Brady Carlsen didn't set out to build one of the fastest-growing franchise brands in the country, he walked in as a customer and spotted what insiders couldn't see. As Co-Founder and COO of The Back Nine Golf, Brady shares how a deliberate "less is more" philosophy, no food, no staff, no complexity, became the engine behind 160+ locations and 300 in the pipeline. For franchise operators and RevOps leaders managing distributed networks, this episode is a masterclass in building revenue systems that scale without you in the room.
Why eliminating staffing costs, not adding revenue streams, was the key unlock to Back Nine Golf's franchise model
How building proprietary software from day one gave The Back Nine Golf the automation and vendor flexibility that off-the-shelf tools couldn't
The "Rule of 3 and 10", what breaks at each growth stage and how to anticipate it before it spreads across your network
Why marketing asset delivery (not the product itself) became the first major operational bottleneck at scale
How The Back Nine Golf's Brand Development Council keeps 160+ franchisees aligned without top-down mandates
The one thing Brady would build earlier: a disciplined marketing system, and why it matters more than the product at scale
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Brady Carlsen | COO of The Back Nine Golf
Brady Carlsen is the Co-Founder and COO of The Back Nine Golf, one of the fastest-growing indoor golf simulator franchises in the United States. Unlike many in the space, Brady didn’t enter the industry as a golf veteran; he entered as a customer who recognized a scalable, high-margin business model hiding in plain sight. He was so convinced by the concept that he bought into the brand before the initial paperwork was even dry. Leveraging his background as a multi-unit franchisee and a founding team with deep franchise legal expertise, Brady helped architect The Back Nine Golf’s signature semi-passive, staffless operating model. Today, with over 160 locations open and another 300 in development, Brady is a leading voice on automation, disciplined simplicity, and the systems required to scale a brand at breakneck speed without sacrificing operational integrity. |
Brendon Dennewill: Welcome back, everybody. Today I'm joined by Brady Carlsen, co-founder and COO of The Back Nine Golf, an indoor golf simulator franchise that launched in 2021 and has grown to just over 160 locations, with 300 more in the pipeline. Brady didn't come from the golf industry. He was a customer who spotted a business opportunity, bought into an early location, and helped build a franchise system around automation, simplicity, and semi-passive ownership. Known for scaling without staff and staying disciplined about what he won't add to the model, Brady brings a sharp operator's perspective on building revenue systems that run without you in the room. Brady, welcome to the show.
Brady Carlsen: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Brendon Dennewill: Brady, you came into The Back Nine Golf as a customer, not an industry operator. How did that outsider perspective shape the business model, and what did you see that insiders were potentially too close to notice?
Brady Carlsen: It was interesting because I was introduced to The Back Nine Golf through a neighbor. I enjoy golf, but at the time I was probably getting out on the course three or four times a year if I was lucky. So I came at it as a customer, but also as a golfer who wasn't fully engaged in the sport.
My perspective was: this is an interesting business model. We showed up to a place that was locked, punched in a code, and there were two bays. I remember thinking, can we use both bays? Nobody's here in this one. And they said, well, we've booked this bay, but if nobody comes, we can maybe open the other one.
I was asking the same questions a lot of our customers still ask today. My big takeaway was: I could still have my full-time job and operate this business. It wasn't until a couple of weeks later that I found out The Back Nine Golf was actually for sale, and I had an opportunity to buy in. That was exciting because my brain was already thinking about the business side of it, and golf was just a perk on top of that.
Brendon Dennewill: And do you feel that completely fresh perspective has been useful as you've so successfully scaled the franchise?
Brady Carlsen: Yeah, I had no preconceptions. One of my first thoughts was: how much is it to be a member here? At the time it was $250 a month. I thought, I golf about four times a year. I'd like to do this, but is $250 a month too much? Am I going to get my money's worth? And I also didn't know a lot about simulator technology, so I needed to understand that. Those were two key pieces that were playing throughout my mind early on.
Brendon Dennewill: Brady, you made a hard call early on to keep the model simple: no food, no beverage, small footprint. How do you protect that decision as the franchise scales and you're under increasing pressure to add more?
Brady Carlsen: It's an education piece for our franchisees. More doesn't always equal better. You think if you add more, you can make more money, but with more comes more expenses. Keeping expenses low and focusing on the golfer is the model we've taken, and it's served us very well.
Other people have latched onto the food and beverage model and are running with it. Our model is to focus on the golfer. We want to create a space where golf never sleeps, where members can come in, get the numbers, get the data, and golf in the middle of the night if they want.
