Speaker 1: And so the next day we told all the troops
Speaker 1: we're going to name the company GoDaddy dot com. And
Speaker 1: they go, that's a terrible dame. Why would you ever
Speaker 1: name a company that you know, we hate it? You
Speaker 1: know so well, the deal was, we never found the
Speaker 1: better name, and it's stuck. Yeah, And that was the
Speaker 1: extent of my market research. Hi, my name is Bob Parsons,
Speaker 1: and I'm here to tell you I'm the CEO of
Speaker 1: PxC dot com and I want to remind you that
Speaker 1: PxC nobody makes golf clubs the way we do. Harrian.
Speaker 2: Hi everybody, and welcome to your favorite podcast and mine,
Speaker 2: Off the Beat. This is your host, Brian Baumgartner. Today
Speaker 2: we're gonna go way off the beat. Even for Off
Speaker 2: the Beat, We're going off the beat outside of our
Speaker 2: usual wheelhouse of factors and athletes. Today I am speaking
Speaker 2: to an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and well, my good buddy,
Speaker 2: Bob Parsons. If you don't know Bob, Bob is many
Speaker 2: many things. He's a great golfer, a decorated Vietnam veteran,
Speaker 2: a motorcycle daddy, and yes he is a psychedelic crusader.
Speaker 2: Oh and by the way, the founder of some little
Speaker 2: companies you may have heard of, like Go Daddy and
Speaker 2: p XG. Now Bob is well, Bob is literally one
Speaker 2: in a billion because he's he's the first billionaire that
Speaker 2: we've had here on the podcast. Not not that anyone's counting,
Speaker 2: because I don't I don't think I could count that high. Yes,
Speaker 2: you're gonna love Bob. He's a riot, he is sharp
Speaker 2: as attack, and I think this conversation is going to
Speaker 2: be in the wild sixths sas category with maybe just
Speaker 2: a hint of trouble. But just in case, buckle up.
Speaker 2: Everybody here is Bob Parsons. Bubble and Squeak. I love
Speaker 2: it Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: Bubble and Squeak.
Speaker 2: I cook it every month, left over from the ninety before.
Speaker 1: Hi, Bob, how are you doing there? Buddy? All right?
Speaker 1: How are you good? Good? I'm you know, I've been
Speaker 1: getting ready for this podcast.
Speaker 2: Have you have you done so much work?
Speaker 1: Well? No, no, I haven't done any fucking work. But
Speaker 1: what I've what I've done is I've drank some rum okay,
Speaker 1: and I had some potato chips. And that gives me
Speaker 1: the voice of an angel.
Speaker 2: You're You're like me, Bob. You and I both we
Speaker 2: have the voice of an angel. How how have you been?
Speaker 2: Are you doing well?
Speaker 1: Bryan? If I was any better, i'd be you baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's about right. That's kind of what I think
Speaker 2: about when I think about you, just almost like me.
Speaker 1: There you go, there you go.
Speaker 2: I actually did do some work in preparing for this
Speaker 2: podcast on you. I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about your growing up. You have said over time that
Speaker 2: you grew up your parents were gamblers. Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? They were, and they weren't very good.
Speaker 2: At what what What kind of impact did that have
Speaker 2: on you? Were you aware at the time that they
Speaker 2: were gambling and not very good at it?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, yeah I was. I was, well, you know,
Speaker 1: at the time, I wasn't really aware of how very
Speaker 1: bad at it they were, but you know, I knew
Speaker 1: that knew they were gamblers. Uh Like you know, my mother,
Speaker 1: for example, I learned how to read fraction. I learned
Speaker 1: how to you know, learned about fractions from her teaching
Speaker 1: me how to read the racing form, you know, And
Speaker 1: I remember, as clear as it was yesterday, her showing
Speaker 1: me that eighth is really a bigger number than the sixteenth.
Speaker 2: Right, right, that's true. Do you think that that in
Speaker 2: any way later in life is what helped your decision
Speaker 2: to get into accounting and finance. Is there a correlation?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: I you know, I would like to say there was,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't. I mean, the way I got to
Speaker 1: be into accounting was I got to go to the
Speaker 1: University of Baltimore by a program they offered to veterans.
Speaker 1: Now keep in mind, I failed the fifth grade and
Speaker 1: I wasn't much better any other year. You know. The
Speaker 1: only reason I graduated high schools because I joined the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps was going to Vietnam, and my teachers took
Speaker 1: pity on me. Right, So, I mean, my grades were
Speaker 1: nothing to really write home about. So I was working
Speaker 1: as a laborer at a steel mill, and I've seen
Speaker 1: this at the University of Baltimore did for veterans. They said, look, you,
Speaker 1: you know, as long as you've graduated or have a
Speaker 1: GED and if you don't have a g D, we'll
Speaker 1: help you get one. Right, you know, you know that's
Speaker 1: all you need. Your grades don't matter, you don't have
Speaker 1: to take any entrance exams, and you go on to
Speaker 1: GI Bill Well to me, that's what I did. So
Speaker 1: I went over. I went over there and I went
Speaker 1: into the registrar's office and said, you know, I want
Speaker 1: to go to college, and he goes, well, what do
Speaker 1: you want to major in? And I didn't even know
Speaker 1: you needed a major to go to Nobody in my
Speaker 1: family ever went to college. I just thought you went
Speaker 1: to college, right, So I then went He says, you
Speaker 1: go see his counselor. While I went to see this guy,
Speaker 1: and there was a line down the hall, ran another
Speaker 1: hall around. If i'd have waited for this guy still
Speaker 1: be waiting to see him, right. So I went back
Speaker 1: and I said, I said to the guy at a registrar,
Speaker 1: I said, anyway, I can pick my major, and goes sure,
Speaker 1: here's a book of majors. I opened it up. First
Speaker 1: major in the book was accounting, and I asked him
Speaker 1: I said, uh, what is this? And he goes, what's
Speaker 1: the county? He goes, well, are you good at Are
Speaker 1: you good at math? I said yeah, reasonably, I guess,
Speaker 1: goes anything and he goes, I have you interested in
Speaker 1: a business? Said I am, and he goes, well, probably
Speaker 1: should take accounting. So I did, and luckily it was
Speaker 1: a fortuitous choice because I loved it, right, and and
Speaker 1: I graduated Magna cumb claude with a degree in accounting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let me ask you, so, why do you
Speaker 2: think that you were such a bad Was it? Was
Speaker 2: it about applying yourself?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: Why were you such a bad student? Almost failed the
Speaker 2: fifth grade, barely graduate from high school? And then you
Speaker 2: know you suddenly you're Magna cumbloude from UNI of Baltimore
Speaker 2: in accounting, Like what what was that? What was the change?
