Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of the Disc Golf Answer
Man. I am Bobby Cool Daddy, Slick
Breeze, and on this special disc Golf Answer Man interview
episode, I have 6 sided disc. Now I've told you guys before on
past episodes that when I got back to Dynamic Discs, getting
back in the disc golf, I did a deep dive into what's going on
as far as content creation and social media because that's kind
of my bread and butter, right? It's what I love doing.
And I came across 6 sided disc and the biggest, the one that
draw drew my attention was I saw thumbnail that said flight
numbers don't matter. And I was like this guy gets it.
He knows me, he knows my message.
And so I watched a couple of those and it made total sense
how he broke down how different how discs work for different
levels of players. And so I did some more research
watching his videos and I loved his style and I thought man, I
got to get this guy on the show. And of course, he reached out to
me and wanted to be on the show. So I was like, let's let's get
you on the show. So right now we have Greg.
So Greg, how are you doing? I am doing great, Bobby, Thank
you so much for having me. I've watched content, disc golf
content for like over five years now.
And so I remember like Dynamic Discs had some of the best
content out there when I got back into the sport, which I
think we'll probably talk about the timing of that as well.
But you know, you guys had some great stuff, enjoyed all the
like tutorials and form and unique and just, you know,
enjoying nerding out about content, talking about the pro
tour, following along with everything.
So it's exciting that you're back and thank you so much for
having me. Absolutely.
Thank you so much for all those kind words.
I appreciate that. But I want to use this as a way
to explore and for me to get to know a little bit more about
you. And I'm sure some of my
listeners, I'm sure they've heard of you, they watch your
videos, but I'm selfishly going to learn more about you on
because it's my show, you know. So, but tell me, what is your
origin story? How did you even get into disc
golf? And then how did you get into
creating content for disc golf? So I mean, my disc golf origin
story goes back pretty far. I just turned 38.
So my origin story goes back over 20 years to when I was in
high school and I just happened to be riding my bike around town
with a friend of mine. We rode over to this park that
we knew that was at a reservoir, which anybody that's familiar
with Central Ohio disc golf will know that I'm talking about
Brent Hambrick Memorial Disc Golf Course at Hoover Reservoir.
We rode across the dam and we're like, what are these?
What are these like metal cages? What's going on here?
We didn't really have any idea. And we decided, oh, let's go
stop by a nearby gas station and get a drink.
And we go in and there's like a rush rack of discs.
This is like the end of a marketing strategy, right?
And so we, we just stumbled on them and even the old AVR stamp
used to show a basket with a disc hitting it.
It's sort of like, OK, great. That that's exactly what that's
for. Cool.
Well, let's try it. So we bought a couple discs and,
you know, played casually back then.
And then like so many people just forgot about it, forgot
about disc golf, got caught up with college, work, getting
married, having a kid, all the stuff you that you do.
And then right before COVID, I just went down this like YouTube
rabbit hole and found I think I was watching Dude Perfect videos
with my son. They had done trick shot videos
with Brody. We watched some of those.
And then there was a video that Brody did with Simon Paul and
Joe Mez where they were all doing like Frisbee and disc golf
trick shots. And I was like, oh, dude, disc
golf like forgot all about it. And so I went to my wife.
I kept telling my wife and I think I actually like jokingly
recreated this in a video, but I'm like sitting in a chair and
I'm just like, like, babe, I know the discs are around here
somewhere. Like we got to find them.
And she's like, what if you looked for him?
Like what? That's so smart.
And so I went and found him in the garage and started playing
again. And that was January 2020.
So you know where this story goes next is COVID shut down,
Nothing to do. I worked from home at the time
for Apple. And so I didn't work till 10:00
AM because everybody was on central time on my team.
And so I would wake up, play disc golf, go home, shower,
work, repeat every day, every day, every because there was
nothing else to do. And I was kind of fortunate
because in Columbus, OH, which is where I'm originally from,
about 40 minutes away, they actually pulled baskets like
early COVID, that kind of, you know, period of unknown, like we
didn't know what was going to happen.
Could you go out and touch something that someone touched?
Who knows? Nobody was even playing disc
golf there. So luckily where I live, they
left the baskets in and just put like spray bottles of sanitizer
under them and be like, please don't hug the basket if you ace
it and that kind of thing. And so that was all I did for
months and months and months. And then I've kind of figured
out really quickly that I wanted to start some kind of business.
Like I just knew I wanted to stay connected with disc golf
more than just playing that. And the fact that I picked it up
again at like 33, I kind of knew like I wasn't going to go places
as a player. So I needed to figure out what
what my space was and here we are.
That's awesome man, now where did you come up with the idea?
6 sided. So I think early on, I mean,
that sort of business idea started out as mystery boxes,
and mystery boxes were nuts at the time.
Disk Mania's mystery boxes would sell like crazy.
And I just had this idea of like, well, mystery boxes are
cool. It's exciting to get a bunch of
stuff that you're not expecting. But you would also hear people
complain like I got all this stuff that I don't want or don't
need. And so we thought, well, what if
we create a bunch of mystery boxes that you that actually set
some expectations. So we had one that was over
stable discs. We had one that was neutral to
under stable discs. We had one that was white dyable
discs. And we branded all of those the
Crusher box, the technician box, the creative box, respectively.
