Why Three of Four Beginners Quit

Nineteen million Americans have tried golf since 2020. About one in four of them stayed.

In this episode of The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf, host Matt Considine and co‑host Dr. Kevin Moore (a.k.a. “The Professor”) sit down with Matthew Reagan, PGA (co-founder and general manager of Operation 36) to talk about why golf keeps losing the beginners it works so hard to attract — and what changed the day he stopped teaching the swing first and started people 25 yards from the hole.

The conversation dives into:

• The year-four gut punch: a junior program running at 95% retention that still lost forty golfers, and the single thing the kids who stayed all had in common
• A year of three-hour nine-hole rounds, a drive to Pinehurst, and the flip that turned into Operation 36 — start at 25 yards, shoot 36, back up
• Why the environment around a beginner matters more than the technical ability of the coach, and what that says about how golf picks its heroes
• The women who told him they had always wanted to play but had never been given permission to start that close to the green
• Opening the app to everyone in 2027 — couch to course, course to coach — and what an app should refuse to pretend it can replace

Connect with our guests

⛳ Matthew Reagan, PGA — co-founder and general manager, Operation 36 — 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-reagan-op36/

📱 Operation 36 — https://operation36.golf — how it works: https://operation36.golf/how-it-works/

🐦 X/Twitter: https://x.com/op36golf — 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/operation_36/ — 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/operation-36-golf — 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/op36golf/

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Links & Partners

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📚 Dr. Kevin Moore ("The Professor") — 🐦 X/Twitter: https://x.com/kevcmoore | 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevcmoore | 💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-moore-177b30b3/

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Chapters

00:00 Cold open: the moment Operation 36 got its name

00:52 Welcome, and a fall morning in Athens

01:20 Ten kids under eight: not rested, but refreshed

03:35 Unplugging, the Slack away message, and the phone-off experiment

06:45 New York, Mumford and Sons, and whether you could live there

08:37 Today's guest: Matthew Reagan and Operation 36

10:10 What Op36 did to Athens Country Club

11:19 Scotland as the barometer: beginners go straight to the course

12:00 Professor's teaching: sampling versus early specialization

15:13 Ad read: Titleist AIM Enhanced and seeing the ball go in

17:18 Matthew joins The Bag Drop

18:16 Sixteen, upstate New York, and a course you could play for free

20:25 Campbell, Ryan Dailey, and deciding to coach

21:46 What actually turned him into a golfer, and it was not technique

25:28 Gamification, variability, and why golf hooks you

28:58 Three juniors at Keith Hills, and a program that grew to eighty

30:01 Ten levels, bag tags, and making a three-footer fun for an hour

32:19 Year four: forty golfers do not come back

33:59 North Carolina Long Term Athlete Development LLC

34:43 The one thing the kids who stayed had in common

36:09 A year of three-hour nine-hole rounds

38:08 The drive to Pinehurst, and the flip that became Operation 36

40:08 Teaching calculus to a seventh grader

42:01 Narrative, and the data nobody else in golf has

44:16 One in four: this is not a junior golf story anymore

45:42 Bootstrapping, licensing, and taking the junior out of the brand

49:15 Shrinking the variables until clarity becomes motivation

51:06 Competence, relatedness, autonomy

52:40 The women who never had permission to start close

55:33 The cultural headwind: America starts on the range

57:05 Aligning a club top to bottom, and Op36 at St Andrews

1:02:41 The ego of the young coach, and a $400-a-month membership

1:05:25 A gymnastics gym on every corner, and not a golf program

1:08:55 What a club needs before this works

1:12:23 If a recession comes, which programs survive

1:15:46 Opening the app in 2027: couch to course, course to coach

1:18:22 Golf Genius, and learning to run an engineering team

1:24:56 One thing you can do to make somebody's first nine better

1:31:07 Close: reviews, Titleist AIM Enhanced, and thanks

What is NewClub?

Founded in 2017, NewClub is the premier private golf society in the United States. It blends the community and access of a private club with the variety and affordability of public golf. Members enjoy thousands of reserved tee times, competitions and events at exceptional partner courses across our local chapters, as well as signature trips and exclusive perks. NewClub is revolutionizing golf membership, making the game more meaningful for those who love it.

What is The Bag Drop?

The Bag Drop features weekly stories from the culture, community, and characters shaping golf today. Produced by NewClub Golf Society, each episode blends authenticity and expert insights for passionate golfers at all levels. Special guests from clubs, courses and every corner of the changing landscape join us for thoughtful, in‑depth discussions on all things golf.

Creators and Guests

Host

Matt Considine

Founder of NewClub and our resident feel player. Matt’s junior golf career led him to the University of Akron where he met our co-host. During his junior year, Matt Studied abroad in Ireland and discovered golf societies. Subsequent trips to Scotland fed his passion for the history, ideals, and culture of accessible, affordable, and sustainable golf, a concept he would later bring to the U.S. with NewClub. Known for his interviewing style, quick wit, and compelling storytelling, Matt brings thoughtful, reflective conversations to The Bag Drop. His professional journey before NewClub included multiple leadership positions in growth-stage startups, where he managed teams responsible for more than $250 million in revenue. Matt actively gives back to the game as a Board Member of the First Tee of Akron and past chair of the Evans Scholar Foundation. Proudly based in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, Matt finds inspiration in family life with his wife, their three children, and their golf dog, Gypsy.

Host

The Professor

NewClub's Chief Ambassador and every golf sicko's favorite educator. Kevin is a thoughtful and deeply curious host. His studied, constructivist approach adds intellectual enrichment and balance to the show. As a professor of Math Education at the University of Georgia, Kevin's background in applied mathematics and cognitive psychology uniquely informs his insights on golf strategy and performance. Originally from Ohio, Kevin was a Division I collegiate golfer at the University of Akron, where his passion for understanding mathematical thinking began. After earning his doctorate from Arizona State University, he combined his analytical expertise with his love for golf by co-founding Golf Blueprint, an organization aimed at helping golfers optimize their games through data-driven strategies. Kevin enjoys balancing deep philosophical discussions with simple pleasures, such as indulging his sweet tooth, cheering on college football, and spending relaxed evenings with his friends, his wife, and their beloved dog, Nole.

What is The Bag Drop: Untold Stories in Golf?

Deeply researched audio documentaries that tell the definitive stories behind golf's greatest clubs + weekly conversations with the characters and communities shaping golf today.

Matthew Reagan (00:00)
it's like teaching all the parts of a house, but not knowing that you're actually gonna build a house at the end, right? Like there was no purpose. And then all of a sudden, the class, the whole atmosphere in the classes changed. Kids knew they were gonna go play, and there's a bigger narrative. I get to go play and I, I know my score that I wrote down. And it was so transformative. And so, like, that was like,

my gosh, this is probably it. It took us five years to get here. We thought all the other stuff that we learned along the way was the best stuff. But at the end of the day, it was really just, this whole shoot 36 and backup mixed that into the program. It was, it was like, okay, this needs to be, you know, shared with the world and we need to keep working on this and package it up and help others experience golf this way. And that's where we named the program Operation 36.

Matt Considine (00:52)
Welcome to the Bagdrop, Untold Stories in Golf. I'm your host, Matt Cotzonight here with our co-host, the Professor. Good morning, Professor.

The Professor (01:01)
Good morning, sir. It is a

beautiful day in Athens, Georgia. for the first time in a long time, I've had my door open past nine o'clock in the morning. Falls around the corner, baby. That means football season. That means prime time golf season down here in the southeast. I am primed and ready to go.

Matt Considine (01:20)
I I'm with you. I the reason my voice is hoarse, by the way, I've been screaming at children for the last seven days on a beach vacation. not rested, but refreshed, refreshed, away from screens, away from I didn't even play golf. I just hung out with 10 kids under eight on a beach all week. But getting off that plane back to Ohio, it was when I left, it was psaltering humidity.

Just like very rare for the mid e the Midwest. I mean, we get it, but you know, it's it's not often. And as as soon as I get stepped off that plane, I was like, Ooh, there's a there's a nip in the air. This is fall weather. I need my pullover. So I I get giddy this time of year. It is the best time for golf. I'm glad to hear it's happening down south too.

The Professor (02:07)
I I want to rewind back to that family vacation. What does a consonant family vacation look like? What are the what are the activities? What are the the

Matt Considine (02:15)
Well

The Professor (02:15)
tent the tensions that occur? That's a big group of people, I know that.

Matt Considine (02:19)
It it well, it wasn't the the the full extended side on it was my in-laws, which are equally they're a different brand

The Professor (02:26)
different group.

Matt Considine (02:27)
of crazy, as anyone with in-laws should know. You gotta love the crazy of of both sides. but it it was awesome, honestly. ten kids, th three families. Beck my wife has two sisters, and they all have kids. And so we had ten kids all under eight. So it was

Not quiet. It was very loud, all in the same house. And like I said, I mean, you just gotta not rested but refreshed. It was really fun. You got to play all day with your kids. I I think I'll say this my profound thought on vacations. You know, kids are so happy on vacation. Everybody's happy on vacation, right? And is it the pool? Is it the beach? Is it the activities that you're doing? You know, I think the the gift of a vacation is just absolute presence.

with the people that you love, right? And I was pretty proud of our our family. We were very present with each other. very few check ins, you know, at work and and other stuff. It was just just time together with our kids, with family. I I just just all good things. It it's hard to make time in this busy world for doing that. You you truly owe it to yourselves and to your families to to make sure you do that.

The Professor (03:35)
Here,

here. I was very excited to see your vacation post up on Slack letting everybody know that you would not be in on the business Slack checking in and at and attending to things.

Matt Considine (03:46)
Actual milestone for for nine years of entrepreneurship. I don't think I ever had that up as an away message. And you can

The Professor (03:55)
Okay.

Matt Considine (03:55)
hold, I will say this. I didn't know about this feature. You can hold all your messages in in Slack. a lot of people in their offices probably use it. just be ready because they all just hit at the same time. And that is terrifying. That is not fun to look at. but

The Professor (04:10)
Yeah, there's there

did you adjust to that at all, like during the week? Was the was there initial anxiety the not being plugged in to work in the in the crew? Yeah.

Matt Considine (04:18)
Absolutely. Yeah,

I think I think that's telling of the times, right? It's very disconcerning to not be plugged in. And especially for entrepreneurs, which you know, today on this show, we're gonna talk a little bit about entrepreneurship and in the game of golf, as we have so many times on this show, with with our very special guests, we'll get to in a second. But but yeah, it's disconcerning because there's you know there's stuff going on that with with small teams you you're just not getting to. But but I still think

Even in those situations you you have to unplug. You got to d to do it for some period of time every year, you know?