Speaker 1: Well, a couple of things. First of all, you know,
Speaker 1: if I was a kid in school today, I'd be
Speaker 1: pumped full riddling. That's first thing. Right. They used to
Speaker 1: give me these yellow it's yellow number two Taykonda Rogan
Speaker 1: pencils and I would chew them down, baby, inside an hour.
Speaker 1: And then I have yellow paint all over my face.
Speaker 1: I look like a rapid little beast, you know. And
Speaker 1: then and then that stuff at home, things were like nuts.
Speaker 1: So you know, it didn't make for me really focusing
Speaker 1: on school. So I mean I just I managed to
Speaker 1: squeak by. Now the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps focused
Speaker 1: me and made all the difference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I graduated and if you can't, you
Speaker 2: can't see Bob right now, but he's wearing a shirt
Speaker 2: on right now. This says US Marines attitude is everything.
Speaker 2: I know. You're great love for the people, both passed
Speaker 2: in service and and current service members. Your decision to
Speaker 2: join was this because you didn't know what else to do?
Speaker 2: Or did you have a particular passion and knew you
Speaker 2: wanted to pursue that? In high school?
Speaker 1: Very few things have I done because I have a
Speaker 1: particular passion. I'll tell you that right now. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've developed that after the fact. But in my senior
Speaker 1: year I was I discovered alcohol and the opposite sex,
Speaker 1: and you know that really doesn't make you know, that
Speaker 1: doesn't really get you ready for the teens list. So
Speaker 1: so I was not doing well and I didn't think
Speaker 1: I would even have enough grades to graduate. So I
Speaker 1: had two guys come to me after gym class one
Speaker 1: day and they asked me to say, what do you know,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do after you graduate? I said,
Speaker 1: I'll probably still be here, and I'll still be here.
Speaker 1: I don't think I want to graduate, yea, So they said,
Speaker 1: why don't you you want to go with us? We're
Speaker 1: going to go talk to the Marine Corps recruiter. All
Speaker 1: three of us wound up joining And now this is
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, and in nineteen sixty eight, and
Speaker 1: then in nineteen sixty nine. I'll give you by comparison
Speaker 1: to war in Afghanistan, the casualty rate there one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty a week, both sides killed them wounded. All right,
Speaker 1: one is too many. I'll tell you that right now.
Speaker 1: When I listed in the Marine Corps, that number was
Speaker 1: thirty two thousand, seven hundred a week. Yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: we didn't know. We didn't know that we were off
Speaker 1: to have an adventure see foreign lands. So anyhow, when
Speaker 1: I went ahead and managed to get accepted into the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps, I showed my teachers my orders a report
Speaker 1: to boot camp that August, and they all passed me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lot of extra credit.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: We used to get extra credit for I don't know,
Speaker 2: reading a book or something. You got extra credit by
Speaker 2: joining the Marine Corps. Wounded in Action while serving in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: Recipient of the Combat Action Ribbon, Vietnam Gallantry Cross and
Speaker 2: the Purple Heart. Is this the hardest thing you ever did?
Speaker 1: You know, and in many respects I would say, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it is. You know, being in in combat
Speaker 1: is is very painful. The stuff you have to carry
Speaker 1: is you know, very awkward and very heavy, which translates
Speaker 1: to pain, and you get very little sleep to no sleep.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just I mean it is. It is
Speaker 1: every aspect of it's uncomfortable. I remember laying in those
Speaker 1: rice patties at night with mosquitoes even as fite, even
Speaker 1: though we you know, we had repellent chewing the shit
Speaker 1: out of me. And then it's grizzly. I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is grizzly, beyond your imagination. So it is not
Speaker 1: a happy thing, that's for damn sure. But that's being
Speaker 1: in combat.
Speaker 2: Is it the thing that you're most proud of in
Speaker 2: your life?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think so, I think so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you you come back. You were injured in action? Now,
Speaker 2: is that is that why you left?
Speaker 1: No? No, no, actually actually actually in the Army Navian
Speaker 1: Air Force, if you were wounded you could opt out
Speaker 1: of combat in the Marine Corps three times. Of course.
Speaker 1: It is a fucking course, it is, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, the Army Davian Air Force, our tour was
Speaker 1: twelve months Marine Corps thirteen months. Ow fucking course, it
Speaker 1: is right, oh Jesus Christ. So so any anyhow, I
Speaker 1: I I what happened with me? Where I was walking
Speaker 1: on a point team one night and I was walking
Speaker 1: second to the point man, a real high stepping guy.
Speaker 1: He stepped over a tripwire. I mean he didn't see it.
Speaker 1: It was pitch dark. He was just lucky. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not that high stepper. I hit the trip wire was
Speaker 1: attached to a North Vietnamese hand grenade, which is best
Speaker 1: I can determine. That thing blew and I mean it
Speaker 1: tore up my legs and my left EBow, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a life threatening wound. So I was in the
Speaker 1: hospital in Japan, was there recuperating for a couple of months.
Speaker 1: And then when I healed up, when I was close
Speaker 1: to healing up, I got orders back to the bush.
