For a traditional golf instructor in the typical pay-per-lesson business model, a lesson is booked, paid for and delivered usually without much thought to the actual process of how value was passed between buyer and seller.  It’s a natural occurrence: the golf instructor has knowledge and a struggling golfer has a need for improvement.  The golfer schedules a lesson, spends 45 minutes with 1:1 instruction, then hopes to take this new knowledge back out on course. It is a perfectly fine system that has worked for ages, but it has many limitations.

For one, it forces the instructor and student to be together. Knowledge is only provided while physically in the same place on the lesson tee.  Once the lesson is over, there is often little ‘take-away’ or specific homework provided so the student can progress on their own. Follow ups only occur when booking another lesson and the instructor has to remember what happened since the last time they were together. Income is only earned when a lesson is provided, which can be hot or cold depending on seasonality and many other factors.  In a service business, you only grow by charging more or working more, and there are limits to both.  Scaling your golf instruction business is simply about booking more lessons, taking up more of your time until you reach saturation and finally reach wits end.  There is another way.

Imagine a world where your expertise is relied upon routinely. Not in long, dedicated time commitments, but rather in smaller chunks accessed more frequently.  Imagine creating a strong relationship between you and your students by providing your knowledge in a low friction, simple manner, and with ability to do it remotely. You no longer have to be tied down to the lesson tee.  You’ll also get paid even when you’re not in a lesson!  The ability to manage many more clients is now a reality and scaling revenue is easier.

The solution is moving from a transactional approach to a subscription model. Instead of ‘paying for your time’ it’s ‘paying for your expertise’, from ‘per lesson’ to a longer-term engagement that provides access to your knowledge and builds trust, confidence and accountability with your students.  To do this, you’ll need to make yourself available using technology to provide quick commentary and feedback to your client when they need it most. That might happen while they are on course, traveling or practicing on their own.  Imagine a client visits the range, records a few swings and asks for your feedback. You can accomplish this in a few minutes of time using technology.  Of course you’ll still want to meet with them for in-person lessons, but you might be able to provide a quick review by analyzing a video or providing a reminder using a brief text message conversation.

This is the world powered by OnForm, a new video analysis and communication platform intended to power the subscription economy for coaches. We believe it’s a better way forward for the coach and the student.  The transition is already happening in other sports like cycling, triathlon and running. Those coaches have built businesses using a software-based coaching platform to provide training programs and workout analysis virtually through technology. The same transformation lies ahead for ‘skill based’ sports like golf. Companies like GolfTec are already making it happen and providing in-person training combined with virtual coaching.

Asking your clients to pay a reasonable monthly fee to obtain routine expertise in addition to in-person lessons is the way of the future. It helps smooth out revenue spikes, unchains you from the lesson tee, and is far more scalable than existing pay-per-lesson models. The sooner you give it a try, the sooner you’ll see the benefits, and so will your students!

​Let us help you make the move, we have a ton of experience in helping coaches grow their business. Contact us today and setup a private 1:1 demo and discuss how you can grow your business. Book a time today https://calendly.com/onform/demo 

Thanks for reading!
-Gear Fisher
Co-Founder, OnForm, Inc.

Since we get asked this question all the time, we wanted to share some best practices on how to video your golf swing.
There’s two angles we recommend for taping your golf swing, "down the line" and "face on". 

Down the line is basically parallel to the target line. This view is the most common and is easier to capture on the range because the camera is not taking up a bay on the range. It’ll help you see the plane of your backswing, how your club face is pointing at the top of the swing and other aspects of your golf swing, such as your wrist hinge and hip rotation.

Face on is directly across from you perpendicular to the target line. This view will help show your setup angles, grip, body position and weight shift. At higher FPSs, you may even be able to see the club face angle at the impact point.

We recommend you capture your swings from both angles because they’ll tell you different things, when combined together will give you a full view of your golf swing. OnForm's new Practice Partner feature supports both angles and will make it easy to capture either angle.
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Here are specific instructions on how to setup your phone or tablet for each angle.

Down the line

1. Place an alignment stick or another club on the ground to help you become more aligned with your chosen target. Choosing a target is one of the most important elements of a purposeful practice routine - we’ll have more to say on this topic soon.
2. Place your iPhone or iPad about 12-15 feet behind you in line of the alignment stick. If you are not using an alignment stick or ground club, position the device directly in line with the toes of your feet (see yellow line in adjacent picture). Use a tripod to hold your device or one of several handy accessories, e.g., SelfieGolf or GorillaPod, to attach your device to your golf bag.
3. Orient your device in portrait mode in order to get as much of your full golf swing as possible, especially the top of your swing including the position of the club head.
4. Finally, position your device at the same height as your wrist during setup (see the red bullseye in the adjacent picture). This is most optimal for analyzing your swing plane and other aspects of your swing.
5. Swing when ready! Let OnForm’s AI-powered practice partner feature do the hard work of automatically capturing every swing you take, and recording your results, such as shot distance and accuracy, no manual work needed.

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Face On

1. As with down the line, place an alignment stick or a club on the ground to help you become aligned with your chosen target.
2. Place your iPhone or iPad 10-15 feet perpendicular to the alignment stick. If you are not using an alignment stick, place your device perpendicular to the middle of your chest.
3. Position your device about belt high in this case. You can also keep it wrist high if you prefer to not change the height when switching between down the line and face on.
4. As with down the line, orient your device in portrait mode to capture as much of your full swing as possible, particularly a full view of your takeaway and the top of your swing.
5. Then just swing away!

Here is a very useful Youtube video from the great golf instructors at MeAndMyGolf describing how to setup your device when recording your golf swing.

Hope that helps! Swing away!

I'm excited to announce the launch of a very powerful, fun and super useful new feature within the OnForm app. We've called the whole experience "Practice Partner", and it's designed to help golfers by auto-detecting every swing they take, saving them as short video clips, then leveraging voice dictation to capture the distance and direction of every shot. Videos are saved in your OnForm library with full text titles containing the club, distance, direction and feel. And it all happens without interrupting the flow of your practice session. 

Just setup the camera and it will auto-detect each swing! It makes practice more fun, and more objective at the same time. Simply swing away, instantly review your shots, and discover your areas of improvement using our slow-motion and visualization tools. 

Share with an instructor
Because OnForm is a true coaching platform, it's easy to work with a coach/instructor to get the best feedback and fastest improvement.  There is no substitute for working with a good coach. The accountability and precise feedback will improve your game faster than any fad device or gadget. Thanks to our built-in sharing and text messaging features, it's easy to share the video with a coach so you can get real feedback about how to improve.  In person lessons also become more powerful and useful as you can review your coach's feedback well after the lesson and during your own private practice time.

Give it a try!
Getting started is simple, you must have iOS 14 on your iPad or iPhone (the Practice Partner feature is not available on Android) and then head to the range.  We've trained the model to recognize 3/4 and full swings and working on adapting it to learn short chip shot swings and putts.  We'd love to hear your feedback on how it goes, drop us a line by mentioning us on Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag #getOnForm. Have fun and swing away!