September 18, 2024 • 49 mins
Mustard Golf recently released their exciting new app with AI swing analysis and personalized reports and coaching from the greats including Tom House, Jason Goldsmith, Justin Rose, and Mark Blackburn! CEO of Mustard Golf, Rocky Collis, joins Chris to share the story of Mustard Golf and how easily you can cut through the noise to find the one fix that will have the biggest domino effect on your game. Check out Mustard Golf: On the App Store: Mustard Golf On Socials: @teammustard Online: www.teammstrd.com info@teammstrd.com
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm your host, Chris Finn, and I'm excited today because
we have our first tech CEO with us and this
is a guy that I've known for a while.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Actually I don't know, shoot three four years at this point.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We have the co founder CEO of Mustard, the Mustard
app team, Mustard dot com. He like, this is some
of the coolest stuff, like just don't like do not
change the station. This is the coolest stuff from a
technology standpoint that we've ever been had on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So Rocky, welcome to the show man. Excited to have you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah, thanks for having me at Chris. I've learned a
ton from you over the years and it's been great
just getting to know you and watching you get to
know some of my co founders in Mustard, like Tom
Houise and some of the impactful work you've done with Tom.
And so now that we're in golf, thrilled to share
the story with other folks that learn from you and
talk about maybe some stuff we can do together in
(01:06):
the future too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I mean this is for anyone who's been following the pod.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I came back from the PGA Show back in January
February and we were talking. I was talking about like
it was the I feel like every year there's like
a new theme there, right, Like No, the year before
it was like simulators or force plates, and then this
year there was and everywhere you look there was a
new AI company and everyone calls themselves AI, so they can,
you know. But having done stuff with you and and
(01:32):
Mustard and obviously with Tom on the baseball side and
then talking about the golf side, anyone who listens knows
that I'm kind of a geek and data and I
think that's where we've kind of hit it off. But
like I guess my first question just to jump it off,
is like I'm always a big fan of stuff that
is not a band aid fix, Like I hate that
in the fitness world, absolutely hate that in the instructional
(01:53):
world like if And the people that listen to this
are people who are looking to solve, like really solve
a problem. Yeah, that to me is something that at
least in my opinion, You tell me if I'm wrong.
It's something that was unique about Mustard and particularly the
ops in the baseball side. Now on the golf But
I mean, how would you describe kind of that mission
that you guys have had around that, and you know,
(02:13):
I feel like we share a similar vision there.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah. Look, Mustard started really from the brains of two
of the greatest coaches of all time, right, like, not
not from business people's brains, but from two of the
greatest coaches of all time. So one is Tom House,
who you know super well, but just for anybody who
doesn't know who Tom is. Became famous in recent years
because he was Tom Brady's quarterback coach, but before that,
(02:38):
you know he was he was a major league pitcher himself,
so he went from baseball to football. He was the
most famous pitching coach in the country in baseball. Nolan
Ryan's pitching coach, and then a slew other guys.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah he was okay, Nolan Ryan.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Nolan Ryan could do what every want idea. And then
Jason Goldsmith that you know, we think is the top
mental performance coach in sports, works predominantly in golf, worked
with both Justin Rose and Jason Day when each of
them became number one in the world, and still works
with both of them intensely, but works across sports. And
so from their brains the concept was like how do
(03:11):
you democratize the world's best coaching. That's what they came
to me with My brother Luke, who was a professional quarterback,
was working with Tom. That was the concept, like Tom
House has this very scientific approach to coaching. When you
go to Tom, you know for sure that the training
recommendations you get are the most impactful possible recommendations. He's
(03:34):
going to give you something to work on that has
a ton of dominoes that naturally fall after that first piece, Right,
He's going to give you one thing to work on.
It's going to totally revamp your mechanics, turns you into
you know, I've seen it happen hundreds of times, turns
you into a better player immediately. How can you program that
into an app? And the initial concept in baseball and
football was how can we just give that the kids
(03:57):
all over the world so that they might keep playing
their sport longer. So we say we have this phrase,
democratize the world's best coaching. It sounds super simple, It
probably sounds thoughtless, but we was actually really thoughtful on
our part. We really mean every word, and I guess
the most important word is coaching. So to your point,
like if something is band aidy, or if something is
just AI for AI's sake, then that's not coaching, you know.
(04:23):
So we work really hard to create products. Where As
a golfer, we want you to feel like you are
in the room with Mark Blackburn Golf diyed just number
one coach in America, and he has identified for you
the chunkiest fix for your golf swing with the most
dominoes after that fix, and then he's given you all
his drills and exercises to improve. So we spend a
(04:45):
lot of time on the tech side. Obviously, we've got
I think the best computer vision AI team in sports,
very proud of what they build. But I would say
we spend even more time on the coaching side, thousands
of hours with Mark Blackburn and with the entire Golf
Digest team, Peter Maurice, you know. I mean, I've been
on the phone with Peter every day for a year
and a half, right figuring out here's all this data
(05:09):
we capture with computer vision and AI. We're not providing
all that data to users. It's useless to them. What
are the what are the parameters are, What does the
report card look like? What does past me and what
does failed mean? What are the drills people need in
order to improve if they've got a long across the
line swing at the top and their hips don't really
rotate that much every every iteration of a golf swing,
(05:32):
you can imagine what does real coaching look like for
that people. That's where we really spend our time and
make our impacts.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that particularly,
you know, for Peter as Golf, like we've were we've
obsolutely we're in the online space and we're always looking.
We've been I've been looking for years for like there's
got to be a way to like measure stuff, and
you know, I just you know, the tech hadn't been
there now we met, and you know I have in
my practice it has always been like a you give
(06:00):
somebody more than three things to do, like good luck,
like they're not going to figure it out. And I
think that's been the biggest attraction for me to to
the Muster Golf app and to you guys, and even
just Tom. First time met Tom, you know, he put
an actual like a label on his teachable right like
like what is the teachable you're going to be taking out?
And I was like, Oh, that's that's a cool word.
I'm want to steal that. So that was what's the
(06:22):
teachable guys. But I think that's the coolest thing to
me about the app. Obviously we can get into the
tech and how it works and the.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Like.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Even just my son was like, he's not a baseball
he's twelve, he's not or eleven. I guess he's twelve.
He's not a baseball player. He's but he was like,
I was like Lucas lially, he said, oh.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Cool, can you feel me. Let's see what happens. What
should I do?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Like you know, he it made it fun for him
and and it was the cool thing for me is like, oh,
that's like actually accurate, and that's I've seen Tom actually
say that exact thing too, somewhat too a professional, and
so it's to me it was it's delivered in such
a way that it's going to be actually digestible by
people to your point, actually get better.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
The tech is there. I've seen a lot of the
other tech.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
It sucks just to be well right, especially when you
start talking about rotationally, but just knowing you guys and
what you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I think that's been the biggest draw for me to
you guys.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And yeah, I don't know if you have, Like I
think for some people understand, somebody probably never seen what
this is like AI, Like what the heck is that?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Like?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
How would you describe that to somebody who's never seen it?
Like how it works? On of you have like some
examples of.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
How you've seen it work where somebody listening could like
start to understand because people can tell by the pace
of my voice. I'm really excited because this is the
coolest stuff I think that I've seen.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Well, let me just say I appreciate everything you said.
I think that in the computer vision AI space, like
in sports golf, golf is really the example of a
sport where there are other companies that I think are
doing really cool work from the tech standard. So there's
a number of companies that I have a ton of
(07:59):
respect for in golf. I think again, where we're we
just have a different angle and I think speak to
a different market than most of the other companies are
doing great work. I think the natural thing with computer
vision AI, where you're measuring basically to generalize, you're measuring
every joint location over every frame of the video. Okay,
(08:20):
so you have all these things plotted and it's you know,
ten thousand lines numbers on a spreadsheet. We're different is
I think the natural thing with all that data is
to provide it to coaches or to really elite players.
You know, justin Rose, our golf partner, loves to dive
in on all that data and understand when his hips
are one degree different, you know, and there's wind off
the left, does that effect his swing half a degree?
(08:41):
In these kinds of things, those things matter a lot
for him, is a real money on the line, But
that doesn't matter to the average golfer, where they don't
know how to interpret that stuff. So we separate ourselves
by taking that spreadsheet and then working with great coaches
and figuring out how do you filter that information a player? Basically,
you know, all this talk about artificial intelligence, human intelligence
(09:06):
is pretty good too, sometimes, yes, And what we realize
is that like Tom house Mark Blackburn, you there are
coaches that have magic, and the magic I see, you know,
Tom's one of these guys that I've seen the most.
The magic in Tom is to identify all the things
(09:26):
he looks at it eleven year old picture. Imagine all
the things he sees that are wrong. You know, this
person still, this person's just understanding where their body is
and in space and just figuring out how to move.
He sees a thousand things that could be fixed, and
he identifies the one that's most impactful. So over forty
years of doing that, he's got a checklist in the
back of his mind, even if he doesn't realize it
(09:47):
at first. And so what we do is we try
to pull out those checklists that the great coaches have,
the checklists that make the magic, and then we program it.
And then the second piece of that, I mean you
talked about the visuals your son in even though he's yeah,
that's huge for us. Like we have this mantra that
we stole from Tom and form instruct inspire. Yeah, and
(10:08):
the inspire is probably the most important one of those.
You want to you want to convince people to keep playing,
keep trying, keep progressing. If people just keep playing, keep trying,
they're gonna get better, They're going to have more fun,
and that's gonna build on itself.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And you'll love this to my son, So literally, I
like drag him out, like I'm like, dude, let's go outside.
He's a bookworm. So I'm like, Lucas, let's go outside, like,
let's throw the ball. So he goes, literally the other day,
he goes, can we use the mustard? Can we use
the app to see if I got better? I'm like, dude,
you haven't done a thing that it told you to do,
Like you're not going to be any better.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
He's like, but can we do it? So I was like,
I tried. It didn't work, but I was like, we'll
tell you what.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
We can use the app if you practice for the
next three four days. Right, So he went on to
practice for like two days and then he kind of
like fell off and he's back to reading a book
and I'm sure we'll have the same discussion and maybe
I'll down it till he's just got to practice too
days and.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
We can redo it.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But it was so funny because he was like motivated
by the tech. It was actually it was pretty funny.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Well, we think a lot about again, we kind of
were born to this focus on kids because we were
in baseball and then football first. We think a lot
about just the issues of kids being on the phone
too much and playing playing video games rather than being
out your kids reading books. That's pretty good. I wouldn't
I'm not going to complain.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I've never thought that's funny.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
My wife and I quick, I never thought i'd have
to ground my kid by saying you can't read. So
he read good to great when he was like in
third grade and like understood it. I'm like, I'm like,
I'm the dumbest you are the smartest man in this house.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So yeah, I mean sounds huge. So so that's great,
but you know for most kids that sat there on
the phone too much. So yeah, we've talked about how
do you take society's problem in the cell phone and
how do you turn it into society's solution. And so
basically we want to meet kids where they are all right,
they're on the phone. Fine, we create a visually engaging
(11:59):
solution that's on the phone, something that's playful. Create streaks.
It's gamified improvement. But the way you improve, the way
you create your streaks, the way you engage with the application.