Brendon Dennewill: As a golfer, I have friends who've built simulators at home and others who go to places like The Back Nine Golf to practice, especially in the off-season here in the North where courses are closed for five months. How many people actually go in at midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m.? Does it happen?
Brady Carlsen: It happens quite a bit. Different people have different work schedules, and sometimes the middle of the night is the best time. We've had members say they just couldn't sleep and went over, or that it's the only time they have available. They put the kids to bed and head to The Back Nine. That's actually how I was introduced: it was 10 o'clock at night, the kids were in bed, and we met up to play. That's exactly what a lot of our members do. It's the least utilized time, but it's there if they want it.
Brendon Dennewill: The Back Nine Golf runs 24/7 with no staff on-site. Walk me through how you built the systems that made that possible, and what broke along the way.
Brady Carlsen: That was one of the things that really attracted me to The Back Nine Golf, and I think it attracts a lot of our franchisees. If you look at other franchise businesses, one of their main expenses is staffing. Some of our franchisees do hire an operator who might be there four hours a day, spending the rest of the time out selling, but for us the model was: keep it simple. If we can eliminate staffing costs and focus on rent as the biggest factor, that's what we do.
That creates some challenges, because we're dealing with simulator technology in each bay. If something goes wrong, how does a member get a resolution at 1 a.m.? Some of the early issues involved access codes. When someone signed up, I had to personally reach out and give them their code. There were too many touch points.
So the thought was: we've got to automate this. That led to what I feel was a big early win: we decided to develop our own software from the ground up. Within that, we built APIs that communicate with the door system to automatically unlock access for a member once they book a tee time. That was a key early automation.
The other thing we always tell franchisees: if you're not going to have an employee there and you've got a 24-hour business, don't skimp on your security system. You need cameras covering every square inch. If somebody calls in at 1 a.m. with an issue, I can pull up the cameras, see exactly where they are and what's happening, and walk them through it. Most of the time there's very little downtime for that member.
Brendon Dennewill: Going back to the beginning: did you have any franchise experience before you decided to do this?
Brady Carlsen: The only franchise experience I had was as a franchisee in a roofing coatings business out of Canada. So I was on the franchisee side. I can empathize with franchisees, but on the franchisor side, this was brand new to me.
Brendon Dennewill: But you understood the built-in power of franchising. I'd argue franchisees sometimes have a better perspective on that than some franchisors. How did those dots connect for you?
Brady Carlsen: I had a couple of experiences. Being on the franchisee side, I understood the power and economies of scale. But my partner at the time was an attorney working with a couple of local businesses here in St. George, Utah, helping them franchise. He was telling me about the challenges he was seeing, and the thought crossed my mind: we need to franchise The Back Nine Golf. He thought about it and came back and said, let's do this. So it was a two-pronged approach: Will had franchising experience from the attorney side, and I had the franchisee experience from the other business.
Brendon Dennewill: Membership is your primary revenue driver. How do you structure the member experience and retention when there's no team physically present to build relationships?
Brady Carlsen: We encourage our franchisees to get to know their members. Early on we positioned this as a semi-absentee business, and we quickly learned: you can't say that. You need to be present. You need to know your members and understand why they're there. They're there to get better, to spend time with their kids, to get away from work for a minute. We highly encourage franchisees to spend time in the location getting to know the people who show up day after day. That's a key piece to running the business well.
Brendon Dennewill: And part of the attraction for a prospective franchisee is obviously the staffing model. For someone who has a day job, whether they're a doctor, a banker, or a professional of some kind, how do they actually get to know their members? Do they go to their location after hours and just hang out?
Brady Carlsen: Yeah, it might be your day off or the weekend. We make it clear early on: you do need to spend time in the business getting to know your members. That may weed some people out who wanted a fully passive investment, because they realize they need to put in a little more time than originally anticipated.
But most of them want to be there. They're golfing themselves, running tournaments and leagues. If you've got a full-time job, maybe it's your spouse, or a friend partnership where you tag team it. We see a lot of husband-and-wife combos.
Brendon Dennewill: What percentage of your franchisees today are golfers?
Brady Carlsen: I'd say probably 90% are golfers, and die-hard golfers at that. They're there to get the numbers and improve.
Brendon Dennewill: That said, I've heard franchise advisors say: just because you're a good cook doesn't mean you should own a food franchise. Being a golfer makes it easier to get involved, but it sounds like it's not a requirement.
Brady Carlsen: Absolutely not. I think it's more important to understand profit and loss statements than to be a good golfer. You can learn the game of golf and learn what the numbers mean. That's what I liked about the business: I wasn't a good golfer, but the business made financial sense. Being able to read a P&L as an owner is far more valuable than knowing how to hit a five-iron.
