Reed Dickens Interview: His journey from the White House to baseball to LA Golf Partners Founder/CEO

From working in the White House in his 20s, to revolutionizing the wooden bat industry and now entering the world of premium golf equipment, LA Golf Partners’ CEO and founder Reed Dickens’ career path has certainly been far from ordinary. He shares the lessons he learned from the President and how a partnership with Bryson DeChambeau has been vital to LA Golf‘s path in becoming innovators in the sport.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
It's episode forty one of of course with Claude Harmon
normally comes to you every Wednesday, but we've got a
bonus episode coming out to you, which is today Friday.
I'm in l A for the l A Open and
I got to sit down with Read Dickens. I was
lucky enough to meet Read a couple of years ago. Um,
and what a fascinating guy. I mean, I just really
really liked his story. Um, he was involved in politics,

(00:33):
he was involved in baseball, and now he's involved in
the golf space. And one of the cool things about
having a podcast is, UM, I can invite guests that
I wanted to talk to and I just I really
the first night I met Read, I think we we
we talked for like three or four hours. We've got
a lot of mutual interest, and I just think he's
a really fascinating guy. And I think the backstory of

(00:54):
of how he got into politics, how he got into baseball,
and now he's in the golf space, and UM, I
think it's to be really Uh, it's a good listen.
And he's got some life lessons about his life and
his career and um things that pertain to golf. Things
that pertained to life, and UM, he's a really really
fascinating interesting guy, a young guy. He's kind of a disruptor,

(01:16):
which I kind of think is cool. And he's doing
some things in the industry that are really really different
and you're either gonna like it or you're not gonna
like it. And I kind of like that too, because, UM,
I think that's where great things happen in business, great
things happen in art, great things happen in life. Um.
And so uh read Dickens. Really an interesting listen, Uh,

(01:37):
and I hope everyone enjoys it. So my guest today
read Dickens, the founder and CEO of l A golf partner.
Read we met a couple of years ago. Um. The
reason why I wanted to get you on the podcast
is You've had a really really fascinating life. You're in

(01:57):
the golf space now, Um, White Golf. When did you
start playing golf? Would you like about golf? I've always
loved golf, but I was never allowed to play because
apparently I was gonna be a number one draft pick
in baseball. Um. I wasn't even the best player in
my high school team, but my dad wouldn't let me
play a lot of golf. No, in all seriousness, I

(02:19):
joke all the time that I'm I owe everything in
my life to politics in baseball, and I never really
enjoyed politics or baseball. Golf was always my passion, and
truthfully it was an economic thing. I didn't have the
money to play golf growing up or you know, in
high school, and then in my twenties, I was working
in the government and UM never had time or money
to be honest, and so when I finally UM exited

(02:43):
UH that last business, I was with my family in
the desert on a family vacation, and I was playing
on Go Daddy, which is one of my favorite hobbies,
and I bought the domain l A Golf Partners for
like ten bucks, and I literally said to my friend
who was there with us, I said, I'm going to
find something to do in golf so that I can
go to Augusta and the US Open and tell my wife, Hey,

(03:03):
I'm going to work. And I've executed that plan flawlessly.
Where did you grow up? Monroe, Louisiana, which is in
the top center of the Louisiana Boots. So people always say, oh,
I know someone in New Orleans. I'm like different state.
Of all the little states that got split in half,
Louisiana should have been cut up because South Louisiana is Cajun,
you know, Catholics, and North Louisiana is Rednecks. It's like

(03:25):
East Texas. So we're on East Texas power cable. So
I grew up about a mile from Duck Dynasty, if
that gives you a reference point. I grew up in Houston,
went to college in Nacodoches, Texas, so East Texas. Yeah,
I played baseball there. Yeah, he played baseball growing up.
But did you play golf as a kid? Did you
like gold? I did so. We we at the Municipal

(03:46):
Course of Monroe, Louisiana. Kids under fIF fourteen or something
you can play for free on Fridays. That was really
my limit, the limitation of my um golf experience, but
I loved it. Didn't play in high school again because
it was affect my baseball swing. Um. And then uh,
when I was really George W. Bush, the military that
worked with was the president on the weekends. He called

(04:09):
me one time on a Sunday. I was probably four
years old, home on a Sunday and he said, Hey,
the President wants to and before he finished the sentence,
President Bush grabbed the phone and said, Hey, can you
play golf at two o'clock? And I said sure, and
he goes, are you any good? And I went uh,
And as I hesitated, he said, I meant are you fast?
I went, yes, I can play fast. And so I
went that day and um, you know, teed off on

(04:30):
the first tea box with dozens of cameras and hundreds
of people and was trying not to vomit. And I
really did start playing with him, and and he would
go to some wonderful places and I kind of caught
the bug. And then when I moved. I moved to
California in two thousand four, and the guy who I
was living with played five days a week and that's
when I that was when I really started. You mentioned

(04:51):
George W. Bush. How I mean you've told me this story.
It's an amazing story. You became the youngest assistant White
House Press Sector Harry in history. Yeah, it's it's it's
it's funny young. It's true. I was twenty four, but
that's not even really the wild part. It was really
how unqualified it was. I joke. Now. I asked people,
I say, do you guys know who Hope Hicks is?

