327: A Story of Service, Strategy, & Success w/ Randy St. John CCM, CCE

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, welcome back to Private Club Radio, the Private Club industry source for news, media trends, updates, whether it's management, leadership, food and beverage governance, you name it. We got it your host, denny Corby. Thank you all for being here. If you have not done so already, head on over to privateclubradiocom right there at the top. Sign up for our newsletter, because we release often more than one episode a week and we give you the update in the newsletter of which episode, some other content and a lot of fun stuff. So head on over to privateclubradiocom. If you're on the socials, we're pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram. Head on over, follow us there. We'd love to connect. In this episode we are chatting with Randy St John. He's a friend of ours, gmcoo of the Tuxedo Club in New York, and some of the topics, some of the things that we go over, some of my takeaways from this episode is really just about being a good human being, being a good person we talk a lot about take care of your employees and the employees are going to take care of the members and just creates this really nice rhythm we talk about. One of my favorite things to talk ask is how do you balance history and innovation. How do you balance those two things in the club world? He has a very rich history. So private club radio listeners, let's welcome to the show from the Tuxedo Club in Tuxedo Park, new York. Let's welcome Randy St John.

Speaker 2: 1:40

Now you know what my team goes through with all my BS stories.

Speaker 1: 1:44

No, these are great stories. So I was going to ask, like what was the beginning? So I didn't realize Air Mark has been around for that long.

Speaker 2: 1:54

Actually my wife worked for Air Mark. I had it wrong. I actually worked for canteen right out of college and I had a you know it was a chef manager job. It was, you know, okay, whatever, right, it was decent money and all that for at our school. It was a little boring, you know, and I didn't love it and my boss was, you know, was not a good guy. And so I was literally this close to starting to sell cars at a Nissan dealership and my mother-in-law, of all people, sees an ad in the paper back when people used to find jobs and newspapers right, that this club outside of Boston was looking for a part-time Maider D and she said, well, that wouldn't that be better? And I said, well, go check it out. So I go, I apply for this job, and manager has me and interviews me and you know she's going through the whole thing and she said, listen, she goes, I'll hire you for this job. She said, but one of my assistants just gave notice he's leaving as of Labor Day and I think you'd be great for one of my young assistant managers running our you know, grill room, patio by the pool, you know, for those diners big Jewish club outside of Boston. I said sure. So instead of selling cars I went and you know, went to a place where we used to do some some weekends. We literally a normal weekend was six weddings, a bad weekend was only three weddings, okay, and a kick and butt weekend was eight weddings. We had two ballrooms, one seat, one seated well, like 775 or something, with a dance floor, the other one was like 250, with a dance floor. We would do two weddings on Saturday, 12 to five, and then two more, seven to 12. On Sunday we would be more flexible. You'd sell like a two or three o'clock one on Sunday, because sometimes you'd only get one. There were probably a half dozen times in three seasons there where we did eight weddings in a weekend and I was the members guy. I like I took care of the 19th hole in the grill room and the members and but when you're doing eight weddings you know all hands on deck. So that was when I was young and slim and wore a smaller tuxedo. The fact that you wore a tuxedo to work definitely dates you a tiny bit, but Well, you know it was, it was, they were early, they were late 80s weddings, so yeah, it was lots of taffeta and bows and you know, thankfully, no ruffle chairs, so I forgot that you grew up in the New England area. Are you picking up the action? Is that what it is?

Speaker 1: 4:23

No, you said New England, outside of Boston. I went to school there for a few years and then crappy school, bay State College. But I was going to school around here, you know, 10 minutes from my house. But I had some friends in New England and they had an entertainment management program that actually had some really cool teachers like the instructors or like former tour managers and all that stuff. So I was like I got nothing to lose. And the school like doesn't you know, there's no real campus because it's back bay of Boston. So like the, our classrooms were in like the brownstones. It was so random Like our dorm.

Speaker 2: 5:02

Yeah, I think I gave a guest lecture one of their classes one time, and how you say that a friend of ours from college was teaching in their hospitality program and she said I'll come talk about clubs one day. I forgot about that. I think that was. I think that was Bay State. She was at that point.

Speaker 1: 5:16

Yep, Yep, that's so funny. So, so yeah, so the. So yeah. I have a special place in my heart for for New England. Yeah, it's a cleaner, nicer, more walkable New York city. That's kind of how I see Boston.

