EPISODE 82

Derek Since then, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Jackie speak. I have my own personal autographed copy of her book right here. We’ve also collaborated with Jackie on her new brand, which we’ll talk about here in a little bit. So I think between getting Jackie’s insight on what it’s like to go through the branding process and what it is that is so critical to the team member side, we’re excited for today’s conversation. Welcome, and thanks for joining us.

Jackie Thank you. I’m delighted to be here and I’m so excited too.

Derek You know, before we dig in, Jackie, what’s your take on hoodies and golf clothing? I noticed Tucker and I both have the casual golf hoodie going on.

Jackie You guys are pulling it off. You guys are all alright.

Tucker Good, good. I was worried.

Derek It’s a risky question. Yeah, definitely. Jackie, you’ve had an incredible career as a resource over decades, specifically within the private club industry. You were editor in chief at the Private Club Advisor for over a decade. Like I said, you’ve co-authored a book. You’ve contributed to other books. That’s not doing who you are and what you do justice. Give us a little bit more about what you’re doing now and what those responsibilities look like – a little bit about what drives you.

Jackie So I grew up, so to speak, in the club world, working in clubs. I was a clubhouse manager, a membership director, kind of a culture czar, so to speak. And then always had a passion for education and training. And so, when the opportunity for the Private Club Advisor came along, it was a way for me to be very connected to the private club industry. But yet, not have to, you know, wear the pantyhose and the high heels and work the nights and the weekends, right? But I was educating the industry, and I really enjoyed it and really loved it. And the book sort of stemmed from that sort of passion for educating and helping other people. And so today, I’ve transitioned over to Notable with the help of Sussner a little bit here. We’re gonna dig into that. So I am providing education for club executives. And so Notable is a monthly publication that has concise, customized content that’s relevant and helpful for the executives in clubs.

Tucker I wanna dive into both sides of that at some point in this conversation. But I want to start with your experience in-house, with a club, working with all of the people and building that forward. We talk a lot about brand and storytelling and experience. What’s your sense of how the culture of a club and its brand and the way that it conveys itself pours into how employees think about the work that they do every single day?

Jackie It’s so important. That piece right there, Tucker, is probably literally like the crux of people first. That’s really what matters to people. It’s not necessarily about the job they’re doing. In fact, one of the studies that I like to reference usually when we’re speaking, Derek, you might have heard it, is that job satisfaction is really about the way people feel when they’re at work. It’s not about what they’re doing. So what that means is it doesn’t matter if you’re scrubbing toilets, or you’re mowing greens, or you’re washing dishes in a hot, smelly kitchen. It’s about the way you feel when you’re there. And that comes down to culture, and that’s your brand, right? Because I think that’s all about who you are, how you make others feel. And that’s such a big piece. So it’s so connected.

Derek If I remember, you had a line that said, It’s not just how you feel when you’re there, it’s how you feel when you’ve gone home, how that stays with you. When you look at all the clubs you’ve spoken to and worked with, how many of them have established core values and cultural guidelines?

Jackie It’s getting better. This answer is going to be all over the board. You’re going to be like, that wasn’t really an answer. But here’s what I would say: some clubs are doing an amazing job, like an amazing job. But that’s probably like this many clubs, like a few. And then there’s a solid chunk that are probably doing something that are much better than they were five and 10 years ago, and they’re making progress, but have a ways to go. And then some clubs are probably back, maybe in the 90s kind of that mode of operation of where they don’t really get it, they’re not really doing it, they don’t really care about it. So I think it’s really across the board. But I think educating people and really kind of helping with that awareness is so important because it’s not as hard as they think. It just takes some prioritizing and some shifting.

Tucker That prioritizing really resonates with me when we talk about the work that we do from a brand lens and seeing that most leadership within clubs want to talk about how this affects members. And that’s a really, really important part of everything that we do. And probably everything that you do. Like the end user is the member. But to us, we look at brand as that double-sided problem. The brand can only really be lived and come to life for members if the staff love it and feel it and understand it. And I feel like that’s the same way within culture.

Jackie You just hit the nail on the head, Tucker, because for years in the club industry, the members are the most important thing. And there are still people who believe that. There are still clubs that say our members are the most important thing. And yes, you can’t have a club without members. Okay,  I totally get it. They are important. But we believe that when you truly shift to prioritizing your employees first, and you invest in them and you care about them and you create this culture where employees are engaged and they’re happy and they’re loyal and they’re having fun and they’re giving their best, guess what? Your member experience is going to be off the charts. It’s going to be amazing. But if you have people who are showing up and punching the clock and not really happy to be there and don’t really care, it doesn’t matter how great your facilities are at your club. It’s never going to be great.