(05:12):
And people who are political junkies will say yeah, and
I would say, well, I was Hope Hicks before, before
social media. I was young, slightly charming, unqualified, didn't know
how to type, and yet the President was kind enough
to have me in his kind of inner bubble. Uh.
And and I look back. I look back, and I
think about all the times I was an uncomfortable situations

(05:33):
and all the times I was in trouble or he
was frustrated with me, and I think, well, it wasn't
my fault. Who led a twenty five year on the office.
How did you get that job? So yeah, So it's
the really short version because it's like a bad Disney movie,
is I? Um saw a picture on the wall at
L shoe or some interns interning for a congressman, and

(05:53):
true story, I didn't really know the difference between Congress
and the White House. So I said, hey, I want
to do that. He said you can't. It's just for
rich kids, owners kids, which I found out years later
that that's true statement. Um. And so I got the
blue pages of the phone book out and I called
my congressman's office every single day for a few months.
They finally let me come up there for a week.
It wasn't even a real internship. Then a lady I
worked with in that congressman's office went to work for

(06:15):
George W. Bush, and so I emailed her a few
dozen times. Never got a response. So I used an
old dating tactic and said, um, hey, I'm gonna be
in Austin, I'm coming to work for I'm coming to
intern for George W. Bush's presidential campaign. And she responded,
big mistake and said great, come say hi. I printed
that out, used it to get past the security guard,
and then something awful happened. It still give any cold

(06:37):
chills to this day because I was really early in
my frank abgnail kind of career. Um. I walked in
and the lady handing out intern badges. There were hundreds
of volunteers because of college town in Austin, Texas, but
they were only like fifty or sixty full time intern
badges with security passes. And she I said, Hey, I'm
here to see Sally Canfield as I'm gonna intern for
Sally Canfield. And she said she's my roommate. She doesn't

(06:59):
have an intern, and my whole body went cold. Um.
And Sally gives speeches. She tells the story to this day.
She's really funny. Um. But long story short, she gave
me an intern badge. I went and sat down with Sally.
That was just the first of many challenges because I
had like only two d dollars to my name and
nowhere to live and so um. But I ended up
having a becoming an intern. Then I put on a

(07:20):
suit and knocked on everyone's door, got hired on staff NAM.
Sandy Pack gave me a job in accounting, and I
remember she said, I'm assuming you majored in business. I
said no, and she said I'm assuming you took an
accounting class. I said no. She said, well, congratulations, you're hired. Um.
And so she said something that changed my life. She said,
I believe in the theory of corks. She said, I
think some people find a way to float to the
top and just figure it out, and I think you're

(07:41):
gonna be a cork. And she said, I want to
be a part of your life. So I mentioned her
in every story. But I changed my life. And then
I became an assistant to Ari Fleisher, the White House
Press Secretary, that I got promoted to White House Assistant
Press Secretary, and I mean things happened fast. I ended
up I did my first official White House briefing on
the field at Yankee Stadium when George W. Bush not
the famous iconic first pitch after nine eleven, I did

(08:03):
my first my first official White House briefing for the
press was behind home plate that night on the field,
and uh, I ended up being the last person in
the Oval office with him on the night of nine eleven,
not because I was important, just because I was there
ship swapping around the press. But it was just a
surreal experience that about a million, you know, probably close
to a million miles on Air Force one and um
just more than anything, I got to shadow the CEO

(08:25):
of the country during two Wars and you know, major
economic you know, displacement, and it was an incredible experience.
You see so many I mean, obviously there's been so
many movies, so many television shows that kind of talk
and and and and try to talk to that life.
How much of you know, West Wing, all of the movies,
how much of it is based in reality? Is it? Is?

(08:47):
It crazier working in the White House than it seems?
Is it? Is it more surreal than than what kind
of art imitates right now? It's a great question. And
every time someone asked me early on this doesn't I
don't get asked this as much anymore. But is the
White House like the West Wing the TV show? I
would get asked that often, and I finally, you know,

(09:07):
after a few hundred times of getting asked that, you
you figure out the right answer. And the right answer
is every white House has a different culture. The Clinton
White House, the average age of the senior staff was
a young thirties, so it was the show really did
reflect Ded Myers and a lot of Bill Clinton's staff
went and you know, we're the senior writers. Laurence O'Donnell
was the senior writer. And um, funny story we could

(09:29):
get to that. I I interviewed for writing job there
and they said what do you want to do? I said,
I want to act and write, And I had no
idea what I was just um, But they created a
show that was very much like the Clinton White House.
So people ordering pizza's, working all nights, having sex in
the closet. It was kind of like this wild not
free for all the George W. The Bush White House
was uh West Wing, full of CEOs in their sixties

(09:50):
with their glasses on the end of their nose, carrying
binders and whispering in the halls. I mean, it was
just could not have been more different. Um. There's no
bad or good. It's just very different. So I think,
what's at you're it is in wartime? Um. You know
if you look at movies like John F. Kennedy Thirteen Days, Um,
after nine eleven minutes of the Camp David and I
was one of the only staffers there other than the

(10:11):
chief of Staff and maybe the personal aid, we had
a work cabinet meeting. We had every Secretary of Defense,
Secretary of State going back to the Kennedy's hiding it
Camp David, mapping out what would be the war on terror.
And I remember hearing them use phrases like twenty year war,
trillions of dollars, and I remember I was overwhelmed. It
made me it was I was dizzy because we thought
nine eleven is gonna be the first of a five
wave attack. And so there's a lot of moments that

