Speaker 1: Hey, It's Josh Carp and it's Friday, which means that
Speaker 1: we are airing a Golf Smarter Mulligans episode from the archives.
Speaker 1: This week's rerun is episode five h two with Derek Ruky.
Speaker 1: We also have new interviews every Tuesday. Next week I'll
Speaker 1: be speaking to Bradley Hughes, the former player and a
Speaker 1: top flight instructor who will be joining us to talk
Speaker 1: about his approach to the golf swing.
Speaker 2: Golf Smarter Premium number five hundred two published on August eighteen,
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
Speaker 3: Derek.
Speaker 4: Hey, Fred, how are you? I am great. How are
Speaker 4: you doing today?
Speaker 3: I'm doing very well.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, and thank you for turning me
Speaker 2: on to the newest GPS product to hit the market,
Speaker 2: t link. I'm very excited about this because you've seemed
Speaker 2: to accomplish something very important in the GPS market and
Speaker 2: that is a great price point.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Thanks it.
Speaker 5: It's been quite a treny that gets where we are now,
Speaker 5: and we had to do a few things very differently
Speaker 5: in the markets to get to a price point. But yeah,
Speaker 5: we're just going and I'm excited to get it in
Speaker 5: your hands and get your feedback and yeah, and kind
Speaker 5: of just chat about it here on the podcast, and.
Speaker 3: That is what we'll do, is chat about it for
Speaker 3: a while. But I need to know.
Speaker 2: I mean, you look like you know, we we've had
Speaker 2: ads ads for Harry's razors on the show multiple times.
Speaker 2: You don't even look like you shave man. You are
Speaker 2: awfully young to be the sometimes you shave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: How is it that you young entrepreneur yourself got into
Speaker 2: a golf product.
Speaker 3: Tell me, tell me the story on that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Sure, So.
Speaker 5: Golf kind of became my passion when I was twelve
Speaker 5: years old. I I feel like people that kind of
Speaker 5: latch onto the sport have that you know, that aha
Speaker 5: moment where they're on the golf course and they you know,
Speaker 5: all of a sudden, the potts start dropping and they
Speaker 5: start like hearing the birds chirping, and they start seeing
Speaker 5: the divots flying. And I just kind of fell in
Speaker 5: love with it when I was twelve years old, And
Speaker 5: you know, I just decided, like one day, like there's
Speaker 5: no other way I would rather spend every single waking
Speaker 5: second than spend it on a golf course. So I
Speaker 5: basically did just that. From the age twelve to twenty,
Speaker 5: and I became pretty good. I started playing in like
Speaker 5: junior golf events. By the time I was eighteen, I
Speaker 5: was a top ten junior golfer in Canada, and then
Speaker 5: that landed me a golf scholarship to go play for
Speaker 5: a university in Texas, which was, you know, kind of
Speaker 5: the main goal that I wanted to you know, achieve
Speaker 5: out of starting golf competitively. And when I got to university,
Speaker 5: I started to kind of recognize that the skills that
Speaker 5: you have to develop in to become a great competitive golfer,
Speaker 5: we're also very advantageous to an educating setting or even
Speaker 5: just business. And that's like having a good work ethic, determination,
Speaker 5: and just really being able to dedicate yourself to something
Speaker 5: for an extended period of time. And so I kind
Speaker 5: of started moving away from you know, competitive golf being
Speaker 5: like everything I focused on, you know, fourteen hours a
Speaker 5: day on the range, to wanting to put that kind
Speaker 5: of work ethic into something else that could potentially just
Speaker 5: put me ahead a little bit. And so when I
Speaker 5: was in university in Texas, I was I started like
Speaker 5: day treating the stock market full time. When I was
Speaker 5: in my dorm room. I started an eBay business where
Speaker 5: I was like importing goods out of China into my
Speaker 5: dorm room and selling them moneybay, and I built that up.
Speaker 5: It was actually became pretty big, and I was making
Speaker 5: some good money out out of my dorm room. So
Speaker 5: I decided, like, look, I'm just going to enjoy golf
Speaker 5: for what it is and not continue to invest all
Speaker 5: this time into it. And so I went home, and
Speaker 5: that eBay business was actually ended up failing for me.
Speaker 4: It was a big failure.
Speaker 5: And I learned a ton from kind of doing these
Speaker 5: little tiny ventures on the side and you know, going
Speaker 5: through a few successes and a few failures. And then
Speaker 5: I ended up finishing or enrolling to finish my degree
Speaker 5: here in Calgary, Alberta at Mount Royal University in their
Speaker 5: Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. And in the first class that
Speaker 5: you take for the entre program, you basically just come
Speaker 5: up with an idea around something that you're passionate about.
