Imagine this: your life’s a rollercoaster, and you’ve got 2 million people watching every twist and turn. That’s Alex’s world. Get ready for a wild ride with Pro-Golfer and Content Creation Star Alex Romo on this episode. His journey took a sharp turn when an injury benched him, leading him down an entirely new path of creating engaging content and living a golf life that's all about balance, wellness, and growth. His story? It's about bouncing back, changing lanes when life throws a curveball, and the magical power of staying positive.
- Alex's leap of faith into experimental stem cell therapy
- A spiritual and healing connection with Dr. Mark Darrow, leading to a surprising recovery.
- Tackling the mental game: How mindset shifts and focusing on mental health can lead to life transformations.
Alex shares how he’s managed to build a tribe of over 2 million followers on TikTok who are all captivated with his ongoing journey. It's easy to see. Alex is the type of guy people gravitate towards:
So, tighten your laces for an enlightening walk with Alex on this episode, where we reveal how golf offers the greatest life lesson of all: armed with conviction and enthusiasm, nothing is beyond our reach. Join us for a conversation that goes far beyond the game, exploring the limitless potential of the human spirit.
Stress-Busting Secrets
- Why diving into a cold plunge might just be the secret weapon you need.
- Turning life's challenges into adrenaline-pumping opportunities for growth.
- Teaching kids to see the bright side and tackle life with a positive vibes
Behind the Scenes of Content Creation
- Shifting gears to long-form content to deepen learning and connections online.
- From swinging clubs to crafting content: Alex's journey to becoming a messenger of impact.
Golf Meets Life Lessons
- Unpacking confidence on the golf course and how it mirrors in life.
- Alex's pivot to mindfulness amidst a midlife rethink, sharing his path to self-discovery.
- How gratitude plays a starring role in navigating life’s hurdles and keeping the passion alive.
Becoming a Digital Trailblazer
- Facing the fears of going public with personal ambitions
- The bittersweet journey of becoming an influencer: the impacts and the imperatives of digital presence.
Life’s Curveballs and Comebacks
- How a sidelined golf dream ignited a new chapter online amidst a pandemic.
- Snippets of wisdom from life influences Gary Vaynerchuk, Hamza Ahmed, and the hustle to build a TikTok following fast.
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The fear of having this passion that you cared so much about, that was such
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a big part of your life. The fear of that going away and the fact
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that you were able to come back and then win, dude, that's like, if you
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stopped right there. That is amazing. That's just a great. I just love
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that story.
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Did I tell you about my albatross? A yo, here we
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go. Come on. Welcome to another episode of did I tell
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you about my albatross? I'm your host, Albie. This is the golf
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podcast for honest degenerates. It's like teeing up with your favorite forsome every
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week and diving into the best stories in and around golf.
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You guys ready to tee off? Let's go. We added chillin on the right side
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of the green. Sip a little something.
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Everyone, to another episode of did I tell you about my albatross?
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And, boy, do we have a good one for you tonight. We've got a special
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guest here, someone I've been really looking forward to talking to. His name is Alex
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Romo. He is. I mean, dude, you really need no introduction,
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man. You are quite the sensation on all social and
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really for a lot of different things, initially around golf, but it's evolved, and
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I'm really interested to hear about your journey
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and your story. So, anyway, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for joining us, Alex,
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thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's nice of you to say all that.
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You're the man. Yeah, man. Well, let's just dive in here, man. So first of
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all, let's just start. You just got back from Morocco. I was noticing. Is that
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right? I did, yeah. I just returned a couple of days
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ago from that, actually. One of my best friends got married in
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Florida on the back end of that trip, so I flew back.
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Tampa, dude, that's where I live. That's where you're talking to me from
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Tampa right now. Are you kidding me? I just. No, dude, two days
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ago. Are you kidding me? That's crazy. That's hilarious. I'm literally doing this,
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Alex. I'm doing this in a shed. Like, I can touch this. I'm doing this
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in a shed in my backyard, in. So. Wow.
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I wish I could remember the place you got married at. I played some golf
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out there, too. So that was a quick little pit stop after Morocco.
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And actually, two more days I'm going to be leaving for Puerto Rico.
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So a lot of international travel in this month, which has been
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exciting. But, yeah, Morocco was a blast.
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You were there for pro am, right? I was yeah, I was there working
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with their tourism board and also participating in the pro am
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for the PGA Tour Champions event out there. Played with
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gentleman named Paul Broadhurst, who's a multiple time senior major
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champion and very cool, awesome guy, great player. And
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I had one moment there. Crazy that your show is called. Did I tell you
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about my albatross? So I've never had a hole in one. Ever been playing since
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I was 532 now. Lots of hole outs and
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exciting things, but never a proper hole in one. And on the
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17th hole, which was a par, 4310 yards, slightly
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downhill, landed like 10ft short of the pin, rolled
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straight into the pin at like, pretty mellow pace because there were
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fans up by the green watching and they're like, yes, it went in the cup
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and rattled out to the right, like 5ft. And it was on camera
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and everything. And so I was thinking, wow,
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that would have been an epic first hole in one, technically,
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but really even better than a hole in one. But no dying.
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We're going to Puerto Rico. I'm hoping that maybe something
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happens down there to shake things up a bit.
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It's crazy that we've had this conversation. Obviously a lot on here because
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the show is called right, just for context. And by the way,
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all my followers and listeners, you guys can tune out for a quick second. Alex,
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have you pumped this out to your people, man, this is a story, really for
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you and for just for context. So the reason it's called, did I tell you
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about Malvich? I love telling the story, by the way, is because, remember,
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member golf tournament, the year is 2020. My budy and I, we were day
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two. We go up to the final hole, we finish on pine one. It was
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a shotgun tournament. So we finished on the first hole, which is actually a par
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five, and I hit a good drive. Fairway, 247 out,
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hit my three wood, and it goes in. Now, we had two buddies that were
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waiting for it. So we go up to the hole, and I hit a really
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good shot. We couldn't see it go in, and my budy's like, hey, we have
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spirit animals. I'll get into all that here in a little bit. But anyway, my
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budy sea turtle, he was like, hey, man, did you think you hit a good
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shot? And I was like, yeah, man, I hit that pretty well. He was like,
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yeah, went over the green. So I started looking for this thing. Alex can't find
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it anywhere for like a good couple of minutes, and I'm like, dude, where is
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this ball? And he said it went in the hole. And we lost our
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mind, obviously. So then we go inside and turn our scorecard in. This is when
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it gets weird. Turn our scorecard in and they're like, oh, yeah, you guys were
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actually three shots back going into that final hole. So with that albatross. Walk off.
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Albatross, you tied for the win. And we were actually doing a Calcutta. We like
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won thousands of dollars, dude, I thought Alex, I thought I was going to be
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famous. I thought I was going to have your social following by now. I guess
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that was immediate. None of that happened. No one cares about my shot. My
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wife'sick of me telling everyone'sick. Of me talking about it. So I'm like, great, I'm
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going to start a pod cast. And until this thing blows up and until I'm
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on sports center talking to Scott Van Pelt, then I'm going to keep talking about
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this damn thing anyway. But to me, man,
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when I hear stories like you that you just described, it drives me crazy because
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there's so many good golfers out there that don't even have a hole
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in one. And then you have gibronis out there
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that are just 25 handicaps that have multiple, like five or six. It just makes
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no sense to me. But anyway, I know I've had that conversation
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so many times with friends, it makes no sense, right? It's such a
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weird combo of skill and luck. There are some people that don't really play that
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much golf that rack up a ton and then other people that are great golfers,
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pro golfers. No dice. That's crazy. What an epic
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story, by the way. Good for you. Thanks, man. Well, it kind of ties in
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the reason I wanted to share it with you. There's a couple of reasons, but
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one, because, first of all, I love talking about it easily, but the other reason
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is because it does tie into a lot of what you and I were talking
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about before the show here. And I went really deep with this thing. I hired
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a data scientist and I just imagined like Einstein curled up in a fetal position
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trying to figure out the math on this because it took him a couple of
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weeks and he came back and he said one in 600 million were the ODs.
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Now, the reason I hired him to do it is because as soon as that
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happened, it just sort of changed a lot of things for me. I just started
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living my life like anything's possible. Like almost like a limitless
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feeling. And I mean, it's got to be the same feeling people have when they
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hit the lottery or just a really rare thing happens and if you start
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paying attention to little things like this and you start having this
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growth mindset, what happens? You'll notice it actually happens quite often.
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It actually happens all the time. We don't really pay attention to it. Maybe it's
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not an albatross, but it does happen in little everyday moments. And that's really what
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this podcast is about. It's about talking about those albatross
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like moments that are just rare and beautiful, whatever they may
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be. So anyway, that's really why I wanted to share with you.
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I love it. I'll follow up with one more similar story in
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30 seconds. Here I was playing a Tiger woods
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design course called Pains Valley in big. I saw
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some of your footage, man. It looks beautiful. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it was
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incredible. Incredible golf complex. Went there twice last year
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actually. And the first hole,
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eight in the morning playing the Tiger woods course. I'm so jacked up and we're
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out there to film everything and promote it. So I'm micked up. I've got a
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buddy in the cart with me. It's like a 480 yard par four,
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but it's straight downhill. So I hit an okay drive and it rolls
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out like 360 or something crazy. So I have a pitching wedge
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in 137 yards and I'm just
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having so much fun. I'm like, how about a walk off? Two to start, something
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about like I think I'm going to make it. And then I
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did. But the way it went in was crazy. It was like a two tiered
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green left side higher than the right side and the pin was on the right
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side, so it landed like on the slope part,
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so it had back spin, but it kind of looked more like side spin, which
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on camera looked really cool. It like yanked hard to the right ten or
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15ft jarred in freaking throw my club
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in the air, just running all the way down, pull it out of the cup.
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We had people with us and it was honestly
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top three most exhilarating, just pure joy moments
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in my life, all things combined. And yeah, just
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kind of like you. I got my five minutes talking about
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that one that I've drawn out for almost a year here,
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that story. Keep talking about it, dude. Because I mean, first of all, I saw
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know the video is great because I had Matt sharf on
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from. Yeah, so he came on, I don't know, maybe
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three or four weeks ago and he was talking about his. Obviously he's got
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these two amazing ones on camera, which a lot of your stuff's on camera too,
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which is great. It's going to happen, by the way, budy, I feel
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it. But he was talking and you said the word like
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you said joy, and that's really what you see him running down. And yours
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was very similar because that feeling is just unbeeble,
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man. It's incredible. So I love that. Tell me a little
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bit about your background. Let's just start when you were young. Obviously you grew up,
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you said playing golf at five, is that right? That's right. Yeah, I started at
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age five. I played a few other sports as well. Basketball,
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baseball, soccer, and water polo was my favorite,
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actually. Water polo, awesome. Yeah, I was pretty into water polo. I
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was doing some training with the olympic team when I was in like 8th grade
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and really into it. Played it in high school, but was
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not much of a future with that sport other than being on the olympic
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team. Right. And at around age
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15 or 16, just decided to hone in on golf because it seemed like that
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one I could take the farthest and stay healthy and injury free the
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longest with it. And so I started focusing on trying to play
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in college, and I came from a pretty small private high school
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in Ohio called Villanova. So although I was doing
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well at golf in our little bracket, it didn't really translate to
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the Division one visibility scale nationwide and so had no
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offers. But I went to a division one program anyway, and that was
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Cal Poly San Luis Bispo in the central coast of California
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and tried my best to walk on. Failed
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as a freshman, last guy cut as a sophomore, last guy
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cut again as a junior. Added to the practice roster
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halfway through junior year, called up to the main squad, and then I wound up
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playing the second half of my junior year and then a senior year
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and a fifth year. So I got two and a half years of d one
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experience after. Didn't look good for a while there, but
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eventually persevered. And that was really special to me. That was
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like kind of the beginning of what I would.
