Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
It’s like playing a round of golf with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs and listening to the stories behind their success.
Hi, I’m Paul Liberatore, and I love talking to entrepreneurs and the stories behind their brands. I find it intriguing when people are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and successes. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to some of the biggest names and brands in the game of golf.
So come join me on my quest to find the stories Behind the Brand.
Behind the Golf Brand Podcast with Paul Liberatore
#87 - Capstone Hospitality: Brian Friederichs (Founder)
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We made it to Episode 87 of the Behind the Golf Brand Podcast. In this week's episode, I interview my good friend Brian Friederichs the CEO and Founder of Capstone Hospitality.
Capstone Hospitality is an industry-leading sales & staffing firm specializing in membership sales for private clubs. With roots deeply embedded in the hospitality industry, we know what it takes to ensure your business succeeds. They partner with clubs and organizations across North America, bringing each a customized sales plan, renewed energy, and competitive spirit.
Today we play golf.
Speaker 2Let me show you how we do it in the pros.
Speaker 3Welcome to behind the golf brand podcast. I never missed with the seven eye a conversation with some of the most interesting innovators and entrepreneurs behind the biggest names in golf. My
Speaker 4Friends were the golf clubs. I lived on the golf course. I lived on the driving range
Speaker 3From pro talk. You should learn something from each and every single round you play to fun from on and off the green. Why
Speaker 5Would you play golf? You don't play it for money.
Speaker 3Just let me put the ball in a hole. This is behind the golf brand podcast with Paul liberatory.
Speaker 6What's up guys, Pauling golfer's authority. Welcome to the behind the golf brand podcast. We are on a episode 87, holy crap camp. We're gonna up there up there. Now this week I had my friend Brian Friedrichs from capstone hospitality, talking about private golf clubs in that world, which I know nothing about. And I find it fascinating because I never been a member. We don't have that many places out here in Arizona to have that. And I think it's cool world to learn more about and how it all works and what it's really like. So I'm really excited. Gonna have I'm on the show today. So welcome to the show.
Speaker 7Thanks Paul. Appreciate it. Gonna be
Speaker 6Fun. Where are you located at?
Speaker 7Our headquarters are located in Neptune beach, Florida. So it's the beaches of Jacksonville. Most people will recognize that it's we're about 15 minutes north on the same road as TPC Sawgrass. So very close to Vera.
Speaker 6That's super close.
Speaker 7Very close, very close.
Speaker 6I'm like 15 miles from TPC Scottsdale.
Speaker 7<laugh> nice. Have you played
Speaker 6It? Uh, once? Yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 7Pretty good.
Speaker 6Yeah. It's cool.
Speaker 7Yeah. TPC golf courses are generally pretty good.
Speaker 6They take really good care of'em. They're really nice. Yeah.
Speaker 7Yep.
Speaker 6I like to play the Munis cuz it's cheaper right now. It's super hot, dude. It's like super hot outside. It's like 112 ands like humid and like it's hum,
Speaker 7No, you don't know humid until you come down to
Speaker 6Florida. No, I know that's true. But in July and August and Arizona, we get these monsoons and it gets so humid and it rains the night, the next night. But like the temperature doesn't drop. So essentially it's like 105 and it rained, you know? And then the bad thing is when we have these storms, my friends on a golf course and I was texting him. So I wanted to go shoot some content and he's like, oh, CLO golf course is closed this week. I'm like, wait, what? And he's like, yeah, dude, that storm like ripped up our course like bad, like big, old, like they have a bunch of, uh, what those trees they have in Australia. That're really dirty. Uh, eucalyptus, eucalyptus trees. Yeah. Eucalyptus. Like they drop everywhere.
Speaker 7They have those. They have a ton of those in south America. When I was playing down there, I love'em they smell so good. So close. Oh
Speaker 6Yeah. They're pretty too. But they're messy as hell.
Speaker 7Yeah, true. Yeah.
Speaker 6Like super messy. So I was like, oh man, really? And I feel bad cuz it's like, now they have to, it's like having a big yard and I have to clean it yourself. Right. Like, unless you wanna spend like 10 grand and hire a bunch of people to come clean it up for you. You're like, oh yeah, we're doing yard work for the next week.
Speaker 7I can barely take care of my little tiny yard. So
Speaker 6You have those like big, like I don't know how big a square foot. I don't know how many acres this is, but it's pretty big golf course. You had like clean it up. Like I was, that'd be crazy.
Speaker 7Superintendent. The grounds crew. That's the uh, that's the unspoken heroes of the golf world. Yeah. They got a job. They got a hard job.
Speaker 6And if think they're super early too, like so
Speaker 7Very early I've worked on, I've worked on a crew, a superintendent or I was never a superintendent, but I've worked on a grounds crew at a golf course. Like cutting bunkers, doing all that stuff, man. It's hard work. And like it's so funny the members or the public playing it if like little things happen, right? Like nature affects golf courses. Right. Then the superintendent just gets ripped<laugh> you know, but it's like, you know, literally to keep a golf course. Perfect. How people's expectations are, is like very, very
Speaker 6Challenging. I bets even more with like the private world too. Right? Like if you're a member and you're paying tens of thousands of dollars, like it needs to be impeccable, right. I'm paying for this instead of going like I'm going my muni or I paid$25, go play 18 holes. Who are you gonna complain to city. Exactly. You know like exactly. And the guy have the superintendent's probably superintendent of all the courses. So you're lucky it's even being mowed, you know? Yeah,
Speaker 7Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Speaker 6So where did you grow up at Florida?
Speaker 7I grew up in south Florida. So we're in the Northeast region. Like literally the most far Northeast you can go in Florida and I grew up nearly the farthest Southeast. You can go, uh, in Boca, Raton, Florida. I was born in Boynton, did a little stent in Deerfield beach. And then from ages five to 18, I was in Boca. Then I went, uh, over on the west coast of Florida, uh, to Florida Gulf coast university, um, played golf there, uh, got my degree in resort in hospitality management and then kind of made my way around and went all over the country all over south America, central America and ended right back up in Florida and the Northeast region.
Speaker 6So did you like, are you a good golfer?
Speaker 7Used to be a pretty good golfer.
Speaker 6<laugh> here we go. Yeah. Okay. So did you play in high school?
Speaker 7Played in high, played junior college, played high school, played college.
Speaker 6That D one school kind of D is that
Speaker 7It's D one? Yep. It's a smaller D one school.
Speaker 6Um, who'd you play against and like who's in your, your region?
Speaker 7Um, it kind of shift a little shifted a little bit. Cuz when I first came in there it was a little smaller. Then we got, I think it was like Florida sun conference, something like that. So we were playing,
Speaker 6But the competition's pretty tight though in Florida golf schools or it is, yeah. It's not like you're flying like, you know, I mean I think hard,
Speaker 7We were playing like university of south Florida, um, Florida Atlantic university kind of that size of school.
Speaker 6Yeah.
Speaker 7Um, we, we have
Speaker 6Like the challenge probably really
Speaker 7Isn't insane. Yeah. No, I mean there's so many good golfers out there. I learned that pretty quick.
Speaker 6<laugh> not this, not this guy. Um,
Speaker 7Not me anymore. It's funny though. And then I
Speaker 6Like all a four handicap now and I'd be like, oh for Brian.
Speaker 7Oh I don't even know where I am. So I, I played professionally for four years as well. And like, so
Speaker 6In what league was, what, what was in that, in like Korn ferry or some other what
Speaker 7It was? Yeah. So pretty much every mini tour you could imagine. And then, uh, I did qualify for what is now the PGA tour, Latino America. It was called the tour day loss America is when I was doing it. So that was pretty.
Speaker 6When was that? Like when did you graduate college?
Speaker 7Graduated in 2008. I actually started the business capstone hospitality. I graduated in December of 2008, 2009. Um, I got recruited, uh, by a company called three Oaks hospitality. Um, and a guy named Jim to Manila. Who's now our, uh, executive vice president of capstone. Um, but anyways, he was like, what are you doing after college at the time? Right? It was 2008 graduating with resort and hospitality really kind of crummy time to graduate with resort and hospital.
Speaker 6Yeah. Like right on the market dumps.
