EPISODE 88

Derek Chris and I connected just a couple of years ago through a mutual golf club client, Lemon Bay Golf Club in Southwest Florida. And we’ve had him queued up to be on our podcast ever since to discuss what branding looks like from his perspective, from inside the club, and from outside the club. Chris, thank you for taking the time to join Tucker and me today.

Chris It’s my pleasure. Really great to be here and share some thoughts on clubs and branding and how it all ties together. 

Derek Let’s start with your role at McMahon. I’m sure that I did not do justice in describing all of the things that you do with your deep expertise. Give us a little bit of background on your role and what you focus on. And then, in particular, I am really curious how all your years as a GM have shaped and helped how you now advise clubs as a consultant. 

Chris I think the first thing that’s helped now that I’m on this side of the table, if you will, and have a little bit more gray hair, I always tell people my club manager IQ went up about a hundred points when I became a consultant. Sometimes I still say the same things that when I was a general manager, but now, as a consultant, evidently, it means more. I’ve been very fortunate to have been brought on to the McMahon Group, actually just a little bit over five years ago. The McMahon Group’s been around for a little over 40 years, and for the majority of those 40 years, the two main principals, Bill McMahon, the founder, and Frank Vane, who was the president and is now the new CEO, were the two gentlemen that we call planners and principals. And I was very fortunate, right place, right time to be the first club manager to be brought in as a planner. So our main role, our bread and butter, is facility planning. Bill’s an architect by trade, and we do the majority of our work in facility planning. But as a part of that process, first is survey work to understand what your customer, your client, really in our world, obviously it’s the member, what their opinions are. And then from there, taking that data and looking and developing a strategic plan and prioritizing those things we learned from the survey work, and asking our constituents, our stakeholders, what’s going on. And from there, we develop a facility master plan. So those are the three main areas that we work on in facility planning. Bill developed our process of really asking members what’s important to them. When you start looking at facility planning, you’re taking resources, which are time and dollars that are really the members. So before you do anything, you want to get your members’ opinion, who are the owners of the club. What I think I bring to the table is a perspective. Again, I was the first club manager. Both Bill and Frank were members of their respective clubs, and both have been presidents of their clubs. So they come at it from that board responsibility and member side. I come at it from an operational side. And since then, we’ve brought on two more club managers because the perspective is helpful to a club, seeing from an operation side, how facility planning impacts the operation, how getting the perspective of somebody who has sat there with the general manager, and I think also from an entree to the club. Being a fellow club manager and understanding the challenges that they face has really been helpful and brings a lot more to the table. And I think it also puts the GM a little bit at ease that we’re working for the club and for them and with them. 

Tucker You’ve spent time on both sides, right? And I think it’s interesting. I mean, five years is a long time advising clubs and looking across that sweeping landscape. For you, being a GM, you’re so focused on the day-to-day. You’re so in the swing of every single kind of season for a club, versus being a consultant, where you zoom out a little bit and you get that 30,000-foot view of a club. Everyone needs to understand their own brand or their own identity of who they are in order to make the right decisions for their club. How has that changed from when you were working day to day versus when you kind of zoom out and look at how the club’s investing long-term? 

Chris You know, when I was a club manager, I was very much an operations person. And so I did what we counsel boards not to do, which is get down in the weeds and deal with the day-to-day operations. For 20 of those years, I ran a seasonal club. So it was a five-and-a-half, six-month club where really it’s a year’s worth of business in six months. So, thinking strategically and spending time at the board level, thinking about that was a lot harder. And I think what I’ve learned in my five years, if I knew then what I know now, I would have done it a lot differently. I mean, I did all of those things, but I didn’t know what I was doing. There’s a process here, right? Understanding the members and not just taking the opinion of board members, having a plan in place, and strategy, understanding the importance of culture, and understanding who the decision makers are with the people that are joining your club. And looking beyond today, a lot of the things that you do in branding, we do with McMahon and strategic planning and mission and vision. I can remember when strategic planning became really important to clubs in the late 90s, early 2000s, about mission and vision. I don’t even know what that is, but okay, let’s take a look at it. And now I can’t imagine a club not having a plan. You’ve got to have a plan in place. You’ve got to know where you’re going. And it’s the same thing with branding and how that all ties together and how you define your brand. When I started in this business, branding was all about golf. I was fortunate to work at clubs, especially the club here. I was at a city club. I was at one of the finest yacht clubs in San Francisco. The brand was already there. It was implied. Nobody really worked on branding. The brand was the quality of the golf course, the quality of the sailing program, the quality of whatever it may be. And now what has changed and what I’ve learned about how it all ties together is that it’s all really about the decision makers of who’s joining the club and why. Potential members want so much more in their club experience. You know, it used to be the male was making the decision, and it was all about golf. Then, when they became two-income homes, it was the male and female. There better be something for both. And now, the decisions to join a club are sometimes made by a 15-year-old. Because it’s where are my friends? Because clubs have taken on community. I was just at a club outside of Boston where over 76% of their members live within four miles. That club has really turned into the backyard neighborhood club for those members. We ask a question in our survey about the reasons that you joined. And for members of five, 10 years or more, it’s about history, tradition. Now it’s about safety, sanctuary, community, sense of belonging. Well, that’s branding. And who we are and identifying that is very, very different than saying, I’ve got the best golf course around. 