Speaker 5: And so for me, you know, the whole Malcolm Gladwell thing,
Speaker 5: what have you invested your ten thousand hours in? What
Speaker 5: do you you know, really know? And so for me,
Speaker 5: that was golf. And I saw these GPS watches, you know,
Speaker 5: becoming really popular along with this wearable tech. And it
Speaker 5: was pretty obvious why they were becoming so popular, Like
Speaker 5: as a golfer, it's you know, especially an average golfer,
Speaker 5: you just want to be able to enjoy your game
Speaker 5: and not have to think about too much. So being
Speaker 5: able to just look at your wrist and have a
Speaker 5: yardage really quickly, you know, it became popular. And so
Speaker 5: I tried these watches on, and you know, long story short,
Speaker 5: I just decided these watches were great, but they were
Speaker 5: far too distracting. They were bulky heavy, really cumbersome, and
Speaker 5: they were expensive. So I just wanted to find a
Speaker 5: way to you know, create that same kind of convenience,
Speaker 5: but put it into something that was much more affordable
Speaker 5: and much more comfortable to wear, kind of more like
Speaker 5: wearing a bracelet, like one of those balanced bracelets that
Speaker 5: you see golfers wearing. And so that was the original
Speaker 5: vision for it, and you know, along the way, I
Speaker 5: just picked up a bunch of mentors. I met the
Speaker 5: right investors. I brought on my co founder and CTO
Speaker 5: who had the technical background behind this, to kind of
Speaker 5: develop software behind it. And then I consider myself just
Speaker 5: to be kind of a hustle and the vision of
Speaker 5: the company, and it definitely takes a lot of hustle
Speaker 5: to get something like this off the ground, especially being
Speaker 5: you know, twenty one years old.
Speaker 2: Tell me the moment that Tell me about the moment
Speaker 2: that you just you you came to that realization that, yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe the tour golf is not going to work for me.
Speaker 2: Tell me what that what that epiphany was like. And
Speaker 2: it's like, no, I think if I'm going to make
Speaker 2: a lot of money, it's going to be in business
Speaker 2: and not in golf.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's funny. It was a very specific moment actually,
Speaker 5: when I was playing a qualify around. So it's like
Speaker 5: university golf, like all of the entire team gets out
Speaker 5: of the course and they do qualifier rounds to see
Speaker 5: who's going to go to play at the next tournament.
Speaker 5: And the next tournament was in Vegas, and I just
Speaker 5: really wanted to go to Vegas. So I put a
Speaker 5: lot of pressure on myself for this tournament. And while
Speaker 5: I was in my qualify round, I was playing, you know,
Speaker 5: I was having a bad time, Like I just really
Speaker 5: wasn't enjoying the game as much as I used to
Speaker 5: I I kind of put too much pressure on myself
Speaker 5: for it. And during that round, I had some open
Speaker 5: trades in the stock market and I ended up making
Speaker 5: like three thousand dollars in a matter of hours. And
Speaker 5: I'm just like, look, I I think I would rather
Speaker 5: dedicate my time to something that's really working and I'm
Speaker 5: actually getting some enjoyment out of then, you know, something
Speaker 5: that's kind of started to become more of a chore.
Speaker 5: And I felt like I had milk golf for all
Speaker 5: that it could give me, and you know, just realizing
Speaker 5: that it wasn't It didn't feel like quitting to me
Speaker 5: because it felt like the lessons learned and the skills
Speaker 5: I gained out of trying to become a very highly
Speaker 5: competitive golfer or the reason why I could make money
Speaker 5: in the stock market in the first place, So why
Speaker 5: not apply that to something else?
Speaker 2: And what skills and lessons were those that you learned?
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean, like you talked about how
Speaker 2: you failed miserably on eBay and that probably was a
Speaker 2: huge lesson too. I mean, what do we learn from
Speaker 2: doing things right? We just keep repeating it, not knowing
Speaker 2: why it was right. It just happened, but here you
Speaker 2: are getting experience at a young age to teach you
Speaker 2: something on how to move forward totally.
Speaker 5: I Yeah, golf is a microcosm of life. I definitely
Speaker 5: believe that. And I feel like a little bit of
Speaker 5: an old soul just because of everything that I've had
Speaker 5: to go through on the golf course, which is strange
Speaker 5: to say, but one of the big things that I've
Speaker 5: learned that's really helped with getting a startup off the
Speaker 5: ground is when you're running a startup and you're getting
Speaker 5: something like t Link, it seems like on a daily basis,
Speaker 5: what is the best thing of your entire life happens
Speaker 5: to you, and on the exact same day, the worst
Speaker 5: thing of your entire life happens to you.
Speaker 4: There's constantly new things.
Speaker 5: Up in the air that are happening that you know,
Speaker 5: one second you get a five thousand unit order and
Speaker 5: the next second your manufacturing breaks down and you can't
Speaker 5: even get those five thousand units off the ground or
Speaker 5: something like that. And what golf has really taught me
Speaker 5: is it's not so much about how you perceive something
Speaker 5: is good or bad on a golf course, whether that's
Speaker 5: a miss three foot putt or you know, a chip in.
Speaker 5: It's more about how you actually deal with that situation
Speaker 5: and react to it. So what golf taught me is
Speaker 5: in between that I guess that stimulus of something good
Speaker 5: or bad happening to you and your reaction to it.
Speaker 5: In between those two things is really opportunity that almost
Speaker 5: nobody recognizes to pro assess it, to think about it,
Speaker 5: and to react in a way that someone else might
Speaker 5: just kind.
Speaker 4: Of pull the trigger on an emotional response.
Speaker 5: And when you get emotional on the golf course, things
Speaker 5: can go bad very quickly.
