Ep #51 - V1 Sports: Bryan Finnerty(CEO)

We made it to Episode 51 of the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast.  In this week's episode, I interview my good friend Bryan Finnerty, CEO of V1 Sports.

Bryan Finnerty started in a completely different career path as he earned Detroit sports legend status as the longtime goalkeeper for the Detroit Rockers of the MISL. Following his soccer career, he applied many of the same qualities such as vision, work ethic, constant learning, and team building to other endeavors. He was founding partner and CEO of ProtectCELL, a $125 million mobile device insurance company. He built a large sports training facility, High Velocity Sports, which he still runs. In addition, he is chief giving officer of Opportunity Seed Capital, where he looks for ways to leverage time, treasure, and talent for community benefit.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Today, we play a golf. Let me show you how we do it in the pros. Welcome to behind the golf grand podcast. I've never missed with the seminar, a conversation with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs behind the biggest names in golf. My friends were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf course. I lived on the driving range from pro talk. You should learn something each and every single round you play to fun from on and off the green. Why would you play golf? You don't play it for money. Just let me put the ball in the hole. This is behind the golf brand podcast. With Paul libertory behind the golf brand podcast is sponsored by OnPoint. The revolutionary three-dimensional dome golf ball. Marker on point provides a layman recognition as small as a degree of inaccuracy from the planned course of the putt face angle endorsed by Jim Furich us open champion and 17 time PGA tour winner on point alignment technology has been proven to increase putting performance and help lower your score. Visit OnPoint golf dot U S, and be sure to use code[inaudible] for a 10% discount on point, make more putts

Speaker 2: 1:09

What's up guys, Paul from golfers authority. Welcome to the behind the call brand podcast. This week, I have my good friend, Brian Finnerty from V1 sports. A lot of you guys are already going to be one sports is cause you use it in your daily regimens or whether you're training or just because you're trying to get better a cough. So it's really kind of excited to hear about how he started the brand where they're going and kind of just his story because yo, he's a soccer player that went into golf, like a real soccer player, not like a crappy one. So welcome to the show. I think he should be my agent when I was thinking of shooting contracts back in my thirties, it should have been, he's a good soccer player, not a crappy one. I really could have, honestly, I was in high school with this guy. Who's a lawyer too, and he's an agent, but he liked those football players, stuff like that. But I'm not that like. Does that make sense? Like, you know, they think they're cool and real, like I'm just not that guy. Like let's just brass tacks. What's the deal. No, we're not doing that deal. Let's make some sense. You know, like, um, yeah, that's what we kind of do. Like with my law practice, like we represent some very big sports companies, uh, in a small firm and we're like doing deals with like the Yankees and the, you know, MLB and NBA and MBH, you know, Europe and all this crap like that. And it's funny. Cause you can start, which teams are kind of jerk, you know like, oh so-and-so's and I'm like, I don't care. You want my stuff? So yeah. So you want to go play a game today. It's called way back machine. So you went your first golf memory. Uh, first golf memory having a sandwich in my hand, like probably six or seven grade down at the beach. I up in Dana point, California near the beach and at the beach basically, you know, we come in from surfing bonfire, throw the Frisbee, play beach volleyball, and somebody brought a sandwich down. And so we throw the Frisbee out and try to hit golf balls to the Frisbee. And that was kinda my first introduction to what golf was as you'd imagine if your first time was trying to hit a golf ball off the sand is pretty funny, but it was interesting. And then our local golf course had a deal. If you picked up range balls for half hour, you got to play for a dollar 50 I'm 53. So I can like dollar 50 back then actually meant something. It wasn't a rounding error. So of play for a buck 50 for the whole week. If you just picked up range balls. Oh yeah, no, anytime during the week they gave you a little card and you're basically like one of their staff guys and I love picking up range balls. Cause I would just take a wedge with me and then, you know, hit them back against the fence and then just pick them all up, made it really easy. So yeah, those, my memories are just kind of like hacking it around and then, you know, playing buddies and having fun. So you grew up in San Diego, essentially county in the eighties, right? So, yep. But that was a fun time. It did not suck. There's a beach scene. I know it was like, it was like, yeah. And then I, I got the good opportunity to go to San Diego state. So really good school. That's also part of the schools too, isn't it? It certainly was ranking right up there. I think it was a TCU ASU, like I'm not sure there was much of a rival, but San Diego state gave it up San Diego state and UC Santa Barbara were giving me a good, good run during the eighties. For sure. I didn't do that. Well, I used to be a pilot before I became a lawyer and like we used to fly into like the airport up there in Santa Barbara and that's like right on the campus, right. Like, oh yeah. And then it's like airport, ocean campus. It's like, all right. They're so weird. Super far on pilot as well. And really it's like, it's foggy half the days there. It could get, you could leave LA on a beautiful day and get to Santa Barbara and be a, if you're not, well, I just remember like flying in there and thinking, oh man, I put the wrong college. Like I should have gone to like, like I remember as a girl at the high school, I was like, what's easy as B. And then when I like five years, I don't, oh, this is easiest to be able to, I knew about this, the high school that wouldn't find out. Like I went to Purdue, so there's nothing out there, but like cornfields and I didn't know, you're back, you're back on the west coast now. So I couldn't even like that even stand there longer. And I was like, I gotta get outta here. So you, you grew up in San Diego and then your, you became a soccer star, right? Like did you got full? Do you get a full ride to San Diego state? No, I was, I was a walk-on. I was a fourth string goalkeeper. I was recruited to go to James Madison university and uh, for a kid who grew up in California to take a recruiting trip in the middle of November was the week before Thanksgiving. They had already had a snow. All the girls were in long winter coats and I got on campus. I was literally like, what am I doing a great soccer program by the way. And I'm like, what am I doing here? Got home, told my I'm going to just go to our local San Diego state university. I think it was 850 bucks back then for tuition. It costs more for books and for lodging. And I was a walk on, it was fourth string goalie, red shirt of my freshman year, third string, my sophomore year, uh, which was my freshman year of eligibility. And the next year I was still third string, which is basically like you're carrying water, placing cones on the ground for the coaching staff, starting goalkeeper, broke his leg in the middle of the year. The next school he came in during that game and literally was thrown up in the back of the net nervous cell lasted like seven minutes in the game. The coach was like, Hey, affinity, like go mop this up. You know, you're in. And uh, we ended up making a run. We won all the last four games through the end of the season, lost to UCLA the last game, but then made the NCAA tournament, ended up playing in the final against Clemson that year, which was 1987 and played every game after that sense. And then we got lucky enough to get drafted by San Diego of all places. And then two weeks later I got traded to Detroit, kind of the rest is history. I played 10 years here in Detroit and my last year was in New York, but my wife and I kept our house here in Detroit and we just settled in Michigan. But yeah. Did you fall in love with Michigan? Cause you're a west coast beach boy. So like sit there. Yeah. Working on fishing boats and I love fly fishing when I was a kid, my grandfather really introduced me to fishing in general, but fly fishing was pretty cool. Michigan outdoors is awesome. And with my family and my wife's family stone, the west coast, I get to go home and go surfing. You know, not as much as I'd like, but the Midwest values and people are fantastic. It's just a great place to raise a family. I can't say enough about it. And playing 10 years here, Detroit, you know, there's a lot of old wives tales about how much Detroit embraced their ex you know, sports athletes or sports guys. And when, when we came back to Michigan and opened up our sports facility in the year 2001 same year, my twin boys were born. We were full. The moment we opened up the facility. And I think a lot of that was I had the good fortune of playing a decade here and they really supported like, Hey, if you're going to stay in Michigan, we're going to support you as a community, especially in soccer. So yeah, it was like a match made in heaven and 30 years