Speaker 1: For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and fifty two,
Speaker 1: published on October ninth, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
Speaker 2: insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our
Speaker 2: interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
Speaker 2: like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: Back when Calloway was Callaway and Eely was run on
Speaker 3: the company, they were so successful. It was basically tailor
Speaker 3: made that initiated the strategy of changing product designs, and
Speaker 3: they tried to do it so fast that Calloway couldn't
Speaker 3: catch up. And they did it as a marketing strategy
Speaker 3: because they couldn't figure out how to be Calloway any
Speaker 3: other way. And it has now become the norm in
Speaker 3: the industry. And that's where it came from. Okay, yes,
Speaker 3: we are a regulated business, but that does not mean
Speaker 3: we are at the end of the innovative rope, so
Speaker 3: to speak, not at all. And if you want a
Speaker 3: classic case, take hybrids. I argue that you take an
Speaker 3: average three hybrid and I'll have you hit it against
Speaker 3: the five greatest three irons ever made in the history
Speaker 3: of time. Guess who wins Hybrids. Absolutely, so it's been
Speaker 3: a great product, especially for the average golfer. And understand
Speaker 3: one thing about golf club design. It has one objective,
Speaker 3: anf airborne and forward. If you can't get the ball
Speaker 3: up in the air and if it's not moving towards
Speaker 3: the target, then you haven't done anything for anybody.
Speaker 1: Part two with the founder of Adams Golf, Barney Adams.
Speaker 2: This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips and insights from golfers
Speaker 2: and golf professionals to help lower your score. It's worked
Speaker 2: for your host, Fred Green.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only.
Speaker 3: Barney, thank you very much. Thank you for extending me.
Speaker 1: Oh thank you for agreeing to be extended, knowing that
Speaker 1: you have time. You don't have a tea time today
Speaker 1: that I have to worry about.
Speaker 3: What what a brilliant entry that was.
Speaker 1: Again, you're you're learning quickly about the world of podcasting.
Speaker 1: We make our own rules as we go along.
Speaker 3: Here, gotcha why I've been doing that for a year,
Speaker 3: So that's okay.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why I'm so fascinated by you, because I'm
Speaker 1: one of those guys too. It kind of like makes
Speaker 1: it up as I go along, and you know the
Speaker 1: way I always did things in my business. I've been
Speaker 1: self employed for over twenty five years now, and it's
Speaker 1: to me, it's I'm going to go out there and
Speaker 1: start making it happen and adjust as I move along.
Speaker 1: And people are, well, you need a business plan. You
Speaker 1: got to write up a business plan. I'm like, nay, no,
Speaker 1: you know what. Those are all just made up numbers.
Speaker 1: Let me go out and get my fingers dirty and
Speaker 1: see what works, and then if it works, we'll get
Speaker 1: someone to pay for it.
Speaker 3: On kindall. Yeah, As a matter of fact, there is
Speaker 3: a book called The Wow Factor Wow, written by your
Speaker 3: truly okay, And I will say that I wrote every
Speaker 3: word of it, so it wasn't as dictated to or
Speaker 3: as interpreted by or so on. And it's about Adam's golf.
Speaker 3: But more than that, it's really aimed at entrepreneurs. And
Speaker 3: I bring that up only in light of what you
Speaker 3: were just saying.
Speaker 1: I'm listening very closely talk to me about the Wow Factor,
Speaker 1: and I'm sorry we weren't promoting audible day. Do you
Speaker 1: have the audiobook version of.
Speaker 3: That, are you kid? I don't know. No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if there I don't think there
Speaker 3: is one. I mean, well, we should do that. We
Speaker 3: missed the best We just barely missed the bestseller list.
Speaker 3: But be that as it me. I just bring that
Speaker 3: up because I get asked a lot about how did
Speaker 3: you get started? And it's really kind of a long,
Speaker 3: involved story. And for those people that are really interested
Speaker 3: in if they want to read the book, fine, if
Speaker 3: they don't find not a big deal, tell us.
Speaker 1: About the book.
Speaker 3: Well, the book is is? It stems from how did
Speaker 3: you get started? Mm hmm. And then when I told
Speaker 3: them the story, the response would be, gosh, that's a
Speaker 3: heck of a story.
