Hey everyone, welcome back to the Leader Show with Lou Carter. We have the pleasure of hosting David Abeles, the CEO of TaylorMade Golf. Headquartered in Carlsbad, California, it is a renowned American sports equipment manufacturer specializing in the production of golf clubs, balls, and apparel.
David presents his insights into the company’s growth and the culture he has helped create over the years. Furthermore, Mr. Abeles talks about leadership and what love means to TaylorMade Golf as a Most Loved Workplace®.
With that said, let’s jump right in.
When Lou asks David to explain what he means by “Beyond Driven” and how it creates a winning culture for TaylorMade Golf, David explains that Beyond Driven is more than just a tagline or slogan; it’s an ethos emphasizing the competitive spirit, connectedness, and willingness to take risks and improve.
Continuous improvement and investing in development are two of the most important factors contributing to the organization’s success. Lou acknowledges the metaphor of driving and golf and how they are related.
Next, Lou and David discuss how TaylorMade Golf’s culture contributes to its product and technological innovation. David highlights that innovation goes beyond creating technical precedents in its products and services. Instead, the company defines innovation as “people innovation”, starting with their employees and creating an environment that encourages risk-taking and courage to make the right decisions.
Innovation shows up in every department; creating new ideas and pathways aligned with their mission and purpose. The fact that TaylorMade is a technological leader in their industry is a byproduct of their innovative thinking, which ultimately creates value for customers.
Following through, Lou asks David about TaylorMade Golf’s approach to innovation and if they use different leadership perspectives such as customer zero, Apple’s “I know it’s right”, or other customer-driven methods.
David explains that they have three primary inputs for innovation: world-class athletes on Team TaylorMade, a creative global product creation function, and customer feedback from those who consume and promote their products.
They ideate with the athletes to enhance their performance, invest heavily in R&D to identify new pathways for performance improvements and learn from their customers to address new technologies that suit the needs of golfers in the future.
He reveals that they have planned five years ahead for advanced technology that they cannot manufacture today.
Moving on, Lou asks what employees can expect when it comes to career development at TaylorMade Golf. In reply, David explains that the company takes a personalized and specific approach to development, looking at different professional profiles and career paths to create tailored programs that are valuable to individuals and the company.
One program he highlights is “Career Stories”, where employees share their experiences and learning with others. Another program called “Fit to Lead” is a four-month program focused on managerial skills development. Finally, there is “Leaderboard”, a 12-month program focused on establishing an environment of creativity and leadership.
David strongly believes that TaylorMade Golf’s commitment to employee development is cultural, with everyone committed to their personal and team’s development, leading to greater progress within the organization.
Next, Lou compliments David for TaylorMade Golf’s and enjoyable atmosphere and asks how he fosters a culture of fun and connection among his team. In response, David says that his employees engage in many activities together, including golf tournaments, team-building exercises, and community involvement initiatives.
He also mentions their “Communi-TEE” program, where employees can take volunteer time off to help less fortunate people in their communities.
TaylorMade Golf’s core values are as follows: originality, relatability, competitiveness, and “golf-timism”, a brilliant portmanteau encompassing their philosophy. He describes how the company’s values are pressure-tested not only within the organization but also with the company’s endorsers and consumers. David emphasizes that TaylorMade strives to be original, relatable, competitive, and optimistic in everything they do in order to drive success.
When asked what he would say to potential employees who are enthusiastic about joining the company and love golf, David Abeles highlights the importance of pursuing one’s passion and building a network to pursue a career in the golf industry. David also encourages people to engage with TaylorMade through their website, social media, or by visiting their headquarters in Carlsbad, California.
Lou and David go into much greater detail throughout this conversation. Thank you for listening!
Lou Carter : Hello everybody! Welcome to the Leader Show. I'm Lou Carter, CEO of Most Loved Workplace, and it is a pleasure to be here today with David Abeles. He is the CEO of TaylorMade Golf, and he's been there for 20 years. He's been CEO for the past eight years, and he's brought them through some amazing growth periods and created a culture that is truly loved.
First of all, congratulations on becoming a Most Loved Workplace, certified, and on the Newsweek top Most Loved Workplaces. Congratulations, David, and great to have you here today with us.
