Pro Profile: "The Deminsky Method"

I had the opportunity to talk to one of the most popular golf instructors on social media, Derek Deminsky. The Director of Golf at Golf Better Tucson, Derek has a strong Instagram following with over 80,000 followers and counting. With social media networking so important in today’s era, we spoke to Derek about his beginnings as a young golfer, how he built his clientele, and how he has turned his passion for golf into his career.

Can you give a little background about your golf career?

Sure, I made the Elk River (Minnesota) High School varsity golf team as a freshman and we would win every tournament. I was the sixth guy out of six players, so they didn't really use my score much to start, but being around the other good players helped me improve immensely.

After high school, I went to college for a couple of years in Iowa to get my business degree, and it just wasn’t for me. Two days before my junior year, I decided to drop out and go to a golf school in Phoenix, Arizona. My thoughts were, “I don't really care right now about money. I've got to find something that I could just do the rest of my life.” It was that move that made me realize the golf teaching business was my passion. I've been in the golf business for 11 years and teaching full-time for the last six years

When you first started teaching, how did you find clients?

I started working for the head PGA Pro back in Minnesota. He was a great teacher, he taught me since I was like in seventh or eighth grade, he charged me for one lesson then said, "I'm never charging you again, I'll just teach you for free.” I was like, are you kidding me? He's been my mentor since. I started with members of the club and, to be honest, when I started teaching I was terrible. I felt like I had some great ideas but lacked the ability to communicate them.

My advice for anyone looking to teach is to accept that you’re going to start as a bad teacher. The thing that helped me in the beginning was my ability to relate to my students and engage them. We would have a great time. They wanted to keep booking with me. I was honest with my abilities with them. "I don't really know how to get you better. I can do my best," I would say. Regardless, we would have a blast hanging out.

The first golf instruction book I ever read was Dave Pelz’s Short Game Bible when I was in eighth grade. As I read it, I started getting really interested in that area of the game. To this day people seem to always get better when I teach them the short game basics. So I always had that to fall back on if I couldn’t think of anything else that could help. After teaching thousands and thousands of lessons, you see what works, what doesn't work, and you continue to learn and find ways to improve people quicker. I still feel like I'm learning to this day. I get so many referrals that I really don't have to promote; at this point I’m overbooked on lessons. I just promote my website stuff. But now that I've got some online learning material, that's where a lot of people across the US and worldwide can get some of the information I teach.

When did you start using Instagram for Golf?

People always ask me, "How did you do this?" And I tell them to look at my first post from three years ago and it's just terrible. It's me teaching my Friday classes and it was just so long ago. But I feel like I got in on an earlier level. Now people are starting to jump into it a little bit more. It seems like Instagram has overtaken Facebook, at least for the younger generation. But the thing for me is I love this game so much.

I love teaching so much that even if it wasn't my business I would do it. It's so easy for me to find these things to post. People always ask "How do you find time to do it?” It's like, I'm watching golfers. I mean, I'm watching golf in the background right now. I'm always seeing stuff so it’s easy for me to put up content because I'm always thinking about this crazy game. It’s very addicting as you know.

Do you have any sense as to how or why your Instagram blew up? How did you get so many followers?

Yeah, I would say early on I would just post some golf stuff. I teach all areas of the game, but a lot of people were interested in what I thought of the short game because that's where I spent most of my time in research. My short game stuff gets so much attention on Instagram that even my online membership subscribers go just for the short game aspect because I've developed this style that I teach that people around the club started to call the "Deminsky method". So, I just put out a video about a month and a half ago on the way I thought about the short game, creating a body structure to move a club. A lot of people have really liked that. That’s really helped out.

It seems like it really snowballed? I mean 80,000 followers is, a lot.

It's interesting because I'm good friends with George Gankas and we have a similar style. He's an outstanding swing teacher and I think I followed him when he had a couple thousand followers and he's teaching this thing with leg work and I'm like, "This guy, what is he doing? " As he’s explaining all this stuff, I'm like, “this guy doesn't know anything." As I delved into it more I thought, “This is the best teaching I've ever seen on the golf swing." And it talks about body rotation and all that stuff. He kind of solved a few questions that I've always had that no one could answer.

I feel like myself and him are fairly similar. I'm not even close to how he is as far as being laid back in Gucci sandals. A big part of it is being a little bit more down to earth. You see a lot of these golf pros, they are so proper and that can get boring. I'd go to someone for a lesson and I might get really good at golf, but have an incredibly boring time. Most people don’t want that. So I think posting a lot of stories and having my juniors do a lot of fun stuff is key. Golf can be really fun and you can really enjoy it while getting better.

Like incorporating your personality?

Just being likeable goes a long way. There's a lot of instructors I know that are so smart, but I don't know if I'd ever get a lesson from them because they're so abrasive. I don’t think I would have a great time. I think that's really helped. Posting a scenario and asking what club would they hit allows me to get interactive with the audience and it gets them to comment. Then their friends can see that through Instagram and then they can join in. Having interaction on your pages is a great thing because people see it and then they can follow along.

Have you had a lot of success with online lessons?

