#90 - 24/7 Golf: Eric Thielsen and Igor Vainshtein (Founder)

We made it to Episode 90 of the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast.  In this week's episode, I interview my good friends Eric Thielsen and  Igor Vainshtein the founder of 24/7 Golf. 

Based in Melbourne, Australia, 24/7 Golf has been selling simulators since 2011. They have also run their own indoor golf centers around Australia and have helped launch centers around the world, from France to Fiji.

They ship globally and are always happy to refer you to a customer near you to. So you can find out first-hand how much they love the golf simulator, in their home or office.

From 24-hour virtual golf centers to being a world distributor, they pride ourselves on providing a seamless customer service experience and removing all the hassles in acquiring golf simulator components outside of your country.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Today we play golf.

Speaker 2 0:02

Let me show you how we do it in the pros.

Speaker 3 0:05

Yeah . Welcome to Behind the Golf Brand podcast. I never missed with the seven nine , a conversation with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs behind the biggest names in golf. My

Speaker 4 0:16

Friends were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf course, I lived on the driving

Speaker 3 0:19

Range from Pro Talk . You should learn something from each and every single round. You play to fun from on and off the green.

Speaker 5 0:25

Why would you play golf? You don't play it for money.

Speaker 3 0:27

Just

Speaker 6 0:28

Let me put the ball

Speaker 3 0:29

In a hole. This is behind the Golf Brand podcast with Paul Liberatory to

Speaker 6 0:34

What's up guys? Paul from Golfer's Authority. Welcome to Do Behind the Golf Brand podcast. This week I am on episode 90. I cannot believe that we're actually on episode 90, which is crazy. Um, I had my good friends ego and Eric from 24 7 Golf , um, talking about Sims and about what they do. It's actually really cool because they're new to the America and it's cool. The , it's really cool. I have really good conversations Eric last week and I kind of wanna expand on that because it's nice to see new players in the market, especially with what they know and how they can help you guys. So without further, do welcome to the show.

Speaker 7 1:09

Thank you, Paul . Thank you . Good to be here.

Speaker 8 1:11

Thanks Paul. Appreciate it.

Speaker 6 1:14

All right . So 24 7. Golf is not from the United States originally, correct?

Speaker 7 1:18

Correct. Now I started in Melbourne, Australia. Okay . What year , years

Speaker 6 1:21

Ago. How many ?

Speaker 7 1:23

Uh , about six years ago actually.

Speaker 6 1:24

Really? Yeah. Let's just rewind everything. Let's start this game . Eric, are you a golf pro?

Speaker 8 1:30

I am. I'm a PJ Professional. Yes.

Speaker 6 1:34

Igor , are you a golf

Speaker 7 1:34

Pro? Absolutely not

Speaker 6 1:37

Mean either . <laugh> . Okay. Let's just get that out of the way. Yeah . So let's just kind of Cool. Sorry . So you started Yor started 24 7 golf in Melbourne. What year is that? 2000 and

Speaker 7 1:48

About 20 15, 20 16, something like that. I , I forget time flies, you

Speaker 6 1:52

Know? Was that your background before?

Speaker 7 1:54

No, and I'm , I'm actually like it gig . Um, and uh , yeah, I've spent my career, you know, it consulting projects like big enterprise staff . Just fell in love with golf about 12 years ago and kind of got me and actually before 24 7 golf. The funny story is , uh, so one of my best friends was a cool dude. He is like a ex professional poker player and, and , and he's have a golfer and he , uh, he and I bought a company in Melbourne called Golf Tech , which is completely unrelated to the golf tech here in the us . We had that for a little while. That's how I got into Golf Sims. And then originally 24 7 golf was style . Cause I , I sort of saw the craze with the, you know, the , those gyms that would have no staff that , like , you have like a swipe card and you go in and so I opened that, but for golf. So you , you get a membership, you go in practice as much as you want. Um , and hence the name 24 7 Golf. That's how it started. And then it kind of pivoted into an eCommerce business and yeah. You know , fast forward , you know, a few years Australia, us , uh, here in , I'm here in Dallas. Oh,

Speaker 6 3:00

We're not gonna be fast forwarding to ,

Speaker 7 3:01

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry . We

Speaker 6 3:03

We're time machining a little bit. Okay. So you grew up in Australia, obviously cuz of the accent . You tell that Yes , I would do my Australian accent, but really bad. Um, I do only do it to English people to them off <laugh> . Um, but that is another story. So you grew up in Melbourne and did you play golf growing up? Like

Speaker 7 3:24

I , I did not. No. I played a little bit in college. Um, but no, I'm like a soccer guy. I was actually born in Eastern Europe.

Speaker 6 3:31

You really? Where

Speaker 7 3:32

So little place. Not many people probably know. It's called Moldova , It's kind of next to, So Ukraine. My mom's from Ukraine and I'm like in a little tiny little country next to Ukraine .

Speaker 6 3:41

It's like right next door. Right? It's like teeny tiny, right?

Speaker 7 3:43

Yeah, yeah. Tiny place. So I came to Australia when I was

Speaker 6 3:46

So then you immigrated then to Australia when you were a kid or what?

Speaker 7 3:49

Yeah, when I was about almost 11. What

Speaker 6 3:51

Made you immigrate to Australia?

Speaker 7 3:53

Well , you know, former ussr not the most fun place to be.

Speaker 6 3:57

Oh, so this is like when like the Soviet Union collapsed and all that? Yeah , like

Speaker 7 4:00

91 just as it all.

Speaker 6 4:02

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's like totally when it collapsed. Right? So you guys moved to Australia, but like, why'd you guys pick Australia? Like, was it like went on America?

Speaker 7 4:10

Uh , cuz Australia has kangaroo

Speaker 6 4:12

<laugh> . It's not like , well duh

Speaker 7 4:15

<laugh> , you

Speaker 6 4:15

Saw frigging rock , Crocodile Dundee and your mom was like, Yo , we're going there.

Speaker 7 4:19

That's it. That's it. Um, we just had like a distant relative there and , and it was, That's cool. You know, we , everyone thinks Australia's paradise and it kind of is, you know, It's a cool place

Speaker 6 4:28

On the edges. Yeah.

Speaker 7 4:30

Far away from everywhere.

Speaker 6 4:32

<laugh> . So I used to work for a really big corporation and like I had a rep . I represent a lot of people in Australia, Right. As far as corporation. And like I talked to , Where were they at though ? They weren't in , were they in Melbourne? They were in Melbourne. And he's like, Look dude, he's like, people think Australia looks like, it's like everything's cool on the coast, but in the middle it's just like super hot and like nobody goes there. And I was like, Really? He's like, Yeah, he is like, and it's like a long flight too, when you wanna go from across the country. And I was like, really? Cause he don't think like that when you're, I don't know where You're an American,

Speaker 8 5:01

Isn't it? Like 80% of the uh , population lives within I think 30 miles of the coast.

Speaker 7 5:06

Some like that. Yeah.

Speaker 6 5:07

Have you done a walkabout, like talk about <inaudible> as to as that question. I , I wanna go Australia like so bad. I think it'd be cool as hell to live there. I don't know . I have a really good friend of mine who lives in Australia. You guys check out his channel too? It's uh , his name is , uh, well his channel's called Golf Rules and questions. Oh . And like, essentially what he , have you seen him on on Instagram? He's really big on

Speaker 7 5:29

Instagram. I know Dave. He's , I I've worked with him in the past. He's Yeah, I know . Yeah.

Speaker 6 5:33

He's so funny dude. Yeah , like if you listen to the podcast with him and I , you could tell we're friends cause we talk crap the entire time. I wanna do a show with him. I think it'd be funny like to watch clips of like pros and then just talk crap and be like, Oh

Speaker 7 5:45

Yeah, definitely shout out him . He's a he is a cool dude. We work together a

Speaker 6 5:48

Bit . He's so nice. Yeah , yeah , yeah. He's actually from New Zealand. He

Speaker 7 5:52

Is. We we we do Hold it again you guys , we we hold it again .

Speaker 6 5:55

Yeah. But he, they worked for like golf rule . He worked for like the PGA version of uh , Australia, whatever they call

Speaker 7 6:03

It . The PGA of Australia. That's Yeah, he worked. Yeah . Yep . He's in . So how'd you He lived like , uh, 10 minutes from my house.

Speaker 6 6:11

Shut up . For real? Yeah . I love that guy. He , he texted me the dumbest stuff, like all these bad jokes and they're so like , uh, like he'll do like these pun like too

Speaker 7 6:24

Memes . The memes, you know, with the

Speaker 6 6:25

Yeah , the memes. He do that to you? He does the memes to me all the time. Like he does it like on not what app is that on

Speaker 7 6:31

You ? You thought you were special?

