EPISODE 93

Tucker They constantly understand how they move forward. They’re constantly looking for what’s the next thing that makes us better? What is the next thing that makes us even better for our members? And that mindset is so healthy to say, How do I improve? I mean, it’s healthy from a personal standpoint. How do I get better? How do I be a better person? I was talking to you earlier. Think about working out or think about doing these things where you’re saying, Well, if I’m 24, I’m in great physical shape. But if I stop working out there and I keep thinking about myself as this 24-year-old and I look up and I’m 44, my body is going to be in a very different state and a very different ability, and people aren’t going to see me the way I see myself in that way. And that’s exactly what clubs end up doing time and time again. We run into it all the time.

Derek For you, it might be your physical shape. For me, it’s my golf game. If you just assume that you’re going to continue to play well day after day, round after round, without putting in the work, and the longer time goes by without that effort of continuing to work out, you’re never going to get there. You’re never going to achieve that physical shape perfection and be able to maintain it without constant effort. We’re not talking about tearing it down and rebuilding it or throwing it away or necessarily reinventing it and starting from scratch. I think we’re talking about consistency and that mindset. Angela Duckworth, in her awesome book, Grit, talks about growth mindset and always thinking about and embracing and being energized by continuing to work on it, continuing to improve it, and to do so consistently, time and time again.

Tucker Today’s conversation is really about how even the most prestigious clubs can still be misunderstood. They can still be underestimated in different ways. They are still seen as outdated, especially by the next generation. And today it’s really about how great history alone isn’t going to be enough. And when the smartest clubs are doing their best work, they’re focusing on how they stay relevant, how they make an experience that’s for a specific person, and that if they’re resting on legacy alone, they know that they’re already behind. This means that brand isn’t something that you invest in once and you move on. This is a constant process, or like I would say, you’re working out those muscles all the time and trying to get better and trying to figure out what the next obstacle, the next opportunity, is for you and your club. And that’s really how we focus on.

Derek What was respected by your parents might not be relevant to you and your generation. And if you’re resting on that legacy of what we once were or what we used to be or what we thought we were, you might already be behind, and it might be time to get back in the gym.

Tucker So let’s define brand really quickly. And we’ve done this a million ways, but it’s helpful in this conversation to really understand how this works. And so for us, it’s really important to think about brand as not your logo. That is the end-all, be-all. If a person comes to us and says, I want to work on my brand. And I say, that sounds good. And we talk about all these other things. And at the end of the conversation, they go, Well, we haven’t talked about our logo. I’d say that’s because your brand is not your logo. That is definitely not how we’re doing it. Brand is really a living, breathing perception of your club. It’s the sum of all your touch points. It’s the sum of all your experiences. It’s really how people assume who you are and what you’re all about, and to realize that those assumptions change over time. What is appealing to a 45-year-old person today is not the same as what was appealing to them 20 years ago at a 45-year-old level.

Derek We know clubs that have great logos, and I would say, brands that don’t live up to that once you have an opportunity to experience that place. And I also have experienced clubs where that experience, that guest experience, was off the charts, and their logo was terrible. It’s not even something that I wanted to buy as a souvenir to take with me. Your brand is so many things, and it’s not just what you say. It’s what you do. Saying it is part of it. Communicating it in the language, that’s part of it, but it really comes down to how other people experience you. That’s the reputation. That’s how you’re building that reputation. That happens in more ways than people think about. I think we’re thinking about maybe the obvious ones, like how you’re greeted when you walk in the door. But it’s also happening in ways where you’re not actively able to do that interaction yourself, like when people are visiting your website or looking at your social media site. So, in addition to those one-on-one human conversations and opportunities, there’s a perception being built out there in the world without you being able to control it that you need to be aware of too.

Tucker If your club’s brand hasn’t changed in 10 years, you are communicating not only to your membership, but to potential future members, that your audience hasn’t changed at all. Meaning they still have the same expectations, they still have the same lifestyles, they have the same interests that they did 10, 20, 30 years ago. And if they do, that’s fantastic. That means you don’t need to change. If they are the same exact people, meaning not the individual people, it’s not John Stewart is still our member 30 years later, but it’s to say the next version of him wants the exact same thing that he wanted. They want the exact same piece. They have the same dress code expectations. They have saved all of that stuff. But if your brand doesn’t evolve, you’re admitting that nothing has changed in the world. You’re saying this is all the same, and that risk is, if you aren’t changing at all, then you’re betting on everything else not changing. And so that becomes a more risky conversation for a club as they keep moving to the future.

