William and Kelly Thomas with Golf2Grow

Intro: [00:00:07] Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio in Woodstock, Georgia. This is Fearless formula with Sharon Cline.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:18] And welcome to Fearless Formula on Business Radio X, where we talk about the ups and downs of the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Cline, and today in the studio we have a company called Golf2Grow Inc of Woodstock. They are owned by two really innovative people that I actually have met through a networking group called YPO, and I cannot wait to hear their story. Please welcome to the studio William and Kelly Thomas. But we’re really going to talk more with William. Welcome.

William Thomas: [00:00:49] Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:51] Sure. I’m happy to have you. I’ve been we were talking before the show. I was looking at some of the things that you’ve been doing on Facebook. And it seems like you all are kind of the most busy. And and like I was saying, there’s like a need for your company. I mean, it was definitely needed. So can you tell me a little bit about how you got started in golf to grow?

William Thomas: [00:01:12] Certainly. So. First of all, Kelly and I have been married almost 22 years. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. We have been through a lot. Thought of a lot. Have created a lot. Of course, our four kids or our our major creations. But primarily, you know, we just we’re looking at that point in our life where we know we have, you know, maybe 20, 25 more years of active employment. And we wanted to do something that really was needed and that gave us some joy and some fun and that we were good at. I think that’s important, too. We had to be good at it. You can like what you’re doing, but if you’re not good at it, you can’t compensate yourself fairly for it. And I just enjoy the sport of golf. I enjoy the community aspect. I enjoy the fact that networking happens to me the most fun thing in golf is finding out how people respond, how patient they are, how competitive they are, if they cheat, if they’re if they have integrity, if they have character. And you can find that out in a 4.5 hour golf round.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:14] Interesting.

William Thomas: [00:02:15] So golf just made sense. And just our our background and my experience in finance and in marketing and in sales, my wife ultimately just said, William, you’ve got to figure out really? She just got tired of me whining, You know, I would complain about what I was doing or what I was making or things of that nature, and she just said, You need to figure it out before you’re 40. So we just it really started by accident. A couple of guys were going to go play some golf together, and within a few minutes they wrote me back and said, Hey, we’ve got a couple other people that want to play. Could you get another foursome together? And, you know, not a problem. We’ll get it. Well, a few minutes later, a couple more guys asked if they could play and all of a sudden we’ve got a huge amount of guys wanting to play golf. So I just said, Let’s raise some money. Let’s let’s donate something, let’s have some competitions. And I told my wife what we were doing. And as she started to see the Venmo’s come in, I want to let her know why she was getting all this money and it wasn’t ours to keep. We had to go book the tee times and she said, Why don’t you do this for a living? Why don’t you create and host golf tournaments for people for a living? And my response was, is how do we market that? Who’s going to pay us for that? Why would they do that? She said, Why don’t you gear it specifically to nonprofits, those who need to raise money? And obviously being Covid, you know, Covid heavy, when we started this idea whose contributions have decreased because other people’s incomes have decreased as well, but they won’t stop golfing. Interesting. So that’s kind of where it started. She she just said that’s who we should market it to. And people are going to golf businesses are going to want to sponsor those who golf because it makes sense for them financially as well. So that’s kind of where it started.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:55] You know, I hadn’t really thought about, well, I don’t golf, but I hadn’t really put together how people who do golf were affected by the pandemic. If they because it’s outside obviously way more than six feet apart that you could be. But financially, I didn’t really think about the impact of the golf industry. So and you obviously got started after the pandemic, which is awesome. Or like toward the tail end, I should say. But so I actually also have never thought about the fact that that someone’s character can be so discernible. You definitely and obvious, you know, even just their temperament of something not going right, you know, And I can’t imagine the varied kinds of people that you see and that can tell you whether or not you’d even want to be friends with someone. You know, you want to.

William Thomas: [00:04:45] Be in friends or in business or if you want to have a relationship beyond beyond golf, there’s there’s so much that can be learned that is.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:52] So interesting. I think I’d be terrible at golf, unfortunately. I just you know, I don’t have the hand-eye coordination. Maybe I’d practice some. But I do admire people who really. You do find the joy in chasing this ball. And like not only that, but like you were saying, the friendships and the time that you’re spending together as opposed to something like tennis where you’re really moving so fast and really don’t chat.

William Thomas: [00:05:15] Right. Huh?

