00:01.91 ModGolfPodcast Welcome to the ModGolf podcast, where I speak to the entrepreneurs, the innovators, the disruptors, and the influencers who are shaping the future of golf. I am your host, Colin Weston. 00:17.83 ModGolfPodcast I just returned from the Golf Business Technology Conference in Belfast, Ireland. First time I've been over there, had such a great time. Met some new people, met some people I've known for a while, some people I've known on LinkedIn, but not in real life. And today's guest is the latter of that. So that is TJ Schier Jr., who wears many entrepreneurial hats, but the one we're going to be talking about today is Smash Swing and Smash Swing Immersive. Just love what he's doing in the gamification entertainment side of golf and we're going to get into that. TJ gave a really compelling, engaging talk at the Golf Business Technology Conference and also at Golf Day there. I had the pleasure of being in his foursome and we actually won. 01:05.14 ModGolfPodcast We came in second place, didn't we? I think we came in second, but still, hey, we did pretty well. Sir Nick Faldo handed us our winnings there, our golf shirts. 01:20.41 ModGolfPodcast So yeah, had a great time at the conference and now we're back here in North America. I believe TJ's joining us from Texas. I'm still in Toronto doing some more work here before returning back to Vancouver. 01:31.43 ModGolfPodcast And I said, "TJ, come on, you got to tell us the Smash Swing story!" And here we are today. So with that, TJ, welcome to the ModGolf Podcast! 01:40.11 TJ Schier Hey, Colin, great to see you again. That was fun time over in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Loved playing golf with guys and going to that conference. It was an awesome experience. 01:48.70 ModGolfPodcast It was. I love that John Daly-esque golf swing where you take it back. You had some extra whippy rental clubs that were driving you crazy there. 01:53.68 TJ Schier Ha, ha, 01:57.32 ModGolfPodcast But I don't know if that will drive you crazy at Smash Swing. It seems like all you're doing is having fun there, even if you're pulling it way left like you were with some whippy clubs with us off the tee in Belfast there. 02:05.26 TJ Schier ha. 02:08.89 ModGolfPodcast So, hey, before we get into all the good things you're doing with Smash Wing, I always love to ask this question, TJ. I think I know the answer. We've already talked about this. But that connection to golf, that first experience, who introduced you to the game? 02:21.95 ModGolfPodcast How old were you when you first got the club in your hand? and And who helped you get that bug that is golf? 02:28.47 TJ Schier Well, I'm going to date myself, but 14 years old, eighth grade, a couple friends of mine that played golf. I didn't play golf at the time. They said, "Hey, come over to this toney country club and watch John Mahaffey do a clinic kind of similar to how we did with Nick Faldo over there. 02:47.78 ModGolfPodcast Right. 02:48.04 TJ Schier And I didn't really know a whole lot, but I went over at 14 to this country club in Houston, watched John Mahaffey give a clinic. And then we all went to this really, really low end public course called Treeline. 03:01.46 TJ Schier And I played golf for the first time. Didn't know what I was doing. My swings as bad then as it is now. And that's how I got hooked on the game. I moved to New Jersey when I was halfway through my junior of high school and decided to put the tennis racket down, pick up golf clubs and start playing golf in high school, start working at a country club. And the rest is history. I'm hooked. 03:25.35 ModGolfPodcast All right. So I've got to hear your backstory on the business side of this. How did you get into the golf industry? I know that you've worked with About Golf, which maybe you need to explain to our listeners regarding what they do. So tell us about your journey that brought you up to the AHA Moment a couple years ago with Smash Swing. So what is your backstory in the golf industry? 03:45.54 TJ Schier Yeah. My golf story is ridiculously crooked, but I worked for Chuck E. Cheese for 18 years and then I was a speaker and a consultant for the last quarter century. So when you add the math up, I'm pretty old. But right when COVID hit, I was a speaker and I owned a restaurant. Talk about the two worst things to have during COVID. 04:02.53 ModGolfPodcast Right. 04:05.60 TJ Schier And I decided, "you know what?" I love speaking. I love doing those kinds of things, but it's really hollow. There's no lasting value in what you do beyond you walk off the stage, everybody gives you high five or clapping or whatever. 04:20.06 TJ Schier I started looking for the a real job and I hadn't had a real job in 25 years since I left Chuck E. Cheese. And a friend of mine that I used to work with said, "hey, I have got the perfect job for you!" 04:30.82 TJ Schier He said, "you need to go talk to these guys over what was known then as Club Corp." It's now known as Invited. 04:36.59 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 04:36.81 TJ Schier They just bought a golf entertainment brand. They want to scale it, compete with Topgolf. And they needed COO. And I was down to the final two candidates. 04:47.31 TJ Schier And I figured, "you know what, I'm probably going to lose on paper to this guy because I had this really crooked, crooked path." I said that my competitor, who I didn't know who was at the time, probably worked at some big chain like Brinker and probably had a better resume than I did. So I literally got on a plane. 