Speaker 3: You did learn a lot that's awesome.
Speaker 2: To the Golf Smarter podcast audience. We are also broadcasting
Speaker 2: this live on Periscope, and to those of you who
Speaker 2: are watching on periscope right now, if you have any
Speaker 2: questions for Derek about his lessons learned or about t Link,
Speaker 2: which we're going to talk a lot about, please go
Speaker 2: ahead and submit them on your phone right there and
Speaker 2: let us know what you're thinking about and if you
Speaker 2: can hear properly, Derek, growing up when you got hooked
Speaker 2: on golf and then all of a sudden you realize,
Speaker 2: you know, you took it as far as you could
Speaker 2: that you felt when you made that decision that it's
Speaker 2: not going to golf is not going to be your
Speaker 2: life as far as being on the course, was that
Speaker 2: a relief? Was that depressing? Were you happy?
Speaker 3: How? How did that make you feel.
Speaker 5: At the time of making that decision? It was it
Speaker 5: was a little tough, just because I know how much
Speaker 5: time I had invested into one singular thing, which is
Speaker 5: learning how to hit a ball into a hole in
Speaker 5: as few strokes as possible, you know, So that kind
Speaker 5: of went through my head of how many thousands of
Speaker 5: hours have I invested into this one thing that you know,
Speaker 5: I might not really use anymore to you know, try
Speaker 5: and further a career in it. But I quickly kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, I was able to recognize that those hours
Speaker 5: weren't just going into, like I said, hitting a ball
Speaker 5: into a hole, but more so into just kind of developing,
Speaker 5: uh as a person, you know, developing that work ethic,
Speaker 5: which is something that I feel is always separated me,
Speaker 5: you know, being always being the first on the range
Speaker 5: and then the last off at the end of the
Speaker 5: day of the golf course. So now that's just translated
Speaker 5: into you know, the first into the office and the
Speaker 5: last out or whatever it might be. And I was
Speaker 5: actually when I realized that it was actually a feeling
Speaker 5: of excitement to realize that, like, holy, I have all
Speaker 5: these extra hours that I used to invest into golf
Speaker 5: that I can invest into other things, you know, and
Speaker 5: that kind of it kind of excited me to have
Speaker 5: this free time to just put into something that you know,
Speaker 5: might actually leverage that time investment into something much bigger.
Speaker 2: I have to ask all the hours that you had
Speaker 2: invested in playing, in learning about yourself and learning about
Speaker 2: the game and what it taught you about how to
Speaker 2: conduct yourself. You've been vague in our emails, and I
Speaker 2: need to ask for myself, what did Golf Smarter have
Speaker 2: to do with any of that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Golf Smarter was It's actually so cool to be
Speaker 5: on this for me because so I was so like
Speaker 5: all I wanted to do was get better at golf.
Speaker 5: So when I practiced when I was younger, like I
Speaker 5: don't know, probably from fourteen and up, I'd be on
Speaker 5: the range for four or five hours at a time,
Speaker 5: and I thought it was extremely inefficient. This is the
Speaker 5: way that I thought it was extremely inefficient for me
Speaker 5: to be listening to music while I was playing, when
Speaker 5: I could instead be listening something that was actually building out,
Speaker 5: you know, my mental game, or maybe a new tip
Speaker 5: that I could be using on the range while I
Speaker 5: was practicing. So I would just be practicing away in
Speaker 5: a way, and I would just listen to Golf Smarter
Speaker 5: while I was playing, and I felt like, you know,
Speaker 5: even if the guy beside me was practicing just as
Speaker 5: hard as I was, I had like an extra edge
Speaker 5: on that guy just because, you know, I was picking
Speaker 5: up this tip that maybe he would never learn and
Speaker 5: being able to apply it. So that was It's kind
Speaker 5: of cool to actually be on this now.
Speaker 3: Well, it's very cool to have you on.
Speaker 2: I'm flattered that you would use that as a way
Speaker 2: to improve your game.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: It's very cool to have you on the show too.
Speaker 2: So now let's talk about te Link. I'm really impressed.
Speaker 2: You know, you talked about the other products out there
Speaker 2: being bulky, heavy and expensive.
Speaker 3: What what did you want to address.
Speaker 2: Immediately on UH and and for those again watching on periscope,
Speaker 2: I'm holding up the box right now for the t Link, GPS,
Speaker 2: golf Watch, convenience, comfort and style. What were the things
Speaker 2: that you felt you needed to address immediately in improving
Speaker 2: on what was already in the marketplace.
Speaker 5: So the key thing right off the bat for me
Speaker 5: was just the overall size and style of the watch.