We had one for glow discs, one for beginners as well.
And those did OK, but I think the name related to partly the
idea of, of the mystery boxes and partly like the logo that I
happened to to make. I just really, I like the logo.
I liked the the idea of the business.
And I had this like short list of names that I wrote out and
none of them made any sense. And I didn't really want, you
know, no disrespect to any of the companies that have names
like this, but this like generic disc golf term discs or
something. I was like, I don't, I just want
to be different. How do we stand out?
And six sided discs was the first name I wrote down.
The logo had six sides, whether it's a hexagon or a cube.
Boxes are cubes, sort of, or at least a non symmetrical cube
that has probably a different name that I can't think of.
But anyways, they all had six sides.
It rolled off the tongue. That's how we got there.
Very cool. That's awesome.
Now, from my perspective, but a lot of your videos are very
informational, very like you want to teach us something,
which I think is fantastic. What?
Why was that the direction you took?
I think there's two reasons for that.
I think one comes from my background.
So for nine of the almost 11 years that I was with Apple, I
was a trainer. And so that's what I did
everyday. I something very similar to this
where I would be on camera with a classroom full of people,
virtual classroom and instructing them through, you
know, learning a new skill set, supporting customers in a new
thing, rolling out some new initiative or whatever.
And I just really enjoyed that. I enjoyed the satisfaction of
helping somebody learn something new.
I think the other side of it was looking at disc golf content at
the time that I was watching. And, and again, this is like,
no, no disrespect to the people that do it really well, but most
disc golf content is somebody with a phone in a field at a
course or whatever doing their thing.
And sometimes that's fun and entertaining and maybe, maybe
sometimes it's something else. But even when I was watching
those videos that were supposed to be informative, I felt like I
was missing something. I was like, I want to see more
like show me close-ups of the disk.
And and like anyone who knows anything about disc golf knows
if you hold up a disk and look at this shape, that profile,
that tells you a lot about what you need to know about how that
disk is going to fly. How wide is the rim?
How deep is it? What's the shape of it?
Is it blunt? Is it aerodynamic?
Is it whatever. And so I figured out really
quickly that the videos that I wanted to make needed to happen
partially out on the course somewhere, because I wanted to
compare and learn about discs and see how they flew compared
to each other. But I also wanted to have that
as close as it could get to the audience, being able to touch
and feel and look at the disc. And so we started combining on
course footage in studio, kind of close up, detailed shots,
looking at the texture and feel, the plastic, the shape of the
rim. And then the other thing that I
felt was important was to script out the idea.
Now, scripting it doesn't come at the beginning of the process
because our videos are documentary sort of content.
I don't decide before I leave that this plastic is going to
fly that way or this discs going to be more overstable or
whatever. That just happens.
And so we go out, we shoot the footage we, we get as we throw
it as many times as we need to, to feel like we understand how
it flies. And then we come back, go
through that footage, trace the shots so that the viewer can see
it, which has become kind of like a pet peeve of mine when I
watch. I'm like trying to see a disc
flying on camera and it's just this tiny, like two pixels.
Where did it go? I don't know.
And, and I, I, you know, anyone who wants some pointers on how
to trace stuff. I use an app on my phone.
Super easy. I will teach anybody how to do
it just to make all content a little easier to watch.
But once I have all that footage, then the story starts
to kind of write itself. What is the, what is the journey
that we're going on? What are we trying to learn
about? And so a lot of times I don't
even have like a title or a thumbnail or or a like real
solid idea of what the video is about until we've already gone
and shot a bunch of stuff. I love that.
What I love about that is that, you know, you get a lot of
people that want to start creating content, whether it's
disc golf or any, anything and anything else.
And they're like, in their mind, they're thinking, well,
something's like that is already out there.
People already do that. You know, I'm nothing, it's
nothing new. Well, now actually your
perspective is something new. So like you said, you saw other
people doing disc golf, informational type content,
instructional type content, but there were for you, there was
something missing and you said, I'm going to fill that gap that
I see is needed and, and you did it and I think that's fantastic.
What is, I guess what is kind of, you kind of talked a little
bit about your process there as far as creating content, but
kind of dig a little deeper about what it, how do you even
come up with ideas? It's just as you're watching
content, you're like, well, maybe this should be talked
about or, you know, how do you come up with your ideas?
That's a good question. I think there's a couple
different ways my wife and I have.
My dog is going to come down and visit us.
Everyone's out of town, so I got to let them roam.
Don't trip on me, please. The So my wife and I have a
meeting every week or two that's just like a creative meeting.
We sit down and we look at a calendar of what videos we've
done recently. What do we have in the pipeline
that we're working on? Our process or you know, my
process for a while was just one video at a time, one video at a
time because that's all I can really had time for.
And it's all all like the brain space I could provide, I guess.