05:04.11 TJ Schier Saturday morning, I flew to the one Big Shots location in Vero Beach, Florida. I went there, talked to the franchise owner there, talked to the GM, spent the weekend there, came back and sent the CEO a note and said, "here's what I think about the brand. Here's where I think I can help." And he calls he goes, "you're about crazy enough to do this job!" 05:21.67 TJ Schier And I wanted the job so bad. I literally just did something crazy. And it made an impact. 05:27.56 ModGolfPodcast Right. 05:27.73 TJ Schier I started working for Big Shots Golf and we opened six more locations in under 20 months. It was insane. It was great. But we really needed to do something different than avoid Topgolf and build in building these small markets. 05:43.12 TJ Schier And so we started working on a new prototype that was the best of an outdoor vent venue, the best of an indoor venue, and the best of putting venues and putting it all under one roof. 05:43.54 ModGolfPodcast right 05:53.79 TJ Schier And unfortunately, the brand got sold to Callaway and Topgolf. It's a very interesting dynamic because Invited is Callaway's second biggest customer, I believe, because Invited owns 160 country clubs, so they buy obviously a lot of equipment, balls and gloves and retail from from Callaway. 06:05.40 ModGolfPodcast All right. 06:13.37 TJ Schier So what I thought was going to be a negative turned out to be an open door for an opportunity to really create Smash Swing and go a different way and try and reinvent indoor golf entertainment. 06:26.54 ModGolfPodcast All right, you brought us up to speed there. So give us the elevator pitch of what Smash Swing is. Now, of course, we're just using our words here to paint a picture. We will, you and I, after we finish up with our audio podcast, we're going to jump over to a video call. 06:36.72 TJ Schier Yeah. 06:42.32 ModGolfPodcast So I really encourage all of our listeners, if they want to see what we're talking about, even though I'll have some pictures in the show notes, we're going to have some video going through the Smash Swing website. So we'll definitely be able to see what Smash Swing is but you're just gonna have to use your words. I've heard you speak. You're very good using your words so why don't you paint that picture of what Smash Swing is. 07:05.30 TJ Schier Yeah, for those in the golf world, if you can imagine that big screen you saw and on TV for the TGL that was about 50 feet wide and 60 feet high, we have built a multiplayer ball tracking system so that we can have many people playing video games on the screen. 07:23.64 TJ Schier Yes, you can play golf. Yes, it's an indoor simulator. But this was really designed for people to come to the facility, play a three or four minute game and hit 30 or 40 balls and this and blow shit up on the screen. 07:36.83 TJ Schier I mean, that's literally what this was intended to be was to reinvent indoor golf entertainment. 07:37.06 ModGolfPodcast Yeah. 07:41.95 TJ Schier and make it fun and have a much broader appeal than a typical golf simulator, which is hitting it 10 feet into a screen. 07:49.63 ModGolfPodcast Right, right. Now, I understand you're working with inrange also, is that correct? 07:57.42 TJ Schier We are, we've built our golf technology on top of inrange as a black box. And then we're using Foresight launch monitors, Falcon launch monitors. 08:06.08 ModGolfPodcast There we go. The reason I mentioned inrange is I had the opportunity to work with them also, and they've been on the podcast and I love those guys. 08:13.57 TJ Schier Yep. 08:14.19 ModGolfPodcast And when they were talking at the Golf Business Technology Conference, they were talking about the different calibration or mix of users. And sometimes whether it's simulator golf, if it's people that are hardcore golfers, some experiences are more golfy, or your mix of customers, your clientele, your users. Maybe more heavily skewed on golf tournaments, the competitive side, as compared to the other end of entertainment, arcade style. What I'm seeing, what you're doing with Smash Swing is somewhere in the middle. So you're really seeing that opportunity of 99% of the world's population doesn't play golf. So you've got this massive opportunity here and a massive accessible market. So is that what you see? That the 99% of the world's non-golfers will love Smash Swing? 09:03.39 TJ Schier I don't know if it's all 99%, but hats off to the people doing indoor golf simulators that are really chasing the hardcore golfer. I'm one of them. I love to practice. I love to go to an indoor golf facility when it's bad weather outside, but we're trying to get the golf curious and the social golfer and the person that just wants to go have fun. And so they may go throw darts with a group of people one night or they may you they may be at a place like a Dave and Buster's or a Boom Battle Bar that they need a different attraction. So they come in here. 09:39.16 TJ Schier Imagine we're at a family entertainment center like that. Three or four of them can play at a time. A couple minute game. They go play Asteroids or Centipede or one of the licensed IP games that we're building right now and they have fun and hopefully they'll come back. And and we're trying to tackle the challenge that all the competitive socializing venues have, the putting concepts, the pickleball concepts, the golf entertainment concepts that once you've been there, the experience really doesn't change. So they lose you after a year or so. 10:08.76 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 10:08.88 TJ Schier And with us, building a box that can be reprogrammed constantly, seasonal games, licensed IP games, it'll give the people a reason to come back and keep a golf club in their hand. And and to me, one of the things I learned from our our beta test was we had a lot of golfers that came in here, or non-golfers, but people that had been to places like Topgolf. 