Soccer Meets America: Leadership, Culture, and the Stories That Shape Us

Soccer has always been here. Is success in America producing the best soccer player in the world? Is success for America winning the World Cup? Every data point about soccer and the American media in the United States from 1991 to 2026 has completely transformed. You can walk into the room and be two ways.

You can say, "Here I am," and, "There you are." The projects that I want to work on are projects that are constructive culturally, not destructive.

Every team says they want to win, but winning takes more than just stockpiling talent. It takes trust, discipline, hard conversations, and leaders who know how to coach people through pressure. I'm Ed Molitor, and this is The Athletics of Business, where the lessons of high-performing teams, elite athletes, and high-impact coaches become the playbook for more impactful leadership, stronger cultures, and sustained success Phil, thank you so much for joining us again on The Athletics of Business podcast.

Reconnecting with you has been one of the greatest treats I've had in a long time. We previously had you on episode 135 and 136- Wow ... which although it seems like a thousand years ago, it also seems like yesterday too o- once we reconnected. So congratulations on all your success.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me, and, uh, yeah, I r- have really enjoyed, uh, reconnecting as well.

You know, it's been fascinating following your journey. And, you know, if you wanna hear the story about how Phil and I first got connected, I implore you to go listen to w- episode 135, because we don't have enough time to tell that story- ... again here. But I've truly been fascinated following your success, and the stories that you choose to cover, [00:02:00] and the way you go about covering them, and how much they keep you engaged.

I'm really curious, what drew you to this story, Soccer Meets America?

It's similar to a lot of my work, which is that it came to me through friends, a really tight network that I've been fortunate to have. I made this series, three-part series, with Verizon and Vox Creative, and eventually Roku came on board.

And I got to it through a friend of mine who is the head of Vox Creative. His name's Yosef Johnson. He was a basketball teammate of mine at Williams College, and he's here-

Once again, the game that keeps giving, right, Phil? That's right. Once again.

That's right. That's right. He was a fellow point guard and classmate.

And he's here in New York, and I'm in Brooklyn, and we're friends and stay in touch. And then the other side of it is the soccer side of it, I got connected [00:03:00] into the soccer space and story through another teammate of mine from, starting from elementary school. My friend Nick Sprague grew up with me in Roanoke, Virginia, and, and played with me on my dad's high school basketball team at a small Catholic school in Virginia.

And Nick has gone on to do a number of things, one of them being that he wrote, uh, The Two Escobars, which for your audience and those who don't know, The Two Escobars is considered one of the best soccer documentaries to come out of the US. It's a great 30 for 30. So anyways, Nick is very well connected in the soccer space.

And so when i- initially talking about, with the group about, you know, the 2026 World Cup is coming, and there's an opportunity here to tell a story about soccer in America- Uh-huh ... and what is that story going to be? And coming from my [00:04:00] perspective as, you know, I'm a sports guy. I consume sports. I consume sports documentaries.

I initially found my love for, I guess, the medium, if you wanna call it that- When I was a kid watching, like, ESPN Classic, when did the Charlotte Hornets start? '88 or '89?

I wanna say it had to be '89, 'cause I think I was a freshman in college. Yes, I think it was '89. Okay.

Freshman. So I had, like, the 1989 Charlotte Hornets VHS, like- I remember it was called The Season.

Muggsy. Yeah.

Muggsy Bogues

Yeah, Muggsy, Kelly Tripucka, all those guys, Kurt Rambis. But I'm coming out of this, like, love for sports on the screen and sports stories on the screen. And what I realized was, like, I didn't really feel a personal connection, you know, when I first, when we first started talking about this, I didn't really have a personal connection [00:05:00] with the sport of soccer.

It didn't have, like, a hook in my identity, right? But, like, I grew up with it. I grew up playing it. I played it in elementary school. And so I started to sort of pick at that and socialize that with Nick and Josef, and I discovered that there were things about the history of soccer in the United States that I had no idea had occurred and were fascinating.

