Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of the Disc Golf Answer
Man. I'm Bobby Cool Daddy Slick
breeze. This is special The game episode
where I have an interview with Scott Stokely.
I've had Scott Stokely on two other times, back in the early
days of Disc Golf Answer Man and back when I was doing my own
thing of Cool Daddy Disc Golf Podcast.
Always a great conversation with Scott.
So this one is also another great conversation.
He we go back to his early days of when he started playing disc
golf at Oak Grove, playing with some of the legends, some of the
influences they've had on his life.
And then talks about some of the struggles he's had, very
transparent about some of the challenges he had with people he
hung out with and substance abuse.
And then of course, him help reaching out for help and how he
overcame some of those challenges.
So a really great conversation with Scott Stokely.
Let's take a listen. All right.
Cool. So where where are you at right
now? Oh God, the mobile you're.
Yeah, so I, I have no idea. So I've done more podcasts from
the vehicle. It's just because I'm on the
road every day, so there's no way around it.
I am in. We're leaving Minneapolis, I'm
heading to. I'm running this seminar in with
Madison, WI on Wednesday. A seminar?
What kind of seminars are you doing?
So I do this, I've been doing this for a few years now.
I do full day, like they're called Stokely Method seminars.
Full day Stokely Method seminars.
I capped them at, well, it was 6 people.
I'm actually going to cut it back to five people, but it's
five people. It's all day.
It's an intensive training session, backhand, sidearm
putting, mental game, utility shots, just every single part of
the game. And it's just where I I take my
lifetime of teaching disc golf and I make people throw better.
I. Like it?
I like it. Yeah, well, I'm sure.
I'm sure. Oh, go ahead.
I was gonna say I have my schedule posted for the rest of
the year. I have a few more in Wisconsin,
but then before the end of the year I have a seminar scheduled
in Colorado, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, California,
maybe a couple other places, but it's Scott Stokely.
Scott stokely.net is where you find the information.
They all still up so if someone's interested they should
sign up because they all stay every time they sell out
basically. Well, just in case, and I'm sure
I'll most of my listeners, if not all of them have heard of
Scott Stokely, but just in case, let's kind of go back to the
beginning and hopefully I got my facts straight straight.
Let's see if I got my facts right.
But it was back in Oak Grove when you were seven years old,
while most kids were trying to learn how to ride bikes and play
little leagues. You were out throwing with some
of the disc golf legends that maybe people have heard of, Dan
Roddick and the Liesman Brothers.
So, looking back, what do you remember most about those early
days at Oak Grove and how it shaped who you are in the sport
now? Yeah.
So when I first played my first round of disc golf, it was on
the world's first permanent Frisbee golf, at the time,
world's first permanent Frisbee golf course, when it was the
only course in the entire world. So I actually started at
basically Ground Zero for the game, at least as far as the
course permanent courses go. My dad had just passed away and
not long after my mom of course would take me in all the local
things in the area. And every park had something
about that park. You know, the biggest merry go
round, the tallest swing, you know, something that made the
park the thing you go to. And this one park called Oak
Grove had a Frisbee golf course at the time.
It was just one of the park activities.
I mean, there were no other Frisbee golf courses, right?
So it was just a thing that that park had to do.
So when you went to Oak Grove, you brought her Frisbee?
And I would play, but I wasn't playing regularly.
Then when I was 11, my mom's business started doing well.
So she moved from a kind of a working class neighborhood to
this kind of rich neighborhood locking out of Flint Ridge.
The park bordered La Canada. It wasn't in the rich part of
town, but it was close. And I didn't fit in to the rich
kid neighborhood, especially back then.
It was like a John Hughes movie. Everybody had brand new bikes,
you know, fancy designer clothing at 11 years old.
And I didn't have any of those things.
But when I went down to the Frisbee golf course, it was blue
collar, it was hippies. It was kind of the people that I
grew up with, and I also didn't have a dad.
And what I've realized since then is that I gravitated
towards basically all the grown men in, in the Oak Grove Gophers
Club as father figures as well as my.
They were my friends. I didn't have a whole lot of
friends at school. I had the Oak Grove Gophers.
They were my people. So everything, yeah, everything
in my early years, I, I got from them.
The way I've described it is, you know, it was a very
imperfect group of people, especially back then.
If you played Frisbee golf, most of the, not all, but most of the
people were kind of on the fringes a little bit.
It was not mainstream by any stretch, but they were the best
man I've known my entire life. And I learned different things,
valuable things from all of them.
I probably learned a few destructive things from a few of
them. Who I, you know, I, I still love
these people, but I, I basically just all, all the good stuff in
the world I found in somebody there and I learned those things
from them. So yeah, it it didn't just help
for me, it completely farmed me. Nice.
And, and I know you've written a book.
I have to, I apologize. I haven't read the whole book,
but I know you haven't. And I've seen a lot of people
talk about it. And in the book, I, I, I've
heard that you really don't sugarcoat stuff.
You don't sugarcoat your past. You talk about it and before you
became a champion, you're living kind of, as you kind of
mentioned, maybe a wildlife battling certain things.
And you've been honest about those two years and what And
that honesty I think resonates for a lot of people and you and
I've had several conversations and I love your honesty and I
love your approach to to disc golf and just talking with
people and helping people. Is there a turning point of
something that happened that made you go from these wild days
to now? I want to, I want to reach out
and I just want to help people and give back.
Yeah, So it's funny because when I saw the autobiography is
called Grown Up Disc Golf, you can get it at Amazon or Audible.
It's been doing really well for the past five years.
I so much of these things I, I really loved about myself when I
wrote the book because I had to then revisit these things and
write about and actually ask, well, why did I do this or why
was I thinking that? For better or for worse.
And when I wrote the book, I made a very early decision.
I was either going to be honest in the book or I wasn't going to
write the book. But it's not going to be some
list of like, all these are these cool things I did and look
how smart I was this week and look how great I was that week.
Like, that's a shit book. I don't know if I can swear, but
that is a definite autobiography.
Well, it's definitely not a good story.
I showed, I showed up and I played well in one.
Yeah. I wasn't going to do that.
I got it. You know, as a teenager, I got
into trouble. I partied a lot.
I was, I had legal trouble, you know, I, you know, yeah.
This is all like a lot of this all, all of it's in the book.
You know, the first time I ever got arrested, I was 15 years old
and I was, I have, I had a motorcycle.
I wasn't old enough to drive. And I I've tried running from
the cops and got pulled over. And to me, that was just like a
wolf. It kind of still is like a rite
of passage, you know, getting arrested for harmless teenager
angst. But I also started doing drugs
and and, you know, when they became harder drugs, it started
going, you know, yeah, they tends to go back pretty quickly.
But that was what I was doing. I was, you know, I did selling
drugs. And, you know, that was my
world. But the, the, the turning point
more than anything else was that it was the Oak Grove Gophers,
but not, not not all of them. It was I started not just Oak
Grove Gophers. I want to expand.
That was, it was the whole Southern California disc golf
community that I started realizing that all the things I
kind of got a pass for as a teenager.
When I started getting older, there were people who were
always kind and always friendly, but I also noticed they kind of
didn't want me around. I just wasn't like as welcome
with them. And those were the people whose
respect I actually wanted. And I, I, I was like, well, I
want to kind of be part of their group.
And I was fitting in with my, my people just fine.
And when you sell drugs, you tend to fit in with the people
using the drugs you sell, right? That's, it's a pretty tight
community, but that's not who I wanted to be respected by.