David Abeles : Great to be here. Thank you. It was wonderful to be recognized and sure, we'll talk quite a bit about leadership today and what love means to TaylorMade. So thrilled to be here. Thank you.
LC : We'll definitely go there today. You know, I wanna start with a question, you know, tell me first, you know, what do you mean by Beyond Driven that creates a winning culture for you and TaylorMade?
DA : Yeah, some might call Beyond Driven a bit of a tagline or a slogan. You might see it in our content or our advertising if you're watching golf on Saturday or Sunday, or picking up our feeds on any of our social. But for us it's more of an ethos. It's kind of how we live and how we lead here at the organization. And really contextually what Beyond Driven means to us is: it's an emphasis on the competitive spirit and athletic mindedness of the company, the connected nature of our company through our colleagues and our customer base, or even direct-to-consumer and how we engage and our willingness, quite frankly, Lou, to do things today that others really wish they could do, so that we can do things tomorrow that others dream they could get to.
So, we're constantly really driven to improve, and we can talk about that at length today, I'm sure we will, about how we invest in development, how we invest in a concept called continuous improvement. So it's really an ethos, a cultural identity of the company that we're Beyond Driven to move further and faster in everything we do every day that we do it to improve the performance of the company, and importantly, the environment and culture that we keep here at TaylorMade.
LC : And certainly the metaphor of driving and golf doesn't hurt, does it? To have that beyond the drive, moving that and following through, I would assume.
DA : You picked up on that, Lou, there's a direct correlation between the two.
LC : Saw that there! You know, we're gonna talk about your products and how you got there because I see that correlation as well with innovation and how your culture, this fun culture that really creates that drive to innovate, that drive to go beyond. And you're known for that. You're known for product and technological innovation in the industry, manufacturing and in the sports industry, you know, so how does your culture contribute to that? You're talking a little bit about that beyond driven to that product and technological innovation itself.
DA : Yeah, Lou, the concept of innovation, I think in many regards is misunderstood in most companies, and maybe our viewpoint might be insular, but the reality for us, the way we define innovation isn't solely true. The technical precedence we set in the products or services in which we bring to market to create more value for golfers. In fact, if I think about the mission of our company, which is to be the best performance golf brand in the world, and you break those words down, words have meaning here because words drive behaviors and behaviors drive actions.
So, to be the best that something is very aspirational, all about performance. We're a golf brand, we don't do anything but golf. So we're very specialized in the things that we do, which enables us to focus on things. I'll come back on innovation here in a minute.
And then to do that on a worldwide basis or a multinational organization. So our mission is to be the best performance golf brand in the world. And the purpose of the organization is to help golfers of all skill levels play the game a bit better, enjoy the game a bit more. So we're very clear around the world in every office and department around the world, all of our employees associates as it relates to our mission and purpose.
So, the concept of innovation sits within that, and we get a lot of credit. We're humbled by it that the innovative qualities we bring to a stealth two driver that's in market this year, played by Roy McElroy or Tiger Woods or Colin Morak, that it's innovative, it's faster, it's more forgiving, it's a better-performing product. It meets those tenants that I shared with you.
It ladders up to the mission, it ladders up to the purpose of the company. But innovation is cultural for us. We don't lead with product innovation, we lead with people innovation. And so if you were to walk through our world headquarters here in Carlsbad, in fact we're shooting this live today from our content studios. Another example of an innovative concept that came to our business over the past several years as we decided to curate our own concept and enhance and deliver our brand message and value to golfers around the world.
We innovate, starting with our employee base, how we hire our employees, how we develop our employees, how we lead our employees, how we create an environment for our employees. So innovation is cultural because you can't truly innovate unless people are willing to lean in and take on the risks to be an innovative company.
And that's why in my opinion, and certainly through the lens of TaylorMade many companies that use the term innovation, they may define it differently than we do to be innovative. Lou is very difficult because you have to be willing to take on risk that others won't because with true innovation, you have successes and you have failures. And so innovation takes a lot of courage and we're a very courageous group of people back to Beyond Driven.