And, like, made me kind of have a sense of pride about our history. Because I was sort of focused on, prior to this story, I was focused on what was happening on the field, right? How good is our US national team? Without really understanding, like, the whole of soccer, you know, global soccer. There's 200 countries that play it.

Anyways, but, like, a couple things I realized, like, oh, the MLS [00:06:00] exists out of a condition for the awarding of the 1994 World Cup to the United States Soccer Federation, right? And so that was the first thing that struck me, like, wow, that's interesting. So FIFA awarded that World Cup to the United States on the condition that they start a domestic professional league.

Interesting. But then you peel it back a step further, well, the year it was awarded was 1988, and four years prior to that, a professional, domestic professional league had crashed and burned i- in epic fashion. This is a bad idea. No one's asking for a professional league, and yet there's a group of people at the US Soccer Federation in 1998 who want the World Cup and are willing to bet that there is an audience for this tournament, and then for the subsequent professional domestic league.

And so I knew nothing. [00:07:00] I knew very little about this history, and that's kind of what started me down the path that you eventually see in the show.

Well, it's mind-blowing because you, you're, you keep backtracking, right? And someone, you know, our listener might be thinking, oh, so it was '88, but it actually keeps going back, right?

Like, all of a sudden you start talking about '84 What truly got me was the whole St. Louis story. I think that was the first- Yeah ... the first part of the series-

Yeah ...

when it talks about there was five people from St. Louis playing in the World Cup. Was that 1950?

1950.

In the US team in 1950. And, and it's like we've had this.

And while people weren't screaming, "We want another pro soccer league," it's almost like they didn't know what they wanted. And people forgot- Yeah ... the NASL. Like, I remember going to see this thing at, at Comiskey Park here in Chicago. Okay. Right? That was entertainment and a sporting event before the NBA, before anything, the NFL, all the great stuff that they do now, the WNBA.

They had it. Y- you had, like, freaking a, a [00:08:00] Bugs Bunny running around fields. You had... I don't wanna give it all away, but it w- Right ... it truly was fascinating to me because the way it all kind of fell apart, as you're doing this series, you can just keep going backwards to really the way you started at Ellis Island.

Right.

That's where

it all came over.

Right. Exactly. And that's what I didn't realize. I had never thought about this. Soccer has always been here, right? And I love sports narratives that reveal culture, you know, say something about who we are. Those are the best ones, and I think, like, that's when this narrative really started clicking for me, when I went back and really understood the history through other people.

And I wanna say, like, I am not currently an expert because I did this show. I'm an expert on how this show came together. And for me, you know, once I understood, whoa, you know, Union soldiers were playing soccer in the Civil War, the question then becomes, like, [00:09:00] where is this in the media by the time I'm a kid?

What happened to the sport if it w- has been here since the 1860s and has always had a strong, passionate fan base? I love that you brought up St. Louis. Not in the show, but one of the reasons that St. Louis has such a strong soccer culture is that at the turn of the century, in the early 1900s, the De La Salle Christian Brothers, who essentially had the diocese there, the Catholic schools, or the schools, I'm presuming they were Catholic, established soccer as the principal sport for the high schools.

And so it became like a cultural thing. The rivalry was expressed through soccer. And so people just, they played soccer. They played pickup soccer. And there were these other hotspots in the United States. But for me, it's like, how is [00:10:00] all of this happening in the shadows of the American press? You know, when did it fall out of the newspaper or lose its footing in the newspaper and in the print media?

And it's just an interesting story about h- you know, following how soccer emerges into the spotlight in different decades. In the 1920s, we had a very good league. I saw an article that was, like, about a day in 1921 where the attendance at the soccer game in New York City was 46,000, and the attendance at Yankee Stadium was, like, 41,000, right?

