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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
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.
Creators & Guests
What is Did I Tell You About My Albatross?
Host "Albi" made a 1/600 million, walk-off albatross (2 on a par 5) to win a 2 day golf tournament in Tampa, FL. So he started a podcast to tell the world about it and to find/share stories like his.
Welcome to ‘Did I Tell You About My Albatross’, the golf podcast that delves into the most incredible, improbable, and downright mind-blowing moments in golf.
Every episode feels like teeing it up with your favorite foursome, filled with laughter, storytelling, and the camaraderie that makes golf so unique.
The inception of this podcast is rooted in one of golf’s rarest feats: a walk-off albatross. In the 2020 Member-Member tournament at Carrollwood Country Club in Tampa, Florida, Albi (Host) defied 1 in 600 million odds, making a 2 on the final par 5, last hole/ last shot securing a miraculous win. This monumental shot wasn’t just a game-changer on the course; it transformed Albi’s life.
Join Albi and his Co-hosts: Sheppard (pro athlete whisperer/performance coach guru), and Panda (PGA Teaching Professional) as they uncover the best "did i tell you about...." moments in and around golf.
Discover the magic, the mayhem, and the moments that make golf the incredible game it is.
The fear of having this passion that you cared so much about, that was such
a big part of your life. The fear of that going away and the fact
that you were able to come back and then win, dude, that's like, if you
stopped right there. That is amazing. That's just a great. I just love
that story.
Did I tell you about my albatross? A yo, here we
go. Come on. Welcome to another episode of did I tell
you about my albatross? I'm your host, Albie. This is the golf
podcast for honest degenerates. It's like teeing up with your favorite forsome every
week and diving into the best stories in and around golf.
You guys ready to tee off? Let's go. We added chillin on the right side
of the green. Sip a little something.
Everyone, to another episode of did I tell you about my albatross?
And, boy, do we have a good one for you tonight. We've got a special
guest here, someone I've been really looking forward to talking to. His name is Alex
Romo. He is. I mean, dude, you really need no introduction,
man. You are quite the sensation on all social and
really for a lot of different things, initially around golf, but it's evolved, and
I'm really interested to hear about your journey
and your story. So, anyway, welcome to the show, man. Thanks for joining us, Alex,
thank you so much. I appreciate it. That's nice of you to say all that.
You're the man. Yeah, man. Well, let's just dive in here, man. So first of
all, let's just start. You just got back from Morocco. I was noticing. Is that
right? I did, yeah. I just returned a couple of days
ago from that, actually. One of my best friends got married in
Florida on the back end of that trip, so I flew back.
Tampa, dude, that's where I live. That's where you're talking to me from
Tampa right now. Are you kidding me? I just. No, dude, two days
ago. Are you kidding me? That's crazy. That's hilarious. I'm literally doing this,
Alex. I'm doing this in a shed. Like, I can touch this. I'm doing this
in a shed in my backyard, in. So. Wow.
I wish I could remember the place you got married at. I played some golf
out there, too. So that was a quick little pit stop after Morocco.
And actually, two more days I'm going to be leaving for Puerto Rico.
So a lot of international travel in this month, which has been
exciting. But, yeah, Morocco was a blast.
You were there for pro am, right? I was yeah, I was there working
with their tourism board and also participating in the pro am
for the PGA Tour Champions event out there. Played with
gentleman named Paul Broadhurst, who's a multiple time senior major
champion and very cool, awesome guy, great player. And
I had one moment there. Crazy that your show is called. Did I tell you
about my albatross? So I've never had a hole in one. Ever been playing since
I was 532 now. Lots of hole outs and
exciting things, but never a proper hole in one. And on the
17th hole, which was a par, 4310 yards, slightly
downhill, landed like 10ft short of the pin, rolled
straight into the pin at like, pretty mellow pace because there were
fans up by the green watching and they're like, yes, it went in the cup
and rattled out to the right, like 5ft. And it was on camera
and everything. And so I was thinking, wow,
that would have been an epic first hole in one, technically,
but really even better than a hole in one. But no dying.
We're going to Puerto Rico. I'm hoping that maybe something
happens down there to shake things up a bit.
It's crazy that we've had this conversation. Obviously a lot on here because
the show is called right, just for context. And by the way,
all my followers and listeners, you guys can tune out for a quick second. Alex,
have you pumped this out to your people, man, this is a story, really for
you and for just for context. So the reason it's called, did I tell you
about Malvich? I love telling the story, by the way, is because, remember,
member golf tournament, the year is 2020. My budy and I, we were day
two. We go up to the final hole, we finish on pine one. It was
a shotgun tournament. So we finished on the first hole, which is actually a par
five, and I hit a good drive. Fairway, 247 out,
hit my three wood, and it goes in. Now, we had two buddies that were
waiting for it. So we go up to the hole, and I hit a really
good shot. We couldn't see it go in, and my budy's like, hey, we have
spirit animals. I'll get into all that here in a little bit. But anyway, my
budy sea turtle, he was like, hey, man, did you think you hit a good
shot? And I was like, yeah, man, I hit that pretty well. He was like,
yeah, went over the green. So I started looking for this thing. Alex can't find
it anywhere for like a good couple of minutes, and I'm like, dude, where is
this ball? And he said it went in the hole. And we lost our
mind, obviously. So then we go inside and turn our scorecard in. This is when
it gets weird. Turn our scorecard in and they're like, oh, yeah, you guys were
actually three shots back going into that final hole. So with that albatross. Walk off.
Albatross, you tied for the win. And we were actually doing a Calcutta. We like
won thousands of dollars, dude, I thought Alex, I thought I was going to be
famous. I thought I was going to have your social following by now. I guess
that was immediate. None of that happened. No one cares about my shot. My
wife'sick of me telling everyone'sick. Of me talking about it. So I'm like, great, I'm
going to start a pod cast. And until this thing blows up and until I'm
on sports center talking to Scott Van Pelt, then I'm going to keep talking about
this damn thing anyway. But to me, man,
when I hear stories like you that you just described, it drives me crazy because
there's so many good golfers out there that don't even have a hole
in one. And then you have gibronis out there
that are just 25 handicaps that have multiple, like five or six. It just makes
no sense to me. But anyway, I know I've had that conversation
so many times with friends, it makes no sense, right? It's such a
weird combo of skill and luck. There are some people that don't really play that
much golf that rack up a ton and then other people that are great golfers,
pro golfers. No dice. That's crazy. What an epic
story, by the way. Good for you. Thanks, man. Well, it kind of ties in
the reason I wanted to share it with you. There's a couple of reasons, but
one, because, first of all, I love talking about it easily, but the other reason
is because it does tie into a lot of what you and I were talking
about before the show here. And I went really deep with this thing. I hired
a data scientist and I just imagined like Einstein curled up in a fetal position
trying to figure out the math on this because it took him a couple of
weeks and he came back and he said one in 600 million were the ODs.
Now, the reason I hired him to do it is because as soon as that
happened, it just sort of changed a lot of things for me. I just started
living my life like anything's possible. Like almost like a limitless
feeling. And I mean, it's got to be the same feeling people have when they
hit the lottery or just a really rare thing happens and if you start
paying attention to little things like this and you start having this
growth mindset, what happens? You'll notice it actually happens quite often.
It actually happens all the time. We don't really pay attention to it. Maybe it's
not an albatross, but it does happen in little everyday moments. And that's really what
this podcast is about. It's about talking about those albatross
like moments that are just rare and beautiful, whatever they may
be. So anyway, that's really why I wanted to share with you.
I love it. I'll follow up with one more similar story in
30 seconds. Here I was playing a Tiger woods
design course called Pains Valley in big. I saw
some of your footage, man. It looks beautiful. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it was
incredible. Incredible golf complex. Went there twice last year
actually. And the first hole,
eight in the morning playing the Tiger woods course. I'm so jacked up and we're
out there to film everything and promote it. So I'm micked up. I've got a
buddy in the cart with me. It's like a 480 yard par four,
but it's straight downhill. So I hit an okay drive and it rolls
out like 360 or something crazy. So I have a pitching wedge
in 137 yards and I'm just
having so much fun. I'm like, how about a walk off? Two to start, something
about like I think I'm going to make it. And then I
did. But the way it went in was crazy. It was like a two tiered
green left side higher than the right side and the pin was on the right
side, so it landed like on the slope part,
so it had back spin, but it kind of looked more like side spin, which
on camera looked really cool. It like yanked hard to the right ten or
15ft jarred in freaking throw my club
in the air, just running all the way down, pull it out of the cup.
