Mike Hendrix (00:00)
Hi, I am Mike Hendrix from smbGOLF And today my guest is Bryan Lord who founded Teesnap and this is the Tech Caddie podcast.

Bryan, welcome to the podcast. Excited for the conversation.

Bryan Lord (00:27)
Me too. Appreciate it.

Mike Hendrix (00:29)
Well, for people that don't know, Teesnap started, you know, not, it's not as old as some of the other tee sheets and point of sales. It's actually one of the newer ones that came along really when I was like right in the middle of golf technology. And I thought it would be great to have you on just, I don't know if you've ever watched the pod before, but we have a lot of founders.

and people that are trying to be founders that watch the podcast. And then we have a lot of golf course operators that watch the podcast. And so I'm always thinking about those people and how I can give them some value with the podcast. And I thought, well, man, you have seen it from so many different angles. I thought it'd be really cool to have a conversation and learn about what you're up to today as well. Okay. So let's give a brief overview. I'll give a brief overview of Teesnap.

Bryan Lord (01:14)
Sounds great.

Mike Hendrix (01:21)
today Teesnap is point of sale and tee sheet and actually a marketing services as well. Marketing services has become pretty important at Teesnap. It is rooted. If that's the right way to say it, it is rooted in iOS. He snap operates primarily on iPads. but there is a back office function that you can be in any, any computer. but talk to us, give us an insight into.

why you wanted to start Teesnap, maybe even was, did it have a different name at some time? You had to go raise money, all those things. It'd be interesting to hear the origin story of Teesnap.

Bryan Lord (01:59)
Sure, yeah. I mean, it goes back to when I was a student at Purdue. I wanted to book tee time on my phone, which to be clear, Mike, mean, GolfNow really ended up accomplishing that problem very well. But I didn't really know. I wasn't familiar with the industry. I'm not like a PGA pro. I worked at golf courses when I was young on grounds maintenance, like mowing greens, fixing ball marks, mowing fairways. But Mike, I did that just because I wanted to play free golf.

Like, you know, it was a cool job to wake up at four in the morning, you you work four or five hours. Yeah, the rest of your day. So I did enjoy it. But as far as like understanding the operations of a golf course, that was never my really like I never worked in the pro shop. But as a consumer, you know, I early adopter attacks, I had, you know, early smartphones, Windows phones long before the advent of the iPhone. And at the time, people

you know, the reservation industries were coming online like Expedia, Travelocity, like, you know, the edge of the internet. And I kind of thought, you know, golf should have the tee times GolfNow ended up, you know, solving that problem amongst other vendors. But along that path, I started to talk to golf course operators and people had a lot of pain with their operational software. And I'll admit that what I was, I was fortunate, lucky to figure out that

people had very specific complaints, but those individual complaints would not be a reason to like change your software, right? Like a lot of people like to complain about things. Oh, if you only do this one thing, I would change everything. Well, that's actually not true. They wouldn't. But what I found at the time, really, which you can appreciate Mike, you know, knowing a lot of operators, no operator told me the problem, right? But the problem was the disparate systems problem, right? Of course you got to go back 2000, you know, really 2000.

six, seven, eight, nine, right? The disparate systems problems was huge, right? Your tee sheet was separate from your point of sale, separate from the CRM, all separate systems. The best you could do is ETL, know, Excel spreadsheets, give it to accountants, try to mash things together. No one said it that way, but that was the takeaway. So the idea was, hey, instead of addressing like the online tee time marketplace, which at the time, think 2011-ish, you know,

that problem was starting to be solved, but the operational software wasn't. And I think at the time, I remember, maybe I'm butchering the numbers, I want to say the average vendor in the space was like 23 years old.

Mike Hendrix (04:22)
Yeah

Bryan Lord (04:24)
Right, so part of the thesis was. and then like the number three player globally in the space. I think was club Prophet. I think that could be wrong, but just know that from my perspective before GolfNow about easy links, it was GolfNow easy links. I think I think club Prophet was number three, maybe IBS, but I IBS was small.

Mike Hendrix (04:50)
IBS certainly had a good footprint. And then even you can't discount things like Jonas on the, on the private side, right? Club Prophet for people that don't know based in Pittsburgh and was server based. and which clearly Teesnap was not right. Teesnap was good, was going to be in the cloud. and, and really change things.

Bryan Lord (05:11)
But I'd also say the disparity between number one and number two and number three and four, which is ginormous. And today that's still the case. You look at like golf, like look at the number two player globally in the space compared to number one. So part of the thesis was like, this space is just under invested. And so do I need to be another vendor that raises, you know, a million dollars for 20 % of the company and you know what I mean? And tries to go into the space or

Could we do something radically different and say, if we came in with, dare I say deep pockets and we just made kind of a run for the industry, which I think Mike, I think you were a VP at GolfNow kind of during, during that time, I think.

And yes, I mean, it was really fun. And so, you know, it took me, you know, everybody always sees the last page of the book, not the other 500 pages. It took me a couple years to raise capital. I mean, that was that was a struggle.

Mike Hendrix (06:03)
Well, let me ask you something in raising capital, because I think a lot of people that watch this are trying to do that. How long did it take you to refine your pitch? Not obviously to sell the golf course operators, refine your pitch around. This is why you should invest in this company. I'm going to build. How long did it take to get that tight to where you felt really comfortable telling the story?

Bryan Lord (06:24)
Yeah, I mean, I would say it probably took a year just to get decent at the story. I think the other thing that I got, I subsequently got a lot better at, is, I, you know, I'm, I'm an advisor and I sit on boards of a lot of companies. see a lot, I see a lot of deal flow, not specifically in golf, but not excluding golf. And a lot of times people are like, I'm going to change the world. We're going to be the largest player in the space, Mike. I just need $200,000. And it's like,

It's like, I'd almost take it seriously if you were asking for like 25 million. Right. Right. And so I think part of it was I got better at being like, wait a minute, like we could, we could probably come in and buy the number two, three, four competitor, right? You know, we could build something state of the art. Nobody really, I mean, I dare I say, Mike, nobody really had a good brand in my opinion, back in those days. And so, which I care a lot about.

which we which Teesnap got a ton of compliments from the brand and the materials and the booths and and not vendors not necessarily competitors of ours, but like other other big big big

Mike Hendrix (07:29)
You wanted, you cared more about like what Madison Avenue in terms of a marketing and strategy kind of a world would have said about the brand rather than what they would have said out of some tee sheet company in Virginia or something like that.

