INTERVIEW: Founder of Trash Panda Disc Golf chats entrepreneurship, sustainability, & more

[00:00:08] Welcome to a special edition of the OutThere Colorado Podcast. I'm going to be interviewing Jesse with Trash Panda Disc Golf today. I'm just chatting about his experience being an entrepreneur and what the disc golf industry is like. Jesse and I met in Missoula, Montana a while back. I thought his story was really interesting, so excited to have him on the show today. How are you doing, Jesse?

[00:00:35] Jesse and I'm doing well. Excited to be here. Thanks for having me. Nice. Excited to talk about Trash Panda? Jesse and I could probably talk about it too much. I probably already do talk about it too much, so here we are with another excuse to keep talking about it. Well, hey, here we go. This will be perfect. I guess before we get into what Trash Panda is and what y'all do, tell us about yourself. What were you doing before Trash Panda? Where are you from? What inspired you to even consider that as an option?

[00:01:05] Yeah. I'm originally from Northern California, just outside of Lake Tahoe. Went to school down in Southern California. Met my wife there who is from Colorado. And then we ended up out here.

[00:01:21] And yeah, I think I was meant to be here in Colorado because I love it and don't plan to go anywhere. So apologies. I am one of those California folk who moved out to Colorado, but I like to think that I was like married into slash grandfathered into it. So here we are. I think you get a pass there in a way. What makes it better than California?

[00:01:46] Oh, I don't know. It. Yeah. California is just so many things at once, you know, like, I don't know. You're putting me on the spot to talk bad about California. I don't know if I feel good about that either. It's a trap. It's a trap. Yeah. Not anything bad. You don't have to say anything bad about California. Maybe what's your favorite thing about Colorado that maybe you're missing in California?

[00:02:12] I just love the culture of being outside here. It's just, it's just like ingrained into, it's the normal thing. I was just in another town and I, I love going out to a nice restaurant and not seeing anyone wearing a cap because I'm like, I know I'm not in Colorado now, but here it's just like, I love that culture of, Hey, we're, we're wearing hats and we're casual, but casual doesn't mean we're not professional.

[00:02:38] And, uh, yeah, I don't know. I just, the, the outdoor culture of it all is, uh, yeah, I love it. Yeah. I've mentioned it on the podcast before, but I'm from Indiana. A similar reason brought me to Colorado. Just that appeal of being outside and just being able to kind of, you know, this culture of just enjoying the outdoors, opposed to just kind of watching, you know, college football, college basketball, professional sports, but that's your whole weekend. Right. Um, yeah. Yeah. It drew me out here. It is always funny. Cause people always ask when they're

[00:03:07] visiting, they're like, do I need to bring, you know, like fancy clothes or anything like that. I'm like, no matter where we go, you'll be fine in a flannel shirt. Like pretty much, but, uh, it's true. Yeah. So I was, uh, we moved out here and I was doing marketing for a nonprofit and, um, just got to a place where I wanted to start my own thing.

[00:03:31] And somewhat naively decided to give trash Panda. I thought I'll make a disc out of recycled plastic in my garage. How hard could it be? And turns out I can say without a shadow of a doubt, five years later that it's next to impossible. Um, and it was arguably dumb of me to even try, but I think naivete is like a massive

[00:04:00] uh, ingredient to entrepreneurship and unappreciated. So, um, I'm super grateful that I didn't know. And I just kind of went for it, built this DIY injection machine in my garage that, uh, literally I would hang on it to inject the disc and started there. And, you know, here we are. So a lot of trial and error along the way. I'd imagine in that scenario.

[00:04:26] I think it was only trial and error at that point. I don't even know if there were successes till we scaled from there. So yeah. What, what made you settle on making disc golfs? And for, for people that might not have heard of trash Panda before, uh, your bread and butter is recyclable or disc golfs made with recyclable plastic, right?

[00:04:47] Yeah. Yeah. We, so recycled plastic is our, so yeah. Um, I started playing. So back in NorCal, I started playing my freshman year of high school and I just fell in love with the sport. I was playing like daily summers. I would be playing multiple rounds a day and it became not only time with friends, but like my therapy.

[00:05:11] If you hear disc golfers talk about playing disc golf, it's, it's kind of like you hear that pretty consistently, but it's just like the perfect way to get away. And in many outdoor recreational activities, it's like that, right. With cycling, with running, hiking. It's just like, it's equally time with your community and therapy at the same time.

