Welcome to this episode of the disc golf answer man.
I am Bobby cool daddy slick breeze on this episode.
This is a disc golf answer man interview episode.
And on this one I have Hunter Thomas from Foundation Disc
Golf. Amazing guy.
When I first got back into Dynamic Discs, I reached out to
him because I'd seen him producing a bunch of content and
I wanted to kind of, I want to do a little research of what
people were thinking, how were they handling as far as making
content. And he was one of the ones that
I knew would have very helpful information and he did.
He had some great advice for me. So I have him on the show.
I will tell you this particular episode is very heavy on
marketing and talking social media.
I think it's very valuable information and I highly
recommend that you let take a listen.
But if it's not something you want to hear about, we're not
talking about improving your disc golf form or about any
particular disc. So if that's not what you're
wanting to listen to, I would take a pass on this episode.
But if you do want to learn more about 100 Thomas about his
start, the way he thinks about disc golf and the way he thinks
about disc golf media, this one is packed full of great
information. Take a listen.
Hi Hunter, So you just got back from the creator challenge and
all that traveling and then I saw even on your social media
guy, you guys got stuck in the airport so crazy traveling.
How are you doing, dude? Are you recovering?
I'm trying to recover, you know, recovering with when you come
home to a sick toddler just doesn't really work well.
But you know, I'm here, I'm happy to be here and I'm as
energetic as I can be. That's fantastic.
Well, I appreciate you taking the time to be on here because I
know your time is valuable running all your companies and
all your businesses and doing all this stuff.
So I appreciate it. So I thought I'd start out with
just just jump into the questions if that's good with
you. Yeah.
Absolutely. So you've told your story before
about how you've got into disc golf.
Like I've heard you on other podcasts, I've read articles,
you've already talked about how you got started in disc golf,
but what's part of that origin story that almost never gets
mentioned but probably shaped how Foundation disked off turned
out? That is a great question.
I think it was probably a little bit later.
So I got into the sport immediately after high school
and it was just because my brother had already played and
I'm just a super competitive person.
So going out playing a sport against him that he was better
than me at did not work well for me because that meant I had to
keep practicing until I got better than him.
And that led to me falling in love with disc golf because I
played a bunch trying to get better than my brother.
And then you head into the fall and I was heading to school at
Liberty University and I found out that they had a disc golf
team, a collegiate disc golf team.
And that I think, is really what set me on the track.
That eventually led to foundation because that is what
introduced me to the world of competitive disc golf and
tournaments and got me playing with people much better than me.
Lance Brown, who's a touring pro, was on the team at that
time, as was Hannah at that point, Hannah Croke, now Hannah
Macbeth. And so they were going and
playing a lot of tournaments. I was kind of the new freshman
that was just bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to be as
good at disc golf as I could. And so Lance kind of took me
under his wing and took me to any tournament he was going to.
He was like, hey, if you want to go, you can ride with me.
And so I went and played a bunch of tournaments with him, and
that got me super into the competitive side.
And then what led to eventually foundation was the fact that
Paul Macbeth at that time was dating Hannah.
And so he would come to different practices and then
eventually kind of became friends with the team.
We had like different game nights and stuff.
And he would just kind of come to all that stuff.
And we all became really good friends with him during that
offseason. And then a few years later, me,
him and another guy from the team, Zach, ended up starting
Foundation. So it was really the decision to
go try out for the Liberty disc golf team, you know, just six
months into playing that led me to where I am now.
No, so I, I've been, you know, been in disc golf for quite a
few years. And a lot of times I, I hear
that similar story where they play a little bit, they get
hooked, they get sucked in and, and sometimes they go down the,
the tournament route where they want to be really competitive.
Sometimes they go down the the route of they just want to have
a good time and play local leagues.
And then a lot of times it turns into they have 10 discs, 20
discs, and they end up having 3 or 400 discs in their
collection. Right.
But what do you think? What part of that story for you?
It sounds like a lot of things that happened in that really
helped. But what what made what, what do
you think helped lend to your success of going from that guy
that got hooked on disc golf, wanted to turn it into a
business and now here you are with a business and you know, a
presence on social media. What do you think helped you in
that area? Oh boy.
I mean, to be honest with you, I think it's funny because people
always try to insult me saying that I rode, you know, either
Paul Macbeth or Brodie Smith's coattails to get here.
And I, every time I hear that, think absolutely I did.
I don't deserve to be sitting in this seat.
I don't know how I got here. And so when people say that, I
think they don't realize that I view that the exact same way
because essentially the only reason I ever even got into
foundation was I knew how to build a website.
I was a graphic design major at school.
I was working as a freelance design.
I'm a designer on the side, and I was managing social media for
local real estate agents. And so Paul was like talking to
me about, hey, I just signed with Discraft.
I'm going to be able to do this retail store thing that I've
always kind of wanted to do as a more of a passion project.
And I need someone to build the website.
Will you build the website for me?
And so we were talking about pricing and stuff for that.
And I was like, hey, man, instead of you paying me to
build the website, can I just be part owner in the business and
I'll build the website for free? And he was like, yeah,
absolutely. And then I also knew how to edit
videos. So the first video on
Foundations channel was just like we went out and filmed a
practice round with Paul of him. I think it might have been him
throwing the Luna or it was it was something he was throwing
like a kind of a newer disc. And we like posted that on our
Instagram and like drove traffic to the YouTube.
And I edited those videos. And that was kind of like the
the whole reason the YouTube channel started was just to have
some type of social presence. So people knew Foundation
existed. And so I kind of just stumbled
into that. And then people discovered who
Foundation was because we were tied to Paul.