Derek If you’re telling me that in the last 10, or I’m going to say five years, that nothing has changed in your organization with respect to your audience and your target market, then you are a unicorn. And I would love to have a conversation with you and to understand what it is that you foresaw to help you be so incredibly successful.

Tucker Visionary, right? Because then that means you’re going to where the puck is going, not to where it was at one time. You were so far ahead of the curve that you’ve already met where it’s at today. That is fantastic. But clubs should regularly be asking themselves, What are we known for? Is that still true? Do we still have that experience? Are we still actually living up to that? So if you say we’re known for being the best club in the area, well, is that still true? Or is it still desirable? Are we known for being the most casual family-oriented club in our region? Okay, well, is that desirable? Who is it desirable to? And is it desirable and true to the next members? And will it attract them? I’ll use that analogy, and I don’t know if you know that Wayne Greskey saying where he says, I go to where the puck is going to be, not where it is now, and I don’t want to be too hockey-forward because we’re in Minnesota, but there’s this idea of getting to where we need to be, not where we are. And how we make sure that we’re getting there is by being really honest with ourselves. And that can be really, really difficult for clubs who don’t want to admit that something isn’t perfect. I think that is a big hurdle to overcome for people, especially GMs who are trying to convey this level of expertise, and we have the best experiences, and we do all of these things to the best of our ability. But sometimes being constructive with our criticism and building towards a better future can do more for our club in the long run.

Derek When it comes to perception and reputation along the lines that you just said, Tucker, let’s be honest about this, part of the truth is you cannot control the narrative. This isn’t public relations, and the way that people think about your club is not fostered that way. You have influence over what people think, and you can continually craft and work on that influence, but you can’t control it. Today, there are way too many channels out there that people have access to that allow them to talk to you or about you that you have no control over.

Tucker It’s like gardening. It’s like taking care of certain things. You can pick the weeds. You can mow the yard. You can do all of these other things. But things will pop up. Things will happen. You can’t control the weather. You can control some of these things. And they’re going to grow on their own time and rights and all that. But you could give them the opportunity to do those things. And so when we say reputation is shaped, it’s guided, it’s influenced, but it’s not forced. You cannot make someone think a certain thing about you. We’ve talked about this in other episodes. I think two episodes ago, we talked about experience and expression. If we’re creating the best experience we can and we have the best expression of ourselves that we possibly can, that is the influence that we create. That is how we guide someone to feel a certain way about ourselves. And so we don’t own it. We can control things like what’s on our website, but we can’t control what people say about us when we’re not in the room. The goal isn’t to always control everything, but it’s about being consistent and giving people the opportunity to say the right things about you when you’re not there.

Derek Consistency is the answer. Yes, it is by offering experience and by expressing your brand. But by doing so cohesively and ruthlessly consistently, it’s really easy to go back to resting on your laurels by creating a great brand, crafting a great brand, and not consistently and intentionally doing things with it and nurturing it. Like you said, it’s a living, breathing entity. Because if you don’t, your members are talking. We’ve talked about it in previous podcasts. Your members are your number one sales force. They’re the ones who are out talking to their friends and colleagues about you. Your guests who visit your club, whether it’s with a member or a prospective member who’s getting a tour from the membership director, they’re talking. They’re going to share what that experience was like. Social media, out of your control, so many social channels. So your club’s reputation is a fluid, active thing. You said the word static. It’s the opposite of static. It is the most fluid entity that there is. So, your job isn’t to lock in and control that and force that like you might try to do in a political campaign. That’s a losing battle.

Tucker There’s this level of the smallest things can really make a difference. When we talk about being inconsistent or outdated, we could go to easy things, tactics that GMs or board members would look at and say, Our website looks awful. And that’s a big part of it, sure. But I’d also go back to what we invest in. What are we putting our money into, and where are we building new experiences around the club? How we invest in the club also says a lot about who we are as a club and builds the perception, not only in guests’ minds, but in members’ minds, when we say Hey, we just got out of a board meeting. Here’s what we’re investing in. Here’s what the next year looks like at this club. What that decision is is a huge influence on how people think about the club and think about, okay, well, here’s what’s coming and here’s what’s changing. We’ve talked about clubs that go, hey, we’re shifting more into a family atmosphere, but then they keep investing in things that aren’t family items and family-oriented. And you would say, so you’re not really adhering to that mission. You’re not adhering to where you’re going. That happens so often in the club world where you have the overarching vision and mission for the club. And then you have a board member who feels very passionately that they want their Himalayan putting green because that would make them really happy. And they’re like, well, this is what all the great clubs are doing. So we need to do that. If our mission and vision statement is to be the greatest club in the world for a family, that’s probably not a Himalayan putting green necessarily being the first place that you’d put your investments. And so when I get into that, it’s about being consistent. It’s about being transparent about what you’re doing. Because every decision you make, whether it’s a website, whether it’s an initiative, whether that’s the way you format your dining atmosphere, can change that status, can change that feel about your club for good or worse.