You got to get up, you got to move your
body around. You got to a lot of our stuff
you can do inside, but sometimes you got to be outside. Right,
So we're trying to we're trying to kind of merge
the two worlds that way. And I think in baseball
(12:22):
we've seen a lot of success that way. And in
golf product's been out for a month, but I think
that's a key part of the product offering for us
is people listening to this podcast. You know a lot
of people feel like they don't have time to go
to the range. So how do they get better? Okay,
upload everybody's got some down the line swing video on
their phone. We can upload that to the Mustard app
and to give you your report card and give your
(12:44):
drills and exercises to do. You can get all that
done while you're sitting on the couch at home, or
more likely for most of our users, while they're sitting
at the office. That's fine too, as long as you
don't work at Mustard, that's great. And then and then
you have the drills and exercises you can do without
a club usually and just wherever you are, find a mirror,
(13:05):
find find a little bit of open space in the
officer at home, and you can get better just working
on movement patterns in a in a way that a
great coach instructs you to do.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
That's so like, can you paint a picture of how
like so down the line just for everyone's doesn't know
that's the they you film it from behind you, so
like you'd be filling it down your target line. But so, like,
what's what's the use case that you know that you've
seen in the in the first year you guys are
obviously it's the golf side has just kind of come out, Yeah,
in terms of I know, the baseball side has some
(13:36):
pretty wild success stories in terms of guys going from
nowhere to you know, having contracts in the pros. But like,
what are what are you seeing on the golf side
that's been like as some of like the early markers
of success that you guys have seen.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Yeah, Honestly, the good thing and the challenging thing for
us is that people get dramatically better within a couple
of weeks. So so when you upload your first swing
to Mustard or take your first swing in the app,
you get a swing score and the average right now
after two weeks, so people, if you upboad another video
every week after two weeks, the average is that people
(14:09):
improve their swing scores ten percent. Wow, that's that's pretty dramatic.
I mean, that's that's that's the difference several fairways around
of it. That's a few loss balls around that that
people have changed, just based on two weeks of focusing
on drills. I think that what we've seen is kind
(14:31):
of the The magic is a lot of our people.
So Golf dis is our partner in building this right.
As you know, we haven't mentioned yet, a lot of
our users are reading Golf Digest articles, they're watching YouTube
instructional videos, but they're they're reading and watching the wrong stuff.
They don't understand their own swings. I didn't understand mine
(14:51):
until I use the app, if I'm honest. And so
you read all this stuff and you start tinkering trying things,
and you go backwards and and you give up on
things very quickly, bec because intuitively you know that you
might be on the wrong thing exactly. Well, now the
app identifies for you and shows you, Okay, you're you
know you're across the line, your your hands are too
far out on the backswing, your hands are too far
(15:13):
into the backswinger, you rotate too much or too little,
or you lose your pops here there. It explains your
whole swing for you, both backswing and downswing, and then
shows you therefore, here's where we're starting, and here are
the drills we want you to do. So people doing
the right drills for two weeks when they've never done
that before in their lives, it's pretty impactful, you know.
You get they get new movement patterns, and they get
(15:34):
a new understanding of what they're trying to do. On
the golf, you get new feels, and they hit the
ball straighter. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I think that's so important for everybody listening.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Like I always think of the construct of just in life,
both you know, whether it's in the fitness side or
business side. I always think of there's kind of like
four things right. You can solve the wrong problem the
right way, right that you can solve the wrong problem
the wrong way, and you could solve the right problem
the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And I feel like a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Of times you got people on YouTube just picking stuff
and they're they're going in those constructs instead of actually
identifying the right problem and the right solution and solving
that the right way.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And so that's the mental construct for me is.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
When I'm evaluating, you know, an improvement system, it's like
how good is this thing at finding the right problem
and then giving the right solution. So that to me
is I think one of the cool things about it
is it's not just like analysis. It's like, hey, we've
analyzed it based on the data. This is what we
then need to address and then you know, these would
be the things to implement now when you are implementing,
(16:33):
Like if I'm a user and I'm using it, just
for illustrating this for people listening, Yeah, you said they
get a report card and they get really, I mean
is there a certain number of things that they get?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Is there like how does that work for the person
using it?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
So you get one issue that Mark Blackburn recommends you
work on perfect and that's like one of the metrics
in the report card. So as an example, it could be.
My first one was my hands were what Mark calls
too far out on the backswing, which basically means they
were too high. Okay, we measured at the top of
(17:09):
the backswing. That's where that's where Mark wants it measured.
So basically, my arms are getting disconnected from my body.
I'm a recovered baseball player, right, so I was. I
was very armsy and I really need to work on
just being more connected in the back so in my
app all right, hands are two out on the backswing,
it was like a five out of ten was my
score on that. I was dragging my overall score down.
(17:32):
I got an entire training plan directed at getting my
hands more on plane in the backswing. That training plan
looks like it's a definition video from Mark where he
explains what the issue is. Then you get three videos.
This speaks to the finding the right problem. As you
just pointed out, you get a few videos from Mark,
depending with the issues you get, you know, three to
(17:53):
five videos on potential causes. So these are reasons that
you your hands might be too far out.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You're getting a why you're getting You're not just getting
the what, you're getting a why with it.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
That's what it's heppening.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, And some of these things, to be honest, are
things we can't see right. The computer vision can't pick
some of these things up. Yet. It could be a
grit problem, right, Sometimes it could be a set up
problem that we can't detect because we don't know where
you're aiming, right. So Mark goes through some of these
things and videos, here are things you should check and
this might be the reason your hands are too far
out on the backswing. And what we found in you know,
(18:24):
about six months of testing it now is that almost
always people when they hear these three or four or
five things, one of them, they're like it's the aha moment.
They're like, that's it, that's the reason I have this problem. Okay,
now they understand their issue. Now they understand the right problem.
Then when they're going through their drills, they're able to
really believe in the drills and apply them to the
(18:45):
right problem, so they get the right problem in the
right solution. So after the causes, you get probably five
to ten drills from Mark just for this issue. We
then ask people to upload a new swing at least
you know, a week later, let's say, is usually the cadence,
and then if they've approved on that issue they were
working on, it'll get recommended to go to the next issue.
(19:07):
I'll say, well, I'll be curious for your taking us.
But like we get a lot of emails from people
that are like, well, I saw my first plan, great,
I got it now, and then it's like the same
day and they're like, now I want to move on
to the next issue. And we specifically didn't build the
app allowing for that we want people to follow this
this process, but people don't want to do it. I'm curious,
(19:29):
curious how you would think about.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It, like training, Hey, that's so funny you say that,
because it's yeah, it's like you will come in, we'll
do the testing with people and it's like, all right,
you're in the tenth percentile of lower body power and
you want to pick up more speed and okay, well
we need to build that and they're like okay, cool,
so by next week. No, well that's not exactly how
(19:52):
physiology works, sir. It takes about six day weeks. So,
but I do think the the fun thing that I
always try to think of in our construct at least
in the fitness spaces, it's it's obviously there's a lot
of education and there's understanding of the why. That is
something that you know, all of our listeners and everybody
that we work with like that, like.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Dies for right.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It's like, okay, that's cool, you told me what, so
what why tell me why? I want to understand why.
And I think for us, I always love the analogy
of the you know the I think it was like
it's like a grandmother that you know, the.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Kid needs the guard.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
The dog needs garlic or something there was have some
medicinal thing, right. So the grandma says the daughter, hey,
give you know, give buddy, you know, some garlic, right,
and she's trying to give the garlic. Kids trying to
get the dog won't need the garlic. And then she
goes to the ground. She's like, she won't need to
She's like, oh, we gott to wrap it in ham.
So you wrap She wraps in the ham and the dog,
you know, freaking eats it up. No problem, right, And
(20:47):
so IVO that that that story is always stuck with me,
and that sometimes you have to give people what they
want wrapped, like wrap that around what they need. And
so I think that's where I always think of on
the fitness side, and I think this is this goes
true the instructional side. Everybody listening, like when you know,
the most powerful thing I think that anybody can get
is the information of what the problem is and understand
why it is. And then you know, I'll always tell
(21:09):
like for us, it's like bicep curls, right, particularly like
the high school kids, right, they're like I want to
do the boys like I want to do curls, you know,
curls for the girls. It's like, cool, you can do curls,
but you got to do these other four things that
actually are going to matter for why you're here first,
and if you get all that done, bow me have
at it, right. And so I think that's kind of
how we've approached it, is like we're not gonna tell
you know, but we're going to tell you why all
(21:31):
that's a waste of time and potentially going to be
like like hurtful to what you're trying to do and
actually working in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
But if you want to do it, by all means,
go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And I feel like for us, it's like by presenting
that rational logic, like people are generally pretty logical, and
you're you're just like, hey, like you can totally go
do that. Like if you want to keep you know,
slicing whatever, you know, whate the problem is, like you
want to keep doing that, bo me, It's like here
here's you know what, here's ten more drills you can
go do that'll just exacerbate your problem. But you know,
if you'd like to actually get better, these would be
(22:00):
the three things that we'd recommend and you know means
your choice, right, But I think that's kind of how
we've how we've approached it.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
That's that's that's interesting. We we filmed last week our
instructional videos with Justin Rose. So right now in the app,
if you get your training plan, all of your instructional
videos are from Mark Blackburn. Pretty soon we will have
a bunch of instructional videos from Michael Jacobs, another golf
di just top ten instructor. But then Justin Row is
(22:28):
a big investor in partner. That's really cool, and he's
so great on camera in the instruction but he's really
interesting on this point, right because as anybody who watches
golf knows, Rosie has been doing the same drills, right Yeah,
I mean, I mean, and I think most elite golfers
are probably that way. But we see him doing the
drill before every swing. You know, we even call it
(22:50):
the Rosie drill, where he's kind of dropping the arms
and sometimes he's chest with these a few different iterations
he does of it, but basically it's the same drill
that he's relied on for thirty years. And so we
filmed a lot with him just explaining the power of
that finding the feels and the drills that really work
for you, and then just really leaning into those and
and and making them work for you. I think that's
(23:14):
going back to the initial concept. That's the power of AI.
That's where AI can be honest for the right problem
and the right solution. Learn what feels, what drills you
should really be incorporating into your routine, and hammer them
and stop and stop just kind of you know, tinkering
(23:34):
around with everything. Find out what are the ways to
get your golf swing closer to neutral right now and
then and then you get to go out and play
with that.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Well, I think that's for everybody listening to the golf.
This is like for a life, But I think it's
so more like really golf is there's so much noise, right,
There's so many things you could do. And I think
if you look at every successful person, like they say
no to everything else, right, and golf, the golf swing
is no different.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
And this is where you know, like a joke with
the guy I'm talking about the bicep curls, I said
the guy, Hey, I'll tell you what, just do bi
scept curls for the next six weeks, and then let's
retest your clubs and see if it goes up. And
then for the next six weeks, let's do this stuff
I'm telling you to do, and let's see if the
clube's peak goes up. Whoever wins, we do their thing right.
And I think that's ultimately what the Muster golf app
(24:19):
does is it gives you that feedback and it eliminates
to me, for the person the golfer listening, it eliminates
all the noise and it says, look, the really successful
people like Rosie, Like we call it the hot spot
list in the physical world, like, hey, there's three things
that tend to pop up that you know your low
right back tends to be the thing that gets irritated
or you're right elbow, whatever it may be. So here
(24:41):
here's the three things for you, like sir, that you
need to always be on top of and be aware of.