Tucker Yeah. And the point that is interesting is when you look at it, it sounds like in the past, it was more of a gut reaction, right? This club’s always been like this. This is who we are. And this is how we’re going to be versus now is who do we want to be? And how do we create that future versus are we a backyard neighborhood club? Or are we a destination national club? How does that work out? And then we build the perception, the facilities, the amenities, the service around that future picture of ourselves versus in the past it was more of just who we’ve always been. 

Chris I would say that in the past, it was a lot easier because, in shaping your identity, like every club that I became the general manager of, the identity of the club was already there. So you didn’t have to explain to people, and I’m not giving any secret sauce here, the Harvard Club of Boston, the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco, which is America’s top club, Boodles of London, the oldest gentleman’s club there is – their identities were already shaped. The interesting thing when I went to Bald Peak Colony Club, their identity was kind of the premier, very private, behind-the-gate, Donald Ross Golf Course Club in New England. And just as one example, when I arrived in 1995, every night in the dining room, jacket and tie. And then in the middle of August, we had a black tie dinner. And it just happened to be the time when there was starting to be a transition of family, and more families were being involved. People were spending more time at the club. So we didn’t come up with, okay, how do we change your identity? More as an evolution, nobody was coming to the black tie dinner in August. And the first year, we did a country and western night with horse rides and gunfights. And then the next year, we started a summer carnival, and that carnival has been going on for 35 years. And so it was a natural transition and a natural change to a family focus. When I got there, family focus meant we had five high chairs in the dining room. That was why we were family. But now there are no more ties. Whereas now things are changing in clubs at the speed of light. And you have to strategically think about the same club that I was talking about outside of Boston. They had family focus in their mission. And when we tested that in their survey, we learned that family focus meant something very different, not only to the membership, but it meant something very, very different to the board members. So getting everybody aligned and what that means as far as our brand is much harder now than it was, I would say, back in the old days. 

Derek You mentioned the survey work that you guys do, and I have no problem saying that we leverage your survey data to help us, especially the clubs where we’ve had the opportunity to come in and help them and talk about brand after McMahon’s kind of worked on the strategic plan and delivered that survey. You guys do such a great job collecting data. I saw Frank present recently at a golfing conference, and he shared a stat where I think he said that the average age of members joining today is something like 42 or 43 years old across the country, which is incredible. So, as you think of that shift and that whole new age group, that generation, you just talked about people are steering away from black tie and going towards the family fun thing. Well, that makes total sense when I think of that age group. From an operation standpoint, I can see why they would want to take advantage of being financially healthy and do strategic planning and facility investments, but how receptive are they when you start talking about setting the vision and recasting the mission statement, and setting the cultural values to help that leadership team? How receptive is the leadership within the clubs that you work with with those components? 