(10:34):
were movie like moments, and there's a lot of moments
that our TV show like moments, but ultimately every White
House is different, and our White House did not have
the fast, fast, toughing, clever, you know pace of the
West Wing when you're around a president, when you're working
for a president, or are you conscious that you're doing
that or does it become at some point the fact

(10:54):
that you're you're with George W. Bushow on Air Force one,
you're traveling all over the world, doesn't just become normal
or do you still have a sense that you're part
of an unbelievable machine and you're both so I um,
it took me probably fifteen years to process that. In hindsight,
every time I ever had a moment that I cringe

(11:15):
about where I spoke out of turn, got yelled at
by the presidented States. Every time there was something where
I just cringe, in hindsight, it was always in settings
outside of the White House reir force. What so, if
we were at the president's ranch and he's we're in
dripping with sweat, cutting wood with chainsaws, and he's burping
in your ear and people or whatever, those were the
moments where I would get a little ahead of myself

(11:37):
as as he would say, just too big for my bridges,
and forget that I was a twenty seven year old
and I would speak out of turn, or you know,
maybe say something or argue with him or something just
that I look back and just cringe. But but when
you're in noble office, especially the Bush White House, let's
tell you how reverent set aside politics. Because I think
both parties are embarrassing and a hundred years outdated. But
if you set aside your politics. George W had an

(12:00):
incredible reverence for the for the the history of the presidency,
and he would say a hundred times a week, it's
not about the president, it's about the presidency. And so
he had this reverence for the office of the presidency.
So just to make I think one fine point about
your question. One Saturday morning, we're leaving to go play golf,
he forgot his binder in the Oval Office, his National
Scruty bider, and he took the Oval office in the

(12:22):
West Wings. So seriously, even though he lived in the
White House, he showered, put on slacks, a shirt, a tie,
and a sport coat to walk to the Oval Office
to get his bider. Unbelief, and I I get goose
bumps telling that story. There's a few things. There's a
few images of him, you know, one his private meetings
with families who lost you know, children in Afghanistan and
Iraq that we never told the press about. You know,

(12:43):
there were moments, but one of those moments that are
burned in my memory is him walking putting on a
sport coat to walk to the Oval Office by himself
and nobody was there. Um And so they answer your question,
that was a long way to say. When we were
in the Oval Office or on Air Force One, you
felt like you were living in a on a movie set.
You you were living history, especially war cabinets and the bombs.
And I was privy to I always say I shouldn't

(13:05):
have been an eighty percent of the rooms I was in, right,
But he liked having me and Blake around, my friend
who was his personal aid, and we played cards with
him and ran with him, and you know, we we
were around a lot of conversations we shouldn't have been.
But we never lost sight of the fact that this
is the president of the United States during the war,
and it was it always felt historic. Did you ever
call him by his real name or did you always

(13:27):
call him Mr President. I saw, I took my kids
to go hang out with him a few months ago
here in Beverly Hills, and to this day, I still say,
I call him sir. And all of you know he
had he had about eight or ten friends from Yale,
from college and from business school that called him George
and they were all his age. But other than that,

(13:49):
his cabinet members CEOs Hank Paulson, who left Goldman Sack
to run the Department Treasury, it was Mr. President. And
again it was because he had so much reverence for
the office of the presidency. I feel like it bled
and everyone else. It wasn't a matter of being afraid
of him, it was the it was the office. And
so no, I I called him sir, and I still
call him sir. And when we referred to him the

(14:10):
most casual people get with him, not to his face,
as we call him forty three. You know, we always
referred to him, and but no, there was there was
always that reverence. Golf has been a huge, huge part
of the American presidency, from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Bill Clinton,
I mean even President Trump. The um my dad and

(14:31):
I were lucky enough to spend some time with um
President Obama when when he was in office. Why do
you think isn't an escape thing for for presidents? They
have such a little time. I remember talking to President
Obama about his golf game and he said, listen, I've
got no time to practice, so I only play golf
and that's it. I'm I don't have any time to

(14:52):
go hit balls. So if I'm going to get two hours,
I'm gonna go try and get in as many holes
as Like, why do you think golf has been such
a huge part of the American presidency? So so I
think you put your finger on it. It is an escape.
But remember they live in a fish bowl. So like
when you look out if you're on the third floor

(15:13):
the Lincoln bedroom, if you're up on the residents of
the White House, if you open the windows, you're looking
at a thousand people with their long lens cameras. Right,
you live in a fish bowl. It is a museum,
um that you live in. And then and the they
live on the third floor and the bottom floor has
public tours. Right, So yes, I think getting out, I
mean long before social distance, and that was social distance. Right,

(15:35):
you go to Andrews Air Force Base or some golf
course out the rural area, and it's just your boys
and cigars. And they don't get to think. They don't
get to be an open space. For often, even secret
Service protocols, right, you can shoot a president from a
mile away. So there's all these reasons. They're never an
open space. They're never out of that museum, that bubble.
So I do think it's an escape. George W. Bush
was very serious about not taking tactic. He knew how

(15:57):
many hours he'd be in the Oval office in eight
years when he walked in the door the first day,
because you know, his dad had been vice president and
no president ever knew the executive office like he did
when he walked in the door. And um, that didn't
mean you don't make mistakes or wrong decisions, but he
knew the presidency and he felt like he was a
servant of the people. It was the taxpayer's time, it
was their money. Um, you know, one of the big

