00:02.26 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Welcome to the ModGolf Podcast, where we speak with the entrepreneurs, the innovators, the disruptors, and the influencers who are shaping the future of golf. I am your host, Colin Weston. And today, I'm excited for this conversation. This is a family affair, what we're dealing with here today as entrepreneurs. And we're going to be talking about golf fitness, golf longevity, golf rehab, all the things that do with how can you improve your body and maintain that so that you can play better golf and play golf longer. 01:02.54 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So today we're going to be talking to the co-founders of GolfDr, and that is with Valerie De Maio, who is a physician and also her son Chris Adamson, who is a golf physiotherapist and also the co-founder of GolfDr. So I've had a chance to speak to both of them over the last couple months. Love what they're doing. And i said, hey, come on, let's get you on the ModGolf podcast here because longevity and fitness is one of the key pillars. One of the things I love to talk about on ModGolf and these two are definitely in that wheelhouse. So with that, Valerie, Chris, welcome to ModGolf. 02:56.66 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, thank Colin. Good to be here. 02:58.20 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Thank you. Yeah. 02:59.42 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Absolutely. Okay, so this is going to be a little different than usual with ModGolf. Usually it's a one-on-one conversation, although I have over the years had two guests on at the same time. So I'm going to be bouncing back and forth with the two of you. We're going to learn about the backstory of GolfDr, your why and your AHA moment, and how you got up to what you're doing right now. But I'd like to start with this icebreaker question that I usually ask on the podcast, and that is your first golf experience, that power of invitation. Who is that person in your life at whatever age that introduced you to the game? And also share with us what you can remember, that first amazing golf moment that hooked you to the game. And Valerie, I'm going to start with you on that one. 03:40.76 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Well, my first experience was my last experience for many, many years. The first experience was a group of my high school friends. We played a lot of sports and stuff together. None of us had played golf and we played hooky for a day and we went out to the golf course and we played and somebody hit a hole in one. I don't think it was in our group, but somebody did it. And I remember the excitement of that. And it was like, that it was the memorable moment for that day. But fast forward, I was into other things, tennis and, you know, running and triathlons, that kind of stuff. And um ironically, i always thought golf was a sport for old people, business people, and doctors. And so i have become the cliche, all three of those things. 04:31.70 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast right 04:36.69 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr But in more recent times, my golf has been through my son, Chris, and my partner, Rick, getting me interested in the game. 04:52.31 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Love that. Love that. Okay. Now it's over to you, Chris. how did you get introduced to the game of golf? 04:58.36 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, a little bit later in life. So I grew up, hockey was everything. Being from near Toronto, hockey was all I did for ah most of the years growing up. But I had friends, family, people that were golfers, and I never really took the jump into that. My stepdad played golf, but it wasn't until I got to college and my roommate was on the club golf team. And so I saw him going to the range every day doing that. He finally drug me out there and I was surprised at how hard the game actually is. And after moving on from the hockey side of things in my life, this I immediately was like, this fills a void on the competitiveness, the competitiveness side of things. And so, within that year, I remember playing around with my roommate and I remember slam dunking a shot from off the green for triple bogey. And I remember how excited I was to have a triple bogey. I was like, this sport's messed up to be so excited about a shot like that. But it was kind of a, it's a once in a moment shot that I, that I hit where at the top of the flagstick, it went straight down and it was just hilarious. And we still thought about it today. So it kind of shows the little moments in golf that, that kind of, that, that make it for us and that we chase time and time again. 06:21.34 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast I love that story. And I love, Valerie, the fact your memory was a shared experience. It's something that you witnessed didn't necessarily happen to you. And golf has that that power and that that capacity to do that, which I absolutely love. All right, so I want to dig into the backstory here before you launched Golf Doctor, I believe about three and a half years ago. So my understanding here, Valerie, you've worked as emergency medical ah physician for many, many years and professor of emergency medicine That's your background. And even though growing up in Toronto, you've been in the Raleigh North Carolina area for some years. I know that now today you're down in Florida. So both of you, i believe Chris, you're down there too. So you are down in that area in the in the US. So Chris, as we mentioned at the top of the show, that you are a physiotherapist now focusing mainly on golf. So I want to hear about the AHA moment. So why how did this come about? Whose idea was this collective? What conversations happened where you saw a gap, you saw an opportunity, and of all the thousands of things that you can do as an entrepreneur, collectively and individually, you decided that GolfDr was it. So so tell me about the origin story. So Chris, I'll start with you on that one. 07:38.04 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah. So I got it depends how far back we should rewind, but I've been kind of entrepreneurial my whole life. I've had small businesses and always had that that big dream type thing but i always pursued the