From Grief To Growth: A Referee’s Year Of Loss, Reinvention, And Impact

A year can include joy and pain without destroying you. In 2025, I said goodbye to my dad—the person I called on every big news story, new tech breakthrough, or small family win—and then rebuilt my life in a way he’d love to hear about. That mix of grief and momentum shaped everything: how I left about work, how I re-built my career, and how I chose where to invest my energy.

The moment the fun drained out of a private equity‑owned, corporate job and the relief that came with choosing a nine‑person company where simple, focused execution mattered more than politics. Leads spiked, deals closed, and I found my stride again. With the commute gone, Refs Need Love Too took off: more than 2,000 orders shipped, new grip socks and made‑in‑USA buzzer flags, custom coins and badges for associations, and a robust global supply chain. On the creator side, TikTok and Facebook revenue jumped alongside brand partnerships, and creator events in Atlanta and LA cemented the feeling that I belong in that room—even as one of the oldest creators there.

The mission sharpened with consulting work for US Soccer, where I helped launch the national referee abuse policy with videos, social assets, and a clear message that reached millions. That momentum led to a full‑time role with SoCal Soccer, building referee development and a learning platform that bridges the macro and micro: content for a global community and hands‑on training for refs running U8 fields every weekend. On the whistle, I earned high school playoff assignments, State Cup finals, and a U.S. women’s youth national team AR slot, then headed to MLS Nextfest to learn from FIFA and CONCACAF referee coaches about the living nature of the game, the spirit of the laws, and the art of reading play.

Family milestones kept me grounded, and to honor my dad’s kindness, I'm launching the Pops Scholarship Fund: annual $1,000 and $500 awards for young referees pursuing education. It’s a way to keep his name moving forward while investing in the next voices with a whistle. If you’re building a life you’d be proud to tell someone you miss, you’ll find a lot to hold onto here—practical playbooks, hard‑won lessons, and a strong heartbeat for the referee community. Listen, share with a friend who needs momentum, and leave a review to help more refs find us.

