312: Attracting the Next Generation to Club Careers w/ Tom Wallace pt 1

Hey everyone, welcome to Private Club Radio, where we go over any and all things private club related, from country clubs, city clubs, golf clubs, yacht clubs, all of the clubs. I'm your host, Denny Corby. In this episode I'm chatting with our good friend, my good friend, good human, Tom Wallace, and I asked him you know, how, how do we see the club world evolving and moving in the next five, 10, 15 years? And he nailed it on the head. And this is something that unprovoked, it's something that I'm independently working on I was talking to other people about and it's all about getting younger people into the world of not just private clubs but just higher end hospitality and having a that servant heart, as Tom Tom will say. And I'm working on an episode now with Jeff Isbell and Matthew Sammel and working on it it's like we've tried, tried over three hours, a lot to edit, but it's all about that topic as well. But more in depth about, you know, getting people, getting them younger, getting the kids younger, no, but just getting people into the world younger and opening it. Opening it, I can't even talk right there, but just welcoming and showcasing all that the private club world has to offer. So, spoiler alert, that's a lot of his answer. But yeah, here we go. How do you see the club world evolving the next couple, couple of years then? Cause, like there is like that weird kind of gap thing. I don't even call it a gap thing. I don't know what's going on, but you know, as things are progressing we're now getting into 24, how do you see the club world moving in five to nine?

Yeah, oh no, I think. I think the challenge is finding, you know, really finding those serving-hearted people, maybe even in high school, and getting them involved in the. You know, the it's not. I know vocational is looked at as differently when I came up in high school. But now if if somebody has a culinary spirit or a service spirit or a grot wants to work outside on a golf court, we should be encouraging that and really our industry should be in the high schools to start and get them encouraged and then start pairing them off with good schools that fit their style. Oftentimes hospitality people, agronomy people they don't necessarily culinary people, they don't necessarily fit that, not, you know that go to class for eight hours. Maybe they need to work and go to school part-time and get their degree eventually. I think we need to work more through that and I think that the younger generation finds school, college, to be less and less important, which you know I'm in the midst of. You know telling my kids how important it is, but they're like you know. But I do think if you engage those folks and show them a no-transcript early, like in high school, that maybe you could tap into that servant heart and you know that. Then I know you know, for big hospitality operations, like four seasons where it's Carlton montage, they're working the high schools, they get these kids to college and they're either underwriting some of their college. That way, as soon as they're done, they come right to Ritz, they come right to the montage, they come right to four seasons and work for them. We need to be doing the same thing. I think we can even go deeper. I think we, because there's so many clubs within high school communities, you can get in there, get, get them to work during high school, but also get that, get their career started early, which I think is probably the right way. I think a lot more H2B's and J ones I think you'll see there's going to be the restaurant, hotel and club worlds are very focused on foreign laborers and having the ability to get them over here. I don't know why, but you know it's more financial there's there's a lot of financial incentive, I think, for foreign laborers to come here and work in clubs and they're Very typically hard working, very well trained and still look at taking care of someone and having that certain heart as a great career path. But I don't think we can ignore our kids here. I think we just got to get them earlier and really get them introduced to the right people in the industry. There's some managers and chefs and superintendents and golf pros that if you sent them into high school, someone's going to go. I want to work for that person, I want to work for that lady, I want to work for that guy, but you've got to get in there and I think we're just you know, we're an industry that doesn't have as much HR staff as the big hotels, the big hospitality operation, so Typically, those are the people that go out and are hitting the job fairs and really pumping up the industry. We, I think we're going to need to do a better job of that and I think we're going to need to get a lot more foreign laborers to fill the gap. I think it's going to be the next four to eight years where we're going to struggle to get people to stay in the industry if we don't continue to do the things we are doing. I think the positive things we're doing are we're we're adjusting our work life balance schedules. We're not just talking about work life balance. We're actually doing five day work weeks. I'm a big proponent. I've been telling people for years that it's these young people, or even people more mature people. It's not that they mind working that sixth day, but there's something that they want to do during their day that being a server coming in at 10 o'clock, being a server doing a lunch shift, getting off at two o'clock and then having to be back at four o'clock to do the dinner shift in order to make enough money. Five, six days a week. That's a rough way to make a best make a living and you're missing. You know you're missing. You've got three or four kind of dead hours where you're not getting paid in the middle of the day. It's tough for clubs to pay for that time. So I think you're going to see clubs get more inventive about the one thing. I keep calling it. There's. The one thing that clubs need to do is figure out what it is that employee really wants to. You know, do they need to get? Do they need to get their kids off in the morning to school? Is that important to them? If that is, then make sure they do that. If it's important that they go to the gym, you know if you have some young people, they want to work out, they want to feel good about themselves, let them leave it to you and come back at five so they can go to the gym, shower and be ready. You know, if it's important that they get their kids off the bus, if it's important that all those things figure out what their one thing would be and I think back to what were the things that frustrated me. You know, if I wanted to go work out during the day but I was working all day from, you know, 10 the close, just start, get a little crabby about work. But if, if work said you listen, you can take off for a couple hours and go work out and then come back and just, you'd be in a better space. And a lot of what has to happen is that I think we need to focus on. What is it that you need to be happy and still work five and a half days a week, maybe even six in the summer, we'll work your four and a half days or four days in the down season and we'll make sure we even out what you make in a year. Focus on those kind of things, I think, is where the business is going to go, I think. I think everybody has to pay Attractively now. I think the good old days of oh no, people don't care about what they make as much as how you make them feel it's all of that. It's all of that it is they do. They do care how you make them feel. They do care if they're learning. They do care if they're having fun at work. They do care if they have camaraderie, but they also want to get paid. At the end of the day, money is very important generationally and they're not. And kids don't stay in jobs as long as they used to. So if they're only going to be there three, four years, they're not as necessarily worried about you building them up as they are just making sure they're making enough money to do the things that make them happy when they're not at work. You know, and I a lot of big businesses, silicon Valley. I was reading an article. You know they're allowing people to do their grocery shopping through Instacart, have it delivered to the workplace, so that I Think it's it's really smart when, so when they do have time off, they're not running errands, they're doing, they're using their, their, their free time is free time. So when they're getting off, if, yeah, you're not doing your grocery shopping between two and five, you're not rushing around. You're actually off on Sunday and Monday and those days are yours to enjoy your kids, your, your spouse, your your Significant other. That, I think, is something we can do very easy, and I think clubs can actually do it easier than a big hotel, because we have smaller staffs and if you have a good HR person or two that can manage and just, but it's. It's gonna take a culture change, I think, danny. I think a lot of club telling a club manager All your employees are gonna have different times when they're starting and stopping, so that we can make them happy. They're gonna go I can't manage that and but the reality is you're gonna have to but you're gonna have happier employees, I think, and in turn you'll have happier members because they're gonna get employees that are Relaxed and ready to take care of them when they're there.