Derek What’s the challenge for the leadership inside a club? How do they get started? Thinking about motivating employees and having some of these tools, you said it’s not that hard. But I think, at first glance, it can seem overwhelming. What’s getting in the way or currently the biggest challenge in keeping private clubs from embracing this?

Jackie So many things. First and foremost, it’s how you make people feel. And so, if your employees are feeling overwhelmed and stressed and frustrated and undervalued and underappreciated, that’s where you have to start. And that’s the biggest thing. So I think it can be a simple place of saying like, Hey, how are you feeling? Or what do you like about working here? Or what would you change? Just having some of those conversations and can you fix everything overnight? No, but can you pick one thing and start working on that? Absolutely. And I think that’s where maybe clubs don’t even know where to start, Derek, right? It is overwhelming. But I think just having some conversation, talking to the employees you value the most, your rock stars as we call them, and asking them, Hey, what could you do to change some things? And the kicker is that not everything costs money. It really doesn’t. It could be a simple thing like, Hey, I wish the server station was on this side because that would cut out 27 steps every time we have to walk to the kitchen. Can we achieve that? Probably. I mean those kinds of things. So I think that’s a big piece of it. And then I know club managers and people that work in clubs are so busy. It’s like time is the thing, right? And so I think some of that overwhelm comes from people just being really busy and just struggling to get through the day, and then they think, oh, I have to do one more thing. Like seriously, I don’t have time for this other stuff. And really what happens is when you prioritize that other stuff and you take the time to do it, everything else gets a little bit lighter because your people become more engaged, and they’re taking things off your plate. So it’s not as hard as it seems, but yeah, hopefully I kind of answered your question.

Derek Last thought on this, I know that your husband Three is a general manager, a long time general manager of several country clubs, and he’s the co-author of the book with you and shares the passion for this people first mission of yours. Just out of curiosity, in a ballpark, when he comes into a club and realizes that they are not leveraging their brand to motivate their internal team, and he takes them through that process, what’s a general timeframe? How long does it take to start to see just some of those initial positive results and the impact from taking some of these steps?

Jackie It really can be kind of immediate. He’s taken over clubs before, and you could feel a difference in a matter of a couple of weeks because people just see that he has a different approach, or he’s looking at things differently, or he’s asking for their opinion, or he’s asking for their feedback. And it’s amazing how that changes the way someone shows up at work. When you know somebody is asking you for your input or wants your knowledge or your experience, and they’re going to listen to you, that’s a game changer. So, on a small scale, it can take a couple of weeks, but on a bigger scale, we know the whole thing can take years, a couple of years, to really get everybody on board.

Derek Let’s shift to Notable, a recently launched brand-new publication that you founded, you’re the editor of, and you’ve now just gone through a branding process yourself. For people who haven’t experienced this new publication yet, the primary brand color is orange. You’ll notice that Jackie is very proudly living her brand herself today. Thinking about your experience in the private club industry, who all have brands, internal and external, whether they’re using them or not, and whether the reputation of their brand is helping them or hurting them. You’ve now gone through this process, and you’ve seen the steps that go into being thoughtful in creating a brand all the way down to the name, of what the name represents, to what the story is, to what the purpose, the differentiator, the positioning, that’s a lot. So you’ve just come out of the other side of that. Thinking about a club that is maybe considering their brand, what advice or insights might you share as they think about whether this is something they should even think about or not?

Jackie Okay, first of all, it was so fun. It was so much fun. And your team is amazing. You guys just knocked it out of the park and were so much fun to work with. And I felt like we collaborated really well. So that was amazing. But it’s a process, certainly. And when I was prepping for this call, it was really funny because I’m like, the private club advisor was kind of an old school club. It was a very old-school newsletter that had value, certainly, and great content, but it didn’t look and feel the way people today expect it to look and feel. And so with creating Notable, we had that opportunity to say, Hey, let’s dream the dream. What would this really look like? And yes, is the content still great? It is. But it’s easier to digest. There are links that you can click on. It’s a digital publication versus printed. So it’s easier to store it and search it and share it with your board or share it with your staff or whatever it might be. And so it was very similar to what a club may be experiencing. And there can be some fear there in what will the members think, what will they say. But I think there’s a lot of positive that comes out of it and more positive than negative, honestly, because just the clarity of being in the creativity that can come along with it is so empowering and enlightening. And I will tell you guys, and this is a toot toot to Sussner’s horn here, but everybody says, I love the way it looks. I love Notable. And that makes me feel good because people love the Private Club Advisor also, but that really speaks to, Hey, some change can be really good. It’s an invigorating life. So I don’t know, ask more.

