But First!

Today’s newsletter is (unsurprisingly) presented by Ship Sticks.

Normal Sport guarantees that your bag tag will wag when the Ship Sticks guy or gal pulls up. Even more importantly, the experience you will have of not lugging your bag to the airport and through the airport and into the rental car and up to the rental house — all while worrying if someone who handled snapped the head off your Meridian putter — is more than worth the cost of admission.

This is probably not the right way to describe it, but recently when I used Ship Sticks to get my clubs from my house to my rental home in Augusta, and it felt a little like I was dealing with a private travel experience.

I just printed off a piece of paper and put it in the little slot OGIO has on its travel bag, forgot about all of it until I opened the front door when I got to my rental home, and there they were.

The experience could not possibly have been better.

If you have any summer golf travel upcoming, you can use the code normalsport right here for 20 percent off your experience.

OK, onto the Q&A.

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Our Patron Saint of Shipped Sticks

Q&A: Jonathan Marsico

KP: When did you fall in love with golf?

Jonathan: Great question. I was exposed to golf as a child, but really focused on team sports through early years of high school. I was on spring break my sophomore year of high school, and I broke 90 for the first time. From that moment, I had the golf bug. Twenty-five years later, I still have that bug.

Why Ship Sticks Started

KP: It seems as if the Ship Sticks story started about 15 years ago. As an adult, had you always wanted to work in golf or was that something that it sort of just presented itself and you jumped into it?

Jonathan: It really just presented itself. My co-founder and I were trying to solve a problem that we had as golfers, as business professionals, as parents.

How can we play as much golf as we want to and play as much traveling golf and do it as efficiently as possible? 

It was at the same time the airlines were starting to charge for checked bags and we really saw the efficiencies of being able to throw on a backpack, bring your carry on and have your golf clubs waiting for you either returning home from shipping it home from a tournament or event or a buddies trip or shipping to [those places] in that same manner.

What Has Changed?

KP: It's been 15 years, and I think it's a little bit unusual but you know, somebody who's a founder would still be grinding on what they founded. But when you think about that early building versus now, how much different is it now than it was 15 years ago?

Jonathan: It's different in a lot of ways, but when it comes down to it and comes back to it, it still really lives with a customer-centric approach.

Our customers are our partners, and our partners are country clubs, resorts, tour operators … those started off as our original partners and/or customers. As we've grown, we've really now broadened that not only do those continue to be a core of our business but now we'll say the general consumer or the general golfer, golf traveler is now a big part of our business.

Being able to enable both our partners, members and guests effortless travel as well as now the general consumer, the general golf traveler. So at the core it's really the same how do we enable effortless travel for all golfers? The distribution and how that's done and who the audience is has evolved just more broadly.

Savannah Bananas

KP: I was reading this article the other day about the Savannah Bananas and how they've made a lot of decisions on the front end that maybe were not profitable or didn't generate revenue, but they trusted that they would be best for the customer in the long run and therefore benefit them.

Was there anything when you guys started out that you kind of deferred to the customer and maybe lost a little money or you made the decision to forego profits in the short term so that you would remain sustainable in the long term?

Jonathan: Yeah, I mean I would say first, first and foremost pricing.

Maybe more importantly — we're, we're kind of in that 99 percent on time delivery window — with that said, at times things, things do happen, unforeseen things happen. Whether it's weather, whether it's just, you know, a delay through logistics, whether the bag gets left in a spot, like things happen.

And we constantly, to this day, from day one to this day, are making decisions, whether it's refunding customers, whether it's giving them additional, what we call SPP for anything delayed so they can walk into the Pebble Beach pro shop with a $200 gift card and rent clubs if their bags don't make it and buy shoes and gloves and balls.

So those decisions that we constantly make that are not part of ultimately what the customer has signed up for, but just wanting to be customer-centric, customer delight and really do everything above and beyond for the customer really has been our core from a business perspective. If we can lead with decisions of How does this affect our customer? It's a really easy guide on how to make decisions.

Ed. note: Since this interview, I saw that Ship Sticks tracked down my friend Claire Rogers’ lost golf clubs — even though she wasn’t a customer of theirs — and delivered them to her home. That seems like an example of what Jonathan is referencing.

How to be a CEO

KP: When you meet people just in, out in the wild in real life, what's the biggest misconception that people have about when they hear the term CEO?

Jonathan: That you don't work and you don't grind. I think the way we operate from a company perspective is we kind of have a saying, We do and we build.” And the we do part, you know, really starts with me and goes through our whole organization.

So not only am I, you know, part of the leading the vision of who we are and where we're going, but I also do a lot of the work associated with the vision and in support of the vision. So I think there's at times misconceptions of the day to day of CEOs.

I know [I’m] not representing all CEOs, but the CEO ends up dealing with a lot of complicated or confusing or challenging things within a company that you really spend a lot of time grinding on doing so. But the reward of doing so and helping lead a team and helping lead and see the benefits from a customer perspective, you know, every day, every night, I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to reap the rewards of the work and the growth from the business.

The Best Feedback

KP: When you guys get feedback from customers, from folks that have used your business, what is the most rewarding piece of feedback that you guys can get?

Jonathan: You know, thankfully we get this a lot and maybe it's indicting ourselves a little bit. But for first time users: I can't believe I haven't used this before. I'm never going to travel with my golf clubs. And as we've started to expand into skis and luggage and other niche verticals or product types, I can't believe I never used this before. I'm never going to travel with my golf clubs again.

Normal Travel

KP: That's awesome. One thing I was thinking about is so we cover a lot of just like the weird stuff in golf and just golf is very strange in general. You must get a lot of weird travel stories that you hear from people's experiences, not necessarily their experience with Ship Sticks, but just like in general. I'm sure you hear a lot of like strange stuff that people have done on trips and whatever.

Jonathan: We probably get less color on what happens within trips. But it's pretty interesting to see people's travel habits and where they go and why they go there. There are certain people that play a lot of golf and they ship their bags really frequently.

So it would be fun for our audience and ourselves really to put together some high profile golf bag movements from a course perspective, not an individual perspective. How frequently bags are moving and where they're coming and going from.

KP: Like bag leaderboard ranking.

Jonathan: Yeah. Think of the top 100 clubs and you know, there's, there's, there's bags that frequent a lot of those.