And so it's like, wow, I had no idea that happened. How did I come to this point as an American sports lover without any type of understanding of the rich history that we do have in soccer? If you'd asked me a year ago before I [00:11:00] started this project, I might point to the 1994 World Cup as a starting point, but it's been around for way longer than that

You know, when you think about, go back to Pelé, and now I don't even know if I pronounce his name correctly 'cause I've spent my entire life calling him Pelé.

I think you can do either. Like the 90% of society. Yeah. Yeah. But they were traveling with close to 200 journalists and photographers on the road when he was playing for the New York Galaxy.

Yes.

That's insane. Cosmos.

Cosmos. New

York Cosmos. Or Cosmos, excuse me.

Yes.

Cosmos. That's just nuts. I wanna get to the question that I think, and, and you're sort of answering it already, what surprised you the most.

And I know you've had some amazing conversations with folks pretty significant in the development of the game to current day. And we're talking now about how it's evolved from a business perspective, so to speak, a little bit.

Right.

How did you notice things? First of all, I look at the clothes back in the 1990s and I can't believe I thought that stuff was awesome.

The style has changed. But how has the style of the game [00:12:00] changed? You know, like our conversation before we started recording about Kobe versus that other guy. Yeah. Bryant. Like, but how has the style, the toughness, the quickness, the speed, the strength, it's such an endurance game. What's happened to that?

Well, like, I mean, I'm not really an expert on the actual game play, but what I've heard guys talking about is, you know, when you watch today's game, it's fast. You know, you can't stand still, right? Because people are running at you, people are all up on you. And so when I'm watching the game today, whether it's MLS or Premier League or whatever, and of course we'll be watching the World Cup here pretty soon, I'm just thinking about how many touches those guys get, and I'm relating it to being a basketball player.

And it just feels like, man, this is like a fast break all the time, where, you know, you touch the ball and trap's coming or guy's coming at you, and you gotta get rid of it to your teammate and think about the angles. [00:13:00] I'm not well-versed in the tactics and all that stuff, but I will say, like, when we sat down and talked with Werner Herzog, who's a award-winning filmmaker, and I'm a huge fan, and I can't believe- Awesome

I got to meet him and spend an afternoon with him, along with our crew. But he showed us some clips of one of his favorite players, and the name is slipping my mind. But when you watch those clips, the guy was sort of standing in space and able to maneuver by himself around multiple people. And that just doesn't seem to happen in today's game.

It's such a fast-moving drama.

And I ask that, and forgive me, I ask that question the wrong way because you just nailed it. The way I've seen it, like when I look at black and white film of George Mikhen versus modern-day big men in the game- Yeah ... like, you see how it's changed and how it really, it makes it more approach- approachable for the public.

It makes it more watchable, right? More- Right ... [00:14:00] digestible. Like, there's more of an attraction to it. And I was just curious, like, as you were making the film if you saw, as you saw so many different clips, as you had so many different- Right ... conversations, how the game has evolved. Is one of the challenges, do you think, with soccer not taking off in America is our undeniable need for immediate gratification?

It's not a game built for commercials, right? It's not a game that takes place in short spurts. Like, it's nonstop action, it's nonstop movement. Like, you're going to the Yankees game tomorrow. You know when you can get up and go get a hot dog, all right? Right. You know that. Soccer, you might leave for the first time in 42 minutes or 52 minutes, you might miss something, right?

Right. Did you ever hear that having anything to do with the game taking off?

Yeah. Th- that's what, you know, a lot of the folks that we spoke with talk about In the US, let's just start with sort of after World War II, when now we have [00:15:00] radio and television, and baseball's on TV and radio, American football's on TV and radio, basketball's on TV and radio, and it's kinda saturated, and there's not, there's not much room for anything else.

And there's an infrastructure that's set up to easily commercialize those games and get people in the stadiums. So for soccer, it wasn't as easy to commercialize the game from a broadcast perspective because they couldn't sell the ads. If you think about baseball, football, basketball, it stops constantly, and in the, that stoppage, we have three minutes of advertising or whatever it might be.

