Off the Deck

Rustic Golf Provisions with Aaron Schrank

• BestBall • Season 3 • Episode 8

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Dive deep into a conversation filled with passion, creativity, and community. From teaching high school math to crafting stunning wooden bag tags, Aaron Schrank’s journey is one of authentic pursuit and entrepreneurial spirit. If you're curious about how woodworking, golf, and social media collide into a thriving business, you’re in for a revelation.

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SPEAKER_01

Driver off the deck for Corey Conner. Use driver off the deck. They're hoblin. The driver off the deck. I knew you would try this, right? Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00

You have to put your foot on the gas. You pull out the driver off the deck and you put it on the drain all the way up the hill. Welcome back to another episode of Off the Deck. I am your host, Josh Decker. As always, Off the Deck is brought to you by Ideca Golf. I'm actually wearing one of their t-shirts from their golf happens drop. Love everything they're doing at Ideca Golf. And you can use promo code OTD25 for 25% off any purchase. That's Idaka.gov. Be sure to check them out. We certainly appreciate them and their support of the show. Today we have Mr. Aaron Schrank with us of Rustic Golf Provisions.

SPEAKER_01

Aaron, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Josh. Happy to be here reporting from my workshop.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So before we dive into everything you're doing with Rustic Golf Provisions, I'd like to give guests an opportunity to introduce themselves, give a little bit of background on who you are away from the golf space, what's your what's your nine to five, those kind of things, and then we can dive into the stuff that we all care more about, right? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

Uh so first off, my name is Aaron and I live in Rhode Island. I've been here all 34 years of my life. Uh for my full-time job, I am a math teacher. Um, I began teaching high school math uh right out of my undergrad. I taught high school for about four years. Along the way, I got my master's degree um because I kind of knew I wanted to potentially teach college-level math down the road. And I've been a community college professor full-time since 2018. And uh obviously I'm on my summer break right now, so I get a big break from that. Um, but I'm very in a steady position at my job. I feel like it's a job that I still enjoy. Um, I definitely see I can ride it out, you know, one of those like jobs for life. Yeah. Um, all the benefits that come with that. But ever since COVID, uh I've had a lot of free time because a lot of our online, our classes have been online, and uh, it does really open up a lot of avenues. And I've always been a big golfer. I've been golfing for virtually my whole life. I also did play baseball up through college, so that was a bit of a conflict with golf. I never really got a ton of competitive golf experience, but golf has just always been a constant in my life. And as you probably know, we've all reached that stage in our lives where we're washed up athletes, and golf is really the only sport that's left for us to play. So my golf travels and experiences have definitely picked up a lot more, I'd say, since maybe about 2021. And along with getting out into the golf space more, you know, via traveling and just meeting people, I've also had the itch to get into the content space. And for about a year or two, I never really knew what my niche was going to be. And then in about 2022, the vision of combining my passion for woodworking and golf and also a little bit of photography, which I picked up along the way. I would say back in 22, uh, that's when the vision for rustic golf provisions came together. And um, I'd be happy to answer other, you know, questions about that when we get to that in the interview.

SPEAKER_00

So uh teaching, um, I for a while I thought I wanted to teach myself. Um tell me math. I have struggled with math mightily. And I've got a I've got a daughter now who's in the fourth grade, and the way she does math compared to how I was taught to do math is completely different. Like, I don't know when that change happened, but was math just something you were always drawn to in school and wanted to just teach? Like, tell tell me about how that came to be.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so my family is full of engineers, architects. We're all very math-minded people. I think we just tend to think linearly. We like to solve problems. Everything is just black and white for us. There's, you know, no gray areas in what we want to do. So I'm the only teacher, or I think my grandma was a history teacher decades ago, but I was the first person to really go down the teaching route for math. So up until my senior year of high school, I really was unsure of what I wanted to go into college for. I had a really good calculus teacher my senior year of high school, and that sort of made the light bulb go off in my head of, okay, I think I want to be a high school math teacher. And I also had a lot of great, she was a woman, but I also had other um great male teachers that taught other subjects that in high school, I took these elective classes that I didn't even really need to graduate, and I didn't really have any interest in them going into it, but my male teachers were really good and they turned out to be some of my favorite classes. So I wanted to combine that with my calculus teacher, and that was going into my undergrad. I wanted to be a high school math teacher, and then throughout my undergrad, I had some other great professors along the way, and that sort of to started to give me a preview of okay, maybe professor life could be a better fit for me. But when I graduated college at 22, I knew I had to get my feet wet, just get into the work space and got through four years of teaching high school, probably some of the most stressful years of my life. But along the way, I got my master's with the intent of hopefully looking for college jobs. And I got a job at Community College of Rhode Island. It's the only community college in Rhode Island, and I think we're one of the biggest ones in New England. So we serve a pretty diverse population. And for me, having a public high school experience, the majority of the students that I have right now are the students that I probably would have had in high school. So I'm just catching them at a bit of a later stage in life, I'd say. And so what do you what are you primarily teaching at the community college level? It varies semester by semester. We typically try to keep a fixed schedule, um, but our classes range from anything from developmental math up through calculus. I I'm able to teach all of them. I think in my eight years of teaching there, I think I've probably taught about seven or eight different subject matters, but it's a very wide range of actual subjects.

SPEAKER_00

Nice. How is uh doing math remotely, how do you make sure that the students are cheating?

