From $4K Bet to 650 Retailers: The Surf & Turf Club Growth Story

In this episode, Adam Callinan sits down with Taylor Artman, founder of Surf & Turf Club, to unpack how he scaled a golf lifestyle brand into 650+ retail locations across 42 states and multiple countries—all while generating just ~2% of revenue from e-commerce. 

Taylor’s journey is anything but conventional. After a career-ending injury, he pivoted from professional golf into entrepreneurship, building Surf & Turf Club from grassroots community roots into a wholesale powerhouse inside elite country clubs and pro shops.

🚀 What You’ll Learn:

•  How Surf & Turf Club landed in 100+ retail accounts early—before even launching a website 
•  The $4K sponsorship strategy that generated $43K in wholesale orders overnight 
•  Why wholesale can outperform DTC in today’s high CAC environment 
•  The real reason most brands struggle with paid ads (and what actually works now) 
•  How athlete mindset—resilience, discipline, and discomfort—translates into business success 
•  Why focusing on a single product category (headwear) accelerated growth 
•  The dangers of “shiny object syndrome” in both product and marketing 

🧩 Key Takeaways:

•  You don’t need viral ads to build a scalable brand—distribution can be your moat 
•  CAC pressure is forcing a rethink of DTC-first strategies 
•  Deep focus beats broad expansion in early-stage growth 
•  Small wins compound—both in sports and in business 

This episode is a masterclass in playing your own game, building with discipline, and scaling a brand through unconventional channels.

🔗 Explore More:

👉 Pentane (Financial Command Center): https://www.pentane.com
👉 Growth Mavericks Podcast: https://www.growthmaverickspodcast.com
👉 Surf & Turf Club: https://www.surfandturf.golf

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

You're a golfer.

Taylor Artman (10:22.259)
Yep.

Adam Callinan (10:23.577)
First and foremost.

Taylor Artman (10:25.63)
Uh, well, man, I mentioned it and no, not anymore. Uh, that was probably one of the biggest changes. I would say I lost my identity a little bit for a while. Um.

And yeah, I played golf my whole life. Started when I was very young. My dad would take me out at age two or three to the golf course and carry me on one shoulder, the clubs on the other. Let me mess around out there. And then they dropped me off as a kid. You know, was a bit different time back then. You could just drop a kid off at the golf course when he was seven and pick him up at, you know, four or 5pm. And so that was my babysitter. And there was a bunch of other kids. I mean, there had to be 10.

Adam Callinan (10:57.209)
Yeah, I remember. I remember those days.

Taylor Artman (11:06.176)
20 of them between the ages of 7 and 16 out there messing around and we're still all friends even if we don't see each other but when we do like yeah that's one of our little trails gang and yeah so I grew up playing competitively early seven or eight years old and then played junior golf all growing up

pretty good in high school, was all-state, went to college. My college career was up and down at the start and I had a kind of a weird start as far as signing. It was obscure but I ended up at Oklahoma City University and played four years there and it was great. We won three national championships, one as a coach, two as a player, a couple time All-American and I had some great players on my team and learned a lot.

About the game and develop my game and so it's all some of my teammates turning pro making it

And figured I need to do that. I need to go try as well. I've made the top of every level. so, you know, from junior golf, I've won national tournaments to high school to college. And so I need to go give it a shot. And so I went out there and played seven years. So I played long enough to keep playing. And I was good enough, I guess, to play for that long, but not good enough to where anybody knows who I am or cares. You know, I didn't didn't make a lot of money, but I made a lot of connections.

a lot of respect from some folks in the industry, think, at least on a personal level, when you're out there that long, you you meet guys and you travel the world with them. And so that was what I used to be. I was a golfer, yes, to answer your question. And then got hurt. You know, you're entering your 30s and I don't have kids, no wife, really no money at all. I did have a house, but you know, the mortgage payment was a different story.

Taylor Artman (12:59.678)
Had roommates and stuff and so it was kind of like once I was hurt it's either do I come back for this this surgery and actually I got hurt once came back for two tournaments and then I got hurt again another huge surgery and I think that's God's way of being like I think I think we're gonna switch gears here You know, and so that's when I didn't know what I was gonna do I at one point I was gonna take a real estate Realtor test like a certification, you know, that's my mom does and then

I don't know, I figured I'd get in oil and gas maybe. I didn't know. I had no idea what to do or coach college golf. I, two summers before in California when I had moved out there, lived out there from 12 to 18.

2012 to 2018 and that's where I was playing in the winters. We started this thing called the surf and turf club and it was just a small social club and that was what made me not a golfer looking back is like we

I was a golf voice, I guess, from that point on because we started our company and people wanted to buy it and they wanted to surround themselves with it and wear it and I'll get into the rest here in a little bit. But yeah, I'm now just in golf, I guess.

Adam Callinan (14:22.88)
What were your, what were your injuries?

Taylor Artman (14:26.766)
I tore my right labrum. I had six anchors, which is about the most you can do without a full replacement. And then I tore it in college, 2012. I just kept making it worse and worse and worse and worse. And then it was coming, came dislocated either five or six times. My buddy caddied for me. He would probably know. Mid-round, I'm taking painkillers.

popping my shoulder back into place and I'm like, I think we're gonna, this is probably the end. And then the next one, I shattered my wrist on a scooter. One of those long scooters. wasn't even drinking yet. I was on the way. Yeah. But I think it worked out, you know? I think sometimes God gives you those hard lessons and I had a good run and you know, yeah, I'm thankful for it.

