Episode 77

EPISODE 77 TRANSCRIPT

INSIDE GOLF BUSINESS
(Ben Vainer, CEO, Tee Commerce)

Charlie: I'm so happy to welcome Ben Vainer, founder and CEO of Tee Commerce to the show today. Ben, welcome. How are you this afternoon?

Ben: I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, excited to be with you, and appreciate you having me on.

Charlie: Well, this is a great topic, and I'm so glad to have you here because we don't always dive deeply into this one, although we're always talking about technology and advancements, and the different things we're covering at the company. But you're going to go ahead and work through some direct dollar benefits of ecommerce today. That's what we're going to hit, right?

Ben: Yeah, exactly. Ecommerce is a must in all industries, and especially in the golf industry.

Charlie: To start out, tell me, you know, your elevator speech. Tee Commerce and your background in ecommerce.

Ben: Sure. Yes. So, Tee Commerce is the online pro shop company. So, we exist specifically for the golf and club industry to help courses sell online. And so, looking at what are the challenges that pros, merchandisers, teams face, and trying to make it easier for them so that the booming golf industry, those retail dollars are benefiting courses themselves.

Charlie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, such a challenging time. You know what my next question is going to be, is, how do we compete with the other online guys in our own online worlds? And that's really where you're drawing the line in the sand, right?

Ben: Exactly, yeah. And the one thing that a course has that no other competitor, no matter how large they are, has is their own brand.

Charlie: Right.

Ben: All right. So, only a course can sell their brand and merchandise, and they do so online. But by not... Excuse me, on course. But by not selling it online, there's a huge miss there as customers, and golfers, and members are used to making their purchases online.

Charlie: Well, I remember, you know, in the old marketing strategy, you would have a great logo, spend a lot of money, perhaps with a graphic designer getting the logo that worked. And then I remember five years later, we even recycled the logos and revised them all to keep the current so that the gear, but now, what we're talking about is not so much that philosophy which we've adopted and, you know, different types of gear, different art variations for the online commerce. But now, we're talking about competing directly, and you've got the one main reason, is because it's your own course brand. And that's the unique reason why.

Ben: And that's how you bring them in, right? You can also benefit. I mean, especially working with a partner like us or others, you can benefit from economies of scale. As long as you can offer competitive prices on balls and consumables, similar to what they might get elsewhere, I think most folks would rather support their local course, which is a small business, if they can. So, you bring them in with the custom merch because that's the only place they can get it, and then show them that you can give them affordable prices on other things. And that's it.

Charlie: Well, what are you seeing coming out of our quarantine as things that, for you, in the trends that you're seeing in pro shop ecommerce, that you see as sort of leading changes in the now market?

Ben: Sure. Yeah. So, one of the things is variety. Right? And that's one of the challenges with an on-course shop is usually it's small square footage, there's minimums.

Charlie: Great point, yeah.

Ben: You've got members or golfers who have a huge variety of styles. It's like those aloha Hawaiian type polo patterns or classic stripe. And so, with online, what services like us can offer is on-demand manufacturing. So, essentially, courses have access to a huge variety of brands, products, etc., that they can market to their customers without having to pay for it until somebody buys it. And so, utilizing on-demand manufacturing, embroidery, printing, things like that where each one is printed just down to that single piece, you can offer, really, an endless variety of both product types as well as, to your point earlier, logos, logo variations, special edition logos, etc., because you don't need to invest any upfront inventory cost at the beginning.

Charlie: So, let me try and see if I can take that one step too far.

Ben: Let's do it.

Charlie: What if we're trying to order and say, "I think this weird floral pattern and this blue color will work," and instead of ordering, you and I ordering...what? What have we got now? Six sizes or something. Ordering a couple hundred shirts, we're just going to order two or three on our own to see if those two or three, and let's just say medium or large or whatever the right shape, if they go right away. So, we might even do that with trying out a new line instead of the old-fashioned which is deciding in the van when the guy comes by and then signing the check and hoping to God that you're right six months later.

