Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
It’s like playing a round of golf with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs and listening to the stories behind their success.
Hi, I’m Paul Liberatore, and I love talking to entrepreneurs and the stories behind their brands. I find it intriguing when people are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and successes. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to some of the biggest names and brands in the game of golf.
So come join me on my quest to find the stories Behind the Brand.
Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
#134 - PXG: Bob Parsons (PXG Founder & CEO)
Bob Parsons pulls back the curtain on his extraordinary journey from a troubled childhood to founding billion-dollar companies like GoDaddy and PXG. With refreshing candor, he reveals how writing his book fulfilled two missions: documenting his unique path for future generations and honoring the persistent requests from his Vietnam War brothers who remain close decades later.
The conversation delivers priceless insights into Parsons' entrepreneurial mindset. "I always did stuff I loved," he explains, sharing his philosophy that passion unlocks opportunities money-chasers never see: "When you love something, it tells you all its secrets." This approach led him to walk away from a $50,000 bonus in 1985 (an enormous sum at the time) to launch his software company—a leap that netted him $250,000 that same year.
Parsons' acquisition of Scottsdale National Golf Club showcases his ingenious problem-solving. When developers tried enforcing unwanted contractual memberships, he created "nighttime memberships" that could only be used an hour after sunset and had to end an hour before sunset—rendering them effectively worthless and solving his problem brilliantly. This story, like many others shared, demonstrates how Parsons consistently finds creative solutions where others see only obstacles.
Perhaps most compelling is Parsons' remarkable ability to avoid worry—a trait he credits partially to his Vietnam experience. Unlike his anxiety-prone brother who "worried about everything," Parsons learned early to focus energy on solutions rather than fear. This mental discipline, alongside the profound sense of belonging he first experienced in the Marine Corps, formed the foundation of his success across multiple industries.
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Well, you know the old saying there's no time like the president. And so you know I have always been thinking about writing a book, mostly because I have a very unique past and you know I wanted one. You know, when future generations wondered you know how I did what I did, I wanted them to see you know exactly how I did it. And so that's, that's one reason. The other reason is the guys I served with during the Vietnam War. They all kept pushing me.
Bob:I'm still in, believe it or not, seven of us made it through that step and we all are tight, and so they all kept pushing me. You got to write a book, you got to write a book. I said why don't you fucking write a book? You gotta write a book. I said why don't you write a book? And they go. Well, I don't, you know, I, I don't know how to write a book. And I said I, I don't know that I do either, but I'll give it a go. And I found laura martin and she helped me and off we went.
Paul:So I have your book.
Paul:I've already.
Paul:I read the entire book and I actually bought the audio book too, the one that you narrate, which was great because to hear you tell the story and just reading it in your voice and I was I was talking to Lila about this earlier Like there's very few books I've read in my life that I feel have a profound effect on me as a person, and just like reading and understanding you and like it, just it's a phenomenal book.
Paul:I think it's only one of the books of my life I can think of that good and I'm not just saying that like this book's amazing, like so I definitely succeeded in what you're trying to do because we really felt or for me, I felt an understanding of like kind of who you are and how you got to where you're at, and hearing your own words and your own voice and like explaining, like you know, know, the myth and the legend is not there's a lot more to this than how I think, how you did it. So it's an amazing book. Like I love this book for real well, thank you so much so I gave this my mom.
Paul:My mom's reading it now, um, and I'm giving out to people just to read, so I'm like you have to read this book because, um, yeah, so thank you for it well, there's some funny stuff in there. Oh my gosh, the funniest book I've ever read in my entire life. Like I love the stories. Well, some of the stories you tell are like. I'll tell you my favorite story okay, because I can picture you doing this is when you bought Scottsdale National and like, how, like you how to get it?
Bob:can you tell that story? Because I love that story, it's so fun. Oh man, I'll tell you what lots of you know. We had this, uh, indoor range over at our office, yeah, and we would go down there after work and just start beating balls and kicking ideas back and forth, back and forth, and I remember stevie telling me he's going, you know, you know, you know, after we both joined and I said well, you know, why don't you go to Sugar Chicken? You know, see what you can get involved in.
Bob:He said nobody will let me do anything Really, and I said all right, that means we take it to Vernal. And then you know, we did what we did. But my favorite thing in there was how we got to buy the housing development.
Paul:Is that that way? The land in the north Is that which way it is? Which way is it?
Bob:It is this way, that way. Okay, Matter of fact, we're on it. Oh really, yeah, we're on it now, so you know when we're ready to go, right after we bust, a couple of days later, the individuals that own that housing development. Now they haven't even broken ground yet on it.
Paul:Yeah, the developer guys.