The Professor (04:53)
I agree. I think you adjusted too. I've been experimenting. I'm on research leave this semester. And so I've been doing a phone off by like literally turned off, not just airplane or focused, full power down, starting at about eight or nine at night and leaving it off, unless we have a podcast like this that I want it on in the morning, leaving it off to one PM the following day. Email as well. So completely shut down from eight to nine

Matt Considine (05:16)
That's yeah.

The Professor (05:18)
PM. And the the first couple of days, I gotta say, were pretty disconcerting. And I was

kind of sitting in some anxiety. and then once I settled into it now, it's man, it's it it's refreshing. Every morning, you know,

Matt Considine (05:30)
Yeah.

The Professor (05:31)
that I have this full thing that just my I'm in entirely present, entirely focused on what the task I'm doing at that moment and nothing's pulling me out of it. And yeah, it's great.

Matt Considine (05:41)
Yeah, I I

made this comment to to my wife made five days into a seven day vacation. I was like, I think this is the first day I feel like I'm good at vacation. Like I I I just wasn't, you know, in the rhythm. I I w but you y you get there and then you gotta leave. And you're like, shoot, I should

The Professor (05:57)
Yeah.

Matt Considine (05:58)
you know, no vac we need to adopt the the French way of of vacation. Don't they go for like four or five weeks in a row?

The Professor (06:03)
The thirty thirty day, I think it's

July. You know, basically the whole country shuts down in July and and other European countries have versions of this some, you know, different time spans. yeah, there

Matt Considine (06:14)
Yeah. I

The Professor (06:15)
there there's something to that. I agree.

Matt Considine (06:18)
I I I I could I could we we all could use that. I don't know if I could survive that with my current ages of my three children, but it's it's it's good non the none the the less. Last well vacation thought, you you my man, you're you're an urbanite hanging out in New York City. How was concerts and

living the big city life? You're you're

The Professor (06:37)
the the

Matt Considine (06:40)
a small town campus guy. You can't survive in the big concrete jungle.

The Professor (06:45)
I tell you what, by the time I by the time that trip was over, I was like, I gotta get out of this city. I I love that I Claire and I love New York City. You know, for the audience, we went up there to check out Mumford and Sons. That is her her current band. Showed up with just Thursday tickets, ended up buying Tuesday and Wednesday tickets as well. just had a blast. Hades Town, if you haven't seen it, go seen it. You know, hung out with Billy Condon, a good friend over at Pro Shop. he's in town. He

He showed us the city life, his city life. and by Friday I was like, Billy, I gotta put you on I gotta put you on mute on the phone. I can't I can't have you pulling us out again.

Matt Considine (07:21)
Could you live full time in New York City?

The Professor (07:24)
you know, we actually talked about that during the trip several times. there was a time in my life, you call it 24. You know, I wanted to be in Chicago, I wanted to be in New York City living full-time. And I could live full-time anywhere and be happy. let's be clear about that. But desiring to live New York City full-time. No desire to live there for two to three months in a row. 100%. Her and I would totally do that. And there's a world in which, you know, as we get more settled into the professorship positions, that we end up maybe

experimenting with that for a summer, and just checking out the city 'cause it is vibrant, so much to do. And I just love being able to just walk around and people watch, grab a bagel, sit in a park, you know, and just not have to rely on any sort of transportation other than city metro and walking.

Matt Considine (08:10)
Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's a a different life. But I could see you you and your your your wife Claire doing quite well. You guys eat good, you like good music. There there's no shortage of that every single night in a place like New York City, which is what I think my big appeal would be. I as a listener to this podcast said, the professor and Matt couldn't be on different spectrums

The Professor (08:32)
Okay.

Matt Considine (08:32)
of of how they spend their time, but it's so cool to hear us, you know, come together on

The Professor (08:37)
Yeah, but

Matt Considine (08:37)
this show. I

Have been chasing down today's guest for for quite a while just because I feel strongly about the product they've brought to the world of golf. co-founder of operating or operation 36, Matthew Regan is joining us today. he's

Matthew Reagan (08:54)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Considine (08:56)
the general manager, he's a PGA professional of Operation 36. But he was a late starter in golf himself, which I think has I'd love, I'm looking forward to diving in because I feel like that might have something to do with.

What they've built. He helped launch an original program, junior program at Keith Hills in 2010 and has spent the year since building this coach-led system that gets beginners onto the course immediately. It doesn't wait, it gets them to the golf course and starting at twenty five yards back from the hole. And we'll we'll get into the details of of what their system does, but

But Operation 36 now reports more than 250,000 golfers at over 800 facilities across twenty-two countries, Professor. So I first stumbled upon it, I think at at one of one of the great junior golf facilities in in Illinois, Cantini, and and just was like kind of in love with it ever since. And so I think I've shot multiple notes to to Matt and

Now now we get to to learn a little bit more about it. They've made a a bunch of strides and they have some some big announcements and things coming up in the next couple of years. So I'm excited to to chat with a fellow, you know, golf entrepreneur in the in the world of golf.

The Professor (10:10)
Yeah, congrats on getting this landing. I've been familiar with Op36 for for a while now. And I gotta say, one, in terms of its embracing, you know, it really reflects learning theories around different ways to learn skill development in terms of its approach, which is for me as a professor and dabbler of research and psychology, love seeing that. What it's done at Athens Country Club, you know, my home club here in Athens in terms of the last eight years when I showed up, you know, very limited kid.

interaction and involvement at the club to now it seems every day I'm we're losing the back of the range to op 36 and you know taking them out on the course or you know the tea times and that which is the best problem to have. It's not a problem at all. I say it in the most complimentary way and they get excited every time that come that comes up. and also when we speak to you know the the the mantra of growing the game, I would argue it is actually one of the few instances that's actually true to what that statement means.

versus say the OEM model of it or whatever where it's just a cliche thing to say. it is something actually oper operational that is technically and truly growing the game when you look at its results and products.

Matt Considine (11:19)
Yeah. I always as we do many times in this show, use Scotland as the barometer for the game, right? And

The Professor (11:26)
Mm, mm-hmm.

Matt Considine (11:27)
I'm sure there'll be some reflections I have as we we get to it with Matt, but just seeing how beginners are introduced to the game at the home of golf. And you know, it's i it it's mostly straight to the course too. And and it's neat to to see

you know, because of American golf, the way that things are, that there needed to be something something bit a little different to help that. And I yeah, I think they're they're leading that effort. So this will be a fun one. But before we get there, do you have anything to he's gonna teach us plenty, but do you have anything to teach us, Professor?

The Professor (12:00)
Yeah, I brought a little semi related fact of the day today. f I'll first ask your kids interested in sports? Though are they at an a age? What are they interested in? What are you pushing them to do? Where are you at relative to maybe your image of their their path down sports them?

Matt Considine (12:19)
Yeah, w w we're we're not gonna, you know, be Earl Woods in this house, I don't think. but we we encourage him to try everything is what we're doing, right? Five, four and one, all about to hit their birthdays here in in the fall. But my oldest is probably taking more interest now because she sees other kids kind of taking interest and sh she likes she doesn't understand soccer, but she likes kicking a ball.

Which we've discovered, so we're gonna kick a ball for a while.

The Professor (12:48)
What about hitting hitting a ball with sticks, right? That's e every kid wants to do that.

Matt Considine (12:51)
It's it it's

it's very human. my my my son, who's our youngest, is the he has more of an interest in hitting things with a stick than his sisters did. And I I don't know if there's genetics at play, chemistry there, but he just whether it's the dog, a ball, a fence, he he likes hitting things with sticks.

The Professor (13:13)
Well, you set me up perfectly there with you want them to sample everything. So famous research, you've probably heard of it. I'm sure Matthew has heard of this, our guest. You know, it's French famous French researcher Kote, looking at specialization. And obviously, several researchers have followed this and and followed up on this. But looking at when you look at elite athletes outside of a few exceptions, figure skating gymnastics, where your peak is truly typically in your teens.

If you go to other sports where the peaks are not the teens, specialization is just not the best way to go. You want sampling. but let's move that out of the importance for actually development of the sport. Ideally, there you're developing different motor skills as you're engaging in different sports, which then helps you specialize in a sport because you have just better motor control and other skills you can draw on. The outside of sports, why is this important? You develop life skills like self-regulation, coping, and goal setting.

By participating in multiple different things in life, pro-social behavior, especially when you're interacting in different sports that have different social roles and how you interact with teammates and opponents. Healthy identity, right? So you're developing all these different sub-identities. You're not just a golfer, you're not just a basketball player, that you're all these things, and that helps you actually identify build an identity as an individual when you have more sub-identities to identify with and lean into. being around

Diverse peer groups, right? You develop empathy primarily through that. So as you're engaging to different sports, which also have different social classes and different backgrounds of the participants, you develop more empathetic and decentration aspects. And then big ones, social capital. The more communities you embed yourself with, the bigger network you develop, especially as you age. and you can spread that across different communities. So I like to hear your answer there.

Right. Thinking about them, one that sample everything, one to get involved in everything. And from that, you know, a lot can grow out of it.

Matt Considine (15:13)
Yeah, I I like I love that I've heard heard that research before, probably from you, but I love that not only i it's it makes sense to me for a well balanced life, humanity, you know, being a good human, all that, but the performance data is pretty illustrative in that too, that they actually are just better at the thing that, you know, a lot of parents are hoping that they're specialized and they're gonna be, you know, dominant at that thing. Well

Trying other things helps that as well, which I think is my favorite part of that research there. Very good one, Professor. Timely for our guest today. The Bagdrop and New Club Golf Society are in partnership with Titalist. The all new Titlist golf balls embody superior performance, innovative design, and technology, precision, manufacturing, and unmatched quality. That is why Titalist is the unequivocal number one ball in golf. Professor, you and I've talked.

A bunch this season about putting. I might have something to do with that because of my woes. But the one thing that has stuck with me is how you visualize seeing a ball go in the hole. It's important no matter what way you're approaching the game. And you could be Justin Rose with very linear approach. He plays the Pro V1 X, or you could be someone like Gabby Lopez, who plays the Pro V1 and sees it more as a track that goes into the hole.

both are now using the all-new aim enhanced golf balls by Titleist, featuring a variety of different designs. Gabby puts just a single dot on her ball, but Titleist now has introduced that to their line of aim-enhanced markings. And Mr. Rose has that straight performance line down the middle. doesn't matter how you use it, but you should try it. And so you can go over to titleist.com, look at the full line.

go through the ball fitting, make sure you're playing the right ball, and add the new aim enhanced alignment to your game. titleist, the number one ball in golf. All right, Professor, let's get on to the show.