Speaker 2: 5:29

Yeah, yeah, new York. It's funny, you know you had to be a certain age and you've seen the cities go up and down and change. You have a gross time square in the eighties and then I remember really nice time square. You know, one of the things that Giuliani did that wasn't crazy probably was cleaning up New York and then and now it's kind of New York is kind of dirty again, to be honest with you. But a lot of cities have gotten dirty or again, which is kind of sad. You know it's not the only one.

Speaker 1: 5:57

So Speaking of dirty, how clean are your club vents? Sorry, no, that was a, that was an inside joke to some of the listeners. I have this thing of like. I cannot stand dirty vents. Like when you walk into like a place and you look up and just the vents are it just like irks my soul. So and I come from like a family business background, that's like janitorial supplies, like facility maintenance, so it's like one of the I think from like years of also just like walking into buildings when I would like work for them and either have to like clean it or if I was doing like sales and like looking up to count how many vents. But I just know it takes like a little like a vacuum hatch to go up and clean it and there's. I did a whole episode on it quick on private club radio because I did a show at a club. Then it wasn't even for a club show, it was a corporate gig, so it was outside group. You know guy was a member brought me in in like the main bathroom where, like all guests, everybody comes like it was just disgusting. I was just like to me it's like little things like. When you think of like a private club I think of like a nice, well maintained place.

Speaker 2: 7:03

So I don't, I don't think about, I don't look at air vents minus smell. I can't stand dirty mop smell. My wife and I was blocked out of restaurants because all you can smell is dirty mop. Drives me nuts.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Yep, nose blindness, I did. I did one on that too, because I've walked into I can't tell you how many club shows I've done and sometimes you walk in, you're like, and like you, almost like, look like no one else, like I'm the only one who smells this, like nobody oh nothing, I just think it's disgusting, so yeah yeah, so, speaking of nose blindness, when you're at Maribel, how do you know?

Speaker 2: 7:45

so I'll be honest, I've only got an NDA with one job I ever had. So what do you want to know about Maribel?

Speaker 1: 7:50

No, I don't know, because you know I was, I was, I was doing a little bit of research and you, you got them to capacity, you got them to fill their membership and you're only there for two years.

Speaker 2: 8:02

Well, you know it's funny. I got there, it was, I think they had been, I think I would say year four after they had turned over from the developers, you know, and the problem with Maribel was it's a great property but the timing of you know, the late 2008-9-10 range, real estate was slowing down. Discovery, happily, was was happy to get out. I can't remember the building company who did the build out. They were happy to get out. The members were happy to take over because they got it for less than they would have paid if they'd been in capacity. The downside to that is now the members have to float the subsidy. That you know. Discovery didn't care if they lost money because they were selling these. You know gorgeous, you know monstrous, expensive homes and now all of a sudden we're 50 members light and they're trying to get to, you know, break even not necessarily profitability, but certainly break even. And so we did that in the first two years. But a lot of the hard work was done before I got there, in fairness, and then you know we just did. We really ramped up some of our national campaigns, you know being for profit. We could advertise in a different way, you know, through some of the you know different golf journals that are specific or local, particularly to let's call what it is. You know Calgary and Western Canada money and you know the Midwest, you know Chicago, minneapolis market and it was. It wasn't a hard sell. I brought in a great membership director. My membership director came with me about six months after I did from LA and she did an amazing job. And when she transitioned with her operations background to my my clubhouse manager, the woman we hired then to replace her as membership, she, she finished the job and really closed it out in her first year there. So but I had great team. You know I've always said, you know I am, I'm very lucky. I usually work with really great people.

Speaker 1: 9:57

So from from your whole, you know, journey so far, how? How has your leadership changed? Or maybe your leadership style, if if any like? Have you had like the same approach the entire time? Uh could so.

Speaker 2: 10:14

I have to filter my F bomb. Play more now. So that's start. Start with that. It isn't 1993 anymore. I can't just f bomb all over you.

Speaker 1: 10:24

I mean you can or just make my editing job so difficult. No, because you know I I'm, I always am. I don't want to say fascinated is the right word, but when you know people will travel long and far for like other staff members, like in in the club world, so that was just like a little like you know. It's like you know you must have a decent style of leadership. So I'm just trying to see like that, just kind of triggered, so you know, how do you lead, what's what your style?