Brendon Dennewill: And it sounds like relationship-building is probably the second most important skill.
Brady Carlsen: Absolutely. Sales ability matters because you are talking to businesses and to members in your community. You've got to be able to sell them on simulator time. Our franchisees say: if I can just get them in the door, the facility sells itself. But there are times you need to be able to have a real conversation.
Not being afraid to talk to a random person at Costco wearing a Travis Matthew hat, handing them your card and inviting them to come by: that's a big piece of it. You're not marketing to everybody. You're targeting people who are interested in golf or getting better at golf.
Brendon Dennewill: And that simple example of learning to recognize what a golfer looks like, then knowing how to start that conversation, makes a lot of sense.
Brendon Dennewill: You were just ranked the 88th fastest-growing franchise. You celebrated your 100th location three months ago, and now you're at 161 with a pipeline of 300. For the emerging franchisors listening: you've gone from one to ten to thirty to one hundred, and now you're on your way to three hundred. Some people may be familiar with the 1-3-10-30-100 model, which is typically when things break. When you're growing at this pace across a distributed network, what's the first thing that cracks in your operations, and how do you catch it before it spreads?
Brady Carlsen: For us, none of us really had franchising experience going in. When you're onboarding maybe three franchisees a quarter, it's very manageable. When you're onboarding fifty a quarter, you better have great standard operating procedures and a clearly defined onboarding process. And once you've onboarded them, you've got operating franchises that need to perform at a high level. You can't just expect them to open their doors and be successful. If your franchisees aren't successful, the business isn't going to be successful.
So early on we had to focus and say: what are the SOPs we want franchisees to follow to open? Then refine: how do we get them open faster and more successfully? How do we help them make money quicker? It's a constant refinement process through onboarding, opening, and then sustaining year-over-year growth.
If you're an emerging franchise brand and you don't have a solid operations manual, make that your Bible. There are great companies out there that will help you build it. The operations manual should be something you can hand to a franchisee and they can understand exactly what they need to do to run their business and be successful. It took us a couple of years to understand that, so we learned the hard way.
Brendon Dennewill: I think the key mindset piece is knowing that if things aren't breaking, you're probably not growing. If you are growing, things will break, and you just have to replace the systems and processes as you go. Is there anything else that stands out as you went from ten to thirty to one hundred, and now heading to three hundred?
Brady Carlsen: Marketing is a big one. You're supporting franchisees who depend on you for marketing assets and brand-consistent materials. In our business, it relies heavily on digital marketing. When you've got 160-plus locations across the United States, all wanting something slightly different or running different promotions, you've got to either align everyone on the same promotion or figure out a way to give each location some creative flexibility without creating a bottleneck where franchisees are waiting weeks for assets.
Marketing broke quickly for us. Web development was another. And we're always improving: franchisees give you feedback and you have to figure out what worked at fifty locations that doesn't work at one-fifty.
As a franchisor, you also have to keep costs under control. We're working toward royalty self-sufficiency: getting to the point where royalties cover our costs. If you keep scaling without improving your systems, it becomes harder and harder to reach that point.
Brendon Dennewill: Anything else that broke between thirty, fifty, and a hundred that you had to fix?
Brady Carlsen: We rely heavily on partner vendors, and early on one vendor decided to raise their prices by over 100%. We had to pivot very quickly. We had already talked to other vendors, so we were able to identify alternatives and make the switch within a month. That taught us a big lesson: always have backup plans. Have two vendors, and control your own development so you can iterate quickly.
Brendon Dennewill: Have you seen the mix of single-unit and multi-unit owners change as you've scaled?
Brady Carlsen: Now that we have seasoned franchisees, they're looking to open additional locations. Early on, the mix was people buying two or three territories upfront to lock them down. We're growing so fast that some franchisees panicked a little, wanting to grab another territory before it was gone but not quite feeling ready. Right now, we're giving a bit more priority to our seasoned franchisees because we know their track record. They're successful, and we want them expanding. That makes our job easier.
There's a clear shift: we'd rather sell a second territory to someone we have history with than to an unknown operator.
Brendon Dennewill: And a territory is typically a metro area?
Brady Carlsen: When we first started, we used zip codes. Now we've shifted to a radius model: once a franchisee finds a location within a zip code, we give them a protected radius around that actual location. Early on we were giving away very large territories, and you can only sell so many franchises in a market if you do that. We shrunk them down because we realized you don't need a large territory to fill your location.
