Feb. 19, 2024
327: A Story of Service, Strategy, & Success w/ Randy St. John CCM, CCE
Catch our talk with Randy St John, GM/COO of the Tuxedo Club, as he shares insights from his journey in hospitality, from nearly selling cars to leading one of the top clubs. He highlights the importance of treating staff well and how it boosts member satisfaction. We'll cover:
- Tackling the pandemic at the Tuxedo Club, including creative solutions like a youth camp and expanding racquet sports.
- Balancing the club's history with modern updates, like adding electric car chargers.
- Leadership strategies, including being transparent in decision-making and managing club and board challenges.
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00:00 - Club Radio With Randy St John
12:07 - Career Evolution and Club Management
18:37 - Balancing Innovation With Club History
27:00 - Innovative Renovations at Historic Club
32:42 - Leadership, Transparency, and Career Decisions
WEBVTT
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In this episode we are chatting with Randy St John.
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He's a friend of ours, gmcoo of the Tuxedo Club in New York, and some of the topics, some of the things that we go over, some of my takeaways from this episode is really just about being a good human being, being a good person we talk a lot about take care of your employees and the employees are going to take care of the members and just creates this really nice rhythm we talk about.
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One of my favorite things to talk ask is how do you balance history and innovation.
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How do you balance those two things in the club world?
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He has a very rich history.
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So private club radio listeners, let's welcome to the show from the Tuxedo Club in Tuxedo Park, new York.
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Let's welcome Randy St John.
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Now you know what my team goes through with all my BS stories.
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No, these are great stories.
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So I was going to ask, like what was the beginning?
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So I didn't realize Air Mark has been around for that long.
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Actually my wife worked for Air Mark.
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I had it wrong.
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I actually worked for canteen right out of college and I had a you know it was a chef manager job.
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It was, you know, okay, whatever, right, it was decent money and all that for at our school.
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It was a little boring, you know, and I didn't love it and my boss was, you know, was not a good guy.
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And so I was literally this close to starting to sell cars at a Nissan dealership and my mother-in-law, of all people, sees an ad in the paper back when people used to find jobs and newspapers right, that this club outside of Boston was looking for a part-time Maider D and she said, well, that wouldn't that be better?
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And I said, well, go check it out.
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So I go, I apply for this job, and manager has me and interviews me and you know she's going through the whole thing and she said, listen, she goes, I'll hire you for this job.
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She said, but one of my assistants just gave notice he's leaving as of Labor Day and I think you'd be great for one of my young assistant managers running our you know, grill room, patio by the pool, you know, for those diners big Jewish club outside of Boston.
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I said sure.
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So instead of selling cars I went and you know, went to a place where we used to do some some weekends.
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We literally a normal weekend was six weddings, a bad weekend was only three weddings, okay, and a kick and butt weekend was eight weddings.
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We had two ballrooms, one seat, one seated well, like 775 or something, with a dance floor, the other one was like 250, with a dance floor.
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We would do two weddings on Saturday, 12 to five, and then two more, seven to 12.
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On Sunday we would be more flexible.
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You'd sell like a two or three o'clock one on Sunday, because sometimes you'd only get one.
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There were probably a half dozen times in three seasons there where we did eight weddings in a weekend and I was the members guy.
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I like I took care of the 19th hole in the grill room and the members and but when you're doing eight weddings you know all hands on deck.
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So that was when I was young and slim and wore a smaller tuxedo.
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The fact that you wore a tuxedo to work definitely dates you a tiny bit, but Well, you know it was, it was, they were early, they were late 80s weddings, so yeah, it was lots of taffeta and bows and you know, thankfully, no ruffle chairs, so I forgot that you grew up in the New England area.
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Are you picking up the action?
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Is that what it is?
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No, you said New England, outside of Boston.
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I went to school there for a few years and then crappy school, bay State College.
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But I was going to school around here, you know, 10 minutes from my house.
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But I had some friends in New England and they had an entertainment management program that actually had some really cool teachers like the instructors or like former tour managers and all that stuff.
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So I was like I got nothing to lose.
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And the school like doesn't you know, there's no real campus because it's back bay of Boston.
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So like the, our classrooms were in like the brownstones.
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It was so random Like our dorm.
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Yeah, I think I gave a guest lecture one of their classes one time, and how you say that a friend of ours from college was teaching in their hospitality program and she said I'll come talk about clubs one day.
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I forgot about that.
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I think that was.
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I think that was Bay State.
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She was at that point.
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Yep, Yep, that's so funny.
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So, so yeah, so the.
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So yeah.
