285: Transition from Private to Member-Owned: Bruce Furmans Club Management Journey

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back to Private Club Radio. I'm your host, denny Corby. In this episode, back again, we have Bruce Furman, gm, ccm. Ccm. Gm of VYC, venice Yacht Club. In this episode we are talking about going from managing a privately owned country club to a member owned country club Private Club. What's interesting is normally it goes from member owned to a privately owned club, but in this case he worked in the privately owned and he wanted to go into the member owned because he wanted to learn about that experience. He wanted to put himself in a unique situation where he can learn and grow more. So I thought this was absolutely fascinating when I was talking to him about this off the record and I said, hey, we have to do a podcast on this because I think it's super valuable and I would just love to learn about what you learned. So back again for another episode. We have Bruce Furman, ccm, gm of VYC, the Venice Yacht Club. Please welcome my friend, bruce Furman. Yeah, all right. So you your whole time in club management, you were in privately owned clubs and now you're in a member owned club and most of the time it's the opposite. People go from member owned to private owned. You went from private owned to member owned intentionally. And we were talking at lunch, I was like we were starting to talk about it. I was like, wait, we're going to talk about it on here. I want to save everything, so tell me about that.

Speaker 2: 1:49

Yeah, so very interesting that you know, since the Breakers Hotel, which was also family owned back then it was Keenan family and they probably still do. I don't know, but you know it's even when I transferred to Breakers West, which is a country club, it was still owned by the same family owners of the Breakers. So it's always been private clubs since Breakers West but it's been an individual family or even developer owned. And what throws another you know little intricate thing in is that at first short time I was well for a while I was with a management company, so I had to please the management company, the owners and shareholders, which we call them in the member. So it was and I got real good at it. I thought this was normal to take care of all these different things. The I think the. You asked me at lunch about the biggest difference and I really Thought about that a lot. I think the biggest difference to me, you know, my first year, was learning about governance. I had no idea what this whole governance stuff was, because when it's family owned or individually owned, it's it's an advisory board that Basically, myself and the owners could say no to. The downside is your developers GM, right? So if they ever take over, you're the sacrificial lamb, right. You're like well, you're the developer guy, you know you're gone. So you know, and I have been involved in CMA for a long time and you know they, they're all like oh, you got to go to a member owned club, got to go to a member owned club, they'll take care of you. Know something you have to have on your resume. So when I was up in North Carolina, I, you know, I I saw Venice Yacht Club and it was time to move to Florida and I wanted to move down because it was member run, it was, it was governance, it was, you know, committees. And the difference is I had one advisory board and one's task force. Now I have 12 committees and a board and you know 760 members that are all owners as well. So the other, the other difference is when it was developer owned, it was all about lifestyle, sell, lifestyle. Sell a real estate. Let's sell 60 homes a year, let's let's turn them and burn them. And you know we're gonna spend all the money we can up front to have first-class Facilities. You run the programming guys. Make sure programming keeps them there. I've opened several clubs that way with developers and it was a great formula when you don't have a recession, right, it works very good. And so I think you know. And then on this on the on the member owned side, which has almost been five years now, I had to go through several years of learning. You know the whole board run club, from governance to rules and regs, to the bylaws to. You know how do you, how do you make sure you time management between committee meetings, mentoring the team, and you know making sure the members are happy and food and beverage, and and you know our big thing is Marina and food and beverage. That's what we have. So we have to, you know, do the best there. So I I would say those are my big takeaways and I'm still learning and that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn and declutter and rethink of you know something new to you know to be a better person and be a better mentor. And it's been a great, it's been a great ride, really has. And, like I said, I'll keep learning and you know, each year I have a new Commodore that's different and there'll be different set of challenges.

Speaker 1: 6:04

And.

Speaker 2: 6:04

I have to understand what those are early. So I know the hot buttons and I know how to stay in front of it and it's been fun. There's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 6:14

If you can, going back to when you were first, you know jumping into this. You know week one, week, two, month. You know one, two, three. What were some of the bigger challenges or things you may have not expected that popped up, that you didn't anticipate for in terms of, like you know, whatever it is, committee stuff or issue. You know, because you jumped into so much. Do you remember anything?