physical therapy path as well as my running joke because it was my ongoing backup plan uh in case i don't succeed in everything else i'm doing um and so during physical therapy school here at UNC i we had a business class where we were tasked with creating a project like a physical therapy business and we would have to pitch that business at the end of The course and me and my friend, we created a business around taking physical therapy to like business centers like the Research Triangle Park here in in Raleigh, where you could work with these large corporations who have an abundance of employees and they could come down, get the physical therapy treatment, go back up and continue their work day rather than having to make a separate time to go to the physical therapy in their busy lives and stuff. So was meant to be bringing convenience to these business centers for employees. And then when I graduated, I still wanted to do that. so what but this was also now COVID covid times. And everybody was working from home. That was the big development there. And so that business concept didn't really make sense to take a physical therapy clinic to a corporation, a business center where there's nobody there because they're all at home working. So I was also in love with golf and I'm like, well, hey, what if I just take this to the golf course? Golf is the only sport that anybody's talking about during COVID that anybody's playing. A lot of people are getting into the game because it's one of the few sports you can play while you know maintaining distance and the health safety side of things. I pivoted the idea to bringing a mobile clinic to the golf course. I'm sure we'll talk more, but how that transitioned into an app for the increase of accessibility and adding more digital features. But yeah, that's the background. 09:51.13 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Interesting. So Valerie, I'd like you to expand on that also, if you've got anything to add, but it sounds like, and I've seen some imagery. So you did start off physically with that with a mobile unit know that you can drive around to do before you went to a digital platform. so So that was your minimum viable product, I guess you could say, to work out, to see where the needs were and the literal physical pain points on people too, I guess, that relating to golf. 10:17.72 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yes. So as far as what Chris and most people don't realize, there's actually two CEOs for this company. Chris is the official CEO, but I'm the chief enabling officer. So when Chris comes to me with this idea, because over the years, he'd come to me with lots of ideas and lots of times where he needed a little bit investment and took put put the block up on things because I didn't think it was a great idea. So he'd find other means to figure it out. But this one resonated with me. before I went to medical school, i always saw myself doing sports medicine. And I saw this as an opportunity to get back to sports medicine type work, as well as in something that I was just starting to learn in golf and and becoming passionate about that. So I basically went along with the idea, thought it was great. And I had a lot of experience myself at that point in running Telehealth programs and business development for different types of programs in the medicine side of the world and thought, hey, when we started to evolve this, you know what does this look like if we can make this more accessible, the mobile component, but also the actual Telehealth component of is of it as well. 11:45.02 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Understood. Understood. And looking at your website, I saw that you do offer golf specialized care in half a dozen states from Florida all the way up to New York. Is that with your mobile unit? Is that what you do it with that piece of the business still with Golf Doctor? 11:57.22 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr That's actually the app component of it in the Telehealth component. So if somebody downloads the app and they upgrade, they'll be able to communicate with me. And that person can physically be in any of those seven states. That's based off of physical therapy licensing. So I have to be licensed in every state that the person is physically located in order to work with them. 12:13.50 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Right. Right. 12:18.14 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr And then the in-person stuff, that's just here in North Carolina. So we've got a couple locations where we can do the performance diagnostic and that's another entry point into the app and getting your exercises. 12:30.71 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Understood. Understood. Okay. Well, Chris, you as the chief executive officer, I'll let you do the do the elevator pitch for GolfDr of what you do and why you do it so our listeners can understand the problems and opportunities that you're addressing and solving. 12:48.50 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, for sure. So GolfDr, what we do is we build tools at the intersection of golf instruction and then physical rehabilitation. So most golf instructors, they understand the golf swing very well, but they don't know much about the body. That's not their background education. And so they don't know how to assess North maybe should they and then they definitely don't know how to treat those things it's just not their turf. Then physical therapists there's no training for the golf swing to build into our education so most physical therapists all they know is hey turn your hips faster that'll be more club head speed once you get down to the ball but actually understanding the biomechanics of the golf swing is very different. We're building the tools that work in between there to have more measurement in both the golf swing and the human anatomy and the biomechanics of what the human is doing. And then we're looking at that data and making recommendations for what that person should do. 13:46.81 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast All right. All right. Valerie, perhaps you can run me through using myself as your persona or avatar here as a 15 handicapper. I'm in pretty good shape, but I'm 61 years old. I but have been doing some golf performance fitness over the last six months. And there's been some videos that I've put out there on YouTube for better or for worse of my progress or lack thereof. Actually, I've had some progress. i'm pretty proud of that, actually. But why don't you run through, let's say I've just found GolfDr, I'm struggling with being overwhelmed with so many tools, so much information out there, I've seen on Instagram and TikTok hundreds and hundreds of exercises that I should do to improve range, mobility, agility, power, strength, and I do zero of them. I'm just overwhelmed. So why don't we do this? So walk me through, myself as someone that's just onboarded or found GolfDr. And now I'm very intrigued and I'm leaning in. So what would that customer or player journey for myself be once I get on your platform? 