Making Media
Episode 15 Inside the Ropes with No Laying Up
Making Media

Episode 15: Inside the Ropes with No Laying Up

Making Media

Episode 15

Inside the Ropes with No Laying Up

Neil Schuster is the co-founder of golf media business No Laying Up. We cover the values that underpin their content, how they serve listeners at different points in their funnel, and why they're comfortable moving slowly to grow fast.

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(00:03:50) - (First question) - Overview of No Laying Up and how its various components fit together 

(00:07:03) - The differences in how they present themselves on Twitter versus Instagram

(00:09:55) - What their mission is as No Laying Up

(00:13:26) - Going from idea to execution and how they arrive at a group consensus 

(00:16:10) - Honing in on avid golfers as their audience

(00:18:15) - The No Laying Up podcast and its evolution 

(00:24:05) - How cultivating characters and inside jokes builds audience loyalty 

(00:29:57) - Taking a stance on things makes for more engaging content 

(00:31:54) - The Trap Draw and their podcast strategy writ large

(00:35:17) - The original insight that lead to bringing DJ into the fold and expanding to video 

(00:38:36) - Lessons learned about storytelling with video in general 

(00:43:41) - Not using YouTube as a dumping ground for discoverability

(00:47:21) - Why they are choosing to grow slowly and take their time 

(00:50:31) - Diversifying business risk with a membership community and how they built it

(00:56:56) - The decision to bring on Kevin Van Valkenburg from ESPN

(01:02:57) - Launching the NLU pro shop 

(01:07:59) - What he’s learned about doing merch well and profitably 

(01:12:02) - Collaborating with and structuring brand partnerships 

(01:17:30) - Never solving internal team communication but improving it every day 

(01:24:39) - How the size of their business and audience has impacted their team 

(01:30:22) - Industry relationships and NLU’s role in the world of golf today

Inside the Ropes with No Laying Up

Introduction

Dom
In this episode of Making Media, I sat down with Neil Schuster. Neil is a co-founder and partner of golf media business, No Laying Up. No Laying Up is one of my favorite media businesses, both for its content and how the small team behind it has grown the operation over the past decade. It began as a WhatsApp group talking about golf among friends. That became a Twitter account in 2013, a blog and then now the famous, if you're into golf, podcast came shortly after.

Neil and his four co-founders namely Soly, DJ, Big Randy and brother, Tron, have captured the mood of golf fans around the world, and they've brought fresh insights as well as conversations with the leading players to listeners. As their audience grew, the side project became a full-time venture and, today, while you can still count the entire employee base on two hands, the business is legitimately one of the biggest and most influential media operations in golf.

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