Jason Richardson: Pursuing A Life of Adventure, Community, and Growth

You know, I was in a rough spot. Like, Bad Birdie was running my life and I wasn't running this business that I actually created to build an amazing life for myself and my family. And so, I mean, there's always been this pressure. I have to perform and I have to, I have to grow this business. I have to do this to achieve something or achieve this. You know, somehow my success will cover that. That deep part of me that is still looking for validation, or that part of me that's like, hey, I don't want to be rejected. I don't want to be different than everyone else. But actually being like, wait, no, it's okay, like, I get to wake up every day and choose whether Bad Birdie's still here or not.

Welcome to the Pursue Whole podcast where leaders share their honest and unscripted journeys, exploring life's big questions and addressing the barriers that get in the way of pursuing a whole life. I'm your host, Andy Maurer.

Leaders spend their whole lives becoming what other people want them to become.

Yet in that process, they forget who they truly are.

Jason Richardson grew up feeling like he didn't fit in. There was something unique about him, something different that inspired him to see endless possibilities where others saw blank slates. Through his journey of wholeness and healing, Jason has come to believe that everyone, no matter how different, possesses a unique gift that deserves to be seen, known and empowered. What drew Jason to build such an innovative and creative brand and how would he use it to unlock people's true potential?

Yes. I'm the founder and CEO of Bad Birdie Golf. We are a golf apparel brand based out of Scottsdale, Arizona and started and made a name for ourselves with printed polos. I started Bad Birdie as a side hustle with the intent of something that I would do just on nights and weekends and just kind of a fun hobby. I had another full time career working in film production in Los Angeles when I started the company and played a lot of golf in my free time and just wanted to start a business and was like, hey, I'll make some shirts for me and my buddies to wear on the course and started with 100 polos and figured out how to make apparel in LA. It's a great spot to learn and yeah, that was kind of the initial story.

I remember reading a couple things when you were scouting golf apparel. One of the big knocks on it was it was boring.

Oh yeah.

You wanted to bring a lot of life to it. Talk to us a little bit about how that's in Line with just your personality and how you kind of operate as a person from your creativity.

That's a great question. So golf historically has been very much focused on being very traditional and very exclusive. And so what that came across from brands and how marketing was. Back in the day, golf apparel was generally really boring, solid colors or stripes. Like, maybe if you were getting a little crazy, you'd wear some stripes. On the other side of that, golf brands focused on either performance. So our product or our apparel is going to help you play better, shoot lower scores, or B, we're going to focus on the tradition of the sport. The sport started, and it's been around for hundreds of years and the nostalgia around it. And no one really focused on, hey, wait a second. The golf is one of the most fun things you can do with your buddies or by yourself. And you go out and compete, have a couple beers, get outside, and play this really fun game. And so we focus on the recreational side of it and have really built a brand around that. And so there's been this massive movement over the last couple years towards changing golf culture, making it more inclusive instead of exclusive, focusing on the recreational, fun aspect of it while still respecting people that chase performance, people that chase the tradition and want to embrace the tradition.

So, yeah, and a lot of bad birdie and what you're describing really comes out of who you are as a person, which I'm excited to get into today. And like we say, a pursue whole. You can be a high performer, but you can't be a great leader unless you deal with the pain of your past. And you cannot create a legacy unless you, as a leader, cast a vision for what that means moving forward. So tell us a little bit about how you were like as a kiddo and some of your unique personalities.

Yeah. So I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona. I'm the oldest of three. So I have a firstborn mentality which, you know, definitely go getter and, you know, stereotypical in that sense. But I grew up in a home that was, I would say, very, I don't want to say rigid, but it was pretty strict. And it was very much aligned around hard work and following rules and obeying your parents and learned a lot of good things from my parents and outside of it and, you know, grew up in a family where work was embraced. So my dad had an entrepreneurial spirit and was involved in a company here in Phoenix. My mom always encouraged us to work hard, and so definitely a family early. Early on remembering that I had this innate kind of desire to perform and do something and contribute in my life. We were a family that on Saturday morning we'd get up and do chores all day. So I grew up every single Saturday doing chores, mowing the lawn, working all day, sweating all day, all the way up to when I was, I was the last kid in my high school, last senior I think in my high school to ride the bus because my parents said if you want to drive a car, you have to save up the money to buy a car and pay the insurance. And it took me till my senior year to be able to do that. So definitely like a self starter kind of mindset early on. But I think through, I think my childhood, I spent a lot of time feeling a little bit different than people. I think I lived a lot of.

