THE CRAZIEST 18 MONTHS OF MY LIFE!!!

2 years ago today I never touched a disc golf disc and ever since then my life has been kind of completely turned upside down mostly thanks to you guys you might have seen an announcement over on Instagram or at least a teaser and we'll get to that a little bit here soon if you're thinking this is the announcement video it's not that'll be coming down the line but about 9 months ago I made a video called you guys changed my life because you did I was able to move here to Colorado and that was back in March and that literally feels like it was 2 years ago that I made that video because of how much has already changed since then 368 right down there two off the top strike try the midnight PR two play uh-oh uh-oh I think I'm probably around like 400 actual videos that I posted on the channel since I started it as of today 18 months ago it's crazy to think that a year and a half ago today I posted my very first video which is POV disc golf with a GoPro on my head playing in Moab Utah just thinking that maybe there was something that I could provide to the this golf content Marketplace that wasn't already out there and the response since then has been absolutely insane so thank you so much for literally changing my life and doing it over and over again in different and new magnitudes there we go I want to walk through like a small amount of the history of this channel where I think we're going in the next hopefully year 2024 but we're also out at a course that we'll get to the tournament that I want to talk about here but this is West Creek Disc Golf course I don't play often cuz it's kind of the opposite side of town for me but there's a lot of like really soft par fours out here and maybe a soft par 5 382 right over that mound we're going to disc up to a driver throw the interval but I started off this Channel with a lot of POV videos where I had a GoPro on my head I actually have 60 or 70 of those that are just like in a hard drive that I don't know if we'll ever see the light of day the first real video I remember like filming and it doing decently and me wanting to start making more videos where I set up a tripod and my camera very much my style now was my zone versus Toro battle when I was in I don't even remember where I was Illinois Maybe oh gross that was so swoopy good thing we're putting good today when I got into the disc golf like content creator game I saw a lot of creators who are either like trying to be coaches and do that side of the sport or who like had a retail store and we're just like making entertainment content to funel people over there which both of which I think are awesome I'm really glad that we have them I just saw a pretty decent Gap in like the people we're actually trying to become Pro disc golfers and documenting that journey and doing that consistently I working for myself already which gave me like leeway to kind of pivot what I was doing since I also didn't have any employees on purpose when the disc golf stuff started to like do pretty well after I committed to it for a couple months and the First videos that I remember being like Oh my gosh this is kind of popping off a little were my first tournament videos when I was doing my first ma1 tournament after playing all of ma2 for the beginning of that year and I realized that it was like that Gap in the market that I thought might have been there and I tested it and people were interested so I started really leading into that and putting out my goal of wanting to cash at a dis golf protour event but it is still so crazy to me to think that I have only had this channel for a year and a half like the way that it's changed so much it feels like it's been 3 or 4 years but it's crazy all right loose player 2 can make something also if you have a big goal maybe don't put it on the internet if you don't want people like kind of crap all over your goal like happened all the time with me even just moving into no after playing being an M1 and then thinking about cashing it a Tour event and now obviously my goal is to get a tour card which I think more people believe in me because I put those goals out there and then achieved them in some sense I know silver event doesn't quite count and I'm excited to casat out a real protour event soon 332 Straight Ahead into a headwind I think we'll go ahead and try the guava come on guav skip oh let's go okay I definitely thought I was like 10 ft closer there we go they caught par 4 400 ft I still don't know why I yell whenever I get further from the camera cuz I'm the mic doesn't move it's always right here my opinion this is like the dumbest hole that's ever been created cuz you're throwing straight over this mound I think we parked it now let me preface anything like that's even potentially negative that I'm going to say in this video cuz I want it to be real with the fact that I have a better job than I could ever dreamed of having I'm so grateful for it as close to perfect almost that you can think but like everything in life there are pros and cons I hope that you'll gr me the charity of the context that I absolutely love like 99% of what I do and that's so much more than any other job that I've ever had in my life and I'm so grateful that you guys gave me this opportunity you guys might know that I kind of did the opposite Pro dis golfer thing where I started by owning a van and then I started playing disc golf and so I was living out of a van already