Sharon Cline: [00:05:15] Thanks. I’m serious. I’ve never really thought about it. Okay. So what were you doing before you had started golf to grow? Because if you think about it, this huge leap of faith is exactly what fearless formula is about. How did you get that feeling of fearlessness? So what was your path leading up to really wanting to make a change?

William Thomas: [00:05:36] Well, certainly.

William Thomas: [00:05:37] I’ll say my wife had the harder job, which is being a stay at home mom and and making sure the house was managed and maintained. I had the easy job of just making money. That’s literally my only job, which to me is easier than than the making sure that kids get where they need to be. And I think you’re my.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:52] Favorite person right now.

William Thomas: [00:05:54] So much easier.

William Thomas: [00:05:55] For me to work.

William Thomas: [00:05:56] You know, I don’t have much responsibility in that regard. Right. But I’ve always been an entrepreneur for me. I’ve always thought that way. I just, you know, I think I was I shouldn’t say a lousy employee, but I’m not the guy who just looks to get by. I try to innovate. I try to find out how we can create better processes, how we can be more profitable, how we can increase our revenue. So if an employer wanted me just to show up and do the job, that just wasn’t my vibe. So for most of my life, I’ve been an entrepreneur. We’ve we’ve been in finance on the financial services company for several years. We had a marriage ministry where we did some encouraging of marriages and public speaking in that regard. So the kind of my, my primary role, I guess, after the service was being in finance. Finance for me was exciting because of the fact that I got to take someone from point A to point B to point C to point D, It got to be multi generational where I take care of the grandparents, the parents and then their children. And to be honest, I felt like I was their only hope. You know, I not that there’s bad companies out there, but some companies want you to have a certain net worth and they won’t deal with you if you make 60 grand a year and you have $100 a month you can save.

William Thomas: [00:07:10] They don’t. That’s not their market. And for me, I liked the little guy. What what started to to be the challenge for me was one, I like to play golf a whole lot. So that was a major challenge. But two is, is just the fact that I really wanted to impact my community locally. As we talked earlier in the show, my wife grew up in downtown Woodstock, so we have a real heart for this community. And there’s so many nonprofits, community organizations that are doing great work that we love to support, but we only have 24 hours a day and we only have about so much money. So we wanted to figure out a way that we can combine our love for our community with some resources that could take advantage of the resources we do have in this community. There’s so much money, there’s so many good people in the community that want to impact their communities. So that was kind of really what what drove us here. But but most of my career has been finance and marketing. That’s what worked so well.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:09] Given what you’re what you’re doing now with golf to grow, right? You’ve got such a great foundation of how to manage these things because that’s what’s wonderful about what you’re doing. If I were to want to try to do this on my own, completely overwhelmed, don’t know how, don’t know how to handle it, what the benefit and want the nonprofit to succeed. I want everyone to be happy, but I wouldn’t know where to start. So what is who’s sort of more your your perfect sort of typical client?

William Thomas: [00:08:34] All right. Well, I’d like to say everybody. Oh, and ideally, we’d like the person that says this is a no brainer. We’ll give you the autonomy to do it. Oh, that’s that’s really our our ideal client. But what that looks like is we prefer to have a smaller organization that has either never run a golf tournament before or who has and just realize it’s a 200 man hours of work. A lot of asking, a lot of volunteering. And you have to take away from your primary cause is a nonprofit. That’s their role is not to fund raise. It’s to to do what their nonprofit does. So we really like that client who just wants to be able to have some additional funding, some additional monies. And oftentimes, you know, other than a thank you or we appreciate you, they can’t give anything back in return. So but we can you know, we can serve a client who has an annual budget of two, three, four, 5 million. That’d be great. But we like the client who’s, you know, annual budgets, 50, 60, 70, 80, $80,000 that, you know, really could use ten, $15,000. That’s huge for them. So that’s our ideal client.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:36] Is that the average amount that you tend to raise?

