Speaker 1: I miss a green for example, I'm already upset.
Speaker 2: When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 1: Ball in a brid egg Frida egg, the dreaded Frida egg,
Speaker 1: Frida egg, Frida egg, bride egg, Lie, I'm about ready
Speaker 1: to run.
Speaker 2: Off of the.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg podcast.
Speaker 3: Today's episode is with me and Garrett Morrison. We are
Speaker 3: really excited and this episode is going to go into
Speaker 3: great detail about this. We are launching a new membership
Speaker 3: called Club TFE. This is kind of the next iteration
Speaker 3: of the Friday Egg. We are not going to be
Speaker 3: changing really anything about what we do and as far
Speaker 3: as what you've come to expect. We'll have our newsletters,
Speaker 3: we'll have our podcasts as we've always had them. What
Speaker 3: we're doing is launching a membership for people that want
Speaker 3: more from us. So it's gonna be called Club TFE.
Speaker 3: It is available today to join. We will have a
Speaker 3: few things for members in the coming weeks, but it
Speaker 3: officially launches on January second. So you're probably wondering what
Speaker 3: is CLUBTFE And we will talk in depth about all
Speaker 3: of these different aspects that I'm about to list off
Speaker 3: with Garrett, but I just wanted to give you a
Speaker 3: brief overview right off at the top Club TFE. What
Speaker 3: you'll get as a member is a weekly course review
Speaker 3: in rating, so we will go in depth and break
Speaker 3: down a different golf course every week and assign a
Speaker 3: rating to it. There will be a new Club TFE blog,
Speaker 3: so that will be a blog that has updated posts regularly. Again,
Speaker 3: we'll talk more about this with Garrett. A monthly virtual
Speaker 3: hangout with the Frida Egg staff, a monthly member only video,
Speaker 3: early access to the fridagg events, ten percent off the
Speaker 3: Frida Egg Pro shop, and an annual gift. So that
Speaker 3: is the as it stands today offerings of Club TFE.
Speaker 3: We have some big plans and hoping to do more
Speaker 3: and more as the year goes on, but that's what
Speaker 3: we're promising today. And you get all this for one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty dollars a year, so that's the price. Obviously,
Speaker 3: what that comes out to is about ten bucks a month,
Speaker 3: so we'll be doing it on an annual basis. As
Speaker 3: I mentioned, you can sign up for this now. You
Speaker 3: can go do Thefrida Egg dot com slash membership and
Speaker 3: that's where you can sign up and find more information
Speaker 3: about that. Obviously, we will talk Garrett and I about
Speaker 3: this in great length, as well as a few other things.
Speaker 2: In this podcast.
Speaker 3: We're going to talk about the history of the Frida
Speaker 3: Egg as a company and how the golf media land
Speaker 3: escape has evolved since I started this thing seven years ago.
Speaker 3: Kind of crazy how quick time goes by. So I
Speaker 3: think this was a pretty interesting conversation. Those are the
Speaker 3: basics of CLUBTFE. Obviously, none of this would be able
Speaker 3: to happen without the support of you guys, listeners and readers.
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it. I'm thrilled about CLUBTFE and what
Speaker 3: we could build there. What we're trying to do is really,
Speaker 3: you know, bring our community closer together and provide you
Speaker 3: guys with more content and more offerings from us. So,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned before, if you want to learn more,
Speaker 3: go do the fried egg dot com slash membership and
Speaker 3: that's where you'll find all the information about that. And
Speaker 3: thank you guys so much for all of support over
Speaker 3: the years. This has been an amazing ride and we
Speaker 3: just hope to make it better and better with this
Speaker 3: new platform.
Speaker 1: Thanks first of all, Andy what specifically does Club TFE offer, What,
Speaker 1: what are the what's the content that we're making paid
Speaker 1: content that is, again in addition to the free content
Speaker 1: that we've always done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think at the heart of of Club TFE,
Speaker 3: somebody is I think the question I get asked maybe
Speaker 3: the most the two questions, there's two part question that
Speaker 3: I get asked the most is what's what are your
Speaker 3: favorite courses? And then followed immediately by what when I
Speaker 3: answer when? When's the Friday going to have golf course ratings?
Speaker 1: Right? When's your top one hundred coming out?
Speaker 3: So you know, I I've needed to see a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff and one of you know, we've been I've
Speaker 3: been thinking about the golf course ratings standpoint and rank.
Speaker 3: It's not a ranking, We're we're going to rate golf
Speaker 3: courses and you know, one of the that's something I've
Speaker 3: been thinking about for the five years. How we would
Speaker 3: do it differently and how we would present it. I
Speaker 3: think the thing that I want to really provide and
Speaker 3: what I think we can provide is unbelievable course reviews
Speaker 3: and write ups that give you all the information if
Speaker 3: you're want a person that wants information about a course
Speaker 3: before you play it public or private, that you know
Speaker 3: you're armed, and when you go to that golf course,
Speaker 3: you're really going to appreciate your day out there because
Speaker 3: you're going to have a baseline of information that makes
Speaker 3: you understand the golf course more before you get there.
Speaker 2: And then we're going to come up.
Speaker 3: We have a rating scale and I am going to
Speaker 3: write a blog post about that, but it'll.
Speaker 1: Be it needs a description, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it'll be a one, two or three egg rating, right.
Speaker 1: So we're doing it in a unique way. We're not
Speaker 1: doing like a rating out of ten or a rating
Speaker 1: out of one hundred, you know, uh where where you
Speaker 1: know if you give if you get a one egg
Speaker 1: rating as a golf course, that's something really special. That's
Speaker 1: the basic idea. We don't need to go into detail
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: My thoughts on ratings are like their courses are in buckets,
Speaker 3: and you know, if you ask me, what what is
Speaker 3: your favorite golf course, it's like, well, what what am
Speaker 3: I in the mood for? And that's what I want
Speaker 3: the ratings to represent. So we're going to do a
Speaker 3: weekly course review. That's something that we've you know, we
Speaker 3: haven't done as many course reviews as we used to
Speaker 3: do because of time effort, how much effort goes into
Speaker 3: those course reviews, and this is something that paves the
Speaker 3: way for us to do these more. Another big part
Speaker 3: of this membership is going to be the Club TFV blog,
Speaker 3: and I think this is something that you are probably
Speaker 3: most excited about, so I'll like kind of explain it.
Speaker 1: I'm also excited about the course obviously because I got
Speaker 1: my start in golf media doing golf architecture writing, and
Speaker 1: so I think that giving ourselves an incentive to do
Speaker 1: more golf course architecture writing is going to be great
Speaker 1: because right now that's not strongly incentivized, and that's part
Speaker 1: of the discussion of the overall media landscape that we're
Speaker 1: going to have in this podcast. But yeah, weekly course
Speaker 1: review and just to be clear, folks, you know, initially
Speaker 1: this isn't going to be like a big battery of
Speaker 1: course reviews right away. We're building it up over time.
Speaker 1: We're doing one a week and it's going to get
Speaker 1: bigger and bigger. But yeah, we're not delivering a database
Speaker 1: or an encyclopedia immediately. That's what we're building towards. So
Speaker 1: Club tf Blog Essentially, this is what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's a blog. It's going to be on various topics.
