Mount O Country

Welcome to Mount O Country! 

Highlighting a new generation of idealistic cigarette ad models but without the tar and nicotine. Taste the difference of these young students and professionals who are doing cool shit and setting a new paradigm for the rest of us.

This is episode "🐺" and we have a reverse office hours session with Paul Boranian. Paul is a Senior at Pepperdine University and finishing up his final semester. He is also a brother in Alpha Tau Omega and absolutely killing it right now with golf brand, Golf Daddy. 

Paul has incredible range and depth. He can seamlessly talk about Pulp Fiction, TikTok algorithms, the price elasticity of products, and philosophize on human nature in the same conversation with humility. While the question of whether entrepreneurs are born or made eludes us, he credits much of his mindset to his parents. Early on he was cognizant of their work ethic, but also the sacrifices they willingly made. That upbringing was instructive in knowing there are certain sacrifices you need to make if you want to achieve your goals.

And it is of course when you dive into Paul's mindset that you unleash the wolf. In fact, in confirming our reverse office hour session Paul simply replied:

Paul admits there is a level of cringe with using the moniker "wolf," but he also knows the mindset behind the nickname has helped him push through setbacks and difficult decisions. He recalled (like most of us mortals) periods of insecurity and how the saying, "wolves don't lose sleep over the opinion of sheep," was a helpful mantra in becoming more confident in his decisions and risk-taking. Worrying what other people might think is a huge hindrance to finding success, and learning to remove or mitigate that fear is incredibly liberating. 

Paul also related how you need to have a relentless fight--that "wolf" or "dog" in you if you want to accomplish the goals you set for yourself. Persistence and consistency has certainly sustained Paul's wolf identity and has become an attribute earning respect from his friends and colleagues. Even his closest friends on a recent surprise birthday showed up with balloons spelling out W-O-L-F and gifted him a wolf crewneck--a perfect balance of roast and respect.

To further lay out the wolf mindset he brought up a good point. He shared how athletes go into a game putting everything on the line to try to win. Even the fans expect this and root because of this fact. But for some reason, when it comes to young entrepreneurs, there is general sense from the outside that it's just a side hustle and it's okay not expecting to win. In his experience, outsiders seem to downplay a venture with the expectation that it will most likely fail. They frame the vision as small, perhaps to keep the disappointment minimal. And while statistically most ventures do fail, he views his startups with the same mentality of an athlete: putting in the work and expecting to win. 

In fact, another mantra Wolf has adopted is burn the boats. As a reminder he keeps a photo of burning ships as his iPhone wallpaper. For those unfamiliar, the synopsis of the story is a General calling to have all the ships which transported the men to fight abroad all burned. In doing so the safety net of going home, or the temptation of being indecisive in battle because maybe you could go home was eliminated. There is no "what if" or plan B. There is Plan, and that plan is to be victorious. If you died gallantly in battle, you dedicated everything you had to it. 

In short, the "dawg" or "wolf" in Paul has quickly transformed him from curious and goofy student to master of content creation and management. Paul shared an instagram account he made when he was younger focused on the New York Knicks. As a hopeless Knick fanboy he worked hard on daily posts and memes only to get a few sympathy likes. He laughed as he pointed out the only comments he got were from his parents or other accounts he created. But the Wolf persisted, and today with the Golf Daddy content he has created on TikTok and YouTube has topped over 150 million views. With that came an impressive 6 figure revenue run in just the first 45 days of launch. Clearly an incredible success for Paul and his friend Daniel who started the business. 

Like most of us he is still a work in progress and still figuring things out. Personally, he is still trying to figure out life balance. But he cited the Navalmanack and $100M Offers as two books or resources which have been inspiring and helpful on his journey.

After our introduction, we asked Wolf a few questions about his college experience and business life.

The campus and Greek Life at Pepperdine is certainly unique, but what is the best part about being a brother in ATO or something you will miss about it when you graduate.

"Certainly the experience of being in ATO pushed me to be uncomfortable and thrive by being placed in so many social situations. I also met some of my really great friends."  

Is there an aspect of attending school at Pepperdine that gets slept on?

"It is a smaller school and so you have your pockets of communities. It takes some effort but once you find your people, the relationships and depth you build are really hard to recreate elsewhere."

What are your goals for Golf Daddy in the next five years?

"Recently we redesigned and engineered the Divot Daddy to be even more rugged and cleaner on showing shot direction. We also released twilight golf balls which glow in the dark for night golf. Currently though we are working on getting the divot mat into retailers and continue making content. The goal is for us to be known as the golf education platform with solid products aiding the novice golfer. In other words, our brand is what the new golfer turns to." 

A lot of students wrestle with dropping out of school and doing business as opposed to balancing both. How have you personally learned to manage both?

"It comes down to opportunity cost. What might make sense for one student at a certain phase of life might not be applicable to another student. Ask yourself, what is the problem I want to solve?" Is it more about making meaningful friends or making money or something else? For me, while I could have dropped I had already put in a couple years of school and also valued the relationships I gained. I learned the blessing of being able to be someone to people other than a businessman and have conversations that weren't just business related."

What’s your advice for those who are wanting to start a e-comm brand, or are just starting?

"The best thing to do is study content like product TikToks. But if you want to get started, all you need to do is validate a product or idea. You do not need inventory yet. You can create content for a product on TikTok, link to a Shopify and when people "purchase" the product just refund them saying you were unable to fulfill the order or you are out of stock. You will learn exactly what e-commerce space or product you will be successful in. With TikTok content, spray and pray and pay attention until you find a winner. Be patient and have fun with the process. At the end of the day though the key is to provide value for others. At first, I was caught up in metrics, but I have had much more satisfaction in providing value to people." 

Biggest personal life lesson(s) you’ve learned through experience in college that you think others might benefit from.

Paul shared that in general, people are not going to care all that much about your goals and success. If you do have some people that do, then it's a blessing and to be grateful for, but there no reason to expect or be entitled that people should have your back. As such, you have to bet on yourself. You cannot wait for confirmation or permission from others, you have to do your due diligence and bet on yourself. You control your own destiny.

Random question: You get to design one college course every student across the US has to take. What is it about?

"Leverage. This is a basic concept which is fundamental to reaching scale and growing wealth and it isn't really discussed much in school. Whether it is investing or media, understanding the principles of applying some force to one end to get exponential return on the other side is critical. Even in negotiating, knowing how to have the leverage in the conversation is so important to achieving maximum value."

Beyond Golf Daddy, Paul is often called on to do consulting for content and high level software from a marketing and CRM perspective. If you are a suit, hit him up on LinkedIn 

Otherwise you can find and study the master on the Golf Daddy TikTok or get help here

If you enjoyed this story, please feel free to share. Or sign uo here. And if you know someone we should highlight, definitely drop us a note.

About Mount O

Mount O is a digital community with a pre-social media soul aiming to maximize your college experience with the best communication tools, network & the occasional meme. We believe a period of maximum freedom and minimum responsibility is the prime occasion to build lifelong friends, wisdom and career opportunities. We mainly facilitate this through our free House Management app. Our service provides cleaner comms and a more community-driven Greek Life on your campus. We also send out and post Mount O Country articles on bad ass students, provide real life office hours, and like to post memes & videos about Greek and College Life on our instagram.

Check out the app here on iOS. (Execs, reach out for a custom onboarding onto the Free app or if your school is not on our network, let's get you set up!)

Mount O | "Pledge to Perfection"