And then Brody eventually bought into Foundation a little over a
year later. And that's when the social media
really took off. And so I had the knowledge to be
able to kind of assist in different areas.
And I think that really helped. But it wasn't like I built this
thing. I think that nowadays I've built
a lot of what's in place now, but I really got, it was really
just God's plan for my life for me to get here because I just
kind of stumbled into open door after open door after open door,
made decisions that looking back, I was like, man, I'm
really lucky. I, I chose to do that instead of
going this direction with my life.
But you know, obviously I don't believe in luck.
I think that it was God's plan and he knew exactly where he
wanted me to be and kind of opens the right doors, put me
into the right situations to become friends with Paul, to
become friends with Brody, to have the skills where when they
needed someone to edit videos or to build a website or to run the
business, I knew how to do those things.
And that's kind of how I ended up here, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you in the fact that some
people may call it luck. I'm with you.
I don't call it luck. I call it I just always want to
be. I always think to myself, I'm
exactly where I'm supposed to be, so that means I'm going to
do the best and be the best person that I can be so that
when those opportunities come along, I'm ready to go.
In fact, I have a tattoo on my arm that says opportunity meets
preparation. In other words, I'm prepared for
the opportunity to come across my plate and I'm ready to go
whatever's presented to me. So I love that.
So, yeah, Speaking of now, all the social media and all that
stuff that you're doing and you have a, you know, a growing fan
base that we all know how it happens on the Internet.
They all have opinions, right? And you even talked about how
some people have mentioned that you're writing the coattails of
these big names. What's something that you've
learned the hard way about managing audience and
expectations of what you put out and what you do with your disk
golf companies? I think that, you know, one
thing that I've learned over time is people are going to kind
of make assumptions and they're going to fall down rabbit holes
of it's like a confirmation bias where you're going to look for
things that confirm what you already think about something.
And so to a certain extent people get, and I used to be
this way where you read a negative comment or you see a
Reddit thread or whatever and you want to defend yourself, you
want to get out and be like, that's not true.
How dare you? Like this is what actually
happened. This is what actually whatever.
And early in foundation, I did that a lot Slash, we did that a
lot, right? Of where there were these
perceptions of, oh, I don't even know what all it would be about,
but different thing going on. Or people would see one of our
takes on a podcast or something and think they knew everything
about us and then take to social media And I would go down this
rabbit hole defending. And what I learned was that
never was productive and LED nowhere, right?
Because then when you're defending your kind of coming
from this dance where you're coming after the person and the
person's never going to respond well to you coming after them.
And so nowadays I've learned it's much better to just be who
you are, let that kind of authentically come through in
content. People are going to make
opinions. I mean, when you meet people in
life, you don't expect everyone to like you.
So if you're doing that on a mass scale on social media, why
do I all of a sudden expect all the comments to be positive?
That's never going to work out. And so you just kind of letting
that stuff go, realizing like, Hey, I have a body of work that
is now six years long. If people, you know, want to
watch one video and get a whole opinion on me, I'ma let my
community defend me or the people like people know who we
are, what we stand for and stuff like that.
And some people aren't going to like that and that's fine.
That was something that was very tough at the beginning was like,
I'm a, I'm a people pleaser. I wanted everyone to like me.
Nowadays I understand like that's just not going to happen.
If everyone likes you, that means you're not really being
you because then you're just being what you think everyone
wants you to be and kind of some cookie cutter fitting into a
mold versus if you're genuinely authentically you, you're going
to have die hard fans, which is what I think we have.
And you're going to have people that hate you.
And that's OK, because that's how that's how it's kind of
supposed to be. You're supposed to have, if you
want people to really love your brand and really love what
you're standing for, that means you have to stand for something,
which means there's going to be people that stand against it.
And there's no way that both like you can't have one without
the other. And that's something that took a
long time to kind of realize being in a public presence where
you see so many opinions out there, you see so many people
that want to, you know, watch one thing and have an opinion.
And so just kind of learning to let that stuff go, let it roll
off was was a big one for me. Yeah, it's always good to know
what your vision is, what your mandate is, and always stick to
that. That way if those little
comments come along, they kind of push you, They they may put,
I know from my personal experience, they pushed me
along. They pushed me to the side,
pushed me back, make me question what's going on.
And I mean, I remember I had a guy years ago that literally
would post on our on our YouTube videos.
You're the worst thing to happen, the disc golf, you're
the worst thing that happened the time this like four or five
videos, he would put something like you should be fired.
And I took it hard, but I had to remember that.
You know, we like you said, I'm just being authentic.
I'm being myself because if you try to be someone else, some
other character, something else that's crazy or whatever, it's
eventually going to wear off and people are going to see right
through it. So I love that you said mention
being authentic because it's so much easier to be yourself all
the time because that's who you are.
So that's that's good stuff. So, but I'm, I've heard on
different podcasts or different videos are done where you are
enjoying what you're doing, you love what you're doing.
And I'm sure you're familiar. Everybody's familiar with the
whole saying of find a job that you love and never work another
day in your life, right? But at some point it had to have
gone from this feels more like a job than something I love to do.
Or have you hit that point? Have you thought about that
point? And then how are you going to
work yourself through that? I mean at the end of the day it
is a job right? So there's parts of every job
you don't like doing. I always use this is the my
immediate fall back because it is the number one bane of my
existence and probably always will be until I hire someone to
do it, which is filing sales tax every month.
The, the fact that you have to, once you cross different
thresholds and establish a Nexus in different States and I got to
go through and file like 25 different states sales tax and
everyone has different laws. That sucks, right?