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I would say I'm a self described underdog,
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always kind of trying to rise from the ashes. I don't think I've ever
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been the best at anything or the most sure
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to succeed at anything, but I definitely have had some delusional self belief
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and a lot of support from friends and family. And
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somehow things just always wind up working out. Maybe not as quick as I
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think that they should, or I would like them to, but now that I can
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look back, it's been a pretty beautiful life and everything has worked out in my
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favor, even if I couldn't see it. At that time. So that was the first
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iteration of that in college. And then
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I was planning on turning pro right after, and I had some nice sponsors lined
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up and a nice schedule, and this was summer of 2014.
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And then a weird injury
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kind of just manifested out of nowhere. I had a degenerative
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joint on the inside of my collarbone. It's called
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external clavicular joint. And it was just
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like part of it was broken off and floating
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in the abyss of my clavicle.
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And it kind of created this popping, clicking, grinding,
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excruciating pain that as a right handed golfer, anytime I would
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rotate fully through on a follow through and wrap around my
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head, it just ripped that joint open and I couldn't do it. So
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did some traditional medicine at first, cortisol shot and a bunch of
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PT, and we couldn't really figure out, one, why
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it happened, and two, how we were going to stabilize that joint unless we did
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reconstructive surgery. And I met with a number of doctors and
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they all said, we won't do it because your aorta and major
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arteries are like, within centimeters of that joint, and the
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risk of nicking it and you bleeding out is pretty high.
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So for someone that just wants to play sports, we're not going to risk
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24 year old kid's life for that. So I felt really stuck. And that was
00:12:33
probably my first experience with pretty heavy depression and just
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hopelessness of like, damn, I had no backup plan, dude.
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I didn't go to the career fairs in college. I took no internships. I
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never for 1 second thought of, oh, probably I
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could do this job if golf doesn't work out. It was like, golf, golf, golf,
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golf, golf. Ever since I was a little guy and
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again leaned on family. We found this experimental
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medicine which now is pretty mainstream, but at the time it was kind of out
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there, and it was called stem cell therapy. Did that for almost
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two years where I was going into LA and getting bone marrow drilled
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out from my spine and then having that reinjected
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into this neck area. I was getting like 300 injections every two
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weeks. Oh, my God, dude, that's crazy. What was
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that? If you don't mind, just tell me a little bit about that
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process because it was so new. A couple of things.
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One, what made you guys pull the trigger? Because obviously it was probably
00:13:31
experimental, to your point. I mean, you were just probably that desperate. You just wanted
00:13:34
to get it feeling better and you wanted to take the chance, I guess,
00:13:38
right? Yeah. I mean, the doctors that we had met with, the more
00:13:42
traditional ones, were like, you will just never be able to golf. And I
00:13:46
also was really into lifting weights at that time. I had real
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passion for working out, and they said that that was not going to be an
00:13:53
option either. And so I just kind of felt like rolling
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the dice. What else was I do? Just sit on the sofa and accept
00:14:00
defeat? I felt like there was someone telling me there's something we could do. And
00:14:04
even though it was going to be very painful, very slow, and very expensive, there
00:14:07
was at least a chance, and it wasn't a life threatening thing like the
00:14:11
surgery. And, and to be quite honest, the doctor
00:14:15
was really spiritual and just connected with him. His
00:14:19
name was Dr. Mark Darrow. Still have a relationship with him.
00:14:23
He's still doing it. I'm one of many success stories for him. I'm in
00:14:26
his book, even. And just a great guy. Wow.
00:14:30
Ultimately kind of said that it was a
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physical manifestation of just the stress and
00:14:37
fear of leveling up in life. This thing that I had built up
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as kind of the thing for me, turning pro and
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starting my adult life and career and just
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not really feeling like I could allow myself to have that success
00:14:52
for whatever reason. And I think it just kind of came up with something that
00:14:56
would be a believable thing to shut it down. And
00:14:59
it was very real. But the fact that it didn't start from, like, an injury
00:15:03
or a fall, that was the best answer we could come up with.
00:15:07
And I just put a lot of trust in him, and I think that
00:15:11
probably had a lot to do with why the medicine worked.
00:15:14
Just your mind kind of creates your reality. Your perception
00:15:18
is your reality in life. And again, this was one of the early
00:15:21
examples of that on a big scale in my life. Just
00:15:25
crazy, crazy belief and support and love from
00:15:29
family and this doctor and friends and. Yeah, fast forward two years later,
00:15:33
was swinging the club again. And here's where the story. Amazing.
00:15:37
Well, hang on. All right. I want to go back to that, if you don't
00:15:40
mind. So this doctor, first of all, what was his name again? I want to
00:15:44
give him some shout out for sure. Dr. Mark Darrow.
00:15:48
A couple of things that come to mind. Mean, I think I'm a big believer.
00:15:51
Everything happens for a reason. The fact that you met this guy and the fact
00:15:54
that he, mean, obviously someone that you connected with and that you could trust and
00:15:58
that you were willing in the state that you were in,
00:16:02
that's a little miracle. That's what I'm talking about. Little things like this that happen.
00:16:05
But you did these, like, 300 shots every week. Yeah, it
00:16:09
just helps the cells and tissue and cartilage to kind of regenerate
00:16:13
and repair itself. Yeah, pretty gnarly stuff
00:16:17
if you get a chance to look it up. And it's more common now, but,
00:16:21
yeah, that was wild. Definitely kind of
00:16:24
incapacitated for a while, just sitting on a sofa watching
00:16:28
old golf videos. But there wasn't like an event. There wasn't like where you're
00:16:32
like, oh, something cracked or popped. It was just like a real gradual thing
00:16:36
where eventually you're just like, man, every time I swing, I'm hearing this clicking noise.
00:16:39
And then probably the pain came after that. It was actually pretty
00:16:43
sudden. And it was one week before that first tournament that I was going to
00:16:46
play. Oh, dude. Yeah, it was like a week
00:16:50
before. I was like, wow, this really hurts. And then I took a ton of
00:16:54
Tylenol and tried for like, one more day and I was like, no, I cannot
00:16:57
swing. And that was it. That shut me down. No more golf for two years.
00:17:00
So, yeah, it was a sudden onslaught of just
00:17:04
some weird pain that we tried to figure out what the
00:17:08
heck caused it. But I've been hearing this a lot lately, too, as far as
00:17:11
this manifestation of bottom line fear,
00:17:15
whatever that fear may. And it's different probably for everyone, but whatever it is
00:17:19
to the individual, it manifests physically in a lot of different
00:17:22
ways. Did he help you
00:17:26
with him telling you that aspect of it?
00:17:30
Did that give you enough of what you needed to sort of. I mean, obviously
00:17:33
he was doing the treatments and stuff, but mentally, was that enough to
00:17:37
kind of make it, or did you have to actually go into a deeper dive
00:17:42
to address the mental stuff? Yeah, no, I put
00:17:46
a lot of trust into him, definitely.
00:17:49
And I was lucky
00:17:53
that I grew up in a household where
00:17:57
mindset stuff and the power of the mind was not considered
00:18:01
taboo. It was encouraged. My parents were showing me, there's a
00:18:05
movie called the Secret. Yes, my mom did the same
00:18:08
thing, man, it was a game changer. Yeah, we were into that when I was
00:18:11
like twelve years old and my dad was teaching me breathing techniques to deal
00:18:15
with fear about anxiety at
00:18:18
school. Or I remember there was like a camping trip
00:18:22
and I was afraid of bears or something, and my dad was teaching me to
00:18:25
do deep breathing and stretching with them. So I grew up in a household where
00:18:29
that type of stuff was really celebrated and encouraged rather than made fun of
00:18:32
or considered taboo. So the foundation was already kind of laid for me
00:18:36
by my parents that I could really affect change in my own life, even
00:18:40
on the physical plane, just with my mental activity if I
00:18:44
really honed in and focused. And so I just don't think I ever bought into
00:18:48
the diagnosis from doctors that I was incurable and all
00:18:51
these things were wrong with me. And so I think that played a huge
00:18:55
role in the healing process, and we can get more into this in the
00:18:59
future. Part of the chronological progression, my life story. But the one
00:19:03
thing that I have been learning more recently, working with
00:19:06
meditation coaches and breath work coaches on some
00:19:10
retreats and workshops together, is
00:19:15
everything is energy. Us as humans and the entire
00:19:18
universe, it's all energy, and it can't be created or destroyed, and
00:19:22
it's supposed to flow freely through our heart and our body. But
00:19:25
stress and trauma and the fight or flight response and
00:19:29
hormones like adrenaline and cortisol can block or
00:19:33
just a closed heart from fear or past scarring and trauma can block
00:19:36
energy that should be freely moving through your body. Sometimes
00:19:41
out of a defense mechanism or fear, we just clamp
00:19:44
down and lock some scarring memory deep down inside of
00:19:48
us because it doesn't feel safe to process it, whether that's
00:19:52
societal conditioning or our parents or whatever
00:19:56
the case may be. And I don't know if I knew at the time what
00:19:59
was going on or had the words to describe it the same way I do
00:20:02
now, but I really feel like that was an extreme
00:20:06
case of me just I had already
00:20:10
kind of first world problems. I've been lucky, and I've had a nice
00:20:13
life, and we're talking about playing golf here, but
00:20:17
my own mental plane, which, like we're saying perception is reality.
00:20:21
And so, to me, being obsessed with golf, all in on golf, believing I had
00:20:24
this big purpose to go chase these dreams, to me, it was like life
00:20:28
or death. And I think that just fear
00:20:32
of failure or fear of judgment or not
00:20:35
understanding stress management techniques at a young age, I think I
00:20:39
just was kind of blocked
00:20:43
off, and I wasn't allowing energy to flow freely through my body. And when
00:20:46
your body's trying to release stress, it can manifest
00:20:50
on the physical plane. You can have literal physical ailments, and
00:20:54
it's a good sign. Sometimes it's a sign of you letting go of things or
00:20:57
processing things that you locked away ten years ago in childhood.
00:21:01
But I met countless people with interesting stories like
00:21:04
that in my later years now, where it makes me feel a lot less crazy
00:21:08
for what I was experiencing at the time, and I really couldn't explain. There were
00:21:11
definitely were times where I was like, dude, I think you're just full of man.
00:21:15
There's nothing wrong with you. But then I would pick up a club and I'd
00:21:17
be like, no, there's definitely something wrong with me. I just can't explain why. I
00:21:21
don't think you should discount that feeling, because it was everything to you. I mean,
00:21:24
that was like your whole future. That was everything you put it. And so to
00:21:27
have that almost feel like it's getting taken away, that's
00:21:31
a scary feeling. It just happened to be golf. But I mean,
00:21:34
replace it with whatever is most important in your life,
00:21:38
that can be a really disheartening thing. So you mentioned depression. Well, all right, I
00:21:42
took you away from the. This is where it gets fun. So let's go back
00:21:45
to that, because I didn't mean to throw you off track there. No worries.