[00:05:35] Um, so, um, I fell in love with it and gosh, for like a decade, I just was thinking there should be discs made out of recycled plastic. Like we're out here, we're outside, we're throwing plastic. Why not recycle plastic? And I just thought that for a long time and never did anything about it. And then when it came to starting something, I remember I just looked back. My, my brother called me an addict.

[00:06:05] I was a hobbyist at one point in my life. And I was like, I was like, well, what, what has been the longest lasting of the addictive hobbies, right? Because I don't want to get in something that might fizzle out. And disc golf has lasted since again, my freshman year of high school, it's been the main thing.

[00:06:27] And so I decided to, uh, you know, I guess, be the change you want to see in the world. I thought recycled plastic discs should exist. So I decided to try. I've learned why they didn't exist because it's so hard. Um, but hard is just an excuse and they can exist and now they do. So yeah. Yeah. What a, what year was that when you started again? It was 2020, 2020, right? Yeah.

[00:06:55] That pandemic. Was that before or after all the news started to break with the pandemic? Technically we say our birthday is in June. I started like really working on it and thinking about it in late April. Um, and so, yeah, it was after the news and it was during lockdown, but I started it in my garage.

[00:07:14] And so it was just kind of the perfect thing to do. But speaking of naivete, like I didn't know what was happening in the world at the moment too, and how much of a risk that was. So I'm very glad it paid off. Yeah, for sure. No, that's yeah. I can't imagine trying to start a new business at that time. I mean, I guess it's good though, with it being an outdoor recreation with how big the boom was there. Did that, did that help you?

[00:07:39] Oh, totally. Yeah. Everything you've seen and anyone who has studied outdoor trends has seen when it comes to that boom during COVID and then that trail off after is exactly, it's mirrored into school. I mean, golf did very well in COVID, but golf is ultimately a much higher barrier to entry when it comes to fees, just as far as like money financially, it's a higher barrier.

[00:08:08] And so the fact that you can go buy a disc for less than $20, you can go out with your family and 99% of courses at that point were free to play. It was such an easy thing to get out and do socially, socially distanced. So yeah, it, it definitely had that same. Oh yeah. I bet that's, I've played frisbee golf, you know, since college and, and it's always been that for me where it's just like, you know, it's like anyone can throw a disc. Like it's way, way easier to throw a disc in my opinion than it is to hit a golf.

[00:08:38] So it's definitely like, you can just grab people that have never played before and get out there with you. Just a good excuse to get outside and just have some time to relax. Um, so you were, so you started in, or started in your garage in April. How long did it take you to get all the way to production where you were selling your discs to the public and those were publicly available?

[00:08:58] Yeah, no great question. That was our first disc was released almost exactly two and a half years after that. So it was production. It was R and D in the garage for two years. Um, and by the time I, so that whole two years, I also told our story on YouTube and just kind of brought people along with the journey because I started the YouTube channel after watching again, my background was in marketing.

[00:09:28] So it was obviously like, um, that's more natural for me. And I remember watching just other YouTube channels and being like, gosh, I have watched this guy for five years now and I've never bought anything from him, but I just want him to win in life. Like I want him to be successful. I like this guy. And when I thought about that, I was like, if I could feel that way about someone, then surely others could feel that way about the brand that I want to create.

[00:09:58] And so that was kind of the idea of like, bring people along for the journey. Little did I know two years would go by before we even released a disc and that would be that whole journey. But it was really cool because how many companies out there do two years of R and D, but don't document the process and you don't get a C into that. And so it was, it was cool, like, especially in hindsight, bring people along for that.

[00:10:21] So two and a half years. And then by the time I had a prototype that I felt was ready to go production level quality. Um, the demand was way too high for the supply. So there was no way I could make it in the garage. So I partnered with a local manufacturer here in Denver and that first disc was released with them making it just a local injection molding company.

[00:10:45] So, yeah, very cool. How, how much was that demand? Like, right when you, when you launched, are you talking like hundreds of discs? You talking like, what were you looking at after that whole time of telling your story? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That first run we sold out of 10,000.

[00:11:01] Wow. That's incredible. Yeah. I was going to say your, your YouTube channel is really cool. Just from the sense of how it shows that behind the scenes aspect of entrepreneurship and of, of just, you know, manufacturing in general. Like, yeah, fun to flip through the videos. You do a good job there. Um, I would imagine a lot of people have just kind of encountered those videos too, you know, and just totally captures your attention.