14:57.46 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr So ideally, we would like you to sign up for a 15-minute free consultation, and that will be with Dr. Chris, and he will go over your goals and understanding of what you what it is you're looking to achieve. So with Chris' wide frame of knowledge of golf and the physical therapy aspects, he will get a bit of key information that he needs to help determine sort of what sort of pathway that you need to be put on. The idea here is we're trying to personalize the experience. There's a lot of one-size-fits-all approaches out there, and we believe that one size fits one size. So we really need to understand the you know specifics of that golfer. We want to then move you into an assessment of how you move, what your golf swing looks like, identifying what your limitations or opportunities are, and your strengths and how we can improve that in a safe manner that will allow you to continue this game and have the longevity that you want in this game. 16:17.98 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Understood. And see now for the clinical assessment, I'm looking at your website again, your nice, clear four step approach for people like myself coming on the platform here that after the clinical assessment and you touched this a little bit, but you actually have this patent and receive your Per X. So you know you elaborate a little bit more what, what Per X is and how that can help me and how that's part of your differentiator with golf doctor. 16:43.10 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, so we call it perks and it's your personalized exercise prescription. 16:45.82 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast There we go. Thank you. 16:48.41 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr That's your custom workout plan. So after we've had that conversation, you've uploaded your health history, we've discussed your goals, what exactly you want to work on or what meaningful progress looks like for you. 16:51.69 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Okay. 17:01.43 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr I've then created your PERx, your custom plan dished it out to you. And then it's this ongoing, iterative process where. you're doing the workouts and then you're messaging me letting me know how it goes. And I'm making adjustments either daily or basically as frequently as you're using it and looking for guidance. So it's allowing for life to happen and saying, hey, I don't really have the time this week for you know that much exercise and so maybe i'm adjusting it just to be a little bit shorter more the low-hanging fruit that we want to keep working on when you have a limited schedule or maybe it's i got this new injury or you know back pain and so i'm adjusting the workout to pay attention or bear in mind that certain exercises that I had before might not be as tolerated currently. And then it's also like, hey, I'm getting better at this. And so like, perfect, you know, let's add more of these types of exercises to fill other gaps or to accentuate what we what is working. 18:02.07 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Got it. Got it. OK. I just wanted to reiterate and to clarify here. So right now for more personalized physiotherapy consultation, because you have to have registered physiotherapists in that particular state or what you're registered in, Dr. Chris, you've got the six states in the US but myself here, I'm up in Vancouver Canada. I'm assuming that I'm not then limited to the platform and the app with GolfDr. I can still access that. So anyone around the world, can can be one of your users, yes? 18:36.23 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr So we have a couple products for that scenario right now, that human interaction piece with the physical therapist like in the US still has to be within one of those states. But we do currently have GolfDr Daily, which is a golf fitness workout that rotates each day, kind of like a workout of the day if you're in CrossFit. And so that there's an access there or something there for everybody. And then coming shortly, we'll have our computer vision technology that allows you to assess yourself. So you may not be working with us from like a one-on-one provider to patient situation, but you could be assessing yourself and working on your own, you know whether you have a TPI personal trainer or you've got an in-person physical therapist, but we've got this tool that can allow you to measure your progress over time and see if whatever it is you are doing is actually working or not. 19:26.55 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Got it. Got it. 19:28.12 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr I was just going to jump in there that we do have the opportunity to scale across all the US states and then hopefully into Canada as well as we bring on a network of physical therapists that are trained in the the golf swing. So the goal is to be able to have outreach to everyone. And as we build in additional AI products, we can make that even more accessible. 19:58.55 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Nice, nice. Chris, you had mentioned TPI and for our listeners here, I didn't even know what TPI was until six months ago when I took the test. So that's Titleist Performance Institute and they have a 16 exercise baseline test where you get either a red, a yellow or a green and then a score. And I did the original one and thought I going to little better than I did. But then 12 weeks later after doing the training with the golf performance trainer I improved on that quite a bit. So I was very happy with that. So my question here is about partnerships. Is that something, are you working with Titleist Performance Institute right now or there are other partners that you see alignment with that will help you to scale and grow even quicker? 