Speaker 2: 6:43

Absolutely. I remember quite a few things. Actually, there was a GM here two GMs ago that died in a motorcycle accident. So the team really loved him and he went through every position to get to where he was a GM and he passed away the next. I felt for the next guy to take over because it was just extremely difficult. Well, I was the next guy to take over where, you know, he didn't do so well with you know, being empathetic with the team. So my 30, 60, 90 day plan was to it was in different increments, like that Come in, not make a lot of change, because I had no idea. You know what was the status and what was. You know how was the club and they were used to being very hands on and I don't think they ever had a certified club manager at their club. So it took a lot of communication and a lot of changing how I run things. I had to look in the mirror and say, okay, this is a for profit, this is break even, and the philosophy change has been, you know, food and beverages of melody that the members can serve year over year. It's period, that's it. It's dues is your dues is the most important. Well, that wasn't how the you know for profit was for. Profit was like let's do 60 weddings, let's you know, let's really you know, try to make as much as we can on real estate and lose so much in the club or make money in the club. So I think the big thing was make sure that I didn't make any big changes for the first 90 days. Come in, listen, learn, understand the team. Remember making a phone call to the club manager, who's still here, and he was the interim GM and I said look, you know I want to call you. Before I got there, I know you had your hat in the ring, they overlooked you, but I need you to be there because you've been there a long time. I need your help and it's been a great partnership. And he still remembers that call that I made before, before I even showed up, and that went a long way to say you know what? I don't know it all. I need you. I hope you stay. I understand if you don't, but here's who I am. You know, here's Bruce. This is what I want to. You know I want to make it better. And once I got through those 90 days, it's you know it really started to take off, that the club needs the board and the club needs to have a strategic plan, needs to, you know, understand the club business. As far as dues and capital dues and what they mean and what they do, and and it's been a good journey because we did, as you know, we did a major renovation Last year. We did a $3.7 million renovation the kitchen and the back of the house.

Speaker 1: 9:55

Looks so good.

Speaker 2: 9:57

Yeah, yes, it's so needed and it just it's. It's basically the heart of the club has been redone. You and I anybody else will never go through another kitchen renovation at this club because we did it and we, we did it right. So I just remember learning a lot about rules and regs, governance. I had to dive into the bylaws. I had to, you know, really communicate with some of the other GMs. I went and met a GM at the Oaks. I went up to Tampa Yacht Country Club. I really wanted to, you know, sit down with those guys and have lunch and say, look, I don't, I don't know this stuff. You got to help me and they've been great all the way through.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Oh shit, when was I going to go with that? Oh, that was so good. You're a pro at this man.

Speaker 2: 10:59

I don't know about that, no sometimes it's like pulling teeth.

Speaker 1: 11:02

It's just like you're giving me nothing. Man here, come on, help me out. I appreciate that. How long was the previous GM there for?

Speaker 2: 11:13

He was there a couple of years. I want to say and I just think that he had a different philosophy than me. He wanted to make certain numbers off the backs of the team and I'm more about let's build up the programming, let's build up the team, let's make sure they're paid well because I know Happy Team makes for happy members Just had a totally different philosophy. So in a way I came in a little bit as a hero because I met with the search committee. I said it's not going to be the same way. You guys have always had it. So that's what we want you to do. We want you to come in, spend money, make the club better. We talked about being a club of distinction and I believe this club can be that and it has a lot of benefits and it's a lot of hard work. But I believe the club we can take the club to a club of distinction and that has some financial responsibility. When I started at the club we had 580 members. We almost have 780 now of kids programming. We've raised initiation, we've raised dues, we've got capital money where we did projects. We're looking at project two. We've hired new people. I think there's a lot to be proud of that everybody's hard work all the way through. But different Commodores. I had to learn different things throughout the year and I mentioned that earlier. And I was just. I was used to. If somebody came in and wanted to be a member and I knew they were a good sailor, I can wheel and deal, and that's not the case here. It's cut and dry. I can't say, okay, our initiation is 8,000. I'm going to do 6,000 for you, but I want you to teach once a week to kids. You know what I mean. I had a lot of power, bargaining power. Now I run operations, I take care of the team, make sure that I give them the tools they need to do their job, and the board is the visionary, strategic thinking long-term. How do we gain assets? How do we?

Speaker 1: 13:53

and that's what I've had to learn over the five years- Going back a tiny bit when you say the GM was back-ending the staff or something, what I don't know if that's just me being dumb, but what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 14:11

Well, it means that he would make decisions on quality and make sure the budget was met. I would make sure we might go over a lot on the budget, but we have a low attrition rate of members leaving because the quality is there. That's what I mean. So almost on the back of the employee. So he would keep the employee paid out, he would keep quality down. He would buy inexpensive things to where I'm more of. We need to buy the right thing the first time, even if it's 10 grand. We just need to do it. So I think that's what I mean on that subject.

Speaker 1: 14:55

Gotcha, I didn't know if you meant like he was like skimming off the back or something like pay for play, like you want to work here. Great pro quo. How bad do you like boats?

Speaker 2: 15:10

Yeah, just has a different philosophy. In other words, I'd rather do things right, be over and it hurts my bonus a little bit, but I know it's the right things and take care of the employees than to cut something to make sure I reach my bonus. That makes sense. So bonus is the last thing I worry about. It needs to be the right thing for the club and, like I said, happy employees, happy members.