So the, the, the once a month when that hits and I'm sitting
down, cranking through that, that's a job, you know, that's
work. But the fact that I get to come
to work and on an average week, I'm playing disc G4 to five
times a week as part of my job. And not only that, but the days
I'm not playing disc golf, I'm doing something I love with
graphic design or creating content in some way, shape or
form for social media. And I'm genuinely like best
friends with pretty much everyone I work with.
It's hard to come into work and have a bad attitude or it feel
like work because you're I'm just surrounded by people I
love. We're all passionate about what
we're doing and we're super passionate about the sport and
we know the type of impact that we have made and can make in
this sport and that kind of drives us day-to-day.
There's some days where maybe I'll be burnt out, but it's good
because Trevor's not burnt out. Or maybe Trevor and I are both
like just this, you know, going through the grind and Connor and
Silas are super passionate. Or or however it may be, there
hasn't really been a day yet where we all come in and we all
are like this sucks. When that day hits, you know,
maybe it will. I just have a hard time
believing it will because we're very blessed to do what we do.
And I think that one key as a business owner that I found is
just because I dislike a certain certain task doesn't mean
everyone does. Like as crazy as it sounds,
someone out there just heard me talk about sales tax and was
like, that's what gets me fired up.
I'm ready to go for that. Cuz back in the day, editing
videos was something that I was OK at, but I didn't love doing
it. But I've been able to hire
people who do love doing it. And so now that's something
where they come in and they're really excited about a part of
the piece of work that I wasn't super excited about.
Same thing with, you know, order fulfillment and inventory
management. That stuff stresses me out.
Brad and Jason absolutely love it.
So I'm able to hire people that not only do something at the
level I did it at, but far exceed it and bring more passion
to it, which means they can push that side of the business
forward. And that's where real growth
starts to come in. Because now it's not just
another thing on my checklist. It's something someone's super
excited about and they can put a lot of time, energy and effort
into and really grow that side of the business.
So that's been a big thing too. But yeah, there are.
There's always going to be about work that is work.
Yeah. Did you ever, did you find it
hard to, I know you mentioned editing wasn't like, it sounded
like it wasn't your favorite thing to do.
You knew it had to be done. But as far as the creativity
part of the media side of things or even any other area, do you
ever find it hard or did you find it hard to delegate that
because they weren't going to do it quite as you thought it
should happen? Oh, definitely delegation I
think is one of the biggest areas that I've grown in over
the last year or two because not necessarily that I thought I
could do it better than someone else.
I just knew I, it almost is something where it feels like
it's going to be harder for me to explain this to you the way I
want it done than it is just for me to do it.
And that's true for the one time, right?
Like if if there's a task of designing A thumbnail the first
time, it is going to be easier for me just to sit down and
design that thumbnail. Then it would be for me to sit
down with someone and explain to them how to design A thumbnail.
But what I had to kind of learn is it's it's not the one time,
it's a compounding task. So this task is something that
has to happen multiple times a week.
So yes, where it might be faster for me to take care of it today,
it's not faster if I train you today or today, maybe it takes
me 3 days, right? If I train you 3 days for this
week, now it's something that's off my plate 52 weeks a year.
And if there's three times a week, that's over 150 times,
it's off my plate. And I had to go longer on it on
three times. And so that was something I had
to kind of see the bigger picture on where, you know,
what's also cool is when you trust someone and train them.
And like I said, if you find people who are really passionate
and skilled at it, then they're able to do it at a level that
far exceeds yours. I mean, if you look at our
videos when I first started and it was just me behind the camera
and me editing and stuff like that versus you look at the
quality of our videos now, I'm legitimately not capable of
putting out the type, the quality of content we put out
now. Like I don't, I wouldn't even
know where to start. You can tell on weeks when our
editors are out and it's me behind here sweating bullets in
my office trying to get this thing cranked out.
People have noticed like what the heck happened to the
scorecard? Why is it all the sudden Comic
Sans at the bottom? What's going on here?
And it's like that's the difference is we're able to push
that forward because now there's people who are way more talented
than me, way more passionate than me running with these
projects. And I don't have to do that
myself. So that's the power of
delegation. But it took me a long time to
accept that. Like I think it takes most
people. Yeah, no, it and it sounds like
very much along the whole thinking of as a leader don't,
don't always try to be the smartest person in the room
because that's not what leaders typically are.
They usually just know how to make those smart people
accomplished tasks. So I like that.
All right, let's throw. I'm going to throw you a little
curveball about your the media that you do.
So you film a lot of chaotic stuff, a lot of challenges and
weird wild shots. What's the dumbest thing someone
has ever done with with those challenges on camera?
Oh boy, we've done some dumb, dumb stuff.
You know, honestly, some of the dumbest things you've ever done
have been some of the worst performing videos.
So they haven't really come back.
Like the the first one that we always bring up is like plywood
disc golf. We had the idea of what if we
just went and got a sheet of plywood and we play double s.
And basically how it worked was I can affect the fly to your
disc with this piece of plywood. So you can throw a roller and I
can set the plywood up to have it ramp off.
It all was based on we wanted to get a roller ace.
And so that was where the idea was born.
But nowadays I'm looking at it and I'm like, that was never
going to work. No wonder no one watched that.
I mean, it's literally called plywood disc golf.
Who's clicking on that? But you know, that's the
learning curve. We've also done like a slip and
slide disc golf, which. Is exactly what?
It sounds like we just set up a slip and slide and had a basket
at the end. Again, really great social
content idea for like Instagram. Terrible idea for YouTube
because why are you like once you see us go down the slip and
slide once, you don't need to watch it anymore.
