279: Pioneering Private Club Marketing w/ Steve Graves
Circling the fast-evolving landscape of private clubs is our insightful guest, Steve Graves of Creative Golf Marketing. Steve unpacks the strategies that clubs should adopt to circumnavigate the artificial surge in business brought about by the pandemic, and how to market their memberships effectively. Breaking the illusion that not-for-profit organizations like clubs can't advertise, he shares expert advice on replacing myths with methods.
Adding a technological twist to the discourse, we traverse the intricate terrain of marketing and technology within private clubs. Steve iterates the importance of tangible materials and strategic marketing in reaching out to both current and potential members. He reflects on the challenges clubs face as they transition out of the pandemic, and how marketing can serve as a compass to navigate these hurdles.
Diving into the realm of customer service, Steve highlights the importance of personalization within private clubs. Advocating for investment in staff members and leadership training, he underscores the necessity of a welcoming atmosphere. Drawing from the experiences of his father's professional shift and its consequent impact on his approach to customer service, Steve concludes with a reminder for clubs to maintain connections with their audience post-pandemic. Tune in for an enlightening chat filled with inspiration, practical solutions, and valuable insights designed to help you sail smoothly across the private club industry.
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Hey everyone, welcome back to private club radio. I'm your host, denny Corby. Thanks for listening in. I have a cool episode. I get to chat with Steve Graves of Creative Golf Marketing. He is a really funny gentleman, a real seasoned pro in the industry, been around for years, knows his stuff, and he and I had a really fun chat and this episode is a little delayed in getting out and he and I just met for the first time. So I got to hang out with him for a little bit in Omaha, got to see him speak and transform the room, but, no, it really brought some golden nuggets and nuggets of information that are really valuable. So I know that you all, the listeners, are going to enjoy this episode as well. So please help me welcome my new friend in person, steve Graves.
Speaker 2:I'm getting. A number of clubs are coming to the realization that the pandemic has concluded. We're getting back to what I don't know where. We're going to get back to what really normal is. But the consumer is not as consumed with playing golf or being a member of a club as they were when they were sequestered at home during COVID with no place else to go, and that has made a and kind of as I put them on notes clubs. It's really surprising how many clubs are realistic. It'd be like I tell. One of the jokes that I tell is if you owned a gas station and it was two miles off the interstate and they decided to do some construction on the interstate and for two years they routed all the traffic by your gas station. And I called you up and go hey, danny, how you doing? You're going. Oh, this is unbelievable, it's just, it's unbelievable Every day. This is more business I've ever done in my life. And then, lo and behold, the construction concludes and they reroute everybody back to the interstate. And I call you up and I go, how you doing? And you go. I don't know where everybody went. And there's clubs who, literally, danny, are convinced that their club was the reason everybody showed up and not an artificial and influencing position. And, like I said kind of in my notes, you could all of a sudden, at your gas station that you own, you could start charging $25 to use the restroom. I mean you could charge $100 for a donut because there's no place else for anybody to go. Now they may grumble a little bit, but they're going to pay the $25 and all of a sudden the rerouting occurs and nobody will pay you for the restroom and as a matter of fact, they're mad at you. Anyway, you know the difficulty for me, danny is and you know we kind of shared with each other. You know, listen, we're both type A, but I watch your videos and went on your website. What your talented guy. Congratulations on how good you are at your craft. That's exciting. It's really impressive. Thank you, I appreciate that you know and. I mean we're all in the entertainment business to us, I mean in private clubs. In my judgment, I haven't really come to that conclusion. And you know, the toughest thing about being in the consultants industry particularly my side, particularly my side is I have to be the guy who says don't get too happy, now I've got general managers going. Why can't you just say be supportive of how great it is? And I said because it's artificial, it's going to change, and so you hate to be kind of the sour grapes guy. You know, because I'm an eternal optimist if you put me in a room full of manure, I think there's a couple ponies in there somewhere and at the same time I'm also a realist, having done this for 33 years and watch, you know, after September 11, after the downturn in the economy at the stock market, you know watching the cycles and I don't think a lot of clubs are realizing how cyclical this is, so kind of just. You know I probably gave you just 15 minutes of what your interview.
