Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my ball in a brid egg.
Speaker 2: Friday egg, the dreaded Friday Friday, Frida Egg Egg fridagg
Speaker 2: bride egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off of
Speaker 2: the hump course.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Friday Golf Podcast. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Andy Johnson. Today marks our ten year anniversary as a company.
Speaker 1: On December ninth of twenty fifteen, I sent the first
Speaker 1: Friday Golf newsletter. I wrote it on December eighth while
Speaker 1: I was at my previous employer. It basically did nothing.
Speaker 1: And I had come up with this idea. I you know,
Speaker 1: I got great advice years ago, and I had this idea,
Speaker 1: and I had met my friend Andy Mack, who's a
Speaker 1: Chicago area entrepreneur, very good junior and a junior player
Speaker 1: and played at University of Illinois, and he had started
Speaker 1: companies and he told me he gave me this, this
Speaker 1: great advice. We had morning meeting. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: everybody spends all this time thinking about how to perfect
Speaker 1: their idea before they ever launch it. And he told
Speaker 1: me that morning, you know, you should just start it,
Speaker 1: you know, and go, because I had told him this
Speaker 1: idea for a golf media company, just do one. Put
Speaker 1: it out into the world, and that's the best thing
Speaker 1: you could do. Don't spend time thinking about how to
Speaker 1: how to make it great before you've ever done it.
Speaker 1: So that day I went to work and I wrote
Speaker 1: the first newsletter and got going and I sent it
Speaker 1: to ten friends who played golf, and then sent it,
Speaker 1: you know, the next one to everybody that I had
Speaker 1: ever played golf with that I had their email, or
Speaker 1: anybody that I knew played golf, I had sent them
Speaker 1: like a nice little letter about you know, I started
Speaker 1: this thing, and then we were often running and you know,
Speaker 1: people shared it around, and you know, we we became
Speaker 1: a golf newsletter, and all of a sudden I became
Speaker 1: really engrossed in trying to build a golf media company,
Speaker 1: and at this time still working a full time job.
Speaker 1: So you know what I found was I did a
Speaker 1: lot of work for my side hustle at my normal hustle,
Speaker 1: and eventually that side hustle became my normal hustle. And
Speaker 1: you know, from that point on, I never really have
Speaker 1: dreaded a day of going to work. And you know,
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote about this in our newsletter that
Speaker 1: went out on Tuesday. But I think the biggest thing,
Speaker 1: when I look back on it was was being naive
Speaker 1: I had. There was never a doubt in my mind
Speaker 1: that things weren't going to work out, which I found,
Speaker 1: you know, when I look back now at how hard,
Speaker 1: how challenging it's been, you know, just like I never
Speaker 1: in the early days ever thought of a reality where
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be doing this, And I think that's probably
Speaker 1: the most valuable thing among all the things that had
Speaker 1: to go my way. Lots of luck, a really impeccable
Speaker 1: timing with the when when we started some things, you know,
Speaker 1: and then you know, a ton of hard work, not
Speaker 1: just for me, but my extraordinarily talented team that I
Speaker 1: am so grateful for getting to work with. So today's episode,
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of talk about the last ten years.
Speaker 1: I'm joined by our first full time employee, hire Garrett Morrison,
Speaker 1: who's been a co host on this podcast, has written
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of thousands of words, maybe millions of
Speaker 1: words on the website. Our second full time employee, Will Knights,
Speaker 1: who now runs our events but wrote the newsletter for
Speaker 1: free when he when he started, he basically knock knock,
Speaker 1: kept knocking on my door until I said, yeah, I sure,
Speaker 1: start writing stuff and we'll have you, and which parlayed
Speaker 1: into a full time job with a start date the
Speaker 1: day that COVID shut down America. That's another fun wrinkle
Speaker 1: of of the story of of of our company. And
Speaker 1: then finally, Brendan Porath, my my co host on Shotgun Start,
Speaker 1: really a podcast that kind of transformed, I would say,
Speaker 1: the way people thought about our media business. And guys,
Speaker 1: welcome on, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 3: Hello, Hello, how's it going.
Speaker 1: It's good, It's good, it's been I said this on
Speaker 1: the Shotguns Start, but I don't I hadn't really thought
Speaker 1: about the tenure until yesterday afternoon when I needed to
Speaker 1: write the newsletter that I told people I would write,
Speaker 1: And then I started thinking about it, and I just
Speaker 1: like a flood of memories, a flood of fond moments
Speaker 1: in time, and you know, a great appreciation for all
Speaker 1: the readers and listeners that have have been with us
Speaker 1: for this time. And you know, I was thinking back
Speaker 1: to like just the idea of like I would live
Speaker 1: and die by how many newsletter subs that we added.
Speaker 1: And then obviously, you know, super grateful for all of
Speaker 1: your guys's hard work and everybody else on our team's
Speaker 1: hard work that have helped us kind of grow this
Speaker 1: company into a real thing over the last ten years.
Speaker 3: All right, well, I want to talk a little history here, Andy,
Speaker 3: kind of go back to the beginnings of the company
Speaker 3: and get some of your stories about that. But first
Speaker 3: of all, just to introduce the voices here, Will Knights
Speaker 3: is on with us. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm doing well. Garrett, great to be here. And
Speaker 2: Reminisce a little.
Speaker 3: Bit and Brendan poor Ath, a voice that many will
Speaker 3: be familiar with from the Shotguns Start podcast. How many
Speaker 3: Frida Egg podcasts have you done recently, Brendan?
Speaker 1: Not many.
Speaker 4: I think I had one about this time last year
Speaker 4: with Jeff Shackelford. I think we did start, But aside
Speaker 4: from that, not many. I know, more before the Shotguns
Speaker 4: Start existed and now, yeah, that's where we park all that.
Speaker 4: And yeah, no, it's good to be I find it
Speaker 4: really interesting to listen to you guys. Reminisce, I mean
Speaker 4: it's good. We never do that that often here right, Like,
Speaker 4: it's like we are going a million miles a day
Speaker 4: and just trying to get stuff out, and I think
Speaker 4: we're pretty productive at doing that. But God, when you
Speaker 4: think it, stop stop and think. And Andy even talked
Speaker 4: about like I didn't really stop and think until I
Speaker 4: had to write something for the newsletter today on the
Speaker 4: ten year anniverse, and so I think it's a good
Speaker 4: exercise to stop and do it. So I'm excited to
Speaker 4: listen to some of you guys.
Speaker 3: But we're very much like a tomorrow oriented company, or
Speaker 3: like next week oriented company, like, but we got to
Speaker 3: get done what we have to get done for the
Speaker 3: next week, and this week happens to be the ten
Speaker 3: year anniversary. So here we are. Here, we are doing that,
Speaker 3: but it happens to be that this task requires us
Speaker 3: to reminisce a little bit and look backward.
Speaker 1: It's funny. I have like a you guys all know this.
Speaker 1: I have a horrendous case of ADHD. Like it's bad.
Speaker 3: It's part of the magic.
Speaker 1: And the part of how I set this thing up
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't fail myself was very strict deadlines, and
Speaker 1: this would never have worked as an occasional blog. And
Speaker 1: I think like there was probably moments a time where
Speaker 1: people were wondering, like, what's going on with the Frida
Speaker 1: Egg podcast? And that's because I did not have strict rules.
Speaker 1: But the start of the newsletter it was Monday Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and like I I, you know, even from like once
Speaker 1: it got to like two hundred that the idea of
Speaker 1: letting down people and them not having it one time
Speaker 1: at that when I said I was going to deliver.
Speaker 1: This was what got me through so much stuff. Probably
Speaker 1: drove my wife insane that I was like gung ho
Speaker 1: about you know, these deadlines and that I could not
Speaker 1: postpone it. And you know, but the deadline oriented nature
Speaker 1: of it, I mean, it makes it so you always
Speaker 1: are looking towards the next thing that you have to do,
Speaker 1: but it does limit the ability for you to ever
Speaker 1: reflect on anything you just did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for those who don't know, Andy's wife was the
Speaker 3: first editor of Frida Egg Golf, or as it was
Speaker 3: called in its first edition, the Golf Hack the Golf Hacks.
Speaker 3: But somebody told you that was bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I knew it was bad coming up with it,
Speaker 1: but I was taking the advice of my friend. I
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna let coming up with the perfect name get
Speaker 1: in my way.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely right, and yeah, you another couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: A funny story, So I changed it to Frida Egg.
Speaker 1: My friend who I used to work with. I'll just
Speaker 1: say his name so he gets recognition. But Paul Spiller,
Speaker 1: I worked with him at a company called Belly. He
Speaker 1: he was like, I love the Wednesday subject line was
Speaker 1: your Wednesday Morning Frida Egg g lie or. And he
Speaker 1: was like, I love the name Friday Eck. Why don't
Speaker 1: you just do that? And I was like, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 1: So anyways, fast forward to we're doing like official business
Speaker 1: paperwork and my my cousin in law I just call
Speaker 1: him my cousin. He married into my married my cousin.
Speaker 1: Is that just a cousin, cousin in law, cousin in law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because my lawyer and our lawyer, I guess he's like,
Speaker 1: you know this Frida Egg name, this is this is
Speaker 1: a terrible name. You have no intellectual property over your name.
Speaker 1: Why all these tech companies are Google or like these
Speaker 1: made up words?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Is that then they own all the intellectual property. You
Speaker 1: need to change the name. And this is this is
Speaker 1: like spring of twenty sixteen, and I say, no, we
Speaker 1: can't make the change the name. The company is way
Speaker 1: too big. It's way there's way to any people who
Speaker 1: know it. I mean, we had like a thousand followers
Speaker 1: at this.
Speaker 3: Point, at this at this point, yeah, and you were
Speaker 3: you were at that point two and a half years
Speaker 3: away from maybe more away from hiring your your first employee.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I'm like, oh, we're way too big to
Speaker 1: do that. People will never forgive us if we changed
Speaker 1: our name.
Speaker 3: It's established.
Speaker 2: Got to thank Paul for all the SEO headaches over
Speaker 2: over the years and the confusion for catering companies. But
Speaker 2: you know, it's a name that's stuck. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Can I ask a quick question because I feel like
Speaker 4: the answer may be it's funny or random, But why
Speaker 4: did you pick December night to send the first newsletter
Speaker 4: for a golf focused company or news? December feels like a.
Speaker 1: Because it was the out right right Well, so, I
Speaker 1: you know, I think about this. I don't. I was
Speaker 1: a little frustrated at my job. I was, you know,
Speaker 1: I was kind of like in charge of our way,
Speaker 1: figuring out new ways for our business to make money.