You mentioned Dan Roddick and then, you know, TD Ugaldi, but
it was, you know, Mark and Susie Horne and it was Beth Farish and
it was Cliff Town and it was Dan Mangoni and it was Snapper
Pearson and it was even some people in, in the early days,
people from End of a Champion like Dave Dunnit Pace and Tim
Solinsky, Harold Duvall were all friends of mine back then.
I wanted their respect and I certainly didn't have it.
They were not part of that my crowd.
And so I and by the way, I was also unhappy and I also thought,
wow, these people seem pretty damn happy.
They go out and play disc golf and like if they have a bad
round, doesn't seem to screw their life up.
They're they're they seem to have their together.
And so I kind of just gravitated towards wanting to impress them.
I mean it really was an important part, but I've never
forgotten all the goodness and the people.
They were part of these other groups because they were not bad
people, they were just had the same flaws I did.
So I didn't abandoned those, those people by any stretch.
I just was trying to impress the other ones.
I feel like with some of the stuff you've done and I pretty
Scott, I totally appreciate your honesty and your transparency
and that's something I've always really admired about you.
So I appreciate that talking about that stuff.
But it seems like some of the things that you're involved in
teaching, doing seminars, even some of the players that you
sponsor it, it feels like like you've, I don't want to know,
Maybe you don't have narrow it down to learned lessons, but
like you're wanting to now put positive out in the world rather
than the stuff you were doing in the past.
Well, OK, so here's the thing. I, when I was doing the things
with the drugs and everything, I wasn't out there like, like I
was a punk kid with an attitude, but I, I was never like, like,
like trying to harm people or anything like that.
I mean, there's people, there's plenty of people that do drugs
that are good people that are struggling with something.
There's plenty of people who do drugs who are terrible people.
You know, regardless of if they were sober, they'd be terrible
people, right? So that they can be an
independent, you know, description of a person.
So I, I certainly, I never had like bad intentions in my heart,
but I just was making bad decisions.
So when I, I'm going to Fast forward them really quickly.
So then I, I stopped using drugs.
Then I went to college and then I went on tour and we spent the
90s on tour and my daughter was born in 2000 and then I was, I
kind of stopped playing sound want to be home to raise her.
So now we Fast forward it up to like 2013 and I, I wasn't a
partier at all all this whole time.
And but in around 2012, 2013, I started using using drugs again
and very quickly escalated rapidly into foreclosure,
divorce, the unable to sustain myself financially, which is a
very fringe way of living. I mean, when someone's like says
they're living on the street, it doesn't necessarily mean they're
on sidewalks, but it could mean that they're scraping together
money for a hotel room with a couple people they don't know
very well a given night. And then you're shaking up with
this person that you probably wouldn't be shaking up with for,
to get have a roof like it. It's a very ugly existence right
on the fringe. And I, I was at that point,
that's what I was doing. And it's probably going to on my
tombstone. This is probably going to be my
favorite story in all of disc golf was I reached out to Dave
McCormick at Gateway Discs. Dave had been a friend of mine
back in the 90s. And well, first I reached out to
disc craft and asked him for help.
And Jim Kenner and Mike actually did some things to kind of help
me out here, but I was still using the drug.
So I wasn't able to succeed with the help they offered and kind
of burned ridges. They've been mended since.
But I, I screwed that up. But I reached out to Dave
McCormick and Dave's like, well, I can help you out.
I need to get in my discs into stores.
I'll send you a bunch of discs and you can get them into stores
and keep the difference to March and, you know, be a sales Rep.
He didn't know I was doing the drugs.
He had no idea that that was probably a bad move, not in
hindsight, but at the moment. So I, I, I walk into fly grain
disc golf store in Denver, Co and the, the way to, to paint
the picture of or paint the scene is that I'm on the
doorstep of fly Green and I for all intents and purposes, and
the biggest loser on earth. I hated myself.
I hated my life. I felt like the biggest loser.
I didn't feel like anybody would, would love me.
All the cliche stuff. It's pretty, you know, it's
cliche because it's accurate. And that's where I was when I
was walking into the store. And I'm gonna have to now I'm
gonna have to tell these people, remind them, oh, I used to be
really good at disc golf back 20 years ago.
So therefore, you know, you should trust me and carry these
discs and blah, blah, blah. So I walk in the door and I look
up on the wall and there's the freaking poster of me
autographed poster be up on the wall of the store.
And the guy behind the counter just looks up.
He goes, Scott Stokely's here and he runs to the back and I
hear him in the back yelling, you guys, Scott Stokely's out
front. No, I'm not joking.
He's he's in the store right now and there were two customers in
the store. It's a true story that
recognized me. And and one of them was like
they said something like, Oh my God, I'm your biggest fan.
And I'm like, what the hell is going?
Don't you? I'm you guys, don't you realize
what a loser I am? What are you?
What are you doing praising me? This is insane.
Wow. And the guys come out from the
back and they say, I know I'm signing autographs and I'm
telling stories. This one guy in the stores
telling stories about me. Oh, yeah.
Whole 3 grateful disc championships.
There's this building over here. And Mike Randolph had him by a
stroke. And I'm like, I'm like, this is
like Twilight Zone. Like I didn't think anybody
would Remember Me, let alone I'm being praised.
And I absolutely at that moment didn't feel like a loser.
I felt like, I felt like Scott Stokely, right?
I'm now I'm like, Oh my God, I'm like this, you know, at least in
our little world, I'm just important person, you know,
again, I, I remember thinking I got to get off the draw.
I'm going to get off the drugs and quit the drugs and I'm going
to make my, I'm going to change my life and get back into disc
golf and, you know, keep this feeling going.
And then I walked out the door and like 5 minutes later I'm
like, I really need to get high. And I went and bought drugs with
the money from the disc I sold because you know, it's not a
movie doesn't, doesn't work like that.
But I had that thing in my head of like, oh, I know how this
feels, how I want to feel. And I didn't realize I could
feel it without the drugs again. And then I was like, well, my
solution here is I need to, I need to get back into disc golf.
I hadn't really played for 13 years.
I'm like, I got to get back into this community where there's
things that make me feel about myself that I wasn't feeling.
It's, you know, kind of, it's a long story.
You know, everyone's got their own version of their, their,
their path. But basically I got off the
drugs and then I was like, oh, all I want to do is get high,
but I'm not using drugs. Fly Green gave me a job.
I'm working at Fly Green. I'm actually, I got an
apartment. I'm, I'm now I'm paying my bills
and I'm miserable because you know, the reason I did, whatever
reason I was doing the drugs doesn't just go away.
So I was doing better, but I was like, every day I'm like, I'm
going to get high tomorrow. Like I know I'm, I know I'm
going to, because I, I know it's not a really, you know, I'm
minimum wage. I'm living in someone's
basement. It's an apartment, but it's not
a life I wanted. And I was like, what am I going
to do? I'm like, I got to go out on
tour. This is it.
I got to go out on tour. So, but I didn't have a driver's
license at this point. You tend to lose those when you
do drugs. I didn't have a driver's
license. I didn't have a vehicle and I
had no money. So I call it Barry Schultz in
North Carolina. I hadn't talked to him in like
15 years. I'm like, hey, Barry, Scott
Stokely, It's like, well, what's going on?
And I just sat on the phone and I told him everything I'd been
doing, all the stuff that had been going bad, just completely
honest with him. And I said, I need to go out on
tour. I go, I need your help.
And he says, oh, I live on a disc golf course and I got a
spare room. Just get here.
And I was like, I'm like, well, First off, he has his roommate,
Brian Mccree. I didn't even ask him about
coming out. I said I just, I don't know what
to do. Barry.
