Andy Johnson says a ball in a bunker is bad, but a ball in a “fried egg” makes him want to run off the course.
1. The Fried Egg Golf Podcast marks The Fried Egg’s 10-year anniversary by tracing the company back to December 9, 2015 and the first newsletter.
2. Andy Johnson, the host, is joined by Garrett Morrison, Will Knights, and Brendan Porath, three early employees and collaborators who shaped the company’s writing, podcasting, events, and video work.
3. The episode asks what Fried Egg was built to do: launch quickly, serve a golf audience directly by email, and keep making work that people wanted to read.
4. Andy says Andy Mack, a Chicago-area entrepreneur and former University of Illinois golfer, told him to stop perfecting the idea and “just start it and go.”
5. He says he wrote the first newsletter on December 8 while working at a previous employer, then sent it to 10 friends who played golf.
6. Andy says the next issue went to everyone he had ever played golf with or had in his email contacts, and the list then grew through sharing.
7. He describes the early company as a side hustle that eventually became his full-time job, while he was still employed elsewhere.
8. Andy says the biggest thing he sees in retrospect is how “naive” he was about whether it would work, along with luck, timing, and hard work.
9. He says strict deadlines kept him from drifting, because a Monday-Wednesday newsletter cadence forced him to keep delivering.
10. The group revisits the original title, “The Golf Hack,” and Andy says his wife was the first editor of the newsletter.
11. Andy tells the story of changing the name to “Friday” after Paul Spiller liked the line “your Wednesday morning Friday lie.”
12. A lawyer later told him in spring 2016 that “fried egg” was a terrible name because it offered no intellectual property protection.
13. Andy says he refused to change the name because the company was already “way too big,” even though it had only about a thousand followers.
14. Andy says newsletters appealed to him because his wife was reading The Skim and he became fascinated with The Hustle and the idea that the newsletter itself could be the content.
15. He argues that email creates an intimate, direct relationship with readers, unlike social platforms that depend on algorithms.
16. Andy says the thing he misses most from the early days is waking up with “ultimate freedom” and asking, “what am I going to make today?”
17. Brendan says the company’s growth came from a kind of “insane behavior,” including Andy staying up all night and still working a full day job.
18. The discussion is reflective, funny, and informal, with lots of back-and-forth about old decisions, staffing transitions, and near-miss moments.
19. People interested in golf media, newsletters, and startup stories would likely enjoy this episode.
20. Listeners wanting quick golf tips or tournament analysis might skip it.