Speaker 6 6:33

Oh, I did think I was special. What's that ? What's on WhatsApp all the time? Yeah . Same . Like he's one the other day. Yeah . Maybe it's a group The . It's probably just a group like text message don't off now it kind makes me mad. Opt I him later. I love that . I seriously love golf rules and questions. He's such a good dude. You guys gotta follow him if you don't. Cuz he's cool though . Yeah . Um, and he's still , he's so smart. Like, he knows every rule. He's like, that's not the right rule. Um, anyways, so you know, Dave, so have you met Dave before?

Speaker 7 7:02

Yeah. No. He, he worked with 24 7 golf for a little bit. And uh , he , we we we cross bots on the social media stuff and the gold team stuff and all of that. Yeah, we , we definitely , um, we , we and we're friends as well, so That's

Speaker 6 7:15

Cool. Yeah , he's a good dude. Anyway, sorry there. So, okay, so you started when you, when you got outta col or you grew up in Australia and when you got out of school, like did you go to it? Was that like

Speaker 7 7:27

I did it yeah. Super geek. Yeah. Um, yeah, it stuff boring.

Speaker 6 7:31

Good money.

Speaker 7 7:32

True. Allowed to play golf later. Like when I got into golf.

Speaker 6 7:36

You started playing golf in college and then like, so then before I go to you , Eric's a pro, did you grow up playing Eric like your whole life? Like did you go like high school like

Speaker 8 7:47

Yeah , mostly. I mean , I think I picked up my first club at around eight or nine years old. My grandpa was a , was an avid golfer and had a neighbor that was an avid golfer and he gave me like my first starter set of clubs and where I grew up, I lived right behind an elementary school and or primary school, Igor <laugh> . And uh , they had a huge field and I would just go hit golf balls back there for hours after school. And that's kind of how I got how I

Speaker 6 8:12

Got started. Is it Ohio?

Speaker 8 8:13

Yeah, I'm in Columbus, Ohio. Yep .

Speaker 6 8:15

Yeah, it's like a picture this like a lot of grass like everywhere. <laugh> that's

Speaker 8 8:19

Rain. Yeah, Rain. Yeah. Lots of rain, that's for sure.

Speaker 6 8:22

Did you play in college or did you go to PGA school or what'd you do?

Speaker 8 8:25

Yeah, so when I graduated high school I enrolled into the PGA PGM program. So I didn't necessarily go the , the college route. You can go to college route if you wanna be going to like Penn State, Fair State , New Mexico State Campbell, like those schools offer PGA is like a career or a pathway. And I just went straight into more green grass , uh, teaching clinics, all that stuff. I knew, I knew school wasn't necessarily my , uh, my route to go <laugh> . I mean, school didn't necessarily get along very well. So I knew being a golf pro was kind of be gonna be my thing right outta high school. And so I took my playability test past that and kind of hit the ground, hit the ground running. And

Speaker 6 9:08

Were you teaching then, like after you got outta school or you like

Speaker 8 9:12

Yeah, so I did two years of about kind of your normal club pro job behind the counter checking people in, pulling carts, like just every task you could have on a , uh, responsibility you could have at a golf course. Uh , while I also did some teaching in clinics. And then after two years I realized I could basically make in two lessons a day what I would make sitting behind the counter for eight or nine hours. Yeah. Eight or nine hours. I was like, well I think I'm just gonna go ahead and uh , just teach full time

Speaker 6 9:45

Is what clubs kind get you though. Like they think like, oh yeah, come work at this club, but really we're gonna make you do a bunch of work like

Speaker 8 9:52

90%

Speaker 6 9:52

Of the time Right. And pay you minimum wage and then yeah, you might get to do one lesson if you're lucky and you'll make more money on that one lesson than you did the last like five hours. I personally like a lot of pros unfortunately, like , is that like, and by the way, you went to school for that, so you're gonna be paying student loans to make $12 an hour.

Speaker 8 10:11

Yeah, fortunately . Go the pga PGM route. It was , uh, significantly cheaper than uh , also doing it.

Speaker 6 10:19

Uh , yeah, like a big school like Florida, Florida State or some big school. Yeah, when I was in law school, I , there was like, I , I was old , I was older. One went to law school, but like there was kids, let's call it like, they just got out and they don't what they wanna do it their lives and they probably racked up like serious like half a million dollars in student loans. Like for reals like cuz they were living off of it and going to bars and like I was like, you knew you gotta pay that back, right? Like someday.

Speaker 8 10:46

Yep . So yeah, I was able to make money while also , um, going through the schooling and the schooling being , you know , uh, a sixth, the fifth of what it would be to go through college, if not, probably more. Uh ,

Speaker 6 10:59

Oh , you stretch .

Speaker 8 11:00

Uh , at one point I was pretty close. I mean I don't play as much now at 36 years old as I did at 22 years old, but I'd probably say if I had to put a number on it, I'm somewhere between a three and a four these days. Uh ,

Speaker 6 11:12

Dive as a three or four playing , you have no idea

Speaker 8 11:14

Playing only maybe eight to 10 times a year right now.

Speaker 6 11:19

So I'm a 24. Everybody out there <laugh> because I , But listen, this is it though. Like , like everybody else, I was like, okay. I was in good in in high school and college, not good in high school, but like college I played a ton. And then I got for college, I played a ton and I got probably in the eighties, you know, like low eighties. And then it's like you have a family and you get a job and like all that crap like that and then you don't have any time to play and then you become crappy. So that's pretty much happens.

Speaker 8 11:43

<inaudible> you said you started this to, to play more golf

Speaker 6 11:47

Like I did . Yeah. And to get better I thought like gear would be it. I knew gear was, here's the thing, I I thought gear would help me get lower than where I was without practice. I'm not saying it made me better. I think like, you know, but this , this is my issue. I'd walk into like, like most guys that could afford golf equipment, you walk into a big retailer and you go, Hey, what's good? Right? And the guy's no jack, right? And he's like, Oh, this is the newest driver . It's the best, you know, it's $700 and you buy it and doesn't do anything. Like my 10 year old driver is better than this thing. So that's kind of why I started all of this. So how'd you two meet each other?

Speaker 8 12:25

Huh ? I I can take that one. Were Yeah , I agree . So actually it was about 10 years ago. Uh , so back in 2012, late 2012, early 2013, I was actually living in Australia. So I did , uh, really? Yeah, I did what's called a , uh, work and holiday visa. And so if you're between the ages of 18 and 30 from different certain countries around the world, you can , uh, apply for this visa. You get approved, then you can go basically live and, and work to supplement your travel , uh, in that country for up to a year. And so I did that. Uh , originally I was just looking at going on a , on a maybe extended vacation to Australia, but uh, I found out I was eligible for this visa and I was like , I can't, I can't not do it. Um , I mean you only

Speaker 6 13:14

Get once , Did you work while you were there?

Speaker 8 13:16

Yeah, so that's, I worked for Igor, so that's how we met really . So yeah, when I, I uh , I landed in, well I spent about three, four months living out of a camper van and basically beach hopping , uh, for yeah, three, four straight months. And then , uh, I made it seven , I made it to Melbourne and then , uh, realized I needed to make some, make some money and I went to different,

Speaker 6 13:39

You add money, you're like, what do I do?

Speaker 8 13:42

So went to different , uh, places around the city and fortunately enough they had , uh, yeah , the , their version of golf tech and I lived fairly close. So I basically commuted via tram , uh, every day to , to the job

Speaker 6 13:56

Then golf tech . Sounds like. So fascinating. So , um, so tell me how that worked. Like, like what was your idea of golf tech

Speaker 7 14:06

You don mean in Melbourne?

Speaker 6 14:07

Yeah,

Speaker 7 14:08

The story was , um, I , I was working in this building for Australia Post , uh, consulting in it stuff, you know, and the ground floor of this 10 story building where the office was, was , was empty. And uh , it was about 6,000 square feet of empty space. And I used to sort of walk past and I think, you know what, you know , um, that would be an , you know, that could be an indoor golf center. Um, and then my friend Damon , Damon , Rashid and I, we used to take lessons at a little thing called golf take up the road about 20 minutes away or 50 minutes away and it was going outta business. So we were like, Hey, why don't we buy it and move it into this 6,000 square foot space.

Speaker 6 14:44

Indoor, It's air conditioned.

Speaker 7 14:46

Yeah, exactly . And so we did , um, and we , we had 10 bays. Uh , we play virtual golf, had lessons, we had a , we even built a bunker. We an indoor bunker. Yeah . Um, probably the first ones, I don't know, I didn't hear anyone else doing it. And a and a big putting green. And we used to have , uh, like a little bar cafe and uh , we used to do quite a few , um, what are they call it bachelor parties. We had to black out the front window for that. But it was all golf . It was all a promise . Promise.