Speaker 1: And I, you know, the CEO of the company, and
Speaker 1: I don't think really saw I die and with with
Speaker 1: where we should be going, and that frustration led me
Speaker 1: to like, well, I could just do this on my own.
Speaker 1: So I went. I went on a vacation with my
Speaker 1: way now wife too, to Argentina and in Thanksgiving during Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I can't really remember, but I
Speaker 1: think I came out of that vacation just more disgruntled
Speaker 1: about my current employment, and it just led me to
Speaker 1: want to do something on my own.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I think that happens with a lot of people, is
Speaker 1: where you get kind of dejected at your existing job
Speaker 1: and it makes you want to, you know, spend that
Speaker 1: mental energy that feels like it's being wasted on other things.
Speaker 1: And frankly, like you know, I was working at a
Speaker 1: media company and basically the blueprint of the fried Egg
Speaker 1: was everything I was hoping our company would do a
Speaker 1: newsletter that was really content forward, that you didn't feel
Speaker 1: like you could skip a podcast, those were those were
Speaker 1: the things I was trying to get my old company
Speaker 1: to invest in, really authentic content that was like you
Speaker 1: you had to read, you know, because we had a
Speaker 1: we had a really interesting audience. It was like, and
Speaker 1: the company's still going, is doing well. I mean, it's grown.
Speaker 1: But we had a really interesting audience of like super
Speaker 1: influential people in the tech scene of these different cities
Speaker 1: that we operated websites in, and I just thought that
Speaker 1: was super valuable. I just I kind of learned what
Speaker 1: the value of building a really engaged audience was, or like,
Speaker 1: what what if we had a really engaged audience? Is
Speaker 1: what I would say?
Speaker 3: What was interesting to you about newsletters specifically, because you know,
Speaker 3: Frida Egg started as a newsletter, was a newsletter exclusively
Speaker 3: for a while, So why why were you building from
Speaker 3: a newsletter in twenty late twenty fifteen, late early twenty sixteen?
Speaker 1: Is Actually my wife was really into the Skim at
Speaker 1: the time, right, which is which is a newsletter that's
Speaker 1: focused on delivering like news, and it was really geared
Speaker 1: towards millennial women who at the time were in their twenties,
Speaker 1: twenties and early thirties. And I remember her asking me
Speaker 1: like what I thought about these random news stories? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, and she's not really like poring over the news, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, what what are you asking? Why are
Speaker 1: you asking? And She's like, I read this newsletter the Skim,
Speaker 1: and I then kind of looked into it because my
Speaker 1: other job was like very related to this, Like I
Speaker 1: was trying to sell newsletter advertising, and I became very
Speaker 1: fascinated with the Skim and the Hustle and these newsletters.
Speaker 1: The premise of the newsletter being that's the piece of content,
Speaker 1: because what happened at the time with newsletters was you
Speaker 1: send these newsletters and there's no reason to open them.
Speaker 1: It's just an aggregation of website articles with an ad
Speaker 1: in it, and I could just go to the website
Speaker 1: and find the articles or go on Twitter or whatever.
Speaker 1: What was unique about the Skin and the Hustle was
Speaker 1: it was the content was in the newsletter. Thus what
Speaker 1: you see because of that is people are way more
Speaker 1: engaged with what you're sending because there they don't know
Speaker 1: what's inside. That's when the content's being delivered, it's not
Speaker 1: being delivered onto the website. So that's why I just
Speaker 1: really loved the newsletter concept. I thought, and what you know,
Speaker 1: what I what I believe in, you know, more so
Speaker 1: today than ever, as we've seen like in the years
Speaker 1: we've changed, is getting a connection with somebody via email
Speaker 1: is a very intimate relationship, like and the way I
Speaker 1: view it is like, I'm not going to ever disrespect
Speaker 1: or kind of overstep our bounds in that relationship. When
Speaker 1: we send you something, it's going to be meaningful, thoughtful stuff.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be we sold our list to
Speaker 1: some company who gets to send you a promotional offer.
Speaker 2: What we what?
Speaker 1: So what I what I believe is then you have
Speaker 1: a lasting connection. You know, there's a lot of things
Speaker 1: that are changing, and who knows, email may change, but
Speaker 1: we're years we still get mail in our mailbox. You know,
Speaker 1: an email address is like a direct connection with people,
Speaker 1: whereas the social media is you're kind of at the
Speaker 1: will of the company and the algorithm. So that email
Speaker 1: connection is really powerful. And I thought, and I believe
Speaker 1: still is like kind of the hub of everything we
Speaker 1: do because you might miss a tweet or a video
Speaker 1: that's posted on YouTube, but you know you can always
Speaker 1: find that email.
Speaker 3: It's interesting how newsletters have survived while every other delivery
Speaker 3: mechanism except from maybe the podcast, has been disrupted in
Speaker 3: some way in the last couple of years. You know
Speaker 3: that the experience of going to websites is no longer
Speaker 3: what it once was. Social media platforms change at the
Speaker 3: at the whims of their owners, and so you can't
Speaker 3: rely on that either. But the one, the one constant
Speaker 3: has kind of been email, and that's it's been really
Speaker 3: steady for us.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, podcast is great too because people subscribe and then
Speaker 1: you're you get that automatic push like it gets sent
Speaker 1: to your phone.
Speaker 3: Especially, it's the email of audios essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it was Yeah, starting was it was quite
Speaker 1: This is a fun, amazing time. I you know, I
Speaker 1: would say the thing that I missed the most is
Speaker 1: is waking up and having you know, early days, nobody
Speaker 1: trying to get a hold of you, and you just
Speaker 1: wake up and have this ultimate freedom of what am
Speaker 1: I going to make today? And that's probably the thing
Speaker 1: that I missed the most about growth.
Speaker 3: But yeah, what comes to mind when you think of
Speaker 3: those those earliest days when it was just just you,
Speaker 3: any stories, any kind of ridiculous events that pop into
Speaker 3: your brain every so often.
Speaker 1: I was texting with a friend this morning, actually, you know,
Speaker 1: like right after I started, and Brendan you'll remember this.
Speaker 1: Do you remember who the Big four was?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a Jason Day, Ricky Fowler, Jordan Spieth,
Speaker 3: and who Rory Right? It was right, Okay, it's.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and I think it was.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was in January of twenty sixteen. Yeah, they played
Speaker 1: at Abu Dhabi and I think they teed off at
Speaker 1: like one am Central something like that. And I stayed
Speaker 1: up all night and then went into work. Oh god,
Speaker 1: and I watched it and then I went into work.
Speaker 1: I was like a zombie. And we lived my wife.
Speaker 1: My wife and I lived in this loft apartment, so
Speaker 1: I had we didn't have a ceiling on our one
Speaker 1: bedroom loft apartment. For the bedroom. It was like one
Speaker 1: of those like half So I'm like, I'm listening to
Speaker 1: it like super quiet, trying not to keep up, and
Speaker 1: it's just like completely insane behavior. BPD.
Speaker 4: You remember much from that, Yeah, I mean I remember
Speaker 4: those times, the Big Four of the twenty sixteen Abu Dhabi.
Speaker 4: I mean, are your last comment sort of like the
Speaker 4: only reason any of this works is from a little
Speaker 4: bit of insane behavior, right, like from you. I mean
Speaker 4: I think about Garrett, like you know once a Yale
Speaker 4: north Western like teaching it like one of the most
Speaker 4: prestigious schools, and like taking a chance, like you know,
Speaker 4: obviously very very smart, could cut his own path taking
Speaker 4: a chance, Like that's kind of insane behavior, no disrespect parent, like,
Speaker 4: but obviously a massive credit to the company. Will like
Speaker 4: this young kid, I'll use that term liberally, but you
Speaker 4: were an adult but.
Speaker 3: In your mid twenties when came on the right Yeah right,
Speaker 3: but at that college. College was a couple of years
Speaker 3: ago when when Will came on board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you have your act together more than any
Speaker 1: of us, like within like the first year, like organized, driven, creative,
Speaker 1: like Okay, I'm gonna I like this guy from Chicago,
Speaker 1: I'll do it for free, let me like, and now
Speaker 1: you're like running everything for us on events and and
Speaker 1: I don't know, and Andy just staying up in the
Speaker 1: middle of night trying to do two jobs at once
Speaker 1: because he thinks he has convictions. So like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It all starts from a little bit of an same
Speaker 4: behavior that that is driven by kind of love and
Speaker 4: love of like wanting to do it, not just wanting
Speaker 4: to make a bunch of money, wanting to be fame
Speaker 4: and wanting to do whatever. It was like, we want
Speaker 4: to do this because we think it's good. I don't
Speaker 4: know that insane behavior common resonated with.
Speaker 1: Me, Garrett, you were our first staff member full time.
Speaker 1: I've never asked you this. What what did what did
Speaker 1: your like family, your wife and your your your your
Speaker 1: other close family say when you were you said you
Speaker 1: were going to join this small golf flock.
Speaker 3: They were excited, honestly they were. They were very supportive.
Speaker 3: So I had a good job, you know, I was.
Speaker 3: I was teaching at this independent school, as they call it,
Speaker 3: a boarding school in California called Stevenson School. It was
Speaker 3: located in Pebble Beach. And that's part of why I
Speaker 3: got back into golf and kind of the mid twenty tens,
Speaker 3: early two thousand tense, because I was I was teaching
Speaker 3: at this school and around all these great golf courses. So,
Speaker 3: you know, it had been an interest of mine when
Speaker 3: I was younger. Golf and golf architecture. Really got back
Speaker 3: into it when I was when I became a teacher
Speaker 3: at the school. And yeah, when by the time I I,
Speaker 3: you know, jumped out of that job and into this one,
Speaker 3: I had been writing about golf for a while for
Speaker 3: you know, a couple of years, publishing articles on blogs
Speaker 3: occasionally with with various magazines, and things like that, getting
Speaker 3: kind of a freelance. My blog went through a couple
Speaker 3: of different names.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: By the end, it was just called Garrett Ford Golf
Speaker 3: because at the time I was going by a semi
Speaker 3: pseudonym on Twitter, which was Garrett Ford.
Speaker 1: Before yeah, I guess, yeah, I mean, but a term
Speaker 1: I just learned about.
Speaker 3: Me too, me too. Apparently it's a it's a really
Speaker 3: big deal. But in any case, uh, yeah, I was.