Transcript

Welcome And A Year Framed By Loss

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Refs Need Love To podcast, a show that gets real raw and behind the scenes of the hardest job on the pitch, the referee. I'm your host, David Gerson, and this week we are going to be taking a look back at 2025. As you know, it was definitely the best of times and the worst of times for me. 2025 will always be remembered as the year that my dad died. I lost my best friend, personal hero, my number one cheerleader. He was sweet, kind, intelligent, generous. His biggest fault was that he loved and cared too much sometimes. He would be too passionate or too stubborn about something. I miss him terribly. I think about him every single day. I see him in random things when I hear something newsworthy or a really interesting scientific fact where I learned something about some new cool technology he would find fascinating. I wish I could give him a call and talk about it. When my kids do something cool or interesting or fun or some new accomplishment, I wish I can call him and tell him about it. I know he would love to get that phone call. When something cool happens for me at work, you know, whether it's in the refs need love to business or for SoCal Soccer League or any of my jobs in the past, I'd call him and we'd talk and I know he would be so proud and so excited for me. On the other side of this wonderful conversations I was having with my dad, speaking to him almost every single day for the last few years, I also know that he was struggling with his health. His body was really kind of given up. He was struggling from kidney disease and was doing dialysis. He was a diabetic, he had cardiovascular issues, pulmonary issues. Because he was diabetic, he was having some issues with wounds on his feet. It was difficult for him to walk. And so by the time that he did actually pass away, with my brother and I and his partner, his wonderful girlfriend by his side, a little bit of me was relieved. I mean, yes, I was crying more in this past year than I've cried in the previous 50 years of my life. But I was also a little bit relieved and happy for him that he would no longer be in pain. He lived a great life and he made this world a better place because he was in it. 2026 was not all bad, though. As a matter of fact, it was one of the best years of my life, personally and professionally, if you can believe that. Career-wise, it was extremely exciting times. At the end of 2024, I left the corporate world behind. I spent over 25 years working for big companies, small companies, publicly traded companies, global entities. I had big titles. You know, I was a chief brand officer for a publicly traded company. I was on the executive board, had these cool experiences, had meetings in Thailand and Portugal and Estonia and Sweden and all across the US and Central America. These amazing learning experiences. Really wonderful. I met people all over the world. You know, it was so much fun. But my last corporate, you know, the fund started to slip away. And I think this is a thing that's happened for a lot of people in America, especially if you're working for a company owned by private equity, as I was. And this was a big global company, but they had been purchased by private equity right before I got there. And I was really excited for the company that I was joining. The CEO who was there when I joined, he was, again, someone who had come from a technician, like real hands-on, and he didn't know anything about marketing. He was really excited about all my ideas and loved it. And then he left and he took a big golden parachute. And you know what happens at a lot of these private equity companies, you know, they take it over for a year, get everything kind of like settled, learn where all of the levers are, and then they bring in the consultants, you know, and the beam counters, and they start cut, cutting. And I went from a team of 17 to a team of five. I had 60% of my budget cut. I used to be a strategic leader. And then I really became everything, right? I was the graphic designer, I was the video editor, I'm the copywriter, I'm the social media person. But it's hard to do anything really progressive. You got no budget, you know, you're just in a reactive mode. It was kind of painful. I had no creative flexibility. And I was having a lot of fun in my Russ Need Love Two life outside here. So I knew that there is something for me out there. I just couldn't support myself on it. But when it became clear that I had no hope at this company, I didn't know if I was going to be laid off. I didn't know if I would just be fired outright. I knew I wasn't getting the jobs that I applied for two big jobs and I was not the right candidate. And I know that. I mean, I definitely was not the culture fit. I did not fit the culture anymore. I went to my boss and I just negotiated a small severance and a notice period to finish out some projects. It was great. And literally the day I signed my contract to work out that notice and get a little bit of severance, you know, I called up one of my favorite suppliers and I was like, hey, you know, I love you guys. I'd love to come work for you. And they were like, oh my gosh, we've been thinking about adding someone to run sales. Now, mind you, this company is nine people, not 50,000 people, but it was so exciting. So I came on, I was running sales and marketing. The company had literally not sent out a digital marketing email in like two years. Their website was woefully out of date. It wasn't even listed on Google. As soon as I got in there and started making some changes within a month or two, we instantly started to see like our lead generation dramatically increase, literally going from like 10, 20 leads a month to like 60, 70 leads a month, starting to close some bigger deals, get some new customers. It was some exciting times. It's amazing what you can do when you don't have all of that red tape and you don't got to go through legal for everything. And you can just create and work on things and have fun. So I was, again, I was everything. You know, I was again the graphic designer and the video editor on the copywriter. But this time I was doing it on stuff that I was excited about. And I didn't have to go through like 20 different levels of review every time I wanted to post one thing on Instagram. It was a really cool experience. You know, you got to do everything, whether it was logistics or thinking about product development, you knew everything going on in the company. It was really exciting. There definitely were some downsides without a doubt. Small company, like no budgets, to do anything to really invest. It was a lot of travel. Company was based in Nashville. Most of their business was based in Nashville. So I was on the road every single week. You know, again, Nashville is not that far from Atlanta. It's about a four and a half to five hour drive, depending on traffic. That was a bit exhausting to do, like almost every week or every other week. That was challenging. Now it wasn't all bad. You know, when I did go up there, I got to stay with my best friends in the