Ben: Yeah. I mean, yes, and. So, even one step back from that is you don't even need to buy that medium and large. So, through like a Tee Commerce Online Pro Shop, you can experiment with different new products. If customers buy them, then you have access to that data or you could decide to stock 24 pieces of different sizes in your shop. Or maybe you see that people with a certain skew, they're buying five different colors, and there's no real pattern that you see in the customer. That's probably a product that should be online where you don't need to invest any inventory, and you can just have the customer have full choice.

So, using tools like us, you get access to that data to both help you sell more variety online with no upfront inventory cos, and be more efficient in the inventory that you do carry on-course.

Charlie: I get it. I love it. Now, I'm thinking about Warby Parker so I can go to the golf course and have me trying on the shirts on a large iPad kiosk or something, right?

Ben: Exactly. Yup. You can see samples, you can touch fabrics, but then you make your actual purchase of exactly what you want online. It's embroidered with the logo you chose, shipped to you, all as if it's coming from that course and the courses, you know, making significant margins on them.

Charlie: What about... Okay. Let me go sideways on you. Sorry. I just had a thought. What about staff? Could you allow staff to variations on a simple... So, they all got to have a logo somewhere. Excuse me. But they are giving some latitude with creating designs around the company shirt. Wouldn't that be interesting as well? And this would give you the ability to do that without a pain point for the manager because we're paying for that. Right?

Ben: Exactly. And, yeah. And what we've learned is, in creating these partnerships with courses and seeing, really, that pros especially just wear so many different hats.

Charlie: Oh my gosh.

Ben: It doesn't make sense if ecommerce would be one of them to have the time to be able to really put into that. So, we step in and like to say, "We are your online pro shop staff, but it can extend to beyond that where it's whether it's your uniform needs or tournament tee gifts." All of that can be done. And because everything, our whole manufacturing and our partners' manufacturing systems are down literally to one piece, then you can just have as much variety as you want without the traditional upfront costs where, you know, if you're 24 or 36 price breaks, etc.

Charlie: Yeah.

Ben: And in addition, to take your piece one step further, we're even able to customize beyond an embroidered logo on products. So, we now utilize what's called sublimation technology, which is what a lot of the brands themselves utilize where we can create custom patterns that incorporate your logo. And you can sell polos, quarter zips, t-shirts, hoodies, with a fully customized pattern that is your course, that is your brand instead of or in addition to simply putting an embroidered logo on the left chest.

Charlie: Right. This is so exciting. I'll throw a quick other thing in. I was working on a different project not related to golf. And I was worried about the setup charges, right? Because I've got my old thinking hat on from 20 years ago, and I wanted to do individual designs on 50 different things. And she said, "Yeah, there's no charge." And I was like, "Wait a minute. Fifteen years ago, when you and I were having this conversation, there's a charge for every time I set that up. Right? Thirty dollars, whatever it is. Now, there's none." And I said, "But this is 50 different ones." She's like, "Nah, it's all digital. We don't care." And I was like, "Wow." I keep thinking setup, setup charges, and all the different things, which don't exist.

The next question I should ask for the audience is turnaround time. The first question they're going to want to know is, okay, I got a tournament. I forgot. How quick can I get these?

Ben: Sure. Yeah. Our standard turnaround time is about five business days for it to ship. Some products are a lot quicker. Some are a day or two longer than that. But, yeah. Because, again, we focus just on that one at a time, that's what our whole setup is, we're able to do that. We have relationships with brands who we place orders with every day. When the orders arrive, they go right into the queue. We have it all set up digitally so we know exactly which logo to put on which queue and who to send it to. Again, all as if it's coming from the course. We want to be very much in the background as a partner.

We believe, for an online pro shop to be successful, it needs to be an extension of the course, an extension of the culture, an extension of the on-course shop. And so, we strive hard to make that the case, and really be that shop staff behind the scenes powering it for them.