Chris I think it depends on where the clubs are. We always say that if you’re a club in 2024 and you don’t have a waiting list, then something’s wrong. So we work with clubs that are challenged because maybe they’re a little bit behind the curve. This same club that I’m talking about outside of Boston is an apple that just needs to be polished a little bit. But they were smart enough to take the temperature of their membership, and they learned that they’re off a little bit in the relevance. It’s a great question in our survey: is the mission right, and is it relevant, and more importantly, are we living up to it? There’s a slide that we use that’s a guy on a tightrope, and it’s balancing tradition with evolving because you can’t just all of a sudden make a 90-degree turn, and we’re not all of a sudden going to be the fun factory. We need to understand what is evolving as a family-focused club, if that’s what we need to do. So it’s baby steps. Sometimes it’s not facilities, sometimes it’s policy. And how do we make it more friendly? The challenge that this club has is that younger people couldn’t play golf on Sundays. It’s interesting, one of the questions that has really changed is the number of tournaments at a club. And younger members want less tournaments because they want social golf. They want to be out on a Sunday afternoon with their three-year-old being able to play two holes. That’s an evolution, and there are ways to strategically make those things happen while still maintaining the tradition. So it really depends on the club. And I’ve learned that culture and branding really tie together. There are a lot of things that are happening. We always talk about nine goals within a strategic plan for a club, and maintaining and enhancing our culture has become number 10 because before COVID, with this rapid increase of members joining clubs, culture was just culture, and you got into the club, and you knew what it was to join. Now we have people saying, Who are these new people? They should do this, this, and this, and they should know better. Well, the interesting thing is they don’t because a lot of them have never joined a club. So branding is really important that members understand the product, technically the product they’re buying, and that’s what helps maintain culture. So it’s slow and steady to answer your question. 

Tucker And that generational shift, if your product, to your point, doesn’t have alignment or were misaligned from either the leadership to the board or the board to the general membership, or however you want to look at that, that creates a huge gap between who we think at the top of the club, who we want to be, versus who the people who are coming in are. And how do you balance that new generation versus the established or legacy generation of a club? And how do you make that turn, even though that might not be a favorable decision by a lot of people?

Chris Great question because that is the challenge that we face in every club. One, it’s data because if you don’t do that, then you’ve got, let’s say it’s 12 board members sitting around a table and 12 of all 12 have different opinions on what we need to be doing. But, you know, there are great quotes out there, right? Data doesn’t lie. Data has no emotion. And so that’s why a survey is so important, because members, especially members on a board, typically get their data from their cohort. So getting the data of the entire membership to understand not only what’s important for today’s member, but we always talk about the next generation of member. When we ask the question to the board, Do you want to leave the club better than you found it? And you want the club to be relevant and sustainable for that next generation, for your children, for everybody else. Then we use examples of how companies have not done that, and companies have done that outside the club world. But the key, Tucker, is getting them around the table. Some clubs are anxious to say, well, strategic planning, we don’t need that. Sometimes we call it, wink, wink, board alignment retreat, as opposed to strategic planning. And it’s just getting them to talk and understand we’re not there to tell them what they need to do. And the alignment may not be perfect, but at least get them to align on where they need to be going. And then you start introducing all those other things of how do we remain viable, and also keep that tradition. And what we’ve learned is tradition isn’t necessarily the ABC Cup that we’ve always played on June 13th, but it’s culture. What does it mean to be a member of X? That’s what they really want. 

Tucker And probably not taking everything from the last, you know, 80 years of the club, and moving it, and saying we have to maintain everything. But it’s probably picking and choosing what the most important things are that make this place special. That is our tradition. Whether we have a coat or whether we may have to wear a suit coat at the dining table or not, that’s not necessarily our tradition. It’s how does that make us special? And how does that make us move? 

Chris Right. It comes down to core values. That’s a great example with the suit and tie because that’s a great fallback. I remember when kids walked into a club, they knew how to behave, and they dressed up, and it was a special occasion to come here. What we like to say is, what’s changed? Obviously, children should still know how to behave, and it’s not the club’s job to police them. And that’s the whole other podcast. But what is interesting and what the demographics can show us in the survey work is that for many members, the club has become their community and their place. The one time in a week when a family sits down and eats together is at the club. Outside of when they’re not there, they’re at practice. Kids are so overprogrammed that they may not remember that the club was where they had to put on a tie and do whatever, but they will remember that that’s where we sit on Sunday nights and have dinner together as a family. Life has changed. And that’s part of culture, right? A club is about community and a sense of belonging. And so it means something a little bit different in 2025 than it meant in 1960. In 1960, you came to the club twice a year as a kid. You know, Mother’s Day, Easter, and maybe meeting Santa, so maybe it was three times. 

