Special Edition | December 11, 2024

This is not your regularly scheduled “here’s the insane spot that ball ended up off Angel Yin’s driver” Normal Sport post.

Let me explain.

After writing my 10 thoughts about the future of Normal Sport, I realized how much I enjoy sharing this entrepreneurial journey with other people.

I had been moving toward the idea that I need an outlet not just for my thoughts about golf (which I have in our regular 3x/week newsletter) but also my thoughts and feelings and ideas about the business we started.

So I am creating that here by sending this once-a-month email in which I write about the entrepreneurial journey but also in which we drop our new merch and release our giveaways for the month.

My 29-year-old self would have done unspeakable things to read someone 10 years ahead of me documenting his or her journey in media/sports/entrepreneur life, and I’m hopeful that my documentation of this will be that for some others.

However, because it’s a bit more personal, I needed a bit of a filter. Can’t just have all of this stuff floating around on the broader internet for everyone to see and consume and light on fire. 

So what I landed on is that the first part of this monthly-ish update will be general news. Podcasts Jason and I went on over the last month, giveaways we’re doing, things of that nature. But the second part will be for members only. 

It will include what I’m learning, what the trajectory of our business is and, in some cases, an opportunity for you to submit questions for our Q&A guests. 

The other night I had dinner at a friend’s house. He doesn’t care about golf but he cares about me and he said he loved reading the 10 thoughts on the future of Normal Sport.

“You want to build up loyalty,” he said. “Man, bringing people along for your journey into all of this is an awesome way to do that.” 

I agree.

I remember listening – as perhaps many of you did – to the StartUp podcast that Gimlet launched when its company started. It was so good, so interesting and I was invested.

I guess this is my version of that, minus the $230 million exit.

Let’s jump right in, starting with a few podcasts and other media Jason and I have done over the last few months.

Media Appearances

One of the ways we spread the news about what we’re doing with Normal Sport is by going on various podcasts and shows as well as writing longer pieces on our own site to explain our vision. Here are all of those since launching on Oct. 1.

• Jason on Bag Drop with Kevin Moore

• Kyle on Mike McGraw’s pod, Better than I Found It

• Kyle on Smylie’s pod

And here are those Big Picture pieces for our website.

• Normal Sport Manifesto — Our vision

• About our company — Our backstory

December Giveaway

This month’s giveaway is a Meridian putter of your choice.

We will be giving away one to a Normal Sport member.

We plan on doing a lot of giveaways throughout the year, and not all of them will be for members only. But this one is.

The good news for you is that this giveaway probably represents the best odds you’ll ever have of winning something because we currently have fewer than 250 members.

You can become a member right here.

We will draw someone at the end of the month so you have until then to enter. Nothing else. Just become a member. We have the list, and we’ll announce a winner, someone who will have made 3x on their investment into our very normal business.

December Merch Drop

We made our first Normal Sport product!

And it’s actually one I’ve been using for a while now.

When I launched Normal Sport as a full-time business back in October, a reader named Joe Daly contacted me to ask for my address.

I’m always a little wary about, uh, giving out my address out to people I meet online, but we had a mutual friend who I trust, and 10 days later a bundle of leather-bound journals and leather coasters showed up in the mail.

Real premium stuff.

So we had Joe put together 25 of these journals for Normal Sport members to purchase, either for yourself or for a holiday gift (although the rabbit hole of explanation you will have to get into if you purchase this for someone who is not yourself might not be worth it).

Here they are.

This drop will be for Normal Sport members only starting out and if we have any left over, we’ll make them available to everyone else.

Here’s the link ...

… for the journals.

3.1 Takeaways

1. One of my closest friends texted me the other day and asked for one win I’ve experienced in this business over the last two months. I told him what I will tell you, which is that I have had gratitude that my identity and contentment have not been wrapped up in the success or failure of what Normal Sport does or does not become.

I’m going to pour everything I have into it, and if it works, great. If not, then that’s OK. It doesn’t change who I am as a person. I think I actually believe that right now, which is a good place to be.

Everything has actually been way less stressful than I thought it would be, which is also an unexpected good gift that I am glad for.

I have been fine going from, as one one reader put it, “being a lowly blogger to a national sportswriter and now back to a lowly blogger.”

More than fine with. It’s been a true joy.

2. The one moment when I realized “oh, sh— this is happening” actually took place the day after my last day at CBS Sports. I got on Slack on my phone and checked the Normal Sport thread (nothing) then went to flip over to the CBS thread (out of habit) and it wasn’t there. Just a toppling of so many emotions and fears and hopes and work from the last decade. In an instant. It wasn’t devastating, but it was powerful. 

Slack, of all things, is what finally and fully upended me.

3. Two surprises: The first is that I enjoy selling Normal Sport to potential partners. I would have told you the opposite two months ago. I have enjoyed talking about it, which is unusual for me. Though I will say that there is no incentive like the fear of returning to a job that isn’t this one. So that is probably part of it as well.