We had people with us and it was honestly
top three most exhilarating, just pure joy moments
in my life, all things combined. And yeah, just
kind of like you. I got my five minutes talking about
that one that I've drawn out for almost a year here,
that story. Keep talking about it, dude. Because I mean, first of all, I saw
know the video is great because I had Matt sharf on
from. Yeah, so he came on, I don't know, maybe
three or four weeks ago and he was talking about his. Obviously he's got
these two amazing ones on camera, which a lot of your stuff's on camera too,
which is great. It's going to happen, by the way, budy, I feel
it. But he was talking and you said the word like
you said joy, and that's really what you see him running down. And yours
was very similar because that feeling is just unbeeble,
man. It's incredible. So I love that. Tell me a little
bit about your background. Let's just start when you were young. Obviously you grew up,
you said playing golf at five, is that right? That's right. Yeah, I started at
age five. I played a few other sports as well. Basketball,
baseball, soccer, and water polo was my favorite,
actually. Water polo, awesome. Yeah, I was pretty into water polo. I
was doing some training with the olympic team when I was in like 8th grade
and really into it. Played it in high school, but was
not much of a future with that sport other than being on the olympic
team. Right. And at around age
15 or 16, just decided to hone in on golf because it seemed like that
one I could take the farthest and stay healthy and injury free the
longest with it. And so I started focusing on trying to play
in college, and I came from a pretty small private high school
in Ohio called Villanova. So although I was doing
well at golf in our little bracket, it didn't really translate to
the Division one visibility scale nationwide and so had no
offers. But I went to a division one program anyway, and that was
Cal Poly San Luis Bispo in the central coast of California
and tried my best to walk on. Failed
as a freshman, last guy cut as a sophomore, last guy
cut again as a junior. Added to the practice roster
halfway through junior year, called up to the main squad, and then I wound up
playing the second half of my junior year and then a senior year
and a fifth year. So I got two and a half years of d one
experience after. Didn't look good for a while there, but
eventually persevered. And that was really special to me. That was
like kind of the beginning of what I would.
I would say I'm a self described underdog,
always kind of trying to rise from the ashes. I don't think I've ever
been the best at anything or the most sure
to succeed at anything, but I definitely have had some delusional self belief
and a lot of support from friends and family. And
somehow things just always wind up working out. Maybe not as quick as I
think that they should, or I would like them to, but now that I can
look back, it's been a pretty beautiful life and everything has worked out in my
favor, even if I couldn't see it. At that time. So that was the first
iteration of that in college. And then
I was planning on turning pro right after, and I had some nice sponsors lined
up and a nice schedule, and this was summer of 2014.
And then a weird injury
kind of just manifested out of nowhere. I had a degenerative
joint on the inside of my collarbone. It's called
external clavicular joint. And it was just
like part of it was broken off and floating
in the abyss of my clavicle.
And it kind of created this popping, clicking, grinding,
excruciating pain that as a right handed golfer, anytime I would
rotate fully through on a follow through and wrap around my
head, it just ripped that joint open and I couldn't do it. So
did some traditional medicine at first, cortisol shot and a bunch of
PT, and we couldn't really figure out, one, why
it happened, and two, how we were going to stabilize that joint unless we did
reconstructive surgery. And I met with a number of doctors and
they all said, we won't do it because your aorta and major
arteries are like, within centimeters of that joint, and the
risk of nicking it and you bleeding out is pretty high.
So for someone that just wants to play sports, we're not going to risk
24 year old kid's life for that. So I felt really stuck. And that was
probably my first experience with pretty heavy depression and just
hopelessness of like, damn, I had no backup plan, dude.
I didn't go to the career fairs in college. I took no internships. I
never for 1 second thought of, oh, probably I
could do this job if golf doesn't work out. It was like, golf, golf, golf,
golf, golf. Ever since I was a little guy and
again leaned on family. We found this experimental
medicine which now is pretty mainstream, but at the time it was kind of out
there, and it was called stem cell therapy. Did that for almost
two years where I was going into LA and getting bone marrow drilled
out from my spine and then having that reinjected
into this neck area. I was getting like 300 injections every two
weeks. Oh, my God, dude, that's crazy. What was
that? If you don't mind, just tell me a little bit about that
process because it was so new. A couple of things.
One, what made you guys pull the trigger? Because obviously it was probably
experimental, to your point. I mean, you were just probably that desperate. You just wanted
to get it feeling better and you wanted to take the chance, I guess,
right? Yeah. I mean, the doctors that we had met with, the more
traditional ones, were like, you will just never be able to golf. And I
also was really into lifting weights at that time. I had real
passion for working out, and they said that that was not going to be an
option either. And so I just kind of felt like rolling
the dice. What else was I do? Just sit on the sofa and accept
defeat? I felt like there was someone telling me there's something we could do. And
even though it was going to be very painful, very slow, and very expensive, there
was at least a chance, and it wasn't a life threatening thing like the
surgery. And, and to be quite honest, the doctor
was really spiritual and just connected with him. His
name was Dr. Mark Darrow. Still have a relationship with him.
He's still doing it. I'm one of many success stories for him. I'm in
his book, even. And just a great guy. Wow.
Ultimately kind of said that it was a
physical manifestation of just the stress and
fear of leveling up in life. This thing that I had built up
as kind of the thing for me, turning pro and
starting my adult life and career and just
not really feeling like I could allow myself to have that success
for whatever reason. And I think it just kind of came up with something that
would be a believable thing to shut it down. And
it was very real. But the fact that it didn't start from, like, an injury
or a fall, that was the best answer we could come up with.
And I just put a lot of trust in him, and I think that
probably had a lot to do with why the medicine worked.
Just your mind kind of creates your reality. Your perception
is your reality in life. And again, this was one of the early
examples of that on a big scale in my life. Just
crazy, crazy belief and support and love from
family and this doctor and friends and. Yeah, fast forward two years later,
was swinging the club again. And here's where the story. Amazing.
Well, hang on. All right. I want to go back to that, if you don't
mind. So this doctor, first of all, what was his name again? I want to
give him some shout out for sure. Dr. Mark Darrow.
A couple of things that come to mind. Mean, I think I'm a big believer.
Everything happens for a reason. The fact that you met this guy and the fact
that he, mean, obviously someone that you connected with and that you could trust and
that you were willing in the state that you were in,
that's a little miracle. That's what I'm talking about. Little things like this that happen.
But you did these, like, 300 shots every week. Yeah, it
just helps the cells and tissue and cartilage to kind of regenerate
and repair itself. Yeah, pretty gnarly stuff
if you get a chance to look it up. And it's more common now, but,
yeah, that was wild. Definitely kind of
incapacitated for a while, just sitting on a sofa watching
old golf videos. But there wasn't like an event. There wasn't like where you're
like, oh, something cracked or popped. It was just like a real gradual thing
where eventually you're just like, man, every time I swing, I'm hearing this clicking noise.
And then probably the pain came after that. It was actually pretty
sudden. And it was one week before that first tournament that I was going to
play. Oh, dude. Yeah, it was like a week
before. I was like, wow, this really hurts. And then I took a ton of
Tylenol and tried for like, one more day and I was like, no, I cannot
swing. And that was it. That shut me down. No more golf for two years.
So, yeah, it was a sudden onslaught of just
some weird pain that we tried to figure out what the
heck caused it. But I've been hearing this a lot lately, too, as far as
this manifestation of bottom line fear,
whatever that fear may. And it's different probably for everyone, but whatever it is
to the individual, it manifests physically in a lot of different
ways. Did he help you
with him telling you that aspect of it?
Did that give you enough of what you needed to sort of. I mean, obviously
he was doing the treatments and stuff, but mentally, was that enough to
kind of make it, or did you have to actually go into a deeper dive
to address the mental stuff? Yeah, no, I put
a lot of trust into him, definitely.
And I was lucky
that I grew up in a household where
mindset stuff and the power of the mind was not considered
taboo. It was encouraged. My parents were showing me, there's a
movie called the Secret. Yes, my mom did the same
thing, man, it was a game changer. Yeah, we were into that when I was
like twelve years old and my dad was teaching me breathing techniques to deal
with fear about anxiety at
school. Or I remember there was like a camping trip
and I was afraid of bears or something, and my dad was teaching me to
do deep breathing and stretching with them. So I grew up in a household where
that type of stuff was really celebrated and encouraged rather than made fun of
or considered taboo. So the foundation was already kind of laid for me
by my parents that I could really affect change in my own life, even
on the physical plane, just with my mental activity if I
really honed in and focused. And so I just don't think I ever bought into
the diagnosis from doctors that I was incurable and all
these things were wrong with me. And so I think that played a huge
role in the healing process, and we can get more into this in the
future. Part of the chronological progression, my life story. But the one
thing that I have been learning more recently, working with
meditation coaches and breath work coaches on some
retreats and workshops together, is
everything is energy. Us as humans and the entire
universe, it's all energy, and it can't be created or destroyed, and
it's supposed to flow freely through our heart and our body. But
stress and trauma and the fight or flight response and
hormones like adrenaline and cortisol can block or
just a closed heart from fear or past scarring and trauma can block
energy that should be freely moving through your body. Sometimes
out of a defense mechanism or fear, we just clamp
down and lock some scarring memory deep down inside of
us because it doesn't feel safe to process it, whether that's
societal conditioning or our parents or whatever
the case may be. And I don't know if I knew at the time what
was going on or had the words to describe it the same way I do
now, but I really feel like that was an extreme
case of me just I had already
kind of first world problems. I've been lucky, and I've had a nice
life, and we're talking about playing golf here, but
my own mental plane, which, like we're saying perception is reality.