Derek The culture thing is so fascinating to me. It’s very relevant in that when we go back to brand and oftentimes when we’re talking to clubs and we say the word brand, they go directly to the logo and they say, You know what? We don’t need branding – our logo is fine. And sometimes their logo is fine. But to your point, while the logo is part of brand, it’s maybe one of, I don’t know, a hundred things that make up a brand, that make up the reputation. It’s a combination of the mission, the vision, and the culture. And you could actually make an argument that the culture itself is a representation of the brand and living that brand. As much or more than any other component, whether that’s visual or logos, or messaging, because the culture now is how they actively live that brand, live the mission, live the vision, kind of on a day-to-day basis, especially from a leadership standpoint. 

Chris And from a club, you think about some of those iconic brands in the golf world. The Masters just ended. Let’s use Augusta, right? If you went and visited Augusta and they didn’t have a logo, that would still be in your mind of what a quality experience means. The logo just happens to be the neon sign that helps you remember that. So, you know, in McMahon, it’s funny. I was reading up a little bit on branding to make sure I understood it, and looked at your website and did some things. Which, by the way, everyone, best website information on branding. How’s that for a plug? But when you talk about defining a brand, it is exactly what we do in strategic planning. It’s a systematic approach. The order might be different. We’d say that you’ve got to ask your stakeholders first, but then it’s determining your goals, prioritizing them, defining your mission, all those things, because branding isn’t just about your logo. It defines the quality of who you are. We would say it’s about facilities, and it’s the quality of your facilities. In our world, it’s programming, facilities, and service. You can have great programming, but if you don’t have good facilities that support it, just like if you have great facilities but no programming, the brand is all of those things, and it defines it more than obviously just a logo. 

Derek You’ve worked with so many clubs. Can you share an example or two, you don’t necessarily need to share specific names, of clubs that when they do that, when they are aligned, when they’re doing it right, when they living the brand, when the facilities are meeting or exceeding that level of engagement, what is that positive impact potential for clubs that are considering engaging you, who know that they need to do a strategic plan, but haven’t, who maybe are thinking about some of the misalignment in their current culture today. If they were to take that on and crush it, what are some of the things that they might realize as a club? 

Chris I’ll use one name and then I’ll leave one anonymous. The success story, I’ll use the name because the club and the president, and especially because I’m from that world, the GM should get a tremendous shout-out. We did a project, just finished, and I was just on the phone the other night with Winter Park Racquet Club in Winter Park, Florida. And Ian Monroe is the general manager. Rob Carter was the president who pushed this. And we had spent about three years with them. And they had gone through a couple of different managers during that period of time. When we first were engaged, they wanted to know, What can we do to be better? What are some of the other clubs doing that we can adopt? Well, right there, saying it’s not unique to you. It’s not your brand. It is not your culture. They hit some challenges with leadership. And then finally, just prior to Rob’s taking over as president and Ian coming in as the general manager, we did a survey and understood where there were some real challenges and misalignment with expectations of membership. The first time we went there, you could have parked anywhere in the parking lot and just walked in and sat in the dining room. The time that they took to go through strategic planning, and you’ve never been there, but it sits right on the lake, has a Western sunset view, and they really focused on what makes us unique is our lake, is our lakeside. Everything needs to be focused on the lake. And they redefined their mission. And then from that point forward, they looked at all the things they needed to do. Ian came in and really did a great job of recreating and enhancing what culture meant at that club, both for the staff and for the membership. And the mission and who they were, who they are, the level of quality, the expectation, the brand of what it meant to be a member of Winter Park Racquet Club, was elevated because they lived their mission. Every decision they made was, Does this advance our mission? Is it part of our mission? And they just approved a project that creates a new racquet fitness center, which is something they need. Everything else focuses on the lake with a socialization space. And the members approved that plan overwhelmingly because they followed the process of defining what they needed to do, and it was mission. Another club that we worked with didn’t see the importance of going through that process and mission. When we tell the story of why we need to do these improvements, and you’re asking members for money, if you can’t explain the story of why we are doing this, which is the whole branding piece of who we are, why we’re doing it, and what’s important, we couldn’t tell that story. There was no defined mission of what we’re trying to do. And when we talk about mission with clubs, we ask the four questions. Who do we serve? What do we provide? What quality level do we provide it at? And what makes us unique? All the things that branding pulls together. And if you can’t do that, then there’s not a clear story to tell to get your members behind to support that. And as a result, they didn’t fail at their project, but they put it on hold because they learned that they really didn’t have the support of their membership. And that was a clear understanding of a club with a strong brand and a club with really no brand. 