Speaker 6 15:14

Oh , better

Speaker 7 15:14

Was, yeah, it was , uh, it was good fun. So it was good fun for a while , but the , the retail rent in Melbourne is quite, quite expensive for you . When we went to renew the lease, you know, they wanted like 600,000 a year for rent.

Speaker 6 15:25

Shut up. For real.

Speaker 7 15:27

Yeah. So anyway,

Speaker 6 15:32

<laugh> that Australian dollars,

Speaker 7 15:33

It's austral it's like pay ,

Speaker 6 15:35

I don't like $40 in the United States. I guess that's ,

Speaker 8 15:39

Yeah , I wish it was back then. Yeah.

Speaker 6 15:40

So

Speaker 7 15:41

That was golf

Speaker 6 15:42

Tech . So let me ask this question, like, was golf tech, like how many, do you , you still have it or do you sell it or did you close

Speaker 7 15:47

It down? No, I , I , so when I opened 24 7 golf, when I had this sort of idea of these , uh, unmanned uh , centers, so I started the first one in my house, which we did well. And then I kind of sold out my share to Damon and , and the other partner Sam from , from golf tech . And I wanted to really, I wanted, you know , my vision was to open like 300 of these, you know, unmanned no staff. Um, cuz the first,

Speaker 6 16:08

Is it really unmanned? There's nobody there.

Speaker 7 16:10

Nobody there. No. You sign up online

Speaker 6 16:12

Cameras and stuff of

Speaker 7 16:13

Michel . I had cameras, Yeah. And I actually had stuff in Philippines watching the cameras to, you know, help out when you need it. I opened , my first one did well, opened a second one, second one didn't do so well. Um , why? It was , it was a bad location. It was up two flights of stairs, people didn't wanna go up the stairs and, you know, it was just a couple of wrong decisions in terms of that. It was four bays. And then , um, and then basically when I went to close it down, I had this four simulators and I'm like, what am I gonna do with them ? So I , I think I listed them on Facebook marketplace and I sold them really quickly and I thought, hey, that's an idea.

Speaker 6 16:48

What year was that?

Speaker 7 16:49

I think that was around 2017. 2016. 2017.

Speaker 6 16:53

So Eric, what'd you do for Igor? Did you work at the simp place ?

Speaker 8 16:57

Yeah, so I worked at the , uh, Australian golf tech. And it's funny when you say golf tech, cuz obviously there's the US golf tech, there's the Australian golf tech. They didn't have anything to do with one another, but they knew of each other. Yeah, I, I worked , uh, behind the counter a little bit , did some lessons , uh, did uh , membership sales. Uh , that was kind of my kind of role is kind of doing all , all three of those things. Uh , I was not a good barista in the slightest, so , uh, I didn't, I didn't sell too many coffees, but outside of that, yeah, just , um, doing those responsibilities, golf balls . Yeah, that'd

Speaker 6 17:30

Be fun . I'd be there all day.

Speaker 8 17:31

Yeah. I hit Golf falls and kind of, it was a per , like I said, perfect location for where I lived in the , in the city. I was basically living in a host for six months and <laugh> did that, went to work for him. The gym that I belong to was right around the corner from, from where the , uh,

Speaker 6 17:48

So the perfect life, right? Yeah, it wasn't bad. Oh , I like work part-time at this golfing place. I'd go to the gym and then I would go surf or go to

Speaker 7 17:57

The beach. Eric used to volunteer for the bachelor parties a lot though .

Speaker 6 18:01

He did

Speaker 7 18:01

Me pick me .

Speaker 6 18:02

He

Speaker 7 18:03

Like ,

Speaker 6 18:04

Oh nevermind, I can't do that. Okay, so you started 24 7 then when? So

Speaker 7 18:10

Around that 2016, 2016 when I opened the first one. Okay . Maybe 2017 opened the second one. And then I shadowed down after about four or five months from, I think in a blur.

Speaker 6 18:21

Um, okay, so then 24 7, When did that start?

Speaker 7 18:24

So, so as a, so when I shut down, I say probably 2017 , uh, and I sold those simulators I had and like

Speaker 6 18:31

All , you're like, Oh, this might actually be something.

Speaker 7 18:32

Yeah, well , yeah. And then I basically, I got, actually I got introduced

Speaker 6 18:36

Cause like nobody was doing this back then. No . Like there really wasn't.

Speaker 7 18:39

It was early on. And the prior , you know, I , I started off with TrackMan and then we , we had a parting of ways and um , I kind of had , didn't have any launch monitors and, and at that time I knew that Joe Asso , um, who's the founder of Golf Tech usa. And we stayed friends, amazing guy. And um , I called him and I said, Hey, can you, have you got any launch one as you can sell me? He's introduced me to Sky Track and I, so then I bought some for my, for my centers. Then I , when I saw those four, I called him again and said, Hey, have you got another five you can sell me ? And they did and I saw those and kind of, we just started going.

Speaker 6 19:12

So back then, so in Australia, cause I mean this is only really, I mean I started this seven 18 right? What I do. And so like , but there was nobody doing this. There was nobody like, there was like the big company you might be able to go to like, you know, whoever, there's no miniature launch monitors. Back then there was nothing like you had $15,000 you could get a launch monitor

Speaker 7 19:32

Even . Yeah, even more. I mean we, we used to, so people came to us because we were the biggest in Australia. People used to come to us, say, Can you build this one? And we actually opened several businesses for other people. But there were, you know, there were like 30, 40, $50,000 just for the one bay , et cetera . And then what Sky Trek when they came into the market, you know, they, they made it affordable for so many people. Um, and then other , obviously since then, other companies have entered that space and you know, everyone's been , uh, sort of brought that price and have been quite successful of it .

Speaker 6 20:02

So, but in Australia, was there anybody doing it really, or? No, not at all.

Speaker 7 20:05

Not really. There was, there was maybe one other company doing, No , there was definitely one other company doing sort of the big fit outs. Um, and , and , and I , I didn't want do those sort of highend fit outs. I had a different idea in my mind of what I wanted to do. Um ,

Speaker 6 20:20

Like everyday person that could afford

Speaker 7 20:22

It . Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to make it, my whole vision with 24 7 was affordability. I mean , when I , when I did the indoor , you know , unmanned centers , I used to charge $12 95 a week for unlimited practice.

Speaker 6 20:32

Like nothing.

Speaker 7 20:33

Yeah, it's just like a less, a bucket of balls back then. Um,

Speaker 6 20:37

So there's a bucket of balls now

Speaker 7 20:38

<laugh> . True , true.

Speaker 6 20:42

There was a mic . Like what made you, like, what was the aha moment for you would you say?

Speaker 7 20:47

Well, it was funny. Um, so when I used to charge $12 95 practice, the biggest challenge with that business was I had people that kind of refused to learn how to use the thing. You know, they're like, they called me up with I can't switch it . I was like, there's a , there's a, there's a button one , the Sky Track has one button because

Speaker 6 21:05

Switch it on. You

Speaker 7 21:06

Just , Yeah , they literally couldn't switch it . I'm like, there's one button on the entire device, just press the button and it switches on the lights. Come on. That's working. There's

Speaker 8 21:14

24 7 golf . Cause Igor was up 24 7 .

Speaker 7 21:16

Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 6 21:17

Yeah, he was 24 7 tech support <laugh>

Speaker 7 21:20

And, and and , and it was just so frustrating. And then when I sold those four and then the next five, like no one would ever call me about call me. They just, they work it out, you know, cuz they spend like five, $10,000 on kind of the whole setup . They work it out. And, and so for me it was like, well I could continue building these centers and kind of do 24 hour tech support or I could just sell them to people's homes and they, you know, they learned how to use it and that wasn't , that was a bit of an aha moment, you know? Um , and so I just went all in , you know, I closed that first center that I , that I started and I just went all into e-commerce. So

Speaker 6 21:52

What was it like when you saw your, like e-com? Did you, like, was it Shopify or did you do like a WordPress website or?

Speaker 7 21:59

I started off with Shopify. I went to WordPress and we're going live back with Shopify in a week. So you , you

Speaker 6 22:06

Leave your WordPress is too clunky for E-com. Like, that's just it . Sorry, WooCommerce, sorry. Like that

Speaker 7 22:14

Shopify's great want .

Speaker 6 22:15

It's pretty, Yeah , I mean it's all plug and play, right? I mean , you gotta paid for it monthly, but it's like, by

Speaker 7 22:20

The time you get to our sides , um, you know , it's hard across three countries , um, you know , multiple warehouses, WooCommerce ends up costing you a lot more than Shopify ,

Speaker 6 22:29

So. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Like , I just , I've had , I tried with Commerce before. I didn't, like, it was just too clunky. It was like, there was like too many fricking steps to list something. I was like, this , this is , this should be like not that hard.