I've been away from the sport. I don't know how it works
anymore. And Barry, I hear him like turn
away from the phone. He goes, hey, Brian.
He goes, Stokely's coming to live with us.
I never asked him. He didn't ask me.
He just told Stokely's coming to live with us.
And Brian's like, oh, sweet. Scott Stoker, That's awesome.
And so he gets back. He goes, yeah, I just get North
Carolina, got a place. And I said, Barry, I go, I
don't, I don't have any money. He goes, I didn't ask you for
money. Just get here and I said how
long can I stay? I said how long can I stay and
his exact words were as long as you need to and that's how it
started of that. I hope this isn't too long of a
story. So the story was so now I'm out
all right now I'm going to go out on tour again and it's like
I would go to a tournament and I would get praise.
Wow, you throw really far. Oh, I knew you back in the day.
I heard blah, blah, blah, beer sidearms really good.
That felt good, but it was still incomplete like I still like it
was kind of not superficial, but I'm like you're praising me for
throwing frisbee as well. That feels good, but that's not
the same. That isn't the feeling I
actually needed. And I ended up dating a woman to
son had autism and I started running events for kids and
adults with special needs. Went to 270 cities and taught a
free disc golf class for kids with special needs while I was
touring around playing these events.
And that was it. That was what did it.
Where I went, people were like, they weren't saying, oh, I love
how good you are at Frisbee. They're like, I love what a good
man you are. I love what a good person you
are. I hire you.
And, and oh man, that was, that was, that was the drug that I
was looking for. So the last years, whether I'm
sponsoring special needs players or I'm, I'm donating.
I mean, the last four years I've donated all my prize money at
tournaments to special needs or developing organizations or
developing kind of like everything I do now is I'm just
seeking a different drug, which is I want to like help the world
and I want to make people better.
And like I'm happy now. I want to share how to become
happy. And I'm financially successful
now and I'm doing really well and I so now I want to share
with other people how to be financially successful.
None of these are paid gigs. This is I'm just seeking that
drug of I want people to look at me in a way where I feel good
about myself because that's my, that's my drug.
If that makes sense. If that makes sense.
No, yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense.
That's a really great. Thing to.
That's 100,000 page books summed up in like 8 minutes, so I hope.
Definitely tell people to go go get the book so they could
actually get it, you know, take a deeper 5 and learn more about
it 'cause I think. Book ends in 2000.
The book ends when I quit this Oh, my daughter was born, but
the book ended with my daughter being born and I'm like, what
the hell am I gonna do now? I play frisbee golf for a
living. Oh, you need.
Sounds like we need a second book the the next chapter or the
saga. No, I'm writing three books and
and. OK, Yeah.
So My Empire Strikes Back is in the works.
Nice. I love.
I love that analogy. That's Oh, no.
Well, you'll appreciate the analogy because.
This is the heavy dark, Moody one.
This is this is that. Oh, OK.
And then after that, the the third book is all going to be
about I've now I've gone to 40 countries in the last three
years. I've I'm going to.
My. 41st country next week. So so last book's going to be
all fun and rosy with the Ewoks. I love it and I love the way
your brain thinks of you're, you're thinking 2345 steps
ahead, which is which is a fantastic way to look at it.
So, so let's talk a little bit about kind of the journey.
You know, disc golf has grown up, you've grown up with disc
golf. You've been through a lot of lot
of different challenges and overcome those challenges.
So tell me a little bit about you know, you're coming back,
but now you're you're playing disc golf now and then you
played back when you were. You played the Open at 50 years
old and not, not a lot of players can say that they've
spanned large generations of disc golf, right?
What's the biggest change you've seen in disc golf?
And is there anything that you miss about the quote UN quote
old days of disc golf? Yeah, that's a fantastic
question. So the biggest change has just
been the cultural acceptance, like the fact that the whole
world's upside down now as far as disc golf goes.
Like we're like this real sport. I mean, we might not be the
biggest sport, but we're not this fringe thing.
You know, there's respectable ball golfers who think disc
golf's a cool alternative to ball golf.
You know, there's parents aren't ashamed of their kids when they
want to play. They actually try to figure out
how to help their kids go on tour.
Cities are cities approach companies and say we want a disc
golf course in our park. Can you send someone and you
know, where do we buy the baskets they used to show up
with with torches and pitchforks if you tried to put a course in
back in the 80s? Nobody today has any
understanding of how much work the early pioneers of our sport
did to get the disc in the ground.
I mean, they literally fought City Hall nearly every time they
put a course in. It could be a five year, it
could be five years of working with the neighborhood just to
get them to approve a tentative plant.
Yeah, So that's the biggest difference now.
And now we're just this real sport.
If you start today, you, you just think of disc golf as just
one of those alternative sports that, you know, 8 million people
play. It wasn't like that.
As far as what I miss about the old days, I I'm not ever going
to be the grumpy old man who says back in my day things were
better. If I was to list 20 different
things about disc golf, 19 of them are better now than they've
ever been. You know what, from the cultural
acceptance to the explosion of the women's field to how many
juniors play and you know, the pro tour and technology and the
Cal cool the courses are. And you know, 19 of the 20 are
better than they've ever been. The one thing that can't be the
same just because we're bigger is that the the the family
aspect of the sport, it just can't ever replicate the way it
used to be just because we're right now Now, OK, disc golf is
like a family. Yes, you can go to any course in
the world, post to Facebook. Hey, I'm in town.
I need a place to crash. Some disc golfer will be like, I
got a couch. You know, like there's still
this thing that we have that's incredibly unique and special,
but it's not the same as when there were, you know, nine of
us. Right.
Right, so the way the way I described it, it was because we
were it was such a group made-up of like outcasts and misfits.
You know, most players, you know, I'm there's there was we
had a doctor here, you know, scientist over there, but we
know mostly we were misfits and there was this it was this US
against them mentality. I mean like nobody, I mean, and
I mean nobody understood what we did except for us.
I mean, you had. You had guys who would.
And this was not. This is a common story.
In the old days, they couldn't tell their boss that they were
going to a disc golf tournament to get time off.
They had to lie because their boss would have no under score.
But first they have to explain what disc golf is.
And then it would sound stupid to them.
And they'd be like, yeah, you're not taking time off for this,
this thing. It's like people hid it from
their wives. And so, you know, our, our, you
know, we were the outcast group. And because the outcast group,
we bonded over this in a way that just can never be the same.
We call it the Frisbee family. We still call it that today.
Like there's just nothing like it.
We just, I went to the Virginia State championships.
So I think the 48th Daniel, I was and it's mostly old school
players. The majority of people that
tournament have been playing longer than me.
And I hugged 100 people and so did everybody else.
It was, it was absolutely a family.
We're never going to get that back, you know, for better or
worse. That's that's the thing that's
different. And me personally, I would give
up the other 19 things I'd do for that.
But yeah, I love where the sport is.
I think it's great. It's growing.
I love the pro tour. I'll say something that that
people don't or they ask me all the time and and they don't
understand how. I don't think they understand
how strange this is, but on the pro Tour, basically nearly every
single person on the pro tour are like really good people.
And they actually genuinely really like one of them.
Like they're competing. They're competing.
You know, where if I beat you, I'm taking food off your plate
and the money is at a level where if I beat you, you might
not come out next season. Like there's there's a line
where people aren't able to afford to keep doing it.
There's every reason in the world for it, for people to butt
heads and have animosity, and there's almost none of it.
