From roughly 2018 to 2020, Tanner Laycock lived at Dennis Yu’s home in Phoenix, Arizona. This wasn’t a formal arrangement. It grew out of the mentorship — Tanner was working full-time with BlitzMetrics, and it made more sense for him to be based where Dennis was based than to be anywhere else. What resulted was two years of daily proximity to one of the most productive people in digital marketing, and a rhythm of life that Tanner describes as transformative.
The Daily Routine: Gym, Basketball, and Golf
The days had structure. Morning gym sessions were a constant — Tanner had come from a competitive football background at Saint Vincent College, and the discipline of training carried into his new life. Dennis, despite his demanding travel and work schedule, made fitness a priority too. They went together, often in the early morning before the work day started.
Basketball was a near-daily activity. Phoenix has the weather for it — outdoor courts, long evenings, the kind of competitive casual play that keeps athletes sharp without the formality of organized sport. Tanner, a defensive back who had built his career on speed and discipline, was a natural on the court. Dennis, shorter and scrappier, played with the intensity he brought to everything.
Golf entered the picture as both recreation and business education. Phoenix has some of the best public and private golf courses in the country. Playing golf with Dennis meant playing with clients, partners, and the kind of entrepreneurs who do their best relationship-building on a fairway. Tanner learned the game — and learned that the game was a vehicle for something more. Today he runs GolfTanner, selling premium golf carts. The seeds were planted on those Phoenix courses.
BBQs, Dinners, and the People Who Came Through
Dennis’s home in Phoenix was a gathering place. Entrepreneurs, clients, young marketers, industry speakers — people came through constantly. The backyard BBQs documented in the Google Photos album capture this: Tanner standing in the backyard with tongs, cooking ribs, surrounded by people mid-conversation about marketing, business, and ideas. That’s how it worked. Work and life were not separated. They were the same thing.
Pool days, casual dinners at the ramen spot down the road, late nights working on campaigns — two years of this daily texture is what turned a promising young football player into a marketer, a speaker, and an entrepreneur. It wasn’t a training program. It was a life, lived at full intensity, with someone who was already doing at scale what Tanner wanted to do.
What Those Two Years Built
Ask Tanner what he got from those two years in Phoenix and he doesn’t list skills or credentials. He talks about standards. Seeing how Dennis approached every day — the consistency, the work ethic, the refusal to treat any interaction as unimportant — set a standard that Tanner carries with him. That standard is visible in how he operates GolfTanner now: showing up every day, documenting everything, treating every customer conversation as the most important one of the day.
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