Charlie: Well, I love that you're saying that because if you weren't saying that, we'd be talking about two logos, because I'd need your logo and my logo, you know?

Ben: Right.

Charlie: As an operator, as a former builder, that's the last thing I want. You're absolutely right. And what you started out our conversation with, I really appreciate it, Ben, is the fact that you're trying to help the pro shop and be additive, not negative, I guess, is the right word. Because, yeah, that is our unique brand, and I'm not going to share it with the guy five miles down the road because that's...he's my competitor. So, I want to pour as much water and grow fast on my stuff, and make it appealing and more available. So, all of this is music to my ear. It makes so much sense because that's the biggest problem. Remember the sale desks around New Year's with all the stuff that wouldn't move. You know, ouch. And this eliminates a lot of that, not all of it, but some of it.

Ben: Well, and then one other tool that's built in is pros and their teams can also add products from their shelves. So, there's an easy app where you can take a picture. It'll automatically remove the background so it looks like a professional product photo. You can track the inventory. And so, you can have a combination of on-demand products in your online store as well as products that you have on-course. And that's especially useful where we see most uses around the holidays, exactly what you're describing, when you want to clear stuff out, but maybe if you're a seasonal course. Or even people are...again, they're just used to ecommerce. And so, if you put options in front of them, they're going to buy it, or maybe those members didn't actually ever go into the pro shop because they hung out at the club house or the pool. It lets you really capture everybody.

Charlie: Absolutely. Well, there's a couple things there. I mean, after a year and a half or whatever the time has been, I don't want to go in your pro shop if I don't have to, you know. Thanks for having the seating outside with propane heaters, blah, blah, blah. And maybe I haven't been in. Maybe I haven't been in in a year on purpose.

Ben: Right.

Charlie: So, we're all a little bit more able to look at the menu on the QR code. So, it's the same...it's not a whole lot different from that. But we're wanting to create the further affinity with our existing customers so they'll feel comfortable doing that. I mean, I know that my daughter is saying, "Let's not buy it on Amazon. Let's buy it somewhere else." And I think we all, you know, kind of feel that way a little bit. I'd rather give it to the local guy. That's what this show is really all about, is that golf courses all across the land trying to figure out a better way to do it.

I'm incredibly excited, Ben. It's almost zero financial risk we're talking about. On the inventory, it's a real change from 20 years ago when, I don't know, at Queenstown that number might have been $100,000 of inventory. Because we had the bags, the shoes, the clothes. Gosh, it was probably more than that. It was probably double that. I don't remember. But this is a huge difference. And so, is it growing leaps and bounds this year? Are you seeing massive interest coming into '21?

Ben: Yeah. No. We're seeing folks want to sell online, not fully sure how to be doing that. And some folks have maybe tried to build their own shop, never done it well, but it just takes so much work and maintenance especially when you have so much else to do. And so, we're seeing interest in folks who want to take advantage of that, and just offer more to their members while making a similar margin and, to your earlier point, having zero upfront risk.

Charlie: Yeah. It's incredible. Such a change for our whole industry. So many new things that are good that are coming out of all this bad stuff. I really appreciate it, Ben. I would love to have you back and talk about the trends sometime because...

Ben: Yeah, that'd be great.

Charlie: I know that this is not the last time that you will be talking about ecommerce to this crowd. And I'm sure '22 will be really exciting with...you know, we're all fighting to get back to where we were. We're fighting to keep our daily fee rounds which is so important. They've come back now with tournaments going on. And as an aside, and I used to run a tournament for our company. That's really exciting, to be able to do such customizable...even the winner gets a special jacket, for example, you know. Incredible. I'm really excited about it. And thank you so much for being part of this today.

Ben: Yeah. Appreciate the time, and enjoyed the discussion. And enjoy the rest of the day. Appreciate it.

Charlie: Best of luck to Tee Commerce. Thank you, Ben Vainer, so much for coming on today.

