Official Caddying Story: Casey Cowell

Casey Cowell was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. He graduated from the University of Chicago receiving an A.B. degree in Economics. In 1976, at the age of 23, he co-founded U.S. Robotics, Inc. He served as Chairman and CEO throughout the company’s history culminating in its merger into 3COM Corporation in 1997, the second largest merger ever in High Tech at that time. Initially a $200 post-college start-up, U.S. Robotics, Inc. became the world’s largest manufacturer of modems and related products that connected computers to the global telephone network. USR was the leading player in every major form factor globally. Its technologies and products included desktop modems, internal PC cards, OEM products for PC manufacturers and massive rack-mount systems connecting online providers including America Online, Prodigy and IBM Global Networks. In addition to a broad array of other products and technologies, USR also brought to market the Palm Pilot, the first highly successful handheld organizer. Cowell has received numerous industry honors including being named one of the 25 Top Managers in the world by Business Week in 1995 and Executive of the Year in 1996 by Crain’s Chicago Business. Today Cowell is an active investor, advisor and board member in a broad range of companies with an emphasis on start-ups and early stage companies in the areas of technology, the internet, social media and healthcare. Cowell has long-standing family ties to the Traverse City area. In 1991 his family moved from the Chicago area to Elk Rapids (near Traverse City) to raise their pre-school age children in a smaller- community environment. He is a long-time supporter of the Interlochen Center for the Arts. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Traverse City based Munson Healthcare Network, Interlochen Center for the Arts, Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities and is active in many civic and philanthropic organizations and activities.

The following transcript is AI-generated and has undergone only minor edits. Please refer to the video recording for direct quotes.

Kai Sato (00:00.815)

Hi, welcome to Caddyshack to Corner Office. I'm your host, Kai Sato. And today we have the joy of talking to Casey Cowell, who's very much in line with our thesis and mission of recognizing the most accomplished people to have grown up caddying and using those stories to help inspire the future. Casey, thank you so much for being with us today.

Casey Cowell (00:20.45)

Thanks for having me, it's my pleasure.

Kai Sato (00:23.055)

Casey, if you wouldn't mind before we start talking about some of the caddying stuff and your story growing up, would you share a little bit about your business career and US robotics? I know it was mixed in there. I think you started with $200 when you were 23 years old, but share some of that and then what you're up to these days.

Casey Cowell (00:35.81)

Yeah.

Sure, so I grew up in Detroit right in the city. My dad was a steam fitter, which he used to like to say was a plumber under pressure. And so it was a very industrial upbringing. I went to Henry Ford High School, et cetera. And...

I caddied some at Plum Hollow Country Club. I also grew up playing hockey. If you were in Detroit, there year round, almost certainly you played hockey as if you were raised in Canada. And it was a life forming.

for me, character forming experience in about, I think, nine years of playing, different age groups from nine up to 18 or so. We won four national championships, which was terrific. And it was pretty much the same group of kids, some of whom I caddied with. And...

You learn to be on the team, sacrifice for the team, go all out for the team, team, team, as Bo Schembechler would say. And you learn how to win and you learn how to lose. And it was terrific. And we were terrible sometimes and we were really good. I remember when we were maybe 11.

Casey Cowell (01:49.666)

We had a really good coach and we were terrible at the start of the year and he got so frustrated at hockey. He finally just said, look, look, get out on the ice. If you don't know who to hit, hit somebody, hit anybody, you know, and and that really summed up the early days and he just kept hanging in there and it was on the team more so than is true with most of golf. But it's a similar character building experience and even in golf, I think it's different.

In hockey, you don't think, you just do. In golf, you have to think and do. And I think it's more complicated. Rod Trump, a good buddy of mine who was on your show, talked recently and he said he didn't start playing golf until after college or in college. And he was a good athlete. The first time he went to a driving, he could hit a 90 mile an hour fastball. First time he went to a driving range, the ball was sitting there on a tee. His first couple of swings, he missed it completely. And he was in.

enthralled. How could this be so hard? You know, well it is. It certainly is. But I grew up playing hockey and golf. We just hit it around the field and we went to Redford golf course where the Detroit Free Press had a learn to play golf. We ride our bike down there and go for a few days on every summer and at Redford it really had holes going every which way and one of my distinctions in my early career of golf is at Redford I got hit in the back twice in the same day.

So you, but anyway, you know, so on and so forth. So I went off to college at the University of Chicago, studied economics, learned as a byproduct really a lot about computers. And one of the things for me, which I hope your listeners and younger people especially think about is it's great. I found it's great to be on a mission and a mission is bigger than you are. It transcends your own life.

And usually you don't achieve a mission, but you constantly achieve things that are in concert with the mission and move you in that direction. And it's kind of a fun story. One of my buddies that I ended up starting this company with, US Robotics, on a shoestring, when we were 23 $200 cash.

Casey Cowell (04:12.162)

We had concluded that through artificial, this is in 1976, 75, we had concluded that through artificial intelligence research, man would achieve immortality. But our guess was it was pretty likely that we would miss the window. And so we thought what we should do is start a company and make hundreds of billions of dollars of profit and use it to fund artificial intelligence research and move that window in so that we'd make the cut.

And so there's a real mission for you, much bigger than we were, you probably can't achieve it, but you just keep moving things in that direction. So on that as an initial mission, off we went with our $200 and everybody working part -time jobs, et cetera, et cetera, and filling in, making it happen. And...

