Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore

#60 - GREENSIDE GOLF: Sam Gleason (CEO)

September 22, 2021 Paul Liberatore Season 2 Episode 60
Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
#60 - GREENSIDE GOLF: Sam Gleason (CEO)
Show Notes Transcript

We made it to Episode 60 of the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast.  In this week's episode, I interview my good friends Sam Gleason, the CEO of GREENSIDE GOLF carts.

If you haven’t heard of Greenside Golf yet, I’m not surprised!  I can tell you it won’t be long until you do though.  This up-and-coming company was founded by golfers, for golfers.

Even more, they’re a group of golfers that won’t settle for anything less than the very best.  That’s reflected in the Golf Money Bag and G Wagon Speed Cart.

I’ve really enjoyed getting to know this group of fellow golf geeks.  It’s just a matter of time before this company finds huge success.

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Speaker 1:

The day we play a golf. Let me show you how we do it in the pros. Welcome to behind the golf brand podcast. I've never missed with the seven 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 fund 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.

Speaker 2:

What's up guys, Paul from golfers authority. We are on episode 60 today, which I cannot believe 60 and a little over a year. So I'm really excited. I have my friend Sam Gleason on the show. So you and I have been friends for about a year, I'd say year and a half. I love what Sam's doing. He's a real go getter like us. And I love how he's kind of transforming the game with golf carts and golf bags and making them actually affordable, which you know, after last year with COBIT, it was like impossible to find it. So without further ado, Sam, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

I'm honored to be on. Uh, seriously. I appreciate everything you've done for us. Like you said, we've been friends for probably a year, a little over a year, and at that time you've been nothing but helpful with us, you know, in terms of featuring our stuff on your platform, you know, with the product reviews and giveaway type stuff, I would say of anyone you've been the most helpful to us in the early going. So thank you. And again, I'm honored to be honest, there's been such heavy hitters on here.

Speaker 2:

How did we find each other? I forgot who introduced us to each other?

Speaker 3:

That's actually a really good question. Cause I don't, I can't think of it off the top either. I remember it was very early. I wanna say maybe it was Brian.

Speaker 2:

Brian knows everybody. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I wanna say maybe it was Brian, but it was definitely early. I mean, we launched,

Speaker 2:

You hadn't even gotten your products yet. They're still in a trip coming over. Like you were like three to four weeks before the ship was coming in. That's what I remember. That was a long time ago. You know, what is

Speaker 3:

Was, it was pro it was probably black Friday the week of black Friday because that's when we'd launched, but we hadn't, we didn't have our products for another three to four weeks after that. So we, we may have reached out directly to you to be like, Hey, we're launching this week, you know, can you help? And you were always happy to help. So that was really cool.

Speaker 2:

Where do you live in? I forgot the east coast, right? Yep.

Speaker 3:

I live in Boston. I just bought a house. So I'm currently in my mother's house because I'm homeless for the, the month of September. While we close on this house.

Speaker 2:

Little guy. Are you staying, are you staying in your room that you, uh, when you were a kid at some point

Speaker 3:

In time? Me and my brother switched rooms, I don't know when that happened. So I'm staying in his childhood room for whatever reason and I'm ready to be out.

Speaker 2:

It doesn't have like spaceship, wallpaper all over the walls and like hockey players from the early or late nineties, early two thousands.

Speaker 3:

No, at some point the posters and stuff came down when I was a kid though, by every, you know, from bottom to top was posters and pictures of sports and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:

That was like me too, man. I had like, I was a big Chicago bears fan when I was a kid like in the ladies. And like I had all these posters on my wall, like Walter Payton and yeah. And then like all these, like there's, there's these very iconic posters. Everybody has a you're like in your forties, they were like those sports illustrated looking ones and they were white. And then I had like a picture of the player in the front and I had their name. That's like all of those posters. So is this your full-time? This is your on your full-time gig, right? This is like your side hustle. That's starting to get big.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. It's, it's definitely still my side hustle. I'm hoping, you know, sooner rather than later becomes full-time. I think we can get there. We'll get there eventually just hoping sooner rather than later. But for now it is still my side household. Yeah. I that's that's how it's. I mean,

Speaker 2:

It's a lot, it's hard, man. It's that transition like it's I feel the whole process is hard, but it's very doable, you know? Yeah. How did you start doing this? Like, were you like a high school golfer or a college golfer? Or what were you just like a normal dude? Like everybody else.

Speaker 3:

I was a post high school athlete golfer, like, you know, everybody else where it's like, okay, I can't play sports anymore. I need something to compete and try and improve at things like that. A sport I'm not going to go play, you know, basketball every single day or whatever that may be. So it was golf. The way that it started was like, I definitely fell in love with golf over the years. Um, I'm 30 now. So within the last 10 years, like it's just grown. My love for golf has grown each and every year. And when I was in college is when I started. And then, so in terms of the story of the brand behind the brand, it was February last year. Golf season is about to kick off in the Northeast you're you're in Arizona,

Speaker 2:

Arizona, New Mexico,

Speaker 3:

Arizona. That's right, exactly. So for us in the Northeast, February rolled around, it's like, all right, let's get our bag ready. Let's get all our cleats. And our club's already to go because once March hits, we're getting back out in the course, you know, March hit, something came along, along with golf season, came something else last year in terms of COVID-19. So, uh, it really threw a wrench into things. And at least in the Northeast, I don't know how it was down there. They weren't allowing golf cards out up until last year. I was, uh, I preferred to ride. I didn't really like to carry, I didn't have a push cart. You know, I was, uh, an electric golf cart guy where I liked to, I prefer to ride over anything. They allowing golf carts out. So I was like, all right, well, I have to go because you know, that's a, non-negotiable I have to golf. If I can't ride in a car, obviously I'm going to have to carry, well, I hate carrying. If I want to throw a few beers in my bag or whatever, it starts to get really heavy, like lugging that thing around for 18 holes, like three times a week is just can be a nuisance. I was like, all right, I need to push hard. Could not get a pushcart. I looked everywhere. I could not get a pushcart. So that was basically, I'm like walking up a fairway. I finally found what I'm using this like rinky-dink piece of crap that I've found on like Facebook marketplace from a neighbor. And I was like, all right, this is insane. Obviously there's like, you know, an opening in this market, the pushcart market where there's an opportunity. So if I can't get one pushcart, maybe I can get a hundred and, and sell them and, and create something that way. So it started out as an idea. It was, you know, what would the company name be? Are we only going to sell push cards? Are we, you know, what else is it going to be? I think at one point I tossed around the idea of calling it Kings golf or something like that. I think that might already even be a brand, but there was a couple of names shopped around and it just, it just sort of, you know, formed into what it is today with the bag, the money bag, the G wagon pushcart. And then on top of that,

Speaker 2:

It was this. So when was that, would you say

Speaker 3:

That was like probably early to mid April, like once last year. Yeah. Last year when I, when I, when the first idea came to me and then it just became like, what's the first step of starting a business. It's like, okay, LLC, you know, create a few ins, you know, an Instagram create all this. There was, it's like creating the brand, find a supplier, things like that. And it took, we launched, like I said on black Friday of last year. So it took from a company sales

Speaker 2:

On black Friday,

Speaker 3:

Zero, zero. Now we had a couple like friends and family and stuff like that. But organic sales. Yeah. Organic sales didn't come for a little while, but like, what's

Speaker 2:

Your full-time gig? Don't you do something with like shipping or something?

Speaker 3:

Right? I do something. Yeah. I do shipping. I'm a logistics broker in Boston. So basically I, um, work with companies like say, you know, I don't work with Nike, but for example, Nike, um, I would negotiate the, the shipping, like basically organize the shipping, uh, contact, the shipping companies. I'll talk with Nike. I'm sort of the middleman in between the actual people shipping. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Uh, oh, the name for that three. PL so are you out at three 30? I was like for people, like, who wanted to like, I don't know, store stuff and then, you know, like then I'm shipping out for her, but I used to

Speaker 3:

Have pre oh yeah. Th there's more, there's more than one name.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. It's just shipping. Uh, I remember I did, like when I first got out of law school, I did international trade law, which I knew nothing about. I don't even know what that means. It's a box. It's just like, you have to make sure that we weren't breaking federal laws. It was the worst job ever. I hated that

Speaker 3:

Job sounds terrible.

Speaker 2:

I only did it for two years and I got the hell out. You don't have a background in this at all. Have you started a company before this or? No. This is like your first, like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to figure it out.

Speaker 3:

This is my first foray in, uh, entrepreneurship. And I always wanted to be my own boss. I was wanting to be an entrepreneur. I was the guy that was, you know, playing golf or, you know, at the bar or whatever, it may be at dinner. And it's like, I see something and I think can that become a business? I've always just thought that way. So that's sort of when the pushcart thing happened, I don't know why

Speaker 2:

That's big ball right there. You guys like seriously, it's not like he bought like a ball marker. He bought fricking golf cards. That's a, that's a huge swing. And that's like a lot of money. Right? Cause not like they're cheap the make, I'm not going to ask you to know, but like, it's not like you're buying a$2 thing. Right. And it's like, well, I could buy a hundred of them. See if they sell on the internet? No. It's like, you gotta buy a fricking shipping container of golf carts.

Speaker 3:

There was a couple of factors that gave me confidence that I could do it. Number one is I'm in sales. That's when I say I'm a logistics broker, like it's, it's sales, I'm in sales. So I knew I could do the sales because I, you know, that's what I do every day. Number two is I'm in the shipping industry. So I knew that I had a leg up on everyone else, understanding fulfillment and being able to have the right contacts in terms of, you know, finding shippers and you know, negotiating good rates and things like that. So I already had those two things that I felt like I was going to be okay at. I felt like those are really important aspects as well as the desire to be my own boss. So that's, you know, it was a huge risk. It still is a risk to be completely out with.

Speaker 2:

Well, aren't you almost sold out. I that's what I thought are you getting close?