world who live in Nashville and they have a beautiful house close in the city. It was so cool. Had so much fun. And it was a good experience. I mean, it wasn't easy. It was tough. I mean, cold call sales is never an easy thing, but the business was growing. We were bringing in new business, new customers. It was cool. I love the new flexibility I had. I was working from home as opposed to commuting 300 miles a week in my car every single day to the office in Atlanta traffic, which was brutal. My commute every day was about, if it was no traffic, 40 minutes to you know an hour and a half, two hours, depending on how bad the traffic was. So I had no more commute. My quality of life is better, my physical health was better. I'm working out almost every single day. I'm home for every single meal. Like aside when I was out of town, it was really cool. And that added flexibility of work from home allowed me to invest more time in developing the refs needlove to business, which, you know, again, my employers were thrilled about. You know, not I wasn't disdained for as I was at the big corporate company, but you know, small company, like, oh man, he's an entrepreneur. That's so cool. So it was really fun. So my refs need love to business really started to prosper. My retail business this year for refsneedlove2.com, it more than doubled year over year. I literally processed over 2,000 orders in 2025. 2,000 individual orders that were shipped out of my website, retail business out of my office. I'm sitting in right now at my house. It's insane. I launched new products. I got these really amazing, comfortable new grip socks, totally new, nothing like it on the market for refs, which is so cool. I started selling the rare bit buzzer flags made in the USA and most of the components. So cool, made by a ref here in the US. And they're selling really well too. So exciting growth in that business, which is really cool. I even expanded into creating customized coins, badges, cards for like, you know, local referee associations, high school associations, and stuff like that, tournaments. Really cool. You know, I've built out a global supply chain for my own store over the last couple of years. So now I leverage my existing suppliers and my bulk discounts, and I do design as well for that. So I've got a whole new part of that business. The social media influencer part of my business literally quadrupled in revenue this year. Okay. And I'm just telling you, it's not enough to live on just that full time. You know, again, if I was a young man, you know, maybe in my 20s and I didn't have kids in college, okay, yeah, I could probably live on that full time, but it's a nice additional source of income. And without divulging exact numbers between TikTok and Facebook, let me tell you, it just comfortably paid for more than a full year of tuition and room and board for one kid to go to an out-of-state university and then some, which is amazing. I never thought that would be possible for someone like me to be able to make significant money off of social media. And then there have been other brand deals. I had a Lysol deal this year, which was paid really well. I had at the I think at the beginning of the year, I had a Moss Plus by Messi sports drink deal, which was really cool. I mean, it's just amazing. I attended two major TikTok creator events this year, one here in Atlanta at the Atlanta United Training Center, and then the other out in LA for the first ever U.S. TikTok awards. It was so amazing. Honestly, I feel like I've arrived in that space, like I'm legit in that scene. You know, I'm not an outsider. It's really cool. I embrace being one of the oldest people there. It tells me that I have plenty to give and I have also plenty to learn in that space, which was so awesome. The refs need love to consulting business. It was also a bum beyond anything I could imagine this year. I created or I completed two consulting stints with US Soccer. We launched the brand new referee abuse policy this year. All of the assets you saw from that, the landing page, the videos, the social media, all of that stuff was done by me and one of my fellow creative partners. We built all of that for US soccer, and it had a huge impact. Those videos have been watched millions upon millions of times and will continue to be watched millions upon millions of times over the next couple of years or so. We did one more consulting stint for them on another video project late this year that I think they're using for training too. So it's been pretty cool. I've also done probably 20 online speaking engagements this year where I've spoken to small referee associations. Sometimes there's 20 people on the webinar, sometimes there's 100, 150. And they pay me a small fee to come on and do that, which is so cool. I also did another career change, but in the late half of the year. So I was working for this little company, Hip Hughes, for the first nine months of the year. And then about eight months in the year, after I had done one of those presentations for a SoCal Soccer League, I kept in touch with the woman who is the executive director of SoCal. And she was telling me about her plans and hopes and dreams. And she wanted to create a new learning management system and this referee development program for SoCal Soccer League. And I was like, I'd love to do that. I don't have time for that though. I got a full-time job. But I also got these other responsibilities. Like, I'd love to hire you full-time. And I was like, really? And I never thought working in referee development or making videos for referees could be a full-time job, but they made me an offer. And it was just so exciting. I couldn't refuse because it completely complements what I'm doing with refs Need Love 2. And now I'm able to do referee programming development training for SoCal Soccer. A lot of that same content is content I could use for the refs Need Love 2 business. And I would also tell you, it's really cool to be now at the macro level, like in this big global social media thing of the referee community, but also at the micro level where I'm working with referees who are doing your local U8, U10 matches, like on the ground. I'm also now on a team of people. So I got a small team of people who run scheduling and the administration of a soccer league for 44,000 kids and their families. I'm really seeing something that I've never done before. I'm learning something new every single week on that team. As a referee, I had a great year. I had a phenomenal spring high school season. We do our high school from February to May every year here in Georgia. Ours is going to be starting up real soon. And I earned three different high school playoff referee assignments into the quarterfinals. So I had some quarterfinal whistles that I had, which is cool. Unfortunately, I was on the road during the semifinals and finals, so I wasn't available to work those games. But I think I probably could have gotten definitely a fourth official, no doubt, a line on one of those crews too. So I'm definitely getting to that stage in my state for high school soccer. I stretched myself. I took on some