The golf swing's no different, Like you're gonna have habits,
You're gonna have these things. And I think that to me,
that's the really cool thing of what you guys are
doing is you're identifying the right problem and then you're
you're literally saying, hey, we have thousands of options of
things that you could do, but literally based on like
(25:02):
the best coaches in the world, the best data, these
are the three things to do. And I think sometimes
as humans, so that's like hard to be like, that's it,
and it's like, but I want to be great. It's like, yeah,
well step one is do more of the right thing,
and then step two is just do that thing better. Yeah,
and until you're scratch like, don't worry about anything else.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's it's commitment and diligence and
work ethic. Right now, I think what's interesting presumably there's
a lot of folks listening that work with you and
learn from you. You know, we try in the app again,
we look at potential causes. So let's take a different
example of somebody who might be under rotated in the backswing. Okay,
(25:45):
so that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
So pretty much, if you're over fifty, that's all of
you right now.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, yeah, and then all of you guys who fail
off all for rotary tests. I went on the radio today,
I said, hey, if anybody over the age of fifty
can pass all for roatdary tests, I'm on extent radio.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So I will give you a year free of training,
and nobody got it. Nobody got it.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
No, I wonder if yeah, I want to try to pass.
That's interesting because I was thinking also under fifty, anybody
who's just on the bicep girl diet that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Is probably that'll be the next offer we make.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, listen to all of those guys.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
They're going to be the under rotated guy you're talking
about right now.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah. So then what we would flag in the app
is this may be a physical limitation. Yeah, you know,
the solution might not be to just tell yourself to
rotate more. Yeah, the solution might be you're got to
do some physical work, and Mark talks about that in
the app. But I think that's you know, for somebody
who's working with a coach, or working with one of
your coaches, or working through your platform, I think this
can must technology can be really helpful, right because now
(26:47):
they can go to their coach or go to you
guys through the platform and say, these are the swing
issues that I know I'm having. Are the things we
should be doing with my training program that will help
me naturally dial the swing in a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, Well that's I literally, it was just having a
conversation with one of our clients, like probably an hour
before we jumped on, and his all his mobility numbers
are great now like he had no mobility. He's now
rotating really was or us for about a year. All
of his power numbers are are up. When we look
at his goal, he's I think he started like ninety five.
(27:21):
He's like one hundred and two hundred and three miles
an hour. He wants to get to one hundred and
I think his one hundred and eight was his goal
for someone to random number he picked.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I don't know. I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
He couldn't tell me either, but basically, like to I
said my first question, I thought, we'll do you work
with a golf professional, because what we should do is
we should get with them to talk about what you're
trying to do performance wise and what we're trying to do,
you know, on the physical side, so we can make
sure we're supporting that. And the most frustrating thing for
me has always been there, like, well, no, I don't
like I got there's a guy at the club. I
may see him wants you know, he kind of knows
(27:49):
my swing or whatever. And to me, that's the power
of a tool like this, like Muster Golf is now
all of a sudden that guy like, well, cool, you
don't have an instructor. Let's here here, go to the
app store, grab it and let's see what you got.
And then you know, then it can say hey, like
let's say that happened right and says, hey, you may
have a physical limitation.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
We very confidently can say the guy, Nope, no.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Physical limitation if you And I think that's what we
see with a lot of guys as they get better,
is they actually will still move and this is probably
forty percent of guys sixty percent they like boom, they
figure it out, their bodies move better, they move better
in their golf swing.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
But I'd say almost half there's a need.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
To like figure out how to get what they've built
physically into the golfsman, they still will do their old
under rotation or not, weight shifting to the lead side,
whatever it may be.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And I mean that's the cool part.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Of a tool like this is it it systematizes not
just the physical side, but then it also helps you
to figure out the instructional side.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
In a really high quality DIY kind of way.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We're in baseball where you
can't play baseball without a coach. Every baseball player has
a coach, right, you're on a team, a team coach.
And so that just from a business perspective, that a
how we go about distribution in baseball and how we
create the product. It's something you have to use with
a coach. But it also led to this learning for us.
(29:11):
Early days of baseball, a lot of coaches were very
nervous about our product because they thought we were replacing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Them, trying to replace them instead of augmented.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
And if I'm honest, in the early days, I thought
it might I didn't know. I mean, we nobody had
done it before. We were the first one in baseball,
and yeah, maybe it would replace a lot of coaches.
We found is yes, a player can use it without
a coach. And to me, that's like in baseball, that's
like level seven coaching, okay, seven out of ten, but
(29:42):
if you use it with a coach, that's ten out
of ten. Basically, Mustard would take any coach from whatever
whatever level they were at and take them up to
a ten because now they're Basically, they got Tom Hose
as an assistant coach in baseball, and that makes them
That makes them pretty good in golf. It's a totally
different market. So the way we look at it, there's
(30:02):
sixteen million people in the US that watch YouTube instructional
videos for golf. Okay, so there's ten million of us
that care enough to spend our time when we're at
we're at home, we could be doing something with our kids,
or we're at work, we could be working it. Instead
we're watching YouTube instructional swing videos trying to get better
(30:22):
at golf. Only one million of those sixteen million people,
only one million take lessons, right, So people care about
it enough to spend their time on it when it's
convenient for them at the computer, but they don't care
enough about it either to pay for it or to
take the time to go. So we started doing research, Well,
why aren't these people taking lessons? Some of them are
(30:44):
too embarrassed. I think they suck too bad at golf
and they don't want anybody to see them hit the ball.
I understand that feeling. That makes sense, I know, I
remember that. I don't feel that way anymore, but I
felt that way for a long time, so I get that.
So okay, So that's sometimes there's a cost. You know,
I realize I'm gonna have to pay. It's not one
lesson's not gonna do it, and I'm gonna have to
pay for six. So you know, six lessons at one
(31:07):
hundred and fifty each, all right, that this is I
don't know. Yeah, well I understand that of course. And
then there's the time aspect of it, which is interesting
because all of these folks are playing golf, so they're
taking the time to play golf, but they maybe get
to play once a week, and so then they would say, well,
I get to play once a week. I don't want
to take my time with so, you know, dealing with
(31:29):
somebody else at the course who I may or may
not like. I just want to play, like I'm trying
to have fun during that time. So I always say, like,
if you're if you're interested in using mustard, it's it'll
still level you up. If you work with an in
person coach, you're gonna get you're going to get a relationship,
you're going to get next level analysis where they can
use mustard too, You're going to get inspiration. It's gonna
(31:51):
make you better. But if you fall into one of
those three categories we've talked about where you're just not
gonna use an in person coach, Yeah, Mustard can help
you get better just on your own in golf. And
that's kind of the point. You can do it at home,
then we do. The annual price is basically the cost
of the average lesson the annual price of Mustards one
hundred and fifty dollars. You can also do a monthly,
but a lot of our people picked the annual because
(32:13):
you get a discount that way. Yeah, and then you
don't have to I don't have to hit a ball
in front of anybody, so you can avoid the.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Well, I think you know what you're bringing up there.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I think when I started the business, the reason I
started for us Golf was I was frustrated with the
quality of data collection or lack thereof, in the fitness space.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I thought I thought golf fitness was a joke. I
was like, there's no way this.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I actually worked for free for people in the beginning
because I felt bad taking money and I wasn't confident
I could help them right. And then as part of
our business, I went locally because before we were online,
this is twenty eleven, twelve, before an online golf thing
would have even done anything. But I just went I
went pro to pro at all of the different clubs
in the area. You know, I'm in the triangle. There's
(32:59):
lots of golf. It was probably had fifteen twenty lessons.
I'm not joking when I say zero of them assessed
me the same way, zero of them told me to
do that. I had to work on the same thing,
and zero of them gave me the same drill. And
so I think, you know, and then I think, when
you look at the historical data on handicaps in America,
they haven't moved. Yeah, And then you look and then
(33:21):
you say, well, why is that?
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Like I do golf pro stink and I know inherently
they don't. Inherently they just don't have There's there's no
when you look at how are they taught to teach
when they get their PGA certification and whatnot. It's very
much on running a golf shop, running tournaments and allow
of the instruction. And this is starting to change with
the PGM programs. We actually will go out and speak
to those guys. But there's no education on the body.
(33:45):
There's no education on a system of coaching. It's literally
based on your internship who you get if you get
to a club and there's a great teacher there that
you can learn under. It's very much kind of archaic
in that sense of sharing stories and you learn that way.
And so I think to your point, there are a
lot of great coaches who understand, Hey, if this guy
wants to get to a five from a ten, these
(34:07):
are the areas of the game he needs to work on.
But what Mustard golf to me, what the technology starts
to do is it starts to standardize assessment and give
you objective points the way.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
You know. One thing I hate on that it's like
how'd that feel? I don't care how it felt? Was
it better or not? Like what does the data tell me?
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
And I think that there is such a disconnect the
more you actually practice and we have two simulators here
and like I'll hit some that I'm like, oh, that
felt great, and then you look at the date and
you're like, oh my god, Okay, I don't want to
feel that, Like I don't want to feel great.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
If that's the result right.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
And so to me, that's where the augmentation comes in.
For the golf professional or you know, the teachers. You
now get to leverage the expertise and the experience which
is not replaceable of the coach, with a standardized assessment
system where you can objectively say, hey, this is what
the coach, this is where I started. I'm going to
implement a solution that the coach thinks I should implement,
(35:02):
you know, using you know, using this tool, and then
we're gonna go do it. And then I'm going to retest.
And it's like the basic scientific method, like problem identified hypothesis, implement, retest.
If it didn't get better, I should probably try something else.
And to me, that's the true value. And you talk
about leveling up. It levels everybody to know a seven,
but now to truly we can get it's not getting
(35:24):
bad to good, it's getting good to create. And to me,
that's what, when used correctly, how the technology is really
really valuable for everybody.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Well, I you know, I agree with everything you said,
although I would also say I think it's very effective
with getting people bad to possible. You know.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, So I'm saying I'm talking more about like the instructors, right,
how do we how do we like, how do we
give everybody? How do we level everyone up as close
as possible? With Mark Blackburn, let's say, you know, I
like to that level, right, and so I just augments
the experience for everybody.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
And I mean the beginners are.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
The ones who are probably nervous to go hip balls
and to people, and maybe gets those people to the
level where now they can they feel comfortable enough to
then use them the pro as well.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
You know what I mean. I think there's so many
use cases to me that are that are really cool.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
We've definitely proven that it makes the coach player relationship stickier.
If they're using mustard together in baseball and and golf,
those people are going to work together forever because they're
going to the coach can prove the progression to the
player in the same set. Right. So usually eating balls
(36:31):
on the right, Okay, you might be feeling like you
hit balls better at the end of a lesson, but
sometimes you're at the end of the lesson you're hitting
the balls horrible, right, because you just got a new
swing thought and you're thinking a lot of swing stuff. Well,
now the coach can show you like, Okay, yes, you
need to practice this, you need another arrange session to
dial it in, but your swing scores improving, like stick
(36:51):
with it, you know, and then you get the light
bulb moment for the player, which we think is really impactful.
It's interesting, as you were talking to a thing more
about your early comments of like people slapping AI on everything.