Derek We would call that a strategy. Once you’ve established that, to then activate the hell out of it, to implement that in all the seemingly simple ways that people experience your brand that are often taken for granted, little things. So yes, big things like your website, like you mentioned, the signage. But the little tiny things, little things that you might even take for granted. One of my favorite little things might be like the guest tag that, when you’re a guest at a club, you get a really special customized tag that they put on your bag tag. It doesn’t have to be expensive things, but it could be verbal things. It could be the way that somebody greeted you or remembered your name. It could be physical ways. All of these things, these little things, combined, do a really important job of reinforcing the story that you want those people who have just experienced you to be talking about and telling others about you.

Tucker Then, when we get into all of this, reinforce that story. Reinforce, reinforce, reinforce. Every decision you make tells a story about you. Every piece of social media content that you put out enforces that story, or it doesn’t reinforce that story. And to keep moving through that, to be really thoughtful, build out a strategy, build out an understanding of who you are and what makes you special, and then how you’re going to express that through experiences, through a website, through all these great things, that’s really important. It’s really important when we go back to the best clubs in the world, when we think about the top 100 clubs or some of these distinguished clubs or platinum clubs of America, and you would say, What makes you great? And they would say, Our experience. And I would say, What about that experience makes you great? They have trouble kind of articulating what is special about them. They can still struggle with that because they’re investing money in everything. And that’s great. But what happens when that desire shifts, and how are we going to maintain ourselves? How do we maintain relevance? Because prestige alone is not enough for the next generation. Because prestige means different things for different people. When we talk about the greatest clubs, when people say, I always want to be Augusta National, I would ask, Does that also mean that you’re going to only attract a national membership that gets to play every once in a while? There’s just a whole level of understanding around what that means for you, and how you build that sense of prestige for yourself.

Derek Just because somebody values tradition, and that’s important to them and who they are, that doesn’t mean they want that experience to feel dated or outdated or old-fashioned. Tradition doesn’t necessarily mean the exact way that it’s always been or the way that it used to be. We talk about this now in almost every episode because it’s so critical in clubs in how important it is to balance what our legacy members, who have helped shape the culture of who we’ve become today, how we balance being inclusive to them along with the generation of members that are going to help us shape who we’re going to be in the future. And prestige, or what the older generation believes, is prestigious. Their criteria might be different than what’s important to the generation that’s coming in.

Tucker It goes back to legacy and prestige earn you respect. But just because I respect you doesn’t mean I want to join you. That is not the same. I can respect somebody, and I can say, yes, they’ve been around for 50 years. Yes, they have been a big part of their own community, and they’ve done amazing things. But that doesn’t mean you’re relevant to me. And so what happens is, if you rest on that and you say, We have a great legacy, and I would say, But what does that mean moving forward? And how are you relevant? It’s about seeing those traditions and moving them forward. There’s something amazingly special about some of these traditions that we come across, and it’s about taking the best traditions and amplifying them. But it’s about understanding what relevance means to us and making sure that’s a core part of our strategy and who we are moving forward.

Derek It’s also important to understand, to get some clarity on what this next generation of members wants. If you are a platinum club or a distinguished club and you’re looking to attract this average age of people that are coming in, which is 42 years old with two kids, to understand what it is that’s important to them as you craft your reputation. These people at that age who have the means, again, not that your exclusive club necessarily means that that’s an expensive club, but individuals who have the net worth and the means to join you, what is it that they expect or hope for from the membership that you provide based on how they already perceive you from interactions they’ve had in visits or from members that they’re friends with.

Tucker And I go back to how we define luxury, and I say we as if I were working with a club. How we define luxury is going to be different than how a different elite club would define luxury. And so to say we’re intuitive and elegant and have character and we make it easy for our members, those are all blanket statements where I would say, Okay, how are we intuitive? And what makes us intuitive different than that? How do we make our lives better for our numbers, versus maybe how the different amazing club makes their experiences different? Our form of elegance is going to be different than their form of elegance. Our form of character is going to be different than their form of character. And so, having great taste, having great experience, is like saying you’re going to do something without an adjective in front of it. And to define that, what does that mean? So when I say we have a great experience here, that is a generic saying that does not tell me anything about your club because great experience is defined so differently across different amazing clubs that we need to figure out what our special mixture and balance, and concoction of experience is here.