Speaker 1: Baby God, yeah, my god. So on my way back
Speaker 1: through a crazy series of events, get ready for this,
Speaker 1: get ready for this, yere put the sea pelowin.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: I wound up in Marine Corps intelligence because my grades
Speaker 1: and so forth, I was exactly the kind of guy
Speaker 1: that was wow, and I was stationed on Okinawa and
Speaker 1: and and what happened was I ran into a guy
Speaker 1: on my last night there. Who I saved this guy's
Speaker 1: life the first night in the bush helicopter with a
Speaker 1: he was he was stunned from this guy being injured.
Speaker 1: I mean, and and a matter of fact, chopper was
Speaker 1: going to land on him. I've seen it. I ran push, push,
Speaker 1: push push the chopper missus boats. We tripped over a
Speaker 1: rice patty dyke in to that ship. But I saved
Speaker 1: his ass and mine too, right. So uh, he was
Speaker 1: wounded a couple of weeks later, and that was his
Speaker 1: third wound. So he was stationed in intelligence and in Okinawa.
Speaker 1: And I ran into him and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: you saved my life. I get your station here, And
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, okay, you know you hear so much
Speaker 1: bullshit in the military. Right, So when I fell out
Speaker 1: from my flight to Vietnam to go back to the
Speaker 1: rightful company, I had order of station to meet Aaron
Speaker 1: and okaw, we got it done. So, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how that happened. It was just the right time, baby.
Speaker 2: Be in the right right place at the right time.
Speaker 2: How how many years did you serve two well two.
Speaker 2: Right you left. You talked about going to the University
Speaker 2: of Baltimore and finding something that you were really good
Speaker 2: in numbers and accounting and business. Your first business was
Speaker 2: selling a home accounting program, money Counts. Now this is
Speaker 2: before there were computers at home.
Speaker 1: Well this is this is right at the beginning of
Speaker 1: it up.
Speaker 2: Beginning of home computers. Did you use a computer with it? Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course I did.
Speaker 1: Of course I did. You know what I did? Was
Speaker 1: I developed when I was in It was nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: Keep in mindy IBM computer wasn't released until nineteen.
Speaker 2: Eighty, right, That's what I was thinking. So I was.
Speaker 1: I was working in accounting for this leasing company, Commercial
Speaker 1: Credit Leasing, and they would send me different places to
Speaker 1: just schedule the asset cities leasing companies they wanted to buy.
Speaker 1: So they sent me to Redwood City, California and company
Speaker 1: that did exotic cars. I scheduled it, and when I
Speaker 1: was done, I had twelve hours left to kill between
Speaker 1: when my flight was and the current time. So I
Speaker 1: wound up on Stanford campus and I was like bookstores.
Speaker 1: I went to a bookstore and I bought a book
Speaker 1: on programming in the Basic computer language. And I started
Speaker 1: reading it while I was waiting for the flight, and
Speaker 1: read all the salient points, and I wrote my first
Speaker 1: computer program, won a flight. And it just so happened
Speaker 1: that in my office we were owned by a company
Speaker 1: called Control Data, which was one of the first computer companies, okay,
Speaker 1: and we had a terminal, a dumb terminal looked like
Speaker 1: a teletype machine. There weren't even monitors then, and it
Speaker 1: happened to run this basic computer language. And so I
Speaker 1: finally got my program running. And then I started doing
Speaker 1: that programming all the time if I could to make
Speaker 1: my job easier. And when Apple two E was out
Speaker 1: two C was out, bought one of those. And then
Speaker 1: I bought an IBM PC, and unlike a lot of people,
Speaker 1: if I wanted it to do something, I wrote the
Speaker 1: code and I also studied the internals, and I got
Speaker 1: to be really good at it. And so when I
Speaker 1: wrote a home computer program, and in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: I decided to try selling it. That's the genesis of that.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's unbelievable, Bob. Did you get any Did you
Speaker 2: have any in the military. You didn't. There was no
Speaker 2: math or finance anything that you got there, right, this
Speaker 2: was all the University of Baltimore and your own big brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. I mean in the military, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps. I'm pretty much surprised they weren't
Speaker 1: using stone tablets. So what I got out it was
Speaker 1: all manual. Baby.
Speaker 2: Yeh, that's incredible. You sold Parsons technology to into it. Well,
Speaker 2: first off, do you think it was the idea that
Speaker 2: you had fulfilling a specific need or the way that
Speaker 2: your programs operated that made you such a big success
Speaker 2: growing it from really a small business into this multimillion
Speaker 2: dollar company.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, it was first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: I wasn't even thinking about filling a need. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about feeling a need for me for keep track
Speaker 1: of my own finances. Okay, So that's how I wrote
Speaker 1: that program called Money Counts. And it got to be
Speaker 1: good because it was the only double entry system. Everything
Speaker 1: else was single entry and you know, a little half
Speaker 1: assed and so forth back at that time, and so anyhow,
Speaker 1: so you know, first of all, it was it was
Speaker 1: pretty good. It took me three years to learn how
Speaker 1: to sell it, a lot of false starts, but I
Speaker 1: put a total of forty thousand dollars into business, and
Speaker 1: I wound up selling it for sixty four million.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a pretty good return on that investment.
Speaker 2: What's what's harder, bob making the product or getting people
Speaker 2: to buy it?
Speaker 1: I would say both. It's like it's like the angeline
Speaker 1: in the gasoline. You know what's more important?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know today it would be the
Speaker 1: engine or the electric assuming they ever fucking sell one
Speaker 1: in them. Right.
Speaker 2: You retired a few for a few years after that
Speaker 2: sixty four million dollar sale? Why why not stay retired?
Speaker 1: Well? First, you know, I like you. I like golf. Okay, Right,
Speaker 1: So I had a year where I couldn't Yeah, better,
Speaker 1: maybe a little more than a year, but I had
Speaker 1: a year where I couldn't do anything. And I mean,
Speaker 1: this agreement not to compete was I couldn't do anything, right,
Speaker 1: shine a pair of shoes, and you know they had
Speaker 1: a whole back, I'd forfeit it and so forth. It
Speaker 1: was stupid. So so any anyhow, so what I did
Speaker 1: was I started playing golf, and I moved to Arizona,
Speaker 1: and I was and you know, if you're playing every day,
Speaker 1: you know the only guys you're going to play with.
