Quit Worrying About the Backup Plan: Interview with 35x70 Golf Co. Co-founder, Katy Winters
This week’s interview is with Katy Winters, the cofounder of 35x70 Golf Co, a golf apparel brand that Katy and her husband, Dan, cofounded out of their home in Wichita, Kansas. The brand’s mission is to produce great golf gear that celebrates the heartland and the unique courses that define the midwest. Both Katy and Dan grew up playing golf and went on to become collegiate golfers. Dan continued working in the industry after college as an assistant pro and teaching and fitting professional, while Katy went on to work in accounting and commodity trading.
In the background, they always dreamed of doing something together in the golf space. As they experienced various career and life changes - including welcoming two sons, now ages 3 and 5 - Katy began feeling the pull for something different. It was during maternity leave following the birth of their youngest son that she had the idea for a midwestern themed headcover. She and Dan placed an order for an initial shipment, with no name and no plan, other than to launch a basic website and see what happened. Over the past two years, they’ve moved into apparel, shipped over 900 orders from their sons’ nursery, and sold over 2,000 polos. In mid 2024, Katy left her job to go full time on building the business. As she told me, "I would rather go broke trying than say we never tried at all."
Over the course of the conversation, we spoke about
Why there’s no “right” time to launch a business and what compelled Katy and Dan to go for it
How she’s learned to shift out of “What can go wrong?” mindset and into a focus on “What can go right?”
Learning to manage through seasonality and slow sales periods
The benefits of thinking about money and business growth like a financial market
What golf has taught her about embracing uncertainty and the reality that every day is different across parenthood, entrepreneurship, and life
Building with the intention to have fun with the journey rather than reach any one destination
Note: The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length. While every effort has been made to preserve the integrity of the conversation, please be aware that the quotes may not be verbatim but reflect the essence of the dialogue.
Let's start with some scene setting. I would love to hear your version of the founding story behind 35x70 Golf Co.
My husband and I both grew up playing golf and have been lifelong golf shop rats if you will. He’s spent his entire career in the golf business on the country club side, and we’d always talked about running a golf shop together. We thought Dan would get a head professional job somewhere and have an opportunity to buy the golf shop (that's a pretty standard setup for golf pros at higher end clubs), and that would take us down that path.
I started in accounting out of college, working for Koch Industries here in Wichita, and then worked at a commodity trading company for 10 years. During that time, Dan switched jobs and started working at a fitting and teaching studio. Between both jobs, there had always been carrots dangled. In my situation, I had a boss who left, where I always assumed that I was being primed to move into his role. However, when he left, they eliminated his role entirely. There had also been some ownership changes at my husband's job as well. You go through those moments as businesses change and feel that sense of push and pull.
So we had this thing that we had always wanted to do, we had some things that we’d hoped would go differently in our careers, and then our second son was born. When I started at Koch, I had a really good family friend who told me, "If you make Koch your golf, you'll be very successful there." When I was on maternity leave the second time, the thing I couldn't get out of my head was: What if you made your family your golf? There was just something about that second child that hit hard. When we had our oldest son, I couldn't wait to get back to work—it was the one thing that felt normal in my life. But after the second one came along, there was a calm in our house that we hadn't had in some time. I thought, "Man, we've got these 2 sweet boys—I don't want to spend my life just going to plug numbers into a computer." About that time, our oldest son was getting old enough to understand what his dad did. One day I took him into school, and the kids were talking about what their parents do. Sam, our oldest, said, "My daddy teaches people how to play golf.” He was so excited about that. When it came time to mention what I did, he just said, "My mom does stuff on a computer." That really hit me.
My point is that there wasn't one big moment—there were just lots of things that were building over time. Finally, when I was on maternity leave, I found this supplier that was making really cool head covers with printed designs and embroidery, and I had an idea for a cover that would incorporate different symbols from Kansas like sunflowers, wheat, and cattle. I couldn’t wait to show my husband when he got home from work. Dan just goes, "Well, that's cool. But where are you gonna sell them?” I just said, "Oh, we'll make a website. It'll be great." That's how we got started. It was literally that simple. There were lots of iterations from that point, but the biggest thing I remember was how much fun we were having every night when I got home from work thinking up what 35x70 Golf Co could be. At the time that we ordered the first head covers, we didn't even have a company name yet. It slowly but surely got to the point where I said, "I would rather go broke trying than say we never tried at all." There was something about that—the fear of failure starts to get beat out by the fear of not trying. That's where things really changed for us.