The second is just how hard my co-founders have worked with very little pay. We all have equity in the business — me, Jason (art), David (sales) and Jeff (tech) — but they have poured so much time, effort and energy in behind the scenes to get this thing off the ground. It has been astonishing. I’m thankful for it.

3.1 [Art Director Jason here] Not to toot Kyle’s horn, but let’s do it anyway. The main reason we’re all enjoying the grind is because Kyle puts in 10x work behind the scenes and trusts us to keep trying things. When I say, “Today we’re doing Ray Nitschke screaming putting tips at a kid” his reaction is LETS GO!

It’s that trust to explore weird and unexpected places that makes the weekly slog of illustrating and editing the newsletters not feel like a slog at all. When I think about putting time into the unknowns of art making, I think about Mike Kelly’s work title More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid (1987). You gotta love it.

And what I’ve been loving lately is bringing readers’ stories to life. Usually they are the last illustrations put into the newsletter made in a whirlwind. This gives illustrations like Hittin’ Putter and Peter Finch, Geno Bonnalie, KVV fever dream a certain energy that thrills me to keep trying things.

Business Traj

I have learned that there are really only two numbers I care about as it relates to the business. Maybe three.

They are …

1. Number of free subscribers (I kind of care about this).

2. Number of paid members (I really care about this).

3. Number of ads available for the following year (I really care about this).

I show up every day with the goal of making the first two go up and the last one go down. Here’s where we’re at right now.

Number of subs: 15,000 — ⬆️ 130% YOY
Number of members: 216 — ⬆️ ♾️ YOY
Ad inventory remaining for 2025: ~120

That last one on ad inventory is a little ambiguous for a few reasons.

1. We could put an ad at the top of our paid Thursday newsletter — before folks hit the paywall — but we aren’t committed to it.

2. Same is true of our daily major championship newsletters. We could put an ad in them, and we might, but because they are paid, we also might not.

Overall, these are good (but not amazing) numbers. Nowhere near what they need to be for this to be a full time gig for me and Jason.

The reality of the grinding media business, I’m afraid, is that it just takes so much time to build. Not weeks or months but years. This is universally true, and in the cases where it’s not — like that ridiculous hawk tuah girl — it’s obvious that the fall is going to be spectacular and sad.

Here is our lifetime subscriber graph.

The reason I don’t care as much about the subscriber number is because in theory I could do this for a long time if all 15,000 subscribers become paying members. In reality, though? Only a percentage of subscribers will become paying members.

So I do kind of care about increasing that 15,000 to 30,000 or 50,000 but I care a lot more about increasing that 216 paid members number to 2,160.

Purse Size

I have written about this before, but the best advice I’ve received from anyone as I jumped into this is from a buddy who has been an entrepreneur for a decade now. He said, “Just don’t run out of money.”

It sounds so obvious. So simple. So straightforward.

But there are a million ways to run out of money (shout out Back Nine Network).

So here’s how I think about this. In October, we started with about 4.5 months of expenses in our bank account, and now we’re up to about six.

That’s great! But it’s not sustainable.

When I think about numbers, I no longer think about money in dollars. I think about it in time, specifically in months.

I think about extending the runway by months at a time. Can we go from six to 10? From 10 to 20? And can we keep it at 20 for five years while bringing Jason on full time and paying ourselves a bit more?

I hope so, but …

What’s Working (and Not)

Even though I said above that I (in theory) don’t really care about overall subscriber numbers, I do find that the thing I fall asleep and wake up thinking about is how to grow that number because I know that in the long term it affects most of the other numbers.

Working: Giveaways! That’s how we have signed up the most people for the newsletter. Masters merch is the biggest driver of subscribers and also representative of the type of thing folks will sign up to the newsletter to have a chance of winning.

Not working: We have had a difficult time moving people from social to the newsletter. This tweet comes to mind as something that is not helping.

I have ~180K followers on Twitter, but it feels like such a slog to get those people — 10 at a time or 20 at a time — to enter their email address and read something (this newsletter) that has clearly become much more of my focus from a content perspective than anything on Twitter.

Part of this is the time of year it is. I have historically never seen much traction with anything golf-related in October-December. In some ways this is good because it has allowed us to get our house in order ahead of Kapalua. In some ways it’s frustrating because we want to come out of the gates having birdied the first three!

One Theory I Have

One differentiator I think we have established is giving a bit of a voice back to the reader and fan. Everyone who subscribes to our newsletter has a chance to share the weirdest golf story they have ever witnessed, and I’ve been surprised at how many people have responded.

It presents a cool opportunity for me, though, to respond to every individual by name and thank them for signing up.

I did not invent this idea, and we just implemented it in October, but I think in the long run that individual greeting into our world makes a difference — in what Ben Thompson has called the most competitive market in the history of the world (writing online) — in folks sticking around.

OK, that’s it for this month.

If you have any business-related questions, I would be happy to answer them in a future version of this newsletter. Just email me back by responding to this email.

Thank you for becoming a member of this ridiculous place. It is literally (but also emotionally) sustaining for Normal Sport as a business.

Kyle Porter
Founder | Normal Sport