ISSUE 003: Building St. Louis CITY SC from the ground up

IN THIS ISSUE

• 🤝 Introduction: Building St. Louis CITY SC

• 🤩 A Special Offer: 20% off at WorldSoccerShop

• 👨‍🎓 Soccer Thought Leaders: Peter Wood, VP of Creative & Content at St. Louis CITY SC

• 🗣️: Pathway Mentorship Opportunity: 1-on-1 with Peter Wood

• ⚽️ Soccer Jobs: The most interesting new jobs in soccer

• 💼 Featured Job: A social media role at FC Cincinnati

• 🫵 Do This Now: Preparing for informational interviews

🤝 INTRODUCTION: BUILDING ST. LOUIS CITY SC

Hello, Pathwayers!

We’re thrilled to be introducing you today to Peter Wood, the VP of Creative & Content at St. Louis CITY SC. Peter joined STL a full year ahead of the club’s first official match this past February and was tasked with building a team completely from scratch. His insights on culture building, hiring, and performance will be helpful no matter what career stage you find yourself. His comments, in particular, in identifying or developing a “super power” are worth your time and consideration as you look to start or progress your career.

Psst: Be sure to scroll down past his interview as Peter has also generously offered up three 1-on-1 mentorship sessions next week. Details below.

We’re a full three weeks in to this newsletter finding a home in your inboxes and we’re grateful for all of the positive feedback so far. If there’s a topic you’d like us to cover or someone you’d like to hear from, please drop us a note - we’d love to hear from you: [email protected].

-Kyle Sheldon, Co-Founder & CEO

👨‍🎓 SOCCER THOUGHT LEADERS: PETER WOOD, VP OF CREATIVE & CONTENT AT ST. LOUIS CITY SC

“A ‘we mentality’ is so important. Sport moves so fast that you need team players, you need people with low ego.”

London-born Peter Wood joined St. Louis CITY SC after 5+ years in the agency world - and more than a year before the club played its first match. As one of the early leaders in the club, he helped define the club’s culture, its departmental structure, and its profile for hiring creative talent.

The team was a smashing success on the field, finishing first in Major League Soccer’s Western Conference, and Peter’s creative and content team quickly established itself as some of the best group of storytellers and producers in the League (exhibit A). Peter was kind to share some of his insights on culturing building and hiring - and we’re confident you’ll find them helpful.

Questions and answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity (any emphasis below is ours - because we think they’re worth a closer look!).

PATHWAY: Peter, you joined St. Louis CITY SC more than a year before its first official match. If you had to pick a few key learnings about building a team from scratch, what would they be?

PETER: I think the most important thing that I did when I got into the club - we were a startup, so nothing existed before, including a work culture - so I spent quite a lot of time clearly defining what sort of culture we wanted to create. Because it's very difficult to hire people into a club if you don't know what you're building. We built out the key pillars of what we thought would make a good culture and then we hired around it. And you can use your culture and your cultural pillars to filter people when you speak to them - “I don't think this person is going to be good at this because of X, Y, or Z.” So, establishing the sort of organization that we wanted to be was the most important thing. 

Even today, we always refer back to the culture when we're making decisions. We refer back to the culture when good things happen, when bad things happen. I had built teams in different industries before and the culture always came after, so having the ability to set it from the start was essential. 

PATHWAY: And then how did you think about the actual hiring process once the culture was established? 

Yeah, the second key learning was a bit different. I'm a creative by trade so my core mission was to build a creative team and I looked to hire people with superpowers. Everybody that I hired into the group has one key superpower. A lot of people go into sport as generalists and that can sometimes cause problems. So, we looked to hire people that were really amazing writers, really amazing art directors, incredible project managers. 

The other bit that we looked for was Swiss army knife people. You want to hire someone with a very specific superpower, but somebody that also has additional skills because you get real big peaks and troughs in soccer, sometimes you're massively busy, sometimes you're not. But when you've got people that can do different things to a reasonable level, it takes the pressure off the team. So I've got art directors that can do a little bit of writing. I've got designers that can do photography. I've got project managers that can produce. So, you build out a team of 25 people, but you've got the skill set of 45 to 50 people because of the way that you hired. So those were the two key things - building culture, and finding people with superpowers and making sure that those people can also do other things as well if needed.

PATHWAY: When hiring, how do you reference or evaluate a candidate's resume, cover letter, LinkedIn profile, social channels, and their presence on the web generally, to get an understanding of what their capabilities or superpower might be before you actually speak to them?

