WEBVTT
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Hey everyone, welcome back to part two of Board Chats here on Private Club Radio, brought to you by our friends, concert golf partners.
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We continue the conversation with Christian and Jordan and in part two we cover the.
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In part two we cover.
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In part two we're going to go over the fiduciary responsibilities of board members, the importance of strategic long-term planning and how to transform underutilized club spaces into amazing hot spots that not only attract new members but also retain your current members and it also makes your staff happier.
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We're very fortunate to have Christian and Jordan as our guests on this episode because they bring a nice, fresh and innovative approach and perspective to our discussion.
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Because they bring a fresh and innovative perspective to our discussion, we're going to talk about how board members need to understand their fiduciary responsibilities and really think about the long-term health of their club, because they need to be aware of the key performance indicators, the KPIs, like member engagement, club utilization, and also they need to explore different options for the need to explore different options when trying to access capital.
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We talk about one of the hot topics now, which is how to utilize underused spaces or space.
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We also talk about a important topic and a hot topic now, which is how to transform underutilized or underperforming spaces, because by upgrading and using these spaces in a much more efficient way, we can take that and offer a really enjoyable experience to the members.
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That really boosts the member engagement.
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One of the hot things right now is turning underutilized pools.
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One of the big things now is taking underutilized pool space and turning it into a really cool hotspot by adding amenities like a tiki bar or furniture, limited menus.
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There's little things that clubs can do now that really enhance their club space, which brings in more members.
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We touch on the changing trends in private club memberships and being able to highlight and execute on adapting and catering to a younger membership.
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So it's all about providing a staff focused environment and creating experiences that exceed expectations and, really summing it all up, it's about providing an environment that is not only member focused but staff focused and creating experiences that exceed their expectations, because that's going to help attract keep members, as well as attract and keep retaining staff.
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So welcome back to part two.
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Once again, here's Christian and Jordan.
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What sort of you know key performance indicators?
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Some like KPIs that you know are just standard?
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Time at the club.
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Are your members spending time there?
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Right, you can look at your month to month, quarter to quarter, year over year sort of utilization of the club.
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How many folks on average are at the pool?
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On the weekend it was a gorgeous 85 degree, sunny day.
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Why was no one there?
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You know, are we doing things to attract a member of engagement?
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Are we providing fun places?
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You know, are we taking the space that we have and making it engaging and comfortable and inviting for people to spend time there?
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I think we've always been at a concert very proud of our level of member engagement, because the programming is big, recognizing your.
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Is it a family oriented club?
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Is it strictly golf?
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Is it tennis?
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And yet we have to realize that we want to include paddle ball or pickable.
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I mean, are there, what are the opportunities and how are we taking advantage of those opportunities so that people are there and spending time?
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And to me, that's always going to be a driving force that you can see very easily and it's not necessarily showing up on a spreadsheet, but I would assume that you know, anytime you've got a healthy area, a bar area, a terrace, a pool that has food and bath, you're going to see.
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You know, kind of the black and white numbers reflect your success in those areas also.
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Yeah, a way to measure that on a spreadsheet is you know, spend to dues, right, everybody pays a dues amount.
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How much are they spending every month at the club?
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And I don't mean that from a revenue or profitability standpoint.
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It may be a little less important to a board, but it does show engagement and then, at the end of the day, that engagement and then being there is going to help retention.
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It's going to help them recruit their friends who are members and always have membership there, and that will help your club thrive.
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And so monitoring am I showing up?
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Am I walking nine holes and I'm leaving right, or I'm just paying dues?
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Am I that type of member or am I paying a cart fee?
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Am I bringing a guest because I want to show off the club or I want to do business there?
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We're staying, we're having lunch, we're grabbing beers, we're, you know, at the on the weekend I'm bringing friends and we're having food and drinks and we're hitting on the indoor simulator because the weather was bad and you know.
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Those are the things where you know people are using the club, you know you're going.
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That's a way to practically monitor exactly what people are doing.
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You have to pay attention to the good boards are are are putting all the tools in their tool bet.
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They're talking to people at concert.