10:30.34 TJ Schier And they said, "you know what, the thing I like about this, because they're hitting from about 30 feet, is even if I just hit a ground ball, the launch monitor picks it up, I see it roll onto the screen, I see it hit something." And at a lot of golf entertainment facilities, that doesn't happen because it's hard to pick up those shots in those massive facilities. 10:46.18 TJ Schier But the other thing that really appealed to me and validated what we're doing was one of the ladies said, "you know what? I found this was fun because three of us were hitting at one time and all of you all that were watching, you weren't watching me." 10:59.95 TJ Schier "When I go to those golf entertainment facilities, I'm the only person hitting." 11:02.16 ModGolfPodcast Got it 11:04.04 TJ Schier "I'm nervous. Everybody's staring at me." All of us golfers know what it's like to be on the first tee when everybody's looking at you at an expensive course and you're like, please just don't shank one off the tee. And she said it was great because nobody was staring at me. 11:16.78 TJ Schier Everybody was watching the screen. Everybody was cheering and trying to have fun instead of just staring to see how I hit the ball. and And that's really what we're trying to do is remove some of that intimidation and fear of putting a golf club in your hand. 11:28.70 ModGolfPodcast Got it. So I want to explore your entrepreneurial journey and also the sequencing of how you've launched this and the partners that you've brought in. I've been a founder or co-founder in many ventures and some we've really struggled with. 11:43.27 ModGolfPodcast Gaps we haven't been able to fill. And you and I had this conversation over a pint of Guinness as far as our backgrounds are similar. 11:50.79 TJ Schier Mm-hmm. 11:51.77 ModGolfPodcast I have an architectural design background, but also a hospitality overlay and then the entertainment piece. And of course, with you, with Chuck E. Cheese and everything you've done. So you've definitely got that hospitality, entertainment side, and then the golf piece. But you do not, like myself, come from a technology background. So I'm very curious, when you first started, how did you put the team together? Because so many entrepreneurs, innovators or founders struggle to find a co-founder or bring in those right people at the right time. 12:22.17 TJ Schier Yeah. 12:22.94 ModGolfPodcast So can you talk about that and help our audience, our listeners that are starting on that journey that may be trying to figure that piece out themselves? 12:31.72 TJ Schier Sure. yeah Let me rewind just a little bit before I started Smash Swing. So when I was at Big Shots Golf, I went to our our leadership team and said, "look, we've got to build a better mousetrap than the competitor and compete with them, not avoid them." 12:46.01 TJ Schier And we had this unique opportunity to be challenged with building a dome on top of a parking garage. And they wanted an indoor golf entertainment facility. And we went to a couple of design friends that I had that designed like queuing line rides for Disney and Universal. 13:05.29 TJ Schier And I said, look, we need to build this golf dome. And I mentioned the story in Belfast, we just imagined a typical golf bubble, one sided driving range, everybody gets out. 13:12.56 ModGolfPodcast Right. 13:14.05 TJ Schier These guys are like, "you're morons, you're missing the boat." They taught us how to design a three sided driving range in a dome and put putting in there. And so that's where the whole thing came up with like, "well, how do we activate the back wall?" 13:27.54 TJ Schier Why do you have to hit it into a driving range and turn around and watch it on TV? Why can't we bring the screen into play? And so that's where everything started. 13:35.01 ModGolfPodcast right 13:35.18 TJ Schier So I had a relationship with some people on the creative side, which was not me. And then i went to my brother and my college roommate, we've stayed in touch for 100 years, and they do a lot of investing in startups. And I said, "look, I've got this idea. I want to build this golf playground. It's going to have an indoor range and an outdoor range and putting." They're like, yeah, that's like eight digits. You're not going to get that funded. 13:59.55 TJ Schier And by the way, you've never even built the tech. You don't even know it works. So they helped us. 14:08.64 TJ Schier Step one is build the tech. So we built the tech first. 14:10.65 ModGolfPodcast yes 14:11.71 TJ Schier We bootstrapped it. We built the tech. Then we brought a bunch of people in and said, "okay, movie theater owners, family entertainment center owners, golf course owners, indoor simulator places. What do you like about this tech as it sits today? What do you need in this tech for you to invest and buy this for your facility down the road?" So that's where we are today is we have taken all of their feedback and we are building a golf version to make this literally an indoor driving range and then the entertainment side of this. 14:42.23 TJ Schier And so now it's going to go out to market. Our first install is going to be in Canada, by the way, late this summer in a family entertainment facility. 14:47.60 ModGolfPodcast All right. 