Derek The metaphor of golf country club attire is a super-favorite topic of mine. For a lot of the guests that we have on our podcast, one of the questions we’ll ask them before we hit the record button is what their opinion is of golf hoodies or performance hoodies in golf club attire, and we get mostly black and white. I think we have a few gray. But I think we have some who say it’s not appropriate, even though we sell them in our pro shop, because you can then wear them at home or at the gym. And then we have people who say, Yep, absolutely. So it’s how you define it and the reputation that you want.

Tucker It makes your life a lot easier when you say I’m going after these types of people, and these types of people want X, Y, and Z. And they want to dress like this, and they want to have a dining situation like this. And being able to define all those things makes it easy for you to say that person is this type of person. What doesn’t make it easy for you, as an elite club, is to say we’re going after a 42-year-old man with two kids, and he works here, and he does this. That’s not going to be an easy way for you to define what an experience looks like. Right now, in my head, I can think of two different clubs who are going after the same demographic. But that demographic is so different when you think about their desires, their wants, and their personalities. The way that they like to experience their golf game is very different. So, just because you’re going after a certain generation of people doesn’t mean that they’re all the same. And to really build that in and to understand that, it’s a mixture of saying, how does our legacy inform how we approach the next generation, and going after that? That doesn’t mean that we have to do things the way we’ve always done things, because that is where you lead to being the club that used to be the best club in the area instead of being the best in the area.

Derek There’s a famous quote that says the seven words of a dying organization are because that’s the way we’ve always done it. Back to the beginning of our conversation, in establishing your reputation, having had the success of earned some top spot or achieved a position that you worked so hard for, and then sitting back and resting on it – it’s common. I understand why it happens because you shift your focus to other things. But thinking about crafting that reputation and doing so consistently, if you’re not doing it on purpose and you’re not being intentional, you really risk losing relevance with the audience, not only your current members, but especially with tomorrow’s members. I heard you say the other day, it was a great quote, relevance is the new reputation. So those two things go hand in hand, and you can’t have one without the other. If you sit back and let other people continue to define your reputation for you, that’s going to be a long-term challenge for you.

Tucker My big takeaway for clubs is that the greatest clubs, the best boards, the greatest members don’t wait until they’re already falling behind to do something about it. They invest to stay ahead. And I think that a lot of people go, we have redone our course. We have done all these things. And I’d say, that’s great. But think about your experience from a broad sense, from an umbrella standpoint. Your experience isn’t just how good your bunkers are. That is not the experience of your club. It’s the way that you’re greeted when you walk in the door. It’s the art that you choose that goes on the walls. It’s the way that your website looks. It’s the way that your merchandise kind of invites people to wear it or not in a certain way. And so they invest to stay ahead, but they’re also staying relevant. The best clubs aren’t worried about being respected. They’re worried about being relevant. They’re worried about staying in that desirable stance, and that means different things for every club. Thinking about being relevant for this person or this person or this person is more important than being respected by someone who isn’t even ever going to be a member here. They respect the way that we build our club. Just because I want to make them feel impressed by me is different than saying I’m building a place forever for this type of person to feel like I’m at home here. I feel like I belong.

Derek For clubs that are struggling and have real challenges, branding is a different type of initiative. But for the clubs that we’re talking about, like a club who used to be perceived as the premier club in your area, and now they’ve dropped to number three, when you talk about those clubs, branding isn’t about catching up. It’s about being irreplaceable. It’s about establishing, maintaining, evolving, and growing that top spot that you worked so hard to get to. And if you haven’t stepped back and re-evaluated your brand, and I’m not even talking about your website, your basic language, but if you look at your reputation and have a good understanding, not only of how your members perceive you, but how the market perceives you, if you’ve haven’t done that in the past five years, then you’re already probably two or three years behind.

Tucker If you’re a club in that scenario and you say, I want to level up, I want to do the next thing, or if you’re an amazing club that says, I don’t want to lose this, I want to keep going, I have that ambition and that passion to keep this being a special place for a certain person, then that’s where you need to invest in a little bit of strategy, a little bit of understanding, be really aware of where you’re going, be really intentional, and be very focused on who you are. It’s about knowing who you are and doing that really well, rather than trying to adhere to people that are never going to be members to you, they’re never going to be a good fit, they’re never going to be that next generation of members that brings you to the next level.

Derek Relevance is the new reputation. That’s my takeaway. It’s an awesome one.

Tucker I like that. You should get it tattooed on yourself.

Derek That would be my first tattoo. I’m sure my wife would love that.

Tucker It won’t be your last, though.

Derek Till next time, thanks again. 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.