Tucker If a GM or a board heard you just say that right now, and they went, Oh, that is my membership 100%, I feel what you just said, what would be your piece of advice to them if they’re struggling because they want to establish that and they want move this forward, but maybe their board or their membership doesn’t feel like that’s important. What can they do? 

Chris Great question, Tucker, because in a lot of the clubs that we work with, it’s interesting. I’ve had two clubs that we’ve gotten strategic planning work because the board or someone on the board has come to us and said, We need to do a strategic plan for us. And we’ll say, Why? Well, we just hired a new general manager, and every one of the candidates that we interviewed asked if we had a strategic plan. So I guess we need one. That’s the easy part. So, ask if your club has a strategic plan. But then, again, it’s still very difficult. So it’s kind of the soft approach. Bill McMahon always says, the key to the success of any project being accomplished and moving forward in a club is you’ve got to have a combination of a great volunteer leader in the president and in the general manager. And the two of them have got to be in sync. And I’ve worked with clubs where you just have one of those, and it’s a slog process. So what do a lot of clubs do? For instance, and there are other companies that do this, but we offer what’s called a first impression, where for no cost to the club, we’ll come and spend a day at the club, do a tour, meet with the president, and meet with the general manager. And then at the end of the day, we’ll give a half-hour, 40-minute PowerPoint presentation with our first impressions. But also, what we do is we talk about what’s going on in the world of clubs and what’s important and what’s happening with those clubs that are really successful, those that are best in class, and they’re not all Augusta. They’re clubs that they would know. And so what we tell the general manager, or if it’s a president who really wants to try and get his club aligned, it doesn’t cost you anything. And the worst thing that will happen is that your board will be a little bit more educated in what’s going on in the world. So it’s kind of a gentle approach. And then we may or may not hear from them, but at least we’re starting to educate them. And for a GM to just start getting that information to them. We’ve had conversations with club managers, and then a year or two years down the line, we finally come in and work with them. Or somebody else does. But if you go all in and say, here’s what we need to do. There’s a reason why people are on a board. They’ve been successful at what they do. And sometimes it’s hard to take advice from other people. The nice thing is that as younger people get on boards, they’re more open and understanding to the importance of consultants who are experts in their field, and I’m sure the two of you know that very well. 

Tucker Well, if someone hears this and they go, All right, we need a strategic plan. We want your first impression. Where can they go to find more? Where can we reach out? How can they get started? 

Chris Sure, so again, there are four others like me, actually probably four that are better than me, but there are five of us at McMahon. So it’s Mcmahongroup.com, and you can go on there and get an overview. You can go to bios. You can click on for a first impression, or you can call or email any one of us. For all of us, it’s our first initial, last name. For me, it Ccoulter at mcmangroup.com. And that’s the same for Bill McMahon, Frank Vane, David Dew, Christian Claire, or just reach out through my email or through the website. And we’re happy to chat. I think what’s really important and what sets McMahon apart, Bill McMahon would tell you, and this is the principle in our culture, is we’re here to help clubs get better. So whether you hire us or not, we’re always a phone call, a text, or an email away to give advice and help and point you in the right direction. So that’s our job. Especially having been a CMAA club manager for almost 40 years, it’s great just to give back. And if we can help in any way, that’s what we’re here to do. 

Tucker Awesome. 

Derek This is exactly why we’ve been wanting to have you on this podcast for so long, Chris. Thanks for joining us today. Your insights are incredible. 

Chris I really appreciate the opportunity, and I really appreciate that companies like yours, and you especially, are starting to get some recognition of how important branding is, and I appreciate all you are doing.

Derek For those listening, we hope today’s conversation with Chris inspires you to think about your brand, not just as a message or a logo, but as your culture and a management tool in your toolbox that helps shape that strategy and bring success to your club. Thanks again for tuning in. We will see you back here again next time. Thanks for listening. Sussner is a branding firm dedicated to helping make a meaningful mark, guiding member organizations into the next chapter of their story. Learn more at sussner.com.