314: Harnessing Mentorship and Dedication in the Hospitality Realm w/ Tom Wallace pt 3

You know, we have younger people looking to come into, looking into the industry also, just people who are genuinely interested in the industry, who might just be on the outside. Actually, let me I don't like how I phrased that Hold on 30, yeah, okay, go. So I'm trying to think of how I want to go into it. Um, what would you say are some essential hold on, let me get. I have, like all my questions now just based off the conversation. I'm trying to like range a little bit as we go. So what I'm trying to get across is you know what are some essential skills for someone looking to kind of get their first position, first management? Well, a first position in a club, but I think, more importantly, someone who's working in a club and trying to get their first management position. So you know, if someone's in a club because you've gone from shoe shine up I don't even know how many clubs still have shoe shines anymore, but you know how, what are some skills? How can people who are in the club world kind of start looking and aiming towards a management position? Like, what are some of those steps? How does that work? Or, yeah, I think obviously.

Well, you know, I think, faith in yourself. You've got to be self-assured, because the industry is. You're surrounded by brilliant members with high expectations. You're surrounded by as a younger person getting in the industry, you have more tenured, mature employees that will tell you immediately when you're doing something wrong. So you have to have that faith in yourself. You have to be a great communicator. It doesn't mean that you're. You don't have to. You can be an introvert. It's harder. You're going to use a lot more energy being an extrovert because at some point you have to be an extrovert if you're going to be in the club space. But you have to be a great communicator one way or the other. You know you have to be able to communicate what you're thinking, how you're seeing things. You have to be able to take in information, figure out what you needed to grab onto and what you could let go. You have to be able to survive in a feedback rich environment. You're going to get feedback. If feedback makes you want to hide your toast, you've got. If feedback makes you go, I'm going to remember you said that and I'm going to show you that. You know, I'm going to show you that if that jazzes you up. If it's rocket fuel for you, you're going to love it and you're going to do really well. But if feedback makes you want to hide, you can survive that. But I don't think you're ever going to thrive as a manager if you don't love that. You got to have passion. You don't have to have passion for necessarily food or golf or aquatics or yachting, but you have to have passion for hospitality, for taking care of people, for making you know say it differently for the next generation building a really exclusive experience for other people to enjoy is really what you do. But you do have to be passionate about whatever you're doing. Shining shoes, like it's funny, I still, whenever I go back to country, I go in the shine room and I'm just filled with. There are just there are three or four gentlemen in there that were all in their 70s and 80s that just took me under their wing, told me about how I should date, how what I do, what to do on a date, how to be a gentleman, how to shine shoes. You know who the members were that they needed to avoid out there so that I didn't get ripped in pieces, and they were just great people and they taught me a passion for people, but you've got to enjoy being around people and learning from people. My passion, I think, for the industry was just people. I was passionate about being around people. I had five sisters growing up, a big family, but I was the only boy. So then I went from that environment. Then I had wrestling, which was all my. You know all boys. Then I went into the locker room. It was all guys and my dad worked all the time, loved them to death. He was my absolute mentor and rock star in my life. But I didn't have that day in, day out interaction with boys and it really helped me that locker room experience. And then I got on. I had a female general manager at country and she took me under her wing and really showed me so many things. So it's just people passion, you know, and you have to be patient. So you have to have passion but you have to be patient. I remember every time a general I had five general managers at country and every time the manager left I would be like I think I'm ready. And they're like you're the assistant manager in the locker room I'm like no, I'm pretty sure I'm ready. I'm pretty, you know. And they're like no. And then you know I was the banquet manager, then I was the assistant manager and you know, by the time I was the AGM and was ready. They were like I know you're ready, like they're like we already know. But I always wanted more. And Sam Linsley always said you know one of the things about the restaurant business? He ran Michael Simon Restaurant Group and he works with us now. He said it's the band of misfit toys. He said clubs and restaurants and hotels. You can come in without an education, without knowing anything about food, shoe shining, golf courses, pro shops, and you could make a life, a great life for yourself, if you're passionate, you know and a good communicator and you have to want to succeed too. I mean because, at the end of the day, it does if you're gonna be putting in long hours and working hard. You really you have to wanna succeed and be able to see that success at the end of the tunnel. I didn't look to my managers. Like I said, I had five in my 14 years at country. The last two set my trajectory for my career. The first three taught me things, both what not to do and what to do, but I wasn't always looking at them saying I wanna be them, but I was just saying I wanna be more than I am right now. And I think that the club and hospitality industry allows you to start somewhere and then continue to build on yourselves and people. Again, members and staff are always giving you a hand up and making sure and I remember a lot of older employees really got a kick out of seeing me grow and watching me go from shoe shining to general manager. They're like there are some employees that saw it where they're the whole time. They're like it's amazing, what an amazing story. They're like we never thought you were gonna make it out of the shine room. You didn't. You were quiet, you