Refine the Product
This year, 2025 marks the 10 year anniversary of my first ever public disc golf course. Although I had built Gogan's Greens outside of Amherst, Nova Scotia in 2007 and Pugwash in 2009 the course at Beech Hill in Sackville New Brunswick was the first ever publicly funded course I was contracted to create. At the time the town of Sackville paid me a whopping $65 over the cost of materials to build it, and quite frankly I was thrilled! In the decade that has followed those first 3 courses I have been lucky enough to build another 53 courses throughout the Atlantic Canadian Provinces and Maine, and consult with, or redesign another 12+ courses in various places around the world. The job specs, just like the game of disc golf, is always evolving and so I have been learning how to evolve too.
When I first started to really consider making disc golf my full time job I realized I needed to see more of the disc golf world and get a sense of what others were doing well. So I started to do some intentional travelling and I made it my mission to ask questions of the people that I would meet. For the first decade or so of my playing days I mostly just played courses solo. I had always spent a lot of time on the road and I would prioritize finding a disc golf course everywhere I went. By the time I was settling in Pugwash I had already played close to 200 courses all around North America. From around 2013 or so forward I made it a mission of mine to take at least one disc golf trip a year to play events and ask as many questions as I could to the locals. I played tournaments in Maine, Quebec, Ontario, BC, and then eventually the Netherlands, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and several other states in the US. Smack dab in the middle of my traveling disc golf escapades were my experiences with what I considered to be one of the best events in the world, the Glass Blown Open. For those of you unfamiliar with the GBO at its height between 2016-2020 it was the biggest disc golf event in the world. Some years over 2000 players would take part in flex starts, clinics, ring of fire, glow in the dark, and the full 3-4 day event. People would fly from all over the world, there would be workshops with pros, panel discussions and a full 3 block outdoor flymart that took over downtown Emporia. There was also an element of magic that was present. You have to remember back in the before times disc golf was even more of a fringe sport then it is now. Instead of walking into a non-disc golf establishment and having them say, “oof your one of those disc golf weirdo’s” when you were in Emporia during the GBO and walked in a random place they said, “ooh you're one of those disc golf weido’s!” (trust me the intonation was way different). It’s pretty safe to say that I took a lot of what GBO did well and tried to incorporate those traits into all of my events.
There was one very particular exchange that happened at Dynamic Headquarters that always stuck out to me and it shaped a lot of how I thought about my role in the game. After my first year at GBO I started to get the chance to do a corporate meeting with DD, Lat, and Westside at the time. They were usually fairly informative for me. I got to chat with some European designers and some of the people who were shaping the behind the scenes parts of the game. One particular year Lat 64 had started to make shoes but the shoes were failing. I had bought an early pair and really liked them and when I sat down for our meeting the conversation eventually shifted towards shoes. One of the members of my party said to the shoe designer, don’t worry about them failing and please don’t stop making them, just commit to making them better. It sounded like such a simple concept, don’t quit, just refine the product. I have had to draw on that mentality several times during my playing and building career. It is usually when I am at my lowest points that I have to take inspiration from that simple phrase, ‘don’t quit, just refine the product’.
As many people might be aware, this summer I lost a bid for a reasonably large city in the Maritimes. They had put out an RFP for the professional design plan for a championship level course. The RFP was more complicated than any I have seen before (or since) and I had to co-bid with an engineering firm. Ultimately we were not successful in our bid, and despite my best efforts to reach out to the city I was never given a reason why we lost. A couple things happened because of this. First, it spiraled me into a deep depression full of self doubt. It happened for a variety of reasons, but the biggest was I didn’t know why I lost. I started to doubt my abilities, imposter syndrome creeped in and felt lost in a way I hadn’t felt since I was a teenager. It was very painful but at the time I decided to take as many notes as I could. Here is an excerpt from my journal not long after I lost the bid:
“For the first time in my life I lost a bid. It was one that I really wanted to win. I had started to tie up pieces of my identity into it. I had been projecting something that I hadn’t quite put into words. I found out while I was at the kitchen table of my best friend's house. I wasn’t even thinking about this bid. I was checking to see if my daughter needed a ride. My competitor contacted me to tell me he won. I didn’t even know we were competing against each other.
When I read the news my first thought was to run away. This catches me off-guard. I drive home but on the way I pull over to send some messages. Is this for real? How did I lose? What’s wrong with me? I am not prepared for whatever it is that I am feeling. First I feel embarrassed by my loss, then I feel ashamed of my actions.
I’m not mad. Not one tiny part of me is mad. There is no one to be mad at. Of course I knew I had competition. I had only given myself a 50% chance of winning. The bid was complex. I needed help to complete it. I am proud that my name was even on the list of potential bids but this loss is deeper than I anticipated.
When I get home on the first day I don’t know what to do with myself. This feeling is so foreign but it’s not unprecedented. All of the sudden I am 12 years old again getting scored on with 13 seconds left to lose the SEDMA tournament. My hockey team won’t be getting jackets. I’ll be crying in the backseat for the 2 hour car ride home. I can’t believe what I am feeling. I’m embarrassed, then I am ashamed.