Or there's, you know, even downtime between a pitch to, to, in a baseball game, to be able to plug in an ad from the announcer. And in [00:16:00] soccer, it's not really built for that, and we didn't have the culture for a very long time of going into the stadium and being in the stadium with family and generations handing down this tradition of being a fan of Coventry City or Gary Hopkins is in the show.

I think, like, there were many ways, many iterations of people trying to commercialize soccer and businessmen trying to figure out a way to make-- Business people trying to figure out a way to make money On selling the sport of soccer and making it sustainable, not necessarily for the love of the sport, which some of the folks involved were diehard.

You know, Lamar Hunt, uh, is one of those people who shows up in the history going back into the 1960s in the first group of teams for the North American Soccer League. But [00:17:00] it's interesting, like, I love this narrative because it's the first time I got to put space shuttles blasting off into a project of mine, which is a dream come true.

Yeah.

But I love the idea of, you know, this through line in the series that is like a tech broadcast through line, right? Mm-hmm. Because if we talk to, what I mentioned earlier, there is a, there's already an infrastructure in existence, and it only has so much room, right? And over time, the, the space increases for people to figure out how they can get in there.

So satellites go up into space in 1962. It's the first international transatlantic broadcast.

Great clip, by the way. That was

a great clip. Telstar, yeah.

Yeah.

Telstar is the satellite, and, you know, that results in the 1966 World [00:18:00] Cup being broadcast in movie theaters in the United States, and it's an event, and people- Oh, yeah

go.

They're dressed to the nines. They're dressed better in that movie theater than you, you see at church.

Yeah. People go, and so I'm making the point that the American business community sees this and says, "Ah, people will spend money On soccer. And it's the first time they've really understood this. It's not like soccer isn't being played up until this point in the United States.

It's just existing in the shadows from a media standpoint. And not one league starts in 1967. Two leagues, two professional leagues start, and that's like a, that's a story that we didn't really get into in the show 'cause we don't really have time for it. Yeah. But that is like the story that keeps repeating [00:19:00] itself for the American professional soccer expression.

And I wanna make the point too that the show chronicles the men's side of the story, the men's professional team, the men's professional leagues alongside the performance of the US Men's National Team, and it tracks those because, like I said before, it's a cultural narrative. And when you're talking about the story of men's soccer in the United States, it brings up different cultural themes.

The narrative, the story of the women's side brings up a totally different set of themes and questions, and I haven't done that research, but I've heard some people talk about it, and it's, y- you would, I think you would be detracting from both stories to try to- Right ... put them together, especially in three episodes that we had.

S-

so should we be expecting or should we be hoping for a similar [00:20:00] series on the women's side?

I'm game for it. We'll see what happens.

It really would be truly fascinating to see how that landed, how it's evolved. It's such a- Yeah ... it's such a great game.

Well, and it, it's happening at the same time as the arc for the series, season one, let's call it- Because when you look at, for example, that youth boom that occurred when Pelé came to the United States and triggered all of this media, what that resulted in was building the youth infrastructure for the game.

Yeah. And what we don't talk about is also that coincides with 1979 Title IX, and this whole other dynamic unfolds with kids playing the game, but all of a sudden women playing the sport. I think it's also like the men's side. It's [00:21:00] extremely rich, interesting territory I think is worth really discussing, and there is already some good feature docs and books out there about it.

So World Cup's coming. Okay. Your third part of this series was the soccer boom. Do you think with the World Cup coming and the growth of the women's game, that we're just gonna see kinda waves? The numbers are here, now the numbers will go there, the interest will go here. You've proven that soccer is so established, and it's such a important part of the very fabric of our being and our society.

But is there still room for exponen- exponential growth? Or is it just- Right ... more of awareness of what we really have?