later, I'm still here. So that's great. Tell them, I live in San Diego. I do live in San Diego. So yeah, I get that. Get back to now. My twin boys are in college. Uh, my wife and I are empty nesters. So we, for the second year in a row, we've gone to Encinitas and Loya, uh, January, February and March, which is a perfect time to get out of Michigan. Cause there's a lot of white stuff on the ground. It's not sand. So it's uh, it's good to get back for sure. So after you played major league soccer, then you opened up your facility. What was it? So it was that it was an indoor soccer facility or what was it? 200,000 square foot indoor, mostly soccer. But we do, we have four basketball, four volleyball courts, field hockey like hardened court that also doubles is football three indoor soccer fields, a full-sized soccer field under roof. So suddenly 7,000 square feet. If you can imagine obviously, a soccer fields, a little bigger than the football field. That's a fully covered space that we can play in year round. So it's a, it's a big endeavor, full sports bar inside, get to golf simulators. We do NFL combines there. I mean it's it's 20 years later. It is. Oh yeah. I can tell you. It's not, it's not anything someone's going to build and retire on. But every day that I get a chance to go in there and I'm only there one or two days a week, these days minutes that our staff does a fantastic job around a bait. They probably say it runs better when I'm not there. But you know, from the kids laughing and having a great time to the parents, they're just excited to get their kids active to the adults that are you're my age that are running around still playing soccer or flag football or, you know, playing softball there. I just think it's cool. It's just a lot of fun that there's just anything like you like that was your idea, right? You built it. Oh my God. Yeah. I had 11 years traveling around the world on somebody else's dime, um, looking at indoor and outdoor sports facilities. So after those 11 years you have a really good idea of what works and what doesn't. And so I bought a complex that has 12 baseball diamonds. Uh, I sold the front acreage to group to put it in an ice hockey facility. And then I built my facility. So I wouldn't say I was going blind. Yeah. I would land in whatever city we're in. I had this affection check it out. Yeah. So you like, so you're already starting to do your investments back then. Cause you're like, all right, I'm going to buy the land. I'm going to sell the front. I'm going to probably get a bunch of cash on that, which will help me with the back I did. Yeah. You know, like that was when my boys asked me, dad, did you really use anything you went to college for? I'd say, you know, life lessons for sure. But I, I was a sports marketing with a real estate minor. I'm a math guy by nature. So I only had two extra classes to take, to clean up a finance degree, which I could apply towards real estate. And I will say that was a really, really important choice for me because understanding the power of real estate and how it works against debt, uh, you know, the old adage is that's where a lot of the sort of wealth in generational wealth gets created, but it's true. And so when you do understand how real estate works and how you can leverage, I got to sell 10 acres to pay for 75. So it works pretty good that way. Yeah. It's the same thing out here. Like I buy 40 acres and then in Arizona you do is called five split. And so like if you had six or more subdivision, you know, I get a public report, right? So it'd be do a five split. You would just put it into five pieces and you have to do a public report. It's not a subdivision. And we ended up doing a sell on the first. Here's a little math for you guys is easy math. So then what you do is you sell like the first two acres in the front or however many acres, it is five acres for 10 acres or whatever at the front. And that will pretty much pay for the other three in the back. And it costs literally nothing to do that because then you're like, now you own 20 acres in the back essentially or more with no debt. Right. And then you also built comps by selling the two out front. So now it's like, instead of being 2000 acres, 10,000 acres and you lose critical market and then use, I mean, that's the, then what happened was the great recession. And that wasn't a good idea anymore. Yep. You've had to make sure he had a little cash in the bank to cover that debt. That was fine. But like I know a lot of people, it's not their Laidlaw's everything. I mean, they, they get, they, they got to, they got to spread thin, but I'm sitting in a 120,000 square foot class, the office space that we bought in 2009, for that exact reason, the guys were okay. It was already crashed. So you bottomed out and it went into foreclosure. One of my old companies, we had 14,000 square feet here. And literally one of my good friends who used to play for the Tritt lions called me and said that your place just went up on auction.com where you're paying rent, like what was valued at 13 five. And it went on auction for 4.5. So my business partner and I are like, we're already paying ourselves rent. And we know three quarters of the tenants in the building who aren't going anywhere. So we got some sign agreements from them, went to the bank, at least got the top end of what we could do and bought it off auction.com. Crazy real estate. You don't have to go to college. All right, I'm going to, I'm going to open. You don't have to go to college kids. I tell my kids, I'm like, you should go to college if you want to, if you want to, that's cool. You know, if you want to get a year off after high school and trying to figure out what you want to do, that's cool too, as long as you're not like doing thing. But I feel like I learn more in my life after college. I did the four year this in college. Yeah. We're gaining all this knowledge and then we're not old enough to do anything with it. Well, you think you're going to go on a path, right? Like you go to college for a path I'm going to do X. I went to school to do X that's what you never wanted to do. X, you just found a major or something, you know? Like, and then the next thing you know, you're doing 30 years of that X job. That's not even what you're good at. Or even like, I dunno, that's my thing. But, so when did you, so then what was the next endeavor that you did? The cell phone company or the insurance how'd you get into that? It was totally random. So open up high-velocity in 2001, by 2003, we were fully profitable, which back then no sports facilities are profitable. It was, they're basically glorified YMCAs that needed some funding to stay alive, helping their cities. Um, I just changed it to me and you'll appreciate this. We just treat it like a sports mall. So we had each of our managers managing a certain square footage in the building, whether it was turf, Hardcourt the bar golf simulators. And each of them had to run their own P and L. And I know that sounds absolutely like no crap simple, but sports facilities just weren't run like that. So I ran it all on the revenue per square foot model. In two years, we were profitable. And as you'd imagine other people that own sports facilities started to knock on the door, literally, Hey, can I come in and tour? Cause you guys must've built the newest mousetrap. And I'm like, we built the same sports facility. That's in Edmonton, Seattle, Tulsa, York. It's not that much different, but we just run it different. So fast forward started doing some Cubs consulting in that world and then opened up a company called sports facilities, advisory sold that opened in 2003. So 2008, I still sit on the board of directors with them. I think they do. They're managing$3 billion worth of projects right now doing 300 million a year. Those guys are absolutely crushing it. They build for like countries Olympic committees, those types of facilities. So they've grown it. So I'd love staying involved in that. And then a good friend of mine who through real estate, I would buy these four and six units, strip malls. He would always put a cell phone store back then. It might've been pagers and cell phones right today, just a little bit. Um, but as one of the anchor tenants, and then we'd easily fill up the rest of the locations. He called me and said, Hey, I've got, you know, 45 cell phone locations now. And we're selling our own insurance, knowing that I was a math guy. He said, can you just run some math on it? And tell me, how do I grow it? As you'd imagine I ran it a little actuarial table on like the money you're collecting versus the number of phones that when someone loses their breaks that you got to fulfill, I said, in 11 months you can be bankrupt. Like all your stores will be bankrupt. You can't just hand somebody a brand new iPhone. No, it was like stop. Um, but the problem was he was handing someone a brand new cell phone if they walked in and filled out a police report, which is just the wrong way to do it. So I helped them rejigger that he's like, Hey, why don't we just be 50 50 partners? Like, you know, most dumb deals start like, Hey, let's shake hands. I don't, we'll be partners. And I can tell you it worked out great. We were partners. Uh, we grew from three employees in 2008 to 125 employees by 2012, doing$125 million, 6,000 locations around the planet. It was a meteoric rise. We ended up getting bought out in 2012. And then again in 2015, by a publicly traded insurance company. And, uh, as you and I were talking prior to the podcast, assuring ushering was our competitor. And so they