Speaker 1: Are the guys that are retired, right, I mean long retired, right,
Speaker 1: And so I mean I'm like at the time, I'm
Speaker 1: forty five years old and I'm playing with all these
Speaker 1: old men every day. And see, Brian, I got to
Speaker 1: learn certain things about him. There's a when when a
Speaker 1: guy reaches a certain age, right, he's like a super senior.
Speaker 1: He starts dressing in strange ways. You know, they look
Speaker 1: like they look like they look like flags from other countries.
Speaker 1: It's like, what the fuck? You know, for Christmas, I'm
Speaker 1: going to get you a mirror. But that's but that's
Speaker 1: what they do, right, So uh, I you know, I
Speaker 1: and at night, I wanted to be back in the game, right,
Speaker 1: So that that's why I came out of retirement.
Speaker 2: You come out of retirement and you you started this
Speaker 2: little business called go Daddy. I read that you wanted
Speaker 2: to call it Big Daddy. A warning to listeners out there,
Speaker 2: don't go to big daddy dot com. That's very, very
Speaker 2: different than go Daddy. It was formerly known as Joe
Speaker 2: Macs Industries. You do domain web hosting became the largest
Speaker 2: in the world. What was it about this company? What
Speaker 2: what did you see before anybody else saw it.
Speaker 1: Well, well here's here's you what I did. You know,
Speaker 1: when when I first started, I had I had a
Speaker 1: lot of money.
Speaker 2: I had.
Speaker 1: I had like thirty six million dollars and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, I know the Internet is going to
Speaker 1: be the thing, so I need to find a way
Speaker 1: to turn a buck on the internet. So so what
Speaker 1: I did. I hired a number of very intelligent people
Speaker 1: and we tried a bunch of different things, and what
Speaker 1: the idea was, if it didn't work, we quit doing it,
Speaker 1: and if it did, then we keep doing it. That's
Speaker 1: called a search fund. Very difficult way to make money. So,
Speaker 1: I mean, we did a number of things. None of
Speaker 1: them worked, but the only thing that gained traction was
Speaker 1: we were doing websites for people and that worked. I mean,
Speaker 1: that made money. So we had a number of people
Speaker 1: ask us, do you have a product that I could
Speaker 1: use where I could do my own website, And that
Speaker 1: was the idea that came up with the genesis of
Speaker 1: our product, website complete so people would do their own website.
Speaker 1: Passed nineteen dollars and you know that sort of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: the problem was, it was a couple of problems The
Speaker 1: first problem was there was so much noise from the
Speaker 1: dot com boom that people didn't see us right and
Speaker 1: and and the second the second thing was the name
Speaker 1: Joe Max Technology. This kind of was very forgettable. So
Speaker 1: me and my right hand person, a lady by the
Speaker 1: name of Barbara Rectorman, we went to work and to
Speaker 1: come up with a new name. And so after about
Speaker 1: three days and nights, one of us says, how about
Speaker 1: big Daddy taken? How about fat Daddy taken? And then
Speaker 1: I remember to go command from AOL used to be
Speaker 1: and type go disc go that, and I typed in
Speaker 1: go Daddy available. So Brian, we bought it as a joke.
Speaker 1: And and so the next day we told all the
Speaker 1: troops We're going to name the company GoDaddy dot com.
Speaker 1: And they go, that's a terrible fucking name. Why would
Speaker 1: you ever name a company that you know? We hate it?
Speaker 1: You know? So well, the deal was, we never found
Speaker 1: the better name, and it's stuck.
Speaker 2: It stuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that was the extent of my market research.
Speaker 1: The name cost me nine bucks.
Speaker 2: That's smart though I never thought. I never put that
Speaker 2: connection together because it was with the with the old AOL,
Speaker 2: which of course everybody had, and you know, initially, I
Speaker 2: mean that was my first email account and access to
Speaker 2: the internet, of course was AOL that's very very smart.
Speaker 2: Not surprisingly, that business was very successful. You get into
Speaker 2: Go Daddy because you see the Internet as a possibility
Speaker 2: and you want to make money. Now, my impression is
Speaker 2: that after that, you decided to do things that you
Speaker 2: wanted to do, things that were passion projects of you,
Speaker 2: like motorcycles. You like to ride motorcycles, right, Bob, I do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So now you own motorcycle dealerships because that gives you joy.
Speaker 2: Is that an accurate statement? You started doing work for
Speaker 2: things that bring you joy?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you know I did. Yeah, and then and
Speaker 1: then they eventually, uh after I got into the business,
Speaker 1: said no longer brought me joy, okay, And then and
Speaker 1: then we had to make it work. Now motorcycles. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know what what I'm telling you, My dad told me, Brian,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I mean, when I started
Speaker 1: my first business, he said, it is always going to
Speaker 1: seem to you like the other guy's business is easier,
Speaker 1: he says, don't you ever believe it. They're all tough.
Speaker 1: And so I found that out about motorcycles. It took
Speaker 1: me a couple of years to figure out how to
Speaker 1: do it. Now we know how to do it. I
Speaker 1: owned seven of them, right, But I have to tell
Speaker 1: you before I shift away from going daddy, I have
Speaker 1: a Twitter story.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So here I am. This is This
Speaker 2: is in.
Speaker 1: I'd say about two thousand and six to thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: I mean, I am selling a couple of three domain names,
Speaker 1: the second right, and we got all these people that
Speaker 1: are interested in Twitter handles, and we got this search
Speaker 1: algorithm that is looking stuff up and so forth. So
Speaker 1: I get the idea that man would be just as
Speaker 1: easy for us to get a Twitter handle and sell
Speaker 1: it for you know, offer it for whatever they you know,
Speaker 1: you know we ought to paying then pay Twitter half
Speaker 1: of that. And I mean they rack up a stack
Speaker 1: of cash because they're giving them away now for nothing,
Speaker 1: right right, So, and I mean, I mean it's made them,
Speaker 1: made them millions. So I go to them. We go
Speaker 1: to them and talk to them and we tell them this.