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I have a special place in my heart for for New England.
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Yeah, it's a cleaner, nicer, more walkable New York city.
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That's kind of how I see Boston.
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Yeah, yeah, new York.
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It's funny, you know you had to be a certain age and you've seen the cities go up and down and change.
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You have a gross time square in the eighties and then I remember really nice time square.
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You know, one of the things that Giuliani did that wasn't crazy probably was cleaning up New York and then and now it's kind of New York is kind of dirty again, to be honest with you.
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But a lot of cities have gotten dirty or again, which is kind of sad.
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You know it's not the only one.
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So Speaking of dirty, how clean are your club vents?
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Sorry, no, that was a, that was an inside joke to some of the listeners.
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I have this thing of like.
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I cannot stand dirty vents.
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Like when you walk into like a place and you look up and just the vents are it just like irks my soul.
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So and I come from like a family business background, that's like janitorial supplies, like facility maintenance, so it's like one of the I think from like years of also just like walking into buildings when I would like work for them and either have to like clean it or if I was doing like sales and like looking up to count how many vents.
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But I just know it takes like a little like a vacuum hatch to go up and clean it and there's.
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I did a whole episode on it quick on private club radio because I did a show at a club.
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Then it wasn't even for a club show, it was a corporate gig, so it was outside group.
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You know guy was a member brought me in in like the main bathroom where, like all guests, everybody comes like it was just disgusting.
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I was just like to me it's like little things like.
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When you think of like a private club I think of like a nice, well maintained place.
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So I don't, I don't think about, I don't look at air vents minus smell.
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I can't stand dirty mop smell.
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My wife and I was blocked out of restaurants because all you can smell is dirty mop.
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Drives me nuts.
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Yep, nose blindness, I did.
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I did one on that too, because I've walked into I can't tell you how many club shows I've done and sometimes you walk in, you're like, and like you, almost like, look like no one else, like I'm the only one who smells this, like nobody oh nothing, I just think it's disgusting, so yeah yeah, so, speaking of nose blindness, when you're at Maribel, how do you know?
00:07:45.742 --> 00:07:48.915
so I'll be honest, I've only got an NDA with one job I ever had.
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So what do you want to know about Maribel?
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No, I don't know, because you know I was, I was, I was doing a little bit of research and you, you got them to capacity, you got them to fill their membership and you're only there for two years.
00:08:02.074 --> 00:08:02.858
Well, you know it's funny.
00:08:02.858 --> 00:08:22.980
I got there, it was, I think they had been, I think I would say year four after they had turned over from the developers, you know, and the problem with Maribel was it's a great property but the timing of you know, the late 2008-9-10 range, real estate was slowing down.
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Discovery, happily, was was happy to get out.
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I can't remember the building company who did the build out.
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They were happy to get out.
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The members were happy to take over because they got it for less than they would have paid if they'd been in capacity.
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The downside to that is now the members have to float the subsidy.
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That you know.
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Discovery didn't care if they lost money because they were selling these.
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You know gorgeous, you know monstrous, expensive homes and now all of a sudden we're 50 members light and they're trying to get to, you know, break even not necessarily profitability, but certainly break even.
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And so we did that in the first two years.
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But a lot of the hard work was done before I got there, in fairness, and then you know we just did.
00:09:04.927 --> 00:09:08.820
We really ramped up some of our national campaigns, you know being for profit.
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We could advertise in a different way, you know, through some of the you know different golf journals that are specific or local, particularly to let's call what it is.
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You know Calgary and Western Canada money and you know the Midwest, you know Chicago, minneapolis market and it was.
00:09:28.008 --> 00:09:29.113
It wasn't a hard sell.
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I brought in a great membership director.
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My membership director came with me about six months after I did from LA and she did an amazing job.
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And when she transitioned with her operations background to my my clubhouse manager, the woman we hired then to replace her as membership, she, she finished the job and really closed it out in her first year there.
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So but I had great team.
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You know I've always said, you know I am, I'm very lucky.
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I usually work with really great people.
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So from from your whole, you know, journey so far, how?
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How has your leadership changed?
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Or maybe your leadership style, if if any like?
00:10:10.331 --> 00:10:12.659
Have you had like the same approach the entire time?
00:10:12.659 --> 00:10:14.384
Uh could so.
00:10:14.426 --> 00:10:15.789
I have to filter my F bomb.
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Play more now.
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So that's start.
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Start with that.
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It isn't 1993 anymore.
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I can't just f bomb all over you.
00:10:24.139 --> 00:10:27.323
I mean you can or just make my editing job so difficult.
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No, because you know I I'm, I always am.
