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Hey, It's Josh Carp and it's Friday, which means that
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we are airing a Golf Smarter Mulligans episode from the archives.
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This week's rerun is episode five h two with Derek Ruky.
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We also have new interviews every Tuesday. Next week I'll
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be speaking to Bradley Hughes, the former player and a
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top flight instructor who will be joining us to talk
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about his approach to the golf swing.
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Golf Smarter Premium number five hundred two published on August eighteen,
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twenty fifteen. Welcome to the Golf Smarter Podcast.
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Derek.
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Hey, Fred, how are you? I am great. How are
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you doing today?
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I'm doing very well.
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Thank you very much, and thank you for turning me
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on to the newest GPS product to hit the market,
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t link. I'm very excited about this because you've seemed
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to accomplish something very important in the GPS market and
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that is a great price point.
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Yeah. Thanks it.
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It's been quite a treny that gets where we are now,
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and we had to do a few things very differently
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in the markets to get to a price point. But yeah,
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we're just going and I'm excited to get it in
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your hands and get your feedback and yeah, and kind
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of just chat about it here on the podcast, and.
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That is what we'll do, is chat about it for
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a while. But I need to know.
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I mean, you look like you know, we we've had
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ads ads for Harry's razors on the show multiple times.
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You don't even look like you shave man. You are
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awfully young to be the sometimes you shave.
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Yeah, but.
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How is it that you young entrepreneur yourself got into
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a golf product.
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Tell me, tell me the story on that.
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Yeah. Sure, So.
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Golf kind of became my passion when I was twelve
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years old. I I feel like people that kind of
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latch onto the sport have that you know, that aha
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moment where they're on the golf course and they you know,
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all of a sudden, the potts start dropping and they
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start like hearing the birds chirping, and they start seeing
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the divots flying. And I just kind of fell in
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love with it when I was twelve years old, And
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you know, I just decided, like one day, like there's
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no other way I would rather spend every single waking
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second than spend it on a golf course. So I
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basically did just that. From the age twelve to twenty,
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and I became pretty good. I started playing in like
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junior golf events. By the time I was eighteen, I
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was a top ten junior golfer in Canada, and then
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that landed me a golf scholarship to go play for
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a university in Texas, which was, you know, kind of
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the main goal that I wanted to you know, achieve
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out of starting golf competitively. And when I got to university,
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I started to kind of recognize that the skills that
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you have to develop in to become a great competitive golfer,
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we're also very advantageous to an educating setting or even
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just business. And that's like having a good work ethic, determination,
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and just really being able to dedicate yourself to something
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for an extended period of time. And so I kind
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of started moving away from you know, competitive golf being
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like everything I focused on, you know, fourteen hours a
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day on the range, to wanting to put that kind
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of work ethic into something else that could potentially just
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put me ahead a little bit. And so when I
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was in university in Texas, I was I started like
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day treating the stock market full time. When I was
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in my dorm room. I started an eBay business where
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I was like importing goods out of China into my
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dorm room and selling them moneybay, and I built that up.
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It was actually became pretty big, and I was making
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some good money out out of my dorm room. So
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I decided, like, look, I'm just going to enjoy golf
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for what it is and not continue to invest all
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this time into it. And so I went home, and
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that eBay business was actually ended up failing for me.
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It was a big failure.
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And I learned a ton from kind of doing these
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little tiny ventures on the side and you know, going
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through a few successes and a few failures. And then
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I ended up finishing or enrolling to finish my degree
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here in Calgary, Alberta at Mount Royal University in their
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Innovation and Entrepreneurship program. And in the first class that
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you take for the entre program, you basically just come
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up with an idea around something that you're passionate about.
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And so for me, you know, the whole Malcolm Gladwell thing,
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what have you invested your ten thousand hours in? What
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do you you know, really know? And so for me,
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that was golf. And I saw these GPS watches, you know,
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becoming really popular along with this wearable tech. And it
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was pretty obvious why they were becoming so popular, Like
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as a golfer, it's you know, especially an average golfer,
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you just want to be able to enjoy your game
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and not have to think about too much. So being
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able to just look at your wrist and have a
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yardage really quickly, you know, it became popular. And so
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I tried these watches on, and you know, long story short,
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I just decided these watches were great, but they were
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far too distracting. They were bulky heavy, really cumbersome, and
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they were expensive. So I just wanted to find a
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way to you know, create that same kind of convenience,
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but put it into something that was much more affordable
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and much more comfortable to wear, kind of more like
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wearing a bracelet, like one of those balanced bracelets that
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you see golfers wearing. And so that was the original
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vision for it, and you know, along the way, I
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just picked up a bunch of mentors. I met the
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right investors. I brought on my co founder and CTO
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who had the technical background behind this, to kind of
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develop software behind it. And then I consider myself just
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to be kind of a hustle and the vision of
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the company, and it definitely takes a lot of hustle
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to get something like this off the ground, especially being
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you know, twenty one years old.