00:21:50
And one silver lining from all of that, as I mentioned,
00:21:54
looking back, I feel like everything has worked out in my favor. But in that
00:21:57
moment, it felt like this is the worst thing ever. What I
00:22:01
learned at the time was a love for social
00:22:04
media and trying to build a community and sharing. I had so much time without
00:22:08
being able to really do much physically for two years there, and I was working
00:22:12
a job at the time, I was a caterer. So it's not like I truly
00:22:14
just watch TV all day every day. But the physical activity I was used to
00:22:18
with golf in the gym was taken away from me. So I filled that time
00:22:21
with sifting back through pictures and videos from my college career,
00:22:25
starting to post a little bit on Instagram, and having my first
00:22:29
experience with attracting little brands here and there for
00:22:32
some free t shirts or posting about this for $50
00:22:36
and very small scale, small time stuff. But it
00:22:39
was the beginning of me gaining belief that, wow,
00:22:44
I can attract like minded individuals through the Internet if I share my
00:22:48
passions and the things I'm interested in. And I put a lot of work in
00:22:52
dming back and forth with people and supporting other accounts. This could become a really
00:22:55
fulfilling, interesting thing where I build a golf community and then,
00:22:59
wow, it looks like there's companies that are interested in people that have an
00:23:03
audience, and I don't even think the word influencer was a thing yet.
00:23:07
In 20 14. 20, 15, 20 14. Wow, that's
00:23:10
crazy, man. I had just got Instagram like a year earlier as a
00:23:14
senior in college, which is crazy because now every twelve year old has it and
00:23:18
dreams of being an influencer. But obviously pretty
00:23:21
late to the game. And this was the
00:23:25
silver lining in the injury, was that I probably wasn't ready for a
00:23:29
pro golf career at that point in time anyway. So life probably was like,
00:23:32
let's put you on the injured reserve for a little bit. You can figure out
00:23:36
what you're going to do in the future, which is going to be more than
00:23:38
just golf. You're going to build a community and try to be a leader
00:23:42
of positive impact in the world online. So that was kind of me getting my
00:23:46
feet wet with that. So I look back with a lot of gratitude that I
00:23:49
was sort of forced against my will at the time, but for good reason,
00:23:53
into the lane, which has now turned into a really awesome career
00:23:57
and something I think I'll do for the rest of my life, which is leverage
00:24:00
the Internet to reach people and spread a message. But
00:24:04
the fun part that you asked about was that within my very first
00:24:07
month of picking up a club, I was like, let's just send it and play
00:24:11
a tournament. And I won, like, my fourth or
00:24:14
fifth thing, which was like, five weeks after I wasn't practicing
00:24:18
ready at all. I just literally was like, let's get back out
00:24:22
there. And I've told this story a few times. In California,
00:24:26
we have a mini tour called the Bo Tour, and just this
00:24:29
awesome guy named Bo that used to run something called the Pepsi Tour, which
00:24:33
no longer exists. But great minigames attract.
00:24:37
They attract PGA Tour know every now and then that are looking for a
00:24:41
game in their off week. And at the time, this guy, JJ Spawn, who's now,
00:24:44
like, a multiple time PGA Tour winner, he was kind of one of
00:24:48
the local savages playing on that tour and taking lunch
00:24:52
money. Wasn't on the tour at the time, but I was in a
00:24:55
tournament that he was in as well. And he was the guy that finished runner
00:24:59
up to me for my first ever pro win. Wow, that's amazing
00:25:03
strokes. And had my girlfriend with me, and it was just this
00:25:06
insane high of like, wow,
00:25:10
I have no business being good at golf right now. I know my swing is
00:25:13
trash. I know my short game is garbage. But this is
00:25:17
yet another moment of proving the fact
00:25:21
that your mind really is in control of everything. What was going through your
00:25:25
mind? Do you remember? Yeah, definitely was
00:25:28
nervous, but it was just gratitude. It was just, like, appreciation and
00:25:32
gratitude that I could play golf, and that was like screaming
00:25:36
so much louder than over time. The further back
00:25:40
in the golf culture you get, the more you kind of get this spoiled
00:25:43
attitude of complaining about the bad bounces, and you have all these
00:25:46
expectations, and you think you should be doing better than you are. And
00:25:50
before that can creep in, when you're just truly playing out of pure
00:25:54
joy for the ability to be like a healthy, physically
00:25:57
capable human being, swinging a golf club and just enjoying that moment
00:26:01
of competing as a pro. When I thought for two straight years it might
00:26:05
never happen. That weighed heavier than
00:26:09
all of the other garbage and allowed me to actually let what skill
00:26:12
was in my body come out. And it resulted in some pretty good play for
00:26:16
a while there and eventually caught up with me and I stopped playing as well.
00:26:20
And if I had continued that trajectory, then maybe I would be on the tour
00:26:23
at this point. But it was a very early, and it's something that I've
00:26:27
continued. I've tried to find that same just
00:26:31
pure enjoyment and gratitude
00:26:34
for living life and detachment from outcome. I think ultimately that's what
00:26:38
it was. I clearly had no expectation of winning. I just
00:26:42
was happy to be there. And that harder and harder to have that
00:26:45
attitude. The more and more you work hard at something and you start to
00:26:49
believe you deserve good results and you start to attach to them and
00:26:53
identify with them. But if you can really make it simple
00:26:57
and take it back to the headspace I was in at that point in time,
00:27:00
I think all of us would get more out of ourselves and whatever we're trying
00:27:04
to do in life. And I'm happy that
00:27:07
I experienced it even once in my life. Just an overwhelming sense of
00:27:11
gratitude that allowed me to excel at something without getting in
00:27:15
my own way. That's not to say that I experience that every tournament, or
00:27:19
I don't know if I've ever had that free flowing state
00:27:23
of golf again in my life since then, but I do remember what it felt
00:27:26
like. And I'm constantly trying to remind myself, like, dude, gratitude is the
00:27:30
answer. Like, you are, in your own way, you think you're so much
00:27:33
more important and take yourself so much more serious than you should. Go
00:27:37
back to that five year old attitude you had of, it's like, wow, this is
00:27:41
just so sick to be playing golf. Heard you say this now twice. Didn't deserve
00:27:44
it. And I've had these feelings before, too, man. It's such a
00:27:48
debilitating feeling because it can be overwhelming. And if you
00:27:52
really feel that way, then kind of like what we're talking about here, if thoughts
00:27:55
become things, it's going to become the reality. So I
00:27:58
think gratitude is an excellent way to combat that. I
00:28:02
think gratitude is a place of abundance, right? The fear of having
00:28:06
what you cared and this passion that you cared so much about, that was such
00:28:09
a big part of your life. The fear of that going away and the fact
00:28:12
that you were able to come back and then that's like, if you stopped right
00:28:16
there. That is amazing. That's just a great. I just love that story.
00:28:20
If you don't mind, I would love to dive in a little bit to the
00:28:23
social stuff I just started. Mean, I had a Facebook
00:28:26
account, but here's the thing, it's funny, Alex. I didn't post anything. Like, I've got
00:28:30
two little ones. I didn't post anything from when I got married, which I married
00:28:33
the most amazing person ever. I should have posted some stuff. If I'm going to
00:28:36
post stuff, should definitely mention that. Should definitely mention when my kids got bored,
00:28:39
like the happiest days of my life. And then all of a sudden I'm like,
00:28:42
I'm going to post about this albatross and this podcast I'm doing, which I had
00:28:45
to get over the fact that this is what brings me to social media. And
00:28:49
then my wife was like, really? What about everything else that we've been doing?
00:28:54
I just wonder what the environment was. How fast did you
00:28:58
catch on? Yeah,
00:29:01
boy, it was a little tough for me, too. I definitely didn't
00:29:05
grow up obsessed with social media or anything. I think I barely had
00:29:09
a Facebook as a senior in high school and then
00:29:13
barely got Instagram as a senior in college and
00:29:17
pretty much just lived in the real world until I was about 23 or four,
00:29:20
sitting on the sofa doing the whole posting when I was injured for a bit
00:29:24
there. But it's definitely something that
00:29:27
I was inspired by. Gary Vee one, and then I love that
00:29:31
guy. I think it was called the hustle sold
00:29:34
separately, and it might have been with Case Kenny,
00:29:38
who, if I'm correct in that assumption, he's still doing content and
00:29:41
I see him on my feet all the time. I could be misquoting that, but
00:29:45
that's not the important part. It basically was some guys talking about
00:29:48
document the journey before you've done whatever it is that you
00:29:52
say you're trying to do, whether that's becoming the world's top chef or a pro
00:29:56
golfer or a great husband and father, doesn't matter. Whatever your
00:29:59
goals are, they're relatable to probably 50 million other people
00:30:03
on the planet that have a similar goal somewhere else in the world.
00:30:07
And the Internet is a crazy place. There's a lot of negative
00:30:11
things as well. But for those that are seeking inspiration,
00:30:15
education, the more helpful side of the Internet,
00:30:18
you can play a huge role in that, even if you don't want to be
00:30:21
an influencer or have an online business.
00:30:26
It's helpful for yourself because it creates some accountability. And
00:30:31
if you make a goal of documenting your journey,
00:30:35
to lose ten pounds in 100 days, and you make a
00:30:38
commitment to post one video per day, or one progress picture per
00:30:42
week or one blog post, it's going to give you a little bit
00:30:45
of pride in what you're trying to do, even if you only have five
00:30:49
people watching, because it just makes it feel like, okay, it's a little bit
00:30:53
bigger than me now. We're out of my own head with this set of goals,
00:30:56
and we're in the world, and some people are watching and rooting for me or
00:30:59
rooting against me. And either way it's motivating because
00:31:03
this goal matters to me and I want to show people I can do it.
00:31:06
These podcasts were kind of talking about
00:31:10
on ESPN. We watch 30 for 30 talking about
00:31:14
people that are already really accomplished and going to their
00:31:18
origin story, and that is inspirational and motivating to
00:31:22
listen to the progression of someone from floor zero to the top
00:31:25
floor. What's even more motivating is if you
00:31:30
share the story and the ending of it hasn't been written
00:31:33
yet, and you're able to draw people in through shared interests
00:31:37
to what you're working on, and maybe you can learn from them at the same
00:31:40
time. And you guys grow collectively as a community
00:31:44
through collaboration and talking about your own unique
00:31:48
experiences. What's working, what isn't working on this journey, to
00:31:51
lose ten pounds in 100 days or whatever. The thing is that you're building community
00:31:55
around, and that resonated with me at the time in 2015, and I was
00:31:59
like, you're right, I'm going to start this pro golf journey. I have
00:32:03
no clue how I'm going to make it, but one, for my own
00:32:06
purposes, to show my family and to watch when I'm an old guy,
00:32:10
I want to document it. IPhones are a big thing now. It's
00:32:13
easier than ever to film. I think it's going to be a cool journey,
00:32:17
progressing from one tour to the next and playing Q schools all over the
00:32:21
place. I want to film it. And then two, I felt
00:32:24
like if I do make it, wow, we've got a pretty
00:32:28
awesome story here of the fact that I actually was filming it
00:32:32
when I was injured with this weird collarbone thing and everyone was saying I would
00:32:36
forgot again, let's start filming now. Rather than waiting
00:32:39
till you're more bulletproof to criticism because you're
00:32:43
already on this tour and nobody can.