Speaker 3:

We are

Speaker 2:

Already sold out. I'm so happy to hear that you have no idea, right? Because like you guys, he did it, right? Like he had an idea, he saw a need, he figured it out. He started a business and he sold out his first wave or whatever of product. That's fricking hard. That is so hard because he's up against all the big boys. Right. So, you know, he's a new kid on the block, also a young guy. So it's like, carts are expensive now because like last year you couldn't find a car. If you'd like to pin it on it. I remember I'm not gonna name the brand, but it's probably the biggest cart brand is your biggest competitor. We did one of their cards and it rhymes with gear and they, like, they ran out, they ran out of cards like in April or whatever it was. And we only had one. And then we released the review I think. And they were like, well, that's cool. You did the review. We appreciate it. But we don't even have any in stock anymore. And it was like three months later, I was like, holy crap. You know what? She told me that in the beginning. Yeah. I don't know cars are huge. I think that's a great market to be in. Honestly, dude, it's pretty. If you can start designing,

Speaker 3:

I completely agree. And absolutely fallen in love with walking the golf course versus right. Like, you know, the push cards. I I've fallen in love with the entire thing. Especially like all the benefits of walking. If you love to golf, we know how important health is. COVID-19, you know, boosting your immunity, things like that is so important. Like, so if you care about your health at all, and you love to golf walking, the golf course is the easiest, most enjoyable way to get real legitimate exercise on a regular basis. So, I mean, there's mental health benefits. There's obviously physical health benefits and it's just the most enjoyable way to do it. You feel more connected to the course,

Speaker 2:

But I go away, dude. That's that's awesome. Like for reals. Thank you. What was your initial order? How many orders? Like a hundred, 500. I ordered

Speaker 3:

200, 200 push cards and 400 golf bags. So I, I obviously did not have the money myself to, to just like, Hey, I'm going to buy all these, you know, pushcarts and golf.

Speaker 2:

I was in bad cards. No wonder you live with your parents was just kidding

Speaker 3:

It. Only a for the next, let's see. What's today's date. The next, uh, 13.

Speaker 2:

I was kidding. I was at my parents for a couple of years. So when I first got a college girlfriend, come check out my room, check out my star, ship wallpaper for real. It's just like,

Speaker 3:

Dude, I was on a race car bed. It

Speaker 2:

Was, that was king. It wasn't me. It's called bed. Check out my bed. Do you want to watch a VHS tape?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we just bought our first house. So I'm, I'm nervous. I'm nervous all over again. Uh, you know, I'm going to have to fix things now. I've been in an apartment my entire life. Well, since,

Speaker 2:

So where are you? Where are you living in Boston? Somebody wants to know what city of Boston are you in? This?

Speaker 3:

I've been in Boston, Boston for the last five years. Um, I lived in Southie the last two years. I lived in Brighton three years before that. Um, I'm actually moving to Mansfield, which is right next to fibro. So I'll be like right by Gillette stadium and uh, TPC Boston. So I'm excited to move into the suburbs. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

You got your first shipment and ordered the stuff and then you're like, oh crap. I gotta build a website. I got to do all this other things. I gotta figure out how in the hell I'm gonna get it out there and market. So what, how did you market the Greenside? Did you like, what, what was your secret? Oh,

Speaker 3:

It would be a good time to tell you that I do have a partner. Um, I have a partner that is definitely, yeah, exactly. You already knew that, but his name is Chris and he has a marketing background. I knew that in terms of marketing, I do sales. I can do shipping. Um, I can do negotiation type stuff,

Speaker 2:

But on the product

Speaker 3:

Buying. Yeah. Like things like that, but specifically advertising and marketing. I knew I was going to need some more help there. So, uh, I brought on Chris and he's been just incredible for our growth. He, he handles all the advertising, uh, all the marketing. He is more of an analytical, um, details type mind versus me being more big picture type stuff. He does a lot with finance projections, things like that. Um, and it's just formed. We've formed a really good partnership. So it's, it's been, uh, an incredible experience to this point.

Speaker 2:

I run ads. Like how the hell did you, like, what were you guys doing? We weren't like Facebook ads zooming. Probably

Speaker 3:

We had to experiment a lot.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I spent a lot of money.

Speaker 3:

I mean, yeah. We spent, we spent a ton of money just trying to figure out what worked. I mean, we, we have worked with, you know, influencers and we've worked with other brands, like newsletters. We worked with a new, at one point we paid a newsletter,$800 to feature us in their newsletter. We got a total or order. We got a total of one order for that. So it's like trial and error. I mean,

Speaker 2:

Do they happen to me once? And I here's the deal, like don't lie to me. Right. So don't be like, ah, I want to get, so my list is so big. I'm going to do all of this. And then it's like, okay, yeah, let's check it out because you need to produce. And then I get it. And I'm like, dude, bro, your list is crap. And he's like, oh, oh my God, do your list is crap. Seriously. You've lost all credibility with me. So I will never, ever, ever work with you again because you're lie. So like, don't lie. Like just be honest because I'll tell you guys right now in the world of like email lists, right? Everyone's like, oh, I've got a big email list, blah, blah, blah. And then you're like, okay, well what's your open rate? And then what's your click-through rate? And they're like, oh no, this, I start making up numbers. And then they're like, well, my email list is 400,000. Yeah. But if like only 2000 people opened the email who cares. Right. And so that, that makes me mad when people do that crap. So I don't trust anybody with that stuff. It's all.