Like, no, they're competing. I mean, there's not a single
player on tour that takes it easy on the person.
No, you're trying to, you're trying to smash the person on
the course. There's no lack of
competitiveness, but there's also love at the same time,
where it's like when you beat somebody, you're happy you won
and you feel what they're going through at the same time.
I don't think that exists. I don't think anybody in the NBA
has ever been like the Chicago Bulls were ever like, oh, I feel
so sad for those Detroit Pistons.
Oh man, I bet they're really, I bet they're they're I bet
they're sad right now. There's there's an empathy.
So it's a wild, it's wild, man. It's it shouldn't be like this.
So that's the carryover of the Frisbee family that we still
got. I don't think there's a sport in
the world that has the quality of people playing it that we do,
yeah. Yeah, I love that.
I've been watching, you know, since coming back to Dynamic
disc, watching a lot of YouTube disc golf videos or guys are
just out there practicing and then showing, you know, what
they do off the course. And I that's something I notice
is that these kids are having a great time together, laughing,
being goofy, and they're all from different manufacturers
because they don't care. They just, they're friends.
They're they're out there having a good time, doing the same
thing, have the same goals, cheering each other on and just
having a great time. So yeah, I think that.
It is, yeah. I couldn't speak any higher.
I'm so proud of them. I mean, they're, they, what
they're doing is they're carrying on the Frisbee
tradition, the Frisbee legacy and, and I'm proud of all of
them. I think they're and they're my
friend. I love all of them.
Yeah. Yeah, let's change the
directions a little bit. You held both the backhand and
sidearm world distance record. So you've had some big
accomplishments when it comes to the the two distance.
And I know on the disc golf answer, man, that's one of the
biggest questions we used to always get it was how do I throw
farther? So in your eyes, what do most
people get wrong when it comes to throwing far?
So throwing far is just. It's technique and it's practice
with with an overtone of like, you know, your physical, you
know, abilities, you know, taller physics is on your side.
I suppose that there's this fast twitch versus slow twitch muscle
thing that probably, you know, it probably is friend, if that's
valid. I, I've never looked into it
enough to know if that's just a trendy, you know, observation of
athletes. But if it's true, there's
probably so there's some, there's some genetics involved,
but but that's the overarching like kind of ceiling.
It's technique and it's, it's mechanics.
If you don't throw with proper mechanics, you don't throw far.
So here's how I'll describe it. It, it's real simple.
A 7 year old cowgirl can, can break the speed of sound with a
piece of leather. If she has the proper technique,
she can crack a bullwhip. A 25 year old male bodybuilder
can't break the speed of sound if he doesn't crack the whip
properly. Now it there's obviously way
more to it than that, but that's just it's a pretty accurate
analogy. Proper technique, physics
becomes on your side, but the whip in the right position, move
the whip the right direction, physics takes over the whip,
accelerates, snap, there you go. You just broke the speed of
sound. Improper technique.
You just have a piece of leather flying through the air, not
doing that. And as far as like when people
say, well, what is the one thing, I'm not dismissing the
answer. It's not one thing.
There are a number of things and everyone of them, if you don't
do those, will remove a measurable amount of your
distance. So no, it's not an exact
formula. But let's say that you, let's
say they be based on your height and your physical attributes and
your age and how long you've been playing.
Let's say that had you been throwing perfectly the whole
time, you're, you potentially had a, you could have been a 500
foot thrower had everything done been perfect.
By the way, I look at it as well, if you don't do this thing
over here, if you don't plant your foot before you start
pulling the disk, if you start pulling before you plant, you're
losing, you know, that's 45 feet of distance you're losing over
here. And then if you're keeping your
head forward, which prevents you from rotating the sores and
reaching back, that's another 52 feet over here.
And now you're putting the nose up on the disk.
That's another 27 feet. And so next thing you know,
you're, you're, you're now throwing 330 feet.
Well, if you fix the nose up on the disc, well, that's going to
get you back that 30 feet. Wonderful that you were losing,
but you're still losing the distance from these other
things. Every single piece of the puzzle
adds or subtracts A measurable amount of distance.
When you get everything perfectly, then you're kind of
at your ceiling as far as what your physical body can do.
And that's where there are differences in bodies.
This is what it really comes down to with with Dick on the
Pro Tour. Like everybody on the pro tour
rips the desk. I'm going to talk about the guys
just because I'm more familiar with the guy Division.
I mean, mechanics, there's, there's not a whole lot of flaws
on the pro tour mechanically. So when somebody throws 500 feet
and someone else can throw 650, that's the last part where it's
like, well, yeah, but they're 6 foot 2 and you're 5 foot 10.
And and yeah, they happen to have those fast twitch muscles
and you don't, but everybody is. The mechanics are so good.
They're kind of throwing at their ceiling.
Like nobody on the pro tour that can only throw 500 feet today
will be throwing 650 in three years because their technique
improves. You're not on the pro tours.
Your technique isn't really damn close to.
I mean I think the word perfect, but perfect ish.
Yeah, I got you. So what's what's what's, I guess
one thing that for the listeners, if that's, that's
something to want to aspire to is getting on the pro tour.
It sounds like getting out there and just practicing and getting
down the techniques and not realize it, like you said.
And something I know we've talked about before on the show
is that it's not just one or two things.
It's a it's a multitude of things working all together in a
positive way to absolutely get that distance.
But I guess to somewhat, what would you say to someone that
thinks that they've reached their ceiling?
Is it? Is that something that prevent
them from being a pro if they can't quite get that big
distance? So no.
So it's not about having a big distance as a pro throwing
farther. So okay, there's a term that use
called tour distance and tour distance means can you throw a
450 foot heiser, which is basically a controllable shot.
Can I throw 450 feet and landed safe?
If you have to throw an Anheuser flex shot to get 450 feet, you
don't have the controlled play door because.
When you lose accuracy, when you do a flight shot, when you do a
Heiser or heiser flip, you're more accurate.
You got to be able to get to that 450 range and every player
on on tour does. That's the the weakest players
on the tour can still pop a 450 foot Heiser.
Anything above that is bonus, but the the frequency by which
these the situations where you will use that come up gets
smaller and smaller the the farther you throw the
opportunity to throw that that far.
Like real, we'll use him as the obvious example throws a mile.
But how often during a run out is that an advantage?
Like, well, every every time there's a basket shorter than
than shorter than everybody can reach, then there's almost no
advantage because they can all reach it when you have longer
holes. But you have OB in play, which
means, you know, AB is not throwing full power anyways.
Like so that all that power is not really going to showcase
itself. So how many holes does he
actually get to use that power? Well, there's a couple like wide
open holes and there's maybe a couple shots turning around
where he gets to throw the big heiser window, which is a bigger
gap than the smaller window the weaker players have to throw.
OK. So yeah, so he's his distance
gives him a couple strokes around.
But so does, you know, Andrew Marwee circle one putty, and so
does Rs B's. You know, the circle two shots
he throws in seems seemingly every couple, you know, couple
times around. So it's it's every part of the
game gives you it's a skill set that that you know, gives you
the edge over the other players so that you can use.
But distance is just one of those skill sets.
You still got to do all the other parts of the game.
Gotcha. Yeah, you got to have a complete
game for sure. Okay, so tell us.
Okay, so as I did my research, obviously I found that you had
your Stokely disks, so you're coming out with some disks.
So tell us a little bit about that.
What's this new adventure all about?
Yeah, so. So I manufactured my own disks.
Now it's called disks. It's not the typical pro line
because they're not third party manufacturer.
