A disc golfer’s guide to exclusive content fans love

Through their YouTube channel and podcast, Foundation Disc Golf became leaders in the flying-disc sport and surrounding industry. The company’s membership business blends retail sales of gear and apparel with audio and video content — all designed to encourage their passionate base of disc golf fans of all levels.

In this episode of Backstage with Patreon, co-founder Hunter Thomas shares how members get to select the topic for an exclusive video that he and his team make each month, plus their approach to hosting live, pop-up events in different cities.

Subscribe to Backstage with Patreon on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or directly via RSS. We’re on Twitter @PatreonPodcast. Join the discussion about the episode in the Patreon Creator Community Discord

Episode transcript

Brian Keller:
Hello creators. You are backstage with Patreon where we open the curtain on how to build a thriving business on Patreon. I'm Brian Keller from the Creator Success Team, and today's guest is Hunter Thomas, co-founder of Foundation Disc Golf. They're a physical and online retailer of gear and apparel for the sport of disc golf that through their podcasts and YouTube channel, have become leading creators about sport in the industry.

Their membership business lives at the intersection of passionate fans in a fast growing sport and blending retail sales and content creation. So let's get started with Hunter Thomas on Backstage with Patreon, and I'm sure not everyone is a disc golf player or enthusiast who's kind of listening. But I think there's something universal about how you guys have really grown with the sport. You've become kind of experts there, so I'd love to hear about how you've carved that out and kind of like what it means to you to be ambassadors and really leading the charge in this popular or growing sport.

Hunter Thomas:
Disc Golf in general is a very fast-growing sport. We actually grew a ton during COVID when people were being encouraged to just get outside, be active. And during that time is when we as a company grew quite a bit on the content creation side. We never intended to be a media business by any means. Actually, we started as an online retailer. And we were looking at the scope of the online retail market within Disc Golf, and just saw an opportunity within the social media world to just use it to drive traffic to our site.

And slowly our YouTube channel started growing. Instagram started growing. We started with Patreon probably six months in to start in our YouTube channel. Once we had a decent following, we were like, "Hey, there might actually be something here." And now fast-forward, I think it's been three years or so since we uploaded our first video, maybe even four at this point. And we have a full dedicated media team. And I would almost say we operate as two separate companies that just work together with one being our media and content creation team, and then the other actually being our retail store and online store.

Brian Keller:
Now, how did you guys make that decision? I imagine the way a lot of retailers or companies think about marketing and what they should do, it's not to just talk about the industry and build their own personalities around it. It could be, "Hey, we should just promote our store and promote things more directly."

Hunter Thomas:
We didn't want it to just be a salesy type thing. Me and one of the other co-founders, we were big Gary Vee fans and obviously one of the things, at least back a few years ago, he was always talking about was hitting me with a bunch of jabs and then the right hook, which the right hook was the sales pitch. And we were thinking of, "What does that look like in the Disc Golf world? What does that look like in our industry?" And we talked through a bunch of different ideas and we were like, "You know what? Let's just create content on YouTube," which is where we really started with content creation that we would enjoy seeing as Disc golfers. And we just were like, "We enjoy going out, having fun and just doing silly challenges." That's where it started.

We did some tutorial content and then there wasn't a lot of voices actually talking about the professional Disc Golf scene, which a lot of people, when they first hear professional Disc Golf, they think it's funny like, "People throw frisbees for a living." It's like, "Yeah." And it was a growing scene at the time. And we saw opportunity there too because we were passionate followers of the Pro tour, which at the time was called the National Tour. We were passionate followers of it, and we were like, "There's not a lot of voices out there talking about it. We're slowly building an audience. This is just another thing to provide to our audience." And then in doing so, just let people know, "Hey, we also have an online store. If you're getting into Disc Golf want to check it out."

As our content strategy developed, we eventually just wanted it to be a way that we could get new people into the sport through our YouTube content, which was just more entertaining stuff. And then keep the sport exciting for people who were in the sport and maybe getting a little burned out by showing them different ways to play, showing them different things to do. And then for people who are in it every day, paying attention to the pro scene, give them something that they could listen to every week to get those news and updates and just went from there.

Brian Keller:
That was one thing I noticed listening to a couple of your podcast episodes, I don't play Disc Golf myself, but I'm a big hockey fan and the way you talk about contracts and the tournaments and the news and notes around that, it really feels like it has that same element of all those things that go into big game sports. But I think that might be surprising for some people to hear about. It's got that level of depth to it. Is that the right way to think about it?