00:32:46
It's a fear of failure defense mechanism, I think, that prevents most
00:32:50
people from posting because almost everyone's living a story and
00:32:54
everyone's story is relatable to a lot of other people. And it's very
00:32:57
fulfilling when you start to connect with people that do resonate with your
00:33:01
story and there's connections between you and these other people
00:33:05
based on these common interests. That's an awesome way to use the Internet and awesome
00:33:09
way to add and enrich everyone's lives, in my
00:33:12
opinion. And what stops all of us from being players in this content
00:33:16
ecosystem is just that fear of looking dumb and being made fun
00:33:20
of for having some big goal and not having the
00:33:23
tangible proof yet that we're
00:33:27
anywhere near our goal. And then that opens us up to
00:33:30
criticism. Know mostly people that don't even know us and aren't our real friends
00:33:34
if they're going to make fun of something like that. So I get it
00:33:37
and know struggled with it my whole life as well. But I think
00:33:41
I'm glad I listened to Gary Vee and I'm glad I listened to that podcast
00:33:44
and just kind of got over myself and little by little started trying to
00:33:48
bust the camera out in public and film things and talk to
00:33:52
it. And it still is hard to this day every single
00:33:55
time that I whip out. What do you mean? What's hard? Dude, I watch
00:33:59
your stuff and you got it dialed in. What do you mean? Yeah, I mean
00:34:03
I feel resistance and discomfort every single time
00:34:07
I start filming myself doing something, because in my mind
00:34:10
other people are watching and they're like, you must think you're so cool. You must
00:34:14
think you're more important than everyone else. Hurry up and hit the shot. Get out
00:34:17
of the way. Or like you're in the way of my gym set, or
00:34:21
why are you talking to a camera in public? And it's just people
00:34:25
are thinking that anyway. Everyone's worried about their own
00:34:28
stuff. But I wouldn't say I'm a natural
00:34:32
born actor Hollywood guy.
00:34:35
Honestly, I can do,
00:34:39
and especially when I realize that it has a purpose and it's bigger than me
00:34:42
and it's all for a reason. That's a
00:34:46
positive reason that motivates me. But yeah,
00:34:49
I wouldn't say I was born to be an influencer or anything like that. I
00:34:52
just learned about the power of the Internet and trying to take advantage of it.
00:34:56
Well, I think you're using it for the right things, too. I think that's a
00:34:59
big part of it. So that's automatically I feel like going to propel you a
00:35:02
lot quicker than other people trying to do it for the money or for whatever.
00:35:05
Fill in the blank. But I love the idea
00:35:09
of documenting the journey and the way that you described. That's really interesting.
00:35:13
And then the other part that is, it's also refreshing to hear someone
00:35:16
like yourself because, I mean, being a guy that's trying to throw up some
00:35:20
content, and I take it serious. I put a lot of heart, a lot of
00:35:22
energy, and a lot of work into it, and it's a grind. It's like trying
00:35:26
to figure out what will resonate with people.
00:35:30
I think your point there is, at least for me, well taken, because
00:35:34
you just have to kind of do what maybe is important for you, and there's
00:35:37
going to be enough. If you put enough of it out there, then there's going
00:35:40
to be enough people out there that will probably find it interesting eventually. And I
00:35:43
think just being genuine and true, not necessarily looking for the latest trend
00:35:47
and trying to piggyback off of what's going viral, but more importantly, just
00:35:52
what gets you excited, I guess, getting back to your journey as a professional golfer.
00:35:56
So we left off where we were doing some of these tours. We just
00:35:59
won this event. So what happened after that then? Yeah,
00:36:03
we're in 2016 and I was still splitting
00:36:07
time as a caterer. And then about a year from that point, I
00:36:11
would become a caddy as well at a club here in California called
00:36:14
Sherwood. And from then
00:36:17
until 2020 was kind of when
00:36:21
I had a bigger break on social media and that became more of my career.
00:36:25
I worked those jobs and kind of was 1ft in the
00:36:29
golf door and 1ft in the small time job door. Just
00:36:33
because I never made cuts at the golf, I never was
00:36:36
like, profiting. I had three wins at this point as a
00:36:40
professional, but all on smaller tours. So it's not like I got some
00:36:44
$100 payday or anything like that. And I just
00:36:48
kept working these side jobs. And
00:36:51
eventually I played on the Dakotas Tour in
00:36:54
2017 and 2019, and that was this
00:36:58
pretty well orchestrated mini tour in the Midwest that would take place
00:37:02
over about three months in the summer. You play like 18 tournaments in
00:37:06
this really rapid fire order, and I got to be
00:37:10
around some really world class golfers on that tour and see
00:37:13
exactly what it takes to win. And a lot of those guys are having
00:37:17
success at the next level now. Corn Ferry, PGA
00:37:20
Canada, Latin America, and a lot of them are
00:37:24
close buddies just from that Dakota tour. So
00:37:28
the fire was growing. Even though I wasn't having
00:37:32
tangible success like shooting sixty five? S and making cuts and
00:37:35
winning, I still knew that it was worth
00:37:39
my time to pursue. And I could eventually figure it out if I
00:37:43
could just free myself up to pursue it for an extended period
00:37:47
of time. I kind of was 2016 17 1819 were
00:37:51
all years of like three month sprint at golf because I had
00:37:54
either got some sponsorship money or worked for long enough to save it up.
00:37:58
And I didn't practice much when I was working.
00:38:02
So I would go out on the tour and be really rusty and sloppy, and
00:38:05
then at the end of the three months, things would kind of be clicking and
00:38:08
I'd be like, God, I am so bummed that I'm out of money, and now
00:38:11
I got to go back home and make the next 20 grand to do the
00:38:14
next run. And that cycle was maddening, but
00:38:18
also inspiring because it's like, man, I see myself rapidly
00:38:22
progress when I'm able to apply myself, not even
00:38:25
fully, but just mostly apply myself to this game and be on the
00:38:29
road competing for a couple of months. I think I have it in me maybe
00:38:33
not to be the best player in the world, but to definitely take it to
00:38:36
a higher level than the many tours that I've been playing at. And I'd like
00:38:39
to see myself have that opportunity. And so that persisted.
00:38:43
2016 17 1819. All the while making Instagram
00:38:47
videos, doing the best that I could to keep editing
00:38:50
things and keep putting it out there and keep making my recaps of these tournaments.
00:38:54
So it's all growing on a small scale. And
00:38:58
2020, obviously, COVID hits and I had sort of
00:39:01
already had this realization at the end of 2019, start of
00:39:05
2020, and I believe March of 2020 was when COVID shut
00:39:09
down everything in California. But interestingly enough, just a couple of months
00:39:12
prior to that, I had already kind of written a lot of notes about
00:39:16
the fact that I was realizing my highest value in
00:39:20
life was no longer to be a professional golfer
00:39:24
and swing this piece of metal better than everybody else in the world.
00:39:28
It just finally was clicking. Like, God, what a dumb life
00:39:31
purpose. At least it's a positive
00:39:35
thing. You're not, like, doing something bad with your life. But come on,
00:39:39
man, it's a game. I know it's a game.
00:39:43
There's more to life than that. And you have more to offer the world than
00:39:47
that. Let's think about what really
00:39:50
fires you up. What are the highest highs you've ever experienced in life?
00:39:54
And it was an easy answer. It was like, oh, connection with other humans. Like,
00:39:57
deep conversations, helping someone that's coming to me with
00:40:01
a problem, just experiences with friends
00:40:05
and family. Like, I love spending 10 hours talking to
00:40:09
someone and getting deep and philosophical. You're a
00:40:12
communicator and you're an empath. I didn't even know what that word was at the
00:40:15
time, but definitely a sensitive person that has a desire
00:40:19
to help humanity in some way and enjoys
00:40:23
feeling valuable to other humans. If I feel like I can
00:40:27
do something that helps someone else and it's based on my own
00:40:30
experience, those are the times where I'm like, wow, today was a great day. Like,
00:40:34
I had a great talk with person x y, and I would love
00:40:38
to hang out with them again in the future and have more feelings like that.
00:40:41
So that was all clicking for me, and I was like, well, what should we
00:40:44
do with this? We are fairly well connected now in the golf world.
00:40:48
I've met a lot of inspiring people. I'm not sure,
00:40:51
candidly if I'm going to make it to the levels that I'm trying to make
00:40:54
it to or not. And I'm getting close to 30 and feeling a little less
00:40:58
okay with being broke, as I felt in my mid twenty
00:41:01
s, a little more like, I always want to
00:41:05
golf, but what are we doing here? And so I had kind of
00:41:09
conceded that I might not play that much in 2020, and I was going to
00:41:12
try to figure out social media and see if I could develop
00:41:16
a more powerful audience and start doing some of the things that
00:41:19
I felt like I was already doing just in real life, in terms
00:41:23
of helpful conversations with people, sharing my
00:41:26
experiences with mental health or fitness or
00:41:30
relationships, and feeling good about myself for
00:41:33
contributing to someone else's life in that way. I had already said I was going
00:41:37
to do that on social media, and then life just kind of teed it up
00:41:40
for me and again said, sit down. You're not golfing anymore.
00:41:44
You're going to have to figure something else out in March, because even pro golf
00:41:48
shut down for a while there and again, shout out Gary
00:41:51
Vee. He was screaming about TikTok at this point in time
00:41:55
and saying, this is the most insane opportunity we're ever going to
00:41:59
see in our entire lifetime to gain an audience and attention
00:42:03
for free. Even if you're nobody, even if you have
00:42:07
no Instagram following and you're not famous for any reason, you could have
00:42:10
a million followers on TikTok and change your life in six months. If
00:42:14
you just understand the language of this platform and take the time to figure it
00:42:18
out and check your ego at the door, don't say, oh, it's for 13 year
00:42:22
olds. Like, I'm almost 30. I'm too whatever for this.
00:42:25
I always look to Gary Vee as prime example of somebody
00:42:29
who is ageless, really is not
00:42:33
too cool to try anything at any age, and is living proof that it
00:42:36
can work. So I had a tremendous amount of respect for him
00:42:40
and I did go all in on TikTok and it did work. By
00:42:44
the end of 2020, I had amassed a million followers there, and that put
00:42:47
enough credibility to my name as being able to
00:42:51
garner attention that it gave me the confidence to take
00:42:55
it further these next couple of years and really refine
00:42:59
what my purpose is online. You mentioned earlier
00:43:03
in your own journey the desire to be authentic and not follow
00:43:07
trends and things that may get you more views in the short term. But if
00:43:10
your goal is to be a long term part
00:43:14
of the conversation of creating content and doing something either
00:43:18
educational or inspirational or helpful in some way with it, rather than purely
00:43:21
entertaining, if that's your goal, then the
00:43:24
attitude of a little bit slower growth in the name of authenticity rather
00:43:28
than immediate growth
00:43:32
by chasing trends and virality, that was something I learned the
00:43:35
hard way because I did get in a crew of other influencers like
00:43:39
a little group chat, and worked with this mentor who
00:43:43
actually was an ex employee of Gary Vee and knew a lot about.
00:43:49
Know I took the advice, but it didn't come from my own,
00:43:53
was I was heavily pushed in the direction of dumbing
00:43:56
myself down. And I've always been this way, the way I am right now. Kind
00:44:00
of a long form guy that enjoys hours long
00:44:04
conversations and wants to talk about.
00:44:07
I love to laugh and I love comedy and I have fun with life. But
00:44:11
if I were to self assess, I'd say I am a pretty serious person
00:44:15
and we get one shot at life as far as we know.
00:44:19
So to me it's not a joke and I like to try to max
00:44:22
it out the best I can. And so that's always how I've been. But some
00:44:25
of these people in LA that I viewed as successful in the industry I
00:44:29
wanted to be successful in, kind of advised me to
00:44:33
turn that off for the time being and just figure out how to make five
00:44:37
to ten second videos, figure out how to follow trends.