SPEAKER_01

We have a lot of guardrails in place where you can use a like a respondus monitored, you can use a lockdown browser that prevents them from using uh you know the tools that we're on the lookout for. So also, um, you know, I also make myself available for virtual office hours. So back when COVID hit back in 2020, we really had to transition so fast that we were holding our classes live on Zoom. And about a year or two after that, after we were more settled into the online approach, then our online classes went back to being asynchronous, which means that you're posting the material online and they're just doing it sort of at their own pace, but you still have to give them weekly updates and benchmarks and deadlines that they have to keep up with. So it's definitely evolving and it's you know, it's very tricky these days with what's going on in technology.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. Well, um, so this is a golf podcast. This is the most that we've ever talked about higher education on this show, but that's one of the things I love about it is it's kind of a a rudderless ship, and we can talk about whatever we want to talk about. Um, so you mentioned that you've played golf your entire life. Uh I think you said you're 34 years old. Um, what what did early uh early golf look like for young Aaron Schrank?

SPEAKER_01

Uh to my knowledge, I think he was around eight or nine years old. Uh, my dad was the one that really put a golf club in my hand for the first time. And I was also playing baseball, Little League, at the time. So had to try to make time for both. I think golf was more of a summer sport because that's when I got my break from baseball. To my knowledge, I think I really started picking up a club when I went to, I'm not sure you've probably never heard of this facility in Providence, Rhode Island, but it's called Buttonhole. Anyone in Rhode Island knows that that is pretty much where a lot of kids start their golf journeys. They do clinics, they do summer camps, they've got a range there, they have a part three short course. So it's a really great place to uh get settled in. I even go there sometimes to still play the short course. So I think I did a couple summers of golf camps just to really get the basics down. And then I would say by about maybe age, 11 or so, I was out, you know, playing nine-hole rounds at some public courses. It was really all public courses for me for those first couple years. And then maybe when I was 12 or 13, I, you know, graduated to playing an 18-hole course for the first time. But I still have memories of the usual courses that my dad would take me to. It was usually within, you know, 20 minutes of where we lived. And then by that point, I was in high school, I was in college, so I was losing my access to the golf course. And then when I was in that stage of my life, kind of going through high school, my parents and I, we did have a membership at uh uh Quinnesset Country Club, which is one of the private courses here in Rhode Island. I had I we were on that membership for I would say a little bit over a decade when I turned 26. I think that was their official age that you were not eligible to be a child on the membership anymore. So that ended for me about eight years ago. And at that point, I mean, it was a great period for me to learn the etiquette of the game, just meet some people, get the sh the social aspect out of it. But over the years, I sort of got tired of playing the same course over and over. And I know I sound kind of spoiled by saying that because it was part of a family membership, but looking back on it, I would I'm glad that I didn't look at a another course to get, you know, like an under 30 membership. I'm glad that I've sort of I've started to branch out and be more of an adventurous golfer and get out and play virtually every public course in Rhode Island. I think I've only got about one or two left for to my knowledge. And now I like to go upstate to Massachusetts. I like to uh just explore any many op as many opportunities as I can. And I think social media has also opened up a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, as as uh all the negativity that is around social media, I like to think there's some positives, like you and I talking right now, um, exists largely because of Instagram. Um, so there are relationships that come to be. I mean, me and Robbie and being on the whole story podcast, like we were talking about in the pre-show, I know them because of social media, and they saw my content from out at Landman, and then I ended up on their show, and that's how this evolved to me having my own show. So, yeah, yeah, there's lots of bad things about social media, but there's also a lot of really, really good things that come out of it. Absolutely. What is what does golf look like? So, Rhode Island, I have I have a list of of states or my goal uh is to play golf in every single state. Um, and Rhode Island is one that I have not checked off yet. What does the golf scene look like there in Rhode Island?

SPEAKER_01

It is, I would say it's pretty diverse. It also depends on, I guess, what your tastes in architecture may be. If you consider yourself a historian, you really admire maybe like a Donald Ross design, you will find that here. The majority of them are private. We only have two public Ross designs here, which I would say are definitely worth checking out. You're gonna get a mix of coastal courses because we do have a lot of ocean access, hence why we're called the Ocean State. But as you get into the sticks a little bit more, you could find some target golf, you could find uh some links style. I mean, I would say you could virtually, I mean, you can only drive through Rhode Island in about 45 minutes or maybe an hour, depending on what what direction you're going. So if I had to guess, I would say there's maybe about three or four different personalities that you would find on these golf courses. But overall, there's not many publics. Like when I said earlier, I played every public course. People might say, Oh my god, that's insane. But I've had 25 years to do it, and I'd say there's maybe about 45 to 50 of them. So it's it's easily accomplished.

SPEAKER_00

It's yeah, it's not as daunting as it sounds. Yeah, easily accomplished. If yeah, if you knock out a couple a year, then you've you've done all 50 of them.

SPEAKER_01

Um But if you were if you were to come up here, I mean you tell me what what what style or taste would you be looking for, then I could maybe guide you towards a certain course.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. What's your favorite track there in Rhode Island?

SPEAKER_01

Um public or private?