You know, we failed miserably for five years, but hung in there. And eventually, we became the world's largest maker of modems, anything that connected computers to the telephone network globally. We did most of the products that connected the big services, America Online, Prodigy, IBM Global Networks, et cetera, on the answering side. If you called America Online, you called into our equipment.

and on the home or the client or office side, you probably used our products to call into the other location. So it became very successful. And I think playing sports, being on teams and playing hard with people, I really learned a lot of character -building experiences, some of which came from caddying. And it stood us in good stead to learn how to hang in there and how to get focused and build a team. And that was a blast.

One of the things that I learned from caddying at Plum Hollow Country Club was that you got to be inside the ropes with people who were really successful. And the way that I ended up categorizing them in retrospect was to say that some people tipped well and some people didn't tip well.

Casey Cowell (06:20.93)

And some people were really nice to be around and respected you. And some people were really not nice to be around and didn't respect you. And usually the people who weren't nice to be around and didn't respect you also did not tip well. And the people who were nice and did respect you usually did tip well. Now about...

seven or eight years ago in Florida, by accident, I ran into a friend of mine that I'd played hockey with for nine years. And when we finished playing, we went in different directions and I hadn't seen him, you know, in 35 years. So we're talking a little bit. And, you know, one of the others, we said, you remember caddying at Plum Hollow? And he said, yeah, yeah. And I said, who was that guy that we would, if the caddy master was ticked?

you would have to stick around and you would have to caddy nine holes for Mr. and Mrs. So -and -so. I won't say their name. And because they said, you know, you would walk, you know, like 8 ,000 yards to carry carrying two bags back and forth, back and forth. And, you know, you'd get 50 feet off the green and.

Kai Sato (07:13.518)

Hahaha.

Casey Cowell (07:25.922)

And Mrs. So -and -so, she'd be looking at it and looking at it and she might say, you know, should I hit the big eight or the little seven? You know, it's like, let's go with the big eight. And so, you know, it would go wherever, but.

The point is you'd finish all that and you'd be out there forever and you would drag in and then I can't remember the fee. I think we got three dollars a bag or something like that. And that was it. Never did anyone ever get a tip from this from this guy. So we had a name for him and we'll leave it to the side. But the interesting thing is, is that in talking with my buddy, we weren't talking for five minutes until one of the other brought up Plum Hollow And the first thing out of either of us was, do you remember so and so? And the other one said,

Yeah, that was, you know, we clearly remember that and we talked about it. At the time we said, you know, if I ever make any money, I don't really know what that is, but if I'm ever in a position to tip well for somebody who's working their tail off, I'm going to do it. And I think we've both, we've both done that and they, and it's great. But one of the things about caddy, which I would encourage if there are any younger caddies listening, you know, and at least in my experience.

is that golf more than almost anything is something that can be accessible to a wide range of people. Young caddies, professional caddies, senior caddies, friends, enemies, you know, they're all out there. You're out there for four hours or so. You're walking around and you see the whole package in somebody's personality and you see how they treat other people and how they deal with them. And you can really learn a lot from that. So being on a mission, re -learning, paying attention.

to how to pay attention and treat people well. If you want to be respected, you have got to be respectable. And one of the foremost rules of being respectable is treat people well, all the time, every time. So that's something that really, really came through for me. And that's carried over. I've had the good fortune the last, you know, 30 or 40 years to be able to play a lot of golf and be a member of or at...

Casey Cowell (09:37.378)

really fine golf courses all over the country and get a lot of junior caddies and a lot of professional senior caddies and a few things have really stood out in that experience for me. One is that with one senior caddy, you know, he was, he was not happy.

And you know, he was just off. You could just tell. And you're around somebody like that on the golf course walking and you get a feel. And this is after having had him for quite a while. Well, it turns out that he had his family had been busted up for one reason or another. He lost his daughter to a foster home in high school and it's start of high school.

you know, et cetera. And so we were talking about her, she was in junior high school, and we were talking about it. And I said, here you go, thank you for doing that, raking the bunk or something. And he said, no problem. And so I got to go into my little extended speech, you know, which was, you know, Gerald, it's when you say no problem,

you're by implication, you're implying that you might decide that it is a problem. But you know, we're not like this. We're like this really, because you should respect the fact that I'm paying you to perform a service for me. So that doesn't mean, you know, that you would decide that something is not okay. You know, if you do, you could find another way to say it, but it's a little bit casual to say blah, blah, blah. So we go on. What about this?

And so it turns out that we concluded that the proper response would be my pleasure. And so he stuck on that, but it led to talking with him from time to time over the next year and a half about other aspects of his attitude toward life, how to be respectful to other people and situations, et cetera. So it's about three years or four years after this.

Casey Cowell (11:42.818)

And I had not seen him for a while because I couldn't play golf one season due to some health issues, all of which turned out fine. And I said, you're looking great. How's it going? And he says, you know, I got it back together. My family's back together. We got my daughter back. She graduated high school. She's done great in college. She's going to go to medical school. He said, life is just fantastic. And he said, you know what, Mr. Cowell?

You changed my life. And...

I got to say to him, you know, I didn't change your life. You changed your life because you got not just respect for other people, but you gained self -respect and respect for your family. And you realized what your role was. And you have a lot of time out here walking along with people that you can see are successful. And you know, if you look at how you stack up against them, when it comes to character and heart, which is what really counts, you have got, you are right there with every

single one of them as good as they are. So that was terrific. Now we had an assistant at the Kingsley Club, very young guy.