basically were trying to squash us and Fortegra the insurance company bought us to say, Hey, we want to go toe to toe with them. And we just, we literally couldn't do it. You know, we were, we were growing important, every dime back into the company as fast as we could. And for tiger was a$4 billion company. So it was easy for them to compete the sharing. I know isn't like Allstate or somebody on that. Somebody owns it. No, it's actually a private they made today, but it wasn't privately held group of three guys who owned a bunch of tow truck companies. And they understood the, the value of selling just knew the math we got out of that decided to no, no more working with a-holes in industries. I don't like I knew nothing about like, you don't care about it. I was, I was literally, my job was to build culture in the company and to build vision for where we were going. My business partner who came from a cell phone world was the industry guy. So we were a perfect partnership. It was just like, Hey, Brian, you stay internally and grow the company. I'm going to go outside and forge all of our relationships. Uh, it was a match made in heaven. He's absolutely perfect for us. So yeah, that was in 15 was the final bite of that apple took a year off and then, uh, but V1, right, which is where I sit today, also started, uh, acquired, uh, uh, golf clothing company called Galway bay among a few other investments. And, uh, yeah, just kind of rolled all that forward. Um, you know, be one at the time. So like you sold it in 15, he took a year off because you're like, what am I going to do next? Right. Because you were working so hard and then they're like, your kids are getting older and they're probably like, I just, I wanted to coach them. And my wife and I started a foundation with the sale of that company protect, sell. So I ran, I ran the foundation for a year, which is really focused on alleviating the pay-to-play sports conundrum as we saw in the country. And then as you really dive into that and you see this, when your kids playing lacrosse and baseball and all the other sports, um, pay to play is everywhere around the planet, right? For the most part. And so we said, well, we're not gonna address it at the, at the national level, let's at least look at the region and you start whittling it down. Literally we ended up not even does a county in Michigan. We went to our city, we're in the fourth wealthy it's county in the state of Michigan. And almost 20% of our kids are on the free lunch program. So you start to look at that and you, I don't have to go to Detroit. Detroit has its own issues there too. Just like, you know, you could go into Phoenix and you know that you can go into Scottsdale as much as everybody thinks Scottsdale is wealthy everywhere. There are areas that it's not. And we started realize if kids couldn't afford to pay for lunch, they definitely weren't paying for sports. So we started partnering with schools to help address that issue, not scholar. I was scholarship and kids the whole year I took off, I was putting the money in the wrong place, which was feeding the organizations totally wrong plan. As we found it, the root cause is actually happening at the school level where these kids are there every day, wanting to play sport every day. And we started having a big impact. So my wife said, look, why don't you go since the foundation's dwindling down, we don't take outside funds from, from other people. We don't want to be a fundraising company. Why don't you go back and invest in build small to medium sized companies? That's what you do. Great. And as those companies grow and sell, we'll take a hundred percent of our pros, our percentage of proceeds and put it back in the foundation. So I get to go to work every day and love what I do as these companies grow and sell or throw off cash. We just repopulate the foundation. My wife runs the foundation and as tax is tax deductible, it's a, it's perfect. Right? It's a, it's a perfect situation. So yeah, we get to serve a lot of people in the community with using our talents, right. Versus, Hey, will you write me a check? And when you write me a check, you know, again, building high-performing teams is what I do. And to be able to do it in golf is like, it's a dream come true, fricking greatest job in the world. So then how did the one, like how'd you get into that V was a local, a Michigan company. So they're based in Plymouth. I had worked with V1 back in 2000. At the time there was 17 or 18 year old company founded by Chris Hart many, many, many years ago. And David approached me during my playing days, the end of my playing career and said, Hey, we want to use V1, which is back then only video technology for golf. And we want to do soccer. But we found out that because soccer is such a moving game versus baseball and golf were obviously very static. Soccer was just going to be a different animal, but I did get to know those guys indirectly. And then all these years later, I heard they were looking for an investor to grow the company. So it's like, Hey, uh, myself and Bob Paul, who was the ex CEO of Compuware were good friends. We were looking for something in sports tech. We thought this is perfect. We can go kind of sit next to the founder and help grow the company. Once we got in there, we kind of realized that Chris had a different vision for where he wanted to take the company, which was kind of building it and sunsetting it. Um, and we just thought there was a lot of life left. I mean, it was a great brand 17,000 golf pros, 70% market share, but really strong brand in the industry that does serve a ton of playing pros and almost 4 million consumers at the time about 2 million. So we built a buyout plan for Chris that way, oh, you surely sunset this dude. Like you got it really special here. And so we just, he didn't see it that way. And so it was like, Hey, if you want to keep taking it that way, let's go. So I wrote up a job description for our new CEO and the board of directors said, that kind of sounds like you. Why don't I, sorry, I didn't step back fast enough. Right. I'll step in for like three months and three and a half years later. Yeah. Three and a half years later, I'm here holding onto the vine. We just completed a$3 million fundraise, uh, probably in the next 30 days. We'll announce who the lead investor was in that group. But I'll suffice it to say a very, very iconic person in the world of basketball that has a deep passion for golf. So it's going to be really an exciting new trajectory for us. Well, that same person own a golf course. Possibly. I can't say anything. I don't know. I don't know. I know a couple of, yeah, that's fantastic. So great. Yeah. It's just great. Great. Uh, I mean, you can sense my enthusiasm, right? It's right. If you're talking about cell phone insurance, I can tell you, I can tell, like, you're like, Hey, I made some good money. I saw my best friend this weekend. Right. You got a new, you got, he had to move from Arizona St. Louis. And he got really good job. Right. Really promoted him. He's making crazy money, but this is like, this sucks. Like I'm like, yeah, money doesn't always solve the problem. Dude just makes it harder to not do something else. Right. That's right. So yeah. V one's been great, man. It's been a lot of fun and a lot coming, which is good. It's kind of interesting too. Like if it's the only time, you know how he's thinking about sunsetting at the time, you know, cause he's been in for 16 years, it's like, well, how am I going to get out of this probably. Right. And then, you know, you come along and you're like, Hey, we could buy you out. And he's probably like, you know, over time, he'd be like, oh, that'd be awesome. Thanks. So is it yes. Keep him involved. Yeah. So he starts, still has shares in the company. Um, you know, it's like, Hey, we'd love for you to be around because only a few guys know where all the bodies are buried in this company and you gotta make sure he know where they are. Um, our director of technology, Mike Maister, who is literally, this was his first job out of college when he was 18. Um, he's uh, almost 40 now. So it's great having these guys with some legacy in the company and Chris being one of them. So it's good having him around at the same time we had, I think 23 people in the company when I took over, went down to 11, you know, in the spirit of, uh, getting the right people on the bus and now we're getting them the right seats. Oddly enough, we had the most profitable year in the company history when we shrunk the company in half and now we're up to 30 plus employees, um, just crank it. And so, but we have the right people on the team and, and you've got to believe in where we're going and, and if you don't have the passion for that, quite frankly, it probably sucks working here or anywhere. Right. If you don't love what you're doing, then kind of why do it? And that's we spent a lot of time there, right? For me, it was, I'm going to cast a vision of where we're going and it is going to be fast and furious. We are going to break some things. We're going to fire some clients we are going to, we're going to get in and clean some out. So it's been, uh, it's been an awesome journey and really cool. That's fricking crazy. So then like, what does, is it is the golf portion of the app more popular than the baseball or vice versa, a golf shirt, right? I mean, we've got 20 some years history in the golf industry, huge market share there. And, um, you know, not resting on those laurels, but we'd say we, we earned our badge of that brand because we've serviced