Speaker 1: You got to do a book, And that was where
Speaker 1: you came up with the title.
Speaker 3: Wow did not come from there. Wow actually came really
Speaker 3: from wow? Is my basic concept for running a business?
Speaker 3: How was that one?
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm taking notes. Okay, Well stands for there's.
Speaker 3: What I believe? And I bet you you practiced this
Speaker 3: and you don't even know it.
Speaker 1: Probably do.
Speaker 3: What. I introduced my first successful golf club. It was
Speaker 3: a club called the Tight Lies a fairway would. And
Speaker 3: when I I was I was working at a driving range,
Speaker 3: custom fitting people, and I had this idea for a
Speaker 3: golf club. And when I got my first samples and
Speaker 3: people hit it, I could hear them say to themselves, Wow,
Speaker 3: this is really good. And then in my mind that
Speaker 3: became the wow factor. Because I believe that every I
Speaker 3: believe two main things. Number one, I believe that no
Speaker 3: business sells a product. I believe that every business sells
Speaker 3: a service. And once you define your service and brand
Speaker 3: your service as it will, as you will, you see,
Speaker 3: if you're selling a product, then your competition is everybody
Speaker 3: else with the same product or knockoff or similar product
Speaker 3: or whatever. But if it's a service, then your competition
Speaker 3: is only those people who can perform as well as
Speaker 3: you can. And I'd rather be in that ballgame. So
Speaker 3: so I define that as the wow factor. I want
Speaker 3: people when they do business with us to say, Wow,
Speaker 3: those guys really have their act together. Wow, those guys
Speaker 3: really ship on time. While those guys' quality is great,
Speaker 3: there are innovative et cetera, et cetera. It was an
Speaker 3: attitude we had throughout the company. We used to ask
Speaker 3: ourselves all the time when we're making a decision, is
Speaker 3: this a wow decision? And that was part of the
Speaker 3: culture of Adam's Golf.
Speaker 1: You think that would put Apple over the top was
Speaker 1: when they went retail and really became a service business.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm not I'm not. I'm not smart
Speaker 3: enough to really understand that and depth, I mean, I
Speaker 3: think and frankly speaking, I don't know if it was
Speaker 3: a conscious decision on their part or if it just
Speaker 3: sort of happened, you know, because they felt they they
Speaker 3: could retail their products better than other people could. I
Speaker 3: don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: You know, read the Steve Jobs books.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's it's just that that wow is
Speaker 3: not a casual thing with me, while was a culture.
Speaker 1: And you believe, everybody's in a service business.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I don't care if you're selling hammers hmm.
Speaker 1: And it's all about delivering to your customer. Absolutely, the
Speaker 1: customer is the product.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily. As a matter of fact, I don't even
Speaker 3: believe in customer surveys. And everybody in the world does that,
Speaker 3: including Coca Cola. Remember New Coke. Yeah, co Cola did
Speaker 3: two years of customer surveys then come out with it
Speaker 3: came out with a product it almost broke the company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what was Henry Ford's line about, you know,
Speaker 1: like focus groups? I think customer surveys focus groups, right,
Speaker 1: Henry Ford said, yeah, if you ask people what are
Speaker 1: they gonna want a fast.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, it'll drive you to mediocrity, right right. I'm
Speaker 3: this is arrogant, but I said, look, I know golf equipment.
Speaker 3: I mean, I've got years on range, you know, you
Speaker 3: name it, the background. I know what makes for a
Speaker 3: good golf club, and it's my job to deliver that message. Now,
Speaker 3: having said that, you can get good consumer reaction as
Speaker 3: to presentation, colors, et cetera. Because quite frankly, for me personally,
Speaker 3: once I know the club works, well, I don't care
Speaker 3: what color it is. It's all about ball light to me.
Speaker 3: But and by the way, that was our service was
Speaker 3: improving ball flight, not selling golf clubs improving ball flight.
Speaker 3: So you can there is some value you can get
Speaker 3: from presentation and so on. But I mean, even Ping
Speaker 3: over the years has dressed up their clubs. But it's
Speaker 3: my job to figure out what's the what's the best,
Speaker 3: what helps get the ball up in the air, what
Speaker 3: helps people play better, et cetera.