Speaker 1: There's going to be some golf architecture. There's going to
Speaker 1: be some discussion of the PGA Tour. There's going to
Speaker 1: be short posts, there's going to be long posts. There's
Speaker 1: going to be some jokey right, and there's going to
Speaker 1: be some serious, excellent writing. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: mixture of all of those things. And part of this
Speaker 1: blog is that there's going to be a comment section.
Speaker 1: And this is where you know, Club TFE members can
Speaker 1: kind of respond to content that's going up on the
Speaker 1: membership site and where they can you know, discuss among
Speaker 1: themselves things that are brought up on the blog. So
Speaker 1: why I'm really excited about this is that blogging has
Speaker 1: kind of gone away in a lot of ways in
Speaker 1: Internet culture. I mean, there's still blogs out there, but
Speaker 1: they've lost their centrality to Internet discourse in a big way.
Speaker 1: They've been a lot of their functions have been replaced
Speaker 1: by social media and by podcasts. And I like social
Speaker 1: media sometimes, I really like podcasts. I think those are
Speaker 1: good additions to the Internet landscape, but I really miss blogs.
Speaker 1: I think that blogs brought a lot to Internet life,
Speaker 1: and when they became kind of an unsustainable business model.
Speaker 1: When the business model that supported the blogging industry early
Speaker 1: on shifted and went to other things, I think we
Speaker 1: really lost something. We lost some really good writing. We
Speaker 1: also lost some really bad writing. This is not to
Speaker 1: say that all blogs are good, right, Like ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of blogs were pretty bad, but there was a
Speaker 1: one percent of blogs out there that was just that
Speaker 1: were brilliant, and that brought a lot to my life,
Speaker 1: you know, ten fifteen years ago. And part of what
Speaker 1: we're hoping to do with this membership is to reintroduce
Speaker 1: some good fun writing into what we do on a
Speaker 1: daily basis and to have a nice, lively comment section,
Speaker 1: you know, like think of the old dead Spin comment section.
Speaker 1: The old dead Spin comic session had some issues and
Speaker 1: I don't want to shy away from that, but it
Speaker 1: was also like a really fun place, and so we're
Speaker 1: trying to create some of that culture within the membership.
Speaker 1: That's the club TF blog.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think like a way to think about
Speaker 3: it too is like it in a way, the comment
Speaker 3: section is going to enable this blog. Like in some
Speaker 3: of the posts are going to be like kind of
Speaker 3: thought starter posts like ways to create almost like a
Speaker 3: daily guided discussion where it can be a topic on
Speaker 3: a golf architecture topic, it could be something about the
Speaker 3: PGA tour, but the idea of you know, there are
Speaker 3: going to be essays that are going to be you know,
Speaker 3: well thought out written takes on different things, but there
Speaker 3: are also gonna be days where it's really like, you know,
Speaker 3: so many times I think about stuff that's like, you know,
Speaker 3: this isn't a take, And I think this is one
Speaker 3: of the things that's happened with writing on the internet
Speaker 3: is it's always got to have a take. But some
Speaker 3: of it I think the most powerful stuff is just
Speaker 3: asking a question and you know, coming to a question
Speaker 3: of like is this what do you think?
Speaker 2: Like is that? Do you like this trend of this?
Speaker 2: Like is this a good thing?
Speaker 3: Like A good example of this would be like I
Speaker 3: don't think I have a take on it yet, it
Speaker 3: hasn't been finished, but like, you know, what, how would
Speaker 3: everybody feel about more leados?
Speaker 2: You know, is that a good thing?
Speaker 1: Right? What do you think about AI in golf course design?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I don't know what my take is, but
Speaker 3: it seems like that's going to be something that's going
Speaker 3: to become a bigger trend in golf architecture. And and like,
Speaker 3: I think there's things that are cool about it, but
Speaker 3: there are also like I don't think I necessarily want
Speaker 3: to have, like, you know, the next generation of golf architects,
Speaker 3: like not you know, recreating courses and not building fresh
Speaker 3: ideas you know, right.
Speaker 1: Right, or designing on a computer as opposed to designing
Speaker 1: on land. Yeah, I think you know. Part of what
Speaker 1: you're saying that resonates with me is that the take
Speaker 1: economy implies that everybody has it all figured out, that
Speaker 1: the take givers have a settled opinion and they're delivering
Speaker 1: it to you. And often that is so false, right,
Speaker 1: and you know, we don't have everything figured out. And
Speaker 1: part of why blog culture was fun a lot of
Speaker 1: the time was that it didn't end with the post itself.
Speaker 1: There was that comment section and that ongoing discussion that's
Speaker 1: not a feature of podcasts. And so what we're hoping
Speaker 1: is that that comment section can be a healthy place
Speaker 1: to discuss things because right now, you know, the place
Speaker 1: to discuss things is Twitter, it's Instagram, it's social media sites.
Speaker 1: That have some major problems with toxicity, and you know
Speaker 1: that's that's not going to be the vibe in the
Speaker 1: Club TF blog. We're not going to be big enough
Speaker 1: to let in all the all the toxic stuff. So
Speaker 1: it should be it should be a really fun place
Speaker 1: to have conversations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So moving on to other things that we're gonna
Speaker 2: So we've.
Speaker 1: Done We've done the weekly course review, We've done the
Speaker 1: Club TF blog. We can go through the other ones
Speaker 1: fairly quickly because they're I think they're pretty self explanatory.
Speaker 1: But what are the other features of the Club TF membership.
Speaker 3: We're going to have early event access, so a week
Speaker 3: ahead of our public registration. For TFE events, which have
Speaker 3: been very popular. We did I think twelve of them
Speaker 3: last year. We're planning to do around that number next year.
Speaker 3: We will have early access for Club TFE members to
Speaker 3: those events. Obviously, some of these events sell out in
Speaker 3: two minutes, and what we want to do is we
Speaker 3: want for the people that are supporting us, we want
Speaker 3: to give them a head start at getting into the
Speaker 3: events that they want to get into. Also, we will
Speaker 3: have a monthly member only video, so these will cover
Speaker 3: wide ranges of topics. We last year hired Cameron Hurtis,
Speaker 3: who's really taken our video platform, our YouTube channel to
Speaker 3: a new level. What we want to do for members
Speaker 3: is provide more video. We have a huge library of
Speaker 3: golf video of golf courses and topics of architecture and
Speaker 3: that we want to dive into and uh, this is
Speaker 3: a another reason to do more of that. So we
Speaker 3: will do a monthly video for members only that will
Speaker 3: be posted on the club TF blog.
Speaker 2: So that'll be exciting that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think off the battle will probably be
Speaker 3: a lot of golf architecture stuff. But like we said,
Speaker 3: you know that we envisioned this becoming more and more
Speaker 3: as it grows and as we as it evolves. So
Speaker 3: those videos will be member they will be member only,
Speaker 3: and then every month we will do a kind of
Speaker 3: a digital Q and a hangout. So the software that
Speaker 3: we've been using for a couple of years riverside, it's
Speaker 3: been under used. I think we did it once with
Speaker 3: a shotgun start during a major during like I think
Speaker 3: of weather delay.