It's the same thing over and over.
So there's a lot of that where it was just learning the YouTube
game and we would have these ideas and for some reason we
weren't thinking like, that'd be a really fun Instagram post.
We're just like, that's hilarious.
Let's go try to make a YouTube video out of this thing and it
would not work. So slip and slide disc golf,
plywood, disc golf, alley, oop disc golf.
We've done a few where similar idea to plywood, but you can
basically as long as your feet were off the ground, you could
catch the disc and re throw it. That went about exactly how you
thought. Just a bunch of us getting hit
with discs. Discs are not frisbees, they're
much harder. So that was pretty dumb too.
But yeah, a lot of our earlier videos we had some dumb stuff.
I like, though, that you're still doing it right.
You know that you got to, you got to test it and you got to
try it. You never know what's going to
hit. Yeah, and you got to and and you
got to get those reps in so that you get better and better and
your ideas become better. I think that's fantastic.
OK, if you could delete one disc golf trend idea or fan behavior,
just snap your finger and it's gone, what would that be?
Oh boy. Disc golf trend or fan behavior?
Oh gosh, there's no way to answer this question without
taking a bunch of people off, huh?
I have a. Couple.
I have a couple. OK.
I think, I think if I could snap my fingers and make something go
away tomorrow, it would be how much people care about ratings.
And I think that that greatly effects what tournaments like
amateurs are playing. It affects how people like, like
if you're playing bad and around, all you're thinking
about is like this is going to tank my rating, next rating
update, so on and so forth. And also it, I don't know, it's
not it's not a perfect system. Everyone knows that.
I think it's a fun system, but people put so much weight into
it that it kind of like highlights the imperfections a
lot of times, which I think is not the the greatest thing
because again, people just tie so much value to it.
I mean, I remember back in the day there were certain companies
that wouldn't even sponsor you unless you were 1015 rated.
And so I had people not wanting to play certain tournaments
because they're like, oh, if we're playing the same layout as
the AMS, I don't want to risk my rating dropping because I'm
trying to get sponsored by so on and so forth.
And I was like, brother, just come out and play the
tournament. It's gonna be a good time.
But they're like, no, I don't want to risk, you know, only end
up just shooting like 915 rated because I'm trying to get to
1015, you know what I mean? So I think how much people care
about ratings. If I could snap my fingers and
make that go away, I would. So as a store owner, what are
your thoughts on the debate of, and maybe this is just an
internal debate amongst content creators, of who do you think
moves more disks? The players or more on the
influencer side. Now when I I look back at when I
was producing a lot of content there, the influencers were the
players. But now you've got people that
their whole stick or whatever is to create disc golf content and
they don't know. They don't really have high
aspirations of becoming like world champions.
But what do you who do you think moves the needle more as far as
moving product? This is I'm probably the wrong
person to ask here because we have a very biased view because
we're the creators and the retailer.
So we are directly seeing how much our bags influence.
Actually, funny enough, I was just I'm about to write the blog
on our year to date sales for different discs and the creator,
if you will, our discs, our personality discs top the
charts. So like the the the best seller
year to date for us is the MD 3 from disc mania.
But that's because we did break 68 MD three tied to one of our
videos and it's sold like hotcakes.
And so another one is like the the Thunderbird, which has a
personality disc with me, the Cash, which has a personality
disc with Trevor, the Shaman with Connor.
These are discs that, you know, on their own don't really move
that much. But once we tie them to a video,
tie them to a personality, it really moves the needle.
So I think it's a little unfair for us because those are discs
that are only available with us. So on the grand scheme of on the
grand scheme of the whole disc golf market, MD threes weren't
the number one mover, right? But with us they were because
it's tied straight to our video. I think my biggest argument for
why creators move the needle more than just pros is Simon
Lizotte, because Simon is able to, you know, drastically change
the scope of MVP, drastically change even disk Manias sales
before and it didn't matter how he performed on the course.
Obviously winning on the course helped, but you have a player
like Gannon Burr who wins on the course a lot.
And I think you can ask any retailer who's moving more and
the Simon line balance, the Simon line time lapse, anything
Simon tied to Simon is moving more than Gannon, even though
Gannon Burgess had the greatest season of all time last year or
arguably one of them. And what's the difference there?
Simon's a consistent large presence on YouTube that also
happens to be a player. And I think that's where you
really see that, those fusing together and players who have
been able to do that well. I mean even Brodie Smith when he
first burst on the scene, his Get Freaky zones were a good
seller everywhere. Same thing with Ezra Aderhold,
obviously he just won this past weekend, but his nukes, his tour
series stuff has been selling for a long time.
I think anyone who is like a creator and a player sells way
more than someone who is just a player.
Though really the only kind of like exceptions to these rules
is Paul Macbeth, Paige Pierce, Ricky Wysocki for a little bit
there where they were so dominant for so long that they
didn't have to be a creator, their stuff just moved.
But in general, I think creators overall are are moving the
needle the most, but especially player creators.
But even with Paul Macbeth, 'cause I can think and, and you
know, I'm obviously better than better than me.
But I remember back in the day when he was just, you know,
starting out rising star, he would still kind of play some
games on Instagram of how he posts stuff and said things.
So even though he wasn't like creating like YouTube videos,
stuff like that, I still felt like he, he understood the game
of marketing, at least to where it was back then.
So yeah, I, I definitely agree. So let's, let's transition that
thinking into your store and your media.
So if I were to take a step back, what would you say the
percentage is as far as how much of your your disc golf business
is media? Because I have a feeling you
think very similar to my thinking is that we're the way I
built it was dynamic disk was a disc golf company, but I was a
media company. So I was building a media
company with the guys that worked for me.