(16:18):
issues you know I had, You know, I'm talking personally,
when President Obama took Michelle on a date and it
was calculated as a sixty four million dollar date, and
George W. Bush he wouldn't play golf during work hours.
After we sent troops into battle. We never played golf
again for six years. UM So he did like the
optics of playing golf while the troops were in home.
His way, and in the first three years when he
did play golfer two years, whatever it was he Um

(16:39):
would play. We would go into off at six am
and we'd play eighteen holes in an hour. I think
that was he could play so fast. I was with
him in comming up for it when he played at
the time his record round of two hours and nine minutes.
And uh, you did not take practice swings or chit
chat or you know. He was He was the guy
who would always say, do you know what the flagways?
You know what having haven't? I mean, he wanted to

(16:59):
get get in and out. And but it was My
point is he took it very seriously not to disrupt
his work, which I think became an optical issue with
social media with the most previous with the most recent presidents,
I think they deal with a lot of optics. Obama
and Trump, when you're playing off while you have two
wars and the economy's crashing or immigration or whatever crisis
is going on social media. People don't really want to

(17:21):
see the president out on the links, right. They don't
really think of you as someone needing a vacation. Right,
You only have a four year sprint that you have
that job, and it's a it's a full time job.
In Congress shuts down in August, the country shuts down
around Christmas, so there's a couple of times a year
you can take a breath. But voters don't really want
to see you out playing off. So it's a touchy thing.
I remember when President Obama came to my club, the Floridian,

(17:42):
in his first term. I I don't know why. I
was surprised. I could not believe how many people. If
it is the bubble, it is unbelievable, how many people,
how many armed people, how many support vehicles for medical,
for all of it. The machine around it for him

(18:03):
to go for any prison, to go play golf is
a massive undertake. So I'll give you a couple of
geeky statistics because it's for people who are jumping about
this stuff. There's a small there's a hard package, and
there's a large package. Right, the hard packages, the eight
armored cars, it's the counterattack guys, the military, the nuclear codes,
the doctor, the nurse surgeon. You know, it's a it's

(18:25):
a hard package, and that hard package can actually surround
the limousine and fight off most small countries. Right. Um,
but it's eight cars and it's not obnoxious. But if
it's a scheduled trip, so he was at the Floridian
for a fundraiser that was announced to a public, or
if it was a part of a weekend or a seminar.
If it's anything public and the public knew about it
more than a week before, when the Secret Service gets there,

(18:46):
then you're gonna see an entourage. It's it's usually forty
four cars, hundreds of several hundred media, several hundred Secret Service.
And then you've got a ring of perimeter of people
guarding the Secret Service, and you've got undercover people watching
the people guarding the Secret Service. It is a show. Um,
But that's because if it's publicly announced, if people know
the President says is gonna be there, al kinda gets

(19:07):
at the time A kind of people, the young peopople
don't know what that is. Al kinda got all their
information from seeing it. So public information was very sensitive
and so that's why you see those big packages if
it's a public event. One of the dumbest things I've
ever done um to date is we worked with my
dad and I worked with the president. You know, we
had him on film, We had him in our swing
studio and stuff, and he said, listen, I'd love to

(19:29):
have some things to work on. And I said, well,
I'll send you some stuff to work on. So what
we normally do is we send that through the Internet
and stuff like that. So one of his aids came
in and said, so, how can we do this? I
so I can just send them some stuff through the internet.
He's yeah, that's not gonna happen. And I'm sitting there thinking,
what a dumb thing to say. Well. One of the
things that's one of the things that's scary or accurate

(19:49):
is that when you watch movies Jason Born type movies,
the cool CIA stuff you see, by definition has to
be outdated. So the CIA usually as a consultant on
the movie set, and they'll let you use things, but
you can't reveal sources and methods that are currently being used.
So one of the things that is pretty accurate is
the technology that you see in some of these bond
like movies, and they they they the bad guys can

(20:15):
send a missile down a chimney from three thousand miles away.
So the President of United States having a cell phone
the tracking guy, right, So so you're never got So
most of the time, if the President needs to make
a call, he'll say Blake, you know, he'll grab one
of his aids. And that was I can't tell you
how many times I had to feel calls about Jenna
and Barbara, his daughters or whatever. I mean, because the
president it would be too dangerous to turn back. Then

(20:37):
you you there weren't unlimited plans. Do you turn the
phone bill back in? It's funny, it's funny. I actually
it's funny you say that before our White House, and
fairness to the Clintons, they came in left to know one,
so the Worldwide Web, the world changed. So but they
didn't really take the time to modernize the White House.
So when we came in to No. One, I was
still having to highlight my phone bill. I mean, we

(20:59):
were having to a lot of antiquated things. And then
Rising came and met with our deputy was staff and
we all got group plans and then we got blackberries
and we quickly modernized the White House. But the first
year we were there, it was it was actually was
like that I would have to I would have to
go through and mark work calls. So you get out
of politics, how did you get into baseball? It was
a passion of your worst growing up. Yeah, so that's

(21:21):
a great question. Nothing in my life, everything and everything
in my life has been a non secretor I have
not had a linear, linear career. Uh. I left the
White House and moved to California. I often say I
was born without what they call a skill. UM. So
I set up a crisis management PR firm. Uh my
um now wife at the time. She made a recording