Yeah, and at least I know, I think from my you know, age, demographic and the way like we are, it's you know we want to see other people do well and understand our more understanding of things. So it's like, oh, mary, I didn't see. It's like I had the kid, oh well, it's like, oh, I don't care, of course you have to take care of the kids. I don't care if I have to wait a little bit longer. The reservation got put like, whatever it is, I think you know 90, right, I, 90% hopefully, of people will like, understand and yeah, yeah, no, I yeah, I think, asking someone when they start here's our schedule.

What would your challenges be with that schedule? And then, and then if they were honest and say I'd really love to never work this day or this day because then I can always go to my kids taekwondo, perfect, gotcha. We can make that happen, and now it takes a lot more work, but once you with technology today, you can integrate all those things into an app and boom, everybody's taken care of, everybody's getting what they want. It's polar opposite. I think of myself growing up as a young man, shining shoes and waiting tables and bussing and cooking and dish washing. If I said to my boss here's the deal, I'm gonna be here On Tuesdays and Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm gonna get here at you 30, but on Wednesdays and Fridays I'm gonna be in around 5, 5, 15, because you know they would be like you're fired. But the reality is you need people and gosh if they're in good moods. People every search we do. Everybody's so focused on member experience and you know, at the end of the day, member experience comes from happy, happy employees. Period. It's it. If that you know. I was at a club in this last week and they said well, what you know what? What do you? What did you think when you're walking around? I said you have. You've talked for two hours today about member experience. Not one of you mentioned employee experience, not once. And they said, yeah, we have a lot of turnover. I said of you, and I asked them. I said have you seen your employee lounge? And they said now, most of them didn't even know where it was. I said it's one of the worst I've seen. And I said and that's saying something. And I said I don't say that to be rude. I tell you that because people are spending fortunes now at their clubs developing. You look at Interlochen, you look at Metaterra, you look at Royal Oaks in Houston. Their employed lounges are exceptional, exceptional. It's like walking into a nice restaurant. Their locker rooms are spa lights. They're really nice. And if you want ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen, their areas have to feel taken care of. And they were like and in fact, as a follow-up, that president was so frustrated by that comment. He asked me to send some pictures of some of these other facilities and I did and he was like wow, we're light years behind. And I said yeah, I said you're doing a lot of awesome stuff I go, but what's important to a 65-year-old employee is not as totally different than a 20-year-old. So you need to bridge the gap. And so I could tell by his tone he was going to take that as one of his charges as president and improve those areas, which was kind of cool. And, quite honestly, besides simulators, which are huge in clubs right now, and obviously any wellness programming clubs are spending the most money on employee areas right now. That's the place where you want to put your money right now, because, at the end of the day, labor is going to be a challenge for the as far as we could see in the future. So you might as well make sure you're an employer of choice, and it starts with great facilities, great hiring, great training, all that good stuff.

