How I Started My Dream Golf Studio (With No Money...)

[00:00:00]So, it's been five years and I'm finally telling you guys the story of how I went from a nine-to-five corporate desk job watching golf YouTube all day, no money in the bank, no business experience, to opening the golf studio of my dreams, a thriving independent golf studio with one of the best reps in the country and one of the most followed fitting channels on YouTube. So, grab yourself a coffee and enjoy. And hopefully I can give someone down that lens just a tiny tiny bit of inspiration like someone did for me. Before I tell you how EP started, I think it's really important to explain why I wanted to build it in the first place. The truth is it was never about money. And personally, financially, I haven't really gained much yet from starting the business, but it was never about that. was more about my passion for golf, golf equipment, but also believing that golfers like yourselves genuinely deserved better and more honest service because the more time I spent around the golf industry, the more golfers I saw being sold equipment they didn't need giving advice that wasn't helpful and leaving fittings more confused than when they went in.

[00:01:13]And that's just not the way it should be. Everything revolved around the next cell, the next driver, the next upcharge, just more money. But what I believe then is still what I believe now. Golfers don't need more marketing and more They just need more honesty.

[00:01:28]There needs to be a company that's prepared to tell people the truth even if that truth doesn't lead to a sale.

[00:01:34]And that idea became the foundation of everything we've built here at EP and everything that we're going to continue to build. It has been one hell of a journey of ups and downs. So obviously golf has always been a massive part of my life. I used to live down the driving range when I was a kid. Every day pretty much I would be at the driving range.

[00:01:53]The weekends I would be playing golf. I would always be hanging around the golf course, walking around the driving range, chipping balls back in to get free buckets of balls from the club pro.

[00:02:03]I loved it. I absolutely loved it. And I was always interested in equipment. Ever since I got my first custom fitted set of irons, Cobras with that little gold band with my name on it, I was hooked. I just absolutely loved everything about golf, the equipment, the practice, the people, what it taught you. I was just hooked. Even as I got older, buying and selling clubs all the time on eBay, like I know so many of you do, tinkering nonstop, always trying to get any data I could. If I could get on any sort of launch monitor, I'd be on it buying, selling, testing, constantly tinkering.

[00:02:39]That was as much of a part of the game for me as actually playing golf. So, the initial spark, the initial Oh, I could maybe actually do this. I think I've got to give a big shout out to Mr. Fraser, Ian Fraser, Matty Boy, TXG back in the day, sitting at my desk like I am now from home when I was supposed to be working, watching YouTube videos, watching so many of their YouTube videos, endless fitting videos, testing videos, which is why a lot of our channel is the way it is today. I have to give those guys so much credit and and inspiring me. So, if you guys are watching, thank you. And I loved watching that content. And the same as so many of you watching down this lens now, you watch it on YouTube and you wish you could do it. I sat there wishing I could do it. And they kind of gave me that first little bit of hope that actually maybe this is a business model that would work and could work and maybe I could tie my passion with golf in with the want of running my own business and working for myself and and maybe maybe it could work. For most of my young sort of golfing career, custom fitting kind of was a thing, but not like sort of TXG and not like this. It wasn't that accessible sort of people did it but regular or stiff and do you want to hit that driver? Yeah, great. 9° 10 and a half like it was kind of custom fit but not really. But then it was becoming more accessible. People were doing it more and more. It was becoming more potentially a viable business model. And after months and months of watching that content I'd made up my mind I was going to become a custom fitter and I was going to start my own studio. I didn't know how. didn't have any money, but I was going to do it.

[00:04:30]Even with that commitment, there's a glaringly obvious problem that sitting there watching YouTube and making a decision is miles away from actually doing it and figuring out how do I go from an office job to the transition to golf to eventually starting my own fitting business. I had no experience in retail, no experience in fitting, no experience in golf apart from obviously playing my entire life. But on my CV, I was just another corporate worker. And if I was serious about turning this idea and this commitment into reality, I I had to find a way into the industry. So I just started looking for jobs in golf as you would. I needed that experience.

[00:05:11]was willing to take a pay cut from the sort of corporate job just to get into the industry, get that experience that I would need to then take my career further, change jobs, eventually start my own fitting place. And I couldn't I I just couldn't I couldn't get a job.