William Thomas: [00:09:39] Yeah, we always tell people the expectation of a first time tournament when you’ve never done it before. People don’t know how your tournament is going to be run, and especially if you’re a newer or smaller organization, you should expect 5 to 8000 after expenses, which that’s a lot of money. Yeah. As you get more seasoned, as you have done it multiple times, you can get in ten, 15, 20,000 based on the sponsorships that we offer, we have the ability to generate about 28,000 max. So, you know, I talked recently with an organization that has $100,000 a year benefit that they get that. Has asked me for advice and counsel on how to make it better. But I could. I couldn’t serve them. If they’re trying to generate 100,000, we don’t have the capacity to do that. And primarily because we like to use local businesses to be sponsors. If we were to go to Fulton County or Gwinnett County or DeKalb County, yes, we could raise 100,000. But I want the mom and pop, I want the local start up here in Cherokee and Woodstock specifically to say, hey, I have a $5,000 a year annual budget. I can only give you a thousand. Well, great. That’s huge. Whereas I could go down to Home Depot in Atlanta, get $100,000 in one fell swoop. But it’s not it’s not Woodstock. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:51] I love that. What you’re saying is you could get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, but that’s not really the goal.

William Thomas: [00:10:56] It’s not.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:57] Isn’t that interesting, though? Do you know how that drives business so much?

William Thomas: [00:11:00] Yes.

William Thomas: [00:11:01] It’s we’ve we’ve we’ve had I mean, a lot of our sponsors say thank you for asking us. And we want them to feel special. If you do a $250 sponsorship, you should be just as valued and just as important as the person who does 2500. And we try to make them feel that way because we know that that’s a hard earned amount of dollars for them no matter what. It’s a lot of money. $250 is a ton of money to me, at least.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:25] It is for a small business owner. Yes, that’s a little painful. It you.

William Thomas: [00:11:29] Know, we’ve we’ve done good sponsorships.

William Thomas: [00:11:31] And we’re like $500. Wow. You know, that’s that’s a week’s worth of budget.

William Thomas: [00:11:36] You know, or whatever it.

William Thomas: [00:11:37] Might be. So.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:39] So as you’ve have you had repeat clients.

William Thomas: [00:11:43] We will we have three that are scheduled already for next year. So we have which is really exciting. So we have three that have already on the books for for repeat repeat business. And we anticipate we’ll probably pick up a fourth. We just finished their tournament at the end of June. So we anticipate that there’s a possibility that we’ll be doing a second one next year.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:02] If I were to come to you and say, Here’s my profit, can you help? What are the steps that you take to get this rolling?

William Thomas: [00:12:09] Absolutely. The first thing we want to do is we just want to identify what their actual goals are. And it sometimes people are afraid to say what they need. We have a non profit. Yes, absolutely. That they what they really need is to update equipment. What they really need is they need to keep up with technology, but they’re scared to ask for people to buy an iPad because they think, oh, my goodness, that’s frivolous. They just want the best of the best. No, what they actually need is for their their individuals that are served by their their community or their or their nonprofit to have the updated equipment. So they’re scared to ask for that or it’s hard to ask for that because people think it’s just a frivolous purchase. But we want to identify, okay, this is exactly what you want to do. You know what? Your staff has been worked for three straight years with no vacation. Wouldn’t you like to give them a three day vacation? Well, you need money for that. It’s hard to ask for money to have staff take a vacation. So we just really want to identify first what their goals are. Number two, what’s the dollar amount? And number three, who who right now is in your corner? Who are your current supporters? Who are those who have committed to supporting going forward? Who are those that you do business with now? I mean, if I’m if I’m spending $2,000 a year on vehicle maintenance, that company should ultimately want to sponsor me now because I’ve been giving them money. Yeah. So we want to find who is in their network now that they can utilize and take advantage of in a in a viable way that not only brings them money but also does promote that business who they believe enough in to support by using their services. So that’s the first three steps that we take.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:40] It’s interesting you’re talking about relationships, too. You know, it’s it’s who’s in. I love the notion of everybody wins, you’re supporting them, they’re supporting you. And the advertising opportunities must just be so big.

William Thomas: [00:13:55] They are. They are, I think. And that’s really how I promote it to to potential small businesses and let them know, you know, and when you have a golfer, most golfers are typically middle class, upper middle class income. We are most likely homeowners, consumers, buyers or products. Our asses breaks break. Our roofs need to be fixed, our plumbing gets stuck and plugged. So we need services. So when a nonprofit has a golf tournament with viable customers or viable clients, essentially and these sponsors realize that, hey, I’m going to be promoted in front of 70 to 75 middle class people who buy it makes sense for them to it’s a it’s a much better return on investment than some other opportunities. So it wins for everybody. And we like that.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:42] It does all around. Right. It’s like in all ways, the energy of it is so positive. It must be. That was my next question actually, is what is the most rewarding part of your job or your company.