Thanks, Ben. Hey, folks. Let us know about your online golf shop stories, too. I'm sure there are more than a few of them.

OWNER TO OWNER
(Allison George, Toad Valley Golf Course, IA + Rock Lucas, Charwood Golf Club, SC)

Charlie Birney: Okay. Always my favorite part of the show, Owner-to-owner. Here are Allison and Rock.

I'm so glad. It's almost like we're together. I'm so glad to have Allison and Rock here. Welcome to Owner-to-owner. Guys, how are you this afternoon?

Allison: Wonderful. Thanks for having me.

Charlie: Look. I've heard about the dollhouse. Rock, where are you transmitting from?

Rock: I'm upstairs in the office which I'm barely rarely in here. So, every two weeks and the time to pay bills.

Charlie: What, you don't pay bills every day? Come on, Rock. Well, you guys tell me what's going on now. It's getting cold here, and the leaves are falling. And it's getting cold too fast for me. But what's going on at your necks of the woods?

Rock: Go ahead, Allison.

Allison: All right. Well, I do feel like I need to clarify since Charlie mentioned it. So, I am sitting in my home office because I am in Iowa, as everyone knows, and where it is cold. And during COVID, I decided to build a dollhouse. So, you can see the...if you're with the video, you can see the dollhouse behind me. So, I told him I probably deserve an award because I'm likely the only golf operator that also builds dollhouses.

Charlie: I think that's a fair bet.

Allison: It is a nice...I think, you know... I don't really play much golf anymore. So, I had to find another hobby. And it's a good...it's a nice, relaxing hobby. Kind of keeps me mentally sane. So, in my neck of the woods, so, we spent the last several years, we've basically remodeled every single square foot of our club house. And so, it was time for me to start remodeling the outside. In the last month, we actually have completely taken all apart, moved I don't know how many tons of dirt in our driving range. And so, we are flattening the landing zone of our driving range. We got rid of this leaky pond, and we're doing a bunch of kind of water retention issues that we're fixing up. The intention is that we will be adding Toptracer to our driving range next year. So, that's kind of our big project.

We had simulators we put in last winter that, you know, went over really well. The downside being...that compliment a northern course extremely well because they're really busy when the outside is not. But then they're not as busy during the summer time. So, I was trying to kind of figure out how did I want to add more simulators that would be busier for a longer period of time. And that's when I actually spoke to Cathy Harbin, and she put that in. And I'm sure she's visited about it on the show.

So, that was kind of the route that I decided to take, and super excited about all of that and be able to offer our golfers additional fun things happening at the golf course. And then our golf course also just won Best Golf Course in the Des Moines Metro. So, that's...

Charlie: Oh, congratulations.

Allison: It's kind of a cool honor as well.

Charlie: That's awesome.

Allison: Top that, Rock.

Charlie: All right, Rock. Come on. That's ouchie. Ouch.

Rock: [crosstalk 00:16:36].

Allison: You're the one that had me go first.

Rock: Number one, congratulations on your award. But more importantly than that number one is, can you build me a doghouse? Because I've seen it.

Allison: Hey. You know what? My husband can even attribute to it how nice the doghouse can be.

Rock: And then [inaudible 00:16:58].

Allison: Yes.

Charlie: There we go. There we go.

Rock: But we won't go there because he's a big time elected official now. So, we can't go there.

Charlie: Yeah, that's right.

Rock: So, you know, doing a lot, kind of like Allison's doing. We've done a lot of remodeling of the actual golf course. We're in a sand zone that runs about where the ocean used to be. It runs about 15 miles wide. It runs from Pinehurst, North Carolina down into South Georgia. And we did the USGA which they call now...now call it the Deacon Program. We were one of the pilot programs with it, and started removing a lot of turf, and going back to the natural sand.