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I don't want to say fascinated is the right word, but when you know people will travel long and far for like other staff members, like in in the club world, so that was just like a little like you know.
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It's like you know you must have a decent style of leadership.
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So I'm just trying to see like that, just kind of triggered, so you know, how do you lead, what's what your style?
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you know, you know honestly it was so I was very lucky I.
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I started as the.
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They hired me as the club manager at Aguam in 1991.
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It was actually my first day work, was my 26th birthday.
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So I'll even tell you how old I am.
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It was my 26th birthday was my first day works the club manager and it was typical old New England club, you know, kind of a strange club in some ways but was suited me.
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I knew a lot of the members because they were a lot of the members were also members at the city club I worked at in Providence during college and then they also some of my members and some of my board members.
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I caddies for their fathers and uncles and parents at High Ennisport when I was a kid.
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So I knew the whole Yankee, I knew the whole vibe.
00:11:35.466 --> 00:11:36.592
So I'm young.
00:11:36.592 --> 00:11:48.176
But they hired me and they took a chance on me and you know and it was all good and then three years into it our golf pro after 30 something years, retired, and that's when they made me the general manager at 29 or 30 years old, whatever it worked out to be.
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And you know, one of the things I figured out after the first three, four years there was, and you know, part of it was building relationships with a tennis pro and a golf pro and a superintendent who had all been there 25 to 30 years.
00:12:00.333 --> 00:12:01.076
When I got there.
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They were all great.
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We had a great relationship, particularly with golf pro, and I and you always play a lot of golf in the morning because we weren't busy and I had time then before my son was born and you know dogs.
00:12:12.461 --> 00:12:30.297
But but you know, one of the things I figured out at that point in my career was that if I took good care of my employees and my coworkers, they would take good care of the members and in turn, to close the circle, the members wouldn't bother me with a whole bunch of nonsense, you know.
00:12:30.297 --> 00:12:33.812
So you know Richard Branson gets all the credit for it.
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He's absolutely right.
00:12:34.796 --> 00:12:37.793
You know you take care of your employees and you know however he phrases it.
00:12:38.504 --> 00:12:45.813
But a lot of us figured that out, I think, in the mid-90s, a lot of the GMs that have been around a while of my era.
00:12:45.813 --> 00:12:54.053
And that, I think, was the first big transition, because, instead of making people work for you, you realize that you wanted them working with you.
00:12:54.053 --> 00:12:59.236
And you know we talk about leading from the front and setting the example and all those other great terms.
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But you know, all of our styles are a little different.
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But I like to think that my most important employees, or the ones that I'm closest to I mean I still talk to employees of mine every couple of months from 20 or 30 years ago is that they knew that I would run through a wall form and protect them when they were given their best and, as a result, I get their best.
00:13:24.206 --> 00:13:25.312
And it doesn't work with every case.
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I've had some employees in the department heads over the years that we didn't all mesh and sometimes I made a change and sometimes they made a change.
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But you know, I think it's about trying to understand people and know people at a deeper level, and a lot of us emotionally intelligent GMs or leaders or managers figured it out at a young age and some people still haven't figured it out, and that's okay.
00:13:50.292 --> 00:13:51.335
It's what makes the world go around.
00:13:51.335 --> 00:14:01.647
But that was the differentiator for me is figuring out that if I took care of these people, the members were happy and then the members took care of me because they were happy Worked out pretty good.
00:14:01.647 --> 00:14:02.888
For the most part, I've been pretty lucky.
00:14:05.009 --> 00:14:07.857
And you've been at Tuxedo Club now since 2000,.
00:14:07.857 --> 00:14:08.701
Was it 17?
00:14:09.082 --> 00:14:09.784
2018.
00:14:09.784 --> 00:14:11.812
I came in July 2018.
00:14:11.812 --> 00:14:16.065
So this will actually this was just my sixth summer, sixth season.
00:14:16.065 --> 00:14:17.529
We're going into our seventh season.
00:14:17.529 --> 00:14:39.993
You know, covid was an adventure, but this club we were able, we were one of the clubs that actually thrived because, being in a not necessarily a gated community that's tied to the park, but in a gated community that the village of Tuxedo Park is, there was a great outflow of Manhattan to people coming up here to what had been their weekend in summer houses being up here full time.
00:14:39.993 --> 00:14:48.972
So I mean, we thrived in terms of operationally, with what we could do based on the restrictions of the moment and you know it also allowed us to.
00:14:49.796 --> 00:14:56.096
From my end, as a manager, I got rid of some crazy institutionalized behaviors of being open too much in certain areas.