Speaker 1: In regards to clubmakers and the products that they put
Speaker 1: out these days, they have to it seems as if
Speaker 1: to stay in business they have to come up a
Speaker 1: new product product every six months and convince the consumer
Speaker 1: that this product is actually better than the last product
Speaker 1: we did. And yet there are so many restrictions put
Speaker 1: on them on what they can do. To golf clubs.
Speaker 1: They've probably reached the limits of what they can do
Speaker 1: and making changes a couple of years ago, and yet
Speaker 1: they're still coming out with new clubs every six months.
Speaker 1: So you see things like a white golf club, and
Speaker 1: has everyone convinced that this is now the greatest golf
Speaker 1: club they've ever hit.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. I don't know if I have
Speaker 3: enough time to go over all the places where you're wrong.
Speaker 3: So I'll try and oh, please shoot me now I
Speaker 3: know I am right. At the same time, to start
Speaker 3: off with, it isn't six months. I think it's fifteen
Speaker 3: minutes now. But that was the ele Calloway effect. What
Speaker 3: happened was back when Calloway was Callaway and there are
Speaker 3: nowhere near that now. But back when Calloway was Callaway
Speaker 3: and Eli was running the company. They were so successful
Speaker 3: that it was basically tailor made that initiated the strategy
Speaker 3: of changing product designs, and they tried to do it
Speaker 3: so fast that Calloway couldn't care. And they did it
Speaker 3: as as a marketing strategy because they couldn't figure out
Speaker 3: how to be Callaway any other way. And it has
Speaker 3: now become the norm in the industry. And that's that's
Speaker 3: where it came from. Okay, yesdr we are a regulated business,
Speaker 3: but that does not mean that we are at the
Speaker 3: end of the innovative rope, so to speak, not at all.
Speaker 3: And if you want a classic case, take hybrids. I
Speaker 3: argue that you take an average three hybrid and I'll
Speaker 3: have you hit it against the five greatest three irons
Speaker 3: ever made in the history of time. Guess who wins.
Speaker 1: Hybrids.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, So it's been a great product, especially for the
Speaker 3: average golfer. And understand one thing about golf club design.
Speaker 3: It has one objective, an f airborne and forward. If
Speaker 3: you can't get a ball up in the air and
Speaker 3: if it's not moving towards the target, then you haven't
Speaker 3: done anything for anybody. So you start with a n
Speaker 3: F and you go there hybrids are a great example
Speaker 3: of a n F. Yeah, and now we have adjustable drivers.
Speaker 3: I think maybe for the very serious they're probably something.
Speaker 3: I don't think for the average guy they're that big
Speaker 3: a deal. But you know, give them credit. That's you know,
Speaker 3: the technical innovation is terrific.
Speaker 1: Back to then we come back to the ego on
Speaker 1: that is like, oh, I've got a driver that I
Speaker 1: can adjust like the head. Have you ever adjusted it?
Speaker 3: Sure? Yes, Actually I have idsted the other day after
Speaker 3: I got it out of the water because I was
Speaker 3: mad at it. But I'll tell you Another one is
Speaker 3: the slots in the fairwy woods. If you've seen those,
Speaker 3: that makes the fairy woods better, period better. Really, fairywoods
Speaker 3: with slots.
Speaker 1: Are better on the back part of the top and
Speaker 1: the bottom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the and the reason why is because they
Speaker 3: create an environment and I won't go into all the
Speaker 3: technical stuff, but they create an environment where the MOI
Speaker 3: of the fairway wood is now about as great as
Speaker 3: the driver. Then that means more distance and that's a
Speaker 3: significant improvement.
Speaker 1: Are you still involved in club design and club making?
Speaker 3: No, I am not involved at all. Taylor made very politely,
Speaker 3: and I don't mean this in a facetious way said look,
Speaker 3: we're a big, strong company. We get a lot of assets,
Speaker 3: and we just don't need you anymore.
Speaker 1: They had purchased your company.
Speaker 3: Yes, they purchased Adam's Golf in June.
Speaker 1: June of this year. Yes, Oh congratulations. So now you
Speaker 1: are very nicely retired. Huh.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm I'm going fishing wherever I can because my
Speaker 3: golf game stinks.
Speaker 1: Now you've gotten into fishing.