Hunter Thomas:
Definitely. It's a unique sport in the aspect of, if you look at it directly, the closest comparison sports would be other individual sports. Looking at your tennis, your golf and other sports like that. But in Disc Golf, because we're so small that a player becomes almost synonymous with the company that they're throwing the name on the discs. And there is such a difference between each company's products. You have Discraft, Innova, Prodigy, a lot of these guys, these are the big manufacturers in the game, and then they have a pro team under them to where Disc Golf has a little bit of a team feel in an individual sport. For instance, a few years ago there was a player, Paul McBeth, he's still one of the best players in the world. He was synonymous with the company Innova. And then 2018 he randomly got a better offer, jumped ship and went to Discraft, which was another big player in the game.

And this was huge news. It actually ended up getting outside Disc Golf coverage, which within a niche sport, that's always a cool moment when you hear about it on SportsCenter or see it in like USA Today or something. But that move, it shook the world. And that was something that was a little bit different for me as, we'll call it a major sports fan of, I watch golf, I watch basketball, I watch football. And in golf there is some hype around if a player changes a sponsor, which is essentially what's happening.

But in Disc Golf, it's almost more so when LeBron James went to Miami where he left a team. And it's a little bit of a team aspect, which I think is where you're here in the hockey side a little bit too, which I think is unique to a lot of other individual sports. But there's a lot more that go on within Disc Golf than I think a lot of people realize when you just see a basket at your local park or head to your play it against sports or somewhere and just pick up a few discs to go try the sport out. There's a whole nother side to it that's a little bit more serious than I think people expect.

Brian Keller:
I hope we've exposed people to a little bit of this sport and how it connects to just the way different creators are at the forefront of a passion, a sport and activity, those areas that I think is pretty widely accessible. But let's talk about the way you structure membership on Patreon. You've got a special name for your community there. Maybe you could talk to that and some of the benefits that you offer and what choices you made around that.

Hunter Thomas:
Our Patreon, we've went through several different formats to get to where we are now and figure out what exactly made the most sense for us. Because you touched on, we do have the online retail side, and that is a big part of our day-to-day operations. And we wanted a good way to merge that with what we were offering. And what we've landed on now is basically a three-tier system where the lowest tier we call our Patreon, the Hyzer Club. And we have Hyzer Club members, Hyzer Club Elite, and then the Hyzer Club Hall of Fame. And over the years we've messed around with having physical benefits, physical rewards, also event benefits, and then just typical content. And what we've eventually landed on is our lowest tier is essentially just content, except for if you're on the annual plan, then you get a physical reward as a thank you for being an annual subscriber to help encourage that move.

And we did the same with our next two tiers up, which is the Elite and the Hall of Fame Hyzer Club members, they get the annual physical benefit as well as invite only event that we're going to throw at the end of the year, fall range. And that's where we end up landing. And the next two tiers up the middle and high tier also offer additional benefits on our site.

And throughout content creation and everything, we've also built up a Discord server that we've allowed to really connect and build our community. And then Patreon integrates so well with that. Now within our Discord server, we have different unique chats that they can get in. And that's also where we'll let people know about one of the tiers gets early access to different releases on our site. And we do all that through Discords the easiest way to real-time let them know, "This is when it's coming, here's your five-minute early access link so you can get in, pick exactly what you want before the public comes in and takes all the cool stuff." That's a broad sense of what we've landed on with Patreon.

Brian Keller:
Got it. A lot of benefits that I think are pretty common across creators there. One thing you mentioned though, doing in real life live event, I think some creators have tried that, but a lot to see it as, "I'm not at a big enough size to do that. How do I coordinate? I've got people that live all over." How are you making an event that effective for your audience?

Hunter Thomas:
The first time we had that idea was with our previous Patreon structure, and we had an invite only Disc Golf tournament was the idea behind it. And then we had another facet to it, which was at the time the highest tier was called a McBeast tier, which is a Disc Golf term thing. That was the highest tier. And those people would get exclusive access to come tour the warehouse, have a Disc Golf clinic, and then have a round with Paul McBeth, like I had mentioned earlier, one of the better players in the world, come and have an experience with him. Unfortunately, a lot of our plans got pushed back because of COVID. And during that is when we restructured what we were doing with Patreon, tried to figure it out, scrambled a little bit, but a year later we were able to still have that McBeast tier event happened.

And when that happened, it was about 10 to 12 patrons were able to actually make it, a pretty small group, but there was just so much fun, so much excitement, and you could tell they got so much value from that event. And just being able to come here, feel the community, and engage with us as the creators, but also engaged with each other, that was just such a cool thing for them that we knew we had to bring it back in some way. And what we end up doing is lowering the tier that is going to be for and trying to make it a little bit of a bigger event so that we can have that community aspect more because I think that was one thing that surprised us is we could see the value that we were bringing in, "Okay, we're going to have a clinic. Okay, we're going to let people play this new Disc Golf course in the area that no one else is going to play."