William Thomas: [00:14:54] I should say? Absolutely.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:55] What do you love the most?

William Thomas: [00:14:56] I would say unequivocally, and I’m sure my wife would agree, is bringing the checks to our clients when they get a check for a business they don’t know of, never heard of, never been engaged with. And we give them that check. That is overwhelmingly the most exciting part. And then right behind it is the sponsor who says, thank you for asking because they because they don’t have a huge marketing budget. A lot of companies or a lot of individuals don’t ask them. So they never get a chance really to find out where they can serve, where they can plug in. They want to. They just don’t know what vehicle. They don’t know who to ask and they’ve never been asked. I know personally, Kelly and I and maybe it’s selfish, but we like for people to ask us, can you sponsor this event? We like being asked. We believe in you and what you’re doing. We’d love to have you be a part of it. Would you be willing to sponsor when we get asked? We have no problem. We typically don’t go looking for opportunities. We want to be asked unless there’s somewhere there’s a heart string for us or something that we have a connection there. But those are probably the two most exciting things.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:58] Wow. So do you feel that there are some misconceptions or there’s misinformation around what it is that you do that you would like to clear up in any way?

William Thomas: [00:16:08] I think the biggest one we get, we were in the July 4th parade and there were probably 7 or 8 people that said, So where can my kids get lessons? So a lot of people think, I don’t know if it’s the golf to grow. I think they think grow means kids getting older and then golf. It’s obviously, you know, a connection of those two being where kids can be involved. Not that we don’t. We we have opportunities in some of our tournaments where we’ll have juniors compete that will get the chance to play. So there’s a place for that. But as far as lessons and things like that, we don’t offer those. And I’ll say with a caveat currently.

William Thomas: [00:16:43] Oh, nice. So you never.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:45] Know, right?

William Thomas: [00:16:45] You’re growing too, so you never know.

William Thomas: [00:16:47] We are. But that is probably the biggest misconception. We are. We’re not a lessons organization at this point so far.

William Thomas: [00:16:57] Yes.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:57] So as you’ve created this company and it’s been nine months, right, that it’s been in active. Yes. Would you say that you have that there’s something that you wish you knew when you started, that you now know some lessons that you feel like you’ve learned or maybe some mistakes that you wish you could have avoided?

William Thomas: [00:17:17] Absolutely. I would have loved to have known we’d be as busy as we are. I mean, that’s a really good problem to have. And I say that in probably in jest. But also, truthfully, we we did not anticipate that there would be that much of a need that quickly. So we just weren’t prepared, you know, not just financially, but just career wise and things like that to make a full time change. And that that has that has been challenging because we’ve balanced, you know, our full time career, my full time job, and then our business, we’ve had to balance primarily our travel schedule. We have made. If anybody knows us, we we plan trips multiple, multiple trips a year, months in advance. And and just for example, last year we took 11 cruises. This year we took seven we went to Europe for six weeks last year. So fun. We love to travel in 2024. We have one trip on the books.

William Thomas: [00:18:13] Oh, no.

William Thomas: [00:18:14] And we just because we don’t have we can’t take any more. And it’s I wish I wish I would have known I’d have been this busy because I probably would have traveled more last year.

William Thomas: [00:18:24] Do you plan.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:24] On hiring people or anything or expanding in this.

William Thomas: [00:18:26] Way? We are we have brought on a couple of people that assist us with some of the marketing and advertising that we have now. And then we have some business plans, we have some expansion ideas that we are in the process of trying to to get worked out now and that will require us to bring on some staff. So there will be some expansions in that regard.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:47] Wow. So I can imagine it would be very easy to get out of balance, which most small business owners do. And that’s something we talk about here on the show a lot. So how do you balance being a small business owner especially? And it’s just the nature of the beast. It’s like social media is 24 over seven. You get messages all the time. So how do you put down times that you say, I’m not going to be working past this amount of time. What do you do? Or do you?