Speaker 3: I was there before those guys. But the reason I
Speaker 3: was going by Garrett Ford was that I just didn't
Speaker 3: want my students to find me on Twitter and I
Speaker 3: didn't want to have to waste a day of class
Speaker 3: like explaining what I was doing, right, uh, And so
Speaker 3: that was it. I was Garrett Ford. Andy knew me
Speaker 3: as Garrett Ford. In fact, I think he might have
Speaker 3: thought that my name was Garrett Ford until he literally
Speaker 3: had to like I had to fill out a tax force.
Speaker 2: Actually that's definitely true, because I remember because I was
Speaker 2: writing for Andy at that time and he like sent
Speaker 2: me a message like I think I'm going to hire
Speaker 2: Garrett Ford, and I was like, oh awesome, Like I
Speaker 2: love this stuff on Twitter, YadA YadA, And I do
Speaker 2: remember that, Like Andy texted me, he said, did you
Speaker 2: know his last name is Morris? At that point, I
Speaker 2: truly had, We all thought your last name was fort.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah. And you can tell, like
Speaker 3: Andy didn't google me or anything, because otherwise he probably
Speaker 3: would have figured that out before.
Speaker 1: No background searches.
Speaker 3: No background checks, no no googling to the Stevenson School
Speaker 3: website to make sure that I was actually employed by them.
Speaker 3: In any case, you asked what my family thought they
Speaker 3: were into it. They they they had already, you know,
Speaker 3: been aware that I was interested in going this direction.
Speaker 3: My wife was was very familiar with my frustrations with
Speaker 3: the kind of boarding school teaching job. Uh, it was.
Speaker 3: It was an overwhelming job that you know. We lived
Speaker 3: on campus in a house on campus and inside the gate,
Speaker 3: inside inside the Pebble Beach gates right Our house was
Speaker 3: connected to a dormitory, and I just couldn't get away
Speaker 3: from my job. I see way more of my kids
Speaker 3: now than I did when I was working that job.
Speaker 3: And it's a great job. It's you know, people do
Speaker 3: it for decades, have have all my respect, But most
Speaker 3: of the people who last that long are real extroverts.
Speaker 3: They really like being out among people and interacting with
Speaker 3: people all day long. By five years of by the
Speaker 3: time I had done that job for five years, I
Speaker 3: was pretty tired of it, and so I was ready
Speaker 3: to move on to something new. Everybody who was close
Speaker 3: to me knew that, and they went with it. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, if they had their concerns, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: there were probably some concerns, they kept them to themselves
Speaker 3: and just trusted me, which was very very nice of them.
Speaker 1: Will you you were kind of on.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 1: I mean, you started working in twenty seventeen in a
Speaker 1: capacity you were writing, and you wrote the newsletter. You
Speaker 1: pretty much had taken that over. And my thing was,
Speaker 1: we had to hire Garrett first because we needed one
Speaker 1: person that knew that had a vast understanding of the
Speaker 1: of the English grammar system. That was number one for people.
Speaker 3: Who I was an English teacher right at the at
Speaker 3: this morning school, and that was definitely part of the
Speaker 3: reason that Andy hired me.
Speaker 1: Will had passable grammar. I don't have fastibal grammar. Nothing
Speaker 1: could be published without somebody reading it. But uh, will
Speaker 1: you came on right during COVID. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: tell you, but I was sitting in my basement staring
Speaker 1: at the ceiling, wondering, like, if anybody was going to
Speaker 1: play golf, how when when's the next like sponsored check
Speaker 1: or sponsor going to come in? How am I going
Speaker 1: to like I just hired Will? Like, why is this
Speaker 1: happening now?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 1: What? What were you feeling in your in your apartment?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I was feeling the same thing. It was,
Speaker 2: honestly at that going back to Brendan's comment of like
Speaker 2: I was young and not really thinking about how the
Speaker 2: Frida egg made money. At that point, it was just
Speaker 2: like Andie's hiring me. Great, I got a job. But
Speaker 2: then you get into the situations like, Okay, how is
Speaker 2: health insurance going to work? And when are these paychecks
Speaker 2: going to come? Is at the fifteenth of the month, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like the basic things. And then a week before I start,
Speaker 2: the Rudy Gobert incident happens, and I fly home and
Speaker 2: we start kind of getting into it, and I realized
Speaker 2: very quickly how the real world works, and especially when
Speaker 2: you have a small business and you have to make
Speaker 2: sure money is coming in the door. And thankfully we
Speaker 2: weren't talking about this to each other. We were just
Speaker 2: worrying about it at home. But I was twenty six
Speaker 2: years old, like working at home with my roommate at
Speaker 2: the time, who had also started a small business around
Speaker 2: this time, and we were both very nervous and just
Speaker 2: kind of expressing our anxieties to each other. But he
Speaker 2: didn't have anybody else to talk to day to day
Speaker 2: beside me. So thankfully we at least would hop on
Speaker 2: a zoom call meet you and Garrett and would we
Speaker 2: would have ideas and we would talk about what is
Speaker 2: going to fill the space that week at the very least,
Speaker 2: and thankfully then last too long. But there were there
Speaker 2: were dark months there at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Honestly, COVID was an amazing time if you just looked
Speaker 1: at it from content creation.
Speaker 3: It was enforced solitude.
Speaker 1: I you know, Brendan, I often look back at what
Speaker 1: we did with the Shotgun Start and I have no
Speaker 1: clue how we did that. Brett, Garrett, you pretty much
Speaker 1: took over fried Eggpod for.
Speaker 3: A little while. Yeah, I mean, because you're you were
Speaker 3: doing Shotgun Start three times a week and uh, running
Speaker 3: a business dealing with the financials, Like we did not
Speaker 3: have a financial person at this time. It was just
Speaker 3: you Andy. And for people who are familiar with your
Speaker 3: kind of podcast persona, they might think that maybe Will
Speaker 3: and I missed some paychecks and stuff like that. We
Speaker 3: never did. All that stuff was completely professionally taken care
Speaker 3: of by Andy and so pretty overwhelming task that you had.
Speaker 3: And so the fried Egg Pod was kind of the
Speaker 3: victim of that for a while. It was really irregularly published,
Speaker 3: and I you know, at some point we just sort
Speaker 3: of agreed that I should I should take on a
Speaker 3: little bit more of that load. But yeah, those COVID times,
Speaker 3: I mean, it turned out to be an amazing boost
Speaker 3: for golf, where people kind of went back to basics,
Speaker 3: rediscovered the game, and a whole new set of people
Speaker 3: came into the game. And you know, it's not that
Speaker 3: that made COVID good or anything. It was obviously a
Speaker 3: very terrible time, but it played out differently than any
Speaker 3: of us thought. And yeah, I remember Will coming on
Speaker 3: board and being worried about that. Now Will had been
Speaker 3: effectively part of our team for a long time. At
Speaker 3: that point. In fact, before I have or worked with
Speaker 3: Andy or did anything with Andy, Will was working on
Speaker 3: the newspaper, on the newsletter rather as as you mentioned,
Speaker 3: Andy writing the newsletter on a you know, three time
Speaker 3: a week basis, so he was very much part of
Speaker 3: the team when I came on board. But bringing Will
Speaker 3: on full time was a big move, something that we
Speaker 3: were excited about. You know, Will brought so much to
Speaker 3: the team other than just writing, and so we're very
Speaker 3: excited to have that. But but you know, just the
Speaker 3: kind of coincidence of that and historical events made for
Speaker 3: a very uncertain time. I remember, actually, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of in a fit of complete irrationality and panic, selling
Speaker 3: my driver for a couple hundred dollars because I figured
Speaker 3: having the extra cash on hand might be a good
Speaker 3: idea for the next couple of weeks. Like obviously that
Speaker 3: wouldn't have done anything if things had gone really bad,
Speaker 3: but I just like, maybe I shouldn't have this driver.
Speaker 3: I ended up having to to rebuy a driver a
Speaker 3: couple of months later. But yeah, it's so you know,
Speaker 3: those that that was a rough couple of weeks. But
Speaker 3: then I think we realized we can be at home,
Speaker 3: we can do some interesting stuff, we can learn some
Speaker 3: new skills, you know, we can we can really burnish
Speaker 3: our skills as content makers. Take this opportunity and and
Speaker 3: and explore some new avenues. And Brendan, I remember you
Speaker 3: and Andy kind of happening upon this idea of the
Speaker 3: long form flashback Friday type podcast that was sort of
Speaker 3: a product of this period. And at that time Shotguns
Speaker 3: Start was.
Speaker 2: What just.
Speaker 3: Was it a couple of years old, maybe a year
Speaker 3: and a half. Yeah, And so that was a that
Speaker 3: was a and it was kind of born of the
Speaker 3: fact that you guys were doing a three time a
Speaker 3: week podcast. You just had to figure out interesting stuff
Speaker 3: to fill up that time when there was no golf,
Speaker 3: and you and you sort of figure it out.
Speaker 1: I mean it was a news show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, scary, that was the concept.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like everything else, pretty scary obviously, like, uh yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a news we will always have something to talk about.
Speaker 4: We will get news the guy the content gods provide.
Speaker 4: And then all of a sudden, there was no more
Speaker 4: golf tournament, no more professional golf or any tournaments of
Speaker 4: any kind. So yeah, like Andy said, when you think
Speaker 4: back on it now, just what we were doing, the
Speaker 4: amount of amount of work and research and then recording
Speaker 4: time was pretty substantial. But I think it grabbed a
Speaker 4: lot of people. People still talk to me about those
Speaker 4: episodes all the time, and you know, if we had time.
Speaker 4: Now I think we do them more often. We plan
Speaker 4: to do them more. But yeah, that was that was
Speaker 4: an interesting time in the company for all of you guys,
Speaker 4: and certainly for the pod too.
Speaker 1: What was going on you were working at espuation at
Speaker 1: that point, right, I was.
Speaker 3: Just going to ask blog cabin came came about as
Speaker 3: well during during your espenation time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I worked for Vox Media and I remember, like,
Speaker 4: like obviously on their sports side, it was like it
Speaker 4: was a pretty like forward digital media company where like
Speaker 4: you could the point was to make something cool and
Speaker 4: unique and creative and not repeat what other people are
Speaker 4: doing and like you like the world's your oyster on
Speaker 4: the internet. And I remember when Andy actually I think
Speaker 4: one of my like earlier members of Andy is he
Speaker 4: sent me something to edit or read over about Aaron Hills,
Speaker 4: like an angles piece, like with an angle, like you
Speaker 4: were explaining it to people who were watching Aaron Hills
Speaker 4: and you had like the scatter.