Speaker 1: You know what they told us. We don't care about revenue,
Speaker 1: really yeah, and that's what our men, Eli Musk found out.
Speaker 1: You know, the fucking idiots are running the aside, And
Speaker 1: you know, I was like, well, have you told your
Speaker 1: bank set? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did you do it anyway?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Fuck? No?
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, No, why why why would I do
Speaker 3: that for them if they're not gonna even if they
Speaker 3: don't want it, right christ And knowing them, they'd have
Speaker 3: probably sued me to stop me.
Speaker 2: Right to not to not allow them to make money.
Speaker 2: They would have sued you. That's crazy. I thought you
Speaker 2: were going to tell me you were about to take
Speaker 2: over Twitter. That's what I thought was going to be
Speaker 2: the big news. But no, you just tried to No, no,
Speaker 2: there's no way. I mean to me, I would be
Speaker 2: like a grand to have symphilis, motorcycles, golf. Now you
Speaker 2: said it doesn't give you Golf still gives you joy,
Speaker 2: right yeah, okay, but not motorcycles. Motorcycles.
Speaker 1: Motorcycles do too. I love them, I mean I just
Speaker 1: love them, right yeah.
Speaker 2: But but not the business of it.
Speaker 1: Well no, I love the business of it because now
Speaker 1: now I know it. But what I'm telling you is
Speaker 1: everything is difficult, and so it took us. Took us
Speaker 1: quite a while to figure out how to make money
Speaker 1: with a motorcycle dealership. Now that we know I love
Speaker 1: running it, take care of my customers like nobody else does,
Speaker 1: and it is it is a blast.
Speaker 2: Uh you speak of golf. You bought one of my
Speaker 2: favorite golf courses in the world. It's Goottsdale National Golf
Speaker 2: Course and the founder, the grand Poobah of my favorite
Speaker 2: golf company, p x G Parsons Extreme Golf, which well,
Speaker 2: does it better than anybody. Has It made you fall
Speaker 2: more in love with the game or just the business?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You know, you know PHG. Yeah, I love the company.
Speaker 1: I love the operation, and we work all the time
Speaker 1: on figuring out the best ways to do it. No
Speaker 1: company has customer service like we do. And I believe
Speaker 1: that our clubs are the finest clubs made in the industry.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, you are putting your money where your mouth is,
Speaker 2: unlike anything that has ever been done in the golf
Speaker 2: world before. You just had the new Gen six clubs
Speaker 2: come out and you are so caught. I love this
Speaker 2: both about you and the company. You are so confident
Speaker 2: that your clubs are the best of the business that
Speaker 2: you have a contest now this August where you are
Speaker 2: allowing people to come in hit their own drivers and
Speaker 2: then hit yours and if their's wins, you give them cash, right.
Speaker 1: Bucks, Yeah, give them hundred bucks. Put on a master card.
Speaker 2: Done, MasterCard, one hundred bucks. If their own driver that
Speaker 2: they own and are used to hitting outperforms yours. You're
Speaker 2: that confident now. I was told by one of our
Speaker 2: good mutual friends. You casually did this competition and out
Speaker 2: of fifty eight times people came in to try to
Speaker 2: get clubs or we're trying out clubs. Out of fifty
Speaker 2: eight times, fifty five your driver won. Why do you
Speaker 2: think that this gen six? What do you think you
Speaker 2: have found now that even though they were great before,
Speaker 2: what have you found now that has made them even better?
Speaker 1: Okay, well, here's what I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you again. We make the finest equipment in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the first time. Okay, hold that in your mind. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right. The second thing, we have tested it against everything.
Speaker 1: We're the tall hal get the crows, brother, that's the trunk. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the deal is it is not only the longest,
Speaker 1: the most forgiving, and it's the most accurate. Right, And
Speaker 1: so you know the we won fifty five out of
Speaker 1: fifty eight times, and we lost those three due to flukes.
Speaker 1: I can assure you.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, you you you have said in terms of
Speaker 2: putting your money where your mouth is, that you can't
Speaker 2: win a farting contest unless you're willing to shit your pants.
Speaker 2: And you you are. This is what I was told.
Speaker 2: And you're you're, you're, you're entering this farting contest and
Speaker 2: you're going against everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, you know I am, but you
Speaker 1: know this particular farting contest. It's like like the tables
Speaker 1: in Vegas. You know, I know I'm gonna win, right right,
Speaker 1: So so so bring them on and then the worst
Speaker 1: they'll do is they'll get to hit a really good driver.
Speaker 2: Right. I love that. I love that you're doing this.
Speaker 2: By the way, you famously there's no one more confident
Speaker 2: than you. But here's the other thing. You make great
Speaker 2: products that you don't. You don't have to worry about
Speaker 2: your confidence because it always works, right Bob. Well, there
Speaker 2: you go. You're you're at the ten year mark with
Speaker 2: PXG and one of the things that you all do
Speaker 2: you wait to release I mean ten years and this
Speaker 2: is the sixth generation. It feels to me like all
Speaker 2: the other golf companies come out with a new club
Speaker 2: every six weeks or so, but you really take the
Speaker 2: time and you and I have talked about this before,
Speaker 2: where you really work on and research, do tons of
Speaker 2: testing before you let anything go out to the market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. That's true.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like and there's a lot of jealousy in the industry,
Speaker 1: you know, I'll tell you that, Like we we have
Speaker 1: a few competitors. One competitor for sure, who who I
Speaker 1: won't name, your spreading ship lies about our equipment, you know,
Speaker 1: because we have the thinnest face in golf and we
Speaker 1: have an explosive core. Uh they say, well, that makes
Speaker 1: it very inaccurate, you know, front the back and left,
Speaker 1: the right and so forth. Actually, are golf dot Com tested,
Speaker 1: I mean every new club this year, are our irons
Speaker 1: are the most accurate?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I mean so that did wrong? Whe that?