Speaker 7Exactly. So like I was flying all around the country trying to find jobs at resorts and everyone's like, man, we're laying off people. We're not hiring anyone. So I played golf with a guy named Jim Tuella. He asked me what I'm doing. I said, I don't really know. He says, I think you might be pretty good at this membership thing. I was like, oh, okay. At the time I, you know, I played muni golf played, um, collegially was never a member at a club. My parents were both teachers. They weren't members of clubs. So I really like wasn't in that world much at all.
Speaker 6You're an outsider.
Speaker 7I'm an outsider. Yeah. Yeah. And so he's like, I think you might be really good at this. You know, let me set you up with this company. Their, their model was, is they were like a subcontractor model. So they would come in, they would do like, uh, assessments. They would do strategic plans for clubs on membership side. They would subcontract out people to come in and help them with it. So they were like, yeah, we'd love to work with you, but we don't have employees. You have to form your own company. That's the time. Right. I'm fresh outta college. I'm like, oh, okay. What does that mean?
Speaker 6You're like no money, like a little bit of experience.
Speaker 7Yeah, exactly. So I'm like, okay. So I formed capstone hospitality in 2009. I did a couple projects, uh, with, uh, PGA of America, uh, PGA village in port St. Louis who did uh, Naples bay resort. Um, and then I always had the itch to like try to play for a living. I just never had the money to do it. And I wasn't good enough to where directly outta college I have like, you know, lucrative endorsement deals, anything like that. So I worked for a couple years, saved up enough money, played in my first two professional events and I won both of'em. And so I'm like, this is gonna be easy. So I turned pro I'd got some sponsorships and then never won again.<laugh> so went out and played for four years, made a couple little swing adjustments. I, I hit the ball really long. I used to hit it really long. But with that came like under pressure situations, I'd hit a hard hook. And like that was like really hard to control. So I was like, all right, I wanna eliminate the
Speaker 6Whole lesson being professionally. So like you're always under stress. It's not like, oh, whenever I'm under a lot of stress. It's like, yeah. Like what? Like when you're leading maybe. And then
Speaker 7Yeah, exactly. When
Speaker 6I'm like in the hunt and also you start choking like crazy. You start being like Norman.
Speaker 7Exactly. Just pull snap, hook one out of bounds, make an eight
Speaker 6And then it goes everything. Now it's all mental at that point. Like, oh, now great. There it goes. There it comes.
Speaker 7So, but I was lucky enough to do it for four years. I had some great sponsorships and uh, traveled all over the country all over south and central America.
Speaker 6That'd be kind of cool though. And you're like, how old? Like 22, 23? Like,
Speaker 7Yeah. It, it was from 23 to 27 is when I did it.
Speaker 6Uh, so was that your full-time job?
Speaker 7Yeah. To
Speaker 6Be you're an athlete. You're just trying to like make it cut.
Speaker 7Yeah, exactly. And you know,
Speaker 6So did they pay for your like fees to get in the tournament and all that?
Speaker 7Yeah, the way it worked was is like, I would get like a lump sum each year for my sponsors.
Speaker 6And, and then you, now you have to manage the money and be like, okay, if I really, I, you might have to come outta pocket. Maybe if you don't like,
Speaker 7Oh, the first couple years, it kind of taught me a lot about business soon, just running a business. Cuz the first year I ran outta money, like with like four months left and I'm like, oh no. So I, I like got caddying job and was a looping on the side just to like pay down credit card debt, you know? And then I would get the dump of
Speaker 6The, did you freaking know that was like the best time of your life? If you say it wasn't you're lying. Cause like,
Speaker 7Oh no, it was, it was incredible.
Speaker 6If you had time machine you'd like I do, I do it every day. The rest of my life like that, like that's like,
Speaker 7It was
Speaker 6It's stressful, but it's like still the fun.
Speaker 7I don't know. I like business, but it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun. The, um, my, my last year was the most fun south America was incredible, but man, it tore my stomach up.<laugh> like really? Cause I'm an adventurous eater. Right. So I'm going, I'm eating like cow heart, these crazy like eyeballs Seviche and Peru, like all this wild stuff. Whereas like buddy that I traveled with, he's just getting like chicken and rice and he was fine the whole time and I'm just like puking and stuff. But anyways, I
Speaker 6Wonder why.
Speaker 7Yeah, exactly. It was a blast, but my last year was the most fun. I got an RV and I traveled around just doing a lot of Mondays. And um,
Speaker 6You got RV in south America and you're just like enjoying it and living the light.
Speaker 7No, that was in north America. So I, I flew back. I was like, all right. I think I'm good on south America for a while. Even though I, I love south America, I surf, I love that culture. Um, but I was like, all right, I'm gonna do Mondays. I was playing really well. My last year I missed five Mondays by one shot. So I was like, I was firing some good numbers. It was pretty brutal. So that's when it started clicking for me that like, and then I started getting some injuries and I was like, all right, maybe I'm not supposed to play golf for a living, but it kind of segued into business. Right. Because I'm like, man, what am I gonna do? You know? And I I've just spent four years like grinding out on tour, putting all of my effort and energy into this. Like what am I gonna do? And so I went back to the membership side of things. And again, during this period of time, right, you're talking like
Speaker 612, 13,
Speaker 7Yeah, 11, 11, 12, uh, really 10, 11, 12, 13. Um, you know, it's not a good time for country clubs, right? Like they just went through a recess. No, you just went through a recession. Right? Like membership is one of the first things to go when a recession hits, which we're coming into again, potentially. Um, and so I would, I, I made it like a routine because I worked in the industry my whole life. Right. Being a bad guy, picking the range, working on the grounds, crew, waiting tables, all that stuff. I would just always go in because like pros, general managers, they never get thanked enough in my opinion. Right. They're like you
Speaker 6Thinkless job. Right. I mean, like, it really is. Cause a pro wants to teach, he doesn't wanna fricking work the front desk and he doesn't wanna sell and pick up phone calls. Like essentially it's like, you're doing a hundred jobs at once and you, the one job you want to do, you never get to do it. You can spend like this much time doing what you're teaching.
Speaker 7Right. Yeah. It's, it's a tough gig man. And you know, so I would, I would just always go in and thank them for hosting the tournament. Talk to them briefly kind of find out how, how their club is doing. And like almost every single one I would talk to cuz I had this history in membership sales as well. They'd be like, oh, we can always use more members. We can always use more members. So I kind of always had it in the back of my mind that like this, this is an opportunity. Um, and so I got knocked outta second stage Q school. Um, that year, this was 2013. I got a call saying, Hey, there's an opportunity up at the golf club of Amelia island, which is amazing property it's right on a Ritz Carlton. And you know, they're not able to sell memberships they're on this island. It's 12,000 people.
Speaker 6Can they say, um,
Speaker 7Yeah, they just weren't doing it. Right. Um,
Speaker 6They
Speaker 7Had a great, they had a great product. They weren't being really proactive in sales. Right. They had somebody. So this is kind of like moving into kind of what I feel is wrong in uh, this quintessential membership director role that you
Speaker 6She's seen. Yeah. I wanna hear this. Cause I don't know. This is
Speaker 7Fascinating. Yeah. Okay. So in private clubs, right? You have all sorts of different, um, dynamics of play. You have board, you have board run clubs, those are equity clubs. You have individually owned clubs.
Speaker 6So equity clubs. All right. So an equity club would be what like, like who,
Speaker 7Who the members own
Speaker 6You buy in. Right. You buy into the club, a person does. And then what?
Speaker 7So yeah. So, uh, if it's an equity club, right. And you're buying an equity membership, you have voting rights. You, you can, you're considered an owner of the club. Right. Uh, equity clubs are owned by the members and there's usually board of governors. They have them break off committees. Right. They have a golf committee, they have membership committee, they have food and beverage committee. And it's just, it's a good member experience. Right. Because
Speaker 6They're really involved. They're like, oh, they want,
Speaker 7Yeah. And they're not. So
Speaker 6There's a lot of too though. Like I bet you have your cliques and like your problems and people probably like I'm out. This is too much for me.
Speaker 7It does happen. And there's some really good board run clubs, really good board run clubs and there's some not so good board run clubs.
Speaker 6So there's pros and cons to it.
Speaker 7There are pros and cons.
Speaker 6So it'll be an equity club. Like what is the most money you've ever seen for an equity club to be
Speaker 7Like how much joint initiation fee.
Speaker 6Yeah.