Speaker 1:No, because I think what you know, today we're going to talk a little bit, probably more, about the.
Speaker 2:You know, strategic planning in golf clubs is pretty much what I took away from that right, I'm actually somewhat what strategic planning is what everybody's invested in? They haven't invested in strategic marketing Because you know if you build I kind of use the amusement park analogy you can build, you know the greatest rides, but if there's not somebody there to sell the tickets or not somebody there to be nice to you, come in. If there's not somebody there to put you on the ride, etc. Doesn't mean everybody's going to show up and ride the rides. You have to also tell the people that you've built the ride. Tell them how exciting the ride is, tell them how much fun they're going to have, because if they ride the ride it's only going to be two and a half minutes and the ride's over. They're not going to pay $100 for the experience of the day. So the overuse phrase of if you build it, they will count is what most clubs are using in their strategic planning. They just feel if they make changes to put in new pickleball courts or put in a new fitness center, that that will magically have people show up without telling anybody about it.
Speaker 1:Well, because they're a private club and not supposed to be known what's going on. It's got to be secretive.
Speaker 2:You're right. What clubs commonly push back to any is marketing is a show of desperation. And so if we market, or they'll say you know, we're a not-for-profit organization, we cannot advertise, which is a false statement. So, yeah, we deal with that all the time and these assumptions that are incorrect.
Speaker 1:What advice do you have, then, for effective strategic marketing? I mean, let's get straight brass tax. What are some things clubs are doing?
Speaker 2:Bad that they have to say listen, everybody's out there doing a great job of Talking to clubs and educating boards about governance. Copland, kimber and Wallace the best in the industry out there You've already interviewed, you know them numerous times and so they're doing a great job of educating boards that, instead of being Operationally governor, you know operational governance. In other words, the guy shows up I'm on the grounds and greens committee and I've been out of the golf course and I suggest that you let's go mow this, and that Instead they come to the board meeting and say I'm ahead of the grounds and greens committee and I'm dissatisfied with the condition of the golf course and so I'm governing you. Governing you by telling you I want those standards raised, but I'm not going to operationally tell you how to do it. So they've done a phenomenal job. I think there's the education, danny, of the same thing that's educating boards, and hopefully you know exactly. What your Podcast does is the. The many people who listen to it, listen to it, say oh my gosh, we this. This has been helpful to us to understand that it's okay to in fact market the club. It's okay to say to the members We'd like to encourage you to sponsor a friend. It's okay to design collateral materials. You know, danny, I'm working with some of the most elite club in the country and let's say that you were a member of one of those clubs and my wife, nancy, and I were good friends of yours and I said, hey, danny, I'm in, but do you have any collateral materials that you can share with me that I could show to Nancy? And you go out to the club and they go no, I mean, we don't, why would we have those? And you come back to me and go no, steve, you know they. They know they said you can look at the website. Yeah, danny, we've done that, but it doesn't talk about your kids programs or what there are for women. And so you know your point is us, yeah, I, steve, I asked, and my point to you is you know what, danny? I'm in a negotiation here with my wife and I need some of these things I'm asking for, and if the club can't provide them, it's gonna be much more difficult. There's lots of clubs that have extraordinary stories that they're just not telling.
Speaker 1:This is me just chatting out loud, and it's not even about having, like let's just say it's a thousand of those packets. You can, you can only, you only need maybe a hundred. You know, and and it's just you know, you're not gonna give them to everybody, but there's gonna be that one person who you know is just gonna appreciate that tangible thing. I think that's, you know, for me, from from my point of view, you know, and then you could kind of either say yay or nay, but to me that is strategic marketing, because it's just having little things ready for specific Personality types or specific types of members, to where, hey, this member might like this, but it's hey, have you really thought about just having like a hundred of these little packets made for these special people? And it's like, you know, that's gonna help click in and make a sale.
