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Recap
All the way from Germany Lukas Exner share's his experience with CoachNow and how it's dramatically improved his coaching business.
Throughout the conversation Lukas talks about the importance of Recaps, moving away from lessons and into long-term development coaching, coaching athletes as well as coaches, his tiered business model, and much much more.
About Lukas
Meet Lukas Exner, a golf coach who's been at the top of the game for over a decade.
After completing his PGA training in 2011, he worked at a top golf school and eventually started his own school at a small club nearby. He's now focused on monthly coaching plans and creating content like video series that his clients can access anytime. When he's not coaching outdoors, he works as an assistant manager in an indoor facility and continues to coach his select group of clients. He's always looking for ways to make his coaching more valuable and effective for his clients.
He believes CoachNow's simplicity was key to keeping his customers and adds value to his coaching. In the winter of 2021/2022, he designed a video series in CoachNow, which he now sells online. Looking forward, he's looking to build more leveraged content like this in the future.
Interview Highlights
You've participated in the ConnectedCoach Blueprints, you've been a power user of CoachNow for several years, and overall you've really used the platform to scale your business and gain new clients. I know you were introduced to CoachNow through Martin Chuck - care to dive into that story as a jumping off point?
Yes I visited Martin Chuck in 2019. He had been a golf teacher since 2008 and I had been a golf coach for almost 10 years. I've visited other famous golf coaches before, but Martin Chuck was like a celebrity to me and being seeing him work was a very memorable experience.
I spent two weeks there, including a three-day camp as a participant. I used the opportunity to improve my own game and also to learn more from him as a coach. I think as a golf teacher, sometimes we forget how difficult it is to do new movements and being the student in this setting really helped humble me a bit and relate better to my students. I also found it helpful to learn potential changes I could make to my own teaching style.
This was my first experience with CoachNow. When I returned to Germany, I registered for his course and got an invite into CoachNow. In that course, every group session was recorded and every individual lesson was recorded and put into CoachNow. It was really great seeing all he valuable teachings from a variety of coaches all ins the same place. It was very easy for them to put great contact content into CoachNow for every participant.
Awesome. And then you started using it for your business?
When I started using CoachNow, the basic feature I used was the video recaps. I think that's also one of the most powerful features CoachNow has for the normal coach. It's so powerful.
I've been using that for every session I've been doing since 2019. It's so easy when I have a new student, it just takes me two minutes to put in the email, make their account, and add the video from the last five minutes of our session. They're always amazed by how easy it is and then when they come home, they can enter their space and see the video.
It's a unique selling point in marketing terms compared to other coaches that don't use CoachNow. That was pretty much the start of how I used CoachNow.
And where do you see your business evolving, right? If you're looking at the next five years of your life, what kind of objectives are do you have? Where do you see yourself going?
For the last five years, I had my own golf school at a small golf club. The club is closing at the end of the year. I want to stay in this area near my family and finances. So it's not clear how this change will affect my business, but I've been setting up my personal brand with CoachNow for long enough to be confident that I'll land on my feet and become fully self-sufficient without a physical club.
Looking forward to the next five or 10 years, my goal is to have my own golf school again, maybe in a golf club in this area, or who knows what will happen in 10 years. But to have my own golf school with maybe two assistants, that would be a good goal for 10 years maybe.
And I'm sure you'll have plenty of content to fall back on when you're ready to do that. Any big takeaways from this most recent position that will help you stand out in your coaching?
Absolutely. When starting as a coach, it's important to lead with confidence. In the beginning, I didn't have the confidence to tell people what we should or shouldn't practice and instead asked them what they wanted to practice. B
ut as my confidence grew and I had a better understanding of what I was doing, I was able to take the lead and guide my students towards what was best for them.
Confidence plays a big role in effective coaching. That's absolutely something I struggled with early on but am getting the hang of now.
I agree and I think there is an important part for the athlete to advocate for what they want to share, their history of what they've done so far, but if you let that go too far they won't value your expertise quite as much. You want to let the athlete advocate for themselves while balancing the fact that you are in charge as a coach.
What else sets you apart from other coaches you work with? Do you feel like your use of technology is an advantage, or is it something else? What do you see as your unique advantage as you progress in your career?
I believe my advantage is my long-term development approach. I believe that quick fix lessons don't really help in the long run. My approach of a three month minimum program with different requirements and different things included is well received by many.
It was a big milestone for me to take that approach. I think it's an advantage for me and also for CoachNow. In that vein, CoachNow is a big advantage for me, because it allows people to see all the videos we had a couple of months ago. They can click on the video and see the progress they made, they can see the things they were working on and remember what they were doing that helped them improve. It's very easy and requires no more time and effort.
I think coaches are scared of technology because they think it'll just add more work. Like after their lessons, they have to record a video and put it online. But with CoachNow (at least how I use it), it's not like that. It's just a small part OF the actual session and the customer pays for the fact that they can reference that a-ha moment down the line.
Let's talk about your pricing tiers. I think that would be a great way to end on how you've tiered out your coaching offers within CoachNow.
I have a basic package that is available online. Customers can book it by the month with no minimum requirement. They can send me one swing per week and I'll provide an answer per week. I've also included a group where I've recorded videos from my trip to Florida, that cover the basics of shots like putting, chipping, and bunker shots. That way, people can easily access the information they need without having to ask me repeatedly. That bundle of videos is included in the basic package as a way to add more value.
The next tier is called the pro tier, it's the middle tier, which includes lessons per month for either 1 hour or 2 hours. I've found that some people prefer the 2 hour lessons, especially those coming from farther away, but some people find that 2 hours is too long for them.
That's my basic offer right now. Though like you've recommended, I'm always in a state of iterating on what I have and trying to optimize based on where the business is. There is a lot of variability in golf students and I want to cater to everyone in any way that I can.
Well Lukas it’s been a pleasure. Hope you have a great week and we’ll talk to you soon.
*NOTE: This is just a few snippets from the conversation Spencer had with Lukas If you liked any of these topics, please listen to the full conversation at our YouTube Channel.