Bryan Lord (07:43)
Yeah, agreed. Yeah, that's well said. So, so ended up raising, you know, a lot of money. I would venture to say in golf software, I don't think anybody's probably raised as much at this point. I could be wrong. Maybe in acquisitions and private equity, but I think from just an entrepreneur raise, we raised a lot of cash, which was fun.

Mike Hendrix (08:01)
Or

are you familiar with Whoosh? So more than Whoosh, just to help us in a ballpark. Okay, that's helpful, okay.

Bryan Lord (08:04)
I am.

yes.

Yep. And, you know, the job to be done was to, you know, build the best thing in golf, the best things golf ever seen and go out and hire all the best salespeople, as I think you probably remember, and go out and make a run for it. And for a while there, you know, it went quite well.

Mike Hendrix (08:28)
It did. I don't know everybody that was on the cap table at Teesnap, but you did get Maury Gallagher to invest, and he had invested in golf previously, so it wasn't foreign to him. And safe to say, he was your number one investor or largest investor.

Bryan Lord (08:44)
it, yeah, there were effectively two people, effectively what became a Allegiant and myself.

Mike Hendrix (08:51)
Okay, got it. Got it. And so you're speaking about a Allegiant Airlines.

Bryan Lord (08:55)
Maury is the chairman. I think he's the chairman right now. I don't think it's CEO anymore

Mike Hendrix (09:01)
got it. And just for what it's worth, Allegiant had an interesting idea because, I think they ultimately did build Sunseeker resort, but I know on some level they, Allegiant thought they could use golf to create more traffic for the airline, actually have a hub there. And I guess that would be Northern Florida if I have that right. And that was part of the long-term strategy.

Bryan Lord (09:24)
Yes, so you know for the pitch directly with the Allegiant , I mean I changed the deck right? So at the time it was that was fly play stay drive right? Golf balls right? And the idea being that at the time there was no I'm probably still to this day. There's no way to really book that whole experience in one fell swoop and what was unique to a Allegiant may still be. don't I'm not sure is that Allegiant kind of like priceline.com.

But it's like a Allegiant air is the only airline and then the rest of the vendors and so like adding golf to that You know package was kind of the was kind of the idea You know we never got there But that was kind of part of the deal and you could do interesting things with you know You know golf clubs, and you know you could loss leader over here and revenue over there There were ways that to kind of think about how to make it pretty attractive

Mike Hendrix (10:11)
that model today would be even more interesting just because there's so much more demand for golf today.

Bryan Lord (10:17)
And if you look at, and very unique to Allegiant, right, they have some presence or very drivable presence in just about every major golf destination market in America. I know it's not, you know, as big of an airline as say Delta, but I mean, name, you know, name a golf destination, right? They don't fly to Phoenix, but they do fly to Mesa, right?

Mike Hendrix (10:39)
And I would assume they have Myrtle if you're talking golf destination.

Bryan Lord (10:42)
They

change their routes, so I don't know exactly, but I would imagine they do.

Mike Hendrix (10:47)
Yeah. so, so Allegiant was a publicly traded company. I mean, look, Comcast is a publicly traded company. Now Versant media will be a publicly traded company. So nothing, you know, nothing crazy there. how many, how, how long was your run as the CEO of Teesnap?

Bryan Lord (11:06)
like seven, seven and half years.

Mike Hendrix (11:09)
So yeah, so you saw lots of probably ebbs and flows. Talk about, you know, we don't want to, I don't want this to be a three hour podcast, but you know, give us a little bit of like, well, this is what the first 10 customers were like. Then we figured this out and we, and we got to the next hundred customers. Like give us a feel for what you had to do to grow it once you had the investment and once it was, was essentially birthed.

Bryan Lord (11:33)
Yeah, I mean, you got to go back to like 2012, 13, 14, right? Apple stores were really cool. I mean, that was like a thing. I today, I think they're still pretty cool. But, you know, if you if you have a phone, you've probably even if you don't have an iPhone, you've probably been in an Apple store, right? But that's time you got to go back over over 10 years ago, right? That was a cool thing, right? And so part of the pitch was more, you know, you're kind of sick of what you have.

you want to shake up your operations, I'm kind of the excuse for you to do that. Which we basically tried to sell change and it was hard. mean, the early sales, was a really cool, mean, Mike, I think you can appreciate it was a really, it was actually pretty really easy company to pitch. The issue was, you know, the requirements, right? It was just every golf course being like, well, I need a punch card program. And you're like, well, how about this is your excuse to change the program.

Mike Hendrix (12:28)
Yeah, yeah, you sold a lot of change.

Bryan Lord (12:32)
Convert all that to club credit and you know, you know what I mean? And do a different program or something, right?

Mike Hendrix (12:37)
Yes.

One of the biggest, I guess things have changed that you sold was how you wanted to handle email addresses with the golfer, If the golfer wanted to check in, I think in the beginning, I mean, the clerk absolutely had to collect an email address to get that golfer checked in because you understood the value of a database, a golfer database.

Bryan Lord (12:58)
It wasn't an issue of doing the printer, right? It was more like we wanted like the funny thing about it is the operators wanted the same thing that we wanted, which was they wanted the data. They wanted the information. And of course the issue was always kind of the friction behind the counter to make it happen, right? Which we're all aware of. I I would say now it's probably more standard than it was, you know, back then. But like anything, Mike, when you're the first to make some moves like this, it's always going to be more painful.

but I mean, these are kind of badges and scars of honor, if I'm honest with you. I mean, it was hard. And, you know, I constantly told operators, you know, for good or bad, I was like, look, like, I will fly to your golf course, will buy a shirt off the rack, don't give it to me, and I'll work the counter and I'll have your patrons walking out laughing. Like you don't have a software problem, you don't have an email collection problem, you have a people problem.

And it was really hard for people who kind of looked at me like, well, yeah, you could do it. And it's like, well, I mean, maybe I can show your staff how to do it. Like at the end of the day, Mike, right, like the friction, right, can really be overcome by somebody charismatic.

Mike Hendrix (14:02)
But then I guess the question becomes how scalable is that? know, How many charismatic people can you get behind a golf shop counter that I think that does have to be considered when you're thinking about scaling the company.