Adam Callinan (15:06.255)
Amen.

Adam Callinan (15:19.887)
So you get then into this company or concept that you started socially, sounds like, kind of just like a social community sort of thing in Southern California. And you start making what, like shirts and hats, and suddenly you say people wanted to buy them. Were they just people within the community or did you have people stop you on the street asking you to buy that hat?

Taylor Artman (15:42.696)
So that's where it got interesting. the idea was to create this social club. And so we have two or three tour players and two club professionals, like at a golf course, you know? And so it was all of us. We're all young. We're all give or take probably 32 to 28 at the time in that range. And we wanted to out in Palm Springs, it's all retirement and it's industry people. And then it's the young people that you can't go play golf at almost anywhere. And if you do, it's a public course, no good. And so we have

friends in the community, the bartenders, the service, you know, whatever that are our age. And we can't go play golf with them places, et cetera. And they don't have places to play, but we can go play anywhere we want because of our career. And so we started this club called the Surf and Turf clubs. We're an official USGA gen handicap club, like just like any golf course, but without the property and the grass, right? Pretty much. And so we have members, et cetera. So you join the club, you get a hat and a t-shirt. And back then it was just

I think it was Imperial Hat and T-shirt, just generic. We bought it off a buddy that sold it, put our logo on there. My friend Pete made the logo. It's a surfboard and a flag cross with 16, which is the year established, on there. And we called the Surf and Surf Club and we were on our way.

Well, we host a few events, we did some charity stuff, some other fun stuff, we had our membership, maybe got 200 members. And the next thing you know, a bunch of non-members that we would run into or people that we would see at these events would be like, I want one of those hats and shirts. And you're like, I don't know if you have one, you're not a member of our club, right?

Adam Callinan (17:17.871)
Yeah, this is a secret club. You can't come in here.

Taylor Artman (17:20.678)
Yeah, it's like asking Hell's Angels for their leather jackets. No. But then enough people ask you and you're broke and you're like, we need to find a way to sell this. Because they're like, I don't want to handicap. I already have one. You know, I'm a member of two places. And so and then the interesting part happened.

Adam Callinan (17:24.109)
you

Adam Callinan (17:31.385)
Yeah.

Taylor Artman (17:38.172)
The plantation, let's see, Weston Mission Hills, I think, a golf shop in Canada that was owned by a member at one of our clubs there. And then a handful of others, Pro Shops, liked it so much, they were like, we want to carry it in our store. We don't have an LLC. Is this even trademarked? I mean, we don't know the first thing. And so, I didn't know, I wasn't...

In the golf industry, was just a pro golfer. So I didn't even know like what minimums were. I had nothing. Luckily Jordan did. so that's we created. What's that? That's what's funny. It's just like generic, like industry blank stuff. It's not. Yeah. And so, then after that, that's when we started working with you, pong, flux fit at the start, we started getting some better hats, some patches overseas. And we started.

Adam Callinan (18:13.967)
Where at this point, where are you making the product at that

Adam Callinan (18:22.529)
Online.

Taylor Artman (18:35.806)
upping our inventory and we said yes and we put it in these first few shops and we started selling it. So I had my uncle was in Polo Ralph Lauren for 30 something years and then my, sorry my computer's about to die here.

Taylor Artman (18:55.26)
And then my roommate at the time was national sales manager for a golf brand. And so I was, I guess, a little connected to apparel without knowing anything at all. I guess I was connected enough that I thought I could figure this out. And so, yeah, so we decided let's make Surf and Turf golf apparel. We'll call it Corsica Coast apparel and then we'll have the club, Surf and Turf club.

And so then we went and got, you know, we had our logo trademarked actually, but we didn't have the name. And then we go get a resale certificate. You you learn all this stuff. really that was the tipping point right there. We shifted overnight from a club to an apparel brand and we're selling in some of the most high end courses in the United States at first. Cal Club.

Bermuda Dunes, which is like Arnold Palmer's place out there. I mean some really great properties. Silverleaf in Arizona was in like our top 10 or 15 properties and then we were selling them one in Canada before we even had a website.

And so that was, now we have a little bit of a thing. And then, you know, I'll get into it further, but that started scaling up to where we couldn't really do it. And then in 2018, I sponsored the North Texas PGA championship or a section championship, which is all the club pros in a region are a member of a PGA section, right? And they go in, they play these events, the winner of that one that gets in the Byron Nelson, the PGA Tour event.

and I sponsored it and maxed out our credit cards. And this kind of caused a little bit of a disruption with me and my co-founders. I was being a little cavalier, but I was like, know all these guys. Like we're gonna sponsor it and we give them a hat, whatever. We only had like 400 hats in inventory and I'm about to give away 200 of them. I, yeah, sponsor it, go out there.

Taylor Artman (20:47.998)
my sister and Michael another co-founder to help me. We make these little packs of like check 18 pieces 36 or 72 and we put it on this desk and you pick your hat and they check your box and we wrote 54 orders for $43,000 and just while they were registering for the tournament right there on a little table and

Adam Callinan (21:11.641)
from individual country clubs.