[00:11:23] It's fun. Cause honestly, I'm, I would, I would guess you're doing something extremely similar in the way you think about it. I'm just telling stories and doing things that I would want to do or stories I would want to hear. And like, at the end of the day, you're like, I find this story to be fascinating. I'm going to tell other people about this story. Right. So that's yeah. It's been fun to no one in disc golf talked about how discs were made.

[00:11:50] And so I was like, well, we got to talk about this. Cause the learning curve was so high and I've got no secret. I mean, my secret is that we make our discs out of a hundred percent recycled plastic and now it's not a secret. So there you go. Like I got nothing to hide. Where do you source the plastic from? Like, what is that? What types of plastic is it?

[00:12:09] Yeah. So the plastic we primarily use is called TPU, thermoplastic polyurethane. It's an extremely durable plastic that exists somewhere in the gray area between plastic and rubber. So it's really finicky, but it's very durable. And in disc golf, you need something that can hit a tree at 60 miles per hour and be the same product again after that. Right.

[00:12:37] And so getting into it, I thought plastics were all the same. I thought like plastic is plastic is plastic. Turns out there's a ton of different types of plastics and it turns out discs are made from a very specific type.

[00:12:49] Um, so TPU where we have sourced it from is all over the place. Very commonly it's used in automotive and medical industries. It's also used in agriculture. One of the places we've sourced it is actually locally. We've sourced it, uh, from cattle tags, like literally the cattle tags are really out of TPU. Yeah.

[00:13:12] Yeah. Because when you think about it, those have to be durable too. They get pretty, uh, worn and abused over time. And something I didn't know is that a cattle tag gets changed over a cow's lifetime. So it, it gets replaced. I, I just not being in that industry, I didn't know if it was a one done kind of thing. Um, so we've also done, uh, sporting goods. Uh, we've gotten plastic from places like Nike. Um,

[00:13:42] and then we just started recycling phone cases from a company that makes phone cases out of TPU as well. So lots of really cool, unique places. Yeah. Yeah. How do you find a place to get plastic from? Like, are you just kind of cold calling around or what's, what's that look like? Yeah, there's, there are brokers which commonly are like used car salesmen. Uh, I'm very grateful to work with a couple who are not like that.

[00:14:11] There's one here in Denver who is an awesome company. They're not necessarily a broker as much as a plastic recycling company. So they have massive, you know, plastic granulators that are two stories tall and, uh, you know, can, can grind a bowling ball, right? Just like they can chop things to bits.

[00:14:32] And, uh, I've been working with them since day one. And then at one point I was cold calling companies, just trying to find companies making products at TPU saying, if you have scrap, if you have waste, we'd love to recycle it.

[00:14:44] And at a certain point with the traction we've had on YouTube and just the attention we've gotten that has kind of shifted to people reaching out to us. So like the phone case company we work with, they reached out to us and I never even would have thought of that. And I'm so grateful they did because it's been a really fun partnership.

[00:15:04] Yeah. That's awesome. And, and yeah, so you, uh, you just moved into last time we were chatting and you were talking about how you're moving into a bigger, bigger space. You just moved into a space. What is it like 8,000 square feet or something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's 9,000 square feet. I've learned that since I thought it was 8,000 square feet, but apparently there's a shed on the back that is not counted in that square footage. So yeah.

[00:15:29] So what's your, so with that much space, I mean, how many discs are you making? Like what's the production level at roughly?

[00:15:36] An injection machine can make one a minute. And so we are recycling a pound of plastic every two and a half minutes. Um, but now we have two machines and we're working up to the point of running those both full time. So, um, yeah. And we've got space for a third when the time comes for that. I should know for people who don't know, um, our story that I mentioned that we worked with a local manufacturer.

[00:16:06] For that first run, we worked with them for about a year and a half. We still work with them in some ways, in some capacities, but we decided to bring our manufacturing in house at a certain point as well. And so we've been doing a lot of like most of our manufacturing at this point in house. Um, so back last year in January, we got our first machine. Then we got our second machine, uh, at the end of last year, exactly when we were moving into the new space. So yeah, it's exciting.

[00:16:34] We, and you, and you guys just like, you guys have obviously like online sales and, but also like, are you in like REI places like that? We're not an REI. I think REI needs to carry some discs and if they're going to carry some discs, they should carry recycled discs. So I'd love to be an REI. Um, our capacity is still working up to the point where we can really match our supply and demand.