The Professor (17:14)
Let's do it.

Matt Considine (17:18)
Matthew Regan, welcome to the bag drop

Matthew Reagan (17:21)
Thanks for having me.

Matt Considine (17:23)
you know, I think part of our chemistry, the professor and I is we're just always trying to impress each other with the guests that we have of of something that we think the other will geek out on. You heard from probably our intro that professor has done plenty of research adjacent or in in your field. So I'm really just r here to brag and tell a professor, you know, that I I got a I got a smart dude joining us.

Matthew Reagan (17:47)
Well, I'm I'm excited to be here. So and I did listen to that intro and the research there on early specialization. And that was a lot of a lot of that research happened back in twenty ten when we were trying to build what became op thirty six today. So great, great little nuggets there.

Matt Considine (18:07)
Nice. Yeah, the the I'm I'm gonna go back a little bit earlier 'cause in my research I found that you p picked up the game at sixteen, is that correct?

Matthew Reagan (18:16)
Yeah. Yeah. I was I I did three sports growing up and just to have the third sport because I grew up on a little farm in upstate New York and so got to do something after school every day. did soccer, basketball, and then r was doing track and field just to do something and

I wasn't the fastest kid. I remember doing the hundred-yard sprint and watching, looking at everyone's backs, and it wasn't that much fun and trying to do high jump, but couldn't jump real high. And it was just you know, I was looking for something different. And my gym teacher was the high school golf coach, and I just got my license at the time. He's like, Hey, why don't you try golf? And if you're a golfer, there's a little nine-hole course in Addison, New York called the Pinnacle State Golf Course. And you could play you you could play golf, right, for free.

you couldn't hit range balls for free. You could play for free, which starts to, you know, you could looking back, that's an interesting kind of nugget that I never thought about as we as I kept going in my journey. But just went to the golf course every day, fell in love with it, was beating balls in my high school golf coach basement in the winter up there. he had a net in his basement. And before I graduated school, could shoot a round par or I I

Broke par in the high school event and went out to a conference one year. And they said, you know, was trying to figure out where I wanted to be in life. And the whole conference was about, hey, do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life. And I was eaten up with golf at the time and looked up how I can go to school for golf, not play on a golf team. I didn't think I was that good, but found Campbell University's PGA golf management program.

And saw I could get a business degree, always kind of had a business knack or always coming up with ideas. So I thought if I could marry business and golf together, that would be amazing. And learned when I joined school there, that's when I met our co-founder, Ryan Daly. He was actually the assistant director of the golf program. And he placed us on internships. And I learned really quickly that I loved coaching. And if I was gonna stay in golf, I wanted to be a coach. And did all my internships around that and then came back to

Came back to Campbell in my final year after teaching a lot of kids on internships and thought, man, I really want to do something in junior golf and and maybe we could build something a little bit better, like a long-term junior golf academy, to take someone from never playing to being a collegiate golfer. And Ryan, you know, my teacher at the time at school, and PGA professional, he was thinking something similar. And that's kind of what got us kicked off working together in 2010.

while I was still in school.

Matt Considine (20:54)
So that that's combined the those two worlds there of you as a high school kid picking up the game at sixteen, breaking par within what, a year or two? and

Matthew Reagan (21:05)
It's two years. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt Considine (21:07)
s so you're you had that that journey, which I'm sure has a lot to do with with your it's some inspiration here. But then later, twenty ten, you start teaching players, you start teaching beginners specifically.

Which part of your transformation when you were sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, did you r remember to be most important in that in

Matthew Reagan (21:32)
Hmm.

Matt Considine (21:32)
that phase for you? And and w what what was as a as a new coach, w w were you were you right that that was the important thing, or is there something you misunderstood about it or something you maybe forgot about in the journey?

Matthew Reagan (21:46)
No, yeah, it's I think it's it's really interesting is if you as you become a golf pro and you become a golf coach, I was kind of the person that always would try to teach, even though I didn't know I was talking about. I loved helping other people. So I remember I the my first books going into when I started that I read. And it all I as I I look at where we are today.

It's all about the environment you build around a golfer. And that, and we'll talk about more of that. And I used to think it's technically what are the technical piece of instruction do I need to know to get better at golf? And how do I technically be sound? And when you look back though, at what actually turned you into a golfer, usually it starts with someone in your life who gets you comfortable.

with the game motivates you a coach of some some aspect. And that was my high school golf coach Steve Thompson, who let me hit balls in his basement. He took me to the golf course. He gave me my first golf set. He he was the coach and you would just go up in the afternoon after school and he would send you off and he'd tell us we need to play a little faster, he'd give you a little tip here and there, but we were learning while we were playing and then we had our high school golf matches, right? So

The environment I was pushed into was like play almost immediately. And then before playing, because of the anxiety of playing and watching me top the ball down the fairway and all these things, I was motivated to practice. You know, I wanted to actually hit balls and improve. And, you know, I was just eaten up with it. So that's, you know, when you look at all of that, I I look back and say, like, it's

In what we learned in op 36, and what we're teaching coaches across the world is it's the environment that you build is around the player is the most important piece. And that's really what we do today is just teach more about how we can build the best environment for learning and the best programs to be able to take someone from never playing and getting them to go from really they're not motivated, it's maybe a new, it's anxious, it's anxiety.

How do we get them intrinsically motivated and build the habit of golf to want to be there? You know, they're to wake up on their own and go, man, I love golf and I don't know why. And that's where I was back when I was 16. but at that time I wasn't thinking about all this. We weren't researching all of this. And you know, come back to 2010 when you're learning to become a coach, you're just trying to figure out how to teach golf. How do I teach a golf swing? what's important in the golf swing?

How does this thing actually really work? And then also translating that to a player. And you just start thinking, man, if I can just get their swing right, they're going to play good. And the more you become a coach, the more you realize that this is a long-term journey and that skill

The Professor (24:31)
Ha ha.

Matthew Reagan (24:32)
development's incredibly important. But if you can put a foundation in place for players to where they're going to succeed, whether you give them the perfect technical stru instruction or not.

That's really what is the most important component when it comes to developing a golfer.

The Professor (24:49)
Yeah, shout out to the coaches out there, Matthew. Shout out to Steven Thompson. In my case, I gotta give a shout out to Greg Leggett. He transformed my game back in early high school, sophomore year got into high school, turned me into the player I am today. Now, when I came across Greg, I already loved golf, already been a lover of golf, playing it all the time. Matthew, your situation is a little unique that you know you were kind of coming to golf when you also had this wonderful coach. Outside of the guidance he gave, what was it about?

golf that made you stick to it and say, Yeah, this is what I wanna do. Cause that happens all you know, we move into all sorts of different sports and we don't stick to it, but something about golf pulled you in and didn't let you go.

Matthew Reagan (25:28)
Yeah, no, it's interesting. when you study so, you know, I I know I keep bobbing back and forth because I'm like reflecting on what I've learned since then. But when we started studying gamification and how, you know, it we studied that as a part of building op 36 when we started. And you start looking at what motivates someone and why do you get neat eaten up with something, how it becomes a habit of your life and why you just you need it. Golf is incredibly variable.

And so when you look at motivation and you look at the science behind what captures our attention, there's a reason that the feed that Facebook and all of them all the best apps developed is variable. You don't know what's gonna open. When you open, you know, you open up that phone, there's gonna be something at the top. And then you scroll a little bit, you put it away and you go, hmm, I'm bored. Well, give me something that's variable to take to adapt my attention. So take that idea.

and then apply it to golf. Every shot is different. You have the chance. If you're a ball beater on the golf driving range, you get to have a chance to hit a shot and you don't know what the results are gonna be. You get to change something immediately and try again. And when you capture it and you think you've got the lightning in the jar and you're gonna put the top on it and you're gonna take that thing with you forever, it surprises you and you can't find it again. And then you go and you start to.

apply that to actually playing the game where there's this whole narrative built around it. and we can talk more about you know the narrative of golf, but all of these things layer on top of each other. And it's such a great game because it's so easy to see pass fail. you know, it's so easy to measure. where it's like like think about going and playing soccer. all of a sudden it's the social environment you guys talked about the different I really loved the way the Kevin or the professor

The way that you put all these different social environments and how their different identities could be built. I thought that was brilliant. I I just I'm I have a nine year old girl and a six year old boy. But when we started this, we did I didn't have kids. Ryan did. Ryan had a Ryan's motivation was I have a kid and I want to make sure they play golf. And then, you know, we built all this. And then I've been like, you know, undercover boss with my kids in the program and watching them go through it. but I'm always thinking, like I think most

The most people will think, what's the technical thing that I gotta get them to do? Where I'm always thinking, how do I just make sure that they're feeling good about this and that it's fun and that they're soaking this in? Because if I can do that, I'm playing the long game, right? I want them to play golf with me for the rest of my life, you know, and it's selfishly. So when we go on trips, when we go here, so I'm always thinking, what's the environment I can build that's gonna make that happen? And it doesn't all have to happen today at the age of six, right?

so yeah, I that's that that would be my advice looking back is just like the whole environment that's built around it. But to come back to your question, that variability I think is everything in what people actually get out of the sport. And if we can wrap a narrative around it that keeps them what with like where we can set some achievable goals for them so they can see progression quickly, we start to really hook someone into the sport. And that's really what we built at op 36 is how do we get someone hooked? How do we create that environment?

How do we feel like they're progressing it maybe even in like their second class or the second time they play, they feel like, hmm, I am a golfer, hmm, I am good at this. And we begin to identify as a golfer. So all of those layers are in there, you know, so and they're all very important.

Matt Considine (28:58)
Matthew, I I'm a sucker for origin stories. I I I want to get to the meat of the fifteen years of research and what you guys have adapted and built, but I I do want to talk just for a a bit or give you the opportunity to talk a bit about those first three juniors, you and your co-founder Ryan Daly starred at Keith Hill's. I think it was a program that grew to around eighty

Junior golfers, right? So a successful program

Matthew Reagan (29:22)
You got it.

Matt Considine (29:23)
by most most standards, very successful, really. And you know, you you you described somewhere I I was reading about the the the retention of that, and roughly 40 of those families didn't return. I'm I'm curious about those, you know, that that that's a the thing about entrepreneurship is there's always the opportunity of failure. What emerges from failure is really the thing. So I wanted to hear from you how you guys reflected on that.