And we had a bunch of those type of benefits built in that we were trying to make it be this huge event. And then what it seemed like was a lot of what got people excited once they were actually here was just the community aspect of like, "Oh, I'm with people who also watch Foundation, who also love Disc Golf." And now we're leaning more into that community event and trying to find out ways of not how can we just provide people with experiences alongside us, but experiences alongside each other where once they come, they're all getting together in different ways to just have some fun and play Disc Golf, that's where it grew from.

But I think as far as the size goes, we've thrown some physical events where it's just been spur of the moment, "Hey, we're going to be in Dallas." We just put it on our Patreon, "If there's anyone in the Dallas area, come show up and we'll hang out and play a round a Disc Golf." And we had five people show up because that was basically all our patrons that were in the Dallas area that were free at three o'clock on a Friday. But they showed up and it was a great time. And it's something that some of those people still messaged me about of like, "Hey, if you're ever back in Dallas, we got to do that again." And I think a little bit goes a long way with actual events when it comes to Patreon.

Brian Keller:
That's really cool how you've made that something that you can do in different places as you go to it and how you've really evolved it based on feedback from your members. You also mentioned annual, and at the start of 2023, I saw you guys made a real big push and promotion around getting people to join based on that. I'd love to hear how you thought about that as a valuable promotion technique.

Hunter Thomas:
Again, we've went through so many different stages to get to where we are with Patreon and trying to decide what makes the most sense for us. And one of the things that was our most popular benefit was we did this monthly Disc Golf disc, this is probably a year or so ago now, and there was one of our middle tiers. Once you got to that tier, you got this monthly disc and you also got a yearly disc. And it was going well, it was going great, but COVID coming in, Vince, all the manufacturers shut down and slowed production. And us trying to get custom stamped discs to go to our patrons to fulfill that physical benefit, it just couldn't work out because most of the manufacturers shut it down where they weren't taking custom orders anymore. And then the few who were some of the not so popular disc molds and stuff to where our patrons weren't exactly happy with what they were able to get, and it was just a logistical headache on our end simply because we couldn't get our hands on the products patrons wanted.

We didn't want to fully get back into that world of a monthly physical benefit that we were actually fulfilling ourselves, but we wanted to still provide that essence to people. And this is where we came up with, "Okay, let's encourage people to go annual," especially with the lower tier and the $5 a month tier, that's pretty much just content throughout the year. Throughout the year, it's not really costing us month to month other than just a little bit of extra time to provide a weekly podcast, exclusive content, stuff like that. There's a little bit of extra effort to try to really push that. Let's go ahead and on the annual tier, get them a yearly disk. And that is something where we're able to find a hybrid model. We're able to guarantee that we're going to be able to get one that people want because we'll know we did it where if you subscribe annually, anytime during the month of January for this year, then at the end of January we'll have that list.

They'll take that and know we need X amount of product. We'll work with the actual patrons, have their input on what they want the stamp to be, what mold they want it to be, because so many discs fly so differently. And we'll take all of that and then be able to just go to the manufacturer and have basically all year to work with them to fulfill it. And we've seen a great response from doing it that way from our community, many people have been very excited that idea's coming back and that they get a chance to have this commemorative disc and support us in what we're doing at the same time. And a lot of them were like, "Well, I was going to pay all year anyways, so if I pay annually, I get a discount on top of all of it." It really turned out to be a win-win for everyone it seems. And we've been very happy with the results.

Brian Keller:
We really recommend more creators to use annual memberships for all the reasons you lay out. And I really love how you've come up with a way to promote it, lending the content that you have, but also this physical aspect to it. And Patreon has some tools to help creators do this idea of a special offer for a time, but I think you're doing it a little bit more manually because you want to understand who are your annual members or not. For folks that might be thinking about taking this approach and doing something specifically for annual, how are you planning to track and fulfill and use that using Patreon platform?

Hunter Thomas:
We have again, some experience with having to actually export, because I know Patreon has different physical benefits that you can use actually through the Patreon app. But with ours being Disc Golf and being so specific where we knew we had to pull this off and, we use Shopify for a back end of our site, go to Shopify. What we actually found was once you sort your Patreon data, then you can export that as a CSV file and upload that straight to a Shopify app that just inputs it as orders. We just have to basically reformat a little bit. But once we got it figured out two years ago, it's maybe a five-minute process of you filter on Patreon to make sure you have the right patrons that are actually going to receive the benefit.