didn't know how to dress. You had really weird hair. You know you had to be W and a shoe shining, but yeah exactly, but yeah, so you've gotta be, you've gotta have that faith in yourself that you've gotta have passion, you've gotta have patience, you've gotta have the want to succeed and you've gotta be a great communicator, I think, as far as skills, another brilliant part about our industry is the CMAA, and I don't wanna not mention that throughout my career, while I was building within the club, I was building myself outside of the club through this club manager's association of America. Even that, like Dick Copeland, came to speak and didn't remember me at all, but he came and you know I had. Cmaa allowed me to go to other clubs, go to other facilities, learn from the best and the brightest in the industry. They would bring them into Cleveland from at the time, I think, lived in Palm Springs and I would be remiss to say the people in my life at the clubs, my family, and then the third part of that triangle for me would be CMA. I learned every skill that you need. It's funny, we do a survey every time, we do searches. What are the key things, areas of knowledge that you want your new manager to have, and they're completely, perfectly aligned with what is taught from the CMA and all their BMIs In order to get your certification, your CCM certification, you're learning all the skills that boards are asking for right now, and it's evolved. The CMA has continued to just offer incredible education Jeff Morgan, jason Koningsfeld everything they teach you need to know. I mean, there's a lot of skills and attributes, but you need to be good at management, accounting, food and beverage, hr, marketing. You need to understand building and maintenance. I mean I was at a club the other day that is 130,000 square foot clubhouse. I was like geez, and I met the maintenance person and I go, how big of a team do you have? And he had five people and I was like, yeah, I would imagine it takes five people to keep. He goes. Well, this is 150,000 square feet, but we also have another 80,000 in eight different buildings around the property that we keep up with. Governance is huge. Cma does a brilliant job with governance. You need to understand how to work with a board, how to work with brilliant board members and brilliant committee members that are well-meaning but also are so smart Sometimes it's hard to get them out of the weeds. And the other challenge with governance and I don't wanna go down this rabbit hole, but they love their club, they love their club. So because of that, they don't wanna see anything Like. They're like helicopter parents. They might love their manager but they don't want their manager to make a misstep, so they're always trying to help and it's like I got it. You've got to. You know, one thing we preach is you've got to let your professionals, the paid staff, do their jobs. But governance is one of those areas that I would not know what governance was. Nor would I be able to manage committees and boards without the CMA and the education. They gave me A lot of that through Dick Copland and Kurt later in my life. Obviously, all the sports educations that you need spa, fitness, golf, tennis, paddle pickle, all those things they teach you about all that stuff Wellness I remember putting in a fitness room at country and the members were just super upset Like what, that's a waste of time. This isn't you know, this isn't. We had a place called Ballets which was kind of it was like Scandinavian LA Fitness and then Ballets and members like if you wanna work out, you can go down the street, and now fitness is one of the biggest parts of our industry now. So all that stuff information technology, data I think of you know, I really think of club benchmarking and just the education that they've given the industry Analytics I always thought it was cool. I did some X-Turning work at the Ritz and they knew everything. They had data numbers, I was like, wow, that's, we don't have any of this in the clubs. And now again, this is the early 90s I'm like I, they know how many members, how many people came in, how many people ate today what they liked, what they didn't like. I'm like, oh, we get feedback but we don't do anything with it. You know, and that was one of the things I always say is if in the club business I tried to preach, if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. Cause, coming up in the club industry, I'd say, do we have a training manual? No, but you know, billy and Susie, they've been training the waiters for years. I said, but we don't have a training manual, like an actual paper manual. They're like, no, we don't need one. I'm like what happens if Billy gets hit by a bus? You know, you know. So one of the things process, procedures uh, if it's not written down, it doesn't exist. That's something I always preach to young managers. Remember that building process and procedure and writing things down and building structure is, you know, a lot of our work in the club business is in a gray space. You find you have to be flexible for your members, you have to be flexible for your staff, but you have to have structure. If you live in the gray space and there's no structure around it, then you're just living in a gray space and eventually that will fail. But if you have structure, that things that you just won't allow to happen or you can let them paint a little bit outside the lines, but that's it. So that's really important. But everything I learned from CMA in order to get to my CCM designation, those are all things that, as a young manager, you have to have that knowledge and so there's kind of internal things you need to have, there's education you need to have and then, the most important thing, if you're an assistant manager, you need to get the experiences that will allow you to become a general manager. The number one thing that happens when we get people in these rooms is the first question is okay, you've been in AGM for five years at a great club. How many budgets have you run? And then they say well, I don't run the budget, the GM runs the budget, but I do. You know two pieces of it. I do the restaurant budget and this budget or this and that, and right away you come down a run. And how many board meetings do you sit in on? Oh, I don't sit in on any board meetings, but I sit in on the House Committee meeting or the grounds committee meeting. Those are all valuable experiences, but you have to do the. You have to have the number one experiences. You