PETER: Yeah, there's a lot of different ways. It's really difficult because for each job we post, we'll get 400, 500, 600 applications. So, if you are applying for a job, understand that you are competing with a lot of people. So, having clarity in your resume is important. Quite a lot of people don’t know what they want in sport, so they try to be an “everybody person” and the people who are hiring may spend 30 seconds max looking at resumes. So, be absolutely clear about who you are and what your superpower is in the resume. If you are a creative or you're a social content creator - the work, the work, the work. If you haven't got a portfolio that I can look at, that means I'm taking a chance. If the work doesn't exist in a portfolio, it doesn't exist to us at St. Louis. So make sure that you've documented your work, even if it's a very curated Instagram feed or something like that. If you don't have any examples of what you do, it's really difficult to hire you.

One of the other little secrets that I've found that people use effectively are the little side hustles that people do to get your attention. Most of the people that I hired, they sent LinkedIn messages, they sought out my personal email, they found my Instagram. It's such an underrated move because number one, you get their attention. I already know you when you come into an interview, and number two, it shows desire. It's very easy to do, but if you send a personalized message and you sort of sell yourself, asking “is there anything that I could do to prepare for an interview?” it goes a long way. And when we were hiring, we only wanted to hire people that really, really wanted to be here. And a lot of those people that went the extra mile ended up getting the roles.

PATHWAY: When you’re hiring, what are the two or three qualities you find to be most important to working either at St. Louis or in soccer more generally?

PETER: A "we" mentality is so important. Sport moves so fast that you need team players, you need people with low ego. You need people that love working in the team. And that's the most important thing when you are interviewing, when you're talking about a project, if it's “I, I, I” all the time, it's a bit of a warning sign. Any success that we have in St. Louis, it's everybody's success, everybody that works on a project, it doesn't matter whether you came up with the idea or not, we succeed together and we fail together. 

There’s a lot of people here at St. Louis because they love the city and they want to see the city succeed. So that was always a big part of it. It's not just working in sport, it's helping to make St. Louis a better place and helping to shine a light on all the good stuff that is happening. But desire can also be how you hustled to get the job. It can be the follow-up emails, it can be going above and beyond to come with an opinion. So, desire is a key part of any role. 

PATHWAY: If you could give one additional piece of really specific tactical advice to someone who wants to break into the sport, what might it be?

PETER: I alluded to earlier, but the best bit of advice is be super, super specific about what you're trying to achieve. I've had people send me emails and say that they've applied for eight jobs at the club. If you're applying for eight jobs at a club, it means you're not serious about it. You just want to be in sport, which is a great ambition, but you are going to have a much higher chance of success by being very specific about what you want. And if you are a creative, target clubs that are creatively led or brand led, and if you are into revenue, go to clubs that prioritize revenue, sort of pick your targets, but be specific and then build everything around that specific thing that you want. And you'll have so much more success in getting responses. You are always in a pool of 500 people, so you've got to stand out and you can stand out by showing what your superpower is.

PATHWAY: Finally, what's your favorite thing about working in soccer and working at St. Louis CITY SC?

PETER: I am a massive, massive soccer fan. I grew up with it. I spend a ridiculous amount of time watching it, and my mood is directly affected by how my club team plays - and that's Arsenal. And now I've got two teams, so my mood can be swung pillar to post every week. And the thing that I love about it, and I know this is a boring answer, I love everything. I started my career in cardboard box factories and now I'm working in sport. Every single conversation is interesting, the highs, the lows. There is nothing that I dislike about this job. It's just a joy. It doesn't feel like real work. It's a total privilege. I'm incredibly lucky because there aren't many sports clubs to work at. I love everything about it.

Ed. Note: You can follow or connect with Peter on LinkedIn or X [Twitter!]

And if you’re interested in applying your super power in St. Louis, here are a few of their current job and internship openings:

• Executive Assistant

• Brand Merchandise Internship

• Partnership Marketing Internship

• Special Events Internship

🗣️ PATHWAY MENTORSHIP OPPORTUNITY: 1-ON-1 WITH PETER WOOD

Peter Wood has generously offered to conduct three (3) 1-on-1 mentorship sessions next week. If you’re interested in speaking with Peter directly, click below to raise your hand for the opportunity. 🙋

• PATHWAY MENTORSHIP APPLICATION: Peter Wood, St. Louis CITY SC

⚽️ SOCCER JOBS: THE MOST INTERESTING NEW JOBS IN SOCCER

Every week, we track down the most interesting new jobs in soccer on both the business and sporting sides of the industry. We put in the work so you don’t have to (It’s because we like you so much). Here are a few that caught our eye this week:

• Head Coach, Women’s Soccer - George Mason University [NCAA]

• Coordinator, Player Operations - Racing Louisville FC [NWSL]

• Tech and Video Coordinator, Soccer - IMG Academy [Brand]

• Manager, Social Media Marketing - USL Spokane [USL]

• Manager, Network - FIFA World Cup 2026 [FIFA]

• Director, Community Impact - MLS [MLS HQ]

• Soccer Analyst - LA Galaxy [MLS]

🫵 DO THIS NOW: PREPARING FOR INFORMATIONAL INTERVIEWS

In last week’s newsletter (Issue 002), we provided detailed instructions for how to approach cold outreach and begin building relationships in soccer.