We will move further and faster, exercise our courage and our innovation, our innovative qualities to advance our company. So in many regards, innovation is cultural for us. And from the cultural ideation of innovation, how it lives within every department of the organization, commercially, operationally, financially, ultimately that will show up in our products as well. And we move forward from there. So thrilled to hear that you view us as a technical leader in the industry. We are, and we're proud of that. But that's a byproduct of innovative thinking. How do we create new ideas, new pathways, aligned with our mission, aligned with our purpose to ultimately create value for our customer? And that starts with our people. Make no mistake.
LC : I always hear different types of leadership perspectives on innovation and ways in which companies rally their culture around it. Here's some ways I've heard. Number one is customer zero, where they become the customer second way and Apple led this is, I know it's right, I'll create it, make it outstanding, unique and truly brilliant in approach. Just absolutely exquisite and I'll present it. The other is customer driven and bringing in the Tiger Woods, bringing in your best golfers to test it, to improve it. Do you bring all three of these into your innovative culture or do you lead with one of these in particular?
DA : Yeah, you know, I think every company has their own perspective on how to create products or services that are right for them, that open meet market needs or define or create market needs. And I don't think TaylorMade is too dissimilar in that regard. There are three primary inputs in which we plug into to ultimately find new pathways for innovation, growth and progress. Most important, and really what we're talking about is progress.
How do we just get a little bit better every day and then over time you build a mountain of success. The first pathway that we plug into certainly are these world class athletes that we call Team TaylorMade. And so while we certainly reference Tiger for obvious reasons and his incredible success on the golf course and quite frankly off the golf course, he doesn't get enough credit for what he does outside of golf.
Roy McElroy, Scotty Scheffler, Colin Mowa, Brooke Henderson, world number one, Nelly Corta. We work directly with those athletes to ideate to think about how they could enhance their performance. What are they looking for in terms of our product tenants form and function, right? What is the functional aspect of the product that is ultimately gonna lead to better performance? And then from a form standpoint, is the design language consistent with innovation and progressive, progressive approach to how products really are look or felt? That's number one. Number two is we lean heavily on a very creative, what we call global product creation function in a very deep and successful R&D function. We invest more in product creation and R&D than in most things we do in our organization because we're trying to identify new pathways for performance improvements for all skill levels back to the purpose of the company.
So, we absolutely leveraged the success, the experience, and also the new thinking within the organization, relatives, new concepts. And Lou, one of the things that is not known about TaylorMade is we are actually five years out on technology. So what I can't do today is share with your audience in this incredible group of people that are listening to this where we will be in five years, that's the, the state secret for us, but we know exactly what technology we are planning to launch five years from now, even if we can't manufacture it today because it's so advanced.
And the final component, this last plug where we identify, you know, really the innovation stream into the company comes from our customer base and we define customer in terms of those who which we do business with and those who which consume our products. So we don't differentiate between wholesale, retail, consumer, we plug into those that actually touch and feel and promote our products every day, learn from them in a learning environment, what's working, what's not working, and then apply those learnings into a process that enables us to address new technologies to suit the needs of golfers tomorrow, not just today.
LC : Sounds like a real agile approach where you find out what's working, how you can improve it, and then continuously adapt and adjust to create the most precise, incredible instrument possible and available in the market today, which is outstanding and most success, best practice. Most definitely.
Let's move, let's move into that a little bit because I was talking about a little about development, right? And how, you know, you've become a Most Loved Workplace, how Most Love programs become certified and the becoming analyst is through really this development, it's through development, it's a programs, a practices, what you put in place to enable your culture and you're committed to development of your people.
That's what I wanted to hear about. A few programs or ways that you go about development examples you're particularly proud of. Tell me more about that practice teller made. What can employees expect when it comes to development?
DA : Would love to Lou, it's an area of deep and profound passion for me, our senior leadership team here at the organization. And importantly, again, it's cultural through the organization in terms of everybody's commitment to be Beyond Driven in their own personal development, team development and ultimately leading to greater progress in the organization. So, I think the starting point in development is interesting because most companies, good companies have a development program and they're committed to that program and they invest in that program and they work to lead through that program. And we do that here at TaylorMade as well.