And we finished playing and he's wiping clubs off and putting them in the back of our car. It's a dusty place. There's always something like that to do. Really young guy, very nice. And so he takes my bag and he wipes it off and he puts it in the back of the car. I gave him a few dollars and I said, thanks, thank you for doing that. And he said, no problem. And so we go through the whole deal, you know, this is really not the right answer. And he said, I know that, I know what I'm doing.

Casey Cowell (13:27.636)

I should have said. I said, what's that? He said, my pleasure. I said, well, that's exactly right, but where did you learn that? He said, that's what they teach us at Chick -fil -A. So, you know, so it's sort of funny that some aspects of basic behavior, be respectable if you want to be respected, and etc., is taught at fast food restaurants or some of them, you know. So,

Kai Sato (13:39.247)

Hahaha

Kai Sato (13:56.015)

Well, it all comes down to people and culture, right, Casey?

Casey Cowell (13:59.746)

Well, absolutely, and the nature of golf with caddies and players walking around on the golf course is you're really, you know, if you think about the people that a caddy can encounter on a golf course growing up, even in college.

You would never see these people on a, how they engage in a sales call, an employee meeting, a boardroom decision, a negotiation, et cetera. But you're sort of seeing the whole package and how they treat other people on the golf course. It is a remarkable laboratory and research center for early on in your career. Because I had absolutely no idea. You know, I mean, when I walked out on a golf course to Caddy, I was...

I was a total disaster. You know, I'm like walking across the screen. Well, I was 13, I think.

Kai Sato (14:44.912)

Will you take us back there and zoom in a little bit? That was an incredible opening gambit, but why did you even get started? How old were you? How did the idea even germinate when you were at Plum Hollow?

Casey Cowell (14:55.682)

Well, I always worked and really the, my buddy that I mentioned I played hockey with for so long, his dad was a...

member not at Plum Hollow, but a country club. He owned a tool and dye shop or something. And so my buddy caddy and I needed to do something. I can't remember why, if I lost a job or what happened. And he said, well, you got a caddy, you know? So he knows the caddy master, he caddyed one or two years before. So we go out there. So the guy hires me and do you know about golf? Yeah, yeah, I know about golf and caddy and I could do that for sure. And like the first hole, I'm, you know, walking across the green, dragging the flag. And so.

you know, rake the bunker? What's that? You know, so anyway, people helped me along and I got all the worst tippers you could get for a while, but eventually I learned. You know, it's trial by fire. You learn a lot and playing hockey probably steeled me for some of that, so it helped me, but...

You know, I'm just a big fan of the game of golf and caddying and youth -oriented participation in particular. It's great today if you think, when you think about it, golf is, you know, 500 years old, thereabouts. The last probably 150 years, as some of the today major championships first began to get started, I think that golf's impact on society and culture became enhanced.

And, and more broad -based and had more impact until today. It's significant. And, you know, as we all know, and I think as Rod Trump mentioned, probably talking with you, cause we both comment on all the time. The amazing thing, one of the amazing things about golf is,

Casey Cowell (16:50.434)

You know, you protect the field when you're in an event and people just know that you do that and you find a polite way to do it if you've seen something that isn't quite right. And you call penalties on yourself. You know, I mean, it's just, it's integrity, it's the honor system. And I think everybody knows that that's a significant aspect that makes golf what it is. And I think it's...

I think that's really underappreciated by people who don't play golf. And for newbies who do play golf, who like that sort of thing, they immediately get the joke. And it's fun to be around people like that. But golf really has an impact. And then you extend it a notch or two. Francis Ouimet you know.

7 ,000 kids on scholarships, I think, since 1949 or something like that. I think globally, 2021 or after 2020, first tee in one year touched more than 2 million kids globally. And Evan Scholars has...

more than a thousand kids in major universities on four -year full ride scholarships. So you don't have to caddy, you don't have to play golf. All you have to do is be a good citizen and get good grades, reasonably good grades. And that's, I know, I was not an Evans Scholar, I wish I had been, but I know a bunch of them. Boy, I've never met a bad one. You know, it's really.

Kai Sato (18:20.017)

up in Detroit, I would imagine that that was on your radar and we're really fortunate. I actually just appeared on the Ouimet Foundation's podcast this week and we've partnered with the Evans Scholars as well and no one's done more for caddying than those organizations. And then there are some people like yourself and so many that we've come across like Rod Trump where, hey, they probably would have done it if they could, but they just didn't know about it. And so that's why we created Caddyshack Corner Office, to make sure that we galvanize even more interest in caddying, help raise awareness.

Casey Cowell (18:44.722)

Good.

Kai Sato (18:48.594)

So that when there's that next Casey and he's trying to figure out what he's going to do that summer that he might say, Hey, you know what? I'm going to try to see if I can get a gig down the street. will you share a little bit about your, your actual caddying experience? You had a learning curve. Did you get pretty good at it? I would imagine as a hockey player, you could hit the ball, but how did you get good at it? And what was that process like? Did it take a summer? Did it take years?

Casey Cowell (19:12.642)

Well, to get, you know, I was, hockey players have good hand -eye coordination and balance as a rule. I was a goalie, but you skate like mad all the time and you have extremely good hand -eye coordination. If...

