When Dennis Yu decided to take the red-eye to Barcelona, Tanner Laycock was on the flight. No extensive preparation, no detailed itinerary — just two people willing to go wherever the work and the adventure led. That combination of spontaneity and purpose defined the European chapter of Tanner’s education.
Barcelona: The Red-Eye That Changed Perspective
Barcelona is the kind of city that resets your thinking. The architecture is impossible — Gaudí’s work looks like a fever dream made real. The train stations are grand enough to make you feel like you’re in a film. For Tanner, who grew up in Frisco, Texas and had gone to college in rural Pennsylvania, landing in one of the great European capitals was a genuine jolt. He stood at that Spanish train station — a picture that made it into the Google Photos album Dennis keeps — and had one of those moments where you realize how much of the world you haven’t seen yet.
The work was real too. Dennis always structured the travel around conferences, meetings, and client engagements. Barcelona wasn’t just tourism. But being in Barcelona meant the conversations over dinner were different. The perspective shifted. Tanner absorbed all of it.
Hungary: Meeting Dr. Robert Lyons and the Kaqun Source
The Hungary leg of the European trip was more unusual still. Dr. Robert Lyons is the founder of the Cocoon/Kaqun oxygen water technology, and his facility is based in Hungary. Dennis and Tanner traveled there to see it firsthand — not as a publicity exercise, but because Dennis genuinely believed in the technology and wanted Tanner to understand it from the source.
Sitting with Dr. Lyons, hearing him explain the science behind oxygen-saturated water and how he had developed it over decades of research, was another lesson for Tanner in what it looks like to build something from true conviction. Dr. Lyons hadn’t chased a trend. He had followed his own work wherever it led, for as long as it took. That kind of commitment — to an idea, to a process, to a result — was something Tanner filed away.
Matthew Januszek and the European Network
The European trips also brought Tanner into contact with Matthew Januszek, co-founder of Escape Fitness and a prominent figure in the European entrepreneurship world. Dennis and Matthew had built a relationship over years of shared work in digital marketing and business growth. Sitting across from Matthew at a Nando’s Peri-Peri in the UK — a casual dinner, nothing staged — Tanner found himself in a conversation about brand, scale, and what it takes to build something that lasts across continents.
That’s what the European trips gave Tanner: a global frame. Marketing doesn’t look the same in Barcelona as it does in Phoenix. Entrepreneurship in Hungary has its own texture. The connections that Dennis had built over 20 years of international work opened doors that Tanner is still walking through today with GolfTanner.
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