00:44:41
If you ever want to have an audience and do any of the
00:44:44
positive things you want to do, you have to grow first. You can't just because
00:44:48
it's true. I was struggling. I was trying to make very long form stuff. I
00:44:51
was seeing it work for other people, but failed to make the connection that
00:44:55
people actually cared about what those other people said because they had a massive following
00:44:59
and had done a number of things that they were known for. And at that
00:45:02
point in time, nobody knew me for anything. And so it just wasn't hitting when
00:45:05
I tried to really speak my mind about different topics. And
00:45:09
so I eventually submitted to that advice and
00:45:12
figured it out. Definitely learned how to follow trends on TikTok and learned how
00:45:16
to just do whatever you needed to do to get views. And
00:45:20
it did not feel good. At the end of the year, it felt like
00:45:23
I had made up my mind that I would get to a million, and then
00:45:26
at a million, I would pivot, and then I would be like, hey, what's up,
00:45:28
guys? I actually have a lot more to me than you've
00:45:32
seen. I'm not just an entertaining, smiling kid. Like, I want to talk
00:45:36
about some real stuff. I was wrong in assuming that it would be
00:45:39
easy to pivot because I think I attracted an audience that wasn't interested in
00:45:43
that. And then it's, did you get the million? Did you actually hit the mark
00:45:46
of the million at the end of the year? I did, yeah, I did it.
00:45:49
Did you really? October of 2020. Yeah, it was about six
00:45:52
months after starting TikTok. Wow. And then you tried to pivot. I tried
00:45:56
to pivot, and up till this day,
00:46:00
it's been tough. I think if I could give advice to somebody
00:46:04
just starting, it would be, don't fall into that trap of thinking
00:46:07
that it's just a life thing. Right. Like, there are no
00:46:11
shortcuts. Anything worth doing is going to take time. So if somebody
00:46:15
sells you a package of being able to skip to a million
00:46:18
followers, which is a lot of people, it's like, that
00:46:22
shouldn't happen fast. If you're doing something that's appealing to
00:46:26
that many people, you're doing something wrong because you don't
00:46:30
want to be that in tune with the masses. You want to kind of be
00:46:34
true to yourself, I believe, at least, and
00:46:37
I kind of have shifted my perspective in recent years
00:46:41
and almost been grateful for the slowed growth that
00:46:45
I've experienced based on or compared to what I was seeing in
00:46:48
2020. Because to me, it's indicative of the fact that I am being more true
00:46:52
to myself. And I don't need 30 million followers to
00:46:56
have a very happy, fulfilling, successful 30
00:46:59
year run at this. I just need the right people. And the more
00:47:03
life I live, the more I realize that I have a fairly unique set
00:47:07
of interests, and I'm not everyone's cup of tea. A little too
00:47:11
deep for some. And that's okay. It's
00:47:15
more important to just stay true to myself and attract the right people
00:47:18
and turn off the people that aren't going to be into that anyway.
00:47:22
And that means you don't get to grow a million followers every six
00:47:26
months end on end on end. That would
00:47:29
only work if you're more of a traditional entertaining blogger and
00:47:33
making stuff that really appeals to 15 year olds. So it was an interesting
00:47:37
journey. Grateful for all of it, all learning lessons. But yeah, kind of
00:47:40
approaching it different these days. Alex. You know what's weird, man? I
00:47:44
literally came across this today. The universe is crazy, man.
00:47:48
Literally today. I mean, a guy trying to grow his YouTube channel. I mean, I've
00:47:51
got like a handful of subscribers, by the way. We're just getting going. But
00:47:55
it. But it's just funny because I came across something today and it was
00:47:58
talking about this exact thing it was talking about because I do know we take
00:48:02
a lot of these podcasts and then we'll chop them up into shorts and stuff
00:48:04
and I post them on my regular YouTube channel. Some of those have done really
00:48:07
well, especially with Matt Sharp is a great example with his audience. A lot of
00:48:11
them were able to see some of the stuff on our channel, which was great.
00:48:14
But what's interesting is this guy was saying that all the success he was having
00:48:18
with the short form, it was taking away from the long form because what was
00:48:21
happening is the short form. People would come over to the long form and they
00:48:24
would only stay for a second or two and then they would leave, which was
00:48:26
just killing the algorithm. So all those videos started going down and it was
00:48:30
a different audience. So basically what he was saying is the exact same thing you
00:48:33
are. It's a different audience that wants different things. So his
00:48:36
suggestion was actually to have to separate. Like, yeah, if you want to do short
00:48:40
form, sure, but separate it, because that audience is probably going to want something
00:48:44
more quick and then there's a certain way that you can maybe build
00:48:47
it to where you can attract them to the long form. But I
00:48:51
completely agree with what you're saying. I think that if you can just have a
00:48:54
much smaller subset of people that really just value
00:48:58
what you're saying, what you're doing, and really appreciate your journey,
00:49:02
then I think you're going to have a lot more success. And what you're like.
00:49:05
I can tell, man, your ultimate goal is to really help people and to really
00:49:08
find those people that you can help. I think you're going to have a lot
00:49:10
more impact doing it that way. I totally agree. I just think of
00:49:14
how I use the Internet and on Instagram and
00:49:17
TikTok, for example, my algorithm is
00:49:21
really well filtered to where it just shows me things I'm interested in that
00:49:25
are helpful tips about self improvement and life. And I love what it
00:49:29
shows me, but it comes at
00:49:33
you quicker than you can digest it. And so at the end of every day,
00:49:36
I've noticed that I've saved like 45 videos from these different
00:49:39
platforms, Instagram and TikTok, and with the pure intention of
00:49:43
revisiting them and implementing what I've learned, and
00:49:47
it just doesn't happen. It's almost like a form
00:49:51
of dopamine. You feel like you're improving your life because you're always
00:49:54
sifting through these different things that are helpful. But the things that
00:49:58
I actually learn from and improve my life with
00:50:02
are like hour long YouTube videos, two hour long
00:50:06
courses, and things where it's not as
00:50:09
stimulating and hyper edited and engaging as the short form
00:50:12
content is that's doing well and going viral.
00:50:16
But at least where I'm at right now
00:50:19
and where I hope to position myself for those
00:50:23
watching my content as well would be more of like a YouTuber
00:50:27
and then moving into even courses and private coaching and stuff
00:50:30
where I don't think there's that much help you
00:50:34
can do in 10 seconds, no matter how
00:50:38
awesome your editing and stuff is, it's better than nothing. And I certainly
00:50:42
still support creating positive content in any
00:50:46
length. But at some point
00:50:50
I think I'm going to pull back from the short form platforms and just try
00:50:53
to go all in on less. I'm going to
00:50:57
intentionally make it not punchy because I don't want to
00:51:01
mess with people's attention span and give them a new angle
00:51:04
and a new clip to look at every 1.5 seconds so
00:51:08
that they don't scroll down in the comments or pick up their phone and text
00:51:11
someone. I genuinely believe that one of the
00:51:15
biggest epidemics going on in the world right now is just
00:51:19
a messed up attention span, and that leading to all kinds
00:51:22
of challenges in life and depression and anxiety
00:51:26
and an inability to form a real connection and
00:51:29
relationship with friends, with family, with your partner. And I
00:51:33
feel like I already don't
00:51:37
really enjoy feeding into
00:51:41
that, even though I'm doing my best to be positive. And I do try to
00:51:44
make longer videos on Instagram and TikTok than the average person, knowing that
00:51:48
they're not going to perform as well, and knowing that that's still more true to
00:51:52
me than trying to spit it out in 5 seconds. But even that,
00:51:55
I feel like I'm still a part of this
00:51:59
perpetuation of an infatuation with short form
00:52:03
creators and viral videos. And there's a deep part of me, and I've been saying
00:52:06
this for like five years in my notes, that at some point I think I
00:52:10
will try to encourage people to just not use these
00:52:13
short, bite sized platforms as much and just seek education
00:52:17
online and accept that if you really want to learn something or really want
00:52:21
to change your life in any capacity, it's not a quick fix and it's
00:52:24
not something flashy or crazy. It's just got to do the work. Just like in
00:52:28
golf, just like in the gym, just like in a marriage, in a friendship, in
00:52:31
school. Anything of value takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work.
00:52:35
And above golf and above any of the other things I talk about,
00:52:39
that's kind of foundational Alex Romo philosophy.
00:52:43
And I think at some point I hope to really make that a
00:52:47
more widely accepted thing. What I
00:52:51
love about this whole thing, man, is I think personally,
00:52:55
this is actually the best thing that could have possibly happened to you, and I'll
00:52:58
explain why. So you were talking about, wow, I'm going to document my journey as
00:53:01
a golfer, and if I make it on tour, I know
00:53:05
that's not completely dead and I know you're still trying to compete and stuff,
00:53:08
but I think it's actually going to be a more beautiful journey to
00:53:12
actually the fact that you didn't. And now you've sort of pivoted and evolved
00:53:16
into much, much more man. It's a much cooler story in my
00:53:19
opinion. Much more depth. And to your point, the other one is just
00:53:23
you swinging a stick, but
00:53:28
you could help a lot of people and I think that's a much cooler
00:53:31
story. I agree. I agree, definitely the
00:53:35
golf is just a bonus if that ever clicks. It's mostly
00:53:38
just an arena to push myself. I love being able to
00:53:42
compete against other people that are the best in the world at what they're doing.
00:53:46
That makes me feel like I can
00:53:49
respect myself if I step into the battlefield with the real
00:53:53
dogs. So I'm going to always enjoy doing that. But it no
00:53:57
longer holds the same weight that it did of like, I suck as a human.
00:54:01
If I don't succeed at this now, I really feel like we're
00:54:04
gaining momentum, like you said, in a totally different realm.
00:54:08
That all was opened up by the pursuit of golf and then the challenges of
00:54:12
that and diving into content and storytelling. But
00:54:16
yeah, it's different ethos on my life at this point. So
00:54:20
it's cool. Been fun to live. Can you tell me a little bit
00:54:23
about, because you're golfing at a very high level. And I've
00:54:27
got some of our really good friends here in Tampa, actually.
00:54:31
Shout out to Brad Bruner. He was on the corn ferry tour.
00:54:35
He's a good friend of ours, anyway, friend of the show. He's been on a
00:54:37
couple of times. It's interesting talking to him because this guy, we've got some really
00:54:41
good players at our club. I'm talking. Plus, there's one guy at our club right
00:54:44
now, plus eight. I mean, he's unbelievable. He's on the canadian
00:54:47
tour. He's right there.
00:54:51
He's right there. And we're kind of following his journey. He
00:54:55
strikes the ball better than anyone I've ever seen besides Brad. Brad's
00:55:01
the difference between. And I'm like a four or five handicap, and we've got some
00:55:04
other good players at the club, but the difference between Brad and this guy
00:55:07
Brandon, it's a different level.
00:55:11
And then the fact that the idea that Brad just
00:55:15
didn't kind of like what you were saying, he was like,
00:55:18
okay, I got a kid now. I'm traveling
00:55:22
constantly. He was on the corn ferry tour. And I mean, yeah, that's a money
00:55:25
tour. But I mean, you're still not making. Unless you're the top five.
00:55:28
You're not really making a crazy living. He's like,
00:55:32
dude, it's not worth know. And so
00:55:35
it's, you know, I was talking to, like, what is the difference, in
00:55:39
your opinion, between someone like, like, that is that good?
00:55:43
And then that next level of PGA guys? And then in my opinion, there's
00:55:47
like multiple layers. Even in the PGA where you have the top
00:55:50
ten, those guys are completely different than the guys that just
00:55:54
are there for a short stint. What is the difference, man?
00:55:57
Do you know? What's your take on it? Yeah. The guys that I've seen that
00:56:01
have been the most effective just have the most
00:56:04
unbelievable confidence in themselves.