Speaker 7Oh, I mean, they can get big, you can get 350,000, 400,000 joining, but typically right. Those are like the elite style clubs. Tickets.
Speaker 6There's a club. I can't think of the name of it. So I'm not, I'm glad I'm not gonna pay for in trouble. But he was telling me it's a pretty famous club. It's I'm not gonna say where it's at either. But he said that like he had to, uh, to interview and he had to have a letter of recommendation from two members of the club.
Speaker 7Yeah. That's pretty standard.
Speaker 6And it was like, he had a travel across United States because the members did not live in the state that he was in. Like essentially they were like the CEO of like like say Coca-Cola or some like, you know, like that like crazy traveling. You have to grow it up, become friends with the person and then it'd be like, oh yeah, you're cool. Yeah. Here's one letter recommendation. And he took him two years to get that. And he's like, and he's a very wealthy man. Yeah. And owns a very big development company. And like, he's like, yeah, I did that for two years to get into this club.
Speaker 7It's nuts.
Speaker 6Its not that really like that true is that really happened.
Speaker 7Oh yeah. That happens. And, and in some instances it's a good thing, right? It, it like promotes the, the exclusiveness.
Speaker 6Yeah. Cause once you're in, you're in, they're like, oh yeah, he passed the test. He's been hazed. Right. Like, yeah. Yeah. It's not like, oh yeah, you'd have a million dollars. Okay. Here's a million dollars you're on in. And nobody likes the guy.
Speaker 7Yep. But for the most part, right. For 90% of the clubs out there, in my opinion, they shouldn't be doing all these things. Like we've, we've, it's a pretty antiquated way of doing things. Right. Um, like we've gone into clubs where they still do like home visits before you can join the club. They literally like go out and sit down with you and your family and interview you. I'm just like, what, what, like that's, that's what some of the craziest things I've
Speaker 6Ever heard and they want your money too. It's not like, I mean,
Speaker 7Oh yeah. Yeah. It's it's weird. So, but so anyway you have equity. Yeah. You have all these different dynamics. Again. Sometimes they can be very, very positive, but a lot of times equity clubs move very slow to make decisions. They don't really
Speaker 6Recall. There's so many agendas, right? Like some people don't want change or some people don't want blah, whatever. Exactly.
Speaker 7And then it gets passed on to the next board meeting, which isn't for another month. Right. And so that is why a lot of equity clubs, especially in downturns struggle and you get companies like concert golf, who's one of our clients, great client, you get heritage golf, you get ClubCorp, you get these big club purchasing groups that come in and gobble these clubs up. Right. Because they're run so poorly. They're not smart with their capital reserves. They're not pushing sales. Like they should be. And they get into what we,
Speaker 6They're not running like a business or running it like their own personal
Speaker 7That's right.
Speaker 6Club. That's right. When it's like not a club like it has to survive. It's not like
Speaker 7That's exactly right. So that's kind of what we preach is like, Hey, there's a great balance here. Right. That can be accomplished. Um, and sometimes it is necessary for a cl you know, a company like concert golf to come in and recapitalize a club cuz they need$10 million on infrastructure that they can just never raise. Um, but off more times than not right by applying some simple fundamentals and driving revenues, clubs can be in great places. And there's a lot of great club managers out there that can manage a good property when they have revenue coming in. Um, so that's, that's kind of the foundation of what capstone was built on, right? Is you have this, uh, standard membership director, that's in a club. Right. And typically it's a person that doesn't have a ton of golf experience. They're more of like a social calendar type driver they're member services. They're doing member events, they're answering billing questions. They're doing all of this other stuff. They're making newsletters. Right. They're not really focused
Speaker 6On, they don't get paid all that much money. They probably don't make Jack.
Speaker 7Yeah. They maybe make 70 grand a year or something like that.
Speaker 6And it's a lot of work and they're never even getting to the whole core of the thing. Right. The core of the thing is getting members not getting more members being a yeah. What's that director on a cruise ship. Like whatever, like a cruise director, like person that goes around like, yeah, that's like, they're doing that. And they're trying to get more members, which is never gonna happen.
Speaker 7It's never gonna happen. Right. And, and so that is kind of like what I pinned down when I was kind of assessing and observing all these different clubs across the markets is like, that is the single greatest thing in my opinion, and is backed with a lot of data that prevents clubs from being financially stable, long term. Right. What you've seen over the past two years is an anomaly. Right. Everybody knows it. Right? Membership, private clubs, public clubs, they all saw this massive boom through COVID. Right. But what has happened is, is we've seen a lot, even some of our own clients where they're like, oh, you know, they're feeling fat and happy. Right. They're like, oh, we're good. We're in this great place. Um, you know, they start pulling the trigger on these big capital improvements. They're taking off
Speaker 6Big ones, like big ones, like big ones. Yeah. Like more by million dollar improvements. So like, oh yeah, we're gonna do, we do all the walls.
Speaker 7And I'm like, you nuts. You're nuts. Like this is not going to,
Speaker 6You guys need be banking cash right now.
Speaker 7Exactly. Bank it, bank it bank and bacon
Speaker 6Rights. Cool.
Speaker 7If you, if you build up a, a wait list, right. That's five years deep. Okay. Do whatever you want, you know, spend the money you want.
Speaker 6And so that's what I know you got. Yeah.
Speaker 7That's what we're trying to get a lot of our, and we, we, we have been able to get a lot of our clients to that point where they're on three plus, uh, year wait list. And right now I'm talking to them saying, Hey, I don't know if you really need us anymore, but they're like no way keep selling. Right. They get it. Um, so that's what happens in clubs, right? You get these membership directors, they're not sales people. They don't understand how to market. They don't understand how to take people through a good sales process. They're more of member services, which again, which
Speaker 6Is fine. That's
Speaker 7An important, that's an important role.
Speaker 6They need somebody to help make sales. Like they need, that's like, that's the missing piece? Not, is it a fun, cool club to be in? Yeah. It's more like we need more members. How are we gonna get more members?
Speaker 7Yeah. They need to market to the right demographic. And then they need to take them through a good sales process and follow up D diligently and close them plain and simple. And I've secret shopped, hundreds of clubs. You know, we, whenever we come in, whenever we sign with a club, we come in, we do full due diligence. We look at all our membership categories. We look at their bylaws, their rules and regulations do a full assessment of their club amenities.
Speaker 6You're like, oh, that's stupid. You shouldn't do that. And you're like nicer.
Speaker 7The biggest thing we see is like most clubs over time have kind of dropped their pants. Right. And they've offered all of these different membership categories. It's kind of like, oh Jesus, whole way model. Right? So they've like, we've
Speaker 6Gone 15 different membership models.
Speaker 7Oh like 40, like 40 plus different membership categories.
Speaker 6And I'm like, you're in sales bro. You're in sales. Right. So, you know, rule, I, I learned this cause I used to be in sales a long time ago. And I learned this, my mentor told me, I remember this cuz he's like, this is in real estate. He says, remember, we're driving, we're driving. Right. He's like, remember this one thing you remember, he goes, this is what my mentor told me. And he owns half a Sedona now Sedona, Arizona, big resort. Right area. Yeah. Yeah. He goes, this, this is his mentor toward him. He goes, a cluttered mind says, no. He's like, remember that? He's like, if a client stops talking, you shut up. He goes, cause you've now overload them. And I'm was like, and I've always remembered that. And I think it's like, so like same thing is like, you give me 40 options. It's like, what? The, give me gimme three. That's it like
Speaker 7Max? Like maybe even just one or two, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 6Maybe two, right? Like the expensive one and the not so expensive one. And like you get one or two and you'll know the difference. Cuz within not 40 Jesus
Speaker 7Christ. It's nuts. It just promotes downs selling. That's all it promotes. Right? It's like you're giving people options to pay less money and the market has been so good. So hot that it's just, it's so foolish to do. So you, you paired that, right? Like an unorganized approach. They're kind of just like flailing around. They're picking up, what's coming in. They're getting on they're they're getting in, you know, online inbound inquiries. They're getting phone inquiries. They're getting member referrals. Right? These are organic things. They're just going to happen at the club, but they're not doing anything else. Right. They're not like hosting realtor events. They're not, you know, doing ambassador programs. They're not doing geofencing ads. They're
Speaker 6Not doing, they're not making content. They're not like exactly. They're not doing any social. They're like not inviting influencers to come play. They're not like whatever, like low end hanging fruit that wouldn't cost all that much money. Yeah. To create like they're not doing any of that. There's like, oh, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a small business. Right. That's what a small business does. Like they go, oh yeah, I don't really run ads. Why? So I won't spend the money on it. Well then you don't want any business because yeah. Like I want, I work for, I'm not gonna say over for a company once. And I was like, oh, do you a website? And they're like, yeah. And I'm like, okay, can I see it? And I was like, it was okay. And he's like, I'm like, so I'm like, what? Like, can I see your traffic to get like bill traffic? And I was like, yeah, because you're not running ads. Right. And your website sucks and you have no article. So like, no one's gonna like find your site. So like you literally, I told like person, I said, it's like having a billboard in the desert. Like no one's ever gonna see it. Like essentially. Right. So it's like, and then it's
Speaker 7A good visual.