Speaker 7 22:40

Agreed . Agreed .

Speaker 6 22:41

Like , um, so then, okay, so what, so you started the 24 7 golf website and what, 16 or

Speaker 7 22:49

17? 17, I think about 17.

Speaker 6 22:51

And like, what were you initially selling?

Speaker 7 22:53

So initially I was just selling like a Sky Track initially, literally just Sky Track . Um, and then I, I started sort of adding like the hitting mats and screens so that I, I had a factory that was making screens for , uh, commercial venues. Um, in ,

Speaker 6 23:11

It's kind of cool cause you already had relationships, like you already kind of like know what's needed, you

Speaker 7 23:16

Know , and projectors and cable , like all these little bits that make up a simulator. There's like, probably call it 10 components, right? Maybe eight . But I knew all of that and I had sort of a factor that used to manufacture contract manufacture for me so I could ask them to make screens. And eventually, you know, I , I looked at the market went , well , there's enclosures, there's this, there's that. And so we , we ended up sort of, we now manufacture probably half of the stuff that goes into

Speaker 6 23:41

It . So, I mean, so then like what does the Sky Track cost back then? I have no idea.

Speaker 7 23:46

Well , it still , I mean , it's always cost 2000 US in Australia with the converter . It was mid, mid threes, you know, converting to a Australian dollars, but it's always been $2,000.

Speaker 6 23:54

Um, When did it blow up for you?

Speaker 7 23:58

So Covid , you know, so I don't know if you know , uh, like in Melbourne , um, we actually, golf was banned. So it was fishing by the way. Apparently it wasn't Covid safe for the Fish <laugh> . Um , but seriously it was, yeah, we had uh , I think six to eight months no golf. And so, I mean, it went crazy in specifically in Melbourne, but it went , um, it went crazy everywhere. And , um, just before Covid, I was in the US at the PGA show when , uh, Fly Scope launched a Nivo Plus , if you remember that. I think it was, what, three years ago or

Speaker 6 24:30

Something? 20?

Speaker 7 24:31

What was it ? 20, 20. 20 , Yeah. Two and a half years ago. Right. And so I know

Speaker 6 24:35

Covid years all blended together. I

Speaker 7 24:37

I agree.

Speaker 6 24:37

I agree. I can't do math. I'm like, wait a minute, what grade was my son in ? I can

Speaker 7 24:41

That . Um, and so I went to Fly Scope and we formed a good relationship and I started selling Flight scope as well in Australia, the , the MIBA Plus . Um, and there was this moment where I was actually in India , um, on , in March back then, and I, I left in

Speaker 6 24:58

Covid year .

Speaker 7 24:59

Yeah. So , but , so I was there.

Speaker 6 25:01

Did you get in there?

Speaker 7 25:02

I was leaving Mumbai the day they locked India down. So I would , I've got this video of Mumbai Airport with like five people in the airport. It was , it's , it was like a movie. You know, there's zombie movies where like there's no humans left. Yeah , It felt like that. And so when I got back to Australia, I realized this is gonna like this, everything's gonna be locked down. And so I I ,

Speaker 6 25:24

For the first time in our whole life, right,

Speaker 7 25:26

Like , yeah , Yeah. And so I , I begged, borrowed and almost stole money just to kind of buy inventory as much as I could. And , and at one point during Covid I ended up being the only one who had inventory anywhere in the world. So we were selling, you know, across the whole world. Um, and kind of got us , got our name really , um, in the market and you know , Facebook groups and forums and stuff like that

Speaker 6 25:50

Because nobody could find anything, right? Yeah ,

Speaker 7 25:53

Yeah . People , people like

Speaker 6 25:54

Offered the manufacturing wasn't really happening. So like whoever had it. Yeah.

Speaker 7 25:58

I had people like from Germany, you know , emailing, going , I'll pay you double, I'll pay you triple. Like it was just, cuz no one knew how long this was gonna last. And so ,

Speaker 6 26:07

And every country had their own rules and stuff when

Speaker 7 26:09

It came to like , and now, you know , we didn't go , we didn't price go , we just said if you pay us what we charge in Australia, which was a little bit more than us because of the conversion and the shipping

Speaker 6 26:17

And you guys pay for shipping and then we'll, we'll

Speaker 7 26:19

Take. Yeah. And so, you know , there , yeah there were people listing, you know , buying, they would get one on , uh, and they listed on eBay for like double the price. And uh , we didn't do ,

Speaker 8 26:29

It was like gym equipment and bicycles and tents like , oh , that was like triple, quadruple the price.

Speaker 6 26:33

Seriously, remember that? Yeah. Like even if you looked on like offer up or like Facebook marketplace, like people sound like those like dumbbells that are , you can like switch the weights to it, you know, know I'm talking , I was like thousand dollars. I was like, I don't even work out that bad.

Speaker 7 26:46

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So that , that was, that was our moment, you know, And , and we, we grew like crazy. Um , and then I saw, you know, how much there is in North America, how much there is in Europe that we could be doing. And you know, slowly the wheels up here started turning and plans started being laid and all of that. And here we are.

Speaker 6 27:07

So where do you sell at right now? Don't say worldwide, but mean like realistically.

Speaker 7 27:13

Yeah, no , so we have , I mean we have Australian New Zealand, which obviously fulfill from Australia, we celebr it in

Speaker 6 27:18

Right. The United States.

Speaker 7 27:20

Yeah. So US , Canada , Um, I have a warehouse in uh , Luxembourg and Belgium with apartment. Um , so we sell all of u EU and uk. Holy

Speaker 6 27:30

Crap. You're everywhere.

Speaker 7 27:32

I told you worldwide, you asked me not to say it.

Speaker 6 27:35

I know, but I don't want you to be like, Oh worldwide. And it's like, oh yeah, we pay like $3,000 to ship it. Yeah .

Speaker 7 27:40

Hey, we don't sell .

Speaker 6 27:41

You really are cuz you have like warehouses and stuff in other places. South America , the United States.

Speaker 7 27:47

Yeah . We're not in South America and Africa.

Speaker 6 27:49

Yeah , yeah .

Speaker 8 27:50

<laugh>. Yeah ,

Speaker 7 27:51

True.

Speaker 6 27:53

That's crazy.

Speaker 7 27:54

Yeah.

Speaker 6 27:55

So like in three years you've like, you're expansiveness of is increased tremendously.

Speaker 7 28:01

Yeah. Moving to the US was a big part of it. I mean the market here is so , But

Speaker 6 28:06

You physically moved too. You were not like, Oh, I work out of Australia. Like, dude, this guy moved to the United States

Speaker 7 28:12

Hold . Well, let me tell you was, it was even more kind of crazy than that because we couldn't leave Australia. Right. You , you had to get a special permit to leave and so That's right . Yeah , I remember that. So I , I leased a warehouse, I bought a car, I leased a house and bought furniture from Australia. Got on a one way ticket and got here to Dallas. My wife and kids came two weeks later. Um, and we just started life , you know, but we, it literally like leasing a warehouse and a house and everything from, from Australia was, I would tell people and they , they think it's a scam. Like, no, no, I'm actually coming for real.

Speaker 8 28:48

You enroll your kids into school, all that stuff.

Speaker 7 28:50

Yeah . Yeah. Everything from Australia . So it was

Speaker 6 28:52

Whole life . Had you ready to like , move your whole life, but, okay. So what made you come to the United States? Like is it , is it the biggest market? I

Speaker 7 28:59

Would , it's the biggest market. I love the, you know, and , and your podcast about, you know, the brands and the kind of entrepreneurial spirit and I , I I think that, you know , no one can really match that. Um , no one in the world can match that except here in the US . And I , and I love the attitude here and golf is like a big deal and I love sort of that the industry here. But to give you a comparison, like Texas, where I am, it's a Texas alone. It's bigger than Australia's population. But in terms of golfing, like participation of golf, Texas has four times as many golfers as all of Australia, just Texas.

Speaker 8 29:32

And if you take it one step further, so if you take the, so in the United States about eight to 10% of the United States golfs. And so there are the , the same amount of golfers in the US as there are people in Australia, maybe more. Yeah, I think it's like 28, 20

Speaker 7 29:50

9 million. That's , it's the , the latest figures are some like 34 million golfers in the ,

Speaker 6 29:55

Okay ,

Speaker 8 29:55

So it's up . Yep .

Speaker 7 29:56

Australia has 27 million people I

Speaker 6 29:58

Think. So then you're like, you call Eric up and you're like, Yo, I'm moving to the United States. Yeah ,

Speaker 8 30:02

Yeah. That's exactly what happened. <laugh> send me a message on ,

Speaker 7 30:06

Uh , what you doing ? I'm leaving the us . Yeah .