You know, what did those departures, those forty families reveal to you guys that, you know, fast forward to where we are today, two hundred and fifty thousand, what what what was it about those forty families that were leaving that that really hit you guys?

Matthew Reagan (30:01)
Yeah. No, so you're spot on. So we got three kids to start. And then Ryan and I, the whole premise when we started was hey, instead of a clinic or camp in the summer, if we could get these golfers coming every week for the full season, and we could work on athlete development and golf development, we are definitely more heavily focused on athlete development when we started because we went out and got TPI certified. We that's where we started to learn more about is

Kevin was alluding to early specialization and building long term programs and all of these layers of like, okay, this could be a long game for golf, right? It's not where you have to be peeking at the age of 12 for gymnastics or something, right? so we built all that into the beginning. And then it was like, gosh, we got three kids to sign up. What do we do with them for an hour? How do we make sure they're coming back? How do we show they're progressing? How do we show the parents that they're having fun? Do how do we make sure they're

Becoming athletes, but also becoming golfers. If we want to see their progressing, what do we teach? versus just let them train and get reps in versus having to test them. So all of these things was like our petri dish of like, okay, well, how do we how do we know what to do? And so you you throw all this stuff at the wall, right? And you I remember planning for hours of like what's our lesson plan gonna be and trying to build a framework as we went. We started with like 10 levels and then it

You know, we had to rework everything. And then we we came up with this, okay. We're gonna chunk it down to six levels, and here's the different skills you're gonna learn. And we borrowed from Boy Scouts and all these other programs that are out there where you earn badges on the back of a bag tag as you progressed and you could show me the perfect grip, right? And so, and then we started studying gamification and we made the classes more fun. So we said, How could we took just a golf ball and a hole? How do you make a three-footer fun for an hour? And so that's a

That's a tough one when you have a bunch of six-year-olds in front of you. And so we learn how to tell narratives around the game we're playing. We learn how to set different levels. And then as we progressed, we we thought we had this thing all figured out. We had different levels, people were learning, they were showing us grips were perfect. They understood the golf swing. They're coming to a class every single week. and we're getting the awards for it too. Ryan was the 2013 Carolina's PGA Youth Player Development Award winner. I was the 2014.

and we just started having coaches reach out and say, Hey, we'd love to learn, we love to use this system you guys have kind of built for developing golfers. and then in year four, as you alluded to, we end up losing half of our golfers. And we these are the same kids that have been coming every single week. We had about a 95% retention rate. I was when you talk about community and coach and connection, like.

Our what we learned is like the program kind of kept them, right? We probably as coaches were just so connected to them and great relationship with families. We kept them for quite a long time. deep down I had this weird feeling like we weren't didn't have everything figured out. Like we we really were trying to prove that you could take someone from never playing to being a golfer. And even though they were showing us things, like in our gut, we kind of felt like something was off. Like

Are they really golfers? Like, are we actually delivering what we say we're delivering? And when all those golfers left, it was a huge like, no moment, right? what we did, Ryan and I, in our reflection said, like, yeah, go ahead. Yeah.

Matt Considine (33:25)
And and you guys and Matthew, like just just to interject,

you you're you're not talking around about building a company around this at this point, right? Or are you?

Matthew Reagan (33:34)
Not really. Like Ryan and I are just thinking about to be honest with you, I was gonna, I was kind of had my own brand. I had Matt Reagan golf. He had RyanDalygolf.com, right? We were gonna kind of just you take we thought probably, hey, let's work on this together. And then you kind of take what you can from it, and I can. yeah, it was kind of like that. Until the coaches started going, Hey, we would love to use this. That was when the wheel started turning. Like, hey, how can we help other coaches?

The Professor (33:58)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (33:59)
and it was just at the same time, right? It actually was called.

We do if I know this is an entrepreneurship show. We our first business name was North Carolina Long Term Athlete Development LLC. N C L T A D L L C.

Matt Considine (34:11)
Beautiful. It it it flows off the tongue.

Matthew Reagan (34:14)
Just

The Professor (34:14)
Ha ha.

Matthew Reagan (34:15)
rolls off the tongue, right? And when it didn't fit on the first check, we realized it's probably a pretty bad name. But we

Matt Considine (34:23)
Probably a sign.

Matthew Reagan (34:24)
were all when we think about what Kevin was mentioning with

Early specialization, we wanted everyone to know we were a long-term program, right?

The Professor (34:32)
Uh-huh.

Matthew Reagan (34:34)
and then it literally then we went to the we called it the edge golf. and that's when we came up with the booklets and the bag tags. Then we tr called it I Gro Golf, because we felt like we were

The Professor (34:43)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (34:43)
growing the game of golf, which was we thought was a pretty cool name. And then that year four, when we started looking at every, you know, we lose those golfers, when we reflected on that, Ryan and I

looked at the kids that were still in our class and the ones that left and there was this common theme we had between the ones that left and the ones that stayed. And any guesses on what that might be?

The Professor (35:08)
The ones

Matt Considine (35:08)
gonna guess

you got to a golf course a little earlier, maybe.

Matthew Reagan (35:14)
Okay, Kevin.

Matt Considine (35:14)
Like on on

The Professor (35:14)
Yeah.

Matt Considine (35:15)
on the plane a little earlier is my guess.

The Professor (35:17)
Yeah,

I was gonna go the get the ones that stayed were playing more. Just out on the out on the grounds more.

Matthew Reagan (35:24)
A thousand percent. So the ones that stayed had someone in their life that was taking them to play outside of our classes. And as golf pros, yep.

Matt Considine (35:32)
And it yeah, so it wasn't you guys,

it was but it was just somebody in their life that was taking out there. Okay.

Matthew Reagan (35:37)
Now we would take them like every four weeks, we would pile twelve kids in the twelve seater golf cart and try to go out on the course and you've seen that all play out before, right? It's a mess. but they

The Professor (35:48)
Yeah, absolute mess.

Matthew Reagan (35:49)
never really got to experience playing the game.

Matt Considine (35:51)
It's not the thing our

buddies that are PGAs are signing up for first is the junior, you know, program because of some of those challenges.

Matthew Reagan (35:55)
No. Thrown.

Thrown to the woods. So you have this weird. So we we learned, okay, mom and dad are actually taking these ones. They play golf, but these other 40, mom and dad didn't play golf. No one in their life plays golf. So whose job

The Professor (36:09)
Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (36:09)
is it to get them to actually start playing the game of golf? That's the big question. And

The Professor (36:14)
Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (36:15)
we go, man, we gotta figure out how to package playing golf into the program. We have to do that. So we spent a year.

Trying to figure out what is the best format to get these beginners on the golf course. And we used the most forward-thinking thing at the time was US Kids has carry tee forward tees and it's based on carry distance. How far can you carry the golf ball? Like a hundred yards or less, you're gonna play. I think it's like a twelve hundred or a sixteen hundred yard course, right? And it makes total sense. So it's like it's matching up, it's scaling to carry distance.

The problem was we did that. We got the track man out. We did the carry distance of every player and we went and played. But it was taking us three hours to play nine holes of golf. And people weren't you what there's a there's a gap between skill level and actually being able to play a course at that level, where it's fun, it's motivating, you're actually, you know, getting the ball to the hole and you're writing down a score. So everyone's just picking up their ball. We're holding up play.

The course is upset at us, like, and we're like, look, we know we have to get them to play, but actually get him on the golf course to get them to play, we can't do it. And one day we were driving to train our first licensed coach, Maggie Simons at Carmel Country Club. And, you know, we were driving to, we went, we were training her at Pine Needles in Pinehurst.

And as Ryan and I were driving down there, we're just like brainstorming because we were man, we need to figure out this whole encourse thing. Like, we we got to get them to play, but it's not working. And the whole goal of our program was could we get them to shoot par for nine holes from the full T box? That was always it. We all we used to say start to scratch in six levels. I remember that was on the box with that you got with your bag tag. And we kind of joked, like, hey, if we put people on the putting green right now, if we put all the juniors that have been in our program for four years on the putting green.

I don't think they could break par. Like we were like kind

The Professor (38:08)
Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (38:08)
of beating ourselves up. And like we said that and we're like sitting there thinking, and and then I think it just hit us both at the same time. We were more upset about the pace of play than anything. And then when we said that, we're like, what if we just put them on the let's do chipping putting, tell them they have to break par from there, and we'll test this thing out. And you know, we we did it from 25 yards away. The next time we had an on course event.

We put them out there. We knew we were on to something when we got around in about 90 minutes. Everyone was excited. They knew that the goal was to shoot par. And I remember the kids running up the cart path at Keith Hills Golf Club going, the kids that got it were like, I did it, I did it. I shot a 34. And then the ones that didn't, it's like, I need to do it again. I I want to do it again. I was so close, you know? And it was like all the education around gamification and this and solving pace of play and

Getting them to experience the magic of writing down a score. It's like, you know, it's like teaching all the parts of a house, but not knowing that you're actually gonna build a house at the end, right? Like there was no purpose. And then all of a sudden, the class, the whole atmosphere in the classes changed. Kids knew they were gonna go play, and there's a bigger narrative. I get to go play and I, I, I know my score that I wrote down. And it was so transformative. And so, like, that was like,

my gosh, this is probably it. It took us five years to get here. We thought all the other stuff that we learned along the way was the best stuff. But at the end of the day, it was really just, you know, this whole shoot 36 and backup mixed that into the program. It was, it was like, okay, this needs to be, you know, shared with the world and we need to keep working on this and package it up and help others experience golf this way. And that's where we named the program Operation 36.

The goal is to take someone from never playing to shooting par from the full T box and you know get that marketing message and the program message really, really s you know, packaged up for everyone to get into the game.

The Professor (40:08)
I love this so much, Matthew, because this really resonates with me as an educator and a professor of educational research. Cause the comparison I've always made, the first time I came across op 36, I'm like, this is brilliant. This is exactly like this naturally should be how it is, because I always compare it to education. Like if I'm trying to teach a kid calculus and he's in seventh grade, well, it's not the kid's fault I can't teach them calculus. I don't have to change him so he can learn calculus.

No, I have to change what I'm teaching so I could build up the calculus. And so I think in golf, we have the phenomenon of teaching all the time. It's like, well, I'm gonna start with the scratch golfer. And now I've got this person over here that's a 20. I have to change them to become a scratch golfer or whatever. It's like, no, you just start with where they're at and how do you make them better? And eventually they will be a scratch golfer. And so I love op 36 does that. Yeah, the problem isn't like, hey, we have to make it so these kids play faster. It's like, no, we got to change the game so they're playing an appropriate scale.