[00:05:27]looked for jobs all the time, applied for jobs, American golf, tailormade admin, and although I was designing reasonably complex integrated security solutions because on paper I didn't have the experience that they thought that they required, they just kind of put you to a side. But I didn't give up that easily obviously. So what I ended up doing was just reaching out to everyone really like golf shops, driving ranges, fitting studios, anyone to say, "Look, I'll come and work my weekends for free just to get something on the CV, just to get some sort of experience to get my foot in the door. I'm passionate. I want to work in golf." My goal was always obviously to to do this and start it on my own, but I needed to get a foot in the door. So worked for free at a driving range that did offer fittings for quite a few months just to get something on the CV, some sort of experience and eventually that did get me a job in the golfing industry. It was by no means perfect whatsoever, but it was a start and it was actually in custom fitting. Really, the last thing I wanted to do was go and work in a pro shop or American golf where you're not going to fit. And even if you do, it's not really fitting. I wanted to be fitting. So the problems, it was about 85 mi each way from where I lived.

[00:06:49]Normally it would take an hour and 30 to an hour and 45, sometimes 2 hours plus.

[00:06:54]I live in Oxfordshire and the place I worked was Custom Lab Golf in Hitchin.

[00:06:59]So shout out Gav and Custom Lab Golf in Hitchin, which is not there anymore, although I think they've moved to Bedford. Um, but yeah, it's Hitchin, which is just the other side of Luton.

[00:07:09]So, the drive was horrendous. M25, M1, awful, awful drive, and I had a company car, which obviously I'd just gotten rid of, but this was my shot to get into fitting. So, I had to take it. So, I bought an old, cheap, rubbish car that was perfect for a long commute. Took a massive pay cut and just committed to it. And for the next couple of years or so, that was my commute. And I didn't mind. I was getting there early, even with a ridiculous commute sometimes, just to try and film a little bit on Instagram, as a lot of you may well have seen back in the day when I was there.

[00:07:43]Okay, morning. Morning. Back again. Back in the studio early doing some more testing. So, I've already been hitting the sim um before. I've already had a few hits with it, as you already seen on Instagram. Uh but today, I'm going to be putting it straight headtohead with the M5 and working till late. Most of the time I was leaving my house at 7 or 8:00 in the morning and getting home at 10 or 11 at night and with paying for my own fuel with that commute. I don't know what my hourly wage would have been, but it was not good. And sometimes it was really, really tough. I'm not going to lie, thinking commuting all of these miles on probably way less than minimum wage when I could have been on my cushy corporate job, way more money, two, three days a week from home, company car, and the long days just sometimes it was like, is this really worth it? But I loved working in golf. I loved fitting people. So although the money was absolutely horrendous and hours were ridiculous and the commute was ridiculous, it was great going to a studio. It was really cool.

[00:08:43]Unfortunately, that novelty sort of worn off now after all these years. But it was really cool being in the golf industry, being around all this equipment, talking to golfers every day and fitting golfers. It was kind of like what I wanted to do. Most importantly, it gave me that chance to get the experience I needed. I thought that it was a custom fitting job, but it's just as much a people job. When you come here, we have to make you feel comfortable, at ease. We have to give you an enjoyable experience, an educational experience. In fact, I think the custom fitting element is the easiest part of this job. You've got to really understand people and make sure we give you the best experience possible. And I promise you, sometimes that's hard because if a lot of you have been fitted in this environment, it's so hard to hit golf balls and perform. So many people struggle. We have to help you through that and make sure it ends up in a positive experience. And even though it was technically my first proper fitting job, because I'd been around golf all my life, I'd known about equipment. I'd tested equipment. I'd worked on that range for a short period of time. Didn't take long before I was full-time just custom fitting. Day in day out, five days a week, even six days a week, I started to work with that commute just to get more experience, more experience, more experience, learn more, learn more. I wanted to accelerate that and become as good as I could possibly be. So, I put in the work and I grafted and without those years of of graft and and learning the trade. Yeah.