00:14:56.096 --> 00:15:02.591
And because this is a big club, you know, I've got a golf house, golf clubhouse that's five and a half miles from the main clubhouse.
00:15:02.591 --> 00:15:08.736
So we're in the summer, I've got a golf clubhouse running like every other normal club that's a golf club, right.
00:15:08.736 --> 00:15:13.375
And then I've got this other campus where I've got the boat house, a tennis house and a main clubhouse.
00:15:13.375 --> 00:15:14.136
I forgot about that.
00:15:14.136 --> 00:15:17.211
Plus, I got a few hotel rooms, not many, but a few hotel rooms.
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We used to have our own camp.
00:15:19.690 --> 00:15:28.216
We've now partnered with the local independent school and they have their own camp and we act as their vendor for the sporting and the lake events and the pool, which is great.
00:15:28.216 --> 00:15:32.613
So it's no longer under my umbrella, my members just have access to it, which is awesome.
00:15:32.613 --> 00:15:38.090
I kind of that was one of my more, I was one of my more genius moves getting the school to take over the camp for me.
00:15:38.745 --> 00:15:39.708
They're probably still mad at me.
00:15:39.708 --> 00:15:42.672
Ooh, let's, let's, let's go to that.
00:15:42.672 --> 00:15:47.697
So explain what, what that is and how that came about.
00:15:47.697 --> 00:15:50.332
So you guys had your own camp.
00:15:50.865 --> 00:15:56.866
So we had our own four day, you know, youth programs, golf, and we have five, really six racquet sports.
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If you count pickleball right now, we're probably going to have seven soon with Padel, you know.
00:16:01.206 --> 00:16:17.235
So we have a lot of racquets in the summer and youth programs we obviously have the golf, we have the pool and the swimming and group lessons and private lessons and then, you know, we do every Thursday night in the summer we do fun kids nights, you know, with petting, zoos or crazy science guys or crafts or whatever it might be.
00:16:17.235 --> 00:16:24.972
And the school wanted to do more with camp and I said, well, why don't you guys do the camp?
00:16:24.972 --> 00:16:27.633
You have that expertise and we'll be your vendor.
00:16:27.633 --> 00:16:34.835
I've got the expertise of great sports professionals and so we help a little bit with the transportation, you know, and so on.
00:16:35.105 --> 00:16:42.692
But I got out from under what was at best break even and actually cost a club a little money every year to do this four day a week camp for eight or nine weeks.
00:16:42.692 --> 00:16:46.596
And now my members get a better camp.
00:16:46.596 --> 00:16:53.572
That's five days a week and all day instead of half day, and I have one or a much smaller.
00:16:53.572 --> 00:16:59.115
Not that it was a big headache, truthfully, but I have one last thing that the club's liability or responsibility.
00:16:59.115 --> 00:17:01.974
So I, I, I saw the opportunity.
00:17:01.974 --> 00:17:05.045
I tell, I tell my young managers all the time you can't miss opportunities.
00:17:05.045 --> 00:17:09.605
And I was having a conversation with one of my members who works at the school and I took it.
00:17:09.605 --> 00:17:10.590
I took the opportunity.
00:17:10.590 --> 00:17:13.574
I was not, I was not going to miss that opportunity.
00:17:14.585 --> 00:17:25.411
In worst case, if it didn't work, what you may have maybe upset one or two people or the people, what you would have ruffled a few feathers and they would have forgot about a few weeks later and it would have been fine, like it's not a big deal.
00:17:25.704 --> 00:17:30.951
I do that walk and pass the driving range, come on.
00:17:32.825 --> 00:17:37.673
So, if I remember correctly, tuxedo club is, is, has um.
00:17:37.673 --> 00:17:40.597
Is it more of a historic club, right?
00:17:41.585 --> 00:17:44.400
It's actually one of the oldest clubs in the country, 1886.
00:17:44.400 --> 00:17:48.092
Um it, you know it's.
00:17:48.092 --> 00:17:50.156
It's got a lot of history.
00:17:50.156 --> 00:17:52.031
Um, not all of it very well known.
00:17:52.031 --> 00:17:54.133
They, they liked being under the radar for years.
00:17:54.224 --> 00:18:07.984
The club actually was founded by a gentleman named Pierre Laurelard and he was a tobacco baron you know the gilded age right Tobacco baron and he actually got tired of the whole new port scene and going to new port from Manhattan or wherever he was coming in it.
00:18:07.984 --> 00:18:09.451
Just, he didn't want to do it anymore.