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They're understanding our business model because it could be perfectly successful for their club.
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There's a lot of boards they just think, oh, we, you know, we would never want to be owned by a corporation, just because that, no reason other than that thought, and because they're a member and they're an equity club and they always go.
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Well, hold on a while, wouldn't you want to explore?
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We have capital, we have a model.
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When you got a Roos Chris, you don't think are they corporately owned, Like?
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No, you think like I hope that what I pay for this meal is really good.
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We are a way to access capital or your club a very unique way, and you should understand that as a board member.
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But so what.
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What I'm kind of gathering from everything is, you know, the.
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The key, the success is obviously having a really good board, but I think it's like having board members that you know understand the actual responsibility of what their role is in that position.
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And it's not personal, it's about the you know the greater good of the whole of just being able to put the ego aside and go hey, I should explore all different options, especially if I don't, you know, even if I don't like it, because then I think it helps when you come to the table you can now go hey, you know, you can, you can explain, I think, the argument better to, because I shouldn't say there's going to be an argument, but there's going to be, there's going to be pushback.
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But I think when you can understand both sides and get information from both sides, you can then articulate.
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You know why it's a good thing.
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Yeah, donnie, you make a couple of great points there.
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I mean the, the primary responsibilities of the modern day board of a private club.
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There's a couple, but the fiduciary responsibility is a big one because that's what's going to keep the club tick, him and the membership happy for the long haul.
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We talked a little bit earlier about the length of time that you're you're kind of responsible for, and it's not a month or a quarter or a year or two at a time.
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There needs to be a healthy financial plan in place for what does our next five years look like?
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What does the next 10 years look like?
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And if you start to chew off bigger segments in that way, you're going to find that 30 and 50 and 100 years should and will be successful.
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But there's got to be this, this very specific fiduciary responsibility, about responsible spending and and care to potentially assess, depending on whether or not your membership can handle it Some can, some cannot and if that's going to lead to member attrition or if it's going to provide an influx of capital, that'll really help you identify needs.
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In part of the financial or, or you know, fiduciary responsibility, there's this identifying what's truly important for the longer term again, health of the club and so where you get a new sort of a tough spot as, I think, a board member is that if the ductwork needs to be redone or if the parking lot needs to be repaved or if the roof needs some some updating, those aren't highly visible and fun projects to promote and to apply to allocate capital towards, but those are things that that need to be done.
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I mean we we talk a lot about deferred maintenance and the amount of money that it requires to maintain clubhouse.
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That might be 30, 50,000 square feet, let alone the grounds, the property, the golf course, all of it.
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And so I think one is that fiduciary responsibility.
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Two is to be purely member driven and responsible and not have an agenda or an ego where you say, hey, I want to redo the greens because all my golf buddies are going to love it and they're all going to buy me a beer at the end of the day because I'll be the popular guy in the clubhouse for for making our greens top notch, you know.
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So I think, yeah, long term, okay, health comes with the fiduciary and it comes with really listening to your membership and setting your own agenda aside, sort of understanding the body of the membership what it looks like.
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That also means being able to put down maybe one loud voice that has a high opinion about something that isn't a response, it's not a primary focus for the majority of the membership, and being able to kind of wade through the voices, determine what's really healthy for the club and pursue it.
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That's a conversation that we have quite a bit in what Jordan and I do, because concert has our model and we've been very successful with it and as a result, we're really fortunate to have 30 thriving clubs, we have happy members and we have beautiful golf courses.
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And yet we find clubs that we know would benefit tremendously from talking to us maybe aren't willing to just because of the fear of the unknown, or it's just an entity that they don't fully understand, and turn over the keys can be very scary, especially for some of these clubs.
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I mean the tradition and history of these clubs.
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They're frequently they're 100 years plus old, so they're just sort of unknowingly not willing to gather information, not willing to have those conversations.
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And we represent concert golf.
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Maybe we're a great fit for them, maybe we're not, but there are tools available to the modern day board member.
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I think it's really important and healthy that they do their own homework, ask those questions and understand what all sort of arrows they have in their quiver and utilize them to the best of their club's needs and wants.