Speaker 3:

We've found. No, I agree. We've found that Facebook and Instagram ads are the most controllable in that we can create content and you know, fix it up and detail how we want. And

Speaker 2:

So you can see if it's working or not. You can see pretty quick. It's not like I'm shooting a gun in a dark. Most of the time got something. No like, so like everyone asks me, oh, you must have a really big email list. No, not really. Cause I'm always cutting it. If you're not opening my emails, like why would I keep it on my list? Like that's so dumb. It's like, it's like the guy who has a trouble balls on the bottom of it. Right. That's exactly what it is. I got big balls. It's like, Hey, you don't like, that's stupid. Be straight. I don't know. That's just how I am. And people always go, oh, we want to send an email out in your list. Nope. That's my list, man. Get your own. Like these are my people that like support me. I'm not going to sell them to your stupid company.

Speaker 3:

Your email lists are, are legit. I will say for the people that don't know you've got, you've got a very legit email marketing lists.

Speaker 2:

If you don't want to be, I don't be on it. Right. And if you like it and I'm never going to sell it. So there you go. Like that's what makes me mad too. Cause people are like, oh, like people will come to you and they'll say, oh I have so-and-so's listen. I could send an email out on that owner. Like I don't want, I don't know who those people are. So why would I trust you? So I was sending out, if you're in business, don't rely on someone else's list. Do we try to sell you that all day long? It's all BS. It's all BS. It's all.

Speaker 3:

We've had zero success with, with that sort of thing. Like buying or we have we've we purchased a, uh, an email list at one point and it absolutely does not work. We got more threats, more threats. So if you would like, yeah, like help.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Like people don't give you authorization, you know? I guess they probably, well, who knows maybe they did, but still like, I don't know, just be straight. That's what I think I've never been on the flip side of it. Right? So like I've always been more of the content. So I don't really like sell per se. I try to find good deals and good offers and be like, Hey, I gotta hook you guys up. I found this really cool thing with so-and-so because they're hooking me up. So here you go. But when I started my own brand, I was like, I, the reason why I did that, I wanted to learn what it was like to be on the other side. So that's how I kind of learned what this thing with the email. And I learned like I wanted to see what was like on the other side of the coin and what people have to deal with as an e-comm or a, or as a business. It's hard out there. I mean, it really is remarketing. You can have, listen, you're not like I know a lot of people in golf, a lot of good friends now, and everyone says the same thing. It's like, until you, if you really want to start, I'll tell you a secret sauce is I think I could be wrong. One is Amazon. There was like, oh I hate Amazon, blah, blah, blah. You got to do the things you got. If you want to deal with the devil, that's how you do it. And it might work. You probably gonna sell a ton of product. I know somebody sells like a ton of product and Amazon. And then the other thing is like you just said with Facebook ads and Google ads, but that's a whole game minutes. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So I'm going to have to get on Amazon. That's probably a, that's a on the top of the priority list that we were talking about. Air the whole expanding our social media. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. I met with somebody this weekend and we were going over 30 Amazon person and they're really successful and they know what they're doing. Like, and it's a whole other world. It's a learning experience, you know, to take you six months to figure it out. But once you figure it out, It might help you guys too, because now you have to carry all that inventory. If you just said, but now you got to pay him to hold it. Cause like, this is what I learned to like, Amazon will rank you not rank you, but like, if you're going through them of prime, then like they almost like push you up. You know what I mean? Cause they're like wanting, instead of just being the guy, who's shipping it out, even though your numbers could be great. I don't know. You got the bags and you got the cards you've you sold out all of it or most of it or what?

Speaker 3:

Uh, all the bags like three months ago, like obviously, you know, everybody, it's no surprise. It's like supply chain is an absolute dumpster fire right now. Or you know, anything that has to do with ordering in bulk, like is impossible right now. So our biggest issues that we've come up with are definitely with within our supply chain because it takes our lead time right now is six months. We have to order, which is hard to, it's hard to project an entire half a year out in terms of timing and knowing, okay, let's order now because we're going to run out of our product in five and a, you wouldn't even know

Speaker 2:

You have no idea because the first season, so you're like, this is what we can afford. So let's buy this. And then you saw three months ago. That was June, like in the dead middle of golf season.

Speaker 3:

Oh yeah. It's I mean, it's, it's been tough too though.

Speaker 2:

I mean you still 400 bags dude between November and April, which was not golf season, the only in half the United States. So that's amazing if you think about it,

Speaker 3:

I appreciate you saying that it's it started to really fire on all cylinders. At one point we've got a few retail partners and golfer's warehouse as well as golf and ski warehouse up in the Northeast. You guys don't have golfers warehouses down there. Right? You have like Edwin watt, Edwin Watts. Do you have that? Roger Dunn.

Speaker 2:

We have the other one called Smith and I call Smith. What's it called?[inaudible] and we have PGA Superstore and we have golf galaxy. Those are the ones we have.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. Yeah, because it's through worldwide golf shops, which owns yeah.

Speaker 2:

They're all to God's hands conglomerate now. Yeah. Vans that conglomerate. Well, that's how they can compete. Cause I think they're all like regional stores. So like I think worldwide is like all the regional stores or companies banded together to compete against the bigger online presence. That's what I think it is. At least I think you're right. Where the, where the sales, the bags like did you have to like send some of those bags to the retailers or no?