14:50.76 TJ Schier Then we're building it in a golf course in New York. But we literally bootstrapped this with my college roommate and my brother, and it's ready to go to market here in the next four weeks. 15:02.39 TJ Schier We brought in some of the expertise from inrange because I went to inrange and I said, "look, who can help me build this technology? Who can build the tech?" And so they found a partner for us that they had worked with in the past and said, look, they built all the tech. 15:17.62 TJ Schier We own all the tech. But we're partnering with them and they've actually invested in our company because they see the long range applicability of this. So now I've hired consultants on the creative side. 15:31.04 TJ Schier We hired the tech partner who's now part of our ownership group. And now we're ready to go. And that's how we got here today. 15:38.70 ModGolfPodcast Love that. Love that. Okay. Staying with the early days. So we talk about in startup world, a minimum viable product and product market fit and doing the testing of this, the iterative design process, not trying to build it perfect because there is no perfect out of the gate. 15:54.48 TJ Schier yeah 15:57.39 ModGolfPodcast So tell us about that. How, when you pull back the curtain when you built that first version 1.0, and it sounds like you embraced having people test it and not just all your friends that would be afraid to tell you, "no, this this doesn't work or I don't like that" or just but this plain sucks. 16:02.60 TJ Schier yeah 16:16.41 ModGolfPodcast You put it out there to people and got their feedback and listened. So many entrepreneurs are afraid of that because they don't want someone to tell them their venture, that their baby's ugly, right? 16:28.32 ModGolfPodcast So they hold back from that. 16:28.52 TJ Schier Yeah, yeah 16:30.43 ModGolfPodcast But you've put yourself out there. So tell us about that sequencing, that first year before launching, or what you've done in the last while to test this, to recalibrate, to learn. I'm sure you had some assumptions of what you thought people are going to love about this. 16:42.90 ModGolfPodcast And it turns out, well, they actually love this feature more. So you're able to get that information. So talk about that customer and user validation process that you've gone through. 16:52.46 TJ Schier When we started way back when I was at Big Shots, everybody will flipped out over the idea in a positive way of "wow, if you can activate the screen and and get people engaged and, make the simulator be on steroids, that's something different that nobody's doing. 17:08.00 TJ Schier And your ability to program and drive repeat business. So at a high level, we thought we had a viable business model from that standpoint. Then it was, "can I get this built?" So we went to our Sozo Labs as a company that we use and said, "look, I want to be flexible footprint. I want to track multiple people hitting balls. Can you guys build this?" 17:32.14 TJ Schier And they said, yes, they could. So we decided, look, build one game and solve all the tech issues. And that was step one. So as they were building that, I went and found a warehouse. And the people will see it if they go to YouTube. I'm sitting in it right now. But we built a warehouse. 17:49.05 TJ Schier It's 20-foot high screen, 30 feet wide for three players. I'm a massive Savannah Bananas fan, the baseball team. And we had them in Big Shots a couple of years ago. 17:59.19 ModGolfPodcast Right. 18:01.93 TJ Schier And I was like, "There's a player experience here and there's a spectator experience here." Because the screens are so large, the spectator experience falls into place immediately. 18:16.03 TJ Schier But when I looked at the simulator inside, i had seen pictures over in Asia where they have indoor simulators where the floor is sloped and they have an auto teeing system. And we had tested that at Big Shots, big fan of that because it's a better player experience. 18:30.64 TJ Schier So when we built this warehouse, literally, if I could peel back this curtain, it's a plywood deck. But we built a ball return. We got auto teeing systems. And people have walked in, and we got to brand it. 18:43.72 TJ Schier So when we started bringing people in here to test, people thought this was going to be like a garage simulator that somebody was hitting into a net. 18:52.18 ModGolfPodcast Right. 18:52.17 TJ Schier And they walked in and they were like, "holy bleep, this looks very polished. It looks great." I was a franchisee of Witch Sandwiches a long time ago. It's a smaller regional brand in Texas. 19:05.91 TJ Schier And one of the things I learned from that founder was, "Look, if you're going to have one location, you need to make it look like it's professional and you look like you have a bunch of these, not make it look mom and pop." We have branded clubs. I have my golf clubs in here that say Smash Swing on them. 19:20.65 TJ Schier The balls do, the side curtains do. Everything was branded so that we made a great first impression with people when they walked in. 19:26.65 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 19:28.30 TJ Schier Now they come in here and go, "wow, this is pretty serious. This looks like it's been well thought out." And now they're happy to give us some feedback on it. And so I'm getting feedback on what matters, not the, "oh, this looks junky here." Boy, I'm trying to describe what this will look like when it's not in a garage. 19:43.95 TJ Schier We spent a bit of money to make it look right and professional and it's 95%. Like you said earlier, it's never 100%. But then we started bringing people in and I was a little naive. I thought people were going go, "I want to buy one of those and put one in my location. 