And then a while back we developed a way of kind of
breaking down our videos into pieces like, well, one video is
1 video, but I have to do 20 different steps to finish that
video, like just from start to finish, all the different things
that need done. So selecting, you know, coming
up with like a rough concept and idea is part of it.
Selecting the discs then based on that concept, what can I get
a hold of now? And from there, the idea usually
starts out loosely into one of four series that we do.
We have one called Flight Numbers Don't Matter.
That's typically larger scale tests and comparisons of disks.
It might be choosing a specific flight number, like, you know,
whatever disks can we find around 55 negative 11.
And we'll take some liberties with that because every company
approaches flight numbers differently.
So like the buzz is 5/4 negative 11.
So obviously we're going to include it in that video if we
can. But one of the most common
comments we get is why didn't you include X disc or Y disk?
And it's usually just, well, the video needed to get done this
week, so couldn't, couldn't get every every disk right.
But flight numbers don't matter is one that's probably our most
popular series big like, you know, 203040 discs that we're
comparing at a time. We have one called plastic is in
the details where we take more of a plastic comparison approach
or, or dig into like is glow always moreover stable?
What's the most durable plastic? Sometimes it's the idea is as
simple as a question, a question that we hear, that we see in the
comments, we hear people talk about or something like that.
We've tried and I think successfully debunked parting
line height as this sort of like perfect always.
If the parting line height is this way, it's always going to
be more overstable than another disk.
It isn't there. There are so many variables that
go into how a disk flies, which is why we kind of never run out
of ideas for things we can talk about there.
But we also have a series and like this other series, the disc
is in the details. I would say it's my catch all
for like any idea I have that's like, well, let's get 5
different players of different skill levels and throw the same
disc. How differently does that fly?
That fits in in that series. And that series is usually like
a narrower focus, one disc, two or three like it or something
like that. But I can tell a more detailed
story about one specific disc. And then our last 1 is probably
my most favorite to do, which is called first impressions.
And that is truly like 100% discovery.
I've never thrown a certain brand before.
I reach out to them and I say, hey, can you send me some discs?
I want to explore them. I want to learn about them.
That's what this stack here is on my desk.
We've got a Destroyer from Estonia, 4 of their molds, never
thrown them until a couple days ago.
Nice plastic. That's all.
All I've done so far for this video is shoot the video on the
course, review those shots and trace the flights.
So I haven't figured out what the story is yet.
I haven't started writing the script yet because it's not,
it's not this week's video. So, but in that series, we had a
video a couple weeks ago with loop discs from Australia.
And like every now and then, I never know, I gave up trying to
predict like how well a video will do or whether anyone will
care or whatever a long time ago.
But we we got a hold of their first disc, their only disc they
currently make called The Wonder.
It's a straight mid range. It has a ton of glide and it
does genuinely fly much farther than you would expect.
It just keeps kind of right when you expect it to start fading,
it pushes like another 4050 feet.
And we tried to capture that as best we could because it did fly
like that for us, which was great.
But I did a little interview with the owners of the company
and put this video out. And it was just like, hey, this
is the best disc you've never heard of.
And I think it got about 14,000 views in the first week.
And at the time we posted the video, there were because
they're a smaller company, they're still relatively new,
and they're an import brand. So there were only like 65
Wonders in North America. And within two hours they were
sold out in the in in all of North America and we had none.
Like I did not financially benefit from that from a from a
business perspective. Could I have handled that
better? Maybe.
But I didn't quit my job at Apple to make money in disc
golf. You know, there were things were
things were financially much more secure at the biggest
company in the world. So.
I would imagine so. Very cool.
OK, so let's talk about flights don't matter, OK?
Just because, yeah, this is sure a message I've been preaching
for the longest time and that that was really the catalyst for
me, for our series that is. Is this right for you?
I remember way, way back in the day, of course, not that long
ago, but it is a while back where people were just talking
about when we on the discount Fancy Man show here that they
were thinking like, we want to see what Bobby thinks, right?
I didn't think that when we first started, it was Eric was
going to give as a pro world champion.
He was going to give the advice and he was going to talk about
disk. I was going to be the guy that
did all the back and work. I asked the questions.
I was the goofy guy that, you know, was stumbling over his
words, you know, all that. But then people would start
asking how it threw for me and I thought, wow, people, the casual
guy, it makes sense. They can't throw a disc like a
pro can. And so how do we just not talk
about that? How do we demonstrate that and
how do we do a comparison? So that's what that came about
was people wanted to see how it threw for me or at the time,
Anthony or other people that we recruit in for the videos.
And then it became, and then it was always a thing of like, do
you see now that flights don't matter as much as you think they
do because these discs will fly differently?
What in your mind of doing that series?
Obviously the big thing is that flights don't matter, but what
are maybe some other things that you've discovered in doing that
series that is very much AI? Don't know if the misinformation
is the right word, but maybe a misunderstanding of flight
number. What are some of the big bigger
ones that come to your mind with doing that series?
That's a great question. I like when you hear people talk
about discs or, or when you hear two people, let's say they're
talking about, you know, like an evader style disk, like, you
know, 0202.5, something like that.