Speaker 2: And uh so?
Speaker 1: So anyhow, I mean, you know, like, for example, you
Speaker 1: can cut a competitors club open and it looks like
Speaker 1: a dumpster inside. All right, Yeah, you know, you cut
Speaker 1: ours open and it looks like a Marine Corps drill team.
Speaker 1: I mean, everything is perfect. So, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just the difference in what we're doing.
Speaker 2: I have to talk to you about psychedelics, Bob. I
Speaker 2: know when you returned from combat you suffered from PTSD.
Speaker 2: First off, if you would talk to me a little
Speaker 2: bit about your own experience and how psychedelics has helped you.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what happened before I went to Vietnam. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a pretty rough childhood, so I was carrying
Speaker 1: some of that. But I was still a pretty happy guy.
Speaker 1: Loved going places, meeting people, all those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: But after Vietnam, the Bob that came back was very
Speaker 1: different from the Bob that left. Bob that came back.
Speaker 1: People would describe me as very intense. I had a
Speaker 1: flash temper. I didn't feel like I got belonged no
Speaker 1: matter where I was at. So I didn't want to
Speaker 1: mostly be with other people. Uh, you know, isolation was
Speaker 1: you know something that that I did, and I was.
Speaker 1: I was a pretty focused guy. Now, you know the
Speaker 1: good side of all that is the way I dealt
Speaker 1: with my PTSD. I buried myself in my work and
Speaker 1: often I think if I hadn't had PTSD, would I've
Speaker 1: been so successful? Yeah, I don't know for sure, I'd
Speaker 1: have been a lot happier, for sure. And the other
Speaker 1: thing is I cry every now and then, always when
Speaker 1: I was alone. I mean, a lot of depression goes
Speaker 1: with that. And so for sure cost me my first
Speaker 1: two marriages. I mean, you know, both of them hungowners.
Speaker 1: God bless them. They both hung on as long as
Speaker 1: they could. And then finally they put a boot in
Speaker 1: my ass and send me back. And I got cut
Speaker 1: from the team twice. And then when I met my
Speaker 1: third wife, Renee Renee, Yeah, she turned out to be
Speaker 1: it's She's just a wonderful, wonderful person. It's the best
Speaker 1: thing that ever happened to me. So she hung in
Speaker 1: with me. In nineteen eighteen, I read Michael Collins book
Speaker 1: called How to Change Your Mind, and it's all about
Speaker 1: it's a treatise one the Bible, one's psychedelics. And so
Speaker 1: I went to my wife and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like to try this, maybe it'll help me. Because
Speaker 1: what happened was, over the years, PTSD didn't get better,
Speaker 1: got worse. And so she had me hooked up with
Speaker 1: a couple of guides in two weeks, and I met
Speaker 1: with them and on the first day I took ayahuasca,
Speaker 1: and you know, there was a lot of talk, a
Speaker 1: lot of exchange, you know, the stuff that I was
Speaker 1: dealing with and so forth. And at the end of
Speaker 1: that a lot of tears, a lot of tears. And
Speaker 1: at the end of that, I still remember it was
Speaker 1: psilocybin or magic mushrooms. God said to me, I swear
Speaker 1: to Christ, find this is true. I mean, I says,
Speaker 1: no bullshit here. And I realized that it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just the same as putting your hand on the
Speaker 1: Bible when somebody talks to you. Right. So first he
Speaker 1: made this this pot of tea, and he goes his
Speaker 1: tea holds three cups and he goes, I really made
Speaker 1: it strong. You're only going to need one cup, Brian.
Speaker 1: I drank all three cups and I ate the tea. Bags.
Speaker 1: Oh brother, I was on the roof. So so we
Speaker 1: took him to revisited, relived a lot of stuff, and uh.
Speaker 1: The next day I took off and he said, you
Speaker 1: don't need a break, baby, And so I I taken
Speaker 1: go play golf with Renee and we played and we
Speaker 1: played nine holes and when I went out, it was
Speaker 1: like the trees knew I was there, you know, and
Speaker 1: and you know, the leaves they all like, hey, Bob, hey,
Speaker 1: tell buddy. So I got to the green and the
Speaker 1: greens told me where the butt? Okay, they told me
Speaker 1: hit the but but I made so many long putts
Speaker 1: I never missed. I never putted that good in my
Speaker 1: whole life. And so I went back and that was
Speaker 1: the third day. On the fourth day, it was LSD
Speaker 1: and yeah, and I mean and.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 1: That was that was pretty that was pretty well. But
Speaker 1: after I was done, you know, it's important to realize,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'd just took psychedelics for those three days,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have changed much. Psychedelics with the right guides
Speaker 1: does because you know, the therapy does the healing, the
Speaker 1: psychedelics make it possible.
Speaker 2: So the psychedelics open you up to be able to
Speaker 2: discuss and go places that you would not if you
Speaker 2: had not taken it.
Speaker 1: Is that right, exactly? And willing to accept change.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right?
Speaker 1: So after that, my wife noticed it, you know she
Speaker 1: you know, she's kept saying to me, man, you seem different.
Speaker 1: There's so much calmer and happier, and you know, willing
Speaker 1: to you know, even do some certain things, you know,
Speaker 1: And when I got back to my office, the people
Speaker 1: in the company goes, what the fuck is he out
Speaker 1: at the bob? You know, I mean this guy, I
Speaker 1: mean he is, He's complementary. He again so calm, you know,
Speaker 1: he says such nice things, you know, and I mean
Speaker 1: in the meantime, I mean before that, it was like
Speaker 1: he's the most attense person I've ever worked it, right, Christ,
Speaker 1: get him away from me. I mean even my son
Speaker 1: told his wife, he said, you know, I'm worried that
Speaker 1: my father is going to die soon. She goes, Whye,
Speaker 1: he goes, well, he keeps calling. He calls more than
Speaker 1: he ever did, and he's so nice to me. I
Speaker 1: worry that he's found out he's going to die soon.