UPSL, which is kind of the fourth division men's adult. I did some other adult amateur games as well in some other leagues. I don't enjoy it as much as youth matches, but it's a great experience. And it's good to push yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then. I got an assistant referee assignment for a U.S. women's national team, a U19 match for one of their camps here in Georgia. That was amazing. I know we're going to get more and more of those assignments as the new U.S. headquarters opens up this year, just like five miles from my house here in Georgia, which is so cool. I took on numerous tournament finals this year, like specifically reached out to my friends who are assigners in different areas and said, hey, I'm open to do a tournament final. Let me know. And they started assigning me to some of those games. Some of them were crazy hot in August and September, and like 95 degree heat on turf. I'll never forget, you know, one particular game this year. Oh man, I was really close to heat stroke. But I pushed myself hard. Probably shouldn't have pushed myself that hard, but it was a lot of fun and a great experience. And then at the end of the year, I had a tournament finals for State Cup. So I got my first whistles for State Cup semifinals and finals, which is really cool. And then I was a fourth official for a semifinal and a final as well. And both matches went well, considering I was nursing a pretty sore hamstring. And then at the very end of the year, I got to ref and mentor out at MLS Nextfest in Arizona, which was just an amazing experience. I mean, there's so many talented referees out there. I mean, tons of regional referees, national referees, even FIFA refa referees, and so many of them. I'm talking like 95% of them are like fans of my channel. I think I posed for over like 150 selfies just with referees. I was stopped by players, coaches, parents telling me how much they love the channel. Even international FIFA referees were asking to take pictures with me to send to their fellow high-level referees back in their home countries in Central America and the Caribbean. It was so funny. I walked up to this one FIFA referee and I handed him some of my sticker and my refs need love to cards, just as like a gift. And he's like, Oh, yeah, I love this guy. And I'm like, hey, dude, that's me. And he's like, no way. It was so funny. It was just like such a wonderful um moment. The best part of that entire experience in Arizona, though, was I got to shadow a FIFA and CONCACAF referee coaches. So this guy, Jeff Solis, he's just absolutely amazing. They were providing feedback and mentoring FIFA referees. It was just such an outrageous learning experience. We got deep philosophical stuff while I was there. That's just crazy. But gosh, hardcore analysis, like technical analysis, which was really quite amazing, but also just talking about the spirit of the game, the opinion of the referee, understanding different situations. I mean, we were really getting like meta and stuff, talking about that the game itself is alive and that you can bend the book and stuff like that. Some situations can be nothing, some situations can be a foul, some could be a yellow card. Every ref could have something different. So it was just so cool talking about adaptability and reading the game and feeling the players and talking about how the game talks to you as a referee and how that contributes to your football understanding. So it just, I mean, talk about like mind-blown type of stuff, but it was really cool. On the mentor side, I did numerous new referee classes this year, which I'm so excited to get started again in the spring because I picked up a bunch of cool new drills from the work I did out in California. So I went to the referee mentor and coach training out in Cal South very recently, and they did totally different new referee games that I've never seen before to help prepare refs. It was so much more hands-on, it was so much more realistic, yet so much more fun. I had such a blast. So I can't wait to bring that here to Georgia. I also participated in the female referees of Georgia, the Frog program, as a mentor for one of their events. It was just so cool. On the personal side, my family's doing well. My eldest son, Jacob, completed his first co-op semester as an engineer for a medical device manufacturing company. My daughter got Dean's List in her first semester at college. My youngest son rocked his SAT and seems pretty well set to be getting into the university of his choice next year, which we're so excited about. My wife doubled her pet sitting business year over year and is literally now having to turn away clients because her business is so good, which is crazy. And she built that from nothing like three and a half years ago. And now it is a booming business with numerous employees, which is so cool. All three of my dogs are happy and healthy, which is good. And even my best friend, my dog Chip, he's wonderful. My human best friends are all alive and healthy. My three best friends from high school are doing well. My three or four best friends from college are doing well. I've spoken on the phone with every single one of them in the last few months. I'll be flying up to Philly to attend the United Soccer Coaches Convention in a couple weeks. And right after that, I'm heading up to the Poconos to hang with my best friends from high school for two nights. I guarantee it'll be hilarious and wonderful. When my dad was on his deathbed, I asked him what he wanted to be remembered for. And he responded that he was a kind and a good person. He was definitely that, but he was so much more. He was a teacher, a friend, a dancer, an engineer. He was the greatest father a son could ask for. He was not a rich man, but he was generous in his love for others, his community, and he lived life to the fullest while he could. That's why I've got a really special announcement today. I am proud to announce the Pops Scholarship Fund. So Pops is the name that my kids gave to my dad as a grandfather, and it's what we just always called him, and he owned it and he loved it for 37 years. So it just seems fitting that we set up a scholarship fund in his memory. There's going to be two awards, a first and a second place of$1,000 and$500. And we're going to run this annually for two young referees towards their education expenses. If you're going towards getting additional education, it will go towards education expenses. It gives me an opportunity to keep his memory alive, pass on the great lessons he gave to me, and also help a few young refs attain their education goals. So stay tuned for more details on that in the next few weeks on the subject. In summary, 2025 was quite an amazing year. I cried more than I have in the previous 40 years combined. But I also laughed. I grew and I learned more about who I am and what I'm capable of. 2026 will be another great year. I know it. Because I'm gonna make it so. I want to create the life and experiences that I would have loved to tell my dad about. Happy New Year! Make this year something special for you to talk about with the people that you love.