Episode 01: David Lynch, Founder of Yushu Group
David Lynch is the registered FA intermediary with a Professional background in Talent Identification, Player Scouting and Opposition Analysis, and founder of the Yushu Group – ‘’360 Management Approach’’ football agency.
In addition, David is ‘An Award Winning Business Entrepreneur’ with a successful track record in starting and growing businesses. In October 2020, his largest business was sold to one of the industries’ fastest growing corporate competitors.
In his professional career, he worked at the Blackburn Rovers FC’ Academy as the regional scout before becoming Head of First Team & Academy Recruitment at South Shields Football Club.
Today, David is on a mission to become the world’s best football agent.
Q1: Tell us a little bit about your background.
I was born and raised in Sunderland- in a working class area. As a loyal Sunderland fan, football was always main passion, and I always knew that I’d be involved in football way one or another. I did try coaching football, but it wasn’t something for me and I did not pursue a coaching career.
I didn’t do extremely well at school, but due to my character, ambition, thinking outside-the-box ability, I was able to become a successful entrepreneur.
Q2: You founded number of successful businesses! What was the business that you are most proud of?
My main business was the Lynch Healthcare which I founded in 2009. At the start I was working alone for about 6 months. After that time I had two more people working with me. The business was in the healthcare sector, primarily supporting patients who could not walk.
I had always a goal to set up a business by the age of 29 and sell it by the age of 40. Funny thing was is that I missed the deadline by one month when I sold my company in October 2020 at the age of 41. One month earlier I would still have been 40.
Q3: Can you remember your first day as a business owner? What was, amongst many, the biggest challenge (task) that you faced back then?
The biggest challenge was how I was going to get customers. I had a mortgage, bills and family to look after, so the lack of existing customers was the biggest concern. I contacted clients that I had worked with previously, and worked really hard on attracting new ones.
Luckily, I was always really good in marketing. As a matter of fact, our company was the first one in the industry to use social media platforms for marketing purposes.
Q4: What advice would you share with small business owners in order to make a successful new hire? What qualities, traits of characters do you value most in your employees?
At the beginning of my journey, I made a lot of mistakes in the recruitment. I was looking for people that were similar to me… could think outside the box, were ambitious and loyal… but I had soon realised this wasn’t a way to go. I had to look for people that were different than me, had a different skillsets. I wouldn’t be able to successfully run my business if I didn’t change my recruitment criteria and start looking for people with different qualities.
Q5: It is impressive that you did manage to be part of the Recruitment Team at Blackburn Rovers? Tell us how you managed to get involved with one of the oldest English clubs?
One day I saw an ad for a volunteer at Blackburn Rovers so I decided to apply. I spent there about 16 months working with John Brown – First Team and Academy Scout. It is fair to say that John was my mentor during my time spent at Blackburn. I’d follow him to every game (roughly three games a week) to learn the profession and develop as a football scout. My main goal was to learn how to write scouting reports. Within that period, I was lucky enough to be actively involved in players’ recruitment at the Academy (U14-U23). At later stages, I got involved in Opposition Scouting. John provided a lot of his time to teach me how to go about it, what information you need to take from the live game and show me the way on how to present the results to manager in a correct way.
Q6: What advice would you give to an aspiring football scout that cannot find a way to get a real opportunity at a professional football club? What would be your first step?
First of all, you must be committed and serious about being a scout, otherwise it is not going to work. I would always recommend going to as many games as possible and write reports to share them with football clubs and their representatives.
Go and find right people on social media and don’t be afraid to reach out to them. Your scouting reports are a great way of showing people your ability to do this job.
Q7: What is the standard level of qualification generally required by Championship or Premier League Clubs to find an employment in their scouting network?
If you want to get involved at clubs from lower leagues, you don’t necessarily need any formal qualification, but you must be able to demonstrate your skills and ability to do the job. I would always recommend doing FA Level 1 Talen Identification, which can be completed completely for free.
If you aim to work at the higher level, let’s say the Championship or Premier League, FA Level 2 (working towards Level 3) is usually required by clubs.
Q8: What did motivate you to become a football intermediary (agent)?
I always knew that I wanted to be professionally involved in football. I just had to figure out what to do. As a business owner, I was faced with so many challenges that helped me to become the person I am today. During my 11 years of running the business, I got a relevant experience in the recruitment and the development of my team… understanding finance, learning how to raise finance to grow the company. I launched various different marketing campaigns and set up different systems at the workplace to allow us to grow.
I realised that if I become a football agent, I will be able to use my business-related skills to succeed in the sport I love.
Q9: We all know how important and difficult networking can be. Can you share one method that has worked for you and helped you make new and meaningful connections?
There is no golden rule to networking, but my advice is to be extremely proactive on social media. Attend webinars, write a blog, do podcasts, join groups.
Webinars are hugely underestimated and provide a fantastic opportunity to network. Once you’ve attended a webinar, make sure you follow up with hosts and other participants.
What it is really important is that you have to be ready to be helpful to other people. Do not hesitate to give someone a favour if she or he needs one. At the end of the day, we all need some help in whatever we’re doing.
Q10: Imagine there is a young or experienced professional football player looking for an intermediary. What services can you offer him?
We are quite unique football agency with the with holistic view and approach. Our agency employs a data analysts that can provide a player performance report on each game which will help us monitor and build your personal performance plan.
We provide a mentoring to advice players on pros and cons of every opportunity that is presented to them.
For full list of services, visit Yushu website at https://yushugroup.com/
Q11: How do you research players to sign with your agency?
The most important thing to do is to identify the strategy of your recruitment. What type of players are you looking for to sign, in terms of their age, location, level of skill, etc? We then work out how we are going to find them and approach them.
At Yushu, we work very hard to identify football talents in the UK. I personally watch one game a day! Some games I tend to watch include, Championship, League 1 and 2, FA Youth Cup, Scottish Championship. You can find many games available for free (YouTube or BBC), however if you are serious about being an agent, you must have access to some sort of video scouting platform.
Q12. Where do you see yourself in five years?
I am determined to become the best football agent in the world and represent world-class players. I always say If you shoot for the stars, you’ll at least hit the moon. There is nothing wrong with aiming high and being ambitious.