[00:17:00] Most of our business is direct to consumer, but we also are in disc golf retailers. Um, so again, to people who aren't familiar with disc golf, they might think there's a shop that's dedicated to disc golf. Yes. There's probably one within 20 miles of your house. Like it's, there's a lot of disc golf retailers out there. At least if you live in a more Metro area, if you're in a, if you're, you know, deep into the mountains, extend that to 200 miles.

[00:17:28] And then quote me on that. Don't quote me on 20 miles. Oh, there you go. Yeah. No, we, uh, I mean, we have several courses down here in the Springs and they're all like anytime I've gone to them, they're, they're pretty crowded. Uh, we have this one course that goes by a, uh, it goes by like one of the local jails or prisons. Um, and one of the holes, I think it's like the third or fourth hole. Uh, you're in a stretch where you're just alongside the prison fence pretty much. And it's just people yelling at you the whole time. Really?

[00:17:57] Yeah. It's pretty, it's a pretty interesting course. Uh, yeah. Yeah. It makes you not want to go to, not want to get locked out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Coming out to Colorado though. I mean, some of these mountain courses are really cool. Like Arapahoe Basin has one. Oh yeah. Um, then there's the one around Dylan Reservoir. I really liked that one out there, but yeah. Are you, do you have time to play much anymore? You, is he working?

[00:18:23] Yeah. I mean, there's a joke in the industry that's just like, if you play disc or if you work in disc golf, you don't really play disc golf and you can, you can design your job to be that way. Um, but I, I will get out now with my friends or by myself as what disc golf used to be, but I'm not trying to go all the time to these different leagues and stuff like that.

[00:18:49] Just cause it's at the end of the day is work now for me. And that's like a wonderful, wonderful thing that I'm not complaining about at all. Um, but if I'm going to be resting, it's probably going to be at home with a book and probably not, uh, not talking to people. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. I get it. I get it there. Yeah. I mean, even just like this, the heavy social media aspect of my job, it's like in my spare time, I do not really touch social media.

[00:19:18] Yeah. Oh yeah. Try to distance distance from it outside of work hours. But, um, yeah, I guess, I mean, but you have played a bit in Colorado, I would imagine. Oh yeah. Of course. Oh yeah. Yeah. Where do you like going? Like, what are some recommendations maybe that people, people should check out?

[00:19:36] Yeah. Yeah. The, what you just mentioned, there's one up at Lake Dylan. Um, that one is there's one called Lake Dylan and it has both a mountain course, which is kind of treacherous, but it also has a family friendly front nine to it. So there's like a nine hole. That's like super fun to play. Um, coming down the mountain from Dylan, there's a course called Beaver Ranch. It's in conifer.

[00:20:02] They have three baskets off of every tee pad. And there's like a easier, a middle and a harder layout. So similar to golf, like blue tees, white tees, red tees kind of thing. Um, that course is really fun. And it's, it's also a mountain course. So it's a bit of a hike, but it's great views. Really cool to throw discs, you know, down the mountain.

[00:20:27] Um, and then that one also has a putter course as well on the, on the front of it. That's like, you could, yeah, you could, you could ace every hole at this putter course because it's so friendly. It's, you know, 50 to 80 feet hole, 80 foot holes. Um, and then once you get into Denver, I would highly suggest a course called Johnny Roberts. It's, uh, for better or worse, it's the second busiest course in the U S. So it is very busy.

[00:20:56] Um, but it's super enjoyable whether you are advanced or complete amateur. It's just a great time because all the holes are approachable. And then there's actually a disc golf store slash tap room right up the road called another round. So if you're, if you're in Denver, it's a, yeah, it's a fun, it's a fun way to go about it.

[00:21:20] Dang. The second busiest course in the U S I would not have, not have thought that how many disc golfers are there in the U S like, is that a, there is a report put out each year by a company called you disc. Um, they're like, uh, they, I should know these numbers. I apologize that I did, but there's, if you look up disc golf growth report, you can find those numbers.

[00:21:42] And there's, I mean, Colorado has, Oh man, last time I looked at these numbers was probably 2021, but it's over 200 courses statewide. So there's a bunch of courses in Colorado.