Speaker 2:Your 100% correct and it doesn't take much to recognize the age difference between the two of us. I tend to be someone who would like to see it in print. My son, who works for us and does all the graphic design, said hey dad, this technology thing, it's not a fad, you know, it's kind of here. So you, denny, as a young man, you would prefer to see it in a digital form. You'd like to see a flipping book. You know that I could just send you a link and you could in fact, you know, go on there and take a look at it. So don't, you don't even necessarily need to have a look at it. Yeah, they have a hundred printed ones. You could just simply have a digital link. Yeah person could instantaneously Send to a friend, and, but Denny lot and not everybody. I certainly can't paint with, you know, too broad of a brush. The vast majority of clubs are not very proficient at that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and then I think that's a whole conversation is going back to sales and we're going to sales and all the that whole other process, but Do you see any, any, any trends?
Speaker 2:I grew up again. I, for the last time I'll say I'm 67. And I grew up where there was only three TV channels. There were not all these you know, other, all these things that were competitors of our time. And private clubs, danny, were the gold standard of everything in their community. They had the best golf course, the best tennis courts sometimes the only tennis courts. They had the best pool. They had the best food and beverage operation they did. One of the stories I love to tell you is in back in in 1980s I was the general manager of my club in Kansas. You live in Pennsylvania, grant, and I live in, I live in Kansas, so I've lived in this town since 1980, 43 years. I was the pro from 1980 to 1992. General manager in there in between, so I was, I was some friends of mine who are members back in the 80s and this guy says to me Steve, remember when you were the general manager, the country club was packed, everybody was having fun and I said we had the only liquor license in town. He goes oh yeah, I forgot about that. So when a long answer to a very short, fair question. Clubs are no longer the gold standard. I was just, you know talking to. Well, actually it was Tom Wallace with Coppola Keyblur and we were talking about excuse. I was talking to Jeffrey Creefle, the general manager of congressional, about QR codes and he said you know, steve, we have a couple of our venues at congressional where we do have QR codes, but you know it's, you know it's kind of the. You know, if they want to grab something at the turn, you know they can go on the QR codes. And his exact words were the private club industry is behind every industry as it comes to technology. So we went from the gold standard to every affluent consumer to continuing to talk about whether you should take your hat off in the clubhouse, whether you know what, whether you should have a collared shirt on or not. They're still talking about fixing and repairing bowl marks rather than the promotion of a technology and how it can be used at clubs to enhance the experience. And so you got to understand that most of the people in the boardroom are not your age. So they're not. They're not technologically savvy, they're not excited about it. You know, you bring up chat GPT in the boardroom and you'll just get blank stairs. You bring up AI, that's again that's being too broad brushed, but there won't be a lot of enthrusing, as, of course, when you and I both know I was chatting with Peter from concert golf partners.
Speaker 1:And you know we were talking about the same thing, how boardrooms will have conversations about the burger buns for 30, 45 minutes because you know there's a whole thing. Oh, we switched them and the the sesame seed on this aren't toasted at and it's like you know well, not you know same thing. As you know it's being a little, a little expensive, but it's like the same same difference. You can be taking that time and being so much more productive. And you know it's funny how you get these people who can be on boards of other very successful businesses and do great, but then you get them in this private club world and they just uh, you know there's uh you probably have heard this before, but Bob.
Speaker 2:Deadman was the founder of uh Club.
Speaker 1:Corp.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the really dynamic uh, you know, you know, you know really dynamic uh, management companies in the United States, probably arguably behind Trune right now, but still very prominent. And Bob Deadman had a one of the best phrases ever, ever, ever, stated Denny. He said the private club business is run like nobody's business because it's nobody's business. And we've, you know, we, challenge people all the time in the boardroom and I'm, I know Peter does in the cop. The point is, is, mr Corby or Dr Corby, is this how you would run your businesses? Are you making the decisions right now? And their answer always is no and they acknowledge it, but they don't. There's really not the thawing in the boardroom of the club as a business. And that now it clearly, you know, has a, you know it's not. It's not necessarily needed, needed to be extremely profitable. It needs to be profitable. But but if they're, you know the attention to the tail of food costs is not as important. Uh, if you're running a red robin restaurant, you need to be looking at your food costs because you don't have any dues coming in, you don't have all these other ancillary, you know, elements, but uh, you see, when that and I've had the privilege of being in over 1600 boardrooms and when that boardroom door closes, it's startling the statements that are made by talented businessmen and business women who run some of the largest organizations in the world and how diametrically opposed their decisions are, cause they think of them were almost a hobby. It's kind of a toy. It's kind of fun.
