Sniffing Out the Best Tee Times with Kelly Gold, Founder of TeeFox.golf

Kelly Gold 00:57

That's right. Yeah. Hey, Colin. Thanks for having me. First off, I'm glad we got to connect after we we met, gosh, it feels so long ago, back in Ireland earlier this year. So I'm so happy to be here on the podcast and excited to talk golf with you today.

The ModGolf Podcast 01:15

Absolutely. It's just funny how this whole golf community works. The fact we're halfway around the world or almost halfway around and that's where we meet. And now we're both back in North America. I'm in Vancouver. Of course, you're one time zone away from me in beautiful Colorado. And we're making all this happen. So Before we dig into all the good things you're doing and that entrepreneurial journey here, Kelly, I'd love to ask this because i don't know your background in golf at all. So this icebreaker question, your connectivity to golf, that first golf experience you ever had in your life, and who was that person, that power of invitation that invited you to get a golf club in your hand and perhaps share a positive magical moment that hooked you, that got that golf bug that's led to you to where you are now?

Kelly Gold 02:05

Yeah so I had an interesting journey with golf. I picked up a golf club early. My dad was the person who introduced me to it. So I was taking lessons when I was four or five years old. And I was getting pretty into golf in my youth up through high school, doing some tournaments and some junior tournaments and playing in high school. But after doing that for a little bit, I just really didn't like practicing. I didn't like the commitment. It felt like a job. And so I stopped playing till after I went to college for a bit, got a job and I could afford to play again.

And then I started playing for fun and especially through COVID just really found myself playing a lot and enjoying it even by myself, met a lot of great people through it and eventually found myself frustrated to get tee times and that led me to to ultimately start TeeFOX.

The ModGolf Podcast 03:02

Love this, love this. Okay, before we get into what you do and why you do it with TeeFox, your background, I understand, is a solutions engineer. My background is in traditional architecture designing buildings. I'm not quite sure what a solution engineer is. So could you share with us what that is, what you've done previously, and how that has informed you as part of your secret sauce that's given you the ability to build what you've built so far with TeeFox Golf?

Kelly Gold 03:30

Yeah, I'm not too sure either. But I can give you the history. So I always knew I was going to work in the tech industry. So that's my background. I've been in software, working in software startups, some big companies briefly as well. So I was in college for computer science. I had an internship after my first year, actually a couple internships, and eventually I dropped out of college just to work for one of those software companies. Somebody said, hey, why don't you see if they'll hire you?

I said, that sounds like a great idea. I'd much rather get paid to learn. And so I got lucky, very very fortunate to find a place where I was able to learn and grow and have a lot of great people around me to help teach me and move up through the different roles. So I was a product guy for a little bit, product manager that's deciding on the roadmap and that sort of thing. And then I found myself as a solutions engineer, which is where you're on the pre sales side. And I would do demos and that kind of thing, basically just answer all the technical questions that people had.

The ModGolf Podcast 04:36

Right.

Kelly Gold 04:36

I was always working in the type of subcategory of the tech industry I worked in, it was very, very technical back end tools, tools for engineers. And so they needed engineering minds in the sales process. And so that was my job was to be the technical resource, the guy who can answer all the questions and give the demos and get people excited about the product. And so that's kind of the job of a solutions engineer. Yeah, and a little bit of background there.

The ModGolf Podcast 05:08

There we go. Well, thank you for explaining that. As we talked about before we jumped on the recording here, it's like you'll need to explain this like you're talking to a third grader. Otherwise, I will not understand this.

Kelly Gold 05:16

Yeah.

The ModGolf Podcast 05:17

So now I do understand what a solutions engineer is. So thank you for that. Okay, I love to dig into the AHA moment, the backstory of all the ventures that our entrepreneurs like yourself create share with us here. But before we do that, why don't we dive right into it here, Kelly? Why don't you give us what was the elevator pitch or let us know what you're doing with TeeFox Golf, what you're doing and why you do it.

Kelly Gold 05:47

Yeah, so the thing we're trying to do is build the largest tee time catalog in the US and become the premier tee time distributor. So what that means is not only just having an app or a place, a website where you can come and view all these tee times, but enabling other companies in in the industry with that data. So we're not the only people who can make use of this data. We've found that other companies, for example, like maybe you're a travel agency or a golf GPS app.