Bryan Lord (14:14)
Well, yeah, agreed, we were the first to do it and now look. So I mean, you I'm not here to take credit, but I think Teesnap did a lot of things for the golf industry, which are still around today.

Mike Hendrix (14:19)
Yeah.

Right. Really, I would say beyond the golf industry today. And a lot of people know this is there's a lot of golf people that work at Toast. Today, Toast has done an amazing job of collecting. Actually, what I like referred to as golfer two, three and four, the way Toast has set up their loyalty program with the little self serve checkout interaction is an amazing unlock for golf courses if they want to go that route.

Bryan Lord (14:50)
Yeah.

Mike Hendrix (14:51)
And

I think you were an early version of that idea.

Bryan Lord (14:56)
Yeah, yeah. That and brand, right? Same thing, right? I think Teesnap, I think, mean, you know, Mike, please push back, but I think Teesnap really kind of puts some pressure on the rest of the vendors in this space to start to care about the brand and the identity of the company.

Mike Hendrix (15:11)
agreed and also probably woke us up to, what was it that we did well at GolfNow? you know, the thing that we did, thought exceptionally well was more about strategy than anything. It was that we paid for boots on the ground, We believed in having people in market and felt that would create such a moat for us, that it would be hard to, ultimately assail to ultimately a surpass us. and I'm not so sure that

to this day that that isn't still the biggest secret of GolfNow is just all these people out there in golf shops every day talking to people, bringing them cupcakes, bringing them pizza. It's hard to overcome that.

Bryan Lord (15:50)
And in 2014, I mean, we started to bring on a sales force. And I looked at Maury and said, hey, I think these people should live. I think they should work from their living room and get in their car and drive down to their local golf courses. And so we were a remote company a decade before COVID, or I guess not a decade, six years before COVID,

And I would say over time kind of mastered that. COVID came, all the experts came out to teach us about remote work. it's like, at the time, like not a lot of companies moved and doing it for years. And we had a large staff.

Mike Hendrix (16:23)
I remember one of the first calls we ever had at NBC because of COVID. And I thought to myself, we're already remote. Like this doesn't concern me at all. You know, the sales team is already out there. So I'm not, I wasn't too concerned about it. Okay. So you agree with boots on the ground. You create this, you know, this brand that really we hadn't seen before in golf. was sleek. was clean.

the whole iOS thing was still very new. mean, the concept, frankly, of a mobile check-in checkout experience with, you know, mobile for the starter was super revolutionary. How did I want go back to that, you know, customers 11 through a hundred, how did it ultimately start to get traction? Did you ultimately find what people referred to as an ICP, your, your, your ideal customer profile? Did you figure out the pro?

that Teesnap would resonate the most with.

Bryan Lord (17:15)
I mean, do you ever? I mean, I think, I think at the beginning, it was, it was talking to the people that were ready for change, right? Because, you know, enterprise resource planning is hard to build. takes a long time, right? It takes a really long time, right? I mean, you know, where does a loyalty program fall in the roadmap when, you know, you got to build a refund? Right, right. Which is tough, right? But, you know, I constantly reminded the team that the problem that we're solving is the disparate systems problem.

And Teesnap solved that right out of the gate, right? One customer record, one database, a suite of products, right? No more ETL, no more disparate reports, right? And was like, if we can go out and remind people that's your pain point and that's what we solve. Oh, and by the way, the beverage cart iPad is the same system, same database, same customers as the one in the restaurant, which is the same one in the pro shop, which now can be the one in the parking lot, on the putting green, right?

very, very, I would say easy to sell the concept, right? The implementation got hard just in the sense of like, wait, you don't have a punch card program or what, know, whatever, whatever the requirement was. And we have to come in and be very clever, like, hey, let's convert that to credit book or let's, you know, let's, you know, let's rethink this a little bit, right? We were selling change. I that was the big thing. And I remember one of the PGA shows I spoke and I basically said like the problem with historically, and I say this with love to the golf industry, but it's like,

Mike Hendrix (18:27)
Yes.

Bryan Lord (18:40)
You can't use the same thing and that got you into the problems, you know, to get you out. Right. And so like, I would say the idea that the customer is always right, I think is a good ethos, but the reality is right. the, the software vendors became so bloated because they built everything everybody asked for. And what I kind of, I kind of took, so I would kind of argue professionally that the golf industry did that to themselves. It's actually the golf course operators that made their software as messy as they did.

Because they picked up the phone they called their vendors and they said if you don't do this I'm gonna leave you and so they did it and You know you do that for 20 years you wake up and it's like who are you anymore? Yeah, what I told What I told our team is like I've done my head you're gonna laugh I've done my job if I had equally dissatisfied every

Mike Hendrix (19:28)
Understood. Yeah.

Bryan Lord (19:29)
I

don't mean to satisfy with the product, but it's like, it's like, yes, I'm talking to, you know, Johnny operator over here, and they need this one thing, but it's like, I've got a roadmap that's much, much larger, much, you know, that I'm trying to manage, right? I at all the feedback, and the question was like, how did the feedback paint a picture that we could develop to, not an individual operator or an individual MCO? We're moving too fast to even let the largest MCO at that time really, really interrupt us.

Mike Hendrix (19:42)
Yeah

You know, you, you, you mentioned MCOs because I, it's interesting to me. don't know if the economics ultimately work, but it's, it's almost as if Teesnap could have been something more. Had it been owned by an MCO, an MCO of size that really believed in like, look, I'm going to remodel the golf shop. We're going to change the way we interact with our customer because I'm not so sure a software company on its own can do that. I don't even know that Apple has.

fundamentally changed the way SMBs operate today, right? But a Teesnap inside of a large management company, that would have been really interesting if the executive level there was serious buy-in.

Bryan Lord (20:40)
Yeah, I think the trouble there is like, it's like we want everything to work exactly the way it does with our legacy system. We want to drop it in a brand new system. And, you know, Mike, if you remember at the time, I know some of the people probably watching this that know me, I just was like, why are you asking to do the same thing you already have? Like that makes literally no sense to me. You're going to rip out all of your operational software to drop in the exact same functionality? Like walk me through how that's a good idea.

Mike Hendrix (21:10)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe better for the bottom line. I think a lot of us sold operation technology based on what it would do the P &L.