20:46.04 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, we're not working with them right now. We have met Dave and Greg at the PGA show a couple years back and kind of had a short conversation with them. um TPI is the gold standard for the golf fitness space as of today. And that screen that you did is a very humbling screen. It's very challenging. But it goes to show that like the low hanging fruit for a lot of golfers, especially as we age is actually working on your body. It's not actually technique improvement. It's getting a little bit more hip and internal rotation or shoulder external rotation, things like that. So that TPI is great if anybody hasn't used it already. And we're building tools that will also do some assessment stuff as well. But in terms of the partnerships side of things, we are looking to have clinical oversight with certain apps or other large golf companies. So for example if you ran like a golf instruction company like you've got a platform of coaches and drills and things like that having GolfDr be the clinical oversight for your members who get injured along the way. Your students are working on the golf swing there's things that happen that cause injuries and questions the coaches might have and we could tap into that and be this extra set of knowledge that the student gets to ask questions or maybe the coach is asking questions and that'll help the coach give better technique advice to that student. The student will have better understanding of what they can and can't do and then if they want to actually improve upon their body then they could come to us and get some exercises. 21:34.41 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah. Yeah. When golfers experience pain, they can disappear from those instructional programs or academies. And so we want to be that piece that keeps them in the game. So we're looking for, ideally for partners who want to keep golfers in the game, not just help them improve their game. And we that's where we think we have a unique value proposition to some of these groups out there. 21:58.23 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Got it. Got it. Valerie, I wanted to ask you this, now that you've been in market for three and a half years, so you're not at the minimum viable product. You're an early growth company now, so you've got enough iterations in now to know what's working and what's not as you as you build this. I know you're still you're still early in a lot of ways as a scrappy startup, but I'm curious to learn as far as your user base right now. What have you found as far as age and demographic, even between women and men and even age? I know even if people are elite-level golfers in their early twenties, it isn't just guys like me that are getting a little bit older that actually need to to maintain what they have and improve on that. So I'm curious to learn there. So what are you finding as far as the demographics of your users so far? 22:47.38 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, so that question's a little nuanced because we have ah pivoted conceptually with ah our product and service offerings. And some of that started with we were in an incubator program and then we've done the I-Core customer discovery. So we believe our demographic is that 35 to 65 and up demographic. When we do customer discovery, we find the key things that people are interested in with golf is longevity and community. So they want to be able to play the sport so that they can go out there with their friends or family and have that connectedness that they're looking for. But then there's also the longevity side. They see this as a sport that is something that they can do for fitness or for health, for their wellness, well-being, well into their 60s, 70s, 80s, some people in their nineties. We appeal to that group of people who recognize the importance of their health and wellness. Not necessarily at this point to the 20-year-old who's just graduated from college and trying to find a good paying job, and isn't as focused on their game, their health, their fitness. So right now, because we have sort of jumped from the mobile clinic, the in-person clinic, which is a different demographic, it is an older demographic, the app allows us to broaden the age groups and demographic of our our cost potential customers. We don't have the reps under our belt in any particular segment at this point because we have had multiple products that we've tried in demo days, got feedback, moved forward with the next idea, and now we're at the beginnings of having a MVP level three that we can actually start to to execute on and deliver. 24:15.58 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Yes, yes. Chris, just to elaborate a little more on what Valerie just mentioned there, are you finding the conversations that you're having, whether in person or even just through onboarding, that women and men have different goals and success criteria and what they're looking for? 24:35.64 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr I think so. I would say I haven't had too much discussion with a lot of ladies in the game that that they're looking to improve, but my understanding is it's a lot more of just not being embarrassed out on the course. It's such a hard game with such a steep learning curve. And so many of us are newer to the game, too. We didn't grow up playing it that um that that the objective number one is don't do something that's stupid or don't hit it out of bounds. And so I think that crowd tends to go more with the golf instructors because generally speaking are more beginner golfers.cBut what I would love to tap into that is that beginner golfers have a lot of pain and injuries. Like when you're not using correct form and you're either topping it or jumping it every single time, times 120 strokes around, that's painful. 