Speaker 2: We had one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you and you and Brendan, Yeah, and we.
Speaker 2: Had we had a few call ins. We had. It
Speaker 2: was fun.
Speaker 3: So we can do these digital hangouts where people it
Speaker 3: can be like live Q and A sessions people can
Speaker 3: call in and and they're really fun, interactive, and we're
Speaker 3: going to do one of those once a month, and
Speaker 3: you know, it'll be kind of like no questions off
Speaker 3: limits for the most part. Maybe there are some off
Speaker 3: limits questions, but you'll have if you can't make it,
Speaker 3: you'll have the opportunity to submit questions beforehand, and then
Speaker 3: if you can't make it, we will obviously post the
Speaker 3: audio and or video uh to the Club TFE blog
Speaker 3: for people to digest.
Speaker 2: On their own time.
Speaker 3: So that will be once a month and that will
Speaker 3: be just like almost like an additional Q and A podcast.
Speaker 2: And then UH.
Speaker 3: One other piece is we'll just have a constant ten
Speaker 3: percent off discount in the Frida Egg Pro shop. The
Speaker 3: neat thing with this is obviously, if you know from
Speaker 3: the standpoint of like if you're looking, if you were
Speaker 3: if you've been eyeing prints or something, and just use
Speaker 3: this as an example. But if you've been eying, like hey,
Speaker 3: I want to redo my office and you buy some prints,
Speaker 3: you get ten percent off. You you're clawing back your
Speaker 3: investment in the Fried Egg with every time you purchase
Speaker 3: something or want to purchase something, I'm not saying you
Speaker 3: have to, but it's just an added.
Speaker 2: Perk, right.
Speaker 3: We want to give you a little bit of a
Speaker 3: thank you for your investment in our membership that we
Speaker 3: hope to really grow the company with. So that will
Speaker 3: be all the time. And then uh, and then finally
Speaker 3: we'll do an annual member gift, So that'll just get
Speaker 3: mailed out to your your address on file and uh,
Speaker 3: it'll be just another thank you, and that'll be you know,
Speaker 3: Club TFE branded and sent out directly to you. So
Speaker 3: that's the offering as of now. As I've said a
Speaker 3: few times in this like, we envision this becoming much
Speaker 3: more and we're really excited about it. And and you know,
Speaker 3: I think, you know, from day one to where we
Speaker 3: are this time next year, I think it'll grow a lot,
Speaker 3: and we're really excited about about this.
Speaker 2: And I probably said excited about twenty times right now.
Speaker 1: You're thrilled, so thrilled.
Speaker 2: I gotta think about saying.
Speaker 1: As yeah, but yeah, we'll come up with some other ones.
Speaker 2: But that's the basics of Club TFE.
Speaker 1: Weekly Course Review and Rating, Club tf Blog, Monthly Virtual
Speaker 1: Hangout monthly video, early access to TFE events, ten percent
Speaker 1: off the TF Pro Shop annual member gift. That's the
Speaker 1: list right now. How much is it per year?
Speaker 2: It is one hundred and twenty dollars per year.
Speaker 1: Okay, are we selling out? Is this a crooked money grab?
Speaker 1: Why are we doing this?
Speaker 3: I don't think we're selling out. If anything, we're doing
Speaker 3: the opposite. I think the the number one thing when
Speaker 3: I started the Frida Egg that I wanted and that
Speaker 3: I saw an issue with in golf media was the
Speaker 3: lack of independence. And I don't think that's necessarily much better.
Speaker 3: Obviously there are some some like no laying up's a
Speaker 3: good example of a of an independent another, but there's
Speaker 3: you know, I think that if anything like what live
Speaker 3: in the PGA tour has reminded us of is like
Speaker 3: how little independence there are is in larger endemics. And
Speaker 3: and one of the reasons that we are doing this
Speaker 3: is to have the ability to grow our team to
Speaker 3: where we want to get to. Like we we have
Speaker 3: very high ambitions of what we what we can provide,
Speaker 3: you know, for people that love golf, and we want
Speaker 3: to keep doing that and in order to reach our
Speaker 3: goals of what we can do in golf coverage. We
Speaker 3: have to grow our team. And one of the reasons
Speaker 3: that we're doing this is is so we can invest
Speaker 3: back into our team so that we can continue to
Speaker 3: add talent and produce more content. And that doesn't mean
Speaker 3: just like more paid content, that's more free content. What
Speaker 3: we want to do is do more. We have a
Speaker 3: lot of ideas. We have hundreds of content ideas, if
Speaker 3: not thousands, that we want to do. But our biggest
Speaker 3: issue at this point as a company is a lack
Speaker 3: of bandwidth. Like you know, we have we have six
Speaker 3: staff members with me, me, and you included, right.
Speaker 1: And if people think that's a lot, just keep in
Speaker 1: mind we don't have a hidden army of people who
Speaker 1: edit our stuff and people who post our stuff to
Speaker 1: the website or to the podcast feed. We do all
Speaker 1: of that ourselves right now, right anybody who's a publicly
Speaker 1: known member of the Friday Egg and that's pretty much
Speaker 1: all of us, that's all we are right now.
Speaker 3: So you know, in terms of that, like, what what
Speaker 3: this does is, you know, it provides us the opportunity
Speaker 3: to reinvest in our team and grow and add like
Speaker 3: people want more and and this is the ability to
Speaker 3: do that. The best way for us to provide more
Speaker 3: is to be able to add talent and support for
Speaker 3: our for our teams. So so that's a big reason.
Speaker 3: And I you know, I don't think it's selling out.
Speaker 2: Like the big thing.
Speaker 3: I think we were all as a team, very steadfast
Speaker 3: on was attempting to not take away anything from what
Speaker 3: we are a provide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the Friday podcast that you're listening to right now
Speaker 1: is going to continue to come out at a rate
Speaker 1: of like six to eight a month, depending on the
Speaker 1: time of year. Shotguns Start is coming out three times
Speaker 1: a week. The newsletter is coming out three times a week.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the core offering. We're also going to
Speaker 1: keep doing the stuff that we've been doing on the
Speaker 1: website and on YouTube. But uh yeah, we're not. We're
Speaker 1: not putting anything behind a paywall with this, so that's
Speaker 1: important to note. Now, I want to say something about
Speaker 1: why I'm excited about the membership model, and that is
Speaker 1: is because what this kind of subscriber driven thing does
Speaker 1: is it aligns our incentives as content makers with those
Speaker 1: of the audience in a much better way, I think
Speaker 1: than the general model of the public Internet does right. Now,
Speaker 1: take Cameron Hurdis's videos for instance, that we've posted on YouTube.
Speaker 1: They're brilliant, they're intricately crafted, they're really artful. But those
Speaker 1: videos don't necessarily do better in the YouTube algorithm than
Speaker 1: things that are made in a much more kind of
Speaker 1: haphazard quick way. But you know who appreciates the videos
Speaker 1: that Cameron Hurdis makes are Frida Egg listeners, viewers, readers,
Speaker 1: people who really like that stuff. And what we think
Speaker 1: that the membership model can do is encourage us to
Speaker 1: do great, well thought through content as opposed to stuff
Speaker 1: that just kind of does numbers, right, that just kind
Speaker 1: of drives traffic. We would prefer to do stuff that's
Speaker 1: well crafted and that we think is a good product.