Speaker 2: 10:55

you know, you know honestly it was so I was very lucky I. I started as the. They hired me as the club manager at Aguam in 1991. It was actually my first day work, was my 26th birthday. So I'll even tell you how old I am. It was my 26th birthday was my first day works the club manager and it was typical old New England club, you know, kind of a strange club in some ways but was suited me. I knew a lot of the members because they were a lot of the members were also members at the city club I worked at in Providence during college and then they also some of my members and some of my board members. I caddies for their fathers and uncles and parents at High Ennisport when I was a kid. So I knew the whole Yankee, I knew the whole vibe. So I'm young. But they hired me and they took a chance on me and you know and it was all good and then three years into it our golf pro after 30 something years, retired, and that's when they made me the general manager at 29 or 30 years old, whatever it worked out to be. And you know, one of the things I figured out after the first three, four years there was, and you know, part of it was building relationships with a tennis pro and a golf pro and a superintendent who had all been there 25 to 30 years. When I got there. They were all great. We had a great relationship, particularly with golf pro, and I and you always play a lot of golf in the morning because we weren't busy and I had time then before my son was born and you know dogs. But but you know, one of the things I figured out at that point in my career was that if I took good care of my employees and my coworkers, they would take good care of the members and in turn, to close the circle, the members wouldn't bother me with a whole bunch of nonsense, you know. So you know Richard Branson gets all the credit for it. He's absolutely right. You know you take care of your employees and you know however he phrases it. But a lot of us figured that out, I think, in the mid-90s, a lot of the GMs that have been around a while of my era. And that, I think, was the first big transition, because, instead of making people work for you, you realize that you wanted them working with you. And you know we talk about leading from the front and setting the example and all those other great terms. But you know, all of our styles are a little different. But I like to think that my most important employees, or the ones that I'm closest to I mean I still talk to employees of mine every couple of months from 20 or 30 years ago is that they knew that I would run through a wall form and protect them when they were given their best and, as a result, I get their best. And it doesn't work with every case. I've had some employees in the department heads over the years that we didn't all mesh and sometimes I made a change and sometimes they made a change. But you know, I think it's about trying to understand people and know people at a deeper level, and a lot of us emotionally intelligent GMs or leaders or managers figured it out at a young age and some people still haven't figured it out, and that's okay. It's what makes the world go around. But that was the differentiator for me is figuring out that if I took care of these people, the members were happy and then the members took care of me because they were happy Worked out pretty good. For the most part, I've been pretty lucky.

Speaker 1: 14:05

And you've been at Tuxedo Club now since 2000,. Was it 17?

Speaker 2: 14:09

2018. I came in July 2018. So this will actually this was just my sixth summer, sixth season. We're going into our seventh season. You know, covid was an adventure, but this club we were able, we were one of the clubs that actually thrived because, being in a not necessarily a gated community that's tied to the park, but in a gated community that the village of Tuxedo Park is, there was a great outflow of Manhattan to people coming up here to what had been their weekend in summer houses being up here full time. So I mean, we thrived in terms of operationally, with what we could do based on the restrictions of the moment and you know it also allowed us to. From my end, as a manager, I got rid of some crazy institutionalized behaviors of being open too much in certain areas. And because this is a big club, you know, I've got a golf house, golf clubhouse that's five and a half miles from the main clubhouse. So we're in the summer, I've got a golf clubhouse running like every other normal club that's a golf club, right. And then I've got this other campus where I've got the boat house, a tennis house and a main clubhouse. I forgot about that. Plus, I got a few hotel rooms, not many, but a few hotel rooms. We used to have our own camp. We've now partnered with the local independent school and they have their own camp and we act as their vendor for the sporting and the lake events and the pool, which is great. So it's no longer under my umbrella, my members just have access to it, which is awesome. I kind of that was one of my more, I was one of my more genius moves getting the school to take over the camp for me.

Speaker 1: 15:38

They're probably still mad at me. Ooh, let's, let's, let's go to that. So explain what, what that is and how that came about. So you guys had your own camp.

Speaker 2: 15:50

So we had our own four day, you know, youth programs, golf, and we have five, really six racquet sports. If you count pickleball right now, we're probably going to have seven soon with Padel, you know. So we have a lot of racquets in the summer and youth programs we obviously have the golf, we have the pool and the swimming and group lessons and private lessons and then, you know, we do every Thursday night in the summer we do fun kids nights, you know, with petting, zoos or crazy science guys or crafts or whatever it might be. And the school wanted to do more with camp and I said, well, why don't you guys do the camp? You have that expertise and we'll be your vendor. I've got the expertise of great sports professionals and so we help a little bit with the transportation, you know, and so on. But I got out from under what was at best break even and actually cost a club a little money every year to do this four day a week camp for eight or nine weeks. And now my members get a better camp. That's five days a week and all day instead of half day, and I have one or a much smaller. Not that it was a big headache, truthfully, but I have one last thing that the club's liability or responsibility. So I, I, I saw the opportunity. I tell, I tell my young managers all the time you can't miss opportunities. And I was having a conversation with one of my members who works at the school and I took it. I took the opportunity. I was not, I was not going to miss that opportunity.