Bryan Lord (21:17)
Well, I think there's an aspect of that as well, right? I mean, it definitely wasn't designed to just be this cost center, right? Hence we built really good marketing tools and really use transactional data, I think, in ways at the time nobody else was doing. And then, of course, we had it, no one was using it. So then we came up with kind of managed marketing services, right? Which did extremely well. Most of the time, your forecast, especially in a startup, you forecast 10x,

and you get X. Yeah, this time we actually forecasted X and we got 10 X.

We're like, it's all there. It's all done. You can go do it. And they're like, we don't know how to do it. We don't have the time to do it. And we're like, we'll pay us to do it. And they were like, done.

Mike Hendrix (21:59)
Yes. Yeah. that's why we started. That's why we started GolfNow plus, which was also managed marketing. But when I started GolfNow plus actually the driving force behind it, I mean, certainly revenue was behind it, but the, the number one way we kind of sold it internally was we felt like we had delivered some pretty good pricing tools, especially for it at the time in golf and, not enough operators were using the tools. The operators in Phoenix were using them and it kind of stopped there.

And we got to a place where we thought, what if we did this for the customer? It would ultimately elevate the value of the GolfNow relationship. And so that was really what drove it. And then honestly, Bryan, we, kind of stumbled into more revenue than we anticipated. And then the revenue actually became, know, substantial and important to the, to the company.

so, okay. So the, the company, you know, I always think of Dragonfly when I think of Teesnap because you guys did an amazing marketing program around Dragonfly and then you showed how they use the product and et cetera. think Dragonfly was near where you were living at the time or maybe lived at one time, but you probably had some personal, relationship there.

Bryan Lord (23:05)
I walked into the pro shop and I met the, I think part owner in GM at the time. And he, he kind of had an idea to go into that business. And I basically was like, well, I've got, you know, I've got a Allegiant behind me and we're doing this. And they became a great advocate and he was great because he was willing to change his operations. He was willing to change his operations to make it work. mean, I'll tell you a great story.

you there was a time when we could book a tee time, we could transact a tee time, but we didn't have the concept of a cart or a pull cart. Again, just just selling early and selling fast, right? And so they just use different color poker chips. So they'd hand somebody a different color poker chip, and they'd walk out, hand it to the cart person. And that's how they knew whether you had a card or not had a card or a pull cart, whatever it was. But that just shows you like the the

The idea of iPads, the idea of this mobile system, we were a payment facilitator, but that wasn't even a word in 2015. We kind of brought that whole thing to the golf industry. one else had, well, frankly, Mike, no one else really in the world had done it other than Uber and a few other companies. was, we talked to the major, major banks and they were like, you can't do this. I was like, actually you can, you can do it. And then of course we got it done, but that was another very unique part of the system.

Mike Hendrix (24:25)
And now today that's become a cornerstone of these companies is really the revenue that they generate from payments.

Bryan Lord (24:33)
Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, and for us, the collection of payments waiting to Teesnap not directly, but, know, to some degree was was kind of the bank as well. Right. Which is also very, very unique to have all the operational cash flow going through you. So if you're the point of sale, right, right. If you're the merchant record at the time the sale happens, then at 11 59 59, right, you already know the products that are sold. You already know gross credit card. You already know. You already know that stuff.

That will settle over the next one to seven days, but I can turn around and remit the money right back to the golf course the next day. Why? Because I have all the information. When you're all disparate tools, you can't do that because you don't know. Right. You don't know what's coming. We knew what was coming. And that was another thing. Or is another like, hey, like you're getting paid from GolfNow, you know, two, three, four, five, six, seven days later. How about you just get one number the next day and that's it.

Right? we picked on all the vendors when it came to that. mean, that's not, not to be specific to GolfNow, but if you weren't Teesnap, you had multiple deposits. You're, you know, your bookkeeper was trying to match the deposits to get the revenue numbers. Right. It's like with us, it's like, Nope, one number one deposit matches every day. And people are like, that's incredible.

Mike Hendrix (25:44)
Yeah. Now you've brought up GolfNow a couple of times you elected to not work with GolfNow, You elected to not have an interface. And for what that means for people listening, it wasn't going to be easy for a golf operator using Teesnap to go sell tee times on GolfNow. They actually could do it in a manual way, but it wasn't going to be as easy as say, if you were using Fore Reservations or something like that.

Talk a little bit about that. Why did you just, you why did you opt for a closed platform? If I, if I can call it that.

Bryan Lord (26:18)
Sure, yeah. mean, to be clear, it wasn't just GolfNow. I didn't have integrations with anybody. That was a feature, not a bug. Right. So look, there'll be a lot of people that are going to learn something here because I think they have a certain memory of this very subject. would say 70 % of that driving force was I didn't want to carry the distraction of integrations with the largest dev team.

Mike Hendrix (26:23)
Yes, yeah

Bryan Lord (26:44)
in software and golf globally. Right? Like we had way too much stuff to build to have GolfNow be like, hey, we made some API changes. It's like, no, thank you. Like not happening. Like don't care. Like unsubscribe. Right? Like truly it was just like 70 % of it was just like, don't want to deal with that. The other thing is, is we wanted to go to non-destination golf courses. And Mike, I'll let you.

critique me, but I thought I did a pretty good job of convincing the industry that had if you got off GolfNow, Steve and Mary are still going to show up at the 730, you know, club, you know, at 730 in the morning and you know, they're standing tee time, right? Sure, they didn't get the hot deal, but I don't think they're going to change clubs because of it. And I think we were mostly right.

Mike Hendrix (27:29)
Yeah, and so that but that also means that you weren't going to go play ball in Phoenix or in Orlando or something like that. That you were going to focus on. Now, look, I live in a flyover state, so I have to be careful the way I say this, but you are going to focus on maybe not the 10 biggest golf markets in America.

Bryan Lord (27:48)
Yeah, because but but to be clear, right, as a percentage of all golf courses, right, I remember this conference as well. I mean, you know, I don't know, but I just I kind of have that theory that that maybe, you know, maybe 5 % of the courses in the country maybe do demonstrably better directly because of it at the time. I mean, I think it's a lot different golf a lot different today than it was in 2000, you know, '19 '18. Right. So that's my caveat.

So at the time, a big part of it was, if the customer lives in Fresno, California, Like does the global distribution channel matter? Or are they just gonna wake up and say, I'm playing golf independent of how I need to book this?