20:02.67 TJ Schier I was a bit disappointed that people weren't going, "I want this now." But I was a little naive and people were coming in going, "I'll buy this if you do this and I'll buy this if you do that." 20:14.56 TJ Schier And I had never really thought of chasing the golf indoor business. But when we had people coming in here that were golfers saying, "oh my gosh, why doesn't every simulator place put this auto tee and auto ball return feature?" And so I don't have to bend over. I don't have to go pick up the tee. And then the golf courses were like, "well, cool. This could be a golf simulator and an entertainment vehicle at the same time." 20:35.47 TJ Schier the light bulb went off in her head. I started talking to some friends like Kelly Brooke over at Bethpage. I was like, "does this make sense for you guys, as a golf course operator?" And that's where she was like, "heck yeah!" because they can use the fun part of this to bring people to the game. 20:53.96 TJ Schier They can use the fun part of this to have social events at their course and bring in the F and B and the parties and the events that they can't do in a traditional simulator place and have a lot more fun. So our target market grew as a result of us taking our time on the front end. And I'm so thankful for that. 21:11.85 ModGolfPodcast And I wanted to ask a little more about your target audience or your target market, I guess is a better way to put it. 21:17.77 TJ Schier Yeah. 21:21.24 ModGolfPodcast Has that shifted? It sounds like over the last while is more conversations you've had that multiple markets have revealed themselves. So let me let me pull back and ask the question this way. 21:32.60 TJ Schier Yeah. 21:33.88 ModGolfPodcast As far as your initial business model, because this is awesome, it's fun, but if it's not going to make money, if it's not a viable, sustainable business model that can scale, it's like, why are we doing this? 21:39.73 TJ Schier Yeah. 21:46.15 ModGolfPodcast There's other ways that we can spend our time and lose money at doing it. 21:46.15 TJ Schier yeah 21:49.43 ModGolfPodcast So I'm curious to learn what started out as what you considered your customer base, how big that was and how that has evolved? I know you touched on it earlier, but if you can drill down into that a little more, I think this is fascinating because so many entrepreneurs struggle with that. 22:00.37 TJ Schier yeah 22:04.93 ModGolfPodcast We don't have to get into the pricing model too much, but where you see the opportunities for different markets to sell or lease, or even on the backend that then you have a licensing agreement, or all the above. 22:07.87 TJ Schier Yeah. 22:16.85 ModGolfPodcast So talk about that a bit, would you please? 22:19.17 TJ Schier Yeah. My initial customer was going to be me. We were building this tech for us to put into our golf playgrounds and it became very evident very quickly. 22:23.34 ModGolfPodcast Right. 22:29.94 TJ Schier I'm not going to be able to find a funding partner yet. So I have to find a customer to get us to that point. I need proof of concept. How much money does this make? What are the returns? What does the customer say? 22:43.52 TJ Schier So we believe our target customer on the consumer side is that 18 to 35 year old person that likes to just go out with a group of friends, the competitive socializing groups. you They go Popstroke one time or Putt Shack or they go to Flight Club or you know play pickleball, whatever the case may be. They do some sort of F&B activity that has fun associated with it. 23:04.84 TJ Schier So then I started reaching out to the family entertainment concepts because I thought those are the ideal ones where I can put this attraction in their venues. And because we're going to continue to program, it'll be a very valuable benefit because we'll help them drive people in. 23:20.40 TJ Schier So as I started describing this to people, Then somebody says, "TJ, you need to go look at the movie theatres." There's like 30,000 excess screens and you got high, high ceilings. And so we started looking down the movie theater path and there is a lot of opportunity there. 23:35.75 TJ Schier It's a little bit of a challenge to monetize the back half of the theater. So we've kind of pushed that one down the priority list a little bit. And now that I think Memorial Day, they just broke box office records. 23:46.91 TJ Schier I think the movie theatres are kind of on their way back, um but, but they still have too many screens. 23:49.61 ModGolfPodcast Yes. They do 23:53.07 TJ Schier I think there's a potential opportunity down the road. And then the fourth piece that I mentioned earlier was the golf courses. So those are really our four targets. It's our own business, which will take a little while to get to family entertainment centers, movie theatres and golf courses. 24:09.40 TJ Schier And to me, golf courses are the low hanging fruit because they're used to paying the kind of prices for commercial simulators already. So like our three player systems about the price of one or two of the other simulators. 24:23.77 TJ Schier So it's in the mix, whether I go try and sell this to a family entertainment center that's used to buying a $20,000 video game, and I got three launch monitors that cost a lot more than $20,000. That's a little bit of a harder sell. So the golf course community and the indoor business has become our focus out of the gate. 24:44.50 ModGolfPodcast Got it. Got it. All Let's talk about the gamification side. Now you mentioned part of your secret sauce is you can have three people at once as a team playing. 