[00:21:57] And, um, yeah, Johnny Roberts is the second busiest, I believe, depending on the time of year, I think it's the first busiest at some point, but the first technical is in San Diego. So they get the full winter as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. It's one of those sports where it's like, uh, you know, I have a lot of friends that have never tried it before and I'm like, you gotta get out there and just try it. Like anyone can have fun playing disc golf. It's just a good one.

[00:22:26] Good excuse to enjoy nature. It's approachable and you can take it as far as you want to. If all you want to do is go out and never play competitively and just have fun with your friends, which is what I did for 15 years, then you can totally do that. If you want to become a professional and tour the world on the disc golf pro tour, you can also do that. So it's, you can, you can do as much as you want with it.

[00:22:50] Yeah. Um, I guess kind of getting back to, uh, uh, your experience with entrepreneurship and trash Panda, what was kind of the biggest challenge that you faced over the last like five years in that, in that regard? Oh, you promised me it would only be easy questions. Uh, biggest challenge is this question right here.

[00:23:14] Um, man, there's a quote I love. It's like being an entrepreneur is moving from one problem to the next with enthusiasm. And I'm still working on the enthusiasm part, but at the end of the day, I am like, I am a problem solver. And so it's hard to say there was like one biggest because each time there's been a biggest, probably, you know, every phase of trash Panda, there was this problem.

[00:23:42] Um, but now I look back on like the first biggest problem and it's like, that was small potatoes. Right. And now the biggest challenge is probably whatever we're facing today. Cause we're bigger than we've ever been. And that'll be true tomorrow. Uh, if I had to pinpoint one though, it would probably be getting our first true industrial 220 ton injection molding machine and learning how to make discs ourselves because discs look very simple.

[00:24:12] And deceivingly simple, but the plastic, the product itself and how it's injection molded is complicated. And then adding a hundred percent recycled plastic to the mix, which is what we do makes it complicated to the nth degree. And so that was a massive challenge for us was learning how to do that in house. Um, but like, you know, when you're hiking,

[00:24:42] up a 14 or you're like, I don't know if I can make it. And then you're at the top and you're looking at it and you're like, I'm so glad I did that. And put my head down and just kept going. Like, that's how it feels, you know? So now it's like, I don't know. I'm, I'm away from that moment when we first did it, but yeah, it's, it's a big, I mean, injection machines are six figures.

[00:25:03] And then there's thousands of tens of thousands of dollars of ancillary equipment to run with the machine. And then in a machine, there are infinite variables that you can combine in different ways to make the plastic flow in a specific way.

[00:25:19] And there's a way to make a perfect disc, but you have to find it. And it's like a maze. That's just, you went all the way down here and you're like, Oh shoot. That's not it. So I have to go all the way back and now I have to try something else. And it's science and art at the same time, but it's, yeah, I don't know. It's, it's cool. I'm saying that now when I'm standing up on a scene, I'm just banging my head against the machine.

[00:25:45] So I can tell how you're talking about it now. You definitely like seem to enjoy that problem solving aspect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. Yeah. Anyone who's going to spend two years on, on R and D to make sure you get the perfect product. They've got to love that aspect of it. I would say. True. What was maybe like one of the biggest surprises that you weren't anticipating when it came to entrepreneurship? Biggest.

[00:26:12] Or just something, yeah. Like unexpected that, you know, you, you think that like somebody like getting outside of that world wouldn't know about looking in. I think, I think probably the biggest surprise has just been how much the community has rallied around it. Like I, I care deeply about this company and the product that we make and the mission that we're on. Um, and there are other people who almost care as much as I do, which is crazy.

[00:26:40] That some random person who I've never met and now have met, but cares so much about what we do. Um, it was pretty quick that like, before we hit, uh, before we released our first disc, we had 20,000 subscribers on YouTube. And those people are all like really stoked about what we're doing.

[00:27:03] So the comments, I mean, I think you and I talked about this in Missouri, that the comments can sometimes be the worst part of the job, but they can also be the best part of the job. And there's some comments that come through. I think that's probably the most surprising is that someone could genuinely wish me so well and like wish us nothing but the best and put their money where their mouth is and support what we're doing. Whether it's buying a product or supporting us on Patreon or something like that.

[00:27:33] And yeah, that, that it's still, I hope that never isn't the most surprising thing to me because it's, I don't know, it means a lot. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Yeah. It seems like, uh, looking through the comments on your, on your videos and stuff, people do really seem to love the brand and it really resonates with them in some way. I think it's just because of your approach and how like transparent it is in a sense and just like genuine and how, how much you care. Like that, that comes off in your videos, uh, for sure. Thanks. And yeah.