Speaker 5: When I tried on the original, you know, like the
Speaker 5: Garment s one, I think was the first watch that
Speaker 5: was really started blowing up in the market. I tried
Speaker 5: it on and it was so uncomfortable and distracting that
Speaker 5: I could hardly even hit the ball straight just because
Speaker 5: I wasn't I'm not used to wearing a watch when
Speaker 5: I play golf, Like I just wear one of those
Speaker 5: balanced bracelets, and that's that's pretty much it. And I
Speaker 5: know a lot of I just knew by nature of
Speaker 5: playing a lot of golf with amateur golfers. I just
Speaker 5: know that a lot of people don't like to wear
Speaker 5: watches when they play because of that exact reason, big
Speaker 5: and bulky. So the first thing was, is there a
Speaker 5: way to kind of scale down, you know, this technology
Speaker 5: into something that's much more smaller, kind of rolls with
Speaker 5: your wrist nicely, it's light and feels more like a
Speaker 5: fitness tracker than you know, a big, bulky watch. And so,
Speaker 5: you know, that was the first big thing, and then
Speaker 5: I just kind of recognized that, like the golf GPS
Speaker 5: retail market is kind of like this small pond with
Speaker 5: big fish in it. You know, you got guys like
Speaker 5: Garmented Bushno and Skycaddy and names that everyone knows. So
Speaker 5: I needed to find a way to get a price
Speaker 5: down to that ninety nine dollars level just to kind
Speaker 5: of make it more of an impulse buy for people.
Speaker 5: And so yeah, really the first two months of having
Speaker 5: the idea was just validating it in my network that
Speaker 5: people really would value having a lightweight, small device that
Speaker 5: could be worn like so teelink can be worn both
Speaker 5: as a watch and as a belt clip. The unit
Speaker 5: pops out, and so I wanted to make sure that
Speaker 5: that was something people would value over potentially having more features,
Speaker 5: and the response was overwhelmingly yes.
Speaker 4: So that kind of gave the go ahead.
Speaker 2: Smart move, very good. I'm for those who again are
Speaker 2: on periscope. This is this is what my t link
Speaker 2: looks like on my wrist. It is very lightweight, it's
Speaker 2: very comfortable. There you go, he's got one too. Of
Speaker 2: course he's got one. Now I've got one too. It's
Speaker 2: very lightweight, it's very comfortable, it's not distracting. And but
Speaker 2: you know, how is it that you were able to
Speaker 2: get away from the two hundred and ninety nine three
Speaker 2: hundred ninety nine four fifty, you know, five hundred dollars
Speaker 2: price point with something that is so lightweight, comfortable, small.
Speaker 2: How does it work? And why is the price so
Speaker 2: different than what the big boys have to offer.
Speaker 4: So the big thing that we had to do.
Speaker 5: Was we're trying to make sure that the focus on
Speaker 5: the device side is strictly on providing that comfortable experience
Speaker 5: and yet having that really accurate data a low cost.
Speaker 5: So the way that we were able to do that
Speaker 5: is by utilizing a piece of technology that pretty much
Speaker 5: everyone in North America uses on a daily basis, and
Speaker 5: it's really the most powerful thing that any of us
Speaker 5: own right now, and that's your smartphone. So we figured that,
Speaker 5: you know, in order to cut down on costs on
Speaker 5: the device side, some of those big costs include like
Speaker 5: having enough memory and having a built on GPS onto
Speaker 5: the device that's constantly pulling GPS, which requires a larger
Speaker 5: battery as well to handle that GPS signal. And so
Speaker 5: what we decided to do was why not utilize a
Speaker 5: GPS battery and memory platform that everyone carries with them
Speaker 5: at all times. So t Link just uses Bluetooth to
Speaker 5: connect with your phone and then run off the GPS
Speaker 5: that's built right into your phone. So we're able to
Speaker 5: kind of keep the hardware and the core technology onto
Speaker 5: something that you already own. And that also allowed us
Speaker 5: to differentiate ourselves kind of from an updating perspective as well,
Speaker 5: because one of the big problems that these GPS watches
Speaker 5: have is golf courses are constantly being updated and you
Speaker 5: have to plug your watch into your computer, go to
Speaker 5: Garmin dot com or whatever it is and download a
Speaker 5: new database, as opposed to with us, since it's on
Speaker 5: the app, everything's just being pulled from the cloud, so
Speaker 5: anytime a course is updated, you never have to update
Speaker 5: the app do anything. You're constantly getting the freshest database
Speaker 5: and you know that you're getting the most accurate yardage
Speaker 5: as possible.
Speaker 4: So yeah, by.
Speaker 5: Utilizing the phone, we're able to dramatically reduce all of
Speaker 5: our costs and be able to have some you know,
Speaker 5: some good margins at a low price point.
Speaker 2: For a while, I've been using the Bushnell Hybrid, which
Speaker 2: I rarely see people use, and I think it's really
Speaker 2: one of the better ones that are out there because
Speaker 2: not only does it have the GPS, but it has
Speaker 2: the range finder on it as well.
Speaker 3: I picked mine up on eBay.
Speaker 2: And so you get front, middle, back, but you can
Speaker 2: also you know, scope out the pin so you have
Speaker 2: better understanding of how deep, you know how much room
Speaker 2: you have to play. But I have been enjoying this
Speaker 2: for the quick glance, you know, it's like or when
Speaker 2: somebody else says, can you give me a read boom?
Speaker 2: I don't have to go nuts over it. But I
Speaker 2: live in an area that is spotty on cell service.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of hills, a lot of mountains here.