Taylor Artman (21:13.854)
Yep. each, each pro is a buyer for their club. And so each time I came through, they knew us. And so I just had an ABC deal there. Just check yes or no. I'll have it. I'll have an email in your inbox. And they all just were like, yeah, I'll give it a shot. This cool hat, whatever. Do 36, do 18, you know, and I don't think, but maybe one or two did 72. That was like shirts and hats. And, but they all at least tried it for the most part. And yeah, we're 54 new accounts right there. So we went from.

Adam Callinan (21:16.233)
And...

Taylor Artman (21:41.406)
About 50 accounts to 105 right there. And then I was like, oh shit, okay. Well, I'm gonna need some product. And so I had Jordan ship everything that we had. I told him what happened. And I was like, we gotta hope, I need an employee. We have 100 accounts now. And we also have $43,000 of orders and no money. So.

I got a loan from some friends and family and we started. hired my apartment manager, our employee number one. Just because she was smart.

Adam Callinan (22:16.015)
What do you think it cost?

Epic. Well, what do you, from your recollection, what did it cost to sponsor that event?

Taylor Artman (22:26.366)
I know for a fact it was $4,000. It was $3,500 and our credit card had a max of $6,000 and we already had about $2,600 on there. And I literally messed it up to the max. Yeah. And then we had nothing, no cash. I probably used that for other stuff. And then I was like, I need help. We got to order a bunch of stuff.

Adam Callinan (22:39.599)
That's so epic. So yeah, let's.

Adam Callinan (22:52.087)
Yeah, so for the non math majors in the room, that's an almost 11 X return on that investment. holy hell, well done. Like every company on the planet would do that all day long, literally. Like that's the new sales technique. You just go around and sponsor like the underlying tour events. That's epic.

Taylor Artman (22:59.964)
in a couple hours.

Taylor Artman (23:14.982)
I don't know what possessed me to do it. They reached out to me, the North Texas PGA, they saw one and I knew those guys. And this guy, David Anderson, he was like, you should sponsor it. And I was like, what? Like the other sponsors, by the way, are like Yamaha, Bushnell, Siriksan and Tidal. But anyway, so we did it and I gave away. And then also we went and put, I went over the top on the 200 pieces. put PGA logos on all of them.

Adam Callinan (23:31.097)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor Artman (23:41.662)
And I still see those around. I've got one in my office up here. And so now that's part of our deal. Every time we get a new rep, we encourage that they sponsor the section or we'll pay for it. And then that way they're a partner. So now as of this year, we'll be adding the Gulf States. So we've got South Texas, North Texas, South Central and the Gulf States that we work with now.

Well, the goal of the state is not yet. It'll be next year. we're giving out free product this year.

Adam Callinan (24:10.361)
So is most of the, how much of the business is now online with just like random consumers going on and buying stuff versus this like really unique PGA distribution?

Taylor Artman (24:22.206)
So that's where it still gets weirder, think, in today's modern, you know, in 2020. Every brand, you know, when you think about all the brands that are going right now out there.

All the brands that are in retail stores and especially in country clubs, things like that, for the most part, they either got, I guess, viral online first, like a Bad Birdie or Breezy Golf or Good Good or something like that, or they are a staple brand that's been around forever, a juggernaut, know, Apollo and Peter Millar, Ashworth, whatever. And with us, we...

have never had our online stronger than our wholesale. And so, you know, we actually right now probably do, in fact, I just saw the numbers yesterday. We do about 2 % of our sales online right now. And the last that's for the last two quarters.

Yeah, it's about 2 % And at one point that was usually consistently 10 to 15, but now we're ramping up I got a new sales team that I've built in the last couple months And so that's ramping up and so now that's diluted that even more We've got to be one of the only brands that has

reach like that, 650 some odd properties across 42 states, four countries right now on the wholesale front. then we, don't think this is, and this is, I'm not talking this up. This is something we got to fix. We have no running social media ads and we haven't sent an email in six months and we got to be the only person not doing that. I mean, it's almost stupid, but we're just so busy with this other stuff. We send emails obviously every day to our wholesale.

Taylor Artman (26:07.339)
and to our partners on that level. And we're doing events now. So we do a DDC move with, we're creating an NIL program through college golf teams and then through miniature players. And so we have a retail aspect where we sell to the customer, but it's at an event, that makes like a pop-up shop.

So I guess if you count that, it's a little bit higher. But online, yeah, it's so low. And I don't know any other brands that doing that. It seems like even huge brands doing millions online can't get indoors.

Adam Callinan (26:37.921)
Yeah, there's, would, my position would be that what you're doing is not bad. It's actually incredible. And it's different today than it was 10 years ago from an online customer acquisition standpoint. 10 years ago, we could spend ungodly amounts of money and acquire customers online at really good returns. I mean, that's literally the entirety of what Bottlekeeper, my last company, was built on was that.

Taylor Artman (27:03.198)
You're right.

Taylor Artman (27:07.974)
You noticed a big change there. I just thought it was really good back then when we were, we did it a little bit for a little while. And so I was like, we can pick that back up and then we've dabbled in it here or there over the last couple of years. And it just doesn't come, it doesn't return this. It's still far away positive, but not like it was. And so I just thought we were really bad at it.