But we've gone probably a few layers deeper than that because we actually look at development through the lens of different professional profiles in the organization where you are on your career journey or your career path, how you're thinking about your future. And while there are always some broad-based development opportunities in the organization, I'll get to some of them here shortly, we also get very specific and personalized relative to the passion or requirement of the specific individual or group to pursue their best and develop within the construct of what they believe will be useful for them and most importantly valuable for them and for the company in the future.
So I can think and share with you a few different platforms in which we embrace this approach. One of the areas that I'm very proud of is a concept, a platform that we call career stories here at the organization. So environmental learning, internal learning is a big thing for us. So how do we bring different employees from different areas around the world to share with interested employee, the interested of the employee base, the things that they have experienced, the things that they have learned from the things that they're working on.
I'll give you two specific examples. Just in the past several weeks, we have a managing director, an individual that runs our business in Australia. Well, he is originally from South Africa. He led a career stories discussion with a few of our commercial groups to talk about how he built his career in South Africa, how he leveraged the skills of his development work in South Africa in a commercial role, and ultimately ended up leading a critical area for us in Australia, which is a wonderful market for golf, wonderful business for TaylorMade.
So you think about a South African Johannesburg born talented leader that migrated from his work in South Africa and ended up in our offices in Melbourne leading one of the important developmental regions in the world for us. So this individual step forward had a wonderful audience of employees from around the world that listened to his process and his story and were inspired by it because of the success that he's had. And he talked about the strengths and progress that he made and some of the challenges that he faced along the way. So the internal learnings of that is critical to the success of anybody's development.
We did the same thing with one of our business insights leads that's based here in Carlsbad, that is on temporary assignment for 12 months in Tokyo. And he's cross-sharing, you know, his, his learnings in Tokyo and our offices in Japan relative to what he actually learned here in Carlsbad, sharing that with a broader audience of employees so that we can actually become more global and learn more about his experiences.
So, the starting point is how do we share what we've learned and what we're working through to improve our performance so that we can enhance everybody's experience at the company. But that's just the starting point. We have a program, a platform called Fit to Lead, which is focused on managers. It's a four month program to help develop really specific managerial skills in the organization so that we can be effective in managing.
And there's a big difference in our mind between management and leadership. And I'll come upon that here shortly as well. Management is how are we assigning goals and objectives? How are we establishing the specific protocols to develop and deliver against stated goals within the organization? So we work on management development as a critical component of development in the organization, and that's in a program called Fit To lead.
It's not a one-time thing, Lou, it's four months worth of development to enhance your managerial skills in the organization to effectively manage a group of people toward a better outcome. And the next platform up from that is a concept that we're very proud of. And again, there's a bit of a golf correlation to this. We call it leaderboard. Leaderboard is focused on higher level directors and VPs in the organization. This is a 12 month program as it relates to how to establish an environment of creativity, how to establish a trusted environment that leads toward the innovative qualities that we talked about before.
How do we establish ourselves and build a culture around leadership that enables us to do the things that we talked about that will lead us into the future. So that's a leadership development program. So at every level of the organization, we are working on development, we are working on improvement.
So what we and I might work on together could be different than what our customer service folks might be working on together could be different from what our finance folks working on together. So we're very specific and intentional around how we work on development programs to enhance the individual's ability to contribute in his or her role and ultimately benefit the company.
You know, one of the things that we're incredibly proud of in development itself is measuring the development along the way. Are we seeing progress points in our development both culturally through our internal glint surveys and pulse checks, which is how are we actually performing in the organization? How do our employees believe or how our employees see the organization developing and they believe in our future. One of the things that we celebrated just a few months ago was a Heritage 20 Club here at our organization. So we have, believe it or not, 2000 employees around the world of which 150 of those employees live have been with the company for 20 years or more.
And we leveraged that experience into the organization to ultimately yield even greater environmental and cultural differences here. So we do a lot here to support our people. We lead with our people unconditionally. It starts with development and then we obviously work through a lot of celebratory recognition-type platforms as well to keep the momentum moving within our culture.