Speaker 3:

And they would just purchase them outright. So they would be like, we want straight 30 bags. We want, we want the bags for the store. It's like, all right, here you go. I mean, we got to give it, we got to give them a cut, which sucks. But you know, we still want the revenue. So margins.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. The margins are there and it gives you more flexibility because cash is king, right. So it's not like you're sitting on, not on. So you saw the bags three months ago. And then what about the cars? One of those sell out

Speaker 3:

The card sold out like two weeks or like three weeks? Probably like, I guess almost a month ago at this point, like three ago or something. And that was, we really got a good push from the worldwide golf shops. They ordered pretty big amount of pushcarts. They were like over 50. I'll put it that way. That with one order, which was like a game changer, like there's been a few game changer moments for us. And like the partnership with worldwide golf shops was absolutely one. We have a few other partnerships that, you know, we're really excited that are coming up. Um, that'll be announced. I don't know. I don't know when exactly, cause there's details that have to be ironed out, but there's a few other partnerships that we're excited about coming up and it's stuff like that that really has helped us stay alive and propel. I mean, direct to consumer, if we could only do direct to consumer, that'd be great. We would, you know, it's just not really viable when we're, when we're this new, I mean, we have to work with as many people as we can at this,

Speaker 2:

Wherever you can find'em right. Like it was down to like, you're not being picky here. Just like, oh sweet. I made a little bit of money on that. Right. And like I made, you know, that's why we have our, that's why we have a margin and you're able to play with that margin essentially. Yeah. But now you're six months out where I'm assuming you were probably did your order, right? Yeah.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. We, so we have another 400 golf bags coming in 10 days. So we're already, we're six months pass. Last time we made that order pretty much. So we have new bags coming in like next week. So it's good timing. We're on this. I don't know when this is coming out, but new bags will be out end

Speaker 2:

Of September. So you made that order six months ago.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, we did a nightmare and oh, by the way, our costs went up 25%. Like our, our cost per bag went up 25% in the last year since we made this resort because it, because that's the industry that's in place right now. It's ridiculous. They, they told me the price and I was like, is this right? Like, are you sure this is the right price? I was shocked and shipping, if anybody that knows anything about ocean freight shipping right now, it's not 25% more. It's like 150% more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And there's no containers. And if you're going through LA good luck with that because I was actually teaching myself, we, my son and I went on a walk yesterday and I'm trying to teach him about business. He said 11. And I was like, okay, I was explaining about, okay, so if you had this pride, like I was literally going the whole thing. And I was like, what are the things you have to watch out for it? And I was explained to him like, what's happening in California? I'm like, so now what do you do? Right. I'm like, so would you pay more for air freight or would you now you can't because you got some heavy as big stuff. So it's like, forget that, you know,

Speaker 3:

Choice be way too expensive, a thousand dollars,

Speaker 2:

You know, like, yeah. But they still get you by the balls dude. Because like what time I had to ship some stuff to, uh, to, uh, another company. Right. And like in golf company. And they had an account with FedEx and like the difference between a guy who does have an account with FedEx and who does not have an account, FedEx was like a 90% difference in cost. Right? Like, they're like, oh, it's not gonna be$127, but they going to, but if you originally that account number, it would be like 800. And I was like, let's see what

Speaker 3:

It guys get.

Speaker 2:

And the guy was like, well, this company probably uses FedEx a lot. So they probably get the best rate. I was like, holy crap. People always speaks about shipping too. Like, why should it be so expensive? Like when you sell stuff, you're like, dude, that's what it costs. Like it's not like I'm making money in shipping. I've actually lost money in shipping. When I, when I've international orders, I can, and I still lose money on that. I still lose five,$10 on international shipping because you don't know what it's going to cost. If you shipped to Ireland, right? You're like, well, you know, here's a rough rate. I don't know.

Speaker 3:

Can't we can't ship internationally. I mean, it'd be double the price of our, our cart. I'm working on Canada. But even Canada is very expensive. FedEx is not been overly helpful. And if anyone from FedEx is listening right now, if you want to help me out with international shipping, that'd be wonderful. But it's been hard right now.

Speaker 2:

Shipping ups, super expensive.

Speaker 3:

I think they both are it's it's a duopoly. So they're just gouging us all

Speaker 2:

So small stuff. So it's like when you have little chotchkies or whatever, but like, you know, like every company you have, like your main two flagship products are big, you know, like just, yeah,

Speaker 3:

They're very expensive to ship.

Speaker 2:

If you'd like to have video. I did of me putting together my cough heart. You sent me.

Speaker 3:

That was awesome. I loved it. I love

Speaker 2:

How come I'm on your website, bro, whatever. You have a bunch of like high-tech pictures and video. And I'm like my stop frame, building it fast forwarding that took a lot of work.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So this, I would say that is one of the areas that we have, that we need to improve on is taking content that other people do for us, such as your video and putting it on our website. Like we need to be way better about, um, using the content that we have social media. I mentioned it a little bit

Speaker 2:

For a while ago, But I mean, that's probably because I'm like on, we're doing the stream right now. Videos are taking forever to load those videos. Who did those videos for you? Because they're really cool. I was going to ask you that.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. So we have a buddy, like it's a friend of a friend that just like quit his job. Just start doing this full time. His name's Andrew. If anybody wants to use him for anything, I'll give you his contact. Yeah, dude, he's a, he's a beast. He's a beast. He deserves all the credit in the world

Speaker 2:

That black video with the thing spinning and the graphics. Oh my God. That's freaking cool. Like that. I don't really compliment people on, but I'm a, I'm a website snap. So like, I'm just telling you that's cool. I'm going to tell, I'm going to find out that guy's information. Like it's just really cool. I mean, yeah, that would be a really good if he could make that smaller and use that for your ads on Facebook, that would crush. I think too,

Speaker 3:

Like we're once the bags get here, we're going to start pushing out

Speaker 2:

For a gift, whatever.