And wouldn't it be cool if you could send your user a notification saying, hey, a tee time just opened up at that course you play all the time. And so there's ways that we can get this data out into the industry even more to just create better experiences for golfers. And that's really what this whole venture was, wanting to create a better experience for booking tee times. Yeah.

The ModGolf Podcast 06:42

Got it, got it. Okay, so I have to ask you as far as the pain points that you saw, I know you just elaborated on that a little bit, but I want you to dig deeper into that because before we jumped on here, I couldn't help myself, went on ChatGPT and just asked for the top tee time booking apps and their core strengths. And of course, about 30 of them popped up here. So there is, I wouldn't call it a crowded marketplace, but this also validates the fact you're doing something that it's expanding. There's more opportunity. So compared to, let's say, the Golf Nows of the world and some others that are out there and let's say 18 Birdies, what is your secret sauce? What is the differentiator? What did you see from the people that you talked to that were experiencing this pain of not being able to book tee times that you looked at as the advantage that you could provide here with what you're doing.

Kelly Gold 07:34

Yeah, first off, great question, and I'm glad to dive into that a little bit because it's an interesting one. I wasn't happy with the platforms that were out there. I still found myself going to individual course websites. So, I wake up on the weekend, I'm looking for tee times, I'm Googling this course and that course and that course and I don't see anything, I don't see anything. And I spend the first hour of my day, just going around to different course websites, clicking through trying to see tee times. Okay. There's nothing there. And for Golf Now, i'll give you one example of why some of these platforms sometimes fall short.

So for a long time, Golf Now their business model was that you had to give up tee times for free each day to be listed.

The ModGolf Podcast 08:21

Right.

Kelly Gold 08:22

And so that meant that busy courses, these really popular courses, they don't need to be on Golf Now. They have plenty of traffic. They don't really need to give away a bunch of revenue each month. Thousands of dollars in revenue in order to fill up their Tee sheet to what they consider an acceptable level. So in Denver, what resulted is a ton of missing courses. Now, not every city is like that. I know Denver's uniquely bad on Golf Now is what I hear.

There are some other cities that have better coverage there. But that core business model ends up preventing some level of courses from being on there. And so we've taken a different strategy where we've set up our business model where we're not relying on the course to buy something to be listed on our website. We're getting as many courses as possible. We're putting the tee times together and we're putting them in front of golfers.

The ModGolf Podcast 09:19

Understood. Understood. I'm assuming what you're creating here without digging deeper yet into the business model and the financial side of this, but it seems like you're creating a two-sided marketplace in that you are working with the golf courses to empower them so that it adds more value for them where the Golf Nows of the world and a few others. Yeah. it actually is counterintuitive or it works against them with the golf courses. It does not benefit them, is the best way to put it. So talk about that as far as the relationships that you're building, not just with the golfers like myself that struggle to find tee times. I know I'm up here in Canada in Vancouver, British Columbia.

And don't have the availability quite yet with Tee Fox to access the golf courses here. But even the local courses here, it's really, really, really difficult to get tee times. So tell me a little bit about that as far as the partnerships that you're working. Are you working with local golf courses? Is your beachhead to, as they say, to nail it, then to scale it across other states and then across the whole country? So tell us a little bit about that as far as the validation that you're getting the partnerships that you're building.

Kelly Gold 10:28

Yeah, so we've developed a strategy where we're able to list as many golf courses as we can. That being said, I've been talking to tons of GMs around me and having conversations. And what we're trying to do is ah bring more business to the golf courses, make it easier to get golfers to the golf course. And so what I found when I go talk to these GMs is there's some initial hesitation when they're concerned that maybe we're buying up tee times, trying to resell them. That's a problem somewhere so in some places and the tee time brokers.

The ModGolf Podcast 10:59

Yes.

Kelly Gold 11:01

So they don't want that. We don't do that. And also if you're charging too many fees, they they feel like you're kind of taxing their tee time or you're charging extra. And the conversations I've been having are all around just how do we create the most seamless experience? A lot of that is we remove those fees. So we recently moved to this subscription model to help get rid of those and put it more in front of the golfer, make the value, the service that we're offering.