[00:10:09]EP never never would have existed. I mean, I'm sure there's loads of you that watching this video for the first time and and you see a studio and and you don't even really care how it was set up, right? And and you shouldn't to a degree. Hopefully, it's a cool story, but why should you care? But I think really the underlying point is the same in in every business. It takes a long time and a lot of graft and a lot of effort. If you actually want to do something like this yourself, unless you just got loads of money, then great. It might be a little bit easier. But most of us, most of us don't. And that's only going to come through real real grit, determination, and hard work. And even now, still do all my own filming, all my own editing. Still fitting five days a week. It's it's been seven, eight, nine years in the making. Still grinding every day. So now I am fitting and I am a fitter and I've managed to gather a lot of knowledge through online YouTube research and then actually realworld experience with golfers day in day out for two to three years. But the negative is I had less money than when I had in my corporate job. And in my corporate job I basically had no money. So I had literally zero money. And then COVID hit and almost overnight everything stopped and the same as all of you had a lot more time to think. And the more I sat there and thought about it, thought why not try now? Like it could be a great opportunity while I'm at home, I've got time to really start learning and understanding about setting up a business. Think about the strategy.

[00:11:45]Think about the logo that I designed.

[00:11:47]think about building a website, thinking about a premises, thinking about startup costs, how would I get the money, is it worth it, all of these questions. But at that point, it was still just an idea.

[00:12:00]But I was working in the industry. I knew the ins and outs financially pretty much. I knew that it worked. And I also knew that there was a gap in the market.

[00:12:11]I knew that you guys deserved a better service, a better fitting company facility, more honesty, more transparency, everything. I knew that there was room for it, but I still didn't have any money. And at the time, we were in lockdown. I was talking to my friend Kane, now business partner. There he is. Sports fans.

[00:12:35]He's working hard.

[00:12:39]uh he always wanted to start a business as well and was looking for potential opportunities. So I'd fill him in about exactly what I'd been doing, why I've been doing it, what the goal was, some of the financial numbers that I was keeping an eye on from actually being involved in the industry previously and we agreed it was a good idea. So he said yes, maybe stupidly he was in. He's like, "Let's do it. I will put some money in and we'll start a golf studio.

[00:13:11]Like he never played golf before. He still hasn't played golf.

[00:13:16]He now knows a little bit more about golf. Helps me with running the business sort of behind the scenes and I'm kind of obviously running EP here doing the fittings, doing the YouTube stuff, and he's helping behind the scenes. But yeah, took a took a big gamble, put a decent chunk of money in. We still had to find a little bit more. or I still had to find a little bit more, but it was a big gamble and it still hasn't paid off necessarily. But I've put the work in to establish EP as a brand and hopefully from here we can go on and and grow and become bigger and better. But yeah, it's a gamble, but I still had to find a little bit of money. So, I didn't have any. I started writing business plans. I wrote uh a few business plans, forecasts, all that kind of stuff, and tried to get a business startup loan from the government, which I managed to get £15,000 from the government, which now we have paid off. Um, and also managed to black a personal loan of around £8,000 as well somehow because my credit was shocking. Uh, so I had about 23 grand. We put that in with Kane's money and then all of a sudden it was it was real. It's like okay let's start looking for somewhere. So that in my naivity I thought would be quite easy.

[00:14:30]You know back when I was working at custom lab I thought ah it'd be easy find somewhere set up all these things you think is just going to be not an issue apparently is an issue. Um we looked at so many places like all over the place and we got very close a couple of times. Golf courses we were almost at Whitney Lakes golf course. They pulled out last minute unfortunately. We sort of had an agreement in place in principle verbally at least. Um and then they decided to go down a different route which I actually think for us worked out much better long term but yeah finding somewhere it took a long time and the reality was I did not want to overextend ourselves. It's a cold start business. Okay, I'd been in the industry a couple of years but that's a couple of hours away. Like we've not got a brand, we've not got a business. We've not got anything. I think the biggest failure people make is going too big too quick. And the business units, the industrial units where we are, even the starter units are so much money, 15, 20, 25,000 pound peranom, big deposit upfront, business rates, all of these things that we were never going to be able to afford. Like if we would have done that, we'd have been out of business before we even started. And one day, I walked into here, which did not look like this whatsoever. This originally, I believe, was a cattle shed about 400 years ago. It had a new roof and that was pretty much about it. Uh, it had been previously a doggy daycare uh and been derelictked for a couple of years. So, it was rotten. It was horrible. It absolutely stank. Pretty much everything you could think of Yeah.