I mean, I did it if you're waking up in Vegas, you know at eight o'clock in the morning, but yeah, like that perfect use case for like any global GDS system like totally get it. But at the time, you know, we were trying to be different Mike right again, you know, my big ethos was like if we're gonna do this, like why would I do everything that everybody else has? was was the end. There's a moment of time. I think I think I think my guess is GolfNow probably has a as a as a much different

Mike Hendrix (28:48)
Mm-hmm.

Bryan Lord (28:57)
stance in the golf industry today with golf booming and, you know, travel golf going up. mean, the S&P 500s, you know, doubled more than doubled in the last five years. Like, like you got to remember, travel golf in 2018, Mike, like, you know, the idea that it's a huge industry as a percentage of all rounds, very small, right? Very, small. So was like, I don't to your point, Mike, it's like, I don't really care about Phoenix. Remember, there's a lot of people who live in Phoenix, which still drive

Mike Hendrix (29:25)
Do you, and maybe you haven't given a lot of thought, would you, do you think you would be open to integrations today? Not just GolfNow, but integrations in general. I mean, we see so many people building apps that work with golf operating systems and some of them, you know, really good apps. Would that interest you or do you think your mindset would be more of if someone builds an app and I think it's great, I'll go build that as a feature.

Bryan Lord (29:51)
Well, mean, look, I think the industry is different now. I think, know, Teesnap set out to solve a certain group of problems. And I think a lot of the industry now is, I'm going to say kind of copying that, but I don't mean that like patting myself in the back, good or bad. just mean like, you know, like to your point about payment facilitation and payments and, you know, brand and like a lot of other things. Like I think the industry is kind of like, like these are kind of now standards. I, not standards, but like,

Um, it's barrier to right? So I think generally speaking, like, I think people think I'm anti integrations. mean, in 2025, I mean, I don't know if I started an ERP company, I'd probably have integrations. again, the question is there, like, if you're going to do it again, what's going to be your differentiator? Are you just going to build a modern version and some modern framework with all the same features that has all the integrations? Like I just don't, to me, it's like, it's not, now I have to go back to every operator and be like, Hey, like,

So let's change again. Like, there needs to be a real problem to solve. Like payments has been solved. Mobile has been solved. Like most people have some version of some mobile thing as part of the offering. Right. And go down. I'm not saying all the problems been solved, but you know, when you start to look at some of these, these tertiary companies, I wonder if they're just features of these existing ERPs. Like I'm very, very worried for some of these vendors that are doing very well.

Mike Hendrix (30:59)
Yes.

I'm dead.

Bryan Lord (31:15)
I know that if I were at Teesnap, I would be like, yeah, that's a roadmap item. I can build your company with our team in six weeks and deploy it and offer to our customers as part of their existing subscription or whatever the fees are.

Mike Hendrix (31:29)
Yeah. But

I think you, I do think you have a lot of respect though for what it takes to build a company, what it takes to start a company. And then part of that is go to market strategy and frankly go to market execution, set the Tech execution aside for a second, but go to market execution. And, and maybe I'm a, on a boat of one here. I believe if you are a startup and you out execute

just about everybody on go to market, even though you might be a feature, you might get such a strong hold that it doesn't matter because you just got to the mountain top faster than most. And then you will rely on relationships. You will rely on, uh, know, iterations of your product. I'd be interested to get your take on that.

Bryan Lord (32:18)
I I think it's true that I still question the longevity, right? Like, eventually, right? Like, waitlist tee times is going to be in every ERP system. It's just inevitable. It's just, it's just inevitable. But I'm not suggesting that the current vendors don't have a great, you know, a great hold on it. But eventually, right? Like, like the relationship matters, right? But eventually it's going to be like, I cannot have that vendor, I can save money, and it's just part of my current offering.

Mike Hendrix (32:29)
Understood.

Yeah, I mean, listen, just I mean, we don't have to dance around it. To some degree, we're talking about Noteefy and I think most people know I'm on record as saying, I just think their execution is unbelievable. I am so impressed with how they brought the market to product how they follow up how they iterate it is an impressive thing to watch from the sidelines. It is an impressive thing to watch. That's what

When I think of execution, I think of Jake and Dathan. That's what comes to mind.

Bryan Lord (33:19)
Look, it's a great. I mean, the proof's in the pudding, right? Like, I don't have anything negative to say about their execute. They've done a great job. mean, I don't, I don't, I don't have a dog in this fight, right? mean, you've done a great job. I'm just saying that like, you know, if this were 2018 and I was the CEO of Teesnap, I would be like, no, like we'll just go build.

Mike Hendrix (33:39)
Yep. Yep. Well, it's interesting because earlier you were saying I already have a roadmap and so, but I'm sure you're

Bryan Lord (33:45)
Well, I didn't say I have. I didn't say I'd build it right then. Maybe I would have it in 2024, right? may have taken me like six years to get there, but it's like, you know, we can just do that.

Mike Hendrix (33:54)
Yeah, understood. Okay. I do want to get back to your time at Teesnap, but I feel like this is a good spot to maybe talk about the future a little bit. The future today, it's hard to be in technology and not have AI be part of the conversation. I'd be super curious to get your take on AI in golf and maybe in, in, look, we don't have to just stay in golf. You're certainly involved.

in businesses outside of golf. Talus Ridge very successful. We'll put the logo up in the podcast and people can go check out Talus Ridge. but I am super curious to get your thoughts and ideas around golf. you know, let's call it golf, SAS and AI.

Bryan Lord (34:39)
Sure. So AI is a screwdriver, or maybe it's the whole bin of tools, right? It's not a solution. The solution is not AI. AI is the tool, right? That helps get to whatever the solution is and get there faster. Said simply, AI is really good at making sense and curating, digesting, and conversationally talking about unstructured data.

Right? You know, using AI as like a developer to code something like that doesn't mean the solutions and AI solution. It just means the solution was built in assistance with AI to help speed up the software development, right? I see a lot of people, you know, dancing around kind of AI and golf. I think if there's an opportunity, I think it's really around.

unstructured data. what's unstructured data? Well, unstructured data is not tee times, right?

Mike Hendrix (35:37)
It's interesting you're bringing this up because for the last two months, I've been living inside of structured data and really came to realize how many golf courses, well, how many website developers don't use structured data when it comes to these websites they've built. But so you're talking about the opposite unstructured data. So go on, sorry to interrupt.