Speaker 1: 15:42

Well, and when you showed me that kitchen, I've been at so many clubs and a lot of them are very proud of their kitchens and take me through and yours that thing is massive and just, it has anything and everything and it's so well organized in the thought process and the placement of everything and the flow. And then you redid some of like the dining room to accommodate that as well, right To all. Do that whole flow. And I know sometimes just chatting with clubs isn't it hard to get because your members were behind it, which I think we talked about how that's not always the case, Like it's hard to get them behind such bigger investments that aren't visually for them that they can see.

Speaker 2: 16:36

So I think that whole process was very well From. We did a member survey. We did focus groups that were small, you know 10 or 12, we had an outside consultant do that. We had an outside consultant do the survey. We did town halls where we showed all the pictures. We had the architects and you know builders there. We felt like nobody could say we didn't try to give everybody a chance on this project early and often communicated our newsletters. We did, you know, e blast everything to make sure we communicated. I think on the survey was a section on the kitchen and roof. Every member knew that we needed to redo the roof and knew that the kitchen was just industry payer. So I think it had been deferred so long that it was a good topic to bring up and say okay, now how do you want to pay for it? Okay, so we can knock the club down. We can do it in project phases, kitchen and roof being number one. We can do it a dues increase. We can do it on assessment. We can do it as a bank loan. We can do it in a combination. So they said don't tear the club down. We love our club. Let's fix it in phases and let's do it over time through our dues initiation and that's what we're doing. We did a bank loan also because we had money in the bank and then. So we did a loan and we're paying on that. But we've increased our dues initiation every year substantially because we were so far behind. But I think the process was great. We made, we said we had goals, like we're not going to close, we're going to. You know, at first it was like, okay, bruce, we're going to get you a little, you know, grill out front. I'm like, no, we need a commercial, we need, you know, 42 feet or you know, bigger. Here I went to a company. I already had the information and they're like we don't need to spend this money. I'm like we don't have a choice because we will lose members if we don't take care of them. And and and we didn't, we didn't lose any extra and we have to remind the members that they said they want, you know, to pay for major projects and their dues and that's okay. It's an easy, easy topic to have or easy conversation to have. But I think the process went really well and we're going to do project two the same way.

Speaker 1: 19:26

And that was like the the roof deck, or like the the top part. Yeah, that's going to be really, really cool, especially after seeing your, your layout out back. That's going to add so much more space and opportunities and revenue from events and different things. So do you happen to know random question the loan type and how you work that out with the bank? You said it was like 3.0, some, some million. How much of that did you finance and how long did you finance that for?

Speaker 2: 19:56

Great question. So we, we spent a million dollars a row of money. You said that the kitchen was shiny and had everything that's needed in there. Well, a million dollars went to equipment so very expensive and we went with we. We interviewed multiple banks. We went with Bank of America, we did a loan for 2.7. And we got a really good interest rate and we locked in for 10 years on that. So pretty, pretty smart of us and, of course, if we need to do it and we can hopefully get that same interest rate, but we locked in, we, the the. The nice thing is we had some buying power with transferring all our banks to them. We were not banking with them. You know, all our, all our dues and all our operating in capital went to Bank of America and they did a great job to get us the loan and couldn't, couldn't sign with the local guy because we had to go with with them and the interest interest rate was a big deciding factor. As you know, there's a lot of smart members and clubs that can help you with all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 21:10

Of course.

Speaker 2: 21:12

You surround yourself with a lot of smarter people than yourself and we we did very well. She comes, my person at Bank of America comes and visits, ask about operations. She asked about how I am. She cares about you know the GM and because she has Sarasota Yacla, venice Yacla, you know three or four other clubs, so she understands how it works, you know. So we have a mod, an operation mod, that we have to keep, and so she comes and checks on us and super nice lady and we chat and more of a you know temperature check and house membership and house things, and so it's you're in partnership with the banks 1000%.

Speaker 1: 22:01

And yeah, it was just a nice plug for our show Board Chats here on Private Club Radio. But we just did a Board Chat episode and we were just talking about that, which is why it was. It was front of my mind and they were just saying how so many clubs get into trouble because you know whether they don't take the surveys or don't take the time to do whatever and they just kind of, you know, take these crazy finance deals over, you know, 20, 30 years and you're just kind of passing the buck onto the next kind of not generation, but like the next group of people. So I was just interested, since everything was going so well, I wanted to see how you, what the process was like, financing that a bit. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 22:44

You're welcome, good question.

Speaker 1: 22:47

Well, sir, it has been absolutely fantastic. I appreciate you being on and I will probably see you sooner than later.

Speaker 2: 22:57

I appreciate the time. Thanks for having me and whatever you need.

Speaker 1: 23:01

Thanks. Hope you all enjoyed that episode. If you did, please share it with somebody else who you think might also enjoy it. Your support goes a really long way. Thanks again. Thanks all so much.