Hi everyone! It’s been a minute since I’ve had time to post so let’s dig back in. In this one I’ll catch you up with where we’ve been, where we are, and of course, where we’re going. Let’s get to it!

As we all know, building anything worthwhile requires a tremendous amount of hard work and patience. To a degree, that’s why the practice facility has always been my favorite part of golf. It’s a place where you can spend countless hours searching for the perfect swing. You’ll find it occasionally, which is also why the range is full of optimism and anticipation. Ironically, that range experience is best metaphor I can come up with to describe the past few months.

My last post left off with intent to talk about our first production run a bit. Unfortunately, the process didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d planned. That’s pretty predictable for start-ups given the to-do list is always a mile long and there are always things you just can’t see coming. Then, of course, with 2020 being such a weird year, the start-up hurdles were amplified in a host of different ways. This all led to bringing production in-house (literally) far earlier than anticipated so I could fix a few things, ensure we attain the level of quality we promise, and bring along some new ideas sooner rather than later.

With the proper resources now immediately at my disposal, we were able to work through a bunch of hurdles relatively quickly. At the same time, an unexpected benefit of the in-housing process was the ability to experiment with ideas on the fly. Rather than sketching something up, relaying the details, and waiting patiently for things to come back just to be able edit them further, I could now take sketches straight to concept and have the go/no-go thought process on the spot.

As it turns out, that experimentation is by far the best part of the making process. In fact, it reminds me of the anticipation of the driving range. You’re searching for something and have a general idea of what you’re looking for but it may take a long minute to properly find it. That process comes with lots of misses and mistakes but the hope of success being just around the corner drives you. And man, when you hit it on the sweet spot, its as pure a feeling as it gets. We’ve hit that mark quite a few times here lately and I honestly couldn’t be more excited to share the results.

From the beginning of this whole Nelson Hill experiment I’ve told people that it all started as a 30-year retirement project. That was as true then as it is now. Nothing worthwhile was ever built in a day but is done by slowly and systematically placing building blocks one at a time. And the best part? The project is never finished. Even when you find the secret in the dirt, you keep going with hope that you’ll find it again and again.

With that in mind, I’m going to work towards posting these on a monthly basis to keep everyone in the loop and up to speed. Until then, be well and thanks for reading!

Best // Eric

The 30-Year Experiment