In this week's episode, I interview my good friend Brixton Albert, the Founder and CEO of Performance Golf.
Performance Golf is the leading online golf instruction company that provides golfers of all levels with the tools and resources they need to take their game to the next level. They aim to help 1 million amateur golfers play the best golf of their lives and enjoy every minute.
Their library of video training courses features instruction from some of the world’s most prestigious golf instructors and tour pros, including Sir Nick Faldo, Hank Haney, Nick Bradley, Martin Chuck, and David Leadbetter. They also offer a variety of tailored resources to help golfers improve their game, including revolutionary physical products and an exclusive VIP coaching program featuring world-renowned pros.
Their founder, Brixton Albert, is a passionate leader committed to helping golfers improve their game. As a scratch golfer, he understands the challenges that golfers face when trying to get better and firmly believes that the best way to learn golf is from the best of the best. Under his leadership, Performance Golf has grown into one of the world's leading online golf instruction companies by consistently providing access to the highest quality instruction and resources available to experienced and novice golfers alike.
In this week's episode, I interview my good friend Brixton Albert, the Founder and CEO of Performance Golf.
Performance Golf is the leading online golf instruction company that provides golfers of all levels with the tools and resources they need to take their game to the next level. They aim to help 1 million amateur golfers play the best golf of their lives and enjoy every minute.
Their library of video training courses features instruction from some of the world’s most prestigious golf instructors and tour pros, including Sir Nick Faldo, Hank Haney, Nick Bradley, Martin Chuck, and David Leadbetter. They also offer a variety of tailored resources to help golfers improve their game, including revolutionary physical products and an exclusive VIP coaching program featuring world-renowned pros.
Their founder, Brixton Albert, is a passionate leader committed to helping golfers improve their game. As a scratch golfer, he understands the challenges that golfers face when trying to get better and firmly believes that the best way to learn golf is from the best of the best. Under his leadership, Performance Golf has grown into one of the world's leading online golf instruction companies by consistently providing access to the highest quality instruction and resources available to experienced and novice golfers alike.
Today we play golf.
Speaker 2:Let me show you how we do it in the pros. Welcome
Speaker 1:To Behind the Golf Brand podcast.
Speaker 2:I never missed with the Seven Iron , a
Speaker 1:Conversation with some of the
Speaker 2:Most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs behind the biggest names in golf. My friends
Speaker 1:Were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf course, I lived on the driving range from Pro Talk .
Speaker 2:You should learn something from each and every single round you play in to fun, from
Speaker 1:On and off the green.
Speaker 2:Why
Speaker 1:Would you play golf if you don't play
Speaker 2:It for money? Just let me put the ball in a hole. This
Speaker 1:Is Behind the Golf Brand podcast with Paul
Speaker 2:Libert tore .
Speaker 3:What's up guys? Welcome to the Behind the Golf Brand podcast. This week I had my good friend Brixton Albert form performance golf zone. I'm super excited to have him on the show. You guys have all seen performance golf zone, all over the internet on YouTube. It's everywhere. And Brixton is the founder and I'm really excited to talk to 'em like about performance golf zone, where they're going, how they started, and like where, what the future holds. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, Paul. Looking forward to chatting some golf today.
Speaker 3:So where are you located right now?
Speaker 2:So I am based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. You , I grew up in the northeast , um, all about the warm winters. Um, so moved down to Fort Lauderdale , um, about eight, nine years ago now.
Speaker 3:So are you a professional golfer?
Speaker 2:I am not a professional. Um, but I am a, I'm a scratch golfer.
Speaker 3:Are you? That's cool.
Speaker 2:I'm a scratch golfer. Yeah, I played , um, played a lot of golf growing up. I'm happy to go into that if you want to at some point . Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like so who taught you how to golf? Like your dad or your grandpa or what? Your grandma Yeah,
Speaker 2:I think my grandpa got me clubs when I was five.
Speaker 3:I ,
Speaker 2:I went to a golf camp once a year, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Never really got into it. But then I saw Tiger Woods win the Masters in 1997. Somehow I had the TV on when I'm a 10 year old kid. And I watched that and I'm like, whoa, this is cool. And I decided that day , um, like probably a lot of other kids that I'm gonna get into golf. And , um, from 10 on, I was just super serious , um,
Speaker 3:About trying to
Speaker 2:Get good, get good at this stuff .