00:18:09.451 --> 00:18:13.651
He sold his house and it's one of the ones I have to look, I should remember after all these years.
00:18:13.651 --> 00:18:18.424
It's one of the ones on Bellevue have that you can take a tour of, or Belvedere, whatever.
00:18:18.424 --> 00:18:22.388
It is Bellevue in new port, like the breakers or Marvel Well, I can't remember which.
00:18:22.470 --> 00:18:29.787
One sold it to the Vanderbilt or somebody and he said I'm going to create this community, you know, an hour north of Manhattan, well, an hour today, who knows what then.
00:18:29.787 --> 00:18:34.871
But then they, um, they came up by train and they saw this land and they made it into a private.
00:18:34.871 --> 00:18:43.732
It was, as we're, as we understand it, the first private gated community in the country and it was going to be a hunting and lodge type escape.
00:18:43.732 --> 00:19:00.734
For you know, manhattanites, and you know, but if you think of the time in 1886, 1890s, golf has started and really started to take off, and so they first had a six hole golf course up where the actually where the school is now a different part of the park golf's taking off.
00:19:00.734 --> 00:19:10.641
So then they have, they created a nine hole course and that turned into 18 holes, and that course was in play until 1952, 1953.
00:19:11.468 --> 00:19:17.971
That was a good one, yeah, the state took the land by eminent domain because that's where they put the throughway to go from Manhattan up to Albany.
00:19:17.971 --> 00:19:31.571
The New York state throughway goes right through um, the original tuxedo golf course, and so Robert Trent Jones was brought in in the fifties and we opened our current golf course in 1953, which is on the um.
00:19:31.571 --> 00:19:34.278
It was the JP Morgan Alexander Hamilton.
00:19:34.278 --> 00:19:40.971
At some point the family's had a marriage slash, merger, and it was Hamilton farms area where the golf course is today.
00:19:40.971 --> 00:19:43.070
So so a lot of history.
00:19:43.070 --> 00:19:46.403
And you know one of the, you know our, actually our.
00:19:46.423 --> 00:19:54.130
We were the first interclub golf match in the country ourselves, shinnecox, st Andrews, and the country club in Brookline.
00:19:54.130 --> 00:20:00.065
It was called the 1890s, so we it carried on again and it actually just ended recently.
00:20:00.065 --> 00:20:01.744
It was called the 1894 matches.
00:20:01.744 --> 00:20:04.253
The original trophy was donated by the club.
00:20:04.253 --> 00:20:09.253
That is the us senior open trophy for the usga is the original 1894 trophy.
00:20:09.253 --> 00:20:12.865
Get out, yeah, and the the.
00:20:12.885 --> 00:20:32.465
The story and I don't know if I believe this one, this is one of the rumors is that tuxedo would have been one of the original usga clubs, but the representative from tuxedo was too busy and didn't feel like going to the meeting which, if you know, our club and we have a great membership, but it's a little bit under the radar, you know, and they kind of like that the quirkiness of it.
00:20:32.465 --> 00:20:38.612
You hear that story and like, well, that's just come on, that's just the urban myth, right, urban legend, but there's probably some truth in it.
00:20:38.612 --> 00:20:41.874
So I think we I never remember we were like 10, 11 or 12.
00:20:41.874 --> 00:20:42.405
We weren't.
00:20:42.405 --> 00:20:44.853
We were definitely one of the first 12 usga clubs.
00:20:47.086 --> 00:20:50.275
So there's a lot of history and as much history as there is with the golf.
00:20:50.275 --> 00:21:02.628
We have even more of a racket history, because we're the only club in the country that has the six racket sports that we have and, as I said, soon to be seven with Padel, because we have court tennis or real tennis, show the palm.
00:21:02.628 --> 00:21:15.344
We have rackets, we have squash, we have lawn tennis, which is on Hartree courts, and we have the pickleball and then we have paddle platform tennis and then we'll be adding the patelle.
00:21:15.344 --> 00:21:17.382
How many?
00:21:17.501 --> 00:21:19.849
ankles are broken a week at your club.
00:21:20.740 --> 00:21:27.846
Not many, but the corp tennis, you know it's funny for so I'm looking at, you know, I'm looking at my wife and I want to come back East and I'm looking at jobs and things.
00:21:27.846 --> 00:21:38.888
And one of the things that attracted me here was the history, because you know, 30 something years in this career to come to a club that had a couple of sports and court tennis and rackets that I didn't even know about.
00:21:38.888 --> 00:21:43.183
And we just say, two years ago now we had the men's US open for court tennis.
00:21:43.183 --> 00:21:44.146
This year we're having the women.
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