Speaker 2: The San Francisco area is notorious for having bad cell
Speaker 2: service on all of the major carriers and minor ones
Speaker 2: as well. There's been one time where I went out
Speaker 2: and played using my te link where when I was
Speaker 2: on the first tee it wasn't connecting. But then once
Speaker 2: I started walking the course, I looked down and I
Speaker 2: had signal, so I was finding the rest of the
Speaker 2: way once it did connect. But there was one time
Speaker 2: that I just couldn't connect.
Speaker 3: How do we get around? Do you have you figured
Speaker 3: anything out?
Speaker 2: That if you're having spotty cell service that you still
Speaker 2: can use the te link.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's probably the biggest big factor have right now.
Speaker 5: You do need a cell service for it to be
Speaker 5: the most accurate heritage as possible. We did happen to
Speaker 5: develop an algorithm that helps with that a little bit.
Speaker 4: So the way that GPS works.
Speaker 5: Is it's constantly pulling from you know, the satellites that
Speaker 5: are nearby and requesting your location to just coordinate with
Speaker 5: them and do all the math to determine exactly where
Speaker 5: you are and when you don't have, you know, when
Speaker 5: you're not above one of those satellites. One of the
Speaker 5: things that we found we could kind of hack into
Speaker 5: it to get slightly less accurate, but at least give
Speaker 5: you yard just you know that are reasonable by tapping
Speaker 5: into the cell towers that around you and triangulating your
Speaker 5: position based on that. It's very confusing. I did develop it.
Speaker 5: My business partner who's kind of like the computer genius,
Speaker 5: did that. But yeah, in all honesty, you need to
Speaker 5: have decent cell service. You know, at least two bars
Speaker 5: I would say to, you know, have it work, And
Speaker 5: that's kind of you know, if you've ever used one
Speaker 5: of the GPS apps on the golf course that you know,
Speaker 5: I think millions of people use. If one of those works,
Speaker 5: then ours, ours will work, and it actually it'll work
Speaker 5: better because of that triangulating kind of algorithm that we
Speaker 5: developed and kind of just to add on to that,
Speaker 5: because it's using your phone, it's it's using data on
Speaker 5: your phone as well, but we actually found a way
Speaker 5: to make that extremely efficient and it'll only use about
Speaker 5: two hundred and fifty kilobytes of data throughout an entire round.
Speaker 5: So I mean if you compare that to like a
Speaker 5: roaming package when you're traveling, I think it equates to
Speaker 5: like like ten cents on your on your roaming packet
Speaker 5: or something like that for a round of golf. So
Speaker 5: it's it's pretty efficient in that regard.
Speaker 2: Very efficient, and we're talking kilobytes not megabytes. So it's
Speaker 2: really small. Talk to me about one of the things
Speaker 2: that everybody when I talk to about this thing and
Speaker 2: say that you're you know, you're tapped into your phone.
Speaker 2: There's an app and the first question that always comes
Speaker 2: up is battery life. What kind of impact is it
Speaker 2: going to have on battery life?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so the tea link itself, the battery is pretty good.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're you're playing five days in a row,
Speaker 5: it'll definitely last, you know, like all five days. And
Speaker 5: we've actually, like even if it's dead, we've really worked
Speaker 5: hard on because I know a lot of people when
Speaker 5: they're you know, going to golf, they'll just kind of
Speaker 5: grab things at the last minute and run to their
Speaker 5: tea time. So you if you charge it for like
Speaker 5: even if it sorry, if it's dead, then you charge
Speaker 5: it for like a minute, it'll last you eighteen holes,
Speaker 5: no problem. And then on the phone side, the this
Speaker 5: is kind of a cool selling point for us for
Speaker 5: anybody that's not made the switch from just using a
Speaker 5: GPS app on their phone to you know, using a
Speaker 5: wearable or a hard GPS. And that's that when you
Speaker 5: use these apps, they're using almost one hundred percent of
Speaker 5: your phone battery. And that's because you're constantly taking out
Speaker 5: your phone. You the screen is on. The screen kills
Speaker 5: your battery and you're constantly having to look at the
Speaker 5: screen in order to get your yardages. So because te
Speaker 5: link allows you to kind of keep your phone away
Speaker 5: in your bag or in your pocket and keep that
Speaker 5: phone off it'll only use about twenty percent of your
Speaker 5: phone battery on a typical eighteen whole round, which is
Speaker 5: I think pretty reasonable for you know, the majority of
Speaker 5: people that try and have their phones charged at all times.
Speaker 2: That's interesting that you said twenty percent of the phone
Speaker 2: battery life. I guess it would depend on the phone.
Speaker 2: I've got an iPhone six plus and I'm it's not
Speaker 2: using twenty I mean, I'm I'm ten to fifteen percent
Speaker 2: on mine.
Speaker 4: Beautiful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I like to kind of give an overestimation so
Speaker 5: people don't freak out if it's using like more twenty
Speaker 5: percent than I say ten.
Speaker 4: But that's great to hear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is good to hear.
Speaker 2: Now, the other thing that's so cool about I love
Speaker 2: that concept of you just don't have to take the
Speaker 2: phone out of your pocket anymore.
Speaker 3: It's not gonna.
Speaker 2: Because that's what really is a big drain, is turning
Speaker 2: it on, turning it off, turning it on, turning it off.
Speaker 2: But there are other services that really, for me was
Speaker 2: a huge selling point and put it over the top
Speaker 2: of how excited I was of other services that are
Speaker 2: provided on the t link in the app.