And so, we're down to actually 55 acres of managed turf, which kind of goes along with the labor issues. So, it helps a lot of that and a lot of the inputs and so forth. And redid all the landscape around the club house. When I say landscape, we ripped out about 75 to 80 trees and just changed the entire look of the club house, and the grounds, and the grounds around the club house. And then this time of the year, we'll start sharpening all the chainsaws and going around the golf course, and do a lot of tree removal and a lot of [inaudible 00:18:02] and pruning. So, we'll set up the golf course in the morning, blow leaves, and then run chainsaws the rest of the day.

Charlie: I know that at Queenstown, they're talking about changing out the river course fairway and shutting down for a few months next year. Either of you looking at, you know, something major like that in the near future?

Allison: I personally am not. I try everything to not close down my golf course as possible.

Charlie: That's terrifying. Yeah.

Allison: Also, our chainsaws are...they probably need to be sharpened because we have cut down almost 200 ash trees. We've just done one hole, you know, every couple of weeks. It has been a nightmare. And we have...all these logs are all stacked up. We're trying to find...surely, somebody wants them. So, pilot company [crosstalk 00:18:45].

Rock: Yeah. We've had a hard time doing that, you know. That in between, you and I were probably in that in between at most golf courses. So, to bring a forestry or timber crew in, it's going to take truckload after truckload after truckload. But anything less than that, they want to charge you. And there's got to be that middle to where, "Hey. Come get it. It's already cut. It's already lengthed. You load it up, and you make the money. Just get it off my property."

But Del Ratcliffe bought his own sawmill. He bought his own sawmill. So, they're taking all the trees that they're cutting, and they're cutting their own lumber. You know, whether he's selling it, whether he's using it for the property or whatever it is, and you can buy it. They're relatively affordable. You can buy the portable ones. Depends on what you're going to do with it, move it around the property or if it's easier to do that, then may as well move all your logs.

Allison: That does not surprise me in the least. Only Del would be like, "I have to cut down a bunch of trees. So, I'll go buy a sawmill."

Charlie: So, I'll make my own wood. Why not? Every boy's dream, you know, really.

Allison: Yeah. Well, we cut all the branches off. Luckily, we're in the county still. And so, we're able to burn. So, we burn all the branches, but then we have kept all the logs. So, they're just in a big pile. You know, we're all scratching our heads of what we're going to do with them.

Charlie: If you do sawmill it, then you could have your own wood for the dollhouse. But what I want her to build is a pro shop. So, I want her to build a dollhouse pro shop and we could sell that off at the conference for a lot of money, Allison.

Allison: Yes. I like it. You know, I just met with our Titleist rep, and you know, it might be the only option to get product in your pro shop is to be offering the dollhouse version. I don't know about you, Rock, but we certainly have had a hard time keeping in stock with all these weird shipping delays. And, you know, we order new golf carts and it'll probably be a year before we actually get them. I was already a pretty patient person, but COVID has definitely taught me a whole new level of patience.

Rock: Believe it or not, we use mostly Srixon. We use Wilson and Srixon. Wilson, we're having...we use the colored yellow range balls that we got on adjacent fairway. So, I can't get the yellow range balls from Wilson. But Srixon said, "If you'll take all your product for the whole year now, we'll guarantee you'll get it. And we're going to give you a discount on top of what you already get," being a staff account. So, we have literally taken the entire year's order, and we already have it in-house. I'm not worried about any golf balls or anything like that, gloves. [inaudible 00:21:24]

Allison: Excellent. Yeah. No, it has been weird. It's always weird. Because we've even struggled with some beer supplies. You know, you'll order something, and you think it's there, and then all of a sudden, they don't tell you that they didn't bring it. And then it's not there.

Rocky: I had one of my restauranteurs, a lot of my buddies all own restaurants. And one of them texted me Saturday morning and said, "Hey. What's so and so's number?" Because he knew the other guy had a convenience store and all that. He said, "I need straws. We're out." And he called my buddy at the convenience store. He said, "Well, I had to shut down all our fountain machine operations because we don't have straws for DHEC. And so, I said, "Well, I've got some." So, I gave him this. And then he was giving something to somebody else. So, Charlotte's about two hours at the road. So, a lot of product, if you can't get it, they'll do what I just did with, like, Srixon balls. They'll drive up to Charlotte. You know, they can't get bacon. So, they'll drive up there and fill up their whole vehicle coolers full of bacon for the restaurants. The supply chain thing is real.