Brendon Dennewill: Franchisee alignment is one of the hardest things to maintain at scale. How do you keep your network rowing in the same direction when you can't be in every location?
Brady Carlsen: It starts from the day they sign. We share our core values up front and make sure they're aligned. When they come out for training, they get to know the team. We educate them on what life looks like as a franchisee, including the phases they're going to go through, so they can identify where they are at any point.
Then it's about having a strong franchise coaching team that interacts with them on a weekly basis so they always have someone to go to. The other thing we've implemented is what we call a Brand Development Council: a council of franchisees who've volunteered to chair nine committees. They're the voice of the franchisee, gathering feedback and bringing it to us directly. When communication comes back to the network, they're hearing it from fellow franchisees, not from the franchisor. That's helped keep us aligned.
It's a constant dance. Sometimes franchisees feel like we're not doing enough but taking all the money. Other times they step out on their own and realize they do need the franchisor's support. It's fun to watch and be a part of.
Brendon Dennewill: Now that you've sold over 450 territories, have you noticed trends in who's buying: new franchisees versus people already in franchising with other brands?
Brady Carlsen: I'd say about 75% are brand new to franchising, and some of those are even new to business entirely: people from the corporate world who are fed up and want to be their own boss. This model allows them to maintain a secure income while starting the business on the side. The other 25% have franchising experience and are looking to add a different business model to their portfolio.
Brendon Dennewill: The low-staffing model essentially opens up franchising to a whole new audience of professionals who would have found traditional franchise models unattractive because of the staffing demands.
Brady Carlsen: Exactly. And because most of our franchisees are new to business, that puts more weight on our shoulders to educate them on how to run a business and read a P&L. But it's exciting because most of them are passionate about golf. The business potential and the golf side scratch two itches at once, and that meshes really well.
Brendon Dennewill: Looking back at where The Back Nine Golf is today versus where you started, what is the one process or system you wish you'd built earlier?
Brady Carlsen: Marketing. That's the one we've struggled with the longest: understanding how to market properly. We would have put more time and money behind it earlier, because it plays such a central role in the success of our franchisees.
Brendon Dennewill: Did you know five years ago that you wanted to build this to a thousand or more units?
Brady Carlsen: We were fairly naïve. We thought if we could get to 100 units, we'd be thrilled. Sales started off slowly, and then when it picked up we were just strapped in for the ride. Luckily, we found great franchise business advisors who helped us along the way. We also became members of the IFA, and attending those conferences, sitting with like-minded people on both the franchisee and franchisor side, has been invaluable. Franchising is fairly similar across all business models. Once you understand how the model works, you can apply those principles to your business.
Looking back, I would have invested earlier in understanding franchising as a discipline. That would have helped us avoid some issues along the way. Luckily, the advisors we brought in early helped us minimize a lot of what we ran into.
Brendon Dennewill: And I think that's probably why the marketing piece didn't get solved sooner: you figured you could get to 100 without changing it. Once you blew past that, the need became obvious. And franchising really is a different animal: it's a two- or three-tier model, depending on how you look at it. The relationship between franchisor, franchisee, and end customer is more complicated than running a single business with one marketing team targeting one audience.
Brady Carlsen: Yeah, because as a franchisor you're somewhat limited. The franchisee isn't your employee. They're their own business owner, essentially licensing your brand and your model. You're trying to get them to perform at a level that you both define, and sometimes you see that differently. But it's exciting. Getting to know franchisees from all walks of life, understanding what drives them, what their why is: that really helps the communication between both sides. If you can always bring it back to why they got into the business, the relationship gets a lot clearer.
Brendon Dennewill: Brady, to wrap up: what is one piece of advice you'd give emerging franchise brands getting ready to go through the growth stages you've just been through?
Brady Carlsen: Find a great mentor or two. Find people who have done what you want to do and spend as much time with them as you can. Join the IFA, go to the conferences, get involved in franchising. Having a mentor you can call up and say, "here's an issue we're having," and hear back, "yeah, we went through that, here's what we did," is just invaluable.
Brendon Dennewill: I think if you interviewed a hundred successful people, ninety-nine would tell you to surround yourself with coaches. That's essentially what you've just said, and I absolutely agree. Brady, thanks so much for being with us today. I'm sure this episode is going to be valuable to a lot of the people listening and watching.
Brady Carlsen: Thanks for having me. We'll stay in touch.
Brendon Dennewill: Absolutely. Best wishes for this incredible growth you're experiencing. I look forward to watching it happen.
Brady Carlsen: Thank you.