And they're pretty happy with it when we send them bookings, right? They want to fill their tee sheet. That feels good. And if we're able to send more bookings to their course, that's great. We also have a new product we're about to launch, which is like a little Tee Fox widget they can put on their website and it just allows customers to put in their phone number and get a text if something pops up. So that helps with some basic retention and demand generation. The one thing that i learned this year, getting full time on this project is just that the golf industry is a little, let's say behind technically compared to what I'm used to in the high tech world.

The ModGolf Podcast 12:10

Right.

Kelly Gold 12:11

So there's bit of a culture shock, right? Where it's like, oh, they don't they don't do any of these things in this industry or they're just turning onto it. And I'm seeing a lot of change, which is exciting, especially around technology in golf in all kinds of ways. And so I think there's kind of a ripe moment here where there's a lot of new things popping up and it's an exciting time to to to be working on golf.

The ModGolf Podcast 12:35

Right, right. And I've noticed that too in the 10 years or so that I've been involved in the golf technology space and the golf ventures with what I've done outside of ModGolf. And in some cases, it's like this double-edged sword that there's so much opportunity because golf as an industry has been so much farther behind other sectors and other industries. But also the other side, the fact that they have more of a Luddite mindset or they are, let's say, technically... How can be polite here? Not as up to speed as let's say other industries that then you have to pull them along or you're starting from zero. I know the last five years post COVID, it's been a little bit easier, but still there's that opportunity, but also there is still resistance or it's a bit slower. So it sounds like you've felt that dynamic also.

Kelly Gold 13:23

Yeah, and I think it's starting to shift. Just to give some tactical examples, a lot of golf courses maybe are not using a CRM in a traditional sense. So knowing who your customer is and then being able to send out emails to them for, getting them back to the course or events that you're throwing, tournaments, doing promotions. That's all coming onto scene at more popular courses, but still broadly speaking in the industry is not something that a lot of courses are doing.

But yeah, thats that's one example of just you know the ways that they're kind of still coming on. Another example would be there are these groups that own, say, 20 or 50 golf courses, right?

The ModGolf Podcast 14:12

Right.

Kelly Gold 14:12

What's the performance across your portfolio? Do you actually have visibility into which courses are performing well and filling their Tee-sheets? Or is it just a revenue number, at the end of the day? And so we're finding that there's not a ton of these analytics tools that will give some of these organizations that own many golf courses, visibility into the performance of their golf course set. And that's something that we're able to start offering through our service of building this big tee time catalog and developing an understanding and a picture of the world of tee times. And then we can extract all these insights that we're not really sure how we'll share yet, but they're very interesting and I'm sure they'll be very interesting to others in the industry.

The ModGolf Podcast 14:59

Yes, yes. And speaking of insights, I recall when you and I sat down at the Golf Business Technology Conference in Belfast over a pint of Guinness that you shared a stat that blew my mind as far as the number of cancellations and then wasted tee time opportunities that golf courses have and that they lose that You're now talking with prompts that you can put it out there with notifications and then have that filled. So Yeah, that number blew my mind how high it was.

Could perhaps you share some of some of those insights and those numbers as far as how prolific this is across the US as far as how many tee times are are lost on a daily or weekly or monthly basis?

Kelly Gold 15:40

Yeah great question. And that's one of the key pain points really of booking tee times today in the United States is that there isn't really prepayment. So a lot of courses, they require a credit card on file to book a tee time, but you can still cancel up till the day before.

The ModGolf Podcast 15:56

Wow.

Kelly Gold 15:57

Then they're releasing tee times typically between seven and 14 days ahead of time. And what that ends up happening is people book up all the good times right when they come out, they try to get their friends together, and they cancel it if they can't get their friends together. By percentage, what we've seen is sometimes up, it varies from course to course, but up to 25, 30% significant percentage of bookings.

The ModGolf Podcast 16:19

wow

Kelly Gold 16:21

And I just read a white paper from an investment firm that's focused on golf. I think based in Denver. And they said that there's a $12.3 billion dollars leakage of tee time revenue each year from cancellations, no-shows, et cetera. So it's a big problem for courses. There's a ton of revenue being left on the table for golf courses nationally

The ModGolf Podcast 16:45

Wow. That's B as in billion.