00:56:08
Really. If they vocalized publicly how they actually felt about
00:56:12
themselves, they'd be viewed as just the biggest cocky douchebags
00:56:15
ever. Really. And most golfers are very nice guys, so
00:56:19
they wouldn't say that publicly. But, yeah, some of
00:56:23
my best friends that have been the most
00:56:26
successful on the Dakota's tour and then have taken it from
00:56:30
there to the corn ferry and have even played a few tour events.
00:56:33
Those guys have absolute God complex and
00:56:37
think that they are God's gift to earth at
00:56:41
this sport of golf. And I don't think that they're born that
00:56:45
way. I think that you develop confidence by
00:56:48
proving to yourself through actions repeatedly that you are who you
00:56:52
say you are. And I think the quickest way to
00:56:56
get there is to look at someone that's Uber successful in a field you want
00:56:59
to be good at, whether it's business, golf, the gym, and be honest
00:57:03
with yourself about what they're doing every day. And so for these golfers that I'm
00:57:07
speaking of, that's what they do. They're not making social media videos,
00:57:11
they're not thinking about what impact can I have
00:57:15
in the world? And all these different things. They literally just want to
00:57:18
be the best at golf and smash everybody in the tournament every
00:57:22
week. That's where their focus is. And that repetitive
00:57:26
actions daily to putt and chip and play the practice rounds and work
00:57:30
with coaches, that breeds the confidence. It's not fake confidence.
00:57:34
It's not fake it till you make it. It's like they really do think that
00:57:37
they're the best because they're showing themselves every day that they're doing what the best
00:57:41
would do, and it doesn't happen quickly, but if you repeat it over time with
00:57:45
enough consistency, I think that's where that crazy self belief
00:57:49
comes from. And that's, in my opinion, the only difference between the
00:57:52
guys that still strike it exceptionally well and do all the
00:57:56
things just like a tour player would do, but don't have the same
00:57:59
success. I would put myself in that category, not
00:58:03
necessarily right now, but at the times when I've been the most practiced and the
00:58:06
most in competitive flow, I've felt like there is a very
00:58:10
minimal difference between myself and the guys that are winning in terms of
00:58:14
ball striking or in terms of anything physical. But
00:58:17
because of. I think I've worked the hardest that I could for my
00:58:21
set of circumstances in terms of needing to
00:58:25
try to figure out how to do social media and all the different side things
00:58:28
that I've done to keep going and not have a real job over the last
00:58:32
ten years. But my attention has been totally split.
00:58:36
And so although I've given golf all that I've had to give it,
00:58:39
I've always known that other guys are giving it way more. And I
00:58:43
think when it comes down to a real pressure situation and
00:58:47
me versus one of them, they're always going to get me because I'll take myself
00:58:50
out of it. I have that lack of belief in my mind
00:58:54
that we judge ourselves the same way we judge other people, which is
00:58:58
on actions. And so you watch somebody go to
00:59:02
the gym 50 days in a row, and you're like, wow, that's like a really
00:59:05
healthy, dude, or that's a bodybuilder or something.
00:59:09
If you see yourself kind of sporadically hit the
00:59:13
gym or sporadically eat healthy, you just don't have that. It's not your identity. It
00:59:17
only becomes your identity after x amount of days
00:59:20
without fail, doing the thing again and again and again
00:59:28
in the future. Something that I'm really hoping to split test
00:59:32
and see if it is true in my life the same way I'm talking about
00:59:35
it. I think if I could buy myself three years of uninterrupted
00:59:39
time at golf, I may see that same effect that I've
00:59:42
watched some of my friends who I don't think they have different DNA.
00:59:46
I don't think there's anything other than
00:59:50
their actions that are making them think that they have this
00:59:54
God complex of being the best ball striker on the planet. And it's cool to
00:59:57
see humans
01:00:00
truly can do whatever they think they can do.
01:00:04
Anything's possible. Anything's possible, dude. Literally.
01:00:08
I mean, an albatross to win a tournament or you fill in the blank.
01:00:11
But I completely agree. One of my co hosts for the
01:00:15
podcast, that's what he does, he has actually
01:00:18
a golf academy. They're starting here in Tampa. He's really, his background is tennis, so
01:00:22
his passion is golf, but he was a world class tennis
01:00:25
player. He's coached his tennis academy. He's had some of the top
01:00:29
five players in the world, men and women and including
01:00:33
gold medal winners for grand slam winners and so
01:00:37
on. And he is a performance coach. So he really
01:00:41
builds teams around these professional athletes and it takes
01:00:45
that at that level of tennis. And the same thing is true in golf for
01:00:48
sure. We're talking physios, we're talking
01:00:52
mental. I mean, you name it. And the mental side is just really
01:00:56
fascinating to me because he said the same thing. You take
01:00:59
someone like, I don't know if you followed full swing. I'm sure you did.
01:01:03
Right? It was just interesting to see Damon because he such
01:01:07
a good dude. I saw a couple of pictures with you, too, so he seemed
01:01:10
like, how is he, by the way? Is he a nice guy? Super cool, same
01:01:13
as he is on. TV, dude, I would love to be. He seems so down
01:01:17
to earth and just such a good guy. But anyway, he was saying a guy
01:01:20
like him who, it's just interesting because he is such a good golfer
01:01:24
at that level and you hear him talk to himself
01:01:29
and we've had this conversation before. I'm like, this guy doesn't have that confidence. And
01:01:32
he's like, yeah, he does. He's like. He does. There's no way he could be
01:01:35
where he's at and didn't have that confidence. There's no way. I know he's saying
01:01:38
all of that probably to like, and that's his own way of dealing with something,
01:01:42
but he's definitely got that extra layer of something that he knows
01:01:46
that others might not. So, I don't know, it's just interesting. Yeah,
01:01:50
I'd have to agree with you. Definitely. Let's talk a little bit
01:01:54
about your new journey. So obviously, the physical side and health
01:01:57
is just been. I mean, it sounds like even from
01:02:01
your injury and everything else, is that where it all started? Is that where the
01:02:05
passion came from and your focus on it?
01:02:08
It's been present my whole life. My dad helped me build a
01:02:12
gym when I was like 13 here at the house. And I always,
01:02:16
throughout high school and college, hated the stigma that golfers
01:02:20
were just like, not really athletes and not in good shape. And
01:02:24
so I wanted to look not like a golfer always.
01:02:27
I wanted to be strong and muscular and hang with the
01:02:31
basketball and the football guys and lift with them.
01:02:36
It's been present before the injury, that desire to kind of just be a well
01:02:39
rounded athlete and, yeah, it's something that will always be
01:02:43
important to me. Absolutely. It's just the most fair thing I've
01:02:47
ever done in life. Working out at the gym, if you
01:02:51
pick up this weight and then you pick up a heavier weight next week, and
01:02:54
if you go home and eat this food and sleep, you will
01:02:58
watch your arms or chest or legs get bigger. And to me,
01:03:01
that was so refreshing being a golfer, because I felt like,
01:03:05
man, I'm not sure if golf really always works like that.
01:03:09
Sometimes I feel like, so true. You know what I mean? I'm more
01:03:13
totally. And I'm dialed in and I got the shanks. All of
01:03:16
a sudden it's like, what is that? It's so unfair. It's probably the most unfair
01:03:20
thing that you could do. I always love
01:03:24
the gym. That was my safe haven, where it would never lie to
01:03:28
me. The weights are on it. That's always going to be a
01:03:32
part of it. And in the more recent years, the
01:03:35
whole mental component and spirituality has become
01:03:40
as much, if not more fascinating to me and important
01:03:43
to prioritize. Definitely.
01:03:49
Maybe that was bred from just a lot of struggle and a lot of
01:03:52
challenge. Again, first world problems. I have never
01:03:55
been unsafe or in a country torn by war or
01:03:59
anything like that, but own headspace. I definitely have
01:04:03
felt pretty jacked up at times. And I think
01:04:06
when you have dark points or real
01:04:10
challenges, that's really the biggest blessings in life because that's when you
01:04:14
start trying to figure things out. If you're not in that much pain, you're not
01:04:17
going to do anything to fix it. But if you're in debilitating pain, mentally or
01:04:21
physically, that's what spurs action. And then
01:04:25
that's life, by the way. It's just constant ebbing and
01:04:29
flowing of ups and downs, or perceived ups and downs, really. It
01:04:33
just is what it is. And you're the one attaching a label that this is
01:04:36
a good emotion, this is a bad emotion. And we have this
01:04:40
false expectation that life is beautiful
01:04:44
and everything is awesome when we're experiencing good
01:04:47
things. But then when we're not, we're like, life sucks. And I'm not
01:04:51
saying everyone's like that, but a lot of us have that attitude and it's like,
01:04:54
dude, yeah, and me too. And
01:04:58
the goal is to continually improve that
01:05:02
and be more okay with when life gives you a tough
01:05:05
hand and be like, okay, this is tough right now, but I will learn
01:05:09
something from it. And guess what? It's going to pick back up.
01:05:13
And then when I'm up, don't get too high and don't get this high and
01:05:16
mighty complex thinking that it's never going to fall, because it will. And
01:05:20
then accept that. Fall graciously. And same with
01:05:24
golf, birdies and bogeys. Same with
01:05:28
everything in life works this way. Energy is always balancing
01:05:31
out and I think it's taken me a while to try to come
01:05:35
to terms with that and start to accept it. Definitely fought with myself for
01:05:39
a while about why my headspace
01:05:42
was rattled. In my late twenty s, I definitely
01:05:46
felt like the golf wasn't
01:05:50
working out, but I didn't know if I could make this social
01:05:54
media content thing work or if I even would be good at it.
01:05:58
And it just midlife crisis, whatever you want to call it. But
01:06:01
I think that kind of pushed me more in the direction of
01:06:05
finding some peace internally rather than I think in my
01:06:08
twenty s. I did it more through friends and going out and partying
01:06:12
and more of the traditional, socially
01:06:16
accepted, western culture ways of dealing with
01:06:19
issues. And that was ineffective for me and
01:06:22
unsustainable. And I've definitely. I mean,
01:06:26
it's not like I just learned about meditating this year, but this 2023 and
01:06:30
2024 is when I started to take it more
01:06:33
seriously. And I've sought out a great coach. His name
01:06:37
is Light Watkins. I've been on two workshops, and then I
01:06:41
actually did, like, a week long retreat for New Year's this past year in Mexico
01:06:44
with him and a small group of people and studied Vedic
01:06:47
meditation. And we did a lot of unpacking
01:06:51
of stress and trauma and just trying to deeply rest the nervous
01:06:55
system and just be with yourself, sit with yourself,
01:06:58
deal with the. It's kind of painful when you're used to
01:07:02
being hyper stimulated. And I find
01:07:05
myself really struggling because, dude, my screen time is, like,
01:07:09
12 hours a day, every day. Is it really? Yeah, I was going to ask
01:07:12
about that. It's justified at this point as a one man
01:07:16
show. I don't know how else I could be communicating with the world as frequently
01:07:20
as I am and as purposefully as I try to if I didn't put that
01:07:24
type of time and effort into it. But, boy, it's
01:07:28
tough on a human brain to deal with that much
01:07:31
information coming in all the time. And so the meditation is
01:07:35
something I'm excited to learn more about. And really, what it is is just the
01:07:39
removal of doing things. No Netflix, no social media,
01:07:43
no talking to a friend, no listening to music. Just stop. Just
01:07:47
sit there. And I think at least my experience so far has been
01:07:50
that that's really scary. It's very hard to just let
01:07:54
your brain yap at you for eight straight hours.