(21:44):
in a fake British accent uh and in our apartment,
and I started a crisis management firm and pretty soon
had dozens of CEOs and celebrities as clients. And I
really kind of built my network. A lot of people
will assume I built my network from politics, but George W.
Bush's approval was twenty seven in California. I didn't come
out here and build a network on that. So it
really came from managing scandals from a lot of famous
people and did that for a few years, and then

(22:05):
my little brother I had gotten him a job being
the personal assistant to the governor Louisiana, my co founder
of Rucci, went into the Governor's office to ask for
advice and said, Hey, I've got these I've got this
wood that's harder than Louivill Slugger. We bought it from
the Amish people. Forty guys are using it on TV.
But I don't know how to start a company or
raise money. My little brother stepped out and said, Hey,
you need to meet this guy. I flew to Baton Rouge.
We formed a partnership on the whiteboard that day and

(22:27):
I said, I'll raise the money, but I'm the CEO
and he's a deal, and uh, we launched. I went
and raised some money. We loused Ruggie and we took,
you know, over eighty percent in the Louiville Slugger's market
share in our first four or five years. We put
Easton into bankruptcy, and we really kind of disrupted the
bat space. It's it's a tiny it's how did you
have the vision to kind of come up with that,
because obviously you're going up again Easton, but Louisville Slugger

(22:48):
is the goal. I mean, they've been a part of
baseball forever. They were the really the only real baseball
bat company. To tell you how daunting it was when
we started rucci Um lou of A. Slugger had about
eighty eight percent of Major League baseball and minor league baseball.
But they had employees in Major League Baseball's offices. They
had they were they had a a moat around baseball. Right.

(23:11):
We weren't allowed to give bats for free to the players.
We had to sell them to players. We weren't allowed
to sell product in the stadium's minor league or major league.
You couldn't go near baseball. Louis Slugger had a monopoly.
And uh, but we had something very special, which was
a harder bat. Um and so and I was too young,
I was pretty rambunctious. And so we made a couple
of hundred videos making fun of them and said, hey,

(23:32):
have you you know if you want to you know,
we we had I got Kurt and I got forty
major leagues to invest and we made a lot of
really funny videos. We knew we had harder wood, which
seven percent harder would that's about twenty one ft in
a baseball field. That's warning track home run difference. And
so we had better would and uh and so we had.
We were big league founded, big League owned, and our

(23:53):
slogan was how hard is how good is your wood?
And we went after him and made them kind of
a hiss, We kind of we would joke that if
you want to a social history experiment, well then you know, sure, babe,
ruth Ty Cobb. Great, that's that's good for social studies. Fair. Um,
but if you want to swing with the stars, are swinging?
You swing roucie and um. The players they would try

(24:14):
it and they would say, this sounds different. David Wright,
I don't know if he played with the Mets. Funny story.
I saw him at Kelly James House a few months
a few months a year ago, and I was telling
him the story about how I used a quote from
David Wright from the Mets. I said, Albert Pools and
David Ortiz, they were two of our first stars. But
David Wright. I used a quote from him because he
said it the woods just harder, it just sounds better.

(24:36):
And I said, I blew that up from yesterday today
and raised all my money with it, and he looked
him and he said, I'm David Right, and he didn't
get he said, he said, do I get any of that?
I said, this is awkward. I didn't know I was
talking to David Right. That's funny. So we've since laughed
about that a much. Um uh So, the truth is
we had a better product, but we did some aggressive

(24:56):
grilla marketing. The players are really instrumental. They helped us market.
We came up with a metal bat that was balanced
like a big league bat, and so we kind of
introduced this narrative that if your kid is Bryce Harper,
if you're a star, if you think you're gonna play
in the big leagues, you need to be swinging wood
and metal, and kids couldn't because they were battle its differently.
So we kind of created a big league cult and
a big league narrative and it worked, um and there

(25:17):
was some Malcolm Gladwellian elements to it in the sense
that the metal bat regulations changed right when we started,
so it was a jump ball for market share. We
had the coolest brand and we took a lot of it.
And now golf l a golf How did you form
that company. Why did you form that company? And what's
the idea and where do you want to go with it?

(25:38):
So so some things and again I quote Malcolm Gladwell,
because some things are kind of where you are, where
you're born, circumstances, geography and other things. Are you know,
ten thousand hours of hard work. UM. This story is
interesting because I got a call from someone that says, hey,
there's a the only American made shaft on the PGA tour.
All the equipment, all the inventory, and the building. It's

(26:00):
available in bankruptcy UM and it's right by your house
in California and Anaheim, California. And I said interesting, and
the guy said it's the same machines and Rucie uses
same composite materials. He's like, you should really take a
look at it. I was hesitant at first because I
didn't want to go back into manufacturing, UM. But I
ended up buying the assets of what was Matrix and
shut down all their mass their factories in China and Mexico,

(26:22):
shut down everything and kept that one. So I really
just bought the equipment and and the building and kept
two of the kept the office manager and the head
of production, and built a company from scratch, And really
it is the same playbook as Mrci. Um it's the
margy playbook. Identify a sleepy and equated industry that hasn't
been you know, that's behind the times. Partner with players, um,

(26:45):
innovate a tool of the trade, which I'll get back
to that. Build a hybrid distribution model, in other words,
find a good retail partner, but also sell directed consumer
and then build a scarcity brand, build a brand that
has social currency to it. So that was our five
play playbook with Musci. I really just decided I'm to
do the same thing in golf, except I always joked it.
In baseball had forty four player partners and about four
of them were helpful, so I just thought I was