And so, to me, being obsessed with golf, all in on golf, believing I had
this big purpose to go chase these dreams, to me, it was like life
or death. And I think that just fear
of failure or fear of judgment or not
understanding stress management techniques at a young age, I think I
just was kind of blocked
off, and I wasn't allowing energy to flow freely through my body. And when
your body's trying to release stress, it can manifest
on the physical plane. You can have literal physical ailments, and
it's a good sign. Sometimes it's a sign of you letting go of things or
processing things that you locked away ten years ago in childhood.
But I met countless people with interesting stories like
that in my later years now, where it makes me feel a lot less crazy
for what I was experiencing at the time, and I really couldn't explain. There were
definitely were times where I was like, dude, I think you're just full of man.
There's nothing wrong with you. But then I would pick up a club and I'd
be like, no, there's definitely something wrong with me. I just can't explain why. I
don't think you should discount that feeling, because it was everything to you. I mean,
that was like your whole future. That was everything you put it. And so to
have that almost feel like it's getting taken away, that's
a scary feeling. It just happened to be golf. But I mean,
replace it with whatever is most important in your life,
that can be a really disheartening thing. So you mentioned depression. Well, all right, I
took you away from the. This is where it gets fun. So let's go back
to that, because I didn't mean to throw you off track there. No worries.
And one silver lining from all of that, as I mentioned,
looking back, I feel like everything has worked out in my favor. But in that
moment, it felt like this is the worst thing ever. What I
learned at the time was a love for social
media and trying to build a community and sharing. I had so much time without
being able to really do much physically for two years there, and I was working
a job at the time, I was a caterer. So it's not like I truly
just watch TV all day every day. But the physical activity I was used to
with golf in the gym was taken away from me. So I filled that time
with sifting back through pictures and videos from my college career,
starting to post a little bit on Instagram, and having my first
experience with attracting little brands here and there for
some free t shirts or posting about this for $50
and very small scale, small time stuff. But it
was the beginning of me gaining belief that, wow,
I can attract like minded individuals through the Internet if I share my
passions and the things I'm interested in. And I put a lot of work in
dming back and forth with people and supporting other accounts. This could become a really
fulfilling, interesting thing where I build a golf community and then,
wow, it looks like there's companies that are interested in people that have an
audience, and I don't even think the word influencer was a thing yet.
In 20 14. 20, 15, 20 14. Wow, that's
crazy, man. I had just got Instagram like a year earlier as a
senior in college, which is crazy because now every twelve year old has it and
dreams of being an influencer. But obviously pretty
late to the game. And this was the
silver lining in the injury, was that I probably wasn't ready for a
pro golf career at that point in time anyway. So life probably was like,
let's put you on the injured reserve for a little bit. You can figure out
what you're going to do in the future, which is going to be more than
just golf. You're going to build a community and try to be a leader
of positive impact in the world online. So that was kind of me getting my
feet wet with that. So I look back with a lot of gratitude that I
was sort of forced against my will at the time, but for good reason,
into the lane, which has now turned into a really awesome career
and something I think I'll do for the rest of my life, which is leverage
the Internet to reach people and spread a message. But
the fun part that you asked about was that within my very first
month of picking up a club, I was like, let's just send it and play
a tournament. And I won, like, my fourth or
fifth thing, which was like, five weeks after I wasn't practicing
ready at all. I just literally was like, let's get back out
there. And I've told this story a few times. In California,
we have a mini tour called the Bo Tour, and just this
awesome guy named Bo that used to run something called the Pepsi Tour, which
no longer exists. But great minigames attract.
They attract PGA Tour know every now and then that are looking for a
game in their off week. And at the time, this guy, JJ Spawn, who's now,
like, a multiple time PGA Tour winner, he was kind of one of
the local savages playing on that tour and taking lunch
money. Wasn't on the tour at the time, but I was in a
tournament that he was in as well. And he was the guy that finished runner
up to me for my first ever pro win. Wow, that's amazing
strokes. And had my girlfriend with me, and it was just this
insane high of like, wow,
I have no business being good at golf right now. I know my swing is
trash. I know my short game is garbage. But this is
yet another moment of proving the fact
that your mind really is in control of everything. What was going through your
mind? Do you remember? Yeah, definitely was
nervous, but it was just gratitude. It was just, like, appreciation and
gratitude that I could play golf, and that was like screaming
so much louder than over time. The further back
in the golf culture you get, the more you kind of get this spoiled
attitude of complaining about the bad bounces, and you have all these
expectations, and you think you should be doing better than you are. And
before that can creep in, when you're just truly playing out of pure
joy for the ability to be like a healthy, physically
capable human being, swinging a golf club and just enjoying that moment
of competing as a pro. When I thought for two straight years it might
never happen. That weighed heavier than
all of the other garbage and allowed me to actually let what skill
was in my body come out. And it resulted in some pretty good play for
a while there and eventually caught up with me and I stopped playing as well.
And if I had continued that trajectory, then maybe I would be on the tour
at this point. But it was a very early, and it's something that I've
continued. I've tried to find that same just
pure enjoyment and gratitude
for living life and detachment from outcome. I think ultimately that's what
it was. I clearly had no expectation of winning. I just
was happy to be there. And that harder and harder to have that
attitude. The more and more you work hard at something and you start to
believe you deserve good results and you start to attach to them and
identify with them. But if you can really make it simple
and take it back to the headspace I was in at that point in time,
I think all of us would get more out of ourselves and whatever we're trying
to do in life. And I'm happy that
I experienced it even once in my life. Just an overwhelming sense of
gratitude that allowed me to excel at something without getting in
my own way. That's not to say that I experience that every tournament, or
I don't know if I've ever had that free flowing state
of golf again in my life since then, but I do remember what it felt
like. And I'm constantly trying to remind myself, like, dude, gratitude is the
answer. Like, you are, in your own way, you think you're so much
more important and take yourself so much more serious than you should. Go
back to that five year old attitude you had of, it's like, wow, this is
just so sick to be playing golf. Heard you say this now twice. Didn't deserve
it. And I've had these feelings before, too, man. It's such a
debilitating feeling because it can be overwhelming. And if you
really feel that way, then kind of like what we're talking about here, if thoughts
become things, it's going to become the reality. So I
think gratitude is an excellent way to combat that. I
think gratitude is a place of abundance, right? The fear of having
what you cared and this passion that you cared so much about, that was such
a big part of your life. The fear of that going away and the fact
that you were able to come back and then that's like, if you stopped right
there. That is amazing. That's just a great. I just love that story.
If you don't mind, I would love to dive in a little bit to the
social stuff I just started. Mean, I had a Facebook
account, but here's the thing, it's funny, Alex. I didn't post anything. Like, I've got
two little ones. I didn't post anything from when I got married, which I married
the most amazing person ever. I should have posted some stuff. If I'm going to
post stuff, should definitely mention that. Should definitely mention when my kids got bored,
like the happiest days of my life. And then all of a sudden I'm like,
I'm going to post about this albatross and this podcast I'm doing, which I had
to get over the fact that this is what brings me to social media. And
then my wife was like, really? What about everything else that we've been doing?
I just wonder what the environment was. How fast did you
catch on? Yeah,
boy, it was a little tough for me, too. I definitely didn't
grow up obsessed with social media or anything. I think I barely had
a Facebook as a senior in high school and then
barely got Instagram as a senior in college and
pretty much just lived in the real world until I was about 23 or four,
sitting on the sofa doing the whole posting when I was injured for a bit
there. But it's definitely something that
I was inspired by. Gary Vee one, and then I love that
guy. I think it was called the hustle sold
separately, and it might have been with Case Kenny,
who, if I'm correct in that assumption, he's still doing content and
I see him on my feet all the time. I could be misquoting that, but
that's not the important part. It basically was some guys talking about
document the journey before you've done whatever it is that you
say you're trying to do, whether that's becoming the world's top chef or a pro
golfer or a great husband and father, doesn't matter. Whatever your
goals are, they're relatable to probably 50 million other people
on the planet that have a similar goal somewhere else in the world.
And the Internet is a crazy place. There's a lot of negative
things as well. But for those that are seeking inspiration,
education, the more helpful side of the Internet,
you can play a huge role in that, even if you don't want to be
an influencer or have an online business.
It's helpful for yourself because it creates some accountability. And
if you make a goal of documenting your journey,
to lose ten pounds in 100 days, and you make a
commitment to post one video per day, or one progress picture per
week or one blog post, it's going to give you a little bit
of pride in what you're trying to do, even if you only have five
people watching, because it just makes it feel like, okay, it's a little bit
bigger than me now. We're out of my own head with this set of goals,
and we're in the world, and some people are watching and rooting for me or
rooting against me. And either way it's motivating because
this goal matters to me and I want to show people I can do it.