Adam Callinan (27:08.479)
And, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we got to ride the wave up and down.

Adam Callinan (27:30.573)
Yeah, here's the challenge with, yeah, here's the challenge. And there are two parts, one of which is sort of just what's happening in the market and the industry, like wider consumer brand industry channel area issue. That was like the worst sentence ever. The other is something that might be specific to your style of business. And it would be actually interesting to kind of break this down. One is that the,

Taylor Artman (27:47.134)
Thank

Adam Callinan (27:54.785)
Again, the 10 years ago we could do it because what we paid to acquire a customer was way less because there were fewer people advertising online. So it was, it's just purely a supply and demand economics problem. And we, know, where we had fewer people advertising and a ton of eyeballs and then more as more people advertise, they weren't growing the number of eyeballs. They were, know, so you're offsetting the supply and demand thing and all that does is push up the price to get access to those eyeballs. So that happened up until COVID and then COVID changed that.

Taylor Artman (28:22.578)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (28:24.853)
And you know, obviously that that was not a planned event to my knowledge. So COVID changed that where you then suddenly had companies that had product in states where their warehouses got shut down. Right. And so those companies could not advertise online anymore. And now you had, so you had the demand side come down and you had the supply side because everybody's sitting on their asses on their couch for months and months and months and months sitting on Facebook and Instagram and all this stuff. So this

Taylor Artman (28:37.0)
Yes.

Taylor Artman (28:50.244)
for Our online salesman during COVID.

Adam Callinan (28:53.583)
Yeah, the supply side went up while the demand side went down. Like we crushed COVID. I mean, know like COVID was awful for a whole lot of reasons, but for a lot of consumer brands, if you could ship product, it was like going back to the golden days, but then that cracks, right? So, I mean, we're not in that period anymore. We're like the zero interest rate period is long gone. So the difference now is that we're back reset on that worse for consumer brands, supply and demand economics thing. So you just have to use it.

differently. Now the kicker in a, in a hat, you know, in a company that's selling hats and shirts and merchant things like this, um, comes down to the amount of, of profit that you can generate. It's technically it's called contribution profit, but it's like the amount of profit you can generate from a given hat. So I'm like makeup numbers here. If you're selling a hat to a consumer for $35 and the hat cost, obviously I don't know your margins and we don't need to talk about them unless you really want to. $15 to make.

and then it costs $5 to ship it to the customer. And then there's another 3 % for credit cards and two and a half for Shopify, like all the things we end up getting to like, our cost on that hat is like 22 to $25. That means you only have $10 left to acquire a customer. That's not gonna happen. Like just in a pure customer acquisition model, it's not gonna, it's too, maybe it could have happened in COVID, it probably did, but that was a weird time. It doesn't work that way like right now.

Taylor Artman (30:17.768)
You think the customer acquisition cost is that high, like on social apps?

Adam Callinan (30:21.975)
If you're doing it as a pure paid media model, yes, but that's why you can't do it as a pure paid media model. And this isn't just something that is impacting apparel brands and things like that. It impacts everybody. Now it's like you create the content. I'm sure you're creating a lot of content, the things are going out, the stuff that goes viral or does significantly better than the rest of it. That's where you put your paid ad dollars. So you take something that's already on fire and you add fuel to the fire with paid ads, but you can't use

Taylor Artman (30:32.843)
for sure.

Taylor Artman (30:44.616)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (30:50.445)
like our old spray and pray model of paid advertising that used to work just is so dangerous. Now, unless you...

Taylor Artman (30:54.238)
That's probably our problem.

Our ads we run, we look like a freaking magazine ad and Skymode, just a picture, know, scroll here, whatever. It's it's outdated. And then you got like, I don't know, Allbirds or something, and they're making innuendos and jokes and you know, ride and rollercoats. It's like, of course they're going to buy those guys, you know? So, uh, yeah, I, I, I'm really, um, I admire like some of those brands and their creative online. And I hope to take our creative and go there. We've just been so bootstrapped, uh, as an organic.

Adam Callinan (31:01.487)
Yeah.

Taylor Artman (31:27.2)
growing brand that we have to focus on what we're good at. And anytime I've shifted that way, you'd be surprised. our manpower and our direction goes that way. And how quickly it can impact you if you miss just a month of reorders of when you've got several hundred accounts, I mean, that adds up. That's people's livelihood. And so we're looking to add that back in. But that's tough. And I think that's how the D2C brands, why they're probably struggling.

Adam Callinan (31:30.543)
100%.

Taylor Artman (31:57.072)
struggling to go to market and to hire these people, whatever, because they're probably constantly trying to hire people to help build and scale that because they're making the big margins, we're doing the big volume. Those are the two deals there. We're probably outselling in volume some of the big D to C brands, but they're making freaking boatload per item where we're split. Maybe, maybe, yeah.

Adam Callinan (32:10.318)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (32:20.847)
Maybe, a kicker is what they have to pay to acquire a customer online. This is, mean, this is like what I like my whole life revolves, not my whole life revolves in my wife and kids. My professional life revolves around a lot of this conversation and around where to drive profitability inside of a brand that is generally omnichannel that's doing like D2C and B2B. And I can tell you both from personal experience and now seeing it in a lot of other companies.

Taylor Artman (32:27.662)
Yeah, that's true.