Speaker 3:Yeah , I remember that match . I remember seeing that in college and I was like, ho like that changed everything when you I first saw it . I was like, this is the future right here, dude. Like I knew right away when I saw that. Yeah .
Speaker 2:I used to bring my golf clubs to school and it's funny, like kids would make fun of me, right? And then as Tiger grew and got more popular in 98, 99, 2000, it went from kids making fun of you for playing golf to like, whoa, I wanna learn golf now. And it just like, he, he transformed the game and got so many people in it and that, that was really the big point for me , um, in my , uh, golf life.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I also think too, like, I mean I was like, I'm like his age. So it's like when you see somebody your age like dominating and it's like, oh crap. Like you get super excited 'cause you're like, oh, this game's changing forever right now. Yeah. It's not like a bunch of old guys playing golf
Speaker 2:And it was entertaining every weekend. I mean, you're turning on golf tournaments 20 weeks out of the year. Like think of how many weeks outta the year he was providing entertainment for golfers and, and playing at an elite level. A level no one's ever seen before. I mean, I remember as a kid being like, whoa, this isn't gonna last forever, but whatever the heck I'm watching right now, <laugh> . It's pretty dang cool. Um, well let's try to enjoy this.
Speaker 3:So then did you like play in like high school and like college or what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the quick backstory is I started seriously playing golf when I was 10. What does serious look like? Uh, my dad would drop me off at the golf course on his way to work at six 30. He would pick me up at 4:00 PM and when he would come to get me, like, I was upset. I I didn't wanna leave. I mean , I , I just loved it. I was , um, incredibly motivated. If you know how there's some parents out there that kind of push your kids, my parents had to pull me away being like, Hey, like, you gotta chill out. Like you're, you're getting too into this. Um, so I was super self-driven, played golf in high school, ended up getting a division one golf scholarship. Really?
Speaker 3:Um ,
Speaker 2:Crap . Yeah, I, I played a US amateur won a bunch of, you know, I would say like pretty good, like local and like state golf tournaments. Um, and , um, yeah, had like a , a pretty decent golf career. I , I wasn't like a great division one golfer. I didn't quite have the career I was looking for, but it was a great experience. Uh, played against a lot of the guys that you , you see on tv and some of those tournaments. I mean, obviously they were better, but I was kind of like in the same, you know, league
Speaker 3:League , yeah. Like you're , you can compete. Yeah. You're competing, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I wasn't like out there like, I mean, I was in tournaments with those guys, but I mean, they were better. But I mean, it was cool to kind of like see the, the best of the best and know you were within, you know, maybe like a couple arms reach of them and , um, yeah, it was super serious about golf growing up. I mean, just loved the game and was just trying to get better all the time.
Speaker 3:So, where'd you go to school at?
Speaker 2:I went to Radford. It's in the big south conference, so yeah .
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker 2:I would play, like when I was a freshman, Dustin Johnson was in that conference, you know , um, crazy. But it was pretty cool to see , uh, people don't realize just how good people are at that level. If you get to college, you're the best player in your area and you think you're pretty good, but you don't realize that once you get there, like even college golf division one golf, everyone was the best player in their area and everyone's really good. Um , yeah ,
Speaker 3:The level, the playing field, you're like, and then you really see like, who's the top 1% of the top 1%. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, I think one year on our team, like we were maybe 70th ranked division one college golf team outta three teams. Like one year we had one guy, like finished second in the Virginia State amateur, another guy Monday qualified for APGA tour event. Another guy, two other guys qualified for the US amateur. You know, like a lot of guys on the team are good. It , it's, it's just so competitive. Um,
Speaker 3:That's what I heard too , because somebody , I had somebody on the show a couple weeks ago and they were saying that like in college you, there's only so many guys complaining the tournament , right ?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Every team's got maybe 10 to 12 guys and five guys travel the tournament. So , um, you gotta be in the top five if you want to go to the tournaments.
Speaker 3:Wow. So then when you graduated, what'd you do? Like, what'd your degree in?
Speaker 2:Um, I got a degree in business. I , um, I got a sales job, or I actually, I graduated from Radford. I redshirted a year. I went to the University of Tampa. I had an extra year of eligibility. So I, I went to school in Radford in Virginia, moved to Tampa for a year. I worked a little bit, I played golf an extra year in college. I was working on my , um, my master's and my MBA there. I got into sales , um, golf game, kept getting pretty good. Like I really like, got better at 23, 24, 25. But I had a sales job where I would do consulting work essentially with, with retailers. Um, so I would help a lot of retailers make a lot of extra money through their marketing. So I kind of got a little bit of a taste of the marketing world and the sales world , um, outta college and had a pretty nice , um, actually like a 10 year run with a , a really successful company that I worked with , um, once I graduated.