They they're often using those flight numbers to talk about a
disk as if it flies the same for both of them.
You know, they're referring to like, well, you know, I throw, I
use it this way or you know, I need, I need AT bird type disk.
I need an invader type disk. I need something like in this
space. But how that disc flies for me,
for you, for anyone that watches our videos, for the the much
younger, faster throwers that we use in our videos than me is
completely different. And so flight numbers, they tell
you something, right? They tell you how the disc was
intended to fly, but then you change the plastic, then you
change the weight, then you change the thrower and very
quickly it becomes a totally different disc for different
people. So for example, last week our
video was on Clash Discs. It was a collaboration with
Northeast Women's Disc Golf, who we met at the Disc E Expo, and
they got together 6 of their members of varying skill levels,
FA 4 to FPO and several divisions in between and through
the Clash Discs soda. It's a straight like Orwell.
Straight, neutrally rated fairway driver -2 two.
But what does that mean to 5 or 6 different people?
Well, for an FA4 thrower -2 two actually flies kind of like 02.
That was her sort of evader slot.
Reliable, consistent fade. By the time you get to FPO or
even some of the FA2 throwers, you have a big turnover bomber
disc that's flying, you know, 200 feet farther and 300 feet
farther, right? So it's a completely different
disk. And I think like, if there's
anything I end a lot of the flight numbers don't matter
videos by saying you don't know a disk till you throw it.
And I think there's so many great examples of that when it
comes to, you know, everybody loves an end of a destroyer,
right? Well, throw a destroyer in every
single different plastic. Or in this case, another video
we're working on soon. These three stacks of your, I
don't know if everybody can see all of them, but we've got 8
Mako threes from end of A7 beasts and six rhinos.
Each of those is a different plastic and you better believe
they don't fly the same, but they all have the same flight
numbers. So really, I, I, if there's
anything that I could do any like magic wand that I could
wave, it would be that manufacturers figure out a way
to give us a little more information, give us a little
more like, all right, well, let's say, you know, let's put
it, I'll try and pardon, pardon me on this Dynamic Discs
channel. I'll try and stay inside your
terminology. How, how different should I
expect the disc in Lucid plastic to fly versus fusion versus
Supreme, right. And if flight numbers is the way
to communicate that, great. Like let's figure out how to
incorporate that. MVP does that with some of their
plastics. Fission has a different flight
number typically than their other premium plastics.
So does electron. I don't know that I always agree
with how they change the flight number because a lot of fission
discs seem to start out moreover stable, but they beat in faster.
So that ends up being correct. But how does it how does it fly
like right off the shelf? So I think that's where like a
lot of the essence of that comes from.
So I think we're also a shop, right?
Like I sell this and if somebody walks up and says, oh, I need
another Firebird, I'm like, do you, where's your old, where's
your old Firebird? Show me.
And they pull a beat up DX Firebird out of their bag.
I'm like, no, you don't. You need something totally
different. Yeah, yeah, Cuz I remember, I
mean this, I've talked about this situation before where I
was out travelling with the RV's a long time ago and people would
come up and ask, you know, about certain discs.
And I remember them asking about a disk.
And I was like, what do you throw now for your distance
driver? And I don't remember exactly
what he said, but he told me and I thought, well this dis ain't
going to be right for you. And he goes well what are the
numbers? And I showed him and he goes
yeah, that's what I want. I was like, you probably want
something more like this other one.
And it was a slower disk and he just would not be just like no.
And he just kind of stopped listening to me and moved over
to the high speed drivers. And I thought I, I get it, but
it's, it's, and I hate to use the word ignorance, but it is
kind of ignorance. They're, they don't understand.
They just think that they got to have that high speed driver.
And you know, it's not like I don't think you need to
understand the, the numbers as a science, but you, you just
can't. It's the same sentiment you say,
I wanted to just say, dude, just throw it real quick.
I, I promise it's going to be much better for you for what
you're looking for. So.
It's stuff like, do you give people what they want or what
they need? Right.
I had, I've had issues with this
for years. One of my first jobs I worked
retail at like OfficeMax and we sold these huge printers, right?
Or well, we sold a bunch of different printers and had a guy
come in and he's looking at the most expensive humongous
multifunction 4 in one. It's like 400 bucks and he's
kind of checking it out. And I walk over.
I'm like, hey man, how's it going?
What are you looking for? How can I help?
And he explains that he wants something portable.
He only needs to print in black and white and he wants to put it
in his trunk. He's going to hook it up to his
car and print stuff while he's out on the road.
I'm like, sweet, you do not need that gigantic printer.
You need this little teeny tiny $180 portable black and white
printer. And my managers like guy was
going to buy the $400.00 one. All right, what are you doing,
man? Like what?
He doesn't need it. He doesn't need it.
So there's a lot of that that comes from, you know, I just
don't like, I don't want that guy's going to come back and
he's going to be pissed. Like, why'd you tell me this
giant thing? I can't even fit it in my trunk.
It's too tall. Like that would suck.
I don't want that for anybody. Yeah, it's there's so many
different rabbit holes. I mean, I remember people would
say that and I I guess I don't understand the tech.