Speaker 3: Oh, I've been in fishing for years.
Speaker 1: And have you ever invented a product for fishing for
Speaker 1: fishermen and out?
Speaker 3: The funny thing is, in my head. I always invent
Speaker 3: stuff in my head. It just never goes any further.
Speaker 3: But I actually invented a carry bag that would carry
Speaker 3: fishing rods and gear at the same time. And I
Speaker 3: might still do something with it, because it's it's not
Speaker 3: a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't imagine you're going to be sitting still
Speaker 1: very much. You probably don't know it.
Speaker 3: It's I am. And again, this is a question I've
Speaker 3: been asked a lot. You know, you look back upon
Speaker 3: the success that Adam's head and you know, doesn't that
Speaker 3: make it feel good? Et cetera, et cetera. And sure,
Speaker 3: you know you don't want to be uh whatever, it
Speaker 3: is just unappreciative. But by nature, I tend to look forward.
Speaker 3: By nature, I'm still the guy that wakes up in
Speaker 3: the middle of the night with ideas.
Speaker 1: I it sounds like that you're you're your own personal
Speaker 1: mantras an f.
Speaker 3: Yeah, pretty, that's a good line. That's I think I'll
Speaker 3: steal that.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's my pleasure. Airborne and forward huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well I don't know about airport. If I
Speaker 3: get airport, I got a land. And if my land
Speaker 3: is going to be a real problem.
Speaker 1: Well that's the a part thinking of albatra hitting hitting
Speaker 1: the water, right, it would be.
Speaker 3: Worse than that. It would be worse than that, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it would be. It would be a catastrophe.
Speaker 1: But you've been in not just golf. You've been a
Speaker 1: lot of you, let's say, taste in a lot of
Speaker 1: different industries, haven't you.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, I started out out a cop. Well, let's see,
Speaker 3: I can go back to when I used to clean
Speaker 3: out stalls on the farm.
Speaker 1: Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3: Upstate New York and the dairy country? And uh, my
Speaker 3: job was a two words both began with s And
Speaker 3: the first word for word.
Speaker 1: Was shovel And do you have business cards printed up?
Speaker 3: I was, I was going to do that, yes, And
Speaker 3: it was on a farm that was about five miles
Speaker 3: from our house, and I used to hitchhike back and forth,
Speaker 3: but I never got the same ride twice when I
Speaker 3: was coming home.
Speaker 1: Oh that's the kid who's shovels.
Speaker 3: Yes. And when I got home, my mother made me
Speaker 3: stand in the driveway. She hosed me off before she
Speaker 3: let me in the house.
Speaker 1: Upstate New York in the winter. Huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well this was in the spring because the cows
Speaker 3: they bordered up all spring all winter, excuse me, and
Speaker 3: the stalls would fill up and then somebody had to
Speaker 3: go in and clean them out. And what you do
Speaker 3: is you pitched the product out the window onto a
Speaker 3: wagon and then we got in the wagon. This was
Speaker 3: horse drawn in those days, and we'd drive the wagon
Speaker 3: out in the field and then spread it out in
Speaker 3: the field for fertilizer, and then repeat the process all
Speaker 3: day long.
Speaker 1: I can see where you became an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was. Well, it got me out of farming.
Speaker 3: That's archer. Yeah, that and bailing. Hey, it made me
Speaker 3: decide that farming was not in my future.
Speaker 1: Okay, so then what was the next Where'd you go
Speaker 1: from there?
Speaker 3: Well? I went to Clarkson University up in far Upstate,
Speaker 3: New York. They thought I want to be a student.
Speaker 3: I thought I was up there to play sports. But
Speaker 3: you know, I managed to get through and with sport,
Speaker 3: I played basketball, soccer, and golf.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and.
Speaker 3: I want to work for Corning Glass, very good company.
Speaker 3: I was a terrible employee. My idea was that whatever
Speaker 3: my job was, that my real job was to tell
Speaker 3: the people according how to run the company. And somehow
Speaker 3: that didn't go over very.
Speaker 1: Well, you're just shoveling more. Huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just couldn't help. But I just saw all
Speaker 3: the advantages they were missing, and I thought I pointed
Speaker 3: out to them and so on. So I left there
Speaker 3: after nine years.
