I think the thing that people really get caught up on is feeling like they
have to close a deal before the eighteenth hole's done. So what happens in
that scenario is you end up just pitching for four hours, and so the
people that you're with, they're not gonna want to go out and play golf
with you again. If that's what happens. Everybody sat through a time shared
presentation and you know, maybe you get a good gift at the end,
and the gift and around the golf is getting out of the office and playing
golf. But if you're just pitched to for a constant four hours and you're
not interested in what the person is trying to sell you, it's really easy
to just get disconnected and then just leave that round with that taste in your
mouth. What we always tell people is you need to leave your playing partners
on the eighteenth hole with an impression of who you are and what you're about
and having that strong relationship. It's all about building a relationship and not necessarily
about closing a deal when you're doing business on the golf course. Hi,
this is run sobody from Westchester, Ohio, and I play at four Bridges
country Club. This is Golf Smarter number nine fifteen, how to increase your
bottom line on the golf course with Fairways RM and Joe Canfield. This is
Golf Smarter sharing stories, tips and insights from great golf minds to help you
lower your score and raise your golf IQ. Here's your host, Fred Green.
Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast show. Hey, Fred, thanks for
having me appreciate it. This is going to be an interesting conversation because I've
always loved the idea of how do we do business on the golf course?
And you know, because there's there's myths about doing business on the golf's course.
And I think that you're going to help us to, you know,
identify those myths and debunk them or support them. Right. Yeah, So
tell me about your business fairways RM. Yeah. So I I went to
business school about ten years ago, and while I was there, I was
playing around to golf with a couple of my classmates and about the fourth tea,
I looked at him and I said, why don't we have a one
credit hour course that teaches us You always hear, you know, business happens
on the golf course. Why doesn't there anything in business school anywhere that teaches
you actually how to do it, and so that that thought had been in
my mind for a while. And you know, fast forward, I got
into a job doing partnerships and sports and on the university side of things,
and I started playing golf with partners, and I had no idea what I
was doing. And so I'm like, Okay, there's got to be somebody
out here who's put something out that has, you know, put some to
a framework together, or at least has tips and tricks, And as far
as I could tell, there was nothing there. So over the last eight
years, it's kind of crazy to me that nobody's been able to, as
far as I can tell, put the two together. So over the last
eight years, while I've been out playing golf with partners and meeting people who
have been successful at doing it for business, I've just asked a ton of
questions. I've been reading up on how you build relationships, both on you
know, the romantic side and the business side, and figuring out, okay,
what works and where, and then going out on the golf course and
doing it myself. And so here we are, eight years later. I've
built the training that I take people through that teaches you really how to how
to do it, and so it's it's been a lot of fun. I've
been playing the game since I was I was seven years old, and you
would think with that kind of experience, I would you'd be a natural fit
to do it for business, but it really wasn't. And it's it's definitely
a skill that can be taught and needs to be learned by a lot of
people. Just fascinating that you identified it, that you realized. I love
the idea of a one credit course at least one credit, but is that
come out of that come out of the physical education department or does that come
out of the business school? Right right? My original thought was always,
okay, you do you know, half in the classroom talking through etiquette and
how and when to bring up business and things like that, and then the
other half is actually going out and learning how to play. I always tell
people, and I think one of the themes of your podcast is is really
you don't have to be great at golf to have fun of doing it right.
And I always tell people too, because that's one of the things that
people kind of miss as they always will say, well, I'm not good
at golf. I don't want to go out and embarrass myself in front of
somebody. I don't know that fell worth And that's fine, that's a legitimate
concern. But at the same time, it's like, nobody's good at golf.
You know, even the pays hit that shots all the time. No
one's good at It's it's an impossible game. So I say that to people
all the time. They oh, I suck at golf. I said,
everybody sucks. Everybody. I mean even the best players in the world are
complaining about a shot they missed. Exactly. It's at to tell people,
I'm like, yeah, you want to at least be competent. You want
to be able to get a ball on the green within six to seven shots.
And I've been teaching a little bit of golf here and there, and
so that's something that I've tried to bring into it as well, to not
only make it a little bit more fun for people to go through a corporate
training, but to help you build that skill because really part of doing business
on the course is having confidence, right, being confident in your ability to
have a good conversation. And if you're focused on how bad you are at
the game or how terrible you're playing, You're not going to have those kinds
of conversations and the level of conversation that you need to have to start building
strong relationships. Right, But what do you have when you started this company?