Speaker 6 30:08

He's like, You wanna come, you wanna make come work for me? And you're like, who's this? Well ,

Speaker 8 30:12

We

Speaker 6 30:12

Had always coffee

Speaker 8 30:13

We had Yeah , I can't, That's exactly right. We stayed in touch over the last decade or so. Yeah.

Speaker 6 30:20

Cause you're buddies, right? Yeah . Like just see what's going on.

Speaker 8 30:23

So he always knew what he was into and he always knew what I was into when I was coaching and teaching and , and all of that. And uh , this was a good , uh, great opportunity to be able to do some stuff working from home. And like, basically my role is to reach out to, you know, people who , uh, it might be worth their time, energy and, and from a financial standpoint to um, get in partnership with to uh , to sell up what we offer to, to their audience. And , um, I get to hang out with my one year old at home and be with my family a little bit more and still

Speaker 6 30:59

Teach, I know life changed so much, right? Like everything can be pretty remote, especially in E-com. Like, you don't really be, you don't need an office. Like, you might want one because you wanna be bothered all day, but like, you don't really need to have one. You know? I think like, you probably worked, I mean being in it, I but you worked for like big corporations, the corporate structure, the, like, you know, the rules about working remotely. Like I have two, like I know it's like it sucks. Yeah . It's stupid and like, there's no rhyme or reason. It's all about control essentially. So I think like with an entrepreneurial, you know, spirit, like you're able to get a lot more done. Doesn't matter where you're at in the world.

Speaker 8 31:40

I find that I'm actually more productive from home. Uh , a lot of times. Well when the family's not knocking at the door <laugh> , but , uh, I'm more productive at home. But

Speaker 6 31:50

Do you guys feel like you work all the time? Cause I feel like I work all the time. Yep .

Speaker 7 31:53

I pretty much do work all the time.

Speaker 6 31:54

That's that I feel like, especially when to cut it off, you know what I mean ? Five o'clock.

Speaker 7 31:59

Yeah . I , that's my Australian team and you know , we get on calls and before I know it , it's like 11 o'clock at night , 12 o'clock

Speaker 6 32:05

At night . Oh yeah. Cuz you guys like Australia, you get , it's like you call, I have a friend of mine who's in Australia and I call him at five and it's like, what, 10 o'clock in the morning there?

Speaker 7 32:13

Yeah. Something like , yeah , Workday starts like four or five Dallas time and you know ,

Speaker 6 32:18

What time is that there in Australia?

Speaker 7 32:20

Like eight or 9:00 AM

Speaker 6 32:21

Yeah. Cause I call this guy, it was like five 30 and it was like 11 his time. I was like, this is hard as hell to figure out <laugh> .

Speaker 8 32:28

And then we're figuring out like Igor's time zone and my time zone , their time zone . We actually have another guy who works out of Phoenix. Uh , so like we're trying to coordinate four different time zones on, on when to have a team

Speaker 7 32:40

Call Luxembourg,

Speaker 6 32:42

You're always working. Then you have team . I mean my team, I say I my team is not as big expansive as yours, but like I could imagine that you're probably having calls all day long, right? Doesn't matter if it's eight o'clock in the morning or eight o'clock at night. What differentiates you guys then say don't say customer service like then ? Cause that's always like the easy one. I'm not , I'm always the easy, like what , like, okay, here's like the ones in my mind I can think of like two other brands that do something similar to you. Right? The , I mean there's probably a lot more, but like there's two of 'em . Like I can think freshly in my head right now. Yeah . So like what is different between what you guys offer and what they offer? Because I know there's other companies out there that are offering like, you know,

Speaker 7 33:21

Similar things. Yeah.

Speaker 6 33:22

I already know what the answer is cuz Eric told me I thought it was coming .

Speaker 7 33:25

Well, let's see , let's see if I'm , if our answers match up. Look, my , my vision from the very beginning has been affordability and accessibility. That's really it. You know, we want to offer a solution at a price point and a qu like, but still remained the quality , uh, you know, at the highest level at a price when they just, other people cannot match . And this is why like , I have the factories that manufacture these things so I can, you know , I own the warehouses where, you know, we take our containers with our staff and bring it in and so we kind of own the whole value chain. We can just deliver it at a price that others can't. Um, and that's our goal is, you know , we , we try not to compete with those bigger brands because, you know , they have more what I call high end stuff. And we , we kind of, our niche or niches I think they call it here , um, is really affordability and, and we keep moving towards the more and more affordable solutions.

Speaker 6 34:18

What I think is so cool is that you guys have a supply chain. It's not like, Oh, we gotta go buy this from X company and y and we're gonna just put a bunch of on a website. Here's all the pieces you need, you can buy through us. Right? We're just a reseller of all these components. Like, you guys are like the opposite. You're like, Hey, we have all this ours. Yeah.

Speaker 7 34:39

You get in

Speaker 6 34:39

The boss . Yeah , here's our stuff. Yeah , it's all ready to go. You know, if you wanna buy a launch monitor or whatever or whatever. Like, you know , prices can fluctuate depending on what you want to do. Yeah . But it's not like you're quote unquote reseller trying to sell that .

Speaker 7 34:54

I mean, we resell things , we resell, we have to, you know , projected what I make current projector. But

Speaker 6 34:59

Yeah, that's different. That's , that's a technology like the screen and the floor and the walls and the this and then that, like

Speaker 7 35:06

The main parts . Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, and , and , and my vision continues to be, and you know, we do innovation and everyone else does innovation, you know, but we also, you know , we try to be the best. We're actually probably not the best at customer service. We try to be, it's

Speaker 6 35:18

A hard job to do.

Speaker 7 35:19

I know it is a hard job, but you know , we're , we're still a small team and

Speaker 6 35:22

Growing, well, Eric should do it all day long, Eric

Speaker 7 35:26

<laugh> . But the , I just

Speaker 8 35:27

Taught golf.

Speaker 7 35:28

The affordability thing is probably the biggest thing that , that I want to get out there is I want as many people as possible to have a golf . They want it, they should be able to to, you know, there should be no reason for them not to have. That's kind of the message.

Speaker 6 35:42

What's your biggest like, selling thing you have? Like what's the most popular thing on the 24 7 site? Uh ,

Speaker 7 35:50

Well up to this point probably the, you know, we've been selling a lot of Mebo plus um, packages, you know, the , uh, with the golf club you can play 150,000 courses and the enclosure and the project and everything, you know. And that , that's been the main thing again because most people look at that. They compare it to what they kind of think it should cost, you know ? So we have people go, Oh , I thought it's between 15 and 20 grams , whatever the number is. You know , it's like around seven. Um , and so that's been a

Speaker 6 36:17

Big and that's including the price of the mieve plus.

Speaker 7 36:19

Yeah. Niva plus Plus

Speaker 6 36:23

That's smoking deal .

Speaker 7 36:23

Even the cable, the <inaudible> , everything.

Speaker 8 36:26

And I think EOR kind of went through that pretty quickly cuz I mean, you can play up to 150,000 courses like, so you'll never get bored. It's kind of like the living in Australia, you could go to a different beach , uh, every day for your entire life and still have beaches left to go to. And this is , uh, kind of the , kind of the same thing, but playing golf from your house.

Speaker 6 36:47

Okay, so I have a MIBA Plus and I have a CAR R 10. Right. So my question is though to you, I don't really know like MEEBO plus like this is gonna update recently, right? Where it has like more features or whatever, like with ball spinning and mm-hmm . <affirmative> , but like, is that like the base that's , I gotta pay another like X dollars for that, right? As a Mebo plus person to use that? Or is that 150,000 already prebuilt into

Speaker 7 37:12

No , that's kind of separate software that's called the Golf Club 2019. Um , I dunno if you've been, oh, if you've seen in the news they just released , um, that in October the

Speaker 6 37:22

Update data thing, they wanna charge you more money for more. Yeah,

Speaker 7 37:25

That's it. Yeah. But they bring out a new one, two K 23 with like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and all these superstars in there. It's gonna be super cool.

Speaker 6 37:32

So with the , with the garment, I mean, I'm not the garment with the Meebo Plus though, and like if I step a miba plus with , I mean I've already actually have a mall. I have aso , I have a meal plus I have a Garin, I have ake ID two , 300 I I have mall . Okay . So like essentially I have all those . I I feel that like I know it's different. The garment R 10 is different. Like even the , I feel like it's more cartoonish, right? Like than

Speaker 7 37:56

You should , uh, you should get golf track then if you got all those,

Speaker 6 38:00

What's Golf Track ?

Speaker 7 38:02

I'm glad you asked. I'm glad <laugh>

Speaker 6 38:06

Just explain what that is.

