We were lucky to catch up with Bryan Turner recently and have shared our conversation below.

Bryan, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I founded No Stress Midwest back in July of 2018 when I was at a crossroads in my life. I was 28 years old, and was just named the head coach of a local high school soccer team (boys & girls) earlier that year (February). I was also informed that the civilian contract position I had as an engineer for the US Navy would not be renewed after working from home for the past 3 years. I was at a point in my coaching career where I was thinking of pursuing coaching full time but did not know the best way to go about it. I knew that in my brief search of engineer positions, I would have to be back in an office 40+ hours/week and that would directly effect my vision of how I wanted to run the high school program. At the time I was a club soccer coach and an assistant for another local high school and from those connections I started doing individual and small group training sessions.
After a few weeks looking at new engineering positions online and some serious soul searching, I decided that I was going to pursue my dream of coaching full time starting with my high school job and started No Stress Midwest Training (a soccer specific training company). I saw that a lot of the players that I was coaching were lacking technical techniques and I saw a way to help. At the time I had no idea if this business venture would work as it was the first time I was pursuing something like this. I felt that was a “push” in life that I needed and I had the option to fly or fall, the feeling for both start off the same and I decided to try and fly.
I felt that at the time, the market for local soccer trainers was not that saturated and I believed and still do that I have a unique way of connecting with players of all ages and not only am able to make them better athletes, but create a fun environment where they feel free to grow and make mistakes in the pursuit of achieving their training goals.
Over the years the business has grown from just soccer specific training of No Stress Midwest Training and has added sports performance training and looking to add other sports in the near future.
In 2020 during covid, a lot of our athletes expressed the difficulties that they were facing adapting to the new virtual learning. We added No Stress Midwest Education to help our athletes, which is an academic tutoring service that supplies licensed teachers to those students in various subjects as well as offer “study hall” for various local soccer clubs & players.
The No Stress Midwest Podcast was also founded in 2020 as a way to connect with current/past professional & collegiate soccer players and soccer professionals around the world. We have released 5 seasons and have streams from over 40 countries in 6 continents.
No Stress Midwest Apparel was started for our athletes and supporters to be able to bring the brand with them wherever they go. Whether it’s t-shirts, hoodies, hats, shorts, and more, we have something for everyone.
Pending federal approval, in 2023 we plan to launch the No Stress Midwest Scholarship Foundation, a non-profit which was created to assist local athletes that may not be able to afford the rising costs to play for competitive clubs in the form of partial and full scholarships.
At this point we are focused on building the foundations of the businesses above and creating revenue streams in all 5 businesses.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a graduate of North Carolina A&T State University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and took my first job upon graduation with Honeywell FM&T in Kansas City in 2012. I played soccer growing up until graduation of high school and after being away from the game during my time in college I knew I wanted to get back involved with the game, and coaching was how I wanted to do it. For the 6 years I was an engineer, I was coaching part-time but logging about 30 hours/week and that is where a hobby turned into a passion. Since founding No Stress Midwest and my pursuit of coaching professionally, I have been featured on the cover of United Soccer Coaches Soccer Journal twice with stories about my time as a high school coach and connecting with the players club coaches to create a cohesive learning environment for the athletes as well as an article on the importance of networking. I currently work part time with US Soccer specifically within the Coaching Education department as an operations specialist. In that position I am around some of the top coaches and coaching educators in the country and able to learn from them and help develop my own coaching philosophy which has a direct correlation in the growth of No Stress Midwest Training.
In the almost 5 years of existence, I have learned not to get to high with the highs or to low with the lows, but find a happy medium and learn to ride that wave.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I started the business a few years before covid, when that happened I, amongst every other business owner was scrambling to figure out how to adjust. The field where I normally ran all of our training sessions was shut down and I did not know how to move forward. I came up with the idea to move training sessions to our clients backyards and while avoiding contact and maintaining distance, I would drive from session to session. One client did not have a suitable backyard so we did the session in the front yard. Someone driving by in the development slowed down and asked about the training and if I would be interested in training their child. From there I would do all sessions in the front yard and within 2 months, was making more than I was as an engineer in half as much hours. That was one of the first times that I tasted success and my passion was rejuvenated. I went from believing that I could do it, to knowing I could do it.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

In 2020 when No Stress Midwest Education was created the idea was to focus on 1 on1 tutoring, whether zoom or in person. The education market was brand new to me and unlike my experience in the soccer world, I did not have any in education. After trying to market it to our clients as a tutoring service, I had an idea to work with what I knew which was soccer and pitch the idea of study hall to various clubs as a way to offer education and training services within their club. After that “pivot” we were able to partner with a local soccer clubs (Sporting Brookside & Global FC) to bring our tutoring services to their specific athletes. For the first 4 months of 2023, No Stress Midwest Education was leading the No Stress Midwest businesses in revenue generated,

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nostressmidwest.com
• Instagram: @NoStressMidwest
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NoStressMidwest
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/no-stress-midwest/
• Twitter: @NoStressMidwest
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@nostressmidwest2350