This month, we might have to go a little bit more in depth to actually reach out to some of the patrons and get their physical address. It was our mistake. We didn't turn on where they need to fill it out when they're signed up for annual. We missed some, some crossover. It'll be a little bit of a backend there, but essentially we're just going to export them and then upload them to Shopify and it'll create the orders. And it's a pretty simple process. It took us a little bit to figure it out, but once we did, it got to where it was a five to 10 minute process each month.

Brian Keller:
And thanks for going through the details. I think it's important for creators to see that it takes a little bit of extra work, but whether it's connecting with Shopify or other tools and leveraging that CSV, that member download, there's a lot of ways to put it together. And as you mentioned, Patreon does have a merch for membership offering, but of course that's really suited for folks who want to do the t-shirts, the hats, those kinds of things. Probably not in our future to have custom Disc Golfs printed, certainly for some creators.

Hunter Thomas:
I don't think that would really make sense.

Brian Keller:
I noticed another one of the benefits that you offer and that you interact with your members on is actually collaborating on exclusive videos, a Mailbag that you put together. What are some of the ways that you're encouraging that and how do you take those, whether it's ideas and questions and actually turn that into the content?

Hunter Thomas:
The Mailbag we do is a weekly peak behind the scenes of letting them know what's coming up down the pipeline? What videos did we just shoot this week? What videos are we about to shoot next week? We have have a few different series that we rotate where we end up going, we travel to shoot videos in different places. We let our patrons know well in advance of, this upcoming year, we're going to do a West Coast swing, and we let the patrons know these are where we're we're coming so that if there's anyone in the area, there's a chance they can be in those videos and stuff like that. And we give all that to the patrons early. And then the Mailbag's also a chance for a Q&A, which is basically the only platform we do intentional Q&As on.

And we've built our different content specifically that way so that we don't just constantly be doing Q&As everywhere. And then you offer it on Patreon and patrons are like, "Well, what's really the perk here? You do that all the time." That's what the Mailbag is, and that's a weekly show. And then the exclusive content with us, we've always done an exclusive monthly video, and we have all these different video ideas that we're trying to come up with for our channel. And it was always a hard line of, if this is a really good idea, do we put it behind the paywall at Patreon or do we put it out to our YouTube audience? And that was always a question that we never really could figure out because we wanted it to be good enough to drive traffic to Patreon, but if it was a really good video, it's hard to be like, "Man, we could really sell that to a brand sponsor on our main channel and really drive traffic on our main channel."

And what we ended up doing is we were talking back and forth and we were getting a lot of suggestions from our patrons during the Mailbag of different video ideas. And we had a aha moment of, "Man, it's a good way to even market our Patreon to say, you get to build content with us." What we do is early in the month, every month we put out a post that basically, I think we actually title it, "Build Content With Us," or something along those lines. And we just ask them, "Comment down below what video ideas you want to see for the exclusive video this month, and then the ones that you like."

And then the top comments we put into a poll the next week and whichever one wins the poll, we go out and shoot. And if the video does really well on Patreon and people love it, then we bring it to the main channel. And people on Patreon know, "Wow, that was my idea that I got to watch slowly morph into what this is on the main channel." That's the route we eventually took, which worked out great for us.

Brian Keller:
What's an example of one of the videos that you made and did that come from maybe an idea that you guys wouldn't have thought of yourself because it came from a particular member?

Hunter Thomas:
We actually are now going to turn it into a full series on our YouTube channel because it just has done so well. It's called Imposter Disc Golf, which essentially we found a way to basically do Among Us, but on the Disc Golf course. And that idea had been thrown around, but we couldn't really get grips on how to do it. And a patron just laid out, "Hey, I would love to see this type of video," and just put a few rules in there. Then we read it. And I was like, "That's it. That's what we've been trying to think through." We couldn't figure out how to do it. And the way they worded it, we didn't even do it as the exclusive video that month. We just let the patrons know, "Hey, this video idea is so good. This is going straight to our main channel, so vote on the other ones."
And it went straight to the main channel. People have absolutely loved it. The patrons have loved that they were a part of what is now going to be a recurring series on our channel, and it was all birthed from one of the patrons during the, "Build Content With Us," just writing out the suggestion and basically taking an idea that we had thrown around, never could figure out, and being able to actually form it into something that is probably one of the most loved videos on our channel. We're super excited about how that one turned out.

Brian Keller:
Wow, that's awesome to crowdsource that and the fact that you might have had a similar idea, but getting it from someone else and the thought that they put into it, when you do highlight those videos on your main channel, even talking about it as a new franchise, what are the ways you talk about the input from patrons, how it was developed there to give them recognition, but also to keep using that as a promotional effort?