And then it circles totally back to you're going to get so many better employees at that point. Because if there's a couple, if you're hiring, you have somebody who works in the bar. They probably have other friends who work in the bar area too, probably around the same age and all that stuff. So if they're going, oh hey, how do you get to do all this? And you're still happy, like, oh well, the club, they let me, they work around my schedule a little bit, they're a little bit more flexible. It's like, oh well, and then that you're going to attract such better, higher quality of yeah and that's.

You know, I've helped clubs and as even as a manager, I would go. You know you can't compete with someone that's at Ruth Chris making 250 bucks a night. But what you can say is Ruth Chris is not going to be flexible with your schedule. They're gonna. They know they're paying you a fortune. Here's what you get, here's what you got to do. You know we have benefits, we have health benefits, we have 401k. We have the one thing you can go do whatever you need. They'll be flexible. We're gonna give you uniforms. Look at these employee areas. I can tell you a it rids Carlton might have a great Employee area, but you're not gonna see that at a great capital grill. It's the employee areas, the dock, where everybody goes to do what I smoke their cigarette, eat their lunch, whatever it is. So there are a lot of advantages and that's the one thing. And you, that's great point. And the best employees come from New employees, come from your current employees, and you're like, just like a membership your best members, new members come from your best members. But I always, one of the things I always ask a board or a Key department heads and staff is what's your elevator speech for why you work here and it's amazing that nobody everybody kind of climbs up because they're like it's just a nice place to work. I'm like, wow, that was awesome, that's you know, that's not. I'm like you need to as an employee in order to ensure that you keep having great people to work around you. You need be able to say you know, articulate, they're flexible about our schedule. I'm 401k, name the things, it's you know 30 seconds. But if you're the salesman, when you are person out there, so please say these things. And a nice HR Program or a GM that has a great program and training will say hey, just remember, we're always looking for great people. And these are the things I'd like you to highlight that really separate us and make us an employer of choice in this area. I was, you know. I always think of these club rich areas Chicago, philadelphia, new York, new Jersey. I mean You're competing with not only all these other clubs but restaurants and hotels. So you have to be able to articulate what separates you and what makes you a great employer.

And I think when it, when it comes to the theme of, you know, being inclusive and diverse just in all aspects, that's just being and Showing that you know it's, it's the whole, it's the whole club level, it's the whole club is about that. It's not just for the membership, it's not just you know it's, hey, as a whole. We're all about this. It's not just like a front, or you know Right diversity.

Diversity's usually been pretty good at the at the employee level, and I and clubs have been hyper focused, as they should be. I'm making sure it's at the member level, but having synergy between both of those things and making sure that yeah, again, it just if you make it a welcoming place for all that includes your employees and your members You're gonna be successful and long term I the night. The nice thing, I think what's gonna force us to be More balanced about work life balance is the fact that kids just aren't gonna do it. So if you want to be able to be open and have enough bodies to open the doors of the club every day and put on the performance and take care of the members, you have to. You have to create something that they want to be a part of, and I think that's the same thing, I think, with work life balance. It's gonna be the same thing with diversity. Young members and young employees aren't gonna want to work at a place that isn't focused on making sure that that there's diversity at all levels. So I think, young, as hard as we are on young people right now, the things that they are forcing, you know they're very creative. They if, if they are passionate about something, they they will go all in. But you got a Trying to find that wick and like the passion is the trick.

Hope you all enjoyed that episode, their buddy Tom. If you enjoyed it, make sure you like, subscribe, share, pass it on. Anything you can do to help us move our needle forward. Get the word out to the industry, show people how amazing we are. It all means the world. Thanks for your support. As always, appreciate you. Until next time, catch you on the flippity flip.