If we're in the kitchen and somebody drops something off of the top shelf, there's a good chance I'll catch it before it hits the floor. I mean, it's just, and it's again, it's not unlike golf. You don't think about it. You know, you're not setting up in front of the refrigerator saying, okay, now they might drop. So if they do, here's how I'm going to, you know, I'll get my balance on my left foot. And so, no, it's like it's golf is completely different. So.

playing hockey for a long time as I started to play. So I played golf as a teenager knocking around only. And then I couldn't really play at all until I was...

mid to late 30s. I mean, I would play a couple rounds a year for business purposes, but then I started to play more. I could spend a little more time and could join clubs and I could play a lot with in the industry, in the electronics industry. So it made sharpen my my interest in that. And I never took lessons. And I wish I had.

because you quickly develop really bad habits that quickly become really ingrained and then they're hard to break. So, you know, I could hit it pretty straight, but maybe it's the hand -eye thing. I was extremely good around the greens. Putt better than average, but short game, bunker shots, et cetera.

Casey Cowell (20:51.042)

well above average. And so that's what kept me in the hunt on all this. And it's fun because you get into these, once you get a little bit good at some aspect of the game, you want to get better at other things, but we tend to dwell on the things that we're good at a lot of times. And so when you're walking up there, the thing about golf is the anticipation. That's what Alistair McKenzie commented in On Golf, architecture.

He says, you know, you hit that ball and it's that few seconds of anticipation when you're wondering, will it clear the bunker? Will it clear the water? Will it stay on the green? You know, and that's those few seconds is what keeps you coming back for more all the time. You know, I think he's, I think he's exactly right. So I never practiced that much because I didn't have the time to do it. I was really more of a social and a club player, but it got reasonably good. But really for me, the, it was useful to,

used to get to know people and I, you know, used to say if I could take, if I could take three guests or seven guests for three days to Castle Pines, I could close every time. And I mean, it's just the nature of the beast, you know, you get there, you're having a blast and, and you're outdoors and you're away from, you got it, and you're away from all the noise, you know, so, so that was really the,

Kai Sato (22:12.625)

You get them that milkshake at the turn and it's all over.

Casey Cowell (22:19.426)

the driver for me was the social aspect. I like to compete and I always want to be competitive, but the social aspect was really big for me and the camaraderie with fellow golfers is just the best there is. So it's just a blast.

Kai Sato (22:38.194)

That's truly the best way to get to know somebody. Mr. Marins, who just passed, unfortunately, was our chairman emeritus at Bel Air for quite some time. And he would always just say, if you don't get along with somebody after five hours on the golf course and drinks afterward, you're never going to get along. And so I think that that was always quite true.

Casey Cowell (22:44.61)

Yep. Yep.

Casey Cowell (22:49.938)

Yeah, exactly. You, absolutely true. Yeah. So, yeah.

Kai Sato (22:57.329)

Will you talk a little bit about the sense of mission and it's extremely profound, but being around successful people, were there any people when you were caddying that really stood out that you looked up to that taught you certain things, even took you under their wing in any respect?

Casey Cowell (23:12.482)

Well, yes, my all -time hero who I got to play with a bunch because I was good friends with his kids through playing hockey was Gordie Howe, and the great hockey player. And I played a number of rounds of golf with him and just being around him, not just on the golf course, but skating. The guy was just, it's just off the charts. And he had so many...

He carried himself in a way that just, it just reeked of being competitive. You know, we were asked him once in the dressing room, you know, he said, he got speared by Stan Makita once and Makita caught him. And he got on the bench and Ted Lindsay was sitting next to him. He used to play for Detroit and he'd moved to Chicago. And Makita said he'd come into the league third year and he was like the dirtiest player in the league. He cut how...

And Ted, he said, Teddy said to me, Stanley, I wouldn't be doing that if I were you. And, you know, and Howe's comment at the time was, you know, we played every team six times that time, so I didn't have to do anything in that game. I could pick my spot. And he did. He knocked him out and with a punch, hit him so hard, knocked him out. And then Howe, before the whistle was blown and the play stopped, just skated right over with Makita line on the ice, climbed over the boards and sat down in the penalty box.

And so, you know, he then asked about that a year or two later in our dressing rooms, we're grown up and he would come in there sometimes and do stuff. And it was announced that Stan McKeta had won the Lady Bing trophy for the most gentlemanly, cleanest player in the league. So after that incident, he changed his game completely. And how made the comment was taping a stick up. And he said, you know, the day that I win the Lady Bing.

is the day that I hang up my skates. And he also, he said, commented that, you know, why are you so mean? You know, why are you so difficult out there? And he says, well, I'm stronger than everybody else for the most part. And he said, if I act that way, people know it and it gains me a half a step and they hold back just a pinch. And in this league, a half a step is the whole ball. You know, it's like a big deal, but he was just...

Casey Cowell (25:37.314)

He was just a total dominating force and extremely good and played all out. And you look for role models because in my, what I did professionally, we were, no, he had no experience. And so we went from, you know, tiny company to a two and a half billion dollars a year in revenue, which is a lot of motives. And so one thing I learned was which golf helped with.

in retrospect was to always look for role models because when you're sailing into uncharted territory and you're in a situation that you haven't been in before, there are two things that can really help. One is to think back of role models. So a lot of competitive times, I would think, may seem like bizarre from right field or whatever, but I would think, how would Gordy handle this situation? And how would he compete or how would he deal with these guys who are being difficult to deal with?