Speaker 1: 17:14

In worst case, if it didn't work, what you may have maybe upset one or two people or the people, what you would have ruffled a few feathers and they would have forgot about a few weeks later and it would have been fine, like it's not a big deal.

Speaker 2: 17:25

I do that walk and pass the driving range, come on.

Speaker 1: 17:32

So, if I remember correctly, tuxedo club is, is, has um. Is it more of a historic club, right?

Speaker 2: 17:41

It's actually one of the oldest clubs in the country, 1886. Um it, you know it's. It's got a lot of history. Um, not all of it very well known. They, they liked being under the radar for years. The club actually was founded by a gentleman named Pierre Laurelard and he was a tobacco baron you know the gilded age right Tobacco baron and he actually got tired of the whole new port scene and going to new port from Manhattan or wherever he was coming in it. Just, he didn't want to do it anymore. He sold his house and it's one of the ones I have to look, I should remember after all these years. It's one of the ones on Bellevue have that you can take a tour of, or Belvedere, whatever. It is Bellevue in new port, like the breakers or Marvel Well, I can't remember which. One sold it to the Vanderbilt or somebody and he said I'm going to create this community, you know, an hour north of Manhattan, well, an hour today, who knows what then. But then they, um, they came up by train and they saw this land and they made it into a private. It was, as we're, as we understand it, the first private gated community in the country and it was going to be a hunting and lodge type escape. For you know, manhattanites, and you know, but if you think of the time in 1886, 1890s, golf has started and really started to take off, and so they first had a six hole golf course up where the actually where the school is now a different part of the park golf's taking off. So then they have, they created a nine hole course and that turned into 18 holes, and that course was in play until 1952, 1953. That was a good one, yeah, the state took the land by eminent domain because that's where they put the throughway to go from Manhattan up to Albany. The New York state throughway goes right through um, the original tuxedo golf course, and so Robert Trent Jones was brought in in the fifties and we opened our current golf course in 1953, which is on the um. It was the JP Morgan Alexander Hamilton. At some point the family's had a marriage slash, merger, and it was Hamilton farms area where the golf course is today. So so a lot of history. And you know one of the, you know our, actually our. We were the first interclub golf match in the country ourselves, shinnecox, st Andrews, and the country club in Brookline. It was called the 1890s, so we it carried on again and it actually just ended recently. It was called the 1894 matches. The original trophy was donated by the club. That is the us senior open trophy for the usga is the original 1894 trophy. Get out, yeah, and the the. The story and I don't know if I believe this one, this is one of the rumors is that tuxedo would have been one of the original usga clubs, but the representative from tuxedo was too busy and didn't feel like going to the meeting which, if you know, our club and we have a great membership, but it's a little bit under the radar, you know, and they kind of like that the quirkiness of it. You hear that story and like, well, that's just come on, that's just the urban myth, right, urban legend, but there's probably some truth in it. So I think we I never remember we were like 10, 11 or 12. We weren't. We were definitely one of the first 12 usga clubs. So there's a lot of history and as much history as there is with the golf. We have even more of a racket history, because we're the only club in the country that has the six racket sports that we have and, as I said, soon to be seven with Padel, because we have court tennis or real tennis, show the palm. We have rackets, we have squash, we have lawn tennis, which is on Hartree courts, and we have the pickleball and then we have paddle platform tennis and then we'll be adding the patelle. How many?