Bryan Lord (35:56)
So

I mean, I think like, think like, you know, in terms of marketing, understanding marketing, understand what's going out on in the golf world, I think AI can go out and bring back results for that. That's very unstructured. Can those results then be paired with tee times and availability? Right. I think there's, I think there's ways to use AI. I have been asked many times, well, like, you know, could you use AI to build another Teesnap or some version of that, right? A Club Prophet.

And my answer to that would be, you know, if, if there was a problem to be solved there, it would be, I think, I think, and I'm not even saying this is a good one. It would be, could you use AI to basically build Jonas or Club Caddie or something like something robust, but build it in six months for like a hundred grand or less where you could go out and you could be like, yeah, subscribe to my service for $99 a month. Yes. the Fore Reservations of 2026.

Mike Hendrix (36:52)
from

Bryan Lord (36:56)
Right? Where you just get to you get to have the same functionality everybody needs. Everybody wants everybody needs. Right? You somehow figure out the onboarding and the, you know, the changeover, which is always tricky. Right? And then it just becomes so cheap that there's nothing anybody can really do. And you can get away with $100 a month because you don't have the capital expenses Teesnap had. You don't have the, you know, the investment of other companies. Right? Like, people don't appreciate like

The reason why the rates are on the rise is because it's expensive to do these things.

Mike Hendrix (37:27)
right? Yes, yes. But but certainly AI has lowered the cost. Yeah, right.

Bryan Lord (37:31)
That's what I'm saying. I'm seeing

like the solution doesn't need to be AI. The solution could be using AI to get to a solution way faster so you can more competitively price your product.

Mike Hendrix (37:42)
You know, it's interesting. So the last podcast we did was with a gentleman named David Clark. He's built his own tee sheet. He's out of Missouri. he, he's in, he's it's, it's with Square, right? So he's built one integration. that if a golf course wants to use Square, they can use his tee sheet. And we talked a little bit about AI and I know he does use AI to help for development, but his take actually was he doesn't think AI replaces a tee sheet.

because that isn't really what you use AI for. Like the tee sheets already structured in a way that it already works pretty well. he was saying, like, I don't know, what AI is going to do better for a tee sheet.

Bryan Lord (38:20)
Exactly, right? Like you could use AI for a tee sheet, but I'm not sure the outcome is any different. That's the problem. Like AI and structured data is like a sledgehammer hanging a pitcher. Like you can get it done, but it's not, I don't know that that's really the right tool. That's as AI is today. Maybe that'll change. mean, AI is changing very rapidly, right? But as of today, I see it around unstructured data, right? Like how do you, you know, how do you...

how do you search a database of every marketing message you've ever had and have AI do that and come back and be like categorize all this, right? And tell me what days I ran all this, then have AI go into your reports and say, now match up all the revenues based off all the, you know, all, right? I don't know if I can finish that, but you know what I'm saying? Like there's a lot of value in kind of the unstructured aspect of that, but I don't think anybody's really looking at that yet. beginning trades in golf are not built by golf.

They're typically just third parties.

Mike Hendrix (39:18)
Let me get your take on. so what we kind of discovered in the last, was like a four month research project where we looked at over 15,000 golf course websites and essentially found that next to no one had taken the time to put the schema markup into any golf course webs. mean, there were, there was like one management company had done it, but like very, very, very few people were even hip to the concept of schema markup. Are you of the opinion,

that if you can provide the information faster and cleaner to AI, it will consume it. And, and, and it, would be better off than slowing the AI down and having it read, you know, just some front end text and hoping that it gets it right. I'd be curious to get your, your take on that.

Bryan Lord (40:01)
Yeah, I I genuinely agree. look, AI is really good right now. The issue is like, how do you bring it to an industry like golf, right? Which has, you know, historically been pretty slow to adopt. Which I will pick on golf. I mean, the restaurant industry, banking, right? I even airlines. mean, you know, the front end of a website for an airline might look brand new, but the infrastructure behind it could be, you know, 30 years old. Banking, I mean, so...

Mike Hendrix (40:14)
Yes, yes.

Bryan Lord (40:28)
So, know, there is an aspect that you can make an argument that because golf is not as risky as I would say like banking or like airlines, maybe they are a little farther ahead. But, you know, the adoption of this stuff still takes a long time. I look at NFTs, right? Like what happened with that? That was like this hot craze. Everything was an NFT, right? I can't go and buy a house with an NFT, which is the perfect use case for an NFT. That should be a

Mike Hendrix (40:44)
Yeah.

Yes.

Bryan Lord (40:53)
thumbprint transaction, digital, done, no paperwork. It's. And no, and I don't, mean, there's no bank in the, I don't think there's a bank in the U S that can do that right now. that is the perfect real real world use case. So what happens with all this adoption is you always use it for this kind of silly thing of, know, board ape, like putting an NFT on a thumb drive in your, you know what I mean? Like weird use case. And I think the beginning of this, we're seeing some of this in golf a little bit.

Mike Hendrix (40:57)
the ⁓

Yes.

So, so today I think one of the leaders, I think that's the right way to say it when it comes to AI and golf would be Courserev. I don't know if you're familiar with Courserev, but essentially what they've done is they're already at 30 plus clients using AI to answer the phone, just to pair it down quickly. Now I know they've got a lot of things that are coming and a lot of features with that. But again, I go back to David Clark from the last episode, he said to me that,

Well, like we've had phone systems that can listen to people for a long, long time and let people book a tee time without ever talking to a human being. So again, he was a little perplexed as to why do we need AI to do this? Is that you think that that's also correct?

Bryan Lord (42:09)
I think it's a little different. mean, I think the AI for call centers is pretty good. I think ultimately, I mean, we looked at the space. I've been looking at that space for. Year and a half, maybe two years now that specific space in golf. I think that that's going to be like Noteefy. I think, well, I shouldn't say just Noteefy. I'm not going to pick on Noteefy the great company, but I think that's a feature.

Mike Hendrix (42:30)
Got it.

Bryan Lord (42:36)
I think that because when we talk about like, we've built AI, like Courserev has not built AI. They're using somebody else's AI. They're putting together, which they should. I wouldn't build the, mean, that's, there's very, very few companies in the world that actually build the AI. So these are kind of off the shelf parts that anybody can really just go Google the vendors and go put together the conversational workflows and go do. Like it's not a major lift, I think, at this point.