Speaker 6You can't argue with stupid people, dude,
Speaker 7But it's a good visual. Yeah. So, you know, that's, that's kind of what we do. I've we played with the model for the first year. So I, I would go into clubs and I would basically give them a roadmap. I'd say, okay, this is what you need to do. And what you would see is you would see like a quick little spike in revenue. And then it would just like revert back to existing, um, you know, numbers because the old habits would pop back in and they wouldn't get proactive. The salesperson was getting, or the membership director was getting bogged down in other activities.
Speaker 6Yeah. There was something else. It just the wayside again, it's not that it get the person. It just,
Speaker 7No, there's nothing
Speaker 6Against, there's only so many hours in the day.
Speaker 7It's just like, you're you have an operation and member relations minded person, which again, an important role within a club trying to do that while also trying to bring in new members, like, it's, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that like, oh, okay. If you bring in somebody that's actually focused directly on bringing in members and that other person is still focusing on servicing and onboarding the members, like that's a pretty powerful combo. And that's why we've seen these massive incre like on average our clubs, uh, after the first year that we come on, come in, they see a 407% increase in initiation fee sold. I mean, that's massive. Right? And it's because of the process that we do. It's because of the outreach that we do, it's because of the whole team effect, right. We come in, we do the strategic plan. We figure out exactly where we're going. We make budgets, we make, um, an advertising plan, a marketing plan. We rework brochures. We bring in video content, we do everything. We supercharge it. And then we bring in one of our highly trained sales people that specifically trained in membership sales for country gloves to come in and sell full-time. Um, and it, it,
Speaker 6So they hire you to come in, get all that stuff figured out, set up and then you have a salesperson working for them to help them sell the membership, essentially.
Speaker 7That's right. Yeah. It's an employee of ours. So we
Speaker 6Still, yeah. So it's like consulting fee or it's probably some kind of
Speaker 7It it's based off sales. Right? So like we have a monthly, uh, fixed fee, um, very small. Like we don't make any profit on it. And then we get commissions on sales.
Speaker 6Um, yeah. It covers cost prob cover cost of like the person. And then like, it's like, let's see if you guys can shine. Right? Like, okay. It's commission based. We've sell a thousand things. We, we did awesome. But like essentially, but just, just like easy, it's a no brainer for them because it's like such low risk. It's like the cost is like nothing, you
Speaker 7Know, it's much lower risk actually than like the existing way that they do it. Um, because you have a
Speaker 6Whole thing the existing way now is they have the same person who does multiple jobs do everything, including that. Which does not mean they're gonna get sick people to sign up.
Speaker 7Yeah. Not just that, but like, right. Like, and we're not immune to people issues, right? Like people are wild cards, you know, they move, they get sick, they get disinterested, they get burnt out. There's all these things that happen. But with us, like there's an entire team behind it. And we're tracking all of these metrics constantly. We see how many calls they're making daily. We see how many emails we see how many touchpoints we see how many lead gens we see all the data. So when things are starting to slow down, boom, we're instantaneously on it. If we have to make a change, literally the next day, there's someone in that seat from our corporate team, that's carrying the momentum, right? Like I've seen so many clubs where they're coming into their peak season and the person resigns they're moving to Florida or wherever may be. And they're like, oh my gosh, like now we gotta do a search. We have to vet people. And it's still the same risk. Like you're losing three, four months of peak sales season. And then you're placing someone in there that could be good. Could not be good. You never know what sales people. Right. You never know until they get into the sea.
Speaker 6Well, that's the thing too. Like how incentivized are they when they're an employee, right. Like, oh yeah. Like, okay. I still get paid my salary. But like exactly. If I tell a thousand new people sign up, I still get my salary. Exactly. Like there's no incentive to like push, I mean, at least in sales, right? Like where's the incentive.
Speaker 7They typically get small incentives, but the bulk is in a base. Right. So you're right. Like there's no real pressure. Whereas ours, bulk is in commission. So if you, if we are not selling or the salesperson is not selling, number one, they're not gonna still be there. But number two, they're not gonna make much money at all. Right. So like they have to sell, we have to sell in order to make the money we need to make. So it really benefits the club. It benefits us. We've seen it change the dynamic so much in clubs where it's like, that's probably the most fun that I have with this job is like, even when I was personally doing it and going into clubs, right. You go into clubs that are kind of down and out, kind of struggling a little bit. And like, you look at the waiters, the waitresses, you look at the front house staff, you look at the cart, guys, you look at the pro shop.
Speaker 6Everybody's like just sad.
Speaker 7Yeah. Everybody's just down. Right. And then, because it's boring, there's no one in there. There's no blood. There's no like energy. Right. And you come in and you start growing it and you start bringing the energy. Now all of a sudden they're making more money and tips.
Speaker 6Yeah. Cause everyone wants to be on a winning team. Nobody wants to be on. Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 7So in seeing that dynamic and that culture and seeing all the new members come in and they're starting to make relationships with existing members, it's just a lot of fun clubs can be an incredible place for culture and developing relationships. And so that's one of the things that we thrive on is just coming in there and helping with that and just blowing it up. Um, so it it's been fun. We've worked with over 70 clubs across the country. Um, we've partnered with some big name clubs. We just signed with the Neco and Woodlands resort out in Pennsylvania, which is wild. We're gonna, we're actually creating the most exclusive, most expensive resort style membership in the country. It's gonna come with like full Butler service, all this crazy stuff. So I'll have to, we'll have to maybe get you out there and see it.
Speaker 6Yeah. We should talk about your show. That's what about that kind of thing? That's cool. Cause I have some ideas too.
Speaker 7It's wild. It's man. It's so wild. This place is so incredible. It has two golf courses as like, um, sport, clay shooting, all these different pools. It has ski slope. It has zip lines. It has high ropes courses. It has offroad driving. They have like lions and bears running around. They have this wildlife sanctuary, like when I took the tour, I'm like, what is happening here? Like where are we? But it's wild, fly fishing, all this stuff. So it's a, it's a cool place. It's very unique. Very whimsical. So it'll be fun for
Speaker 6What where's that
Speaker 7At? It's like just outside Pittsburgh. Interesting. It's just outside Pittsburgh. It's in Pennsylvania. Yeah. It's
Speaker 6Cool. I've heard of Miami. Cool. On a bunch of courses. It's got a bunch of stuff don't they?
Speaker 7No. So it's um, it's owned by the people who own 84 lumber company. So it's, it's just been their like kind of fun projects. So they've
Speaker 6Just their playground. Yeah. Like they're exactly. They have so much freaking money. They're like, oh, it'll do something crazy and cool.
Speaker 7That's what it feels like. And now people are gonna be able to experience it as members it's it's like, there's a private landing strip for private jets on it. So it's like, that's, that's kind of the crowd we're going after, where it's, it's gonna be a special, special place to be a member at. So that'll be cool.
Speaker 6So when you come in, when you come in to like, let's say I have a club, right. You come to me and you're like, okay, this is like, what, what do you offer me as a club? Like, you're gonna handle all of my sales, right. To help me get my mm-hmm<affirmative> and then you give me a roadmap and be like, okay, here's our goals. Here's what we're trying to do. And then are you also consulting them on how to make their club better outside of the sale process and all that? Like how to really run this club. So it's efficient.