My years, especially in those developmental years going when you kind of become like a teenager and you go into high school. I felt a lot of that time feeling a little bit like an outcast. And I think I wanted to be a different version of myself. But I was really scared to be that person and that felt really scary to go, I guess, be who I think I was created to be. The funny part about that is Bad Birdie is really a manifestation of who Jason is or who I am to the fullest extent. And I think if you went and met 12 year old me versus now, you'd see a completely kind of different shift. But that was, that's always been core to who I am.

Who did you feel like you had to be, you know, as a 12 year old kid or what was accepted?

Yeah, I think at that time I just was very. I spent a lot of my early years and I still, you know, trying to work through this, but I spent a lot of time caring about what people think about me. And so I was very much, I'm very self aware person, I'm very aware of culture and what people are perceiving and what's working. And I think that's been a great benefit to especially grow a brand like Bad Birdie. But if I put that on myself, it's almost like I'm always looking internally and I'm trying to be. I felt like I had handcuffs on a lot of my, those developing years just not feeling comfortable, my own skin feeling like the people I had around me maybe didn't see the same things I saw my way. And so yeah, I just struggled as in those early years as a kid going through, going through middle school and high school, I felt like I had to like kind of fit into this way. And I was like, I didn't really know how to break out of that.

So on the inside, you. You know who you were.

Yeah.

But somehow you couldn't represent who you were in those settings because you're afraid to be rejected. Afraid? Is that really what people want? So you put together a functional image of what you felt like people wanted and what they liked. And when did that start to change for you, Jason, from this image that you put on to really coming to terms with embracing who you really are?

You brought up a good word there. Rejection. And I think core to some of my doing a lot of work understanding that part of that shame in me is like, I have this big fear of being rejected. And I think there's just, like, a safety mechanism. And so I remember in my senior year of high school, I went and had lunch with my youth pastor at the time, and I remember just sitting down. I don't know why I brought this up to him. I had never really hung out with him. And I said, hey, I want to change. I have a great family. I have great friends, but this isn't who I ultimately want to become. And so I want to make a difference. I want to change my senior year in high school. I want to do something different. And so I just kind of declared that it was kind of scary, and I. I kind of shifted my friend groups. I still kept some of those old friends, but kind of shifted in a new way. I became more free in my own skin. I got to show a little bit more of my personality. And a big shift for me was, okay, senior year, where am I gonna go to college? And I didn't want to stay in Arizona because I needed to kind of go on this journey of changing. And so I decided to go to a small school in Los Angeles called Azusa Pacific. And when I went there, it was definitely this moment of freedom. But my first year, I just shriveled back up, and I kind of got to that safety zone that I felt where I was like, I need to protect myself. And then there was this turning point. About halfway through my freshman year, I was like, I can't do. So I had to open back up and kind of put myself out there. And by doing that, some of my best friends today are. I mean, my best friends from today are still from that group that I. A couple core group that I met in college. That's all due to myself kind of opening up.

What's fascinating, as you share about.

Being scared of rejection, which a lot of us are, especially in Middle school. And even as adults, we're scared to not be wanted by others. That's actually a really core element of what you were describing in Bad Birdie is this ability to really open it up for more people and let them know that they're welcome in that sport and to be able to allow them to express themselves through your clothing. And I think some of the best brands, if you look at founders, some of the best brands, are built out of the pain of their story and the brand and the business as a way to change the world for the better. Do you feel that way with Bad Birdie for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think Bad Birdie in the same way, like, golf was very constricted, right. And I think Bad Birdie in a way, is kind of a. A liberator in a sense. Like, I might be going too metaphorical on here, but, like, I always felt like I was tied a certain way. So it's like I want to, like, liberate myself, free myself to be an experience life and who. Where it can go. And so I think Bad Birdie in a small way is doing that in the game of golf. Right. We're showing more of what golf can become versus what it has been looked at. And so I think golf has been this amazing sport for hundreds of years. Right. But no one's really given it the space to breathe and be like, this is what it is. And, like, bring that creativity to. And bring that self expression that I think people have probably been feeling for a long time. They just didn't know that they had to have the upside down.