Allison: Yeah. It is. We had a hard time getting Styrofoam cups. Because we use them because, you know, as you know, on a golf course, you want your drink to stay as cold as long as possible. And, you know, we finally...my food and beverage person was calling around. And he even called Dart, you know, like, the main supplier of that kind of stuff. And they couldn't. So, we finally found some. And we ended up buying, like, 10,000 cups. It was like, "Okay. We're not going through this again," because you got to have cups, you know. [crosstalk 00:22:58].

Rock: If you found it, you better buy it.

Allison: Yup. Probably the thing I say most frequently is, you couldn't make this stuff up if you tried. I never realized how fragile our supply chain is and just really how global our entire economy is. It just depends so much on not even just China which, you know, obviously, you always know that. You know, even little countries. You know, they make just one little, tiny thing and it's fascinating.

Rock: In the U.S., even the grocery stores, they resupply your main staple items, they resupply it four times a day. They don't keep it in the back [inaudible 00:23:38] supplies. So, if the food supply chain breaks down, there's only enough food for probably two days for the whole country before the whole thing shuts down. So, if you go to your grocery store, I mean, they don't keep that much milk in there at that one time. They're going to resupply it a couple times a day. So, if you find it, you better get it.

You know, like one of my restaurant guys, he said he couldn't find anybody to wash dishes. So, they went to all-paper products, which cost him more and is...you got to find it. But that, you know, beat having trying to find somebody to wash the dishes. Other ones have gone to instead of being open x number of days, now they're going to be open, say, Tuesday through Saturday, closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday because they don't have the staff.

And another conversation I was having is the people have become...and especially the restaurant side of it, they've become conditioned because the restaurants, one, they were closed. And then when we started opening them up, they were closing, like, at 8. And then now, they're trying to go to 9, then they're trying to go to 10. And so, all the employees, they don't want to work till 10:00 or 11:00. And I got my daughter even. She's going to college and she works at one of them and said, "They want to stay back open till 11:00." And I said, "You used to work till 12 and get off at 1. And now, you're complaining about working till 11." I said, "You know, you've become conditioned." And so, it's even in my own household.

Allison: It's weird. You know, I was telling Charlie before the show, even...you know, I would consider myself to be an outgoing person. And even I have gotten to where, like, I just kind of prefer my home. It's really weird. I've never spent more time at home than I have this last year. And it's just kind of...you know, someday I hope we'll be a better person for this entire experience, for sure.

Charlie: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it does my heart joy in the meantime to be with both of you guys, and hear what's going on. It's been a crazy year here, too, in employment not just in media, but I'm involved in marinas as well as some commercial stuff here from the company I used to work at. And the staffing problems, you guys know this, they're everywhere. It's just absolutely everywhere. There's nowhere that this isn't a problem. Cities and urban areas, too. So, I'm kind of amazed and just hoping that maybe this spring will bring more workers, you know, I'm hoping.

Allison: Yeah. You know, it's kind of a mystery. Almost everyone I talk to, you know, it doesn't really add up. Like, what were these people doing beforehand? And my only assumption is that they used to have a second job. And I think that's where the golf course is a little more affected because a lot of people who at least work at my golf course, you know, it's their second job. It's their, like, fun job. And they kind of got used to not doing that extra fun job. And so, then, you know...I don't know. It's interesting.

I did see... We've been planning out this Toptracer. I'm actually pretty excited to go to the PGA show because I can't remember which range company it is. But they basically have a robot range ball picker. So, it'll be...because that's, like, a really hard position for us to find because it's kind of a monotonous, you know, boring work, but extremely vital in the operation of our range. And it is just unbelievable. You just program, runs off a GPS and, you know, like, this goes and picks up your range. And, of course, you know, there's no risk of anybody getting hurt on it.