Speaker 1: And I think that this is the best way that
Speaker 1: we can be allowed to do that, both in the
Speaker 1: membership and also publicly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to give people an idea.
Speaker 3: And this is a little like inside baseball, like running
Speaker 3: a media company, but like there are a couple of
Speaker 3: ways in which you could grow your team and provide
Speaker 3: more content content to people. One of them would be
Speaker 3: you could sell more sponsorships, And obviously, like that's something
Speaker 3: that we're still going to try and do because we
Speaker 3: want to provide more free content, and sponsorships and advertisers
Speaker 3: and partners are a great are great avenue for that,
Speaker 3: and we have great partners like people that really allow
Speaker 3: us to do some great stuff, you know, but we
Speaker 3: would need a lot more partners and not every partner
Speaker 3: is a great partner. Like what happens a lot of
Speaker 3: times with partnerships is that you're you're they want specific
Speaker 3: types of content. You know, come attend to this tournament
Speaker 3: and do something on this tournament. Come attend X, Y
Speaker 3: and Z and do something on this and like that.
Speaker 3: That's great and all, but that's where you you begin
Speaker 3: to lose your independence. That's you know, like we're going
Speaker 3: to still attend the major, Like I the thing that
Speaker 3: I really think where I want to go attend golf
Speaker 3: tournaments as majors. Right, you know what would be more
Speaker 3: valuable for our core audience me attending a B list
Speaker 3: PGA Tour event because we're getting paid money by a
Speaker 3: sponsor to go do that to that event, or me
Speaker 3: going and seeing a bunch of new golf courses in
Speaker 3: in the UK or something and providing like insights into
Speaker 3: what we thought about golf courses. You know, you different
Speaker 3: listeners would have different opinions, but I think where most
Speaker 3: would fall would be, like, I'd rather see them go,
Speaker 3: you know, discover some golf courses that I might go
Speaker 3: see at some point in my lifetime, you know, versus
Speaker 3: covering said tournament.
Speaker 2: So with that, like, that's one avenue.
Speaker 3: And we're still going to have advertisers and advertising on
Speaker 3: our free channels.
Speaker 2: Like that doesn't mean that's going to end.
Speaker 3: But like advertising, finding great partners isn't like an easy
Speaker 3: thing to do, and.
Speaker 1: The ones we have are fantastic and it allowed us
Speaker 1: to do what we want to do, sometimes incredibly so right,
Speaker 1: like I can't believe that, you know, we got an
Speaker 1: advertiser to buy into some particular project that we've done.
Speaker 1: So we have found those sponsors. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: we turn away a lot of sponsors because a lot
Speaker 1: of other ones kind of want us to do particular
Speaker 1: things when it comes to content. And so the ones
Speaker 1: that we have, you know, you're hearing from that sponsor
Speaker 1: because they've allowed us independence. That's that's the red line.
Speaker 1: But behind the scenes, there's a lot of sponsors who
Speaker 1: you know, would prefer content that's more along what they
Speaker 1: envision and and so that's the that's the issue with
Speaker 1: the completely ad supported content operation. Am I right about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It's the tricky thing.
Speaker 3: And you see, you see these challenges with a lot
Speaker 3: of outlets, right you know, Like I mean, I think
Speaker 3: Golf Channel and the PGA Tour's partnership in a way
Speaker 3: like rights partner, rights partner versus and that's like, listen,
Speaker 3: they're a rights partner. They have to be that way,
Speaker 3: but they can't be an independent outlet because of that.
Speaker 3: You know, they can't talk about certain things that happen
Speaker 3: on the PGA Tour because of that and what we
Speaker 3: want to do. And you know, I think, like I
Speaker 3: can say this with real confidence, like I don't want
Speaker 3: to do this if we can't say what we really
Speaker 3: believe about things. And I think I hope everybody that
Speaker 3: has been a listener and a reader for a long
Speaker 3: time believes when I say that, Like I think like
Speaker 3: we've we've pretty much spoken our mind about every single
Speaker 3: topic that comes up, and like I don't try and
Speaker 3: sugarcoat things. I try and say exactly what I think.
Speaker 3: And if the day when we don't do that is
Speaker 3: probably the day when I have no interest in doing
Speaker 3: this anymore. So with that, like, another option would be
Speaker 3: to raise outside capital and grow that way, and that's
Speaker 3: something that we you know, have have discussed and might
Speaker 3: potentially still do, but but that's not something we're doing
Speaker 3: to date. So it leaves you with like, okay, like
Speaker 3: the membership and a a you know, reader and listener
Speaker 3: supported model is the best way to grow your team
Speaker 3: in a sustainable way without giving up you know, all
Speaker 3: of your voice in your potential integrity, like and also
Speaker 3: providing the content that you know the readers want more
Speaker 3: of that maybe an advertiser is not going to buy,
Speaker 3: you know. That's the other aspect of this is that
Speaker 3: like we want to provide content that are we know
Speaker 3: our readers and listeners want, and that's going to be
Speaker 3: part of this too, is like, you know, what what
Speaker 3: people want is going to shape what we're doing in
Speaker 3: this membership. We obviously I think I have we in
Speaker 3: our team has good instincts on what what you guys want.
Speaker 3: But we will listen and take feedback and produce content
Speaker 3: more content if you if there's things that we are
Speaker 3: covering that you want more of, we will. We will
Speaker 3: strive to do that, and that's the exciting thing on
Speaker 3: top of what this membership from a community sense, like
Speaker 3: we we do we really like. I think that's been
Speaker 3: one of the most rewarding aspects of since I started
Speaker 3: this that I never imagined that it being was the
Speaker 3: community that's been built around, you know, and when we
Speaker 3: go to these when we go to our events and
Speaker 3: like the people we meet, you know, you see these
Speaker 3: these strangers that become like really good friends by the
Speaker 3: end of the day. And you see people that had
Speaker 3: never met in the morning or setting up golf for
Speaker 3: when they're back home in a couple of weeks. Right,
Speaker 3: that's the rewarding thing. And we want to create something
Speaker 3: that can foster even more community, and we believe that
Speaker 3: this membership can do that.
Speaker 1: Cool, all right, So that's Club TFE. Why don't we
Speaker 1: rewind a few years. I kind of just wanted to
Speaker 1: do a review of The Fried Egg to this point.
Speaker 1: You know, I know you've told this story in a
Speaker 1: few places, but I don't think that you've done that
Speaker 1: in full on this podcast really really talked about how
Speaker 1: you started this company and how you built it. I
Speaker 1: think Club TFE is a major moment in this company's history.
Speaker 1: We're moving towards something new and we're doing well right now,
Speaker 1: but we're trying to add to that with this. So
Speaker 1: I thought it would be a good time to kind
Speaker 1: of rewind and and you know, figure out where this started.