SPEAKER_02

Both do both.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. Um I'll start with private. I mean, I haven't gotten a ton of access to a lot of private courses, but I do have a buddy of mine that's a member at Warwick Country Club. That is one of the uh uh private Ross courses here. It's a very unique design, has insanely nice views of the Narragansett Bay area, which is you know one of the big inlets of water that we have here. It's not necessarily open ocean, but that's that's a great spot that I've been to a few times. It's also a par, to my knowledge. I think it's only a par 69. I think there's only one par five, but it is it is very tough, even though the length might be deceiving. So that's that's probably one of my favorite privates. And then as for publics, I don't there's a lot of courses here that I don't play repeatedly. I I think the one course I played the most is actually the first public course that I remember playing, and it was Exeter Country Club. I haven't been there in a while, but it's sort of dead center of the state. It's kind of in the sticks. But what I like about the course is not only the nostalgia of, you know, really starting there, but it has a really cool layout where the whole front nine is the boundary of the golf course, and then the back nine is the interior. So that's the routing gets a little interesting as you get deeper into the round. And uh, I also, when I was there, uh I also worked a job there for a couple summers when I was in college, and I actually uh worked with the buddy that I mentioned before, the one that's a member at Warwick. He was not even into golf up until when I was working at Exeter in the summer of 2012. I think he was just like desperately looking for any kind of work that summer, and I got him a job at Exeter Country Club, and he just got a set of clubs and figured why not take advantage of the free golf that they're giving us. And uh I remember one day I was working in the pro shop and our pro shop overlooked the ninth green, and he was I think he was playing nine holes before he started his shift, and he's coming down the ninth fairway with these clubs that he bought. I don't even know what kind they were. It must have been his second or third round ever, and he was a lefty just like me, so I was kind of analyzing his swing at times, and he he hits his drive in the fairway, and I'm watching from the pro shop and he pulls out an iron from the fairway, maybe about 150 yards, and he just throws an absolute dart to about like one foot. And and I'm watching this from the pro shop. He's playing by himself, he walks up, he taps it in, and then he comes up to me, he goes, Dude, I love golf. And it's just it, I mean, I I would argue that that was when he officially caught the bug, and then he started golf you know, halfway into my golf journey, and I would argue that he's probably two to three times as much of a sicko at than I am. So it's it's yeah, Exeter kind of has a soft spot. It's not the most pure golf course, but I think it just has a lot of sentimental value to me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, it sounds like some core memories were made there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that I think that's how I would really define one of my favorite courses is I mean, you have to you obviously have to factor in the layout, some of the holes, the the design and everything, but I think you have to factor in the other stuff as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. That's that's very cool. Thanks for sharing that story. Yeah, he's I mean, if if you're only two or three rounds in and you're throwing darts, you you've you've got some God-given ability that a lot of us don't have and should probably take take the game pretty seriously. That's that's wild. Um, so you founded and created Rustic Golf Provisions, um, and and you mentioned at the outset that it's woodworking and then some photography. Uh, I'd like to hear a little bit more about the woodworking background before we go into everything that rustic golf provisions is. Is that a hobby that's always been yours even growing up, or is that something that's more recent? When did you have an interest or develop an interest into woodworking?

SPEAKER_01

I did not really get into woodworking uh, you know, with the hand on the hands-on experience until about 2023. So I've always been around DIY projects. I've done house projects at my parents' house growing up. I uh bought a condo before we bought the house that we're in now. So I'm pretty I feel like I'm pretty handy when it comes to carpentry around the house projects, but woodworkers are a different beast because I mean it requires different tools, different precision, different methods. And I would say I think COVID was really when was a time period when people just were looking for new hobbies because there was nothing else to do. So I would say back in 2021, I took my first golf trip, which was to Pinehurst, and that trip alone really opened my eyes to the adventure side of golf. Like, wow, I need to explore the golf space more. Woodworking had not really entered my mind yet, but I that sort of lit the fire under me of okay, I think I want to maybe explore some kind of content. There was just something about that Pinehurst trip that really got that, got the gears grinding for me. Yeah. And then about a year my fiancé and I were in the condo that we were in prior to this, just about a mile down the road. And there was really not much going on in the world still. We were sort of in those COVID years. We, I think it was winter time here, so I was indoors a lot. And then I just went down the YouTube rabbit hole of DIY videos, specifically woodworking. And uh I would say all of 22, I'm the type of guy when I wake up, I have my morning coffee, and I just want to throw on YouTube and just watch anything DIY related. And uh I just eventually started watching all the famous woodworking YouTube creators, and they weren't necessarily making golf-themed items, but they were making uh items that can be golf themed, like cutting boards or coasters or picture frames. So I basically just watched as many YouTube videos as I as I could. I typically make the joke that I graduated from YouTube university, everything is self-taught. I I did I did learn a lot of the basic tools and materials from these house carpentry projects, but there are tools that I had never used before that only apply to woodworking. So I just got to the point where I would pull up a YouTube video of of a guy or a woman that was gonna make a certain item, and I just got to the point where I could predict what tool they were gonna use next. I just I could see the script for how the whole thing was gonna go. So I felt very educated in that sense, but the biggest problem at that time was that I didn't have a workshop, I didn't have that dedicated space to really master the craft. So early 2023, my fiance and I were ready to get out of the condo and actually buy a home. And for me, it was non-negotiable that we would get a two-car garage, which I'm in right now. And my end of the deal was that I would get half of it as my workshop. So uh we house hunted for about six months and then we eventually landed on the one that we're in in late 23. So up until that point, I was just hammering YouTube, you know, even watching Instagram or TikTok creators. And I just felt like I had such a solid knowledge base that once we got into our house, I spent that first winter that we were here. The the garage was pretty clean. You know, the workbench behind me was actually the like, you know, the vintage workbench that the previous couple had left. So that was a nice little like centerpiece. But everything that you see around it, I had put up that winter just to start making it somewhat functional. And then early 24, I came up and I also had the name Rustic Gol provisions in mind in 22. I had everything ready to go, but I wasn't ready to go full throttle with it until I was able to at least get a shop going and get some experience.

SPEAKER_00

So in and so that you got the shop, and then you had the branding already, or the name, at least, for the for the for what the business would be. And you design and create these beautiful wooden bag tags. How did you decide that the bag tag was going to be kind of kind of your thing? I mean, it's it's prominent in everything that you do. What was it about the bag tag that that drew you to that as your item that you were going to be the expert in doing?