Speaker 7 38:07

Uh , well we , we , you know , it's , it's a little bit harsh . Harsh , so don't tell everyone all right . But it's um , it's a new app that , uh, we've just launched a couple days ago. Uh , it's on the app store. What a

Speaker 6 38:16

Do ,

Speaker 7 38:17

It's a launch monitor. It's basically like your Garmin R 10, but just using the cameras on the back of your phone. So you don't need anything else. You just hook up your phone, works indoors, outdoors. You can play all the courses and do all that.

Speaker 6 38:31

So you don't need a Garmin R 10 or a Miba Plus or any of those things.

Speaker 7 38:34

Well, the, the, to get started, you don't need it. I mean, depends on kind of how accurate you want it. Um, you know, there's obviously, I kind of tell people, you know, depends on what your price point is, you know, so when you move to like couple of thousand dollars, you know, Sky Trek me plus, you know , they're great products. They're very accurate, you know , garments probably not there yet, although they've improved a lot since they launched. Um , and then

Speaker 6 38:57

Yeah, but the gar tens like the high is like bananas. You can't , wouldn't even get one for a year. Oh . Like

Speaker 7 39:02

You could order , We , we ordered hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them and uh , I mean their marketing's been great. It's uh , they just , they can't give up. It's uh , it's been very successful product for

Speaker 6 39:12

Them . I think I know somebody , it was like literally only YouTuber that had a video on it because he got it. And, and I know how he got it, which is really cool.

Speaker 7 39:19

I know

Speaker 6 39:20

What you're talking about. His channel. Yeah. And his channel exploded because he was the only person that had it. And like that shows you the power of like video content when no one else can get the product, right? Like and the garment, like I got my garment and I got mine in April, May, May , I got my May take that long. Like I think Garin did a really good job, I think cuz the price point's so low, right? It's like 600 bucks.

Speaker 7 39:41

So this is the thing that, that kind of, that's the important thing, right ? It's, it's, you know, we've gone from like what, six years ago you'd have to pay 20 grand, 30 grand for simulator, you know , now it's like hundreds of bucks, like 600 bucks plus, you know, set up and et cetera . You know, three, $4,000, you have a full start .

Speaker 6 39:59

But that's the biggest leap where I think it's cool what you guys are doing because like essentially I have all these stupid things, right? That are cool, whatever. But like, where am I gonna use it at the driving range, right ? Like , oh, I don't have a simulator. Like do I wanna build a simulator? Okay, if so, what do I do? Like you go , I think a lot of golfers have that problem where they're like, okay, I have this thing, but I have a basement and I guess I'll shoot in a a $200 fornia net, you know, or something like that. Like, or in the backyard . But like, I think you have two types of golfers. Like you have the gearhead that wants like pinpoint precision, you know, will pay the whatever. And yet the guy who's like, I don't give a . It's close enough. Like yeah . Oh, that's not five yards farther. Like, and I, that's what I think.

Speaker 7 40:44

And , and , and you know, with this resurgence that golfers had and all these new people that have entered the market right, entered the Gulf market, they're not your single digit handicaps. You know , they're beginners and people who hack around, you know, and they just wanna have fun and like, and isn't that the best part of our golf is to actually have fun with it? You know, maybe just forget the, you know, your spin number for a minute, but just enjoy it.

Speaker 6 41:07

Yeah. I mean, how do you even get to practice if you don't, Like you can take it to a like , I don't know , I think that's like the, the gap, right? Like essentially you guys are starting to fill is that you can do that at home and we make it affordable. If you're already gonna spend two on a, on a Mevo plus. Yeah . You don't even have to have a mimo plus you give a Mevo , you could have a whatever the hell you want. Like ,

Speaker 7 41:32

And that , that's , I mean like Sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say that's the idea with Golf Track, right? It's , you already have a phone, right? So you download the app and all of a sudden you can play, you know, and , and if you get, you know , obviously from us, the enlo all the setup for a couple of grand , all of a sudden you can have that simulated experience at home. Now if you turn into a gearhead and you say, you know what, I want my accurate numbers and all that, you can, you just buy a Mebo Plus or a Sky Trek or you know , whatever other product that you know , might particularly fancy for

Speaker 6 42:00

Two . Yeah . But they're like diminishing returns. Like this is what I found is like, you know, I'll , I'll take a Mebo Plus or a , or a wrap Soto and I'll go head to head on a $50,000 simulator. Yeah , right? And like honestly the numbers are yeah, the $50,000 simulator is way closer. Right? But I mean, you're talking like five to 10 yards difference in accuracy. It's like, does that really matter? Like do I really care?

Speaker 7 42:25

I can tell you , we , we , so I've been to Scottsdale a couple of times and we , we tested the robot with the apps with golf track against the GC Quad and a TrackMan form . And the difference between the cameras on your , what

Speaker 6 42:37

Is a $15,000 unit?

Speaker 7 42:39

Yeah. So the , the difference between the cameras on the back of your iPhone and, you know, a 20, $25,000 piece of kit is like 3%. But

Speaker 6 42:48

What about like what's in the Soto or like the

Speaker 7 42:51

So is very , I've tested it . I think it's a good product and it does , you know, it's , it works outdoors obviously. And when , when I was developing , um, golf track, it's been five years in development plus five plus years. Um, we initially just launched , uh, like as a beta, an outdoor version, but everyone wanted to use it indoors. And so we kind of went back to the drawing board and had to rebuild it. Well

Speaker 6 43:10

That's what it is, right? No one cares about using anything outdoors anymore. Like essentially the money is, is in indoor cheap, cheap mean , not cheap mill made but affordable where people can afford it.

Speaker 7 43:21

Affordable indoors In

Speaker 6 43:22

Your garage. Yeah , in your house in the basement. Like, and you're not out a million dollars, you're out like five grand organize if you buy an nicer unit. Yeah ,

Speaker 8 43:32

Yeah . And you don't want to end up , uh, on the , uh, the golf net , like home DIY golf net fail videos, <laugh> as I've started here. You're

Speaker 6 43:41

Hilarious

Speaker 8 43:41

Dude. As , as I started a

Speaker 6 43:42

Guy like hit this straight up and it hits a hole in his ceiling. Like that's some funny.

Speaker 8 43:46

I've never seen so many of those videos since I've been on onboard here with ego . Like trying to figure out like what, like doing, you know , the due diligence and figuring out what other people have tried and done and, and experimented with. Like, I've seen so many of those videos and uh , it , it does provide a good , uh, good entertainment value throughout the day. But then also man, it's like I just wanna help them out.

Speaker 6 44:08

<laugh> a starter kit, right? Would be how much? Like starter? Like,

Speaker 7 44:15

So between

Speaker 6 44:16

Without , without a meebo plus. I guess that's two grand. So let's say like a starter, just

Speaker 7 44:20

Basic . So start , you know , somewhere around, so with projector included , um, you're talking about between three and 4,000. That's

Speaker 6 44:26

Not bad.

Speaker 7 44:27

That's projector enclosure. Hitting Matt Cable. Yeah.

Speaker 6 44:30

Projector's expensive, right ?

Speaker 7 44:31

Projector's about a thousand bucks of that.

Speaker 6 44:33

So I think , yeah , and the , and golf flooring is expensive. Like people don't think it is, like fake grass is expensive as hell.

Speaker 7 44:40

Like it is. But we , we actually , uh, we have a really good Home Depot , um, solution to build up the floor and then lay grass over . It's , it's very cost effective. Again, I just wanna make it affordable. Like it's , you know, Well

Speaker 6 44:51

It's the key, right? Cause that's, that's the demographic. That's who you want. It's like normal guys and gals that would like to have something like this, but they don't wanna spend 10 grand on some or

Speaker 7 45:02

More. And a lot of guys, you know , they have to get past the , you know, the minister of finance and you know, there's the conversations of like five ,

Speaker 6 45:10

Oh I got one .

Speaker 7 45:11

The 20,000 is a very different conversation.

Speaker 6 45:14

<laugh> , I mean I got a mis of finance. You let me do this for this half, but like that half, you don't get to see. I'm like, it'd be cool to put a simulator over there, but I don't think it's , I dt know if it gonna work out. I mean it will fit. That's gotta , I, I'm like I need a bigger space <laugh> , maybe next year I'll but say I don't wanna lease anything. Cause I think it's expensive. So whatever keep

Speaker 7 45:36

Cost , you don't need that much. A single car garage . Like think of a space.

Speaker 6 45:39

Yeah, so Eric was telling me that last week, right? So like, okay, so what's the dimensions of a , of a at home you

Speaker 7 45:46

Need 10 feet of space. You need nine feet of height and you know, 12 feet to plus of , of depth. You know, you can get away with 12 feet even. And that's it. So it's like literally think of a single car garage and that is the space you need. And in fact, we have a lot of people that put it in their garage. So

Speaker 6 46:04

10, So 10 by 12, by nine

Speaker 7 46:06

By, No , Yeah , that's the minimum. Pretty much.

