In 2011, I was coaching 40 hours a week and spending at least another 30 on admin. Not because I had to. Because I'd read The Talent Code and I was determined to create an environment where skill development could keep going even when we weren't together.
That's the problem nobody talks about. Ignition, deep practice, expert coaching — all three only fire when you're in the room. But when you're an individual coach working with golfers you might not see for two or three weeks at a stretch, that gap kills the development.
So I was doing everything I could to bridge it. Email. Text. YouTube. Whatever tools existed in 2011. And I was burning out because of it. That burnout is what led to building what was then called Edufii and is CoachNow today.
Fast forward a few years to why CoachNow actually worked.
The technology got inserted into an active relationship. We weren't trying to change behavior. We weren't chasing cool moments. We made the relationship between a coach and an athlete more effective.
The athlete got better faster. The coach's business grew. Because we built something integral to developing both the skills and the relationship.
So why am I telling this story now?
Because I'm meeting founders in the golf-tech space that haven’t fully found product market fit (PMF). They've built a cool feature that gave them misleading signals.
They're bringing on users, creating a cool moment, converting that user into a paying customer. And then the retention craters.
Because they haven't found a way into that customer's actual workflow. The user isn't logging in every day. They're logging in occasionally for that cool moment. And eventually distraction wins, the cool moment gets absorbed by something else, and you get churned.
Some of these founders are then landing on the wrong diagnosis.
"Golfers don't practice."
Having spent 20-plus years in this business and run a software company that would counter that thesis directly — it's not that golfers don't practice. It's that most golfers don't practice with any level of feedback.
Whatever you're building, you need to find a way to make it integral to their on-course, their off-course, and their at-home opportunities to get better. A cool moment isn't enough. You have to find a way into their complete way of thinking about their skill development.
Obvious Suggested Read
The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle eventually became the entire thesis behind CoachNow.
Coyle's argument is that talent isn't born; it's grown in three ways: ignition, deep practice, and expert coaching. You need all three. Remove one, and the development stops.
If you’re a coach, this is a must-read.
If you’re a product designer, this might be the key you’ve needed to deliver real value and keep coaches and athletes coming back.
From this week's 1:1s
🧱 On what actually makes users stay: "All their media, data, communications, collaborations to other coaches all lived inside CoachNow. Every day they used it, it just got harder and harder to leave."
A killer product has an inherent high cost of switching
🔁 On value creation: "Your product, as well as all the education inside and around it, must constantly remind your users of the value you're delivering.”
Don't hide all the value behind a login.
📲 On why onboarding misses the point: "They're downloading it for a specific result, not to press buttons. Don't make it so feature-centric that they lose track of why they're doing this in the first place."
Nobody opens your app because they love you… They open it because they want to get better.
Golf is littered with tech
But most never make it. I’m curious to get your take, let me know below.
Why do you think most golf apps end up dying?
Keep fighting the good fight. See ya next week 👊
-Spencer
(P.S. Hit the poll. Seriously.)