They're not just two or disc, you know, like they're actually
like I manufacturer me and my partner, we like every single
disc that every single Stokely disc you get is coming off of a
machine that we owned, being from a mold that we own, that we
created, shipped from a warehouse that we now I always
want to be clear with people like we have some help within
the industry in disk design and the manufacturing process.
Like that is an art that takes years to get good at.
Like if you start manufacturing on your own machines yourself,
you're going to go through a several year learning curve
where you're going to burn through some bad.
Yeah. Getting so we, we didn't do
that. We jumped ahead and we got some
experts to help with those areas.
But we we own the company, we own the machines, it's our
facility. I mean everything's on.
We have 5 discount for Stokely discs.
The most recent one is the Peregrine, which is the, it's my
first high speed driver. I'm super excited.
If we were to comparables, call it Halo Destroyer because
everything is comparable to something else, but it's an
overstable high speed driver, doesn't share one bit how windy
it is. It holds its lock.
It's really good and you know. I've got, I believe three more
molds coming out this year. We'll have 8 by the end of the
year for Stokely discs. We also bought for the some of
the people have been around a minute.
We bought Qing disc. Qing is a company that been
around for years. They they shut down in 2014.
And the important part of this story is they didn't shut down
because they weren't doing well. I mean, if people didn't like
the discs, we weren't going to buy the company loved the disc,
but the person that owned the company had personal reasons for
shutting it down. He shut down a successful
company. At the time, all 8 discs were
being manufactured in China. And the very first thing we did
when we bought the company is we bought, we brought the mulch
back from China. So they're actually all in
American they're being manufactured on car machines as
well. So we juju which was the most
possibilities out. I'll be just been for stores
releasing the the the precision, but all eight of the Ching bolts
will also be released as well. But we're just pacing them, you
know, probably 2A year to, you know, build hype around each
model. So yeah, we're we're actually
like this like we're like this real production facility.
We're not just making one or two disks hoping to get it off the
ground. We're actually full speed ahead
to, to, to become a major manufacturer.
And and we're, we're, we're going to be, it's exciting.
Yeah, it's me. That's awesome, I love it.
So tell us if someone wanting to try out your disks, whether it's
just Stokely disks or the Ching, what?
Why? Why would you tell someone as
far as what your mission is, what your values are?
Why? Why do they want to try your
discs? Okay, so there's that.
That's a fantastic question. And that's the, you know, that's
the key to any type of marketing like are are we, do we fly
farther? Are we, do we feel better?
Are we less expensive? You know, like whatever the
selling pitch is? There's a couple things.
The first is, is the reason why I started this company because
I, I make plenty of money teaching disc golf.
I could have a hell of a life just traveling around the world
the rest of my life teaching disc golf and I'd be quite
comfortable and it would be really, really easy relative to
like, you know, the grinding out the, you know, the 50 hour a
week job. I mean, I could go to, I could
run one or two 7 hours a week the rest of my life and, and be
comfortable. The reason why I started the
company, my motivation was I have three things that I want to
do desperately with my life. And these things cost a lot of
money. I want to promote adaptive disc
golf, special needs disc golf. I want to promote disc golf for
people that the traditional game of disc golf doesn't fit for
just because of physical or developmental disabilities.
I want to open up the game to that.
I am very passionate about bringing disc golf or and
participating, I should say, helping to bring disc golf to
countries where they don't have disc golf.
And this is primarily developing countries.
We've been spending time in Indonesia, Cambodia.
We just got back from Vietnam. We'll be going to going to South
America this winter. I want to bring disc golf to
people that the game doesn't reach now just for logistic
reasons and financial reasons. So basically the the theme here
is that disc golf, disc golf in in the US and Europe and in the
West is doing just fine without me.
If if I disappeared tomorrow, disc golf, you know, I hopefully
will mourn for about a minute and a half.
And then if they're going to keep doing great, I can't make I
can't affect change in in this the way I would like to where
where I can affect change and grow disc golf or are these
areas that disc golf isn't reaching well?
And that's developed countries. People adapted disc golf.
So that's where my my heart is. And the third thing, and this is
very important to me, is that there are more disc sports out
there other than disc golf and ultimate.
It's. It's so important.
To me that these sports don't go away.
We're talking about guts and double discord and and freestyle
and you know, I just everything that isn't disc golf and
ultimate these sports are hanging on by a thread in some
cases and it just needs an infusion of money.
It needs an infusion of money from someone who doesn't get
about money, if that makes sense.
The the same reason I give all my prize money away.
I've been doing it for like the last four years.
I I name an organization to donate my prize money to is the
same reason I'll be giving away the money from this company.
I'm not going to die with money under my mattress.
I'm going to die, Brooke. Everything I make is going to go
to. And so these disc sports where
there's no way to see a profit in them probably for many years,
if ever they need someone who can throw money at it that
doesn't care about where it's my return coming from.
I had one more part of that the tradition of Frisbee on the
bottom of the first Frisbee, it said invent games.
That's the that's the core of our of, of flying disc sports.
And there haven't been a whole lot of games invented.
So I also want to like get behind whatever and encourage
people to invent new disc sports that I can now get behind.
All these things take millions of dollars and that's that's
where the money goes. And so if I mean like, look,
we're making great discs, they fly great.
They're good plastic. If the discs weren't good, it
didn't have good plastic, no one's going to buy them because
it feels good, right? Like, right, no one's going to,
no one's going to shoot worse on the course just because they're
all supporting this thing. They believe that.
I mean, in nature, these discs are unbelievably good.
They fly great. The plastic is super high
quality. So they're great discs when
other people make great disc golf.
So then the choice is which great disc do you choose?
And with my company, when you are throwing Stokely discs and
team discs, you are fundamentally promoting disc
golf in a way that no one else is doing it.
And you're you're part of this. We can we call it the flock
where we're we're going to formalize the name.
So all my discs are bird names. So we're calling it the flock.
But when you're part of the flock, you are growing the sport
of disc golf to the people. Disc golf doesn't reach.
You want to grow the sport. This is one way to.
Do it. Throw a disc.
It's just as good as any other company's discs, but you are
growing the sport when you do it.
Wow, I like that. That's that's the biggest thing.
I don't, I mean, I'm telling you I will die.
Absolutely. I don't think you're better in
person than my girlfriend. Been together 5 1/2 years, not
traveling with me. When I met her, I said I go, I
go good news and bad news. I go good news, I make a lot of
money. Your bad news, I give just about
all of it away. Like everything I don't need.
Well, I, I told her when I met her, I said, look, we'll be,
we'll stay at hotels every night for the last five years and go,
it's going to be a roof over your head.
There's going to be food on the plate.
You are not going to see a savings account because
everything I've made above what it takes for us to get through
this week is, is out the door for some cool thing that I want
to do. And by the way, if you look
interview, that's just how I buy my drugs.
Like that's this is what this is excited.
I'm going to go do this cool thing over here.
And then I then and then I get the dopamine hit from like, you
know, whatever, whatever fun thing I think, you know, I don't
know, weird when it comes to money, man, I don't like having
money. I like making money.
Another marketing question I want to ask you is the
undercover shopping. I've seen videos where you've
got the clever little mustache on, kind of go in the store and
do some undercover shopping. That's not you.
Is that you? And it looks like me, but no, I
don't have a mic back. So what was that?
How did you come up with that idea and what's been the the
outcome of those adventures? So as I'm traveling, because
I'm, I'm in the Stokely Discs, you know, you know, Sprinter van
with the Stokely Discs logo on it, people think I'd sleep in
it. I don't.