with my wife and we were just planning on traveling and we did do a lot of that but a lot of that travel got changed from just travel for travel sake which is always something that she was a little bit more interested than me into travel for disc golf sake and helping me grow this business fortunately right before my last tournaments of last season we got some bad news about our van that it probably wouldn't hold up for forever long we got a really expensive quote that we just could not even close to afford and we were planning on driving all the way out west to San Diego and then going straight down to the southern tip of Baja California Mexico and the van might have broken down during that period so we decided that we were going to stay in Florida for the off season while we saved up a little bit of money and waited out the snow to move to Denver where we live now but that was honestly really difficult and for that last little bit of time in the van it was so much dis all focused cuz we had lived in Florida Orlando before we moved into the van and so there wasn't as much like fun exploring or craziness for my wife like she enjoyed doing and so that kind of created not like a massive strain in our relationship but it was one of the more difficult relational hurdles that we've luckily been able to overcome that kind of part of this was not deal even though my channel was growing rapidly and getting to the point where it was my just my disc golf stuff was fulltime and so I'm really grateful for like the position in terms of disc golf YouTube that I've been able to get to in a very very fast amount of time but it did come with stresses and relational hurdles that can happen anytime that you go a little too hard on a job but especially when it's something that seems to be so one-sided towards me and I seem to have the like ability to change it cuz I'm My Own Boss that was a little more difficult and I'm grateful now that it has grown to the point where the sacrifices have paid off already and it was worth it and maybe they would have paid off down the line if we didn't get to this point as soon as I did everyone always has Room to Grow but don't sacrifice the important relationships for the sake of some business success especially in disc golf cuz it's so small but I wish sometimes I would have taken a slight step back and taken a full look at everything in my life and gone at some things a little bit differently but no regrets now we're here and all we can do is move forward no man so once we realized that baja wasn't going to happen I really decided to just go all in on disc golf YouTube I have another YouTube channel that I had before this which I was making some money on and I'm planning on maybe doing some more stuff with it this next year but I realized this was what was working there was a much bigger Gap in this Marketplace even though the audien's like top level were significantly smaller but I figured hey let's just see how big we can grow this thing thankfully to you guys during November December January February my channel Grew From I think like 5 6,000 subscribers to 10,000 subscribers exactly 6 months after starting my channel and then got through the offseason and was very confident that even with my wife working part-time and thinking that maybe she'd work fulltime once we got to Colorado that we would be able to move to Denver and find an apartment based off of your guys support and the income that I was able to generate off of entertaining you with these videos 285 Straight Ahead proxy so in February we took the van and moved all the way up here to Denver over a couple day trips stopping through Kansas City to meet with some friends and David over at Apollo disc golf ended up fighting an apartment in like 2 days after staying with her aunts down a little bit south of Denver and just continues to train and try to get ready for the season which started for me in May of 2023 my first tournament was the 303 open an a tier that always happens in May in Colorado Aaron gosage actually ended up taking it down now it came down to the final round where I shot two of like really bad ratings compared to how I thought I was going to be playing because I was playing so conservative just wanting to not play Bad and that ended up making me play bad and then I was like wait I'm good enough to get birdies so the last round I played pretty well shot my first thousand rated round of the year and missed cash by one stroke 300 ft Dead Ahead couple more tournaments throughout the year second one the week after I was out in P go Springs really beautiful course really beautiful tournament and then I came here for my third Tournament of the year and my first rout I shot way better than this I ended up missing a put on hole one just like that almost from the exact same spot and then I went and shot 14 of the last 17 shot my first 1050 rated round ever my highest rated round ever up to this point and I was tied with Joel Freeman and one back of Joe Rivier going into round number two 300 ft I think just going to go Firebird oh great shot let's go second round was was like today I couldn't make a single putt like 962 so it was still over 1,000 rated for the tournament but I ended up taking fourth I didn't even Podium at that event even though I was like five Strokes ahead of the next guy and that was my last tournament before I actually went on kind of my little in on the road midseason tour which is where so much growth