Tucker I think it becomes really intriguing that parallel of your experience going through that, you have a history with private clubs. You can kind of see when we work with a club, where that moves and your balance of taking the roots of what that was, the Private Club Advisor, we didn’t take it and say, this doesn’t work. Completely restart. What we did was say, What are the best parts of this? And how do we move it forward to today? And how do we move it forward to a vision of the future to set that new course? And to me, it was exciting. We were just talking about this yesterday, me and one of our designers, Nick. We love Notable because of how seamless it feels, even though it’s almost the same content as the content before. And so you go into this and go, Wow, for a club shifting, they can move forward using the same general experiences that they’re offering members, using the same type of culture and using all that stuff and saying, How do we tell this story in a new way? And how do we move this forward without destroying what was so great about it in the past? And I think that that’s such a good parallel. I’m glad that you brought that up.

Jackie And it’s so easy. Honestly, I know we joked about my brand sweater here, but it’s so easy because now that I have the color code, everything is the same color. And I have the font family. So, everything’s in the font family. Or I know, here’s my tagline. Here’s what it is. And for me, that clarity is so awesome. And when I think about how that can help a club when you have so many people in so many departments and so much going on all the time, it’s pretty likely that it’s not very consistent. I mean, let’s be honest, right? And so just clarifying that can be incredible.

Derek I think one of the things that makes it easy now is because of the work that you did upfront. You made a couple of very key choices. We did a little bit of research with your help so that we knew. You decided what this publication was about, how it was unique and different from all the other publications that are in the industry, and how that was relevant specific to your target audience. So, at its core, you have your own set of values. You have your own vision for this publication, and you chose it. Then, our job became helping craft the story of all of that upfront hard work so that now it can become easy to tell that ongoing story. We see clubs that haven’t recognized that they need to take that first step and they’re floundering, and they don’t even realize they’re floundering because they haven’t made the decision to decide who we are, who we’re for, and what is unique about us. Even if what’s unique about them is just simply the cultural makeup of the membership that they have, so that then somebody can help them tell that story, why is that so hard for clubs to grasp?

Jackie I think it’s because, OK, A, everyone’s busy. B, branding isn’t something that was necessarily around when we grew up. I mean, like it was, but it wasn’t. And so I think it’s sort of a foreign concept to people. And also, I think, maybe this is the trifecta of the problem here, but also, I think a lot of people think their club is unique and different as it is. I mean, our joke is like, I know you think your club is different, but it’s really not that different. Everybody’s club is kind of the same thing, but I think people kind of get hung up in that, like, oh, well, we’re already a club, and we’re unique and different. So that is our brand. But I just think there’s so much everybody listening. They can make it so much easier. It can be so much easier when you just know this is how we’re going to operate. This is our story. This is our brand color. This is what the thing is. And the big piece there, Derek, is consistency creates credibility. And credibility creates trust. And so, by having these consistent things, you’re ultimately raising your members’ trust in you. Isn’t that really the goal? I mean, that’s kind of what we’re all looking for.

Derek Shout out to Cameron. I think Jackie just had an awesome snippet right there. Let’s see that on social media here shortly. That was awesome. Well said.

Tucker Jackie, I would send you to every club around the country because I think you do a great job talking about what the importance is of this and that that refinement of is every club unique on paper? No, they’re not. You look at amenities, you look at offerings, you look at all of this stuff. If you were to tell a normal person to differentiate a club who maybe is not a member or any of that, they couldn’t. They just wouldn’t know how to. We work with a lot of members who say, Yeah, this place is so different. Over the last five years, I’ve learned how different this is. And my thought is always, wouldn’t you want people to feel that right away before they even become members? Don’t you want them to know how special this place is before they even agree to become members there? And that’s really what we’re trying to accomplish even from an employment side. If you’re a prospective employee, you go, Well, all these clubs kind of look the same, they kind of feel the same, they kind of act the same. What makes each one special, and which one different? I think that really echoes the importance of branding, not only from a member side, but really an employee side, to tell them who we are and what makes this place different.

Jackie And that is such a key piece in retention. A huge thing for employers today is retaining people. And again, Derek, you heard us say this in our speeches, but when there are opportunities, like Burger King is paying a $1,500 sign-on bonus. Okay, well, when I get frustrated at my job, I’m gonna go work at Burger King because I can get a $1,500 sign-on bonus. So, the grass is always greener, right? There are these shiny opportunities everywhere. And so for clubs to be able to really retain people or attract people, those are the things that matter. Like, who really are we? And why are we special and different? And why should you want to work here? Maybe when you don’t even get the $1,500 sign-on bonus, but why do you want to be here over Burger King? And here’s why. And I think that’s a key piece that so many clubs are missing out on. It can be so simple, and it can help in so many ways.

