What's up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and executive chairman of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,

a team, or a new product. For the next little while, we're going to be republishing classic

episodes of Founders Journal. Why? Well, first, I think they're really good episodes and with so

many new listeners over the last few months. It's very likely you haven't even heard them.

Second, I am spending the month of May evolving Founders Journal so that we can make this show

as good as humanly possible for the next generation of builders and entrepreneurs. I would love your

help as I dream up the future of this show. So once you've listened to this episode, shoot me an

email to Alex at Morning Brew.com and tell me what you'd like to see from me moving forward.

Okay, that's the update now time for the episode. In today's classic episode, originally published

on September 13th, 2021, I talk about how much you should focus on your competition as a founder

or an employee. So let's hop into it. Every single business has competition. And if you don't think

your business has competition, you're probably lying to yourself. But the real question is,

how much do you actually think about competition and about the things outside of your control?

That's what I want to dive into today. And I want to start with what is seemingly an unrelated

story, but I promise there's relevance. So on the side outside of Founders Journal and Morning Brew,

I've been looking to embark on a very strange project. And that project is to buy many golf courses

around the US. Why you might be wondering? Well, I thought it'd be a fun operational project.

I also love mini golf. I played it a lot growing up. And I see this opportunity to upgrade

mini golf courses to be like top golf, which is the tech-enabled driving range business,

which sold to Callaway the Golf Maker for $2.6 billion. So what I've been doing as I try to dig into

...