Speaker 1: Isn't it amazing how smart we are when we come
Speaker 1: out of college, how much we know about everything in
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm lucky because I've always been brilliant. It just
Speaker 3: other people haven't recognized that. But I ended up on
Speaker 3: the West Coast. I worked in the Silicon Valley in
Speaker 3: the semiconductor industry, and I can tell you all you
Speaker 3: need to know about that in one little vignette. Well,
Speaker 3: I started with Dave Pell's running his company in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: This was my big chance to be in the golf industry,
Speaker 3: was that?
Speaker 1: And that was an ex for you.
Speaker 3: It is like, oh that I was. I was, Yeah,
Speaker 3: absolutely right. I could use all my skills I accumulated
Speaker 3: over the years, et cetera. And it took me about
Speaker 3: two and a half years and I had them in bankruptcy.
Speaker 3: And you you could argue that, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 3: all my fault, et cetera. But one of the mantras
Speaker 3: is that when you're the top guy, you get all
Speaker 3: the praise and you get all the garbage, and that's
Speaker 3: just life in the big city. So it was my fault.
Speaker 3: One might into it from that that maybe the golf
Speaker 3: industry wasn't the place for me, but I didn't see
Speaker 3: it that way. I bought the remaining after the bank
Speaker 3: sold off all the assets, so we just had a
Speaker 3: bunch of tables and stuff. I bought them and started
Speaker 3: up on my own, Like you said, no business plan,
Speaker 3: no plan of any kind. And I got a job
Speaker 3: in the Silicon Valley, a real job that provided income. Well,
Speaker 3: I kind of was nurturing my little company. And one
Speaker 3: year I went to the PGA Show with my little company,
Speaker 3: which means that I flew to Ablinge, Texas, loaded up
Speaker 3: my products, rented a van a little ten foot booth,
Speaker 3: drove it to Orlando, Florida, set it up, worked it
Speaker 3: for four full days, tore it down, drove it back
Speaker 3: to Abline, Texas, and loved every minute of it. When
Speaker 3: I got back to California a couple of months later,
Speaker 3: I went to the Semicon Show, the semiconductor show in
Speaker 3: San Mateo, with our little testing company. What was that,
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't Yeah, it was the early early eighties,
Speaker 3: I forget exactly.
Speaker 1: Helped beginning of the personal computer era.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he helped started it. Yeah, helped them set up
Speaker 3: the booth at the show. Yeah. I was gonna work
Speaker 3: the booth with them, because you know, that's the right
Speaker 3: thing to do, and so on. And I can remember thinking,
Speaker 3: as you know, it's gosh, I've been here all day.
Speaker 3: It's time for lunch. And I looked at my watch
Speaker 3: and it was quarter nine in the morning.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: And I went to the Bitch Capital group that I
Speaker 3: worked for and I said, I'm out of here. I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't need any more, you know, I mean, what
Speaker 3: the heck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was at a golf show all day long
Speaker 1: and didn't even realize it was.
Speaker 3: Killed myself, killed by I could hardly walk when I
Speaker 3: got home. Yeah, absolutely, at nine, at eight forty five,
Speaker 3: I'm ready to leave. So I left the Silicon Valley
Speaker 3: started up on my own. Should have gone broke, Well,
Speaker 3: I was broke. I mean, what the heck I would
Speaker 3: to me, I should have. But I basically ran a
Speaker 3: Ponzi scheme where I ended up with forty two credit
Speaker 3: cards and borrowed money from one and paid off a
Speaker 3: little on the next one. And that's how I financed
Speaker 3: myself for several years. And I'm giving you the cliff notes.
Speaker 3: Version came up with a club called the tight Lies.
Speaker 3: It got it became popular on its own.
Speaker 1: It really it kind of exploded.
Speaker 3: Huh oh yeah. We it became the largest selling Fairway
Speaker 3: would in the industry. We did a TV infomercial. It
Speaker 3: became the largest TV golf infommercial in history. We want sales.
Speaker 3: Our sales went from minuscule, you know, a couple hundred
Speaker 3: thousand bucks to eighty million in three years.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wall Street came in ninety eight, we went public. Oops,
Speaker 3: the industry kind of slowed down. We fought our way.
Speaker 1: Through, you know, in retrospect, was the going public? Was
Speaker 1: that a valuable thing?