Speaker 1: Made the tenth hole, I think again, tenth Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 3: It was the article. It's an article with the title
Speaker 3: with an angles, okay, and and it and it really resonated.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he sent it to me, I'm sure you
Speaker 4: like I like to look over and I was. I
Speaker 4: sort of been I don't know, brought up and groomed
Speaker 4: in digital media in a way of like looking for cool,
Speaker 4: different important ship not just like here's how tiger Wood
Speaker 4: shot is seventy one And I was like, whoa, this
Speaker 4: is like really really smart. That was you know, I
Speaker 4: had known you and followed your work, but that was
Speaker 4: the first time I was like reading over like this
Speaker 4: is like I don't know if it was the most
Speaker 4: revolutionary piece or the well written piece, was like this
Speaker 4: is like a different way to like make stuff, and
Speaker 4: it is probably the thing that knows you're talking about
Speaker 4: waking up, like what am I going to make today?
Speaker 4: Like that freedom you had, And that was one of
Speaker 4: the first things or was coming from sort of the
Speaker 4: culture I came from, and seeing that like felt like
Speaker 4: a really really good match, Like this guy is really
Speaker 4: smart and really like is trying to make something different
Speaker 4: and unique and say something that maybe not all the
Speaker 4: other people are saying all the time. So yeah, and
Speaker 4: then we launched into blog cabin and it all went
Speaker 4: from there.
Speaker 1: You bring up something about like the Vox culture, about
Speaker 1: thinking outside the box, doing stuff that other people aren't doing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the company prior that I worked at, we had a
Speaker 1: staff of writers, and I I'll never forget I was
Speaker 1: on you know, the business side, but I was. I
Speaker 1: would occasionally have to go tell them they needed to
Speaker 1: write some sponsored content piece that I sold, which was
Speaker 1: never fun. But I became friends with a lot of
Speaker 1: them and I would be like, do you write stuff
Speaker 1: that you want to write? And they're like, no, never, right,
Speaker 1: like maybe one article a week and they're writing multiple
Speaker 1: articles a day. And I always thought that was like
Speaker 1: kind of backwards. It's like, you should always have writers
Speaker 1: and then for the most part, you should just let
Speaker 1: them write whatever they want to write, because that's going
Speaker 1: to be the most interesting thing. Like let them take
Speaker 1: a topic or take an event and write it through
Speaker 1: their prism. And that's I think something that like, you
Speaker 1: know it, established media is kind of botched is that,
Speaker 1: you know, they feel like they have to do the
Speaker 1: old like, well this worked ten years ago format, so
Speaker 1: we have to keep doing that, and somebody's always got
Speaker 1: to be assigned to that. And that's something that drew
Speaker 1: me to Brendan's writing was he's writing about you know,
Speaker 1: monster cutout to gas stations, right right?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean I think that's why you were You
Speaker 4: and your team were able to kind of crack in.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say you like could take over, but like
Speaker 4: you can crack in because all the other golf media
Speaker 4: space people have like so many masters to serve and
Speaker 4: the reverse they're doing the reverse of what you're talking about, Like,
Speaker 4: what can I write to generate the most traffic that
Speaker 4: serves the ads that keep us the lights on? And
Speaker 4: you were going from the you were starting from the
Speaker 4: opposite end of like I want to write something cool
Speaker 4: that I think is interesting or important or funny or humorous,
Speaker 4: uh or something I have a particular expertise on, like
Speaker 4: you're and that will draw the people in and then
Speaker 4: we'll build from there and that will draw the sponsors
Speaker 4: in that like I Yeah, it's not a way to
Speaker 4: scale right away overnight. Right Necessarily, there's gonna be fewer
Speaker 4: people wanting to read about the wid and angles of
Speaker 4: the tenth hole than there are that like Tiger Woods's
Speaker 4: back update or whatever. But it's a way to actually
Speaker 4: have a voice and authenticity and a real audience. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and a real audience. And that's and nobody was I
Speaker 4: would I won't say nobody, but not many people were
Speaker 4: doing that. And you saw you guys saw the opportunity
Speaker 4: and and I think that's why it's been able to stick,
Speaker 4: Why you were able to crack in, not necessarily take
Speaker 4: over the world, but why you were able to stand
Speaker 4: out and crack in and now stick.
Speaker 1: What are your guys's favorite things that you've worked on
Speaker 1: since you've been here?
Speaker 3: Go ahead, Will, I mean, I.
Speaker 2: Think, I mean, there's been so many different variations of
Speaker 2: my job over the years.
Speaker 1: That Will It's been like basically everything I.
Speaker 2: Kind I was kind of thinking about it. Over the
Speaker 2: last ten years, I've done everything from like podcast clips
Speaker 2: to the merch to the writing writing. Garret would edit
Speaker 2: the newsletter. I would put everything in our back end
Speaker 2: system to events to social media. It really has like
Speaker 2: kind of transformed over the years. But to your point earlier,
Speaker 2: like when I started writing the newsletter, it was after
Speaker 2: my day job. I would come home and just like
Speaker 2: kind of figure out what happened during the day. But
Speaker 2: Andy would let me write whatever I wanted, and that
Speaker 2: was like a really freeing thing. Was like, as long
Speaker 2: as I'm covering the events that are happening, just write
Speaker 2: about that. And that was always super fun for me.
Speaker 2: So I mean that honestly, Like the newsletter being like
Speaker 2: my responsibility and it wasn't even my job, was like
Speaker 2: something that really like got me into Frida Egg quickly.
Speaker 2: It was like, Okay, I'm invested in this thing. I'm
Speaker 2: not making money off of it, but like I want
Speaker 2: this to be a good product, And that was super
Speaker 2: fun for me as a twenty four to twenty five
Speaker 2: year old. And then over the years, I mean, having
Speaker 2: been and so many different things, I have stories for everything.
Speaker 2: But I think seeing people at our events now that
Speaker 2: I've got to know in twenty twenty one, or even
Speaker 2: our first events in twenty nineteen is incredibly rewarding. And
Speaker 2: just the fact that I consider many of them friends
Speaker 2: now is something that is probably what I'm most proud of,
Speaker 2: is the fact that people want to come see us
Speaker 2: around the country. And so I mean that's a very
Speaker 2: long winded answer to what's my favorite thing that I've
Speaker 2: been a part of, But I think there's just so
Speaker 2: many different tentacles of our business that we've been been
Speaker 2: involved in over the years that there's something that everyone
Speaker 2: can kind of latch onto.
Speaker 1: I was doing your review research today and I was
Speaker 1: trying to find something in my email, Will and I
Speaker 1: came across an old newsletter subject line that you had
Speaker 1: crafted that was Mitch, Mitch, don't kill my vibe.
Speaker 2: Didn't you do?
Speaker 3: Actually, didn't you do Jordan's third Leg? At that point
Speaker 3: that was Andy Okay, Yeah, our newsletter headlines used to
Speaker 3: be a little bit, a little bit wilder than they are.
Speaker 1: Well, that Jordan's third Leg came from the LaGuardia airport
Speaker 1: after my flight was delayed. After I did up all
Speaker 1: night for the open with Brendan, Brendan invited me to
Speaker 1: come to video. It was like video pop. It basically
Speaker 1: was what like kind of the beginning of the shotgun start,
Speaker 1: I would say. And we did it with Amon Lynch
Speaker 1: one day, and we did it with h. Richard Johnson
Speaker 1: one day from the Box offices in New York. I
Speaker 1: remember I made the cut at the Oldinois State Am
Speaker 1: and w dd to go do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know that was a good idea, but
Speaker 4: it was something came of it eventually it did.
Speaker 1: It wasn't great, It was a great idea, some of
Speaker 1: the best ideas, but we we were like, we didn't
Speaker 1: sleeper two days. No, that was the whole premise of
Speaker 1: the stick was we were literally up all night.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, think about like that. I don't know,
Speaker 4: think about that. Golf Channel just would have picked us
Speaker 4: off then or somebody make me. I'm glad we you
Speaker 4: know that's where you had Abe and me you Richard
Speaker 4: j I don't know.
Speaker 1: It was like, probably a pretty good show, but except
Speaker 1: it was at four in the morning and nobody was watching.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that was fun. I forgot about that. One
Speaker 1: of the crazy sliding Doors moments was when we started
Speaker 1: the Shotgun start and we you know, Brendan was working
Speaker 1: at Vox, and we we offered Vox fifty percent of
Speaker 1: the pod and they said no thanks and washed their
Speaker 1: hands of it.
Speaker 4: I remember that well. I talked to my boss. I
Speaker 4: was like, cause, this is absolutely not going to I
Speaker 4: have a full time job here. This is not going
Speaker 4: to be for you or your company or property or
Speaker 4: you know, project, and they're like, oh no, like they
Speaker 4: didn't care about it. I mean, at that time we
Speaker 4: had expanded it into politics and all that. I don't
Speaker 4: know that we had a person running our sports who
Speaker 4: didn't know who Nick Saban was. I'll just leave it
Speaker 4: at that, so let alone. Golf was pretty far down
Speaker 4: the line, and the golf pod. The notion of a
Speaker 4: golf pod was sort of like, uh no, yeah, go
Speaker 4: ahead and do that. And but like I guess if
Speaker 4: it gets like big or you can make money off it,
Speaker 4: we'll need to talk. I was like, all right, sure,
Speaker 4: I'm sure we will not be talking.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it.
Speaker 3: There's no obligation there.
Speaker 1: I just got permission. We're going see it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was right, that is true.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you, Vox, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, they could be a partner for this pot.
Speaker 1: Nothing is in writing. We're off and clear, we're running.
Speaker 1: Let's see you got your Garrett, what was what was
Speaker 1: your favorite piece or project?
Speaker 3: I loved doing the first uh what what we now
Speaker 3: call All Grasses Local. There are videos that are about
Speaker 3: different turf operations across the world, and the first one
Speaker 3: of those videos that we did, and at the time,
Speaker 3: the concept was more we're talking about young people getting
Speaker 3: into turf. We're talking about turf internship programs, and so
Speaker 3: our idea was to make a short series of videos
Speaker 3: about the internship at sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska
Speaker 3: and bally Neil Golf and Hunt Club in Colorado, and
Speaker 3: we made three different visits to the courses, talk to
Speaker 3: the superintendents, talked to the young people and the turf
Speaker 3: internship program that those two courses ran jointly at the time.
Speaker 3: And that was just such an amazing project to do
Speaker 3: because it was a new kind of thing that we
Speaker 3: were doing, and the focus was really on making a
Speaker 3: quality piece of storytelling about these people at these places.