and then potential for growth which happened at the end of this year came from so I kind of set out from here in Colorado to Kansas City played a couple tournaments there was planning on trying to Monday qualify for The Preserve no mo Challenge and I actually was able to get into the Kansas City Wide Open which is a silver event so my first tournament in Kansas City went all right I think I averaged around 990 tournament then I actually went down to collaborate with Nate Turner down in Arkansas massive shout out to Nate he's got a great Channel as well played a tournament down there and really realized the burnout from traveling and trying to put out as much content as I was doing I was tied for first after the first round and then I shot like two of the worst rounds of my entire year just cuz I was so done there was a rain delay between round one and two and I was hoping that the tournament would get canceled during that rain delay when you go into that mindset into the freaking break between on run and two shout out to Kyle my caddy I was able to head over to his house you're just not going to play really good for the rest of it 516 part 4 up there Mando ew no thrown look but we should be able to get the birdie had a blast with him down there and then went right back up to Kansas City for a second tournament which is kind of like a prequel to The Casey wide open played that course for a couple rounds didn't score super well and then I decided that I was honestly just not even going to try to want to qualify for the preserver de Mo spend a little extra time in Kansas City hang out with a buddy of mine and just like recuperate cuz my body and my mind and the travel was really like burning me out but I was getting so much good stuff out of it and then went up to The Preserve hang out with bradick before The Preserve and then was able to meet Drew Gibson there which a lot of this was so important just like meet with friends and like hang out with Kevin kefir along the way who's a buddy of mine I met met Drew at The Preserve and we just we're talking a lot of disc golf talking a lot of content and that's also where I met Simon and was able to actually get out of his Instagram DMS cuz we were talking camera stuff and I was like hey I'll Dem you a camera I think and then he read that request and that's how I was able to collaborate with Simon was just like building that Network had a really good time up there stopped posting daily content and kind of was really worried because the money that was coming in was just not equivalent to the money that I was spending traveling at that point even close and so I was like really worried and stopped actually looking at comments analytics everything until I got back to and was here for like a month which is maybe a month and a half 2 months after that so after The Preserve went to the Kansas City Wide Open which is kind of one of the crowning things it was the only event that I was going to be in that was a protour event it's a silver Series so not a full field was during the European swing so I knew I had a good chance at trying to get my first cash but I knew I'd probably have to play a little bit better than a thousand rated disc golf and coming off of being a little injured and having some of the worst tournaments that I've played I wasn't feeling super confident about that now one of the best videos that I feel like I've ever made was actually my Vlog of those couple days at the Kansas City Wide Open playing the tournament and then ended up taking tide 38th which was maybe three four strokes in cash or something let's go I ended up cashing there and then right after that I was between trying to go and follow the tour a little bit more and extending my road trip for like 3 to four months honestly and I decided that I miss my wife a lot she was also on a road trip out over the west coast and I wanted to see her again and so called her and I was like okay I'm going to come home and then she ended up getting home right after I got home got home was able to reconnect with her as well cuz it was a important and good trip for both of us getting back into Denver disc golf a couple tournaments a little bit of work on some play and then she was trying to put out the best possible content that I could there we go but those couple months were really interesting times for me I was definitely a little bit depressed I think a part of it's like coming down off the high part of it was way over burning out and so I end up putting out way less content than I typically do I know putting out daily videos or close to daily videos is a lot but you just kind of make it how you work feel like people are very adaptable you can kind of adapt to almost anything and so feel like it wasn't crazy hard for me to adapt to just like I mean I made daily videos for 140 days or something like that and so now getting back into the swing things that's almost why I feel like I have the capacity that I won't burn out creatively if I start my second Channel it actually helps me cuz having another project to work on I don't know I'm a really stupid brain but it's kind of how it works but there's one point where I was shooting a video and I go on my phone and I see glitch World Championships Maple Hill and I'm like I might be if I can swing like three or four videos out of this I have some flight credits I might be able to make this an actual profitable trip and so one of the first things I do is DM my buddy