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And so to that.
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I mean to summarize, any club that's wondering what?
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How are we going to pay for X upcoming capital, whether it be just the things that Christian talked about, or you need new irrigation or it's we want to improve the amenities or add amenities, because we know that's going to help us continue the competitive clubs nearby and it'll help with the long term health.
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Well, how are we going to pay for that?
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Well, there's multiple ways.
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You can assess members.
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You can take on debts.
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You can partner with somebody, like concert golf, who has the capital and has a business model to do that.
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Well, if you're a board member and you take that to do, share responsibility seriously we should have a conversation while you're also having conversations regarding some other past.
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Just because it's the right thing to do for your membership, right, we obviously think we have a great solution, or we wouldn't have done this so many times with so many clubs, and if we didn't, we wouldn't be in business.
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So, speaking of the capital, capital improvements, from your point of view, working with all these clubs doing renovations, seeing what clubs are doing well, what they're not doing well, talking to all these clubs, what types of capital improvements have shown a really kind of direct correlation with increased membership and happiness and excitement and use of the club amenities?
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Some of them are super simple.
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Can you talk about the Ear Club pool bar?
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And we've done many, many of our clubs.
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It's just a pretty shocking story.
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Yeah, so my home club, not affiliated with concert, but great place, great golf course.
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The pool was just underutilized.
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It's not an Olympic swimming pool with lanes and a swim team, so it's a little smaller than that.
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But it was nice, it's clean, it's a well-defined space.
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But it was underutilized for, I think, a few reasons, and the primary one was that there were no amenities to it.
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There were some chairs, lounges, some chairs, a table or two and that was kind of it.
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So they did build a very nice Tiki bar.
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It's got stools, it has flat screens, it has fans.
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They've got food and beverages out there, so they've got some frozen.
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My kids love the frozen slushies.
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They've got ice cream bars out there.
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They can certainly go in.
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You've got a limited menu of wraps, sandwiches, all those types of things, so snacks, bev.
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Of course people are having cocktails by the pool.
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That's a big part of it.
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But they upgraded all the furniture.
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The chairs, lounges and chairs are much nicer, much more comfortable.
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They put a lot of umbrellas for on the perimeter so there's shade, which I noticed right away was bait with the mounds, with the young children where they could get them into.
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Throw down a towel on a chaise, throw a couple Barbie dolls down and now you're two-year-old is happily playing in the shade.
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You're not having to lather them up with sunscreen every five seconds, so I think it's just a more enjoyable experience.
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The number of families I saw that started to spend a lot of time up there went through the roof and I would tell Jordan, on a Saturday afternoon, beautiful middle of the summer, not competing with a holiday of any sort, you know, fourth of July weekend or anything, there might be 20 bodies up there, total a handful of kids, a handful of primarily moms or, you know, young families.
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That same scenario on a Saturday after they made these renovations.
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There's probably 200, 250 people there on that same day Holy cannoli.
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There was clearly a desire for you know, there was clearly a want for those things and sometimes the membership doesn't always advise you very intelligently.
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They aren't coming to you and saying, hey, we think if you did X, y and Z, we'd spend more time up at the pool.
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So you sort of have to understand the utilization of space and, where there's opportunity, and not be afraid to reinvest in the club, because you know that's one great example of a way where the space already exists, the expensive part of the pool is already there and it's fine.
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If you just sort of add some ancillary amenities to the big one, the pool, I mean you've got five, six, 10 times growth in the amount of people spending time there and of course that translates into people spending money to their buying food, their buying drinks and they're staying there for a longer duration of time and that's easily probably transferable into half a million dollars a year plus in revenue.
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Just those umbrellas, if you can keep a family there for an extra hour, 90 minutes because their shade and mom can put the toddler down while the kid's playing the pool, dad might order another drink, mom might order.
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Now it's getting close to dinner.
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We'll just stay here at the club and you know, dude, you know, have dinner here.
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Oh, thousands and thousands of dollars a day in revenue.
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And then can you think of any better model than getting your members to stay and play at the club?
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I mean, isn't that really what it's all about?