I don't understand it enough, but people would say that West
Side discs numbers were terrible.
They they aren't right. And I'm like, not right for who?
For you. I don't.
So my thing is. Tell those people, get in the
comments. Let's talk about that.
Yeah, I just, I never understood that people were saying, well,
you know, maybe because West Side's in Finland, the
elevation's different and the and the, you know, things are
different over there that I'm like, you know, that's not and
then even sea. Level sea level man.
And then even the understanding of plastics, you know, I, I was
watching your, the, your episode where you did a breakdown of a
lot of different brands and kind of the, the, you know, the House
of discs and the different brands.
And then Gateway and the different by the way, I didn't
know Gateway had that many different brands.
I knew they had a lot, but I didn't know all those.
So I learned a lot. So thank you for that video.
Yeah, sure. But but even I've seen on other
podcasts, I think it was the Funsie podcast where they went
over some survey about plastics and people were actually saying
picking like West Side disc plastic is better than Latitude
64 plastic. Within those brands.
They are the same. But it's it's a matter of of I
don't want to call it loyalty, but a matter of perception that,
you know, the people don't understand.
They they feel that they're like, well, this is great
plastic. I'm going to rate this higher
than Latitudes plastic. It's the same.
It's the same plastic. You know, like in this day and
age with with misinformation and social media and all this, like,
I think we see it even more as saying that we used to say in
customer service stuff at Apple, which is perception is reality.
Like people will believe what they want to believe.
So if they perceive it's better, I guess it's better.
Yeah. So my biggest thing to I guess
combat that or at least to help people get understanding is kind
of what you're doing is put more information out there so people
will learn more. My approach is very much the
just I'm the casual guy that just, I'm not that too much into
the technical, into the weeds of it.
I just like going out and throwing, have a good time
having fun here at work. And so that's kind of the
approach I take. Yeah.
So what, what, what are kind of your plans for this?
How far do you want to take it? I'm assuming you want to take it
as far as people will let it go. But like what's kind of looking
ahead what, what would you like to see as far as 6 sided and
your business? It's a good question.
I mean everything we've talked about so far has been revolving
around our YouTube channel, but we are also an online store.
We're a traveling pop up shop. We go to a lot of tournaments.
We do a lot of like amateur payout stuff around Central
Ohio, work with a couple different tournament directors.
We currently sponsor the club in Columbus and we handle payouts
for them. So that's an important part of
our business as well. You know, where like where do we
see ourselves going? I think there's a couple
different things that we have priorities about.
Our YouTube channel just started out as like, let's make a video,
let's make a couple videos, let's see how it goes.
I was still working full time at the time and then one of those
videos just blew up and and then I was like, oh sweet, like we
could really do this. Anyways, I got to go back to
work and like nothing happened with it for a while.
Now it's really just about continuing the series that we
do. We're always trying to look for
new ideas. We've experimented with a lot of
different stuff with our podcast at the start of the year, it was
a totally different setup. We had like a almost like a late
night set looking sort of deal in here with a couch and
everything. Those pieces of furniture still
exist, they're just not here. But so I think there's still
more to explore with the stuff that we do.
There's still tons of brands that I've never thrown.
Luckily, there's still new stuff popping up all the time.
Hopefully that continues, although I think the market as a
whole seems a little bit, let's say like back to normal pre
COVID steady, you know, modest growth versus explosive insane,
crazy growth. One of the things like, I would
say selfishly for me, what I'm most excited about isn't
something that is going to be as as like wide-ranging and
accessible as our YouTube channel.
But we've been shopping for property and we want a piece of
land that we can live on with a course and a shop.
And we want our our friends and our local community and anyone
traveling through when our course or our shop is open to be
able to come in, play disc golf, shop disc golf, talk disc golf,
watch disc golf, whatever and just enjoy it together.
Like that's definitely one thing we're we're excited about.
We've looked at a couple properties recently.
We made an offer on one that doesn't look like it's going to
happen, but I think that's one side of it.
You know, this kind of goes back to why, why I left my cushy
corporate job with benefits and do this now is that I, I love
it. I love doing this.
I love learning about disks. I, I don't, I don't get to play
as much as I used to, but I I still love learning about them,
finding all the little differences and quirks and
things about them. And like nerding out, I think
you mentioned earlier is like a great way to, to explain it
because, you know, all the, all the people that were at the
Expos that we went to disc East and disc S like, yeah, I was
excited to talk to Anthony Barella or Gannon Burr or, you
know, anybody else that was there.
Ken Climo was at the Expo. You know, I was checking out all
these different discs The, the moment that got me the most,
like surprisingly, and I didn't even realize it until it
happened. The thing that got me the most
excited was when Chad Richardson from MVP walked by my booth and
knew who I was and was like, yo, I've seen your videos.
I was like, like another, another like elite disc nerd
knows that I'm a disc nerd too. And like, that's, that's
awesome. You know, that's just like so
hyped about that. So yeah, I mean, where are we
going? I'm not like the most business
savvy person. I don't make all the best
decisions to make as much money as we possibly could.