Adam Callinan (32:49.347)
When you have a D2C channel against a B2B channel, the B2B channel is always more profitable. Always, because you're not paying to acquire the customer. That situation, yeah, there's no, mean, you know, in some.

Taylor Artman (32:56.222)
I could see.

Yeah, it is no cost.

I mean, your sales commission, I guess there is a cost, it's so far long gone, right? It was when I sponsored that event or it's when we did this. It's so far long gone that it becomes an overhead or a fixed marketing cost depending on what it was. And it's not associated as directly. So when it's diluted over thousands, thousands product, yeah, it's a very low cost. You're right.

Adam Callinan (33:25.711)
Yeah, that D to C might be paying 40 cents of every dollar on paid ads. That's a two and a half return on ad spend, which is like mediocre. That's actually pretty good for some brands that 40 cents of every dollar.

Taylor Artman (33:35.07)
And that's where the ad spin too, I've had other entrepreneurs I've talked to and some turned to me for advice and that's where I got turned away from it was the ad spin got down to like 4X.

or less, whereas like you were saying, eight years ago, it was eight or 10. And you know, and you could do that. Now it's two to four and you're paying somebody and they're like, we're doing two to four X on ad spend or whatever. And I'm like, well, yeah, but let's remember here, we're not selling a non-inventory item. You're selling something that has a cost and then they're shipping. And then you're hooking them in with a 10 % discount. And then you're only giving me, you know, and we're paying, I don't know, whatever it is,

Like you said, you know per day or or or break it down to per customer and that's like two four X It's like we're breaking even with every sale and you're right. I'd you know, I think that's probably been the biggest Shifter and probably why I've gone away from it. It's hard. I got asked the other day if I could spend a thousand dollars To make as much money as possible. What would I do?

And I had my answer and it was offline, but I wanted to hear yours like, what would you spend thousand dollars as far as digital media and advertising? You're the guru in that spot for sure. And I'm clearly not a D to C, you know, social media ad guru just by our numbers. In fact, I'm 2 % of one.

Adam Callinan (35:03.128)
Yeah, again, I would not downplay the value of that statement.

Like I wouldn't, there is incredible value in that statement that is being missed. You are not missing the boat by not being like D2C Heavy.

Taylor Artman (35:11.506)
We don't

Taylor Artman (35:17.694)
I think it will be a lot easier to fix that wheel that's broken than to fix the other one. And that's what I always say.

Adam Callinan (35:20.737)
100%. It's way easier to go that direction than it is to go from that direction into your direction today.

Taylor Artman (35:27.526)
Right. I mean, we were selling at pop resorts. We're selling to college golf teams. We're selling to, you know, some of the nicest country clubs in the world. Like it's like, I think we can figure it out on online ads. There's people on TikTok here that are making, you know, boatloads money from their basement. Like we should be able to figure it out. But yeah, I was just curious what you would, you know, what in today's world would that look like?

Adam Callinan (35:48.271)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (35:52.047)
I mean, I would go and find your, the whatever social posts, the things that you're doing, go find the one that just crushed. You don't even necessarily know why. I mean, it just crushed completely organically and I would put it behind that in a boosted post.

Taylor Artman (36:08.061)
through Meta you think would be the best one? Wherever, okay, yeah, yeah, that's good. See, that's where, there's so many options now, man. It's crazy. And you got these marketplaces and then now you can do...

Adam Callinan (36:09.913)
Wherever it lives. Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor Artman (36:20.862)
You know, what do they call them? Um, it's like through your Shopify's and your other deals. So it's like an ad that'll go through sort of like pop up on, on other services, you know, like when you go log on to wifi's or, or whatever, I'm trying to think of the, it's a targeted marketing, but what the, what that ad is called, um, it's a retargeting and it comes up through other channels, right? And I know that's an omnichannel, um, not just on Instagram, it's not scrolling. It shows up at the various spots. And I was wanting, you know, where.

Adam Callinan (36:38.351)
Yeah, it's all retargeting is the.

Taylor Artman (36:50.654)
where it is right now. that's a question I keep asking myself. When I start, because we're going to, any minute probably, because it needs to ramp up, I don't want to sit and think about it forever. So I'm going to start somewhere. I'd like to at start educating myself. probably one of my... Go ahead.

Adam Callinan (37:12.783)
I'll say the big difference today is the quality of the creative really, really, really matters. It didn't used to. It was always important, but it was never like the paramount piece. And that's different today because the ad networks, whether it's on Meta or on Google or, I mean, pick an ad network, TikTok, Pinterest, whatever, they're really heavily prioritizing quality of content. And that doesn't mean big production. It's just whatever the...

Taylor Artman (37:18.833)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (37:39.971)
whatever the person that has the eyeball on their platform, whatever they're engaging with is quality content. So you have to produce a lot of it and to be able to test and tweak and test and test and test. And then you find that one that goes parabolic and you put money in, that's the one that you spend that thousand dollars on. Yeah, you just throw it up. Yeah, totally.

Taylor Artman (37:44.412)
Right.

Taylor Artman (37:49.989)
yeah.

Taylor Artman (37:56.958)
Yeah, I mean, it's just A-B test after A-B test after A-B test. It's kind of a cool science, know, and one that I'm a marketing major, but I would say that's far from the advertising part is far from my skill set. But it's something I look forward to doing when we get a minute. But we're wrapping up.