I think, like, what's fun about the series is each episode ends with the question of what's next. We follow our protagonists in episode one, and they're trying to secure the 1994 World Cup bid in the late [00:22:00] '80s, and they get that.

They get it, right? So okay, you're gonna host the World Cup. What next? Good job. What next? What are you gonna do? Then 1994 World Cup, it's- Pulled off in epic fashion. It changes the World Cup forever, and it provides money for soccer infrastructure in the United States. Okay, great. What next? What are you gonna do next?

And so here we are, episode three follows that birth of the MLS, and we're pushing into a modern day where you might think, like, the groundwork is laid for a huge step, a huge leap in soccer culture in the United States. All eyes are gonna be back on the US, and North America, Mexico and Canada as well, this summer.

And the question [00:23:00] is what... It is what is next? What is next? And, you know, that's one of the best parts of all of these interviews I did with people who've lived this from all different backgrounds and facets of the game. Everybody had something different to say about what success would look like for the game, right?

Is it going to be m- making the game more accessible for the youth, right? Are we gonna have better youth infrastructure to develop players? Is success in America producing the best soccer player in the world? Is success for America winning the World Cup on the men's side? Is success mean that the MLS becomes equal to the NFL in terms of attendance, you know, are we packing stadiums, 70,000-seat stadiums every game?

It's just like, what does that success look like, and [00:24:00] are the metrics r- realistic? What's interesting about this story for me, I point at it in the first scene of episode one, every data point about soccer and the American media and in the United States from 1991 to 2026 has completely transformed. Yeah.

You can't point to anything that isn't mind-blowingly different in terms of revenue and, you know, number of games on television, all that type of stuff. But you could still hear the same conversations, the same question in the media about like, is soccer popular? And when the World Cup comes around every year, you know, I just know this from looking at the archival and watching TV today, it strikes me that I [00:25:00] still will flip on, you know, the local news channel or whatever, or even the national news, and there will be sort of like a soccer 101 remedial segment explaining the sport.

That does not happen for basketball Football- Football, baseball ... baseball, hockey. It doesn't- Not even

lacrosse.

Yeah, not even lacrosse. Right. Yeah. It doesn't happen, and so my question is, like, it's not really a question, it's just like a wow, what's happening? How did that happen? And so I think, like, well, I wonder, let's say, I wonder, like, how much bigger is the audience?

Our soccer audience today is already huge. It's already massive. We're unlike any other soccer nation in the world. Our audience is larger than some populations of some soccer-loving countries. We're the only place where the domestic league is [00:26:00] not the number one watched league in the country. We're the only country where the domestic league is not the number one watched league, where some of these foreign leagues like La Liga or the Mexican League have value in the United States, have value in our market.

We have such a diverse population, a diverse community. We're watching these other leagues that we have a connection to, but also I think what makes the American audience unique is that we want to watch and see the best.

Yeah. Well, they, they truly do have a love for the game. They truly do. You know, and something I found fascinating in all our conversations is you have this sense of ownership and responsibility for the films you make to the people who you are making them about or to the organizations you are making them about, right?

In, y- you know, The Standard, The Bookkeepers, The Passing [00:27:00] Game, which w- we've talked about, there was an attachment. Somewhere, like, you were connected to those stories, and you mentioned it earlier in our conversation, this was something just had nothing... There was nothing there. Yes, I played it as a kid, but there was nothing for me.

There was no hook, as you- Mm-hmm ... identified it. Did that give you a greater sense of responsibility to ask more questions, to dive deeper into things, to make sure that you had clarity, to make sure that you were getting things right because this was something, like, you almost didn't have an opinion on too?

Yeah. I think my knowledge gap certainly gave me a little bit more trepidation going into making sure that we were understanding the storyline, that we were staying in our lane, that, for example, we weren't stepping into, you know, we get into a segment that's a little bit about youth development structure in the United States, um, in [00:28:00] episode three, and I know now that is, like, a conversation that is really a lightning rod topic- Mm

for people in the soccer community. So it was like we've gotta really stay home on this and rely on the people that we've talked with and let them come through. From a just a personal filmmaking perspective, like my dream is to disappear. I want you to watch the film or the series and not think about decisions that I made or the team made.