[00:16:13]was here. It was disgusting. The floor was wonky. The roof was open. Everything was just not not what you would want, put it that way. But the rent was cheap.

[00:16:25]The rent was cheap. They didn't want a big deposit because the building was probably worth about 8 quid. So really, it it was perfect for what we needed. It was an open space with low rent. So we got started. I called on everyone really that I knew to help. We needed to keep costs low and it was going to cost a reasonable amount of money just to level off the floor. ply off the walls, get some sort of ceiling and make it a usable space. So, big shout out to my brother Bruce.

[00:16:55]>> And then rather than >> Yes, Jeff.

[00:17:00]>> That was a good one to get. But no, >> yeah, more round and then just keep your head down, go through it. now.

[00:17:08]>> Um, my really good mates Fred, Alex, everyone that helped Ash, my floor mate, everyone that helped build this place and make it what it is today. And we all put in a ton of work to make it what it is. It took months and months. I think most of it was through lockdown to be honest. Probably shouldn't have really been doing it. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be saying that, but like it was a ton of work. But eventually slowly it started to form a golf studio and slowly I started to see the vision come together and it was so cool. Hopefully I can put a video up now of like Ash probably hitting like the first ball in here when I had people come down. We were like hanging extension leads from the ceiling and hitting balls into nets and stuff. I was like we just hit the first shot inside my golf studio.

[00:17:58]Unbelievable. And and it was just so cool to be like building something. I mean, it was an incredible amount of work. Every hour went into this place doing everything I could myself painting, which I hate so much amount of time time I spent painting this place, it was starting to shape up. But really, that's that's still only the beginning of the journey. And there was still a huge gamble on the table that I hadn't told you guys about yet because there was never any guarantee from any of the brands that that we were going to get accounts. So, we had found a place. We were plowing money into a place. We were doing it up. We were building a golf studio with no promise that we'd have any golf equipment to sell. But luckily through working at Custom Lab and something that I knew I was going to need down the line was connections. And luckily I had some really great people that were willing to help me who worked in those brands, Titists, uh Jack, Matt, people from Cobra, Callaway, who I had kind of formed good relationships with that I could reach out to and say, "Look, this is what I'm doing. Here's the plan. You come down and see the place. Can we have a chat?" And yeah, luckily we did manage to get a few accounts open. And when you get a few, it's a little bit easier. So after years of learning the craft, putting countless hours into volunteering for free, taking huge pay cuts and commuting across the country for years, finding somewhere, spending months building it hour after hour after hour, turning an old barn into a golf fitting studio.

[00:19:34]We were finally ready to open. Golfers started walking through that door and the business was real. The first day had begun. We were open and I want to give a shout out to Jack Davey. Actually, Jack, one of my customers from Custom Lab Golf back in the day, knew about the journey, following us on Instagram as we built it as a lot of you hopefully were and booked in on the first day. So, we had real customers. We had a business. It was exciting. It was terrifying a little bit at the same time. Everything was now down to me um to try and make this what it is today. and a lot more hopefully.

[00:20:14]And honestly, it already felt like we climbed a mountain just to get to this point. But the reality was that was just the start and there's no backing out now. And in the next part of this video on YouTube, I'm going to take you through the rest. That was how we got to opening the doors at EP, which was just over 5 years ago today. But how did we go from that first opening day to where we are now? How did I build the YouTube following? How much work did it take?

[00:20:47]How much money do we make, if anything?

[00:20:49]How did we get the money to expand? And how have I found hiring people and trying to actually run a business? Um, which is just still wild to me to be honest. But all of that is going to be covered in one of the next videos. So, make sure you subscribe and hopefully you can follow the journey of EP. I want to do much more content, not only like this, but actually starting to tell the story of EP, who we are, what we're doing, what we want to do in the future, how we want to grow the business, and be able to provide more of the UK and maybe the world with the fitting experience that you deserve. I hope you subscribe and I hope you follow along because it would mean a lot. As always, for my hardcore audience that watches all of the videos, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.