William Thomas: [00:19:14] Well, I will tell you that and I’m grateful for my wife, I’ll say. And I’m a guy who’s like, you can have all 24 of my hours. I’m going to grind and I’m going to grind, I’m going to grind. And she will not allow me. She won’t allow me to become overextended. One, because I wear things heavy on me. I get I’ll get stressed, I’ll get overwhelmed, I’ll get discouraged. So she she’s kind of my buffer two is, you know, and she says this often. I’m saying this as your business partner, not your spouse. So my wife has a very strong spirit of discernment. She’s able to to really feel things out, situations, people out. And she’ll say, you know what, William? I think this is probably better. I mean, we had a conversation last night and I was I woke up this morning extremely discouraged. I felt like that 12 hour window was just brutal. And she gave some words of encouragement, some ideas to counter those those thoughts. And then I was I was picked up and we had we had some pretty good conversations today. So exciting conversation. So she she really is my buffer. I, to be honest, don’t think that I would be successful not only in business but in life without my wife. Just to be flat out honest, I don’t have that kind of one drive and desire without her. And number two is I have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth, not thinking of the repercussions. So she.

William Thomas: [00:20:36] She’s.

William Thomas: [00:20:37] The person who reads all my emails before I hit send. So I’ll write an email, she’ll go edit it and then she’ll send it. So that is if you can find it. If you can find a good wife, you find a good thing. That’s what the scripture says.

Sharon Cline: [00:20:50] Oh wow, that’s so inspiring to me. I love it. But I also think that a lot of people have talked about that because I’ll say, you know, what do you think some really great advice that you could give someone who’s a small business owner or trying to start a small business? What would be some advice that you would give, which I will ask you as well. But oftentimes they say surround yourself with really good people.

William Thomas: [00:21:08] Absolutely.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:09] And I think that’s a huge challenge, especially when you’re married. Yes. Because how do you keep those boundaries? You know what I’m saying?

William Thomas: [00:21:17] It’s tough.

William Thomas: [00:21:18] It is tough. It you know, we certainly have people in our corner that we we trust, that we value, that give us great wisdom and insight. And I think it also helps to be direct yourself. You know, you’ve got to know your worth, your value. You’ve got to know your goals. No one is going to believe your goals like you do. So there’s times where the people even that are in our corner, we share this is what we’re going to do. And they’re like, You know what? We don’t think that’s wise, but we believe what we’re doing and we’re going to go ahead and do it. So I think it is important to surround yourself with people that you know, that you believe are successful, that have your best interest at heart. But to be honest, you’ve got to believe at first yourself. You’ve got to see the vision and you’ve got to be willing to commit time wise and also financially. So there are some things that we’ve had to do financially that, you know, old me would say, you know what, that’s probably not the best decision. But if I really want to grow our business to the next level, if we really want to impact our community, like we say, we want to, there are some commitments we have to have for ourselves.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:19] I love that. What you’re saying is that no matter who you have around you, you can’t rely on them to be the driving force. It has to be something you truly believe and truly feel, truly want.

William Thomas: [00:22:31] Exactly. I always say the the final decision rests with those that are in my household. You know, that’s that’s who’s going to go to bat for me. You know, my wife, I mean, she just champions me. I don’t know why she always sees so much value in me, but she she does champion me. And she’s she’ll say things directly like, this is what I want for my husband. This is what I want for him. And if that means it means swimming upstream, if it means going counter to what everybody else says. But we wholeheartedly believe in it. We’re going to get after it and get it done.

William Thomas: [00:22:58] Wow. But I’ve also.

William Thomas: [00:22:58] I think given her confidence that I’m going to get it done, I hasn’t been words. It hasn’t just been, you know, actionless, you know, activity. It’s I’ve actually done these things. So I’ve given her confidence that if I say we’re going to lead and we’re going to go this direction, she can say, Oh, my husband’s done this before I can I can take it to the bank. It may take a while, but we can take it to the bank. You might have to hold the check for a little bit.

Sharon Cline: [00:23:22] Do you have the credibility?

William Thomas: [00:23:23] I think I do. Yes, ma’am.

William Thomas: [00:23:24] Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:23:26] What was the very first tournament that you did? What was that.

William Thomas: [00:23:29] Like? The very first one that we did under the Golf to Grow umbrella. So we had done a couple and just consulting and things like that. But the very first one was for Cherokee County youth golfers. And it was it was extremely nerve wracking. I mean, between the is it going to rain, too? Are people actually going to show up to what if we mess something up? What if what if we don’t get the logos in in time? What if we don’t get all the print stuff done? And what if the trophies are late? It was just extremely, you know, anxiety filled. But it was so fun. It was absolutely fun and rewarding to look at each other at the end of the day, tired and exhausted. I mean, we didn’t sleep the night before because we were anxious and checking the weather to getting up and getting there at 6:00 to making sure everything went smoothly, doing awards and having all the energy in it, and then cleaning up at four and getting home at five and unloading the trailer and unloading all the stuff that we had and, you know, laying down at 7:00 just to breathe before you jump in the shower and just saying we did that, what what we wanted to accomplish, we did that and it was hours. And even if we never had another event again, if that was the end of our business, we could have said we put you know, we put after expenses $10,000, over $10,000 in the pockets of those we were serving, which is I mean, that’s just extremely cool to us. We’re just William and Kelly Thomas. We’re nobody important. I mean, we’re not a special we’re just regular people. And that was that was fun.