There are films that I love that I have no idea who made them, and I'm really not interested, but I am interested in emulating them and figuring that out. And so to do that, especially like this is a prime example of just trying to [00:29:00] translate the experience to the audience. So I got to spend all of this time with former US Men's National Team players, MLS players.

You know, Bruce Arena is an incredible coach, and my job is to translate that experience to the audience and mimic the journey I had of being like, "Oh, I did not know that. That is wild." And then track how that happened to me. And it's a lot like The Bookkeepers. The Bookkeepers is, for those who don't know, is a story about where I follow my dad as he travels the country promoting my mom's first book after her death.

That was a narrative also very risky because at first I was really drawn into wanting to talk about how my mom died 'Cause that's what was on my heart, right? Right. And so you have [00:30:00] to s- you know, step back and say like, "What is, what's happening to me here as a filmmaker that is making me intrigued about this process and this story?"

And so I tend to evaluate that and try to map the narrative onto that personal journey. And so for this story, I mean, I would say like my- one of my first instincts was to go down this road of is soccer popular, right? This question. Starting with that sort of, you know, there's a FIFA documentary. So from 19, like, 76 to 1998, there was this group of filmmakers who made the World Cup documentary film after every World Cup, and they shot it on film.

And it's just beautiful footage. It's f- you can watch it. It's free. It's on... You just Google it up or look it up on the FIFA [00:31:00] Plus app. Okay. But then I looked at the 1994 World Cup one, and it starts off with talking heads in the United States, just random people being like, "Soccer? What's that?" You know, and like trying to...

And I thought, "Oh, God, we can't do that again. We, w- we can't repeat

not-

The popular

conversation.

Yeah, it's like media, like tr- Almost.

And you're almost stuck. Like we've been stuck on that, like trying to validate- Right ... the sport for so long when it doesn't need va-

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. So, like, see the best in your audience and start from the fact that soccer is extremely popular, and everybody knows it.

And so start from there, and then what happens? So yeah, I was like, I was very conscious, and we were very conscious of, you know, the fact that we haven't lived a life dedicated to soccer or passion for soccer. But, like, [00:32:00] that is my job, my, my role. I should be able to walk into a number of situations and be able to tell those stories.

That's what I do for clients when I've been making commercial content and things like that. It's just, it's understanding what's the problem with the universe here? How do our subjects help solve that problem? And, you know, how do we take the audience on that journey? And so, you know, I think, like, for us, we did have our guardrails in place with my friend Nick, who's just, like, an encyclopedia of soccer knowledge.

And then everybody that we interviewed, everybody that you see on the screen, everybody that you see credited- Did a tremendous job. And I'll say that i- the group that I worked with of soccer folks were so welcoming and [00:33:00] collaborative. Like, people were texting me, staying in touch, answering questions, you know, kind of on background because they just, like, wanted to get it right.

how did you get stretched?

How did you evolve? Like, how did you grow as a filmmaker from this project? Was there something about the film that taught you something about yourself in the process that went into it?

Yeah. The other projects I've done, basically, it's just me. The end credit says, "Written, directed, filmed, and edited by me."

This one- Yeah ... you go in there and it's a number of people, 30, 40 people. I don't know. We'd have 12 [00:34:00] people in the field, 20 people on set, maybe more than that. So what I started to understand by the end, hopefully earlier than this, I don't know, it's all a blur, but what I started to understand is my- I'm the creative vision.

I'm the director, the showrunner, and, you know, head writer, all that stuff. Everyone involved is looking to, to the person in my role, which was me, to provide the creative direction. And so to do that, I needed creative problems, and in order to keep my problems in that creative side of things, I needed to rely so much on other people I was sort of absorbed into a preexisting Vox creative production team.