Over this past year I have gotten a lot of students that fly in from around the US, especially students with chipping yips. There's different styles, but to this day I haven't found one person that has had the yips that we've not been able to fix. So they've seen a lot of success with that. Also, a lot of people are jumping onto the membership sites. I've got people in countries from all over that can touch base with me. A lot of the people locally see some of my social media stuff, but I still do a ton of lessons around Tucson. A lot of the Instagram stuff seems to really get people outside of Tucson that either fly in or take part of the membership site and/or do online lessons. It's really helping. It really helps boost business, almost too much. But in a good way.

How do the online lessons work? Do I take a video of my swing, send it to you and then you break it down and give me instruction?

A prospective student would contact me to set it up in one area of the swing or short game. For example, "I'm struggling with this style of pitch shot. I do this." They give me the background, they send me videos, I analyze them and then I'll send them a response video and explain what's going on, what I see, then detail how we're going to improve that. I send that back to them, they have time to work on it. Right now, I'm doing follow-up videos, although I probably won't do that as it’s getting pretty busy. But, I'll do a follow-up video where they say, "Okay, here, how is this looking?" And then, I can say, "Yep, that's exactly what we want but you should still continue to do x, y, z.” That way they have a plan.

How do you utilize video?

I'm really big on retention. Every lesson I ever teach I'll document it so that when you are done with the lesson, you’ll know the keys, what we worked on and what you were feeling. Otherwise, you'll have a great lesson but when you sit in your car you’ll say, "What did I even do? All I know is I was hitting it great.” But if you can't remember what you did, it defeats the purpose. A lot of members will come around the club and they'll say, "Man, I played great today." And I'll say, “Why do you think you played great?" They’ll reply, "Oh, I don't know." And I'll say, "Well, you probably won't play great the next time because you don't even know what you were doing!"

They might get mad, but inevitably they’ll approach me and say, "Hey man, I played terrible." And I'll say, "That's why when something's going well we need to know why.” I really like videos when people are doing things well because usually when someone's swinging well it's their own swing at its peak and I want them to know what that looks like. If they take the club way outside and drop it inside and that's how they've played their best, they should know that. If they are off an instructor might say, "Hey, we've got to fix this huge move." And then they can say "No, that's how I played my best."

It's funny, I took a lesson two years ago and the pro took a swing video. I've been able to duplicate that swing ever since. It's a lot harder than just watching the video and replicating the swing.

And that's what people don’t know at first. I'm always asking, "What are you trying to feel here?" Because feels come and go and that's why you see top players play well for three to four weeks and they fall out of form and then they get it back. So, you're always kind of finding and re-finding form. But if you know what the your skeleton of your game looks like, you've got a general sense of how it looked at your best. You’re probably not that far off, but we don't have to retool the whole swing.

Where do you want your business to go in the next five years?

We've redone the website as we're getting a lot of members to sign up and re-sign up, and they're bringing their friends and they're referring people as the Deminsky Method videos are getting popular. I want to keep growing the online site, but I really do love one-on-one lessons the best. I'll still probably always teach full-time as well, but continue to grow the online portion to where if there's people struggling with the short game, or just their game in general, I've got a website that they can utilize to really find answers that can help them.

It sounds like you're into the mental side of golf. Is that a big part of what you teach?

Yes. I love to teach, but I'm a player. I love to play. The reason I developed the Deminski method videos is I was tired of not always chipping and putting consistently. I would chip and putt so great one day and the next day I'm like, "Well, how can I definitively find a way for just myself to get better? "And then because I spent so much time researching, tinkering and experimenting, I feel like I've got all these ways that I can help people. I still play tournaments. I'll play all the section events down here. Having that mental game has always been a strong suit of my game. Many players don't know how to manage the course. Things don't always go well on the golf course. Being able to turn that around is huge. As far as putting your best score out there, the mental side is absolutely a huge part of it.

As far as most of the pros I know, I don't really see any of them doing the stuff you're doing. How do you engage people and build a career in a “non-country club” way?

The golf business has gotten so saturated. Everyone thinks if they just hang around long enough they’ll get this job. They won’t. A lot of people are in the golf business for a job; it's not my job, it's my passion. Having a heavy passion for it really helps drive me day to day. You can just tell who’s burned out when they're teaching a lesson. You can just tell they don't have that passion, they don’t have that drive. They don't engage. I feel like I pour my heart and soul into every lesson. If I'm not feeling great, I couldn't just sit in a cart and say, “Try doing this…” I can't do that . I have to be engaged in the process. "No, no, we have to do this. Let’s feel this,” I’ll say while really encouraging them along the way. I think that's what helped me early on when I didn't have a lot of great ways to help people. I was like, "Hey, I'm here for you. We're going to do this, we're going to have a great time." Being personable and energetic are traits that can help you go far in this industry.

I never think about having fun during a lesson. It's more about like, “am I going to improve?” That's all I care about. But you're right. That's an interesting point.

Some people are so insecure about their game. They hit a bad shot, they'll say " Sorry, I never do that." And I’ll reply, "Here's the thing: I know you do that all the time.” And they laugh. It’s important to get them comfortable because people don't always like to learn. They learn better with someone that they feel safe around. Golf is kind of an embarrassing game. It's more embarrassing than the success for a lot of people. They want someone there that they can feel comfortable with. Some people are all business. "Hey, I don't care what you say to me, get me better now." But a lot of people want to learn in a fun environment. That’s what I try to provide.

Check out Derek's website: www.golfbettertucson.com