it for so long in golf. The good news about baseball is, and I think I can say this. If there were much baseball people here, they're probably five to seven, maybe eight years behind in technology where golf yet. It's not the golf is the absolute end, all be all in the forward spot. Golf has quite frankly used technology for well over two decades, even longer. Baseball is just getting there. So if you look at pressure technology, video technology, video, AI technology, we see it, right? Exit velocity. We're hearing a lot about now exit angles. We're hearing a lot 10 years ago. If you talked to somebody about exit velocity of a baseball or the launch angle of baseball, people will tell you like they stopped swinging for the fence as well. Guess what, how has major league baseball played right now? Big hits, big hits because they're learning how to do that. That's all through technology. It's not an accident. It isn't anecdotal it's technology. So we think as we talk to groups like the Pittsburgh pirates, Detroit tigers, et cetera, that are using our technology, we're basically saying we've done it for over two decades in golf. So you can trust us. We're not some brand new company that theoretically, right? Like we don't have an idea we're coming. Yeah. Yeah. When tiger woods gets on in his first tournament and says, Hey, how'd you do it? You're a young kid. You know, he's like, I use V1 technology. Like all my young guys do well, you know, we, we didn't have to pay for that. That was something that inherently, he was saying, disc is how I get better. And oddly enough, baseball's at that precipice right now. And so for us, we get to leverage it, which is leveraging the brand and the technology it's been fantastic and really go so well with the, when the pro buys the V1. Right. Which I think is really cool because an app, right. I bet you, back in the day you had to buy a software, you know, even 10 years ago, right? Yeah. But I mean, by having just an app, I mean, you can put on your iPad, they can put it on their phone. Right. Android. I'm assuming to like anything really. It's like, it's like a tool that coach tells you everything you need to know about what you're doing, you're swaying, right. Because there's the video capture that you can draw all over it and be like, Hey, this is not, this is what's wrong. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's the good thing is we, we, we've sort of repositioned the company to say, let us meet you where you're at, whether you're a golfer or a golf pro or a baseball player, baseball, uh, academy instructor, let us meet you where you're at. And if I talk to somebody in Arizona, they're going to say, I don't, I don't teach inside of four walls. Or especially in San Diego, like I'm out on a range, maybe under a tent. Well, if I go to Oakland Hills or Seminole or Kioti club, or, I mean, we've got a lot of big breakers, you know, Claude, Harmon's got a full seven bay studio with four to six cameras in each bay. That's how he teaches, which is awesome. But you might run into a guy like Steve Cox at the, the grand who says, I just want to use my phone and my iPad. Perfect. We have that too. So we kind of have a system that fits from six or eight cameras at a full on teaching bay, right. Where you come in to a guy or gal who's to your point using a phone or an Android device or an iPad. And let me just record your swing here. I'll do a voiceover. I'm going to attach three tips and drills and you take it how you use it. It's like awesome. We also have V1 game, which allows them to capture data on the golf course about how they're playing, which is I think really super important. And that can all go back to the golf coach via V one coach. So cool. If you're a new instructor, right? Like if you're a new guy coming up, you know, school, and you're trying to build a business, you know, you can't go out and buy all this crap, right? Like if you're brand new guy, you can't buy bays. You can't buy cameras, you can't buy all this stuff. So all you have to really do is take your phone. Like if you're new and take your phone or your iPad or whatever, and literally had the same technology right there in your hand for a fraction of the price, right. A small fraction, at least you're on the same playing ground to try to really stop, you know, especially as you're trained that way as well, like you, and you know, it works, then it makes it that much easier for you to grow a company, right. Your own brand, or it might be, yeah. We like to say to the new pros at the end of the day, let us just give you some math, right? I'm a math guy. So I, I definitely, I lean that direction, but almost 70% of people across the course of time in history and human nature are visual learners. So if you're not a visual learner, what we are saying is just pay attention to math. 70% of your students are visual learners. So first and foremost, whether you use V1 or not, you need to give the majority of your people something to look at in order to start the conversation about getting better for the other 30%, they might be tactile or auditory. It doesn't mean visual doesn't matter. It just means you're going to have to augment some of that training. So our job is to give you more time in the day and a more seamless way to do your business. Again, you just tell us how you want to do it, or you're brand new, or are you a guy who has been teaching for 25 years? Who wants to go to more lacrosse and baseball games? And you're tired of leaning on a seven iron from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM or missing revenue. If you get a full day of rain, like we're going to have tomorrow in Michigan, why don't you do like a lot of guys don't just stay at one place, teach. Right? Like they don't know that. I didn't know that my instructor, I got, he coached little league together and I know he's a call fro, like he told me, he's like, yeah, you just rent. I'm like what? And he's like, yeah, I rent here. I rent there and I keep the whole facility. It's almost like I work there. I don't, I just pay them a small rent. Like I'm really cheap. I'm like, that's how that works. I never knew that. I, you know, and so like, if you're portable and you're going from point a to point B and the thing too, like you could even teach somebody in par, right? I mean, if you really want your house or indoor facility, or we've got an instructor out of Santa Monica that does almost$200,000 a year, teaching students in China and Japan, that he's never met making over$200,000, doing nothing but online lessons with people that he's never met to your point, you could do it at a park. You could actually be doing lessons in your basement or in your office at home, just using the technology of the capture, swing on V1 golf. They send it to you. Do you use our system? Telestration attached tips and drills, send it back to them. Oh, you're going to go play golf, assign me as your coach capture all your data. So now I know, you know what, Hey, Paul, you're missing like 75% of your fairways to the right. And unless you're massively lined up wrong every time, my guess is you're working with a little bit of a slice of your right-hand golfer. Yeah. Actually I am. Guess what? We're going to work on the next time you show up to the range, working on your slice. We're not going to work on hitting your driver further or how to chip better. We got to get the dispersion down first. I'm just picking that as one thing. But if you rolled up, thanks a lot, man. Never, never, never, never. But we do know that if we remove the emotion of that, right? So if you walk up to the lesson tee and you're pro had all that data, you, if your last T-ball was blown out of bounds to the right, or let's say worse, it was to the left. You pull up that double it. If you tell the instructor how want to work on my driver, cause I'm double crossing everything. We hear that all the time. In reality, it was one shot. It just you off. You lost the bats. Like it's a sore subject. But when he looks at the data and says, it's really not the problem. If we correct the slice, you're also going to get rid of the books. Now we've got the driver going in the right direction. Let's just focus on that versus the other stuff. Okay. It takes the emotion out of it. Right. And the learning light comes on faster. When we remove emotion, we know that through psychology. So anyway, that can be okay. It was like, you're like, you're like a Jack of all trades. So here's the thing. Like everyone, you know, a lot of people I work with, they're like, oh yeah, you should interview so-and-so you should interview. So-and-so right. And like, you know, we're friends, the same people, you and I, so they're like, I should interview you if you're really cool. I'm like, all right, cool. I don't do a lot of research on people because I feel it's really, you know what I mean? I know, I don't want to know these things about you guys. Like I want to know, I want this to be a real conversation. Right. And it's really cool because like, I mean, if you can impress me during the interview, that's always a good thing. Cause I'm like, well, it was like, there's only a couple of actually blow my mind before. And I was like, oh man, like you're at a whole other level. And I love seeing that. That's why I love doing this show because it's like, I love hearing how you actually do. Right. Because what happens is like, I try to tell my kids this either you're an entrepreneur or you're not like, it doesn't, you don't just happen. Right. Like it's kinda like you gotta have like this weird drive inside of you