Caring (The Sequel) (eBook)

Valuable Insights Into Effective Club and Hospitality Management

Herb Lipsman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
186 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-9855-2 (ISBN)

Infos

Caring is about dealing with the many people issues we all face in the club and hospitality industries. It provides numerous stories and essays that illustrate proven methods for more effective leadership, thereby producing better outcomes and results. Over 45 years of experience have led to Lipsman's series of essays about 'What Matters Most' in achieving sustained success at any level of an organization. 'The people make the biggest difference' rather than facilities, equipment, or any of the other 'things' that many club or resort leaders delude themselves into devoting their attention to. This book is full of 'nuggets' to help service industry leaders make better decisions and better judgment.

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Over 45 years of experience has led to Lipsman's series of essays about "e;What Matters Most"e; in achieving sustainability at any level of an organization. "e;The people make the biggest difference"e; rather than facilities, equipment, or any of the other "e;things"e; that many club or resort leaders delude themselves into devoting their attention to. This book is full of "e;nuggets"e; to help service industry leaders make better decisions and better judgment. The overarching goal of this composition is to influence leaders at all levels of their organizations to care more for their people, ultimately leading to far greater financial success for their companies. Happy, enthusiastic, inspired employees serve the members and guests at a far higher level which leads to the customer becoming loyal to the brand, spending more, and referring more. However, common sense is not always common practice. Leaders within any organization that relies on membership for its growth and success will find many parallels to the challenges they face in getting their arms around all the people issues driving their businesses, while also building their brand appeal. Conversely, focusing primarily on the bottom line at the expense of members, guest, employees, clients or customers is a recipe for unsustainable profits at best and certain disappointment as the business never performs up to its potential.

Textauszug

Preface

I grew up in a small town in Iowa. Tennis was my life from the time I was ten years old. Bettendorf, Iowa, was not exactly a tennis mecca, but I was addicted to the sport during most of my youth. I made the Northwestern University varsity tennis team as a walk-on in 1975-76 at the age of 19. Title IX , requiring educational institutions to provide women’s sports with greater financial support, resulted in a reduction in my financial aid package at NU. This led to me leaving college to take a teaching pro job at an indoor tennis club in Dubuque, Iowa, while promising my parents I would only take a year off and then return to school.

I was very successful as a teaching pro during this first year and opted to make this my chosen profession. As with many of these small “mom-and-pop” clubs in the late 1970s, the romance for the original owners of having their own club wore off as deficit spending increased. In this case, they eventually sold to a local doctor, who was attracted to this investment for emotional reasons rather than sound business analysis.

During the ownership transition, I was offered the job of head tennis pro at the Dubuque Golf and Country Club (Dubuque, Iowa). I jumped at the chance. Nearly all of the members of this private country club could afford lessons, and I found immediate success in building my book of business and income. I earned $45,000 in my role as a teaching pro in 1979 at this seasonal position.

Ironically, the doctor who purchased the indoor club where I previously was employed decided that one club wasn’t enough, so he acquired the Cedar Rapids Racquet Club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (about 90 minutes from Dubuque). He wooed me to come back to work for him, offering me the combination position of Head Pro-General Manager, which I gladly accepted. This was how my career in club management began. I still recall my first day walking into the Cedar Rapids Racquet Club. I put on my suit, because of course I wanted to look like a manager, not a tennis bum. As I stepped into the club reception area, I saw a long-haired guy with a ponytail sitting behind the club front desk with his feet up.

He took one look at me, without removing his feet from the desk, and glanced at his watch. Then he said: “Good morning HL! I’m Doug Mackert, head of maintenance for the club. Don’t worry. I’m on the…7:07 a.m. break.” Doug was a Vietnam vet who was a handyman at the time. This was my initiation into people management. I spent the next four years as Head Pro and GM at this six-court indoor facility in a community of 150,000 people.

My club management education took off at a time when the health-club industry was in its infancy. Indoor tennis was in vogue, and metal buildings and air structures were springing up all over the country. Next came the racquetball craze. I recall converting one of our indoor tennis courts to three racquetball courts during this period.

This was also the period when group exercise first came into the mainstream. I recall one day when two energetic women marched into the club with their boom box, leotards, and leg warmers and asked if they could teach an aerobics class on one of our tennis courts. They came in at the slow time of the early afternoon, so of course I said yes. Why not earn a little extra income from an idle court? Little did I know that this same phenomenon was occurring across the world at the time.

Cedar Rapids happened to be the home of Universal Exercise Equipment. Hence, I had direct access to one of the top equipment manufacturers of the day in my back yard. So I closed in a small space (on the same former tennis court where the three racquetball courts were now located) and turned it into our first fitness studio. Voila! We were no longer a tennis club or racquet club. We were now a full-fledged multi-purpose athletic club and I was permitted by the owner to make all of these changes and additions based upon my instincts at a very early period in my career.