25:30.02 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Oh, yes. 25:30.51 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr The pros are pureing it 60 to 75 times around. It's a completely different set of strains on your body compared to a beginner golfer throwing all the force they have into the ground. So there's a bit of education too, and in getting people to understand the need for what we're doing and that balance between instruction and the physical rehab or the body side of things. And then from the male perspective, it tends to be about more distance, getting more yards. The classic, I want to hit it 10 yards further. But with the population we're finding to be our target is not just I want to get more yards, but a lot of them are I want to maintain what I've got. I'm getting older. I like the place I'm at. I just don't want it to get worse. 26:26.14 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah. And I think from the women's perspective, I can bring a little insight to that as well. Obviously, traditionally golf has been overly represented by men and for women, this is a great opportunity to improve their wellness through this game. The differences for women, whether they've just been through a pregnancy or they're going through menopause, they're developing arthritis, changes in strength, things that occur with that change, balance, those types of things. That's why i'm particular particularly passionate about this is because I recognize a lot of these things in myself that I know I've had to modify and ask Chris for hey, how should I address this with my arthritis and my grip. So the personalized approach makes this ideal for women in golf because, like Chris says, they don't want to embarrass themselves, but also there's some competitiveness to women as well, but they don't want to feel defeated every time they go out there because some other limitation that is beyond just the mobility issues that's holding them back. 26:55.51 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Got it, got it. wanted to ask you this. The fourth stage or component of your platform with GolfDr, you talk about ongoing care in the app. I know you touched on that earlier, but I'd like you expand on that a little bit. I'm curious to learn what you're building out. Is this something you're doing as very high touch to personalize this? Or have you starting to integrate a little bit of AI into this so that the learning over time as I improve, or let's say a certain injury that I have, that with one of my the left side where I had some pain and some tightness and a bit of sciatica and I managed to work that out is these things improve. You talked about the low hanging fruit earlier, Chris, and once maybe that's already picked. So my question here is how over time do you with GolfDr put that ongoing care in place, both with the technology and also with your personal service? 27:45.14 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, with the technology, where the intention is to scale that you would check your weight every day. If you do that, it's intended to be this frequent scan so that you can track progress over time and then assess whether or not what you're doing outside of the app is actually making a difference and then returning that feedback back to us so that we can make adjustments. Or you're just getting that perspective as the user like hey maybe I'm not doing enough of this stuff because I'm not seeing i'm seeing this plateau, i'm not seeing the progress or you challenge it. Maybe this isn't the right plan and I need it to be a little bit harder or maybe this is too painful and I need this particular exercise swapped out so they're they're meant to be synergistic with the technology. Our goal as of now is not to replace the human aspect of it in any way it's meant to be assistive because traditionally a lot of the things that we'll do in the app would be measured by a physical therapist just like watching you do the movement and then marking something down there's a lot of human error that can be involved in that process of course and then there's no document there's no real democratization of that data either. The patients rarely get their outcomes, their reports, their like, whatever the physical therapist's desk becomes this secret that they never really get to find out. But the next time they show up physical therapy, they're told they're better. And it's like, well, am I? I don't know. A lot of our tools are intended to remove that human error aspect and bring that into the person's hands so that they can measure themselves, they can see their own data, they can do what they want with that data, whether it's giving me the feedback on a plan and or me seeing that data and then customizing their plan or taking that data elsewhere as part of their just their health portfolio that they might take to the doctor and say hey this is how consistent i've been with exercising but maybe they're using that for a different reason like weight loss The conversation evolves but point being people should have their data and we should be measuring it properly and we want to use ai and development technology to make these measurements more accurate and precise. 28:01.80 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast One of the things that I struggle with, even though I'm fairly self-motivated in a lot of areas, is to stay on course and stick to the plan. And I find golf being an individual sport. I grew up playing like you hockey. I played a lot of team sports and love that. So I always had that energy of others around me. Even with me, I do the hot yoga thing, but I'm in a class with 30 other people sweating, wondering what the heck we're doing in here, but at least we're all being crazy together and you do that. So I'm curious to learn, have you built in any rewards and delighters or ways to keep people motivated with not overly micromanaging them? I know we talked off camera earlier that i but my Spanish streak, even though I'm not fluent at all, but with Duolingo of over 2000 days now and I keep going. So I get these little rewards and delighters. So I make sure I do my 15 minute Spanish lesson for better or for worse. So I'm curious to learn what you're putting in place here to motivate people to keep them going if they happen to drop off without being overbearing and then losing them that way. So what what's the balance and what are you doing there? I don't know, Valerie, if you want to jump in on that one or leave it to you, Chris. 