You almost personified the sport as a person.

Oh, totally.

Yeah. And, you know, if it was a person, you're basically unlocking it and saying, hey, how would you want to express yourself? Yeah, that's really interesting how you. How you just described that.

I want to talk about that because that's a big theme for you, Jason, from childhood to adulthood. What did you do in order to give yourself permission to fully show up as Jason?

Oh, that's a deep question. I think.

Ultimately learning to love myself and learning to, like, recognize that I am different and that that's okay and that I may view things in a different way than others, but that's actually a unique gift. And if I don't embrace who I am, right. I'm actually.

Limiting what I guess my contribution to the world could be. And so I think about everyone has these unique gifts, right? And it's like, how many people are just sitting there, they don't even know that they have these special gifts that they can unlock and, like, make an impact. And so for me, it's still something I struggle with, but just like, reminding myself to be like, hey, I was created to have unique abilities and gifts and hopefully bring those out.

What are the parts of you that are hardest to love?

The hardest parts of me to love? That is.

It's a really good question. It's a really deep question. And I think a lot of the times it could simply be just waking up and looking in the mirror in the morning and be like, who is this guy? And it can start, I think, externally, and it can just start externally, looking at myself in the mirror, being like, I don't like this part about myself. I'm going to go deep here. But I think back to my time in middle school. I developed a little bit slower than some other guys. And so I just remember feeling like, hey, I'm behind the curve. Like, what's wrong with me? Why are other kids growing facial hair and a beard? And I can't, you know, I'm like, still shorter. I'm still different than them. And so just feeling like an outcast, I think was tough for me at that early age. I just kind of taught myself, hey, you're different. You're behind the curve, and so there's something wrong with you. And so I think that I've had to retrain myself to be like, hey, that's outside of your control, Jason. You're totally fine. You actually have a lot of gifts you can offer. And fast forward 20 years, 20 plus years to now. I think the hardest parts for myself to love, that I have to remind myself, is that I am different than people. And a lot of times I feel like I am. Wait, I just want to conform and be like everybody else, but I have to remind myself that, like, it's okay to be me. And understanding that I don't need to be accepted by every single one. And the way that I do things is going to be different. And that is actually a way for me to create what I have created with a company like Bad Ready, because I lean into that and owning that.

So I think it's an important journey for a lot of leaders to take, and I've had to take that journey for myself as well. A lot of my clients and a lot of our listeners know that I had a condition called hyperhidrosis, where my hands and my feet, my armpits sweated profusely all the way up until high school. And then I got a surgery to stop that. But I was always embarrassed. My shirt sweated. I had big rings in my shirt. I always had to wear black colors. Couldn't do gymnastics because my hands and feet sweat too much. Had to be a lifeguard because I'm in the water. Couldn't even do my homework because my hands were sweating so much. So all of these things about my body that felt so broken, that led into a lot of areas of my life where I felt like, man, something's wrong with who I am. And I was way more emotional as a man. So you put that on top of it, and I don't fit in anywhere. I'm way more creative, way more emotional, kind of like what you're talking about. Jason. I had to come to a point where I had to learn to recognize that the things that I'm ashamed of are actually my greatest gift to the world. And oftentimes for leaders, when we feel so different and unique, we can feel really ashamed about that. When in reality, we just haven't had people tell us that that's a unique gift. That's something unique and beautiful about us. And when you believe that about yourself, when you actually believe that the areas that you feel shame are actually your greatest gifts to people, how does that change the way you feel? How does that change the way you live? As a leader, the first word that.