to like figure stuff out. Right. And so, I mean, that's very fast. I think, I think is, um, as people go, I mean, I'll talk about this whole, you know, speaking of business school thing, there is this belief that you can teach entrepreneurism. Um, I'm not saying that isn't possible, but I, I do call on that. I say, look, teach that right? So there's a gene there's DNA that says I have the ability to discern risk differently. Right. And my appetite for it is different, but you've probably known a bunch through your legal practice of guys who ultimately go bankrupt because they don't have a filter on that risk factor. Yeah. Want to pull it back? Yeah. That's completely different. And then when you lose one time, guess what? You're not gambling anymore because you've been smacked hard and you're not going to went out again. And he says, gosh, you know what? I could have taken some chips off the table and either reinvested into extra diversified. And I do think that's the part that can be trainable. So to me, it's like, Hey, if you are, if you are predisposed to having this entrepreneurial trait, spend the bulk of your time, learning, reading, studying, interviewing others that have been before you like those lessons are the most valuable because they're going to help hone your skill. That's a craft. So being an entrepreneur, isn't some lucky DNA lottery thing. It's not, you know, being born in the United States. That's lucky lottery, zip code deal. You just were born here. But what you do after that is like, it's a craft. Can you hone the craft? The guys who were the best entrepreneurs in the world when you talk to them and you've probably talked to a bunch, they don't go like, oh my gosh, it literally was like winning the lottery. But like, no, I just made these series of decisions. And you know, this is a pilot for sure. Almost every crash that's been documented is because of a series of bad decisions, not one bad decision. And I look at entrepreneurial-ism I use being a pilot. I went through the training to do that. Cause I was fascinated by how do you minimize the number of bad decisions? I mean, I love the idea of flying. That's true. But the training for that is always about checking and coming back and checking and coming back and having what happens when this happens, follow the plan. But you don't know the plan well enough come back and study the plan. Right. So it turns out anyway, it was funny. You were saying this story, right? So like I used to be a flight instructor. And so, you know, I can, I could, teachers sort of taught me and I used to fly these to an engineer planes. Right. Teach auto I upon a time. Right. And so one of the things I was taught, you know, is like, you can't just memorize something. Like, you know, like, okay, here's the checklist, go through it. You know? Like we taught like, you know, instantaneous, like, you need to know where to go right away. Right. Cause when hits the fan, you don't have time. Look at a piece of paper. Right. Sorry. You know, especially when you're going through know your acronyms. And so like I took off one, here's my story. This is a good story. I took, we went to freaking Texas, right. To pick up an airplane. Right. It was me two other pilots and a mechanic. Right. And so they pull out this plane, it was covered in bird. Right. And I was like, oh God. I was like, oh, you got to fly it back to Phoenix or give me this is covered. Right. Like, oh, we got a good deal on it. I'm like AF and so I'm like, okay, so the mechanic checks it out and he's like, oh, it's fine. It's fine. All right. Fine. Okay. So we get this big piece of, right. It was like, no paint on it. There's bird everywhere. And so we're in, in the middle of, I think we're in Amarillo or even in Amarillo. We're like north AMRO, uh, middle of nowhere. Okay. It was an airport with a hangar. So we go take off the mics. Don't work headsets. Don't work. We go run up the engines. They're working fine. All right. Now I gotta fly back to Phoenix. So my friends take off first. Okay. Friends take off first and the good plane. Right. First I'm with the mechanics we take off. Okay. And so like, when you, when you were trained, you do so many times and when you teach other people you learn, like you just comes in. It's the best of the best for sure. I'm here. I am sitting right. For a full power, going down the runway and do my scan. Right. And check I'm going to twin. Right. So we're hauling. And so I look and I lift off a rotate and I lift off and I'm still doing my scan. Right. Cause you can't see nothing checking your skin, your engines. And all of a sudden I see the oil pressure go, boom. And go to zero. And I was like, and I, I looked at it and I was like, wait, like I had never seen that. Right. And so then I, I turn over, I look up my left window and the whole back of the wings covered oil, the whole. And I was like, what do you do? Right. Like, cause like I couldn't, I was like 250 pounds. Right. And one engine and the airplane, these calls, plane, these planes, like a flying potato had like no way right now. Right. So I was like, I'm gonna die. Right. Like, I don't even know I'm going nowhere, but it's like, what you're saying? It's like, what you instinctually? It's like, okay. I trained myself over and over. I tell other people, it was like, I visually remember this moment. And the mechanics like this, like cut the engine, cut the engine. Right. Because he go and blow the engine. And I was like, so you know, then all of a sudden it's like, there's a split second where we bought a panic. Right. And then all of a sudden you get this calm over you. And you're like, it is useful. Your brain literally goes in automatic mode. It's like, I started just doing like, you know, dead foot, dead engine. Now what change am I going to pull? Because you pull the wrong engine. You're going to those first in the ground. Like, you know, all this. And you know, I feathered the props and then come back. And actually, I couldn't believe it was crazy. God, I swear to God because I played you to fallen on the sky. But somehow I was able to like gain Altoona one engine would, I don't know how I did that a little bit enough for like a turn. And I was able to like mercy land it. And then I was like, holy crap. That just happened. And you know, and so it's the same thing you were saying before. It's like, you just have to, you, you can train for that moment to make a decision, but you can't, it doesn't just come. Right? Like if you could, at that moment in time, see the thing with business. If you start to panic or you do the wrong decision, you're done, right? Like so a hundred percent, I a hundred percent agree though. It's like, you can't teach that skill. Like, you know, you have the gene, but until you started using that gene in your body or whatever you want to call it, that's when you really start to like, it's like a muscle, I guess. Right. And I think if you, if you've spent time interviewing pro athletes right. Being around them, I can tell you that to overuse term, being in the zone, I could take out the word airplane and put in game. And that's what, that's what guys would talk about when they're in the zone. Like they trained so hard that it just becomes like, I don't even know how I did this. I was just doing this stuff. Time slowed down for me. I was able to XYZ. That's what the zone is about. The zone is not an accident. The zone is not like, holy crap. I would just enter the matrix. And I was dodging all the bullets. Like, no, it's actually fantastic. By the way, nobody, it goes away. You're talking about right. The pilots that do survive, stuff like that by the grace of God is also because yeah, it's like, you train for that moment, but it's like a muscle, right? You're always working. He didn't tell you, like I was going to flip this switch or this switch. I flipped the coin and I picked the right one. No, it was like, there was a series of things that kept them alive instead of where we started this part of the conversation instead of a series of things that led to a plane going nose first, there were a series of things that you did from that engine, dead foot focus on this, which end am I doing? Okay. No, it's right in, you know, you have to choose because you don't have time to make the wrong decision. That's right. That's what that engine is tells you because you know, you have all these controls in front of you. If you just put, like, if you make the wrong decision you're done. Right. So it's almost like by Todd there's so many times that the moment it really mattered is when it like mattered, right. A hundred percent. Well, you think about tiger woods, right? Like when he's in the zone, like that's like, that's what he's always talking about that. Like, how did he do that? All this crap going on in his life, because he was just in the moment, like he just is that locked in that Steph Curry. Right? I was just listening to a podcast on effortless and Steph Curry. It's very documented the amount of time. I mean, he was an undersized pick in the NBA. He was undersized and didn't get off for his first college, college scholarship to play where his dad played. So there was a lot of the game that was telling him, like, honestly, dude, you're just not good enough. You're not big enough. You're not strong enough to be at the collegiate level. And then not at the professional level. So what did he do? He went and trained his mind. The thing is like, that's, that's a common equation and his ability to do things like bounce, a tennis ball and then a basketball, switch them over, hold one while doing the