Speaker 6 46:10

Cause like the , but okay, so Eric and are talking about this the other day, like with like a Meebo plus, You put that behind you, right?

Speaker 7 46:16

Yeah . You need more, but yeah, you need like 15, 16 feet with Mebo Plus. But Sky Track , for example, it says next to you ,

Speaker 6 46:23

Oh , you put on the ground right next to you. Right?

Speaker 7 46:26

So you don't need , you can swing a club , you know you're okay.

Speaker 8 46:30

Or golf track. Golf track goes behind, but it doesn't have the same depth as a Yeah . It's only mi

Speaker 7 46:36

It's four feet behind you , uh, behind the , the , the shoot . And

Speaker 6 46:39

But isn't the mimo like six? Like six or

Speaker 7 46:41

Eight, Right ? Eight . And it needs eight .

Speaker 6 46:44

Eight plus another. How many in front of you? So now you're talking like 18 feet or 20 feet or something.

Speaker 7 46:48

16. You need 16, 15, 16 feet.

Speaker 6 46:51

Yeah. I think like, I mean, it's ideal for somebody as a girl , like the one garage bay. I mean, I mean that's, that'll work. You know,

Speaker 7 47:00

We , you know, we, we literally built one bay specifically for the garage. And so you can drive your front of your car and you could open your doors without the simulator being in the way. For that reason, I put that in my house, in , in Melbourne. It's in our , one of our promo videos. You know, put the car in there because that's what people want. They just, you know, you don't have to dedicate a space, you know, you don't need a room, that's your go similar room, you know , you just need a garage. That's all.

Speaker 8 47:22

And then the simplest thing, like we could tell people all the time, like one of our first questions when people reach out to us is, what is that space requirement? And it's, Well, have you swung a golf club in there before? Like if you can swing a golf club in there, Okay. You're most of the way there to figuring out if it's actually feasible. Uh, if you have a seven foot high ceiling and the , uh, pitching wedge would put a hole up there, well it may probably not work and we need to find another solution. But , uh, that's the first thing to do is

Speaker 6 47:52

Figure out what are most Garage is 10 feet tall, like

Speaker 7 47:54

I think, I think nine at 10 . Nine

Speaker 6 47:56

Nine, Yeah.

Speaker 8 47:58

On new builds. And the good thing too, like I actually, I , I sell this story all the time. Like, we had someone who called, who had a 20 foot high , uh, garage and they were worried because they had an electrician come out and say it was gonna be $4,000 to do wiring from the ceiling, drop it down 10 feet so that, you know, you could actually , uh, get the projector to work on the screen. But it's like our projectors actually are housed inside of the enclosure. So you don't have to , Is it really? Yeah. So you don't , Yeah , you don't have to put the projector on your own ceiling. You're

Speaker 6 48:33

Really , So technically you have a kind of a portable unit, right? I mean really, if not portable, but like , if you wanted to move it and not keep it one spot, you're not drilling more holes in the ceiling and doing a bunch

Speaker 7 48:41

Of crap again. You , we got videos made by myself doing it , putting one up in 15 minutes and taking one down in seven minutes, like six seconds. Wow. Career . Yeah,

Speaker 8 48:51

It took me a little longer, but still It's

Speaker 6 48:53

<laugh> Where yours at ? Eric?

Speaker 8 48:55

Uh , mine's on the way. Mine's on the way. I'm actually gonna be teaching , uh, you know, a bit indoors this winter being up here in Columbus. So like , uh, with my , with my students and I'm gonna get one set up and

Speaker 6 49:05

In the basement of the garage.

Speaker 8 49:07

Uh , well, so I have two places. I have a , I have a , a , a facility that's a golf course and driving range that I'll be able to put one in and then actually got offered , uh, an office space to be able to teach , uh, teach out of, So, you know, for PGA professionals and coaches, like we have , uh, we have other affiliates who are PGA professionals that they use their garage and that's where they have lessons at in the winter, like in Chicago. And it's like another way for the PJ professional to, to generate income.

Speaker 6 49:35

Smart. I think it's really smart what you guys are doing or ,

Speaker 7 49:37

Or like that your summer when it's in hundred hundred <laugh>

Speaker 6 49:41

That's like , is here, it's hot as hell. Like I , we will go use my , my buddies, I'll be my buddy's office or whatever, use his sims , play around cause it's too hot. Like why do you wanna practice? When's 110 degrees outside with a hundred percent humidity? No, thanks

Speaker 7 49:55

<laugh> .

Speaker 6 49:56

So I guess what's, what , what are your guys' plans for the rest of this year then? Like what is the focus now? And

Speaker 7 50:05

You know , the famous phrase from, you know , Game of Thrones, winter's coming. Um, so , um,

Speaker 6 50:12

This , what I know is like this is your golf season. Yeah.

Speaker 7 50:17

Um, so, you know, we've just launched golf track , you know, we want to get out a little bit, you know, get people to try it out. Um , obviously with our enclosure and everything. But the coolest thing probably is we've got a , uh, end of the month or so in a couple weeks , uh, we've got a new uh , kind of connector coming out for it where you'll be able to play , uh, um, the golf club, two K two one, you know, with the full career mode and then in our show Shut up . Yeah , man , you just buy it from uh , you'll be able to just buy it from Steam store for like 60 bucks .

Speaker 6 50:46

This is really pretty cool .

Speaker 7 50:48

And uh , but wait, did you see the two K 23 that's coming out 14th of October . So we're gonna , as soon as it's out, we're gonna build a connector to that, be

Speaker 6 50:56

Able to , It's already like people are already talking about that. I know . Like , it's crazy. Instagram,

Speaker 7 51:01

We want people to , we want people to be able to this winter, you know,

Speaker 6 51:05

Bro , I wanna do that. That'd be freaking

Speaker 7 51:07

So we'll hook you up man. We'll hook you up .

Speaker 6 51:08

So like how did you run that off a steam though? Was that what you can run off an Xbox, right? You'd have to like run

Speaker 7 51:14

Through computer has to be pc has to be pc.

Speaker 6 51:16

So like, well the new two K 23 you could play for reals. Yeah . With your golf set, with your simulator, but play the game as if you were playing it . Not like using a controller.

Speaker 7 51:26

Correct.

Speaker 6 51:27

Holy. That's crazy. That blows my mind. Yeah.

Speaker 7 51:32

Um ,

Speaker 6 51:32

Cause there's like YouTubers out there that just play that game like I've seen it. Yeah . And they like , and they're not , and they're the worst golfers in the world. They're really good at two K two . You know what I'm talking about, right? I do. And like, I'm like this get like 30,000 views on him playing two K two , whatever. And I'm like, wow, how does he like, it just blows my mind. But that's cool. Like that's cool . Wow. That's like next level cuz now it's bridging gaming and Well

Speaker 7 51:56

It's funny you say that because that is the exact message and in fact, you know, if I can just put a little future, you know, thing in , um, we already have a prototype out of a soccer app. Um , so it tracks the soccer ball in the same way it tracks a golf ball and we are connecting it to, you know , ea sports fee for 22. So, you know , you'll be able to kick a soccer ball into our enclosures, you know, and you can play it on the EA sports , um, on the screen. So you become the controller, you know, throw away your, you know, your Xbox for drawing . You become,

Speaker 8 52:28

And then you can do playing lessons with your coach , uh, through the , on the video game.

Speaker 6 52:34

But it has to run through pc. I said I didn't think about that. You're right. It like, that's the key. But I , I mean, it's easy to do if you strong enough, fast enough computer that can run because I mean, how much, if you're running a I may ask , generally this is might be a dumb question, but when you run a simulator through a computer, right? Like is it , does it take a lot of processing power or

Speaker 7 52:53

Not really? Listen, you just, you can get a computer like , um, uh, the Predator series on Amazon. I've seen them on sale for like 700 bucks. It'll run at no problems.

Speaker 6 53:02

Does it have to be, is it could be a laptop or does it have

Speaker 7 53:04

Yeah , laptop? No , we actually, we only recommend laptops cuz it's versatile . You can move it. Um , I have a predator series myself. Um , we sell them, we recommend them. And you know, I've seen Amazon here in the US like in Australia we're not that lucky kind of. It's a bit price. But here I've seen sales where you get one of these gaming laptops for, you know, under $700 and um, that's all. You don't need anything more. Not not to run the golf club. You know, if you were playing one of those shoot games and you know , things are moving really fast, maybe

Speaker 6 53:34

You hit a ball . It's just showing some rendering of the traveling. That's

Speaker 7 53:39

Right. That's right. I was wondering , you know , the most intensive thing in those games is like the water

Speaker 6 53:44

<laugh> or me, or me missing my shot and getting off and throwing it. That's just , I think that's really cool. I think like, yeah, that is really cool. That just blows my mind's blown right now. I didn't , I didn't know that could all happen, you know? So point to a hundred thousand golf courses, I think that's cool. Yeah, but it's like, I played yesterday, I , I was messing around and I played like banded whatever. Yeah . And I was like, I've filmed it, I filmed all of it. It didn't turn out that well. Cause my mike well me off. I ,

Speaker 7 54:16

I just bought when I was testing it with Tgc 2019, the non simulator version. Um, so with testing at the moment, so it'll be out a couple weeks, but that version on Steam is like $12 49 cents, you know, with 180,000 golf courses. So again, I keep coming back to affordability, AccessAbility. That's what, that's what we wanna do.