Speaker 3: I thought they came out really well, and that's mostly
Speaker 3: a credit to Cameron Hurtis and his excellent work. But
Speaker 3: I often remember the feeling of producing those being being
Speaker 3: on site at those incredible golf courses. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was the first time I had seen either of those courses.
Speaker 3: I was pretty blown away by the courses themselves and
Speaker 3: just the opportunity to talk to the people who were
Speaker 3: working on them and to try to make something beautiful
Speaker 3: and moving and informative and about what life is like
Speaker 3: when you're living and working at this kind of place.
Speaker 3: And since then, we've done a number of different videos
Speaker 3: that have kind of taken that perspective on golf courses,
Speaker 3: and I've really enjoyed that I've been involved in a
Speaker 3: number of them. Obviously are current colleague Matt Rusius and
Speaker 3: Cameron Hurtis are most involved in those video projects now.
Speaker 3: But yeah, whenever I get an opportunity to help them
Speaker 3: with one of them, it's a big highlight. And Andy,
Speaker 3: I know you always like to reminisce about staying in
Speaker 3: the hotel in Mullen. There was hotel at least yeah,
Speaker 3: sand Hills Hotel. There was at least one night when
Speaker 3: we needed to stay there. It's not the ideal place
Speaker 3: to stay, I will say, although they're very friendly there
Speaker 3: and it's a you know, it's a bed to sleep
Speaker 3: in for the night. But it was after a long
Speaker 3: day of shooting.
Speaker 1: It was dark.
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing about these trips is that you're
Speaker 3: up all day, right because you don't you don't go
Speaker 3: in for dinner because you're shooting at sunset. And so
Speaker 3: it was what nine or ten o'clock when we finished up.
Speaker 1: I think when you think of the totality of the day,
Speaker 1: it was one of the hottest days of the year there.
Speaker 1: It was like one hundred, one hundred plus and I
Speaker 1: I like to remember the day like it was yesterday
Speaker 1: because we woke up super early. We had to drive
Speaker 1: from Grand Platte, which is where we stayed the night before,
Speaker 1: were up to Mullen and we so we you know,
Speaker 1: that's like an hour drive and we had to be
Speaker 1: there for the morning meeting at Sandhills for the maintenance team,
Speaker 1: which is like an hour before sunrise in the middle
Speaker 1: of summer.
Speaker 3: So we were right North Platt. Yeah, we started North Platte,
Speaker 3: went to Yeah, so if people are familiar with the
Speaker 3: Era area, a short.
Speaker 1: Drive, Yeah, it's not short, but it was just like
Speaker 1: it insanely early day. We we get through, we shoot,
Speaker 1: I want to say, like we you know, obviously shoot
Speaker 1: all the morning, set up the morning meeting, like them
Speaker 1: doing their jobs. Then after that we have these inner
Speaker 1: blocks of interviews and it's like two o'clock and he
Speaker 1: literally just texted me, which is funny that like while
Speaker 1: you were talking about this project. So I go to
Speaker 1: Kyle Heglund you and Cameron. Cameron had played because we
Speaker 1: stopped there on the way for me moving to California,
Speaker 1: and we did before the place opened, and we played
Speaker 1: nine holes there that week. But you know, I go,
Speaker 1: I go to Kyle Heglund at like two and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: you think we can play? And it was like it
Speaker 1: was one hundred plus degrees. There's nobody on the golf course.
Speaker 1: Go for it. And I remember we go, we're walking.
Speaker 1: We're the only ones out there, because I remember we
Speaker 1: sat down on the fifteenth tea box, which is the
Speaker 1: furthest point on that side of the property. It's the
Speaker 1: furthest point away from the clubhouse on the whole property,
Speaker 1: I believe, And we're sitting there and we're the only
Speaker 1: ones on the golf course and there's you know, the
Speaker 1: beauty of the sandhills. Is this a vast nothingness? And
Speaker 1: I think we just sat on that tea box for
Speaker 1: like a good twenty or thirty minutes, and I don't
Speaker 1: think we said much of anything to each other and
Speaker 1: just say at in silence, and it was like, I'll
Speaker 1: never forget that we finished. We finished golf and where
Speaker 1: it was a little cloudy and we were waiting for
Speaker 1: the sun and Dick Young's cap and his wife are
Speaker 1: just hanging out on Ben's porch. It was us, Kyle Haglenn,
Speaker 1: Dick Young's cap, who's the founder of sand Hills and
Speaker 1: his wife, so the two people that like started this.
Speaker 1: And Dick Young's cap is telling us about like these
Speaker 1: these amazing stories about digging the mainline irrigation by hand
Speaker 1: himself to build this place, you know, all these early tales, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, hiring Bill Corr and we're doing this and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, like this epic explosion of
Speaker 1: sun comes out and we get our footage we need,
Speaker 1: and then we finished shooting and we have a couple
Speaker 1: drinks with Dick Young's Cap and then we go into
Speaker 1: town and go to the hotel and pick up We
Speaker 1: picked up a pizza.
Speaker 3: Pizza, Yeah, there's there's the one twenty four hour gas
Speaker 3: station in.
Speaker 1: Mullin pizza if I remember correctly, from a twenty four
Speaker 1: hour gas station and a six pack of beer. And
Speaker 1: we just sat outside. It was a beautiful night and
Speaker 1: sat outside and like you know, no cars are going by.
Speaker 1: It's one of those like U shaped motels, eating pizza,
Speaker 1: drinking beer on the off the hood of our car
Speaker 1: while just trains passed through.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, with the the pizza box on. It was
Speaker 3: either on the hood or on the trunk, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, the six pack was on the hood too, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was Yeah, It's just a great moment
Speaker 3: after a really wonderful day. Yeah, Dick Young, Stap and
Speaker 3: his wife. I remember we're like raiding the set. They
Speaker 3: had a rating system for sunsets that they were discussing,
Speaker 3: and they gave this one like a seven or an
Speaker 3: eight or something that they had seen better, but it
Speaker 3: was a pretty good one. So yeah, it's I mean,
Speaker 3: what of privilege to even set foot on a golf
Speaker 3: course like that. I've tried to never take that for granted.
Speaker 3: I've gotten to see a lot of incredible places during
Speaker 3: my time in the company that I never imagined that
Speaker 3: I would get a chance to see before I started
Speaker 3: working for Friday, So, you know, an incredible opportunity to
Speaker 3: just get to play the course and spend a little
Speaker 3: bit of time there, but to actually get to know
Speaker 3: Kyle Hegland, the superintendent, get to know the people who
Speaker 3: worked for him, learned something about the community that they
Speaker 3: were all part of, and then to spend some time
Speaker 3: with Dick young'scap himself. It just worked out beautifully and
Speaker 3: we finished the day on the note of you know,
Speaker 3: the pizza beer on the hood of the car. So
Speaker 3: that was really the that was the fall experience there
Speaker 3: and and you a day that I'll never forget that project.
Speaker 2: As an outsider who wasn't involved in the day to
Speaker 2: day like you guys were making these trips out there,
Speaker 2: I was in Chicago doing events or holding.
Speaker 1: It down whatever it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were only four or five of us for
Speaker 2: the time, but I no, no, no, But I remember
Speaker 2: that project sticks out to me too because like we
Speaker 2: had done some events at amazing places, and we'd like
Speaker 2: done some travel and all that stuff. But when we
Speaker 2: actually had like an official project. We were working with
Speaker 2: sand Hills and Valley Neil and for me had someone
Speaker 2: who had only heard about these places or read about them.
Speaker 2: They were just completely mythical. But I knew how well
Speaker 2: regarded they were in the golf space, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: some like very serious places are giving us a chance.
Speaker 2: And it was a really cool moment as someone just
Speaker 2: kind of taking in like frieda Egg as a whole
Speaker 2: from inside the company too, because it's like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 2: other people actually kind of see what we're going after
Speaker 2: here and are going to and are actually going to
Speaker 2: give us a chance to work with them in the future.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that project was a moment when we
Speaker 3: felt started to feel post COVID, Okay, we're we're cooking
Speaker 3: with gas here, We've got something going here. We've we're
Speaker 3: working with with some incredibly talented people who can make
Speaker 3: excellent content, and we've we've started to resonate in the
Speaker 3: golf industry to the point where we can we can
Speaker 3: go to these courses and make unique things about them.
Speaker 1: And at that point, Brendan was full time. Cameron was
Speaker 1: full time and.
Speaker 3: Full time at that point. Yeah, that was kind of
Speaker 3: on the Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: He was, he would have started that spring, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pp you got a favorite story? Uh, I mean or moment.
Speaker 4: There's there's so many of them, obviously from Shotgun, but
Speaker 4: but that's maybe more apropos for that pod.
Speaker 1: I I don't know.
Speaker 4: There so so many of the amusing stories are like
Speaker 4: the mishaps, right, like or the like rough in it
Speaker 4: life that I think, like, I'm not suggesting we have
Speaker 4: we've had a hard go of this at all. This
Speaker 4: has been great and like, but you had to also
Speaker 4: kind of love the game or love the game for
Speaker 4: some of these some of these instances and some of
Speaker 4: the just I mean, you know it's like that the
Speaker 4: pod committing to do it three times a week, and
Speaker 4: where you have to record from and where you would
Speaker 4: produce it from and turn it around and get it out.
Speaker 4: And you know, we we went to and Will was there.
Speaker 4: We went to the Ryder Cup in a freaking RV
Speaker 4: because we're not paying for a house in Wisconsin with
Speaker 4: limited supply and we're living on this RV that anytime
Speaker 4: one of us like rolled over in bed, the other
Speaker 4: end would shake and the like. We had to go
Speaker 4: like thank god, we'd never even touched the bathroom because
Speaker 4: we you know, parked in a country club parking lot
Speaker 4: and used so like or we went to the Open
Speaker 4: and that was like a massive trip. It was the
Speaker 4: first open either of us had ever gone to, and
Speaker 4: I think the first time we gone to Scotland. And
Speaker 4: but but like to make it work, we stretched to
Speaker 4: pay for dorm rooms where you'd have the bathroom at
Speaker 4: the end of the hall, communal like showers and toilets,
Speaker 4: and we both got like the stomach bug.
Speaker 1: We were there. It was the work like, it was awful,
Speaker 1: the best life, but you know, you had some for
Speaker 1: love of the game situations and in.
Speaker 3: Some really creepy houses in Augusta Tood.