Speaker 3: It was valuable because it gave us money to stay alive.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 3: And then uh, there was a kind of a dust
Speaker 3: up on the board and they wanted to sell the company.
Speaker 3: So Tailorman came along and bought it, and I go fishing.
Speaker 3: Nice end of story.
Speaker 1: Wow does what would Dave Pel's What were you doing
Speaker 1: with him? And why do you need we made?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had. He had a product called Fellow Lights
Speaker 3: back in those days, which which didn't work, but they
Speaker 3: got a lot of detention at the Dame and then
Speaker 3: we I actually studied buddy of putters for two years
Speaker 3: of my life. And funny people, you know, want to
Speaker 3: explain putters to be like I've never seen one, And
Speaker 3: I actually spent probably more time on putters with Pelzy
Speaker 3: and I did anything else. So we just, you know,
Speaker 3: we were trying to come up with innovative ideas.
Speaker 1: Wait, what's your opinion of the state of the equipment
Speaker 1: industry right now? The golf equipment industry.
Speaker 3: Well, it's changed drastically and it's I think it's going
Speaker 3: to continue to change in the same we see. When
Speaker 3: I was active, we had like four thousand pro shop
Speaker 3: accounts and are roughly an equal number of retailers that
Speaker 3: we call doors. Today, you have still got four thousand
Speaker 3: pro shops accounts roughly and five retail accounts.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that consolidation means that it's become a numbers game.
Speaker 3: You'll walk into a retailer. He looks at the market
Speaker 3: share data. He says, well, your number three points four
Speaker 3: will give you ex percent of the budget. Thank you,
Speaker 3: and goodbye.
Speaker 1: No conversation, no negotiation.
Speaker 3: H's you know.
Speaker 1: No relationships, forget that stuff.
Speaker 3: There's there's always relationships. I mean, you're dealing with human beings,
Speaker 3: but you know, but the metrics is that they pretty
Speaker 3: much have to deal that way to cover themselves. It's
Speaker 3: pretty hard for a guy in a buying job to say, gee,
Speaker 3: I Fred, I think you got some great products, and
Speaker 3: even though nobody knows who you are, I'm going to
Speaker 3: give you some of the Taylor Made's four space that
Speaker 3: ain't going to happen.
Speaker 1: Where does the next tide lines come from does it happen?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, we had hybrids.
Speaker 3: They'll always be innovation. But because I'm gonna give I'm
Speaker 3: going to give you an answer. Call me in a year,
Speaker 3: maybe less. I had one of those middle of the
Speaker 3: night ers. So we shall see what we shall see
Speaker 3: him in the middle of the night in the shower
Speaker 3: a big your pardon?
Speaker 1: Do you have those in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: or in the shower?
Speaker 3: I in the middle of the night, I wake up, up,
Speaker 3: wake up, and I write it down. I get up
Speaker 3: the next morning and it says.
Speaker 1: But then you're like, oh, that's really a good idea,
Speaker 1: or I'm going back to sleep.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically, yeah, So what the hell's the matter with you?
Speaker 1: You've had a couple of those in your life, right
Speaker 1: at all?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Lots of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you've made some of them work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of them have worked out okay, and some
Speaker 3: of them been a joke. But that's you know, that's life.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and haven't you learned a tremendous amount from
Speaker 1: those jokes?
Speaker 3: Well, you learn more from you will learn I said
Speaker 3: this in the book. You'll learn way more from failure
Speaker 3: than you do from success.
Speaker 1: I call that experience.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact, in the book, what I
Speaker 3: really try to do is point out all the dumb
Speaker 3: things I did, because that's how people learn.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You don't really learn much from from doing something right,
Speaker 1: because oh, well, I better keep doing this. What am
Speaker 1: I doing? I'm not sure, but I'm going to keep going.
Speaker 3: Well, if you do stuff right, you think you're really smart.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and everyone tells you are. That's what makes it worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you find out that you're not so smart, and
Speaker 3: by that time it's too late.
Speaker 1: Right right, Well, again, you said you learn a lot
Speaker 1: from doing something wrong. Again, I call that experience.
Speaker 3: Could be I mean, if it's all the experience, if
Speaker 3: you recognize some people don't recognize.