Speaker 1: And he says change. Well, you know, I had to
Speaker 1: set him straight, and we did. But it had been
Speaker 1: forty nine years since the war and I finally came home.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's awesome. I mean, had you had experience taking
Speaker 2: these drugs recreate? I mean I don't even know. I
Speaker 2: guess that's had you had experience with psychedelics previously without.
Speaker 1: The door No, no, because you know, I believed all
Speaker 1: the standard boshit. I thought if I took LSD, I'd
Speaker 1: climb up on a roof and jump off, thinking I
Speaker 1: could fly. Well, you know that's not the case, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and so forth. So I would have never
Speaker 1: taken them. But after I read Michael's book and I
Speaker 1: understood that these things is what they're healing power was,
Speaker 1: then I said, I'm on board.
Speaker 2: It's that's incredible. I mean, I was hoping that you
Speaker 2: were going to say that, because I think that's the
Speaker 2: issue that we're dealing with right now. Right we have
Speaker 2: something that may really be able to help people, particularly veterans,
Speaker 2: people who are suffering with PTSD, either from the military
Speaker 2: or something else, but there's a stigma attached that, you know,
Speaker 2: makes people scared or or not able to use it.
Speaker 2: I have to tell you all this. I saw these numbers.
Speaker 2: This is absolutely staggering. Bob and his foundation Bob and
Speaker 2: Renee Parsons, has given over fourteen million dollars to psychedelics
Speaker 2: funding and total funding aimed at impacting PTSD. Bob one
Speaker 2: hundred over one hundred and nine million dollars. You truly
Speaker 2: are putting your money where your mouth is and and
Speaker 2: trying to help others who are dealing with the same
Speaker 2: things that you have been. I that's incredible.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I do that because I know how
Speaker 1: important it is. And I do it because I can
Speaker 1: do it. And there's a there's a there's a saying
Speaker 1: in the Bible to him who much has given, much
Speaker 1: is expected. Yeah, and so we try to take that
Speaker 1: the heart. And I know that when the day comes
Speaker 1: when we fucking wake up and that, you know, we
Speaker 1: wake up and we know that, okay, that this stuff
Speaker 1: is as important as it is. Like, for example, on
Speaker 1: the third field trials for m d m A, which
Speaker 1: we help fund of hardcore cases, somebody being treated with
Speaker 1: md m A by a trained clinician or you know,
Speaker 1: the therapists, psycho psychologists, psychiatrists, after three sessions, sixty seven
Speaker 1: percent are completely cured.
Speaker 2: Come on, is that that's incredible?
Speaker 1: Right? And and and so this is the third time.
Speaker 1: I mean, they don't ever have results like this, and
Speaker 1: they're thinking about it, so you know, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they're you know, they got their steps that they have
Speaker 1: to do and and you know, and I understand and
Speaker 1: I have no criticism of them, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of people that they got to
Speaker 1: deal with politicians and to say the least. So they're
Speaker 1: working on it. But I mean, you know something some
Speaker 1: of the crazy stuff. Crazy stuff is you know, there
Speaker 1: was there was an an initiative up in front of
Speaker 1: Congress to make uh to study marijuana for its it's
Speaker 1: possible healing effects. And even though there was a lot
Speaker 1: of support for it on the Republican side, they voted
Speaker 1: against it. And the reason they voted against it, and
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not necessarily faulting them, I mean
Speaker 1: in a way I am, but I'm in a way
Speaker 1: I'm more faulting the process. Right, they voted against it
Speaker 1: because it was introduced by a Democrat in the Senate. Now,
Speaker 1: had it been introduced by a Republican, what a pass?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the way it's you know, our government works.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think it's noteworthy that you have chosen to
Speaker 2: not be an investor in these psychedelic therapies, that you
Speaker 2: have chosen to use it through your foundation to give
Speaker 2: because you feel like people may not trust your story
Speaker 2: and it adds credibility to your story. You feel that
Speaker 2: passionately about this and how it can just plain help
Speaker 2: people that you're willing to to not be an investor,
Speaker 2: but to give Is that right?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean you think about it. Let's say I'm
Speaker 1: investing in psychedelics being approved. Well, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: and this, I am not faulting at all people that
Speaker 1: invest in this stuff because we need them completely, because
Speaker 1: they're the ones that will carry the day, right all right,
Speaker 1: But to just for we're right now at a stage
Speaker 1: where credibility is absolutely important. And given the fact that
Speaker 1: I have no act to grind in it, I have
Speaker 1: no money to make in it. All I have to do.
Speaker 1: What I get out of this is to be able
Speaker 1: to sit back and smile and say, you know what
Speaker 1: I helped to this. That's it. One other thing in
Speaker 1: my rifle squad, you know, I was, I was operated
Speaker 1: on a squad level in Vietnam, and my squad we
Speaker 1: were out on an ambush every night. And every night,
Speaker 1: you know, in Vietnam, they're no front lines, so we'd
Speaker 1: go out a couple of miles and we set up
Speaker 1: in a little circle and the only safe place Brian
Speaker 1: was inside that circle. And so you know, the guys
Speaker 1: I was with, you know, I mean, most of them
Speaker 1: seen far more combat than I did. I mean, I
Speaker 1: was wounded after a month and I never went back
Speaker 1: to combat. So, I mean, the guys that served so
Speaker 1: much more combat, seen so much more than I did.
Speaker 1: But squad leader and the machine gunner dear friends of
Speaker 1: mine to this day. I fucking love those guys. They're
Speaker 1: crazy bastards, but I love them. And so both of
Speaker 1: them were carrying this PTSD cross. I got them together
Speaker 1: and we went to another location. I had the same
Speaker 1: GUIDs go through it with us that you know I
Speaker 1: went through with them before, and I went through it
Speaker 1: again with them because to get them to do it
Speaker 1: and both of them.