SPEAKER_01

Well, to be very honest with you, the bag tags were not even, I didn't even think they were going to be a focal point of anything. So I had the idea of rustic golf provisions. I was very set on that name and branding. And originally I wanted it to only be the intersection of woodworking and golf, which it still is, but while I was going down the YouTube woodworking rabbit hole, I also got sucked into the photography rabbit hole. So I bought I bought my first camera um back in 22. I was just gathering all my materials. I was just waiting on that workshop to be ready. And I got enough experience with the photography that I thought, okay, maybe I could be an entry-level photographer. So I decided to make those three parts of Rustic Golper Visions. And if you look at my current logo, you'll see a mesh of uh golf on a T, but it's actually uh a saw blade on a screw, and then that's all embedded into a vintage-looking camera. That is the way that it's been since the start, but I'm actually going through a bit of a rebrand right now. Um, I do want to still do golf photography, but I'm working on separating the the woodworking and the photography. So rustic golf provisions is still gonna be here. It's just gonna have a new logo, and that's strictly gonna be woodworking. And then I would like to maybe watch the photography in the future as its own entity.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. And the photography, is that something you're doing? Action shots of people playing, or is it more landscape and and actually capturing the course as it sits in its current state?

SPEAKER_01

It could be either. I I usually just bring my camera. It's uh if you know anyone who's a photographer, they'll probably tell you that it is very hard to shoot and play at the same time.

SPEAKER_00

I was gonna ask about that.

SPEAKER_01

It's it's I mean, honestly, I I my ideal time to actually use the camera is I I need to be in a cart if I'm using the camera. And I would prefer that it's a very, very slow round because then you get to take your time. If you're playing with one other person or you you have to keep up the pace, photography is just really hard. I mean, you'll still get some good action shots, but if there's that one angle that you're dying to get, but it you have to maybe walk somewhere to get it, you're just not going to get that when you have to keep up the pace. So I tried to go back and forth between just playing and just shooting, but to answer your question, it's really either. I mean, if I I would prefer to have the I love golf photography because if you're doing action shots, the subject is right there. I would be a terrible basketball. I tried using my camera at a volleyball tournament and once and it just came out so blurry. You have to be on top of everything. So I would say it's majority action shots, but if I go to a bucket list course, which I brought it to a few times, like taking it to Scotland and St. Andrews, like those those pictures are just ingrained in my memory forever.

SPEAKER_00

That's cool. That's cool. So so tell me about rustic golf provisions and then and and the bag tags. Like what was it that uh allowed for that kind of to become a thing?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so so rustic golf provisions, now that I'm starting to separate them, rustic golf provisions will just be the woodworking aspect. So originally when I launched the page and I had enough experience, I still didn't really know what direction I was gonna take it. I originally had wanted it to be more of a blog style where I would say, okay, in this video, I'm gonna build this. It was more meant to be like inspirational, maybe get people to get into their own shops or try these things, you know, show people how easy it is to take something simple like a a cardboard box from your favorite drink, and you can turn it into a sleeve of golf balls. And uh and then one of the uh projects that I was just gonna tinker with for fun was making a back tag on exotic eighth-inch hardwood because I I've seen it before, but I just felt like I wasn't seeing enough of it, so I thought that could potentially be a corner of the market maybe to get into. And so I bought my first laser engraver, I think it was in early 24, and it was a it's a pretty decently priced um beginner-level engraver where it's a very small workspace. You can really only fit one tag in there at a time. And back when I started it, I was doing everything from I'd source, you know, a sheet of eighth-inch hardwood, I would then have to uh cut out maybe about a three by four inch section, I'd then have to laser out the little oval that the strap goes through, or I could uh or I could just cut a plain circle with a drill press. And then I'd also have to round the corner. So even just prepping the pieces in itself for one tag is a bit of a process, but I would I had no really I had no clients or customers for it, so I was okay with taking the time to uh do everything like that. And then the laser engraver I was using at first was very uh user-friendly because it simply runs through Bluetooth. You just do everything from your phone, all the commands are sent through Bluetooth, you just have to get everything adjusted, and then I started posting a couple step-by-step videos of here's how you make a wooden bag tag, and it just seems like it took on a life of its own after that, where I was sending them to one person at a time, and then not too long after that, I was getting a request for 50 bag tags for an event, and then within my first year, I was already getting tags of a hundred or orders of a hundred plus tags for events. I've gotten orders for bachelor parties, bachelorettes, I mean, you name it at this point. So it it started to ramp up very fast, and I felt like, okay, I think I've unlocked this corner of the market here, and then it just I realized very quickly that I can't be uh prepping every single piece like this. I need to speed up this process. So I'm now at a point where I still use that laser engraver just for small batches, maybe one-offs, but I got another laser engraver, which is over here in my shop where it's a bigger, bigger unit. I can fit eight tags in there. If I'm just doing a repetitive design, I can put eight tags in there, get everything centered, and then it goes to work for an hour. So it helps me multitask. And then with the amount of tags I sometimes have to do, instead of prepping every piece by myself, I don't have a CNC machine. I don't know how to use one, and I don't have the space here. So I am now able to send off my sheets off to somebody that does the CNC work for me, and then they send me back the blanks, and then I work with the customer on what's your design on the front and the back. Sometimes they'll do a generic logo on one side for everybody, and then I'll do custom items on the back side if they want their picture, their a QR code to their Instagram page. I've also started to uh do like mini sponsorships for events. I I'm actually doing one in about a month for an event in Chicago. So it's a bunch of influencers and creators that are participating in it. And I'm gonna make a custom tag for each player, and it's gonna have their name and the QR code to their website. So it's been amazing to see uh the different occasions that I can make these tags for and just to see people's reactions because they they're just blown away when they see it, and it that they fe they feel like they uh they want to treat it so they want to treat it so well that they would feel bad if it broke or something.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. So it's wild to me that you can laser engrave a QR code into wood, that it is that um detailed and that precise that the edges uh would still allow for a QR code to pull up. I mean, how how deep is the laser cutting?