Sharon Cline: [00:25:04] Did you know after that first event that you were on to something just really big?

William Thomas: [00:25:09] Yes.

William Thomas: [00:25:11] We did. The feedback that we got, the encouragement, the sheer amazement, people were like. Why has nobody done this?

William Thomas: [00:25:20] Exactly.

Sharon Cline: [00:25:22] Like it hits so big and so fast. So hard. So that’s the thing is like you can see that there was a need here that no one just even knew was so important.

William Thomas: [00:25:30] We’ve got you know, I think it takes three things. One, I understand marketing and I’m good at it. And I don’t mind sales. I’m not very detail oriented in most things, but my wife is she’s a great event planner, She’s a great coordinator. And I think almost really every woman is they have to be able to balance spouse, kids, spouse, kids, job, spouse, kids house. So when you combine the skill sets that I have, the talents that my wife has and then the drive we both have together, I think we were just uniquely created to to launch this. I don’t think again, we were special. I just think we had those specific talents and gifts that we decided to use. And, you know, I again, I may may put my foot in my mouth here, but I I’d much rather struggle and and be mine than be okay and it be someone else’s.

William Thomas: [00:26:23] So that’s deep.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:24] I think about that.

William Thomas: [00:26:25] We just were willing, you know, if it meant that William Thomas had to go through the embarrassment of maybe losing some physical things because he believed in getting his business together and he wanted to grow something for ten, 15 years, 20 years down the road if it meant losing a house or losing a car. Thankfully, we hadn’t had to do that. But we’re willing to we are willing to you know, people say, well, William and William Kelly, they don’t they don’t they don’t travel as much. You know, maybe they’re struggling. If that’s what you want to think about it, that’s completely fine. We have a vision of what we’re willing to do. And for us, that means we’re willing to put it all on the line. We’d rather not go through the uncomfortable things, right? But we believe in it.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:02] What is it, do you think, about your personalities that allowed you to feel the fear and do it anyway?

William Thomas: [00:27:09] All right.

William Thomas: [00:27:09] So I didn’t hit five foot tall until I was a sophomore in high school, so I had short man syndrome, which is a real thing. Oh, short men typically struggle with their value, their worth. At least I did. And I grew up in a home without my father. So I always wondered if I was valuable enough. And I always wondered if if I could be valuable enough to a potential spouse, to my family, to to the kids that we would have to a career choice. And that’s driven me. I walk with a chip on my shoulder in that regard. And I don’t think that movie Pretty Woman helped, but that was it. The way they talked to Julia Roberts when she went in the store, like, Hey, I’ve got money, I can do this, I can purchase whatever you want. And I kind of operate that way. And I’m like, You told me I couldn’t do it or I’m going to show you. You told me that I wouldn’t make it or I’m going to get there and I’m a surpass it. So and I think that’s been contagious to my wife. My wife is I mean, she’s the mama bear ready to go fight with me. She may not know what the fight is about, but she’ll be there. So I think it’s just that for me has been my my motivating factor being short and and then just being counted out, you know, being a statistic, you know, broken family, African-American kid, inner city. I wanted to to overcome all the statistics, stereotypes and say, you know what, I can change that from me on. So that was it for me.

Sharon Cline: [00:28:34] Yeah well I like is that you’re talking about using something that some people consider almost like a liability or something to be ashamed of, but you actually turned it. You reframed it into something beautiful, a drive.

William Thomas: [00:28:47] It has been a drive.

William Thomas: [00:28:48] And it’s I think it’s healed my relationship when I had with my father as I got older, I think my drive, my desire, you know, and he’s made he made some choices that were poor. But I think seeing that, hey, he had a son that was going to get after it, I think that created a relationship. It is also driven me closer to my wife where I know everybody else may be against me, but she’s in my corner. So that strengthened our marriage and our relationship. So I’ve I’ve would not have wanted other circumstances. And I go back and I look and I say, what if I would have grown up with my father? My father was fairly wealthy before he passed. I mean, he left my stepmother in a great position financially, but we would have butted heads if I grew up with him. He was very opinionated and so was I. And I think it would have stunted my growth. And I probably have been very comfortable financially, and I don’t think I would have had the same same drive as I did.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:38] And maybe not the same appreciation for where you are.