These podcasts were kind of talking about
on ESPN. We watch 30 for 30 talking about
people that are already really accomplished and going to their
origin story, and that is inspirational and motivating to
listen to the progression of someone from floor zero to the top
floor. What's even more motivating is if you
share the story and the ending of it hasn't been written
yet, and you're able to draw people in through shared interests
to what you're working on, and maybe you can learn from them at the same
time. And you guys grow collectively as a community
through collaboration and talking about your own unique
experiences. What's working, what isn't working on this journey, to
lose ten pounds in 100 days or whatever. The thing is that you're building community
around, and that resonated with me at the time in 2015, and I was
like, you're right, I'm going to start this pro golf journey. I have
no clue how I'm going to make it, but one, for my own
purposes, to show my family and to watch when I'm an old guy,
I want to document it. IPhones are a big thing now. It's
easier than ever to film. I think it's going to be a cool journey,
progressing from one tour to the next and playing Q schools all over the
place. I want to film it. And then two, I felt
like if I do make it, wow, we've got a pretty
awesome story here of the fact that I actually was filming it
when I was injured with this weird collarbone thing and everyone was saying I would
forgot again, let's start filming now. Rather than waiting
till you're more bulletproof to criticism because you're
already on this tour and nobody can.
It's a fear of failure defense mechanism, I think, that prevents most
people from posting because almost everyone's living a story and
everyone's story is relatable to a lot of other people. And it's very
fulfilling when you start to connect with people that do resonate with your
story and there's connections between you and these other people
based on these common interests. That's an awesome way to use the Internet and awesome
way to add and enrich everyone's lives, in my
opinion. And what stops all of us from being players in this content
ecosystem is just that fear of looking dumb and being made fun
of for having some big goal and not having the
tangible proof yet that we're
anywhere near our goal. And then that opens us up to
criticism. Know mostly people that don't even know us and aren't our real friends
if they're going to make fun of something like that. So I get it
and know struggled with it my whole life as well. But I think
I'm glad I listened to Gary Vee and I'm glad I listened to that podcast
and just kind of got over myself and little by little started trying to
bust the camera out in public and film things and talk to
it. And it still is hard to this day every single
time that I whip out. What do you mean? What's hard? Dude, I watch
your stuff and you got it dialed in. What do you mean? Yeah, I mean
I feel resistance and discomfort every single time
I start filming myself doing something, because in my mind
other people are watching and they're like, you must think you're so cool. You must
think you're more important than everyone else. Hurry up and hit the shot. Get out
of the way. Or like you're in the way of my gym set, or
why are you talking to a camera in public? And it's just people
are thinking that anyway. Everyone's worried about their own
stuff. But I wouldn't say I'm a natural
born actor Hollywood guy.
Honestly, I can do,
and especially when I realize that it has a purpose and it's bigger than me
and it's all for a reason. That's a
positive reason that motivates me. But yeah,
I wouldn't say I was born to be an influencer or anything like that. I
just learned about the power of the Internet and trying to take advantage of it.
Well, I think you're using it for the right things, too. I think that's a
big part of it. So that's automatically I feel like going to propel you a
lot quicker than other people trying to do it for the money or for whatever.
Fill in the blank. But I love the idea
of documenting the journey and the way that you described. That's really interesting.
And then the other part that is, it's also refreshing to hear someone
like yourself because, I mean, being a guy that's trying to throw up some
content, and I take it serious. I put a lot of heart, a lot of
energy, and a lot of work into it, and it's a grind. It's like trying
to figure out what will resonate with people.
I think your point there is, at least for me, well taken, because
you just have to kind of do what maybe is important for you, and there's
going to be enough. If you put enough of it out there, then there's going
to be enough people out there that will probably find it interesting eventually. And I
think just being genuine and true, not necessarily looking for the latest trend
and trying to piggyback off of what's going viral, but more importantly, just
what gets you excited, I guess, getting back to your journey as a professional golfer.
So we left off where we were doing some of these tours. We just
won this event. So what happened after that then? Yeah,
we're in 2016 and I was still splitting
time as a caterer. And then about a year from that point, I
would become a caddy as well at a club here in California called
Sherwood. And from then
until 2020 was kind of when
I had a bigger break on social media and that became more of my career.
I worked those jobs and kind of was 1ft in the
golf door and 1ft in the small time job door. Just
because I never made cuts at the golf, I never was
like, profiting. I had three wins at this point as a
professional, but all on smaller tours. So it's not like I got some
$100,000 payday or anything like that. And I just
kept working these side jobs. And
eventually I played on the Dakotas Tour in
2017 and 2019, and that was this
pretty well orchestrated mini tour in the Midwest that would take place
over about three months in the summer. You play like 18 tournaments in
this really rapid fire order, and I got to be
around some really world class golfers on that tour and see
exactly what it takes to win. And a lot of those guys are having
success at the next level now. Corn Ferry, PGA
Canada, Latin America, and a lot of them are
close buddies just from that Dakota tour. So
the fire was growing. Even though I wasn't having
tangible success like shooting sixty five? S and making cuts and
winning, I still knew that it was worth
my time to pursue. And I could eventually figure it out if I
could just free myself up to pursue it for an extended period
of time. I kind of was 2016 17 1819 were
all years of like three month sprint at golf because I had
either got some sponsorship money or worked for long enough to save it up.
And I didn't practice much when I was working.
So I would go out on the tour and be really rusty and sloppy, and
then at the end of the three months, things would kind of be clicking and
I'd be like, God, I am so bummed that I'm out of money, and now
I got to go back home and make the next 20 grand to do the
next run. And that cycle was maddening, but
also inspiring because it's like, man, I see myself rapidly
progress when I'm able to apply myself, not even
fully, but just mostly apply myself to this game and be on the
road competing for a couple of months. I think I have it in me maybe
not to be the best player in the world, but to definitely take it to
a higher level than the many tours that I've been playing at. And I'd like
to see myself have that opportunity. And so that persisted.
2016 17 1819. All the while making Instagram
videos, doing the best that I could to keep editing
things and keep putting it out there and keep making my recaps of these tournaments.
So it's all growing on a small scale. And
2020, obviously, COVID hits and I had sort of
already had this realization at the end of 2019, start of
2020, and I believe March of 2020 was when COVID shut
down everything in California. But interestingly enough, just a couple of months
prior to that, I had already kind of written a lot of notes about
the fact that I was realizing my highest value in
life was no longer to be a professional golfer
and swing this piece of metal better than everybody else in the world.
It just finally was clicking. Like, God, what a dumb life
purpose. At least it's a positive
thing. You're not, like, doing something bad with your life. But come on,
man, it's a game. I know it's a game.
There's more to life than that. And you have more to offer the world than
that. Let's think about what really
fires you up. What are the highest highs you've ever experienced in life?
And it was an easy answer. It was like, oh, connection with other humans. Like,
deep conversations, helping someone that's coming to me with
a problem, just experiences with friends
and family. Like, I love spending 10 hours talking to
someone and getting deep and philosophical. You're a
communicator and you're an empath. I didn't even know what that word was at the
time, but definitely a sensitive person that has a desire
to help humanity in some way and enjoys
feeling valuable to other humans. If I feel like I can
do something that helps someone else and it's based on my own
experience, those are the times where I'm like, wow, today was a great day. Like,
I had a great talk with person x y, and I would love
to hang out with them again in the future and have more feelings like that.
So that was all clicking for me, and I was like, well, what should we
do with this? We are fairly well connected now in the golf world.
I've met a lot of inspiring people. I'm not sure,
candidly if I'm going to make it to the levels that I'm trying to make
it to or not. And I'm getting close to 30 and feeling a little less
okay with being broke, as I felt in my mid twenty
s, a little more like, I always want to
golf, but what are we doing here? And so I had kind of
conceded that I might not play that much in 2020, and I was going to
try to figure out social media and see if I could develop
a more powerful audience and start doing some of the things that
I felt like I was already doing just in real life, in terms
of helpful conversations with people, sharing my
experiences with mental health or fitness or
relationships, and feeling good about myself for
contributing to someone else's life in that way. I had already said I was going
to do that on social media, and then life just kind of teed it up
for me and again said, sit down. You're not golfing anymore.
You're going to have to figure something else out in March, because even pro golf
shut down for a while there and again, shout out Gary
Vee. He was screaming about TikTok at this point in time
and saying, this is the most insane opportunity we're ever going to
see in our entire lifetime to gain an audience and attention
for free. Even if you're nobody, even if you have
no Instagram following and you're not famous for any reason, you could have
a million followers on TikTok and change your life in six months. If
you just understand the language of this platform and take the time to figure it
out and check your ego at the door, don't say, oh, it's for 13 year
olds. Like, I'm almost 30. I'm too whatever for this.
I always look to Gary Vee as prime example of somebody
who is ageless, really is not
too cool to try anything at any age, and is living proof that it
can work. So I had a tremendous amount of respect for him
and I did go all in on TikTok and it did work. By
the end of 2020, I had amassed a million followers there, and that put
enough credibility to my name as being able to
garner attention that it gave me the confidence to take
it further these next couple of years and really refine
what my purpose is online. You mentioned earlier
in your own journey the desire to be authentic and not follow
trends and things that may get you more views in the short term. But if
your goal is to be a long term part
of the conversation of creating content and doing something either
educational or inspirational or helpful in some way with it, rather than purely
entertaining, if that's your goal, then the
attitude of a little bit slower growth in the name of authenticity rather
than immediate growth
by chasing trends and virality, that was something I learned the
hard way because I did get in a crew of other influencers like
a little group chat, and worked with this mentor who
actually was an ex employee of Gary Vee and knew a lot about.