Speaker 1: 21:17

ankles are broken a week at your club.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Not many, but the corp tennis, you know it's funny for so I'm looking at, you know, I'm looking at my wife and I want to come back East and I'm looking at jobs and things. And one of the things that attracted me here was the history, because you know, 30 something years in this career to come to a club that had a couple of sports and court tennis and rackets that I didn't even know about. And we just say, two years ago now we had the men's US open for court tennis. This year we're having the women. Actually, it's fascinating, you know, it's like a whole new sport and it's basically almost all other racket sports are derived from this court tennis or rackets. They all evolved from that. So you can go on the website afterwards and check it out, but it is there's, we are. I think there's 12 courts in the United States now, 53 or 54 worldwide for court tennis and we're the only one that has the rackets, the court tennis plus all the other stuff. So it's we're about to do this next. Well, two weeks from now, we do. It's our big tournament. We do two big rackets tournaments a year. One of them is called Gold Rackets. It's always in February. This year will be the 120th playing of Gold Rackets. The court opened in 1900, tied into the World's Fair in conjunction with the World's Fair, so it's very historic. All three of our clubhouses tennis, maine and golf are very historic. Even our golf clubhouse it's only 25 years old is a Hart-Howerton clubhouse Beautiful shingle style clubhouse and we've got this Tudor Gilded Age mansion for the main club and this French architect that did the tennis house with the basements Really cool. It's like going to, it's like being a fandom of the opera, because it's all these brick arches that hold up the cement court. Tennis court. You want to talk about spooky. The only building we don't have ghosts in actually is the golf clubhouse. The rest of them all have ghosts in them too, so it's very exciting.

Speaker 1: 23:10

That. Ok, we're coming back to that at some other point. We're going to like talking like October, we're going to do Ghost Hunters Private Club Radio Edition at the Tuxedo Club, what so? If my research will do hand held.

Speaker 2: 23:25

We'll do Blair Witch. So do handheld. It will be very exciting. We have one of the staff, we have one basement. We have one bathroom in the in the lower level or basement of the club, where the Bill and yours room used to be, and we're looking at some renovations down there. Actually, right now we all joke that's the Moaning Myrtle bathroom. This is classic 1920s, beautiful marble and beautiful old tile bathrooms like the Moaning Myrtle bathroom. No to riot, yeah, that's funny.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Huh, what if you can like monetize or not monetize on that, but like do something fun with that around the hall around Halloween, or like a little bit of crazy, crazy, it's going to like. So I was going to ask, with a club that has such history, and how do you like, how do you balance? I hate because innovations like the like you know the hot buzzword now Like, how do you balance innovation with history? You know, because that, because you mentioned to like, the club likes to be a little bit more on the, you know, low, low key side also. But how have you and the club kind of made that balance?

Speaker 2: 24:32

You know, I, you know I think we mostly get it right. You know we've tried to a good example. It's just simply dress coach right, and COVID was. That was a place where we were able to move the needle a little bit because, you know, while the club lends itself to a very, almost like an old city club, very rarefied, and you expect to see men in jackets and your ties still and things, and you know there's a place for that. But our member has changed as well, you know, and has changed a little more quickly than normal. A lot of due to COVID. We had a lot of turnover in real estate in the park, a lot of younger families and couples coming out of Brooklyn in the city that wanted to not be in the city anymore, you know, for whatever the reasons were at the time. So that was one way of it, you know. But I'll give you the other side right. So we're looking at doing these renovations in our basement area where we have a working wine cellar that we use for events but it needs some love, these moaning myrtle bathrooms and then an old billiard's room and stuff. And you know we're not such a high volume club and busy that we're going to staff that you know all day long, or every day, with someone down there just in case you come in. But they said, well, how are we going to get a drink? And I said we're going to go old school, I'm going all the way back to the old days and we're going to have buzzers on the wall so you can have a buzzer and someone come down, take your drink order. So to me, right on one side, we want to be this modern club and I'm very conscious of the budgets, especially with all these multiple outlets operating at the same time that none of them are maxed out. Well, how do we get a drink? And I said we're going to go old school, 1920s, and you're going to hit the buzzer on the wall. That's cool, yeah, so you know. So like so you say innovation, but sometimes innovation is going back to something that you know that fits today.

Speaker 1: 26:07

And it's neat that they're allowing that. I like allowing that, that, that fun, that innovation.