Bob:Yeah, they come in and say, you know, well, congratulations on buying the club, and I want you to know that we have memberships that we're entitled to for every house that we do. I was like 230 houses and so forth. And I said, yeah, I'm aware of that. And I said, well, we're not going to hire them. And they said, well, you got to because it's in the contract, this is maybe in the contract, but we, we're not going to honor them. And they said, well, you got to because it's in the contract, this is maybe in the contract, but we're still not going to honor them. And so this back and forth, and back and forth.
Speaker 2:And so what?
Bob:finally brought us together and had them give up on their housing development because unless they had an amenity associated with it, like a golf course right, there was no way that you know that housing development was going to work. So we read the contract again and again and again and then it just occurred to us you know we get to define the memberships and I said it's simple, they're nighttime memberships. These memberships are for golfers who want to tee off an hour after sundown. And they got to be off the course an hour before sundown. He said nobody's going to want that. And I said exactly, it's so funny and it was just looking at us the whole time and that brought it right together. I mean we paid a very fair price for it. We paid more than we wanted to and they sold it for less than they wanted to. Perfect deal. And after I you know know we kind of flows that deal where I bought the property, I invited the guy to be a member. Any join?
Paul:yeah, that's part like he was.
Paul:He was a test and at the end he's like oh yeah, you know that he joins, that he joined the business I remember the part in the book is you're like, cuz you like woke up in part in the book because you're like, because you like you woke up in the middle of the night and you're like got it, Like you went and figured out like how to like join the clubs Because they wouldn't talk to you. Right, the owners of the Scottsdale National or what was it called back then Scottsdale, what was it called?
Bob:It was called the Golf Club. Yeah, the Golf Club Scottsdale. Yeah, that's it, yeah, and everybody's a valid point here. Anybody can get on it.
Paul:Yeah, exactly, oh, my God, that was so funny. I guess it takes you to be excited because you're like I finally figured out that problem. So one question I have for you is what made you, knowing how you were raised and seeing the failures your dad had as an entrepreneur, like what made you want to be an entrepreneur and like what drove you?
Bob:you know, I never thought about it. I never thought about that. You know his stumbles and that sort of thing, yeah, and, and lord knows he had a lot, um, uh like, like I told you when you, you know, he was a gambler, a big gambler.
Bob:And he caught wind that at the state fair one of the horses the thoroughbred horses was going to be doped and this thing was doped so much. My God, this thing come out of the starting gate. Pop put every nickel he had on his horse right on the nose to win. And his horse comes out of the gate like a rocket. He's going faster, faster, faster, faster, comes around a far turn and can't make. He's so stoked he can't make the turn and instead runs right into a fence and he kills the horse, damn near, killed the jockey and my father's going. That's what happens when I bet on a horse. I really just thought, yeah, but anyhow, I you know, it's just I did stuff I love to do, you know, like, for example, you know, I started a software company, you know, when I, in 1984, after I wrote to Kohn, you know, for a home money management product and I really enjoyed it and I thought, man, it'd be beautiful to sell this and have customers and do updates.
Paul:Yeah, we'll make money on this, that sort of thing, yeah.
Bob:I never even thought about making money. I did it just to do it. You know, and you know what I realized over the years. You know it was the same thing with GoDaddy when I did that and when I, you know, pxg, when I did that. I always did stuff I loved, right. And when you love something tells you all its secrets, all its secrets. And when you work for money, people will never work as hard as I worked for the love of it, for the passion, and so I think that was the difference. And so people, they look at me and say you're an entrepreneur. Yeah, maybe that's what.
Bob:I am but that's not why I did it. It's because you were excited, I did it because I wanted to do something fun.
Paul:When you walked away from the job that you had when you started the software company. Who does that? Give you a bonus right At the end of the year.
Bob:Yeah, I left it on the table.
Paul:Yeah, who does that right? Everyone's like you're crazy and it's like, yeah, that didn't matter.
Bob:That's slowing you down. Yeah, that bonus. I had $50,000 on the table. That's a lot of money right In 1985? That's a lot of money, brother. That was some long green for me then, but there was no way I would get a tax program done in time for the season if I stayed there.
Bob:And you know, that year, when that year was over 1985, I made a quarter million dollars. I never made that kind of money in my life. Took my wife down to the Caribbean and went to a new beach Me and her told one around that we went around there, did all that kind of stuff. But anyhow, you know they were fun times.
Paul:I just think what I love about the book is like you tell these stories and you're explaining like stories that people haven't heard before. You know what I mean. Like people they see your achievements throughout but like, how did you what you? What was that? You know what made it transition? Right, like leaving that job, and you're like kind of tired of you know. You know your boss promising you stuff, right, like people always hear these things a lot of. You know, like you see, a lot of time, um, people write about false promises, right, and it's like, well, you know you get tired of it. You know I'm gonna do my own thing, I don't need it whatever. There you go, um. The next question I have for you is one thing I really like about the book, too, is how you opened up like right off, right off the bat, right, you had to open letter to yourself from when you're um. It says what was that? Was that a therapy or a retreat, or was.