Speaker 3: Tell me about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I really liked the When I was at
Speaker 5: one of my first PGA shows, before this was even
Speaker 5: an idea, I saw everyone, like probably thirty percent of
Speaker 5: the people at this PGA show walking around with like
Speaker 5: fitbits or like Nike fuels, activity trackers, and golf is
Speaker 5: quickly becoming this more of a you know, an active sport.
Speaker 5: People like, you know, they're looking at guys like Roy
Speaker 5: McElroy that are just getting ripped, and you know, they're
Speaker 5: starting to want to track their fitness on the course.
Speaker 5: So we wanted to build in an accelerometer into t
Speaker 5: link that allows you to track your steps, your distance walked,
Speaker 5: and your calories burned, both on and off the course.
Speaker 5: And so when you go into our app, all of
Speaker 5: that information is just kind of loaded up, and you know,
Speaker 5: you can at the end of your round, you'll get
Speaker 5: an update and you'll say, you know, you burned however
Speaker 5: many calories, two thousand calories, you took eleven thousand steps,
Speaker 5: this is how far you walked. And we're even further
Speaker 5: building that out right now. That'll give some more stats
Speaker 5: and I'm I'm running a beta of it right now,
Speaker 5: which if anyone's on periscope, this is like a super
Speaker 5: sneak peak, but it'll tell you like you're accumulated. I
Speaker 5: don't know if that'll show up. It'll focus there of
Speaker 5: like all your all your stats throughout all your rounds
Speaker 5: of golf. It'll even or even building out like a
Speaker 5: beer simulator, so it'll tell you how many beers you
Speaker 5: burned while you're on the course and good things like that.
Speaker 2: So now it's starting to save data because I've noticed
Speaker 2: that if I, you know, as soon as the round
Speaker 2: to conserve battery life, as soon as my round was over.
Speaker 2: On the first one or two times that I tried it,
Speaker 2: I would turn turn the the little unit off, and
Speaker 2: then when I would go to the app and look
Speaker 2: for you know, how much because I love to walk
Speaker 2: golf courses, but I also like to know how much
Speaker 2: I'm walking, I would check and it's like, oh, but
Speaker 2: I turned it off, so that data wasn't there anymore.
Speaker 2: It kind of disappeared. So are you going to be
Speaker 2: able to save the data now? And that's why you
Speaker 2: can accumulate over the multiple courses.
Speaker 5: So the way that this one's working is when you
Speaker 5: hit end round in the app. So when you're done,
Speaker 5: there's a little red button that just makes you on
Speaker 5: the round, and then that's what triggers, you know, the
Speaker 5: end of your round also from a pedometer perspective, so
Speaker 5: that takes all the information that you walked from the
Speaker 5: start of your round to when you just hit that
Speaker 5: button and loads it into the app, and then it's
Speaker 5: stored there forever for you to go back and look on. Now.
Speaker 5: We are working on an update where this limited kind
Speaker 5: of just the steps, distance, walk calories burned will be
Speaker 5: available to see on the on the watch face as
Speaker 5: well of the t link that'll come. It's something we're
Speaker 5: building out. It's just when we started the phone is
Speaker 5: just a much better way of displaying detailed information and
Speaker 5: targeted information for what a you know, what a user wants,
Speaker 5: as opposed to just kind of you know, we wanted
Speaker 5: to keep this display really thin and small, and it's
Speaker 5: it's not really enough real estate to do what we
Speaker 5: wanted with, you know, giving golfers as much kind of
Speaker 5: health information as we possibly could, uh while they're you know,
Speaker 5: while they're playing in tracking in their health.
Speaker 2: Well, I get the updates when you get those out
Speaker 2: on this unit itself, not just my phone, or will
Speaker 2: I have to update my unit later as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we've built this in a in a cool way.
Speaker 5: This is another reason why I just love a smartphone
Speaker 5: being your kind of platform for operation of te link.
Speaker 5: And that's when we can update both like the app
Speaker 5: software like so just you know, when you're downloading a
Speaker 5: new app or something changes to an app, we can
Speaker 5: update that. But the cool thing is is that through
Speaker 5: the tee link app, you can also update any kind
Speaker 5: of the software and the firmware of how the tee
Speaker 5: link itself works. So, for example, we're working on we're
Speaker 5: going to be releasing an update that will allow stat
Speaker 5: tracking in end of August early September here, and so
Speaker 5: that's completely changing all of the kind of functionality of
Speaker 5: the way that te link works that you right now.
Speaker 5: And so all you'll have to do is go into
Speaker 5: the app. You won't have to change anything. You'll just
Speaker 5: have to hit the update button that will send over
Speaker 5: and update everything on te link. And then when it
Speaker 5: turns back on, all of a sudden, it functions like
Speaker 5: a totally new device. You'll be able to track your scores,
Speaker 5: your greens and regulation, your fairways, hit your putts per
Speaker 5: round and that's an exciting kind of addition that we're
Speaker 5: going to be adding to this pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: Here exciting is not descriptive enough.
Speaker 2: That was jaw dropping to hear that information that you're
Speaker 2: going to have that as well.