Speaker 2: 26:17

Yeah, well, you know, I mean even our boat house. It's interesting. So the, the Tuxedo Lake, is also part of the reservoir system for the village. So our lake that we have the boat house on, there's a lot of restrictions, one of them being there's no engines, no gas, oil or greases on the lake, so everything is. We have a couple of pontoon boats and boats that we rent for people to take out for like party boats or even fishing on the lake, because the lake is stocked, it's great fishing, like. Those are all electric boats, but yet we we needed to rent it. These boats they were. They were pretty hammered right, they needed some love. So we renovated them a couple years ago instead of buying new because new, forgetting the fact that new costs more money. New look new, right. So here we have this 140 year old, 138 year old club. We wanted to, we want things to feel like they were always here. So we took our old pontoon boats and it was actually a couple of members, kids. They started a business doing this for other members and normally, you know, we don't do business with members, but this was one of those exceptions, these two, you know, teenage, you know, I think, ones in college ones. Like it was a senior in high school, they stripped these down to the frames and renovated them and with the skin we put on them, you know our colors are green and gold and like kind of a color these boats look like they were always here, you know. So sometimes we go backwards to go forwards. I don't know if that answers your innovation question, but you know it's. We're very. Every time we do something here, you know we've had to pay a couple of the parking lots. It's just again. They just needed love and when we did that, you know we did a. After we were done, we did tire and chip so that they very quickly looked like they had always been there. You know a nice Belgian block detail. And the funniest was when I went to the, I had to go to the town or the village. We had to get approval on this and that, and they have a very strong board of architecture review and so they approved everything. They like the design, they like that we weren't taking down too many trees, right. And he said well, we have one small request. Could you paint the? Could you paint the lines a different color instead of that, like really bright yellow or white. Could you do like a green, like the club green, for the parking lines? I said that's the easiest question I've had, anything you want. So we have hunter green parking lot lines instead of yellow or white. But you know what? It's very subtle and I think that goes again. So like we go backwards to go forward sometimes kind of cool.

Speaker 1: 28:39

And that was from the city architects.

Speaker 2: 28:41

The city. You know the board of architecture people that live in the village. It's like a five person panel and I'm like if that's all you want, that is the easiest. Yes, I got all day If that's all you want like that's like the.

Speaker 1: 28:52

I think that was probably one of the best ideas. That's so cool, Great idea.

Speaker 2: 28:56

And it's subtle, and so when that was in our tennis building parking lot, so this past year we did our main clubhouse parking lot and that do a bunch of work there. So on one side we have this subtlety of you know, green lines that kind of melt away and it looks very natural, and yet we've got two electric chargers for people to charge a complimentary electric charging when they're here at the club, or for their guests or our hotel guests.

Speaker 1: 29:19

That's neat. No, that answers the question perfectly, and because I like to leave it open to interpretation, also because everybody's you know idea of innovation and things are different. I think just for me it was. You know it's one of the oldest clubs, it's massive, you know. So sometimes it's hard to, you know, bring in new and do new, and it sounds like things get accomplished fairly quickly at your club as well.

Speaker 2: 29:43

I wouldn't go that far Okay.

Speaker 1: 29:44

Well, I am going to edit that part out.

Speaker 2: 29:48

No, you know what it depends on quickly, right? I mean I guess that's a subjective term Some things do, some things take longer, I think it's. I think it's a little quicker than it used to be.

Speaker 1: 30:01

Or I guess, maybe my view. From my view it was almost like maybe you've earned. You've earned the right to make choices and they respect. It sounds like they respect most of them and obviously some need more time and things than others, but it sounds like you've gotten to a good place with you and the club and everybody there, to where it's.

Speaker 2: 30:23

I think we mostly trust each other most of the time, you know, I mean not, and part of that is, I think, of maturity in this business. You know, you get to a point where you realize that you're never going to make everybody happy. And you know, I've preached for years. I always this is my mantra we're going to do the best answer for the greatest number of people, knowing that we're going to make some people unhappy, but we're going to do the best answer for the greatest number of people. And you know, sometimes that's about employee decisions and sometimes that's about, you know, facilities or programs for the members or whatever it is. But you know, and I think doing that and one of the things you know you talk about differences and things you know, figuring out leadership style 20 years ago, 25 years ago, right, more than that, god that makes me sick Is that you know, in the old days, right, everything was like on a need to know basis. You didn't have to, you didn't need to know what happened in the boardroom. It was old. You know, little black ball in the box and all this nonsense, right, and there was a time and a place for that. But I think that the successful leaders and managers and successful clubs have gone 180 degrees with transparency. You know, and I always tell people I'll answer any question I can answer. If I can't answer it, there's a really good reason. But I'll tell you anything you want to know. You know, people ask me about the finances of the club. I'll tell them wherever they want to know. I don't care.

Speaker 1: 31:44

Numbers and numbers. They don't lie right.

Speaker 2: 31:46

So you know, I mean, if it comes to personnel things, I had a situation once in my career where I had to terminate a really bad employee, some really bad behaviors that, unchecked, could have been disastrous for the club okay, and I terminated this employee and very few of the members understood why, but it was a personnel decision and so I didn't care that they didn't understand why. It wasn't comfortable. You know, not everybody loves it, but that I can't be transparent on that right. But if you ask you know about anything, what number? What do I care?