Know I took the advice, but it didn't come from my own,
was I was heavily pushed in the direction of dumbing
myself down. And I've always been this way, the way I am right now. Kind
of a long form guy that enjoys hours long
conversations and wants to talk about.
I love to laugh and I love comedy and I have fun with life. But
if I were to self assess, I'd say I am a pretty serious person
and we get one shot at life as far as we know.
So to me it's not a joke and I like to try to max
it out the best I can. And so that's always how I've been. But some
of these people in LA that I viewed as successful in the industry I
wanted to be successful in, kind of advised me to
turn that off for the time being and just figure out how to make five
to ten second videos, figure out how to follow trends.
If you ever want to have an audience and do any of the
positive things you want to do, you have to grow first. You can't just because
it's true. I was struggling. I was trying to make very long form stuff. I
was seeing it work for other people, but failed to make the connection that
people actually cared about what those other people said because they had a massive following
and had done a number of things that they were known for. And at that
point in time, nobody knew me for anything. And so it just wasn't hitting when
I tried to really speak my mind about different topics. And
so I eventually submitted to that advice and
figured it out. Definitely learned how to follow trends on TikTok and learned how
to just do whatever you needed to do to get views. And
it did not feel good. At the end of the year, it felt like
I had made up my mind that I would get to a million, and then
at a million, I would pivot, and then I would be like, hey, what's up,
guys? I actually have a lot more to me than you've
seen. I'm not just an entertaining, smiling kid. Like, I want to talk
about some real stuff. I was wrong in assuming that it would be
easy to pivot because I think I attracted an audience that wasn't interested in
that. And then it's, did you get the million? Did you actually hit the mark
of the million at the end of the year? I did, yeah, I did it.
Did you really? October of 2020. Yeah, it was about six
months after starting TikTok. Wow. And then you tried to pivot. I tried
to pivot, and up till this day,
it's been tough. I think if I could give advice to somebody
just starting, it would be, don't fall into that trap of thinking
that it's just a life thing. Right. Like, there are no
shortcuts. Anything worth doing is going to take time. So if somebody
sells you a package of being able to skip to a million
followers, which is a lot of people, it's like, that
shouldn't happen fast. If you're doing something that's appealing to
that many people, you're doing something wrong because you don't
want to be that in tune with the masses. You want to kind of be
true to yourself, I believe, at least, and
I kind of have shifted my perspective in recent years
and almost been grateful for the slowed growth that
I've experienced based on or compared to what I was seeing in
2020. Because to me, it's indicative of the fact that I am being more true
to myself. And I don't need 30 million followers to
have a very happy, fulfilling, successful 30
year run at this. I just need the right people. And the more
life I live, the more I realize that I have a fairly unique set
of interests, and I'm not everyone's cup of tea. A little too
deep for some. And that's okay. It's
more important to just stay true to myself and attract the right people
and turn off the people that aren't going to be into that anyway.
And that means you don't get to grow a million followers every six
months end on end on end. That would
only work if you're more of a traditional entertaining blogger and
making stuff that really appeals to 15 year olds. So it was an interesting
journey. Grateful for all of it, all learning lessons. But yeah, kind of
approaching it different these days. Alex. You know what's weird, man? I
literally came across this today. The universe is crazy, man.
Literally today. I mean, a guy trying to grow his YouTube channel. I mean, I've
got like a handful of subscribers, by the way. We're just getting going. But
it. But it's just funny because I came across something today and it was
talking about this exact thing it was talking about because I do know we take
a lot of these podcasts and then we'll chop them up into shorts and stuff
and I post them on my regular YouTube channel. Some of those have done really
well, especially with Matt Sharp is a great example with his audience. A lot of
them were able to see some of the stuff on our channel, which was great.
But what's interesting is this guy was saying that all the success he was having
with the short form, it was taking away from the long form because what was
happening is the short form. People would come over to the long form and they
would only stay for a second or two and then they would leave, which was
just killing the algorithm. So all those videos started going down and it was
a different audience. So basically what he was saying is the exact same thing you
are. It's a different audience that wants different things. So his
suggestion was actually to have to separate. Like, yeah, if you want to do short
form, sure, but separate it, because that audience is probably going to want something
more quick and then there's a certain way that you can maybe build
it to where you can attract them to the long form. But I
completely agree with what you're saying. I think that if you can just have a
much smaller subset of people that really just value
what you're saying, what you're doing, and really appreciate your journey,
then I think you're going to have a lot more success. And what you're like.
I can tell, man, your ultimate goal is to really help people and to really
find those people that you can help. I think you're going to have a lot
more impact doing it that way. I totally agree. I just think of
how I use the Internet and on Instagram and
TikTok, for example, my algorithm is
really well filtered to where it just shows me things I'm interested in that
are helpful tips about self improvement and life. And I love what it
shows me, but it comes at
you quicker than you can digest it. And so at the end of every day,
I've noticed that I've saved like 45 videos from these different
platforms, Instagram and TikTok, and with the pure intention of
revisiting them and implementing what I've learned, and
it just doesn't happen. It's almost like a form
of dopamine. You feel like you're improving your life because you're always
sifting through these different things that are helpful. But the things that
I actually learn from and improve my life with
are like hour long YouTube videos, two hour long
courses, and things where it's not as
stimulating and hyper edited and engaging as the short form
content is that's doing well and going viral.
But at least where I'm at right now
and where I hope to position myself for those
watching my content as well would be more of like a YouTuber
and then moving into even courses and private coaching and stuff
where I don't think there's that much help you
can do in 10 seconds, no matter how
awesome your editing and stuff is, it's better than nothing. And I certainly
still support creating positive content in any
length. But at some point
I think I'm going to pull back from the short form platforms and just try
to go all in on less. I'm going to
intentionally make it not punchy because I don't want to
mess with people's attention span and give them a new angle
and a new clip to look at every 1.5 seconds so
that they don't scroll down in the comments or pick up their phone and text
someone. I genuinely believe that one of the
biggest epidemics going on in the world right now is just
a messed up attention span, and that leading to all kinds
of challenges in life and depression and anxiety
and an inability to form a real connection and
relationship with friends, with family, with your partner. And I
feel like I already don't
really enjoy feeding into
that, even though I'm doing my best to be positive. And I do try to
make longer videos on Instagram and TikTok than the average person, knowing that
they're not going to perform as well, and knowing that that's still more true to
me than trying to spit it out in 5 seconds. But even that,
I feel like I'm still a part of this
perpetuation of an infatuation with short form
creators and viral videos. And there's a deep part of me, and I've been saying
this for like five years in my notes, that at some point I think I
will try to encourage people to just not use these
short, bite sized platforms as much and just seek education
online and accept that if you really want to learn something or really want
to change your life in any capacity, it's not a quick fix and it's
not something flashy or crazy. It's just got to do the work. Just like in
golf, just like in the gym, just like in a marriage, in a friendship, in
school. Anything of value takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work.
And above golf and above any of the other things I talk about,
that's kind of foundational Alex Romo philosophy.
And I think at some point I hope to really make that a
more widely accepted thing. What I
love about this whole thing, man, is I think personally,
this is actually the best thing that could have possibly happened to you, and I'll
explain why. So you were talking about, wow, I'm going to document my journey as
a golfer, and if I make it on tour, I know
that's not completely dead and I know you're still trying to compete and stuff,
but I think it's actually going to be a more beautiful journey to
actually the fact that you didn't. And now you've sort of pivoted and evolved
into much, much more man. It's a much cooler story in my
opinion. Much more depth. And to your point, the other one is just
you swinging a stick, but
you could help a lot of people and I think that's a much cooler
story. I agree. I agree, definitely the
golf is just a bonus if that ever clicks. It's mostly
just an arena to push myself. I love being able to
compete against other people that are the best in the world at what they're doing.
That makes me feel like I can
respect myself if I step into the battlefield with the real
dogs. So I'm going to always enjoy doing that. But it no
longer holds the same weight that it did of like, I suck as a human.
If I don't succeed at this now, I really feel like we're
gaining momentum, like you said, in a totally different realm.
That all was opened up by the pursuit of golf and then the challenges of
that and diving into content and storytelling. But
yeah, it's different ethos on my life at this point. So
it's cool. Been fun to live. Can you tell me a little bit
about, because you're golfing at a very high level. And I've
got some of our really good friends here in Tampa, actually.
Shout out to Brad Bruner. He was on the corn ferry tour.
He's a good friend of ours, anyway, friend of the show. He's been on a
couple of times. It's interesting talking to him because this guy, we've got some really
good players at our club. I'm talking. Plus, there's one guy at our club right
now, plus eight. I mean, he's unbelievable. He's on the canadian
tour. He's right there.
He's right there. And we're kind of following his journey. He
strikes the ball better than anyone I've ever seen besides Brad. Brad's
the difference between. And I'm like a four or five handicap, and we've got some
other good players at the club, but the difference between Brad and this guy
Brandon, it's a different level.
