For roughly 13 years, I had what I like to call ‘God View’ on the best coaches and athletes in the world.

No, I wasn't sitting in everybody's Training Space watching how tour players and Olympians trained. But I was able to connect and communicate with some of the best coaches across 80 sports and 140 countries about all the things they do. And often they’d give me access to their coaching operating system inside CoachNow, giving me insight that I don't think anybody else in the world has had, or maybe ever will again.

So here are five things the best coaches across any sport have in common.

1. They document.

They document religiously. They believe in making meaning of the key learnings during each and every session. They don't record the entire thing, because not all of it is gold, but they do a great job of capturing video, notes, imagery, and any data they can get their hands on to help tell the story of the session and build on that story moving forward. So that they not only have access to it, but more importantly, their athletes and the supporting coaches have access too.

2. They're data informed.

Because they're collecting all that data and documenting it, a lot of people like myself early on thought, the best coaches in the world are data driven.

Cameron McCormick, Jordan Spieth's coach and one of the best coaches I know across all of sport, set me straight on how he does it by saying he was data informed.

You can aggregate all of these insights, especially with today's AI tech, but it's up to a seasoned coach to filter through it and make meaning of it for that athlete.

Even if the data is saying one thing and a coach's experience says the other, they have to meld those things together and deliver it so the athlete has confidence and conviction in where they're headed.

3. They're extremely relationship focused.

Coaching is a relationship business at its core. When we were building Edufii, which later became CoachNow, we coined a term internally: athlete relationship management system.

That's not something that's publicly available out there in the archives, but it's something we thought about a lot, because we knew the best coaches care deeply about maintaining their relationships.

That's why our platform was so successful. We helped them with the most important part of any relationship, communication.

4. They believe in short feedback loops.

Fast feedback. That's another reason we built CoachNow the way we did, because we wanted to make sure weeks didn't go by, days didn't go by, without an athlete getting the right level of calibrative feedback.

In the beginning of any relationship, a coach is giving directive feedback. But calibrative is where you ultimately want the relationship to go, because you've given the athlete the correct tools and the self-assessment skills to navigate their development not entirely on their own, but pretty dang close to it.

In doing so, a coach can provide fast feedback that calibrates the athlete's actions moving forward, which not only allows the athlete to perform better, but that a coach can take on more athletes without adding hours.

5. They believe in long-term development.

They do not believe in quick fixes. Internally at CoachNow, I banned our entire team from using the word lesson, because in any other sport you can think of, when did you go to your soccer lesson or your football lesson? Of course there are individual training sessions on skills within those sports, but for the most part, all the kids out there and all the professional athletes go to practice.

Calling it a lesson frames it as a transaction. Calling it practice frames it as an improvement journey.

The best coaches in the world see it exactly the same way, not just in golf but everywhere else. The only way to get better at something is to dig in and create a long-term development plan with milestone check-ins along the way.

We are not here to fix people within one hour. We know that, the best coaches in the world believe it, and that's why long-term development plans are the way to go.

So why does all of this matter?

If you're a coach reading this, hopefully it's confirmation you're on the right track, or maybe it gives you a little insight into where you can improve. If you're building for the scorecard, or investing in the businesses that are, this should tell you what the best coaches in the world are actually doing, and you should tune your product to help them across all of these categories, not just one.

Most products hit one of these. Some hit two. Hit all five and you've actually got something.

ICYMI here’s some movement in the game-improvement economy

MyGolfSpy was acquired by a newly formed group called Pin High

My take: Consolidation is happening all over golf. 8am, Revelyst, Troon, and others are swooping up tech and media companies. Newly formed groups like Pin High are another sign more money is entering the game trying to gobble up distribution and data. Press Release

CHIP’d Golf Balls are on their way

My take: As most of you know, I’ve been working with the CHIP’d team for the past year. It’s amazing what they’ve accomplished, but as they’ll tell you directly, it’s been a long, hard road. Early adopters will be receiving their balls this month, marking a major milestone for CHIP’d and golf as a whole. Learn More

I missed ya’ll last week for another quick summer trip with the family.

As always, while I was gone, my LinkedIn DMs and my inbox kept filling up with founders reaching out, asking for help, asking to grab a call. Unfortunately there's only so much time in the day. Even though I'd love to speak to every founder with an idea and the determination to make it happen, I simply don't have the capacity.

That's been true for the last year, ever since leaving CoachNow. Because of that I’ve kept telling people I was working on something, some way to help, without being able to say what it was.

Based on recent surveys and direct notes from founders I think I'm finally on to something for a phase 1.

The overwhelming majority of founders reaching out are stuck at the same stage, zero to $500k. I’d like to help.

I'm pressure testing it over the next few days. If it holds up, I'll show you next week.

Keep fighting the good fight. See ya next week 👊

-Spencer