Comes to mind is just empathy and connecting with people and understanding, hey, I know what that's like, to feel like an outcast or feel different. I'm just reflecting even as you're saying that. Just that whole journey from middle school to high school, I'm like, man, that feels so tough. It feels so uncomfortable. I don't want to think about that. But the reality of it is I learned a lot during that time that actually has helped me become a better leader and recognize that every person that I engage with on our team, everyone has a story like that. Like, there's no one out there that doesn't have a story where they feel like no one lives a perfect life, where they're like, I don't have some sort of pain or hurt. And learning to embrace that and understand how that can be a strength for them, understand their sensitivities around that. I think that is something that, you know, would hopefully create a space for people to kind of be open and share that and walk through that and relate to that and.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you started Bad Birdie in your apartment and have grown it now.

Yeah.

It's a pretty large company.

Yeah.

Tell me about kind of where Bad Birdie is. Now then, I want to talk about some of the challenges of scale over the last couple years.

Yeah, so we started, you know, I started with a hundred polos. I put, put $20,000 of my own money and I haven't put a dollar in cents. So I've been very fortunate to bootstrap and build like a business over and over. And I think like where we are now.

You know, we're. I think we're going to probably hit a million polos this year, like totally producing, sold, which I think is really awesome in total over the last couple years. And that's huge. Right? We have a team of 35 and hiring and growing. We have three retail stores, one in Scottsdale, one in Newport Port beach, and then one in Houston. And we sell to Dick's Sporting Goods, the largest retailer for sporting goods in America. We're the fastest growing golf brand in there. We also sell to, you know, high end stores like Nordstrom and we also sell at pro shops. So, yeah, scaling, going that journey from basically having a side hustle to running a corporation or a large company has been a massive, massive weight and a massive growing opportunity. I've loved every second of it, but.

It'S hard.

Yeah, you have two really unique parts of you. Yeah, you have an extremely high performance part of you. A driver, you're gifted, you're motivated, you push the limits. Then you have a very empathetic, creative, emotional part of you. And very rarely do both of those get to exist in a business, especially when it's growing so rapidly. So talk about the process of keeping these two parts of you in check as the business grows. Which part got more time and attention and how did you navigate, you know, both of those parts of you?

Yeah, that's a great question. And this is an ongoing learning for me. So I definitely the high performer, the, you know, let's call it the producer. So before I started Bad Birdie, I was a producer, basically a professional firefighter. But in the film world and so running a business, you are a firefighter every day. And I think that I have really, really leaned in and over exhausted that side of myself over the last six years. You know, Bad Birdie has been successful in a lot of ways due to the fact of that grit and perseverance and just continually pushing forward. And I think with that I've, you know, I've let this, you know, emotional, creative, empathetic side of me probably take a little bit of a side seat. And so for me, one of the things that I'M focusing on, especially as we scale our team hiring staff around the vision of Bad Birdie. And where we're going is allowing that creative side of me to breathe and come out. And it's pretty scary, to be honest, sometimes, because I've spent so much of my time at Bad Birdie being the business guy, being rigid, following rules, building structure, all these things to help grow the company. And I think for me to take a step back and be more creative and empathetic, I think I'm only, you know, I'm probably on overdrive on the producer production side, and I'm probably only using like 20, 25% of that creative side. So I'm excited to go into that. It does feel scary, though, if I'm being honest.

Like, yeah, what feels SC about it?

I mean, it's just like, whoa, what am I going to like? We just hired to give context, so we just hired a chief operating officer who's going to come in and run a lot of the day to day operations, not a lot of the entire day to day operations. And so I'm like, what am I going to do now? Like, I have to go be creative and set vision and work with our team to inspire the future of Bad Birdie's creativity. And I'm like, wait, I. If I. I could just always lean back on being busy all the time. Right. And so it's exciting and it's new and I know it's in there. It just is like, I have a lot more repetition and experience on the side of me that is very production operations focused. And I think I have, you know, that creative side has gotten bad to where it's at. But imagine if we can just, you know, double down on that and continue to grow that so.

Well, your creative side, as you talked about in the podcast, comes from the deepest parts of who you are. The deepest parts of your story.

Yeah.

So for any creative or any entrepreneur, if they actually have heart in what they do, you know, you can create a widget, not care about it, but when you create something out of your story and out of your passion and the impact that you want to see in the world, your identity and who you are is very much tied to it. So when you put it out in the world, people who reject that or don't like that or don't want that, it hurts, it's scary, it's vulnerable. What do you feel like is one of the heaviest burdens you carry as a leader?