I'm assuming that's kind of similar to wobbly your line of
thinking. So how much is it for you as far
as Foundation disc golf and Foundation, the marketing media
company? Yeah.
We get this question often in different, different shapes
because if we're just looking from a revenue standpoint, we're
like 75% of disc golf store, 25% of media company, right, If
you're just looking like top line revenue.
But that 75% of a disc golf store doesn't exist without our
media. So how I view it, when we first
started, we were a disc golf retailer that happened to use
media to try to sell discs. That flipped in 2020 when Brody
bought in, and nowadays I describe us as a disc golf media
company that sells discs. I'd very much view us as a media
company first because that's what spins all the wheels,
that's what gets revenue, that's what gets people to our site,
all of that. I think, you know, it's funny as
I talk to a lot of different entrepreneurs both in the space
and outside the space, just because I'm trying to learn from
everyone. And people are consistently very
surprised at how little we spend on marketing.
And I have to always just remind people like, well, no, my
marketing dollars go to the salary of my media team because
we can organically reach so many people that we don't have to pay
for Facebook ads. And when we do, we're paying for
Facebook ads or Google search ads to a warm audience.
We're able to retarget people who have already seen our stuff.
So we don't have to teach people who foundation is.
That's what our organic contents for.
We're taking that of you already know who foundation is.
But did you know we also sell discs?
Did you know we also have these courses?
You know, do you know we also have this and we're able to
retarget a warm audience. So it actually makes our ad
spend our cost per conversion lower.
So we are able to get better ROI on that type stuff, but we spend
way less than other companies because other companies have to
use marketing spend to teach you who they are and get you to
convert. Instead we use our organic
content to teach you who we are and a lot of times we use
organic content to also convert into sales as well.
So our kind of marketing budget is our media teams salaries, if
that makes sense. Because if you don't include me
and Brody, even though we pretty much do all media, our media
team is 3 people that are full time, all they do is just
content. And then Brody and I, pretty
much all we do is content. I obviously run and oversee the
the business, but the majority of my day-to-day work is content
oriented in some way shape or form.
So if you throw us in, we have a five person media team in a two
person full time warehouse team and then part time, you know,
warehouse and retail store employees under that.
So. Yeah.
And I saw you were kind of venturing into just the golf
world rather than just disc golf.
And it, it sounds like you're kind of using that, that
thinking along that way is that you're going to use your
personality, your media presence to kind of drive the sale of, of
golf equipment. Are are you, are you going to go
full on golf equipment or more like golf apparel or?
Now, so golf we're going to go, I mean golf, we'll have some
apparel in that type stuff where, but it's a pure media
expansion. So it's just a play on the
popularity of golf. Correct.
It's it's we're not looking at building the exact same
foundation disc golf we built in golf.
It's more just a way of, I mean really what it, what it comes
down to is I have been approached by so many families
and different people who really appreciate what foundation does
where we create clean, entertaining, sports related
content on YouTube. And they're like, I can turn
this on and I don't have to worry that my 4 year old's in
the room with me. Or I can turn it on and my whole
family can sit down after dinner and watch this together and I
don't have to worry about y'all cursing or about y'all making
crude jokes or whatever. And I started to think about
that and someone company that I love the content of, but I had
to change my perspective of when I'm watching them post
Happiness. My son is Barstool Sports.
I really like all the content they put out.
They're very funny, very crude. You cannot watch that.
I mean, my wife doesn't even let me watch it in front of her.
She doesn't like hearing it. And so, but you know, as a
sports fan, I like listening to different podcasts.
I like watching them play golf or watching these different
sports challenges. It's just something you can't do
in front of kids or you can't do in front of your wife.
Or if you just don't want that going in your ears as a
Christian or if you're religious in some other way, you don't
want a lot of times the the swearing or the crude humor and
stuff like that. And so I saw, wow, we're filling
this need in disc golf. Why can't we fill it elsewhere
as well? Yeah.
And so that's kind of where the golf comes in.
The big motivator for why Trevor and I are the face of the golf
content right now is it allows us to play golf once a month and
call it work, if I'm being just completely frank, is we both
love playing golf. And it's like, hey, it worked
out for disc golf. What if we were able to make
this golf thing work? But the play eventually is to
introduce another personality into the golf sphere so that we
can keep cranking out disc golf, doing what we love and then
build out the foundation personalities that way.
And hopefully eventually foundation disc golf is always
the core of who we are. It's always the core of what we
do. But it's one of many sports
channels that all kind of provide this clean, entertaining
sports content and pour into each other.
And as a disc golfer, I also see that as a big way of growing the
sport because right now a lot of times people always are asking
us when are we going to collab with XY or Z athlete?
And I'm like, that'd be sick if they knew disc golf existed,
right? Like if Bob does sports, which
is a huge YouTube Golf Channel, new disc golf existed.
Of course we would. So then I started thinking,
well, what if we became the people who already know disc
golf exists, where we build out the Golf Channel.
We're able to use our knowledge from disc golf on YouTube to
build out a platform and then we can integrate and grow the sport
that way. Like what if we can build the
outside arm as disc golfers and that becomes something that
pours into the sport? It's a lofty goal and I don't
know if this one that's going to work out, but it's something
where it allows me to play golf for free, quote UN quote, once a
month. So I'm going to keep pursuing
it. I like it.
No, I like it. You be you literally become the
collaborator that you're collaborating with.
So exactly. That's awesome.
So. OK, so that's interesting.
So, and maybe I know the answer to this question, but let's say
that foundation disc golf is gone.