(27:06):
gonna fewer partners. But but the shaft is a tool
of the trade, right, it's both the um I'm not
telling you anything you don't know, but it's both the
engine and the transmission of the golf swing. And and
it's been rolled. It's been mass produced and rolled like
an ice cream cone for fifty years, and no one's
innovated shafts. Even though it has the most effect on
your ball flight and your ball for Florance. So we

(27:27):
I got one of the best engineers in the industry
and partnered with Bryson, a Shambo who really knows his
stuff and as an engineer UM by training and Uh.
I had their first phone call lasted three and a
half hours and it was really funny. But I knew
we had something special. So we started with shafts uh
and then I I he called me. One day, Bryson
called and said, hey, UM, I think the descending loft

(27:47):
technology and the sick putter faces the most innovative face
technologies that I've tested hundreds of putters, and anyone who
knows Bryson knows that was not an exaggeration. And so
he said, you should buy this company. And I already
wanted a putter. I knew that we have the US
putter shaft probably ever created that actually keeps the putter
head from wiggling on impact. It's a it actually impacts
the ball performance. And so I wanted a putter, but

(28:08):
I kind of assumed we developed one overtime and UH.
But what M and A is kind of a reactive thing.
When you get an opportunity to buy something, you have
to move quickly and I would say it's like running
for office. You have to be patient enough to wait
ten years, but you have to have the guts to
jump tomorrow. And we bought, We moved quickly um and
created this putter. But it's a very similar story to Ruccie. Right,
you identify an industry where the tools of the trades

(28:30):
the players are actually using inside the ropes haven't been
innovated in decades. Scottie Cameron hasn't innovated his putter in
thirty years. Right, It's just steel. It's a flat piece
of steel. And so I realized it was an opportunity there.
So Rucie people say, well, you know Louisville Sucker had
eighty five pers on the market. Well, Scottie Cameron has
eighty five pers in the premium putter market, but hasn't innovated.
And so material science material sciences has evolved exponentially over

(28:55):
the last fifteen years, and the major brands haven't. And
so we UM created the first all carbon putter head.
We put six descending loft face into that head that
allowed us to have a sweet spot. A larger head
would keep the same swing with So if you think
about it from a physics standpoint, Our putter head weighs
the same thing as a Scottie Cameron Newport two, but
it has a sweet spot that's larger. We have a

(29:16):
shaft that doesn't have any uh anti it's an anti
vibration shaft, and then it has this descending loft face.
If you watch a slow motion video when a Scottie
Cameron putter hits the ball, it's skips and bounces for
about twelve inches and descending laft face from that we
acquired when you when the putter strikes the ball, it
rolls immediately, so there's a there's a more consistent, truer roll,

(29:38):
no vibration or negative feedback in the shaft uh in
a larger sweet spot. And my last point, UM, since
I'm a putter salesman now, is is that UM most
of the time, like a zero handicap, misses the sweet
spot the majority of the time. And most of the
time you think you read the put wrong or your
caddie read the put wrong, it's because you missed the
sweet spot. It makes the putter head wiggle. You lose
two to three degrees of your line, sometimes twelve eighteen

(30:01):
inches of role um and so having a fifty larger
sweet spot and a chaft that doesn't vibrate, and a
head that doesn't wiggle, and a face that rolls the
ball immediately versus the skipping. I think it's the most
technologically advanced putter and probably thirty years Uh. It's also
really sexy. Where that was my contribution. We met. We
worked hard to make sure it was a good looking putter. Um.

(30:21):
But if you step back, what we just executed over
the last two years is basically what we took six
years to do it. It's the same playbook. I'm just
older with a little more experience. So you've partnered, I
mean with Bryson de Shambo. He's one of the biggest
figures in golf. I mean, he's a major champion. Now,
what's that process been like to work with him? Because
I think he can sometimes be a kind of a

(30:42):
lightning rod. There are people that like him, there are
people that don't like him. There are people that think
he's super smart and changing the game. There are people
that think he's too smart for his own good. What's
it like having someone like him who's constantly trying as
a player to get you in the space that you're
in to push the envelope. So one of my favorite
words is conflation. I think when people think about or

(31:03):
talk about Bryson a Shambo, they conflate a bunch of
different topics. One is personality. Um. So the first thing
I get out of the way when I talked about
Bryson is you don't have to like him. Um. That's
we're not all friends in the world, right. Um. The
other thing I think people are mixing up is um
status quo with contrarian thinking. Um. A lot of times

(31:23):
it takes years for contrarian thinking to be normalized, and
then by the time it's normalized, everybody acts like it
was inevitable. But if you go back, Elon Musk is
a good example. It was only a few years ago
where the Wall Street Journal and all the analysts were saying, well,
people buy electric cars. There's no charging stations. Why would
anybody build charging stations. There's no electric cars. This is
not gonna be at scale. Oh, by the way, they

(31:44):
can't produce cars. I mean it was if you read
all the analysis, there was so many chickens and so
many eggs. But look at where Tesla is. It's a
two trillion dollar company in ten years um and one
private equity cycle. There's now charging stations everywhere. And so
I think contra Bryson at his core is a contrarian thinker.
How he all, how he delivers his message, his tone

(32:06):
of his message, his personality, how he interacts with partners,
those are all separate issues. So is it? You know,
he is one of the smarter guys I've ever dealt with.
He's that I always say. In baseball, we had Chase Utley.
Chase Utley was the Bryson Shambo, and then we had
David Ortiz, who was like Dustin Johnson, who was like, hey,
bro i' can hit with a broomstick, right, And so
I think Bryson is a He's a He's a workaholic.

