John Schultz, CEO of Club Leadership Alliance, has been around the block - a bunch of times! Prior to his current role, he was the GM for over 20 years at Carmel Country Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. Taking over a club with financial challenges, he put his flywheel in motion and turned the club around with more than 60 million dollars in capital improvements in 2 decades.

Balancing the shifting demographics of new, younger members with longstanding members, facilitating town hall discussions, managing the conflict and debate that goes with member assessments and day to day communication challenges that are hand-in-hand with running a club, Schultz has done it all. John Schultz built his career at Carmel Country Club with more than 20 years of service AFTER doing 9 years of military service as a United States Marine. There were probably some days as a Staff Sergeant in the Marines that were easier than his days as a General Manager, but that’s another story! Needless to say, when you stay in one place for over 20 years, you did a lot of things right and you also dealt with a lot of change. 

Today, John Schultz is the CEO of the Club Leadership Alliance which is a collaborative effort between The McMahon Group, Club Benchmarking and Kopplin, Kuelber and Wallace. Their mission is to aggregate the best practices they’ve seen from the hundreds of clubs that they work with and then help clubs take advantage of the knowledge they have gleaned. What better guest could we have for an episode on change management and managing shifting club demographics and dynamics?

Episode Notes

• 4:29 - John talks about taking over a club that was experiencing financial distress early in his career.
• 9:03 - John talks about how he approached relationships with the board.
• 11:18 - John talks about how the "Flywheel Approach" started to help grow the club with the right members.
• 13:00 - John shares his most challenging initiative and how he handled it.
• 15:47 - Building trust again is difficulty. John talks about how he approached it while at Carmel CC.
• 22:02 - Member unrest led to some tense times in his leadership and John talks about how he handled a group of members who opposed the club's direction.
• 26:29 - In 2016 the member demographics began to change at Carmel and he talks about how he handled the influx of younger members with the established legacy members.
• 30:31 - Words of wisdom from John on how to handle bridging the generation gap between members.

Episode Transcript

Ed Heil [00:00:01 ] You are listening to Crush and Club Marketing, a podcast for progressive club leaders ready to increase their club's revenue. Time for change begins right now.

John Schultz, CEO of the Club Leadership Alliance, has been around the block. Prior to his current role, he was the GM for over 20 years at Carmel Country Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, taking over a club with financial challenges. He put his flywheel emotion and turned the club around with more than $60 million in capital improvements in two decades. In this episode, John Schultz shares his stories of change management, navigating, shifting club demographics, member assessments and of course, member conflict.

Balancing the evolving needs and goals of private clubs, including the shifting demographics of new, younger members with long standing members, town halls, conflict and debate that goes with assessments and day to day communication challenges that frankly, just go hand in hand with running or leading any business, including clubs, are endless, all you club leaders know. Our guest in this episode, John Schultz, has been there and done that. He built his career at Carmel Country Club with more than 20 years of service, after doing nine years of military service, which I'm sure there were some days in the Marines that might have been easier than his days as a GM, but that's probably another story for another podcast. Needless to say, when you stay in one place for over two decades, you do a lot of things right, and you also had to deal with a lot of change. Today, Schultz is the CEO of the Club Leadership Alliance, and it is a collaborative effort between The McMahon Group, Club Benchmarking and Kaplan, Keebler, and Wallace. Their mission is to aggregate the best practices they've seen from the hundreds of clubs that they work with, and then help clubs take advantage of the knowledge they have gleaned. What better guest could we have for an episode on change management and managing shifting club demographics and dynamics? Thanks so much for joining me today. 

 

John Schultz [00:02:13 ] Glad to be here. Appreciate being invited. 

 

Ed Heil [00:02:15 ] Well, this is a I know this is an important topic for a lot of people. Leadership positions at clubs, and and man, with your your history at Carmel Country Club for almost 20 years. I guess the first question I have for you is, what is the key to making a long run like that at one place? 

 

John Schultz [00:02:37 ] Yeah, 20 years is quite a while. And. And it's not like I had one plan going in and trying to move through and only executed to this one set of objectives and priorities. It's constantly moving. It's constantly changing. It's listening and seeing what's going on. It's feeling where the industry's going, what what people and members are looking for and the experience that they that they want from their club. And and that changed in many times through the dynamic. When I, when I first got to Carmel, they were in financial distress and the membership was, sliding. There was some debt and we really had to analyze where the club needed to go and and take advantage of those things. But also it changes, and about every five years we would take a new look out to to the future and see what was what were the opportunities and how could we, take advantage of where we were in the Charlotte market and, and what would make people, the most satisfied and, and engage at their club. 

 

Ed Heil [00:03:48 ] This kind of reminds me of a conversation I had with John McFadden, last year from the Union League, Philadelphia, where he came into a club that was, you know, a little financially distressed, and, and hearing what you're saying, there's a the two words that came into my mind are brave leadership. And, you know, can you just talk about what that was like to walk into a situation where you're relatively new, unproven, and you're going to lead out of this, you know, kind of challenging times? Can you maybe just speak to what the mindset is and what it was within you that that gave you that ability to do that? 

 

John Schultz [00:04:29 ] Sure. And Jeff is an inspiration to all of us and a, you know, visionary that jumps out there. And, and I hope to just be a portion of that. So, you know, when you look at the opportunities and the areas and what you can get done in a reasonably, financial responsible way and, and see where the club's going, I tend to look not necessarily, at the clubs next door and what, what they're doing, in our backyard because you get too homogenous when, you're only staying within that, constraint. And what are what are the resorts doing? What are the hotels doing? What are people doing? And the better restaurants and, and that kind of thing. So looking for those opportunities outside just "clubdom". And I have to admit I stole many, many ideas from many clubs around and repurpose them. And, and put my name on it and took credit for it and and and enjoyed the success from some of those. But it was outside the industry that really brings more opportunity. And, you know, the hotels resorts tend to be further ahead of us, and many in the Florida market, of clubs have to be more progressive in, in what they're providing. The competition is, much more, tighter down that way. So, so if you look at those areas and seek out what, what is going to be the next, the next big thing and, and try to take advantage of those and be on the front end. Carmel, was more open to, being progressive in the space because we weren't as traditional and we weren't as classic as some of the other clubs around. So we had the opportunity to take advantage of that, be a little risky and not a lot of risk, but some that would allow us to build, the, the, resort style pool and have social, engagement that was not typical. And so that social thing is really the first initial, area that I started at Carmel was to take advantage of the events and club functions and expand those things so that the, the members that lived around the, the club felt like that was their outlet. And to build that up was really our first, issue. We couldn't build anything because we had debt. So, I was able to really get the momentum going and it became their home away from home, as everyone likes to say. And the membership growth started, when we announced the pool, the year we announced the pool, put out the pretty drawings with the, you know, the tiki bars and all the rest of it, we brought in 131 new members, and paid for the pool in. Just the one year, of initiation. 

 

Ed Heil [00:07:39 ] What year was that? 

 

John Schultz [00:07:40 ] That was 2008. Okay. And so, right. 

 

Ed Heil [00:07:43 ] Before the the downturn. Yeah. 

 

John Schultz [00:07:45 ] Well, this was seven eight. Yeah. And then that roll that that success then rolled into the next big thing. So we proved that we cou