The first night I decide I have to keep busy so I work with my hands. I lay interlocking paving stones under my solar barn. The bricks make sense. Their patterns fit together and make each other stronger. I can’t make sense of my loss. I’m spiraling. I am trying to use all the strategies that I have gathered over the years. I know about opportunity and how it perches above disaster. I know about doors closing and windows opening but I can’t get to that place just yet. Instead I am being covered by a weighted blanket and it is slowing me down. I know I have to keep moving but I am so embarrassed and equally as ashamed.”
The journal goes on for another 6 or 7 pages but I think you get the point. Slowly, over time the wound healed and I remembered, don’t give up, just refine the product. The second thing that came out of this loss was a realization of who and what I am. I am ridiculous. I live in a fairy-tale world where I believe people are looking out for each other and that most people are good. I am also terrible at what most people would consider business because I constantly give away my product for free. (There is a fine line between faith and stupidity. I have faith that many projects should be brought into the world even if there is no money because those projects change peoples lives for the better. Sackville, Windsor, and many of my school projects have all cost me money to create but I would argue that they are so valuable to the community it was worth my time to do. The problem is other courses have asked me to work for free and only caused me undue hardship. That’s what makes life so tricky doing something hard despite overwhelming odds against it succeeding is both what successful and stupid people do. I can never tell which I am.) I have an almost impossible time writing bills because I never want to charge full price. I always look for a way to keep the cost low because I think bringing good in this world shouldn’t break the bank. Practically what that means is that many times I short change myself, and in turn my family. I am so thankful for all the people who invested in me and compensated me fairly for the work I have done. I also have this insane idea that if anyone was going to come to Atlantic Canada to build a course they would reach out to me to work together on it because surely anyone in this industry must know how much I love the place I live and how committed I am to making it thrive here. I know this is foolish, and completely wrong for me to assume. Absolutely no one owes it to me to give up any part of their profits to include me in anything. It is after all, a dog eat dog world out there and to be completely 100% clear I know nobody did anything wrong. Not the designer who won, not the city who put out the bid, or the engineering firm who bid with me. Everyone played by the rules and I have to believe that the best bid won. My brain knows this but my heart is often the one who leads the way.
There is however one advantage of living in my make believe world. I understand that many times I get to choose the reality I live in. Yes, losing the bid made me feel insufficient but after enough time I remembered, ‘solutions not problems’. So in time I started to study more and try to acquire more skills to make me a better designer. I took detailed notes on all the courses I built after that and I started to create formulas that better help me understand the process i follow. Don’t give up, refine the product. I also realized that although I couldn’t force people to work with me I could reach out to people that I wanted to work with and make more collaborations, especially if that meant the courses would benefit. I have long believed that one of my super powers is relationship building. People might not remember much about you, but they do remember how you make them feel. If I can take the time to reach out to the important people in my life and tell them that I appreciate them, and find ways to work together then I have found that is where I do my best work.
It’s not a surprise to anyone who has been following along that the disc golf world is going through some huge changes. Pre-pandemic we were a fringe sport with lots of hopes and dreams. Post-pandemic we are still a fringe sport but now we have huge expectations. Several key companies, retailers, and even players have moved on from the sport, citing financial hardships. More people are aware of our game than ever before and the numbers still suggest we are growing but, in my opinion, we are at a crossroads. How do we balance the professional side of the game with the experience that the casual user has? What is the business model that makes sense going forward? How many discs do people really need? How do we come to grips with the fact that for 90% of the people who pick up this sport it is just going to be a casual passtime and not their entire identity. I can’t solve any of these alone, and truthfully if I was in a position of influence I still don’t think I could solve them, however I do identify these as the issues facing us and so it helps me to shape my own future. So with that in mind 2025 is shaping up to be something different for me.
Flickline is trying even harder to embody the quality over quantity philosophy. Our 4 PDGA events will be called the ‘B-line’ as they are all B tiers on courses that are important to me (Fundy National Park, Beech Hill, Kings PIne, and Wentworth). The limited number of proposed courses that we hope to build this season are more ambitious than ever. We have identified tee pads and land processing as the two biggest things we can improve on. We have spent a significant amount of time talking to people in and out of the industry to get a better sense of how to improve these. We also have some very special surprises lined up for our projects that we will be announcing in the weeks to come. The last few months I personally have been recharging. I did my best to stay away from social media for a few weeks as I tried to reset my priorities. I hope to take a more active role in posting some interesting things that we as a group are working on over the next month or so. Tour details are almost finished and will be shared out to the public very soon. In the meantime I want to thank everyone who has ever played a Flickline event or course, and to all the people who are out there doing quiet work to make the world a better place. I am more committed than ever to making Atlantic Canada a beacon of quality disc golf. Now is not the time for me to give up, but it is time to refine the product.
As always, shoot a little and have a lot of fun.