Speaker 2: Come home, that's incredible, both.
Speaker 1: Of them, both of them, both their wives told me,
Speaker 1: he says, I mean, one of them said, you know,
Speaker 1: he's now talking to his sons about the war. He
Speaker 1: would never do that before. He's so relaxed. I finally
Speaker 1: got my husband back, and I mean, and the other
Speaker 1: one said the same thing, same thing. Yeah, So, Brian,
Speaker 1: the stuff works well.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you're a veteran, you created a number
Speaker 2: of successful businesses. But it seems to me that if
Speaker 2: you can get this help get this passed, the use
Speaker 2: of this uh these therapy is to help people that
Speaker 2: truly need it. This uh, this could be your legacy?
Speaker 2: Will that be? Will that? Will that? Would that be
Speaker 2: acceptable for you?
Speaker 1: You know what, I don't need a legacy. No. Once
Speaker 1: I'm gone, baby, you know what, just flush the toilet.
Speaker 2: Well I hear along those lines, you signed the giving pledge,
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did. Yeah. My wife is the one that
Speaker 1: was really interested in that, so I signed that with her,
Speaker 1: you know. And at the end of the day, what
Speaker 1: it says is that, uh, we're you know, we'll we'll,
Speaker 1: we'll give half of whatever we have to charity after
Speaker 1: we're dead. And you know, after I'm dead. I'm a
Speaker 1: pretty generous guy.
Speaker 2: Well, you're a pretty generous guy now. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: you gave a million dollars to to try to advocate
Speaker 2: for people with PTSD. That's one million dollars every fourteen days.
Speaker 2: The trend is continuing this year. You're you're pretty damn
Speaker 2: generous now, Bob, and you're pretty damn good at what
Speaker 2: you do. God bless you. Thank you for being exactly
Speaker 2: who you are.
Speaker 1: One little thing I'd like to point out that we
Speaker 1: do move a million to charity every fourteen days. But
Speaker 1: it's to a combination of causes. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 1: not not all of it is for PTSD, and so okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know we got we got a lot
Speaker 1: of other problems to Brian, I know it.
Speaker 2: You give a lot to the Scottsdale area and other
Speaker 2: important foundations around the world. Why stay in Scottsdale? What
Speaker 2: is it about that area for you?
Speaker 1: You know what, I could live anywhere in the world,
Speaker 1: and I choose Arizona. I think Arizona is one of
Speaker 1: the last great states. Yeah, it is hotter and shit
Speaker 1: in the summer. I love it. I can't be hot enough.
Speaker 1: You know, it was hot for one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: degrees for twenty three days. You know what. You know
Speaker 1: it gets rid of people. I mean, and you know
Speaker 1: not so many people live there, right.
Speaker 2: I have to tell this story. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you'll remember what the commercial was. The very first time
Speaker 2: I met you a number of years ago, I showed
Speaker 2: up at Scottsdale National Golf Club. And I mean when
Speaker 2: I say on the course, I don't mean like on
Speaker 2: a cart path somewhere or out by you know, the
Speaker 2: restaurant in the middle of the course. There was the biggest,
Speaker 2: most executive looking desk that was sitting out on the course. Bob,
Speaker 2: you were shooting a commercial and you were pounding on
Speaker 2: this desk and you were behind this desk on this
Speaker 2: golf course. And I looked over and went, wow, that
Speaker 2: is a That is a badass. That is a badass.
Speaker 2: He just like this is this he this, he is.
Speaker 2: He is indeed the head of his domain, so much
Speaker 2: so he's gonna put a desk on the middle of
Speaker 2: golf course to show everybody who the boss is. Not
Speaker 2: that they didn't know already. That was just amazing, you know.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the story behind that. One one
Speaker 1: of the golf magazines came up with that idea, okay
Speaker 1: for to take a photo, you know, to head up
Speaker 1: to the interview. And I was wearing a sleeveless shirt
Speaker 1: and and and I have tattoos, big tattoos with both arms,
Speaker 1: so you could you could see them. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know most of my tattoos are under karmas. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know that's my wife. You know, she don't want
Speaker 1: me looking like a com when I go out publish.
Speaker 2: Well, keep doing what you're doing, Bob. I am so
Speaker 2: so grateful to you and thankful for the work that
Speaker 2: I do with you. I am so thankful for what
Speaker 2: you are doing for other people. Look, people may love you,
Speaker 2: they might hate you, but God blessed, they're going to
Speaker 2: respect you because of all that you have accomplished, everything
Speaker 2: you put your mind to, and I wish you nothing
Speaker 2: but the best.
Speaker 1: Well, always a pleasure to see you, buddy.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Bob. Bob, You're amazing. What an
Speaker 2: incredible life you have lived, and I feel so lucky
Speaker 2: that you took the opportunity to share it with me
Speaker 2: with us today. I'm going to see you out on
Speaker 2: the course soon. I fully intend to dominate you with
Speaker 2: your very own creation by p XG Clubs. Uh, listeners,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna see you. Well, no, that's not right, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna hear. I'm gonna You're gonna I'm gonna talk at
Speaker 2: you whatever it is. I'm gonna be right here on
Speaker 2: the podcast next week. You should come back and listen again.
Speaker 2: Until then, well, I hope you have a great week.
Speaker 2: Off the Beat is hosted and executive produced by me
Speaker 2: Brian Baumgartner, alongside our executive producer Ling Lee. Our senior
Speaker 2: producer is Diego Tapia. Our producers are Liz Hayes, Hannah
Speaker 2: Harris and Emily Carr. Our talent producer is Ryan Papa
Speaker 2: Zachary and our intern is Thomas Olsen. Our theme song
Speaker 2: Bubble and Squeak, performed by the one and Only Creed
Speaker 2: Brandon