Managing the Cedar Rapids club was a four-year crash course in business for me, and I learned many lessons the hard way. Most importantly, I learned that cash flow was king. Try as I might, the club just couldn’t cash flow. I, like many at the time, was in a constant state of scraping to make ends meet, make payroll, and keep the lights on.

Around this time, a former tennis friend, Ed Williams, invited me to join a new start-up club management firm in Denver called Club Sports International. I jumped at the chance to take all that I had learned and get a fresh start, so I sold my interest in the Cedar Rapids Racquet Club, sold my home, and packed my personal belongings and my Golden Retriever, Player, into a U-Haul and headed for Denver. In Littleton, Colorado, I managed the Valley Racquet Club. It was a small tennis and swim club in the foothills just west of Denver, in the beautiful Ken Caryl Ranch development. It was co-owned by the bank and the company that developed the community. In essence, it was a community amenity that was privately owned and operated, but served to draw home buyers.

This provided another tremendous learning opportunity for me, now in my late 20s. Club Sports International (now Wellbridge) was one of the first national health club management companies. Unlike many of the other chains of the day, Club Sports was focused on the larger, upscale multipurpose clubs with not only exercise equipment and group exercise, but also court sports and swimming pools. I was able to “cut my teeth” at Valley Racquet Club and prove to the CSI execs that I was a good leader and manager. It was also during this time that I wrote my first book on club management, called: Caring: A guide to Excellence in Club Management.

In 1986, Club Sports was developing two new multi-purpose athletic clubs, one in San Antonio, Texas, and the other in Vail, Colorado. The CEO of Club Sports, Tom Lyneis, offered me a promotion to assume the GM role at one of these two new clubs, and I jumped at the chance to move to Vail. The Cascade Club was a 70,000 square foot multipurpose athletic club located in West Vail. Cascade Village was a small development at the base of Vail Mountain with a Westin Hotel (at the time), assorted luxury retail stores, and a movie theater.

One of my most vivid memories of managing this special club was the first big snow day shortly after the club opened in 1987. They called these “powder days” because the deep, fresh snow was like untouched powder. Well, on this particular powder day, no one from my staff showed up for work…I mean no one. I was freaked out and afraid something terrible had happened to everyone. Not only did they not show up, but none of them were answering my frantic phone calls (we didn’t have cell phones in those days). I was left to run the club entirely by myself. Fortunately, most everyone in Vail was out on the mountain enjoying the first powder day of the season so the club was empty.

Finally, around the middle of the day, my restaurant manager came waltzing in carrying his skis and covered in snow. “Hey, Herb, can you believe that powder? Isn’t it awesome?”

I demanded to know where he had been and where everyone else was. He laughed, shrugged, and said “Powder day, man. Everyone is out skiing. This is just how it is in Vail whenever there is an early season powder day. Get used to it.” Another important lesson managing people…be aware of their primary motivators. In Vail, most employees worked multiple jobs so they could ski. In other words, job second, skiing first.

In 1988, Club Sports decided to move me to their largest club in Henderson, Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas, in a new suburban community called Green Valley. The club was a 112,000 square foot, luxurious multi-purpose athletic club and was the crown jewel for American Nevada, the developer of the community. This club, though a for-profit entity, was really designed to draw home buyers to the Green Valley community and it worked beautifully in serving this function.

I remember walking into the club the first day and seeing all the staff looking at me suspiciously because my predecessor had just been fired that day. In other words, my recruitment had taken place before they let the other guy go and he was beloved by many on the staff. So here was the new guy stepping in, and everyone was scared for their jobs and angry at how things had gone down. I had my work cut out for me winning everyone over.

Fortunately, I had an ally, Frank Arandt, who was the Athletic Director at the time. Although he was personally a close friend of the previous GM and intended to move back to Colorado upon my arrival, he did me one huge favor: He convinced Greg and Natalie Nielson to hang on and give me a chance before deciding whether to leave or stay. Greg was on Frank’s fitness staff, and Natalie ran the front desk. Greg became my closest ally for the next 25 years, and we became lifelong friends. Greg also served as my boss for three years during my time managing Golf Club of Houston from 2013 to 2016.

Green Valley, though located minutes from the infamous Las Vegas Strip, was typical suburbia, USA. In fact, while living there, PM Magazine, a local program on life in Las Vegas, did a feature story on our family while playing the Leave It to Beaver theme song. It seemed like the perfect place to raise our young children because we lived just a few minutes from this family-friendly club.

Managing Green Valley Athletic Club forced me to become a much more well-rounded-manager and leader. It was such a large operation that I had to hone my time management skills...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.9.2021
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft
• ISBN-10: 1-0983-9855-6 / 1098398556
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0983-9855-2 / 9781098398552