Speaker 1: So why did you start the fried Egg? Where were
Speaker 1: you at in your life and you know what possessed
Speaker 1: you to like start the company?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was. I was a golf nut. I
Speaker 3: was a member at a club in Chicago. I was
Speaker 3: working in the tech world there. It was called the
Speaker 3: built In and it was a it was like a
Speaker 3: hybrid media slash media company that had this job board
Speaker 3: and we had these sites, local sites in different cities
Speaker 3: that had big tech scenes. It still exists today out
Speaker 3: of built in dot com.
Speaker 2: And see it.
Speaker 3: But you know, I was working there and that's where
Speaker 3: I learned a lot about media. But I was in
Speaker 3: you know, as I learned more and more about media,
Speaker 3: I wasn't a writer or anything.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I was a business guy, and I just started to
Speaker 3: think more and more about golf and in other sports
Speaker 3: media and how nothing was really curtailed to like what
Speaker 3: I as, like a devoted golfer wanted. You know, I
Speaker 3: played every weekend, I watched tournament golf, and I would read.
Speaker 3: I'd read articles and on the l going into work
Speaker 3: on a daily basis and be like, why did I
Speaker 3: just spend like three minutes let's reading this or five
Speaker 3: minutes reading this like this, I just didn't get anything
Speaker 3: from the.
Speaker 1: Days of blogging, as we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I kind of got a lot
Speaker 3: of ideas from what we were doing at built In
Speaker 3: and some of what we weren't doing at built In
Speaker 3: that that got shot down.
Speaker 2: Like I was an avid podcast.
Speaker 3: Listener, and I was I really believed in the newsletter
Speaker 3: concept that companies like the Skim and the Hustle had
Speaker 3: had developed and were at their somewhat early parts of
Speaker 3: their existence. I like that kind of email that's delivered
Speaker 3: right into your inbox that has all the content in it,
Speaker 3: so you don't have to click out to like some
Speaker 3: article and you don't get served vibe ads. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I can just like read this email and be set.
Speaker 3: I know what's going on if I missed something. So
Speaker 3: that was kind of like the basis, and that's how
Speaker 3: the Friday started. I had I told a friend of
Speaker 3: mine who was a founder of a company and a
Speaker 3: really big golf nut. His name's Andy Mack. I said,
Speaker 3: I sat in his office. We were talking about a
Speaker 3: couple of things, a couple of business things, and I
Speaker 3: told him I was like, I got this idea for
Speaker 3: this business. And he was like, you know, Andy, like
Speaker 3: I spent the last like I spent six months before
Speaker 3: I started the company that he had founded at that time.
Speaker 3: I spent six months making sure everything was perfect, dotting
Speaker 3: all these i's, crossing all these te's, and like, the
Speaker 3: best thing I can tell you is just start doing it.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about it being perfect day one, launch it,
Speaker 3: and let it go from there and see what people think,
Speaker 3: because that's going to be the most valuable and most
Speaker 3: you know, important feedback that you're going to get. So
Speaker 3: that day, I like I went into work and I
Speaker 3: didn't work. And I was at this point an awful writer,
Speaker 3: horrendous like like no background in hiding, yeah, and like
Speaker 3: widely known as like very bad at writing emails, Like.
Speaker 1: You had a reputation, yes, as a guy who wasn't
Speaker 1: the guy to write emails well.
Speaker 3: And I worked at a company with writers and editors
Speaker 3: and like you know, they so there's a lot of
Speaker 3: It was funny when I started to tell people that
Speaker 3: I started this thing, They're like.
Speaker 2: Wait, what you're writing?
Speaker 3: So anyways, I went to work that day and I
Speaker 3: just wrote a newsletter and thankfully Kaylee, my wife is
Speaker 3: it was a journalist journalism major, and.
Speaker 2: She edited it.
Speaker 3: And I mean she she didn't know anything about golf.
Speaker 3: The first first newsletter, it took her I think like
Speaker 3: two hours to edit and she she at one point
Speaker 3: was in tears over the writing. So that was our
Speaker 3: humble beginnings. It went out to ten people and the
Speaker 3: list grew from there. It was like friends and family
Speaker 3: and then and then the next email I sent to
Speaker 3: like basically every email I could find in my in
Speaker 3: my email history. That was somebody that I had played
Speaker 3: golf with or knew they were really into golf, and
Speaker 3: I sent all of them like an email beforehand.
Speaker 2: And then that's what launched it.
Speaker 3: I think it was like two hundred people got that
Speaker 3: second email, and then we were off and going and
Speaker 3: it became just kind of like a pet side project
Speaker 3: for for a number of months, and eventually I quit
Speaker 3: my job and and started just going and jumped off
Speaker 3: the cliff and uh and it was it was you know,
Speaker 3: those those early days were crazy, you know.
Speaker 2: I in a way and one of the things that appeals.
Speaker 3: To me about this membership is like one of the
Speaker 3: my favorite things about the first couple of years of
Speaker 3: the Friday really like the first you know, two years,
Speaker 3: is like every day I would wake up and it
Speaker 3: would be like, Okay, what am I going to write
Speaker 3: about today? Or what am I you know, like and
Speaker 3: in a way like and this is something that happens
Speaker 3: when you're when businesses grow, is that like you have
Speaker 3: I have a lot more responsibilities now than I had
Speaker 3: then in terms of what I have to do for
Speaker 3: the business. And you know, we we obviously have a
Speaker 3: staff and and like my day is only partially devoted
Speaker 3: to content. But like I think think one of the
Speaker 3: beauties of this membership is that it it adds more
Speaker 3: emphasis to my daily basis on producing content and waking
Speaker 3: up and like, I think that's the beauty of that
Speaker 3: club TFE blog waking up And you know what, what
Speaker 3: do I want to talk about today?
Speaker 2: Is A is? A is A beautiful? It was it
Speaker 2: was it was simple.
Speaker 3: I had like no money, I was making nothing, and
Speaker 3: I was like sitting in my apartment. My my wife
Speaker 3: at the time, I think she was my fiance. She
Speaker 3: would she would go to work and it would be
Speaker 3: me and the dog just sitting in the.
Speaker 2: Apartment all day, Like what are we going to write
Speaker 2: about today?
Speaker 1: At what point did you start doing golf architecture content?
Speaker 1: Because the early newsletter wasn't necessarily focused on golf course architecture, right,
Speaker 1: that wasn't really a baked in concept in the business.
Speaker 1: So what made you start writing about golf architecture? And
Speaker 1: you know that eventually became kind of one of your
Speaker 1: calling cards or your early major calling card.
Speaker 2: So when you're a startup, I.
Speaker 3: My content strategy was like if I'm if I'm generally
Speaker 3: interested in something, there has to be thousands of other
Speaker 3: golfers interested in that same topic.
Speaker 2: Like that was my theory about content.
Speaker 3: And and so that was kind of like and I
Speaker 3: had always been really interested in my whole life in
Speaker 3: golf architecture. I grew up caddying, like as Tom Doak says,
Speaker 3: like caddies have a would make like the best golf
Speaker 3: architects because they in some sense because they like navigate
Speaker 3: a wide range. Like if you go caddy for like
Speaker 3: a senior or a woman or a junior who hits
Speaker 3: a lower trajectory shot, you know, you understand hazards and
Speaker 3: strategy and how to get around them, like if you're
Speaker 3: a good caddy, like it just innately, because that what
Speaker 3: you're doing is you're like trying to like navigate around
Speaker 3: the golf course and get your player into a position
Speaker 3: where they can attack, you know. And so I had
Speaker 3: been reading Golf Club at lists when I from like
Speaker 3: when I was in college, and I was always really
Speaker 3: interested in it. And and so we had started the website.