Yeah, that's a very real question, I think, right now it's the burden of looking out for our team and the people aspect of it. I don't take it lightly that people get to choose to work at Bad Birdie. And I really genuinely care about people and where they're going to go and just making sure that their time at Bad Birdie pushes them in the direction of growing. Where is their strength and where is their gifting? And so what keeps me up at night is when there's conflict or there's a challenge that is going to impact someone personally and have to have a tough conversation or have to give feedback or do something that I know is not the most fun thing to do, but trying to teach myself and embrace the fact that, hey, it's part of my job.

What's made you better at that rather than just being paralyzed through fear when conflict arises? Because you've actually really leaned into that a lot and done a great job over the last couple years of leaning into that. Really?

Yeah. So I think when there's a tough people decision or a tough people conversation, it is a chance for me to kind of balance those two sides of myself. So there's this empathetic side that's going to feel a lot of the emotion and put myself in their shoes and be like, oh, my gosh, what would it be like to receive this information or have this conversation? But then the other side of that, you have. Have that operations producer mentality that's like, hey, here's the best decision for the business. And so learning to be like, okay, what is the clear objective here? Let's go deliver that objective. And then also balancing, hey, I'm empathetic and I care about you, and that's why I'm giving you this information, and that's why I'm doing that. So trying to manage, it's like, how do you.

Two parts of you that you talked about.

Yeah, two parts and managing both. And it's like one of my first jobs out of college. One of my other coworkers, she, when she had to deliver some news or kind of have a firm stance with a client, she called it the silk hammer. So it's firm, but it's soft. And so being fair but swift, being firm but soft, doing things, that's like in a leadership role. I mean, we are a business. We are making decisions, but making sure that they're coming in around an empathetic way and understanding, hey, I'm talking to a human here. This isn't a robot. This is someone who has feelings, emotions, passions, dreams. They have their own wounds from the past, all these kind of things and.

And you can have both of those at the same time. Yes. I think that's so difficult for leaders is because they bend to either being too empathetic and then they don't make hard decisions and they don't make the calls they need to or they bend to being too critical and harsh and then they lose that sense of culture and community and care. What have been some of the hardest moments for you personally as a leader and how did you make it through those?

Yeah, man, I get emotional just thinking about my family and my wife and just the, the weight that it is to run a business. I don't know unless you've done it, if there's any way to explain it and the toll that that takes on you personally. And then when you're married or partner with someone, just that that spills over into every aspect of your life. Right. I don't wake up and you know, not look at work till 9am and then clock out at 5:30 and I'm home. It's like, it's a, it's a full on lifestyle that I love. But learning how to balance and make sure that my wife stays a priority, make sure that my daughter stays a priority is really tough. And it's an ongoing thing. You know, I was with my family before this and you know they're gonna go, my wife and daughter are gonna go do a little trip to the aquarium. And my daughter's like, hey daddy, can you come with me? And I'm like, hey, I can't, I gotta go work. Right. And I think that's good for her. And there's, you know, that's pretty normal for people to do that. But there is this reality of like the times I, I say I have to go to work probably happens more so than the average person. It has gotten so much better over the last couple years. But the of it is, I mean starting a business will test you in every possible way and it will take a toll on your family. There's, I don't think there's a way around it. I think you're probably going to get to a spot where, I mean, even when I started working with you, I started working with you because I was in, you know, I was in a rough spot. Like Bad Birdie was running my life and I wasn't running this business that I actually created to build an amazing life for myself and my family. And so learning to change that perspective and continually be growing has been huge. And so that's been a really tough thing, and that hits closest to home. Because the most important thing I.

It's for my wife, Jen, and it's for my daughter Ivy, and is our growing family. And if I.

Don'T know, what else am I doing this for?

What needs to change over the next five years in order to keep those priorities straight for you?