Ben Kenny's over on the Nick and mat show and he's like oh yeah you can say with me no problem and then I DM Simon I'm like if I can get a Simon video this will guaranteed be profitable oh man I am somehow get over that but Simon actually ends up getting back to me not like super soon but like sooner than I anticipated and he's like yeah we can definitely do something and then honestly until the Simon video happened until the morning of I had no idea what we were doing I was like Hey here are my ideas like I was whenever I reach out to somebody to collaborate with him and this is probably a good rule of thumb if anybody wants to reach out to YouTubers to collaborate don't just say hey you want to collab or I'm going to be in town something like that like having a concrete plan with somebody who's already so busy and is so creatively taxed and like give them concrete options and examples because that way their creative mind can get spinning and if there's a better idea or something that can be punched up then they can do that but it respects their time so much more than you taking one second to DM and be like hey can we make a video so I reached out to assignment and I was like hey these are my ideas I'm going to come in town for this would you think we be able to do XYZ whatever oh I didn't know what what the heck so they ended up getting back with me and I had known the time lapse was going to be coming out and I was like if I can get the first time video oh my gosh it would do so well and I was also trying to be flexible with him cuz there's at one point that he's like hey I don't know if I want to Vlog blah blah blah I was like hey if you don't want to no worries like ended up coming and he's like yeah I'll Vlog whatever I got something to talk about cuz I think it was after worlds and he luckily gave me the front half back off the video was able to actually win this Simon line bag by playing him and winning through 18 holes which I don't really count as beating Simon obviously it's just a silly YouTube video but it was an absolutely incredible experience that video if you haven't checked it out can we get to 100,000 views that'd be so clutch I don't have a 100,000 view video yet on this channel it's at like 96 or something so that would mean a lot but that video by far made that trip hanging out with Ben filming with ta actually meeting him playing the G World Championships even though I was God awful cuz I had been doing so much and worrying about the Simon clab so much more important than the glitch thing that I was just terrible but that was really like a milestone in my channel I think and in my career and getting a little bit more of that hopefully mainstream relevance and I'm coming home from that continuing to make my my normal content cuz ultimately consistency is going to win over the long run Let's Go part four 4 five we are only 6 through 10 now though so I KN I knew that just like just keep putting up your stuff numbers don't have to be crazy every time hopefully the Baseline will increase a little bit oh also I forgot the Backyard Barbecue video I did with Ganon and Cole at Matt's house that was clutch and then it also gave me a relationship with Cole so that when he came through town he end up W even film with me then and like all the stuff that you see happening on my channel is through like a lot of like pretty intentional networking and then also some accidental stuff that I'm very to have happen through in oh Cole had flown into town we had filmed that video at Adam's Hollow we were just talking on one of the holes just about how he's like yeah you should win three local events there's this experience that you can get locally that you can't get otherwise and so I was planning on starting about a 5we offseason after the a tier Colorado States before I traveled to Lynchburg for the battle for Bedford and so I ended up signing up for a c tier but I did end up winning that event that gave me a lot of confidence heading out to Lynchburg two weeks later where I was able to play the battlef for Bedford didn't play phenomenal but played all right I think I took 12th especially because in between those two things something kind of crazy happened all right we missed the t-shot here I don't know if I talked about the experience that I had with Drew yet or not I think that I did but I ended up pressing the button twice said I just once all lot to say after that form change withdrew which was massively helpful and important for me in just getting the ability to be where I am now with 2 months left of my offseason instead of hopefully getting to this point over the whole offseason and also just made some pretty Banger content it was a little crazy because this Drew thing happened and we were texting on Friday night at like 11:00 p.m. my time and on Monday morning I was on a plane to hit so it happened all pretty fast and like negotiations for fees and I I haven't felt this like muscle fatigue in a while I'm not burnt out but I think I haven't been hydrating and eating well for the past week and I've been putting my muscles through the same thing that I typically do if got a little less but let that show you the importance of nutrition and hydration cuz I've been slacking this how we're going to sit on the bench but in Lynchberg I ended up really straining my glute medius which your SI joint right here which is right above your right butt well it's above both your butts but for me it was the