William Thomas: [00:29:41] You know? Absolutely.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:42] Was that surprising how much something like this impacted your relationships? Because that’s not what you think about when you’re about to start a business is all these great. You know, the relationship changes. I’m going to have, you know, it’s just a byproduct of it. But was that surprising to you?

William Thomas: [00:29:55] It was. And it also just it makes you obviously your conscious with your time, of course. But you genuinely want to have good people around you because that reflects on your business. It reflects on who people think you are. So we really are conscious about how we invest our time and who we communicate with and associate with. But it. Drives you to want to have deeper friendships and deeper relationships, because I know I’m going to be doing this 20, 25 years, and I want to make sure that my reputation continues during that 20, 25 years and then when we turn it over to our kids. So I want them to get that automatic credibility that their father had, that their mother had.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:37] So it’s the legacy you’re leaving.

William Thomas: [00:30:39] It is for them. That’s the.

William Thomas: [00:30:40] Goal. That is the goal.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:42] Um, would you say that you’ve seen a huge change in in Woodstock? I mean, how big is the change in Woodstock from, I don’t know, 20 years ago to now?

William Thomas: [00:30:52] It’s been huge.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:54] Even just like the last ten years, I feel like I’ve just seen a huge amount. I mean, they’re working right now. They are down the street.

William Thomas: [00:31:00] I think it’s been it’s been amazing. I remember the first time I came up here and I drove down 92 and I all I remember is Highway Papa John’s over there by Trickum. And I’m like, where in the world am I and why am I up here? And do they like my kind up here?

William Thomas: [00:31:15] Oh, my goodness.

William Thomas: [00:31:15] Honestly, what I was worried about, I was like, I don’t think I’m supposed to be this far north, but I’d always joke with my wife. She grew up. Where? Down in Arnold Mill. There’d be 1 or 2 cars that would come an hour and they’d play kickball on the street and it would very rarely interrupt their game. And if you were African-American in Woodstock, it was my wife’s family. It was all her cousins. And just demographically, over the last 10 to 20 years, it’s grown considerably. There are so many different cultures and so much different lifestyles and socioeconomic statuses, and I think that’s awesome.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:47] It’s the most beautiful thing is the diversity.

William Thomas: [00:31:49] To me.

William Thomas: [00:31:50] Woodstock is is a it’s a different city. It really is. People that come here, I think, recognize that Woodstock and Cherokee County, Cherokee County, by and large, is really just a it is not every county out there.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:02] You are not the first person to say that on this show, because people have talked about, well, we started this business in a different county and then now we’re here. And it feels like a like a small town. That’s like what I was saying is like how nice it is to be able to walk down Main Street and to see people that I know. There’s like an emotional investment I have in this city that I’ve never experienced before in my life. And it’s fascinating to me because I really am like I, I genuinely care about what’s happening, you know, And I’ve never really been invested like that. And I think that’s really special.

William Thomas: [00:32:36] It is. Maybe.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:37] Maybe really it is to Woodstock, you know, that’s what people say anyway. Yes. Um. Oh, God. I had another really good question and gosh dang it. I got all emotional. I got all emotional about my love for Woodstock. Um. Oh, here it is. It’s the show name. What do you think is your fearless formula?

William Thomas: [00:32:59] Oh, that’s a good one. I guess I just would reiterate, we really don’t care about what everybody else thinks about William and Kelly as long as we believe it, as long as we’re not challenging our ethics, our standards, our integrity, as long as it doesn’t bring embarrassment to our name and our kids names and our parents names. Of course, we we really don’t care. You know, we I used to say this a long time ago in finances. You know, I I’m not trying to keep up with the Joneses to be like the Joneses who are broke.

William Thomas: [00:33:38] You know.

William Thomas: [00:33:38] I just don’t have a desire to look like everybody else when they don’t have the lives I want. And that’s not just a financial thing. You know, if they don’t travel the way we want to travel, if they don’t save the way we want to save, if they don’t give the way we want to give, if they don’t enjoy each other the way we want to enjoy each other, then we’re not going to strive to be like that. So for us, that means we’ll just do what we do. So our fearless formula is okay, We believe that we’re going to get after it. Let’s get it.