[00:28:01] And I mean, and I always say like, cause we get, you know, our fair share of very mean, very angry internet people commenting. And, uh, I'm always like, man, just one good comment, like erases the, the, you know, the like impact of 10 bad comments. People tend to think it's the other way around where like that one bad comment brings you down. But I mean, to me, it's like, as long as there's someone happy, you know, it's like, that's, that's motivation in itself. Yeah.

[00:28:27] You got to train me to think that way because my brain is probably wired in the reverse of that, which is why I don't really read comments anymore. Cause it's just, I mean, I read everything for years. And then at a certain point I was like, I just can't, can't do this anymore. So I, yeah, it's what it is. Teach me. I'll do my best.

[00:28:51] But yeah, so, um, I, one other question that came to mind and, you know, I think we've, we chatted a little bit about this, but I wanted to make sure that I included this in this conversation. Uh, why, why trash Panda? Why, why the name trash Panda? Yeah. The immediate answer I love to give is for whatever reason you want it to be like, genuinely, I'm good with that. Uh, there's a couple of cool things about it.

[00:29:19] Uh, one is that we're, we're the dumpster diver of the disc golf industry. So like, I'm good with that. Um, one is as a marketer, there's just something about a name that's catchy and there's a lot of like disc crap, disc mania, Innova, latitude 64, dynamic prodigy. Like those are cool names, but if you hear all of those and you hear the word trash Panda next to it, something's different than the rest. Right.

[00:29:48] And so it stands out. It's memorable. Um, I mean, even now it's so funny, like wearing this sweatshirt. If people are listening, it says trash Panda across the front and the amount of people who just stop and go trash, man, that's awesome. Like love the shirt, love the sweatshirt. And they have no idea what's going on. So I think the, um, as a marketer, there's that.

[00:30:10] And then I was, I wasn't a hundred percent sure on the name, but then my wife, I'm pretty sure jokingly said she would leave me if I didn't name it trash. So that's, that's the realist reason that we went with it. There we go. Now we never have to find out if it's a joke. Yeah. Uh, no, that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, pandas definitely are trash pandas, i.e. raccoons. Uh, for those people, not people, not in the loop there. Uh, they definitely have like a sort of viral appeal to them. Right.

[00:30:38] Like it's always been my dream to go to that, that coffee shop. I think it's in Japan where it's just a bunch of raccoons there. Yeah. There's like an Island in Florida too, where you can just like, they're all around and they're like, yeah, it, I mean, one of the first comments and like early comments we were getting was like, why is it a raccoon? If it says, if it says Panda and like, there were so many comments that said that.

[00:31:04] And, uh, yeah, speaking of negative comments, there was one that was like, this dude was like, this guy's an idiot. He says all these things, but he's got a company that's called Panda with a raccoon on the logo or something like that. And I was just like, I'm not responding to this. I'm not leaving this. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's maybe some justification for not reading comments there. But here we are laughing about it a few years later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all good.

[00:31:36] Yeah. Yeah. No, that's awesome. Um, what do you, what do you think's like next for your trash Panda? Like, are you, are you finding that most of your people are ordering from like Colorado? Is it like worldwide? I know you just moved into the massive warehouse. So like, that's obviously a big next step, but yeah, we, so, uh, on the manufacturing side of things, it's just continuing to expand on the amount of discs that we have.

[00:31:59] Um, typical disc golfers, like your, your, your moderate disc golfer who's gotten into the sport will carry typically anywhere from like eight to 24 discs, which sounds crazy to anyone who hasn't played, but just like golf clubs, they all do something different. And, um, so expanding on the amount of discs we have, we only have four right now. Um, we're excited to keep that going and get up to probably around the 12 range.

[00:32:28] As far as where our customer base is, it's worldwide at this point. Um, we've got discs in, I think it's like 26 countries that we've sold to at this point. Oh, wow. And yeah, it's definitely Colorado is a great base and we're incredibly proud of being from Colorado, but most of our sales are not in Colorado. Um, and, but yeah, we're, but like two of our discs say made in Colorado or recycled in Colorado on them. Like that's an incredibly important part of it to me.