Speaker 1:It's really not yours, so you really? Can't mess it up. So it's like ah it's right, it's, it's.
Speaker 2:it's a little bit like driving a rental car. You know, you, you, you, you you're driving a nice one, but if you run over a curb, not your car.
Speaker 1:You're going to flirt a little bit more than normal. You're going to hit those breaks a little bit harder than you might. You know you're going to Put in a sport mode. You're gonna rip it.
Speaker 2:I don't know if these analogies are perfect or not, but but there's a, there's an angle of truth, you know. To it, no question, and you know that's what you know when we were talking earlier about Clubs look at marketing as being desperate. They feel as though their product should stand on its own two feet. That people should, you know. The other thing that most people don't understand is that when people Before, for instance, you know, you see my shirt, I just happened to put this on it, it wasn't, it wasn't for you, Maybe was subliminal that I wanted to say to you hey, you see my Augusta national shirt, you know, you don't. You don't see very many logoed shirts anymore, danny, unless they're from Baltus, raul, pebble Beach, dustin National. But you know, just to have a logo and I won't name any clubs because I don't want to demean, you know but just, you know the club of in the town that you live in. They're not as prominent Because, because being a member of a private club is not as aspirational as it once was, it no longer showed the success that you've enjoyed and or demonstrated that success where people literally sat at their desk in their hometowns and Romanticized getting the heck out of the office and getting you know to the club. One of my jokes when I was the golf professional was Wednesday, wednesday, all the doctors. I said you know, if you're gonna ever break your arm, make sure you break your arm on Wednesday, out at the country club, because that's where all the doctors are. There's no doctor you know anyplace else, but you know at the country club on Wednesday. Well, the one of the professions that is the least has the least number of members joining it right now. Doctors, they, they're no longer there. They're having to be more businessmen and business women, be more bottom line oriented and they're not as prominent of availability, of taking off as they were, as they were back in the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Speaker 1:I feel now like when you go to the doctor, it's not like when I was a kid, like they had their own practices. Now it's part of like a guy, so it gets part of all these other bigger ones, and like there's just not that homey feel. So you're like, oh, like you know, at least like you would go to like the doctor, like I, you know. I remember like when I was younger it was like a homey feel, like you'd walk in. Oh, it wasn't like sit down, please, what's your copay? Can let me get your number Okay, but Like it's, it wasn't as transactional, it was a little bit more you know, and you can deal with like your body and health. I was like you almost kind of want that a little bit like is now you know, like we Was what we're going to Africa, me and my family, so we had to get like all these shots and stuff and like just when you go in there it's just so like robotic. Well, that's what.