Tucker And we use brand as a tool for change management for leaders too. When we make decisions from a leadership side, it makes it easier to go back and say, here’s why we’re doing this. And this makes sense for us because here is what we’re trying to accomplish. And I think when we work with club staff, they’re more like, I just want communication and transparency. And the brand, from an overarching lens, really provides that transparency around why and how we’re making decisions rather than because I just think it’s good. And that really can build that trust from an employment side.

Derek There’s a chicken and egg conversation that we have sometimes. Do you start with the team and the staff and the membership that you have and then create a brand around that? Or do you take a step back and be really intentional with the culture and the direction of the type of club and the type of members and the type of staff that you want, and then grow that and foster that? That’s a little harder, but I think that’s the one that ultimately is more successful. Imagine having all of your staff telling the story that you want them to tell to their colleagues and to be recruiting more right-fit team members to your club for you.

Jackie That’s an awesome chicken and egg because as you’re explaining it, I’m going, Oh, yeah, I can see both sides. One of the things when I was a clubhouse manager that I would do when I would bring on new staff, especially when our club was in a transition, and maybe the culture wasn’t the way that we wanted, or we had a lot of changes to make, I would say to them, and it was sort of an aspirational interview, Hey, here’s where we are right now. We want to be here, but we’re not there yet. And so every day we need your help. We want to get better and better. So we want you to know we might have frustrating days and things aren’t going to be perfect starting off, but we know this is where we want to go. So we need your help to get there. And it’s kind of that almost like inspiring and motivational thing where people are like, Oh, I want to be part of it. But it was also some clarity and some transparency and really saying, Hey, we get we’re not perfect today. We’re not really where we want to be. But we need your help. And I think so often people just sort of go, Oh, this is the way we do it here. You know, they sink to where you are. And so I love that idea, Derek. I think that probably is, in the long term, the better route where you create it and you draft what you want it to really be. And then you build to that with members and employees and everything.

Tucker What about the clubs and the executives at those clubs that are struggling to define where we want to be? We work with clubs all the time that say we know where we’re at just isn’t right, but we don’t know where we want to be. And how do you overcome that challenge?

Jackie Education and also kind of looking at what other clubs in the country are doing, frankly, not even in the country but across the world are doing because so many are evolving and there’s a lot of clubs that are being created that are not the traditional club. I mean, they’re very different. And I think that can be really exciting and inspiring and uplifting for clubs that say, We are not really where we want to be, but we don’t really know where we want to go. It’s like look and do some research. I mean, that’s where you guys were so awesome. You really helped me conduct the research to say what’s possible. And then we could say, Um, that’s possible – I don’t really want to go that way. This is possible; let’s go that route. And I think clubs can do the same thing.

Derek More and more clubs are embracing this. They’re recognizing it. I think they’re becoming younger. Well, I don’t think, I know that statistically they’re becoming younger across the board, across the country. And there’s an energy and a desire for choice. People want to know what their options are and what the differences are, and they’re excited. They have the means, they have the time. We just need to give them the story that helps them know that our place might be the right one for them.

Jackie I think today people want easy. I mean, in my life, I have two little kids, I’m busy, I have a busy husband, I want easy. So I don’t want to have to go look up and research what’s going on, or I don’t wanna have to go through like a four-step process to make a reservation or whatever it is. So when we kind of think about how we’re communicating with our members or how we’re teaching them to use our club, we have to take out all the heavy lifting and make that as simple and as easy for people to use as possible. And I think that’s another key piece of really telling our story and our branding and, again, the consistency that this is really tying together here. If we want to create that experience, then that’s really where it starts.

Derek Jackie, it’s been a pleasure to have you. Before we go, tell people how often Notable comes out and where can they subscribe.

Jackie So Notable is a monthly publication, www.clubnotable.com. And check it out. You can click learn more and subscribe. You can learn more about me there. And I hope you check it out. It’s been really fun. And I’m so grateful for Sussner’s expertise.

Derek Appreciate it. Thanks, Jackie.

Tucker Thank you.

Jackie I really enjoyed it.

Derek Sussner is a branding firm specializing in helping companies make a meaningful mark, guiding marketing leaders who are working to make their brand communicate better, stand out, and engage audiences to grow their business. For more on Sussner, visit Sussner.com.