28:20.76 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Well, I think Chris probably gives this one better, but I think gamification is key because physical therapy is a little daunting for people. I think when people think of physical therapy, they're thinking of tough times in their life. They were either injured or they're having surgery or they weren't able to do the thing that they wanted to do. And so we want to take that out of it. We want to make it fun. We want to give people the inspiration they need. And a big part of that is showing them their data in fun ways with the dashboard and allowing them to see their progress. Or maybe they didn't you know they're not they're having a rough spot and they can see that now. And it makes sense why we're doing these things and why we're adjusting these things. I think Chris has additional questions. 28:40.90 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, I'll add on to that. You're touching on a challenge that physical therapy has in general, if we zoom out and think, exercise without a real goal or how you tie it to a result that you want is just a torture thing. It's just struggling and effort and taking time away from other things you're doing in the day. And so a lot of people prioritize everything else above exercise. And so that is an extremely big challenge from a business standpoint to overcome. But that's part of why we want to give the results to the person, because if they can see that their results are making progress, then that will be a positive feedback loop that will continue to motivate them to do more within the app. And then, we do want to bridge into a lot of gamification. You know, you can keep your streak alive we can give you some points maybe you can redeem those points at Dick's for the goods gift cards or pga super superstore gift cards. We'll tap into that stuff after we sort out some of the core value of what we're building but it's extremely important because you have to enjoy what you're doing and it's as simple as show me why this is worth my effort and I'll do it. 29:11.96 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Yeah, yeah. 29:32.35 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr And if we can build a tool that does that for somebody, then they'll be pretty excited to use it. 29:38.52 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Yeah, and exercise just for the sake of doing exercise, it can be ah a futile endeavour, kind of like Sisyphus, rolling that that rock up the ah up the hill and have it go back down the other side and then back up again and just never ending with that, which by the way, in over 300 episodes in nine years, I've been trying to work a Greek mythology reference into there, and now I can finally tick that box on ModGolf. 29:58.14 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr There we go. 29:58.58 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast You gave me Gave me that opportunity. So let's score it on that one. 30:02.62 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr ah Love it. 30:03.78 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast So that people think that I'm trying to be a snobby smarty pants. I think that's the only Greek mythology reference I actually know. So i'm there you go. I'm glad I worked that one in there. 30:15.62 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Glad to be of service. 30:23.93 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast All right. One thing I want to ask you, and this is it we of a personal question too, but also for everyone out there, all golfers. And that is the M word mobility. And I find with myself, my mobility's increased a little bit, but even though I've been active and an athlete all my life, I didn't even know what mobility restrictions I had in the golf swing. So there was a bit of ignorance there and then knowing a path forward. So, Dr. Chris, why don't I put this one to you? Can you talk about mobility in golf, what people are seeing, what they're not seeing and what they need and how you assess that? 31:00.73 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, this is a great question. And this is really the value of working with a physical therapist who out understands the golf swing biomechanics, because otherwise we'll get generic answers. But especially as we get older, mobility becomes more and more important. We get tighter and things stop you know moving quite as freely. There's a couple of key areas in the golf swing that tend to stand out for most people in terms of limitations that are actually affecting the golf swing. so those are hip intern this is my gift to you guys or anybody listening, if you were to work on four things, it would be these body areas. 31:33.46 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr They would be hip internal rotation, your shoulder external rotation, your like torso rotation, and then neck rotation. You probably heard that all of those were rotations and golf is rotational sport. But we do so much in our lives that are linear or very front to back, so we lose mobility in our ability to rotate. An example that actually affects the golf swing, like somebody could come to me and if I've assessed that they are lacking shoulder extra rotation, I'll explain what that is. That's the ability for your arm to rotate backwards. Why it's important is at the top of backswing, you're trying to get in this perfect kind of Tiger Woods-esque textbook position where your trail arm is vertical in the backswing. And if you don't have external rotation of your shoulder in that position, your hand path is already forward. And that's going to be the golfer that's fighting the steep angles and coming over the top, the out to in type swing. And it's ah it's a very difficult thing to shallow the golf club when you don't have shoulder external rotation of your trail side. So for a right-handed golfer, that would be your right shoulder. And then the downswing is now already started too forward, too quickly. Your shoulder wants to rotate out of that, so your torso wants to turn out of that position because it even hurts to be maxing out your range of motion and it's still not being enough. And then you're coming over the top and you're going to have a big slice or pull hook or, if you're lucky, a straight pull that you learn to play. So that's