Hunter Thomas:
We've done it a few different ways. I think one of the easiest is just thank the patron by name for coming up with the video idea. Another good one also is once it's happened, when we're talking, occasionally we'll reference back to last time we did this challenge or whatever. And we'll have to remind ourselves, "Last time we did this challenge was on Patreon." And that's a great time to remind the audience and be like, "Hey, you might have heard us say last time we did this challenge, and you're thinking, I haven't seen it before. That's because it was an exclusive video over on our Patreon." And I think another good thing too is once you let people know, you can go, "If you join this month, you can see this upcoming month video, but you can also go back and watch all these exclusive videos that we've been doing."

That's been a really easy way to just drive traffic and have it flow because people get to learn about different aspects of Patreon that as a creator, it's just so in your brain because you're constantly creating all this stuff that you forget that some of your audience members might have no idea you have a Patreon or might have no idea that on that Patreon, you do this exclusive video or that you even have a podcast or anything like that. We have to be very intentional about each video, each week, what are we highlighting? What aspect of Patreon or what other show or what are we pushing in these videos to make sure that our audience actually knows what all they can get from us each week? We're putting so much effort into content, we don't want some of it to flop just because people have no idea it's even out there.

Brian Keller:
You mentioned upcoming videos, things that are happening in the future. I think that's another interesting idea. We really are trying to help creators figure out how do you let your members or prospective members know the future things that you're going to get as a way to make sure they're excited about membership? How do you incorporate that?

Hunter Thomas:
Most of that is on our weekly podcast, on the Mailbag, we let people know. The Mailbag, yes, by name, we know if people send us stuff, whether patrons or not, we open that on air. Yes, we do the Q&A, but the big thing is we let you see behind the curtain and what's coming down the pipeline. They are always the first people to know, even for us, when we have physical products coming, when there is a new Disc drop that's exclusive to our site, we let the patrons know that first. And we've found that that's very beneficial because one of the tiers gets early access to these physical products that we release on our site. And we let them know, "Hey, this is coming probably in a few months." And then it also gives them, our patron, we let them know a lot of information that we don't want leaked to the public of like, "Hey, we have a marketing plan in place. This information can't get out."

And it's never gotten out. It's been sometimes a little bit of a risky move. It wouldn't be detrimental, obviously discs and stuff would still sell, but sometimes you just have a marketing plan, you don't want this information to get out. We're like, "Do we even tell our patrons?" I'm like, "Yeah, I think we do because I think it shows we trust them." And in doing that, we've seen a good retention with those members because then they feel like, "Wow, not only are they letting us peek behind the curtain, but they're letting us know stuff weeks in advance that they don't even want anyone to know." And it validates when we say, "You're supporting us. You're creating content alongside with us. You're a part of the Hyzer Club, you're a part of the family." And then you show that with your actions. It helps validate that, "Hey, this isn't just words. We're not just saying this, but we genuinely value you as a community and this is the type of stuff that we're doing to show you that."

Brian Keller:
I love ending with that point about trusting your audience and what you can share with them. Some points to wrap up, we talked about how to do a real world event and really open that up as much as possible to get more of your audience involved, helping encourage creators, do custom merch, figure out what works for you and how to leverage that using Patreon. Really cool ways you are building content with your members, getting ideas that you never would've had before, and that actually powers some of your public content as well. And then let them in on what's in the works. It could be content that's under production, it could be products and merch, things going on, as well as what's happening with the company and trusting them with that. Hunter, it's been great getting you to chat with you, telling more creators about what you're doing with Foundation Disc Golf, thanks so much for sharing it on Backstage with Patreon.

Hunter Thomas:
Thanks for having me.

Brian Keller:
Tune in next week to Backstage with Patreon, when we’ll have Norma O’Mahony, from Patreon’s Growth team, which rolled out a long awaited feature for creators, allowing them to offer free trials to their audience to get a short taste of the benefits on their tiers before paying for monthly membership.

To catch every episode of Backstage with Patreon, follow or subscribe in your podcast app and leave us a review. We also have transcripts available at patreon.com/backstage. You're growing as a creator by listening to the show, so why not share the insights from this episode with another creator on Patreon or who is running a creative business? We'd love to have you as an active collaborator with Backstage with Patreon. Come join the discussion in the Patreon Creator Discord. Follow the link in the episode notes and you can get answers to your follow-up questions directly from the guests and weigh in on what topics we'll be covering next. Editing by Tyler Morrisette. I'm Brian Keller. See you next time, Backstage.