Yeah, I think it's making actual operational changes in the business to free up more time and letting go. So I think letting go and equipping people and trusting in people. So I firmly believe in the idea you move at the speed of trust. So passing that off to people and then also trusting myself that look at what we've done, looking what we're building, having confidence in myself to hand things off and actually be like, hey, it's okay if you step away. Like, it's okay if you don't have to be involved in every single thing. And also understanding that, like, there's not this pressure. The personal side of me, there's always been this pressure. I have to perform, and I have to. I have to grow this business. I have to do this to achieve something or achieve this. You know, somehow my success will cover that deep part of me that is still looking for validation or that part of me that's like, hey, I don't want to be rejected. I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be different than everyone else. But actually being like, wait, no, it's okay. Like, I get to wake up every day and choose whether Bad Birdie's still here or not.

I think that's a really important distinctive. Because, I mean, I sit with leaders, and I hear them say all the time in regards to their business, I have to. I have to. I tell them, I said, I sit with them and I say, you don't have to. You don't have to go to work tomorrow. You don't have to do this anymore. You don't have to show up. But you can choose to if you want to. And what that does, that small shift that you just talked about right there, puts the power back in your court, and you make a volitional choice to get back in the ring. You don't have to get back in the ring. You can choose to. And oftentimes when they just make that subtle shift, it really gives them a new sense of empowerment and confidence to get back in. Because a lot of these leaders, including yourself, are resilient because they've gone through a ton of pain in the past. And made it through. That's what makes us great leaders. You don't become a great leader by going through an easy life. It'll kick the shit out of you really bad. And you have to survive and figure out how to navigate that.

Let's talk a little bit about your legacy moving forward. Because you've done a fantastic job on healing and growing. And because you've done that, now you can actually craft a life that has. Has way more purpose and meaning.

Yeah. So I think for me, on the personal side, one of the things I'm continuing to work on is just to love myself for who I am and understand that I am different and understand that I look different. I think different, I am unique. And that is okay that I don't look like you, Andy, or I don't act like you, Andy. We have our own traits. And embracing that in myself and doing that, loving myself so I can go love others and becoming a better leader, becoming a better father, becoming a better husband. And just like continually, like, I always want to be better and growing, but doing it in a way that's not so tied to performance. Doing it because I actually like to do it. Not because I have to, but I get to choose to grow because I actually really, really like doing it.

Yeah.

And I've had to make a lot of decisions where I'm putting the business, you know, first. And so that has taken a toll on just my. The community. My community life. Right. You know, a lot of my time gets taken up. And so trying to really invest over the next five years on that core community to do life with, I think is really important with me. And primarily just really, you know, Jenna, my wife, given me so, so much freedom and autonomy to build this business and really pouring back into her to just be. Just give her back more time. You know, her biggest thing is quality time and being present for her and just spending more time as a family, I think is like, those would be huge wins for me.

I love that. And I actually have your big vision here that you wrote this five year vision on who you want to be as a person as part of your process. Do you mind if I read a.

Yeah, not at all.

Yeah. Because it goes in line with what you said. The end of your big vision. You said my focus on growth is not fueled by insecurity or comparison, but rather by a peaceful and joyful pursuit to unlock the best version of myself and others. And that really sums up what you're describing there. Because a lot of leaders in insecurity, they go down and in pride, they go up. And it's a skill to just be with people, to not compare, but just be with people, to see their gift and to also feel a sense of pride about our own gift. And that's something that I think has been one of your biggest areas of growth that I've seen as you accept who you are, tap into who you are, and I've seen that actually really love people better because you've done that work. At the end of your life and journey, what are you going to look back on and say was the most important thing in life?

I mean, the people closest to me, my family is going to be the most important thing. And hopefully from a business, like, I'm an opportunity when I'm on my deathbed. There's going to be the revenue, there's going to be the growth, there's the business story of it. But like, I think that small little thing to just open someone up to be like, hey, can I be more of who I am and embrace who I am? I think that that would be the legacy that I would want to leave. And you know, we have this beautiful life we get to live that's full of adventure and opportunities and growth and all these things. And I think a lot of people just live like I lived and those really you're just kind of like sheltered and afraid to go out and be who you are. And so I just need to be like open the floodgates and just we need more of who, who you are meant to be. My name is Jason Richardson and I am pursuing a life of adventure, community and growth.

Pursue Whole is on a mission to inspire and equip high level leaders to pursue a meaningful vision for their life, leadership and relationships. We invite you to Pursue Whole by visiting our resources@guose whole.com Sam.