have to have run a capital project. You have to have hired and fired people. You have to have dealt with a budget from start to finish and then dealing with things when there's blips in the financially in the air and how you fixed it. You have to have things in your heart that just make you who you are. You have to have education and then you have to have a manager that's gonna allow you those experiences. That's the number one thing I tell folks is, if you don't have a general manager that is allowing you those experiences, then you need to go ask someone to mentor you outside of that club. I don't tell you. I don't tell someone to leave a manager that's not mentoring them. I don't think that's my place. I would say don't go work for a manager though If you're undecided or a free agent. Don't go work for a manager that's not going to mentor you and doesn't have a reputation for mentoring you. Because if you go somewhere where you're going to be, you know, one of the great things the CMA is doing and this is something I was passionate about for years Mark Beto and I were on a committee years ago is we want interns in the industry to go to work, for the CMA is now certifying clubs as a place where college interns can come and work, and I think part of the requirements and I'm not totally up to speed on it is we only want them to go to clubs that are going to teach them a lot of different things, not just say, okay, you're going to be a waiter for four months, thanks. That's not preparing them to be a great manager and it's not preparing them to love the club industry. But if they are interning with you, you have a responsibility to the industry to make it an awesome experience, to make sure they're overwhelmed with knowledge and hopefully, that they've had some fun so they want to come back the next year when they've graduated and maybe get into the industry. But for years I think you know we did a bad job of that and but it's at every level. It's the golf, the golf professional has to make sure that their interns are having a great experience in building and learning, not just folding shirts, not just, you know, picking up buckets of balls, it's everywhere. Tyler Bloom, who's a good friend of KK&W, used to work with me at Oakmont. He's in the high schools with what he and he's teaching people about how cool of future and agronomy you know working as a superintendent or working towards being a superintendent and he says it's amazing how many people just don't know what agronomy is. He goes. But once, if you go to a place where people want to be outside certain communities, you're probably not going to go into the heart of a city and say do you ever dream about working outside? And they're like, no, no, I don't. That sounds awful. Yeah, I have bad sinuses. But if you go to the right schools, the right programs and you sell it the right way, tyler's had a lot of success with getting young high school people to get jobs and then they turn in. Then in turn, they're getting help with their hopefully college schooling from the club and then they turn into. You're building your own workforce. Basically, he's been on the forefront of that, which I think is incredible, and he's got some cool programs. But yeah, I'm going all over the place, but those are the things I think. You have to have the experience, you have to have some intestinal fortitude and want to succeed, the ability to have feedback and then lean into the CMA. There's so much good education at the CMA. I went to school for hospitality but I would say I got much more of an education doing it and much more of an education participating with my peers and networking and going to educations through CMA. It's funny I've just noticed in the picture that I'm wearing my teetop. I'm on the board for teetop for the troops. It's the charity that KK&W works most closely with and we've been involved with since the very beginning. Dick was involved at the very beginning. It's really a charity for wounded veterans to help them, but the big part of what they do is golf. They use golf outings and golf-centric things to bring in money to help these folks and those kind of things are happening at clubs. There's so many cool things happening at clubs. I think of Matt Lambert down at Marisol and he does an event every year and it's unbelievable. You have a bunch of wounded veterans and they're there and they're talking and they're sharing their stories and they're out there with prosthetics, golfing with members and members are donating money and the employees are touched. It's just one of those things that, and they do that all over the country, but it's just one example of things. I'm sure the restaurant business and hotel business does these types of things, but I think the club business allows you to be a lot closer to those types of things and I think that's important to young people coming out of school Again. They want to be a part of something bigger. They want to be a part of something exclusive, and exclusive doesn't always mean it's for them. It could mean that your organization is building homes for Habitat for Humanity. I know one of the things that Carmen does. They've donated money and their staff has built homes for Habitat for Humanity. The staff did it. It wasn't a member thing, it was a staff thing, and Shirlene Industrius, who's the HR person there, and Carmen pushed that along, and I know Gray Oaks did that. They have a bike drive where a lot of the employees don't have to walk to work. So the employees have a bike drive to give every employee at least a bicycle and a helmet so that they at least have a bike to ride to work and get back and forth. I mean there's a lot of cool things like that that go on underneath the members, because by nature you should have a pretty caring group in hospitality, but they also. I think when you're around philanthropic people you start thinking about how to be philanthropic yourself and clubs that have employees that understand that there's people that are less fortunate than them and they wanna help. I mean, you gotta imagine that culture's pretty good there and that team's pretty fun to be around and fun to work with.

Well, t-dubs, t-dubs. Mr Wallace, thanks for being here.

You can call me T-dubs. That's actually funny. That's a lot of my old employees teammates called me T-dubs. That's funny Really. And Kepler calls me T-W out of the blue. So, that's fine. Some version of that is frequent. Is there anything else you wanted to cover?

No, this was perfect. This is perfect.