We stay in hotels, merchandise and I'm going to pro shop, but
we're already in about 300 pro shops in our first year, which
is just mind blowing to me. That's awesome.
Every, everyone's down with this.
Everybody's like, this is really cool.
Cool. You know, we want to be a part
of this, right? So everybody, all the pro shops
have been great. So I've been visiting pro shops,
but as I'm making my way back around now, I go to a town where
there might be like, like, let's say there's a couple pro shops
in this small town and one of them already carries my discs
and one of them doesn't. Well, it would kind of be crappy
of me to like just skipped a story that carries my disks to
go make a sales call. What about you guys?
You know, they were early adopters.
So that then I was thinking, well, how I need to do something
to make, you know, I got to visit these places too.
So if I'm in town, I'm like, I want to visit, but the I just, I
want to make it fun. So one of the big things I added
to the list of like probably one of the ways I'm going to be
making less money, but I don't care because it's fun.
I am adamant about promoting. I call it shop Local 1st.
I believe that the single most important key to the growth of
disc golf in our sport is all of the local entrepreneurs that are
boots on the ground doing grassroots promoting of disc
golf in their town. Like all the big manufacturers
out there. The BIG4 manufacturers have have
all like they've put millions of dollars into the sport.
These I'm friends with all the big manufacturers.
I respect all of them. They've done so much to grow the
sport and donated so much money and what what they've done has
been they've done a lot of positive, but nobody is doing as
much as as the guy that just opens the pro shop because he
loves dog court woman, right, guy or girl, whatever.
But they open the pro shop and now they're running leagues and
now they're promoting the game and putting courses in the
ground. I'm a big fan of, you know, free
market capitalism. I'm a big, you know, go USA.
Like I love our system because the way that our system works
and I want to polarize my audience by being yay USA.
But the way our system works is that if you own a pro shop, if
you get another course put in the ground, you're going to make
more money. And that is what that drives
people more than anything to, to grow the sport.
And, and when I run leagues, I I'll be able to sell more discs
that grows the sport. I the pro shops to vendors, the
pop up course runners to tournament directors to clubs,
the private courts owners. These are the folks that are
growing the sport more than me or any manufacturers.
So that was longer than I intended, but that's these are
the people we need these people more than anything.
I am adamant that we need our community to support these
people by buying their discs from these stores.
They need to buy their merchandise from these stores.
When you buy directly from a manufacturer, you're not doing
what's in your best interest because you are not keeping the
person in business that you need to run leagues in your town and
get new courses. So shop local first doesn't mean
don't buy from the manufacturers doesn't mean don't buy online.
What it means is give your local retailer first dibs at your
business. You know have a a orbit selling
Ricky Wysocki selling. Call.
Them if they don't have it, get it.
If they don't, if they can't get it, go online and buy it.
Go to the manufacturer, like get the disc you want, but start
give that, give that person first dibs at your business.
It's in our sports best interest.
So when I'm traveling, I'm going into these stores and all I'm
doing is I'm shooting content to promote their store.
I'm in town. Let's put eyes on your shop.
Let's promote. So I said I'm going to lose
money by doing this. I make about 6 times as much
money when you buy a disc from me direct as you do when you buy
it from a pro shop that I sold the disc to that it is 6 to 1
difference. And I'm still telling people if
they sell Stokely discs in your town, buy it from the local
store because I need that local store to grow the disc golf, to
grow the sport I love in your town.
Now if that store very Stokely discs so they don't have the
discs you want, go to stokelydisc.com and buy it from
me. I still want your business.
I still want your money. I still want to sell you golf
disc, like give that local vendor the first dibs.
So boots on the ground. I'm out actively promoting
stores and doing everything I can to help help these folks.
Now we need these people with every time a pro shop goes, at
best our sport takes a hit. Our entire sport.
Yeah, that's very true. OK, I got one last question for
you, but before I ask, I'm going to put a little seat in your
head. I'm going to try something
different with these interviews. I want you to be able to ask me
questions at the end. So anything you've wondered
about or or just curious about, you can ask me.
But before we get to that, I want to ask you one last
question. So you've mentioned a lot of the
challenges that you've gone through, some of your past that
your that and how disc golf has been a very positive force in
your life to help you to be where you're at right now.
What would you tell that one listener right now that is in
that similar situation? They've got a lot lot going on,
a lot of challenges in life, but disc golf seems to be that
saving grace. But they're still kind of trying
to struggle. What's a piece of advice you
would give that person? Yeah, so that the first piece of
advice would be, don't expect one piece of advice to be the
fix. There's the thing you have to
do, and people are notorious, and I've done it.
You've probably done it. People don't do what's in their
own best interests. People make decisions every day
that is contradicts what would be in their own best interest.
You need to make decisions that are in your best interest.
And the biggest thing you can do above all else is seek out the
people that have what you want and figure out how to.
And usually the way you figure out how to get what they have is
by asking them and learning from there.
So. So when I wrote my biography,
you know your biography. It's the story.
Of my life, I get to put 11 sentence as the introduction on
the Page 1 you know one quote you know they're supposed to sum
up what I believe in in 55 years of life.
And what I wrote was go where the love is not where it's
supposed to be most important thing.
And the reason why I wrote this was because when I was a little
kid, I came from a crappy family.
I had a great mom and then a bunch of not great people in my
in my world. I sought out family where the
love was and I went where the love was not where it was
supposed to be. It's supposed to be from your
family. Well, turned out it was a bunch
of hippie disc golfers at a park.
Doesn't matter. The love was there.
So I went and got it from where it was.
But when I say seek out the people that have what you want.
If you see someone that's happy, talk to them about being happy.
If you see some. If you're if you have substance
abuse problems, talk to someone that has stopped using drugs.
If your business is failing, talk to someone who's successful
at business. Go talk.
Go figure out from the people who have what, what, what you
want. Go how many people actually
like, oh, I've had three failed marriages and I'm crappy
relationships. And if you ask them, well, how
many people with good relationships have you grabbed
and said, please tell me what you do?
Nobody does this. Go see, I want my marriage to be
better. OK, well, do you know anybody
with a good marriage? Go talk to them.
And and that's not one piece of advice, but that's an
overarching strategy. So I have a page called, well,
two things. I have a Facebook page called
Stokely's Longest Drive. It's my non disc golf stuff
where I talked about all sorts of things related to career
happiness and all that. And then I have a Discord server
called What's Scott stokely.net/discord?
Twice a week I go do a live a live open discussion on mental
health, physical health, you know, same thing.
I'm in really good physical shape, right.
Well, then you didn't. You probably ought to listen to
me if you want to get into shape because I have something that I
can teach you that make me an expert.
But if I'm in better shape than you, then I know something that
you don't. All of my channels, my longest
drive page mainly, and my Discord server yet are all about
me trying to share these things that I've learned in life that
you can learn from me because you didn't want to learn from 30
year old me. 30 year old me didn't know what the hell he was
doing. But 55 year old me is really
good at life. But there's other 55 year old
me's out there in your town and your disc Golf Club that are
good at life. You got to seek these folks out.
One final thing, not to just, you know, go on a rant, but if
somebody has something you want, which means they're good at
relationships, career, happiness, sobriety, life,
health, if they're good at those things, I will almost guarantee
you that that they are also then the same type of person who
would like nothing more than to help someone who asks them.
Like nobody with a good marriage isn't going to be like happy to
talk to you about how to make a marriage good because the
qualities that make a good marriage are probably the
qualities that make you want to help someone who's looking for
help. Seek those people out.
That's what I did when I was 19 years old.