And then the fact that the idea that Brad just
didn't kind of like what you were saying, he was like,
okay, I got a kid now. I'm traveling
constantly. He was on the corn ferry tour. And I mean, yeah, that's a money
tour. But I mean, you're still not making. Unless you're the top five.
You're not really making a crazy living. He's like,
dude, it's not worth know. And so
it's, you know, I was talking to, like, what is the difference, in
your opinion, between someone like, like, that is that good?
And then that next level of PGA guys? And then in my opinion, there's
like multiple layers. Even in the PGA where you have the top
ten, those guys are completely different than the guys that just
are there for a short stint. What is the difference, man?
Do you know? What's your take on it? Yeah. The guys that I've seen that
have been the most effective just have the most
unbelievable confidence in themselves.
Really. If they vocalized publicly how they actually felt about
themselves, they'd be viewed as just the biggest cocky douchebags
ever. Really. And most golfers are very nice guys, so
they wouldn't say that publicly. But, yeah, some of
my best friends that have been the most
successful on the Dakota's tour and then have taken it from
there to the corn ferry and have even played a few tour events.
Those guys have absolute God complex and
think that they are God's gift to earth at
this sport of golf. And I don't think that they're born that
way. I think that you develop confidence by
proving to yourself through actions repeatedly that you are who you
say you are. And I think the quickest way to
get there is to look at someone that's Uber successful in a field you want
to be good at, whether it's business, golf, the gym, and be honest
with yourself about what they're doing every day. And so for these golfers that I'm
speaking of, that's what they do. They're not making social media videos,
they're not thinking about what impact can I have
in the world? And all these different things. They literally just want to
be the best at golf and smash everybody in the tournament every
week. That's where their focus is. And that repetitive
actions daily to putt and chip and play the practice rounds and work
with coaches, that breeds the confidence. It's not fake confidence.
It's not fake it till you make it. It's like they really do think that
they're the best because they're showing themselves every day that they're doing what the best
would do, and it doesn't happen quickly, but if you repeat it over time with
enough consistency, I think that's where that crazy self belief
comes from. And that's, in my opinion, the only difference between the
guys that still strike it exceptionally well and do all the
things just like a tour player would do, but don't have the same
success. I would put myself in that category, not
necessarily right now, but at the times when I've been the most practiced and the
most in competitive flow, I've felt like there is a very
minimal difference between myself and the guys that are winning in terms of
ball striking or in terms of anything physical. But
because of. I think I've worked the hardest that I could for my
set of circumstances in terms of needing to
try to figure out how to do social media and all the different side things
that I've done to keep going and not have a real job over the last
ten years. But my attention has been totally split.
And so although I've given golf all that I've had to give it,
I've always known that other guys are giving it way more. And I
think when it comes down to a real pressure situation and
me versus one of them, they're always going to get me because I'll take myself
out of it. I have that lack of belief in my mind
that we judge ourselves the same way we judge other people, which is
on actions. And so you watch somebody go to
the gym 50 days in a row, and you're like, wow, that's like a really
healthy, dude, or that's a bodybuilder or something.
If you see yourself kind of sporadically hit the
gym or sporadically eat healthy, you just don't have that. It's not your identity. It
only becomes your identity after x amount of days
without fail, doing the thing again and again and again
in the future. Something that I'm really hoping to split test
and see if it is true in my life the same way I'm talking about
it. I think if I could buy myself three years of uninterrupted
time at golf, I may see that same effect that I've
watched some of my friends who I don't think they have different DNA.
I don't think there's anything other than
their actions that are making them think that they have this
God complex of being the best ball striker on the planet. And it's cool to
see humans
truly can do whatever they think they can do.
Anything's possible. Anything's possible, dude. Literally.
I mean, an albatross to win a tournament or you fill in the blank.
But I completely agree. One of my co hosts for the
podcast, that's what he does, he has actually
a golf academy. They're starting here in Tampa. He's really, his background is tennis, so
his passion is golf, but he was a world class tennis
player. He's coached his tennis academy. He's had some of the top
five players in the world, men and women and including
gold medal winners for grand slam winners and so
on. And he is a performance coach. So he really
builds teams around these professional athletes and it takes
that at that level of tennis. And the same thing is true in golf for
sure. We're talking physios, we're talking
mental. I mean, you name it. And the mental side is just really
fascinating to me because he said the same thing. You take
someone like, I don't know if you followed full swing. I'm sure you did.
Right? It was just interesting to see Damon because he such
a good dude. I saw a couple of pictures with you, too, so he seemed
like, how is he, by the way? Is he a nice guy? Super cool, same
as he is on. TV, dude, I would love to be. He seems so down
to earth and just such a good guy. But anyway, he was saying a guy
like him who, it's just interesting because he is such a good golfer
at that level and you hear him talk to himself
and we've had this conversation before. I'm like, this guy doesn't have that confidence. And
he's like, yeah, he does. He's like. He does. There's no way he could be
where he's at and didn't have that confidence. There's no way. I know he's saying
all of that probably to like, and that's his own way of dealing with something,
but he's definitely got that extra layer of something that he knows
that others might not. So, I don't know, it's just interesting. Yeah,
I'd have to agree with you. Definitely. Let's talk a little bit
about your new journey. So obviously, the physical side and health
is just been. I mean, it sounds like even from
your injury and everything else, is that where it all started? Is that where the
passion came from and your focus on it?
It's been present my whole life. My dad helped me build a
gym when I was like 13 here at the house. And I always,
throughout high school and college, hated the stigma that golfers
were just like, not really athletes and not in good shape. And
so I wanted to look not like a golfer always.
I wanted to be strong and muscular and hang with the
basketball and the football guys and lift with them.
It's been present before the injury, that desire to kind of just be a well
rounded athlete and, yeah, it's something that will always be
important to me. Absolutely. It's just the most fair thing I've
ever done in life. Working out at the gym, if you
pick up this weight and then you pick up a heavier weight next week, and
if you go home and eat this food and sleep, you will
watch your arms or chest or legs get bigger. And to me,
that was so refreshing being a golfer, because I felt like,
man, I'm not sure if golf really always works like that.
Sometimes I feel like, so true. You know what I mean? I'm more
totally. And I'm dialed in and I got the shanks. All of
a sudden it's like, what is that? It's so unfair. It's probably the most unfair
thing that you could do. I always love
the gym. That was my safe haven, where it would never lie to
me. The weights are on it. That's always going to be a
part of it. And in the more recent years, the
whole mental component and spirituality has become
as much, if not more fascinating to me and important
to prioritize. Definitely.
Maybe that was bred from just a lot of struggle and a lot of
challenge. Again, first world problems. I have never
been unsafe or in a country torn by war or
anything like that, but own headspace. I definitely have
felt pretty jacked up at times. And I think
when you have dark points or real
challenges, that's really the biggest blessings in life because that's when you
start trying to figure things out. If you're not in that much pain, you're not
going to do anything to fix it. But if you're in debilitating pain, mentally or
physically, that's what spurs action. And then
that's life, by the way. It's just constant ebbing and
flowing of ups and downs, or perceived ups and downs, really. It
just is what it is. And you're the one attaching a label that this is
a good emotion, this is a bad emotion. And we have this
false expectation that life is beautiful
and everything is awesome when we're experiencing good
things. But then when we're not, we're like, life sucks. And I'm not
saying everyone's like that, but a lot of us have that attitude and it's like,
dude, yeah, and me too. And
the goal is to continually improve that
and be more okay with when life gives you a tough
hand and be like, okay, this is tough right now, but I will learn
something from it. And guess what? It's going to pick back up.
And then when I'm up, don't get too high and don't get this high and
mighty complex thinking that it's never going to fall, because it will. And
then accept that. Fall graciously. And same with
golf, birdies and bogeys. Same with
everything in life works this way. Energy is always balancing
out and I think it's taken me a while to try to come
to terms with that and start to accept it. Definitely fought with myself for
a while about why my headspace
was rattled. In my late twenty s, I definitely
felt like the golf wasn't
working out, but I didn't know if I could make this social
media content thing work or if I even would be good at it.
And it just midlife crisis, whatever you want to call it. But
I think that kind of pushed me more in the direction of
finding some peace internally rather than I think in my
twenty s. I did it more through friends and going out and partying
and more of the traditional, socially
accepted, western culture ways of dealing with
issues. And that was ineffective for me and
unsustainable. And I've definitely. I mean,
it's not like I just learned about meditating this year, but this 2023 and
2024 is when I started to take it more
seriously. And I've sought out a great coach. His name
is Light Watkins. I've been on two workshops, and then I
actually did, like, a week long retreat for New Year's this past year in Mexico
with him and a small group of people and studied Vedic
meditation. And we did a lot of unpacking
of stress and trauma and just trying to deeply rest the nervous
system and just be with yourself, sit with yourself,
deal with the. It's kind of painful when you're used to
being hyper stimulated. And I find
myself really struggling because, dude, my screen time is, like,
12 hours a day, every day. Is it really? Yeah, I was going to ask
about that. It's justified at this point as a one man
show. I don't know how else I could be communicating with the world as frequently
as I am and as purposefully as I try to if I didn't put that
type of time and effort into it. But, boy, it's
tough on a human brain to deal with that much
information coming in all the time. And so the meditation is
something I'm excited to learn more about. And really, what it is is just the
removal of doing things. No Netflix, no social media,
no talking to a friend, no listening to music. Just stop. Just
sit there. And I think at least my experience so far has been
that that's really scary. It's very hard to just let
your brain yap at you for eight straight hours.