Vanish is poof, right? What are you doing?
Not not like I'm not talking like a whip bankrupt.
I'm talking like it just didn't exist.
What would you be doing? Just as like my personal job.
Yeah, my dream was always to build a marketing agency.
Mainly, I was very fortunate to grow up with a father who owned
his own business. And so therefore he was at every
one of my basketball games. He coached me for most of my
sports practices. We went on vacation throughout
the year. If we were, if my brother or
sister was sick and had to go to a doctor or something, my dad
was able to take off work and be home with us.
And as I got older and started to mature, I realized that that
was a blessing that that's not normal that, you know, not
everyone got to do that. And I realized the reason was my
dad owned his own business and was able to create his own
schedule. So if he wanted to be off at
3:00 PM to be able to drive to our game that's two hours away
and make sure he's there for me, he could do that.
So from the get go, I knew I want to own my own business so I
can create my own schedule, even if that means sacrificing
income. I value my future family and the
freedom to be with them enough that I don't really care.
And so I started to work down that route.
That's how I ended up here is I was doing freelance graphic
design, I was doing social media and the goal was eventually get
busy enough with that to hire someone under me to take some
off my plate. Keep growing and building that
to where I was a one stop shop for everything you needed for
graphic design, social media marketing, digital print media
marketing, all that stuff. So that was the road I was on
and that was the road I was never convinced I'd be off of.
But obviously God had other plans and I've been able to kind
of build that within disc golf. Now I'm kind of building a media
and marketing company inside a disc golf.
And now that my son's, you know, 2 1/2, he'll be 3 here in a few
months. I've already been able to kind
of see and I have to kind of check myself because I, I love
work. It's something I love to do.
But I'm like, the whole reason I built this or am building this
is to have the freedom to spend time with him.
So I need to make sure I'm actually using that freedom to
spend time with him. And I'm not telling my wife, no,
I can't come home early to take my son fishing or no, I can't do
whatever. So I'm being trying to be very
intentional with that cuz that's the whole reason I wanted to
build this, but that's definitely what I would be doing
if I wasn't here. So let's say and we'll kind of
circle back a little bit with the you doing the social media
and the media and marketing and then the golf.
What would you do or not? What would you do?
But let's say it takes off even more like skyrocket and you
start seeing more like the direction of just for a great
example, because of the style of videos, do perfect style things
just really take off mainstream for you?
Would you ever say goodbye to disc golf or disc golf?
Still be at the center of what you do for your videos?
Oh no, We would never ever say goodbye to disc golf.
There's no chance. Mainly it's what gave us in that
world. It's what gave us any type of
platform to build what that is. And again, disc golf's what we
love, right? Like we love this sport.
And I think that one of the things that makes disc golf so
attractive to people who you introduce it to is it's really
easy to play. It's really cheap to get into,
and that makes it super accessible.
Whereas, like, I have plenty of friends that love to play golf
but can't play golf because, you know, clubs are really
expensive. Heck, balls are expensive for
how much you lose them when you suck at golf like I do.
And then you got to pay like 60 bucks to go play around,
sometimes 60 bucks to play nine holes.
So when you look at that and you look at, you know, your, your
monthly budget, it's like, yeah, I can probably swing golf like
once or twice a month. But your average person's not
going out and playing G456 times a month because now we're
looking at like $300 a month like that.
That doesn't make any sense versus disc golf.
It's like I can walk into AU section, pick up 3 discs for 20
bucks and that's my expense. Those discs are going to last me
as long as I want them to. Pretty much every course is
free. So I can go play that 30 * a
month if I want to. And I, I think that that in, in
a big scheme, like let's say that it blew up and you know,
our Golf Channel slash whatever is like, dude, perfect level.
I'd be screaming from the mountain tops like, Hey, disc
golf is something that you can get into.
Because I think that that'd be something where a lot of people
want to get outside, they want to be active.
That's why golf content is so popular.
That's why all these things are so popular.
But the accessibility is not there.
And disc golf has that. I think that's one of the, the
biggest things for disc golf. So, you know, it would never go
away honestly. I mean, obviously it wouldn't be
able to be a bigger part because there's the other pools are
bigger. So if you're getting millions of
views, there's just not millions of views to be had in disc golf,
which is completely fine. But fingers crossed one day
there is. And if we can play a role in
getting that there, I think that would be phenomenal.
I think that'd be awesome. Perfect.
All right. What's something you believe
about disc golf could be about the sport, the culture, the
business that most people just completely miss?
Oh boy, I think, you know, back to the pro side, I was actually
thinking about this somewhat recently because I, I think that
a lot of pros miss how important social media is to what they're
doing. Because if you look at other
sports, you don't have to be your own brand or or marketer.
Because if you're good enough at basketball, you're going to get
paid well. If you're good enough at
baseball, if you're good enough at golf, it doesn't matter if
your clothes sell, if your discs sell, whatever.
If you're a good enough golfer, you don't even have to have
endorsements. You're going to go out and make
millions on the PGA Tour. That's not really true in disc
golf, right? Like, yes, you can be Gannon
Burr and you can make enough money, but you're if you're 20th
in the world and you're just relying on your pro tour
earnings, you're probably going to struggle being out there on
the road. And so I think that that's
something that gets overlooked is, yes, you have to pursue
being better at disc golf, But if you neglect building a brand
and building community around what you love to do and who you
are, you're going to leave a lot of money on the table.
Not that it's all about money, but it's about money to the
point of being able to survive day-to-day.