Speaker 3:So were you doing consulting or was that a brand that you owned or you just worked for ?
Speaker 2:No, it was , um, I started working for a company called Listrak. Um, I was probably like their 20th employee there and , um, you know, started when they were like a two, 3 million company and over a number of years, I, I was selling for them. I was one of their sales guys, but the company skyrocketed from two to 3 million to a hundred million. And I learned a lot about sales, but a lot about marketing, I would say also kind of in that process and , um, that eventually kinda led to, to starting performance golf.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because that's , I'm like, honestly, because performance golf, I'm like this guy, like, they know what they're doing with marketing. Like, like I , once I saw it, I'm like, holy crap, this is like a next level stuff. I could tell right away that like, oh , well
Speaker 2:Thank you .
Speaker 3:Like, and I'm not, I'm not saying it's a compliment, you can just tell like straight outta the gate, it's like, oh yeah , these guys know. It's not like, oh, we have this really good idea and then we have to market it. It's like, no, we're really good at marketing and we have a really good idea. So it's almost like, I don't know , it's brilliant, but No , I
Speaker 2:Appreciate it . Yeah,
Speaker 3:You did. So then you're at list track .
Speaker 2:Yeah . And
Speaker 3:When did you, when did you start thinking about performance golf? Um , what made you decide, or what year was that?
Speaker 2:So I had a friend of mine that he had a business helping skinny guys gain weight, and he had some success with that. And he would always tell me, Hey Brixton, like, why don't you start a golf business? And this is when I was like 23, 24. I wasn't really spending a lot of money on golf, you know, like when you're in college, you kind of get your golf clubs for free. I was fortunate, my parents gave me the opportunity to play a golf course in the summer, so it wasn't like I was dishing out a lot of my own money for golf. So my friend's like, create a golf business. And I'm like, well, I don't spend really a lot of money on golf. So for a couple years I really just sat on the idea. I thought about it, I talked about it, and then there was really one day I was like, you know what? I gotta do something different. I don't wanna work my job forever, even though it's a really cool place to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I said, let's just go all in. And what I realized was, even though I was a younger guy at that point, there are a lot of people that spend a lot on golf, you know, like, you know how golfers are. So it was a really good market to get into. But , um, I kind of had this idea. I sat on it, like a lot of people probably do. And then one day I just said, I'm all in. And it , it's just been like pretty relentless.
Speaker 3:It's cold Turkey. Like, you're like, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna figure it out and I'm gonna do a brand or what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like, I mean, it was like, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna sell something. I'm gonna sell a golf. Like at first we started with like a digital course to help people gain distance and um, you know, so I mapped it all out. I spent six months building it, outshooting the videos, crane the site, trying to figure it all out.
Speaker 3:So who was in the video? Was it you or did you hire somebody?
Speaker 2:Um , well I actually had a golf pro back then. Like it didn't really work out with that pro long term . Yeah . Um, they're still a really good teacher, someone that I have a lot of respect for, but we just didn't kind of like, you know, it was like just starting a business out. Things kind of didn't work out , um, exactly the way we envision , of course . But the big takeaway that I took from it was, I'm like, people, I , I remember the first day we launched, four people bought, and I remember exactly where I stood. I was like, whoa, like this is gonna be big and <laugh> . And you just remember that moment. And then from there we just ,
Speaker 3:Yeah. First you make on the internet, you always remember that moment. You're like, holy crap. Yeah . Like I remember , I don't know who bought this, but they bought it.
Speaker 2:I remember exactly where I was standing. I'm like, whoa, if one person can buy, I think more people will eventually buy if we can just get better at what we're doing.
Speaker 3:So you had one course, right? Like one training course?
Speaker 2:One course , yeah.
Speaker 3:And what was the cost of that one course back then? Do you remember?
Speaker 2:It was a $47 course. Um,
Speaker 3:Was it all video or was it video and PDF or what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, just all videos . Like a step-by-step system to help people, you know, gain some extra power. Um, yeah , exactly. So I launched that course, sold a little bit, didn't had a business relationship. That didn't work.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And
Speaker 2:Then I brought on another golf pro onto my site, and then I worked with him, and then he passed away, unfortunately.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh .
Speaker 2:So my first two years were a little , um, rough. They were , yeah, like
Speaker 3:You learning, like learn trial by fire, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like imagine like you start something, you see it going well, then you have to restart, and then you restart that whole process, you're grinding and grinding and grind it . Then that guy passes away and I'm like, whoa, okay. Well I've learned this market exists, but I've re I've kind of wasted two years of my time. And then at that point I was like, I gotta go out and find a couple golf pros to really, you know, diversify kind of our business model.
Speaker 3:Yeah , yeah . Rolling your dice on one person or whatever.
Speaker 2:Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> And , uh, so what year was that ? So that was 20 , that was 2018 . So like , yeah, when I'm being honest, like we've only been, I mean we've been at this for like seven years, but really the first two years we kind of started and stopped, restarted and started again.
Speaker 3:Was it always performance golf zone or was it called something else?
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, we started at as as performance golf zone. Um, when I first started Paul, I saw two domains, performance, golf and performance golf zone. And I'm like, Ooh , performance golf looks pretty good, but performance golf, the guy wants $20,000 for the you
Speaker 3:Have that I'm <laugh> ,
Speaker 2:You know, and Performance Golf Zone was one of those domains I think you get for like 7 99.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I bought Performance Golf Zone for 7 99. But then as we started to grow like two years later, I actually went back and bought Performance Golf. So we've officially changed the name to Performance Golf.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know, some people still refer to us as Performance Golf Zone, but I just think performance, golf's a a little bit of a
Speaker 3:Guy be hijacking all your traffic, right? Because he'd be googling performance golf and gonna go to like some other random site and you're like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2:Fortunately we have the redirects in there, so we kind of get that traffic. But , um, that was the story of Performance Golf Zone to now performance Golf is the name .
Speaker 3:So when, all right . So you launched in 18, was your first course was the first series of course .
Speaker 2:Yeah, first course launched September of 2016. Oh , okay . Had that had that year and a half kind of period learning.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like unfortunately, you know, one of the golf pros passing away the relationship not working. And then I found , um, it's interesting, I was, I was introduced to Erica Gono , um, who's a, you know, pretty well known YouTube personality Yeah .
Speaker 3:On YouTube. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I had a friend of mine that said, man, there's this guy, like, he's pretty good on camera, you know, he's a decent, like , he's like a polished guy. Um, he , I think he's gonna be something in the golf space. So I just sent him an email. We had a couple conversations. I didn't know him, and he's like, Hey, I think at the time Eric launched 200 YouTube videos and his videos all had under like a couple hundred views. Like oh , one was really watching them . Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like normal YouTube algorithm stuff.
Speaker 2:He didn't , he didn't have the , the YouTube algorithm going and uh, but he was a good teacher. You know, he had a book lesson calendar and I said, Hey, like, I know how to market stuff. Why don't we create a course to fix golfers slice, fix or slice you come to the course, I'll film it, I'll market it, you know, I'll pay you a royalty. And that course really blew up. And you know, I think that blew up. And Eric also kind of got his things going and Eric's now like a pretty popular YouTube, you know, in golf personality. Yeah, he is .
Speaker 3:Yeah , for sure.
Speaker 2:And we kind of started with Eric. So Eric was the first guy. I
Speaker 3:Didn't know that, I didn't know Eric was the first. I thought like it was somebody else, like one of the other guys on your list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Eric was the guy. And , and then once Eric took off, I was like, okay, then , then I approached a bigger name instructor, like a golf, I just top hundred guy. And then I was like, oh, okay, well this guy's interested in what we're doing. And then I got his to work, and then from there it really snowballed to where I was able to get guys like Hank Haney , you know, I worked with Sir Nick , I worked with David Ledbetter , where we work , you know , the
Speaker 3:Who's who, the who's whose list, like of the top, right? Like it's
Speaker 2:Insane . Yeah , it's a great, it's a great group of guys. And it's funny, like these were guys that I always tell people, like when I was 10 years old, I, I kind of envisioned like Cernik Fowler , you're just watching golf in the nineties. Cernik was kind of the guy when I was like 12 years old. I remember thinking, man, David Ledbetter, I just wish I could take lessons from him. I remember being 13, I'm walking up the fairway with my Callaway hat and my clip, like, my clip on my hat thinking I was rock ed , you know? And I have all these visuals over the years of like, I just kind of, when I was younger, I kind of liked a lot of these guys and I really looked up to them. And now that we work with them, it's just, it's super humbling and , um, you know, feel super privileged to have a great group of
Speaker 3:Guys . Yeah . Like full circle, right? Like the guys you looked up to are now working with you and you're like, holy crap. Like that did that just happened , you know? Yeah.