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You want them to play golf, of course, or tennis or whatever their sort of personal agendas, but a club that has people spending time there is easily the healthiest club.
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They're using the areas, there's a need for staff, there's a consistency, and when you have that like, for example, the same thing at the pool, we had an amazing service staff there because they knew every day they'd show up and it would be busy and that they could make money, and so the retention of talent at service staff becomes a big component too.
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Whereas if you have, you know, sort of spotty business in an area and three out of four days your A plus server shows up and can't make any money, they're not really going to be that engaged or want to continue that summer, let alone future summers to come, and that's a big deal.
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You've got a lot of your service staff who's maybe seasonal and they're not going to come back the following year if they don't see an opportunity there.
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So it affects a lot more than you'd even really think about.
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Yeah, it's a positive snowball right.
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That's what I was saying.
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It's even less about the revenue that you described and more about the engagement which helps with the long-term retention and people staying at the club, and you know.
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So that's the important base.
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So we've done that.
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We just built a few kind of pool bar areas in our North Carolina clubs.
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We have one where, like if you go on a Sunday afternoon at our club in Fort Myers and you go to the pool bar during the winter, so it's hot down there, it is like it feels like a resort to me.
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There's TVs everywhere and just people hang out there all day, literally all day Sunday, and it's just because it's where the community is and it's where they want to be.
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And creating those types of spaces at clubs are becoming more and more important.
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The younger the membership is as well, the more they want to hang out spaces right.
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It's like we're doing a lot of building a lot of top tracer ranges where you have technology on the driving range to practice or just have fun with, and typically that comes with being able to order food and sit and hang out with some friends or, at least you know, spend more time at the range.
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That's what younger generations want.
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They want the ability to just hang and it be convenient and have a spot to fellowship, as opposed to just getting in a golf cart and going to drive, and so creating those spaces are pretty important.
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Say one more, denny, because it's such a great question on how to, you know, allocate capital and what you can really, which amenities drive business and drive member engagement.
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But there's a big influx in this one.
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It could be controversial because I don't know that the investment is, the return on it is so great, but I think it's just the right thing to do sometimes for the membership experience.
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We see these indoor, outdoor dining tourists sort of.
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You know it flows.
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The reason I know this is how I feel anyways is if you're eating hot food on a hot day and you're sweating, it's not a wonderful experience, and vice versa, if the breeze blows too much and your food's cold two minutes after it arrives, it's also not the best.
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So it's you know.
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I know I'm sort of picky about eating outdoors, but everybody loves in the summer months in you know Michigan, where I live, or anywhere that you know you don't get warm weather year round.
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You want to take advantage of the great outdoors and the fresh air and you want to be exposed to it, but you also, like Jordan said, you'd like a flat screen and a fan so that you can kind of perfectly you know climate control the area be comfortable, enjoy your meal and stuff all the matter conveniences.
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So we're seeing a lot of interest, and we've done it a few places incredibly successfully, where the indoor outdoor flow whether it's just well placed doors and a lot of glass, or whether they're truly, you know, even garage doors or something that has the ability to completely open up seems to be the most popular place in the clubhouse every time they have one.
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So I would think that that's a pretty healthy way to, you know, modernize and upgrade amenities for the again the good of the membership.
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Those outdoor heaters, especially in like the.
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So I'm up in the north in Pennsylvania Now it's getting like, you know, the cool, the fall.
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You still want to be outside but still want to be warm and there's those giant outdoor propane heaters and man, you know, keeps people, you know, there it's yeah little things.
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Post COVID, post COVID.
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I don't know of a club that doesn't want more outdoor dining, but that less seasonal, so has heat, has air, has doors that go up and down.
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I mean, that is, you know, our club at Blue Hill.
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We have a restaurant over the pool, one of our dining area, and it's all garage door sort of mechanisms, so if it's raining or it's freezing cold outside, you close them.
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You're just in a restaurant that's got walls, like you normally would be.
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It's nice outside, open up the whole thing, and all of a sudden you're just eating a covered patio.
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It's pretty cool and some it's an amazing outdoor dining space.