SPEAKER_01

Well, so I've got a sample here. So this is I haven't put the finish on this yet, and I'll I'll cover the name on here, but this is this is a piece of mahogany.

SPEAKER_00

So this is So for the listeners, he's he's holding up one of the bag tags, and you can see the QR code plain as day. Like that's so how deep is that laser cutting into that mahogany?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, you can choose the depth. So on both of my units, they ask you for a percentage depth cut, and I had to do a lot of trial and error. I had to really fine-tune all the settings, but generally once you get it mastered, I generally use the same depth. It's usually anywhere between 10 and 15%. Yeah. If you if you want to do a, I don't really do many full cut-throughs because it does generate a lot of smoke. I also have what's called a diode laser. So that was one thing that I had to learn about early on. There are different types of lasers in terms of their strength and their capabilities. To my knowledge, a diode laser is not necessarily the strongest. It's it's good for surface engraving, but if you want to be doing cut-throughs, stuff like that, you're better off using a CNC router or maybe like a carbon laser. I forgot what the other types are. So I would say for my situation, a diode is gonna get the job done. But the depth, I would say 10 to 15 percent. And it only does it in one pass as well.

SPEAKER_00

Oh wow. Okay. So the other thing I was gonna that I noticed is the QR code was incredibly distinguishable from a color difference. Is that something you fill in and with color, or is the mahogany once you get through the surface layer, is it just a darker wood?

SPEAKER_01

It's yeah, I mean, the so the the file that I upload, that has to be in black and white. Obviously, it doesn't engrave any color, but I think to answer your question, once you sort of penetrate the the surface of the wood like mahogany, the other wood I use right now is cherry. So I think once you penetrate the surface, maybe you'll get some tones of whatever the wood species is. But generally, any cut like this is gonna come out pretty a very, very dark brown. And then when I put the uh tongue oil finish on it and let it cure for about a day or two, it just makes everything pop even more. So I actually I can I'll step over here really quickly. I have a back tag from the same event, and you can actually see what it looks like uh before and after the oil. I'll describe the other one here.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah. I'd love to see yeah. If you want to step over and grab that real quick, that'd be fine.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so so these are both uh mahogany, and so these are uh two uh individuals playing in that event I talked about. So this is the uh pre-finish of mahogany, and then this is the after.

SPEAKER_00

So you So once you put that finish on it, it pops big time. Yeah, does that protect it or just create additional longevity for the for the wood piece, or how fragile are they?

SPEAKER_01

I would say it gives it a little bit of protection. I mean, at the end of the day, uh you're just you're just burning into the wood. So I think I think if you were to leave a raw piece out like this, if it maybe gets a little wet, it will it won't soak it up too much. I mean, if you leave this thing out and it just gets absolutely dumped on, then yeah, I think it would need some protection. But I if I would say it's half for protection, but then half just for like the the luxurious and the pop of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So how many now have you made for people that have uh are have their own provision? I know that's something you do on your social media. What is what does that process look like? And what does it take for someone to be for you to request someone to be uh part of your page and and showcase them and then provide their provision? And if you can expound on that, what does it mean to have a provision?