an example of how shoulder mobility specifically would affect the golf swing. And when we assess shoulder extra rotation and find there's limitation there, that's some of the things that we're looking for. And then the conversation is, are we working on or around this limitation? So if the golfer is ambitious, they want to actually do the work and they want to improve that shoulder external rotation. Then yeah, we're getting a bunch of stretches involved, a consistency to actually improve that motion such that it's actually meaningful and impactful for the golf swing. It's a golfer who's little bit older and has a total reverse total shoulder replacement. So a major surgery on that joint, that shoulder is not going to rotate up to 90 degrees, which is kind of what we need. So it's just kind of impossible. So a golf instructor would have a really tough time working with that person because they can't do physically can't do what the textbook golf swing should look like. So that's now a conversation of where can we compensate elsewhere so that we can get the best performance, the least amount of pain, the most fun golf that we can play. 32:16.77 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast It's interesting you mentioned all that because when I was getting my clinical assessment using the Titleist Performance Institute testing and that shoulder rotation, that one, I really struggled with that. And for years, I was getting very frustrated because as an athlete, i played a lot of baseball and hand-eye coordination. I knew where the club had to be and what I had to do. So my golf IQ was quite high, but I couldn't get my body to do what it needed to do. And for years I was beating myself up for not being able to do that. And then realizing after the assessment that I have certain limitations, as my fitness trainer said, we've got to clean that up. Which was code for, yeah, that's not good. So realizing, even being a little kinder to myself of realizing, now I know what I need to work on. But even there, it was a lot of effort for me to do that. What I love with what you have with the GolfDr clinical assessment, that you're going to make it a lot easier for people to get on board for that, where I had to really make an effort that for the majority of people, you're not going to do that. So you've got this onboarding and catchment that's much easier and frictionless for people. So again, I encourage people to ah to contact you and\ go for that, to start the care and get that clinical assessment with you. All right, so to finish up here, I still want this piece of the puzzle to be cleared up a little bit. So you had the mobile clinic and you were taking that to golf courses and to events. And that seemed to be quite successful as your proof of concept. But rather than expand that solely, you now have the GolfDr app. You decided to go digital. So I'm curious to know that inflection point of where you saw that opportunity, to why you decided then to go digital rather than just sticking with the and expanding your fleet of mobile clinics. 32:55.72 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yes, so we realized early on through our demo days with the mobile clinic and some early negotiations with a large golf course um that not everybody quite understood this concept of why physical therapy was important in a golfer's journey. And where the golf instructors and the fitness instructors and all of those individuals that are in golf are quite aligned with that understanding, general managers and the attorneys that were more on the monetization side. How are they going to monetize this at their golf course? They didn't quite see the vault value prop of how if you keep a a golfer coming back because they're healthy and not in pain and they're going to keep coming keep coming back to to make those tee times. So we realized that we had a bit of a branding issue and a conceptual issue that we needed to overcome first. And so that's when we pivoted to a digital approach. And the idea here is to try to scale the digital approach so that we can create a base understanding of the importance of wellness and movement um in the longevity of the game for the golfers. And interestingly, that then also allows us to pivot back to scaling that mobile clinic model and allowing the mobile clinic for the in-person, high-touch, manual therapy type programs. Physical therapy to occur at golf courses where it's convenient, easy. The golf course is a place that everybody loves to be. And if they're feeling pain or they're injured, they still want to come to the course and see their buddies and sit and have a drink at the 19th hole. But that we can go back to that or come full circle back to that original model. 34:36.07 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, and just to jump in on that if I can, it's really a lesson in entrepreneurship is that sometimes the action that you take, you'll have a different intention or purpose for doing it. 34:46.04 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Love that. 34:59.50 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr It doesn't become known until much later in the future. So we actually do have our mobile clinic at Old Liberty Golf Club here in North Carolina right now. And it's another, so it took us a few years to figure out that path of penetrating the golf course politics and demonstrating that importance. It probably took a bit of the golf industry evolving and understand the importance of the health side of things to where we are now able to bring these concepts to a course and they're a lot more open-minded to it. 35:36.44 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Love this. Love this. Now we have talked about this, that we are going to jump over to the ModGolf YouTube channel. We're going to shoot a video that we're going to walk through a demo, but we're not going to do that right now because you've mentioned to me that you're very excited that the next iteration, next release is going to be in a few weeks time. So we're going to hold off on that. So all of our listeners, we will include the link to that video later. That will happen a couple weeks down the line. And I will then put that out in our newsletter and everywhere else that we connect with you, our ModGolf listeners. So you'll be able to see that video, but we're not going to do that quite yet. But to finish up here, both of you, Dr. Valerie and Dr. Chris, why don't you let us know if there's people out there now who want to learn more about the GolfDr app, the platform here. Perhaps I want to even get on board right now and check it out. Where should they go? And also the other piece too, because I know that you're also reaching out to more physiotherapists all over North America, especially in the US, because unless Chris, you have a a cloning machine, you're not able to replicate yourself 50 times. So I believe you had mentioned in another conversation that you are looking to partner and bring other people on board. So yeah, tell us about what you're looking for and how people can get in touch with you and get on the platform. 