Speaker 3: We had moved from you know, obviously the just the
Speaker 3: newsletter at the start, but we had launched a website
Speaker 3: where we wrote because like the website's purpose. When I started,
Speaker 3: I was like, well, like I need to get people
Speaker 3: to sign up for the newsletter, So I'm going to
Speaker 3: write blogs that then make people want to sign up
Speaker 3: for the newsletter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that you know, that is all centered around
Speaker 1: the newsletter. I think the podcast started kind of in
Speaker 1: a similar way, right, you were like, I need I
Speaker 1: need more avenues for getting people to sign up for
Speaker 1: the newsletter exactly.
Speaker 3: So that was the idea and and then you know,
Speaker 3: with with the blog, it gave me the ability to
Speaker 3: write about more topics, right, And golf architecture was one
Speaker 3: that I always was interested in, and I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, I think I think people would be super
Speaker 3: interested in it. And outside of golf club aut lists,
Speaker 3: there wasn't really anything on the Internet that that was
Speaker 3: like writing about golf architecture at that point.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, and some of the legacy magazines had
Speaker 1: golf course writers would have you know, one or two
Speaker 1: maybe golf course or travel writers. They would have their
Speaker 1: top one hundred lists. But as far as like in
Speaker 1: depth golf architecture content was concerned that focused on like
Speaker 1: the design of golf holes, there wasn't like a whole
Speaker 1: lot out out there aside from golf club atlists. Golf
Speaker 1: club batlists was different. And so this was a kind
Speaker 1: of area where, you know, correct me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 1: but it would have been hard to notice that there
Speaker 1: was an appetite for this kind of content, yes, because
Speaker 1: it was so rare for it to exist on the Internet.
Speaker 2: That's the thing.
Speaker 3: And that's what everybody said to me at the beginning
Speaker 3: when I started writing about it. They're like, you can't
Speaker 3: build a company that writes about golf architecture and make it.
Speaker 3: There's not enough people. That's what everybody always used to say,
Speaker 3: there's not enough people. And I think like where I
Speaker 3: was different, and I think one of the beautiful things
Speaker 3: this is like a challenge, honestly, Like I think about
Speaker 3: this a lot. And what makes it a little bit
Speaker 3: harder at this point to write for write about golf
Speaker 3: architecture is like in the beginning, it was like I
Speaker 3: wrote as I was learning, you know, I was learning stuff,
Speaker 3: and it was kind of like me writing and taking
Speaker 3: people along for the ride. You know, there was like this.
Speaker 3: I go back and read it now and I kind
Speaker 3: of like cringe a lot. But it was like this
Speaker 3: this like it was me learning.
Speaker 1: Now you weren't talking down to people. I think that's
Speaker 1: a big deal that you weren't, you know, delivering insights
Speaker 1: and knowledge from on high because you were learning this
Speaker 1: stuff at essentially the same time that you were writing it.
Speaker 2: Uh huhm.
Speaker 3: And And like now it's like some of the things,
Speaker 3: like you know, I you look at things and you're like, well,
Speaker 3: like the things that I look at and care most about,
Speaker 3: and nobody will care about, you know, So it's like
Speaker 3: going back to like kind of that base level is
Speaker 3: always an important, important aspect of of of it. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that so I started it was funny I wrote this
Speaker 3: article on her Dan holds, Yeah, and my wife was like,
Speaker 3: I mean she was she edited everything. I mean, I
Speaker 3: just think anybody that's got a partner that doesn't know
Speaker 3: anything or like golf, like she was editing everything.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like a comical thing to think back to.
Speaker 3: She I mean like she was in this she was
Speaker 3: working you know, hours a week on this thing too,
Speaker 3: like in an editing capacity, because I could nothing I
Speaker 3: wrote could go out on editing like nothing.
Speaker 2: So like she's.
Speaker 3: Reading this about Dana Holes and she's like, this is
Speaker 3: the most boring thing I've ever read in my life.
Speaker 3: And and then I posted it. I think I posted
Speaker 3: on the fourth of July and it was like post it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: awful like history like if you web traffic day, like
Speaker 3: one of the worst days of the year that you
Speaker 3: can post something on the on the web and expect
Speaker 3: to get traffic. And it was like our website for
Speaker 3: there that day's like that point standard like exploded and
Speaker 3: there was so much interest in it. I bet if
Speaker 3: you found the tweet of us tweeting it out, you know,
Speaker 3: in the archives, like you know, there was a lot
Speaker 3: of retweets. It was like this article in it in
Speaker 3: what it did to me it was Chris lies like
Speaker 3: you know what. Like it was it went back to
Speaker 3: the belief like I really I like golf architecture. I'm
Speaker 3: super interested in this and other people are too, you know,
Speaker 3: Like that's the thing if like you're super into golf
Speaker 3: and I give this advice to a lot of people
Speaker 3: that ask me for advice if they they're trying to
Speaker 3: get in and break in, is like, don't look at
Speaker 3: what other people do and do and try and be them.
Speaker 3: Like you can't look at No laying up and be like,
Speaker 3: oh we're gonna be just like No laying up. They
Speaker 3: have their own personal style. What you have to do,
Speaker 3: Like this was a great let I guess, like example
Speaker 3: of that is like righte about what you care about
Speaker 3: and like because if you're really like a golf nut
Speaker 3: and you have like things that you're passionate about, there
Speaker 3: are other people that are passionate about those same exact things.
Speaker 1: Or you can recruit them into your passion yes, because
Speaker 1: the key is that enthusiasm. People do tech, that they
Speaker 1: know it when they see it. It's rare, and so
Speaker 1: people are attracted to it. And I think that that's
Speaker 1: part of what happened with golf architecture. I think there
Speaker 1: was a I think there was a kind of silent
Speaker 1: majority of people who were already interested in it, and
Speaker 1: that there were more people out there than maybe we assumed.
Speaker 1: But there were also people who became interested in it
Speaker 1: because they noticed, you know, the passion that was starting
Speaker 1: to build up around it. And I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the most kind of surprising and fun things that's
Speaker 1: happened on the golf Internet in the past several years,
Speaker 1: is that building of a community around people who are
Speaker 1: generally getting into the weeds about golf course architecture. That's
Speaker 1: not to say that this the first time that this
Speaker 1: has happened anywhere. You know, we've mentioned Golf Club atleast
Speaker 1: a couple of times. Want to be clear that a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff happened in its own way there,
Speaker 1: but there has been something in the past few years
Speaker 1: when when you know, more people have just gotten into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think.
Speaker 3: I mean one of the big things was making everything
Speaker 3: accessible and inclusive and open, because you know, I like
Speaker 3: golf club at lists, and I like would I would.