Thankfully we don't have to. My wife has a good job.
That's why she's not home right now because she's at a
conference in Philadelphia. But, you know, we we got the
trade rolls and I took a lot of pressure off of what I could do
with six sided discs and what I wanted to work on and learn
about and stuff like that. But I think there is like a
little bit of pressure for it to be more than just a hobby, more
than just like a side hustle or something like that.
And not to say that we aren't like, you know, outside of
working on this week's video and talking to you, I had eight bins
of discs to get an inventory this week for a tournament
that's coming up next week. So, you know, we're still very
much working all the time as the business.
And that works really well with the YouTube channel because
we're, we buy discs for the channel, we make a video with
them and then, well, we got to do something with them.
So we sell them on our website or at at tournaments we go to
next. So.
Very interesting, tell me what are your thoughts on this is
kind of jumping into a whole nother subject but it just
popped my head. I watched the video this morning
where it was just casually looking through YouTube to see
what pop ups pops up on my feed and it was an AI character using
an AI voice and using obvious AIB roll and some real B roll.
But you could tell that AI probably put it in there based
on the script teaching me how to better use AI.
So AI was teaching me how to use AI and I mean, I know I've
looked into it. I I just don't like not knowing
about things. I like to at least learn about
them so that I'm not caught off guard.
What are your thoughts on as far as disc golf content?
And AII know that infinite discs put out some AI stuff and I
thought it was when I first saw, I thought this is a little
risky, but it was clever. I thought it was clever the the
use of it. But what are your thoughts on AI
and disc golf content creation? So I've always mainly just to
keep our channel, you know, accessible to the greatest
audience. We don't swear.
We try to keep it family friendly.
And my genuine honest feelings about AI can't be summarized in
a family friendly way. So I'll just tone them down to
say that I think AI is like, on the one hand, we can't avoid it
at this point. Like their companies are
embracing it. They're selling everything with
AI. It's got to have AI, whatever.
But I remember TV's before smart TV's and they were great.
Smart TV's are garbage. Like my, why does my TV have to
update? Why does it have to do that?
I never used that function. I don't need it.
I turn it on to watch something on my Apple TV and turn on my
PlayStation and my TV's like one SEC, I got to update.
No, you don't. No, you don't.
So in the, in the same way, I think a lot of companies feel
like there's this pressure that they have to utilize some new
technology, they have to make their devices smarter.
You know, people are now like paying more money for old dumb
dryers just so that they don't have to hook up the Wi-Fi or
whatever. So I I feel the same way.
Like AI has its uses and I want it to make parts of my life
better that are annoying and difficult.
Like, you know, I want AI that can scan the stuff in my fridge
and be like, yo, this is the stuff you need to buy this week
because I don't want to take the time to do that.
That would be useful. I'd like it to know how many,
how many of my pairs of underwear have holes in them.
You should order another package or whatever.
Great. Like those sorts of things would
be very helpful. I don't need it to think for me.
I don't need it to be creative. I, I left my, my job where AI
could, you know, do a lot of those tasks so that I could be
creative and, and I find being creative very fulfilling.
The idea of asking an AI to be creative for me, like no way, no
way. So I I feel like some people use
it as a crutch. They lean on it too heavily and
pretty soon if you take the crutch away, they're still
limping and they don't really know how to walk without it.
So I don't like AII don't want anything to do with it.
I asked it. I remember, you know, I messed
with it once and was like, tell me everything you know about
disc golf. It didn't know.
Shit. So.
Yeah, I hear you. Yeah, yeah.
I have a feeling that the AI is being pushed so hard that people
are going to get sick of it. And so I'm leaning heavy on I'm
leaning heavy on still remaining authentic and transparent
because I think that is going to be like a welcome reprieve from
all the polishedness and perfect perfectness of, of AI for sure.
Well, I will say. If anybody wants to know my very
honest feelings about AI, we will be at 4 Disc Golf Pro Tour
events this season and you can come to our booth and ask me how
how I really feel about it and I'll tell you.
Your unfiltered opinion, perfect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so I got one more question
to ask you, but something I've, I'm in the whole spirit of being
transparent, bringing back the transparency here at Dynamic
Discs. I've added to the last couple of
interviews a segment where you, the guests ask a question.
It could be disc golf related, it could be whatever.
And no holds barred, I will give you my thoughts on it and
opinions on it and basically just kind of start a
conversation on whatever you want to talk about.
But before that, tell us real quick, you kind of alluded to
some of the projects you have going on, but what's something,
what's some projects that people can look forward to coming up on
your YouTube channel? Yeah.
So, I mean, real quick, I happen to just, you know, conveniently
drop a couple here on my desk. So I mentioned Destroyer.
We're checking out their four molds that were available at the
time. They're a brand out of Estonia,
so that's exciting. And then this is the video that
I was editing before, before we got online here, which is
partially about the new vessel and turbulence, but a larger
conversation about thumb tracked sort of surface technology
innovations. You all have the Slammer among
several other discs. You know they got the Berg
that's a popular one or the lift discs.
Neon has like a full on reverse Dome.