LC : I was looking through your videos and throughout the world I can say that you have a lot of fun. Your people have a lot of fun and I was thinking to myself, whether it's in Thailand or wherever it is around the world, your people are happy and they're doing cool things and whether it's team building events in the middle of the forest I saw, right? Or or just having fun at the onsite or learning and getting involved in in new golfing outings. It's just fun. Right. So you're committed to fun in addition to development and I noticed that throughout the videos.
Tell me, you know, beyond the management and leadership, which, which is awesome, you know, what are ways that you're committed with your team to having fun to help them connect with one another?
Yeah, well we, we do a lot, sometimes maybe too much [laugh]. We have, we have a lot of fun here and, and how special is it that you can plug into your workspace every day, wherever you are around the world and truly be passionate about what you do and do it with an enormous sense of pride. Not only commitment and dedication, but certainly have fun in embracing your professional ambition and ultimately what that means to the success of the organization you work for.
So, we certainly do spend a lot of time in the game of golf, as you might imagine, again, the best performance golf brand. We're not the best performance tennis brand or the best performance basketball brand, although we have athletes around the organization. But we have a lot of fun with our tournament series here around golf and our organization, both domestically and internationally.
We do a lot of team building exercises. We talked before about the development platforms, but at times it's really good to get outside and run programs where we can either work together to facilitate stronger working relationships, even if we're not working specifically on developmental strategy or tactics where we're building stronger, more embedded relational equity amongst our people, more trust within our people, and doing that in a forum or in a platform or in an environment that is a lot of fun where it's open to learning where people are expressing vulnerability and where people are really leaning on each other for the betterment of the team and subsequently their own personal progress as well. You know, the other thing we do, Lou, and I'm very proud of this and I know our team and human resources really has led us through this. We're very community-focused as well.
We embrace a concept called COMMUNITEE capital TEE. Again, a correlation back to golf, having some fun with that. Our people have the opportunity to take volunteer time off at the organization to take a day and plug into things like feeding San Diego or helping individuals that may not be as privileged as others and have different requirements to help them either one, get back on their feet, have a hot meal on their table, or ultimately support their family. It's one of many programs that we'll embrace. We build bikes for less fortunate kids that ultimately might not be able to afford a bike and we'll pay for that and get those bikes out to it.
There's a lot of wonderful things that we do, others do as well, where we feel giving back is not only incredibly helpful for those that are receiving that gift, but importantly the pride we feel and ultimately the progress that we make as a people, like a group of people in our organization to add value to others that that may not be in the same situation we are. So we do a lot of that, but all of this, Lou really comes back and certainly the concept of fun comes back to the core values of our organization and I'm happy to talk to you about that. We talked about our mission and our purpose, but the core values of our organization are central to everything we do, every idea we create and every behavior and action in which we roll out into our respective functions.
LC : Let's go into that David, cuz values are certainly an important component of this. And we've talked about the holistic person so far, the developmental, the community-focused, the volunteer focused and getting involved seems like an entire human is being developed at TaylorMade. Tell me the values now, tell me about the values. I'd love to hear more about that.
DA : Yeah, we have four very specific values here that are clearly defined in and to some degree outside the organization. And one of the beautiful things about our viewpoint on values is we certainly live and lead by them and we certainly create and innovate through them. But those values are pressure tested, not just inside the organization. They have to be pressure tested outside the organization. So when we assign or endorse an athlete, do they meet the same values that we as subscribe to here in the organization? When we bring a product to market, a campaign to market a new, innovative, creative way to engage consumers with technology or content creation, are all of those executions aligned to the core values of the company? So I'll share them with you and everybody right now. The first one is original. The things that we do, we believe they should be authentic and most importantly, original in the way we do them.
So we challenge ourselves every day to create something new that is original to TaylorMade. And through that originality, we'll create value for those that are consuming it, embracing it, or touching it. So we view ourselves and we live by the fact that the things that we work on, they have to pass this original test. We are an original group of people, we have original ideas and we challenge ourselves. Again, Beyond Driven. We challenge ourselves to be original in our space and the things that we do. The second one is relatable, which is are the things that we're doing to our product services, brand campaigns or even operational practices, are they relatable to different audiences? Are they relatable internally? Are they relatable externally?