Speaker 2:I'm the bum of my family. My father is a physician but he was a general practitioner and Then he became an emergency physician. And he loved being a general practitioner because he he knew the Corby family. He delivered all the babies. He knew the mom and dad. They would sit down. He became an emergency physician and he loved his profession. But he hated the fact that he would get counseled by the hospital. He'd stayed too long with that patient. You need to get back and you know you need to get to the next guy. You need to get you know on to the next. You know bottom line. My brother's a doctor at the Mayo Clinic. He's retired now but was a doctor at the Mayo Clinic and you know I mean there can't be. There's no better clinic. There is. But he became a bit disenchanted with the fact that there was no longer the sitting bedside manner of. So, denny, tell me about your trip to Africa. Tell me. You tell me about it was sorry, got to go. And the private club industry that's one of my arguments is is that they've invested so much into capital but they have not invested into staff members. So when I show up at private clubs, denny, I I could start taking artwork off the walls and chairs out of the foyer and taking them out to my car, and Know what he would say a word, because there's nobody there. There's nobody there to say welcome. Not only just why are you taking the pictures, it's welcome to the club. Who are you here? To see nice, to see you again or, as I leave, say hi to Nancy. How are the kids? Hope you'll be here tomorrow so they've over invested in capital. But strategic marketing with regard to the intrinsic side of you know people now remember in that boardroom. Those board members don't need to be coddled. They are the they. They think about the club every day. They're at the club every single day. They're not the average member. The average member uses the club occasionally and and needs someone to say you know if, as you're walking out of the club, good to see you, mr Corby, you know, hey, I hope you had a good time today. And even if you turn around and say you know I struggled getting the cup of coffee I desired, thank you, mr Corby. I'm so glad you told me that I'll take care of that, versus you just get in in your car and being upset that you couldn't get the cup of coffee to take home with you. So they're they're over invested in capital and, tragically, under invested, you know, in staffing. You know, and that personal side you know, of the relationship that is that is so critical staffing, training in leadership. I mean, it's really. We could be talking about a dentist office, we could be talking about a doctor, we could be talking about any you know well run and high profile or, excuse me, high performing business. But the private club industry has just felt that it was so powerful on its own that it really didn't need these type of investments. It didn't really need to cater to the negatively trending member. It didn't really need to, because everybody that's a high performing member, high utilizing member assumes that everybody thinks about the club like they do. I mean, think about your profession. You know you have a lot of people in the audience who are there for a variety of different reasons and my son, who's now a pilot, our oldest son, who's a pilot for Southwest Airlines, is an amateur magician and he loved magic. He loved magic as a kid. So you know, every magic store, every town we go into, danny would be like going to a baseball card store. He'd go. hey, could we go by the magic shop and so he'd get the disappearing nickel or you know all these things. So if we went to see your professional show, he'd be there out of excitement. Now I might go, you know, as another person and Nancy and I just happened to be in Scream and you're doing, you know the show and we're just looking for something to do and we're a little ambivalent. You know we paid the price and it's kind of, hey, entertain us, you know. So there's these different levels of people that you deal with every day and you know it before you walk up to that mic, to that microphone and you understand, listen, every boarder am I going to Danny? You know the first guy I look for, bad body language, the first guy I look for, and that's the guy I want to know his name, I want to greet him, I want to talk to him. I suppose you use similar tactics. But the guy who shakes my hand and says we're so glad you're here, I don't need to sell him, I need to, you know, sell the guy who walks in that says I don't know what we got, the way we got this consultant in here. You know we've already got a membership director. You know what. Does he know that we? She doesn't know. I'm sure you do that every show you do.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep. It's just that little bit of extra caring, that little bit of just putting the pieces together and realizing the bigger game that's at play.
Speaker 2:So a lot of what we're talking about are small pieces of a big puzzle or mosaic, but where they're all, they all make an impact. And I'll say it again, I think there's a vast under investment, you know, in just the concept of marketing enough staff members to pay attention to a larger group of people while they're there at the club, in a larger group of people. One of the most impressive things I ever had was when I got a phone call of my house and the golf professional didn't ask for me. They asked for our son and reminded him. Didn't remind my wife, they didn't remind me. They said to my son hey, don't forget junior golf tour, I'd love to see you there. You think he didn't hang the phone up with the biggest smile on his face. So you know the guy made the right call. He didn't just call my wife and say don't forget to bring the boy up, yeah call the boy and hurt it. And, most importantly, one guy the golf profession was a mentor of mine drank a case of perhaps blue ribbon every day, A case when I would walk into the pro shop I would hear. And so he took me aside. He said to me you know, Steve, you got a little problem. And I said I figured that out and he goes, but I figured out the industry. He'd been the pro for 20 years. I go what's the secret? He says you take care of kids and you take care of women. Now, that was back in the 70s and he was right in the 70s and he's right in the in the 20, 23s. But most people take care of the guy and strategic marketing says hi, Mrs Corby, I don't need to talk to Danny, I already got him, he, he, I, yeah, he, Danny. I did a. I did a session for the club management association of America and the name of the session was no man has ever quit a private club. Do you think your view? Can you imagine you ever going home to your wife and saying hey, honey, I've been thinking about it. How much are we really using the club? That's always the spouse, and whether it's a male spouse or female spouse, I don't care whoever, whatever spouse it is, I don't care. Yeah, but it's always the nonusing spouse who is talking about whether they're, whether the price, their pain and the entertainment they're getting is proportional, no different than any time they go to a comedy show that you have. You got somebody who's pushing back saying is this worth the ticket price? Mm, hmm.