Speaker 6 54:37

Yeah. Because then it's like, oh, okay, now I wanna get my , if my get my kids into it like it's fun now. It's not like, oh, you're practicing. It's like, oh no, you're playing, you know, the masters or

Speaker 7 54:48

Whatever. Yeah. And , and , and then you know, golf again and like my son, you know, he's a little bit into golf, but like when I , when I got him to test the soccer app that couldn't get him off it , you know, I loved it . So, you know , uh, your kids can play other sports if they're not , not , you know , not crazy about golf like us. Well,

Speaker 6 55:03

Like even that , uh, what's that one game called where it's, well it's golfer, it's the VR golf. Like that game's popular too, just like some

Speaker 7 55:12

YouTube . I've seen it , I can't what it's called, but I know the one you made , it

Speaker 6 55:14

Looks. I'll just tell you it doesn't look that cool . But I mean, you're putting on your goggles, so like it that looks cool. Yeah . Um , I , this is blow my mind. See like, this is like, you , you're right. Like it's being able to , to provide the accessibility to people where it's not like way , if it was $15,000, like who , who doesn't pay $15,000? Like, not an average person has that money to sitting around to go put something up like that.

Speaker 7 55:38

Um , my ultimate goal is really for you to be able to buy a full simulator with the software to play all those courses , um, with, with golf track for about as much as it cost to buy a full set of clubs. Like to me, if you are into golf and you can justify a set of clubs, what

Speaker 6 55:53

Kind of clubs, like ag kind of clubs, maybe not Stratas at , at Amazon,

Speaker 7 55:58

Maybe more like, you know , maybe like a tailormade, you know , um, Callaway , let's not GOG or anything, you know, just,

Speaker 6 56:04

Okay, so like three grand , four grand , three

Speaker 7 56:06

Grand essentially. Right? My magic number between two and three grand. That's, that's my

Speaker 6 56:10

Vision. I mean, you're slowly chipping away at it though. Yeah . I mean you're like , I mean , biggest , I guess the biggest thing is the tech, right? At this point,

Speaker 7 56:16

Listen, at the moment we're doing a package and a , you know, a bit of self-promotion, but we're doing a package for under four grand that includes a Garin R 10 and a projected, an enclosure and everything under the foreground. So we, we are getting real close

Speaker 6 56:28

When you resell the tech, right? Like a garment or like, but you're stuck on prices on that, right? They , you can't, like under agreements and stuff, you can't be like, oh, we'll sell for a hundred bucks. Like it's not gonna

Speaker 7 56:39

Happen. No, you , no , there's , there's agreements. You're ,

Speaker 6 56:41

You're , you're limited to how, like what you can discount for you is , is a package is what you can control, not what

Speaker 7 56:48

Yeah . The stuff we manufacture. Yeah . Um , we can control that. Obviously we set the pricing , uh, but , um, uh, yeah, the , like, especially the tech like projectors and launch monitors, you know , they're pretty strict like map pricing, so minimum advertised price and stuff and you know, we stick to that. We , we don't mess around.

Speaker 6 57:06

You have to. I mean, you're gonna lose your deal with those guys. Yeah , we have , I was wondering we have good relationship, it's cool , but you , you are controlling the price though, making it affordable with what you can control. Yeah. So I mean , as we've already seen the last three or four years it's coming down in price. Yeah . Right. Like,

Speaker 7 57:23

And I think you said yourself, right? Like with Garment, like it came down to price and all of a sudden, you know , their sales went super crazy high .

Speaker 6 57:29

Yeah. That was post Covid that came out August last year. Yeah . So it's almost like that wasn't made, you know, two years ago

Speaker 7 57:36

They were trying to get it out for Covid , I'm sure, but logistical, the

Speaker 6 57:40

Dude I was calling around so many people I was calling my friends at Garment every , nobody had it. Nobody. They're like, we don't have it. Like they're saying , they're like , they're telling me in August it'll be October. You wanna pre-order it? No. Wanna pre-order it one right now? What are you talking <laugh> ? That's cool. I don't know , it's just cool as you guys are doing. I think it's kind of neat. I think it's really, I don't know . I haven't seen anybody do this. Like I said, that's why it fascinated me because everyone else is just trying to resell, you know? Oh yeah , resell. We just, oh, we can put a package together for you. But it's like not our mat , right? It's not our , it's not our enclosure.

Speaker 8 58:13

And to give equal credit, like he designed the enclosure too. Like he, he put all the thought and design into like how it's supposed to be , where the seams are supposed to be, which ours doesn't have any. Uh , so it's like, that's kind of the stuff that, that I really respected about what he was doing is that yeah, he was able to tinker to design that.

Speaker 7 58:34

Remember how I had those 10 bays and golf tech in Melbourne and used to have like batch the parties , you

Speaker 6 58:39

Know, the , you knew what you off. You like this .

Speaker 7 58:41

I I knew that. I also knew what like drunk golfers can do to a golf ball and where they can send it and I'm like, I'm gonna design something that'll protect us against even those people. <laugh> .

Speaker 6 58:51

I think it's cool. I think it's really cool. I this is so cool. Wow. I obviously that a long time I've, I just, where everything's going and like, just the accessibility of it is fascinating to

Speaker 7 59:02

Me. Yeah. It's, it's only gonna get more accessible. I mean technology price is coming down, you know , projectors will come down in price, you know , um, like every , I mean that's really the most expensive. Like that will become, you know, once like golf tracks , uh, with golf track , even with garment, the projector is literally the most expensive part besides the enclosure. Um, so that's the most expensive piece of tech .

Speaker 8 59:23

And people don't realize, to your point earlier, Paul was like the projector piece, like people don't, they , we get those questions all the time too of like, I'm gonna put my own projector in or whatever, like you, and this is where Igor is , like, when we have another guy on our team, Scott, who's way smarter than I am about this stuff. Like I just tell people I'm a dumb golf pro. Like I can only count to six. Cuz why would you want to count more than six during, around , uh, so like the, the throw the resolution, like all that stuff, it's, it's like, I don't know, I just want one that is, it's gonna work when I put it up. Not that I have to send one back. Everybody wants . Yeah .

Speaker 6 1:00:00

Yeah. Like why is this not working? Like nobody wants to deal with that. Well I think it's cool. I appreciate you guys being on the show. You guys need to check out 24 7 what your guys is url so people can go to your website.

Speaker 7 1:00:12

Um, two 40 seven.golf g o l f obviously. Um, and uh , golf track.app . Those two are the only ones you need to know.

Speaker 8 1:00:22

T R A K .

Speaker 7 1:00:23

Oh , yes. Thank you.

Speaker 6 1:00:25

That's exciting. I'm , I'm on you guys website right now. This is pretty freaking cool.

Speaker 8 1:00:29

<laugh> . If you go to the golf track, I see if you go to the Golf Track app website and scroll to the bottom, it shows us , uh, testing it oror testing it against the Sky Track .

Speaker 6 1:00:38

Oh really? I'll check that out. I'm on the Amazon are 24 7 website and I was like, I'm like, what is that? I must be

Speaker 8 1:00:44

Yeah, that Garin, the garment one that Yor was talking about. It's under our B by , So bring your own launch monitor , uh, package. So the garment would be, Oh , I see . The garment would be the bring your own. So we're just including it for free , uh, with that right now, which

Speaker 6 1:00:59

Is $600 right there. So that's a smoking deal. Yeah,

Speaker 8 1:01:02

I think after the bundle it's a little over 1200 is is the discount right now. You'd get on it for the total package. Wow.

Speaker 6 1:01:09

This is cool. I'm gonna , I gotta a window shops neat <laugh> . All right you guys, you had to check out 24 7. They got some cool stuff happening. You're probably hear more about even more in the coming year. So thank you for being on the show. Thank you. And I really appreciate it and I will see everybody in the next episode.

Speaker 8 1:01:29

Appreciate it Paul. Thanks for the opportunity.

Speaker 3 1:01:32

Thanks for listening to another episode of Behind the Golf Brand podcast. You're gonna beat me a golf stay connected on and off the show by visiting golfers authority.com. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a comment . Golf is always more fun when you win. Stay out of the beach and see you on the green.