Speaker 1: 32:25

It's your club. I'll tell you whatever you wanna know hey you can look it up yourself now.

Speaker 2: 32:29

Hey, listen, and that's the other side, right? Remember the old days when everybody pretended they made this and do this and know that. If anybody doesn't know how to go online now and figure out and read another club's 990 form, shame on you. There's no secrecy anymore, guys. You know, and if you know how to do accounting, you can figure some stuff out.

Speaker 1: 32:47

Was it your family's diner, or did you start a diner, or did you buy a?

Speaker 2: 32:50

diner. No, actually it was built in the I forget what year, in the 50s in New Jersey. It was a mountain view. It was what I learned in number 47 or whatever it was, I don't remember anymore. And you know, honestly, I'd been at Aguam 11, almost 12 years at that point and the board was going sideways. The guy who came on as president was one of these. The members should be running the club After, you know, eight plus years of a GM and the club being more financially solvent and successful than it had been in decades. But okay, and you know it was funny he became president at the annual meeting and he pulled me aside to talk and he said and I want to let you know, we're going to make some changes starting today and from now on, in the board meeting, you're going to come in and give you a report and then you're going to leave because there's too many things you shouldn't be involved in. And I said, oh, okay, that sounds great, peter, thank you. And then I went home and told my wife and I said, well, it's no longer. If now, it's when. So just be prepared. And so I started thinking about what I would do and there wasn't a job I loved in New England. I'd had some opportunities that I chose not to interview for or pursue whatever because I was happy, you know. I mean it was a great job and you know the members were great and I had a great team. But that started the clock ticking and we were looking at business opportunities and I called a broker about one that was advertised poorly. It really wasn't what they said. But he said well, I've got this business right in town. It's this little restaurant diner, but I can't tell you the name. And I said, oh, you mean the nest? He said well, I can't tell you that. I said have you ever been here at 6,000 people in one diner? I'm like I'm pretty sure I know what you're talking about and so you know. So we started talking about it and working with the owner and you know it was more good than bad. It allowed me to sort of reset myself for a few years and then, truthfully, I missed being around golf and clubs. And that's when I went back to Plymouth. Which was what interests me at Plymouth was they had just demolished a clubhouse and they were looking for someone with a good building background and renovations and master planning. And they said to me. They said you know, we have a good golf course and a hot dog stand. We're going to build a club. We want a real club and a great golf course, and so that intrigued me. The problem was half the membership was great. They were literally Mayflower descendants, yankees, my kind of people. And because the club, however, was so you know reasonably priced, you had people that didn't really understand the methodology of being an owner of a club and you know, and that and it was weird I did a great job, you know, built a nice clubhouse. They're actually about to do a master plan and fix some of the things that were done wrong, which is great. You know what? Almost 20 years later, at this point, every once in a while I'll still talk to a couple of the members from there. But when my contract was up, I said thank you. And they said what do you mean? You don't. What do you mean? And I said I said I came here to do what you asked me to do. My contract's up, you need somebody else. I'm not the right guy for you going forward. So I've never, you know. So you're still recording it looks like, but you know, my chef just gave notice two days ago. We hired him a year and a half ago. He's done a great job. You know, inherited some things, like everybody does, but he's done a great job. He's done the hardest work of the job but he's been offered the opportunity to be closer to home, make a little bit more money and you know he's at a point in his career and you know his family's first and I respect that. You know that's how I am because I'm the same way. You know, when I wasn't happy I made changes. Other people I've got friends that have stayed in jobs for five, 10 years longer than they should have, that are miserable and I'm like why, why do you do that to yourself? I don't get it, but everybody's different.

Speaker 1: 36:39

Was there anything you learned from running a diner that helped or you know, I'm trying to, because that's a unique experience. I feel like that's a, that's a different animal than just like a normal restaurant or a bar. If I got diner is like its own animal, like what. Were there any like good learning learning points from that, some good teachable lessons?