Speaker 2:It , it's super cool , um, to learn and get their different perspectives and, and spend some time with them. For sure.
Speaker 3:So like, it's almost like you learn from each in instance, right? So like, you made the first couple videos, you know, the first thing in 16, huge learning curve figure had issues, figured it all out. Relo redid it on 18 with Eric and it's like, but you were successful on each one. So just kind of build the foundation to then be like, oh look, we did this with so and so . Oh yeah, sure, I'll do that all day long. 'cause you're , you're doing the hard part, you're doing the marketing, right? For the Yeah , there's ,
Speaker 2:There's a , a lot of people don't realize, like with marketing, you're, you're losing more than you're winning. It's not like I'm just like throwing things out there and it's just blowing up. I mean , sometimes you launch something and it takes off right away. Yeah . But a lot of it is like, we're just constantly testing things on our end where yeah , hey , I might test 38 things and 35 times or 36 times outta 38, it's gonna fail, it's not gonna work. You
Speaker 3:Lose money on them . Yeah, exactly. Well then
Speaker 2:You find those winners and when you stay consistent, just like a lot of things in life. But I think a lot of people don't realize the amount of testing and the amount of failure that you really have to lean into and embrace to get these things to the point where they start to kind of pick up steam. Uh, so to say.
Speaker 3:No, that's, that's really poignant actually to think , because you're right. It's like you have to test and if you fail, you learn something from it and you don't, and you just tweak it or you don't do it at all or whatever it might be. Um, when did you start getting more and more instructors? Like, like when did you start getting like the, when did like certain Nick come on or David Le better or Martin Chuck? Like was it just in the last couple years, because that's what I've noticed, a lot more marketing in terms of Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> . Like you see Martin like every day on YouTube. Pretty much like it . Martin , like, I always joke around with them too. I'm like, I see you more than I see myself. So that's so funny.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think the goal was, I think at the end of the day, people latch onto to different teachers.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Some , some teachers . Yeah. And I think the goal was to have a couple different teachers and then to have them focus on different things. So like when you think about golf, like all golfers have swing issues, all golfers have different pain points. Our goal is to help golfers fix some of their biggest challenges. And the reason I brought on all these teachers are , it , it's hard to get access to some of these guys. Like it's hard to work with David Ledbetter in person, or Sir Nick or, you know , it's , oh yeah . It's really , it's hard to get a lesson with Martin . Like he's got golf schools booked out for, you know, months and months. So I wanted to really bring them into a platform where people could fix some of their biggest challenges, kind of in a step-by-step way smart to learn from these guys that are , are some of the best of the best. That would be difficult to try to work with them like in person or actually, you know, work with them .
Speaker 3:No , that's brilliant. So I mean, right now how many instructors do you guys have on the, on the site or on the system?
Speaker 2:There's a handful. Um, I mean, you know , I think I rattled off some, like, the main ones that we're working with currently are guys like Eric Martin, Chuck , um, work a little bit with Sir Nick , David Ledbetter , Rocco Media . We do some work with him. We're about to have a couple more that we're rolling out with, but I would say there's a handful of, you know, five , um, just six guys that we pre pretty regularly work with and do video shoots with and come out with new content. And , uh, you know, we're always looking to strategically add a couple more to the mix, which I think people are gonna see in 2024. That's cool. Um , but yeah, five keeps us pretty busy. Um, you know, as much as I would love to have 400 different teachers, you know, five keeps us pretty busy with everything that we've got going on over here,
Speaker 3:Because I've been at Martin's place when you guys are filming him. Yeah . Like, and I'm like, whoa, this is legit. Because I mean, it's like high quality, like the, and it's , it's legit. It's like a movie set. It's like really nice. Like, I was like, holy smokes.
Speaker 2:I looked through my, I looked through my phone and I, I looked out when I was trying to run these video shoots, Paul, in like 2016, like, you're getting to the course, it's like
Speaker 3:Four . Is it you filming or do you have like somebody helping you?
Speaker 2:No , I was there, but I was trying to direct the shoot, so I'm
Speaker 3:Like, Hey , yeah , you're like a crazy person.
Speaker 2:We got six hours, we gotta do this in the morning, we gotta do this. And the whole day is mapped out and, and now fortunately we have like a really good film crew.