Charlie: Yeah, because we all used to aim at that person.

Allison: I know.

Charlie: You know what I'm saying. When I would go to the range and that guy came by, I would try to hit that thing.

Allison: Yes.

Charlie: I could never do it, but I would try. I'm sure I got it once in a while.

Rock: Yeah. I think [crosstalk 00:27:13] and Justin or Jason...Charlie, you did one a while back with one of them, their demo and one right now.

Charlie: That's right. That's right. No, this is the stuff that we're going to see. Man, it's super, super exciting. So, yeah. I forget who it was. You're right. One of those guys had one up and running, I think, maybe. Yeah.

Rock: Yeah. They're doing one now, the autonomous. And they've got the mowers also. They've got the rough units out, and I know that John Deere has been doing the fairway units. They're actually on a couple golf courses now on South Carolina where they're still in the testing. And I was at...they had...I forgot the company. Cub Cadet, I think it was. They had the autonomous greens mowers. And I watched the videos of them out at a USGA Regional Conference, and this was two years ago. And they were already out there in the field. And so, the assistant of whoever would go and unload it, it would start mowing the green while he changed the cups, raked the bunkers and all that. And it was pretty neat, but they also showed all the pictures of where they were flipped over into the bunkers and ponds and some things. Still, the technology is close, but not, you know, in this market where it needs to be yet.

Charlie: Of course. I remember when we converted the Queenstown to a golf course. We took the farmer who'd been there with the soy and the feed corn, and he became a mower on the golf course. The problem with that as opposed to the robot is that, occasionally, Eddie would fall asleep, you know. At least the robot doesn't fall asleep. Ed, he was a wonderful guy. I love him, but he was getting on, and he would occasionally just take a little snooze cutting the fairway. That was pretty dangerous.

Rock: I can see people putting a barrel on top of the autonomous range picker. You hit the barrel while it's moving, you win something, you know, a free drink.

Allison: There you go.

Charlie: I like that. That's perfect. Oh.

Allison: I'm actually so comforted to hear that story, Charlie, because I used to have a great uncle that worked at our course. And this was, you know, back in the '70s. And so, you know, people's standards were a little different, I think, back then. But we had one of those huge gang mowers, you know. It used to be we had no trees on our golf course. So, you could mow and mow and mow, and you wouldn't run into things. And he would fall asleep also. You know, he was an older guy. And so, sometimes a golfer...

Charlie: All that noise kind of lulls you into a...

Allison: Yeah. The golfers would, you know, have to pull over sometimes, you know, make sure that he was in fact just sleeping.

Charlie: Yeah. Well, you know, [crosstalk 00:29:34].

Rock: [crosstalk 00:29:34] out, but we got a president that does the same thing.

Charlie: I don't want anybody to know this, but I feel asleep recording someone once in a podcast. So, it does happen.

Rock: I guarantee you. If I sit still, my wife would tell me, I'm not sure who falls asleep first, me or my lab. The lab, she'll start snoring, but the second I sit down, man, I'm done.

Allison: Yeah. And it gets earlier and earlier the older you get.

Charlie: Yes, it does. That, I'm okay with. But, yes, it does. Well, Allison, Rock, so good to see you both and talk with you. And I'll be thinking of you, and have a wonderful rest of the week. And thanks for being here today.

Allison: Thank you, Charlie. Great seeing you guys.

Rock: Appreciate it. Thank you.

Charlie: Thanks today to Allison and Rock, and Ben Vainer for a great episode. And as always, thanks to John Deere and Yamaha. Hey, Robb Spewak in the booth, thanks to you for running these sessions. And lastly, to our listeners, thank you, and continue to send in your golf business stories. See you next time.




Podcast transcription courtesy of Podville Media.