And what they're doing actually fits with the idea of shooting par, right? Don't teach them to shoot par, put them in a situation they can shoot par and then let them graduate

Matthew Reagan (41:13)
Thousand percent.

The Professor (41:14)
from there. So when all right, so you walk off, you see these kids going nuts. I really want to ask, were you and Ryan right then like, man, we gotta ch flip our whole script? Like, we're would were you sitting there like we're looking about this backwards? And now we need to change our whole outfit.

Or was this more of an incremental change, like, okay, we've got something additional here that's incorporated in? What where were you at at that precipice when you first saw this happen and got and got excited about it?

Matthew Reagan (41:43)
It was it was like when you work on a problem for a very long time and you're just banging your head against the wall and you're like, This isn't working, and you know it's not working, and then it does, it was like instant. It was instant because we did it the wrong way for so long. So

The Professor (42:00)
Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (42:01)
it's like the first thing was like, Okay, we didn't actually get them playing golf. That one hit really hard and it took four years. And then it was a year of this is

Nine rounds, 10 rounds on the golf course, three hour rounds, everyone upset, parents yelling, kids upset, picking up the ball. Just didn't feel good. And you're like, man, this doesn't and then but all of the work of like we were trying to get them to shoot par and then tying that narrative to it from closer and figuring that little flip that solved pace of play plus the narrative. And that's what you're speaking to. It's I think the most underappreciated.

item in coaching is making sure that the narrative matches the player and they understand the journey that they're on. And that's so we focus so much of our time, energy, and effort of making op 36 simple to understand and simple to market it. Yeah, it's start close, shoot 36 and back up. A very simple concept. But guess what? If I show up to the golf course and you say, hey, take these five lessons and overwhelm you and I don't know why I'm here and just stay on the driving range until you're ready and there's no clear what's next.

we have we spent forever getting it down to like exactly what's next and showing you that you are slowly progressing. And because like in the in a eight I would say an eight week program so we can see the data of players too. When we say like I I really appreciate what you said in the beginning where we are when they say grow the game of golf, we I believe are the only company in golf that can truly measure with our technology. We're measuring

The first round a player ever plays on the golf course from 25 yards away to when they can shoot 36 or better from the full T box. And we have all the data and we can see how long it takes. We can see how many attempts it takes. We can see at what ages. So we can begin to build a model around when you think of a development model to understand am I ahead or am I behind? so all that is being tracked, right? And so that's kind of like where we fast forward to beyond, you know, that because everything we're talking about up till now is just 2015, right?

But yeah, that's that's that's really it. Is you know, just the narrative built around this is the most important piece to get people to buy in for the long term.

Matt Considine (44:16)
this is this is probably a good point where I wanted to interject the the reality of what you guys are are are doing. obviously the inspiration it came out of a junior golf program, but this is so timely and and really I think important to both the professor and I. the work I do with new club, I've I've met so many people who are golf curious in the last five years because of COVID and and the game has

Matthew Reagan (44:38)
Yeah. Yep.

Matt Considine (44:39)
just

Boomed and the statistics are very clear here. w it it's growing in a big way, but one in four become committed golfers of this, you know, however many million new golfers we have. Only one in four, not not the best success rate, right? And and and what what what I do in in in my day job is is really for committed golfers who are at that point, are the one in four. And I've seen so many that I've connected with that are on that journey who haven't.

stuck stuck with it. So what what we're talking about here isn't just for kids. Like this is an operation, it's a platform, it's a system, a curriculum for all beginners. And so I I I I wanted to hear a little bit about how that evolution has has happened. was it with parents of the kids eventually? Was it what what were you learning through you know all these years, Matt, that

said, Wow, this is this isn't junior golf either. This is this is for anybody who wants to pick up the game.

Matthew Reagan (45:42)
Yeah. So from, you know, fast forward in the journey now or twenty fifteen to today. So we started licensing the program to other professionals. You have to understand Ryan and I ran just at Keith Hills and then we were bootstrapped the company, right? So we would we would if you think about the business model, the business model is really solid too, because we have recurring revenue of everyone signing up like a monthly membership to attend the program.

So we would make, you know, coaching eight or nine hours a week. We would make around 12 grand a month, you know, which is pretty solid. and a little even that back then was I think everyone's trying to switch to that now in the golf industry. you know, and because we had that though, and I actually lived with Ryan for a little bit, we would just pay ourselves very minimal and we'd reinvest all that back into the program to go build our own technology.

to keep, you know, to keep growing it. And then I started at another location here in Raleigh in my own location. So now we have two revenue streams to help fund the business, to pay ourselves a little bit and to build our own technology. So that's how we did it. and we just kind of made that decision like we just didn't really pay ourselves a lot. And then we started licensing it. We got more coaches in. We were only allowed to run junior golf at the places we were at.

And we started getting asked questions from the coaches, like, what would you change in this model and this framework for adults? Because I'm getting parents that want to learn this way too. And so we got all the coaches together and we're like, okay, like let's look at what we would change. And really the the what we've learned is like the system, the model, the development framework doesn't really change, right? You have to play golf, that builds the narrative.

It's shoot 36 or back up. You write down your first score. Now that the story or the journey has begun, then we got to give you an environment to train, right? And to learn. And the coach is going to c facilitate that once a week with people in a community of like-minded people with you, have a similar skill level. So they feel comfortable. so that's the learning and training. And then you need to see your progress. You need to know where you are in your journey. And that's where the technology came in, right?

So we just went on a shift to go, okay, well, we need to start to take a little bit of the junior out of the brand, right? It can't be all kids and videos. It can't be, you know, it took a while, you know, because we're just like this small team, but you don't realize how many times you call it a junior program or how many times you do that. So it took years. And this is probably 2018, 2019. And then you fast forward to today, like we have really worked hard to make kind of a gender neutral brand.

A you know, age neutral brand that says, look, this is a way for people to learn to golf. Like this is how people should be introduced to golf. And in the last from 2017, when we actually had the technology built, it went from all juniors signing up to now it's like 60 juniors, 40 adults. And out of

The Professor (48:44)
Well.

Matthew Reagan (48:45)
those adults, 70% of them are ladies, 30% men that are signing up, and it's

It's interesting to see the spectrum of complete beginners versus some a lot of the adult males that are signing up. They're not beginners, but they're like, I kind of want to know where I can shoot 36 and what level it is. And they're learning that way. Yeah, it's like learning it is kind of cool. There's people

Matt Considine (49:02)
Let me start over. It's it's not clicking. Let me let me clear the mechanism and start from the beginning.

Matthew Reagan (49:09)
there's people in their life who have never shot par for nine holes, right? And

The Professor (49:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (49:15)
and you go, I know they're curious about where they could.

And so we say, look, go start at level one, see if you can do it. Go to level two by just doing that, just doing that exercise. There's more you will learn about your golf game and how to get better and where you need to focus than anyone. So because what you're doing is you're shrinking variables, right? And to be able to where do I focus? And that's why you do stat tracking and all these things. I still think from a full T box.

If you, you know, there there could be distance involved and contact with irons and there's so many things that could be involved. Shrink the environment. And then it's a little eye-opening to see where most people actually get stuck. And that's when the motivation to go, I can do this. I have an achievable goal. I know what I need to work on. It shrinks everything so you can focus. And that's when clarity becomes motivation, right? and they feel like they're not like out there just swimming in a water by themselves. So

yeah, sorry, and I keep going off a little tangent, so pull me back in. You can see I

The Professor (50:17)
No, the

this is absolutely great. I think you know, what you hit at there is you give a test they can pass, right? Like it the worst thing to do to any learner in any sport education venture, whatever, is to keep giving them tests they can't pass because that drives most of them away, or they just don't improve because they don't see an avenue of improvement. They don't actually achieve something that lets them push a little harder.

I do want to dial in though, as you s made this transition from being just a junior program to obviously bringing in adults, and that's impressive now, you know, being a 60-40 breakdown. and so much selfishly I'm gonna ask this question with the wife that is, you know, once again in the game, especially as she moves towards tenure in her job. What different lessons have been learned there as you've had adults come into the mix that maybe you won't you didn't learn through the kids being in the mix?

Matthew Reagan (51:06)
Yeah, what's interesting. So you think about the group environment. group environment's important because of the so you I we I like to think, and I I was just on a webinar, kind of going back through some of our research that we did. One of the things that stuck out to me was how much we had when we started studying fun and motivation, like there's all like these blends of that, you know, and it overlaps education. The self-determination theory was by

DC and Ryan was one of the things that stood out the most. It just kept coming up over and over again. And McCaulay chick set me high with flow states and challenging just above your ability. But

The Professor (51:43)
Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (51:44)
that SDT framework was like, how do we get people to go from being amotivated to being super motivated, even though they don't want to learn? And it would, I think it was in an educational setting, right? and so the three things were one.

Is competence. Do I feel competent? Which means do I, do I feel like I'm actually improving? Do I feel like I have everything in place that I need this sec to to to actually progress? I don't feel like self-helplessness, the opposite of that. The next thing is it was relatedness. So do I feel like I fit in with this group of people? and that's that community, that's that coach, that's Matt, that's what you've built, right? It's the it's so important, it's massively important.

And then the third is autonomy. And when you're building a beginner program, you really it's competence first, then the relatedness, and then it's autonomy. As you get older, you can flip those, right? Autonomy is the most important. But when you're

The Professor (52:40)
That's right.

Matthew Reagan (52:40)
new to something, like if you put me on a battlefield and I've never shot a gun before, tell me what to do, right? Like I, you know, just tell me what to do. I'll I'll look up to you, right? And so going to answer your question.

The most important pieces with adults is showing them that they're gonna be in a group of people that are like them, that this is

they're gonna, it's that they're that's what they're loving. I'm in a group, we're all learning together. and I will never forget I've had, I don't know what it I've had about eight or nine ladies come up to me and say, Hey, I do this. They wanted to play, they've always wanted to play, but they've never had permission to start that close to the green and to learn this way.