right butt I was a little scared that I was like hurting myself for my form change and it luckily ended up being uh just overuse cuz I think I played New London and Ivy Hill combine like 10 or 11 times over 4 days which both of those are 2 miles of throwing disc and most of them were not single shot rounds get I think a top 15 maybe top 20 I kind of forget how high I finished there ended up cashing and shooting just under th000 rated which I was really happy for with the form change that was going on and then after that luckily I'd had conversations a bunch with Hunter and the found Foundation guys mostly Hunter but then I was able to film all those foundation collabs and unfortunately one of them kind of got lost from their channel so there's not that like crossover but I was able to put it online which I'm super stoked on so those three videos were awesome to have been able to do and then after all that I kind of came back home and things kind of chilled out for a little bit I got all the content up that I could I tried to get back to doing daily videos and would take a couple days off here and there just either cuz I was too tired or I need to rested up or I was a little burnt out creatively but all the while I just have a massive thank you cuz the channel has grown to where my average viewer ship like in the first week of my content is up almost double from like 9 months ago and my subscriber count has literally the last 12 months my subscriber count has more than tripled since I hit 10,000 like literally 12 months ago I'm so excited cuz I don't expect it to happen next year I kind of expect the next 18 months to be when I triple again and hit 100,000 subscribers so almost exactly at 3 years of having a channel but if it happens by the end of the next year I'd be super grateful and I think it definitely is possible possible cuz I have a lot of really cool stuff in the works as you might have seen some proof of over on Instagram which we'll talk about here in a second but it is definitely an interesting dichotomy to balance the amount of content that you need to put out in dis golf to make any sort of a decent living in it with the fact that when you make that content you're doing something that's physically exerting and you only have so much physical capacity I hope that you've seen the channel enough to know that I'm not just like this awful at disc golf but I'm just dead but as you saw recently I had the culmination of one of my goals for this year because when I came into this channel I thought about it like a business obviously it's super important to me it's like my baby but in order for it to grow well if you think about it from an external Observer perspective who's like a business person it can be really helpful to do that and so I came in with the goal of changing the landscape of influenc like creators in disc golf and how they're compensated how they're viewed and like what the potentials are as like an individual Creator who doesn't want to like own a retail store or be a coach and maybe like changing the landscape is a little too aggressive but more so I wanted to help start Paving the way for people to come up and have like a path to move down and so part of that was threefold I wanted to get my rating as high as I could I wanted to get my channel as big as I could and I wanted to sell as many discs as I could and thankfully to you guys I was able to sell more discs than I expected and more disc than a lot of touring Pros are able um sell through my website and that helped me to land the deal that I have that you might have seen over on Instagram this deal let's go baby now I know there have been some questions about the announcement date and kind of what's going on and all that will happen like most contracts doesn't start until January 1st but I anticipate announcing before then and I'm pretty excited cuz I think it's a a deal that has never been done or seen before and I feel very valued by the company that I was able to sign with massively excited for what this is going to mean for the channel because it's going to make a lot of things much easier it's going to really legitimize maybe just to me but it really I feel like it will legitimize me in my own eyes that I have less imposter than that like I did it that someone sees the value and that it's there and there's one last little piece of the puzzle that has to be finalized and ironed out which I actually have a meeting on at 4:00 today and once that's done we'll be able to announce and you guys will be able to know but until then feel free to speculate but I'm not saying anything to anybody oh I'm glad we got course pars cuz I think that's technically 11 under par somehow a lot of more fun stuff coming this offseason obviously the announcement I'm taking a couple trips some family that will do some disc golf some disc golf related I really appreciate you guys I know that my play isn't always the best and I know that's not necessarily the reason you're here but it's always better to play better you guys have trusted me with this platform to consistently Entertain You and I hope that I can just continue to do that do think that these developments are going to help me to do that more and much less stressfully I'm just really excited for what 2024 holds and for the next 18 months of this channel it's crazy to think that a year and a half ago none of this existed and now it is what it is I appreciate you guys so much see you guys soon bye