Speaker 3: I figured out when I was in college how to
Speaker 3: use their message board. Their message board has some of
Speaker 3: the most amazing information about like you know, in its heyday,
Speaker 3: when they had a lot of the great historians posting there,
Speaker 3: when Tommy Nacarado was active, when when Tom Paul was
Speaker 3: posting on.
Speaker 1: There, Thomas Wood like these guys Thomas mcwood sadly, but man,
Speaker 1: he's done some of the best golf history architecture writing in.
Speaker 3: The treasure troves of information on that on that message
Speaker 3: board incredible, but like you know, like I'm a Golf
Speaker 3: Club batlist member now, but I had no hope of
Speaker 3: being a Golf Club bat list member until it was
Speaker 3: it was this closed off, like I couldn't get on
Speaker 3: there and ask questions for you know, Tom doak Er
Speaker 3: like there. You know, there's great things about it, but
Speaker 3: like one of the big issues was it wasn't inclusive
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: It was closed off.
Speaker 3: It was like you have to know somebody who can
Speaker 3: get you a log in, and and you know, and
Speaker 3: then you might get one, you might not, and and
Speaker 3: and I wasn't that person at this point, you know.
Speaker 3: I think that that was like one of the other
Speaker 3: things I think there was. I was extremely naive to
Speaker 3: the golf world when I started it, and and you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know anybody in the golf industry.
Speaker 2: You know, I was just a golfer.
Speaker 3: And and I think like, as you get into it,
Speaker 3: like you realize like how how connected everything is and
Speaker 3: how small the golf world is. But I think that
Speaker 3: was one of the things about starting it as a
Speaker 3: outsider and like being extremely naive was was actually a
Speaker 3: huge benefit because I, like, you know, I didn't understand
Speaker 3: how difficult that the job and building this would be.
Speaker 3: But I was like very enthusiastic and passionate about it
Speaker 3: because I love golf so much.
Speaker 1: Right Well, okay, so on that theme of not really
Speaker 1: knowing what's going to happen next and maybe acting naively
Speaker 1: in a good way because you you didn't know how
Speaker 1: how difficult it would be. You started the Shotgun Start
Speaker 1: with Brendan poor Ath in late twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: I believe it was September.
Speaker 1: I think September, okay, twenty eighteen, three days a week podcast.
Speaker 1: I think that this is a big turning point in
Speaker 1: the Frida Egg as a company. I feel like things
Speaker 1: sort of snowballed.
Speaker 2: You just for glossing over when we hired you. Was
Speaker 2: that twenty nineteen?
Speaker 1: Oh, that was twenty nineteen. That was post shotgun start.
Speaker 1: My theory is that, like you started the Shotguns Start
Speaker 1: and the company shifted and eventually you needed to hire
Speaker 1: somebody and you you hired me. But so so, what
Speaker 1: do you remember about how things started to change after
Speaker 1: you started the Shotguns Start? What did the Friday Egg
Speaker 1: evolve into? Because you know, okay, just to you've you've
Speaker 1: given an idea of what the Frida Egg was like
Speaker 1: early on when it was a one person operation with
Speaker 1: Kaylee helping with the editing and some business stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: you were making the content right, You were writing the stuff,
Speaker 1: posting it on the website. You were doing interviews with
Speaker 1: golf course architects and posting those on the Frida Egg
Speaker 1: podcast feed.
Speaker 2: Great audio if I might, Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was really excellent early on, especially the first couple.
Speaker 1: It's quite something.
Speaker 2: But I just rend I found episode one. Oh did
Speaker 2: you podcast?
Speaker 1: The lost episode one? Yeah? People don't know. The Frida
Speaker 1: Egg podcast starts with episode two right now, which I
Speaker 1: believe is an interview with Jim Herman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I found episode one.
Speaker 1: You found episode one?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was it was I founded my voice memo
Speaker 3: that it was a recorded voice memo on my phone
Speaker 3: that shows you the record, the sophistication of the.
Speaker 1: Audio recorded voice memo. Okay, well that's going to be
Speaker 1: a club TF perk. Clearly we'll post that on the
Speaker 1: Club TFI website. But in any case, so that's what
Speaker 1: it was like early on, you know, really sort of
Speaker 1: in super indie operation. You were doing your own stuff.
Speaker 1: You start the shotgun start. How did things change after that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think Brendan and I had talked a long time.
Speaker 2: We met. Everybody always asked like how we met. We
Speaker 2: met at you know.
Speaker 3: This will just tell you like how far golf media
Speaker 3: has come since then. We met at blog cabin, long
Speaker 3: time listeners and followers blog cabin. At the twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: players they PGA tour invited like it was it was
Speaker 3: it was Chris Solomon, uh DJ Piawski was at the
Speaker 3: tour at Tron Carter of no laying up those two guys,
Speaker 3: Kyle Porter.
Speaker 2: I think I think Bacon was there. I don't think No.
Speaker 2: Bacon wasn't there.
Speaker 3: Bacon was I think actually doing like PGA Tour live stuff. Maybe?
Speaker 3: Oh was he Ryan Baljee from Golf News Net, Brendan
Speaker 3: from eSPI Nation, and I got I think I'm forgetting
Speaker 3: some people. But they invited us down for the players,
Speaker 3: and they had like a rental house for us to
Speaker 3: stay at and in like the inside the gates of
Speaker 3: Panavidra and and Panavidro, and they gave us like the
Speaker 3: bikes to ride to the course every day. So that's
Speaker 3: where Brendan and I met. And it was like funny
Speaker 3: because like Brendan, you know, you just hit it off
Speaker 3: with certain people like we were we were the ones
Speaker 3: that were up to like three am at night drink
Speaker 3: and you know, thrown back. They dropped off like a
Speaker 3: truckload of michelob Ultra, partner of the tour and uh.
Speaker 3: And we were the ones like up up up late
Speaker 3: drinking talking golf, like just talking golf.
Speaker 2: And so that's where it kind of started.
Speaker 3: Was like it all kind of derives from blog cabin
Speaker 3: where we we kept talking about like, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: it'd be fun to do something and and Brendan and
Speaker 3: I kind of sat on, like, you know, what there
Speaker 3: isn't right now is like a regular golf show that
Speaker 3: talks about you know, at the time, like we were
Speaker 3: an episode whenever we got an episode done. No, Laying
Speaker 3: Up was kind of in the same boat. They had
Speaker 3: like a you know, an episode a week, and it
Speaker 3: was a lot of interviews, and like, you know what
Speaker 3: golf doesn't have is like a show that's like a
Speaker 3: morning show, like a morning radio show. Yeah, and and
Speaker 3: so that's where the idea of it started. And like
Speaker 3: I think like one of the things that in general,
Speaker 3: like you know, this is what happens on the internet
Speaker 3: is like people are like, oh, like you know, I
Speaker 3: used to get people be like, oh, Andy's just a
Speaker 3: golf architecture guy. He doesn't know anything about about tour golf.
Speaker 3: And it's like I write about it three times a
Speaker 3: week in the newsletter, you know, you know.
Speaker 1: Like because there are different audiences for the Frida Egg,
Speaker 1: this is one of the things that I've discovered. There
Speaker 1: are people who kind of run the gamut and consume
Speaker 1: the newsletter as well as the podcast, as well as
Speaker 1: the website, et cetera. But then there are also some
Speaker 1: of these micro audiences, you know, like even people who
Speaker 1: just follow our Instagram feed and don't do anything.