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Every club wants that right now, every club ours, it doesn't matter.
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They want more outdoor space, like and sometimes it was cost millions of dollars, but oftentimes it costs millions of dollars but we're building them and we're expanding our dining.
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Well, I even know with me and my wife and my group of friends, even if we go somewhere and it's cold, or whether it's the winter or it's chilly, and we see those doors down in the back of our heads, we're like, oh, so they have, you know, outdoor, really nice air dining.
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So now next time, when it's nice out, cool out or whatever, you're like, oh, I would love to sit outside for dinner.
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It's like, oh, remember, they had the thing the doors are probably open at.
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You know, yeah, yeah, 100%.
00:23:53.884 --> 00:23:58.913
So you know all of this it's building up to.
00:23:58.913 --> 00:24:03.847
You know the future and the future memberships of private clubs.
00:24:03.847 --> 00:24:10.093
You know what are from your point of view, from your research, from your you know feet to the ground.
00:24:10.093 --> 00:24:13.786
You know how is it different, similar to.
00:24:13.786 --> 00:24:15.788
You know prior generations.
00:24:15.788 --> 00:24:23.250
You know how can people and clubs be proactive and address some of these areas.
00:24:24.220 --> 00:24:25.987
This is one of our favorite things to talk about.
00:24:25.987 --> 00:24:27.884
I mean, it is evolving.
00:24:27.884 --> 00:24:28.667
It's a great question.
00:24:28.667 --> 00:24:30.002
Danny Jordan, you go ahead please.
00:24:34.945 --> 00:24:36.228
Again, the younger the membership.
00:24:36.228 --> 00:24:40.401
My generation, I have young kids, christian has young kids, their little holder than mine.
00:24:40.401 --> 00:24:47.414
Show up, enjoy the club, enjoy the amenities.
00:24:47.414 --> 00:24:51.266
We don't think about it until you come again.
00:24:51.266 --> 00:25:01.086
There's no desire from the younger membership to want to get into the nitty-gritty of managing the club, which I think is different for this generation.
00:25:01.469 --> 00:25:08.332
I think, if you look, I grew up in the South and, denny, I'd be interested to get your perspective on this right.
00:25:08.332 --> 00:25:22.364
I grew up in the South where there's a lot of churches, specifically Baptists and Methodist churches, which were always known, like my grandparents generation, to be governed very similarly to the private member-owned country club.
00:25:22.364 --> 00:25:33.287
You had a board of directors, you had tons of committees, like we've had, you know, clubs were between 26 committees and they hired staff and that's how they were governed.
00:25:33.287 --> 00:25:39.409
That is becoming a trend that almost doesn't exist anymore in the Southern churches.
00:25:39.409 --> 00:25:59.280
It's pastor-led churches, right with, you know, maybe a board of advisors right, that has a little bit, you know, to keep the pastor accountable, but it's all about being staff-led because they're doing it every day, they're the experts and they're going to know better than the volunteers and that trend seems to have happened a little bit faster.
00:25:59.280 --> 00:26:12.094
That same trend is happening in private clubs today, where the younger, the generation they want to show up, pay their dues, feel like they're getting the right value for their hospitality experience and just understand what they're buying.
00:26:12.094 --> 00:26:12.295
Right?
00:26:12.295 --> 00:26:20.367
No assessments, like, don't assess me, I don't control what you're going to spend money on, I don't know that you're spending it responsible, so I don't want an assessment.
00:26:20.367 --> 00:26:25.050
And that's not about wealth, right, it's not about younger having less wealth, it's just about a mentality.
00:26:25.050 --> 00:26:36.194
And so we're seeing clubs want to become more and more just, very, you know, general manager and staff focused because they're there every day and they're thinking about it.
00:26:36.194 --> 00:26:39.067
And less boards, less committees.
00:26:39.167 --> 00:26:51.535
You know, you see these Greens committees who are often made up of dentists and large and very, very smart people and they may, they know what they want from a consumer perspective.
00:26:51.535 --> 00:26:52.599
So it's very helpful.