And it was helpful to him and many others as well. And the other thing that we learned was today they have maker spaces. And so you can go to a machine shop that's open to the public or for a small fee and they have all kinds of machine tools in there and you can run a blade through the mill and make things and all kinds of electronic stuff. And there are experts there who will help you figure this out. We didn't, there was none of that in the 1970s in Chicago, but we found that the

Chicago was our makerspace because I could get at that time the yellow pages out and if we were trying to mold a plastic part or etch copper off of a fiberglass circuit board or you know drill a number 67 hole through some really hard material material etc and like four or five or six phone calls to people in that industry I would find somebody who caught the enthusiasm

and vicariously we're going to have a blast teaching us how to do what it was we were trying to do. And we'd go out with a lot of enthusiasm and they'd do it time after time after time. So, you know, positive thrust forward, being on a mission that you keep driving for. You know, Gandhi was on a mission to liberate India. He's one of the few people who probably achieved his mission. Usually you achieve things in concert with it, but, you know, being on a mission, having role models, constantly setting and resetting goals.

Casey Cowell (28:00.226)

thinking of ways into the future, the big mistake we tend to make is if we're at A and we're gonna plan to get at B next, what B might be is really constrained by the narrowness of how we see forward from A. But if you start at G and say, forget all that, wipe the slate clean, where do we wanna be in six years or whatever it is, just for fun? And then where will we have to be in four years and then in three and two and so on?

you get way more fun, it's way more fun, and you get way more interesting and creative thinking. So those few things are really helpful. They're good approaches. It's a good little checklist to have, keep in your hip pocket and make sure you go through them. So we, as an example, in 1990 we did $50 million a year in revenue. We were trying to get our managers to think further into the future, you know, because it took...

By the time you define a position, then you did a, that takes two months, then you do a search, that takes three months, you find somebody, relocate them, that takes two to four months, and then it takes six months for them to be on the job before they're any good. They know how the company works, et cetera, especially in a fast growing company because nobody has the time to teach, everybody's too busy doing stuff, so you gotta get good people. So that adds up to more than a year easily from the day you say go.

before you're functioning in that area. So you've got to really be thinking ahead. So we thought, how can we get our people to think further ahead and aim for really higher and really quality people? So we adopted a really simple target, which we called Five by Five, and we did $50 million in revenue in 1990. So in Five by Five, we broadcast loud and clear everywhere that with Five by Five, by 1995, we would do $500 million a year in revenue.

that was our commitment. And so we're thinking way out, thinking big, and it was doable, but you really had to plan backwards. If that's 500, it's 350 and 94 and so on. And so as I've said many times in talks, we didn't make $500 million a year in 1995. We did it in 1994. And we did $900 million in revenue in 1995. And we did $1 .9 billion in revenue in 1996. Now,

Casey Cowell (30:23.97)

The market was growing like crazy. All of that was all to the good, but there were more than 50 companies that made products like ours, and nobody else came close. It's had performing like that. And you know what? We worked as a team. We were more inspired. We were more focused and better organized, and we celebrated our victories. And it was a blast.

Kai Sato (30:47.508)

Will you talk a little bit about some of the tough times? You said you struggled for several years there and you know, people now Casey, they always want to look at, and I certainly want to know what it was like afterward, but biggest merger at the time, $6 .6 billion, an incredible, incredible outcome. But for years you struggled, what was, what was one of the lowest points and what got you through it?

Casey Cowell (30:53.602)

yeah, yeah.

Casey Cowell (31:03.49)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Casey Cowell (31:11.042)

Well, you know, it sounds in gest, but it's pretty much trues. I can remember standing in a cold shower about four in the morning at home, got little kids sleeping away, my wife, and I'm standing in an ice cold shower and I got sweat coming out of every pore in my body. And I'm standing there thinking, there is no way we're getting out of this one. You know, it's like as we used to say, our strategic plan at six in the morning was to still be in business at noon.

And I mean, it was really, really a scramble. And the economy would go bad. The prime rate goes to 19%. And we've got no money. We're existing on thin margins. So we're constantly having to finance the business. And so it was just a constant, constant struggle. And also, we did almost all of our...

assembly ourselves, so we learned how to do that sort of thing, eventually farmed some of it out. But, you know, it was just a constant battle in every direction. The economy was difficult, the hard to hire people, we didn't really know what we were doing, so, you know, and so it was just, it was always one struggle after another. And you just hang in there, you know, you just keep your head down, keep going. Now the, amazingly, if you...

We, to get credit, we raised $55 ,000 in 1978 from friends and relatives. My aunt and uncle who were retired policemen from Detroit living in Tucson, my mom shamed them into investing $1 ,000, right? And they wrote that off. It's like they wanted nothing to do with it. They did it. But the, if you held on to the top, to the peak, which was 1995 or so,

And I don't think anybody did, but a number of people, my roommate in college, a number of people did, hang on. The return was 6 ,300 to one. So if you put $1 ,000 in, you took out $6 million. And so my aunt and uncle, I called them up to tell them this. We'd gone up. Hadn't talked to them in years. They didn't want to talk. And I told my uncle, I can't at that time, their stock is worth like $2 .7 million or something.

Casey Cowell (33:33.506)

I called him up and it was nuts, you know? And it's not so often you see the little people win, but it happens. And he said, what? And I told him again, he said, hang on a second. And I could hear all this noise, this yelling and screaming and clatter in the background. And he gets back on the phone out of breath. He says, your Aunt Jane's yelling how some yelling car, car, you know? And that did a change, you know, it was great. So.

So it was really fun to see some of that happen, really, really exhilarating. It was a blast. But there were plenty of dark, we almost went bankrupt three times. And I mean, it was really down to the wire. And we managed to survive and could have gone the other way. But if so, we would have done it again. My mom used to say, we're struggling with all this stuff. And she would say, why don't you just stop this?