(32:29):
He's a young, single guy. He works around the clock.
He thinks about golf twenty four hours a day. Um.
That's not for everybody, right. A lot of people play
golf as a profession and then they have a wife
and kids and they have hobbies and they do other things.
That's not Bryson. Um. And so I think when people
you'll hear other partners and vendors that work with him say, oh,
he's difficult to this. I find Bryson to be fascinating

(32:51):
he I know this sounds cliche and cheesy, but I'm
gonna say anyway. He makes us better. Um. If we
make a product, he will call and give you an
hour and a half explanation why it's not right, and
he's usually wrecked. So you have to have a little
humility to work with Bryson because you might not like
how he says it or the tone and he says it,
but he's usually right. And so he also respects that

(33:11):
we we have created some innovative products for him. I
don't think any company on the planet could have followed
him on this club speed journey, but a golf um.
And so we came up with a design structure that
allowed him too. We added fifty yards of carry to
his swing before he gained the weight. UM. And so
they answer your question, I'm a big fan of Bryson.
He's actually a great partner. UM. And I also, you know,

(33:35):
I'll give him tips sometimes as an older brother and say, hey,
when you talk to the press, still talk in future tents,
talking past It's like if you're gonna hit it over
the lake in may Hill, go do it and then
talk about it. You're gonna do it, and every day
everyone's waiting on you do it. Like I think, if
I were talking to any young guy in any profession,
I'd say, don't talk in future tips talking past. It's
so there's like little things I try to be helpful
with and um, but generally speaking, if you I think

(34:00):
ten years, if you look back, I think the market
will have moved towards Bryson. So to me, that's the
definition of a disruptor or a contrarian. Is whether you'
I'm at Galileo or Elon Musk. I mean, you could
go on and on, and I really do think Bryson
is a disruptive thinker. Is that like him or not
agree with him or not like his tone or not?
I promise you, like Tiger twenty years ago, if you

(34:22):
fast forward ten years from now, this next generation of players,
they're all trying to hit the ball two fifteen ball speak.
That's what high schoolers are going for now. Well guess
what they need the equipment to do that, They need
to work out and train to do that. It's going
to change the an entire generation of players. It's going
to change how they train and how they play. Nobody
has done that since Tiger, So I think he has

(34:43):
moved the needle, to use an overused expression, on a
whole generation of golfers. So to me, when people say, oh,
they disagree with Bryson, I don't like this. I don't
think everything's about distance. I don't know. People throw out
all these opinions all the time about things they disagree
with Bryson on. But if you look at the the
body of knowledge and the if you look at holistically,
I think in ten or fifteen years, when you look

(35:05):
back the the the industry didn't move to David Thomas.
It moved to Tiger. Right, the industry is going to
I think the industry's gonna move towards well. I just
had James hart Deputy on my podcast. He's South Africa,
he's six nine, he's to sixty. We would have never
seen golfers trying to play at that size, trying to

(35:25):
do those things. And I think the effect realist and
I think the effect that Bryson has had along with
Kyle Berkshire, who's the world long drive champion, who he's
become very very close with those type of guys are
pushing so many boundaries that I think we're going to
see this a new crop of athletes who were could
have done other sports really try now and say, okay,

(35:48):
I can really really focus on golf. Are you a
as a as a golfer and as a fan of golf?
There are people that say, listen the distance that players
are hitting it now, it's make in the game, boring
and stuffing. Where do you come in as both someone
in the golf space but as someone that plays golf
and he's a fan of golf where distance is in.

(36:10):
So you've forgotten more about golf than I'll ever know.
So my my narrow view from a golf perspective is
every tournament Bryson one and I maybe give or take,
he was top three in strokes gain putting. Okay, so
every time people talking about Brice, I'm like, well, you know,
he finished when he won the US Open number one
in the field strokes gain putting. So he didn't just

(36:33):
go destroy the course with his driver. He putted lights
out And that's how you win major tournaments. And it
always has been so until that stat changes, until you
see someone winning a tournament because they hit it four
D and thirty yards next to the pen, and they
were lasting putting. And I could be wrong eventually, but
I think it's a right. Now. Distance is changing golf,

(36:54):
but it hasn't changed your need to chip and put
and I think that's what makes golf special. And now
I will say that's Bryson at the Long Drive. That
there's two interesting insider factoids. I don't actually know what
they're public or not, but Bryson what I think was
so important about the long Drive. I had even partners
an investors saying, why is he doing this? This is
so stupid. I said, I'll tell you what he's doing this.