00:26:52.599 --> 00:27:13.887
But you know, the superintendent has a turf degree and you know under and talks to the suppliers all the time and understands fertilizers, probably toward the tour manufacturing facility, really understands grass, and so don't you want to just make sure that the job is to have the best superintendent in place and so that the grass is the best?
00:27:13.887 --> 00:27:16.624
Or do you want a Greens committee arguing over moving a bunker?
00:27:16.624 --> 00:27:17.567
I don't know.
00:27:18.571 --> 00:27:20.378
To me that's where the trends are headed.
00:27:20.378 --> 00:27:23.470
Show up, enjoy your club and that's where you know we'll.
00:27:23.470 --> 00:27:24.192
You know concert.
00:27:24.192 --> 00:27:30.656
We have expertise in each of those areas and that's how we manage it, and we still manage to member satisfaction.
00:27:30.656 --> 00:27:33.560
If the members are not happy, nothing's going to go well.
00:27:33.560 --> 00:27:35.047
So we're a hospitality business.
00:27:35.047 --> 00:27:43.892
You show up at a Ritz Carlton and you expect them to give you a great experience for what you pay, and that's what the younger generation wants out of their club.
00:27:45.026 --> 00:27:50.036
Yeah, well said and it's at any young family that you speak to.
00:27:50.036 --> 00:27:56.346
And a lot of the younger members joining do have families that are utilizing the amenities.
00:27:56.346 --> 00:28:13.248
Their kids are in the golf program, the junior tennis program, they're on the swim team, they're attending Easter brunch and Santa at Christmas time and there's, you know, movies on the green on Friday nights or movies by the pool on Friday nights.
00:28:13.248 --> 00:28:15.513
So it is a family experience.
00:28:15.513 --> 00:28:18.387
I think it was always intended to be that way.
00:28:18.387 --> 00:28:22.266
But we know that a lot of the clubs were the guys.
00:28:22.266 --> 00:28:27.547
They were guys golf clubs and they were dominated by that agenda and those desires.
00:28:27.547 --> 00:28:42.726
And I just think that you know, in a healthy way, the younger, more modern mom or dad that's interested in playing golf, but also as a family, it's travel across and it's, you know, travel, baseball and it's all the school engagement.
00:28:42.726 --> 00:28:43.587
It's just a very.
00:28:44.369 --> 00:28:52.527
The modern society is very busy and I don't think that people have the same amount of time to dedicate just kind of doing the same thing over and over.
00:28:52.527 --> 00:28:56.646
And when they do, to Jordan's point, they really want to make their splash.
00:28:56.646 --> 00:29:02.529
They don't want to have to worry about the price of a cup of soup or you know, being assessed.
00:29:02.529 --> 00:29:05.587
They just want to show up and enjoy it and return to their families at home.
00:29:05.587 --> 00:29:09.728
You know, time is so valuable and we see this trend in a lot of things.
00:29:09.728 --> 00:29:13.807
We see it in the workplace, where people want to work closer to where they live.
00:29:13.807 --> 00:29:15.192
For advice first they'll move.
00:29:15.192 --> 00:29:24.554
You know, we see people taking salary cuts potentially to work in an environment and for a company that they think is more conducive to a happy lifestyle.
00:29:24.554 --> 00:29:33.696
So I think people are hyper aware of how they spend their time and money and I think the more that we understand that and cater to it, the healthier that the club membership is.
00:29:34.525 --> 00:29:52.038
Some would argue that, oh well, once the younger generation gets older, has more time, you know they're going to want to become more involved, have more people in the office and get together with other board staff and and I could accept that if you're retired you have more time you may want to fill up your time with being on a board.
00:29:52.038 --> 00:29:53.174
You may care about your club.
00:29:53.174 --> 00:29:54.596
You've been there for years now.
00:29:54.596 --> 00:29:58.137
I don't buy into that at all.
00:29:58.137 --> 00:30:01.678
Just given some of the changes We've talked about, it's not what you see in churches.
00:30:01.809 --> 00:30:08.474
My parents and I know this is a small kind of anecdotal example, but they're at the age they're retired.