Speaker 7Yeah. We don't focus so much on operations because we trust like the general managers. We, we have a pretty lengthy interview process with clubs before we partner with'em. So we wanna make sure that they have like appropriate management in place so that they can handle the growth. Cuz we know we're gonna grow the membership. We know that for a fact. So a lot of time, what we kind of learned initially is sometimes when we bring in 120, 130 new high quality members, we grow the initiation fee up significantly. So it reduces attrition. Sometimes clubs can't handle the influx of members. Right. So we just wanna make sure that like, okay, you guys can handle this. Right. Um, you're set up for a success.
Speaker 6Yeah. Cause you don't wanna manage your club for'em. You wanna manage your membership. Like you're like, let us like, let us manage, getting people in the door.
Speaker 7You guys manage them once they're in the door.
Speaker 6It is not our club. This is your club. You guys, you guys run this club. We're
Speaker 7Just dealing
Speaker 6Is our job.
Speaker 7We look like an employee of the club, like a prospect coming in would never know that the person taking them through the sales process is an outside company. They wear the logo. They would never know. Um, but yeah. It's like you guys we'll, we will bring the members in, you guys manage them. But advice on, uh, like in particular amenities. So like say, you know, we go to an area, a good example. We signed with a club, uh, in Al Alpharetta, um, little bit older club. It was ma predominantly a golf club, but it's in this like massive neighborhood where it's like all families and there was no family activities whatsoever. And so we're like, you're not really marketing to your demographic. That's here. You're marketing to just like a golfer. Right. And most people around here are gonna want some form of activity for kids. So we kind of advise, Hey, you need to get set up a kids club. We need to do outdoor dining, more casual style things. And so they did that.
Speaker 6Yeah. People do that. Oh, that blew up.
Speaker 7It blew up. Yeah. We signed up like 400 people in the first year. So it's, it's been a really good success story.
Speaker 6Yeah. Because parents want something like that and they're already in the neighborhood or nearby and it's like, why would you not have, but see, it takes that time to figure that out. Right. And like, think about it. And like, sometimes you're just like, why don't
Speaker 7Right. That it, it kind of sets sometimes just takes a fresh set of eyes in any business. Right. It's like you bring in a fresh set of eyes that have seen so many different operations
Speaker 6And
Speaker 7You can, we can usually cause
Speaker 6You like 10 years of experience, like seeing this other clubs, like you've been behind the scenes and all these other places. And you're like, yeah, this, and then you also look at what's going on that area. Like, then you look at, then take that. And then you look at the individual club and where they're located and the demographics and the income and like everything about that area. And you're like, look
Speaker 7Exactly.
Speaker 6This is what you guys need to do to be successful. Yeah. Yeah. And here we'll help you with this part of it, but this is what you guys need to do. Exactly. So are they, are they, would you consider yourself a consultant then?
Speaker 7Yeah. I mean, we're kind of a combo, right? Like we are a consultant and a management company in the form that we manage the we're a turnkey solution. So say a club like, yeah, maybe they have a membership director. Maybe they don't have a membership director. Maybe they're on a, a flip of membership directors, whatever they would call us up. And basically we would come in and operate their entire membership department and um, make sure that people are being sold and onboarded appropriately. And then they manage it. And that's really like if you talk to a lot of our clients, that's what they love about it. You know, general managers will routinely say like, man, I love that we have capstone in here because I don't have to worry about membership at all. And membership is the lifeblood of a club. So then they can focus more on just servicing the members, which pairs really well, because if you're servicing the members, well, you're really focusing on your operation and amenities, then you're attrition rates are gonna go down. Right. And you're gonna have success across the entire board. So,
Speaker 6Um, how many clubs are you working for right now?
Speaker 7So we have 25 active clients. So we have 25 where we actively managing the membership sales, uh, across
Speaker 6The, and there are located all across the United States.
Speaker 7Yeah. All across, predominantly in the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, and then some peppered in the Midwest.
Speaker 6So you have to have somebody on site.
Speaker 7Yeah. We have someone on site at every single
Speaker 6Of those clubs. So when you onboard, you see, let's say at a club and it's in Arizona and I'm like, okay, I hire you. You have to hire somebody to be in Arizona. Yeah. To manage that club because they have to be on site every day. That's right. Their job.
Speaker 7Yep. So we're constantly recruiting people. Um, we have, uh, a full-time recruiter. Um, we have full-time trainers. We have full-time club launchers. Um, so really we have a big system to where we can handle right. 25 clubs. We've kind of purposely stayed around the 20 to 30 club mark at one time because that's, that's what we could kind of manage and stay really, really hyper focused on.
Speaker 6Yeah.
Speaker 7But over the last year, right. We've been able to build out the infrastructure to take on 50 a hundred clubs. Um, you know, and that's, our goal is to get to a hundred active clubs within the next couple years.
Speaker 6So you just need like more people essentially, right? Like
Speaker 7More people, more clubs.
Speaker 6Yeah.
Speaker 7Yep. More people.
Speaker 6So what are you seeing right now in terms of the market? Like what's happening right now, as of right now with like, you know, private club, world and golf and the economy like you were saying before, like, is it still pretty stable or is starting to decline a little bit or
Speaker 7Tend to decline? Um, so we, we track all metrics and really like the Canary in the coal mine. And, and we sent out a letter to our clients, uh, two months ago, alerting them of this. But the Canary in the coal mine is inbound leads. Right? Organic inbound leads. Right. Because some clubs are gonna do better in different markets with different things. So when I'm talking organic, I'm talking website, inquiries, phone, call inquiries, things like that. Um, January, February were pretty stable compared to year over year. Right. Uh, March was down. I, I may get these numbers slightly wrong. March was down. I wanna say like 13% then April was down like 38%. Uh, then may was down like 51%. Um, June bounced back a little bit and was down about like 40%. But the inbound leads are significantly less that are coming in. Right.
Speaker 6And why do you think that is?
Speaker 7It makes sense. Like, think about it, right? Like,
Speaker 6Well, but we're up so high too. It's like,
Speaker 7That's exactly right.
Speaker 6200% or something crazy. Like you're down 40. It's like, dude, we're still up 150% like take on forever. Like this.
Speaker 7That's why I tell people, like it's not so much a down trend. I think it's just leveling back off to where it was.
Speaker 6It's like real estate.
Speaker 7Exactly. It's it's you think about it? Right? Like why did we see the boom during COVID it wasn't that just like magically
Speaker 6The only sport you could play.
Speaker 7Exactly. It wasn't just literally, oh, all of a sudden, you know, all these new
Speaker 6Girls, every loves golf school now.
Speaker 7No, it's literally like the only thing you could do, uh, in a lot of different places. So naturally you couldn't travel. Couldn't go on cruises. You couldn't do the kids. Sports were
Speaker 6Canceled. Everything was couldn't even go anywhere. You, you couldn't, you go to public parks, you couldn't go national parks. Yeah. You couldn't do.
Speaker 7You couldn't do anything. So what could you do? Right? You could from home, join a club. You could go play golf. Right. These are the things that were like open and, uh, available. So boom, like organic increase just massively shot up. Right. And then now they're starting to taper off because now you can travel again. You can go on cruises. Kids. Activities is like back up. Like there is now competition for recreational activity again. So these clubs that are like, oh, we're fat and happy. We're in a great place. We talk to like so many different clubs across the country and the clubs that were like really in a bad spot before boom. They see this like quick little spike, like, oh, we're good. We're good. And I'm like, okay. You know, like literally nothing has changed in your business model. You haven't like, you're just going to revert right back to where it is. And it's great that we saw this. Boom. It's awesome. So many clubs, the smart clubs are being proactive about it. Right. They're building out wait lists. Right. If they get to one of the other things that's happening is right. Like even just golf rounds were up significantly. Right? So say your membership didn't grow immensely. Maybe it only grew 30% or something like that. Um, but like the people that are members there are playing a lot more golf. Right? They're working remote, they're doing all these things. So then it starts feeling like course, the course has some compaction issues. Now all of a sudden you got your groups because it's like, oh, we can't get a tee time on Saturday. Like we always could, we can't get this. We can't get that. And then, so you get these groups of people saying, we need to cap our membership, stop selling members, you know? And it's just like, no, that's actually the worst thing you can do. You need to, if, if you wanna cap your membership fine, but build out a deep wait list. So that inevitably when you start getting resignations, when the sales starts slowing your dues line, isn't gonna drop. You don't have to assess members. You don't have to raise dues. All this that like puts people into this downward spiral, gets them into a really bad spot to where they have to sell. Right. So that's kind of where we're at right now. It's going
Speaker 6Business, dude. It's like literally running a company. It's like,
Speaker 7What's that?