Speaker 3:

And then have that playing, like just the thing where like that would catch your eye fast. Especially in Instagram. That would be really good. I think, give me your cruise information. I'll talk to you after the show. I dude check out his website. This is a good video. And then if you want to talk to Andrew, then you guys just email me and I'll I'll you mostly. Yeah. Great. Inside golf dot C O go there now buy a bag, buy a pushcart.

Speaker 2:

So he made that. I Apolo, I mean, you know, it's so expensive or no, it's really hard. Apparel apparel is like super hard, super hard. We,

Speaker 3:

We don't, we do not make money on apparel. I can tell you that

Speaker 2:

I don't do there. I mean, apparel, I don't know. You know, when you come into doing a bit, you know, doing this stuff, like you just don't know what you don't know. Right. And when it comes to apparel, like I'm friends with some pretty big apparel, like trendy apparel companies are cool. And like when I go to their offices and I saw what they're doing, I was like, it blew my mind. I was like, see, this is a real apparel company. They have like swatches on the wall. And they're like figuring all this stuff out. And I'm like, oh, I want to make a t-shirt you know, like apples and oranges. Right. And I don't know, golf apparel is kind of cutthroat too. So that's just my,

Speaker 3:

Uh, I, yeah, I once heard from an entrepreneur selling more expensive items is beneficial for owners because they take a, the pushcart, for example, it's two, it's$250. It's much easier to find one person to buy a$250 product than it is to say you sell pop sockets or, you know, widgets or whatever it may be then to find, you know, for$2 or each, right. It's a lot easier to find one person to buy a$250 product than it is to find 75 people to buy a$2 product or a hundred people to buy a$200 or a$2 product that would get me to the exact same amount, any, uh, potential entrepreneurs out there, expensive items are the way to go sales.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And like a Mart. Here's a thing, right? Sammy, what he's doing? The margins. Yeah. It's all at the margin. Right? If you can play at that margin and you're like, okay, I can afford buying X. Right? Whatever. It costs for a hundred of them. So I can afford that. So if I can sell it for Y it would be double, right. Let's just pretend or triple or four times as much, I was blown away. Some of what, some of these things cost and golf and what they sell them for. And that's what kind of me off. So that's why, like I find the same people that make the same product and I did sell for way less. Cause I'm like, dude, you guys are screwing people over. Right.

Speaker 3:

I would love to be domestic in terms of our supplier, our supplier for the postcards. I am sick of being overseas. It is impossible. It's never going to, I doubt it.

Speaker 2:

I would love

Speaker 3:

For it to happen.

Speaker 2:

If you're going to try to do that after the margins are really, really bad. Right. What I'm finding, if you, first of all, you're not going to get stopped. Most of the stuff's made overseas anyways. Right. But let's just pretend you find something that's not made overseas. Like you can, you can tell yourself right now, it's gonna cost two to three times more than people out overseas. Right. But if you're okay with that and you're gonna make less money, but it's still in the United States. So it takes less time. And there's less risk. It's about that. Now it's about risk reward, right? Like it's a whole other equation. I have a buddy who like, he's doing so well here buying his own warehouse. Cause he was at a three PL and he really, he did the math and he's like, oh, campaigns. So much money in a three PL I might as well buy my own warehouse, hire people because he didn't get enough money to do it where it would be the same price, literally what he was paying. You know what I mean? Like it was crazy. So now, you know, the fricking warehouse,

Speaker 3:

I mean, we do all of our, our own fulfillment. Um, I, I warehouse my stuff myself. I ship everything myself because I have a warehouse. It's right. It's right outside of Boston, it's more of a store, a large storage unit. It's not really aware. I was like, we only have say 500 pieces at a time at most, which is only going to take up say 40 by 10 or 30 by 10 feet. So I could just like get a storage unit. And I do all the shipping myself because I like, that's

Speaker 2:

A lot of work, like

Speaker 3:

Crazy. A lot of people like that's crazy. And like, I save a ton of money and I enjoy doing it. I like, I like the process of printing the shipping labels, sticking it on the box, you know, organizing it and dropping it off or having FedEx pickup,

Speaker 2:

Like anybody who knows me, who's bought stuff from me. Satisfies. I always send like a thank you card. Or I'm like that, hear about the people buying it. If I see people buy multiple things, I'm like, wow. It also extra stuff. I'll be like, oh, here's a whatever. And you didn't buy it and I'm giving it to you just because of like, thanks for being loyal and thanks for actually caring enough about us to like support us. Cause that's a big deal. Cause it's their money. Right. So it's like, I appreciate that. They chose me over something else like that. This, I dunno, I've been on both sides of the cloth. So

Speaker 3:

I'll deliver it. I'll just, I'll deliver it right to your right to your address. I'll I'll, I'll walk up your step, ring the doorbell and put it right on your doorstep. If you're in Boston and you place the order,

Speaker 2:

Why bother shipping? Did you, you should bring that to Brian's house. Cause he lives by you. I don't know he was in some suburbs. Yeah. I don't what Scarman don't

Speaker 3:

You live in?