What does Dan Roddick do to be happy?
Why is TD why? How come TD Ugaldi just had a
bad tournament? Why I went to TD Ugaldi said,
why aren't you mad right now? I went to and I just kind of
observed. I didn't talk to him.
Why? I'm very close with Dan Roddick,
but I also observed how he led. He's the, he's the greatest
promoter in the history of disc sports and I and, and you know,
he probably is our sports greatest leader.
And although let me rephrase that, he is our sport's greatest
leader. And I just did, I got close to
him. I was, I became a DDC partner
for eight years and I just watched.
How does he lead? Why do people follow him?
Because someday I'm going to lead and people are going to
follow me. I don't have nothing offered
today, but but someday I'm going to.
And but where do I learn that? Learned it from him.
Yeah, yeah, always be learning. I love that.
And, and yeah, I think one of the biggest I got here from
that, from what you just said, is that don't be afraid to reach
out for help, you know, reach out for help.
People are willing to help and they want to help help you out.
So all right, so did you think of any questions for me?
I'd love to answer any questions real quick as we wrap this up.
Yeah, yeah, let me let me go on a 10 second rant about that,
about reaching out for help too, which is yeah, you may not.
You should watch this video. You probably noticed I'm a man
and men and women face different struggles.
I can't even speak to the struggles.
Women face because I hate. 1 I can speak to men, but I I can
tell you for a fact that they're not the same because the the not
only are we different, they're the support systems, the
empathy, the everything that's out there is different from men,
that it's for women. And so without meaning to, it
turns out that a lot of men are following me because I'm
speaking to them, not in a generic political correct.
All of us are AB and C. No, I'm speaking to them as a
man about struggles men go through and reaching out for
help is kind of contradicts what men are in fact to a point that
men have they struggle with things like when I'm in a
relationship with a woman, the more I need help or show
vulnerability or weakness, all of a sudden my partner feels
less safe, less secure, and now I'm treated differently.
I better keep my damn mouth shut.
But men misinterpret that and they think, Oh, well, now I
can't talk to anybody because if I've seen weak and vulnerable,
my partners and less attracted to me or, and then so men are
like, Oh my God, I got to keep my mouth shut.
Well, no, you don't need to keep your mouth shut.
You just need to not be vulnerable in front of a person
who's counting on you to be strong.
You can go over here and be vulnerable where that person
ain't. They don't get to see you being
vulnerable. Go crying your best friend's
shoulders, best friend, you crying your best friend's
shoulders. That's that's where you need to
be vulnerable. Not in those areas where as a
man, you have to be strong, but there's places.
And so go seek out as a man, go seek out help, but go seek out
places where you're safe to seek out help.
And it ain't everywhere. There's select places we need to
go. They exist.
And closest place they exist is with our closest male friend,
not our group. I'm so glad you brought that up
because it's so powerful. Yeah, I have.
I actually have a group of men that that I trust and rely on.
We have a regular Tuesday morning meeting where we go have
breakfast. I haven't able to go as often
just with the new job, but I'm working it out to where I can
see them more often. But it is just that it's a place
we all, we all have the similar faith, we have similar beliefs.
So when we talk, we know we're talking from the same plate
place, but we don't talk go there the judge each other.
We go there just to be guys, be goofy, be dumb, but we also go
there to be vulnerable. And it's amazing.
It's so helpful to talk to other guys that have very similar
struggles and challenges because from the outside you're like,
well, dude, he's a dude. He's making it.
He's successful. He's over here.
He's got a great marriage. He's and you find out that,
yeah, they've got a great marriage, but it's not without
struggles. Yeah, he's got a great business
that's growing, but it's not without his challenges and days
that he's like just barely getting by, but he's doing what
he needs to do. So it's great to be able to talk
to other men that are going through that similar struggles
and challenges that you are and know that they're just doing
what they what they can do to make it so.
Yeah, I think that's great advice.
So, and, and this is, again, this is just, it's, it's there's
a lot of, I don't want to go off in the total tangent here, but
there's, there's a lot of mixed messages men get now that they
never got in the past. And we are told to be vulnerable
in front of our partners. We want vulnerability, we want
this, we want that. Well, we don't get the reactions
we want. Well, the reason we don't get
the reactions we want is that in most cases that isn't
necessarily what the person wanted.
They wanted our partners want us to be strong.
They want us to be met. But in 2025, you're not supposed
to say that. That's toxic.
And it's like, well, no, guess what?
Guess what? No, it No, it's not.
My partner will tell you flat out, if I said to her right now,
how would you feel? If I was just crying in front of
you, she's like, I would feel unsafe.
You need to be a man. Yeah.
And she just verbalizes what I think a lot of people say.
But you're not supposed to in 2025 S, you know, we got to be
man. It's OK to be a man that's wrong
with being a man should be proud to be a man.
But you need to figure out where to be vulnerable and it's going
to be with man. It just is in my opinion.
Don't get mad at me in the comments or get mad at me.
I don't care. I'm I'm speaking what I believe.
No, I want, yeah, I want speak what you believe.
Speak what? What you, what you feel.
So I think that's fantastic. People are going to hate, but
I'm sure there'll be a plenty of other people that are glad.
So what questions do you have for me?
Oh, God, is there a God? What's the meaning of life?
No, no, no, I OK, I got a question for you.
So you're back with DD, right? All right.
So I would love to hear and I'm going to go ahead and give you
the platform. This is this is my marketing
part of my brand. I'll give you a platform to
pitch this. The thing about all the house at
this companies, I'm friends with all these.
I'm friends with Roscoe, I'm friends with Anders and Thomas
and Svante. And do you see like these are
all my friends and I love every one of them and I respect them
and they're great people who ran great companies.
And the perception was that when house at this came in that now
the decisions are being made that weren't being made by disc
golf people. And there has been ill feelings
in the community towards the House of disc companies because
of this. And of course, people that don't
know the ends just think, oh, well, now there's this company's
this and that company's that. They're not behind the scenes
realizing that the the original owners are pulling their hair
outgoing. No, we don't like these
decisions either, but we're not in charge anymore, right?
And but that you know, to the outside, all it is is dynamic.
Did this cast the plast change the plastic dad or whatever like
that's all they see. So my question is.
What are you going to do? To to let people know that these
companies are still being run by the same they're not sorry.
They're they're still most of the core good people that made
you a fan of your companies before are still almost all of
them are actively involved in the companies.
How do you how do you turn public public opinion about this
because you got an uphill battle.
Oh. Yeah, for sure, for sure.
And that's a great question, a question that I've asked myself
that the from the moment I had a conversation with David Berglund
of Latitude 64, when he talked about when he called me and
asked me about my interest in coming back, It was a question
that I still asked myself last night after some conversations I
had with some of our team players.
I can't go back and change the past, you know, I don't have
that power. I wasn't involved when I left.
Things were like still on the huge climb from the pandemic as
far as sales and as far as interest in disc golf.
They were climbing high when I left dynamic Disc, and I didn't
leave because I didn't like Dynamic disc.
There were some personal reasons going on in my life.
I felt like I needed to be closer back with my family.
So I was an outsider watching things happen and I my heart
broke when I saw some of the news of people getting laid off.
I got mad when I saw certain decisions being made about
pricing and things like that. I was like, what are they doing
with this? What is going on over there?
But I was on the outside, so I can't really speak to a lot of
the decisions that were made, whether they were great
decisions, bad decisions, why those decisions were made.
Of course, I have my own personal opinion about it, but I
can't change that. I can't change any of that.
All I can do is move forward with what I have before me.