There’s a frequent comment you’ll hear about when it’s the “best” time to start a business along the lines of, “Once you get married and buy a house and have kids, it will be too late.” Your story shows that this is not true at all, and you two seem to embrace the idea that there is no perfect time! What helped give you the push to go for it at a time when many people get frozen by the fears that it’s “too late” or “too risky?”
I have a couple of answers to that. First, I'm an only child and when I went off to college, my mom decided she was going to get a real estate license. She was 54 at the time. My dad was the longtime breadwinner throughout their marriage; he was a lawyer and a bankruptcy judge. She had substitute taught for the last several years that I was in school so she could have flexibility, but this was a total career shift for her. At 54, she went and got a real estate license, and within the next year she was rookie of the year in her company. She did that at 54 because she was passionate and wanted to try something. So there's that angle—I don't think there is a "too late."
There's always new stuff happening in the world, in the markets, whatever it may be. If you're excited about something, give it a shot. Even if that just means starting with some basic research. We never thought we’d get into apparel, and now that’s our entire life. We started moving in that direction because Dan needed some new polos. We started looking around and everything was either $115 for a quality polo, or it had beachy stuff all over it. We wanted to find something that felt more midwestern and felt like home. One of our very first ideas was a pattern with wheat stalks all over it. At that point, we knew enough about sourcing product to be dangerous, and we found a manufacturer in South Korea that we thought could be a good fit. We sent them an email and went to bed. By morning they had responded, and the following week we had a video call with them. The next thing you know, we were off making polos. We owe them a ton of credit because we got on this video call at 5:00am in the morning, and they asked to see our tech pack and adobe illustrator files. I literally had to ask, "What's a tech pack?" We had no clue. They sent us a blank version of the document we needed and walked us through the entire process. They made all the difference. My point is you never know who will end up being in your corner if you reach out.
I reached out after seeing one of your tweets about the first year of going all in on the business where you talked about how scary it felt the first few weeks as you watched every dollar go in and out, and even found yourself casually looking at job boards. You noted that a big shift occurred when you were sitting at a stoplight one day and felt an internal voice say, “This is your life now. There is no backup plan.” Can you talk more about that moment and the shift you felt happen inside you?
I left my job on May 1st, 2024. The first few weeks were definitely very honeymoon-esque where I was waking up everyday thinking, "This is amazing! I don't have to be on Teams at 7:59, and I get to soak up the morning with the kids!” We spent two years planning for the moment so that we were ready for it financially.
We had an absolute rocking March and April that year, and then things just froze. May was really quiet. June was really quiet. We were tweeting every day, posting every day, talking to people, and couldn’t figure out what was going on. You have noise coming at you from every direction saying things like, "Oh, it's an election year, it's gonna be slow. Oh, Meta ads are bad right now. Social media just isn't working anymore."
I’d started to think about things like, "What if I had a part-time job in the mornings and then had all afternoon to do 35x70 stuff? Maybe that would pay the mortgage or something, just to take a little bit of stress off." Then, I was literally sitting at a stoplight that I pass through at least 4 times a day waiting for the light to turn, and I had this lightbulb moment where I thought, "This is your life now. You want this to work? Lean into it. Quit worrying about the backup plan, lean into it, and just see what happens."
I’d spent the previous 2 years planning for: What if it doesn't work? I worked in risk so a lot of my career was about planning for what happens if things don’t go well. I had to stop worrying about that and start thinking about what happens if things go right. That was a big moment, but it's an ongoing thing. I couldn't tell you the last time I pulled up a job board, but there are definitely still moments where I ask myself, "Are we on the right path here? Do we need to change something up?" It feels like every time we get to that point, if we just dig a little deeper and trust it and see what happens, things tend to work out.
Is there anything, as time has gone on, that has helped you manage through some of those slower times mentally?
I think just having gone through and lived them a few times now. We launched the polos in March of 2024, and they did really well. I had a tweet the following week that had 300,000 views, and I think we sold somewhere around 100 or 150 polos off that tweet out of the original 600 that we'd ordered. I remember thinking, "This is great—we need more of these polos." Dan immediately said, "No, we don't."