Speaker 1: It, right, that's so so true. But you think that
Speaker 1: that their innovation continues. And we're talking to the golf industry,
Speaker 1: and we can talk to any industry.
Speaker 3: And will always continue. It's the bane of the golf industry.
Speaker 3: I realize it's pretty much a fashion business today, but
Speaker 3: it's a fashion business still with innovation involved.
Speaker 1: And what about the status of golf courses with private
Speaker 1: courses seem to be struggling, public courses are struggling to
Speaker 1: stay open. Where where do you think that is headed?
Speaker 3: Play the right t's you'll go a long way to
Speaker 3: fixing the problem.
Speaker 1: Real simple?
Speaker 3: Do you told you I'm a simple person? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Did you come up with a nameta forward to? Or
Speaker 1: did PGA do focus.
Speaker 3: With that name? And quite frankly, I didn't like it
Speaker 3: because I thought it was kind of delivered the wrong message.
Speaker 3: But I certainly appreciated their their support and getting on
Speaker 3: the bandwagon and so on.
Speaker 1: So you know, I have to agree with you. I
Speaker 1: don't like it either, because again it's like it's almost.
Speaker 3: I wanted I want to tour equivalent. They thought the
Speaker 3: word equivalent was too much of a mouthful.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And you keep saying people are smart and
Speaker 1: they're saying no, no, no, we don't want to make them
Speaker 1: hard words.
Speaker 3: That was I What can I tell you? It's their sandbox, so.
Speaker 1: Go get your own cat and put it in their sandbags.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to go back to tea at forward
Speaker 1: for a while. It's an interesting concept. It's hard to
Speaker 1: understand and it shouldn't be and the name doesn't do
Speaker 1: it justice and it kind of sends you in the
Speaker 1: wrong direction.
Speaker 3: So we agree I think. So all right, good, will
Speaker 3: you come up with any uh brilliant ideas let me know? Well, yeah,
Speaker 3: because I'm I'm trying as hard as I can.
Speaker 1: All right, so then I'm going to throw this out.
Speaker 1: We have a global audience of golfers who've been listening
Speaker 1: now for an hour.
Speaker 3: Two They can't be awake now, they're probably asleep.
Speaker 1: Well no, they put it on pause and they came Okay,
Speaker 1: they take a nap and yeah, they come back. And
Speaker 1: actually some people even listen multiple times. And I think
Speaker 1: you're so entertaining. They're going to be they need to
Speaker 1: get a life. But go on, well, hey, listen, they
Speaker 1: play golf.
Speaker 3: Well that's true.
Speaker 1: There they've already got big trouble.
Speaker 3: Since the yard, I understand.
Speaker 1: But if they have answers, they're probably right.
Speaker 3: They're probably late for their psychiatrists.
Speaker 1: It's probably well, they're caring. They're probably sitting in their
Speaker 1: psychiatrists listening to this, or on a bus, or they're
Speaker 1: at the driving range, so they're walking there.
Speaker 3: I only know those people on one of them, so
Speaker 3: stand we're.
Speaker 1: Both one of them. We are them.
Speaker 3: Maybe they they enter the r S.
Speaker 1: We if we have people uh from anywhere on the
Speaker 1: face of the earth that have better names for this.
Speaker 1: Should we send him to you?
Speaker 3: No, send him to the PGA. They don't.
Speaker 1: You're done, You're talked out, and send them to me.
Speaker 3: You're send them to the you're you're, you're singing to
Speaker 3: the choir. It's waste of time.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. And you wanted to use PGA equivalent,
Speaker 1: and they're like man, tour facility, tour approach, tour like
Speaker 1: tour approach.
Speaker 3: There we go. That's my latest one.
Speaker 1: That's a good one, tour approach because approaches has so
Speaker 1: many meanings to it on that.
Speaker 3: I understand, and and that tour approach is actually my
Speaker 3: last one I could. I I'd like to take credit that,
Speaker 3: but a friend of mine came up with approach rather
Speaker 3: than equivalent was an easier word.
Speaker 1: And PGA is involved. So it's not like you're infringing
Speaker 1: on the word tour. It's not like sorry that that
Speaker 1: word is copyrighted. We can't touch that word.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm hip. We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: Tour. I like tour approach because yeah, approach your approach
Speaker 1: shot and and playing it like the I like.