24:48.80 TJ Schier Yep. 24:53.60 ModGolfPodcast I love this team aspect. I grew up playing team sports, not golf. So I always love that. Being able to play with multiple people. Or even when you and I were teeing it up in Belfast there, the fact we were part of a team and me having the highest handicap that, not to brag, but I did manage to chip in from 50 yards for a deuce net eagle there that helped the team but and that made me feel good because I was actually contributing. So let's talk about not me anymore. I can talk about myself all day but let's talk about you. Let's talk about the actual experience here which we will run through once again as a video perhaps even, I don't know if you can do this on the ModGolf YouTube channel since you are sitting literally, I'm assuming that's not just a back image you have there as wallpaper. That's your actual screen in the studio. 25:42.20 TJ Schier It is. Yeah, I'm sitting in the warehouse. So I could fire up the game a little bit later and if you want to play it on video. 25:44.28 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 25:49.56 TJ Schier But what we built it's a flexible footprint. 25:53.27 ModGolfPodcast yes 25:53.21 TJ Schier So I can do a two-player simulator up to 24 players, 12 players on two levels. So depending on how much space people have, they can build a two-player system in about the size of a typical simulator, although we recommend higher ceilings and hitting from further away so that you kind of bring in that that wow effect or that wow factor because people want to see the ball fly further. 26:20.26 TJ Schier But the other thing that we did is we built point of contact games. And I don't want to get too much down a rabbit hole, but if you ever if you hit in a simulator, it's point of trajectory. You hit the ball 10 feet into the screen, and then it shows you what happens to the trajectory after that. 26:34.90 ModGolfPodcast yes 26:36.03 TJ Schier Our games, we built the first game point of trajectory. And that's what I have in here right now. and people are like, "yeah, it's kind of confusing." So we switched everything to point of context. So now bird flies across the screen. You hit the bird right there. 26:48.48 TJ Schier Boom, done. you know So it's great target practice if you're a golfer because it really gets you to hone in to do specific things. So I believe, again, some of what we built for the entertainment side is going to make golf practice more fun. 27:02.69 TJ Schier But again, we can have two to three players playing this and in this case, or I can have 20 players playing it. We're building an indoor driving range in California that is going to have 12 players wide. It's 100 feet wide. 27:14.76 TJ Schier They're hitting from 35 feet into a 30-foot high screen. So you can just imagine this massive, massive building. And when you walk in, people are going look straight up into the sky. And it's great because everybody can go in there and use it just like a driving range. I can go into the first bay at one o'clock. You could come in 15 minutes later, be hitting next to me. We'll see our own shot traces. There's a lot of technology that the tracking companies are aware of that they couldn't solve the problem of the perspective of the balls. 27:44.15 ModGolfPodcast Right. 27:44.14 TJ Schier We've solved all that. Everybody looks like they're hitting the ball dead straight from where from they from their perspective. It's going out from where they hit it but they have the flexibility where they can get all their shot data in their little kiosk touchscreen, or they can play long drive while the other guy next to him is playing closest to the pin, but they're all hitting on the same screen. 28:04.61 TJ Schier It's basically a virtual driving range. And then if the operator wants, they can just flip a button, put it into entertainment mode. I could have 12 people playing Asteroids in this massive video game on a screen at one time. 28:15.98 ModGolfPodcast Cool. I want to get a golf club in my hand and start bashing some asteroids right now. I'm getting excited about this. So a lot of entrepreneurs, when they start out, they get hung up with intellectual property as far as patents and needing to protect themselves and not wanting to share their idea. 28:34.43 TJ Schier yes 28:36.30 ModGolfPodcast Can you tell us about your journey on that as far as what you see, what you created with Smash Swing, the barrier to entry for others? Are you looking at filing for patents? Is there even value? I know one size doesn't fit all, but I know a lot of people get hamstrung with that and a little bit paralyzed and spend a lot of energy on that. So tell us about your thoughts on that as relates to Smash Swing. 29:00.23 TJ Schier I think for Smash Swing, we went to market with one patentable idea. And that is the ability to track multiple balls for multiple players into one screen. 29:08.45 ModGolfPodcast Right. 29:13.80 TJ Schier And we purposely didn't pigeonhole it to just golf because as an example, I could kick soccer balls instead of hit golf balls, or I could fire a slap shot and hockey pucks against there. The way this launch monitor technology works is any ball that comes from a sitting position like a hockey puck or a soccer ball or a golf ball in our case. 29:37.42 TJ Schier There's a full swing simulators out there that do lacrosse and tennis and baseball. I don't want to get into that mode. 29:43.41 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 29:44.26 TJ Schier But we believe the patenting of the multiplayer ball technology is our mode because that is the thing nobody else out there is doing. And as we got into this, we believe nobody's doing point of contact in this space. 