Kelly Gold 16:47

as in billion. Yeah.

The ModGolf Podcast 16:48

That is crazy stuff. So let's talk about how you not only benefit here with TeeFox Golf, but how the golf courses now benefit from that stat to help fill those tee times and for the golfers. So talk to us a bit about your revenue and your pricing model. How have you done this? I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with this, and I'm sure you're looking at the competitors to kind of find your your price point, but can you shed a little bit of insight on that, of how you've managed to, let's say, tweak or find that right balance for value for everybody.

Kelly Gold 17:22

Well, I think, you know, we're hoping to continue to make it even ah more accessible and more valuable as we scale up here. And so how it works today is you can look a couple of days ahead. We want you to be able to use the platform, try it out, make sure that it works. You can actually see tee times. And then we have it set up where there's a $9 a month basic subscription and a $29 a month premium subscription. And the biggest difference between those is going to be the booking window goes up to 10 and then out to 90 days, which means you can actually get ahead of the new tee times coming out, get on that waitlist and then right when it pops up, whether it's midnight or 6pm or whenever that course happens to release them, our concierge will be there to pick it up and book you a good slot and send it to you.

The ModGolf Podcast 17:57

Right.

Kelly Gold 18:09

And then we also have the alerts functionality. So coming on to tthe T-Fox Pro, you actually get the the option to book it yourself.

The ModGolf Podcast 18:17

right

Kelly Gold 18:25

So you can book it through us, and there's a small fee for that. But we know some golfers don't like that. So we'll also just give you the link and you have the option to book it yourself. So there's a lot of flexibility when you subscribe to the platform where you're searching tee times. If you see a tee time you like right now, you can just book it yourself. You can book it through us. You can get an alert. If there's not a tee time, you can get on the wait list and have us book it for you. What we've really done is combine a lot of features that I've seen in kind of other applications.

There's other golf search platforms, but they don't have a wait list. They don't have alerts like Golf Now or Supreme Golf. They might not have some of those more advanced features. And we've put all of that onto one simple page, right? So I like to think that what we're helping one of the things we're creating here is the simplest experience. A lot of the other applications out there have a lot going on.

And I don't need to know all of that. I know where I want to play. I know what 10 golf courses are around me that I'm going to drive to. I just want to see the tee times. So we're really aiming to kind of target those frequent golfers, those avid golfers who are just like, "give me the tee time information".

The ModGolf Podcast 19:34

Nice, nice. Now, my understanding is, and you're based in Colorado, so right now you have access for golfers for three states, or have you expanded from there?

Kelly Gold 19:45

Oh yeah, no, we have 7,000 golf courses now, pretty much available nationally. We're pretty much in every state.

The ModGolf Podcast 19:51

Great.

Kelly Gold 19:54

Yeah. We've got like hundreds in California, Florida. Yeah all over at this point so we're really racing, as I mentioned, to have the largest catalog. That's one of the key target points for us. And the number that I kind of have in my head right now is about, somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 golf courses with actual serviceable tee times. So not just listing the course on your website or having a link out to the booking page, but actually showing the tee times for all of those courses will have definitively the largest catalog. And I hope that will be here in the next couple of months.

The ModGolf Podcast 20:31

Excellent. Excellent. Well, hey, sorry, I didn't mean to sell you and TeeFox Golf short there. Good to know you're up to 7,000 and growing as we speak. I want to flip this around a little bit to say the branding and naming side. My understanding is you did launch as TeeBox Golf and you have changed it to TeeFox Golf, which I love, by the way. I think it's more memorable. So you could talk about this the process, because I know in a lot of cases with branding ventures that we've created, some people spend absolutely no time doing things. You see some businesses out there, they're like AAA tools or ABC vacuuming or whatever. And It's fine. It doesn't really matter for them.

Where we've spent time, probably too much time agonizing over the name of things and letting it paralyze ourselves. So what I want to have you pull the curtain back and have a little bit of fun here. So how did you arrive starting with Tee-Box golf and how did that evolve and into Tee-Fox golf?