And not only that, if you're able to build a brand where you
know your discs are selling, your tour series discs are
selling, the manufacturers want to pay you because you actually
move the needle. It takes all the pressure off of
your play because now I don't have to worry about if I don't
cash, I'm have to DoorDash more next week to be able to pay my
for my Airbnb to make to the next tournament.
Now I don't have to worry about that because my tour series
discs are killing it. I'm getting ad revenue from
YouTube. I'm doing brand deals on, you
know, on YouTube and on social media.
And if I go out and cash, great. If I don't, that's OK.
And now you're actually able to play more freely and play better
because you're not so stressed. So I think that's something that
in disc golf is getting missed of.
Like, yes, other sports you focus on being the athlete that
leads to the paycheck. Disc golf's not there yet.
There's just not enough money in the sport to just strictly being
that good enough athlete. It'll lead to the paycheck.
That's for the like 1% of the 1% in disc golf.
But the players who are very, very good at disc golf, I mean,
top 20 players in the world, top 30 players in the world, it's
not there yet. So instead you still have to
build out your marketing platforms.
You still have to, you know, have social media and build out
your brand because that I mean, I'm sure as a manufacturer,
y'all see it when a player has social media ties, when a player
is posting and trying, they're going to move more tour series
plastic than a player who it goes out there and might have
better finishes but has no social media presence.
No one knows who they are. I mean, our coverage, unless
you're top eight, you're really not even on coverage.
So you can become a 25th every week and no one might ever hear
your name. So you kind of have to scream
from mountaintop about who you are, what you stand for and what
you're doing out there. Yeah, absolutely.
That's that. That's word for word what I tell
the players. We have here a lot of times and
no one in particular on on team DD right now, but there were
times where people would say, you know, if I just had someone
following me out with camera, I I could do it all.
And it's like you got to do it yourself.
We're not the big, we're not the big companies.
You know, there's, there's a false narrative being put out
there where it feels like you're just watching one guy with 1
camera. Those those top guys, they have
people, they have a team of people that help them with their
PR and stuff like that. So yeah, it's definitely
something that's it's on them right now because of the state
of disc golf right now. Now where will we ever get
there? You know, I'm not sure,
hopefully someday, but it'd be nice.
But but yeah, definitely you are.
AI would tell them you are a brand, whether you like it or
not, you are a brand. And basically it comes down to
your personality and what you put out there is what people
will see that what your brand is.
And so you want to take control of that before some other
narrative does for sure. I'm going to ask you one more
question and then I'm going to, if you want to think about, I'm
trying something new with these interviews, I'm going to kind of
flip it, flip it on you. And I want you to think of a
question that you want to ask me Anything, anything at all.
And I will be, I will answer it no matter the cost, no holds
barred. So, yeah, so you got to be, you
got to be thinking about that for sure.
So I guess my last question I guess will be kind of along the
lines of what you just touched on.
It is give me 3 action steps. Someone approaches you and
they're like, dude, I love disc golf.
I think I can play really well. I want to be on the on the top
and I know social media and media is important.
Give me the first three things I should be doing to make all that
happen. Yeah, OK.
So I think step one is you have to have a YouTube channel.
As much as people don't like it, YouTube is where communities
built. It's not necessarily where the
reach happens. It's it's harder to get a
consistent audience on YouTube, but the people who are there on
YouTube are going to be there. You know, it's longer form
content, so they're going to get to know you a little bit more.
And when people get to know you more, they'll feel more tied to
you. That's where communities really
fostered and built. So whether you like it or not,
you have to have a YouTube channel.
In my opinion. The secondary thing is the other
social media platforms are where reach happens.
So that's where the algorithms, it doesn't care about how many
followers you have. It cares about if your content's
good or not. And so the other platforms I
would just find, do you like TikTok?
Do you like Facebook? Do you like YouTube Shorts?
Do you like Twitter? Do you like Instagram?
Whichever one that you're most drawn to, which is typically, if
you look at your screen time, whichever one you're scrolling
the most on, that's where you should start and just get
posting. Post there once a day, throw
stuff out there and take every analytic deep dive into it,
right? Because I think a lot of people
don't get just look at analytics as random numbers.
And then the third thing I would say is don't care about the
numbers because most people who come to me, I've done like
social media coaching on the side and people will come to me
and they'll be like, yeah, my, my first post got 100 views.
My second post got like 500 views.
This one got 50. Like I'm, it's not going
anywhere. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Listen to what you just told me. Your first post got 100 views.
Your next post got 500 views. What?
The question you should ask yourself isn't OK, this sucks.
It only got 500 views. Why did that post do five times
better than your first post? Because if you can figure out
that answer now, we can replicate it.
OK, Well, in the second one, I was outside.
The first one I was inside. OK, let's try to make some more
content outside. Was that it?
OK, now all of a sudden they're all getting 500 and this one got
2500 again. Are we talking big numbers?
No, but we're looking at this one did five times better again.
Why is that? And if we keep studying that,
next thing you know, our floor is going to go from 50 up to
1000 up to 5000. And now we have where we we can
figure out, oh, if I go outside, I wear this bright blue shirt.
I start with a question and I throw over water.
I'm going to get 50,000 views. And it's like you learn that
about your audience by not caring where you work because
too many people just kind of post, post, post.
They just throw stuff out there. They don't study their analytics
and their Instagram is just like, yeah, sometimes I get 2000
views, sometimes I get 50 views. I don't know it, it sucks the
the algorithm hates me. It's like, well, no, you're just
not feeding the algorithm what it's showing you at once.
It gave you 2000 views here for a reason.
And then you can follow all that back.
You can use the short form content to learn what your
community wants to then feed them long form content.