29:59.83 TJ Schier There's a lot of those touchscreen walls or the floors that you can dance on that do those kind of things. 30:04.92 ModGolfPodcast yes 30:06.19 TJ Schier That technology has been invented. but we're working on a second set of patents that's got things around point of contact and then fixing this perspective issue. And again, it's a little bit of a rabbit hole. But like when I first started this simulator, everything's from the perspective of the center player. So the people hitting from the sides, the perspective isn't right. 30:30.01 TJ Schier And so we had to fix a lot of those things. 30:30.44 ModGolfPodcast Right. 30:32.13 TJ Schier So we've got a few patents that we've filed. And it takes about a year or plus here in the U.S. to get a patent. So ah we're almost to that point. We did that very, very early on to make sure that we got that into play long before we go to market with this technology. 30:50.03 ModGolfPodcast Got it. Got it. Well, any listeners that want to take a deeper dive into filing for patents, whether you need one or not, we had Tim Markison on our ModGolf Live show about two months ago, and he's the founder of Athalonz and he's also a patent lawyer. So he gave us a great show called Patents 101. So I will include the link also if you want to build on what TJ had just mentioned with them, whether they should file for patents, what you should file for, when you should file for that, all that stuff, which can be overwhelming. 31:22.56 ModGolfPodcast I'll include the link for that because that was a great conversation there with Tim. So, hey, as we finish up here, I want to learn more about the future of where you see the next steps. I'm sure now you've got some traction, you've built this and I love the fact you have been very deliberate and put the effort in for the brand and the graphics. Myself being a bit of a brand guy and the work that we do and graphics being so important and the logo mark. I love what you've done here. 31:55.86 ModGolfPodcast And that just instills confidence and validity in what you're doing and also reduces the risk. It's that first impression you talked about. I see so many entrepreneurs don't focus enough energy on that and some that focus way too much on that. So I have to congratulate you. I think you've done a nice job on that, TJ. 32:14.66 TJ Schier A tip of the hat, I mentioned learning that way back in the day, but the second tip of the cap, when I worked at Big Shots Golf. I learned a lot about branding and marketing and having the story behind the brand and those things from the marketing team there Big Shots Golf. So again, as an entrepreneur, had I not taken this crooked path to get here, it wouldn't be what it is today. 32:39.38 TJ Schier And it was so much fun to be able to pull all these little different things we learned along the way from all these different unrelated businesses really to to help put that together and get Smash Swing to where it is. 32:57.44 ModGolfPodcast All right. Well, this is exciting. And you're just getting started here. So last question I'm going to ask you before we go over to our YouTube channel. 33:08.19 ModGolfPodcast I'm going to task you with this on YouTube, I want to see you hit some balls into the screen. I think we can pull this off and we'll do that. 33:15.59 ModGolfPodcast So yeah, I really encourage all of everybody listening here, the link I will include in the show notes. So yeah, watch the video. You'll actually see Smash Swing in action. 33:25.97 ModGolfPodcast As far as the next steps here, you are on the verge of scaling. I know it's a bit of crystal ball gazing here of what you're going to do over the next 12 to 36 months. 33:38.42 ModGolfPodcast But how have you worked with your team on what that strategy can be? I'm sure other opportunities are opening up and people are giving you opportunities. Like saying, "oh, come do this, maybe do this a little differently." And sometimes you have to just say no and stick to the path. So how are you navigating that? What's the plan? What's the strategy and the hope for the next couple of years with Smash Swing? 34:01.13 TJ Schier Yeah, from an investor standpoint, everybody wants us to just get as many of these units into markets as possible. Me being an operator by trade, being in that hospitality, golf, entertainment, you know family entertainment space, I want to build our own venues. 34:17.83 TJ Schier Part of it is complimentary because I could be the biggest customer of Smash Swing. And then part of it is it's taken my eye off what we're doing here. 34:26.73 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 34:26.86 TJ Schier And so, as we get down the path, I'm working with a few other individuals to say, "look, if you guys can go do this part of the business, then I can stay here. So you guys can build the operating company to get us going to start ordering from Smash Swing." I can stay 100% focused on Smash Swing because we've got a lot of opportunities in the golf world, the family entertainment world. 