SPEAKER_01

Yes. Uh well, so first of all, I uh want people to know that I do not hand pick, I mean, there's no there's no vetting process to uh be a part of my what I call the provisionary collective or my version of TPC. I want to make it very clear that anyone is welcome to join. All you have to do is reach out to me. If you uh see an interview with somebody that you know, that's your signal to reach out to me. And uh I came up with the idea for that probably a couple months after the back tags really took off. I mean, I just I could genuinely tell that people were really into them. So one of my content strategies that I'd been I'd been looking for an idea for it, and I think I found it with the interview series. I wanted to have something ongoing that would sort would start to build that sense of community. So once I got the whole back tag process down and realized that, okay, I think I can batch these out relatively quicker than I thought, I decided to offer a free back tag for anyone in the golf space, whether you're a creator, you are, you know, you're you're a podcast host or you own your own brand of any sort, anybody is welcome to join. So the criteria is that you reach out to me and I make a back tag for you in exchange for an interview. And uh I let people know that it's not a long form podcast. I just do, I actually use Riverside like we're using right now, but I use a slightly different version of it. And we only chat for about 10 minutes, and then for the final product, I trim it down to a minute of about sound bites. So just a quick introduction to every person that I interview and uh the name of it uh to answer that last question of like, what's your provision? So that kind of goes back to the name of my my brand or my my business, Rustic Golf Provisions, where I wanted rustic golf to be the beginning portion of it. And then I really thought about that last word for a while. And I've told the story in a another interview where I had a Google sheet of about a hundred plus different words of like, okay, what do I want that last word to be? And when I got to provisions, it just sounded so perfect. So I ran with it. And then the more I thought about it, I'm like, wow, there's a lot of words that you can sort of extract from provisions. And so you've got pro or pro uh provisional, like in golf, or you know, you have a vision for something. And I just felt like my my vision for a lot of this was finally coming together. And I decided that okay, everybody that becomes a member is instead of calling them a visionary, they become a provisionary just to keep it on brand. So I just strongly believe that as not as golfers, but just as people who get into cut into content and social media, we're clearly doing this for a reason. Nobody put a gun to our hands that said, hey, you need to start posting. You clearly have an idea or a vision, or in my case, a provision that, okay, this is what I'm passionate about. And this has come up in my conversations with people, how golf is one of those very unique sports that you can have an intersection with virtually anything woodworking, photography, art, music, I mean, you name it. So the whole point of the series is to just get people a platform to talk about not only their golf obsession, but what else what other things are passionate about and how that can intertwine with golf. So it's gone very well, as you know, as a podcast host, you like to have a backlog going. And uh, I also am starting to realize that my online teaching experience and just teaching experience in general has helped a lot for that because it just helps you stay on track. I always hate feeling behind on anything, so I uh I want to have things ready to post in the future. Um, and uh it's gone very well. I hit over a hundred people being interviewed by now, and uh I like where it's going. Um and the way I kind of view it is I think a 30-minute conversation uh, you know, with somebody is valuable enough for me to uh give them a free back tag and ship it to them for free. I basically look at it as like my marketing strategy. I don't put money into ads anywhere. I just think this gesture of the tag, the interview, the exposure speaks for itself. And I I just think word of mouth really is more powerful than people realize.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, no, totally agree. I mean, that's so uh I in like for me it's stickers, right? Like I I've I've tried to create multiple different designs of stickers with the off-the-deck logo just because that's kind of fun. Like, I don't have near the expertise or what I think is a large amount of patience that you likely possess um to do the woodworking, and I'm fascinated by it. I mean, uh the what I've looked at on your your Instagram account and the just the imagery that you share really is incredible of the product that you make. What what order was it that came in, whether it be for an event or for a private club, that you were like, oh, okay, this is this is a thing now. Like I can I can actually market this, and there are people that will place large orders. When did when what was that like? And and who, if you can share when what order was that when you're like, okay, yeah, this is a thing.

SPEAKER_01

Um I would say so last I think summer last year, summer of 25 was really when the bake orders started to kick off. And uh, I mean, though those orders were coming in early in the year, because I recommend that people give me a couple months' notice. So I would say I think my I think it was really my first hundred plus order. Um it was for a tournament actually here in Rhode Island. I didn't really the person who reached out to me wasn't really from I I think I think his son-in-law followed me on Instagram, but no one that would no one that was really affiliated with this tournament really was like in deep in Instagram. Like they weren't a brand owner, they weren't a content creator, they were sort of a I don't want to say an average golfer, but they were just they were just you know, anyone hosting a tournament, and I'm like, wow, like these people had the courage to, or they or these people are putting their trust in me to make a hundred back tags. And I th I think that that dopamine of of a hundred of you know doing a hundred tags was very special. Um so I would say from like a quantity standpoint that one, you know, really meant a lot to me. Cause then it just it just proves that okay, like like you start to build that portfolio from it. And then late last summer, it was I think in August of 25, I did another batch. I believe it was 130 tags. And so that must have been like my biggest order to date. And uh that one was a really cool event. It was out at uh Goat Hill Park in San Diego. Oh, yeah. And that one was really cool because that tournament was hosted by a brand that I've also done small projects for before. So I knew the audience very well. They were hosting an event at Goat Hill Park, which I had actually been to for the first time a month or two prior to that. And going back to how social media just connects you with all these people, about a year ago, I went on a 10-day trip out west where I went to Utah, San Diego, and Arizona. I did a three-legg trip basically on my own dime, and it was just a meetup with all these pockets of people that I had met through social media. And when I was in San Diego, if you've talked to anyone from San Diego, they have such a tight-knit community out there. I mean, you can get any combination of golf creators together out there, and they're just gonna have such a blast. And they we got we had Goat Hill on the itinerary for one day, and I was really looking forward to that. Loved every second of it, and it's just like one of the best muni experiences you'll ever see out there. So, to be making back tags for an event at Goat Hill Park two months later, and I'd say about half of the people playing in the tournament were like some of my Instagram friends, that was really cool to uh have that all come together. So I would say for back tags, that has been probably some of the most memorable commissions I've done. And then I as much as I love the back tags, I don't want to only be known as the back tag guy, which it is it is cool to hear that that recognition, but I want people to remember too, like I also make picture frames. I have really gotten into making um other displays like for your ball markers or for your pencils, all your collectibles that you want put up somewhere. And uh one thing that I've started to tap into is maybe wholesale accounts with golf courses. That's something that I think will become more of a focal point for me in the years to come, but the back tags are not going anywhere.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And so how long does it take?

SPEAKER_01

you to make 130 let's just assume they're all the exact same design right what is what is the timeline look like on that kind of project that well so that that's that's the very key detail is is there any customization or is it all repeatable so if it's 130 back tags they're all exactly the same it also depends on if they want front and back if they want a QR code that sort of slows things down so to my knowledge that those back tags for the 130 it didn't have a QR code so the de the design wasn't that intricate so if I'm putting eight tags into my unit um eight tags at a time I mean I'm not doing I'm not spending you know consecutive days doing it but if I if you add up everything I would say if it probably takes about maybe twelve hours. I mean the the good thing about my my shop is that I have the big engraver which which can do eight tags at a time. If I really want to multitask I can also bring you know single pieces over to my other unit behind me and I can just but the thing about that is that once it once it's done engraving after about two minutes you have to swap the next one out. So you sort of have to be available for that. And then there's then there's there's the other on the other tedious task of you have to put the oil on all of them so you have to get them all laid out you have to make sure they're elevated they're they're getting fresh air you also have to make the straps you know you have to cut you know about a 10 inch piece of faux leather and then you have to tie a double knot. So like it takes a while to do that too like my my nails will start bleeding at some point and it's it's a tedious process but I just tell people if you can at least give me maybe two months notice I could I could do a hundred tags in that time. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome. Well I yeah I'm I'm I'm learning a lot today and I'm already like man I don't know when my next golf trip is but this is something I would like to include as because I'm having I'm going on a golf trip in like two weeks so it's probably not enough lead time to try and have back tags made but I've had a blast putting all the swag together. We're doing ball markers I'm doing Glencaron glasses um it's been it's been fun to put all that stuff together and I'd love to do back tags for the next trip that I put together.