(37:14):
When he first went on this distance journey, I asked him,
are you ever afraid of killing a fan or topping
at six inches? And he said absolutely, Well that that
when that creeps in is on Sunday at Augusta, on
Saturday on the weekends. Well, so when he went to
those major championships, he had just been hitting that swing
speed for a few months. The Long Drive contest forced
him to hit a thousand balls a day for sixty

(37:37):
days in like sixteen minutes doing speed drills. So that
creates neuron pathways in your brain. He had like seventy
five thousand balls over two hundred and ten miles ball speed.
It gets you really comfortable with swinging at that speed.
And so at the at the long drive contest he
came in, I think it was unbelievable. Right after the
writer account of My favorite stat was the seven guys
in front of him average in the grid he was

(38:02):
so he finished eight, but was three x more accurate.
So so anyway, but to answer your question, I think
distance is making golf more fun. I think the U. S. G. A.
Wakes up every day and says, how can we make
golf harder and less fun? Right? How can we make
golf murmursable? And I think people like rice and make
golf fun and it's fun to watch, it's fun to play, right,

(38:23):
but you still have to jet. So I'm a big
fan of the distance. If you can't tell. Lastly, you're
getting into a space as as someone that's trying to
get into the Putter space. And there's such a huge,
huge history. Um you're going up against you know, massive
companies who have a long history, and that does that
does that scare you? Does that encourage you? Does that

(38:46):
drive you? I can't wait. Um. Someone asked me the
other day, actually several people, but a very prominent person
asked me, do you think Scottie Cameron is threatened by you?
And I said, if he's not, that's not wise like,
because up starts in any industry, it's the up starts
that change things. It's the startups that disrupt industries. It's

(39:07):
never the incumbents. Right, Louisvill Slugger doesn't change baseball. Louisville
Slugger was a steward of baseball and they actually did
a wonderful job. I was a big fan, right, Um,
So I don't think, um, there's anything more exciting than
when you give I gave Bryson de Shambo and my
engineers a blank sheet of paper and say, let's create
the best shaft ever created. And then not a big
a calls me one day, I don't even know him,

(39:29):
he's not a partner, and said, I think this is
a Unicorn product. It's the best. There's no peer or
comp for this product. Well that was in one year.
I'm very proud of that this putter comes out and
pros today at the at the you know, at the
tournament at Riviera. We're saying this feels I've never felt
anything like this, This feels unbelievable. So to I believe
the opportunity to disrupt a space and change directionally, change

(39:52):
how people make products, how people promote products. Um, no
one had ever sold baseball bats directed consumer After Marucci,
everyone sales baseball strected. Because I mean, I could go
on and on, but I think the opportunity to disrupt
not just for the sake of disruption, but for the
sake for the sake of improvement. Right, if you're improving
someone's it's it's a it's a performance it's legal performance enhancers. Right,

(40:13):
if you make a better piece of equipment. I think
this is the best putter ever made. And I'm biased,
but it actually that makes your game, makes the game
more fun, Uh, it makes you better. And so I
I think, um, if you look at me, I'm using
every young brand, every startup brand. We're nobody right now
has to have a foil. And I think Scotty Cameron
of the premium market, Uh, that's obviously you know. Uh,

(40:34):
that's obviously who we're going after. And we're gonna try
to take as much of his market share as possible
and I think if you look at Taylor Made, I'm
a huge swing and tailor made Stealth. I got two
of them. I think Taylor Made is a great brand
car Cobra um Bryson has UH. We have literally set
for hours talking about Cobra's irons. And I am a
big fan of these brands, right I'm I'm I'm a

(40:55):
golf junkie. But if you say, as a businessman, as
an entrepreneur, if you have an opera ttunity to create
something to compete head to head, and then the greatest
players in the world say I'm gonna choose your product,
I think it's better. That's a that That's what gives
me up in the morning. Well, I appreciate you talking
to us. I'm excited to see, um what happens. And
uh is your game going to improve as a result

(41:15):
of all this technology that you're producing My game? Actually,
the one thing I never had time for is practice.
And I finally got a simulator. I got a g
C quad and I bought those birdie balls. I don't
know if you ever used those. They're amazing little plastic
cylinders that you can shape. I can't, but you could.
Um and UH I've actually started practicing, so my game
is improving just because I'm practicing. And I love that

(41:36):
Tiger Woods quote when he says when people say I'm
trying this, I'm trying that, and he got shut up.
Just just work harder, just practice more. I'm trying to
practice more. Good luck. Appreciate you talking to us. Thanks
for so that was read Dickens and listen. I think
he's a fascinating guy. I like hearing what he has

(41:57):
to say. I like all the stories. It's a cool
see people get into the golf space and you know,
kind of disrupt the golf space. Um right, sind Shambo
has been using it. He's a Cobra guy. I'm a
Cobra guy. I use their graphite putter shaft in my putter.
And they're gonna be coming on the pod in the
next couple of weeks. Is and supporting it. So, as
we mentioned, new l A golf putter is out now.

(42:18):
It's made by hand in southern California. You want to
check it out. You can learn more about the new
l A golf putter at l A golf dot Co.
It's a larger head, it's got a fifty bigger sweet spot.
It's got a graphite shaft for anti vibration, and it's
got the sick Um descending loft technology, which I've been using.
Cobra's using that in their putters. I've been using it.

(42:40):
I think it's really good and I just think it's
it's cool product. And uh, I think you're gonna be
seeing it. Like I said, Reads a disruptor, l A
golf is Is is a big shaft company. I think
they're in the golf space to say, and Um, it
was really really cool to listen what he had to say,
and it'll be fun to see kind of which direction
they go. Thanks for listening and thanks for down like listen.

(43:03):
We've got a bunch of great podcasts if you haven't
listened to UM all the ones that we have, This
is forty one. We've got forty that you can listen to.
Bryson Um has been on it, and you know, Read
talked a lot about their relationship with Bryson and what
an interesting character Bryson is to work with. So check
it out wherever you get your podcasts. Back next Wednesday

(43:27):
with yet another guest. We will see you next week.