34:47.47 TJ Schier And then you guys handle the operating company. That's what the goal is right now. We have had to say no to a lot of things. I've had so many people come in here and say, "hey, I want to have four people be able to play a virtual course at the same time. 35:02.44 TJ Schier Very cool idea. Can be done. We will do it, but not right now. Because it's not the most important thing we need to do to get this into the market. I do think 18 months from now we'll do it. 35:15.78 TJ Schier but But not now. And so it was great to just get everybody's feedback. And again, we had 250 or 300 people test this thing for us and tell us what they wanted to do. 35:27.12 TJ Schier And then we had to go and put it through our filters. What makes business sense? What's feasible? What's not feasible? What would make people want to buy this? And that's how we prioritized everything that we got done to move forward for the next one to three years. 35:42.26 ModGolfPodcast And the testing that you've done, I should go back and look at your social media feeds, but I'm hoping that you saw this as this golden opportunity to create some awesome content that then would also create more buzz and that that flywheel effect there, that this is real. You can see people not just talking about this as a computer simulation that you've generated, but this is real. So how about, tell us a a little about that strategy as we finish up here on ModGolf. 36:10.50 TJ Schier Yeah, as you know, I'm very involved on LinkedIn, and this is really a B2B product right now, so we've spent most of our time and attention focused in that regard. 36:21.38 TJ Schier We're going to have a number of announcements coming out in June and July about our first installs. And so I think I'm not an Instagram person. I'm not a TikTok person, but I've got people that are going to help me do this because I've seen a lot of of friends and colleagues that I have do unboxing events and do product reveals and those kinds of things. So I'm going to bring in some outside help that is, that is, this is not my swim lane is to start documenting these kinds of things, to show the installs happening, to show the consumers looking at those things, because ultimately, we need the consumers to want to come to a Smash Swing venue. We want people to say, "hey golf simulator place, why don't you have this?" 37:04.08 ModGolfPodcast right Yeah, and that user-generated content, that's how that network effect, that's how things go viral. 37:04.04 TJ Schier And so our strategy is going to switch over the next 90 days from B to B to B to C. And that's where that social media will take over to help us start generating the buzz for people to say, "hey, come contact us to buy this, to put it into your venue." 37:24.31 ModGolfPodcast And people love the behind the scenes. 37:25.15 TJ Schier Well, and to that point, and maybe I'll show this during the video, but we have a camera behind every bay. 37:26.98 ModGolfPodcast You talk about the construction of things, but people love that type of content. So, yeah, you're right on it. 37:37.00 TJ Schier So part of the deal is when you get to play the game, you get a video of your game because these games are typically two to three minutes because you're going hit 30 or 40 balls in a short amount of time. 37:45.79 ModGolfPodcast Right. Right. 37:46.21 TJ Schier And so we've got it built in as part of the player experience that you get a video texted to you of your game afterwards. Because again, I want them to take that little snippet, post it onto their social channel. 37:56.90 TJ Schier And I saw that at a pickleball place. I was like, wow, you can have your match recorded. Cool. I called the company. 38:01.49 ModGolfPodcast right 38:02.67 TJ Schier And they were at the PGA show, save my play. Like, can you do this in our venues? I'm like, "sure simple." You got to think about how you can build a marketing machine with things like that through social media and user posted content. 38:15.84 ModGolfPodcast And I love that you are looking outside of the golf industry and maybe ah completely unrelated industries and in sectors for inspiration and ideas and then folding those in to make what you're doing even stronger. 38:28.89 ModGolfPodcast That's just a great entrepreneurial insight there that but I think is a great way to finish up here on the ModGolf Podcast. So, hey, before we go, TJ, why don't you let our listeners know where they can learn more about Smash Swing? 38:42.79 TJ Schier Well, hit me up at LinkedIn because that's where I put the most of the content. But if you just go to smasheswingimmersive.com, you can see what we're doing online right there. 38:46.03 ModGolfPodcast Yes. 38:51.97 TJ Schier So thank you, Colin, for the time. This was great to talk a little bit more about this and lovely to do a video in just a little while. So hopefully everybody will come see us on the YouTube channel too. 39:03.24 ModGolfPodcast Yeah, I'm excited for that. And as I always do in the show notes, I will include the links to smash swing to make it nice and easy for all of our listeners to click on that. And also I will have a bio page for you, TJ, and I will make sure your LinkedIn profile contact is front and center on that so people can reach out to you directly there. So with that, TJ Shear and Smash Swing, so happy we've got together again here. 39:28.88 ModGolfPodcast Hopefully we'll meet again in Belfast or maybe at the PGA show again in a few months. 39:32.84 ModGolfPodcast Well, another half a year's time, but I know we're going to see each other in person again and hopefully we tee it up again and you have your clubs that aren't quite as whippy as they were in Belfast. 39:41.91 TJ Schier Nope. I had them for the rest of the Ireland trip, which was very helpful and very good. So thanks again for the time. 39:46.71 ModGolfPodcast Nice. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right, TJ. Thanks again for joining us today on the ModGolf podcast. 39:53.47 TJ Schier Take it easy. Appreciate it.