We're very proud of our AI, like you know, I
feel strongly about it. I think it's we've made it
really useful for people. Now. Now what we see like
(37:13):
in you know, Venture venture World, is everybody's trying to
figure out how to use generative AI. It's not just AI,
but it's like where's the chat GPT generative AI elemented
And without sharing too much that we're not ready to
release it, like we are going to build. We are
building generative AI features to our app that I think
(37:33):
will be really impactful. But as part of going down
that road, I heard from one of the biggest tech
companies on Earth some of the you know, some of
the generative AI stuff they're working on them they and
they showed us they built in a very short period
of time a golf product with generative AI that given
(37:56):
the amount of the little amount of time they spent
on it was quite impressive. Like I was like, that
would have taken us, you know, several months, but it
was impressive, but still not usable for the average golfer.
It wouldn't have you know, it wouldn't have lowered handicaps.
I'll put it that way. Yeah, it would have been
fun to play with. But it's like if you just
(38:17):
funnel all of the golf instruction on the internet into
it into a product, well that we already have that.
We have the Internet already, right, people are already funneling
through that and already getting confused. And so now you've
got things in there that inflickt with each other, or
you know, you get one recommendation one day, you get
a different one the next day, or you're getting recommendations
(38:39):
from somebody who's not the best coach in the world, right, Yeah.
And so what we found through that process is like
there were elements of generative AI that really short and
runways for companies obviously of course, and you can create
products much more quickly in a very impactful ways, but
you still have to do the hard work that we're doing,
(39:01):
which is find the best coach in the world that
a sport and then spend thousands of hours with them
basically pulling the magic out of their brain in a
way that's programmable.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, And I think that's the big thing to me
is that yes, you can pull everything offline that still
doesn't solve the problem.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I've always called it the Google. My dream is always
to build a Google of golf, like we've talked.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
About this before, where like you can create the single
entry point where the user, the golfer out there, has
confidence that the search results that they're that they're plugging
in are going to be accurate, right, and say like,
you know, I'm coming over the top, or how do
I stop slicing? And instead of saying, oh, this is
how you stop slicing, it says, well, let's take a look, like,
(39:45):
let's do it, give us some metrics, let's send a
swing in, and then we'll tell you that if that's
even the problem, or if that's just a symptom of
something else.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
That Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
One of my fair analogies like you just you go
to the mechanic and you tell them like, hey, my
cars make it noise, right, And you don't even take
you just like you see the mechanic at the grocery
stores like, oh well maybe this or this right. To me,
that's like just searching the internet how do I fix
my slice versus you actually take it into the mechanic
which is going into the Muster golf app or coming
(40:14):
into p First Golf for the body and you say, hey,
can you take a look and you say, okay, yeah,
so it's making a noise, but that's actually connected to this,
which that's what's causing that noise. But actually that's the
problem is coming from this other spot over here, and
actually there's two other things over here that are about
to break. So if we can address that one thing,
that'll take the stress off of those two and it'll
(40:35):
fix everything right. And it's like like that's the level
of detail that having the right assessment that ultimately brings.
I think unfortunately a lot of people are just like
talking to the mechanic and the grocery store like, hey,
it's buzzy, Oh well, it's probably that, And to me,
that's why that's where the struggle has been with people's handicaps.
Not improving is wrong problems and guesses at solutions and
they're just not the right ones.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
I think people know that too, Like I think people
it's intuitive for people that when you get a band aid,
it's like, okay, stop moving your head. Yeah, people, well
moving my head because of six other things that happen
in the chain, and I don't know what they are.
And so then you they feel that magic right away.
You know, one piece of the app I didn't talk
about yet, but it's actually proven to be like our
(41:17):
magic moment when people really buy into what we're doing
and you upload a swing and actually before you see
your report card, we have this video AI video of
Mark Blackburn pops up and basically he explains your whole
swing to you. So it's not just one thing he
wants you to work on, but he actually explains both
(41:39):
your back swing and your down swing to you. So
an example, again, thinking about my first one, it would
have been like, Okay, your hands are too far out
on the back swing, they're too high, and then as
a result of that, you kind of you know, you're
trying to figure out how to get the club back
to the ball, your hands come too far in on
the downswing, and then as a result of that, you know,
you don't you don't rotate enough. You kind of early
(42:00):
extend a little bit. You're thrusting at the golf ball,
and as a result of that, you're missus. This is
the key part. Your misses are probably A, B and C.
It's so so so everybody gets that video or you know,
I would say ninety five percent of swings get that
kind of analysis from Mark up front. Within thirty people
when they realize that the computer vision the AI has
(42:22):
seen the whole swing and done that level of analysis,
and then Mark is going to tell them, therefore, here's
the one thing I want you to work on. That
that's that's when they're compelling.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
That's compelling. That's pretty compelling.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Yeah, and that and that, and that's not for us.
It's not about making the sale. It's about we need
to be compelling and convincing for people right then, so
that they'll be committed to doing the work right, so
that they know when they get the drills from us,
those are the right drills for them to get better.
They need to know on that level of analysis. First. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, I think that's the similar you know, approach we're
taking in our model is you know, we've spent basically
a year, creating over a year worth of content of
kind of like video and demand type content right or
it's follow along or prescripted based on you know, how
people do on an assessment, and we're going to be
similar to you guys.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
My goal.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Our goal is to help every golfer we can play
this game as long as possible, and we're literally giving
it going to start giving it away for free, like
this is like same quality level as other products that
that are charging you know, thirty bucks a month or
you know, a couple hundred bucks a year.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Like, we're literally just gonna give.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
It away for free, and for the exact reason of like,
I don't want any cost barrier. I want to help
our missions to help every single person we possibly can.
And if this can help people who can't afford it, great,
And there's going to be people who get into it
and they're like, wow, this is If this is the
free stuff, paid stuff must be pretty cool too, like
and like, oh, I want to coach. I want to
customize even more, so I want to dive deeper into
like you know, and then obviously people will do other
(43:51):
stuff on that, but you know, I think that's the
same idea. Use you guys use the word democratize, it's
how do we get this How do we get this
information the right information. That's been the big thing for
me is with all the data and research we do,
I know we have the right information. The problem is
it's so dang noisy that it's hard to get the
right information.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Out to people. Well, you know, let's.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Make it free and really good and that they'll take
it that way, right, And so to me, that's how
we're always looking at it is how do we continue
to get this stuff to people so that that way
they can they can.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Get the right information.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
The power of knowledge is just and being informed and
being empowered to kind of handle and take care of themselves,
I think is so critical. And that's the same thing
you guys are doing, is just giving them an objective
way to improve.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
People want to get better at their sport, and I
think that's one of the greatest joys in life, is
like progressing at something. I think we're all out sort
of like personal improvement and progression. That's why golf is addictive,
you know, it's like people that are addicted to golf.
It's people that are passionate about test and self improvement
and in other parts of life too. But man, when
(44:59):
you get to when you're into an activity like that
and it feels like either you don't have the knowledge,
or you don't have the time, or you don't have
the resources to keep progressing, and you're just sort of stagnant,
you know, when.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
People quite demotivating, one hundred percent demotivating. So like, yeah,
I just spent all this time doing this and I
got worse. Like that's not fun.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
No, Yeah, And golf it's hard because you get it
just takes so long to play, you know, so a
lot of us it's like, Okay, you're gonna play, you know,
twelve rounds a year. Well, you know, you're gonna have
to find some ways to practice at home or you're
not going to get.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
So you know.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
But I think with what you offered, in what we offer,
it's interesting, right, Like people accept for the most part
that in order to get better golf, they got to
be in certain shape physically, They got to be able
to move in certain ways. They gotta have a certain
amount of stamina, they gotta have a certain amount of flexibility.
And I think you guys are the best on the
best in earth, on Earth and providing that stuff. And
(45:56):
I think for us, people understand and that their swing
has to be relatively on plane. It's gotta be within
certain parameters. What we've proven in early data is our
technology can help people dial to swing into a place
where it's more neutral. So it's cool.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I'm so excited. It's gonna be fun to bring
you on.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Like after you guys have are out for a year, Yeah,
here and hear the like, it'll be fun. I like,
listen back to this and then have everyone then listen
to a year from now, and like I can, I
can't tell how much more dialed in it's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
It's gonna be. Yeah, this is It's gonna be so cool.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
So for Roggy, I want to thank you so much
for coming on. Man, where can people Where was the
best place for them to involve get involved with Muster?
I know you guys do a bunch of pre stuff
on Instagram, Like, what's the best place for them to
follow you guys and see what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
They can find us in the app store just look
for Mustard Golf. Obviously, we have a pitching application the
app store too, Only use that one if you're if
you're a pitcher. So for people listening to that, recomend
you search for Mustard Golf and you'll find us Instagram.
We've got a ton of instructional videos and and fun
stuff on Instagram that people enjoy. And it's team Team
(47:06):
Mustard on on Instagram. Our website is Team m str D,
so Mustard without values vowels Team mstr d dot com.
So any of those or just or shoot us an
email any questions thoughts info at Team mstr d dot com.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Perfectly well, we'll make sure we put all that in
the in the show notes, so everybody has that easily accessible.
And I did. It was hard for us to get
together to do this. I'm so excited we finally got
it on on the on the record here because it's
a truly you know, I admire what you guys are doing.
I've been following you guys absolutely for a while looking
at a lot of the other stuff, just as we
continue to try to augment what we do for people,
(47:44):
and so I really encourage you guys listen, go check
it out. It's definitely worth worth a download and uh
and see uh see.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
What Mark Mark tells you.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Hopefully, hope is there one for somebody that's the perfect
golf swing which says, sorry, you're perfect, can't help you.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
I'll tell you quick story. This is, and any give
Peter Maurice a hard time about this before before you
kicked me off here. I don't think I don't think
markle Mine might telling the story. So we have a
lot of people that upload videos of swings that are
not their swing right, and we knew we knew this
was coming out of Any. So we're filming with Mark
for three days and outside of Birmingham he works, and
(48:20):
I said, look, we need a video to pop up
when somebody uploads a swing at Tiger Woods or justin Rose.
And so it goes. We go to film and and
I wanted it to be just funny and kind of
casual and just say, hey, we noticed it was justin Rose,
you know, get lost, But Park inserted a slew of
swear words at the person, like pretty colorful ones in
(48:43):
a very Mark Blackburn way. He's like, yeah, we know
that great swing, except we noticed it was justin Rose.
You blah blah blah. And so I loved it and
I intended to put it in the app, but golf,
I just uh, I think they didn't even say it
back to us. Actually we never even got it back.
(49:04):
But I hope at some point we'll have another video
like that, maybe without the swear words.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
You do notice when that happens that AI notices, so
there's something that Yeah, that's so cool, Chris. I really
appreciate you having me on. I've been and remain a
huge admirer of yours and part for success. So a
treat to come on and get to tell our story
in golf with people that we admire respect so much.
And obviously we've been been lucky to do some stuff
(49:30):
with you in baseball and with Tom House too, So yeah,
thanks for helping us tell the story and look forward
to continuing to learn from you all too.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Likewise cool, We definitely we'll do this again in about
a year.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Well, I'll be excited to share the one where you
guys are at.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
So thanks as always guys for hanging out with us
on the golf in this bombs bock, and we'll catch
you on the next episode.