other, throw it against the wall while still he's training his mind to do things that when it become game, his ability to move the ball around without thinking about it was unlike other people. Yeah. You can shoot the three G's the game, all of that. But he didn't get in those spots by accident, by being bigger, stronger, he was smarter. And he changed that part of his game, which is his brain. That's it helped you like, cause it, you know, by being an athlete, you know, and getting into the zone and like training, you started, you know, you learned stuff in your mind and then you use that information. Even though at the time, you probably didn't realize that like this would help you later on, right? Like the why with the soccer facility, right? Like you were, you're learning, it's Ross, Moses. And like, you know, like you're in the moment. And then when you actually were, you know, had ideas, you could execute them because you're like, oh, I don't know what to do. I use it when I I'm very unapologetic about using what I learned in sports into business. Because for me personally, I can't speak for anybody else as a direct, a hundred percent correlation across the board, from how I prepared for games, how I journaled after the games, why did I watch film? What was I taking from film? When I interview people, I interviewed literally every person that we hire in our company, I did it for protect sell, even at 125 employees from our call center, people to the next, um, the guy who took my job as CEO. I think it's a really important part to say, this is who we are. This who makes us what we are. And I can't tell you how many really qualified people that I've interviewed that call us back and say, thanks. But no, thanks. That just does not sound like the right environment for me. I want it to feel like a locker room, not the F this and F that, uh, locker room talk side. I want the prep. I want the post-mortem. I want the, what did we learn? We lost not gonna win every time we're gonna get our asses kicked. Sometimes, you know, sometimes we're going to be really prepared and still lose. And sometimes they're going to be ill-prepared and when that's not pounder fits on our chest. So let's, I want people who understand that part of the journey. And I don't care if you're on the robotics team. I don't understand that part of the journey. Right. They like, they get lucky. Right? Elaborate on that. We've got, I've got two guys that worked for us that were in the marching band that like were told they weren't athletes make, tell me about your commitment to get ready for a high school football game or six hours before recap on Sunday. Literally watching film bumper formation. It's still the same. Right? It's still competitive. It's still understanding discipline, applying those things. So, yeah, I think it's, I mean, I can't speak enough about a hundred percent, a hundred percent, right. If someone just says, well, I got an a, when I went to Harvard, but I never understood anything about a team dynamic or playing competitively in sport. This is probably the wrong spot for you. I found in the last couple of years, it's like a lot of brands of brands get lucky in the beginning. Right? Like they had a good idea, whatever went viral, whatever it might be. Right. So they're used to winning. Right. And then all of a sudden taking up competition or, uh, you know, what they're doing is not so novel. So someone else does the same thing and just painted a different color, whatever. And they freak out. Right. Cause I think like the last not fair. Well, I was like, that's life dude. Like I don't to tell you, or I've had a lot of brands. I'm like, oh, did you trademark that? Or no? I'm like, did you like the patent on that idea? I mean, it's not more expensive. No trademark is cheap. Like why would that trademark your freaking logo like, like, know, it's almost like, because I mean, this was my job. I've seen the opposite side of that. When someone tries to, you know, copy or take it or whatever it might be. So it's just interesting to like, you know, people don't know how to act or react to the situation because they did, they just got lucky. Right. They did get lucky. They were successful out the bat and they didn't have to go through that post-mortem and be like, why is this trust? I it's the worst feeling in the world. If you start like a brand and you have nothing but problems, right. Or like, you just keep on, be like, you're spinning your wheels. It feels like. It really does. Right. So you have a choice, either quit or you keep on trying to figure out what, what works. But that I would that Le the learning in that phase is the best lessons you can learn. Right? So like all your failures. Yeah. I think it's both. And, and a year from now, you, you and I are going to be talking about whether it's over a beer on another podcast. Um, how many companies didn't see this coming. So, you know, we're in the golf industry and both you and I, all the boats have risen with this tide without a doubt, probably the greatest rise the golf has seen since maybe the late sixties. So in our lifetime is professionals. I was certainly, wasn't a professional late sixties. This is my biggest notice of gain. It rivals, uh, soccer's growth. After the 1994 world cup was here. Well, what happened to soccer? It's settled back in. Well, guess what golf is, the tide is going to go back out. We do know history will repeat itself. And a lot of this surge right now is going to fall off. You've probably spent time with these guys. I certainly have as peers of how many of them are not doing any post-war based on their success. So we do it sometimes with our failures, like, ah, what the hell happened? Can't let that happen again. My staff was a little bit frustrated when like we're doing a post-mortem on why we've been successful to grow 30% year over year in a 25 year old company that never happens. Well, part of it is COVID induced. So if we start believing in eating our own dog, that's it. And we're like, oh, V1 is the greatest thing in the world. It's like, let's understand the leverage points that we use to get where we are. And then let's safeguard some growth, right? To reapportion what's coming. Let's, let's be fortune tellers for a little while. Cause we can see it. So let's spend time doing that instead of patting ourselves on the back and talking about how great we are and how inventive we are. Um, I love all those things about us. Don't get me wrong. But I do think if time tells us anything, is that this will settle in. And those that are suddenly like, oh crap, the tide went out. It's like, yeah. But it happens twice a day. Like every day it was gonna happen. Well, that's like the thing with the real estate market, right? Like I lived through the book, the last one. Right. And so right now, like prices in Arizona have gone to roof like seriously, it's insanity. It's insanity right now. Like, I mean, when I was in real estate, right? So like when I was in real estate, 15 years ago, whatever, it was 12 years ago in like, it was the bubble, the last bubble, like I'm not seeing right now is a bubble or not, I'm not even going to get my conversation, but like yeah. You know, I'm gun shy. I really, yeah, because people are like, oh, you should buy. Right. You know, you know, you should buy real estate. No, hell no. I'm not going to buy real estate right now. Are you kidding me? Like, dude, like in Arizona it might like how's are selling for 60, 70,000 more than asking. I'm like, where does that coming from? Right. Like that's not normal, but like, oh there's no houses. Yeah. There is. It just it's it's complete insanity. So it's like wiser and sanity, you know? And so it's like, is that really a bubble or not? I don't really know. But it's like, you can't think your desert age is always going to last like that. And again, you'd say, okay, so what is similar? The stock market's pretty similar to the real estate market, but most people don't have experience in both. And you'd say whether you use the term bubble overvalued, whatever it is, I've yet to meet anybody. Even if they're a complete novice at investing that says, you know what, I'd rather do. I'd rather buy high and sell low. Right. So you, what, what, what do you think the plan is in the stock market? It's dollar cost, average buy low sell high. Okay. Everybody knows that it's easy. Why would we think the real estate market is any different because it's hot and what happens in the stock market, it starts going up and then everybody has FOMO that doesn't stay discipline. We start dying. That's what it feels like instead of saying, okay, this is a time to take a breather, build up some cash reserves, right. Again, I know it's not in business podcasts, but the market is the same as is our business. Like this is the time for us as a business to talk about reinvestment, no. And reinvesting in the brand and parking cash. Like, like why we raised capital is we're fortifying. You know, our partners are in the group of investors. Some of them V literally the most successful investors on face planet. They too are understanding that the tide is going to go out. So when I tell them, look of the majority of some of the money that we've raised, I'm just telling you that a portion of that we are literally putting in and no growth rainy day fund for when this tide settles in, it doesn't really affect you guys. Not a single one of them has said, I don't want to invest, but they actually say is actually like your leadership. I think I'd like to invest and have some confidence that number one, you're there babysitting