37:00.92 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, for sure. We're looking for physical therapists who are passionate about golf. They've you know done some training in golf and they really want to make it their lifestyle. That's the kind of physical therapist that we want to bring onto our platform. But for anybody who's interested in working with us, you can just go to our website, which is golfdr.app. It's G-O-L-F-D-R.app. And you'll find our apps on there. If you're local to us, we can schedule an in-person performance diagnostic and get you assessed and get you on your way. 37:30.84 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast Very nice, very nice. And as I always do in the show notes for this episode, I will include all those links that Dr. Chris had just mentioned there to make it nice and easy for you to connect with Golf Doctor, with Dr. Valerie DeMaio, and also Dr. Chris Adamson. So I want to say thank you very much for joining me today on the ModGolf podcast. Oh, I do have one more question. This is the one that I remembered here. And that is expanding on that longevity piece. I know a little bit about the statistics. This is your world, so I know you know them probably even more than I do. But in Canada here, golf is, by participation, the most popular sport. And I'm sure in the United States, probably a factor of 10 because of the population is probably the same. And that reason is you can play from five years old until you're no longer with us up until 100 years old, if not beyond that, unlike any other sport. So you talk about that a little bit, just as far as that longevity piece that you mentioned earlier and and that opportunity that you see that you're hearing from people that they want to play golf in an engaging, meaningful, social way that you're helping to make happen. Because this is such an opportunity I can see also business-wise for you, the fact that it isn't like your potential user base is tapping out, let's say basketball, something at it at like 30, 35, or even 40 years old. So you've got this great opportunity here. 39:05.37 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, from a lifetime value, like you're talking, we're not going to lose our customer due to aging out of the sport necessarily. This is a sport across the lifespan, which also touches on why it's more challenging to answer the question of like, who's your target demographic? Because it is such a lifespan sport. Each age range wants something a bit different out of out of our app. So the juniors, the younger people, they're trying to play college or pro, whatever. They want more performance-focused stuff. And they've got different – their body works well. They've got a young body. It's flexible. It's strong, all those things. And then as we get older, our body gets a little tighter. it gets weaker. Things don't work as well. And our goals change too. We're no longer trying to become a professional. We just want to be able to hang out with our buddies every once a week, every week without hurting too much to get through a full round without embarrassing ourselves so there's a lot of different intentions or goals in the people that want to work with us and it actually makes it challenging to create very specific products or features because because so many people want so many different things but that's the beauty of this game is that there's so many people that play it and when you get hooked you don't really stop playing it so you're always interested throughout your whole life. 40:22.01 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, I don't know that we have statistics for how many people drop out of the game in those later years because of pain or perceived limitations. If we can help people move better and hurt less, that they'll enjoy playing more and be able to stay out there longer. I personally know of a good friend of mine. I lived in New Zealand years ago, and he's 86. And golf was his life. He started having sciatica and it derailed him. And he hasn't played golf in a couple of years now. I tried to give him some pointers from afar to you know keep him going out there. But I have to believe that there's a lot of people out there like that. We do know statistically that over 40% of people every year that play golf have some sort of pain or injury that stops them from playing golf, even for a short period of time. And so there is this is something that is meaningful, to everybody and that golfs and wants to continue their golf journey. 41:38.49 Colin Weston - host of The ModGolf Podcast I think we have our mic drop moment right there. Play longer and hurt less. Who knows? Maybe that's the episode title right there. Maybe you just wrote it for me there, Valerie. I think could we could be onto to something there. So with that, Dr. Valerie De Maio and Dr. Chris Adamson, mother, son, co-founding tandem here of GolfDr. I want to thank both of you for joining me on the ModGolf podcast and sharing your entrepreneurial journey. And I have feeling you're just getting started here. It's exciting. And probably have to loop back in another year or so to see where the update is. So with that, hey, I want to thank you again for joining me today on ModGolf. 42:47.89 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr Yeah, thank you, Colin. 42:48.15 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr Thank you, Colin, for this opportunity. 42:49.07 Dr. Chris Adamson - Co-Founder of GolfDr It's been great. 42:50.03 Dr. Valerie De Maio - Co-Founder of GolfDr We appreciate it. Let's keep people golfing for as long as they can.