Ep. 00 | The History of UGP + Who is Mac and Leo?

Leo
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Urban Golf Podcast. My name is Leo Rooney, and I'm sitting here with Mac Todd, Founder and CEO of Urban Golf Performance. We've been thinking about creating a podcast for a while. We have this amazing community of incredible people around us, and we've been thinking about what would happen if we just sit down and talk to them, and so that's what we've been doing. And Mac and I have really, really enjoyed these conversations because when you speak to high performers, regardless of their background, you realize that they all have a process. There's so many commonalities between high performers, whether they're musicians, basketball coaches or players or golf instructors, and so to notice these commonalities and connecting the dots have been fascinating to us, and that is why we're so excited to, to launch this podcast. These conversations are somewhat informal. We talked to our guests like we're sitting in a coffee shop, and in some of these episodes we throw you straight into the conversation right off the bat. The purpose of this intro episode is really about going over the history of Urban Golf Performance and a little bit more about Mac and I and our backgrounds. So why don't you start? Mac, talk to us about how UGP came about and the inception of this brand.

Mac
Yeah, gladly. I guess pretty much embarking on the eighth year of Urban Golf Performance. Started it back in February of 2013. Really without getting super long winded, I was a high level junior golfer, played college golf for a couple of different Division 1 programs. I went to IMG Academy, Leadbetter Academy in high school as well. So had a unique experience in golf where growing up in El Paso, Texas around some really amazing players. Rich Beem was our assistant pro before he won the PGA Championship. Had some PGA Tour players and winners and major champions that I got to grow up around. And then I went to IMG and was there with Casey Wittenberg who was the number one junior in the country, Paula Creamer, Julieta Granada. We had some really great players that IMG during that time, I got to see sort of a full bore sports performance academy that had everything under one roof for all sports. Then going in playing college golf, seeing what different programs were like, really, always super interested in team culture. And then I had a little stint on the Mini Tours in Southern California after college and quickly ran out of money, got against the wall, and started chasing this entrepreneurial journey that I've been on for these last eight years. And a young family, I had my daughter in the process of kind of getting this whole thing going. Your first few years in the golf industry as a teaching professional are not extremely lucrative typically, so we struggled a lot in those first few years, and I got a lot of experience working at different academies, driving ranges, and golf courses. Some of the best and some of the worst, and really got to see what was out there. I have just a unique, eclectic mix of experiences in golf, from my playing days, to my working and teaching days, then my background, and in my education from colleges in psychology and neurobiology. So I brought a unique mix of understanding the brain, motor learning, motivation, and things like that into my teaching. And then eventually, into what became the business. UGP really was built not as an enterprise opportunity or as to build a business. In a lot of ways, it was to display and share my passion and my experience with the game with others. And to put a team together and provided a place where a young aspiring golf instructor or fitness trainer could come to, and have it be a unique experience and working in the golf industry itself. It's been a great journey and like I said, we're going into our eighth year. We have the location in LA, another one in Newport Beach, and then we are in the final stages of construction with our third in Santa Monica. So it's been awesome and there's a lot to come. And Leo, obviously you've been a big part of this journey. You've been with the company for four years now and have had, a had a huge impact on the company. So, also too, would like to hear a little bit more about your background and I think everybody wants to know who Leo Rooney is.

Leo
Sure. Yeah, so I'm the Director of Performance now. I'm originally from Sweden, just outside Stockholm. I grew up playing all kinds of sports. Both my parents were chefs. Now my mom is a physical therapist, my dad is working in education, and ran a restaurant when I was growing up. So, I've always been taught service and nurturing. I've always carried a lot about, serving others and helping others. Grew up playing table tennis, golf, and soccer. I'm big into table tennis for golfers, and that's another subject. I believe all golfers should play table tennis, but that's for a different episode. So I grew up and I started really excelling golf, and qualified for the Nordic League in 2010 and I was a young player. I still wanted to go play in America, go play college golf. But I qualified and I played a full year on the Nordic League Tour, which is basically the under tour to the challenge tour. Played terrible the whole year, and then I was recruited to come play in America. So I came over here, played four years California Baptist University here in Riverside, and then had a pretty good college career, but really got into my major which was Exercise Physiology. Right out of college, I started training golfers so been training pretty much anything between, you know, PGA Tour player, LPGA Tour player, to beginners, to juniors. That's how my career started here in Orange County. And then Mac found me in 2016 and I joined as a golf fitness trainer, essentially. UGP just grew and grew. We were about 12 people when I started, now we're almost 40. Grew with the company and just went on this journey with Mac, and it's been an amazing journey and now we're here four years later, talking to these incredible people. And we've been focusing a lot on the team and on the interpersonal skills of a coach. That's really how we've been growing this business, is making sure that our members and our clients are having the best golf performance experience in the world. That's what we work with every single day. So this podcasting thing is new. Be patient with the quality of this, we're getting better for every day. But we're super excited to share this with you guys.