And, now, you’ve got a date on the calendar coming up where you’ll be speaking to someone who could be a future manager, mentor, colleague, or collaborator. You’ve got less than 30 minutes to make an impression in that meeting to both learn as much as you can and, ultimately, put yourself on this person’s radar for future consideration.

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you prepare for that meeting:

• Even though you’re conducting the (informational) interview, you should treat the conversation as if you were interviewing for a job

  • In other words, how you present yourself, the strength of the questions you ask, how you speak to your personal experiences all contribute to this person’s impression of you

• Research, research, research. You should know this person’s career and work inside and out. If it’s on the world wide web, you need to find it and internalize it.

  • There’s almost nothing more impressive than when someone has done their homework and can speak intelligently and specifically about the other person’s career.

  • Ex: If you’re speaking to someone that has worked for a club, look for big moments (player signings, championship wins, rebrands, significant announcements) that happened during their tenure - a question like “What was the most unexpected thing about planning that championship parade downtown?” shows you did your research and allows the individual to speak to a positive memory. That’s big.

• Write out your opening remarks (seriously) and then rehearse the main points so you nail ‘em.

  • How you set-up the conversation and set expectations is so important. Don’t memorize to the point of it feeling like you’re reading it, but do make sure you hit the key points.

  • Simple example: “It’s so great to connect with you and I appreciate you [gratitude] taking some time to speak with me. I’m so impressed with what you’ve done [research] with your career so far and some of the projects you’ve worked on. My objective [intent] in the coming months is to find a role [hint, hint] that allows me to make an impact in soccer much like you have [flattery] so to hear about your experience is invaluable. If we have a few minutes at the end, I’d love the opportunity to tell you just a little bit about my journey [hint, hint x2] so far, too.”

• Write out a minimum of 10 questions and then rank them 1-10 based on what you believe will be most valuable to you.

  • A few example questions (adapt these based on the person’s role/expertise, how long they’ve been in their career, etc.):

    • At this stage in your career, what lessons or insights would you share with your younger self at the start of your career?

    • What was the best thing you did early in your career that led to success later?

    • What is something most people don’t know or understand about working in soccer in America? (or you can make this company/club specific)

    • What project/initiative/campaign/challenge is coming up that you’re really excited about?

• It’s almost always the case that the individual will ask you a few questions of their own. Be ready.

  • Be prepared to answer questions like the following:

    • What type of job are you most interested in?

    • Are you open to relocating for the right role?

    • What do you feel are your greatest strengths?

    • How can I be helpful to you in the future?

• End the meeting five minutes early.

  • Assume they’re busy (everyone is busy!) and give them some time back. They’ll appreciate it and it will be a solid final impression.

• Wrap the conversation with a no-pressure ask - whether to pass along your resume or to stay in touch.

  • If you feel the meeting has gone well, consider ending with something like: “I can’t tell you how valuable this time has been. I’ve learned a ton and I’m so grateful to you for taking the time. If you’re open to it, I’d love to send you my resume in case you see of anything that might be a fit for my background. And, if I can ever return the favor, please don’t hesitate to ask - it will be an immediate yes.”

There’s always more that could be said, but we hope this gives you a great starting point for crushing your next informational interview. You’ll get better with repetition so don’t worry if you have one that doesn’t go as smoothly as you’d like. Just keep at it. These conversations - if you have them on a regular basis! - will unlock opportunities that you can’t even imagine today.

Go get ‘em. 🙌

When you’re ready, here are a few ways we can help you:

1. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up here to ensure you get every issue (sent on Wednesdays!) directly in your inbox.

2. And, if you’re a club or brand looking to hire the most ambitious talent in soccer, drop us a line and we can tell you about our process, our growing talent pool, and the services we offer.

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Issue 003 is in the books. 997 to go until we hit 1,000. Stick with us, we’ll get there together.

See you next week, soccer friends. 👋

• John Bello

• Kyle Sheldon

• Nolan Sheldon