Mike Hendrix (43:03)
Yeah. And then, and then I guess it's just some baking time, if you will, for the LLMs to learn and get better and better.

Bryan Lord (43:11)
Which

is not yeah, which is yeah I mean I view that more like you deployed a version of your software and you got a few bug fixes It's kind of the same thing, right? Same thing, it's the same thing fundamentally. It's always a little bumpy at the beginning LLM same way software development same way like there's no version Mike, you know where it's just

Mike Hendrix (43:20)
Agree, it's not the

Yes. Yes. So let's, go back to Teesnap because I did, I know a lot of people, I mean, there's always these stories in golf, right? There was boatloads of trade that I had to navigate through and whatnot. In the case of, of Teesnap, there's an investor call that's kind of famous in golf for people that don't know where, and we're talking Allegiant now and investor call for Allegiant and Teesnap kind of comes up and that ultimately, but you, you,

Tell me if I'm wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, but that leads to a place where, hey, maybe it's best if someone else owns Teesnap. Is it fair for me to put it that way?

Bryan Lord (44:06)
I don't think it was because of the investor call. I don't think that that's a fair characterization. know, at the time, so Maury Gallagher and Tim Flynn were the investors in GolfSwitch.

So you mentioned, know, Maury had a history in golf. know, Larry Lippon, right? That's Tim Flynn, Maury's partner, and Maury Gallagher. So there's a little bit of history there. And then of course, you know, at the time, all the executives at Allegiant golfed, right? So kind of done, been there, done that. I actually flew down and played golf with Larry Lippon. So.

Mike Hendrix (44:21)
Yes.

And for people that don't know GolfSwitch. was one of the earliest booking engines in golf and actually got way out in front of a bunch of other people had a lot of integrations was frankly, it was worldwide. had put a ton of languages in it. I mean, it was really pretty.

Bryan Lord (44:51)
Okay

Good.

right. So. Yeah, there's there's. So I'm saying that because because there was a little bit of institutional knowledge there, right? And then at the time we were kind of the only real non airline specific initiative, right? And then internally there was kind of this rumor mill of of of what became Sunseeker, which was going to be, you know.

obviously demonstrably bigger than Teesnap. So I don't think I can place it directly on that call, but it was more just changing internal resources and what people cared about.

Mike Hendrix (45:30)
Understood. so, tell people, Bryan, how do you go about selling a company? You know, because I do, do actually think we have a few entrepreneurs today in golf that maybe you're at that stage where now it's time to hand it off to somebody else and see if they can sprint another 30 yards down the field with it. How do you go about selling when it's time to sell?

Bryan Lord (45:51)
Very carefully. I mean, it's tricky, right? It's easiest to sell when things are going great. that, know, Noteefy didn't ask any advice, but if I were them, man, I would sell the company as fast as possible.

Mike Hendrix (46:07)
because things are going so great.

Bryan Lord (46:09)
It's

going so well. And it is going well. I think I think it's a great I said, Mike, like you said, kind of publicly, I said, many years ago that I thought, Noteefy if I was a great idea, but it was just a matter of time before it became, you know, potentially a feature. And to your point, they have out executed everybody on the go to market. But still, again, the forces are going to step in. It's why like Courserev as an example, right? Like, I think ultimately, you know, I think like a Club Caddie could go build that like no problem. You know,

Mike Hendrix (46:36)
You mentioned Club Caddie a couple of times. Club Caddie is one of the fastest growing tee sheets in America. I think you know Jason Pearsal all the time. What are your, I mean, I guess you're going to say good things, but like, what is your perspective on Club Caddie?

Bryan Lord (46:46)
Yeah.

I mean, look, I'm still very much kind of on the outside of the industry, right? I mean, I got out in 2020, early 2020. So I've been out for five and a half years, longer than five and a half years. I mean, my perception is they're the up and coming company to beat, right? My understanding is, know, foreUP got acquired, Club Prophet got acquired, like everybody got acquired, right? I Teesnap got acquired, they're in private equity.

Club Caddie is owned by Jonas, but I think that they have a different relationship, right? I think the Jonas acquisitions, Constellation acquisitions are uniquely structured. ⁓

Mike Hendrix (47:28)
They

are. I don't know if I told you this, I spend a lot of time with the Ohio golf course owners association. I that's become a passion project for me. It matters a lot to me, frankly. So I'm spending a lot of time with these owners. And somebody asked me the other day, he said, well, Mike, are like how long until somebody buys them? And so what I said to him as a member of the association was actually they're owned by Constellation software. They don't sell anything.

It is a buy and hold strategy. It's, it's unique. Their strategy is unique, but they've built a massive, mean, massive company, I believe traded on the Canadian sock exchange that has served them incredibly well. So yeah, I don't think Club Caddie is, is going to be acquired by anybody for decades,

Bryan Lord (48:15)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I agree. I think there's some story, I think, like the founder of Constellation, like had an early company and he sold it too early. And then it turned out to be like this multi-billion dollar company, right? He shouldn't have sold it, right? And so like he changed the strategy to buy and hold forever. And, you know, I don't know enough about the company to know, but I think they've more or less acquired and held forever. Yes. To your point, I don't think there's a worry in that. But what I'm saying, though, is I think that relationship

Mike Hendrix (48:36)
Yes

Bryan Lord (48:40)
is built around sustainability, right? Not the classic, want to buy for X and sell for 3X and do it in seven years, which, I'll say it out loud, so you don't have to, Mike, but I mean, that literally is the strategy most of the ERPs are sucked into right now. For sure. Yeah. So it's how do you crank EBITDA? How do you get cash flow? How do you how do you change the optics so you can, you know, two, three, four, five extra money, do it, you know, seven to 10, whatever your fund is, right. And move on. And because of that,

I mean, the interest in software development goes down. mean, it all becomes like charge more, less commissions, less people, right? You're trying to kind of milk it. I think, and I think I don't, the impression I get is Club Caddie is not in that space, right? And because of that, I think they're gonna continue to do really well.

Mike Hendrix (49:26)
Yeah, yeah, I think they're in a good spot. don't think GolfNow is going anywhere anytime soon. think that they're in pretty good spot as well.