Kelly Gold 21:32

Yeah, great question. I wish I could say that it was like a choice that we came to this name, but what actually happened was, I didn't know what I didn't know getting started as an entrepreneur and I chose a name. I found a domain. I thought, all right, cool, that's my company. And when I started looking into the trademarks, it turns out somebody already has the, the Tee box software trademark in there, a simulator business, I think out of Utah.

The ModGolf Podcast 21:57

Right. Okay. okay

Kelly Gold 22:00

And so once I found that out, it was time to pick a new name. And so we started exploring, agonizing definitely is a good word for it, over the different options. I had sent out Survey Monkey surveys just to random targeted golfers to try and get a sense of what the people thought was good. And ultimately, I was laying in bed one evening thinking, man, this is such a silly thing to be spending time on. If only one letter was different, it wouldn't be a problem. And I started thinking, what letter can I swap out?

And Tee Fox was the first thing that popped into my head. And at first I thought, oh, it's a little cringy. But after a second, I thought, you know what, that's actually great. It's like kind of the Geico, the Aflac, other companies that have these like really, really memorable animals to go with them and something that I felt after I thought about it more that's lacking in the golf industry. Every single other golf app out there pretty much has golf in the name.

It's like we got Golf Now, Supreme Golf, one of our competitors, Fairway Finder, Loop Golf. All of these companies just have these, for lack of a better word, boring, very accurate, verbose type names. I thought there was an opportunity to do something more more fun that we could play around with marketing.

The ModGolf Podcast 23:24

I love it. I think it's a virtue, the fact that you had to pivot, and I like it. And I've seen some of your videos, your promotional trailers, and I noticed at the end there, you do have an animated Fox there. So you've already established that. So now the next question, I know you're not quite there yet, but what famous actor is going to be the voice of your Fox? If you had to shortlist that, I'm putting you on the spot here, Kelly, but who would you like to have? You could choose anyone in the world. Who would it be that would be the voice of Tee-Fox?

Kelly Gold 23:58

Oh goodness, that is a tough question. Man, I can't, it's hard to say, and the reason I say that is because currently all of those Fox videos that we're making are, they're AI generated.

The ModGolf Podcast 24:13

Yes.

Kelly Gold 24:13

so I want a snarky, sneaky voice, and it spits out something for my fox. I'm trying to think who would match up with that in the real world, but I can't. No one's coming to mind. Someone sleuthy.

The ModGolf Podcast 24:29

And that's okay. I put you on the spot here. Got to keep going with putting you on the spot here. I'm going to pivot a little bit of here and ask you this question. And I haven't asked this one in a couple of years on ModGolf, but I love the responses that I get all over the map here. And that is, can you share with us one of the first jobs you havd, that you consider the worst job you ever had. Maybe you worked there only a day and then you quit. i don't know what that is.

What is the worst job you ever had? And looking back now, what positive takeaway from that negative experience have you learned that's helped you with what you do now?

Kelly Gold 25:08

Uh, yeah, my first job was, I worked at a steak and shake. I worked in the drive through.

The ModGolf Podcast 25:13

All right.

Kelly Gold 25:13

so it's nonstop, working in food service, and especially in a drive through, those cars come around for eight hours. You only get two 15 minute breaks.

The ModGolf Podcast 25:26

Right.

Kelly Gold 25:26

It's a lot to be on your feet, running around doing that all day. What I learned from it though, busting my butt for $8 hour was just, just a strong work ethic, that I took on really early. It always felt important for me. I got a job the day I turned 16 pretty much. So I think just getting a strong work ethic was really what I got out of it, taught me the value the future jobs that I got as they got a little more comfy, right, working in an office and being able to take time off to go to like an appointment if I have to, those kind of luxuries that come with having a corporate job.

The ModGolf Podcast 26:11

So there you go. Yes, that that sounds like it was a very intense job. And I'm sure being at that cold face where you're at the window, you heard the brunt from people if things went wrong. I was in hospitality for years also as as a waiter.

Kelly Gold 26:28

Yes.

The ModGolf Podcast 26:29

And one of the things you have to deal with, and it sounds like you did also, things that are beyond your control that go wrong, but ultimately you're that person with that customer or that client that you have to hear it. And you have to then, even though you're not the one that created that problem, you've got to help solve that problem. So did you find that also, as far as your problem solving almost ah spontaneously that you had to handle to try to make something better rather than making a situation worse?