Welcome to the Golf Fitness Bomb Squad.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm your host, Chris Finn, and I'm excited today because
we have our first tech CEO with us and this
is a guy that I've known for a while.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Actually I don't know, shoot three four years at this point.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We have the co founder CEO of Mustard, the Mustard
app team, Mustard dot com. He like, this is some
of the coolest stuff, like just don't like do not
change the station. This is the coolest stuff from a
technology standpoint that we've ever been had on the show.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
So Rocky, welcome to the show man. Excited to have you.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Yeah, thanks for having me at Chris. I've learned a
ton from you over the years and it's been great
just getting to know you and watching you get to
know some of my co founders in Mustard, like Tom
Houise and some of the impactful work you've done with Tom.
And so now that we're in golf, thrilled to share
the story with other folks that learn from you and
talk about maybe some stuff we can do together in
(01:06):
the future too. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I mean this is for anyone who's been following the pod.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
I came back from the PGA Show back in January
February and we were talking. I was talking about like
it was the I feel like every year there's like
a new theme there, right, Like No, the year before
it was like simulators or force plates, and then this
year there was and everywhere you look there was a
new AI company and everyone calls themselves AI, so they can,
you know. But having done stuff with you and and
(01:32):
Mustard and obviously with Tom on the baseball side and
then talking about the golf side, anyone who listens knows
that I'm kind of a geek and data and I
think that's where we've kind of hit it off. But
like I guess my first question just to jump it off,
is like I'm always a big fan of stuff that
is not a band aid fix, Like I hate that
in the fitness world, absolutely hate that in the instructional
(01:53):
world like if And the people that listen to this
are people who are looking to solve, like really solve
a problem. Yeah, that to me is something that at
least in my opinion, You tell me if I'm wrong.
It's something that was unique about Mustard and particularly the
ops in the baseball side. Now on the golf But
I mean, how would you describe kind of that mission
that you guys have had around that, and you know,
(02:13):
I feel like we share a similar vision there.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah. Look, Mustard started really from the brains of two
of the greatest coaches of all time, right, like, not
not from business people's brains, but from two of the
greatest coaches of all time. So one is Tom House,
who you know super well, but just for anybody who
doesn't know who Tom is. Became famous in recent years
because he was Tom Brady's quarterback coach, but before that,
(02:38):
you know he was he was a major league pitcher himself,
so he went from baseball to football. He was the
most famous pitching coach in the country in baseball. Nolan
Ryan's pitching coach, and then a slew other guys.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
Yeah he was okay, Nolan Ryan.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Nolan Ryan could do what every want idea. And then
Jason Goldsmith that you know, we think is the top
mental performance coach in sports, works predominantly in golf, worked
with both Justin Rose and Jason Day when each of
them became number one in the world, and still works
with both of them intensely, but works across sports. And
so from their brains the concept was like how do
(03:11):
you democratize the world's best coaching. That's what they came
to me with My brother Luke, who was a professional quarterback,
was working with Tom. That was the concept, like Tom
House has this very scientific approach to coaching. When you
go to Tom, you know for sure that the training
recommendations you get are the most impactful possible recommendations. He's
(03:34):
going to give you something to work on that has
a ton of dominoes that naturally fall after that first piece, Right,
He's going to give you one thing to work on.
It's going to totally revamp your mechanics, turns you into
you know, I've seen it happen hundreds of times, turns
you into a better player immediately. How can you program that
into an app? And the initial concept in baseball and
football was how can we just give that the kids
(03:57):
all over the world so that they might keep playing
their sport longer. So we say we have this phrase,
democratize the world's best coaching. It sounds super simple, It
probably sounds thoughtless, but we was actually really thoughtful on
our part. We really mean every word, and I guess
the most important word is coaching. So to your point,
like if something is band aidy, or if something is
just AI for AI's sake, then that's not coaching, you know.
(04:23):
So we work really hard to create products. Where As
a golfer, we want you to feel like you are
in the room with Mark Blackburn Golf diyed just number
one coach in America, and he has identified for you
the chunkiest fix for your golf swing with the most
dominoes after that fix, and then he's given you all
his drills and exercises to improve. So we spend a
(04:45):
lot of time on the tech side. Obviously, we've got
I think the best computer vision AI team in sports,
very proud of what they build. But I would say
we spend even more time on the coaching side, thousands
of hours with Mark Blackburn and with the entire Golf
Digest team, Peter Maurice, you know. I mean, I've been
on the phone with Peter every day for a year
and a half, right figuring out here's all this data
(05:09):
we capture with computer vision and AI. We're not providing
all that data to users. It's useless to them. What
are the what are the parameters are, What does the
report card look like? What does past me and what
does failed mean? What are the drills people need in
order to improve if they've got a long across the
line swing at the top and their hips don't really
rotate that much every every iteration of a golf swing,
(05:32):
you can imagine what does real coaching look like for
that people. That's where we really spend our time and
make our impacts.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that particularly,
you know, for Peter as Golf, like we've were we've
obsolutely we're in the online space and we're always looking.
We've been I've been looking for years for like there's
got to be a way to like measure stuff, and
you know, I just you know, the tech hadn't been
there now we met, and you know I have in
my practice it has always been like a you give
(06:00):
somebody more than three things to do, like good luck,
like they're not going to figure it out. And I
think that's been the biggest attraction for me to to
the Muster Golf app and to you guys, and even
just Tom. First time met Tom, you know, he put
an actual like a label on his teachable right like
like what is the teachable you're going to be taking out?
And I was like, Oh, that's that's a cool word.
I'm want to steal that. So that was what's the
(06:22):
teachable guys. But I think that's the coolest thing to
me about the app. Obviously we can get into the
tech and how it works and the.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Like.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Even just my son was like, he's not a baseball
he's twelve, he's not or eleven. I guess he's twelve.
He's not a baseball player. He's but he was like,
I was like Lucas lially, he said, oh.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Cool, can you feel me. Let's see what happens. What
should I do?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Like you know, he it made it fun for him
and and it was the cool thing for me is like, oh,
that's like actually accurate, and that's I've seen Tom actually
say that exact thing too, somewhat too a professional, and
so it's to me it was it's delivered in such
a way that it's going to be actually digestible by
people to your point, actually get better.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
The tech is there. I've seen a lot of the
other tech.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
It sucks just to be well right, especially when you
start talking about rotationally, but just knowing you guys and
what you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
I think that's been the biggest draw for me to
you guys.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And yeah, I don't know if you have, Like I
think for some people understand, somebody probably never seen what
this is like AI, Like what the heck is that?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Like?
Speaker 1 (07:23):
How would you describe that to somebody who's never seen it?
Like how it works? On of you have like some
examples of.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
How you've seen it work where somebody listening could like
start to understand because people can tell by the pace
of my voice. I'm really excited because this is the
coolest stuff I think that I've seen.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
Well, let me just say I appreciate everything you said.
I think that in the computer vision AI space, like
in sports golf, golf is really the example of a
sport where there are other companies that I think are
doing really cool work from the tech standard. So there's
a number of companies that I have a ton of
(07:59):
respect for in golf. I think again, where we're we
just have a different angle and I think speak to
a different market than most of the other companies are
doing great work. I think the natural thing with computer
vision AI, where you're measuring basically to generalize, you're measuring
every joint location over every frame of the video. Okay,
(08:20):
so you have all these things plotted and it's you know,
ten thousand lines numbers on a spreadsheet. We're different is
I think the natural thing with all that data is
to provide it to coaches or to really elite players.
You know, justin Rose, our golf partner, loves to dive
in on all that data and understand when his hips
are one degree different, you know, and there's wind off
the left, does that effect his swing half a degree?
(08:41):
In these kinds of things, those things matter a lot
for him, is a real money on the line, But
that doesn't matter to the average golfer, where they don't
know how to interpret that stuff. So we separate ourselves
by taking that spreadsheet and then working with great coaches
and figuring out how do you filter that information a player? Basically,
you know, all this talk about artificial intelligence, human intelligence
(09:06):
is pretty good too, sometimes, yes, And what we realize
is that like Tom house Mark Blackburn, you there are
coaches that have magic, and the magic I see, you know,
Tom's one of these guys that I've seen the most.
The magic in Tom is to identify all the things
(09:26):
he looks at it eleven year old picture. Imagine all
the things he sees that are wrong. You know, this
person still, this person's just understanding where their body is
and in space and just figuring out how to move.
He sees a thousand things that could be fixed, and
he identifies the one that's most impactful. So over forty
years of doing that, he's got a checklist in the
back of his mind, even if he doesn't realize it
(09:47):
at first. And so what we do is we try
to pull out those checklists that the great coaches have,
the checklists that make the magic, and then we program it.
And then the second piece of that, I mean you
talked about the visuals your son in even though he's yeah,
that's huge for us. Like we have this mantra that
we stole from Tom and form instruct inspire. Yeah, and
(10:08):
the inspire is probably the most important one of those.
You want to you want to convince people to keep playing,
keep trying, keep progressing. If people just keep playing, keep trying,
they're gonna get better, They're going to have more fun,
and that's gonna build on itself.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
And you'll love this to my son, So literally, I
like drag him out, like I'm like, dude, let's go outside.
He's a bookworm. So I'm like, Lucas, let's go outside, like,
let's throw the ball. So he goes, literally the other day,
he goes, can we use the mustard? Can we use
the app to see if I got better? I'm like, dude,
you haven't done a thing that it told you to do,
Like you're not going to be any better.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
He's like, but can we do it? So I was like,
I tried. It didn't work, but I was like, we'll
tell you what.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
We can use the app if you practice for the
next three four days. Right, So he went on to
practice for like two days and then he kind of
like fell off and he's back to reading a book
and I'm sure we'll have the same discussion and maybe
I'll down it till he's just got to practice too
days and.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
We can redo it.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
But it was so funny because he was like motivated
by the tech. It was actually it was pretty funny.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Well, we think a lot about again, we kind of
were born to this focus on kids because we were
in baseball and then football first. We think a lot
about just the issues of kids being on the phone
too much and playing playing video games rather than being
out your kids reading books. That's pretty good. I wouldn't
I'm not going to complain.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I've never thought that's funny.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
My wife and I quick, I never thought i'd have
to ground my kid by saying you can't read. So
he read good to great when he was like in
third grade and like understood it. I'm like, I'm like,
I'm the dumbest you are the smartest man in this house.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So yeah, I mean sounds huge. So so that's great,
but you know for most kids that sat there on
the phone too much. So yeah, we've talked about how
do you take society's problem in the cell phone and
how do you turn it into society's solution. And so
basically we want to meet kids where they are all right,
they're on the phone. Fine, we create a visually engaging
(11:59):
solution that's on the phone, something that's playful. Create streaks.
It's gamified improvement. But the way you improve, the way
you create your streaks, the way you engage with the application.