SPEAKER_01

What's what's going on and while I have you here I was going to ask if you would like your own back tag for TPC. We'll we'll chat after this we'll design it and then we'll get you into the interview series for me.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah I would love to absolutely yeah yeah and I'll display it proudly right behind me or even on my bag as long as long as I know my bag's not going to be uh too roughed up depending on where I'm playing or where I'm going but yeah I would love to have one that'd be incredible.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah what so what's I'm I'm rambling about my provision now but I want to hear about yours eventually.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah yeah I'll have to give that some thought so what is what is in the future you mentioned the frames and displays and wholesale accounts is that something where you're calling on a course and asking them like like let's take Bandon Dunes for instance. They've got however however many golf courses it is if you want to buy a ball mark display for all your ball marks from the different courses there is that kind of the train of thought with with that process and trying to market the displays to wholesale accounts yeah so that I mean first of all abandoned dunes is obviously like a dream relationship to have so I've actually talked to a few people that are in their pro shops already but I have to still manage my expectations so what one thing that I really need to like before I really get into the weeds and start getting into conversations with pros and other courses is I need to educate myself on what structures there are because there's that lots of different ways you can do it.

SPEAKER_01

You can do tiered wholesale accounts where if your retail value reaches a certain threshold then your discount changes. So I'm I'm gonna take a good amount of time to figure out that process. What I'm really trying to find right now and I've developed a few relationships just like with some nine whole courses around here because I think if you come across any Rhode Islander, whether it's here in the state or out of state, I think having that common background of being from Rhode Island or New England just kind of instantly puts you in a good spot with them. Yeah. I think what I'm really just looking for at this point is any course or country club that's as willing to take me on as like a guinea pig and kind of just like figure out the process along the way. So you know if I like I had a a course around here I've been talking to their head pro who's also in touch with their new superintendent who really makes the the calls at the end of the day. They just redesigned their their flags so they put new flags on every hole they want to start selling their flags in their Pro Shop and they might want me to make some frames that will be sold with the flag. So you know I'll I'll go chat with them next time I'm there and you know I'll get a sample I'll make I'll figure out what kind of frame do they want do they want it to be like a shadow box style or do they want it to be like a just a regular frame it's really just you know I make a sample and then figure out a quantity and then as long as it's reasonably priced for both of us I I think it's just one of those things that I'm gonna have to figure out along the way as long as somebody is willing to take me on as you know that that guinea pig.

SPEAKER_00

And on the frames is that something where you're using your also using your laser and and making it a custom frame with imagery or word? I mean it can be anything right with that laser is that what you're doing is it is it fully custom to because I'm I mean my my wheels are already turning I'm like okay because I have a stack of flags that aren't even framed yet um and having something potentially custom on that frame that's special to me that is part of that story with that flag is a really cool concept.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah the the frames are totally customizable in every way the the first batch of picture frames I made back in this past fall I made them three generic sizes. It was for eight by tens, eleven by fourteens, 16 by 20s, and then you can also have you know prints that fit in there all the way or you can do a smaller print that has the white uh border or mat around it. But right so for a custom frame it can be customized to the size it can, you know, for the actual frame you can have a very thick or wide frame you can go very thin if you want. If you want the engraving you know to show up on the front of one of the legs uh you probably have to go with a a width of maybe at least like an inch or two. And so yeah I mean like the laser engraver can hit any area. If you also for example want to put a flag on maybe like a piece of like plywood or something give it a little bit of a border before the frame catches it you can engrave whatever you want onto the plywood. I mean the laser engraver can virtually hit any spot so it just comes down to what does the client want. So yeah happy to happy to frame whatever you whatever you need framed.

SPEAKER_00

That's awesome. Well Aaron I I appreciate you taking time to chat today. I I love what you're doing uh especially of the bag tags and I'm excited to keep up with all the the framing work and and your business as it continues to grow.