Speaker 1: Some interesting ones that I don't even like I had
Speaker 1: the credential via my prior job. Sometimes then I think,
Speaker 1: like then Indy, I don't know, I will got the
Speaker 1: broad yall on one of those I think where he
Speaker 1: was like my mental health that was not good. The
Speaker 1: one at a gate you can only do this loop
Speaker 1: around one little street and he had to go for
Speaker 1: a walk, but it was like this no quarter mile
Speaker 1: loop you just had to do over and over again
Speaker 1: or what I think, Yeah it was.
Speaker 2: I think it was the twenty twenty one Masters. Yeah
Speaker 2: we had a house. Not it was not far from
Speaker 2: the club, but like we you guys had. I got
Speaker 2: it on the grounds one or two times that week,
Speaker 2: but otherwise I was just covering it on social from
Speaker 2: the house. And I remember like they pushed up tea
Speaker 2: times or something. But I needed to get outside. So
Speaker 2: within that little gated community that was effectively two cull
Speaker 2: to sacks, I got my ten thousand steps in and
Speaker 2: effectively a loop, and I counted and it was fourteen times.
Speaker 2: I did this look and I was just like I
Speaker 2: just needed to be outside and then I remember I
Speaker 2: do remember texting you Brendan, and I was like, golf
Speaker 2: needs to start here because I'm going insane.
Speaker 1: It was not good for a mental health.
Speaker 4: I don't know, Yeah, what one what I would throw
Speaker 4: out from a company wide perspective on like the sand
Speaker 4: Hills side of like cooking with gas would be Like
Speaker 4: I think the Kiowa PGA was I don't want to
Speaker 4: say transformational, but like sort of affirming in a.
Speaker 1: Way that like we were we had we weren't out
Speaker 1: of COVID yet, but like kind of coming out of
Speaker 1: like that was the first one where people could start
Speaker 1: coming again and and and like the first time I traveled,
Speaker 1: and like it felt free in a way. But for
Speaker 1: us it was sort of like a proof of concept
Speaker 1: of can you get value from going to professional golf events.
Speaker 1: Of course we know in our golf course architecture, architecture coverage,
Speaker 1: we need to go to these courses, we need to
Speaker 1: photograph them, Garrett and and and Andy and Matten camera.
Speaker 1: They need this continuing education and on the ground education,
Speaker 1: and of course that must happen with professional golf. I'm
Speaker 1: not always sure that's like convinced that should be the
Speaker 1: way should you watch this on TV. Can you take
Speaker 1: more of it in? Is there more value to turn
Speaker 1: something around real quick being at your desk And I
Speaker 1: think it's a mix and match. But that Kia one
Speaker 1: and it was writing on the Friday, it was writing
Speaker 1: for the Friday newsletter video, the Quia video, and then
Speaker 1: like the pods too. It's just like we got a
Speaker 1: lot of insight that I don't think we would have
Speaker 1: gotten from the comfort of our home, and I think
Speaker 1: we started to and sometimes you're at the mercy of
Speaker 1: whatever happens in front of you while you're there. And
Speaker 1: I remember, like Mike Clayton and several others sent us
Speaker 1: messages like God, that was good stuff, like you can't
Speaker 1: that's what we want from you. We want to like
Speaker 1: to be you know, get sort of the point of
Speaker 1: view of being on the ground, be put in your shoes.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, that just developed in a way
Speaker 1: where we got we were in the right places at
Speaker 1: the right times, and it was a little affirming in
Speaker 1: that way for obviously not just Shotguns Start, but the
Speaker 1: the competitive golf operations of the entire company of of
Speaker 1: like going to some of these events and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously it was a historic Major with Phil and everything
Speaker 1: like that, and when we were there seeing the Phil
Speaker 1: Brooks dynamic in that final group, it is amazing. We've
Speaker 1: had an amazing group of majors to cover when you
Speaker 1: think about it, between Tigers twenty nineteen, we had Phil
Speaker 1: at Kiowa, we had Bryce and Rory at Pinehurst, I
Speaker 1: mean the country clubs kind of like the one that
Speaker 1: people don't ever talk about, but what a great, great
Speaker 1: weekend that thing was, and then obviously now you have
Speaker 1: Rory at the Masters. Is It's been an amazing, amazing
Speaker 1: I think that's what you pinch yourself to all these
Speaker 1: events that you've been to.
Speaker 4: Pinehurst. Pinehurst was insane. I mean, pine Hurst was like
Speaker 4: the best major. I've felt like they just keep up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, since basically twenty fifteen, it's been. It's been pretty
Speaker 3: consistently high quality, with just a couple of exceptions. If
Speaker 3: you think about the Majors from twenty ten to twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: you know it's not nearly the same. So we're fortunate
Speaker 3: in some respects. But that Ko Phil versus Brooks event,
Speaker 3: that was I remember that too as a really great
Speaker 3: moment in the company. Both Andy and Brendan wrote fantastic
Speaker 3: articles after that event about the different dynamics of the
Speaker 3: final round and just talking about golf in a way
Speaker 3: that that I don't see it talked about very often
Speaker 3: with an eye for detail and a sense for what
Speaker 3: it means. That that is pretty rare. And so that
Speaker 3: was you know, that was is twenty twenty one, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's a while ago now, but still still very vivid.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite memories is from the Pebble Beach
Speaker 1: us Helfen, where Brendan and I have seen it at
Speaker 1: one read house. I slept on a on a pull
Speaker 1: out couch that like just was like a crater, was terrible,
Speaker 1: and it didn't have a sed. It was like an
Speaker 1: insanely hot week and Pebble Beach. It was the week
Speaker 1: that you started, Garrett.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. That was the week that I started, because
Speaker 3: it was the it was the week that I was
Speaker 3: moving out of my place on campus at Stevenson School.
Speaker 3: We were we were packing up and getting things in
Speaker 3: the truck, and we were going up to Oregon where
Speaker 3: I now live, and we overlapped for a couple of days.
Speaker 3: You showed up Andy on on Tuesday or Wednesday or
Speaker 3: whatever it was, and we had time to go to
Speaker 3: my classroom and record a podcast. So we we recorded
Speaker 3: a podcast in my classroom, and then you came to
Speaker 3: dinner that night. My parents were there because they were
Speaker 3: helping us move my my wife was there, my kids
Speaker 3: were there, and so that was everybody's introduction to to
Speaker 3: Andy Johnson, this guy that I was going to be
Speaker 3: working for. And they they all very much enjoyed Andy.
Speaker 3: I think they were. They were put at ease by
Speaker 3: by the fact that he seemed like a solid person
Speaker 3: and uh and and not a jerk, you know, so
Speaker 3: they were I think they were reassured by that. But
Speaker 3: then the next day we were we were on the
Speaker 3: road and out of there, so I actually didn't see
Speaker 3: any of the Pebble Beach us open because I had
Speaker 3: to move to Oregon on that very week.
Speaker 1: Do you guys remember the story I wrote that week
Speaker 1: from oh yeah, you timed up Bryson, right, you went clock,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and.
Speaker 3: You put a stopwatch to Bryson. I was gonna say
Speaker 3: the hollow Thud article. I remember the Hollow Thud article
Speaker 3: as well, which was a little more serious, I guess,
Speaker 3: but the.
Speaker 1: Stopwatch article is my favorite one ever anyway ever are
Speaker 1: ever doing? I was out there with a notebook and
Speaker 1: I had my phone and I was timing like to
Speaker 1: the to the split seconds on all these guys in
Speaker 1: this group, and it was so funny. I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: I was walking up the sixth hole and some somebody,
Speaker 1: some fan was like, hey, are you Andy Johnson? And
Speaker 1: I'm like yeah, I was like he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I figured I figured you'd be the only one out
Speaker 1: here timing people on how long they took a job.
Speaker 1: Didn't know me from anyway.
Speaker 3: He just didn't know what you looked like, just the
Speaker 3: fact that you had a Yeah.
Speaker 1: He just was like yes, by the time by me
Speaker 1: sitting there timing and jotting down numbers and you can
Speaker 1: see the whole notebook.
Speaker 4: But this was this was like way before it got hot.
Speaker 4: It can't lay and everybody timing bryceon. Remember that Liberty
Speaker 4: National was a place and that some viral video there.
Speaker 1: That came after Yes, every day basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're definitely. There are definitely people who have
Speaker 3: replicated that that idea. To put some numbers to these
Speaker 3: claims about slow play.
Speaker 1: He was averaging like two minutes he was the details.
Speaker 4: I will tell you a quick story from that pebble
Speaker 4: that comes to mind that serting capitulate encapsulates where you
Speaker 4: were in the startup day, like getting there, like the
Speaker 4: the hybrid days. We did not have like the nicest places.
Speaker 4: You said you were sleeping on like a brick rollout
Speaker 4: thing and there was no ac and it was one
Speaker 4: hundred degrees And you'd come back and you'd come back
Speaker 4: from a day of pebble and it was one hundred
Speaker 4: degrees in the house. It was like over ninety on
Speaker 4: the thermostat, and you're like, do what you can't open
Speaker 4: the windows and sort of you I wouldn't say we're
Speaker 4: rough in it, but it's not like the we're not
Speaker 4: staying at the Pebble Beach Lodge. And but you had
Speaker 4: cracked through in a way and established yourself in the
Speaker 4: community or as a golf media person. We sometraction that
Speaker 4: you had a former US Open champion and Jeff Ogilvie
Speaker 4: coming to record a podcast with you at this house
Speaker 4: spartan accommodation. So you're like in this hybrid of like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're cooking, we're making a name. Jeff Ogilvie No, like
Speaker 4: wants to pod.
Speaker 1: He's a great chat and he comes over and he
Speaker 1: like walks in the door and it's like, I'm just
Speaker 1: sitting on the ouch in this like small room. You're
Speaker 1: gonna go record the pod like over there five feet away,
Speaker 1: and he like looks around. You're like huh. He didn't
Speaker 1: say anything because he's classy and polite, but the look
Speaker 1: on his face and there was like, huh, what's going
Speaker 1: on here? This like kind of dark room was like that.
Speaker 1: That was a great That's sort of an encapsulation of
Speaker 1: where you were cracking through but also still climbing your
Speaker 1: way up. God, do you think about from his perspective,
Speaker 1: I think he had just left Cypress Point where they
Speaker 1: had done a they had done like a champion a
Speaker 1: US Open champions Reunion event has Cypress, and he came
Speaker 1: straight from there to that little one bedroom. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was like an old fisherman house in Pacific Grove. It
Speaker 1: was just a shack. I mean it. Oh that's good.