Speaker 2:

I think Chris don't have these in the chat. I think he was, I think he lives in Boston area too. So it was like asking questions and

Speaker 3:

This is cool. I'm going to, yeah, this is

Speaker 2:

The bomb dude. Like honestly, it's the best software. I

Speaker 3:

Want to answer a question. Can I answer a question? Go through

Speaker 2:

Them. Go ahead. Yeah. Well, yeah, let's go through,

Speaker 3:

Is there a warranty? Is there a warranty on the pushcart? We have a no ask. No questions asked policy on returns of your order, your pushcart, you don't like it. You want to send it back? That's fine by me. Like I said, customer appreciation and customer satisfaction are the most important thing. I want to make something clear that where I like to differentiate between the big guy and the little guy is I'm at, you know, a normal guy. I'm one of you. I'm a golfer. Like if so, if I don't like the product, I don't want to be hassled about sending it back. That's the same policy that we have. If you don't like anything that's to

Speaker 2:

Yes. Keep it. Well, you can't do that, but I'm like, just keep whatever. I'll just, we put our money. I mean,

Speaker 3:

We can't afford to do that. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

Exactly. I can. But like could my products like cheap compared to yours?

Speaker 3:

And then another one is for Sam. What's your favorite courses to play in the Boston area? I was hoping this question came up because I just love talking well. So I love talking about golf and golf courses, granite lengths. I love, um, I had the pleasure of playing and over country club and that's an incredible track. Uh, but yeah, definitely granted legs. Oh, pine Hills. I love the pine Hills, the little sandwich pocket. As what I like to call it, sandwich. Massachusetts is an underrated little pocket for golf. They've got like six golf courses that basically all touch each other. So if you're ever like in the area you want to spend the night, right. It's on the south shore is right by Cape Cod. I mean Cape Cod has some incredible golf course, Massachusetts, in my opinion is the pinnacle of golf in the Northeast. Obviously we're not talking about Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, but in the Northeast, Massachusetts has got a one New York has some good, some good courses as well. But I feel like New York is so big that it's not as like tight knit of a community. Massachusetts has got a really incredible community for golf. That would, the mask off is the, is the program. They do an incredible job. Hopefully we'll work with them in the near future. But in terms of favorite courses, love the pine Hills courses. Big fan of granite links. Always a good time up there. Check those out red tails are a very fun course. Those definitely probably be my top three. Are you

Speaker 2:

Coming out with new designs for your bags?

Speaker 3:

So we have a slight product change, slight design change on the, the newest golf bags. We're going from our number one piece of feedback on the golf bags. The money bag was people didn't like the 14 way top. So we, we brought it down to six. So we've made it a six way top. And like I said, that's just based on feedback from the, from the customers. They said we don't, we don't want a 14 way tops fine by me. I always liked it. I liked having a space for each of my clubs, but maybe that's my OCD.

Speaker 2:

No, no. That's a cool thing too. When you're a small brand starting to grow is that you're able to make changes whenever you see a patient.

Speaker 3:

No, absolutely. I agree. It's, we're trying to listen to the customer, listen to the feedback from the customers and the people that actually interact with us and care to give us feedback. I very much appreciate it. I love interaction. I run the social media myself, hopefully that changes in the future because number one, I'm not very good at it. In my opinion. And number two, it would be a huge time saver if someone could take that off. Yeah. If someone would take that off your hands and just like,

Speaker 2:

Like I've learned that there's like social media. I I'm sure I have some, I have somebody I trust a lot of people know him already. So like he's helping me with it, but I upload all my YouTube stuff, but I like, there's this things like the podcast I have to do all that myself. Cause you could train somebody, but it's still like going out to the world and it's like, no, I got it. You can't fix it once it goes out. So it's like, I think I would love to be able to like transfer that job. I don't think I would.

Speaker 3:

We want to, we want to definitely expand our Tik TOK presence, our reels presence. Like that's obviously the future. And that's where people are migrating to the millennial.

Speaker 2:

I get more views on my videos on, well, not right now because I'm still learning YouTube, but like I'm getting more views on Instagram TV and um, Amazon, Amazon of all places. It's crazy what I have found[inaudible] Yeah, but you gotta be an Amazon influencer. So like, I don't really know. Maybe it's not like a companies can just throw crap up there. But if you're like, if you make content, like I do, you can throw it up there. They have rules and stuff. Like it has to be like quality and it has to be like informative and explain, you know like I'm like, all right, cool. I have a lot of app content, but you can't like talk about price. You can't talk about like going off site, like, Hey, check out my website. You gotta take all that crap out because they just, you know, like either we'll go to Amazon, you go to the bottom and it has like those little videos on the bottom. That's what people are doing. And I just found out, oh yeah, go. And somebody was telling me LinkedIn and I don't know. Cause I never go to LinkedIn because I'm like, LinkedIn's boring. Supposedly LinkedIn could, you can put videos on there. But I never seen that. So

Speaker 3:

I love LinkedIn. I don't use it. Like I don't, I don't have much of a content presence, but I love following people. I'm favorite follow. Is Chris a guy named Chris Mead? Who's one of the founders of cross net. Are you familiar with cross net? Probably not, but he's a young, he's like he's so it's a, it's a variation of volleyball and Foursquare. It's like a Foursquare style volleyball and they are absolutely murdering the guys. Like it's two brothers and like one other kid, one other guy they're all in their twenties and they're absolutely crushing. And he's like way ahead of his time in terms of his business savvy and has knowledge. So I follow him. He's a great Paulo. LinkedIn's good for following entrepreneurs and getting ideas from

Speaker 2:

All right. All right. All right. I'll figure it out. I love that world. It looks like to this cause Sam are friends and I was like, Hey, you want to be on the show? Because I think we all learned something all the same. Right. Even though we all kind of do something different, we're all having the same struggles. Whether you're a huge brand or a little brand, everyone has the same struggles. Now the cool thing is that the people that have the big brands have some really cool stories because they've seen a lot more stuff. Right. It's essentially, if you wanted to like, get an education on how to like start a business, this is it it's like the inside edge, right? Like, yeah. Like you have a golf car company. There's the guy who's doing it. He just told us how he's doing it. It's not easy. You know, if you got,

Speaker 3:

I thought it was interesting that like starting a business, nobody ever tells you that growing a business is 10 million times harder than starting a business. In my opinion, starting a business was easy growing the business. That's a different animal. That's a, that's a beast. It's easily

Speaker 2:

Thing set up and like cookie cutter, whatever. Right. It's easy. Cause it's exactly. But like where the rubber meets the road, those two things I think is also getting your first sale or getting your, you know, it's easy to go spend money and buy product. It's easy to like set up account. But then when you really have to do it and you're like, oh crap. That's when it gets hard and you have to like figure it out and there's no playbook. There's not, everybody's every way of doing it is different depending on what you're, what you're doing. Right. Like I don't nothing about golf carts. I wouldn't even know where to begin. Right? Yeah. It's golf equipment. But I mean, it's like, how the hell would I sell a golf cart? I don't know. That's not really true though, because I've sold library, golf carts on my website. That's true.

Speaker 3:

Yeah. I should be, well, you need good friends. You are, you, you need, you need friends in the industry. You need people to help you out. Nobody can do anything alone. Usually there

Speaker 2:

Are certain brands that help me. Like I don't

Speaker 3:

Think that made sense.

Speaker 2:

No, no, but no, it's true because like there's brands that I worked with in the past that like, I've become such good friends with these people they've helped me exponentially. And I never asked them to, we just did because we were friends and I said, oh, you should. I'm gonna introduce you to so and so, you know, and then I don't know, that's how it works. Golf is like life like seriously, it just be a good person and like, be cool. Don't be a. So

Speaker 3:

That's absolutely treat people the way that they should be treated. Not necessarily the way that you want to be treated. Cause that's kind of a ridiculous thing that you just treat people good. How about that?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm really happy how good you're doing seriously. That's awesome. I, I, all I know is I see from afar that I think is on the website like a couple of weeks ago. And I was like, what? He pulled out. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. Cause that's a big deal. It's hard to sell. So I'm really excited. I'm glad that you're on the show today. I appreciate you coming out. You guys need to check out Greenside golf.com. He has two, his two main products are the G wagon. Right. And uh, the money bag and the money bag could name, right? The carts 250 bucks. This is like super cheap in my opinion. And actually what

Speaker 3:

I told you, the bag is the bag is one. So it's probably going to go up the, yeah, it's going to, it's probably going to be this, this 2.0 bag going to be 180, probably because the fact is our, our price went up 25% and you know our costs. So like we can't afford to not go up a little. We're not going to go up 25%. I don't know what

Speaker 2:

You got to share that. Yeah. You're sharing that. You're sharing the costs. I mean, just be honest about it. So yeah. You know, you guys need to support them, honestly. Like they're good people and I mean, look, he's doing it in the bags. Cool. My dad stole my cart and bag. I'm just telling you right now. I don't have it. My office in here right now.

Speaker 3:

I'll have to send you another one.

Speaker 2:

That's cool. Like 2.0 or whatever,

Speaker 3:

But I mean, do you prefer 14 way or six way? Top of the golf bag?

Speaker 2:

Honestly, I would just like the cart. I don't need another bag. I got so many bags. Like, I'll be fair with you. You probably want to do. I got like, I don't have you guys been on the internet, but vessels to new bags coming out and I just got, those were coming to me right now. So it's like, I've still got, I got the fricking new minimal bag right here. Like I have.

Speaker 3:

And I got to, I got a cart with your name on it. I got a car with your name on it. We'll get it out to you as soon as possible customer behind the brand golfers authority right on the side. No, don't do that.

Speaker 2:

Embarrassing. Well thank you for being on the show. Thanks for everyone who came in and thanks for having questions and hung out today. I will see you guys in the next episode.

Speaker 3:

Thanks guys. Thanks Paul. Greenside golf.ceo at Greenside Greenside golf bell. See for Instagram, follow us. Interact with us. Go to the website, byproduct. I love you.

Speaker 2:

You love me. Thank you. I love you.

Speaker 3:

I love everyone else too. That's I've got enough love for everyone.

Speaker 1:

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.