That period was so important because we got a lot of feedback from customers. Things certainly slowed down—we had this big 6 weeks or so to the point that we ran out of a few things inventory-wise, and then May and June were just at a standstill compared to that. It was good because it gave us a chance to get through that and see that we were going to be able to rebuild. May was slower for us than April and March this year, and we were able to say, "Hey, that's what happened last year too." I think this is just something we can expect now.
When you go from being on salary for 12 years to being self-employed, the whole side of paying yourself is different too. When you have the good times you know that you can't just live like it's always going to be like that, and when you have the bad times you know that you still need to take care of yourself. The answer lies in being able to find some middle ground between those and making sure you're ready for that rainy day, while also being ready to keep listening to customers and digging in.
The flip side of being afraid of never having another sale again is the fear that comes from investing in growth. What advice would you have for other entrepreneurs that are at that point where they're thinking about investing in a new product or some new growth area and feeling overwhelmed by the thought of doing so?
I don't know that I have a lot to say at this point because when we first moved into apparel I was still working. We started 35x70 with savings from Dan’s teaching over the years. When we first got married, he would be buying golf clubs and golf shafts, and I just said, "You know what? That teaching check that you get from your lessons, we're gonna open a separate bank account and that will be your golf slush fund. I don't want to know about it."
Then COVID hit and the lesson business was just booming. Finally we looked and I said, "Hey man, there's a decent amount of money in here." So that was how we got started. When we moved into the polos, we were still kind of working off that initial amount of savings, and we still had my W-2 check coming in. At that point it just felt like another product and another step that felt natural.
Since then, we've brought in eight new polo designs after the initial six, and we actually have three more new ones on the way next week. I have this very vivid memory of the first time we got polos. I remember running home from work to go look at them in the garage, ripping a box open, and thinking to myself, "Someday these things are gonna show up, we're gonna know that they'll fly off the shelves, and it will be amazing." I was waiting on a shipment this spring, thinking back on that moment, and just laughing because now I think, "I have no idea if these will sell. I hope people like them and no one laughs at them online.” I think there's this naive side when you get started where you think you'll achieve this mythical steady state. Now I’m much more likely to say, "We don't know what's gonna happen." Maybe that's the best advice – I don't know that you get to this optimal level where you're always going to know exactly what you need.
We are getting ready to move into some new products right now with hoodies and ladies clothing. On one side of it, it's natural growth and something that customers have asked for. On the other side of it, you’re still having to make decisions around colors, branding, how you’ll market it, and all that kind of stuff. I don't know what to say other than you have to take the swing. You have to have some risk on the table to get some reward. That's probably what I always go back to the most when things get hard—risk and reward are always tied together. You have to be out there to be able to take a swing. We're still at the point where we're just happy to be out there and grateful to be in the ring. I love the Teddy Roosevelt quote about being in the arena. You can't go to somebody who's got a W-2 and explain to them, "You might be breaking even, but there's just something about it that makes you feel alive every day." What’s more, you know you have a chance for it to be way better than that. Granted, you have a chance for it to not be too. But there's something about the opportunity that is really special.
How has your relationship to fear evolved as you've been on this entrepreneurial journey?
That is such a good question. Like I've said a couple of times, my dad was a bankruptcy judge. I am the last person in the world who should be an entrepreneur because when I was growing up family dinner was essentially, "I had this person in front of me today who had this business going, and then something unfortunate happened to them, and they couldn't run the business anymore, and then they lost their house.” That's what I grew up on.
Generally, my parents have been pretty fiscally conservative. My mom's family farmed. Being very fiscally conservative was always a very important thing to me because of that background, but you really have to let that go when you're running a business. You have to be able to be lean when you need to, but you have to spend money to make money. You have to take those risks. I remember spending $2,000 on the first set of head covers thinking, "Oh my gosh, how long are we gonna have to save up to collect $2,000 if none of these move?" Then you need stickers, packaging, and all these other things where those expenses add up in a hurry. What I learned from that is that I had a weird relationship with money. Now it's just a number, but that has been a slow transformation. It's just a number, and there’s a market behind everything. The more I think about it like a market and think of it as a stock or an index, the easier it is to take a lot of the emotion out of it, as opposed to, "Oh man, how many hours do I have to put in to get this back if it doesn't go well?" That's the last thing you want to do because, again, it puts you back into the whole mindset of, "What if this doesn't go well?"