Speaker 1: That was good.
Speaker 4: Great pod too. I mean he was game. It was
Speaker 4: just like he walked in this room. I'm sitting over
Speaker 4: there in the corner. It's like dark it's like, what's
Speaker 4: going on right now?
Speaker 1: Anyways, I completely forgot about him. Come over there, all right.
Speaker 1: We could do this for literally like ten hours, I think,
Speaker 1: but I'd love love to hear maybe favorite place that
Speaker 1: you've gone, and it could be any place that you've.
Speaker 4: Gone with Friday. Good question, favorite trip, Favorite place I'll
Speaker 4: go first, all these guys think, I mean I I
Speaker 4: I feel like Northern Ireland should be in the running.
Speaker 4: There have been so many That was a massive trip
Speaker 4: for us, a big one. But when we did that explorations,
Speaker 4: I guess it was last year, March of twenty four
Speaker 4: and I, you know, just getting to play like Woryal
Speaker 4: County down Rollport Rush with you guys. You know, we're
Speaker 4: sprinting and working the whole day, trying to get some
Speaker 4: cultural stuff as well, communal stuff as well, and you know,
Speaker 4: like the whatever number one, three, eight whatever courses in
Speaker 4: the world, pretty good weather during a time when no
Speaker 4: American tourists were around, but also getting the good like
Speaker 4: good enough weather to make it not feel awful like
Speaker 4: that's that's obviously a massively memorable, memorable, memorable trip for me.
Speaker 1: All of us. Getting the the plague at that I
Speaker 1: dodged that I got. I got out. I got away
Speaker 1: from that.
Speaker 3: Some of you guys got.
Speaker 1: I was on the plane on the way home from
Speaker 1: that trip. I was like dying. It like hit me
Speaker 1: mid flight all the way you know, long flight, but
Speaker 1: it hit me like mid flight. I was dying. I
Speaker 1: had on two sweatshirts and a jacket and I was,
Speaker 1: you know, baby, if there's still a listener. But I'm
Speaker 1: like huddled up in the corner and next to me
Speaker 1: is this younger guy. It's like, hey, do you do
Speaker 1: you do the fried Egg podcast? And I'm like, I'm
Speaker 1: so sick. I couldn't talk to anybody, you know, And
Speaker 1: I'm just like yeah, and I just like, don't say anything.
Speaker 1: I huddle away. I always thought, like, I hope that
Speaker 1: guy didn't get sick.
Speaker 4: Another quick vision from a trip would be when we
Speaker 4: went to the Open. And obviously we got to place
Speaker 4: like Great Court, the Mirfield and Gulling and all these
Speaker 4: places before, but we were there for the Open and
Speaker 4: it was the first time you got to see the
Speaker 4: old course and like you walked out and like I
Speaker 4: had a couple people text me like on off the side,
Speaker 4: like hey, can you.
Speaker 1: Like you gotta you gotta get his reaction. You gotta
Speaker 1: get it, like get.
Speaker 4: It, Like I need to see his face when he
Speaker 4: finally gets to the Old Course, and uh, I did it.
Speaker 4: And like so my daughter's birthday today, you look like
Speaker 4: my daughter coming to my wife like put all these
Speaker 4: balloons out in the house and like that she had
Speaker 4: set this scene or Christmas morning and like it delivered
Speaker 4: like that. I'll never forget you walking on the first
Speaker 4: tea of the Old Course. That's that was a fun
Speaker 4: trip you just like honestly that kid kid in the
Speaker 4: candy store like lighting up. Yeah, you started immediately talking
Speaker 4: about the reversible hitting like and Stephen Britton was like,
Speaker 4: of course you would walk out the first thing you
Speaker 4: start thinking about it is a reversible you know frush.
Speaker 1: But that was a we suw kevin na practicing by himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was another trick one singular right right, all right,
Speaker 1: go ahead, guys.
Speaker 3: I mean so many great trips. I'd have to say
Speaker 3: going to Melbourne, Australia last year basically a year ago
Speaker 3: today is when I was over there was an unforgettable
Speaker 3: experience and and just something that I'll be probably talking
Speaker 3: about for for the rest of my life. The number
Speaker 3: of great courses that I saw there I was stunning,
Speaker 3: and the number of really wonderful people that I met
Speaker 3: was was impressive as well. That that kind of Melbourne
Speaker 3: golf community is really something else. So so that, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's that's number one. It's got to be. I also
Speaker 3: loved going to Maine. This is also a fairly recent trip,
Speaker 3: I guess, but it's just always something that was in
Speaker 3: the back of my mind. I'd love to go to
Speaker 3: Maine and play some of these nine holders and write
Speaker 3: about them and take some photos and sort of take
Speaker 3: people along on that experience. And specifically the day that
Speaker 3: I devoted to taking the ferry out to north Haven
Speaker 3: Island and playing a nineteen thirty two Wayne Styles course
Speaker 3: out on north Haven and then coming back on the
Speaker 3: ferry and that being kind of the day that was
Speaker 3: that was wonderful, And yeah, at some point I'm going
Speaker 3: to do full justice to that experience. I've talked about
Speaker 3: it a couple of times and written a thing or
Speaker 3: two about it, but yeah, that's that really jumps out
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: I think mine are very similar to yours. Gary, Like
Speaker 2: there's not one specific place necessarily that's like my favorite.
Speaker 2: But two trips in particular that jump to mind. One
Speaker 2: is when Garrett, Andy and I we we had hosted
Speaker 2: an event at meadow Brook and Detroit, and all three
Speaker 2: of us went to the events. We came out one morning,
Speaker 2: all like all three of the bedrooms kind of came
Speaker 2: to the same place, and we were all wearing the
Speaker 2: exact same thing, like the same Friday polo and khaki shorts.
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, well, we got to get
Speaker 2: some more stuff in the in the.
Speaker 3: Merg shop here.
Speaker 2: But then also trip we did, yeah because double authentication
Speaker 2: wrecked the world at that time. And we also like
Speaker 2: we went to Oakland Hills and saw Inverness. We woke
Speaker 2: up at like two thirty in the morning or three
Speaker 2: o'clock to drive two hours to Inverness.
Speaker 3: Franklin Hills we also saw on that trip.
Speaker 2: Yeah, awesome trip. And then the other one that sticks
Speaker 2: out would be like I haven't been credentialed at too
Speaker 2: many events, but like back in the day, I went
Speaker 2: with you guys to a couple of majors. And also
Speaker 2: the Michigan trip was when the little Will thing started
Speaker 2: on shak Would started.
Speaker 1: That was remember at that trip make sort.
Speaker 3: Of like Will pretended it was his bead is where
Speaker 3: we'll sleep in the night.
Speaker 1: Honestly one of the best bits because everybody would come
Speaker 1: up to be and Will at events and be like,
Speaker 1: Will's like the same size as you.
Speaker 3: Well, but it's brilliant because it seems like Will when
Speaker 3: you see him, like on a call like this, it
Speaker 3: seems like he could be short. You know, sure's fine,
Speaker 3: it seems like it's possible. It's not that he looks short,
Speaker 3: it just seems possible when you look at him from
Speaker 3: the shoulders up. Yeah, that guy could be short.
Speaker 2: He could be like five four I'm not you know,
Speaker 2: definitely not six' five for.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah but he's like a completely average sized human male.
Speaker 2: O man that had such a long. LIFE i, mean
Speaker 2: people were at The Ryder cup bringing it up to
Speaker 2: me it was that was good. Stuff but then the other,
Speaker 2: trip that other credential one that would be The brookline
Speaker 2: us open that it was also like a combo, trip
Speaker 2: because that's kind of how we did things back in the,
Speaker 2: Day like we tried to tie our own events to,
Speaker 2: majors which is ludicrous in the.
Speaker 1: Day looking, back we still try to do. That we're
Speaker 1: still trying to tie everything. Together it's, like, well we
Speaker 1: have to be here for. That we can do this.
Speaker 2: Too try to do, that but it's much easier to
Speaker 2: do now that we have a larger. Team but so
Speaker 2: like The, brookline LIKE i went with you guys to
Speaker 2: the first couple of days of the tournament and then
Speaker 2: had to drive To yale because we were doing an
Speaker 2: event that had been delayed for two.
Speaker 1: Years that was an insane.
Speaker 2: Situation, yeah and so god like piecing all of that,
Speaker 2: together like trying to do a major coverage drive run
Speaker 2: to a two wave event that we were, like these
Speaker 2: people had given us their. Money in twenty, twenty the
Speaker 2: world shut down and all.
Speaker 3: It was The Dog, bowl right was we were so.
Speaker 3: EXCITED i remember when that event sold out and they
Speaker 3: had a second, day and then we did it second
Speaker 3: day and that sold out.
Speaker 1: Faster it sold out. Faster it was like twenty minutes
Speaker 1: the first one and then eight minutes the second, one AND.
Speaker 3: I remember we were looking at each Other andy and
Speaker 3: we were, like holy, shit this is, working this is so.
Speaker 3: Great and THEN covid hit and we couldn't do.
Speaker 1: It, yeah it was just it was.
Speaker 3: Heartbreaking but, people like most people who signed up for, that,
Speaker 3: like you, know obviously a fair number of, people you,
Speaker 3: know since the event didn't, happen you, know want it
Speaker 3: would want to reach that would be a reasonable. Thing
Speaker 3: almost almost everybody stuck with, it, Right like a lot
Speaker 3: of people stuck with it and just waited until the event.
Speaker 3: Happened and that was like one of the first indications
Speaker 3: that the community around this company is is really pretty.
Speaker 3: Special and and just the fact that they stuck with they.
Speaker 3: Stayed they signed up in twenty, twenty did the event
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, two and a lot of people who signed,
Speaker 3: up you know that in that initial wave finally got
Speaker 3: the product two years later and they were fine with.
Speaker 3: It that's.
Speaker 2: Amazing and they only got like half the, product which
Speaker 2: is the craziest part because we were only able to
Speaker 2: do we could only have a maximum of one hundred
Speaker 2: people on property at a time Because yale was still
Speaker 2: extremely strict with their. Rules So i'd be, like if
Speaker 2: you're in the first, wave like you need to be
Speaker 2: off the site by one o'clock because these guys are
Speaker 2: coming in and they're like and, so but not only
Speaker 2: the people coming to the, event but Like, peter who
Speaker 2: is THE gm Of yale like an amazing guy to
Speaker 2: work with and he's like his communication throughout the whole
Speaker 2: process was, great and just like getting to know these
Speaker 2: people throughout the years and their dedication on all ends was.