Wow, that. There you go.
I hadn't seen that one, that's crazy.
Pretty funky. So I I love seeing new
interesting design and this is I think a space in disc golf that
is actually still really pushing the envelope and innovating the
turbulence being the latest disc in that in that sort of realm.
So that's this week's video to be out by the time this
interview's out. And then these stacks over here.
I don't know how many of these are visible, but like I said
before, this is like another just kind of comparison like how
differently will 6 rhinos fly in, you know, very premium to
very base plastic and everything in between a neutral mid range,
a neutral driver as well. This is kind of more, I don't
know, experimental exploring. So these are the next three
discs in our lineup. Anyways, outside of that, we are
going to D Glow, Ledgestone, Idlewild, and the Pro Tour
Championship this year. It's the most Pro Tour events
we've ever gone to and the farthest we've ever driven for
some of them to set up shop. So we'll be at the Fly Marts
Friday and Saturday night at Ledgestone, Saturday night at D
Glow, all three days of Idlewild, and all four days of
the Pro Tour Championship in Virginia.
Nice. So if.
You want to come see us in person?
Come say hello. Nerd out on disc golf stuff with
us. I love it.
I'll be at Idlewild, so I'll get the a chance to come over and
and talk with you. So that's fantastic.
Well, thank you for being on the show.
What, what question? What do you want to talk about?
What's the topic burning on your on your mind?
Let's see. OK, So you weren't there at the
time. I'll ask 2 questions you, I
don't think you were there at the time, but did anybody else
get to ride in Ricky's helicopter?
And then because that was, that was a sweet video that was
fantastic, great announcement, social media video.
And then the second question is probably more how different is
it now at Dynamic Disks? Because I believe from the time
you left to now, the ownership structure has changed.
You guys are properly integrated with House of Discs.
We've covered and talked about House of Discs and you know the,
I think inherent complexity of that kind of umbrella
organization and having hands and so many different things.
What's different now versus before?
So as far as the helicopter, yeah, I wasn't here.
I'd already left before the whole helicopter.
But when I saw the video, I laughed because it had been
talked about before I left. It started out as an idea where
it was like Jeremy was like, wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be
great? Like, man, Can you imagine if we
had a helicopter come in and and brought like a player?
Like that would be their player announcement.
And I remember thinking, Oh my God, Jeremy, that is a crazy
idea. But Jeremy just has a way with
making connections and getting things happen.
So when I saw it, I was like, he got his, he got his helicopter.
I thought it was. I thought it was fantastic too.
I thought it was well done. What's interesting is the
backlash on it now because of everything that's gone down.
But when you look at the comments on the video at the
time, people thought it was amazing.
They thought it was fantastic. It was awesome.
It was great marketing. But now, Beth.
Didn't have a helicopter. Yeah, so looking it's, it's
interesting how perspectives can change.
And maybe it's just the people become louder that want to point
fingers when things go wrong. But imagine if if the story was
different and disc golf was still on a huge climb from the
pandemic, I imagine people would think that was the greatest
decisions you've ever made. So that's a whole nother topic
for another show, I guess. As far as your question to how
things have changed, yeah, when I first came back to Dynamic
Discs about a month and a half ago, I knew I wasn't coming back
to the same company. I was coming back to Dynamic
Disk, but it's not the same company.
They've been through a lot here as far as the different
leaderships, some good, some bad, some choices that were made
were good, some were bad. And to me, the biggest
difference in my, at my perspective is that everything
is at a, it was getting at a bigger scale when I left, like
we had just started, Amazon started really taking off, big
box stores started really taking off and disc off.
When I left, it was like we were trying to figure out how do we
get more discs from Sweden to get here because we're just as
soon as it when a container got here.
When I say a container, I'm talking 506070, depending on the
mold 1000 discs on one container it we would have those gone and
like a month or two just gone. So that's when I left.
So coming back that's not the case anymore.
Now we're like, how are we going to get rid of these discs, all
these discs? So so that's kind of been the,
the changes that before I left it was like, how do we keep up
with demand Now It's like how do we make sure that we still have
demand? Now the demand is there.
I I'm with you and it feels like things are sort of leveling out.
I still think disc golf is growing, it just I think some
people are just so used to how it was growing.
It's just not growing as fast. So that to me is the biggest
thing. And then of course to answer the
question about House of Discs, that of course was the other big
thing was seeing the other brands in the warehouse.
That was a little like it was different.
I wasn't used to seeing, I was used to seeing Latitude,
Westside, Dynamic boxes and discs and to see the other
brands here in the warehouse was very different.
But you know, we're approaching it as, I mean, just even get
into it more. I remember when we said, OK,
Latitude 64, we want to be your distributor in the US, so send
us your discs. That whole thing was worked out.
And then I don't know who started the whole trilogy, but
we got dubbed trilogy. And I'll be honest with you, I
hated it. I hated because from a marketing
standpoint, it dilutes each of the brands, right?
And people we'd even think, are they just going to be, why don't
you just quit calling it different names?
Just call yourself Trilogy discs, right?
