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I was raised most of my life in Mason City, Iowa. It's a small blue-collar city built on two cement plants and a door factory. There’s not a lot of entrepreneurship thriving here. Median incomes are pretty low and resources are limited. My mom was a third-grade teacher, my dad was in sales, then bought a company called Metalcraft, which makes asset tags — not CNC machining like you'd think from the name. My grandfather also worked there, so that’s what we had growing up.

I played college golf at University of Northern Iowa where I got a business degree, then did medical sales for seven years before coming back home to work at Metalcraft. I mostly came back because my dad got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), and my wife and I wanted to start our own family near our folks. I took a big pay cut to move back but family was more important. After my dad retired, I kinda had this realization that I was following his exact path. He worked really hard but now with MS he can't enjoy his retirement. It hit me that we never know when a life-altering event might happen.

Golf has been part of my life forever — I’ve been running a golf newsletter with about 11,000 subscribers. It’s not a money-maker but I loved it. So if I was going to start a business, it had to be golf-related. You can't really profitably make golf drivers or irons here in the U.S., but putters — putters you can do. I had never even seen a CNC mill before, wasn't handy or DIY at all, but I felt like I could figure it out. So, why not putters?

Quitting Metalcraft was really tough, telling my dad and my friend Kyle, who was CEO. Then the next day, my wife was told her job might end (luckily, it didn’t). I took all my savings, bought a Tormach mill and taught myself everything through YouTube. I got stuck constantly on basic stuff like work offsets and engraving logos. Money got tight fast. By May, I had only $2,000 left. That stress triggered my first-ever panic attacks.

Then a turning point happened at this small golf event in Belle Plaine, Iowa, where I sold 12 putters. It wasn't just the sales — guys came up saying, "Hey, these feel really good, you made these?" Those compliments meant everything. But the manufacturing process was still tough. Each putter needed meticulous work: bead blasting, sanding, painting — and painting was surprisingly hard. It took months before I got the painting right.

Eventually, I bought a Haas TM-1P, moved into an actual shop, and now I comfortably make about 60 putters a month. We named the company Hanna Golf after my daughters Johanna and Harriet. I’m not very creative — I basically just chopped off the "Jo." Our putters are milled from one solid block of 303 stainless steel — no screws, no bolts, just great feel.

Honestly, this was very, very difficult at first. But I'm proud of how far we’ve come as fast as we have. It’s stressful but building something special and doing something I genuinely love — that makes it worth it.