Speaker 1: Amazing what are the crazier things about that event was
Speaker 1: the period of time when nobody was working At yale
Speaker 1: DURING covid because they had no superintendent and no general,
Speaker 1: manager and people would ask, like what's going on with?
Speaker 1: This and our response would, be there's nobody there to talk,
Speaker 1: to so we don't, know we don't. Know we will,
Speaker 1: refund we will refund your money if you'd. Like we
Speaker 1: plan to have an event as soon as it is
Speaker 1: it as there are people that work. There BUT i,
Speaker 1: mean it was that was a crazy. One, WELL i
Speaker 1: was going to bring up the trip we. MADE i
Speaker 1: picked you up from your your job And Grand rapids
Speaker 1: and we went To Grand, Rapids, michigan d and we
Speaker 1: we stopped at Stouton. BRAY i remember we got beers
Speaker 1: at a bar that had the auction. Prices it was
Speaker 1: like the stock market of beers In. Kalamazoo this is.
Speaker 1: Great what was that?
Speaker 2: Called, yeah not very crashed every hour and beer was really.
Speaker 2: Cheap it was amazing and.
Speaker 1: Uh and then we went to Sto we Played Stoton
Speaker 1: bray in the, morning and then we went to.
Speaker 2: The.
Speaker 1: Mines was it? Yeah and then so it was thirty
Speaker 1: six On, saturday and then On sunday we had thirty
Speaker 1: six again and it was it Was pilgrim's run To
Speaker 1: Diamond springs and all this we were droning everywhere we're.
Speaker 1: Going So I'M i THINK i was carrying around the
Speaker 1: heavy the big, drone the one That will uses now
Speaker 1: The phantom. Four we're A phanom. Three it was a
Speaker 1: big backpack and we were and we uh we played thirty.
Speaker 1: Six i'm effectively double bagging with the with the with
Speaker 1: the uh the. Thing and it was While tiger was
Speaker 1: winning The Tour. Championship so we were walking up like
Speaker 1: the closing stretch Of Diamond. Springs me And will are
Speaker 1: just like huddled around a phone Watching tiger win The
Speaker 1: Tour championship and THEN i you, know we, fly we
Speaker 1: fly the. Drone that, Night will's cooking on the newsletter
Speaker 1: and driving home and then he's going to work the.
Speaker 1: Morning so it just like pure startup, hustle like we
Speaker 1: get away where we just we shot four. Courses we
Speaker 1: we you, Know will's writing the newsletter all the way
Speaker 1: back in between, courses we're talking about like fuddy tweets
Speaker 1: that we could send from The friday. Account, uh just
Speaker 1: like encapsulated startup. HUSTLE i feel LIKE i think.
Speaker 2: That was Also i've been dating my now wife for
Speaker 2: like six or eight months at this, point and Like
Speaker 2: andy AND i had probably seen each other in person
Speaker 2: like two or three, Times like it was not like
Speaker 2: we knew each other really. Well we like we worked
Speaker 2: together after my day. Job BUT i was, like, Yeah
Speaker 2: i'm just gonna go out for a weekend trip With,
Speaker 2: andy and she was AND i, like we really we
Speaker 2: split a hotel. Room we split a hotel. Room and
Speaker 2: that was also WHEN i, learned LIKE i learned some
Speaker 2: quirks About Andy. Johnson like we we finished the first
Speaker 2: day and like we didn't have a hotel room, booked
Speaker 2: and that gave me so much. Anxiety And he's, like,
Speaker 2: oh we'll find a. Place, yeah it, all it all
Speaker 2: works out in the.
Speaker 3: End BUT i was just what IF i get my
Speaker 3: help INTO i remember one Time cameron AND i were
Speaker 3: driving From denver To North, Platte, nebraska which we had already,
Speaker 3: uh which we already, mentioned and we didn't have a
Speaker 3: hotel and we we Called andy and we were, like
Speaker 3: we don't have a. Hotel andy was, like, oh no,
Speaker 3: Problem i'll get you, one and he like called ahead
Speaker 3: and we had hotel rooms that. Night but that is
Speaker 3: that that that is a different way of operating than
Speaker 3: THAN i had been familiar with.
Speaker 1: Before that's we've been, Better we've got. Better we definitely had.
Speaker 2: Apart, YEAH i think the more YOU i would also
Speaker 2: had like had traveled at that. Point so it was,
Speaker 2: like when you're not in the travel, world you don't
Speaker 2: know how easy it is that find hotels in certain.
Speaker 2: Places but, actually the first TIME i Met brendan at
Speaker 2: the twenty Nineteen, Masters andy booked my flight DOWN i
Speaker 2: think like four days ahead of time BECAUSE i didn't
Speaker 2: know IF i was, going BUT i had taken a
Speaker 2: full week off of work SO i could go. DOWN
Speaker 2: i was, LIKE i HOPEFULLY i am, going but everything
Speaker 2: always works.
Speaker 1: Out it's he, stated The Bixby, house The Original.
Speaker 3: BOYS i remember WHEN i loved that.
Speaker 1: HOUSE i remember at landed In chicago for The Ryder
Speaker 1: cup At Whistling.
Speaker 4: STREETS i guess it would have been twenty twenty one and,
Speaker 4: eighties like we've GOTTEN rv and you're driving by the,
Speaker 4: way you got to go pick it.
Speaker 1: Up AND i was like, WHAT i.
Speaker 4: DON'T i Don't i'm not driving this. THING i don't
Speaker 4: want to be. RESPONSIBLE i don't. Drive i've never driven
Speaker 4: anything over like AN sguv or. Minivan, like, no you're.
Speaker 4: DRIVING i was like, no, no And will AND i
Speaker 4: went and picked it.
Speaker 1: Up and.
Speaker 4: The owner was obviously a very interesting character because he
Speaker 4: owns ON rv and uh and, uh you got it
Speaker 4: off some Like airbnb for. RV's i don't know why
Speaker 4: you you went down this rabbit, hole but you were
Speaker 4: an R v boy that. Week BUT i had to drive.
Speaker 4: It and then we're on like the, whatever the beltway
Speaker 4: Around chicago and rush hour and.
Speaker 1: Like this thing's. Bouncing i'm, like Oh, god just get
Speaker 1: us To. Wisconsin so that ended up being a great set,
Speaker 1: up big thing again To Pine, hills the country, club
Speaker 1: the best course of the. Best, yeah and they let
Speaker 1: us park in their parking lot and they kept the
Speaker 1: locker room door open for us that week so we
Speaker 1: could use the bathroom and shower or whatever we. Needed
Speaker 1: it's very.
Speaker 4: Nice we went in the one morning for breakfast or
Speaker 4: like to sit, down and there Was Michael jordan's who
Speaker 4: goes all The ryder, cups and mj was, there you,
Speaker 4: know playing a recreational.
Speaker 2: Run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, god that place is. AWESOME i feel like a
Speaker 1: full time event.
Speaker 3: There we're we're reminiscing about the startup days fondly, here
Speaker 3: but we are we're a different kind of company. Now
Speaker 3: we have a lot more colleagues than we used to
Speaker 3: and they are very professional and it has kind of you,
Speaker 3: know streamlined us and organized us in a way that
Speaker 3: we just weren't capable of and a few years. Ago
Speaker 3: And i'm very great for. That it's although although you
Speaker 3: kind of miss those days when you would when you
Speaker 3: would just kind of slap together things at the last
Speaker 3: minute and and do everything. Yourself you, know there's there's
Speaker 3: part of you that misses. That but we're we're definitely
Speaker 3: in a better place, now ye where we can do
Speaker 3: so much, more so much more, efficiently because of because
Speaker 3: of all the people that we work with that we've
Speaker 3: been able to bring on in the past couple of
Speaker 3: years who have just frankly been better at a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff than we.
Speaker 2: Are.
Speaker 1: YEP i hope this pod was. Listenable it was just
Speaker 1: us reminiscent. HERE i don't know if anybody asked for,
Speaker 1: this but this is what you got. Today big thank
Speaker 1: you to everybody who has, listened who has done anything
Speaker 1: in support of Frieda, egg whether it's even just tell
Speaker 1: a friend about about what we. Do this all wouldn't
Speaker 1: be possible, without you, know the people on our. Team
Speaker 1: but more, IMPORTANTLY i always say this at, events is
Speaker 1: like if nobody ever listened or, read we wouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1: This AND I i'm a Huge i'm just eternally grateful
Speaker 1: for everybody that's listened read for the years and and
Speaker 1: made it possible for us to build this great. Team
Speaker 1: And i'm really really excited about about the next ten
Speaker 1: years and you, know us continuing to push ourselves to
Speaker 1: produce better and better stuff for you guys and and
Speaker 1: tell more stories authentically and and you, know kind of
Speaker 1: in our. Way SO i appreciate. Everybody the last twenty
Speaker 1: four hours has been just, say you, know kind of
Speaker 1: pinch me moment of thinking about what what the last
Speaker 1: ten years have. Been and thank you guys on this
Speaker 1: podcast and everybody on our team for all the hard
Speaker 1: work over the, years it wouldn't have been you. KNOW
Speaker 1: i think that the best THING i can say about
Speaker 1: our staff is THAT i never wonder if anybody's not
Speaker 1: working hard and AND i think that's the number one
Speaker 1: thing you don't. HAVE i don't have to. MIND i
Speaker 1: never had to micromanage anybody and never have really doubted
Speaker 1: what people are. Doing and that's the dream as somebody
Speaker 1: who runs a. Company so thank you, everybody and uh
Speaker 1: we'll be back next. Week and uh big thanks TO.
Speaker 1: Pj big editing day FOR. Pj another another another important
Speaker 1: hire over the. Years but thank you to, everybody and
Speaker 1: we'll be back next week with WE i you, know
Speaker 1: we have ten year. Merchandise we did the original. Run
Speaker 1: we did a run on. Original our FIRST t shirt
Speaker 1: is A Sukumba Berry watt design with an. Angles it's
Speaker 1: modeled after the fourth hole At woking is the whole
Speaker 1: design on. IT i love THAT t. SHIRT i ordered
Speaker 1: myself a new. ONE i have one of the. Originals
Speaker 1: it's free worn out at this. Point and then we
Speaker 1: have ten year hats which are just Like Friday established twenty.
Speaker 1: Fifteen if you want to get in the celebration, mood
Speaker 1: but thank you, everybody and thank you guys for jumping
Speaker 1: on and chatting with.
Speaker 2: Us