If you haven't done much of that in a while, chances are all the things
that you're pushing down that you don't want to address or deal with, they're
still there. They never go anywhere. The human brain is a computer that
can remember what happened to us when we were three. It's out of survival. It's
trying to remember painful and traumatic things, store them as stress triggers, and
then in the future, when something that looks or sounds like that painful
experience from the past, we're going to close off to it because we don't want
to die, whether that's figure fight or flight or literally. And
so it's a beautiful thing, the way our mind protects us,
but ineffective in our 2024 society, where most of the
things that stress us and cause us anxiety are not threats at all and
are just figments of the imagination, and we need to let the thought
pass straight through us. So this whole world of meditating and
being still and sitting with yourself and then breath work, which
is something else I've been really interested in, and ICE
baths and cold exposure, these are kind of like accelerated
stress releases and accelerated chill pills for the
nervous system. And definitely there's a lot
of levels to it. That I could take way further than I have, but I
think I'm on the right path and starting to tap into some things that,
similar to the weightlifting, will benefit me just for life.
And then things that I want to obviously share as well. I keep
investing heavily, not only my time and energy, but also money into
learning these things and putting them into practice myself. And
that's twofold. One, it's to try to improve my own life, but pretty much everything
I do nowadays is through the framework of, like, this
is something that I can share with other people. Love
it. It's first my family and friends, and then once I've got a
little bit of practice talking about whatever the thing is and I feel like I
can explain it coherently, then I'll open my phone
up and try to put it on a video or whatever. And that's enjoyable for
me because I do think the reason I got into these things
was other people that I viewed as cool, whether they were golfers or
influencers or friends, started talking about something that was a little
taboo, the breath work, to me, that was taboo, like one or two years ago.
And then some cool people started talking about it and I'm like, what's this all
about? And that's all it takes. Then you experience the benefit for yourself and then
boom, now you're next in line. That other people, whether you know it or not,
are watching you, whether you're an influencer or not. Everyone
is looked up to by someone and what you're
doing and saying and interested in does matter. And
it's a very motivating way to go through life. Just knowing,
just treating yourself like you're in a movie, like you're the main character in a
movie and you're responsible to do your best every day
to live a life that others would be proud of
and you would want your kid to watch and look up to whether you have
a kid or not. I find myself framing a lot of my
actions through fatherhood at this point, even though I'm
not currently on a path trying to have a kid or be married or anything
like that. I think that everything I'm doing
online and in my own life, just constantly striving
to improve and then share with others, that's all practice for
being a good leader, which you could probably speak to more than me. I feel
like that's what it is to be a father and a husband, right? Just standing
for something and leading by example. Yeah, for sure, man.
I think that's when it actually clicked for me. You're way ahead of the
curve than I was. Alex, the way I've had to learn
everything is because I've had to learn the hard way, man. I've had to make
a lot of mistakes and learn from it that way, which, it's okay.
I think that's another way that you can learn.
You're saying some really insightful things here, at least for me, because you said
everyone has someone that looks up to them. And the first thing that came to
my mind are my kids. And until I had kids, I didn't really look at
it that way. And you see your kids and they're sponges, right? So they're running
around. Everything you say and do, they pick up on. And you start to
realize, like, oh, man, I need to really be the best me. Not just
for me anymore, but just so they can be the best them. I mean, you've
referenced your dad. I can't even count how many
times on this pod. And I love it because that's how big of an
influence he was and look how impactful he was in your life and look at
the things that you're doing. It's all probably because of the things that he did
out of love for you growing up. And, I mean, it's a shame that not
everyone has that, but, dude, that is a special gift that hopefully you will be
able to pass on and you can help people
at least with some sort of flavor of that. But the other thing,
too, you had mentioned you're really good at being able to explain some of this
stuff. So I caught your video on the cold plunge. And I've got a bunch
of buddies around here that they've been trying to get me to do this cold
punch stuff for a long time. And we actually have one at one of the
clubs here in Tampa. Not at our club, but a different one. And we were
playing the other day and he was like, all right, man, get there at like
07:00 a.m. We'll do the cold punch before we go out and play.
And I'm sitting there in bed and it was like a cold morning here in
Tampa, which means it's like 65. I'm like, I don't know, man. I could
stay here under the covers. So I didn't do it. But, man,
I've heard so many things. And the way that you described it, it made a
lot of sense. Finally, it spikes
your adrenaline and all your fight or flight and then when you get
out is really where the benefit happens because then your stress levels go down
naturally because they've already been initiated. Is that a
fair way to summarize it? Okay, yeah, exactly. It's
the same with any other hormone flooding in our
body. There's a max that could be in our
bloodstream at any point in time. And if the
baseline is a five out of ten, and then you intentionally
ramp it to a ten out of ten, now you've used a lot of it
up and it can't possibly say that high anymore. So it has no chance,
no choice but to lower the low baseline down to a four
or three out of ten until it can replenish. Because these are all
finite resources in our body that replenish daily when we sleep
and hydrate and nourish our bodies. So, yeah, it
can, in my experience, be
like probably the biggest bang for your buck.
Cheapest, quickest way to reduce anxiety and
depression. And also it just kind of is like
self confidence producing because you feel, same with the gym. It's like
anytime you do something, my budy, that you don't want to do, your brain
is starting to chirp to you, like, I don't want to do it. This is
going to be hard and you should do it anyway, as long as it's like
a positive thing for yourself that does
infuse some confidence in you and it spills over whatever
the next hard, challenging thing is. You're like, I know that I can do this
because I already did the gym or the cold plunge, and cold
plunge takes like three minutes. Gym for me takes like 2 hours.
Talking about this, I'm going to do it, man. My budy said
the same thing. He was like, dude, yeah, of course you don't like it. I
don't like doing it either. But the fact that afterwards you're like, I did that,
it feels good. That's the good feeling. So I don't know, man. I'm sold. Plunged
quick shout out to one of my biggest influences. His name is Hamza. He's
a self improvement youtuber, and he always ended his videos with
this quote called do the hard work, especially when you don't feel
like it. And he speaks to that being
the real key to developing discipline, or basically just
discipline, is the ability to do something you don't want to do. And I think
that when we talked about what separates the top
golfers and how they have confidence, it's the same thing. They
feel that same voice in their head saying they want to sleep in or it's
too cold to practice, or they already played around and they don't feel like practicing
whatever the internal narrative is, trying to make them not do
what they said that they were going to do and what they know they need
to do to be excellent at their craft. We all feel
that to the same degree every day. And the most
disciplined people, it's like a video game, and you're trying to
increase your stat of discipline. It comes from
reps, the same way you build your bicep stat. It's like, how many times have
you curled the ability to override that internal voice
saying, I don't want to do this hard thing. That's a learned skill. That
every time you feel the resistance of saying, I don't want to get out of
bed, it's too early, I don't want to get in the cold punch, it's too
cold, I don't want to hit 100 extra balls, I'm tired, et
cetera. That is practice at the mental override,
aka discipline, that every successful person does
have. Because to be successful, you just repeat the
actions day after day after day that lead to proficiency
in that skill of business, golf, gym. And in order to
do things every single day, you got to understand that everyone's
life is kind of the same. We have obstacles and family and
hardships that get in the way. But the most successful people
let virtually nothing stop them from doing what they said they were going to do
the night before. And I think that that cold plunge is like one
of the. It's very hard every day, or cold shower as
well. It's like, always going to suck, and your brain is always going to scream
at you, like, I don't want to do it. And that almost in, like, a
cynical, diabolical way, you can start to laugh at that voice.
Like, perfect. That's what we're looking for right there. That's what we're looking for. Not
wanting to do it. That's my time to go do it, because I know I'm
going to gain, like, five discipline points. And I know that everybody else
out there that I'm competing with, whether I like it or not,
especially as a man. I'm in competition with everyone else in the world for
resources, for jobs, for potential partners. It
is a competition. And if I want to beat my
competition, then acknowledge that they're feeling the same thing, and if I
can do it right now, I'll get five extra points of
discipline, and that will benefit me in the long run. I
love that, man. No, I love the narrative because, really,
I told you before, I work with an executive coach. Shout out to Russ Kyle.