Go to General Motors, get a job, get your two week vacation every year. Have a, you know, that's it. You know, it's like, I don't think I'm out. I don't think it would have worked. Well, we had a kind of a taste of how it could go, you know, so, so it was really fun. And we were on, being on the team was an absolute blast. You know.

Kai Sato (34:34.163)

That would have been suffocating for you. You never would have been able to survive.

Kai Sato (34:42.291)

W -were you -

Kai Sato (34:46.771)

Will you share a little bit about that team and what was that culture like? You said it stemmed from hockey, but how did you, you shared the mission and how critical it was. You really just trying to make enough money to support AI, but where, where, where did that, that team and that culture come from and how did you hire and fire by a standard?

Casey Cowell (35:06.018)

Well, as we got rolling, we were doing OK, but we weren't doing great. And so just like that was the sense. And we were starting to kind of figure this out in the late 80s. So we did an exercise. We had a few hundred employees, if that many. And at our peak, we had about 6 ,000. So we did this exercise where we went around to all of our managers and.

We asked them to rate their employees, put them on a simple grid. And the vertical axis was good today, not so good today. And the horizontal axis was teachable, great in the future, not teachable, not great in the future. So it's today, future. Everybody rated all of their people in the Northeast quadrant. Everybody was great today and great in the future. So the...

So I would pick up the axes and plop them down in the center of the cluster and just say, I think this is probably more accurate, so let's just talk it. So by the time we did that a few times, people started to get the joke and they started to understand. And so they started to place a premium on building a cohesive inspired team. And we were great at communicating goals and in a forward view.

So the other thing we did as we were getting bigger is we retained a psychologist who was somebody that, an industrial psychologist who was somebody that I knew and we described in 1988, 89, we're 30 some million in revenue and climbing and could kind of see the opportunity going forward. And the conclusion, what I learned and what we concluded was,

that the number, we had to have smart people and they could do the work and be, but the thing that we really put an emphasis on was self -confidence. Because the conclusion was that people lacking in self -confidence are oftentimes threatened by the success of people around them. And so rather than build and inspire the team, they'll actually undercut their coworkers.

Casey Cowell (37:30.114)

because they're threatened by seeing them pull away if they succeed. Whereas people who are self -confident get pretty much as much satisfaction out of seeing you do well on the team, the team do well, is for them to do well themselves. So we put a huge premium on that and emphasize team, team, team, and team goals as much as we could all the time. And that was the biggest thing. Focus on team.

But then you gotta have team players. Because if you have A pluses who are brilliant, but don't function well as a team, I mean, I'll take Bs, B minuses, B pluses, functioning well as a team and beat those guys all day long every day you can name, because that's what works. And so that's what we focused on. Now we did have need for some really brilliant people and they were really eccentric.

And so we thought, we have to have them. These are the A pluses that we've got to have, but they're going to wreck this place. So we created a facility called Advanced Development, which was in Grass Valley, Nevada City, California, up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. And we had about 50 people there. And I would go and visit there once a quarter or so.

We talk with people, how's it going, whatever, and so and so would be having a dispute with somebody else three desks down because their pencil sharpener was too loud. And so there are cases where you have to deal with that. And it's the right thing to do, but you've got to make sure that if you do have to yield to eccentricity or personality foibles, that it can't really spill over into the rest of the organization.

Kai Sato (39:29.843)

There's so much in what you just said, having dealt with this in a lot of different companies than anyone who has. It's all about people, it's all about culture, and sometimes you need that outlier talent, but how that person mixes into the organization is critical. What was it like for you? Sorry, go ahead, Casey.

Casey Cowell (39:33.762)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

yeah. Yeah. You.

No, I was going to change subject. You would pose the question, which we can come back to, any particular great caddies or caddying types that you wanted to talk about. So yeah, I had a, in late 80s, I had the opportunity, maybe early 90s, I had the opportunity to play in the Ameritech Senior Open with Lee Trevino. And I've had the chance to play with a number of.

great golfers and very fortunate. But he was really interesting. And so if I had the chance to pull somebody aside who was a caddy to really get their story one on one over a beer or coffee or whatever, that's who I'd get. I was like probably 14 at the time playing like two rounds of golf a year, maybe, maybe four. And I'm hitting it all over the place. He found just about every ball that I hit.

Casey Cowell (40:42.946)

I mean it would be way wild. We'd be looking, saying no no no no it's down here. I marked it. I saw exactly, you know, and he would, he was on it four or five times probably. So he was a blast to be with. So there's a hole that, there's water down the right hand side curves around in front of the green and the green is close to the water and the pin was way up. And so he's playing from the back tees and he says,

He says, when the pin's way up, this fairway slopes left to right towards the water. So you've got to smash your drive. And if you lose it right and it goes in the water, you're one in, two out, but you're really close, highly likely with a front pin, three on four. Whereas if you hang back and you're trying to go to that pin with a longer iron and you put it two in, then you're two in, three out, four on five. So you've got to pound the drive. Okay, we got it. And so...

So he hits five balls in the water. And there's about 200 plus people following us around. And I'm hacking away. And he hits five in the water and his caddy, I can't think of his name, he was with him forever. He says, give me another ball. And he's kind of like, throw me another ball. And caddy's standing there and he pulls his pox, like we're out of ammo. And so he never skips a beat. Lee never skips a beat. He looks at me, he says,

Casey, you're a 14. 14's always got four or five balls in their hip pocket. Give me a ball. Of course, I have so many balls in my right hip pocket. They're so jammed in there that I can't get, I'm fumbling around, I can't get one. I finally do. Everybody's laughing, I turn beat red, you know, but he was a great sport. He had a difficult, or a hard work upbringing from day one, and that'd be the one that if you could ever get him on, it would be great.

