We recently connected with Hunter Thomas and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Hunter thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you manage your own social media?

In today’s day and age, it is obvious that businesses need a presence on social media. The problem is that merely a presence isn’t enough! Social media is an opportunity to give your business a face and personality and engage directly with your target audience in a way that other marketing avenues just don’t offer. That is why when we started our business we focused so heavily on content creation upfront. Many companies in our industry were using social media to post about new shipments, product reviews, and other updates. This content just wasn’t engaging and we saw an opportunity. We decided to create content that we felt was the type of content that our target audience wanted to see on their feed. This lead to very high engagement and quick growth that simply would not have been possible without social media!

Hunter, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I first found the sport of disc golf when I graduated high school in 2015 and immediately I was hooked! I played nearly every day for the next several years and in 2019 I started Foundation Disc Golf with two of my friends. We started as an online store selling disc golf discs, accessories, apparel, and pretty much anything that you might need on the disc golf course. From the start, one of our focuses was on content creation as we felt like that was the hole in the market that we could fill. What we didn’t expect was for that to take off and become a main focus of our business and a reliable revenue source! Now, three years later, I would describe Foundation as three businesses that operate together and pull in the same direction. Our YouTube channels, podcast networks, and other social media accounts are used to bring in revenue on their own and drive traffic to our other two sides of the business, online and in-person retail. This has allowed us to keep our marketing costs very low and most months we end up making more than we spend on marketing which would have never been possible if we didn’t decide to handle all content creation and social media management in-house!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Social media can be very tricky when you are first starting out. For most of us, content creation just isn’t something that comes naturally. I think the biggest key to growing on social media is consistency and capitalizing on trends and adapting them to your business or brand in creative ways. This is especially crucial in the new social media age that is dominated by Tik Tok! I think that one of the most important things is to let your company’s personality show through your social media. This is why I advocate for people to keep their social media in-house over outsourcing it to agencies. Agencies can post consistently and solve some of the problems, but when the rubber meets the road there is only so far they can take your social presence. Social media should be a place where your customers feel like they get to know the business and can interact with in a natural way. Having a consistent presence and pulse on this can really help you know what your target audience wants from you and what to put your time and energy into!

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

One of the hardest things for me to do that proved over and over to be the best move has been to replace myself in the business. The first hire we made was someone who took the order fulfillment and inventory management off of my plate. Looking back it seems so insignificant and like a no-brainer, but at the time it was a big deal. I had just gone full-time with Foundation and I was worried about having an employee and the idea of having someone rely on us as a business. Over time this hire allowed us to crank out more content and have a bigger focus on the social media side which proved to be lucrative the more time I poured into it. This brought me to the second time that I replaced myself with a videographer and editor for our YouTube channel. This hire was more about increasing our quality and output than it was about freeing my time up. Both times they have quickly made it clear that the decision was right and the free time that it gave me allowed me to generate additional revenue to cover the added cost. It is always a scary risk, but when done at the right time, it is the best decision for the business.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foundationdiscs.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foundationdiscgolf/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/foundationdiscs/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/FoundationDG
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_p7Tr6a_LWrIFIdhkYFm3A

Image Credits
Konner Kennedy Mikey O’Brien