your own money. That feels pretty good. I'm not just here babysitting, you know, an idea. And I'm not one of those to your point earlier, I'm not one of these rotating seats, CEOs who goes from company to company. Like I'm here with, with my physical investment. It's not like you're just getting paid a paycheck. This is like, your money is just as much as tied up as theirs. So it's person in the company, like not even close. So that's the other thing is like, I, I know where my value is. Its long-term gain the people. I need to hire a better really. Like we got to get them on right now. They should be making more than me. Well, you're just talking about this. Like I feel that with like golfers authority brand, like I literally have, I mean, I, I before, but I feel like I have my finger on the pulse. Right. Because literally I see the traffic, right. So that tells me I'm not at a golf course. I'm not doing rounds played, but I can tell you if people are buying product because I can see are people searching for the product. Right. So like, I won't really know until probably September, October, whether or not the tide started to go out. I'll I'll know, I'll know because I know where it peaked out at last year and I can be like, oh look, we're below now. Right now. I'm not below where I was a year ago, but it's like, it's gonna be, I can look back at that data and be like, okay, because we know that people can look at Google trends. It does a website called Google trends and you can see like, you know, search volume, whatever that's different. But when I'm actually seeing people come to our websites or sort of a product, it's like, okay, people are still out there by. So, you know, one thing I've noticed too is a lot of new brands popping up a ton of new brands just time. And it's like, they're all doing the same thing. So it's like, Hmm. Yeah. That's kind of played out. There's no room when the tide goes out. So there again, it's whether it's new product or new investment going into the market, going into real estate or going into golf, we're we're no different golf is no different than the stock market or than real estate. It's hot. People want to be there and they're going to throw money at it. The real question is, do you have a plan for what happens next? And that's where the enduring brands will, right? To your point, am I looking at the data that has no emotion? It never lies. And it always tells a story. We know that's true about math. So if that's true and it's, by the way, very true in real estate, I've taken the data, tells you everything like, so we just have to be there and want to take it in. And it's not sexy. A lot of times it's not fun. It's a little mucky, but at the end of the day, it won't be, you know? Yeah. Entrepreneurship does take some guts. I'm not saying that it doesn't right. It does go back to that DNA we talked about. But if that's all I rely on, I am flipping coins a little bit. If I look at the data and say, here's what it says, and we're already starting to see X, Y, Z. And what's our plan. Uh, no guarantees the golf industry. I was telling you keep already knows. But for the listeners, supposedly, which I think is kind of, but it might be real. Like there is a huge shortage, still a product, because like of all the delays, you know, like physical, tangible product brands have told me that, then I'm like. Like, yeah, it's not as much. I think you try to squeeze as much as much money as you possibly can right now. Right? So it's almost like supply and demand. I know a year ago there was no ball falls. I know that for a fact, right? Like you can get a ball to you. Well, there's a shortage for sure. I mean, we're seeing on the clothing side, right? So whether it's just import what the transportation system is under right now, there is a shortage. My question would be in a business and golf's not unique to this. You could baseball, you could add soccer, you can add any activities, skiing, wakeboarding. It's a, it's a physical, tactile sport. We do some, we try a new driver at the, at the driving range. I got to go, man, you're going to hit the new Titlest XYZ. Awesome. Unfortunately, it's on back order and doesn't get here for 11 weeks. I liked it Enneagram and do it. That happens one time. I'm telling you what happened one time. The next time I go back for a new set of irons and he goes, by the way, that's going to be another 12 weeks. I'm out. What were last year's models. Okay. I'll just take one of those here. We got a million of those over there and they're half the price. It's like a half truth, right? That there is truth to the delays. I'm not saying they're secretly stocking. They weren't. No, there was, but delays June of 21, there was delays in September 20. I can tell you that. But 20, come on. I'm like, yeah, there probably is some kind of delay a little bit here and there. You're just trying to squeeze as much as you can be honest. Like tell me the truth. Like, I'm going to tell I'm going to find out anyways. So like, I don't know. I think it's a lawyer, whatever dude. So yeah. See, this is what happens. I've talked to really smart people. Like just like, you know, like a CEO of golf balls.com, right? Like he's oh gee, I call him an OJI because he was like one of the very first golf comp sites, right? Like the CEO of global value commerce, which is global coffin. All of his brands. Right? Yup. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant man. Right. I've had, and it's just like, I love this stuff because this is the, I love because I feel like they don't teach us as a school. Like if you want to learn how to run it, if you want to start a golf brand, this is podcasts because people are going to tell you what to do, what not to do and how to learn, how to do it. And then really listen to the words they're saying and say like, okay, well, how can I learn that? Whatever. Right? Like, that's right. Like, so, I mean, that's why I appreciate you being on the show. I know you have another brand too. We can talk about that. I think you come back, come on. Callway that'd be cool. Like, you know, I, yeah, this is more of an entrepreneurial podcast that does everything. Like I don't ever like let people, like, sometimes people want to come on the show to like talk about their brand. And they're like, Ooh, what Nama doing that? Like, I'm not an advertising company. I'm just so behind the brand. Right? I mean, at the end of the day, there's there is, or is not something behind the brand. And you've seen plenty that there actually isn't that much other than maybe some money behind the brand. And then I can tell you who those people are. I can tell you the guy who doesn't have a clue what they're doing, but they have a lot of money behind it. So it's like, they think the guys you referenced before there is something behind that brand. And there is something to that company and there's something worth listening and gleaning from the words of wisdom those guys have. And that's the important stuff, because you don't learn it in school. And if you pay close enough attention, that's why I say like, you gotta get your hands on the dough and get it a little bit. That's where the learning for me, like one thing I've always helped me is I've had mentors, right? If you want to like accelerate your growth, I've always been ballsy. Right? So like, oh, here's another story for everybody. So like my, like I, I started doing this. I was doing for six months. I was all proud of my, you know, website, traffic, whatever. And then, uh, I'm in a small Facebook group right. Of people. And so, uh, was, I was in a course, I don't know how to do stuff. And so one of the guys at the San Diego, right. So I, and I saw him and I was like, Hey man. And he has a website, but it's not golf. Right. So I'm like, Hey, I'm coming to San Diego. I'd like to meet you is sort of everybody. This is about my mentors. Okay. An acceleration of growth. So I'm like, Hey, I'd like to meet you. And he's like, I see you live in San Diego. I'm going to, Cornado my family. He's like, oh yeah, for sure. I'll meet with you. And I was like, well, surprise. Cause he's a big time. Utuber right. I'm like, oh, that's cool. And so, because this is like, right, like six months in my brand. Right. I go to, um, we have a coffee or lunch where the coffee is coffee shop by his house. And he lives over by Buffalo park. And so I'm sending that down there anyways. So he'll or something like that. Yeah. It was like just the north side. It's there's a Hilltop. It's like here's bell ball park. It's like right here. It's like a two, three blocks away. Four blocks away. Right. I love it. I love, I love Sydney. I lived there in a heartbeat. So, um, so we have coffee, right? It's an ego. And I have soul excited. I put my laptop and I show my website. You know what he says? He says, he goes, no offense, man. Your site looks like. That's what he tells me. I was like sward. Right. Cause I was not expecting that has all proud of it. And he's like, and then for the next three hours, he just re ripped it apart to be all this stuff, this and this or this or this or this and this and this and this. I was like, like I walked out quiet. My mind was blown. Right. And so, so I'll get back to the hotel Coronado. Yeah. And uh, I texted him like, Hey, thanks for coffee, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, first of all, I'm like, if someone's wanting to tell you all things that are wrong with your stuff, maybe they care enough to tell you that. Right? Like, that's it, like, it was not like you have a fixed skin. It's like, someone's