Adam Callinan (38:18.871)
Yeah, I mean it sounds like the whole

Taylor Artman (38:21.31)
We're doubling again this year, they're a wholesale, so we're gonna get there here soon. But yeah, it's very interesting.

Adam Callinan (38:30.819)
That sounds like it's working incredibly well. So there's the classic, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I mean, I think that is a little bit of a broken statement and that you always find ways to do things better and optimize them, but.

Taylor Artman (38:34.611)
Thanks.

Taylor Artman (38:41.726)
I always like to say, think one of my things from golf, right, is play your game and let your clubs do the talking. Like you can't play somebody else's game, you know, like we're, we're not going to play, you know, one of these viral brands. We can't play with them on that space. Like we can't, what's the, the guys that are here in Dallas, they do all the trick shots. You know I'm talking about? Yeah, they do all those trick shots. cool. Lucky, no, dude, perfect, dude, perfect.

Adam Callinan (39:01.497)
Mm.

I know you're talking about, because I've seen them on Instagram and whatnot.

Taylor Artman (39:11.472)
It's like we can't beat them at that game, you know, and that's okay. And so, you know, so if they're selling merch on there for their dude, perfect trick shots and all those cool videos or whatever. So we try to play our game. right now ours is not just in that channel of wholesale and B2B, but it's in through our events and through our connections through golf. That's how we started it. Kind like how I don't want to compare it to Nike, how Nike started out as a track brand, right. And grew on Steve pre-fontaine and went through track stars, but then they got into.

basketball, football, now that they're in golf, everything. And we want to use golf as the, I guess, initial groundbreaking way to get into anywhere that way. And then we'd go into other sports through our progression. also, sticking our lane through product, too. We've not released a polo yet as a golf brand, and people think...

That's obscure and I get asked that question more than anybody by customers. That one hurts when you got hundreds of customers wanting to buy something that costs four times more. But that's a tricky game too. It's a whole other deal. It's gonna come with a learning curve. I don't care how confident I get. I know I'm not as smart as I think I am or whatever. Something's gonna bite me in the ass. Pardon my French. And playing our game and sticking to headwear has been probably one of the biggest turning points the last two years. We've shifted down from dabbling in other things

and we're putting all of our focus on not just existing customers but existing products and improving those and trying to be the best at those. For a while there I was trying to mess around with the things that weren't us to try to you know get a little bit in everywhere and it's like let's just get a lot in a few places you know and it's started working and so I feel like with the D2C and B2B it's the same thing as the product it's like you got to stick in your space and play your game.

Adam Callinan (41:05.859)
Yeah, I I think there's, there's so much value to going deep instead of wide. And then, you know, when that time is right, which is a decision you get to make that has risk associated to it, you know, it might be okay. It'll take the blinders off a little bit and, and play some shiny object syndrome.

Taylor Artman (41:24.048)
Right. I've fallen guilty to those. We had a Sylvester Pro Golf Series one time. We did. I mean, yeah, we've done some weird stuff. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (41:26.453)
We all have Yeah, welcome to the club. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (41:34.767)
I mean, the reality is like, got to try stuff that that's part of what it is. I mean, that's where the education comes from. If it's a content thing and like it will take a while to figure out how to create content. It just does. That's the reality. You have to start somewhere.

Taylor Artman (41:45.758)
I mean we started out as a club and then we end up in apparel company overnight and we're in you know We got properties that established brands couldn't get we didn't know that and I had another story That's kind of popular we when we first started right one of these courses the plantation actually It's a great course probably my favorite ever out in California and they ordered

I remember, 18 hats or something. So we take it to this mom and pops place and we give it to them, whatever, and we're like, here's the logo, the DST file, which I didn't know what that was, which for those listening is a digitization file. It's for embroidery. So it teaches you, I mean, it shows you like the thread, the route that it takes when it switches from color A to color B, et cetera, how dense it is, the whole deal. And it's a very specific, really important file that you have to have.

And you even have to have a certain app to open it. But anyways, we give this file to this mom and pops place. And it was a hat just like this, and we say we put it right there on the mesh.

and color coordinated to the hat or whatever. And so they did it. So we go pick it up next week or whatever, take it over there. And one of the Travis Matthew guys, which is a huge brand in our space, he said, how did you put that logo on that mesh like that? We don't do that. I mean, these guys are like just sold for $150 million of Callaway. And we're like...

We don't know. We didn't know that. We didn't know. We were like, I don't follow, you know? And they're like, yeah, we don't do that. We will not put a logo on a mesh hat like that. We sell truckers. And turns out I figure out that a lot of brands back then didn't and still don't today. Or they don't for certain appliques. And the only reason we did is because we were so ignorant. We just like, just put it right there. We're just right there inside. And we didn't think anything of it. And we'll pick it up next week. We wouldn't have beers or whatever. And that was it. And this mom and pop took it there.

Adam Callinan (43:16.676)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (43:35.887)
Yeah.

Taylor Artman (43:43.26)
the extra time to make this file dense enough and they put in some time into it to make it, because they probably knew, because they're pros. And it's this kind of elderly woman, retired woman, she just wants to make these kids, you know, make their day. And we went and it. And then after that...