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Tell me the moment that Tell me about the moment
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that you just you you came to that realization that, yeah,
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maybe the tour golf is not going to work for me.
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Tell me what that what that epiphany was like. And
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it's like, no, I think if I'm going to make
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a lot of money, it's going to be in business
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and not in golf.
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Yeah, it's funny. It was a very specific moment actually,
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when I was playing a qualify around. So it's like
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university golf, like all of the entire team gets out
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of the course and they do qualifier rounds to see
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who's going to go to play at the next tournament.
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And the next tournament was in Vegas, and I just
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really wanted to go to Vegas. So I put a
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lot of pressure on myself for this tournament. And while
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I was in my qualify round, I was playing, you know,
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I was having a bad time, Like I just really
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wasn't enjoying the game as much as I used to
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I I kind of put too much pressure on myself
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for it. And during that round, I had some open
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trades in the stock market and I ended up making
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like three thousand dollars in a matter of hours. And
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I'm just like, look, I I think I would rather
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dedicate my time to something that's really working and I'm
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actually getting some enjoyment out of then, you know, something
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that's kind of started to become more of a chore.
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And I felt like I had milk golf for all
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that it could give me, and you know, just realizing
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that it wasn't It didn't feel like quitting to me
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because it felt like the lessons learned and the skills
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I gained out of trying to become a very highly
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competitive golfer or the reason why I could make money
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in the stock market in the first place, So why
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not apply that to something else?
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And what skills and lessons were those that you learned?
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And you know, I mean, like you talked about how
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you failed miserably on eBay and that probably was a
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huge lesson too. I mean, what do we learn from
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doing things right? We just keep repeating it, not knowing
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why it was right. It just happened, but here you
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are getting experience at a young age to teach you
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something on how to move forward totally.
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I Yeah, golf is a microcosm of life. I definitely
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believe that. And I feel like a little bit of
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an old soul just because of everything that I've had
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to go through on the golf course, which is strange
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to say, but one of the big things that I've
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learned that's really helped with getting a startup off the
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ground is when you're running a startup and you're getting
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something like t Link, it seems like on a daily basis,
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what is the best thing of your entire life happens
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to you, and on the exact same day, the worst
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thing of your entire life happens to you.
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There's constantly new things.
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Up in the air that are happening that you know,
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one second you get a five thousand unit order and
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the next second your manufacturing breaks down and you can't
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even get those five thousand units off the ground or
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something like that. And what golf has really taught me
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is it's not so much about how you perceive something
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is good or bad on a golf course, whether that's
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a miss three foot putt or you know, a chip in.
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It's more about how you actually deal with that situation
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and react to it. So what golf taught me is
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in between that I guess that stimulus of something good
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or bad happening to you and your reaction to it.
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In between those two things is really opportunity that almost
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nobody recognizes to pro assess it, to think about it,
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and to react in a way that someone else might
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just kind.
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Of pull the trigger on an emotional response.
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And when you get emotional on the golf course, things
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can go bad very quickly.
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You did learn a lot that's awesome.
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To the Golf Smarter podcast audience. We are also broadcasting
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this live on Periscope, and to those of you who
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are watching on periscope right now, if you have any
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questions for Derek about his lessons learned or about t Link,
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which we're going to talk a lot about, please go
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ahead and submit them on your phone right there and
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let us know what you're thinking about and if you
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can hear properly, Derek, growing up when you got hooked
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on golf and then all of a sudden you realize,
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you know, you took it as far as you could
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that you felt when you made that decision that it's
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not going to golf is not going to be your
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life as far as being on the course, was that
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a relief? Was that depressing? Were you happy?
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How? How did that make you feel.
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At the time of making that decision? It was it
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was a little tough, just because I know how much
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time I had invested into one singular thing, which is
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learning how to hit a ball into a hole in
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as few strokes as possible, you know, So that kind
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of went through my head of how many thousands of
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hours have I invested into this one thing that you know,
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I might not really use anymore to you know, try
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and further a career in it. But I quickly kind of,
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you know, I was able to recognize that those hours
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weren't just going into, like I said, hitting a ball
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into a hole, but more so into just kind of developing,
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uh as a person, you know, developing that work ethic,
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which is something that I feel is always separated me,
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you know, being always being the first on the range
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and then the last off at the end of the
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day of the golf course. So now that's just translated
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into you know, the first into the office and the
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last out or whatever it might be. And I was
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actually when I realized that it was actually a feeling
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of excitement to realize that, like, holy, I have all
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these extra hours that I used to invest into golf
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that I can invest into other things, you know, and
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that kind of it kind of excited me to have
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this free time to just put into something that you know,
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might actually leverage that time investment into something much bigger.
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I have to ask all the hours that you had
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invested in playing, in learning about yourself and learning about
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the game and what it taught you about how to
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conduct yourself. You've been vague in our emails, and I
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need to ask for myself, what did Golf Smarter have
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to do with any of that?
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Yeah, Golf Smarter was It's actually so cool to be
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on this for me because so I was so like
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all I wanted to do was get better at golf.