really mentoring you, telling you what's wrong with your stuff. Right. Like no one ever does that for free. So I go, Hey, would you be my mentor? And he texts me back. He's like, no, he's like, I'm really busy. He's like, let me think about it. And then like five minutes later, texts me back. He was like, yeah, I'll do good. That's what accelerated my growth. Like everything else, because I can just bounce things off of him. And he, this dudes making crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy money. Right. But I'm able to go to him and say, what am I doing wrong? Right. And he's like, don't do that. It's stupid. Right. Or don't, it doesn't watch the website anymore. It's more about these. I even like a bit like he's younger than I am. It is a he's figured it out. Right. And like, I mean, he is over a million subs on YouTube and I mean, he's crushed, crushed, crushing it. He's bought a warehouse in San Diego for what he's doing. And it's like mid thirties. Right. But it's like, the thing is, the mentor is the key to, I feel like if you want to accelerate your growth as an entrepreneur, you gotta, yeah. I mean, show me any successful person in history. That's a bold statement. Cause I don't actually know the answer to this. So I probably shouldn't say it that way, but my challenge will be, show me any successful person in history that didn't have someone that they worked with or under whether it's a coach, a mentor, a compadre. I mean, think about the guys that think about the guys that Edison was surrounded with. Think about the guys that great players had for coaches. They won't tell you it was the guy with the best X's and O's. And I'm reading a great book by John Gordon. The game is won in the locker room. Like this is so true. At the end of the day, stuff happens on the field. What are you going to do? When you get punched in the nose, you change your plan. I get all that. But if you weren't prepared, right? Whether you're flying a plane or running a company or playing in a game, if you're not there prepared and who helps you prepare someone who's been there before you a bunch of players, don't sit in a locker room and go, Hey, what do you guys want to do today? What do you wanna do for practice today? No, the coach has been their coaches. Aren't typically younger with zero experience above players. They may not have played at the same level, but they've been around coaching. That's what they do. Mentors. The guy has a million viewers plus plus, plus if he had 10, he wouldn't be able to give you good advice. When he's got a million, he can say, look, I've seen this before. And if you're willing to take a little bit, well thank you and your businesses, right? Like you seen it, right. It doesn't matter what it is. They're all, they're all different industries, but you've seen. But I learned I'm surrounded by great guys and they're pouring into my life. Like I'm 53, I've got four guys who are my mentors that a hundred percent pour into my life. Do I owe that gratitude? I'm mentoring seven guys. Cause I feel a gratitude to the four guys that took time out of their lives, away from their families away from their personal time to pour into me in a sort of spirit of pay it forward. Like I don't, I owe that debt for sure. Like I get more out of it when I'm mentoring someone, like you said, and you're flying the plane and you learn, you grow. And you're like, I get way more out of it than I'm sure that the guys are my mentoring. But yeah. It's awesome, man. So yeah, I think having that relationship is I always feel like having a mentor in entrepreneurialship is like the boost is a boost to helps. So I was just saying, if you ever find somebody out there, you're like, I really want to do X to go talk to them. Right. Or try to yes. And even if they don't have time, you've probably run into this too. But sometimes people are just like, Hey, my book is full, man. I just do not have any more time. But this person might be able to help you because they might have time. Like, you'd just be really pleasantly surprised at how many times I'll get a call. Can you help this guy? Just one time. Of course I will. Because I know I'm helping the person who just referred that all time. I get that all the time. Or I'm in these email chains and it's like, I was telling my wife, this, my mom could care less. Right. But I'm like, Hey, I was I'm in like this email, like five pretty, very successful called brands. And I'm put I'm friends with all of them. And I'm like, but there's a sixth guy. I don't know who that guy was. You know? And then, so I just sent an email like, Hey, we're obviously we run in the same circles. Let's talk. You know? And now we're friends and now he owns a big clothing brand. Right. So it's just funny. Cause like everyone kind of works. Everyone knows each other, you know, because they, yeah, they. They will not, they will like that gets, yeah. I can tell you, I have a whole sort of list basketball and business. It is the greatest filter because it is brutally honest. That's the one thing I do love about it is you can not be an a-hole without being figured out quick. You can't like fake it until you make it. If you're an, you're not gonna be around long. I'm sorry. You're not like, you're not gonna be a good teammate. You're not gonna be good in the peer network. You're not going to be good. Like we're just having a beer talking about business. You can you help me out the guys? Cause you don't have time. There's too many good people to get excited about doing what they're doing. And that's why the network is cool and small. Right. And it's not like that's organic. That's not like it's, you know, you can't go into it and be like, Hey, I want to be your friend. That's weird. Right. It's almost like you guys just[inaudible] last year. And I like, like my buddy Sam who owns a minimal ball, we became friends with this. Like he's on my podcast. My very first episodes. Like he's really in a vehicle bag. It's like the most coolest golf bag ever. So anyways, I've seen it. It's very cool. I'm surprised you don't work with him because he is like cm golden school golf and in California. But anyways, I probably do actually. But um, you just hit off with people, you know, it's really weird. And then once you hit off, you're like, oh, we're like, we're like twinsies and I never even knew who you were five minutes ago. Exactly. Anyways, I'll get off my soap box. Now that's a good one to be on now. It's not. Well, I really appreciate you being on the show. I know that you're a busy man. So thank you. I will definitely want you to have you back to talk about Galway. I think it'd be fun to talk about that. How you kinda got into that. So that's a whole other area of golf clothing and I'll probably learn more from you than Jack. It's exciting. Like it's a, it's a technical fabric and there's something to be said about not just doing the same. That's out there with everybody and being another man, we need to have a separate, we gotta have a call. It's like, seriously, I could tell you, like, I've heard a lot of clothing brands I can tell you. Like I can say like, oh yeah, there was lucky. Right. And then they did the hot shirt and then I can be like, no, they actually have something really cool. And they're nice people, you know like, but yeah, hard apparel is so freaking hard. That is like our hardest, I'm sorry. Multi-million dollar sports facility that I think is hard, which isn't running a fricking clothing brand is so hard. I didn't know idea. Zero idea. When I started doing that, I was like, holy, this is harder than I thought hard. It's cool, man. It's cool. The juice is worth the squeeze for sure. Yeah. The margins I'm parallel is Brittany killers. I'm just telling you guys, but why it's so hard because you have many people out there trying to do the same thing. And it's also fatty too. That's the hard part, like it's trends. So it's like, oh that's cool. You know? And then next year you see this a lot with like the colored shirts, right? Like bad birdie kind of made the, were the first ones and they do a phenomenal job. And then now there's like hundreds of other little brands trying to do the same thing. It's like, and even big brands that are falling a little brands. Right. But they're like two years behind dude. And he's like so annoying. I don't want to I'll talk after the show to you. I can tell you like all kinds of people that do that. And I'm just like, it's so disappointing because when you like you, like, that's not even cool. You know? It's like, oh that's original idea. I'm like, that was cool. Like five years ago, you know? And, but it's like, they'll have money. Right. So they can make it, they can get it in the stores and they can do whatever people still think. That's cool because it's everywhere. That's not cool. Right. But anyways, thank you for being on the show today. No, you have to take off and have some lunch because you're three hours. You're going to go work on your tan somewhere. Nice. And hopefully out on a golf course or fishing in Michigan. Cause I always figured rains in Michigan, but we'll put thanks for your, my new friends, new friends, everybody. So that's cool. Vice versa. It's going to be great. But thanks on the show. I'll have you on the next, I'll have you on for the Galway and yeah, I'll see you guys in the next episode. Thanks buddy.

Speaker 1: 1:07:01

Thanks for listening to another episode of behind the golf bread podcast. You're going to beat me like 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're winning, stay out of the beach and see you on the green.