Speaker 6It's like, it's like running a business. It's it is like it's. But the one FA the one factor you have is now you have like your members complaining because they can't get the tee time they wanted, or you're packed bumper to bumper on every hole. And it's like, if you've been to any golf course in the United States are all like this, like right. You know? So it's like, just because you had the same tee time for the last 30 years doesn't mean you're gonna get it now because you like, yeah. There's but they might because you're on the board, you know, like it's exactly
Speaker 7Right, exactly. Right. So
Speaker 6Its like a double edged store. It's like, you, you want the people there, but then you don't want the people there and it's like, oh what do you do?
Speaker 7Right. Right. So, well I think you develop out a wait list and stack it really deep. That's that's the answer. And you also,
Speaker 6Yeah, because you have a warm lead, right. They're wanting to do it and obviously you guys want to close it, right? Yeah. Because you like write the finish line and then it's like, well they're gonna be on the wait list now. You're like, well now like 50, 50 chance of this guy's gonna come back. Right. Or like,
Speaker 7Well, no, no. Yeah. No, if you get'em on a wait list though, like what we advise our clients is you do have nonrefundable deposit to get on a wait list. A lot of clubs aren't doing deposits. They'll just put people on the wait list. I'm like, well you don't really have a wait list. Right? Like
Speaker 6Yeah, you gotta get some money. You gotta get something. So they feel vested. Yeah.
Speaker 7I guess in the game. And there's, there's all sorts of strategies to it. Like um, again, the very smart clubs, right? Like if you look at your corporate run clubs that are like looking at the bottom line and figuring it out, what they're doing is like through all of this, they're forcing attrition. So they're basically looking at subcategories, right. That have maybe been sold over the course of 10 years. Right. Your group, your group memberships, your preview style memberships.
Speaker 6Oh yeah. Like give like they like 50 options get rid of 49 of'em. Right? Exactly. Yeah. Because now's a good time to do it because we don't wanna stick around fine. We have 50 other people want to pay full price and exactly you got a stupid offer anyways, 20 years ago.
Speaker 7Why don't you own a club and we'll work together. We kill it.
Speaker 6<laugh> we would you
Speaker 7Get, you get it. You know? And, and, and so it's convincing right. Boards and general managers that, Hey there you're, you're
Speaker 6Actually it's cause you're an outsider. And so am I dudes because like I'm not ingrained in this world and like I'm sticking at it. Like it's money. It's this basic dollars and cents.
Speaker 7Exactly. It's basic business senses. And um, that can be challenging.
Speaker 6There's probably a lot of ego involved too though. I there's a ton of ego. That's awesome. Especially with every me with, I mean, not with you guys, cuz you're like, we wanna do our job. We wanna get paid. But like everybody on the other side, right? Like whoever it is, like the director, the pro, the who, the member, the board, all these people, all this ego involved. And it's like, they have their own agenda as to why they don't wanna do what they want to do.
Speaker 7Not. Yeah. Or like they're getting pushed by a group of their buddies, you know, say they're the board president
Speaker 6And they're yeah. Peer pressure, right? Like, oh it's your buddies. You play golf every week weekend. And they don't want to do it. Well now you gonna, now you're gonna'em off.
Speaker 7That's a big thing. That's so, but no overall like, look the, you know, like I've said this countless times to people that wanna talk to me about it, it's just like, I'm not trying to be doom and gloom here. Right. Because it's not like we're still crushing.
Speaker 6That's not, it's just a,
Speaker 7The golf, industry's still crushing it. But there are signs and you talk to any industry style person out there and they're gonna tell you the exact same
Speaker 6Thing. Like where's what I've seen this year. At least I've seen similar to what you said January, February. I look at traffic, right? Like the interesting golf generally and products. Right? So January, February, same thing, stable March. It's the masters. You get this huge wave, right? Like this. Oh cool. Spike. It lasts until after the masters. Pretty much for the element of month of April. I think people are tired of winter. Oh cool. Warming up. Right. And then May's a month. It goes back down because it's like, no, one's really golfing yet. Even though you think it would be. And then June you think is maybe June, July should be your biggest month. July should be the July 15th. August 15th should be the peak. I would say. Um, it's probably doing the same thing. It's not
Speaker 7On your mind.
Speaker 6Yeah. Depend on market here. No where you're at. Yes. You know, and like, I feel like we're at disadvantage, both you and I, cause we're in states that we're, you can golf year round. Right. So like, I always forget that like you can't golf in Pennsylvania in November, right? Yeah. Or either or March. So it's like, it's very cyclical. Um,
Speaker 7Oh, you know, it's actually kind of interesting. Um, it's this data point that our VP of membership sales, Greg just brought to us cuz he was just analyzing all the data and it just reminded me of that. When you said that is like, for instance, Florida's numbers have not dropped at all. Like there's still,
Speaker 6Here's one hasn't either. Are you kidding me?
Speaker 7That's what I'm saying. Right? The, the, the areas that are dropping
Speaker 6Well, you could not like honestly it was up to, uh, after Memorial day is when people, when you just start getting tee times, like not, I mean, I mean everywhere, Muny, it didn't matter. And it's like, it's packed, like, and fees are up the. Like they're like so high right now. Like if you wanna play boulders, you know, in March it's gonna be$300. You know what I mean? Like or something crazy. Like they, you can get top dollar, you can get, you know, whatever, you know, you can't play muni. It's like 60 bucks with cart. It's like some MUN. Yeah. You know, like now I can play a single golf for$18 with cart, but it's too
Speaker 7High. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's nuts. Like the, the states where people are like mass migrating to right now. Right. Moving to all that stuff, still crushing it it's the, the Northeast states, it's the Midwest. It's the Mid-Atlantic that we're really seeing big drops in. Um, and some of that is correlated to season, but again, just doing year over year, exact same time period. Um,
Speaker 6That's where we, the demographic shift too, like people are moving out of those states, like you're saying, and they're moving to Florida, right? Like, or Arizona cause cheaper or Texas, right? Yeah. Like, no one's move. I mean, we have a lot of Californians here now. Like everyones, California, and moves here. That's cheaper. Yeah.
Speaker 7It's interesting. Cuz we've just started speaking with a couple clubs in Northern California and they're struggling big time. So it's like these little areas, these little pockets are getting hit, these other ones aren't.
Speaker 6So how do you find clubs? Like, is there a list of like every single private club in the United States and you just start working that list essentially? Or how does that work? I have no idea. Like, how do you find the private clubs work? I mean, most
Speaker 7Of our stuff, most of our, most of our stuff is, uh, just references from existing clients, from people that've heard of us. They
Speaker 6Understand word of mouth,
Speaker 7Lot of word of mouth. Uh, we've just recently again, because we've kind of structured it out to now where we can scale. Um, we have a head of partnerships, Tyler Vander, Mullen who's out there, just hunting clubs, um, talking to people, figuring out, you know, would our setting
Speaker 6Up meeting trying to get meetings, try to introduce you guys, like let's talk to you about what we do.
Speaker 7Yeah. And, and what we do honestly, is it's pretty, it's, it's pretty simple. Like all we do, we come in, we do a complimentary assessment of their club. We look at their categories, we look at what they've done the past few years, pre COVID during COVID see what type of growth they have, see what their goals are, and then see if you know, it'll work for them. See if it makes sense for them. See if it makes sense for us because every single club we've been in, every single one we've raised their initiation fee. So like say a club starts at five grand. You know, they have a$5,000 initiation fee. We come in and we raise it up. Like we're getting clubs from five,$10,000 up to 30,$50,000 now. And so that's massive. We basically, we pay for ourselves and then some, um, bringing in massive amounts
Speaker 6Of, yeah, just in the initial couple months, it's like, bam. And they're like, holy crap. So like everything after that, it's like, they don't care. They're happy. It's not, they've already, they already can see the light. It's not like, oh, give it a year. We'll uh, you know, slowly
Speaker 7A massive dues line. That's stable. Um, they can operate a great business. Um, if they have a fluctuating dues line, it's really hard to budget, really hard to do a business that way. So that's why we wanna raise the initiation fee. It's just common sense. Right? It's like the higher initiation fee people pay, the less likely they,
Speaker 6But if you're a member already, let's say as a number of a club and then it's like five grand. So I pay five grand and then you guys raise dues to 30. Am I still grandfather? I already made my next year, I have to pay$30,000. That how?