You got to get up, you got to move your
body around. You got to a lot of our stuff
you can do inside, but sometimes you got to be outside. Right,
So we're trying to we're trying to kind of merge
the two worlds that way. And I think in baseball
(12:22):
we've seen a lot of success that way. And in
golf product's been out for a month, but I think
that's a key part of the product offering for us
is people listening to this podcast. You know a lot
of people feel like they don't have time to go
to the range. So how do they get better? Okay,
upload everybody's got some down the line swing video on
their phone. We can upload that to the Mustard app
and to give you your report card and give your
(12:44):
drills and exercises to do. You can get all that
done while you're sitting on the couch at home, or
more likely for most of our users, while they're sitting
at the office. That's fine too, as long as you
don't work at Mustard, that's great. And then and then
you have the drills and exercises you can do without
a club usually and just wherever you are, find a mirror,
(13:05):
find find a little bit of open space in the
officer at home, and you can get better just working
on movement patterns in a in a way that a
great coach instructs you to do.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
That's so like, can you paint a picture of how
like so down the line just for everyone's doesn't know
that's the they you film it from behind you, so
like you'd be filling it down your target line. But so, like,
what's what's the use case that you know that you've
seen in the in the first year you guys are
obviously it's the golf side has just kind of come out, Yeah,
in terms of I know, the baseball side has some
(13:36):
pretty wild success stories in terms of guys going from
nowhere to you know, having contracts in the pros. But like,
what are what are you seeing on the golf side
that's been like as some of like the early markers
of success that you guys have seen.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Yeah, Honestly, the good thing and the challenging thing for
us is that people get dramatically better within a couple
of weeks. So so when you upload your first swing
to Mustard or take your first swing in the app,
you get a swing score and the average right now
after two weeks, so people, if you upboad another video
every week after two weeks, the average is that people
(14:09):
improve their swing scores ten percent. Wow, that's that's pretty dramatic.
I mean, that's that's that's the difference several fairways around
of it. That's a few loss balls around that that
people have changed, just based on two weeks of focusing
on drills. I think that what we've seen is kind
(14:31):
of the The magic is a lot of our people.
So Golf dis is our partner in building this right.
As you know, we haven't mentioned yet, a lot of
our users are reading Golf Digest articles, they're watching YouTube
instructional videos, but they're they're reading and watching the wrong stuff.
They don't understand their own swings. I didn't understand mine
(14:51):
until I use the app, if I'm honest. And so
you read all this stuff and you start tinkering trying things,
and you go backwards and and you give up on
things very quickly, bec because intuitively you know that you
might be on the wrong thing exactly. Well, now the
app identifies for you and shows you, Okay, you're you
know you're across the line, your your hands are too
far out on the backswing, your hands are too far
(15:13):
into the backswinger, you rotate too much or too little,
or you lose your pops here there. It explains your
whole swing for you, both backswing and downswing, and then
shows you therefore, here's where we're starting, and here are
the drills we want you to do. So people doing
the right drills for two weeks when they've never done
that before in their lives, it's pretty impactful, you know.
You get they get new movement patterns, and they get
(15:34):
a new understanding of what they're trying to do. On
the golf, you get new feels, and they hit the
ball straighter. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
I think that's so important for everybody listening.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Like I always think of the construct of just in life,
both you know, whether it's in the fitness side or
business side. I always think of there's kind of like
four things right. You can solve the wrong problem the
right way, right that you can solve the wrong problem
the wrong way, and you could solve the right problem
the wrong way.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And I feel like a lot.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Of times you got people on YouTube just picking stuff
and they're they're going in those constructs instead of actually
identifying the right problem and the right solution and solving
that the right way.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
And so that's the mental construct for me is.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
When I'm evaluating, you know, an improvement system, it's like
how good is this thing at finding the right problem
and then giving the right solution. So that to me
is I think one of the cool things about it
is it's not just like analysis. It's like, hey, we've
analyzed it based on the data. This is what we
then need to address and then you know, these would
be the things to implement now when you are implementing,
(16:33):
Like if I'm a user and I'm using it, just
for illustrating this for people listening, Yeah, you said they
get a report card and they get really, I mean
is there a certain number of things that they get?
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Is there like how does that work for the person
using it?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
So you get one issue that Mark Blackburn recommends you
work on perfect and that's like one of the metrics
in the report card. So as an example, it could be.
My first one was my hands were what Mark calls
too far out on the backswing, which basically means they
were too high. Okay, we measured at the top of
(17:09):
the backswing. That's where that's where Mark wants it measured.
So basically, my arms are getting disconnected from my body.
I'm a recovered baseball player, right, so I was. I
was very armsy and I really need to work on
just being more connected in the back so in my
app all right, hands are two out on the backswing,
it was like a five out of ten was my
score on that. I was dragging my overall score down.
(17:32):
I got an entire training plan directed at getting my
hands more on plane in the backswing. That training plan
looks like it's a definition video from Mark where he
explains what the issue is. Then you get three videos.
This speaks to the finding the right problem. As you
just pointed out, you get a few videos from Mark,
depending with the issues you get, you know, three to
(17:53):
five videos on potential causes. So these are reasons that
you your hands might be too far out.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
You're getting a why you're getting You're not just getting
the what, you're getting a why with it.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
That's what it's heppening.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Yeah, And some of these things, to be honest, are
things we can't see right. The computer vision can't pick
some of these things up. Yet. It could be a
grit problem, right, Sometimes it could be a set up
problem that we can't detect because we don't know where
you're aiming, right. So Mark goes through some of these
things and videos, here are things you should check and
this might be the reason your hands are too far
out on the backswing. And what we found in you know,
(18:24):
about six months of testing it now is that almost
always people when they hear these three or four or
five things, one of them, they're like it's the aha moment.
They're like, that's it, that's the reason I have this problem. Okay,
now they understand their issue. Now they understand the right problem.
Then when they're going through their drills, they're able to
really believe in the drills and apply them to the
(18:45):
right problem, so they get the right problem in the
right solution. So after the causes, you get probably five
to ten drills from Mark just for this issue. We
then ask people to upload a new swing at least
you know, a week later, let's say, is usually the cadence,
and then if they've approved on that issue they were
working on, it'll get recommended to go to the next issue.
(19:07):
I'll say, well, I'll be curious for your taking us.
But like we get a lot of emails from people
that are like, well, I saw my first plan, great,
I got it now, and then it's like the same
day and they're like, now I want to move on
to the next issue. And we specifically didn't build the
app allowing for that we want people to follow this
this process, but people don't want to do it. I'm curious,
(19:29):
curious how you would think about.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
It, like training, Hey, that's so funny you say that,
because it's yeah, it's like you will come in, we'll
do the testing with people and it's like, all right,
you're in the tenth percentile of lower body power and
you want to pick up more speed and okay, well
we need to build that and they're like okay, cool,
so by next week. No, well that's not exactly how
(19:52):
physiology works, sir. It takes about six day weeks. So,
but I do think the the fun thing that I
always try to think of in our construct at least
in the fitness spaces, it's it's obviously there's a lot
of education and there's understanding of the why. That is
something that you know, all of our listeners and everybody
that we work with like that, like.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Dies for right.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
It's like, okay, that's cool, you told me what, so
what why tell me why? I want to understand why.
And I think for us, I always love the analogy
of the you know the I think it was like
it's like a grandmother that you know, the.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Kid needs the guard.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
The dog needs garlic or something there was have some
medicinal thing, right. So the grandma says the daughter, hey,
give you know, give buddy, you know, some garlic, right,
and she's trying to give the garlic. Kids trying to
get the dog won't need the garlic. And then she
goes to the ground. She's like, she won't need to
She's like, oh, we gott to wrap it in ham.
So you wrap She wraps in the ham and the dog,
you know, freaking eats it up. No problem, right, And
(20:47):
so IVO that that that story is always stuck with me,
and that sometimes you have to give people what they
want wrapped, like wrap that around what they need. And
so I think that's where I always think of on
the fitness side, and I think this is this goes
true the instructional side. Everybody listening, like when you know,
the most powerful thing I think that anybody can get
is the information of what the problem is and understand
why it is. And then you know, I'll always tell
(21:09):
like for us, it's like bicep curls, right, particularly like
the high school kids, right, they're like I want to
do the boys like I want to do curls, you know,
curls for the girls. It's like, cool, you can do curls,
but you got to do these other four things that
actually are going to matter for why you're here first,
and if you get all that done, bow me have
at it, right. And so I think that's kind of
how we've approached it, is like we're not gonna tell
you know, but we're going to tell you why all
(21:31):
that's a waste of time and potentially going to be
like like hurtful to what you're trying to do and
actually working in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
But if you want to do it, by all means,
go ahead and do it.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
And I feel like for us, it's like by presenting
that rational logic, like people are generally pretty logical, and
you're you're just like, hey, like you can totally go
do that. Like if you want to keep you know,
slicing whatever, you know, whate the problem is, like you
want to keep doing that, bo me, It's like here
here's you know what, here's ten more drills you can
go do that'll just exacerbate your problem. But you know,
if you'd like to actually get better, these would be
(22:00):
the three things that we'd recommend and you know means
your choice, right, But I think that's kind of how
we've how we've approached it.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
That's that's that's interesting. We we filmed last week our
instructional videos with Justin Rose. So right now in the app,
if you get your training plan, all of your instructional
videos are from Mark Blackburn. Pretty soon we will have
a bunch of instructional videos from Michael Jacobs, another golf
di just top ten instructor. But then Justin Row is
(22:28):
a big investor in partner. That's really cool, and he's
so great on camera in the instruction but he's really
interesting on this point, right because as anybody who watches
golf knows, Rosie has been doing the same drills, right Yeah,
I mean, I mean, and I think most elite golfers
are probably that way. But we see him doing the
drill before every swing. You know, we even call it
(22:50):
the Rosie drill, where he's kind of dropping the arms
and sometimes he's chest with these a few different iterations
he does of it, but basically it's the same drill
that he's relied on for thirty years. And so we
filmed a lot with him just explaining the power of
that finding the feels and the drills that really work
for you, and then just really leaning into those and
and and making them work for you. I think that's
(23:14):
going back to the initial concept. That's the power of AI.
That's where AI can be honest for the right problem
and the right solution. Learn what feels, what drills you
should really be incorporating into your routine, and hammer them
and stop and stop just kind of you know, tinkering
(23:34):
around with everything. Find out what are the ways to
get your golf swing closer to neutral right now and
then and then you get to go out and play
with that.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Well, I think that's for everybody listening to the golf.
This is like for a life, But I think it's
so more like really golf is there's so much noise, right,
There's so many things you could do. And I think
if you look at every successful person, like they say
no to everything else, right, and golf, the golf swing
is no different.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
And this is where you know, like a joke with
the guy I'm talking about the bicep curls, I said
the guy, Hey, I'll tell you what, just do bi
scept curls for the next six weeks, and then let's
retest your clubs and see if it goes up. And
then for the next six weeks, let's do this stuff
I'm telling you to do, and let's see if the
clube's peak goes up. Whoever wins, we do their thing right.
And I think that's ultimately what the Muster golf app
(24:19):
does is it gives you that feedback and it eliminates
to me, for the person the golfer listening, it eliminates
all the noise and it says, look, the really successful
people like Rosie, Like we call it the hot spot
list in the physical world, like, hey, there's three things
that tend to pop up that you know your low
right back tends to be the thing that gets irritated
or you're right elbow, whatever it may be. So here
(24:41):
here's the three things for you, like sir, that you
need to always be on top of and be aware of.
The golf swing's no different, Like you're gonna have habits,
You're gonna have these things. And I think that to me,
that's the really cool thing of what you guys are
doing is you're identifying the right problem and then you're
you're literally saying, hey, we have thousands of options of
things that you could do, but literally based on like
(25:02):
the best coaches in the world, the best data, these
are the three things to do. And I think sometimes
as humans, so that's like hard to be like, that's it,
and it's like, but I want to be great. It's like, yeah,
well step one is do more of the right thing,
and then step two is just do that thing better. Yeah,
and until you're scratch like, don't worry about anything else.