I'll give you a perfect example of this. I think the most relatable athlete in the world right now is Rory McElroy. Rory is one amazing human being. And when he talks, when it's press conferences or he is playing golf, he demonstrates an authentic expression of humility, an authentic expression of vulnerability. And even in his great success, right? He's very grounded. We are a very grounded organization, I think most can relate to that. So we try to be relatable in the things that we do and relevant through our relatability. There's also a high degree of humility in here that's not within ultimately our value set, but it is connected to the relatability of the things that we do.
So, I'll give you an example of that, Lou. We're the largest golf equipment manufacturer in the world, but we will not tell anybody. So I'm kind of contradicting myself right now. But a lot of other companies in or outside our industry would use that as a brand platform or positioning platform to tell the world how good they are.
We would rather learn from the world as it relates to how we can get better and then deliver them something of value so they can pass judgment on how good we are. A very different approach. We're relatable in that regard. We're extremely competitive. This is the third value. And as you might expect, we're in a very competitive environment. The golf landscape is a competitive sport, but importantly, every individual, all 2000 of our employees, we are competitive in the things that we do. We're constantly competing to win and that's important and we don't win all the time, but when we do, we celebrate that, we recognize that we make progress around that, and then we move on to the next thing that we're doing to try to improve again. So we're extremely competitive and that shows up in the DNA and everything we do certainly shows up with our athletes on tour, certainly shows up in the products that we make, certainly shows up in the services that we deliver and certainly all the content we create that many of you will consume.
We're highly competitive and we have a desire to move on and get better and improve. As we've talked about before. The last value is the one that I think I'll get a bit of a chuckle from you and probably from most of those that are listening today. At times through the innovative qualities of the company and the ideation that happens here and the creative nature of the things that we do, we make things up. So there was a value, we were having a discussion when we went through the assessment of our values several years ago. If you were to define like the personality of the company and you took a look at leaders, individuals through the organization and tried to identify a characteristic that is common, a red thread that connects us all Beyond how original we might be or relatable we might be or competitive that we are, what would that be?
Well, a couple of are terrific leaders came up and said, well, we're always optimistic. We're always trying to find some optimism in great times or even the most challenging times. Yeah, but we're all about golf and we all love golf. Even if we play it at different levels of the organization, we're passionate about it. We hire around it, we develop around it, all those things are in place. So we had a very creative marketer that said, well then that makes us golftimistic. We love golf, we're optimistic, we're golftimistic. Well, my guess is if you look in Webster, you won't find that word anywhere, but it's our fourth value. We are a very golf optimistic group. In fact, our CMO told the story as we were working through this process that I'll never forget from time to time we're fortunate enough to go down to the masters and celebrate one of the great major championships in golf.
Well, if any of you have been down to the masters, you see this amazing clubhouse right outside the clubhouse is this gorgeous time tested oak tree. And then you walk on either to putting green or the first tee. Well, we get to go down there, fortunately, as part of our business with frequency, hopefully every year, if not every year, every year or two. Well, our CMO was having a conversation with another industry leader and he said, well, the industry leader says to our CMO, well, here we are again, another year at Augusta National and another masters to which our CMO said, you've gotta be kidding me. Do you know how fortunate we are to be standing on the grounds of Augusta National. You know how incredible this is that we can actually embrace this sport at the highest level at this major championship.
So many millions of people around the world on their bucket list would die to have the opportunity to stand right here with us right now. Why are we not embracing this opportunity and appreciating how incredible this is? Immediately in that conversation, the tone of that discussion change. We are extremely optimistic in everything we do. That doesn't mean we succeed all the time, but that optimism will lead us to a better pathway and lead us to even difficult times into better times. So between the originality of the company, how relatable we are, importantly how competitive we are, we are very golftimistic, and if you were to walk into Carlsbad or walk into any office at TaylorMade in any corner around the world, you would feel that passion and reigns supreme through the organization. And I think in many regards, Lou, it defines us and we're incredibly proud of that. And again we lean up against it to ensure that we hire and develop through a golf optimistic lens.