We asked her what she did, whatever, and so we sent any vendors, we're like, be sure and do this to the file. And so our trucker hats come with logos inside and they never have the kind of spotty blemishes that the mesh will bring out. And the only reason that happens is because one, we try it, we weren't afraid to try, and two, we didn't know any better. And so it's like, you gotta try everything once. And sometimes, even if somebody else didn't do it, what if it works, right? That's how everything new started.

Like, first podcast. I mean, it doesn't make sense at the time. Now it does. Everybody's got one.

Adam Callinan (44:40.983)
Yeah, I mean, there, I don't know if you can see on my wall, there's a sign here that I've had for 15 years at like every office I've ever been in that says question everything. And that's not because I'm like a super conspiratorial person. It's because of that exact thing, like why? I think the question why, the word why is so fantastically valuable when used correctly, which is not how my four-year-old always uses it. Let's be clear.

But it is such a critically important question. You go like three layers of why into something is really helpful.

Taylor Artman (45:14.492)
think why is easily the most important word not just to ask others or ask yourself or whatever but as a vision in general if you're going to work at a place or you're leading people to work there and hiring whatever you got to remember not just why you started right but you got to explain if you know if I'm

Whether I'm making hats for you or whatever or working for you. It doesn't matter if you have an end goal I need to know like what why are you at? Why are you needing this to be this way? What was the goal here? Right? Because once you tell me that I can like oh I get it So you just want you know, you just want to make sure that those two colors match and it's not too big or whatever That's all you had to say, you know And whatever that could be like why is it it bothers you that I'm you know? Turning in my emails this way or whatever, you know

like asking that.

The other person probably has a very valid reason that's not what you think. And then, but you internally can lose sight of it, think too. I, Simon Sinek has a big one of Know Your Why, his book. And I love that. And it's like, anytime you're in a bad spot or anytime you, it may be made a mistake or you're doing something good. It's like, why is this happening? Right. And it's either because I got curious and I started doing this, or I started focusing on this instead of this, or, you know, why,

know am I struggling right now well because I'm not doing what's energizing me you know or whatever it is and I think that why yeah is I'm glad you said that because I literally I think that that one curiosity is one of the strongest values you can have

Adam Callinan (46:56.377)
Totally agree. So shifting gears a little bit and something that we're always do here and this is not a gotcha. So don't worry. how do you deal with this? This is actually really relevant. Having played at the level of sport that you have, how have you mentally dealt with and prepared yourself for maybe starting with like the wild ups and downs of being a professional athlete, you know, being a high level collegiate and professional athlete. And how does that translate into being an entrepreneur?

Taylor Artman (47:02.174)
you

Adam Callinan (47:26.872)
Or does it?

Taylor Artman (47:27.07)
No, it does for sure. And actually, I love writing and if I was to write a book, there'd be one that would start and the game would, the name would already be play your game. That's my saying. But it would be the parallels of golf and sport. I mean, I'm sorry, sport or golf and business and, but relationships as well. Those three things and how you...

You know, relationships are like a tennis match back and forth or anything, or you're playing that you can't control the other person. It's like playing the golf course. You can only play your game. If you're playing it to your best ability, you're doing the right things or whatever, and the course is in letting you have it. So be it that that relationship may not work. It's not your course, right? But if you do the right things, you can say, hey, I did all I got and that person will reciprocate it and you'll have a good bond or whatever. The same thing with business. If you do what is needed to be done.

and you put in your preparation work, right? Ahead of time, I think that you're preparing to succeed and then also you're preparing to rebound if you fail in that way and you're building that adversity. And so that connects back to like that adverse moment in sport and business alike of there's like a shame factor or a...

ego, pride, a humility there when you make mistakes or your business isn't taking off or whatever that correlates back to you know seven years of pro golf I played

A lot of ups and downs, man. And so, and more downs than ups for sure. mean, I got to look back to think of some ups, but you're down so much. there was a running joke that I would talk to one of my college teammates I would travel with and we would be driving back from a tournament or whatever. And we'd be like, dude, doesn't it suck when you're like five over on 16 and you're just like, my family's going to hate me. I'm going have no friends. no, you know, like I'm an embarrassment. I just, you know, I just worked all year for this just to go bogey.

Taylor Artman (49:28.148)
the first three holes and in business I think that you have the exact same really like

Self-aware, but self-unaware, guess, moment, because you're losing sight of reality for a second. But you think the world's crumbling down, that this is your identity, that you're only as good as this last result. That's not true. And I think that when you're building a business, you encounter these ups and downs that are so astronomically unimportant, but important also, that there's small wins in everything, whether it be a learning experience that can develop you for the rest of your life.

So that's what you have to take from the big side of it. And the small side of it is like, it's not the end of the world. No one's dying. You know, I guess there are some careers where lives are at stake or whatever, not in my mind of work.

Adam Callinan (50:18.711)
Yeah, Yeah, not mine either.

