question I’ve received is “how do you find players?”. My answer before our first season was that players were the least of my worries, which turned out to be correct. There was so many unknowns when it came to everything outside the field. Before our second season my answer to that same question changed somewhat. They find us, I answered sounding somewhat arrogant. But it was true. What most people who haven’t...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Marcus Walfridson Aug 29, 2024 Building Paradise: Culture and Core Values ↓ How many times have you heard the word culture this week? Bad results in sports or business chalked up to bad culture. The amazing startup or championship team that heralds the amazing culture. As a new club it’s important to foster a culture that helps you achieve your vision and mission. Since club culture is how our people act, there needs to be some guidelines that can create the behavior that we want. The basis...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Marcus Walfridson Aug 15, 2024 Building Paradise: Why start a club, and why here? ↓ The most common question I get is “Why start a club, and why here?”. Since the answer seems so obvious to me, my answers aren’t always great. The short answer is why not, and hey, it’s paradise. However, there’s a little more background to it that will create a better context for this Paradise story. In 2008 I started my coaching career after suffering a knee injury playing in Norway. As many young coaches I...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Marcus Walfridson Aug 1st, 2024 Building Paradise: Experiments ↓ I’m a big believer in questioning existing practices. Whatever the context I often find myself asking “why is that like this?”. The operations of your favorite soccer team is no exception. For everything we do well, the question of whether or not it was pure luck comes to me. The itch of wanting to mess with it just to confirm or disconfirm comes to me. This is not how owners and operators of sports teams normally think. Most...
3 months ago • 5 min read
Marcus Walfridson June 17th Building Paradise: Contracting or Expanding? ↓ Some conversations trigger me in unexpected ways. Thankfully I'm self aware enough to notice and avoid too much damage. There's been many times these last couple of weeks where I just wanted to tell people to f-off, quit what I'm doing and go hide under a rock. When that happens I go into analysis mode (if time) and try to figure out why I reacted like that. It's not the other person's fault. I'm the one reacting to...
4 months ago • 1 min read