And that's where I'm like, okay, I know this is simple. I know that you know, this has been this was in the little red book, start close, work your way back, right? But why

The Professor (53:32)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Matthew Reagan (53:33)
hasn't everyone's like it's so simple? Why ha doesn't everyone do this? And that's where, like, intrinsically, my I feel like it's our mission to build a product to make sure that not only golf pros can pull someone into the game, but everybody can pull someone into the game this way. And it

if we could teach everyone that, you wouldn't be afraid to pull your wife out there and say, Hey, why don't we try it this way? Why don't yeah, you only need two clubs. We don't need 14 right now. put those in the back. And now anytime you get in a situation where you where you have someone that's like, I want to go play golf with you and you go, Great, I know how to. I and if we do that, that one in four metric you're talking about, Matt, is what I'm looking at all the time and going, Why? And it's all about how do I give

Each of you, every golfer that's already out there, a narrative, a tool, and a program that people believe in. It's not just, hey, this is where you go. Something they can believe in and see their progression early. And that's that's what we're after now. Like we want it, we truly want to introduce a million new people to the game. And we're 250,000 now. And we thought we'd be able to get there faster. And that's what we're after in the future. Here is how do we equip every existing golfer?

If that existing golfer can introduce one other player to the game, it's way beyond a million that we can get going and and keep in the game. That's the goal.

The Professor (54:54)
Wow, Matthew, that's incredibly insightful. I'm already I'm already thinking about how I can use what you just said in my work with adult learners, the the relayedness being that key aspect. Cause I think about as adults, we become it's difficult for us to be vulnerable in new settings in areas where we don't have a skill, or I just say we don't have competence in because we have s we have an ability to do so many things we're successful at and we feel comfortable with. So when we run into those situations, it like it's alarming at times. And yeah, you hit the head on the nail. How do you solve that? Well, you

Get people that will feel related around that vulnerability and that'll help them be comfortable with it and actually sit in it and then work through it. That's that's brilliant.

Matt Considine (55:33)
You know, my my what I took there and one thing I want to get your your take on, Matt, is the the cultural challenges of all this. I I think, you know, the the professor and I have talked on the show and and talked many times about just our experiences overseas and and what we see. I I think a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to this of what once you see something, it can't be unseen. You've just seen

Something that's a better way for you. It was watching those kids run back at you that, you know, I shot 34, I did it. And the ones that, I gotta go again because I didn't. And I I I think for for me, so much of that it has happened because of my time in in Scotland, the home of golf, and how they get beginners on the course in a very similar fashion. But culturally, they don't have driving ranges. You know, they they have shorter versions of golf. They almost pick apart.

they have kids courses and and the the championship course, pitch and putts, know, it's just how it was. So they don't have the the the the cultural norms that we do, which is why so many start on on the driving range. But I'm I'm just curious how you've

approach that through all this. I mean, you even said it's been slower than you guys had hoped. And I gotta imagine a lot of these cultural norms are the number one thing that are going to be the the headwind that that's knocking you guys you guys back in a way.

How how has has has that gotten harder? Has that gotten as courses get busier, is has that gotten more difficult

Matthew Reagan (57:05)
Yeah.

I think when you look at any environment, there's going to be challenges in what you build. Now, if if we go back to like 2017, you know, facilities are begging to figure out how to get people on the golf course. And then you hit 2020, you know, God bless that everything blew up in the golf industry and we figured out this was a healthy sport that more people in the world wanted to come to.

And you're getting numbers bigger than when Tiger was, you know, at his peak. that's amazing. Now, does that pose challenges for a program that is saying we gotta get people playing the game to connect them to the game? And we truly believe it? Absolutely. Like, so we have to find ways to work with facilities. It's for us, there's every club is different. Every

Leadership at a club is different. Every GM is different. Every professional staff that we work with with coaches are different. That's why we're talking like our role every day is we're talking with golf professionals every day to kind of deduct and understand their club. But we've talked to so many. I mean, if you think about it, we're we are essentially providing almost like like a business in a box, a franchise in a box kind of, but it just is a basic license to that club to use it. And we want to let them use it how they want to.

But we learn a ton, right? So we anyone who leaves, a club that leaves because it wasn't it they say it wasn't successful or they didn't take it on, like we really take it seriously to see what what are what what didn't work. We've got it pretty well wrapped up now of like what questions do we need to ask to these clubs? We're pretty blunt on, hey, look, this is how the program runs. And if you can't do this, you're not a fit, you know, so it's not worth you even looking at.

or moving forward. So it's kind of just making sure we're getting the right program locations. Cause we have a service for you know, one of we have a service for anyone who comes to our website and wants to find our location and then they get there and they realize, well, this isn't what I expected. Well, we want to know that at the same time. you know, it's it's it's a bit of a struggle because we can't like say that you can absolutely do this. You this is how you have to do it. but what we try to do, Matt, is just showcase

what works. we really truly feel like we're a network of golf pros all trying to share. These are the best practices that we do at our club. If we have a busy club, then yeah, we might back it out to one day a month for a our play days. We might cap our classes, which is okay. We're still building the environment. and then just every place is different, you know, so we are really starting to in gain some traction internationally.

You know, actually Operation Thirty Six this year started at St. St. Andrews Lynx Trust over there. And so they're running and they're running very successfully. As you said, when they the idea you don't have to break down the idea of getting them, we don't have to sell them on the idea that this is something that the golf pro does, right? It's already built into the culture. So like I feel like for the last fifteen years, that's all or well, let's just call it seven when we started licensing. I'm still educating golf pros.

I was on webinar last week, you know, that look that to create a golfer, you gotta to build the best environment for this golfer. They need to actually play the game and you should lean into it. And then we have to show them this is how you can make money for it or they're never going to do it. And this is how you impact the club. And then it comes back to the golfer. You got to build this whole like golfer facility pro all win or you're not gonna build the environment. Right. And that that's the

I think that's the biggest learn when I t I noticed like all my talks now are not about the technical skills of like if

The Professor (1:00:47)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (1:00:48)
you looked at where we started, it was so technical and we got to make sure we know the right golf swing and the right things to do. And then I realized as we've gone through this, it's like if you build the environment, you could just put someone who has no technical idea or instruction. But because we put pen to paper and you put it in the schedule, we're gonna create a golfer just by getting the reps in. Just like

How I got into golf. I just played a bunch, right? So, you know, that's really what we're kind of motivated and going out and doing now is just making sure and trying to educate people about the environments that should be built. And I think any beginner that's out there that wants to get in or wants to introduce somebody, the more educated they are.

I think they'll look for the right programs and they'll find the right programs and we'll we'll pull the facilities forward, so to speak, you know, by by going through the consumers, if that makes sense.

Matt Considine (1:01:42)
It really makes sense to me. I have a number of beginners in my life now with with children, but also friends who have, you know, come on board and and like I said, golf curious through the the these last five years. And it I I feel like at both of those groups, the adults and the kids, th they don't really want to be told how to do something.

anybody r really doesn't love that. in the pursuit of it, there's obviously guidance and assistance and coaching that will always be needed, but the exploration I see all of them enjoy more than anything. And it sounds I it's really cool to hear your that answer from you because it sounds like there's been things you have built into Operation 36 that are deliberately left alone. Is that is that fair to say where you you just you get them going and they're gonna

Have that experiment themselves. They're gonna explore, and that's gonna really build that hook more so than the other methods.

Matthew Reagan (1:02:41)
If I was, I still remember watching seasoned coaches and going, Why aren't they saying anything to them? Like it's clear that the sp split grip is not helping. But like why aren't you over there just always hands-on, moving someone, doing something, giving them something to work on? Like, and then you get older and you were that guy that did all that, and then you start backing off and you're like,

my gosh, I'm not as important to be. I my job is to build the

The Professor (1:03:11)
Ha ha.

Matthew Reagan (1:03:12)
environment for you to learn and to watch you learn. And it's so hard because it the way that golf instruction was built is I go get as many accolades as I can to so you pay me $150 to $200 an hour. Maybe I coach a tour pro and I want to coach better players because I want to prove that I'm a good coach. Right.

The Professor (1:03:33)
Mm, mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (1:03:35)
And that's

That's the ego, young coach. I know that for a fact because that is who I am. That's who I was, right? I you go look at all my accolades. I've, you know, I went through everything you could possibly go through. And I just wanted to prove and I wanted it. Well, it it also came down to I want to make some money too doing coaching. I liked it. And, you know, you can flip once you I think once coaches understand your job is to build the environment. And that's what people are paying for. They're

I I gladly pay for my nine-year-old. I'm paying for the program now, by the way. I joined the club. I am the perfect example of how if you actually connect the whole family to the club, you will I became a member this year. I paid my initiation fee. I now pay $400 a month to have my kids enrolled up in op 36 with Andrew Kiger, but he's putting the dates on the paper. He's building the community and the friend connections for my kids at the club in those weekly classes.

I'm not the coach. Hey, go talk to your coach. We'll continue to work on it. Okay, awesome. Between classes now, I can go play. We can eat at the club. We play at the pool. I mean, it was like we're the perfect example of what a if a club leans into this, you can literally build the whole membership off of player development. And because it and that's what clubs are starting to figure out too, right? It's the most important piece to it. So if I go back to a younger me, Matt, that would be what I

Stop stressing about getting it right. And but it also at the same time, you know, in our industry, I just think all the time, like, we don't we don't need someone who's an absolutely skilled technical coach to build these environments. Yet there's a karate studio, a dance studio, a gymnastics gym that are developing gymnasts, that are developing, you know,

The Professor (1:05:24)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (1:05:25)
dancers, that are developing baseball players in our backyard that they're like.

Paying for 10,000 square foot facilities and they're building these massive, they have to figure out how to build a massive business on this. And then at the golf facility, like the golf pro doesn't pay for that facility typically, or it hasn't have to do this. Yet we still don't have like progression development programs at at the 15,000 clubs in America. And we have 800 right now that are running op 36, but

How many more? Why isn't that everywhere? Right. Why isn't, you know, and that's what takes, you know, that's what keeps us going, right? Is going, look, we need to build these better environments. And as people get it and as leadership gets it, and it everyone kind of like figures that out, it it becomes so much easier because it, you know, a golf pro really helps, but it can be run by anybody. It's just someone putting

The Professor (1:06:19)
Hm.

Matthew Reagan (1:06:19)
dates to the paper and you will create a golfer if you show up to a weekly class with people that are connected with you.

And you play golf every other week, you're gonna become a golfer, you know, and you're gonna be good at it. And even if I don't teach you anything and you just model after other players, you see a kid do a chip shot, you're not gonna take your hands up over your head, you know, you're gonna do a little shot. You're modeling is another very powerful form of learning, especially for beginners.