Bob:Yeah, yeah, I was in my, I was in my I guess was in my, I guess, late thirties.
Paul:And it's like I think it's very profound and you get right off the bat too and like I think, like to me, it opens up. It opens up the whole book because you see, like this is serious, like this is how we help who. He is a person Right. But even being able to like for someone who's I'm in my 40s now I'm in my 40s to read that and you can, I don't know, I got a real sense of like. Okay, I hear that same story. You know what I mean. So I think what made you want to put that right away, because that's pretty. I mean, we already know you're ballsy. That's ballsy right, because a lot of people will not put that out there you know Paul my life's always been an open book.
Bob:I mean, I have always believed that if I had something that I wasn't quite proud of, I embrace it. I don't try to shy away from it or cover it up, I embrace it. And I did that with with that letter, you know and that was.
Bob:You know the letter was what that I wrote to myself when I was just a kid and my mother was going nuts in the house and you know, and little bobby was having trouble with in school because all that shit and it's heavy stuff. Yeah, and I told him that you know, I know you better than anybody alive, right, and that I know one day you're going to overcome all this. So, no matter what right, just keep dreaming about being in a better place in time, because that will be what saves you.
Paul:You've always been a dreamer right and that's what kind of guided you when you were a kid in the basement, always playing with the soldiers and stuff. Do you feel a real strong connection when you joined the Marine Corps? I know you would say in the book that was the first time you felt that you had a home right, a real family.
Bob:Exactly, yeah, when I was with, you know, I was with the Marine Corps Rifle Company and in my rifle squad, the guys I was with and I served with I mean I just have never been closer to any guy, you know, any group of people like that, before or since, and it'd be the type of thing. Like you know, the most important thing in the military, particularly when you're in combat, is mail call Mail.
Bob:Letters from home are so important. But I take what we do. I mean you know some days you'd get mail and other days you wouldn't. So when I got mail, I read my mail, and when I didn't, I read their mail and they'd read my mail when they didn't. And I mean we got to know each other really well.
Paul:That's right, so you can really understand each other's world and where they're coming from with these letters from home back then.
Paul:There you go. Yeah, I remember that in college and we still had letters and people would send letters to people. That was the best not to all the emails. One last question before we go One thing you said in the book was you never worried? Ever, even as a kid, you never worried. I think it's a very strong trait. You were talking about how it's a waste of time to worry about something because it makes it worse. It's like pushing through and figuring it out. That's what's helped drive you through all these years and all these things you've created. You're you're never worried about it. It's always solving the problem to make it better, instead of being like, oh, it's not going to work Right, or just giving up or something.
Bob:Well, the you know I I learned that in in Vietnam for sure, you know, reinforced it and when I was a kid, you know I didn't have too much to worry about. You know, other than you know my situation was my situation and you know I learned to tune it out is what I did. I got really good at disassociation, which you know can be a good thing and not a good thing yeah, it comes back later on, when you get older.
Bob:Yeah, yeah and then um, I um, you know it's just um a lot of stuff. You know that you, you know you talk to people they worry about and it never happens. In other words, yeah, and so I mean in all this time, this mental anguish and so forth, you know and it's got to kill them right.
Bob:And so, you know, never did it. You know, my brother was a first-collegiate martyr. He worried about everything. I mean he worried about everything. He worried about the federal government's deficit, he worried about state government's deficit. He worried about if his golf course was going to be able to pay the bills so they can stay open. I mean all this stuff he would worry about if the Baltimore Ravens would make the playoffs. He went to a psychologist once and he said and you know, he went to a psychologist once and he said you know, I want to be like my brother, my brother doesn't worry about anything. And she says you know, you can get. There were in Spain and we got to go, we're in some city and we want to catch a plane to Pamplona. And you know, the guy told us he goes. You know it's going to be very difficult for you to catch the plane, you know, because you know it's getting ready to leave and all this and my brother's going. Oh my God. Again I said, brother, if we don't catch it, we'll get the next one.
Paul:He's like really stuck in fear of his life.
Bob:Yeah, so stuff like that.
Paul:Well, I think it's, I don't know. I think it's a phenomenal book. So thank you for writing it and thank you for inviting me out here again and talking to me. I appreciate it very much. It's always a pleasure, my friend.
Speaker 2:I love talking to you. Thanks for listening to another episode of Behind the Golf Brand Podcast. You're going to beat me. Stay connected on and off the show by visiting golfersauthoritycom. Don't forget to like, subscribe and leave a comment. Golf is always more fun when you win. Stay out of the beach and see you on the green.