So if all of a sudden you notice they love, you know, this type
video where you're giving tips and they think that, you know,
oh, this is the guy who really knows what he's talking about in
the coaching world. And then over on YouTube, you're
making fun challenge content. Well, those are mixed signals.
So if everyone loves you coaching on Instagram, make
coaching content on YouTube and then they'll pour into each
other. Or vice versa.
If I'm trying to make coaching content on YouTube and then or
on Instagram and people come and watch me on YouTube and I'm
hitting the first available tree and I'm doing stupid challenges,
that's mixed signals. I need to make all that
harmonious. So make them all work together.
But you have to have YouTube. I think that's first and
foremost just because that's where true communities build.
That's where you really find connections.
And then you use the other social media platforms as your
reach, as your brand awareness. Let people know you exist and
try to funnel them over to YouTube and then be an analytic
nerd. Study it and every.
Everything means something. You might not know what it means
yet I still don't know what half it means, but everything means
something. Something doesn't all of a
sudden get more views and have a longer view duration for no
reason. There's some reason something
became more shareable and you have to just dive deep and then
test, test, test, test, test, test until you figure it out.
Perfect. I love it.
Preach. The the social media guy means I
ain't preach. I love all that stuff.
Good stuff.
All right, what? What do you have for me?
What do you got for me? Fire away any discussion you
want to talk about. I, I think what's most
fascinating for me, for you is you were in dynamic and what I
would call the golden era, right?
And then you left Dynamic, you're with Clash for a little
bit and then you left disc golf all together and now you're
coming back into Dynamic in almost a rebuild era, it feels
like, because post House of Diss, I think the perception of
Dynamic shifted a lot. So now that you've been in it
for a little bit, what are some of the things that you've
noticed are different from when you were at Dynamic the first
time versus when you're here now?
And what are you doing to try to get the Golden Era back, if you
will? Oh yeah, that's a great
question. Some of I've been talking or
thinking about in my brain every time I go back to the condo.
Here is how do I do that? Because I've been telling people
that I I came back to the same company, but I did not come back
to the same company. There's a lot of things that
have changed and I'm certainly not naive to think that, you
know, I just show up and things are back to the way it was.
No, I had an amazing cast of characters.
I call it that. I've had I had the team.
I had melted. Of course, Melton still I need
to get I've been contacting Melton, but we had Oakley, Zach
Melton, Chris Clemons, you know, all these guys were great
friends and had great chemistry together.
They had Mark, Robert McCall, had Danny and Anthony.
And it isn't as simple as some people would like to where I
just snapped my finger and everybody's back here working.
I mean, that's just not how how business works and it's not the
state that we are right now. There's a lot more logistical
type stuff just it just today there was some complications
with the hot stamp machine with getting a product here and
something that gets released today just got stamped or
something. I'm sorry, something that gets
released tomorrow just got stamped today and I'm like, OK,
I guess I have to create content around it, right?
And then I got to go ask people where it's at.
Oh, it's over in this box over here.
It's not in the normal place yet because it took a while to get
it done and back in the day it felt like I would because things
were smaller. If something was coming out and
being released, it was so easy to just for me to walk up, grab
the disk, go make some content real quick, go out to Jones
Park, make content, bring it back and put it out there.
Now I have to tell somebody where I grabbed it from.
I have to tell them which which shelf I grabbed it from and then
I got to tell them I'm going to take it for marketing purposes.
It's all good. It's it's needed.
I'm not complaining, but it's made things a little more
complicated and it's back to square one of it's just me, just
me doing it. So now it's on me to create the
content to think of the campaigns.
So that's the challenges and I'm not complaining.
I love it. It's it's, it gets me going.
So what I'm, I had to finally come to a conclusion very
recently that it is just like you said, it's just I have to
have grace with myself. Grace with what, where we're at
right now. And I have to stop thinking, oh,
if I could just get it back to the way it was, if I could just
have what I had before. I'm right here and all I can
think is now I just move forward.
What worked in the past, you know, making connections,
building relationships with people that make content,
relationship with players, with stores and then move up from
there and and move forward. And then again have grace that I
know it's just going to take time to build.
And as long as, as we talked before, as long as I've got that
vision, that mission, that mandate, and I keep that in my
focus, I honestly believe that we can bring it back to where we
had it. I was here when Dynamic Disks
was at its best and I know what it felt like.
And there are a lot of people that are in the same boat.
They're here, they know what it was like, they wanted to get
back. We just have, it feels like it's
weird because because we have more resources, it means we have
more responsibility. So it feels like it takes a
little bit longer to get there. I used to when we were, I mean,
we just talked on a competitive level when we were like, OK,
we're going to be better than disk craft, We're going to be
better than Innova. We were much more nimble because
we were a smaller company. Now I see why it takes a while
for certain things that happen, why it takes longer for a bigger
company to make things happen. There's so many more moving
parts and gears that have to make it just right and make it
happen. And so it's learning how to make
implement things that I did before, but now with a different
company and much larger companies, learning how to make
all that work. I don't know if that's a too
vague of an answer, but that's that's what kind of where my
head's at. Nah, that makes perfect sense.
Yeah, yeah. So and then I mean, I reached
out to you very early on when I came back because I'm watching
what you guys are doing and what's working, what's
happening. And I'm trying to implement into
implement that into what dynamic disk is right now.
And it's been awesome watching you guys.
And again, I appreciate you coming on the show.
I could talk marketing all day. Hopefully some of our listeners
got some value out of this. I think they I think they did
because they they understand where my heads at with these
interviews. So, but again, I appreciate it,
Hunter, and I thank you for being on the show.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
You as well. All right.
Thanks, Matt.