01:07:58
If you haven't done much of that in a while, chances are all the things
01:08:02
that you're pushing down that you don't want to address or deal with, they're
01:08:06
still there. They never go anywhere. The human brain is a computer that
01:08:09
can remember what happened to us when we were three. It's out of survival. It's
01:08:13
trying to remember painful and traumatic things, store them as stress triggers, and
01:08:17
then in the future, when something that looks or sounds like that painful
01:08:20
experience from the past, we're going to close off to it because we don't want
01:08:24
to die, whether that's figure fight or flight or literally. And
01:08:27
so it's a beautiful thing, the way our mind protects us,
01:08:31
but ineffective in our 2024 society, where most of the
01:08:35
things that stress us and cause us anxiety are not threats at all and
01:08:39
are just figments of the imagination, and we need to let the thought
01:08:42
pass straight through us. So this whole world of meditating and
01:08:46
being still and sitting with yourself and then breath work, which
01:08:50
is something else I've been really interested in, and ICE
01:08:54
baths and cold exposure, these are kind of like accelerated
01:08:58
stress releases and accelerated chill pills for the
01:09:01
nervous system. And definitely there's a lot
01:09:05
of levels to it. That I could take way further than I have, but I
01:09:09
think I'm on the right path and starting to tap into some things that,
01:09:12
similar to the weightlifting, will benefit me just for life.
01:09:16
And then things that I want to obviously share as well. I keep
01:09:20
investing heavily, not only my time and energy, but also money into
01:09:24
learning these things and putting them into practice myself. And
01:09:27
that's twofold. One, it's to try to improve my own life, but pretty much everything
01:09:31
I do nowadays is through the framework of, like, this
01:09:35
is something that I can share with other people. Love
01:09:38
it. It's first my family and friends, and then once I've got a
01:09:42
little bit of practice talking about whatever the thing is and I feel like I
01:09:45
can explain it coherently, then I'll open my phone
01:09:49
up and try to put it on a video or whatever. And that's enjoyable for
01:09:52
me because I do think the reason I got into these things
01:09:56
was other people that I viewed as cool, whether they were golfers or
01:10:00
influencers or friends, started talking about something that was a little
01:10:03
taboo, the breath work, to me, that was taboo, like one or two years ago.
01:10:07
And then some cool people started talking about it and I'm like, what's this all
01:10:11
about? And that's all it takes. Then you experience the benefit for yourself and then
01:10:15
boom, now you're next in line. That other people, whether you know it or not,
01:10:18
are watching you, whether you're an influencer or not. Everyone
01:10:22
is looked up to by someone and what you're
01:10:26
doing and saying and interested in does matter. And
01:10:30
it's a very motivating way to go through life. Just knowing,
01:10:33
just treating yourself like you're in a movie, like you're the main character in a
01:10:36
movie and you're responsible to do your best every day
01:10:40
to live a life that others would be proud of
01:10:44
and you would want your kid to watch and look up to whether you have
01:10:47
a kid or not. I find myself framing a lot of my
01:10:51
actions through fatherhood at this point, even though I'm
01:10:54
not currently on a path trying to have a kid or be married or anything
01:10:57
like that. I think that everything I'm doing
01:11:01
online and in my own life, just constantly striving
01:11:05
to improve and then share with others, that's all practice for
01:11:09
being a good leader, which you could probably speak to more than me. I feel
01:11:12
like that's what it is to be a father and a husband, right? Just standing
01:11:15
for something and leading by example. Yeah, for sure, man.
01:11:19
I think that's when it actually clicked for me. You're way ahead of the
01:11:23
curve than I was. Alex, the way I've had to learn
01:11:26
everything is because I've had to learn the hard way, man. I've had to make
01:11:30
a lot of mistakes and learn from it that way, which, it's okay.
01:11:33
I think that's another way that you can learn.
01:11:39
You're saying some really insightful things here, at least for me, because you said
01:11:42
everyone has someone that looks up to them. And the first thing that came to
01:11:46
my mind are my kids. And until I had kids, I didn't really look at
01:11:50
it that way. And you see your kids and they're sponges, right? So they're running
01:11:53
around. Everything you say and do, they pick up on. And you start to
01:11:57
realize, like, oh, man, I need to really be the best me. Not just
01:12:01
for me anymore, but just so they can be the best them. I mean, you've
01:12:04
referenced your dad. I can't even count how many
01:12:07
times on this pod. And I love it because that's how big of an
01:12:11
influence he was and look how impactful he was in your life and look at
01:12:14
the things that you're doing. It's all probably because of the things that he did
01:12:18
out of love for you growing up. And, I mean, it's a shame that not
01:12:22
everyone has that, but, dude, that is a special gift that hopefully you will be
01:12:25
able to pass on and you can help people
01:12:30
at least with some sort of flavor of that. But the other thing,
01:12:33
too, you had mentioned you're really good at being able to explain some of this
01:12:37
stuff. So I caught your video on the cold plunge. And I've got a bunch
01:12:40
of buddies around here that they've been trying to get me to do this cold
01:12:43
punch stuff for a long time. And we actually have one at one of the
01:12:47
clubs here in Tampa. Not at our club, but a different one. And we were
01:12:50
playing the other day and he was like, all right, man, get there at like
01:12:52
07:00 a.m. We'll do the cold punch before we go out and play.
01:12:56
And I'm sitting there in bed and it was like a cold morning here in
01:12:58
Tampa, which means it's like 65. I'm like, I don't know, man. I could
01:13:02
stay here under the covers. So I didn't do it. But, man,
01:13:05
I've heard so many things. And the way that you described it, it made a
01:13:08
lot of sense. Finally, it spikes
01:13:12
your adrenaline and all your fight or flight and then when you get
01:13:16
out is really where the benefit happens because then your stress levels go down
01:13:20
naturally because they've already been initiated. Is that a
01:13:23
fair way to summarize it? Okay, yeah, exactly. It's
01:13:27
the same with any other hormone flooding in our
01:13:31
body. There's a max that could be in our
01:13:34
bloodstream at any point in time. And if the
01:13:38
baseline is a five out of ten, and then you intentionally
01:13:41
ramp it to a ten out of ten, now you've used a lot of it
01:13:45
up and it can't possibly say that high anymore. So it has no chance,
01:13:49
no choice but to lower the low baseline down to a four
01:13:52
or three out of ten until it can replenish. Because these are all
01:13:56
finite resources in our body that replenish daily when we sleep
01:14:00
and hydrate and nourish our bodies. So, yeah, it
01:14:03
can, in my experience, be
01:14:07
like probably the biggest bang for your buck.
01:14:10
Cheapest, quickest way to reduce anxiety and
01:14:14
depression. And also it just kind of is like
01:14:18
self confidence producing because you feel, same with the gym. It's like
01:14:22
anytime you do something, my budy, that you don't want to do, your brain
01:14:25
is starting to chirp to you, like, I don't want to do it. This is
01:14:28
going to be hard and you should do it anyway, as long as it's like
01:14:30
a positive thing for yourself that does
01:14:34
infuse some confidence in you and it spills over whatever
01:14:38
the next hard, challenging thing is. You're like, I know that I can do this
01:14:41
because I already did the gym or the cold plunge, and cold
01:14:45
plunge takes like three minutes. Gym for me takes like 2 hours.
01:14:49
Talking about this, I'm going to do it, man. My budy said
01:14:52
the same thing. He was like, dude, yeah, of course you don't like it. I
01:14:54
don't like doing it either. But the fact that afterwards you're like, I did that,
01:14:58
it feels good. That's the good feeling. So I don't know, man. I'm sold. Plunged
01:15:01
quick shout out to one of my biggest influences. His name is Hamza. He's
01:15:05
a self improvement youtuber, and he always ended his videos with
01:15:09
this quote called do the hard work, especially when you don't feel
01:15:12
like it. And he speaks to that being
01:15:16
the real key to developing discipline, or basically just
01:15:20
discipline, is the ability to do something you don't want to do. And I think
01:15:23
that when we talked about what separates the top
01:15:27
golfers and how they have confidence, it's the same thing. They
01:15:30
feel that same voice in their head saying they want to sleep in or it's
01:15:34
too cold to practice, or they already played around and they don't feel like practicing
01:15:38
whatever the internal narrative is, trying to make them not do
01:15:42
what they said that they were going to do and what they know they need
01:15:44
to do to be excellent at their craft. We all feel
01:15:48
that to the same degree every day. And the most
01:15:51
disciplined people, it's like a video game, and you're trying to
01:15:55
increase your stat of discipline. It comes from
01:15:59
reps, the same way you build your bicep stat. It's like, how many times have
01:16:02
you curled the ability to override that internal voice
01:16:06
saying, I don't want to do this hard thing. That's a learned skill. That
01:16:10
every time you feel the resistance of saying, I don't want to get out of
01:16:14
bed, it's too early, I don't want to get in the cold punch, it's too
01:16:16
cold, I don't want to hit 100 extra balls, I'm tired, et
01:16:19
cetera. That is practice at the mental override,
01:16:23
aka discipline, that every successful person does
01:16:27
have. Because to be successful, you just repeat the
01:16:31
actions day after day after day that lead to proficiency
01:16:34
in that skill of business, golf, gym. And in order to
01:16:38
do things every single day, you got to understand that everyone's
01:16:42
life is kind of the same. We have obstacles and family and
01:16:45
hardships that get in the way. But the most successful people
01:16:49
let virtually nothing stop them from doing what they said they were going to do
01:16:53
the night before. And I think that that cold plunge is like one
01:16:57
of the. It's very hard every day, or cold shower as
01:17:01
well. It's like, always going to suck, and your brain is always going to scream
01:17:04
at you, like, I don't want to do it. And that almost in, like, a
01:17:08
cynical, diabolical way, you can start to laugh at that voice.
01:17:12
Like, perfect. That's what we're looking for right there. That's what we're looking for. Not
01:17:15
wanting to do it. That's my time to go do it, because I know I'm
01:17:19
going to gain, like, five discipline points. And I know that everybody else
01:17:23
out there that I'm competing with, whether I like it or not,
01:17:26
especially as a man. I'm in competition with everyone else in the world for
01:17:30
resources, for jobs, for potential partners. It
01:17:33
is a competition. And if I want to beat my
01:17:37
competition, then acknowledge that they're feeling the same thing, and if I
01:17:41
can do it right now, I'll get five extra points of
01:17:45
discipline, and that will benefit me in the long run. I
01:17:49
love that, man. No, I love the narrative because, really,
01:17:53
I told you before, I work with an executive coach. Shout out to Russ Kyle.
01:17:56
So you gave your guy a shout. This guy is amazing because he talks about
01:18:00
discipline, being self love. Like, as soon as you're able to be more
01:18:03
disciplined, really what you're doing is you're allowing yourself to love yourself, because
01:18:07
really, as long as it's positive stuff. So he also talks
01:18:11
about, you had mentioned problems. He told
01:18:14
me everything that kind of goes on. The way that you're feeling
01:18:18
is really the story that you're telling yourself. So you can have
01:18:21
negative thoughts. And that's okay. Let them go. Let them come,
01:18:25
recognize them and let them go, because if it starts becoming your story,
01:18:29
then it's going to become, like, reality. It's going to end
01:18:33
up manifesting. So he won't let me. It's funny because I'll sometimes
01:18:36
say, yeah, man, I've got this problem. He's like, it's not a problem. He's like,
01:18:39
you have an opportunity. And after a
01:18:43
while now, I'm programmed whenever I want to say problem. So,
01:18:47
dude, it's so funny because now my kids, like I said, they're sponges. So I've
01:18:50
got them now. They're not allowed to say the word can't. We don't say can't
01:18:54
in the reading household. My last name. So we don't say can't. So it's funny.
