Business plan project

Business concept

My business concept is an application that helps sports enthusiasts that wish to improve their performance in certain sports, to connect with coaches that can help assist them in achieving the level of performance they want to reach.The name of the concept is CoachScout. This business will be a medium in which sports coaches can connect with people that require thier services. There would also be an instant posts feature. This would be posts uploaded by the users performing their preferred sports as well as coaches coaching players.This idea came up to me from a personal problem of mine. I am a lover of sports and leisure . One of my favourite sports is basketball and because of my height and size it is easier for me to score in the basketball paint. But unfortunately I cannot shoot the basketball from the 3point line . And I would love to find a sports coach that can assist me in achieving an improvement in this performance. So I thought of creating an application where young sports enthusiasts like me can find the right coaches for the right price. This is a problem solver for young talented sports players that wish to tap into their potential but have no one to give them the guidance on how to go about it.As well as coaches out there looking for work especially during this pandemic. Some young people have aspirations of being drafted in certain sports or being able to acquire sports scholarships in universities. The problem is they haven’t found the right coach or trainer to guide them into their potential. One of the key things we would be introducing into this application is the ability for users both coaches and players to upload instant videos on the application for coaches to view and perhaps give free short comment consultation on what could be improved in the players performances. And the players could then look at the comments and it could help the players in choosing the right coach. Because most professional coaches are also scouts traveling far distances looking for talent or are connected with scouting agencies. The name CoachScout was derived from the idea that users would be scouting for coaches online. And coaches would also be scouting for potential talented players online.In the long run I envision this would also be a platform where scouts can find talented sports players.

Business strategy:

The business strategy is connecting young sports prospects with the right coaches and also giving them the opportunity to be seen. Players and Coaches would have to sign up on our app as either “Coaches”, or “Players” . After which they have to choose what sports they wish to coach for the coaches or what sports they wish to be coached on for the players. So players and coaches would have to be uploading videos constantly on their sports activities for coaches to be able to notice their talent. For now we will start with small number of sports like basketball ,soccer and American football. This is to have a strong concentrated vetting process for the coaches. If we decided to have a very diverse number of sports available at a go, it would be difficult to do a strong vetting process for all sports coaches. This would dilute the vetting process especially since this is a new application. When the users use our application from the beginning they will see two options “Be a Coach” and “Find a coach”.

Coaches :

Some coaches are also scouts for teams looking for talent . Our application could make it easier for them to find talent much faster than usual. We have a process for coaches of each sport. For example basketball coaches would have to pick basketball when they sign up on our site. And then the coaches that have signed up and picked their sport would have to upload their resumes ,references, pictures ,videos on the application. After we have received all the necessary documents we would also do strong background checks on the coaches in order to determine if they are legitimate and If the documents they’ve sent are valid. After the vetting process is done we will then rank these coaches according to their resume and background with numbers of stars ⭐️. The number of stars a coach has will then determine the prices the coaches will be able to charge per hour session. Coaches will also have the chance to upload their coaching sessions on our application. This could then entice players that are online to choose which coaches they want to work with. Our ranking process would be determined by years of experience, professional teams/players that they’ve coached in the past as well as coaches past successes. For example a rookie coach with 2 years experience who coaches a high school basketball team would be ranked with 1 stars while a coach who has had experience in professional basketball Leagues for more than 5 years would be ranked 3 stars. This would then give the players information on which coach we feel will give them higher value based on the coaches experience. But Unfortunately there would be some discriminations . For example if a coach was able to bring huge success to a previously really bad team but only had 2-3 years of experience then they would still be ranked 1 star ⭐️ . 1 star because they may have had success in shorter time which is great. But their years in coaching isn’t long enough for us to know if their success was just luck or if the coaches are truly talented.Thats why we rank on both success and years of experience.Coaches also wouldn’t not be allowed to choose more than one sport to coach . This is to protect the quality of their services to our players.And it will allow them to put focus on one sport rather than multiple sports. Sports coaches make from 13$-30$ per hour for thier services. Of course in our case we would make it 15-32$ to pick the coaches on our platform. Coaches with high star rankings have the options of taking a 1 star ranking pay on our app. But that option won’t be given to 1 star ranking coaches.One of the key strategies tha would be vital especially during a pandemic like this would the chances of coaches giving coaching lessons online rather than in person so they can get paid whilst working from home. And if they get paid we get paid . We would be taking a 25% commission from each per hour session that coaches take.

Players:

Players that register on our site have to register their information :Name ,age, address, and what sport they wish to be coached on. After players have filled up the registry process with thier the necessary information, we will then match a list of suggested coaches that fit thier criteria. It would be based on location of both the coach and the player . After a coaching session , players can decide whether to continue with thier coaches or not. After each session players would be asked to give reviews of thier coaches impacts on them . Whether they’ve seen improvement in thier performances or not.

Strategic positioning:

Our product is the platform CoachScout which would be a medium for people to find and pick the coaches they want. It is an application that connects athletes with private coaches online. This will be located in ,Lagos Nigeria. I decided to locate it in lagos Nigeria because of its high technological growth. And also because there is no application like this available in Africa. Lagos is also becoming a mega city in Africa in which there is very quick development taking place especially now. There are many gifted Nigerian athletes in Nigeria that do not have the platform to show thier talent to the right people. CoachScout could be a platform for them to display thier talent online to the right coaches. As they will have the ability to post instant videos of thier work sessions online which will be available for all coaches on our platform. Think of our platform as a form of social media for both coaches and athletes to connect with each other. There are also very wealthy Nigerian(African) parents who are willing to pay good money for thier children to be coached in certain sports ,in order for thier children to garner scholar ships in universities abroad.

Target market:

Professional coaches with experience that wish to use our platform to find jobs would be our target from the supply side . Also coaches looking for recognition. Our target audience from the user side would be athletes that are looking for recognition who would use our platform to post thier work out videos to create awareness of thier talent. People that enjoy the game of sports who play in thier leisure time and wish to get better in thier respective sports. Young people( ages 7-17) with parents who wish to develop the athleticism of thier children in hopes of them getting a scholarship in sports.

Trade offs

One of the trade offs we have that coaches don’t have the chance to choose more than one sport to coach but this is because we want to provide quality coaching sessions for our customers. If one coach is coaching multiple sports then he may not give full effort on the each of the sports he/she is coaching.