The Professor (1:06:45)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (1:06:46)
And you know, think about the think about this. If I put you on a range and

The first thing you see in and you've never seen golf before. And then the first thing that eight people on the range do is lift their hands straight up over their head and swing. What are you going to do the first time you hit a you know, you just you're gonna model what they're doing. And so that's that other group environment. What people don't get is how much is learned through others when you're evaluating and taking in information.

Where me, the coach, is not really teaching you that much. Now, when you get stuck, that's what coaches are for. When you feel frustrated because you can't figure this thing out, that's what we're there for. We get you over that hump and you feel like someone's gonna progress you. And that's that's where we get rid of that like self helplessness that a lot of existing golfers feel, right? I don't feel like I can get better. I've reached my peak, right? But in the beginning, it's just putting that environment in place. And if there's anything that I wish the listeners understood, it's like evaluate the environment.

way more the in in how the coach makes the kid feel, whether than more than the actual skill development or the technical ability of the coach.

The Professor (1:07:55)
beautiful, Matthew. I stanted to ask you about any tensions you've had with the industry or field because you look at this different way. But I want to stay on the positive here and just building a better and creative environment. You know, we brought up Scotland and such like you said, you go over there and it's like telling them the sky is blue. They're Well, yeah, the sky's blue. This is what we do. Like North Berwick has a kids course that adults can't play on because it's just there for the kids to learn golf. but that's

Bring it back to the United States, where we're having this huge shift over the last several years of new places being built, places trying to rebuild themselves, rebrand themselves, get more golfers involved. And you just hit it right there. Like if we think about op 36, right? It needs to have the right setting for it to be successful. So to our listeners and anybody that's out there trying to reshape their environment, if you had to give them one or two things of like, hey, how can you build a better and

creative environment and they're evaluating what they have, what should they be looking for to change or make sure is in place before you all come in with op thirty six so it's a hit once it hits the ground?

Matthew Reagan (1:08:55)
Yeah, no, I think the best facilities that we see take off are just aligned from top to bottom. Like if I was asking a club just to kind of evaluate or bet if this facility would be successful, I would first ask, is it are you a family-based club and want beginners and ladies and juniors playing at your club? Or are you more of a, hey, this is the men's playing club and we're, you know, where the you show up, you play, people are betting out there.

And then the club championship and this are the biggest things and we don't want people here. And if if and then then I would ask, is that what the general manager and of the club wants as well? Is everyone aligned from pro all the way up through? So that's if the answer is yes, like we want to attract families, our whole membership director wants families, or it could be a public club. I know I'm kind of speaking in terms of like private clubs, but you know, if you if you have that from the top down where that's what they want.

That's really step one. And then step two is okay, is there someone someone here that could lead the coaching, even if it starts with just one class? Is there someone here that if they call the pro shop, they know that this is where I could start? Right. and if there is someone that could absolutely lead something like this, they want to, they want to teach beginners, they want to get going. we struggle with finding that more than anything, like staff.

that has time and also wants to coach, right? Like if and that's where I go. Like it's it's not that hard to do to put the dates on the calendar and to follow a basic lesson plan and to go get people to go play golf on the golf course, especially with all the tools that we package up and the technology for everyone to run this. that would be the next step is just do you have someone who wants to run it? And then once we go, man, we got a club that's aligned. They're a family club.

They want more families at their club. They're okay with beginners being out there. They have a pro on staff that wants to teach this. and then the final thing is okay, when are your slowest times in the evenings that we can get, you know, a nine-hole play day in? that maybe you're not filling that space, or you could say, hey, twice a month, this is gonna be where we are welcoming beginners to come out and we're training them to see, okay, I can this is how I go play golf. So now

In the first couple of you know nine hole play days you play in, it's amazing to watch. And if you haven't, I encourage all listeners, let you know, take son or daughter or husband, wife, whatever it is, out and play nine holes. Just do it. And it's and it's gonna be hard. The first one, it kind of looks like they don't really know what's going on. It's a lot, you know. Okay, what club do I use? Do I mark a ball? There's all these things. Then go watch the second time they play. It's unbelievable.

How much better they look like golfers. Then go watch the third time they play. and and so what we're doing is we're training beginners, we're really training customers for the golf facility on how to go out and book a tea time, feel comfortable doing it, and paying the club, either for a tea time or for a round. And when facility owners start seeing it that way, like the best way to look at it is: do you have a program here that can create your own customers, right?

That's gonna create a golfer from the ground up. If you have that, you never have to worry about, you know, your club going under or whatever. I think where people are gonna make mistakes or owners are gonna make mistakes is they think that golf's gonna continue to just grow into oblivion. I

The Professor (1:12:22)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (1:12:23)
I d I hate to take the other side of that, but I don't think that we're gonna continue to see this sustained growth over time. I think, you know, if we get in a pinch or a little recession, you're gonna wish you had programs that

Families are going to start going, well, what do I cut? What do I keep? And if you've already got your, your, your tendrils into golf and they, you know, they're already hooked on golf. Well, maybe they're, you know, if they can't do other things, they might drop some of those other activities to stick with golf. And I think that's if I was a club and an owner of a club, that's how I'd be evaluating my club right now. I'd be, I'd be saying instruction and player development first. If someone calls my facility, I want, I want every staff member to know exactly, you're brand new to golf.

This is exactly who I need you to talk to. Here's our exact plan to become a golfer at this club. That's just not industry standard, right? So, you know, it should be, you know, but if I call the gymnastics gym down the road and I say, Hey, my daughter's never done gymnastics, there's a there's someone on the phone that knows exactly what to tell me, right? And it's just

The Professor (1:13:24)
That's right.

Matthew Reagan (1:13:24)
that clubs are built for existing golfers, they're not built or thought about for new golfers, but if they think in terms of new golfers and families,

It's incredible what it can do for the culture of a club and for the longevity of a club.

Matt Considine (1:13:37)
You know, I that that is so illustrative of what I see every day. And and you know, there's so I've I've I've mentioned a couple of times that just the the group of folks who come to an organization like New Club that want to be a part of it but yet don't know where to start. And I've been asked directly, you know, what would New Club do to get people started in the game? And and it would be everything you're describing here, but I w we're a club operator, we're a golf society, kind of also a throwback to

origins of the game, but we we don't own facilities. And and I've, you know, shared with multiple people probably on this podcast before that w we'd be set up to fail there because you need the buy-in of everybody to get somebody started in and especially in this way, right? And the in the so I I think, and this will kind of take me to more maybe more of a business question I had for you as we as we wrap up here, but I I think on the public side of this and what you guys are doing.

The massive opportunity I see there because the the municipals and park district courses that we frequent as a club, you know what seems to be in industry standard? Letting someone who's new to the game just show up on a 6,800-yard golf course and be be sacrificed to the the the golf gods. It's

The Professor (1:14:53)
huh.

Matt Considine (1:14:54)
it's the most tragic, awful thing. And then they get yelled at, and and there's somebody that hasn't been trained on how to actually deal with that person. So

It it goes to the foundation of like, all right, well, do we create an avenue for that? And and I know for for us, we'd love to be a part of that. If we had facilities that we could send people and say, Hey, you know, we we'd love to have you a part of our club. there's some steps to take to get there and and become a golfer, a committed golfer. 'cause that's really who we who we service and who we're for. But there would th there's gotta be that that direct path.

that they that they can take. And and so I I we'll we'll ask it in this way, Matt, is the the app I was reading in 2027 it's gonna be opened up to those that are aren't in the in the past. It's been a local op 36 program to utilize the full

Matthew Reagan (1:15:46)
Mm-hmm.

Matt Considine (1:15:46)
scale of the app. You guys are going to be opening that up. And I'm sure a lot of that there's been some changes in your guys' world, golf genius, I believe acquisition or partnership. and

and and and you know that their service there's been a number of services I've seen that have have gone that route as well. But what became more important in this whole journey than maybe protecting just the the program led, the coach led doorway and and trying to get it in the hands of of any organizer or any one that wants to to get started in the game.

Matthew Reagan (1:16:17)
Yeah. Well what's what's interesting is you know we actually built up we we kind of were like tech first. And so once and it it didn't like start out that way. It's like never intentional, but like in twenty sixteen, we were still pen and paper. You know, I've got the booklets behind me. I could show you a booklet that we had and you had a bag tag and that was it. And then

We'd have 14, 15 locations and we go, we need to make we want to make a change to the curriculum. And then what do you do? You got to reprint all the booklets. You got to reprint all these back tags. And our business model was kind of built on it too. It was like we sold this kit with the booklet and the back tag in it. It was a welcome to golf kit. It was cool. It's legit. And then you bought your next one, right? So there was a it was like in our business model, we're like, ooh, this is a good business model. You sell the next kit when they level up too.

And then we're like, look, this is not scalable. So we need to build tech to do it. Right. So if I would have known how hard tech was and how expensive it was, we'd have never done it. You know, the entrepreneur, I don't know what the principle is called, but I'm so glad we didn't know, right? Because it's like one of those things you have it, you know, I came in, I started as golf pro coach, you're learning to build a business, you're learning to license a business, and now we're endeavoring on we're gonna go build technology. So

Ryan and I kind of split the business and it's like I became the I I always had a little bit of knack with tech and websites and marketing and I like that stuff. So I kind of went into the let's go like lead the product and figure out how to build this. So we started with a consumer and we put the basic consumer stuff in. And then we started working on some of the coaching tools to make this thing happen. And it became a web app and a mobile app. And then you go, man, we're managing a web app and a mobile app.

We're bootstrapping this and just barely funding it. It's fun to build. You're seeing it come to life. And now you're getting feedback from people. And then you're like, hey, no one's using this, right? No one's there's there's not even

The Professor (1:18:19)
Ha ha.

Matthew Reagan (1:18:20)
useful tools in here, right? So I'm

The Professor (1:18:22)
Mm-hmm.

Matthew Reagan (1:18:22)
like, man, and you think you know, you have this vision of what you want. So you're not even talking to customers. You're like, Yeah, we need this, this, and this. And so we learn and then all of a sudden you realize, well, no one's using it again. So we we slowly whittled away from twenty seventeen to

You know, where we are today, what actually brought us to Golf Genius. We built something pretty solid right before getting to Golf Genius, grew to about 500 locations. And then it started to become clear, okay, we got these locations that are depending on the software. It needs to work. We have this list of features and roadmap that we got to build out. And I now get that feeling like, this is where you need funding and you could advance, like you could see where you want to go, but you just can't. You're like,

I can't get there yet, you know, and it is and it's like slow. I remember sitting in the office going, I know what we need to work on, but we can't do anything because we're still built up fixing these bugs while also trying to build these new features. So fast forward to meeting Golf Genius, trying to see if we could maybe, you know, get some developers that met Mike and Chris from Golf Genius, and they were they said, Look, we just love this mission. We love what you guys have built. We think it would be great if you just joined our joined the team.