Speaker 3:Yeah , yeah .
Speaker 2:You know , um, with guys that really know golf , um, I know exactly
Speaker 3:What you're talking about too , those guys. I know those guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah. These video shoots aren't easy. Like people think, oh, it's easy to shoot videos, but you're at the golf course, you're battling a lot of elements and , um, there's a lot of stuff we're trying to get done in these shoots. But , um, it's cool to see how the production quality has improved from kind of when we, you know, we first started.
Speaker 3:So if somebody goes to Performance Golf zone, like how does it work? Like I know how it works personally, but how does it work if somebody come in and they sign up for like a class and then they can do more classes? Or how does it usually work if somebody doesn't understand how that works? Yeah,
Speaker 2:So we offer a number of different programs. I mean, some golfers just wanna come to our site to fix their slice. Some golfers wanna come and just , uh, improve their contact. So we offer one-off courses that golfers can buy. That's one of the options that we have. Yeah . It's like, Hey , what's that biggest pain point? How can we help them have kind of a step-by-step plan to fix that? That's one of the things. The second thing we have is we have something called the Scratch Club, where basically I broke golf into like a six step framework to reach your full potential. And I kind of found the best of the best teachers in the world for all those areas. And we developed a framework to help the average golfer get closer to scratch golf. And that's a subscription that we have. Um, that's around $29. That's cool . Yeah. Then we also have another option. I mean, some golfers like to get hands-on feedback. So we have an option or site where you can send in a video of your swing, and a pro of ours will get on camera within like 48 hours of when you send the video in at the latest. I mean, so they're getting on camera quick and they're sending you a video back saying , Paul, you're doing this, this, and this. Great you's a drill that's gonna help you fix this. And it becomes like this interactive feedback loop. And we have, I mean, we have hundreds of people a day that are sending their swings in.
Speaker 3:That's awesome .
Speaker 2:That we're helping. So those are kind of the big three things along with, you know, the training programs and some new, or the training , um, the physical products and some new things that we have that we're,
Speaker 3:That we're doing now. So like when did you guys start doing physical products? So that's pretty recent, like in the last year or less, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Um, it was Masters Sunday, not this masters , but last masters . So we're going back , um,
Speaker 3:22.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Or yeah. So we're going back, I don't know, maybe like 18 months ago, 17 months ago. 17 months ago I guess . And I'm sitting on the couch with Eric Gono and a couple friends and we're just talking about golfers' pain points. And like, I just had this epiphany. I'm like, okay, golfers struggle with Clubface control, they struggle with Ford Chaffing . Why don't we do this, this, and this? And I had this idea , um, which became the Straight Stick, one of our really Holy smart . Yeah. And it hit me and I was like, okay, I don't know how to sell physical products. I don't have any manufacturing contacts, but I gotta go figure this out. So it took a full year to build it, figure it out, have it ready. And then the following Masters Sunday, ironically we launched the product and it kind of took off, but it basically, it blew up.
Speaker 3:It's like everywhere now . Yeah ,
Speaker 2:It's probably this year. I mean, the , the idea was 18 months ago. Right. And we were able to launch it six months ago, which um, has been great. Has been great so far .
Speaker 3:So was that the first product then was a straight stick ?
Speaker 2:The Straight Stick was the first physical product Yep . That was part of our
Speaker 3:Platform. And then , um, when did like the, like EA Z three and the launch deck and all , and the straightaway, because that's , I've been starting to see the commercials for that too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So those all came out in the following months. So those are, those are definitely dropping them .
Speaker 3:Yeah. New products,
Speaker 2:Those are definitely , yeah. And again, like we're really just, you know, we're not trying to create like a stealth driver for Tour Pros, but what we see in the market, Paul, is there are gaps in the market that golfers have pain points for. I'll give you an example. Like we created the Easy three because the average guy that swings 80 miles per hour has a tough time hitting a three wood off the ground. It's a hard club to hit. I mean, I'm a scratch golfer and I can't say I'm the, the greatest three wood player from two 60 off the deck, and I'm not the buyer. Most people buying our things, Paul, are guys that are like 20 handicaps, 15 handicaps. Yeah . It's a lot slower. So we're like, how can we create some things just to stack the deck better for these golfers to make the game more fun, smart . And that's kinda where a lot of our, I would say our physical products kind of come into the mix for them.
Speaker 3:So do you have more products , uh, coming out in the next six months?