Speaker 3: Do you have a time frame?
Speaker 5: It's really cool the way that we're going to build
Speaker 5: it out. So the way that it'll work is when
Speaker 5: you get onto the green. What it does now is
Speaker 5: it automatically changes holes for you if you have that enabled.
Speaker 5: But now if you have stat tracking, what it'll do
Speaker 5: is on te link, it'll just bring up a series
Speaker 5: of screens that will allow you to one select your
Speaker 5: score and then the next screen will be able to
Speaker 5: se did you hit the fairway left, right, or center?
Speaker 5: And then the third will just be putts. And so
Speaker 5: when you enter that information just quickly from your wrist,
Speaker 5: it takes less than ten seconds. What will happen is
Speaker 5: on the app on your phone, a scorecard will be
Speaker 5: totally filled out with all your information of your entire round,
Speaker 5: and then we'll be able to kind of graph what
Speaker 5: your round look like in terms of what was your
Speaker 5: percentage of fairways hit, your percentage of greens hit, how
Speaker 5: many puts, what your performance was like on part three's
Speaker 5: versus Part fours, and you'll be able to open up
Speaker 5: your phone and have all this detailed information that can
Speaker 5: kind of outline your game without you know, having to
Speaker 5: put in too much effort. You're just really pressing a
Speaker 5: few buttons at the end of each hole and you're done.
Speaker 5: You have all this infro in your phone and you
Speaker 5: can kind of you know, we're going to build it
Speaker 5: out so you can share that with people. We're going
Speaker 5: to eventually throw in like tips so and handicapping different things.
Speaker 5: So one of the things that when I was a junior,
Speaker 5: I started using one of those stat tracking softwarees that
Speaker 5: got you to kind of detail your entire round and
Speaker 5: it gave you a handicap based on your short game,
Speaker 5: your long game, your irons, all that. And it wasn't
Speaker 5: until I used that software that I realized I'm a
Speaker 5: way worse short game player than I thought I was.
Speaker 5: I was like a fourteen handicap short game player and
Speaker 5: like a plus three iron and driving player. So I
Speaker 5: needed to focus more on the short game, and it
Speaker 5: took the software for me to actually realize that. So
Speaker 5: that's that's something that I want to really focus on
Speaker 5: building out on t link as well.
Speaker 2: I game golf was I don't know if that was
Speaker 2: the one you were using, but game Golf for me
Speaker 2: opened my eyes to that and changed my game as
Speaker 2: well totally.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a big battle of that is just recognizing,
Speaker 5: you know, through stats and data where you need to
Speaker 5: be improving. And it's incredible how quickly you can improve
Speaker 5: when you recognize, Oh, if I just you know, work
Speaker 5: on my five footers, I could save myself potentially six
Speaker 5: strokes around.
Speaker 4: That's pretty powerful.
Speaker 3: It's very powerful.
Speaker 2: So in addition to the wristband that the unit pops
Speaker 2: in and out of, so you can just pop it
Speaker 2: out and just have it in your pocket if you
Speaker 2: don't want to wear something on your wrist, but you
Speaker 2: also included a clip that works both on your I
Speaker 2: guess on your cap, but it mainly for belt loop
Speaker 2: or you're putting on your belt.
Speaker 5: This is this is a clip right here, and yeah,
Speaker 5: you clip it on your belt. We've had a few
Speaker 5: people clip it onto like their shirt or their collar
Speaker 5: as well, or onto their hat. Yeah, and that just
Speaker 5: kind of gives an option for the people that you know,
Speaker 5: just don't want anything.
Speaker 4: On the risk period.
Speaker 5: And you know, I actually use the belt clip probably
Speaker 5: more than I use the wristband.
Speaker 2: When you're using the belt clip, do you are you
Speaker 2: able to bend this thing? I mean, are you just
Speaker 2: turn your whole belt? I'm trying to figure out I
Speaker 2: can see how it comfortably fits in the belt loop.
Speaker 2: I guess, oh, I see, you would just kind of
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure it out right now, stand up
Speaker 2: and give us a demonstration on video here while we're
Speaker 2: watching you on periscope how it works on your belt loop.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 5: Well, the way we designed it was it kind of
Speaker 5: like it kind of bends naturally. I'm not even wearing
Speaker 5: a belt right now, so this might not be the
Speaker 5: best demonstration.
Speaker 4: But when you put it on your belt clip or
Speaker 4: your belt, it.
Speaker 5: Kind of jars itself forward a little bit, just by
Speaker 5: nature of the thickness of any kind of belt, and
Speaker 5: so when you're looking down at it, the screen is
Speaker 5: slightly tilted towards you, and then it's really just a
Speaker 5: matter of kind of tilting the bell clip up a
Speaker 5: little bit. It's flexible, so you don't really have to
Speaker 5: ever take it off, and the screen is readable enough
Speaker 5: where you can really just leave it on there and
Speaker 5: see the numbers just fine.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you mentioned that you can see the
Speaker 2: screen because obviously one of the issues with people pulling
Speaker 2: out their cell phone all the time, again not just
Speaker 2: battery life, but it's tough in the bright light to
Speaker 2: see a cell phone and a colored screen like that,
Speaker 2: and the screen that you're utilizing looks more like one
Speaker 2: of the original kindle paper white. I mean, the numbers
Speaker 2: just pop off the screen. They don't need to be
Speaker 2: in color. They're just numbers, right, So you're not looking
Speaker 2: at greens and things like that, You're just looking at
Speaker 2: the numbers.