Speaker 2: 37:01

You know, there's always teachable lessons. I think that you know it's funny. Years ago I started out, you know, went to Johnson Welles' thinking I was going to be a chef and I figured out the first year in that I didn't want to be a chef. And I knew, even at, you know, 20 years old, I knew that I wasn't passionate enough. Right, I'm never. I was never going to care so much about the newest toy, the newest ingredient, traveling to, you know, sri Lanka to figure out how to make this dish the perfect way. And I applaud the people that have that passion. And you know, and truthfully, when I went back and did the diner what it did is it reminded me that I wasn't, I didn't want to own. It was a 46 seat restaurant and it did very well for the size it was. But the next step was going to be to acquire one or two other places and my heart wasn't in it. You know for what it was going to cost me time and emotionally and maybe money I'd. I decided I'd rather go work for someone else and be around golf. So it didn't teach me necessarily anything about the business. It taught me about myself and that was okay. But you know I had four years, my son was in an elementary school. I never missed, you know, a presentation on his Dr Seuss paper or a flag day or the Christmas singing chorus thing or any of that. It was a half mile around the corner from my restaurant and I could do what I wanted when I wanted, and I didn't have any committees. You know talking about the size of carrots in my bowl of soup and you know as I, as you know, I always wanted to have a shirt. Right, we had different hats and shirts and my wife would never let me do the one shirt I wanted to do. We sold bean and matapois at near the water in New Bedford. We did a ton of seafood and my shirt I wanted to do. She wouldn't let me do it. So I wanted to get a shirt that had, like you know, the diner, on the front right and on the back, said if you don't like our oyster, you should chuck off, and she would never let me do that shirt. She would never let me do that shirt to this day.

Speaker 1: 38:56

So but but yeah, you realize. You realize you have to make just one of those shirts and give it to her for Valentine's Day. You have to make her a one-off shirt and make honey. I got you something.

Speaker 2: 39:09

After almost 40 years, I think she'd be more surprised that she got a present for Valentine's than at the shirt. But okay, you can go with that. Yeah, it was, and it also taught me that, you know. It also taught me that I couldn't be a chef. In the front of the house at the same time I had a one man, one guy, and he sat at the. He would sit at the counter and when his mug was half empty he'd start going like this, he'd start tapping his mug. And one day I was out there I'd been on there early to open up the place and I went out to get a cup of coffee and he started tapping his mug. And I looked right at him and I said, brad, if you keep tapping that mug, you're gonna find out if you can drink it left-handed. But you can't do that in a club. So you really shouldn't do that at all is the lesson of it. But you know, I survived it, he survived it and he, you know he didn't come in for about a week and then he started coming back because his friends were ragging on him that he deserved it. So but you can't do that in a club. In a club, you just you know you eat it. The only thing you can do in a club and you have to be halfway decent to do it is when you play golf with members. Every once in a while you can beat up on him, but you even gotta be careful with that, and I'm not halfway decent anymore. So that ship has sailed. So Ha ha, ha ha.

Speaker 1: 40:26

This is where I'm gonna end it, all right, ha ha ha.

Speaker 2: 40:30

All right, and you didn't even have to use the time delay or pause me. See that you got barely any F-bombs to edit out. I don't think we have any, no.

Speaker 1: 40:38

I've got my best behavior for you. I truly appreciate that from because I will say I have interviewed like a bunch of guests for private club radio so far and I have to say after this one you're definitely the most recent. So thank you. Most recent.

Speaker 2: 41:00

Yeah, what's that mean?

Speaker 1: 41:03

I was making a sarcastic. I was trying to like, like, build it up like, oh, after like all my guests so far, you're definitely the most recent.

Speaker 2: 41:10

Yeah, Sorry, you know, listen I that one flew over me in my bed.

Speaker 1: 41:14

So Ha ha, ha ha. I guess it's funny when it's part of my show. So so for Raymore and Flanagan I'm about to end it's like the whole thing and you know I've been with them day and a half, got it's been. You know, on behalf of you know, you know it's one. Thank you all so much, from being a Raymore and Flanagan customer to also, you know, being here. You know I know it's just the beginning of 2024, but you know, looking at events from last year, then even coming up, I have to say you guys are definitely the most recent. So thank you, and it's one of those like just the you know, now it's your worst.

Speaker 2: 41:52

You're telling me furniture salesman got the joke and I didn't.

Speaker 1: 41:55

No, no, no.

Speaker 2: 41:57

I gotta go get some regular coffee Wow.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Hope you all enjoyed that episode. If you did, you know what to do. Share it with somebody. Give us a five star rating. And if you don't think it's five stars, don't give it five stars. Give it what you think it's worth. We appreciate any and all feedback, because that's how we roll. Any support is always appreciated. Sharing an episode with a friend or a colleague, sharing re-sharing on the socials is always amazing and your support means the world. So that was this episode. Until next time. I'm your host, denny Corby. Catch you on the flippity flip.