Kai Sato (42:39.635)

We absolutely want Mr. Trevino on and we're working on it. We've got a queue now of almost 90 people and we're about to ratchet up with a big content partnership and start to push a lot of these stories out there in a big way. But I think that Lee Trevino's story needs to be a motion picture, right? I think that where that guy grew up, where he came from, what he went and did is incredible, unparalleled. We'll circle back and I actually, hopefully there'll be some people from your caddying days and maybe some of those hockey players.

Casey Cowell (42:46.85)

Wow.

There.

Great.

Casey Cowell (42:55.874)

I agree.

Yeah, it is.

Casey Cowell (43:09.25)

Yeah.

Kai Sato (43:09.267)

that you ran into, but when you, and we will let you go, I don't want to take up too much of your time, Casey, but you guys, you do this merger, you sell this, it's a transformative event. How did your life change? And how did you also stay grounded post $6 .6 billion merger? Was there anything from caddying, mission, values that provided a ballast for you?

Casey Cowell (43:13.57)

Yeah. no, my pleasure.

Casey Cowell (43:19.346)

Yeah. Yep.

Casey Cowell (43:34.914)

Well, yeah, I mean the so we made a lot of money but we had publicly traded company or so all kinds of people were were engaged in that and Core values and team just don't go away and so you know a lot of my friends were the same people that I've been playing golf with or hanging around with or played hockey with for a long time I moved to my ex -wife and I

moved to Traverse City, Michigan in 1991, the year that our company went public, to raise our kids were two, four and six and we wanted to raise, we wanted to get out of the city. We didn't have enough money to live in the city of Chicago and really get it right. And with the suburbs, it was a long drive and it didn't suit our lifestyle that well. And we had relatives in the Northern Michigan area. So we decided we moved to the Traverse City area and would raise our kids there. So we, I've been there for...

a long time and I like smaller communities. And if you're a team player, we did a lot of stuff in the Chicago area, but subsequently as I could transition to the Northern Michigan region, it's really family oriented. It's an absolute jewel as a place to live. And in fact, it's such a great jewel that I always tell people, really, you know, Northern Wisconsin, Northern Minnesota, that's really where you want to go.

So it doesn't get overrun, but it's really a fabulous place. And there's a lot of tourism. And the thing that will really make it vibrant, in my opinion, is to have year -round jobs that make it possible for people to earn enough money, have a good enough income, that they can really raise their family well year -round. And the thing about year -round...

residents and families is that 30 year olds with three kids usually don't go to Scottsdale for the winter. They stay in the community and they're plugged into the community and focused on having it. That's the thing that will keep the community from getting wrecked is to have the residents be in it for the long haul and want to keep it good. So my focus has been on making the Northwest Michigan part of the lower peninsula vibrant economically. And...

Casey Cowell (46:01.41)

I'm a big fan of organic growth over time because it's solid. And if you have 2 ,000 employees move, Oracle moves thousands of employees to Nashville to move their headquarters there. Nashville's big, but that's a big, huge overnight impact. And I think that's harder to digest and have it be even through the community.

rather than organic growth that steps along. If you go to Bentonville, Arkansas, for example, in my opinion, home of Walmart, you know, that's, if you go there today, there are more cranes in the sky than you'd think you're in China. There's so much going on, but it's happened over 60 years. And so it's, I think it's well managed and a little bit, I could tell. But anyway, I focus on really solid economic growth that creates good paying jobs for people who live there year round. And that's...

Everything about that mission lends itself to finding things that you can do that are in concert with it. And it's extremely team or community oriented. So you can talk about that and bring people on board and get them to get engaged in any number of ways, but it's really about team and community. And that's what's really fun for me and satisfying.

Kai Sato (47:20.981)

Will you tell us about some of the initiatives? I've read some of the philanthropy, but especially venture capital, you are a technologist at heart and you're looking at areas to really galvanize that area and to grow businesses. What are some that really have caught your eye or caught your heart?

Casey Cowell (47:36.194)

Well, so we started a fund. It's just mainly my money and a few other people who come in particular deals. And it's called Boomerang Catapult. And a boomerang is someone who picked a place like Traverse City, for example, someone who grew up there or lived there for a while, goes off into the world and gets really good at doing something, has some valuable skill set and talent, and would come back if there was work.

And so, you know, to some of the other industries, tourism for example, we're always going to have tourism, but it's a little bit lopsided and it tends to be very seasonal. And that makes the employment markets and the housing markets and the basic use of infrastructure difficult. Whereas year -round jobs are more steady state and can lend itself towards organic growth. So...

We said, okay, if we want to have people raise their families here and we want to have them have good paying jobs, we better create the jobs. So we've done, I think, like 22 or so startups in the last five or six years, investing the total of over $200 million all in from all investment sources, created several hundred jobs and...

All kinds of companies. The main thing that we look for is that they can scale, get bigger, and that they have good margins in their business, meaning they make enough money so that they can invest in the business, invest in the community, and pay well so that the people who are attracted for these jobs can likewise invest in the community and save their money and participate locally.

And so that's what we've been on. We have a few with Health Bio AI, which is a guy named Bruce Patterson, former head of virology at the Stanford Medical School, who is a leading expert on long COVID and virus -oriented health issues. But in particular, long COVID, both with the diagnostics and medical treatment therapy.