Speaker 3: Else, or there's people that just listen to the pod,
Speaker 3: or people that just listen just read the newsletter. It's
Speaker 3: all over the board. But anyways, so we started that
Speaker 3: and the idea was around like, hey, this can be
Speaker 3: like a quick update of what's going on in golf,
Speaker 3: and like it obviously changed, it's like everything, and like
Speaker 3: this is like I guess like one of the things
Speaker 3: with the membership that I'm most excited about out Like
Speaker 3: I think like this is an entrepreneurial take and something
Speaker 3: that like when you're a smaller company that you have
Speaker 3: the benefit of. But like what I kind of have
Speaker 3: like really learned from this experience is like when you
Speaker 3: start something, you can have like all of the stuff
Speaker 3: laid out of exactly how it's going to go the
Speaker 3: first six months, and none of it is. It's going
Speaker 3: to change so much and it's going to evolve in
Speaker 3: so much in for your eyes. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the thing I'm kind of most proud of of with
Speaker 3: with the Frida Egg and the Shotgun start is like
Speaker 3: what the original idea was and what it became you know,
Speaker 3: you know, it became so much more than what that
Speaker 3: original vision was, which was almost small minded. And I
Speaker 3: think like you know, the shotgun start. Yeah, we started
Speaker 3: that and and then I mean it added a lot.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Things got crazy for you. Yeah, you're doing that three
Speaker 1: times a week. It was a lot more thinking about
Speaker 1: and following PGA tour too, because although you were writing
Speaker 1: the newsletter about it, there's a whole other level of
Speaker 1: you know, kind of engagement that you have to put
Speaker 1: out if you're going to have three times a week
Speaker 1: of talking about joking about the PGA Tour and related tours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that changed everything. Then you came on
Speaker 3: like you know, that's kind of like when it just
Speaker 3: it gave us, it made us multi dimensional more so, right,
Speaker 3: So it was it was it was kind of a
Speaker 3: that was a moment where we were, you know, we
Speaker 3: became more than.
Speaker 2: Just like golf architecture guys.
Speaker 3: Even though the newsletter was was was there as as
Speaker 3: a you know, we'd always recovering PGA Tour golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So right, so fast forward to today, we're three
Speaker 1: years on from the time we were talking about from
Speaker 1: from when you started the shotgun start. We're four years
Speaker 1: on from that point. Actually, I keep I keep thinking
Speaker 1: that it hasn't been as much time as how But
Speaker 1: you know, we're a company of six now, you know,
Speaker 1: we've we've grown a lot. We have me and you.
Speaker 1: Brennan Poorath came on full time earlier this year. Cameron
Speaker 1: heard us. We hired toward the end of last year.
Speaker 1: Nights with us since. Yeah, Will Knights with us since
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I mean will Is. Will was an early writer. You know,
Speaker 3: he started writing for us way back even before you.
Speaker 1: He was Yeah, exactly, You and Will linked up before
Speaker 1: you and I were working together, and he started writing
Speaker 1: the newsletter basically on your behalf when when your time
Speaker 1: got consumed elsewhere. So so Will's been with us for
Speaker 1: a while and with us full time since basically right
Speaker 1: when the pandemic hit. That was an interesting period in
Speaker 1: the company's history that we don't need to go into.
Speaker 1: We also have meg Atkins working for us on a
Speaker 1: part time basis, though it seems like she does as
Speaker 1: much work as any of the rest of us at least,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's a great team. I love working
Speaker 1: with these people. It's been such a delight, but we
Speaker 1: are looking to change and expand and do more. And
Speaker 1: so as you're kind of looking toward the future, what
Speaker 1: are some of the things that you're most jazzed about
Speaker 1: going forward? What's kind of getting you going thinking like
Speaker 1: about what this company could be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think we've hit a few places where people
Speaker 3: are super passionate about. But what excites me about the
Speaker 3: game of golf is that there are so many angles
Speaker 3: to the sport that make people geek out and nerd out.
Speaker 3: And right now, I think, you know, we've hit on
Speaker 3: courses in travel and the competitive aspect of it, the
Speaker 3: PGA tour stuff, but you know, the beauty of the
Speaker 3: game is there's so many other angles that we haven't
Speaker 3: really explored. And I'm you know, what I'm confident about
Speaker 3: is like we we're going to explore different angles of
Speaker 3: the game in our own unique way and that's what
Speaker 3: we'll we'll continue to do and we'll find people that
Speaker 3: can that can help us do that. And and that's
Speaker 3: you know, when I when I think about what it
Speaker 3: can become, is is I just I believe that we
Speaker 3: can become a spot that, like, if you're interested in
Speaker 3: the game and what I always think about is like,
Speaker 3: we want to be a place that deepens people's affinity
Speaker 3: and love for the game of golf and makes them
Speaker 3: think about different things a little bit, maybe a little differently.
Speaker 3: And you know, some of the most rewarding messages that
Speaker 3: I've ever I've ever gotten is like, you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of people have sent me messages that are like,
Speaker 3: I didn't know I didn't know anything about golf architecture,
Speaker 3: and I'm even crazier about this game that I than
Speaker 3: I thought it could be when I thought I loved
Speaker 3: it as much as I could. And I think that's
Speaker 3: the you know, what we want to do for the
Speaker 3: game on a lot different levels, And you know, so
Speaker 3: that's that's kind of the goal, is like it's not
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's to become it's to continue to
Speaker 3: provide more and more content that make people think about
Speaker 3: and love the game more.
Speaker 1: The beauty of golf is that there's so many different
Speaker 1: ways to do that, so many different avenues that you
Speaker 1: can take to do a real deep dive or become
Speaker 1: a nerd about. There's such an array of those opportunities
Speaker 1: in golf. I think it's pretty unique among sports in
Speaker 1: that sense, and yeah, Club TF is kind of the
Speaker 1: kind of the next step there. All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: think we can wrap up there, Andy, we should probably
Speaker 1: give people remind people of where they can go to
Speaker 1: find more information and to sign up, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can go to the website, the Frida Egg
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 2: It'll be right on the front page.
Speaker 3: You won't be able to miss it if you If
Speaker 3: you subscribe to the newsletter, there'll be something that you
Speaker 3: get Tuesday from the newsletter. And yeah, we hope to
Speaker 3: see you in the club. And thank you to everybody
Speaker 3: for all the support through the years. Whether you know
Speaker 3: whether you join or not, we hope you'll keep listening.
Speaker 3: And every listener matters. And I can't believe that been
Speaker 3: able to do to us far and all that goes
Speaker 3: to people supporting us by just listening.
Speaker 2: So thank you to everybody.
Speaker 1: This episode of the Friday Podcast was edited by Meg Atkins.
Speaker 1: Thank you as always to Meg. We've done enough talking
Speaker 1: about what you can do to sign up for Club
Speaker 1: TF and the membership, et cetera. So I'll just stop
Speaker 1: with a thank you to our listeners and we'll see
Speaker 1: you again soon with a more traditional type episode of
Speaker 1: the Friday podcast