Speaker 3 (25:22):
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's it's commitment and diligence and
work ethic. Right now, I think what's interesting presumably there's
a lot of folks listening that work with you and
learn from you. You know, we try in the app again,
we look at potential causes. So let's take a different
example of somebody who might be under rotated in the backswing. Okay,
(25:45):
so that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
So pretty much, if you're over fifty, that's all of
you right now.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yeah, yeah, and then all of you guys who fail
off all for rotary tests. I went on the radio today,
I said, hey, if anybody over the age of fifty
can pass all for roatdary tests, I'm on extent radio.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
So I will give you a year free of training,
and nobody got it. Nobody got it.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
No, I wonder if yeah, I want to try to pass.
That's interesting because I was thinking also under fifty, anybody
who's just on the bicep girl diet that you mentioned.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Is probably that'll be the next offer we make.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Yeah, listen to all of those guys.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
They're going to be the under rotated guy you're talking
about right now.
Speaker 3 (26:25):
Yeah. So then what we would flag in the app
is this may be a physical limitation. Yeah, you know,
the solution might not be to just tell yourself to
rotate more. Yeah, the solution might be you're got to
do some physical work, and Mark talks about that in
the app. But I think that's you know, for somebody
who's working with a coach, or working with one of
your coaches, or working through your platform, I think this
can must technology can be really helpful, right because now
(26:47):
they can go to their coach or go to you
guys through the platform and say, these are the swing
issues that I know I'm having. Are the things we
should be doing with my training program that will help
me naturally dial the swing in a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Yeah, Well that's I literally, it was just having a
conversation with one of our clients, like probably an hour
before we jumped on, and his all his mobility numbers
are great now like he had no mobility. He's now
rotating really was or us for about a year. All
of his power numbers are are up. When we look
at his goal, he's I think he started like ninety five.
(27:21):
He's like one hundred and two hundred and three miles
an hour. He wants to get to one hundred and
I think his one hundred and eight was his goal
for someone to random number he picked.
Speaker 1 (27:28):
I don't know. I don't know where it came from.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
He couldn't tell me either, but basically, like to I
said my first question, I thought, we'll do you work
with a golf professional, because what we should do is
we should get with them to talk about what you're
trying to do performance wise and what we're trying to do,
you know, on the physical side, so we can make
sure we're supporting that. And the most frustrating thing for
me has always been there, like, well, no, I don't
like I got there's a guy at the club. I
may see him wants you know, he kind of knows
(27:49):
my swing or whatever. And to me, that's the power
of a tool like this, like Muster Golf is now
all of a sudden that guy like, well, cool, you
don't have an instructor. Let's here here, go to the
app store, grab it and let's see what you got.
And then you know, then it can say hey, like
let's say that happened right and says, hey, you may
have a physical limitation.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
We very confidently can say the guy, Nope, no.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Physical limitation if you And I think that's what we
see with a lot of guys as they get better,
is they actually will still move and this is probably
forty percent of guys sixty percent they like boom, they
figure it out, their bodies move better, they move better
in their golf swing.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
But I'd say almost half there's a need.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
To like figure out how to get what they've built
physically into the golfsman, they still will do their old
under rotation or not, weight shifting to the lead side,
whatever it may be.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
And I mean that's the cool part.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Of a tool like this is it it systematizes not
just the physical side, but then it also helps you
to figure out the instructional side.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
In a really high quality DIY kind of way.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We're in baseball where you
can't play baseball without a coach. Every baseball player has
a coach, right, you're on a team, a team coach.
And so that just from a business perspective, that a
how we go about distribution in baseball and how we
create the product. It's something you have to use with
a coach. But it also led to this learning for us.
(29:11):
Early days of baseball, a lot of coaches were very
nervous about our product because they thought we were replacing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Them, trying to replace them instead of augmented.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
And if I'm honest, in the early days, I thought
it might I didn't know. I mean, we nobody had
done it before. We were the first one in baseball,
and yeah, maybe it would replace a lot of coaches.
We found is yes, a player can use it without
a coach. And to me, that's like in baseball, that's
like level seven coaching, okay, seven out of ten, but
(29:42):
if you use it with a coach, that's ten out
of ten. Basically, Mustard would take any coach from whatever
whatever level they were at and take them up to
a ten because now they're Basically, they got Tom Hose
as an assistant coach in baseball, and that makes them
That makes them pretty good in golf. It's a totally
different market. So the way we look at it, there's
(30:02):
sixteen million people in the US that watch YouTube instructional
videos for golf. Okay, so there's ten million of us
that care enough to spend our time when we're at
we're at home, we could be doing something with our kids,
or we're at work, we could be working it. Instead
we're watching YouTube instructional swing videos trying to get better
(30:22):
at golf. Only one million of those sixteen million people,
only one million take lessons, right, So people care about
it enough to spend their time on it when it's
convenient for them at the computer, but they don't care
enough about it either to pay for it or to
take the time to go. So we started doing research, Well,
why aren't these people taking lessons? Some of them are
(30:44):
too embarrassed. I think they suck too bad at golf
and they don't want anybody to see them hit the ball.
I understand that feeling. That makes sense, I know, I
remember that. I don't feel that way anymore, but I
felt that way for a long time, so I get that.
So okay, So that's sometimes there's a cost. You know,
I realize I'm gonna have to pay. It's not one
lesson's not gonna do it, and I'm gonna have to
pay for six. So you know, six lessons at one
(31:07):
hundred and fifty each, all right, that this is I
don't know. Yeah, well I understand that of course. And
then there's the time aspect of it, which is interesting
because all of these folks are playing golf, so they're
taking the time to play golf, but they maybe get
to play once a week, and so then they would say, well,
I get to play once a week. I don't want
to take my time with so, you know, dealing with
(31:29):
somebody else at the course who I may or may
not like. I just want to play, like I'm trying
to have fun during that time. So I always say, like,
if you're if you're interested in using mustard, it's it'll
still level you up. If you work with an in
person coach, you're gonna get you're going to get a relationship,
you're going to get next level analysis where they can
use mustard too, You're going to get inspiration. It's gonna
(31:51):
make you better. But if you fall into one of
those three categories we've talked about where you're just not
gonna use an in person coach, Yeah, Mustard can help
you get better just on your own in golf. And
that's kind of the point. You can do it at home,
then we do. The annual price is basically the cost
of the average lesson the annual price of Mustards one
hundred and fifty dollars. You can also do a monthly,
but a lot of our people picked the annual because
(32:13):
you get a discount that way. Yeah, and then you
don't have to I don't have to hit a ball
in front of anybody, so you can avoid the.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Well, I think you know what you're bringing up there.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I think when I started the business, the reason I
started for us Golf was I was frustrated with the
quality of data collection or lack thereof, in the fitness space.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
I thought I thought golf fitness was a joke. I
was like, there's no way this.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
I actually worked for free for people in the beginning
because I felt bad taking money and I wasn't confident
I could help them right. And then as part of
our business, I went locally because before we were online,
this is twenty eleven, twelve, before an online golf thing
would have even done anything. But I just went I
went pro to pro at all of the different clubs
in the area. You know, I'm in the triangle. There's
(32:59):
lots of golf. It was probably had fifteen twenty lessons.
I'm not joking when I say zero of them assessed
me the same way, zero of them told me to
do that. I had to work on the same thing,
and zero of them gave me the same drill. And
so I think, you know, and then I think, when
you look at the historical data on handicaps in America,
they haven't moved. Yeah, And then you look and then
(33:21):
you say, well, why is that?
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Is it?
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Like I do golf pro stink and I know inherently
they don't. Inherently they just don't have There's there's no
when you look at how are they taught to teach
when they get their PGA certification and whatnot. It's very
much on running a golf shop, running tournaments and allow
of the instruction. And this is starting to change with
the PGM programs. We actually will go out and speak
to those guys. But there's no education on the body.
(33:45):
There's no education on a system of coaching. It's literally
based on your internship who you get if you get
to a club and there's a great teacher there that
you can learn under. It's very much kind of archaic
in that sense of sharing stories and you learn that way.
And so I think to your point, there are a
lot of great coaches who understand, Hey, if this guy
wants to get to a five from a ten, these
(34:07):
are the areas of the game he needs to work on.
But what Mustard golf to me, what the technology starts
to do is it starts to standardize assessment and give
you objective points the way.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
You know. One thing I hate on that it's like
how'd that feel? I don't care how it felt? Was
it better or not? Like what does the data tell me?
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
And I think that there is such a disconnect the
more you actually practice and we have two simulators here
and like I'll hit some that I'm like, oh, that
felt great, and then you look at the date and
you're like, oh my god, Okay, I don't want to
feel that, Like I don't want to feel great.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
If that's the result right.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
And so to me, that's where the augmentation comes in.
For the golf professional or you know, the teachers. You
now get to leverage the expertise and the experience which
is not replaceable of the coach, with a standardized assessment
system where you can objectively say, hey, this is what
the coach, this is where I started. I'm going to
implement a solution that the coach thinks I should implement,
(35:02):
you know, using you know, using this tool, and then
we're gonna go do it. And then I'm going to retest.
And it's like the basic scientific method, like problem identified hypothesis, implement, retest.
If it didn't get better, I should probably try something else.
And to me, that's the true value. And you talk
about leveling up. It levels everybody to know a seven,
but now to truly we can get it's not getting
(35:24):
bad to good, it's getting good to create. And to me,
that's what, when used correctly, how the technology is really
really valuable for everybody.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Well, I you know, I agree with everything you said,
although I would also say I think it's very effective
with getting people bad to possible. You know.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, So I'm saying I'm talking more about like the instructors, right,
how do we how do we like, how do we
give everybody? How do we level everyone up as close
as possible? With Mark Blackburn, let's say, you know, I
like to that level, right, and so I just augments
the experience for everybody.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
And I mean the beginners are.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
The ones who are probably nervous to go hip balls
and to people, and maybe gets those people to the
level where now they can they feel comfortable enough to
then use them the pro as well.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
You know what I mean. I think there's so many
use cases to me that are that are really cool.
Speaker 3 (36:11):
We've definitely proven that it makes the coach player relationship stickier.
If they're using mustard together in baseball and and golf,
those people are going to work together forever because they're
going to the coach can prove the progression to the
player in the same set. Right. So usually eating balls
(36:31):
on the right, Okay, you might be feeling like you
hit balls better at the end of a lesson, but
sometimes you're at the end of the lesson you're hitting
the balls horrible, right, because you just got a new
swing thought and you're thinking a lot of swing stuff. Well,
now the coach can show you like, Okay, yes, you
need to practice this, you need another arrange session to
dial it in, but your swing scores improving, like stick
(36:51):
with it, you know, and then you get the light
bulb moment for the player, which we think is really impactful.
It's interesting, as you were talking to a thing more
about your early comments of like people slapping AI on everything.
We're very proud of our AI, like you know, I
feel strongly about it. I think it's we've made it
really useful for people. Now. Now what we see like
(37:13):
in you know, Venture venture World, is everybody's trying to
figure out how to use generative AI. It's not just AI,
but it's like where's the chat GPT generative AI elemented
And without sharing too much that we're not ready to
release it, like we are going to build. We are
building generative AI features to our app that I think
(37:33):
will be really impactful. But as part of going down
that road, I heard from one of the biggest tech
companies on Earth some of the you know, some of
the generative AI stuff they're working on them they and
they showed us they built in a very short period
of time a golf product with generative AI that given
(37:56):
the amount of the little amount of time they spent
on it was quite impressive. Like I was like, that
would have taken us, you know, several months, but it
was impressive, but still not usable for the average golfer.