Speaker 3: So those numbers really do pop off the screen.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was that was really important, and that like
Speaker 5: that caused us actually a lot of money to make
Speaker 5: sure that we have the right the right screen to
Speaker 5: make it super readable. It's actually the more sunlight that's
Speaker 5: on it, the more readable it is. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: pretty happy with that with that aspect of it. That's
Speaker 5: obviously key for for something that's going to be on
Speaker 5: the golf course.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Uh you mentioned before that, and I've not been
Speaker 2: able to work get this to work right, so I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have you help me with this. Is you mentioned
Speaker 2: that you can use it as a watch. It'll tell
Speaker 2: the time. It's even though when I connect. So once
Speaker 2: I connect, the reconnect the phone to the unit, all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, now it's just showing me golf data.
Speaker 2: It's not showing me a clock. How do I get it?
Speaker 2: If I just want it to be the watch?
Speaker 5: So the way that the time setting works on it
Speaker 5: is first when you connect what tee link is doing.
Speaker 5: When you first turn it on, it'll be showing an
Speaker 5: inaccurate time. It's when you connect to your phone that
Speaker 5: it just grabs whatever time is currently on your phone,
Speaker 5: puts it on the t link watch, and then you'll
Speaker 5: be able to view time when you're disconnected. So once
Speaker 5: you're connected, it grabs the time and then all you
Speaker 5: have to do is go in the app and disconnect
Speaker 5: or just turn off your Bluetooth and then it'll revert
Speaker 5: to like the regular time screen. Like so right now
Speaker 5: it's eleven, yeah for two where I am.
Speaker 2: So then as long as the unit has connected, but
Speaker 2: then you you turn off the Bluetooth connection to it,
Speaker 2: then it just goes back to being a watch.
Speaker 3: Is that is that works?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So whenever you're not connected, it's just functioning as a
Speaker 5: watch right and we are actually I'm running a beta
Speaker 5: on this one right now where you will be able
Speaker 5: to switch between yardages and time while you're on the
Speaker 5: golf course just selecting the middle button. And that's like
Speaker 5: I said, that's just like there's these little things like
Speaker 5: that that our users have started requesting, where you know,
Speaker 5: I would love to be able to see the time
Speaker 5: while I'm playing golf, which is a fair request. So
Speaker 5: I'm we're able to just quickly kind of pump out
Speaker 5: these updates within our team of you know, everyone that's
Speaker 5: on our team, where I'm just testing it all day
Speaker 5: just to make sure that there's no crashes, no bugs,
Speaker 5: and then once it's ready, we'll just send it out
Speaker 5: through the app. You'll hit update and then you'll be
Speaker 5: able to use that same feature yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a that's a really good one.
Speaker 2: And actually one of the things that I learned when
Speaker 2: I was looking at the stat tracker as far as
Speaker 2: how much I walked, how many calories I burned, and stuff,
Speaker 2: it told me how long the round was, which is
Speaker 2: also something good to note, so that when you go
Speaker 2: to play a course on regular basis, you know what
Speaker 2: day a week you're playing whatever how long it takes
Speaker 2: to play that course.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, for sure, So give us the.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about how to find it the U r
Speaker 2: L and talk about pricing again.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So if you guys are interested in taking a look,
Speaker 5: you just go to www. Dot golftelink dot com. That's
Speaker 5: just one where go O L F T L I
Speaker 5: n K and if you you can. Actually so, the
Speaker 5: way that it's working is you can buy either just
Speaker 5: this like our standard black or white tee link. It
Speaker 5: comes with both the wristband and the belt clip and
Speaker 5: the unit obviously, and then we also sell like riskband
Speaker 5: accessories for anyone who's watching them just pulling up like
Speaker 5: a pink a pink wristband, So we sell blue, pink
Speaker 5: and red wristband separately. We sell those for fourteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: and then we sell the te link unit itself for
Speaker 5: ninety nine dollars.
Speaker 2: And now Derek Rookie of golftee link dot Com has
Speaker 2: a quick tip on how to best use your tee
Speaker 2: link GPS system.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So when you're using te link and you're playing with it,
Speaker 5: one of the things that's really important to remember is
Speaker 5: that it uses Bluetooth to connect with your phone, and
Speaker 5: although you can leave your phone in your golf bag
Speaker 5: or in your golf cart, something that you need to
Speaker 5: remember is that the yardages themselves.
Speaker 4: And where you're getting your.
Speaker 5: Yardages from is from wherever your phone is, because it's
Speaker 5: using the GPS on your phone. So just to be
Speaker 5: kind of conscious that wherever you're leaving this is where
Speaker 5: your gardages are coming from. So if you are leaving
Speaker 5: it in your cart and you're walking one hundred yards
Speaker 5: away from it, yards are going.
Speaker 4: To be a little bit off.
Speaker 5: So most people try and keep it in their pocket
Speaker 5: or in their bag and it's close by them.