And right now what I have before me is it's less people here for
sure, but the people that are here have that same passion for
the sport, the same passion for the brands and they want nothing
but to see the sport succeed and of course the company succeed
because it's not that we want to make money a lot.
That's the thing that makes me mad is these, yes, the people
that invested in us, they invested because they want to
see growth and they want to make money.
But I've met some of them and they just want to see success,
right? And yes, some of their decisions
are based on the numbers that we have out there and decisions
that have to be made. They're not fun decisions, but
their decision, it's like, I mean, let's just be honest, some
of the decisions that were made is so that we are still here.
If some of those decisions weren't being made, we may not
even have what we have now. So I'm glad they made those
decisions. Am I glad that some people had
to lose their job or. Get laid off or decided to quit.
No, not at all. But these we're here and what we
have now is, like I said, a group of people that have a
passion for the sport. And this just as you say, you're
making money to do, to see, to live out your goals and to live
out your mission and your vision.
Same thing here. Our goal is to grow the sport,
yes, to be a successful business so that we can do something we
believe in, which is see this sport we love grow and succeed.
And so now my, my job is to not allow the negative stories to be
what people hear about. And that's all that people
concentrate on or focus on. My job is now to continue to
tell the story of what we're doing behind the scenes to help
the sport grow and to help be passionate people and enrich
people's lives here through the sport of disc golf.
I'm simply just going to show what's going on and what's been
missed all these years. It's a tough thing because now
I've got to kind of turn the tide.
And man, that tide is the everyday.
I learned this tide. The turn is heavier and heavier
than I thought it was, but it's still there and I still believe
in it. And that's what drives me is to
make sure we we continue to tell the stories that's happening
here, whether it's our tournament directors, the great
tournament sponsorship program we have with our plastic, we
have, we've always had great plastic.
The plastic has for some of the companies, nothing has changed.
There's we could get into the weeds of it, but you know,
people keep saying, well, the plastic did this, plastic did
this. Yeah, maybe a little bit changed
because of manufacturing, but they're not all the same
plastic. And like you said, people don't
know the story behind the story. And so that's my job is to tell
those stories to make sure that people don't believe the the
misinformation that's put out there.
I know it's kind of a rant on my part of, of talking about what's
going on, but that's that's what I believe is that I've just got
to tell the story because no one else is telling it and other
people were just going to believe what to put out there.
Yeah, you got hey, like you got. You have an uphill battle and
it's going to be smart. If I can I give you my my old
man advice to you. Please do.
So disc golf is the way disc golf works.
It's very tribal, it's very community and people are very
loyal to their tribe and, and every, you know, the, the, the
people dynamic that through dynamic with people through cast
applies today. They that was part of their
tribe and people felt betrayed. Yeah.
They they, they felt betrayed. And there's, there is, there's
that's the most difficult thing to overcome.
So I'm going to give, I'm going to take a quick aside here.
I'm a pro wrestling guy, OK? I do pro wrestling.
I'm a, I'm a heel manager. I do indie shows.
I'm going to be doing another show here that I love.
I love pro wrestling. And when you're trying to make a
bad guy in pro wrestling, like a new guy comes to your territory
or new guy if you, and I'm not talking about the modern version
where everybody hangs out after the show signing autographs.
I'm in the old days when there's actually bad guys that people
hate it. If you wanted to make a bad guy,
the best way to do it, if you really wanted to get people
angry, was you wouldn't bring him in as a bad guy.
You would bring him in as someone people liked, got
behind, and then you betrayed them and let your people down
because that is a different visceral feeling the audience
would feel because they're like, I supported you.
I bought your shirt, I took my kids to meet you.
You signed my autograph and pretended you were nice, you
know, at the Expo, whatever. And I think people felt
betrayed. They felt betrayed when these
things were happening and winning them back is a lot
harder than if if they simply just didn't like you and you
tried to convince them to give them a chance.
And the best way to do this is, is I'm telling you, you guys
need to own it. Like you need to own every
single thing that was wrong. And you need to own it with
yeah, that was a bad decision. We wouldn't do that again.
We know why it was wrong. I totally understand why that
pissed you off. That honesty is the first.
And by the way, you're not going to win everybody back.
But I think the honesty will and and the accountability I think
will will win some of them back because they they don't want to
not. Like you, they they.
Just want to feel like they can trust you again.
Right, no, no, you hit it on the nail right there is that that's
part of the battles earning back people's trust and the only I
mean, I could say it over and over again, but I'm just going
to have to show it and it's that's that's what I'm.
And you also have to take time, and you cannot tell them when to
trust you again. That's on their schedule.
That's like when you apologize to somebody, you you cannot
decide when you're forgiven. You can apologize and then the
forgiveness happens on their time, if ever.
And that's just the way it is. But and now, of course, you also
have there's still there's a new audience.
There's people that don't know anything about anything that you
can win over from scratch. I think they're I don't say it's
easy. I'm trying to build an audience.
It's not easy, but it's easier than the people, any people
back. But yeah, I would go honest and
accountability. And then that's your.
First time I think that's and I think that's why why people like
you said with the whole wrestling and I laughed at that
because I remember those they're like, wait, he was a he was a
good guy. Now he's a bad guy.
Like it was, it was like it threw you off.
You want to piss someone off? Sell someone a $30 shirt, Sell.
Sell someone a $30 shirt with your logo on it.
And then all of a sudden betray them next week and now you've
just wasted 30 bucks. That's like, you know what?
That OK, I'll give you one more example.
Go buy a jersey from somebody on your sports team.
And then then the next, next week, they demand a trade and
you're like, wait, I just spent $100 on a jersey like.
That is right. Because because you, you know,
started off here and came down. So yeah.
Yeah. And that's why I think, I think
that's why Dynamic Disc got picked on the most when all this
went down is because we were the brand that was like, hey, come
join our journey, Come help, come grow the sport with us, you
know, and we took you on our journey and we showed you a lot
of behind the scenes. And all of a sudden they felt
betrayed. But, you know, now me being back
is, is, is literally an acknowledgement from a lot of
the people in leadership that they needed to get back to what
we did before, which was being transparent, being honest,
owning what we do, you know, making decisions, taking risks,
and then owning the consequences, whether they're
good or bad. And just having people join us
for the journey because we're all, you know, you know, we're
all in this. We always had that.
We're all in this together to help grow the sport we love, to
share the sport we love with everybody.
So. We'll tell.
We'll then tell the. Story.
I love it. Tell the story of the journey
back then that that that that that's a story people might
TuneIn for. Hey, I appreciate man.
I appreciate everything. I appreciate everybody's excited
to have you back. Thank you for having me on seems
how I'm a competitor and honestly between you and me,
you're all going to be working for me someday.
But but I will remember those people who were nice to me along
the way. So when you come to work for me,
you probably won't start sweeping the warehouse floor.
I'll probably start you with like a desk job.
You're still going to start down here, but still down.
Below, Right, right, right, right.
Oh, no, everybody starts off. Everybody starts off low.
But if they're nice to me, they skip these sweeping the, the,
the warehouse floor and they started menial desk.
So yeah, I, I won't forget you when I'm, when I'm, when I'm the
biggest. Thank you so much for that,
Scott. I appreciate that.
I'll I'll keep you to it. I'll hold you to that.
So OK. You got it.
No, thank you so much. I appreciate the conversation,
Scott, and the transparency and the honesty.
And I love the mission and everything you've got going on.
So I appreciate that and thanks for being on the show.
You're very welcome man. Say hi to everybody.
Thanks. Bye.