Speaker 3: That one very good, very good, and twenty five million
Speaker 3: of your listeners right to the PGA and tell them
Speaker 3: to change it to tour approach.
Speaker 1: And how about this, It'll be small, a small P
Speaker 1: capital p r O small ach. So it's a pro.
Speaker 3: You're way beyond me, way beyond me. I listen, I
Speaker 3: told you before.
Speaker 1: I'm I want you to get your fishing rod out
Speaker 1: and reel me back in. Now I am getting a
Speaker 1: little too far. My wife does this a lot when
Speaker 1: I start with my idea, she throws out her imaginary
Speaker 1: fishing rod and reels me back in, going whoa Fred,
Speaker 1: Come on back, Come on.
Speaker 3: Here, Fred, Here Fred. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: Is that why people always said I name my dog Fred. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a bad, bad first name. Wow, Hey, Barney, I
Speaker 1: really enjoyed getting to meet you. This has been very
Speaker 1: entertaining for me. Thank you very much, my pleasure, and
Speaker 1: I wish you all the luck of the world. And please,
Speaker 1: when you get that that, when that next middle of
Speaker 1: the night idea starts to happen, can you share it
Speaker 1: with us?
Speaker 3: I certainly will.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that too.
Speaker 3: I'll put you guys right in the middle of my list.
Speaker 1: Sure, and actually top of the list. Is that guy
Speaker 1: swinging the club right behind you, right right? You didn't
Speaker 1: tell anybody who was Wait, you said your all time
Speaker 1: favorite golfer, it's Arnold. I know that. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the picture. But this is all I've been.
Speaker 3: Well, I've I've been very fortunate. I've played with him
Speaker 3: a couple of times. He's my hero, and I told him.
Speaker 3: I told him he was my hero.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure he loved hearing that.
Speaker 3: He's a good guy.
Speaker 1: He's the first guy ever. You're the first one ever
Speaker 1: to tell him that. I'm sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, first million.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, But I mean, so was he your hero
Speaker 1: before you played.
Speaker 3: And after you played? Yes? Yeah, back back to the sixties, yeah.
Speaker 1: Quality human being.
Speaker 3: Remember I went to college in the fifties. Yes, so
Speaker 3: just just got out of the gut approach to era.
Speaker 1: So did you. You know they say, if you remember
Speaker 1: the sixties, you weren't there.
Speaker 3: Well, this, but by the sixth by the time the
Speaker 3: sixties came along, I had a job, I was married,
Speaker 3: I had a kid, and I worked every day. The
Speaker 3: sixties were not part of my life as you're referring
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 1: No, No, you're that's more of the mad Men's sixties.
Speaker 1: You were you were, Yeah, you were working. You missed
Speaker 1: that part, Yeah, no hippie for you.
Speaker 3: Yep, I I missed all I missed all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But you are right there at the beginning of Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley be case starting to explode. Miss that too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't that.
Speaker 3: The Silicon Valley is full of wonderful, brilliant physicists and
Speaker 3: mes and ees and so on, and I'm none of
Speaker 3: the above, So I didn't belong there.
Speaker 1: You feel like you're lucky to where you've been and
Speaker 1: what you've gotten.
Speaker 3: Of course that you don't think I got here on
Speaker 3: talented you. Of course I'm lucky.
Speaker 1: Wow, lucky guy. It's a wonderful life.
Speaker 3: Huh, yes it is. Say Fred McMurray could do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, see back to Fred. I named my dog
Speaker 1: Fred was after Fred McMurray. That's right, all right, party,
Speaker 1: best wishes, good health to you and more great ideas.
Speaker 3: Thanks very much, man.
Speaker 1: I just received an update that Barney's being inducted into
Speaker 1: the Clarkson University Athletic Hall of Fame. He was there
Speaker 1: from the late fifties to early sixties, playing, As he
Speaker 1: told his golf, basketball and soccer. But of course he
Speaker 1: really made his mark in the sports world after he graduated,
Speaker 1: and well we heard why. And so he's a benefactor
Speaker 1: of Clarkson University as well, and so it's very kind
Speaker 1: of him to do that, and so he's being honored
Speaker 1: as such.