Kelly Gold 26:55

I've never really thought about that, but you're probably right. I think I learned a lot of valuable kind of customer service things through that. I also worked as a waiter. And then after that, I worked as at a Best Buy as well, where I was selling computers. And that's actually where I really got the bulk of my my skill set. That's where I learned to talk to As I mentioned in that solution engineer job I was doing, I had to talk to engineers, but also heads of marketing.

And so you have to speak to each of those people differently. And I learned a lot of that at that Best Buy job where you didn't know if it was a mom coming in who just wants to buy her kid a a good computer for school, or it was the guy who thinks he knows everything and wants to like talk all the tech specs with you. And so you had to learn to assess every single person that came in and find that right level of how to talk to that person. And I didn't realize how valuable that that skill was until I started working professionally. And I was like, oh, that's that's actually really, really important niche skill to have where you can explain things on on different levels for different kinds of people.

The ModGolf Podcast 28:04

Yes, and that's part of that active listening, being able to, whether you're waitering or working at Best Buy, within moments you have to do your best to thin slice that, to to find out what their needs, wants, desires are, without misjudging what the person really is there for, what perhaps they want to buy. I see this, and we've had this in the past, especially when we were younger, walking into car dealerships where ah we pull up in an older car, we're dressed casually and people won't even talk to us. And it's like, we're ready to drop like 40, 50, $60,000 on a vehicle here and you won't even talk to us.

So not doing that. And it sounds like you got very good of getting your reps in that I'm sure that has helped you with what you do now. as an entrepreneur that with, uh, with the platform that you're creating with, with T Fox golf.

Kelly Gold 28:55

Yeah, I like to think so. I'm glad I got to spend, i mean, I spent time at the, you know, in those jobs and then of course working in the the software industry for, um you know, like seven, eight years, seven years, eight years. So um yeah, i spent a lot of you know, nine, 10 years kind of working in customer service in the software industry. As much as they can, it's helped prepare me for what I'm working on now.

I've been fortunate to meet a lot of great people, and that's a big part of what building a company at this stage comes down to. You've got to have a lot of good people on your team that you feel confident in, that are autonomous, that are better than you at certain functions. That's been the best part of kind of spending all of that time building that career is the network of people that are now able to come help and are excited about Tee FOX. And that's the most awesome thing ever when you have another colleague or someone who's like, what can I do to help? Let me get involved. It's such an awesome thing to be working on.

The ModGolf Podcast 29:56

I love that. I want to dig into that, the team that you're building around you and with you in a second here. But I did want to mention that after Kelly and I finish up here on the ModGolf podcast, we are going to jump over to the ModGolf YouTube channel. We're going to shoot a video and I really encourage all of you listeners to go to the show page where I will have the link for that because we are going to do a live demo today.

You've granted me access here to the TeeFox platform, and we're going to run through and we're going to book a couple of tee times here. So everyone that's interested in that, I really strongly encourage you to join us over there on the ModGolf YouTube channel. Okay, so back to... when you're building and when you did build T-Fox and starting off here, well, back in the day with T-Box. So I want to hear a little bit about that aha moment because you saw pain points.

You've got this convergence of yourself as playing golf competitively, seeing yourself. It's difficult to build to book Tee Times and also with your tech background. But... You have to make that decision. It's like, I'm going to put my resources in and I'm going to build this thing. So I want to hear a couple of things here as why you had the confidence you decided I can do anything I want with my time, work for another company, build something else but you decided I'm going to go all in here with Tee Fox.

And who are the other people around you? Because we can't do everything ourselves here. We have strengths, but we also have gaps. So tell us about those two things as far as how starting off, what you saw that that inspiring AHA moment and the people that you brought in to fill those gaps.

Kelly Gold 31:28

So like I said, just born out of frustration myself for finding tee times and I observed, I had seen all these golf courses use the same five or seven softwares, generally speaking. And if you could just hook into those five or seven touch points, you could have thousands of golf courses. I thought to myself, and that was an observation that I made due to my background, as an integration expert, as a data guy.