LC : I remember watching the masters in Augusta this year and, and seeing the, it was little cold, a little bit rainy, and I thought to myself, what a beautiful day. It was so beautiful. And thinking in a golftimistic manner, I thought this is the pinnacle of beauty because, you're competing in one of the most, one of the oldest sports, one of the most incredible sports, you know, ever created. And they are, these are the biggest competitors in the world. They have macro, they have these incredibly grounded, relatable, original, competitive and golftimistic people. What your values are, as I see it, are the values of great golfers.
They're the values of great golfers. And golfing is an incredibly internal game of being really a whole person, a whole person, and leading from within and others. You know, I always see the greatest golfers and their relationships with the, we still say caddies, don't we?
So our very special, you can tell there's a, there's of the Great Grace Club, you could tell that there's a give and take, there's an understanding there, there is, there's a relatable aspect. There's a competitive aspect of winning together, right? And that's the kind of thing that I see at TaylorMade as well is that, you know, in, your community is about that kind of optimism, golftimism and it's pervasive and I just caught it from you, even though we're far away from each other. I felt that across the airwaves here, and I know people also in the audience have today, golf is contagious. It's truly contagious. And it sounds like that's been a part of your culture too.
If I'm an employee just out there, I love golf or I don't love my assumption is, you know, I'm still gonna wanna work with you, still gonna wanna work for TaylorMade. What don't we tell those people about? How do I get to become an employee of Killer Made? I'm excited about you. I love what you do. I'm super excited about golf. What, what would David tell them today?
Yeah, well, thankfully, and we are all incredibly proud of this. As you might imagine, there's quite a steep demand curve of talented individuals that would love to be part of the golf industry because of their love for golf. And certainly related to TaylorMade part of our organization. We're very proud of the things that we do. And I'm sure you could probably sense that through the emotions in my voice when I talk about the things that are important to us.
My recommendation to anybody who is interested in getting into golf is pursue that passion. Start to build the appropriate network with the respective golf community. Reach out to our company, our website and our consumer engagement capabilities is always wide open. We have opportunities that present themselves with great frequency through our recruiting portals. So, the starting point is start, right, and that you're going back to Beyond Driven.
If it's something you wanna do, you have to start and you have to pursue it. So the advice I would give is plug in, get started, start to identify, you know, specifically what you're looking for in your career. What functional discipline you, you may have experience in or you wanna develop experience in culturally, what's important to you? Do you align with company values as it relates to TaylorMade the four we just talked about? And then find your way into our organization, whether it's in digital form or in personal form, where you get a chance to embrace our people.
We welcome countless tours and people through our buildings so they can experience some of the things that we're talking about in real hand. We're based in Carlsbad, California. If you want a tour of our building and get a chance to know the company, come in and see us. If you wanna engage with our content and respond to our social platforms, do that. It's a wonderful way to get to know the company, learn about the company, and subsequently become part of the company. You know, there isn't a direct pathway to come on in, show up and, and start at TaylorMade. But you know, the starting point is really embracing the opportunity of engaging with us both in physical form or in digital form, and then coming into the organization, get to meet our people.
LC : You know, what's in interesting about what you said and it came out to me as, as you're saying it, is that you gotta be ready. You have to be ready. And that means that the show, if you're gonna get into the show, you have to prepare. You have to get in and understand the environment. You have to get in and understand if it connects with you, if to be ready to get to the show. We don't just go to the masters, we work toward the masters and we get to the masters because of the passion and commitment to that plan A.
So thank you so much. David Abeles today- what a treat to learn from you today and all of the development you do, culture work, you do community work, you do, and especially your golftimism, which has come out in strong force today to all of our audience and to everyone. Not just in the golfing community, but in the business and beyond.
DA : Well Lou, thank you very much. And you know, being named a Most Loved Workplace is something that we are incredibly proud of and something that again, motivates us to continue to move forward and find progress in the things that we do. The work that you're doing is fantastic. Exposing individuals like me and others who I have watched to a broader community to learn from and develop within is something that we find great value in. So credit to you and your team for all the great work leading us to this day. So we appreciate that. Thank you.
LC : It's great to have you, David. We'll see you soon.