[00:32:57] I'm extremely proud of being a local Colorado company. We're made here with as much as we can possibly do. And so, you know, being made locally is, is like the main thing I care about. So, um, yeah, continuing to expand on that, maybe another machine here or there we'll see. Um, and then being that we have injection machines, the longterm is that we have the ability to make stuff that's not disc golf this.

[00:33:25] So we are one of the only. That I'm aware of, we might be the only company that has injection machines. That's making everything out of a hundred percent recycled plastic, not just in disc golf, but in the industry. And so for us to continue to push that, I'm like extremely proud of that. I'm extremely proud. Like I'm proud of being from Colorado. So I want, I want that to be a piece of it too. Like the company is attached to that. And I think Colorado should be known for waste diversion.

[00:33:53] So, um, we're, we're, uh, yeah, we're really proud of that. So continuing to expand on possible future products as well. Uh, we'll get there. We're still focused on disc golf at the moment and, uh, we'll, we'll always be a disc golf company at the end of the day, but being able to expand on tangential products I'm excited about. That's the entrepreneur in me who needs to calm down a little bit. Yeah, no, that's, uh, that's super cool.

[00:34:21] Um, well, Hey, talking to the entrepreneur in you, what is, uh, maybe a one piece of advice that you wish somebody had told you when you were starting out that other people that maybe want to create a product of their own and bring it to market might benefit from hearing? There it goes again with the easy questions.

[00:34:45] I, I feel like the more I do this, I don't know. I don't know if this would have been helpful to me, but the more I do this, the more I'm convinced that time is the answer to almost every problem out there. Um, and so being okay with playing the long game, there's a great book called the infinite

[00:35:12] game by Simon Sinek that kind of describes that and being okay with like, it's not a game of winners and losers. It's a game to play because you enjoy playing the game and like what we're doing will go past ourselves. Um, I think being okay with time because the thing arguably all of us in any industry or just as humans don't want to do is wait.

[00:35:36] Um, and I think time is like, uh, I believe it's not a real story, but I think there's a legend of Alexander the great and that he would wait to open his mail two weeks because almost every problem would have resolved itself by the two week mark. And then if it hadn't, it was worth his time to address.

[00:36:00] And I think about that like once a week and how time will just, yeah. So I guess wrapped up into that, the advice is just keep going. Keep going is like two words that just go in the back of my head. It's just like, I'm just going to put my head down and keep going. Cause there's an answer here. There's a way to do this and it might take time, but I won't know if I don't keep going. Yeah. Very cool.

[00:36:30] Uh, yeah. I mean, Hey, it's hard to, I think it's hard to end this interview on a better note than that. Um, but yeah, let's chat a little bit real quick. Just where can people find a trash Panda disc golfs? Uh, where should they go looking for them if they're interested? Obviously got the YouTube channel too. So yeah. If you just Google trash Panda, we should be doing our job. So we should show up right there. Um, but if you're interested in getting some of our discs, you can check with if there's local retailers or you can buy them straight off our website.

[00:36:59] It's just trashpandadiscgolf.com, but Google trash Panda and see if we're doing our job. So start. And then leave a YouTube comment and let them know. Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly. No. Yeah. And then, yeah, if you want to just follow along, like one of the, one of the, we see our YouTube videos as a product, it's a free product that we make, but we see it as a product. So we're very proud of what we make on YouTube. And so if you want to just follow along and check it out, I'd highly suggest just checking out some of our videos on YouTube.

[00:37:27] If I wanted to call one out, if I may, it would be my favorite video we've ever made was almost exactly a year ago. And we tested how many times we could recycle the same disc over and over. So we tested one to 10 times recycled and I won't spoil the results, but basically the concept of the video is we made a hundred discs.

[00:37:51] We kept 10 ground 90 of them, made them again, kept 10 ground 80 of them, made them again and did that all the way down. And, uh, it's just a, it's like, I just think it's such a cool video and, uh, such a cool concept. So, yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. Awesome. Well, hey, thank you, Jesse. Uh, everyone, everyone that's listening, go check out a trash panda disc golfs. Uh, next time you were looking for a disc and, uh, Jesse, we will talk sometime soon.

[00:38:20] So yeah, man, we got to have you up to the new space. Yeah, dude. If you're down here, let's, uh, let's do some disc golfing too. I hear there's a cool course by a prison. So let's do it. There we go. Between the prison and the mud on the course. It's, it's a pretty exciting time. There we go. All right. Have a good one, dude.