Taylor Artman (50:21.822)
Yeah. yeah, money can be involved. The livelihoods are at stake, but that's usually a compounded chain of events, right? When it starts getting that way, a failed product release, a ad that doesn't work, 2 % online sales, whatever you can make up for it somewhere else. Just like in golf. I thought all the times back I was really good at putting and wedging and chipping and hit every straight, but it wasn't long hitter and I didn't have great like long irons. Anyway, so.

my short game was always great. The one time out of 10, I would go out and hit the ball like freaking Adam Scott or Tiger Woods. I would putt marginally and chip marginally. And it's like, that is what business is like. The second you're doing this other thing good that you just figured out.

the other thing stagnates and that's because your focus shifted and you know, and you didn't have to and that's okay, but that's a competitive spirit that is making that happen good on one side, but it's gonna come with a balance on the other. I don't know what law that is, but it's one what goes up must get, something's gotta come down, right? Cause and effect. And so I would say from the adversity standpoint, golf or sport in business owners,

really get that on how to bounce back. Whether that's from injury, bad performances, slumps, but also keeping their, they're cool that you don't play good forever, right? Rory McIlroy won the Masters what, two weeks ago and I guarantee you he's already had a moment on the range being like, freaking suck, you know, or whatever. And that's, that's life. And so to be, to have humility, but also keep your confidence without being overconfident. Cause you see a lot of business owners

Adam Callinan (51:57.763)
Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor Artman (52:07.644)
get overconfident, over cocky, you know, and it doesn't have to last forever. All these accounts don't have to keep buying our stuff. You got to take care of these customers. You got to keep making great product. You can't skip, you know, all these steps just because you got to figure it out. And you can't do that in sports either. You have to keep showing up every day. And you got to be there for longer than the other guy.

Adam Callinan (52:29.839)
And the reality that those folks that develop that overconfidence for whatever reason, I mean, I generally think that.

that has a tendency to happen where confidence is given without being earned, where there's not effort, significant effort in there to develop that confidence.

Taylor Artman (52:51.198)
And I think that's where it correlates to. It's like when you try your best at something, and I don't like the word try, but when you give it your best at something for a long time and you don't see results, that's, I would say entrepreneurship and pro sports is that. But one day.

Adam Callinan (53:05.933)
Yeah, that's where the humility comes from.

Taylor Artman (53:08.67)
Right. One day, one of two things will happen. you know, like you're either going to finally get drafted or win that big thing or whatever, and the rewards will come. Or if you don't and you are middle of the road or whatever, you can look back knowing you accomplished something that very few have done when you opened a business and ran it. You know, whether it became, you know, Polo Ralph Lauren or your boutique on the corner.

you did something most can't. They can, but they won't and they didn't, right? And so I think that's where, know, minor league baseball players, pro golfers, practice league NFL, any of those guys, high level college players didn't quite make it. They have everything inside them that the greats did too, I think. And so I'd encourage them to take that to business because I've noticed a strong correlation between athletes and business for sure.

Adam Callinan (54:03.439)
And it makes perfect sense to be able to operate at that level to your point, even making practice squad is something that 99.999 % of the typical population is never going to accomplish and achieve. It takes a certain type of mindset and grit and capacity for discomfort.

Taylor Artman (54:05.02)
Yeah.

Taylor Artman (54:21.854)
Exactly. Discomfort is a big one. You got to be able to listen to the crowd and hear them and hear them enough that you hear the support and that you can learn things, but you got to be able to weed out too. Cause I mean, shoot, people say stuff all the time. You get reviews. You'd be shocked. mean, we don't get a package out in a day. It's like one star, you know, on the BBB like, you know, the owner's ball. Yeah.

Adam Callinan (54:42.602)
you

Yeah, I know exactly what that is. Unfortunately, I am all too familiar with that.

Taylor Artman (54:51.548)
Yeah, you know all of sudden they're just bashing into the whole brand's history, you know, because our package didn't get there by Monday. And so you got to, know, and people aren't going to like your products sometimes and that's okay, right?

Taylor Artman (55:11.272)
I was getting a call. yeah, so I think that a short memory, but a useful curiosity, I guess. And then also, you know, just the ability to just take the good with the good and run with it and then use the bad to your advantage, but forget the rest. Because one, we talk bad about ourselves, too. Like nobody talks worse about themselves than they

Adam Callinan (55:33.283)
I'm just...

Taylor Artman (55:34.814)
High-level athlete that just messed up at a big stage. They they talked to You know at times and their worst they talked to themselves like no one should ever talk to a human You know, that's what my sports psychologist be like you would never talk to somebody like that Why do you talk to yourself like that and you to catch yourself and same thing? I think as a business owners lonely out there Feels a lot like golf you can't You know, you can kind of turn to your caddy Or coach, but they're not playing they don't really get it, right?

As a business owner, it's tough, it's lonely, but it's a noble, I guess, role that can make you feel proud of it if you just remember why you started and that you're doing the best you can. That's all you can get control, it's your game.

Adam Callinan (56:23.841)
Epic. Thank you, Taylor. Where do want people to find you? Find Surf and Turf.

Taylor Artman (56:29.022)
Our Instagram is surf and turf club It's sort of club not golf and then Facebook We just got a tick tock in the last like month We're still figuring out as we've gone over we're by by a long shot not a D2C all-star quite yet with the social media But yeah, tick tock is served her club also and then surf and turf golf calm

And we hope to see you guys around. We'll be at finest at events, buy us in your pro shop or business. We're all over the place. Thanks for having me, Adam. It was fun.

Adam Callinan (57:04.291)
was great. Really enjoyed it. Thanks, Taylor.

Taylor Artman (57:06.194)
Yeah, you got it.