Speaker 7No, no, no. So right. You have two different,
Speaker 6You're like locked in at five because you're grandfathered in essentially.
Speaker 7So two different things. So you have an initiation fee. That's what I'm talking about. And then you have your monthly annual dues, right? Initiation fee is a one time payment to get in the club. Hey, here's 20 grand. I want to become full golf member. And then after that you start paying your monthly due$600 a month. Right. So you never, if you're a member, you never have to pay another initiation fee again. Right. You just pay
Speaker 6Your, oh, you're saying, well, oh, you're saying, oh, I see. So like the new bees. Yep. Like I come in, I'm a new guy. I wanna join the club. You're like, okay, it's 30 grand, not five anymore. And you're like, okay, I'll fine. I'll pay it. And then you still pay 600 bucks, like everybody else, but got these still got$25,000 more on one guy than they did on the last guy who wasn't like that before.
Speaker 7Yeah. Members love that. Like existing members love it. Right. Because they're like, oh
Speaker 6Yeah, they ain't going nowhere now. They're like, oh hell no.
Speaker 7I'm that again?
Speaker 6Yeah. Yeah. Because once they know what, once they know what the fee is, they're like, oh, I, they think they're cool. Number one. Cause they got for five and they're like, Hey, I'm at a$30,000, uh, initiation club. And they think they're hot because the it's a more expensive club to be in. Yeah. All it's all like mental whole thing's like mental.
Speaker 7Oh it's for sure. Mental, like the psychology be behind
Speaker 6It all. So much psychology in this whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh my God. As I thought it was fascinating. I'm like, this is a different world.
Speaker 7That was one of the first like books I read when I was like really trying to kind of like hone in on this craft was the psychology of persuasion. Have you ever read that?
Speaker 6Was it good?
Speaker 7Oh, it was good. It's worth a read called the psychology. The, I think it's the psychology of persuasion. I'm Googling it too. Just make sure I got that right.
Speaker 6Is that the dirty book? I don't think I have the right one. I'm just kidding.
Speaker 7Because of the implication.
Speaker 6I'm just teasing.
Speaker 7Do you watch
Speaker 6Influence, influence a psychology persuasions has to be
Speaker 7It's that's it? Yep. That's it. It's a good one. It's worth read. It's it? It just talks about like how these little minute things can make the difference. Like I'll give you an example. Okay. So
Speaker 6Yeah. I want to hear, I love
Speaker 7To share. There is there is this one, uh, this one, like case study that they did where, um, girl scout cookies, right? This one girl was like every single year. She was the leader across the nation of selling girl scout cookies. And they're like, what the hell is this girl doing? So they were like, all right, we're gonna go. We're gonna kind of like analyze her, see what she's doing. And so literally the only thing that she would do, right. You see girl scout cookies, typically outside Publix or whatever, grocery store, your, yeah. Your nose around your hometown. And so all she would do, she would load up on just little carnations or little like inexpensive flowers. And all she would do is as the people would walk out, she would just hand them a flower. That's it? She would just hand them a flower. And she had her little booth set up and boom, it triggered this like innate thing in our mind that like, Hey, if someone gives us something, we feel the need to like reciprocate that. Right. So boom, get a little flower. It's like, all right, I'll buy a box of cookies. And that was it. Right? So like these little subtle things that can be done just to like enhance experiences, right. Lead to better sales, like they, they just do. And so that's what we imply a lot of. Um, it's not manipulative. It's
Speaker 6Not, I think, well, I think, I think you hit on, I think you've hit on the head though, too. Like you have to be a give or not a taker. Right? That's right. So what you guys do is you give and you give and you give and you'll take at some point.
Speaker 7Yep. That's right. You know, you kind of have to do it in membership sales too, because a
Speaker 6Hundred percent
Speaker 7It's, it's not like a, you, it's not insurance. It's not a car. It's not anything that's like necessary at all. It's a lifestyle enhancement product. So it's like, you have to understand how to sell that. And again, going back to like a secret shopping clubs, whenever we come into a market, we secret shop all the clubs around, just kind of see what's going on and you would be
Speaker 6Shocked and you see how they act and you see like,
Speaker 7Oh God, it's so bad. It's so bad. It's like, literally that's where I'm just like, our thesis is kind of like, you know, everything's gonna kind of revert back to normal. I still think golf is in a great place. It's gonna continue to grow. But like the processes have not changed. Like when we inquire so many times we don't even get responses, right. Or if we do get kickbacks, it's like this automated kickback with all of the pricing, this super long, we call data dump email where it's just like all the information. It's just like, holy. You know?
Speaker 6Like, there's like no personalization. There's no touch. There's no feel. It's like, it's like a, so help support line India. It's you know, it's like, and,
Speaker 7And, and so like, one of the things that like I mandate is that like, if someone inquires, you call them instantaneously back within minutes, right? Like you drop everything. You're doing, you call right. You find out what they're looking for. You talk to them, answer
Speaker 6Their questions, try a meeting,
Speaker 7Set up a meeting, get'em in person. Treat him for lunch, treat'em to a
Speaker 6Tool. Let me show you around. Let us show you around. See what we got. See, if's doing the right fit for you. You might not like it. You might. Yeah.
Speaker 7And
Speaker 6A Carnation.
Speaker 7Yeah. Hand them a flower. Right. When they walk in, you
Speaker 6Should do that. That should be a test.
Speaker 7And then you get the whole,
Speaker 6Everybody walk. Like everybody just sees'em to give'em a flower. They be like, what the
Speaker 7Hell? Everyone just gets all weird out and leaves.
Speaker 6<laugh>. Yeah, I totally like, but you put like a lay on them. You're like welcome. And you're like a freaking club in like New York. Like here's a lay. You're like,
Speaker 7Oh, what are you gonna kill me or something? This is weird. Yeah. No, the, um,
Speaker 6Like white outfits,
Speaker 7We do actually do a little bit of that. Um, like whenever someone comes in for a tour and plays golf, we usually put like a little gift package in the cart for them, all that stuff. So again, you just want to display like, okay, you, you wanna become a member at this club. Like we figure out the reasons, why is it because golf is because camaraderie, you wanna meet people. Is it cuz of the social events? Like you ask all these questions and then you cater the tour are specific to that. Right? Like as opposed to just being like, here's what we have. We have this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this here's our application. Let me know if you wanna join. It's like, okay,<laugh> you. So
Speaker 6Maybe I know who you're selling, not as a, like, you know, their intention for being there are not so much who they are as a person, but like what do they looking for? Exactly. You know? Like, and can we give that to them? The other thing is too, you gotta make sure you can give'em what they want. Because if you can't there's to get off and they're gonna like sign up and they're not gonna quit. And they're like, that's right.
Speaker 7No. And that's w hy I l ike, w e, we give a really good tour. We give a really good process. We treat people, right. We're honest. Like I have said, w hen, you know, b ack u p 5, 6, 7 years when I'm actually selling memberships, there's countless a mount amounts of times that I would say to people, Hey, I just, I don't think this is probably gonna be the best fit for you. I think you maybe should go and check X, Y, Z club. And a lot o f times they would still join the club because they're like, well, wait a second. You know, like, you know, this could be a good fit for us.
Speaker 6Cause you were honest. Yeah, exactly. Right. So it wasn't like no one likes being sold. Exactly. You know what I mean? So like who likes walking a car lot? Like nobody, no one. Right? Like that's the last place on earth I like walking onto. Right, right, right. And so it's like, cause you know, you're gonna get your kiss. You know, you're gonna try to get sold the whole time. Yeah. They're not gonna let you leave. Yeah. It's like all this. Right. And then it's like, if you just make it easy for somebody and be like, whatever you wanna do is cool.
Speaker 7That's it that's and, and that's how we train. Right? Like we have this entire, it's like a three week training process that all of our people go through and that's one of the like core fundamentals is like, like, yes, like we are trying to get a yes, obviously, but we're, we're also like trying to get a no, you know what I mean? Like a no is fine. I'm totally fine with someone saying no to a club. Right? Like it, like you said, it has to make sense for them. What we try to do is figure out what are the people's wants. Right. Is this going to be a good fit? And then we try to help them make a decision on where they want to be. Right. And if it's with us awesome. If it's with another club, great. We'll stay in contact. Maybe you have a friend that's a good fit for here. So, um, yeah. And I think, you know, you look at,
Speaker 6Is that a hard sell?