And then we had team Trilogy and it was like team Trilogy.
People are going to think that's a brand that's not a brand, but
it was a fan base brand that became something amazing and
awesome as far as team Trilogy. And it kind of feels like that's
happening now with House of Discs where people, I've heard
about House of Discs, it was the name was put out there for
business reasons. I don't know the particulars
about that, but it was. And then people started
thinking, oh, is oh, House of discs.
Well, now we're going to buy a House of discs discs.
No, you're not going to buy a House of Discs discs.
You're still, you're still going to buy Disc Mania discs.
You're still going to buy Dynamic Discs discs, you're
still going to buy Latitude 64 discs.
They just happen to be housed in the same warehouse that now that
the employees here now just know that we have some amazing brands
here under our House of discs. So it's not going to be a brand,
it's not going to be a company. It's just going to be an entity
that, you know, we can kind of get behind and say we we have a
lot to offer the disc golf community in all our different
brands. And each brand will still
maintain their own identity, their own people that want to
throw their particular brands and be loyal to their brands.
We just happen to have them all here in one warehouse and able
to fulfill that for you if you want those brands.
Yeah, I'll admit, our shelves have little magnetic labels for
what brand is on that shelf. And I do have Trilogy tags, but
I have all three logos on there. I'm just saying all three logos
around there. And I do separate the discs by
brand within that rack. But yeah, Discmania separate,
Castoplast is separate. But I, I completely understand
why people would, would associate stuff like that
because it becomes harder to explain like, well, you know,
well, I throw this and this and this and they're from different
countries and different places, but they're, they're the same,
but they're different, you know, it's sort of like, well, I can,
I can just batch them all together.
It's quicker, it's easier to explain what I'm doing so.
So, yeah, I, I bet, you know, I became, I embraced it and was
like, OK, well, if this is the market's going to be the market
and the market is Dick, what dictates what's going to work?
And so instead of fighting it and, you know, at first I was
like, I'm never going to use the word the trilogy and any what I
think, what I say or anything I type out or post that I put.
But I embraced it and thought, you know what, this is what the
people want. This is what they got.
So yes, the Trilogy family of discs is the three discs, but I
don't think you'll ever see us say, you know, this is the House
of Discs newest release or whatever this is.
It's just going to be. House of Discs doesn't have like
a logo, doesn't have branding, does it?
No, that's and that's on purpose.
That's on purpose. That's just in my talks with
different stores and different players.
I just noticed that people would say, you know, well, the House
of discs brands are doing good. And so then I then I go
particular well, how is dynamic just doing?
How is these other brands doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So that's the biggest thing is, is that figuring out how to make
all that work. And I mean, I, I think people
know this, but we're not this isn't a new concept to disc golf
to have all brands under one big entity, right?
You know, you've got automotive companies that do it.
You've got, you know, what do you got?
Chocolate companies that do it. Oh, you see?
The the maps of like who owns what from like General Mills and
yeah, Kellogg's and stuff like that.
It's just a spider web of companies.
It's crazy. Right.
Yeah. So, so, yeah.
So we're just trying to make that and trying to navigate that
within our family of of brands. So yeah, I would say and, and
the biggest thing was no one was here telling their story.
They were allowing the story to be told with everything that you
saw. You know, I'm not going to deny
it. Layoffs happened.
Things happened. Did they happen the way they
should have happened? No, I disagree with the way
certain things happened. But I wasn't here.
I wasn't here at the time, so I wasn't living it.
So I can't really speak to it, but the people are still here
that the people that are here and not saying that the people
that left for whatever reasons didn't feel this, but all I can
do is speak to what's here and now, which is there are people
that still love disc golf, they still love their job, they love
what they do. They're just really beat up.
They're beat up over all the, frankly, some of the social
media and some of the stuff was that was put out there so their
story wasn't being told. The other side of the story, and
that's what I'm trying to do now is be like, OK guys, we get it.
That's out there, but there's another part of the story and
we're going to move forward by telling that part of the story.
So yeah. Yeah, it's great.
I mean, take control of your own narrative.
You know, there's always, there's always haters on the
Internet. You know, I read the comments.
I choose which ones are valid and useful feedback and which
ones are somebody having a bad day.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Ray, I really, again, I
appreciate you being on the show.
I learned a lot. I'm going to continue to learn a
lot because I'm a subscriber to your YouTube channel and I
highly recommend people listening or watching that if
they're not subscribed, if you want to learn more about and I
say a nerd out. And it is there is an element to
that, but it is really all just great information.
That is isn't just nerding out to nerding out.
It's learning about the discs that you talk about.
And it will help your game because maybe there's a disc you
haven't tried, because you have you haven't considered because
you didn't like the numbers or your or you heard from your
buddy the way it threw. Well, you got to get out and
throw for yourself, get more information.
And I believe your YouTube channel is one of those sources
of great information that will help people figure out what what
discs they need. And yeah, so I appreciate that.
Any last words? No, thank you so much for having
me. I really appreciate it.
And I think all of us here in the content community appreciate
you being back as well. I appreciate it.
All right, take care. Thank you.