What golf taught me about running a better business

Let’s kick off the new year with a confession:

I’m a huge golfer.

But I don’t get to talk about golf much at home. My wife and daughters forbid it!

So I’ll indulge a bit today.

Here’s a quick golf story with a valuable business lesson attached.

I’ve been playing for about seven years. And I’ve become an above-average player through sheer effort — hitting the range regularly, playing rounds when I can, etc.

But after a while, my progress slowed to a crawl.

Why?

Because I was practicing completely blind, with zero feedback on my game.

So I decided to get a coach.

And that’s when I started seeing massive improvements.

My coach uses this tool called a FlightScope, that tracks data about your golf swing.

After every single swing, we’d look at the metrics together, figure out where the problems were, and what adjustments to make.

Then one day, it hit me.

No, not a golf ball… a realization:

Most business owners are running their companies exactly like I was playing golf!

They’re grinding hard, putting in the hours... but have no idea if they’re actually improving the right things.

And eventually, “more effort” stops being the right solution.

Here’s a perfect example from my own agency.

During one of our weekly sales meetings, we saw something interesting on our scoreboard:

• We’d brought in a record-breaking number of warm leads for strategy calls that week

• But our appointment booking rate was way down

• And our show-up rate was even worse

And when people did get on the call, they were coming in looking for different services than what we provided.

None of this felt right.

So we did some digging.

And as it turns out…

One small line in the first paragraph of our marketing emails was misleading prospects about our services!

They thought we sold leads directly. But we don’t. We build clients a website and an online presence that generates leads after a few months.

So one incorrect line of copy was destroying our results!

The moral of the story?

Just like the FlightScope transformed my golf game, using the right scoreboard with the right metrics can transform your business.

We only caught this because we were religiously tracking our numbers and reviewing them every single week.

On that note…

What about your agency?

How many “small issues” like this are secretly costing you thousands in lost revenue?

And what would change if your entire team had crystal-clear feedback on their performance every single day?

Open Book Management will help you:

• Spot invisible, profit-killing problems that are secretly bleeding your profit dry

• Give your team instant feedback on what’s working (and what isn’t)

• Build a team that protects your agency’s margins like they’re their own

If you’d like to learn more about how OBM can help your agency thrive in 2025:

Book a free 30-minute strategy call with me here.

And I’ll see you in Tuesday’s issue!

— Nick Kringas
Founder of Open Book CFO