So you gave your guy a shout. This guy is amazing because he talks about
discipline, being self love. Like, as soon as you're able to be more
disciplined, really what you're doing is you're allowing yourself to love yourself, because
really, as long as it's positive stuff. So he also talks
about, you had mentioned problems. He told
me everything that kind of goes on. The way that you're feeling
is really the story that you're telling yourself. So you can have
negative thoughts. And that's okay. Let them go. Let them come,
recognize them and let them go, because if it starts becoming your story,
then it's going to become, like, reality. It's going to end
up manifesting. So he won't let me. It's funny because I'll sometimes
say, yeah, man, I've got this problem. He's like, it's not a problem. He's like,
you have an opportunity. And after a
while now, I'm programmed whenever I want to say problem. So,
dude, it's so funny because now my kids, like I said, they're sponges. So I've
got them now. They're not allowed to say the word can't. We don't say can't
in the reading household. My last name. So we don't say can't. So it's funny.
I'll hear my daughter, who's turning six this weekend, and then she's
talking to my four year old son, and Grayson's name, and
Gregory will go, he'll be like, I can't do that. And she'll look out and
go, Gregory, we don't say can't. We don't say can't in the writing house. It's
so, you know. Yeah, it's great, dude. It's great.
All right, man. Well, I got two questions that are kind of silly at the
end. I'm serious, too, sometimes, but I'm also real silly,
and I love the silly. So I do want to ask. I ask everyone on
our show these two silly questions. They're not golf related. One of them is, but
they're not good. So I want to get to those. But anything that I can,
like. So do you actually have. Because, dude, I want to sign up whatever you're
offering. Like, if there's coaching or if there's anything that you've got, like,
framework wise, like, dude, sign me up. What do I need to do to get
on board? Do you have anything yet? Are you working on it? What's next? Thank
you, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's
like top of mind. Number one thing I'm trying to work on, if I can
get out of the daily cycle of making videos and content
engulfing this online community. It's a website
called School skool.com,
and it's basically like an educational social media
and it's these little private communities. Hamza has
one. It's just a self improvement community. I don't know if there's really any golfers
on there yet, but my goal is to have a couple courses
inside about this sort of holistic approach to golf that I've
been kind of refining over the years, which is just my belief
of how to improve a golf. Incorporate the gym,
incorporate mental health and mindfulness and breath work and cold
showers and nutrition. All these different modules of
things that I have some experience with and have worked with coaches or
experimented with in my own life. So courses basically video
series and PDFs and prompts for you to sort of
journal and create your own plan about how to basically build a
daily routine and an action plan to start improving and
solving problems in your own life. That, as well as
Zoom calls and me bringing on some of these meditation
teachers and breath work coaches and experts in these fields that I'm learning
from having sort of lectures, know,
community calls for everyone that's inside as well as
just like social media looks like Facebook people post
and comment and it's kind of gamified. You can unlock more
courses when you level up. Yeah, the more things that
you comment and the more guys that are upvoting your
contributions, it's so addicting in the best way.
Basically, you get in a group of extremely like minded
people that are paying to be a part of it, so they're highly motivated
to engage and make friends and learn and go through the courses
I have been in some other people's, and that's what's got me so jacked
on, saying like, wow, yeah, this is the future. This is where the people that
are using the Internet for the right reasons, we're going to gravitate towards more of
this private community structure. And so I think, honestly, within a
couple of weeks, I have one right now, it just doesn't have content
inside, but I'm actually paying
monthly to have it, just forcing myself to get it together and do it more
quickly. Love it. And so if you're at all interested in the regular
content that I put out, it doesn't
seem like I can put that much depth on Instagram without it just kind
of getting suppressed. It's just not the right place for extreme long form stuff.
And at this point in time, I don't have a very sizable YouTube following
or consistent viewership. So I think that this is the place
that I'll be going all in on for the foreseeable future for the
people that really want to work one on one, make like
minded friends and kind
of get on this whole regimen and program of different things
or any piece of the puzzle of things that I've been talking about. So
my school community will be launching soon and that'll be definitely
plastered all over my Instagram and TikTok. And right now I
have like a broadcast channel on my Instagram, which is where I
keep putting updates and stuff like that in as well. So
that's right now the best that I got for you. I wish I had, like
coaching offer and if there's enough demand for that, I could definitely
do it. But at this point in my life I think I've been doing
that and just not really monetizing it, taking calls here and there
and a lot of DMs and just didn't really get
business smart or understand that not only is
it beneficial to me, but it's better for others as well.
When you sign up for a course or a private
community, at least in my experience, that's when I really dive into stuff.
You have a gift, man. Again, I've met you
tonight in person. I mean, I've been following you for quite a while, but you
have a really unique gift in being able to deliver
your message where it's consumable, especially
in today's world where there's so much noise. But the cold plunge
is a great example of that. I had probably ten people tell me about the
cold plunge. It never really resonated with me in, I don't know, like a
32nd video. I'm like, oh, I totally get it now.
I'd see why I'd want to do it. So, I mean, you being able to
bring that and then systemize it, I think
it's just going to be a great tool for people to hop on board, so.
Yeah, absolutely, man. I'll be looking out for that. Thank you. I
appreciate that. That's awesome, man. Cool, man. You ready for these two questions?
Yeah, let's do it. All right, question one. We
ask everyone on the podcast. All right, man. If can a human
being, and there's no right or wrong answer to this, by the way, can a
human being eat a golf ball and
survive swallow a golf ball? That's
insane. I got to believe that we're pretty
damn resilient. So, yeah, I think a human probably could.
Yeah, I go back and forth with it because, you know, and you take someone
like a big human, like Shaquille O'Neill, I imagine he could get into down a
lot. I don't mean. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. But then
the way this came up is my buddy panda.
Okay, I'll get to the spirit animals now. So we have this deal
where on our podcast, by the way, I'm going to try to come up with
the spirit. Do you have, like a mascot or like a spirit animal? Like, you've
ever. Dang.
I mean, my college mascot was Mustangs, maybe. Mustang. Mustang.
Okay. I'm thinking something like an animal that's like
super friendly, super mellow, chill. I don't know. I'm going to come
back retriever or something like that. I like that. Loyal.
Yes. Okay. Serving like someone. That's
okay. I like retriever. So anyway, we've got all these for our personalities
on the podcast. And my buddy panda, who is one of the co
hosts here, he's kind of a younger dude, but dude, the
guy's a throwback. He is like a golf savant. He knows everything about golf
history. It's just crazy. He knows certain golfers mom's names. I have
no idea how, but it's just crazy. So anyway,
he was telling me one time, he's like, we were saying, okay, if I
get a certain number of subscribers or followers where I
can actually do this full time, then I won't mention the albatross story
ever again. And he was like, there's no way you're going to be able do
that. Come on. I'm like, no, serious. And he was like, what are you going
to do if you don't? Or if you do tell, if you do start saying.
I'm like, I'm a man of my word, man. And he's like, nah, you got
to have a Tony, you got to eat this. So this is the golf ball
right here, buddy. Alex. I had to make myself my own
trophy because no one cared enough to. Like, they sent an email out at the
club, but I had to make myself my own trophy. So, look, I'm terrible at
making trophies. Like, this is the golf ball side. That's awesome, bro.
But he's like, all right, you got to eat that golf ball. If you tell
the story after you get the certain number of subscribers, you got to eat the
golf ball. And I'm like, I don't know if I'll live. I don't know if
it's going to kill me or what. So anyway, that's where that question originated from.
That's funny. All right, second question.
All right. This is a little sillier, little non golf topic. But, dude, this one,
I love this question. Are there more? And I'm talking about anything alive, like
anything that has life to it. Okay. Are there
more eyes or legs in the world? More eyes or legs
in the world? I would definitely think more
eyes because doesn't everything has eyes, but
their snakes don't have legs. And maybe some birds.
Yeah, I don't know. Do you know the answer?
I've tried everything, dude. I cannot get to the answer of this. I go back
and forth because you got a centipede with however many legs those dudes have. You've
got crabs with multiple legs. But then you got
fish. You got all these fish out there. And I'm not counting fins as legs.
Those aren't legs. Tentacles aren't legs. So, I mean, dude, I think it's
eyes because of all the fish, but I don't know.
And I love hearing people's take on it because it's 50 50, dude,
you ask 100 people, you're going to get 50 on one way and 50 on
the other. Yeah, those are wild questions. I wonder if there's, like,
a story of anyone ever eating a golf ball that's out there that we could
research and they lived or not. I've done some
digging around. There's one dude. Yes. So there is one
dude on Reddit that. And by the way, we're not condoning eating golf
balls. Like, do not eat a golf ball based on Alex. And
there's one. There's some guy on Reddit that actually ate
the golf ball. And I think it was weird because the video was like, you
could see him swallowing it. I'm assuming he's okay, but
I don't know. Other than that, I don't know. So silly.
Anyway, dude, everyone gets so wrapped around the axle about
important stuff, and I'm sitting here losing sleep over if there's more
eyes in the world. Anyway, hey, listen,
Alex, man, thank you so much for coming on, man. I know there's a
lot of other things you could be doing and sharing your story. Dude, you've got
a great one, man. And I'm really excited to kind of see what's next in
store for you and following along, because I think you're
on just an amazing path, dude. I really do. You have a lot to offer.
Thank you so much. That's really sweet of you. I appreciate that. And I had
a great time. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, man, of course.
All right. Until next time, everyone. Did I tell
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Think fairways and greens. Here we go. Come on. Did I tell
you about my albatross? Oh, how you know?