The fear of losing and not being able to pay bills has shifted to fears like, "Are we gonna be able to have enough inventory quickly when things do go well? How do we make sure we're ready when somebody calls and places a big order?” It's been a big shift, but it definitely feeds into being very grateful to be there because you go from being very emotional about money to saying, “It is what it is. Let’s go.”
Say more about thinking about it like a market. I'm super curious about that.
My very first attempt at trying to find something that I could do to get rid of my job in finance was day trading. So I spent a year and a half listening to this live trading stream day trading equities—specifically index equities and then individual stocks. I never got into currencies and crypto and that kind of thing, but I thought, “I've always enjoyed markets as a finance major and worked in commodities. This could be a natural transition." Of course, when you tell people that you're day trading, they immediately ask, "Are you lighting money on fire?" because everybody thinks that's what you're doing.
It was actually a huge step because it showed me that there are people who do this for a living and do it really well, and they're not lighting money on fire. They were taking very calculated risks. You know you're accepting that risk, and the whole point is to not get too emotional and lose more than that. There's always a next shot. As long as you've got money in the account, you've got another opportunity. Personally, I didn't like how it felt for me. It was really hard to not just trade the P&L and think, "Oh, I'm up a hundred dollars, cut it." I did not do well with that, and I didn't do well sitting there, accepting that something had hit that risk, and then maybe it went up from there. Pretty quickly I got to, "I really enjoy this, but I don't want to do this for a living." Still, it taught me a lot and prepared me for what we’re doing now. For example, we might bring in a new product but we’re not going to use every dollar available to do that. We’re going to see if it works first and grow from there.
If I had to summarize what I learned from day trading, it’s that everything has a value to it at a point in time. You can't get too emotional about it. There are periods where the market's really, really hot, and there are periods where it's not. It's not a level, linear thing. Seeing that has helped me get through the seasonal periods because I can say, "Okay, you can't always expect to sell an exact number of polos every single month, maybe over the course of a year you do, but there will be seasonality.” So thinking about things like a market is basically saying that growth may not be linear and there will be ups and downs, but you need to make sure you're positioned to be able to take advantage when there are ups. As long as you have cash flow, you have the opportunity to do more. Not every single thing has to win. That's probably the biggest thing I learned—you just need to make sure that your winners on average are bigger than your losers, and you need to limit the losers, but there are going to be losers.
You and Dan both grew up playing golf and went on to be collegiate golfers. What mindsets from golf have been impactful as you’ve navigated building a business?
My favorite thing about golf has always been that it's different every day. You can play the same course a thousand times, and you may never get the same shot. Even if you're in the same divot you were in yesterday, or right next to the same divot, the pin's in a different spot, or the wind might be a different direction, or it might be raining, whatever it is. Being ready to adapt and being okay in the uncertainty has been the biggest thing for me. It applies to everything. When our oldest son was about six weeks old, we could not get into a routine. It was endlessly frustrating. One day we were late for an appointment and couldn't get out of the house—diaper change, outfit change, feeding, yada yada, and finally he was on the changing pad, and I just looked out the window and I thought, "Why is this so hard? It's different every day." That was a lightbulb for me. I realized that the wind was blowing in a different direction today, just like on the golf course. At the end of the day, you're out there, and you still have to hit the shot.
I’m a relatively new golfer and I always have to selfishly ask more experienced golfers this question: What helps you reset during a round that’s going off the rails and you’re playing horribly?
Trying to get really present and out of what's happening on the course. It can be as simple as stopping and being aware of it. Sometimes you get so mad that you go down a hole, make 5 bogeys in a row, and don’t even realize what’s happening. Being able to stop and say, "Wait a minute. This hasn't been going well. What's happening? Where's the golf ball going?" is a big thing.
How are you intentionally crafting the life you’re building? What’s your “no directions” life look like today?
In general, we are building towards having a more present life with our kids and more time together while we build this golf brand. We don’t have anything like, "We're gonna hit this milestone and then we're gonna buy this," or "We're gonna hit this milestone, and we're gonna go on this vacation." We're enjoying every step of the process. In the corporate world, you very much get to a point where you say, "Okay, I'm a director, I'm gonna live in this neighborhood with the other directors." It’s nice to be freed from all of that. We don’t have any expectations. We’re looking at: Are we having fun with this? Are we having fun writing about golf courses? Are we having fun designing polos? Is it growing? If yes, then let's keep going.