You're receiving this because we've had a real conversation.
Sorry I missed you last week. I've been focused on preparing for the official launch of our D2C performance brand, [golfhackz].
Here's some quick insider information: what used to take weeks and a full-time designer now takes 48 hours (if you know what you're doing).
By using a combination of Claude, Claude Design, Lovable, and team feedback, we conducted two parallel full branding exercises. We even went as far as building out landing pages to see everything come together.
Working with Claude to refine the voice, using Claude Design to visualize it, and then Lovable to bring the HTML output to life with additional inline editing capabilities proved to be an incredible workflow.
What you're seeing below are drafts, but by the end of this week, we should have our templates completed so we can not only launch but also have the whole team in sync.
More soon. 👀
Early drafts of Brand Kit
Test landing page
Founders and coaches are making the same mistake
If you're a founder, your TAM is lying to you. If you're a coach, your calendar is lying to you.
9 calls, 9 different operators - a mix of coaches and founders. Every one of them tripped over the same idea from opposite ends.
The mistake: counting what's in front of you instead of building for what's really happening.
Founders count every golfer as a potential customer. Coaches count every hour as income.
Both overcount. Both run a smaller business than they think they're running. Both have the same fix.
Here's what I told them this week.
For the founders
The TAM math founders fumble at every pitch meeting:
"If you take the total addressable market and treat it as your serviceable addressable market, a lot of the savvy investors I meet will immediately go, 'well, the founder doesn't know what they're talking about.' Because not every golfer is going to be a customer of your company. It's not possible."
Don't recite the top number. Walk all the way down to the people who would actually pay you. That's the real number. That's the one that keeps you in the conversation.
Here's an example of how I do it, every time:
"There's 30,000 PGA members. How many actually give lessons? Maybe 15,000. How many make enough money to call themselves a coach? 5,000. How many actually make a full-time income? 3,000. The reason I do that is because people came in to try to compete with the thing I built, and I'm just going, guys, there's not even literally enough coaches to go around. You will not make money in this."
Four steps from the headline number to the real one. Every layer cuts the number in roughly in or more. By the time you land on the truth, the pitch sounds completely different. But, now you’ve got a clear line of site to what’s possible.
For the coaches
Coaches don't have a TAM problem. They have an hours problem.
But the math underneath it is identical. Counting what's in front of you. Missing what's possible.
The framing problem first:
"Most coaches don't look at themselves as entrepreneurs. They look at themselves as range technicians. They'll buy a $25,000 TrackMan and go in debt because they have no way to get the ROI back. But they won't invest in actual business acumen."
A range technician sells hours. An entrepreneur sells outcomes and builds leverage.
What that looks like in practice:
"One of the hardest things to do is say no. Not one person should be teaching 12 hours a day. That's insane. You need to be saying no to a lot more people, but each person you're saying yes to needs to be more of a high-value customer. Your overall stable of golfers will probably shrink. But your income will skyrocket."
Read that twice.
Stable shrinks. Income climbs.
That is the opposite of how just about every coach I've ever met thinks.
And then the leverage move most coaches never make:
"The revenue you're bringing today is totally capped by the amount of time you can put into it. The hybrid coaching model is a nice shift. But the way to really free you up and give you 3x, 4x, even 10x your opportunity is by building a team of coaches."
Hire before you're maxed out, hire before you think you need to. Not after. Because if you wait until you're fried, you'll be too tired to train anyone.
Same mistake, two ends
Read the two sides next to each other and the pattern is obvious.
Founders count every golfer. Coaches count every hour.
Both are overcounting. Both think their ceiling is bigger than it is. Both are leaving the actual business on the table.
The fix is identical in shape. Shrink the denominator. Raise the ceiling. Fewer real customers, more revenue per. Fewer real hours, more income per.
Scaling does not mean more. It means more per.
The reframe that closes it
I had a call this week with a founder I work with. His team has poured years into a product, and they're trying to figure out what to do with it next.
Mid-call, he said this:
"Remove the expectation of monetization. Look at the landscape as, hey, if we were just gifted this product, how can we best utilize it? If you remove all expectations of what it should do or return, what's the highest and best use?"
I told him on the spot that was one of the best reframes I'd heard in a long time.
"One of the biggest challenges we all face is the sunk cost fallacy. Oh, we put a bunch of money into it, now we've got to figure out how to recoup it. If we look at it super objectively, assuming there's no sunk cost, no sunk emotions, no sunk ego, what would we do?"
That's the founder version of saying no to the wrong 12 hours. That's the coach version of pricing for outcomes instead of time. That's the operator move at every level.
Count what's real. Ignore what's spent. Build for what's possible.
If you're a founder, walk the TAM all the way down before your next pitch. If you're a coach, start cutting clients and saying no anyone who doesn’t fit the way you coach. If you're sitting on something you've sunk years into, ask the founder's question.
Keep fighting the good fight. See ya next week 👊
-Spencer