01:18:57
I'll hear my daughter, who's turning six this weekend, and then she's
01:19:01
talking to my four year old son, and Grayson's name, and
01:19:05
Gregory will go, he'll be like, I can't do that. And she'll look out and
01:19:08
go, Gregory, we don't say can't. We don't say can't in the writing house. It's
01:19:12
so, you know. Yeah, it's great, dude. It's great.
01:19:16
All right, man. Well, I got two questions that are kind of silly at the
01:19:19
end. I'm serious, too, sometimes, but I'm also real silly,
01:19:23
and I love the silly. So I do want to ask. I ask everyone on
01:19:25
our show these two silly questions. They're not golf related. One of them is, but
01:19:28
they're not good. So I want to get to those. But anything that I can,
01:19:30
like. So do you actually have. Because, dude, I want to sign up whatever you're
01:19:34
offering. Like, if there's coaching or if there's anything that you've got, like,
01:19:38
framework wise, like, dude, sign me up. What do I need to do to get
01:19:41
on board? Do you have anything yet? Are you working on it? What's next? Thank
01:19:44
you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's
01:19:48
like top of mind. Number one thing I'm trying to work on, if I can
01:19:52
get out of the daily cycle of making videos and content
01:19:55
engulfing this online community. It's a website
01:19:59
called School skool.com,
01:20:03
and it's basically like an educational social media
01:20:06
and it's these little private communities. Hamza has
01:20:10
one. It's just a self improvement community. I don't know if there's really any golfers
01:20:14
on there yet, but my goal is to have a couple courses
01:20:18
inside about this sort of holistic approach to golf that I've
01:20:21
been kind of refining over the years, which is just my belief
01:20:25
of how to improve a golf. Incorporate the gym,
01:20:29
incorporate mental health and mindfulness and breath work and cold
01:20:32
showers and nutrition. All these different modules of
01:20:36
things that I have some experience with and have worked with coaches or
01:20:40
experimented with in my own life. So courses basically video
01:20:43
series and PDFs and prompts for you to sort of
01:20:47
journal and create your own plan about how to basically build a
01:20:51
daily routine and an action plan to start improving and
01:20:54
solving problems in your own life. That, as well as
01:20:59
Zoom calls and me bringing on some of these meditation
01:21:02
teachers and breath work coaches and experts in these fields that I'm learning
01:21:06
from having sort of lectures, know,
01:21:10
community calls for everyone that's inside as well as
01:21:14
just like social media looks like Facebook people post
01:21:18
and comment and it's kind of gamified. You can unlock more
01:21:21
courses when you level up. Yeah, the more things that
01:21:25
you comment and the more guys that are upvoting your
01:21:28
contributions, it's so addicting in the best way.
01:21:33
Basically, you get in a group of extremely like minded
01:21:36
people that are paying to be a part of it, so they're highly motivated
01:21:40
to engage and make friends and learn and go through the courses
01:21:44
I have been in some other people's, and that's what's got me so jacked
01:21:47
on, saying like, wow, yeah, this is the future. This is where the people that
01:21:51
are using the Internet for the right reasons, we're going to gravitate towards more of
01:21:54
this private community structure. And so I think, honestly, within a
01:21:58
couple of weeks, I have one right now, it just doesn't have content
01:22:02
inside, but I'm actually paying
01:22:06
monthly to have it, just forcing myself to get it together and do it more
01:22:09
quickly. Love it. And so if you're at all interested in the regular
01:22:13
content that I put out, it doesn't
01:22:17
seem like I can put that much depth on Instagram without it just kind
01:22:20
of getting suppressed. It's just not the right place for extreme long form stuff.
01:22:24
And at this point in time, I don't have a very sizable YouTube following
01:22:28
or consistent viewership. So I think that this is the place
01:22:32
that I'll be going all in on for the foreseeable future for the
01:22:35
people that really want to work one on one, make like
01:22:39
minded friends and kind
01:22:43
of get on this whole regimen and program of different things
01:22:47
or any piece of the puzzle of things that I've been talking about. So
01:22:51
my school community will be launching soon and that'll be definitely
01:22:54
plastered all over my Instagram and TikTok. And right now I
01:22:58
have like a broadcast channel on my Instagram, which is where I
01:23:02
keep putting updates and stuff like that in as well. So
01:23:06
that's right now the best that I got for you. I wish I had, like
01:23:10
coaching offer and if there's enough demand for that, I could definitely
01:23:14
do it. But at this point in my life I think I've been doing
01:23:17
that and just not really monetizing it, taking calls here and there
01:23:21
and a lot of DMs and just didn't really get
01:23:25
business smart or understand that not only is
01:23:29
it beneficial to me, but it's better for others as well.
01:23:32
When you sign up for a course or a private
01:23:36
community, at least in my experience, that's when I really dive into stuff.
01:23:40
You have a gift, man. Again, I've met you
01:23:43
tonight in person. I mean, I've been following you for quite a while, but you
01:23:46
have a really unique gift in being able to deliver
01:23:51
your message where it's consumable, especially
01:23:55
in today's world where there's so much noise. But the cold plunge
01:23:59
is a great example of that. I had probably ten people tell me about the
01:24:02
cold plunge. It never really resonated with me in, I don't know, like a
01:24:05
32nd video. I'm like, oh, I totally get it now.
01:24:09
I'd see why I'd want to do it. So, I mean, you being able to
01:24:11
bring that and then systemize it, I think
01:24:15
it's just going to be a great tool for people to hop on board, so.
01:24:18
Yeah, absolutely, man. I'll be looking out for that. Thank you. I
01:24:22
appreciate that. That's awesome, man. Cool, man. You ready for these two questions?
01:24:26
Yeah, let's do it. All right, question one. We
01:24:30
ask everyone on the podcast. All right, man. If can a human
01:24:33
being, and there's no right or wrong answer to this, by the way, can a
01:24:36
human being eat a golf ball and
01:24:39
survive swallow a golf ball? That's
01:24:43
insane. I got to believe that we're pretty
01:24:47
damn resilient. So, yeah, I think a human probably could.
01:24:50
Yeah, I go back and forth with it because, you know, and you take someone
01:24:54
like a big human, like Shaquille O'Neill, I imagine he could get into down a
01:24:57
lot. I don't mean. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But then
01:25:02
the way this came up is my buddy panda.
01:25:05
Okay, I'll get to the spirit animals now. So we have this deal
01:25:09
where on our podcast, by the way, I'm going to try to come up with
01:25:13
the spirit. Do you have, like a mascot or like a spirit animal? Like, you've
01:25:16
ever. Dang.
01:25:20
I mean, my college mascot was Mustangs, maybe. Mustang. Mustang.
01:25:24
Okay. I'm thinking something like an animal that's like
01:25:28
super friendly, super mellow, chill. I don't know. I'm going to come
01:25:31
back retriever or something like that. I like that. Loyal.
01:25:34
Yes. Okay. Serving like someone. That's
01:25:38
okay. I like retriever. So anyway, we've got all these for our personalities
01:25:42
on the podcast. And my buddy panda, who is one of the co
01:25:46
hosts here, he's kind of a younger dude, but dude, the
01:25:50
guy's a throwback. He is like a golf savant. He knows everything about golf
01:25:53
history. It's just crazy. He knows certain golfers mom's names. I have
01:25:57
no idea how, but it's just crazy. So anyway,
01:26:01
he was telling me one time, he's like, we were saying, okay, if I
01:26:04
get a certain number of subscribers or followers where I
01:26:08
can actually do this full time, then I won't mention the albatross story
01:26:12
ever again. And he was like, there's no way you're going to be able do
01:26:15
that. Come on. I'm like, no, serious. And he was like, what are you going
01:26:18
to do if you don't? Or if you do tell, if you do start saying.
01:26:21
I'm like, I'm a man of my word, man. And he's like, nah, you got
01:26:24
to have a Tony, you got to eat this. So this is the golf ball
01:26:27
right here, buddy. Alex. I had to make myself my own
01:26:30
trophy because no one cared enough to. Like, they sent an email out at the
01:26:34
club, but I had to make myself my own trophy. So, look, I'm terrible at
01:26:38
making trophies. Like, this is the golf ball side. That's awesome, bro.
01:26:42
But he's like, all right, you got to eat that golf ball. If you tell
01:26:45
the story after you get the certain number of subscribers, you got to eat the
01:26:47
golf ball. And I'm like, I don't know if I'll live. I don't know if
01:26:50
it's going to kill me or what. So anyway, that's where that question originated from.
01:26:54
That's funny. All right, second question.
01:26:58
All right. This is a little sillier, little non golf topic. But, dude, this one,
01:27:01
I love this question. Are there more? And I'm talking about anything alive, like
01:27:05
anything that has life to it. Okay. Are there
01:27:09
more eyes or legs in the world? More eyes or legs
01:27:12
in the world? I would definitely think more
01:27:16
eyes because doesn't everything has eyes, but
01:27:20
their snakes don't have legs. And maybe some birds.
01:27:25
Yeah, I don't know. Do you know the answer?
01:27:30
I've tried everything, dude. I cannot get to the answer of this. I go back
01:27:33
and forth because you got a centipede with however many legs those dudes have. You've
01:27:37
got crabs with multiple legs. But then you got
01:27:41
fish. You got all these fish out there. And I'm not counting fins as legs.
01:27:45
Those aren't legs. Tentacles aren't legs. So, I mean, dude, I think it's
01:27:48
eyes because of all the fish, but I don't know.
01:27:52
And I love hearing people's take on it because it's 50 50, dude,
01:27:56
you ask 100 people, you're going to get 50 on one way and 50 on
01:27:59
the other. Yeah, those are wild questions. I wonder if there's, like,
01:28:03
a story of anyone ever eating a golf ball that's out there that we could
01:28:06
research and they lived or not. I've done some
01:28:10
digging around. There's one dude. Yes. So there is one
01:28:14
dude on Reddit that. And by the way, we're not condoning eating golf
01:28:17
balls. Like, do not eat a golf ball based on Alex. And
01:28:21
there's one. There's some guy on Reddit that actually ate
01:28:25
the golf ball. And I think it was weird because the video was like, you
01:28:28
could see him swallowing it. I'm assuming he's okay, but
01:28:32
I don't know. Other than that, I don't know. So silly.
01:28:37
Anyway, dude, everyone gets so wrapped around the axle about
01:28:41
important stuff, and I'm sitting here losing sleep over if there's more
01:28:45
eyes in the world. Anyway, hey, listen,
01:28:49
Alex, man, thank you so much for coming on, man. I know there's a
01:28:53
lot of other things you could be doing and sharing your story. Dude, you've got
01:28:56
a great one, man. And I'm really excited to kind of see what's next in
01:28:59
store for you and following along, because I think you're
01:29:03
on just an amazing path, dude. I really do. You have a lot to offer.
01:29:07
Thank you so much. That's really sweet of you. I appreciate that. And I had
01:29:10
a great time. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man, of course.
01:29:14
All right. Until next time, everyone. Did I tell
01:29:17
you about my albatross? Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Don't miss out on our upcoming
01:29:21
golf giveaways and experiences. They're exclusive to our subscribers, and all
01:29:25
you got to do is subscribe. And until next time, golf's easy.
01:29:29
Think fairways and greens. Here we go. Come on. Did I tell
01:29:33
you about my albatross? Oh, how you know?
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