So we were acquired by them with the whole idea of us just continuing to run it, which we have been and we've been so thrilled with. they've been phenomenal. And then I've got to learn and watch what a true technology organization, how you truly run a dev team and an engineering team. And with AI and all this vibe coding and stuff going on right now, it's exciting, you know, to be able to build something from the ground up and do that and so much fun. But when you have

legit engineers that are trained and mat like the these massive teams of very, very smart people. And then you get it, you know, you put these new tools in the hands of them. It's unbelievable. Cause it's still, I think, to build something scalable that works and you know registration's going to work and everything is there. Once you start to get at scale, is very, very challenging to keep that thing going while building new features for different platforms and maintaining features. So

You know, that's what I've had to learn over the last little bit is all this tech stuff and how to actually manage a technology platform, be a product manager. and then obviously just with all the rest of the everything going on. So come full circle. We've really spent the last seven years focusing on the coach tools. And it's slick. Like if you're a coach who's launching the program, I think about right now, if I was just to go back and run it again, like you have your registration, the payments are done, the enrollments, the

Invoices for families to be able to see everyone to know their levels. To we built an actual nine-hole event manager to manage the nine-hole events. So you know who's coming. You can build pairings and it submits it to the app. And everyone can log when they play and practice and learn inside of the app. And the coach sees it in a feed. I mean, it's so slick, you know, it's like everything we ever want, but it all came from our coaches giving us feedback, right? And but one thing we haven't done is we haven't really touched the mobile experience for.

golfers in probably four years just because a lack of resources and time and energy to do it. And we we but we've listening, right? We're always listening, getting feedback. And so now we're back into that like, hey, we know what the next version of this needs to be. And we also have listened to people going, man, I it I'm on the website every day, there's four, five, six people. I don't have anyone near me. Can I just and they're chatting us, can I just get access to this to help

bring someone else into the game. And so our vision now is okay, well, we we've got the tools for the coaches. We're always going to connect you to a coach. that'll be a central part of the whole app, but we want to be able to open up the app and give a tool to you, Matt, or to Kevin to say, hey, how here's how you pull someone into the game. we're definitely looking at it through the lens of family. how can we get families to, you know, have a pro everyone have their own op 36 profile, go out and play together.

on the golf course, give the GPS to be able to do that, know where to drop their ball, keep up with their levels and their scores. And then when they're ready, let's get them connected with a coach. So that's that's the whole idea is we're calling it couch to course and then course to coach. And that's where we're rebuilding the mobile app to be able to facilitate that experience. So and we're really excited about we feel like if we can get more golfers on the platform, it reinforces to get more coaches to maybe want to sign up.

And then we can get this little flywheel going to to get

Matt Considine (1:22:55)
Yeah.

Matthew Reagan (1:22:55)
and better improve the game.

Matt Considine (1:22:57)
Yeah, that that is so illustrative of the entrepreneurial journey. Like both the naivety in the beginning, right, Matthew, of having just just this going slow and painstakingly and the the the failures of of boy, you know, that now we're in it and we're figuring it out. It's almost the necessity of it, of it all and and ig and exciting that you're all these years later at that point now where things are moving so quickly for you and

you'll get five signups for me and my family on that the what'd you say, coach cou couch

Matthew Reagan (1:23:32)
That's great to hear.

Matt Considine (1:23:33)
to course for sure. just because it's y you know, families, I I said this recently. Families are are are really just little clubs in themselves. And you're foresome if you a dedicated foresome you play with, they're really just little clubs. And so so much of what you talked about today, I I was really reassured to hear that, you know, community and relationships are one of those pillars.

because we've we've seen that ourselves in what we do at New Club. And it just it it it reinforces and I always say it's kind of the the glue that holds it together because it's one thing to you know, aspire to lead our order of merit or get to the semifinals of the club championship. It's another thing to do that with a group of people cheering you on or you know, doing it with you.

and and giving that narrative. I love the word narrative because that's how people learn is through stories and and they always have. so so this is really I I I I've gotten so much more depth on what I knew was a a good idea. but I got one last question for you before before we let you go. What is most of our audience listening are avid established golfers. So what is one thing you would say to each of them

one thing that would help that that they can do to make somebody else's first nine, first experience better.

Matthew Reagan (1:24:56)
yeah, that's a great question. So if they're pulling someone into the game and I I think it really is just getting them to understand the magic of the actual game itself. So if I was taking someone for the first time, I would start right at the putting green, three foot from the hole, and I would teach them that the goal is to just get the ball in the hole and then just give them the putter, show them a little putting stroke, have them try it. Right. And then it's okay. And then as we get farther from the hole, we can make a little bit bigger stroke.

And once they understand just that basic, you could take them to the golf course then. You could give them a wedge and say, hey, it's just a putting stroke that's a chipping stroke. And then they could try to chip one on, and then you go putt you say, We're just going to count it every time. And then they write down their score and they've played their first hole of golf. So, you know, I think if if you can get it excited about how can I how can I get someone to go play their first hole of golf, right? And then

Once they play the first hole, you could say, Okay, you'll see how quick it happens. And then they can watch you play from the full T and then you just keep going, right? And before you know it, you've played nine holes with them. They've played the amount. You might for you as an existing golfer, you're gonna think, Man, that how are they gonna enjoy playing just that close? How you know, I can't believe they're not gonna have fun doing this. And you'll see in the first few holes, you'll go, like this is.

They're going to hit it six, seven times, you know, to get it into the hole. That's how many times I hit it from the full T box. And so they're going to be excited that they're not back there because you got to just get rid of the anxieties, right? So that would be to get someone in is just get them excited. If you can get them to write down a score, you've opened up this narrative with them of like, it's the way I put it, it's like think about if you can the if you.

We're in a weight loss program, but you never stepped on the scale. You would kind of always question the is the exercise I'm putting in helping or not? Right. And that's really so the the idea is first just getting them to a driving range or to putt with you, hit some balls. especially kids, I'm definitely like, hey, we're gonna go get an ice cream right now. Hey, we're gonna go ride in the golf cart. It's all those other little things that are gonna keep them.

And then it's like when they're ready, you know, when you feel confident, like take if you want to take them to the course, then you've got a model now that you can use that. And once they write down those scores and they start to understand it, it's like, okay, this is now I can go and practice with dad to get better. And now I can go, you know, talk to my coach to get better. But yeah, in the beginning, that would be how I would start anybody now. But I would not be afraid to get them on the golf course with you.

Because it's experience the the experience of going around and driving in that golf cart and seeing this big, beautiful golf course and all of this. That is a like just that and riding in the cart is a journey in and of itself that's so much fun. It might not be the golf, you know. but they'll be like, Hey, do you want to go play golf with me again? They're not thinking maybe the golf, they're thinking, my gosh, I get to ride in this golf cart thing and maybe I get to steer it a little bit and all those things. These things layer up.

To all of a sudden them being more competent, wanting them to be in the environment, thinking and attaching these positive things to the environment. And then you can start layering in, okay, the competence and actually wanting to get good at golf. But I as a parent and you know, co-founder of this program, it has been a tough, tough thing to do as a parent, you know, to actually know what the right thing to do is, to say it's okay if they don't want to go to the golf course.

And I always wonder, man, is are they ever gonna wanna do it again? And by not forcing them, it it's like time and time again, they do end up coming back to it. So I know that was a very long winded final wrap

Matt Considine (1:28:46)
Ha ha ha.

Matthew Reagan (1:28:48)
to it, but hopefully there's one nugget in there that they can pull out of it, Matt.

Matt Considine (1:28:52)
Yeah, i I I d I wasn't sure where all there's so much to it, but I think the best companies that you know, the professor and I have have studied a number of well actually we've studied clubs, we've studied companies, we've had so many interesting people, but there's this theme of a a really simple idea that for whatever which reason has there's been barriers and blockers that have steered us away. You know, starting

at at 25 yards and working your way to the the main T. Like you've said, it it is a simple idea. But there really is this depth of questioning you guys have done so well of I almost feel it's philosophical in a way of what's the deeper essence of all this? You know, what what is it

Matthew Reagan (1:29:39)
Yeah.

Matt Considine (1:29:39)
that is is calling us back? It is driving us forward, is, is sticking with this, you know

occasionally maddening, frustrating game. but we all know it it can be equally as fulfilling and beautiful. And there's there's few people that I think c come at it from this perspective of a b beginner's mindset. You guys have have spent many, many years clearly doing that. And I j I that's what I've loved about this conversation. It's the at every stage of the journey, I think it's it's hitting on the fundamental goodness.

in in the game. that simple idea of getting a ball into a hole, i it the it's it's deep and it goes back to whoever it might be, the monks or the shepherds, there's arguments of what it was,

Matthew Reagan (1:30:22)
Yeah.

Matt Considine (1:30:22)
but they were they they knew it to be true. And and we we've just sliced the game up in so many different ways that I think we maybe lose sight of that. And and so I I just wanted to to make that comment here as we end that I'm I'm grateful there's

folks like you and Ryan who have just you know committed your lives to doing your vocation to doing this really in detail and in depth because I think that your success has obviously shown that and I and I hope I I'm really excited now about what what what happens here moving forward that that I hope I see Operation 36 just across the country because I think the game will be so much healthier, so much better because of that.

Matthew Reagan (1:31:03)
Well, thanks for giving us a platform to share our mission. It means a lot.

Matt Considine (1:31:07)
Sure. Any yeah, yeah, that's what we like to do on the backdrop. And so thanks for being with us, Matt. Thank you everybody for listening. if you can for the professor and I, we want to get some more reviews, some ratings, more conversations like this become easier when you guys support the show. And that's an easy way to do it. So click the like, shoot a comment, tell us who you like better, the professor and I. That's always a contest between the two of us. and and

Reach out. Our our contact information is always in the show notes, as are our guests. So we'll have op thirty-six, links to their platform, the program, everything you heard today. Matthew himself will we'll put that information in the show notes. And thanks as always to our partners at Titleist. And they're all new, Titleist AIM enhanced golf balls, the Pro V one, Pro V one X. Whatever ball you play now, they have a new aim assistance they continue to be the number one.

ball and golf. We'll catch you guys on the next one.