They do incredible work, [00:35:00] primarily branded content. They do long form content. And so they already have this practice, and they already have, you know, their way of doing things. I was welcomed into that, and all of a sudden I went from my phone not ringing to having meetings, you know, on the schedule every day and, you know, having 15 minutes or 20 minutes- Not a

great feeling, by the way.

Yeah. Just not a great feeling. Yeah.

When you look at that group, I mean, really the people I worked most closely with, Sylvie Krakow, Zizi Hakim, our post supervisor was Skylar Westby. Those folks, like on a daily basis, I was saying to them, "Okay, what's the purpose of this meeting?" Like a genuine question.

"What are we doing here? What do you need from me?" I remember Sylvie setting up a meeting like the first week with the art [00:36:00] director, and I opened up the conversation with, "Okay, what does the art director do? This is your opportunity to train a director." But I think that's important because I've learned that in my experience, you know, doing client work and stuff.

I have people ask me all the time for things I've never done before, and it's very important that I say like, "I've never done animation. I don't know how to do that, but I'll ask for you, and I'll get back to you But it's important to say what you don't know. And so I was trying to do that all the time.

And the other thing I would do, I would say, you know, "My dream is this. Here is my dream, and I think we can achieve that. But please tell me, in your experience," fill in the blank, right? Because there were days and there were tasks that I was completely unfamiliar with and, you know, somebody [00:37:00] would take it off my plate or explain it to me, and it'd be like, "Oh, okay.

I understand." Were

you okay with that? Was that hard for you to be vulnerable and, and recognize the fact that I've got no idea-

Yeah ...

what the art director- The

hardest-

Is that a challenge?

Yeah, the hardest thing was delegating. The hardest thing was, like, thinking, "I need to do this for the team." We would be going into production, and they would ask me for, like, a production schedule, and I was kind of like, "What is that?"

And then, you know, someone explained it to me. Sarah Sparkman was our producer. She explained it to me why we needed it, because she needed to know how many PAs do we need, how many sound people do we need, that type of thing. Then I was like, "Oh, okay. I got it." It was difficult to, yeah, like, assign things to other people, because I felt like I was burdening them sometimes.

But I'm very, very lucky that, you know, everyone- Well, you're so used [00:38:00] to,

you were so used to doing it on your own, right? Right. I mean, you said when the credits rolled, the written by, directed by, produced- Yeah. ... like all of it was you. And like I have to imagine that was hard. I have another question for you before we wrap up, and I hate running out of time with you, thus why we had two episodes out of our last recording.

Oh. All right? Yeah. Okay. Where can people find... Now, we'll put all this information in our show notes and our social media posts. Yeah, yeah. But where can people find out more about Soccer Meets America? Where can they watch it? Also, Phil Wall Films, let's talk about that, where they can find out more of your amazing work.

Yeah. Soccer Meets America, s- three-part docuseries. It's on Roku. It's on the Roku Channel. It's free. If you have a Roku device, it's gonna be right there in front of you. If you don't, you download the app, or you can go to the rokuchannel.com in your browser. If you are, I think, in the United States, maybe North America, you can get it.

And then my stuff is philwall.film, and it's got some old films I've done and projects that [00:39:00] I'm putting out there.

There's so much great stuff. I obviously connected with you over The Standard. Saw that, then went to your website. Right. Saw what other projects you were working on. I'm like, "He is such a great storyteller."

Oh, thank

you. And which leads me to my last question 'cause in the business world, I mean, in any facet of life, but specifically in the business world, th- the significance of being able to tell a compelling story to your team members, to your clients, et cetera, is so important. What are some of the keys that you can tell business leaders like, "Hey, if you really wanna tell a great story, here's the best way to do it in a real succinct, powerful way"?