Speaker 2:We do. Um, you know, to get a product right, it takes a lot of testing, a lot of prototyping, and , um, we have , um, actually a driver that we're gonna be , oh really?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh,
Speaker 2:In October. Um, it's a club that's gonna really , uh, make it a lot easier for someone that hits a fade or a slice to square up the face a little bit easier. And then next year we've got a number of other products that are in manufacturing now. Um, and , and the results with our testing has been unbeliev . We've just been prototyping these now for a full year, and we have at the point where we've tested like hundreds of golfers on 'em , and , and the results are really cool. So I think our, our roadmap for 2024 , uh, it's pretty fair to say we're , we're all really excited about.
Speaker 3:That's so cool. I what I , what I like about performance golf is that like, it's such high quality, the content's so good. The site is so good, the instructors are so good. Like, it's like , it's like everything's done the right way. It's not, you know, it's not halfass, it's not like some cheesy like PDF and like, oh, here, go watch this. It's like, it's high quality content that will actually help you with people that know they're talking about. Like, that's
Speaker 2:The part . No , I , I appreciate that. I think a lot of that, like, you know, as a business owner, you're trying to juggle a lot of things, but like if you look in my, if you look at my phone here, you know, Paul, I'm that guy that literally, like, I've had years where I've fill my golf swing a thousand times in a year, and I've personally in my golf career, I've wasted a lot of time working on the wrong things. And you know, we see so many golfers out there that just aren't getting better, that are just jumping around from so many different things. So really our big goal here is like, how can we give, go ? How can we help golfers identify their issue, get them working on the right thing, but then kind of a plan on how to fix it. I see so many guys like, go to the average driver range , go to the Raven and you're gonna watch guys just slam 50 balls machine, machine, throw 'em, slam their clubs in the trunk and think what the heck just happened. So our goal is how can we help these guys go to the chorus with a little bit more of a plan to be strategic in their improvement efforts? And, and we take that seriously, you know, to, to help these guys hopefully improve.
Speaker 3:Well, that's a disconnect, right? It's like you can get these products, but like, you know, either on, on an iPad or physical Yeah . But if you don't actually have a plan, it's not like you're gonna use it or really, you know, it's gonna be one more thing you bought that didn't work, but it with , with yours. It's like you have both. It's like you have a full plan if one, if you have one issue, you can watch this from this instructor, famous instructor, right? Yeah . And then it's like, if you don't have that issue, but you wanna get better at golf, we have the entire program from all these famous people that will help you get good. And if you wanna take something physical, you to go practice it, we have that and you can go to the course and go practice it. So it's like you have the whole gambit, which is honestly brilliant. So Yeah. And
Speaker 2:Golf's a hard game. I mean, I think we have to be real with ourselves. Like, you know, you think about , um, did you play sports growing up at all, or?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I did.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you go out and shoot , if you go out and shoot a basketball, you're gonna improve your jump shot . If you go play chess, you're gonna probably get better at chess, right? But golf, I mean, according to the United States Golf Association, after playing golf for three years, you actually get a shot worse.
Speaker 3:Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Golf is so counterintuitive where like you can do, you can, you can practice and get worse. So, I mean, I've personally wasted five years of my time working on the wrong thing as like a scratch golfer. And if I'm doing that, imagine a 20 handicapper out there that might not have as much golf acumen that I do. So I think just that plan is so important. How can you practice smart? How can you practice the right way to not form more bad habits? And I think that's one of the big, you know, kind of missing gaps that you kind of see in the, in the golf market today for most, most golfers.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I think there's a bit , there's been a void in the market too for actually actionable content that people can get. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> , right? Like I , for a while now , um, and I think you guys, and I was telling this to Brix and earlier before the show started, I'm like, I think he's the only brand everyone's talks about doing this. Brix is the only person who's actually doing it, right? Everyone's like , oh, we're gonna be doing this. And it's like they're doing it at a high level already, straight out of the gate after a couple years. It's like, that's the force, that's the force we reckoned with right there. You know , it's like everyone else , it's like too late. You had your chance but you didn't do anything.
Speaker 2:I , and I think there are a lot of great, you know, there's a lot of golf instructors that I have a lot of respect for. It's just, as a golf consumer, you need to be careful. It's like, hey, you gotta get the right info that applies to you. But then also you need to know how to practice it, right? You need to know like, hey, if I'm gonna go hit 30 balls, like what's the intention gonna be? How should I kinda work through those to have a good session? So again, I think there's a lot of great teachers out there, but I think the disconnect sometimes can be how do you actually implement these things? Yeah .
