Rally coach research

How your coaching business works

I’m rebuilding Rally around how your coaching business actually works. This isn’t a feature survey and there are no right answers. I’m trying to understand what you actually do today — especially the annoying, repetitive or messy parts — before deciding what Rally should become. Real examples are much more useful than ideal answers. If something varies depending on the player, group, club or situation, say so.

Answer only what applies to you. Short answers are absolutely fine — concrete examples are even better.

Please don’t include players’ full names or sensitive personal information. You can use examples like Player A, Parent A or Junior A.

Research questionnaire · 10 sections · approximately 10–15 minutes

01 — Your coaching business

1. Roughly how many people do you currently coach or organise tennis for?

2. What kinds of tennis work do you currently do?

Select all that apply.

3. Which of these are usually recurring?

02 — Your working week

4. In a busy week, what takes up time outside the actual coaching?

5. Which three of those take the most time?

6. Think about one recent busy or chaotic week. What made it difficult to manage?

A short real example is more useful than a perfect answer.

7. When deciding whether you can genuinely offer someone a lesson time, what do you need to check?

8. How often do two possible commitments compete for the same time?

03 — Players, juniors and parents

9. Who do you currently coach?

10. For juniors, who usually arranges the lesson, receives schedule changes, pays, and checks remaining lessons / balance?

Skip if this doesn’t apply to you. Use Junior, Parent / guardian, or Depends for each item.

11. Do you ever need to keep track of someone before they would realistically create a Rally account?

12. Do your players commonly train with other coaches or clubs at the same time?

04 — Private lessons

13. Who normally starts the process of arranging a private lesson?

14. How are private lessons usually arranged?

15. When do you consider a lesson confirmed?

16. How common are recurring private lesson slots?

17. Do you ever hold a time while waiting for someone to reply?

05 — Courts, changes and cancellations

18–22. Who normally books the court, when is it secured, what causes changes or cancellations, what happens financially when a lesson moves, and do you have fixed cancellation rules?

Include any short explanation of your cancellation rules. Suggested causes: player availability, your availability, court, weather, club commitments, travel, illness, no-show, other.

06 — Groups and community

23–28. Do you run or organise groups / WhatsApp communities? If yes, what are they used for, how stable are the members, what creates the most admin, and what should stay conversational on WhatsApp?

Skip if this doesn’t apply to you. Include a brief example of one recent group session that was difficult to organise.

07 — Payments and balances

29–38. How do people pay you, when do you get paid, and do you use prepaid lesson or time blocks? If you do, explain what a block represents, how you track it, how often you check or reconstruct balances, who owes money, and the payment admin that creates the most friction.

Skip prepaid-block details if they don’t apply. Include one particularly annoying payment or balance situation if you can.

08 — Clubs, tournaments and other coaches

39–45. Do you coach through clubs? If yes, who controls the schedule, who pays you, and do other coaches or club staff need shared access? Do you organise tournaments or events, and if so, what do you manage and what is the biggest headache?

Skip any club or event details that don’t apply to you.

09 — Your current tools

46–48. What do you currently use to run the coaching business, what information do you enter in more than one place, and what do you most often have to search for or reconstruct?

Examples: WhatsApp, calendars, spreadsheets, notes, banking, court systems, club software, paper notes, memory.

10 — Priorities

49. If you could permanently remove three administrative jobs from your coaching week, what would they be?

50–52. What causes the most unnecessary back-and-forth? What do you wish you could see immediately without checking another tool? What would make you trust a system enough to use every week?

53. What monthly price would feel reasonable if it genuinely saved you time and helped run the business?

54. Is there anything important about running your coaching business that we haven’t asked?

Optional.

Thanks — that’s everything.

This is really useful. I’m using these answers to decide what Rally actually needs to do before rebuilding it.