And so I decided to hack together a little prototype one day, just seeing if I could get at the data that we wanted and get it all nicely together and create this simple search. Turns out you can't. So once I figured that out, I was working on that for a year while I was working at another startup as a solutions engineer. After about a year of doing both, I had sold a large deal at that company. And I got to thinking, if I can build something that Best Buy once wants to buy, then this thing has some potential. And so I want to go work for myself. So this was twofold. One was like, we had built up the prototype but a good bit over that first year, got it to a place where we started to feel confident we could launch a product pretty quickly.

And then also just feeling like I'm giving all of my good hours in the day to to someone else and it's time to to work on something for ourselves. Yeah.

The ModGolf Podcast 33:00

I really like the way you put that as far as the sequencing that, yes, it was a side hustle that you were developing and getting not only to physically build it, but also having the insights and using the experience and in and tools that you already had at your disposal to bootstrap this the best you can and get that product and market validation going. But I know even myself over 10 years ago, looking back that I gave up my day job a little bit too soon before we actually had that validation and traction that you managed to get before you made that decision. I know there's no one size fits all. You have to make that decision. That's one of the hard things with entrepreneurship. You being a founder, you have to make that decision and go with your gut, even though it may be intimidating and bit overwhelming and bit frightening sometimes, but you did it and then you started to build. So, so talk about that next piece. Who else did you bring in on board, even as fractional or with friends to help you on the marketing side to get it out there.

So tell us about the other pieces and the team that you have right now with Tee Fox Golf.

Kelly Gold 34:05

Yeah, so initially I reached out to a buddy of mine, an engineer and I said hey I could use some help on this, particularly on the the front end the side of things making it look nice and all of that. That's not really my skillset. He told me man, I don't really play golf. I don't think I'm interested. About two weeks later he called me back and said, Hey, you know, man, I actually want to give this a try.

I'm trying to build my side development business. And this seems like it's a good fit. It's all just coding, right? And I said, okay, sure. And now he's playing golf more than anybody I know. He's gotten so into it over the last couple of years.

The ModGolf Podcast 34:51

Look at that.

Kelly Gold 34:51

It's been awesome. So he really got the bug after he joined. Since then, a mutual friend of his, we brought him on and some more engineers to build out a lot of the infrastructure we needed. And then more recently, some colleagues of mine - the sales and marketing side that i've worked with over the last nine years at various companies. Chris Price and someone that they recently had left to start their own digital marketing company and it worked out. Just good timing wise where we can help each other out, we need support and you guys need business.

So we were able to find a good structure for that. And then also leveraging some offshore resourcing as well for certain tasks. It's a huge asset to add that supplemental resourcing to our team here as well.

The ModGolf Podcast 35:47

There we go. There we go. I have so many more questions I want to ask you here, Kelly, but i'm going to show a little bit of restraint, which is not my natural state. I got to hold off because you and I, as I mentioned, are going to jump over to the ModGolf YouTube channel, not only for the demo, but we're going talk about the future of Tee Fox Golf and where you're going to go, where you see these opportunities.

And also, anyone listening if you're considering entrepreneurship, you've got some ideas, perhaps you've already worked on a venture or two. I really want to dig into your journey as an entrepreneur and perhaps you can give us some valuable insights and some cautionary tales of what hasn't worked. So I want to hold off on that. But before we go here, Kelly, why don't you let our listeners know where they can learn more about Tee Fox Golf, the website and also on social media?

Kelly Gold 36:44

Yeah, teefox.golf is our website and you can find us at teefox.golf on pretty much every platform or on our links on our web page so yeah teefox.golf is the best way to find tee times go ahead and check it out.

The ModGolf Podcast 36:59

Nice and simple. And as I always do in the show notes, I will include the links to everything Kelly just mentioned there for Tee Fox Golf. And as I also said, with the link to our YouTube video also. So with that, Kelly Gold, this has been great.

Kelly Gold 37:15

Yeah.

The ModGolf Podcast 37:15

I love this conversation.

Kelly Gold 37:15

Thanks for having me. Yeah. It was super, super fun. Enjoyed this.

The ModGolf Podcast 37:19

Absolutely. Hey, thanks so much. i look forward to seeing you over on YouTube.

Kelly Gold 37:22

Right. I'll see you over there.