William Thomas: [00:34:03] Done.

Sharon Cline: [00:34:04] Do you feel like there’s pressure somewhere to. Change because, you know, one of the hardest things in the world, I think, is to continue to be who you believe you should be when so many messages in society try to tell you you should be something different.

William Thomas: [00:34:22] I think we’ve gotten to the point in our lives where, no, the outside influences are just not it. We we know what we we genuinely know what we want to accomplish. And we may be short sighted in the fact that we don’t have a desire to take over Georgia with golf tournaments. We don’t have a desire to be multi-millionaires. That is not our drive. If we can service 10 to 12 clients a year, generate them 10 to $20,000 a year, and we can provide for our family doing it. We are absolutely 100% content.

William Thomas: [00:34:55] What anybody says we don’t. Where’s the downside? You know, I.

William Thomas: [00:34:58] Don’t need to be, you know, who’s who Top 40 in United States, You know, I don’t I don’t really care. Well, I’m not. I’m M40, so I guess I can’t be, you know, I can’t be under 40.

William Thomas: [00:35:07] Anymore and do that.

William Thomas: [00:35:08] But, you know, I just don’t if that happens as a byproduct, I’m I’m totally cool with that. You know, if they recognize the top couples in Cherokee County and we’re happy to be one of them, that’d be awesome. But that is not our driving factor. So we we just we know who we want to serve, how we want to give and how we want to contribute to our community. And if we can do that, regardless of what the dollars say on our checking account, we’ve been successful.

Sharon Cline: [00:35:30] Where would you like to see your company go like five years from now? What would you like to see it doing?

William Thomas: [00:35:35] I can’t answer that because we have some expansion ideas that we can’t share yet.

William Thomas: [00:35:40] Gotcha. Well, you do have a plan, though.

William Thomas: [00:35:42] We do have a plan. What would with a general vanilla is we want to engage the community in a way that allows their dollars to be found useful in the community. I’ll say, you know, unfortunately, we. We don’t shop local as much as I think we should. We don’t contribute and support local as much as as we should. I think there’s enough revenue in this county. I think it’s enough brilliant ideas in this county where people can take advantage of the hard earned dollars they have and keep it here, not selfishly, but to continue to grow this community. And I think the main caveat behind that last year we went to Italy and one of the most exciting things to me was one one family was was the butcher, another family was the baker, another family was the egg person, another family was the stitch your clothes. And they all supported each other. They very rarely went down from the mountains into town to to to buy services. Yes, there are certain things you need and you have to get outside of it. And it wasn’t because they didn’t want to support those businesses, but they wanted to support those on their street and their neighborhood and their community. And and I strongly believe in that model. I just want people to be able to utilize their dollars to support everybody in this community. So we have some ideas of what we want to do and that will take our business to the next level.

William Thomas: [00:37:05] To do that.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:06] Well, if you ever want to come on the show and talk about any of those things, I would love to have you back and and maybe like a year from now be like, oh my gosh, remember when we were thinking about And the next thing you know, I mean, because it seems like that’s the trajectory you’re on and it’s really exciting to watch. And I do want to say that I admire that, you know, you could grow so much bigger if you wanted to, but where your heart is, is where you want to stay. Right. And that’s that’s admirable and really beautiful.

William Thomas: [00:37:32] Thank you. You’re welcome. Absolutely.

Sharon Cline: [00:37:34] Well, William and Kelly Thomas Kelly is smiling over there. She’s here, I promise. But I was like I told her, if he says something that is kind of wrong, she can say no and that can be it. But thank you so much for sharing your story with me. And how could anyone get in touch with you if they wanted to?

William Thomas: [00:37:52] The best way is probably via email. It’s William at golf. At golf. The number to grow grow.com so William at golf to grow.com. That’s our website or our email address and our website is golf Growcom so you can find us there. All of my contact information is on there. But that is probably the best way at this time.

Sharon Cline: [00:38:14] Well, I’m sure whoever is listening will be seeing you all out in the community as you continue to grow and again, come back anytime.

William Thomas: [00:38:21] We will. Thank you.

Sharon Cline: [00:38:23] You’re welcome. And thank you again, everyone, for listening to Fearless Formula on Business RadioX. And this is Sharon Klein reminding you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.