SPEAKER_01

Um got a couple quick questions for you and then we'll let you get out of here um what's your the favorite new course to you in the last 12 months some a place you had not played yet that you recently played in the last 12 months let's see here if you if you had asked me uh last 24 months I probably would have given you some different answers but if we're sticking to 12 months uh we'll go 24 let's go 24 all right we'll we'll do 24 then we'll we'll come back to 12 so the last 12 months I'll get to in a sec. So 24 months um I have to I have to give it to within the last 24 month period I was able to go to Bandon and uh St. Andrews. So those were in those those two trips happened in about a five month span. So it's it's hard to ignore those so as for so I guess if I were to pick one course out of those I hate to say it but I'm gonna actually go away from Bandon. I'm gonna go and I'm actually looking at the flag for this course right now on my garage door it's in St. Andrews it's not the old course it's the castle course. Okay and I know Robbie is in the background listening to this because I believe Robbie and Jonathan from Best Ball they went to St. Andrews and they also played the castle course and it is one of the most mind blowing courses I have ever seen. It it just makes your jaw hit the ground. It's like if Bandon and Tory Pines and Cabot Cliffs if they all had a baby that would be the castle course it was my word okay yeah that's awesome I need to chat I need to check that out I'm not uh read up on the the castle course and it I guess I need to look up some pictures too it sounds like it's incredible. It's a it's a relatively new course so I I can't remember the exact timeline but I think it's only maybe 20 to 25 years old so it obviously does not have it doesn't right I it doesn't have the history whoops one of my frames just one of my frames just fell um yeah it doesn't have the history that you obviously think of um I mean the old course it's it obviously is a is a must play for the for that aspect it's you gotta check off that whole experience. But the course itself from a design standpoint and just like the amount of goosebumps it gives you and and and the the really tough conditions that it has out there because a lot of it is just right on the water. Okay. That that course kicked my butt but I wouldn't have had it any other way because the because the the pictures I that was one of those courses where I had the picture I had the camera with me and we were walking we had one caddy in our group but it was one of those rounds where it wasn't super busy out there so we could actually take our time I could get my my shots with the camera and I I still pull out those pictures and look at them at least once a week from the castle course. That's awesome. That's awesome uh what's your favorite club in the bag right now um I would have to say my four hybrid it's a tailor made tailor-made sim two max uh hybrid I mean that club came out I don't know what when did the when did the sim twos come out I was gonna say like six years ago maybe yeah I mean I'm assuming all the all the sim twos or the maxes were around the same time. So I actually got that club about two years ago. It was new but obviously four years old and uh I just I've I preferred to hit that over a four iron um you know no matter the situation but the reason I'm choosing that club is because I hit one of my favorite shots with it. Um it was actually on the St. Andrew strip how we were on 18 coming down at the end and I hit a really good drive it actually if you know the the con the path that goes across one and eighteen at the old course my ball managed to land on the path it took a huge hop. It basically went almost on to the green and so I don't know if you can remember the the 18th green there how uh it's got this very big valley in like the front left area. Yep and and then the pin was in the back right and my ball was down in that valley. So I had a really uh big decision of do I bump and run this do I put it do I flop it there's so many uh ways you could approach that you know 35 yard shot I had coming up and my caddy just said do whatever you want I mean I he he just said just go with your gun so I pulled out the four hybrid and I uh I just basically putted it from there and I put it to about maybe like three feet and it just it just felt really good off the face. I feel like I had really good control of it. You can you know take other factors out of it. And the cool part of that shop was not only did it feel good off the face but there were a couple pedestrians either the people in front of us in our group or other people walking the street you get a little bit of a round of applause for the shot and oh nice that's awesome. You get to give a little salute a little tip of the cap. So that was a that was probably one of the coolest moments of my golf life but you can cut this if you want but I miss the birdie putt no that's that's that's still awesome though that you get to have that moment at St.

SPEAKER_00

Andrews. That's that's really really cool. Where you're located you're surrounded by some incredible golf courses if you had to pick one as a bucket list bucket list course that you would like to check off what would that be that's up there around you anywhere around me. So like the Northeast or New England you say yeah yeah I mean you've got right there in your backyard basically you've got Wingfoot and Shinnecock and NGLA I mean that's what what would what would be one that you would want to check off if you could pick up I'm actually I'm actually glad that you brought up NGLA you're talking about uh National Golf links on Long Island.

SPEAKER_01

So that one I was actually in Long Island for the first time about I think it was last summer and I did play Montauk Downs which is the Muni there um but on that trip I remember we drove by NGLA and then I got into a rabbit hole of researching that course and I would say that I'm actually going to go come back to New England. So um I would say Sancity Head in Nantucket. Yeah I've actually I did go to Nantucket for the first time this past October so I've been researching a lot of shoulder season courses that are worth the trip and I've also discovered that I'm obsessed with taking a ferry to a round of golf. It's just one it's just one of those experiences I feel like every golfer has to have at least once and and and I'm not talking you know take a ferry and stay somewhere for a weekend like no it's a day trip. You ferry there you play golf and then you ferry back. So I went to Nantucket and I played Maya Comet in late October which is one of their few publics there. It was in great shape their rate goes down about 50% in the shoulder season and Sankey Head is obviously one of those more exclusive private courses more at the other end of the island but they've got the iconic uh lighthouse there but you know though that's where like Bill Belichick has a membership there. Like you got to know someone who'd know someone to get there. But from a from historical and also a photography standpoint I would say Sanquity Head was is probably my number one right now in this area.

SPEAKER_00

Love that great answer. Great answer. Aaron, thank you for taking time today to chat uh loved hearing everything about rustic golf provisions and the business that you are building um like I said fascinated to keep up with uh your continued success. Uh can't wait to come up with my own provision um and see what a bag tag looks like for off the deck. Uh but thank thanks for coming on the show. Yeah no problem.

SPEAKER_01

And when you answer what your provision is you really do not need to overthink it. I always tell people it's just the way I the when I ask people what's your provision, it's just my way of asking what are you contributing to the golf space and then just talk about whatever you've been doing all this time. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

I feel better about it now I might actually be able to form an answer because I was like man that's gonna be a tough one I'll have to give that a lot of thought.

SPEAKER_01

It's it's all right it's it's not an interrogation it's not a podcast we're just gonna we're just gonna shoot the breeze for about 10 or 15 minutes. Love it. Love it.

SPEAKER_00

Well for Aaron Schrank I'm Josh Decker and this has been another episode of Off the Deck

Head Shot

Josh Decker

Host