Speaker 1:And then it's saying, especially at clubs, because you get the same thing you know. So about like most of my business is private clubs, about about two thirds. So it's the same thing. Like you know, you have the people who are there. They're excited, they watch the videos, they came to see the show. You have others. It's there. You know the wife's going because the husband loves magic. He's like oh okay, here we go. Then you have yeah, you just yeah.
Speaker 2:And I think that's you know. So if you go into that strategic marketing, they're just not realizing the vast diversity that consumers. I don't mean diversity by race, creed, color, religion. I'm just talking about just how they view the club as a part of their life and whether you know, and how important it is and trying to make it as important as they possibly can for you know, all consumers. But I know one thing if the kids have a great time at junior go and the spouses, regardless of which one they are, have a great time, the highest using spouse is never going to get the phrase is this really worth the money?
Speaker 1:Well, because you know, if the kids all of a sudden equate the club to fun, it's never going to be an issue to get them to go there. Even if there is a dress code, they're excited to go. And you know, and this is where marketing isn't just pamphlets Like it's not just like that physical thing that we were talking about earlier. This expands so much further and if you have more activities at the club that the kids enjoy now, if you have to go pick the kids up from the club for whatever reason, you're more likely to stay there and have a meal, because you're already there and the kid I don't want to leave, or you know whatever, or you might even get takeout, so you might not even eat there, but maybe. Oh hey, since we're already picking up Tim, why don't we just pick up dinner too?
Speaker 2:And even saying that to the members and saying listen, we know how busy your day is. When you pick up Johnny and Jill at the club today, if you want to, just you know, give us a 30 minute notice, you know we'll make dinner for you to take home, so you don't have to have, you don't have to make dinner. But if that, if that premise is not proffered, you know, then you just pick up, you know Jimmy, and you know Johnny and Jill at the club, you got to go home and that spouse still needs to make dinner. As opposed to even just the offer, you know of it. You know is, but you're. But as small as the teams are, danny, they don't have the chance to sit and talk these types of strategies. They're typically overwhelmed, understaffed, so they're just taking putting out the fires of each day and the upcoming member guest and things of that nature. I'm very passionate about the industry, lots of subjects, and so, no, we, all I want to do is have something that benefits your listeners. Interest, you know, is not to sell anything that I've got. I'd just like to help educate. You know, give some thought. No, no different when you're sitting in church and they go through a variety of subjects and you know, commonly they talk about being a better husband, being a better dad, being a better person, and you know you find yourself thinking, man, I hadn't thought about this or hadn't thought about that, and so I just hope we hit a few subjects that are helpful to you and you know, might be of interest to your. But if you're ever interested in any specific subject, I'm certainly not shy with, with or as it pertains to you know, trying to come up with a scenario that's beneficial to you and your listeners.
Speaker 1:I hope you all enjoyed that episode. I know Steve is a really great guy Well, now I know after I talked to him in person and then did the episode but super, super fun, really enjoyed that. Link up with him on LinkedIn, steve Graves, or check him out on his website, creativegolfmarketingcom. As always, appreciate any likes, reviews, subscribes. Catch you on the next. Catch you on the Flippity Flipp, the Flippity Flipp, the Flippity Flipp, the Flippity Flipp.