Speaker 7It's not a hard sell it. Can't
Speaker 6It can't be hard. It's not like you're gonna a timeshare in yeah, exactly. Mexico or some.
Speaker 7Right, right. You bring'em into the room. Don't let leave until they buy. I mean, we are sales people, like people definitely are gonna get answers out of people. Um, but it's, it's, it can't be a hard sell. It's
Speaker 6A lot. Yeah. It's
Speaker 7Different. It's a different
Speaker 6Thing. Well, yeah. It's like, you want the right person for the right club essentially. And is it the right fit? And that's the perfect scenario. So
Speaker 7Yeah. We're looking for long term members. Like that's, that's, you know, another thing that we pride ourself on is like, there's a lot of companies out there that will imply like these, uh, uh, style memberships they'll have like their membership base, go sell it for them. And they'll discount the initiation fee. They'll do a year of like previous style dues and they'll get a lot of people. Right. They'll get a hundred people. But what we've seen is like 30, 40% of those people will leave. And what's happened after that is it's devalued your club. Right. So now everyone's like, well, I want that deal. You know? It's like, well, yeah, I bet you do. So we've had to, we
Speaker 6Don't have that anymore.
Speaker 7Yeah. We've had to come in a lot of times after those clubs and kind of clean up the mess a little bit, reestablish the initiation fees, reestablish the integrity of the membership, do it the appropriate way. And again, like ours is not like this. Sometimes we come in and it's a quick hitter and like, boom, we knock it outta the park. But a lot of times it's like this slow growth strategy that we have. And
Speaker 6I think, well, as a test, it it's trial and error. Like, you don't know what you're stepping into. Like, you kind of have an idea, but like, you don't know the whole thing until you try it. And like, oh, I failed. Oh that they don't whatever. I mean, you don't know. It's like every new club is a new experience you have. Right. Essentially. Yeah. Well it's crazy. I mean, I didn't even know this world. Like it's just nuts, man. I mean, it all makes sense. All this,
Speaker 7Isn't it so weird. How many people like there's so many businesses out there I'm oh, my mind is always blown with how many businesses are out there and how people make a living. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 6that change the world. It's true. Well, where can people find you guys if they have a club or where can they find you?
Speaker 7Yeah. Go to our website. Uh, www.capstone-hospitality.com. Um, you can email me directly@briancapstone-hospitality.com. My cell phone is(561) 445-7448. Look at that. Boom.
Speaker 6Whoa, holy crap. You're the first to ever get out their cell phone on a podcast,
Speaker 7Man. I tell you what, it's probably dumb. You can
Speaker 6Be a lot, a lot of, you know what picked
Speaker 7<laugh>, you know, it's actually pretty funny. The, um, I, I said this, uh, on one of the last podcasts I was on, but it's kind of good, but it also, you know, can backfire a little bit like this isn't a backfire. It's actually a really good story. So my wife's going in the labor. It's 2, 2 22 and I'm in the hospital and we're like getting to the zone, the push zone, right? Like we're like, I think looking back on it, it's like an hour and a half out of when our daughter actually came and I get this phone call. I'm like, I don't know this number. And then I get a text right after it. It's like, Hey Brian, this is Tom from Nico Woodlands resort. He's like one of their top guys there, you know, I saw you on. So and so podcast love that you gave out your cell phone, sorry, texting. So late, you know, love to talk to you. I'm like, Tom, I really wanna talk to you right now. But I am in the hospital. My wife is giving LA she's laboring for our first daughter right now. Is there any way I can set you up with a couple of our other guys? And he is like, oh my God. He's just like, love the fact that I responded and all that. So
Speaker 6You're real person.
Speaker 7Yeah, exactly. So now you can grow.
Speaker 6I think in a world that I think it's true, like in a world that there are so many faceless things, you know, like, like I think people like that we've lost that. I feel like on the internet at least like, or at least in the world of business, like, you don't know who you're talking to and why. And I think like that personal connection, like, I don't know, people just wanna find the right person.
Speaker 7Yeah. I'm a, I'm a phone call guy. I don't really like emails, you know? Like I'll, I'll, I'll do emails. Obviously it takes
Speaker 6Forever. Dude. You got, you can bang out in two minutes on a phone call. It takes 40 minutes to write the DM email.
Speaker 7That's what I'm saying. That's I
Speaker 6Have a zoom call. Let's have a zoom call. Let's just talk about it right now. I love zoom. Figure it out.
Speaker 7I love it. We, we jump on zooms all the time. It was like, that was a lot of obviously negatives with COVID. But I feel like that was one of the positive was zoom. You
Speaker 6Know, everybody has it, you
Speaker 7Know, I'm like, we're in the future now, man. I'm like, look at this. This is like back to the future stuff.
Speaker 6It really is. We think about it. Like I was writing something and I like, it was a video. And like, I was like, oh, I want you make, because uh, it was like a 10 year old on YouTube video. Yeah. And he's like, oh, don't you try out this new thing called Skype? And I was like, oh my God. That was like, you know, and Skype's like the worst. And it's is funny. Funny, cuz now this is an accepted thing. Like, oh yeah. Zoom call. Unless you're at a big company, you know, like
Speaker 7Yeah. Yeah. It it's pretty cool. Yeah. And then also like, you know, we're always looking for new, uh, staff. So I mean, if you're someone out there that's a hustler and you know, you want to get into the golf business or uh, maybe you're doing sales for another industry and want to kind of switch it up. We offer really good compensation packages. Like on average, our people are making a hundred K plus a year. Um, you get to work in a great environment. We do company retreats, all that stuff. So, um, you know, uh, I think our email for that, I should probably know this it's careers at capstone dash hospital sauce on our website. Just go under the careers tab and we'll set you up, bring you down to Florida. Awesome. On the beach to do some training too.
Speaker 6There you go. Yeah. And Brian, I'll let you, uh, go golfing with him. He'll give you some golf lessons. No
Speaker 7Way, man.<laugh> it's funny. You know, like I it's so bad. I, I, I'm starting to get the golf bug more and more, but man, I don't play just even close to as much as I should,
Speaker 6But dude that's how old are you? You're probably what? 34 35
Speaker 7Close 37. Thank you for staying younger.
Speaker 6Old man old
Speaker 7Man. I had, we had some friends in town this last weekend and it was my college roommate. Right. He has a four year old son and a seven year old son. And like he's looking a little banged up just like I am, you know, it's like, we've been in business
Speaker 6Really? Bang up. You got a baby five months old, eight. That's what? Talking about
Speaker 7Whatever. So this, this, his
Speaker 6Son give like 10 years. You're gonna look like me.
Speaker 7Yeah. His, his son goes, oh my God, have you done the 10 year challenge recently? I did that the other day. And I'm like, oh.
Speaker 6<laugh> so that,
Speaker 7Yeah. Um, so anyways, his son is looking, looking at me and he goes, how old are you? How old do you think? I<laugh>? And he's like 48. I'm like, oh Jesus. And I'm like, how? And I'm like, okay, it's probably perspective. How old do you think your dad is? 34. I'm like what? I'm like you think I look 14 years older than your dad. You little sob get outta my house.<laugh> so anyways, that's funny. Tough.
Speaker 6Well, it's awesome. You guys, you gotta check it out if you're in the club world, which I'm not, but it's really interesting to find this all out. If you want a club or, and have questions, you gotta reach out to Brian cuz he knows he is talking about and can help you. And I just think it's fascinating just this world, you know, I I've never been in it, so I don't know what to say or to expect. And I thought, I thought it was cool to like learn about it and find out like really all the facets you know of that industry. Cuz it's not, it's not what you think it is. Right? Like it's not as easy. It's not it's it's pretty complex. So thank you for being on the show and I'll see you guys. Yeah. In the next episode,
Speaker 7Let's do it again. All right. Talk to you later.
Speaker 3Thanks for listening to another episode of behind the golf brand podcast, you're gonna beat me a golf stay connected on and off the show by visiting golfers authority.com. Don't forget to like subscribe and leave a comment. Golf is always more fun when you win, stay out of the beach and see you on the green.