Bryan Lord (49:35)
I mean, if I were to say it, would say GolfNow and Club Caddie probably are in the two best positions in my opinion. And frankly, don't even know that I view that although they are competitors, I don't really view them as competitors.

Mike Hendrix (49:48)
Yeah, it's always it's always interesting. Bryan, what year is it? And is GolfNow a marketplace company? Or is it a technology company? So you never know. So there are probably years that yeah, they don't compete with each other much at all. that's that's for another time. Okay, so Tell us a little bit about Talus Ridge and maybe some other things that you're doing today. It'd be you know, I don't are you are you in golf at all? Or or is golf something of the past for you?

Bryan Lord (50:16)
Well, so I'm in golf right now on the cursory with Open Links Golf, OpenLinksGolf.com. I had this thesis with co-founder Paul Story to basically kill email. I want to put a gun to email's head and I want to kill it in golf. And the reason, Mike, is because golf changes every day. All the variables change. The grass changes, right? Food and beverage, everything changes every day. And I think

personally that those changes should be marketed and those should be marketed basically every day. Now, you, now one, how would you put together an email or multiple emails every day? The barrier to entry for that still really high. So the idea was basically create more or less the Instagram of golf where an individual could follow the golf courses. You're not fighting Kim Kardashian, Donald Trump and whatever, you know, you're not fighting algorithms of Taylor Swift, right? Like it's just, just golf. You're just following the course you want to follow.

You just get push notifications of anything, of, hey, tee sheet's wide open, play as a single, you can probably play in two and a half hours. That's a marketing message which resonates with me living in Lake Tahoe. I don't want to burn six hours playing golf, but if I could get a message just like, tee sheet's wide open on a Tuesday, I'm out. But no one's going to send me that email. And if you do send me that email and then 10 more, I'm going to unsubscribe.

So the idea was to give basically access to all the individuals at the course who have authority to make a simple like X slash Instagram style post. And that's it, right? And by doing so, you're giving the autonomy, like there's no one bottleneck at a golf course. There's no like I'm the GM or I'm the person marketing. Like I have to figure this out. Like that all goes away. Like food and beverage can be like, hey, we got a new keg in. It's an IPA and it's a reserve thing. They can snap a photo of it and say, hey, IPM.

draft today, right? Like whatever, right? And that can apply to every sector of the golf course. So superintendent can say, hey, know, car path only number seven, we've got a sprinkler issue, right?

Mike Hendrix (52:13)
Overseed went great this year. Look at the place something like

Bryan Lord (52:15)
Yeah, we're double cutting and top dressing and rolling the greens today. You know, they're running, you know, 11.2, right? That could just be a superintendent or a sister. But again, these are like, these are like five to 25 second posts, not sit down for 45 minutes and try to craft one email. Right. And you're getting them kind of throughout the day, right, as the variables change. And so I'm passionate about that with Paul, to kind of push that narrative.

Mike Hendrix (52:32)
Right.

Bryan Lord (52:43)
And so we're in partnership with golf.com. So we deployed coursefinder.golf.com. That's us deployed with them, a tool for kind of golf course discovery with a lot of interesting data behind it. And then as part of that experience, you can claim your golf course by scanning the QR code as an operator and go through a self authentication process. Right in the app, you can issue credentials to the other people, the golf course, and they can get posting same day.

Mike Hendrix (53:06)
Nice, nice. The self-authentication pieces will be bigger as I'm a big believer in the owner operator controlling their brand. Right. And that's a really key piece. that's good that you built that way.

Bryan Lord (53:21)
And then I studied separately from that, we studied kind of what Courserev's working on. I the adoption's slow. I don't know the founder, I think it's Manna. I don't know him personally, but I give him lot of credit for doing a good job. But in something that's less operational change, and this is not a judgment on him, it's more of a comment on the industry's take on it. I think something like that, you should go from zero to two, 300 courses in two years.

zero to 30 or 50, which is not a judgment on him. I'm saying is I think the issue is again, the golf industry trying to wrap their arms around that adoption and or pricing. It's one of the. And so I think for me to come into that space, I would want to come in extremely well financed if I was going to come into the space and go, you know, how can we like we're not coming in ripping out Club Caddie or ripping out GolfNow would be coming in being like, hey, just we got to reprogram your phone. Like that's going to take two minutes. And then you're like.

Mike Hendrix (54:01)
Yes.

Bryan Lord (54:19)
And then we have a little portal, upload some data, and be done with it. So how can that be thought about to go, now we can actually onboard 300 golf courses a year?

Mike Hendrix (54:22)
Yes.

And they should be able to onboard themselves at 11 o'clock at night and be live the next morning.

Bryan Lord (54:35)
Yeah, exactly. And what I'm not clear about is the demand from the industry. Right. Right. Do I think it's a great idea? Yes. Do I think that an operator should ever have to answer the phone again? No, I don't. But the operators need to come to that conclusion. And I don't think they are as fast as the rest of the vendors in that space want them to. I'm not a judgment on any of the execution, right? I think the execution is great. I just I'm not convinced that it's going as well as

Mike Hendrix (54:57)
That's it.

Yeah. And that's Del Ratcliffe too, just for people that don't know. And actually speaking of brand, think they've done a nice job with their brand. think their brand is attractive. And I really give Manna a lot of credit. This is probably two months ago now. At one point they were going to do apps, they were going to do websites. And he actually publicly said, hey, I've changed my mind. We're going to stay laser focused on what we're doing here. And I really give them a lot of props for doing that. I think that was a great call.

Bryan Lord (55:31)
Well, two in golf and then the Talus Ridge is a tactical. We developed this intellectual property in the, the defense space. I can't talk too much about it, but that's going extremely well. Hopefully there's some good stuff for us to come in the next six months to a year.

Mike Hendrix (55:47)
Is Talus Ridge to market or no?

Bryan Lord (55:50)
No, this will likely be intellectual property.

Mike Hendrix (55:54)
Gotcha. Okay. Well, we'll, keep our eyes open for that. So, I appreciate your time. It's been good to catch up with you. you really are, one of the original trailblazers in this space. so I congratulate you on everything you did and the impact you've had and what you all started the impact that's had on the industry on a long tail. It's been impressive.

Bryan Lord (56:20)
Awesome. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Mike Hendrix (56:22)
Okay, so that is Bryan Lord and I am Mike Hendrix. This was Tech Caddie Podcast. Goodbye.