Mac
Yeah, and I think that's really nice and it's very natural, like you said almost to have these conversations because again, I come from a golf instruction background and Leo, from training golfers, physically training golfers. So the principles of coaching are very fascinating, I think to the both of us and also now really truly entrepreneurship, management, leadership, work life balance, success, building upon success, failure, all those things that are part of developing your game. Your physicality, and winning and building winning cultures within yourself, and then amongst teams are really part of our daily conversation and operating this business. And so with that void missing right now, with this situation that we're facing with this quarantine experience that we're all going through in this country, it left us with sort of a lot of ways, like, how are we gonna get that outlet of having those discussions and being stimulated that way? It led us to let us to this and 14 episodes in, like you say, it's been amazing and enriching. I've learned a lot already, and I'm super excited for the rest of it. Like you said, to continue this thing going is once this is over.

Leo
Yeah, and Mac and I are essentially a little bit out of servicing our members directly. We have almost 1,500 active members between the locations now, but we're diehard golf performance fans, and we really enjoyed talking about performance, even though we don't do it hands on every single day. I still help a little bit of our tour players on the fitness side, but we really get into performance. We get into the business side of things, and we really love to see the commonalities between, um, all these high achievers, whether it's musicians or basketball coaches or tour players or golf instructors. There's so many commonalities. And that's kind of what we're breaking down in this podcast because it's so interesting to see the highly successful people are doing very similar things. They have these processes that are very similar. So, we're we're just enjoying these conversations that is fairly informal, fairly casual. It's more like we're sitting in a coffee shop just conversing rather than interviewing the guests. That's kind of the format that we're going for.

Mac
That's great, and we look forward to sharing with everybody. Our first guest is gonna be probably one of the rising stars, arguably the rising star on the PGA Tour, and one of our guys. One of the guys that trains with us, Collin Morikawa and his coach Rick Sessinghaus, who has been his coach since he was eight years old. There's so much we learned in that episode, and again, it's the beginning of what is gonna be. A lot of commonalities across successful teams and people, and we really look forward to sharing it with you all. Leo Yeah, this episode is really about, like how a star is born. Because Collin, from eight years old to now, literally is the poster boy of what the research says about how to practice, how to develop, and Rick has done an amazing job throughout the whole time. A lot of amateurs can actually learn from the processes that they talk about, it's not just for the pros. This is actually techniques that anybody can use. And this is a guy that's special, really, really special. Potentially new world number one. It was awesome to learn more about what they've done since he was eight years old till now, winning on the PGA Tour. Mac Yeah, it's great, too. And I think not only that, amateurs, professionals, aspiring junior golfers, and also teaching professionals. I think what's amazing about Rick specifically, is that he labels himself a mental coach and he's arguably one of the most well respected mental coaches or mindset coaches in the game of golf today. He comes from a background of a teaching professional. I think that there's a lot to learn for golf instructors around the country here and around the world, about how important it is to incorporate that those sorts of processes into the coaching. And that's something that I think we've learned with all of our guests so far. Some of the top coaches in California that we've had on the show, including Sean Foley and it's really how much mindset and psychology are the foundation of high level performance coaching?

Leo
Absolutely. We're so excited to share this with you guys. We have so many good episodes coming up. We plan on releasing these every Friday and the first episode with Collin and Rick will be launched next Friday. And then after that, we have a packed schedule of world class coaches, tour players, musicians, basketball coaches, tech entrepreneurs. Anybody that is in our community that Mac has built up over the last 7, 8 years. Such an amazing community. And we're so lucky to be surrounded by these amazing people. We can't wait to share with you guys. Please subscribe and share with your friends if you like it. Enjoy.