Speaker 3:Follow through with it. Exactly. Which is huge. I they also, the other thing is too is I think people are intimidated to go get a lesson, right? For whatever reason and the cost, right? Like the cost is not cheap to get a lesson. I mean , you get your pay for, so it's like with this, you get high quality content from the world's best instructors.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That
Speaker 3:Is stuff that really matters. And it's not , it's not gonna like break the bank or you gotta put like a thousand dollars deposit or some other crap. It's like you can literally just do what you wanna do, which is really smart.
Speaker 2:Try to make it affordable. And I agree like in person's always good if you can find a good teacher, but the reality is a lot of people aren't gonna do that, right?
Speaker 3:No , I wasn't gonna do that.
Speaker 2:And uh, yeah, I think that's kind of what we're, we're trying to do, making these courses , um, easy to follow to help them fix some of their biggest issues. To shoot better, to shoot , uh, better scores , uh, faster.
Speaker 3:So in the next like six months you have new products coming out and then you have more instructional like series coming out too, like with other instructors or
Speaker 2:We do. Um, I think the big thing that I'm really excited about, you know, is again, like our motto around here is how can we help golfers improve faster? Like that's really kind of our goal. Um, so one of the big things that we're rolling out here in the coming months are we're gonna have a performance golf app. So you can have all the videos on your phone, but the biggest thing that we're most excited about that I've been working on now for, gosh, probably a year and a half, is we're developing an AI component to our app where you can take a video poll of your swing and our app will analyze 17 different things in your swing through three d skeletal motion capture. And then our app will give you feedback saying, Paul, here are your top four swing issues. Here's the order you need to work on your issues on, and it's gonna show you drills to improve them. So let's just say your biggest swing issue is your, your pelvis rotation. You're gonna see that in the app, it's gonna give you a video, you know, right in there. And then you can film your swing again. And it's actually gonna give you real-time feedback if you're improving that.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:So this has been a , a, a huge project. We're currently in beta testing with it, and we're, we're, we're gonna roll this out right beginning of 2024. So that , that , that's probably the biggest thing that I think golfers should be excited about. Just having that feed that way to practice with feedback and that way to practice knowing you're working on the right thing. And that's something we're really excited about .
Speaker 3:That's crazy. And then you also, then you have all the instruction on top of it. So it's almost like you can actually know what you're doing right and wrong, and then if you need more help, it'll tell you what to do and be like, oh, maybe you should watch this video from so and so . Yeah . That'll reinforce what we're selling you or what the app's selling you.
Speaker 2:That's the goal. Yeah . The apps is gonna be there to be a feedback device for you and, and really get you focused on let's work on the right thing. Uh , you got five issues, right? But let's work on the biggest thing that's gonna move the needle for you. And it's all built kind of through this three d skeletal motion capture. So it's gonna be super customized for everyone and um,
Speaker 3:Yeah,
Speaker 2:I think people are gonna love it .
Speaker 3:That's cool. So where can people find like performance golf?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well there , there's this site that I've been working on for a couple years, Paul. Um, it's called performance golf.com.
Speaker 3:Ah , there we go.
Speaker 2:That's a great place. And you know, we've got some, some free content there. We have information about some of our clubs. Um , we have a way where you can kind of tell us your issues on the site and then we'll give you some feedback back on where to start. Uh , but performance golf.com is the , the best place to look.
Speaker 3:That's awesome. Well, Brixton's a very busy man, as you guys can tell. So I'm really happy he was able to come hang out for a while with us and talk about performance golf. If you guys want to , like, if you guys need help or instruction, like this is the place to go to on the internet and with the, with the instructors they have and the products they have, it's just, it , it's mind blowing , like the direction that's happening. I'm just, I'm really impressed with performance golf . Like that's straight. Well , I appreciate, and I'm not just saying that like, it's like smartest thing I've seen in a long time, so. Well, I appreciate it , Matt . Kudos to Brixton and his team, like that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 2:Definitely. And we would love to have you to the site. Hopefully we can help you improve. And it was nice to speak here. You know, I'm definitely passionate about golf and um, really enjoyed our conversation here.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well thanks for being on the show and I'll see you guys in the next episode.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to another episode of Behind the Golf Brand podcast. You're
Speaker 2:Gonna beat me and
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Speaker 2:Golf is always more fun when
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