Casey Cowell (49:58.434)

to Traverse City from Menlo Park, California, and is off to the races building this company up. We've got Atlas Space Operations, which is the world's leading technology for Earth to satellite command and control, which is to say, talking to satellites orbiting Earth, generally collecting data of all kinds, from fungus and oil and fungus and vineyards to...

you know, production in oil fields to you name it. And Atlas has the most sophisticated technology for stitching together networks that talk to satellites as they're orbiting. And they're based in Traverse City, Michigan, you know, who would have thunk it? So, yeah, so there's, you know, there are other, you know, much more mundane sounding businesses, but they all have the potential to, and you know, most businesses fail.

So startups, most fail. So you're gonna, and usually it can be frustrating because usually the failure happens, the ones that fail, fail sooner than the ones that succeed. You can go for a long time, you think it's gonna succeed, but there's a, you know, you cross a certain threshold and it's sort of like, wow, this is generating cash and you know, we can see the future so we can go and raise money and invest in this and it's gonna pay off. So that's.

really fun. The ones that fail, you know, it's sometimes you just can't bring yourself to give up. But that's the, you know, that's like, you know, you're down 12 to nothing, two out, bottom of the ninth, and you're going up to the plate thinking, we can win this thing, you know. And you can, yeah, it's not likely, but it's possible.

Kai Sato (51:49.557)

takes grit. How does High Point Golf Club fit into all of this? This seems to be near and dear to your heart. Obviously, Rod Trump's a great guy who brought us to you and such a unique property in that region.

Casey Cowell (51:55.554)

Yeah.

Casey Cowell (52:02.434)

Yes, so you know the whole story, but Tom Doak's first golf course, famous holes, designed every green, shaped it 26 years old when he did it, 62 when he came back to bring it back to life. He moved to Traverse City when he built High Point and has been there ever since, raised his family there. So he's committed to the community, struggled with High Point, which was highly regarded.

You know, I was owned by a family and the founder passed and his children, boys, I think weren't real golfers. And then also in the 2008 financial crisis, it just didn't make a lot of sense for them, I think. And so, you know, I went through a farming phase, but it was just sitting there. Tom, I think, tried to resurrect it a couple of times, went down the path. And Rod is really first class. And...

Tenacious, committed, in it for the long haul, acts on principle, committed to a vision, has an impeccable sense of what's proper and what's the right way to go, to do, does things with integrity. And you just don't have to ever question any of that sort of, and he's tough. He's combative, or he is combative, but he's competitive, and he wants to see it done right.

and he will do anything, it's his life, and it will be his legacy, and he will do anything and everything to have that turn out extremely well, down to the biggest concepts and the finest details. So it's really cool, and it's fabulous. I mean, you could, you say, well, what's it good for Traverse City? Pick that up, get the sod cutter out.

Kai Sato (53:53.237)

It's exactly what we expect out of a former caddy.

Casey Cowell (53:59.394)

cut the whole damn thing up, put it on an aircraft carrier, float it to any urban or agricultural area, any place in the world, and they'll up. So it's like, absolutely you want it there. And he's doing it right. And the good thing is a lot of groups could have come in and not done it. Rod has a real appreciation for the game of golf. And that's true for the game, the traditions of the game.

the history of the game, how it should be conducted, how camaraderie, the importance of camaraderie, the nature of the milieu, how the whole thing is set up and coordinated to inspire camaraderie and the staff the same way. And he's gonna get that right. And that is as powerful a force in sports, culturally, as anything you can find.

And when I look at the impact that having high point can have compared to when I look at maybe what some of the impact of some professional sports are and their franchises inside big cities, et cetera, et cetera, I'm just thinking like, they can't touch us. This is way out in front in terms of the lasting impact it will have on culture and society. So.

Kai Sato (55:22.261)

Rod Trump's a class act. I'm really glad he put us in touch. Casey, I'm going to let you go shortly. Are there any people other than Rod, Mr. Trevino, people that you may be even caddied with in Detroit have come across through the years whose stories are similar to yours that we should try to share?

Casey Cowell (55:23.746)

Yep.

Casey Cowell (55:37.058)

Let me think about that and I'll get back to you.

Kai Sato (55:39.477)

Well, most importantly, a real pleasure to chat with you. I don't know, Casey, if I've ever come across anyone, especially in this format, but caddying myself, having been in business for a couple of decades, who had a clear vision of what he wanted to do, was really driven by mission and has executed in a very linear fashion. And I don't think it was easy by any stretch of the imagination, but is now not only giving back to a city that he seemingly loves so much, but now on the precipice of AI and change, which

as an ardent technologist yourself, it seems like you're that kid in the candy store who literally did what he set out to do in life. And I hope you're having an awful lot of fun with it because it's truly incredible to hear about.

Casey Cowell (56:19.522)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm having so much fun. The only problem with all that is it gets in the way of me hanging with my buddies at the golf course and having a good time. We will. Yeah, no, we are armed.

Kai Sato (56:30.421)

that you've got to fix because as we all know that that's what fills our cup, right?

Casey Cowell (56:36.066)

I'm joking. Hey, this was a pleasure. You got a great thing going here. Keep it up. Anytime we can help with anything, just say the word.

Kai Sato (56:37.685)

Casey.

Kai Sato (56:47.509)

Sounds good, Casey. Can't wait to keep the conversation going, get out there with Rob Trump and play some time. Thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you.

Casey Cowell (56:53.73)

Yeah. Okay, thank you. See you.

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