It wouldn't have you know, it wouldn't have lowered handicaps.
I'll put it that way. Yeah, it would have been
fun to play with. But it's like if you just
(38:17):
funnel all of the golf instruction on the internet into
it into a product, well that we already have that.
We have the Internet already, right, people are already funneling
through that and already getting confused. And so now you've
got things in there that inflickt with each other, or
you know, you get one recommendation one day, you get
a different one the next day, or you're getting recommendations
(38:39):
from somebody who's not the best coach in the world, right, Yeah.
And so what we found through that process is like
there were elements of generative AI that really short and
runways for companies obviously of course, and you can create
products much more quickly in a very impactful ways, but
you still have to do the hard work that we're doing,
(39:01):
which is find the best coach in the world that
a sport and then spend thousands of hours with them
basically pulling the magic out of their brain in a
way that's programmable.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, And I think that's the big thing to me
is that yes, you can pull everything offline that still
doesn't solve the problem.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
I've always called it the Google. My dream is always
to build a Google of golf, like we've talked.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
About this before, where like you can create the single
entry point where the user, the golfer out there, has
confidence that the search results that they're that they're plugging
in are going to be accurate, right, and say like,
you know, I'm coming over the top, or how do
I stop slicing? And instead of saying, oh, this is
how you stop slicing, it says, well, let's take a look, like,
(39:45):
let's do it, give us some metrics, let's send a
swing in, and then we'll tell you that if that's
even the problem, or if that's just a symptom of
something else.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
That Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
One of my fair analogies like you just you go
to the mechanic and you tell them like, hey, my
cars make it noise, right, And you don't even take
you just like you see the mechanic at the grocery
stores like, oh well maybe this or this right. To me,
that's like just searching the internet how do I fix
my slice versus you actually take it into the mechanic
which is going into the Muster golf app or coming
(40:14):
into p First Golf for the body and you say, hey,
can you take a look and you say, okay, yeah,
so it's making a noise, but that's actually connected to this,
which that's what's causing that noise. But actually that's the
problem is coming from this other spot over here, and
actually there's two other things over here that are about
to break. So if we can address that one thing,
that'll take the stress off of those two and it'll
(40:35):
fix everything right. And it's like like that's the level
of detail that having the right assessment that ultimately brings.
I think unfortunately a lot of people are just like
talking to the mechanic and the grocery store like, hey,
it's buzzy, Oh well, it's probably that, And to me,
that's why that's where the struggle has been with people's handicaps.
Not improving is wrong problems and guesses at solutions and
they're just not the right ones.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
I think people know that too, Like I think people
it's intuitive for people that when you get a band aid,
it's like, okay, stop moving your head. Yeah, people, well
moving my head because of six other things that happen
in the chain, and I don't know what they are.
And so then you they feel that magic right away.
You know, one piece of the app I didn't talk
about yet, but it's actually proven to be like our
(41:17):
magic moment when people really buy into what we're doing
and you upload a swing and actually before you see
your report card, we have this video AI video of
Mark Blackburn pops up and basically he explains your whole
swing to you. So it's not just one thing he
wants you to work on, but he actually explains both
(41:39):
your back swing and your down swing to you. So
an example, again, thinking about my first one, it would
have been like, Okay, your hands are too far out
on the back swing, they're too high, and then as
a result of that, you kind of you know, you're
trying to figure out how to get the club back
to the ball, your hands come too far in on
the downswing, and then as a result of that, you know,
you don't you don't rotate enough. You kind of early
(42:00):
extend a little bit. You're thrusting at the golf ball,
and as a result of that, you're missus. This is
the key part. Your misses are probably A, B and C.
It's so so so everybody gets that video or you know,
I would say ninety five percent of swings get that
kind of analysis from Mark up front. Within thirty people
when they realize that the computer vision the AI has
(42:22):
seen the whole swing and done that level of analysis,
and then Mark is going to tell them, therefore, here's
the one thing I want you to work on. That
that's that's when they're compelling.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
That's compelling. That's pretty compelling.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
Yeah, and that and that, and that's not for us.
It's not about making the sale. It's about we need
to be compelling and convincing for people right then, so
that they'll be committed to doing the work right, so
that they know when they get the drills from us,
those are the right drills for them to get better.
They need to know on that level of analysis. First. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Well, I think that's the similar you know, approach we're
taking in our model is you know, we've spent basically
a year, creating over a year worth of content of
kind of like video and demand type content right or
it's follow along or prescripted based on you know, how
people do on an assessment, and we're going to be
similar to you guys.
Speaker 1 (43:13):
My goal.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Our goal is to help every golfer we can play
this game as long as possible, and we're literally giving
it going to start giving it away for free, like
this is like same quality level as other products that
that are charging you know, thirty bucks a month or
you know, a couple hundred bucks a year.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
Like, we're literally just gonna give.
Speaker 2 (43:28):
It away for free, and for the exact reason of like,
I don't want any cost barrier. I want to help
our missions to help every single person we possibly can.
And if this can help people who can't afford it, great,
And there's going to be people who get into it
and they're like, wow, this is If this is the
free stuff, paid stuff must be pretty cool too, like
and like, oh, I want to coach. I want to
customize even more, so I want to dive deeper into
like you know, and then obviously people will do other
(43:51):
stuff on that, but you know, I think that's the
same idea. Use you guys use the word democratize, it's
how do we get this How do we get this
information the right information. That's been the big thing for
me is with all the data and research we do,
I know we have the right information. The problem is
it's so dang noisy that it's hard to get the
right information.
Speaker 1 (44:08):
Out to people. Well, you know, let's.
Speaker 2 (44:11):
Make it free and really good and that they'll take
it that way, right, And so to me, that's how
we're always looking at it is how do we continue
to get this stuff to people so that that way
they can they can.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Get the right information.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
The power of knowledge is just and being informed and
being empowered to kind of handle and take care of themselves,
I think is so critical. And that's the same thing
you guys are doing, is just giving them an objective
way to improve.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
People want to get better at their sport, and I
think that's one of the greatest joys in life, is
like progressing at something. I think we're all out sort
of like personal improvement and progression. That's why golf is addictive,
you know, it's like people that are addicted to golf.
It's people that are passionate about test and self improvement
and in other parts of life too. But man, when
(44:59):
you get to when you're into an activity like that
and it feels like either you don't have the knowledge,
or you don't have the time, or you don't have
the resources to keep progressing, and you're just sort of stagnant,
you know, when.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
People quite demotivating, one hundred percent demotivating. So like, yeah,
I just spent all this time doing this and I
got worse. Like that's not fun.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
No, Yeah, And golf it's hard because you get it
just takes so long to play, you know, so a
lot of us it's like, Okay, you're gonna play, you know,
twelve rounds a year. Well, you know, you're gonna have
to find some ways to practice at home or you're
not going to get.
Speaker 1 (45:34):
So you know.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
But I think with what you offered, in what we offer,
it's interesting, right, Like people accept for the most part
that in order to get better golf, they got to
be in certain shape physically, They got to be able
to move in certain ways. They gotta have a certain
amount of stamina, they gotta have a certain amount of flexibility.
And I think you guys are the best on the
best in earth, on Earth and providing that stuff. And
(45:56):
I think for us, people understand and that their swing
has to be relatively on plane. It's gotta be within
certain parameters. What we've proven in early data is our
technology can help people dial to swing into a place
where it's more neutral. So it's cool.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah, I'm so excited. It's gonna be fun to bring
you on.
Speaker 2 (46:18):
Like after you guys have are out for a year, Yeah,
here and hear the like, it'll be fun. I like,
listen back to this and then have everyone then listen
to a year from now, and like I can, I
can't tell how much more dialed in it's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (46:30):
It's gonna be. Yeah, this is It's gonna be so cool.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
So for Roggy, I want to thank you so much
for coming on. Man, where can people Where was the
best place for them to involve get involved with Muster?
I know you guys do a bunch of pre stuff
on Instagram, Like, what's the best place for them to
follow you guys and see what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
They can find us in the app store just look
for Mustard Golf. Obviously, we have a pitching application the
app store too, Only use that one if you're if
you're a pitcher. So for people listening to that, recomend
you search for Mustard Golf and you'll find us Instagram.
We've got a ton of instructional videos and and fun
stuff on Instagram that people enjoy. And it's team Team
(47:06):
Mustard on on Instagram. Our website is Team m str D,
so Mustard without values vowels Team mstr d dot com.
So any of those or just or shoot us an
email any questions thoughts info at Team mstr d dot com.
Speaker 2 (47:22):
Perfectly well, we'll make sure we put all that in
the in the show notes, so everybody has that easily accessible.
And I did. It was hard for us to get
together to do this. I'm so excited we finally got
it on on the on the record here because it's
a truly you know, I admire what you guys are doing.
I've been following you guys absolutely for a while looking
at a lot of the other stuff, just as we
continue to try to augment what we do for people,
(47:44):
and so I really encourage you guys listen, go check
it out. It's definitely worth worth a download and uh
and see uh see.
Speaker 1 (47:51):
What Mark Mark tells you.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
Hopefully, hope is there one for somebody that's the perfect
golf swing which says, sorry, you're perfect, can't help you.
Speaker 3 (47:58):
I'll tell you quick story. This is, and any give
Peter Maurice a hard time about this before before you
kicked me off here. I don't think I don't think
markle Mine might telling the story. So we have a
lot of people that upload videos of swings that are
not their swing right, and we knew we knew this
was coming out of Any. So we're filming with Mark
for three days and outside of Birmingham he works, and
(48:20):
I said, look, we need a video to pop up
when somebody uploads a swing at Tiger Woods or justin Rose.
And so it goes. We go to film and and
I wanted it to be just funny and kind of
casual and just say, hey, we noticed it was justin Rose,
you know, get lost, But Park inserted a slew of
swear words at the person, like pretty colorful ones in
(48:43):
a very Mark Blackburn way. He's like, yeah, we know
that great swing, except we noticed it was justin Rose.
You blah blah blah. And so I loved it and
I intended to put it in the app, but golf,
I just uh, I think they didn't even say it
back to us. Actually we never even got it back.
(49:04):
But I hope at some point we'll have another video
like that, maybe without the swear words.
Speaker 1 (49:08):
Oh, that's amazing.
Speaker 3 (49:09):
You do notice when that happens that AI notices, so
there's something that Yeah, that's so cool, Chris. I really
appreciate you having me on. I've been and remain a
huge admirer of yours and part for success. So a
treat to come on and get to tell our story
in golf with people that we admire respect so much.
And obviously we've been been lucky to do some stuff
(49:30):
with you in baseball and with Tom House too, So yeah,
thanks for helping us tell the story and look forward
to continuing to learn from you all too.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
Likewise cool, We definitely we'll do this again in about
a year.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Well, I'll be excited to share the one where you
guys are at.
Speaker 2 (49:45):
So thanks as always guys for hanging out with us
on the golf in this bombs bock, and we'll catch
you on the next episode.
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