Man, I mean, I think the first thing is someone told me, I had a client who, he said, "You can walk into the room and be two ways. You can say here I am, and there you are." And I think, like, I apply that to storytelling. [00:40:00] First of all, I feel it's important to say, "There you are," because the story is for the audience.

It's not about the teller. And so once I feel like I understand that, then you have to, as I said earlier, create a problem in the universe. This is where we're at. Then use a protagonist, a team, a person who uses knowledge, experience, help from unexpected allies to come to a resolution to the problem in that universe.

And of course, there are obstacles along the way. But in the case of soccer, in Soccer Meets America, we follow the players, the coaches, the people who are behind the business operations of it, who get help [00:41:00] from satellites, from the expansion of cellular networks, from the internet, from pop culture To where we are today, right?

And so I think that's not a succinct answer. That's not even an answer. It's us- Starting, starting to- Yeah ... address your question,

it's perfect. And, you know, you said something right from the start where a lot of people get wrong, right? And obviously, as I studied the science and the art of keynote speaking, oftentimes people get up there and just, it's about them.

Right.

When it's not. It's really not about you, even though you're the one up there speaking, it's about the people sitting in the audience, and what's that one person in front of you- Right ... going to connect with. And you do such a good job of that in your films, and it's a very, like, they're very easy to watch.

You can get emotionally, you know, you can self-select into it. You get hooked, you get connected. There's always something that, that intrigues you. Mm-hmm. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate, you know, you said something earlier, like you [00:42:00] love the stories that reveal culture, specifically sports stories.

What are the other things that help you decide what projects you're gonna take on?

I mean, that's tough. Like I've said, it- so many things have come to me are a surprise. Like right now, I'm continuing my job on Soccer Meets America out here, you know, talking about the show, speaking on its behalf, be- on behalf of the team, and I believe that's gonna attract like-minded people.

Maybe that is more of the answer to your question, is what helps me decide, is when I feel like I'm with like-minded people who appreciate the narrative. But it's really not the narrative, it's really who appreciate the audience in the way that I feel I do. And, and that resonates with me because I think one of the things that you just reminded me of is it's also important to envision the best version of [00:43:00] whoever is out there in the audience, and know that that person is bringing something far more powerful in themselves than you could ever tell them, right?

So like I know that with Soccer Meets America, many people have better understanding of the game, the sport, maybe its history than I do, and I know that they're bringing that to the viewing of the show. And we have to allow the space for them to see something in the show and be fulfilled by that because, oh, that's connects that.

And The Bookkeepers was a very good example of that because it was about grief, and I know that from watching my dad go out and being with him when he would share the story, his love story with my mom, that people would just walk up and start pouring [00:44:00] out their heart to him or to me, and that really helped me, someone else telling me a story was something I would hang onto and get energy from when I walked away and days later and weeks later.

So I think it's also important to understand that, you know, you're not telling anyone anything. It's a conversation and you just don't really get to hear the other, the feedback from the other side. But create a space like building a path through a park where you understand someone can sit at this bench, and this is what they might see from this view, and create the space for the audience to bring themselves to that.

Some projects, you know, that creates not logistical, it just makes it a more iterative process where you're going through drafts and drafts and [00:45:00] drafts of scenes to get it right. Whereas if you wanna be as streamlined as possible, you're gonna write down every line and try to make it cookie cutter in a, in like an assembly line And so yeah, the projects that I want to work on are projects that are constructive culturally, not destructive, that build people up, and projects that have a love for the audience and have a love and care and appreciation of the awesome responsibility and the awesome opportunity that we have to tell stories through, through film.

That's awesome. Congratulations on all your success, another great film. You know which one I'm waiting for to come out, and we're gonna have you on again and talk about that one.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. All right? That's gonna be... Yeah. Let's do it. But thank you so much, and we'll put all the information you shared, we'll put it on the show notes.

Just [00:46:00] continued success, appreciate your friendship, appreciate your work and- Thank you ... and everything that you shared with our listener, my friend.

Thank you so much.

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