How long have you had this company? Now? I've been running it
for about a year now. We've been doing testing and all that kind of
stuff. We launched an online course just about a month ago. But we've
been doing corporate trainings for about a year now. But you have a job
as you're starting to do this or this is your life right now? No,
I still work full time. I do partnerships and development for the University
of Utah. But I mean, ideal scenario, I'd love to jump in
to do this and teach people how to way golf. And I do think
it's a marketable skill. I Mean one of the crazy things was, you
know, I was coming out at business school. I'm a twenty three year
old kid, and I'm the only one who played golf in the office,
and so all of a sudden, I find myself playing golf with people that
are you know, the head of marketing of multinational corporations and CEOs of companies
in the valley. And you know, I'm sitting here as a twenty three
year old kid, and the only reason I'm in that scenario is because I
played golf, right, And so it's something that I wish more people would
pick up when they were younger, right, and they were able to use
it. And people ask me it wasn't really a marketable skill. I go,
well, yeah, I think it is. You know, I've been
able to get to where I'm at in my career because I've been able to
use it and have had an audience with people that I would never have in
any other scenario. And you've probably played some pretty fun courses. We've we've
been some fun places, yeah, we've and you get to write it all
off. So yeah, exactly where's the downside here? Right? I mean,
that's the dream. I Mean one of the things that I've been fortunate
to do. One of the corporate trainings we did was actually up abandoned dudes,
and that was that was incredible. I'd never been before, and I
mean I think you could spend you know, years there and not get bored
that places is incredible. But taking a partner up and getting letting them experience
that and then having that experience with somebody else, Like, that's a relationship
that's never going to die, even if they move on to another another company
or whatever, Like, you're always going to have that connection once you experience
something like that. Oh especially if you have a budget to do that and
someone else is paying for it, Oh my god. They Yeah, if
it was on their diamond, mightbe not so much, but they would still
be some good memories there for sure. No no, no, no,
You're you're trying to get clients. You're trying to close business, so you
got to take care of that. But still absolutely go into places like Bandon
Dunes as people. People do it all the time. I mean, it's
obviously it's high ticket type sales. It's relationship based sales. It's not necessarily
you're selling them a software package or something like that. You know, it's
the industries are typically you know, banking, insurance and kind of high end
types of you know, vcs are taking people out. There's a few groups
here in Utah where I'm based that you know, they load up people on
a private jet, they go fly out, they play golf for a couple
of days, and then they come back and that's how they that's how they
generate their business. And I think it's lost on people like how valuable that
actually is. They see the cost of it and they see the expense,
but they don't understand the value of having strong relationships and how much easier it
is to do business with people that you like and you've already built that relationship
with right, Yeah, exactly. My son works in private equity and so
he gets taken to a lot of great courses and every year they've got a
group of like twenty eight guys that goes up to hand. Yeah, that's
incredible. Yeah, and it's like, oh, okay, I mean,
like he had an injury, so he hasn't played in a number of months,
but right before the injury, he was in Ireland with nine guys,
you know, I mean, and so and I'm just like playing munis locally
and it's like yeah, no, Dad, I'm not. No, it's
not the same thing. Yeah, not the same thing. Not the same
thing. No. So, when you talk about teaching golf, are you
talking about the mechanics of golf? Are you just talking about doing business the
mechanics of doing business on the golf course. So yeah, it's interesting enough.
You know, the original idea that I had was to combine both because
I do believe that you need to be confident enough in your golf game that
that's not what you're worried about when you're out playing, you're able to play.
And so I'm doing both. So what a typical training looks like from
us is we spend two hours in the office with you. We talk through
when we go through a number of exercises. We work on understanding the value
that you per bring to a round a golf because once you've understand the value
that you can deliver to somebody else, that confidence level just shoots up.
Right. You already know, okay, great, I know exactly what I
have to deliver. My invite's going to be succinct, it's going to be
great. I know I know how to get somebody out of the course.
And then we talk through golf etiquette, because that's another big excuse people use,
is I'm not good at golf, and then I don't want to embarrass
myself by breaking some of these unwritten rules. And everybody who's in golf knows
that, you know, etiquette is subjective, and some people do things front
than others, and so we cover a lot of that stuff. And then
the next day what we do is we go out on the course and I
teach a swing lesson. We go through everything from putting. We start with
putting, go to chipping, pitching, full swing, and then drivers.
And then we sit down and we have lunch, and then I saren you
lose, to go play eighteen holes and put into practice what we talked about
the day before. Fascinating. Fascinating. You know, you talked about how
golf is supposed to be fun even if you you're awful. Let me just
say, golf gets more fun the better you get, so it's worth the
effort if you have the right attitude. Though, if you had a bad
attitude, it's never fun. It's never fun. And if you keep blaming
yourself, it's like light not up. Okay. I told guy, a
friend of mine, we were playing a week or so ago, and he
started yelling at himself, and I said, don't talk to my friend that
way. I listen, we're gonna take a time out. We're gonna be
back right after this. Joe, there's gotta be a number of rules and
myths about doing business. On the golf course. Do you have your own
list, do you have your own way of approaching those things? Yeah,
I think the thing that people really get caught up on is feeling like they
have to close a deal before the eighteenth holes done right, And so what
happens in that scenario is you end up just pitching for four hours and so
the people that you're with and they're not gonna want to go out and play
golf with you again. If that's what happens, everybody sat through a Timeshare
presentation and you know, maybe you get a good gift at the end,
and the gift and around the golf is getting out of the office and playing
golf. But if you're just pitched to for constant four hours and you're not
interested in what the person is trying to sell you, it's really easy to
just get disconnected and then just leave that round with that taste in your mouth.
What we always tell people is you need to leave your playing partners on
the eighteenth hole with an impression of who you are and what you're about and
having that strong relationship. Right. It's all about building a relationship and not
necessarily about closing a deal when you're doing business on the golf course. That
comes after. Right, We really believe in the value of relationships and the
power of building strong relationships because at the end of the day, we do
business with people that we like. It's whether that's right or wrong. That's
how it happens. Right, you need something done, you want to be
able to pick up the phone and call somebody that you know is going to
be able to get it done for you. So what we teach is how
to emulate those values through around a golf that's going to leave that person feeling
like, Okay, I need something done. I'm going to pick up the
phone and I'm gonna I'm gonna call Fred because I know that he's gonna be
able to get it done for me. So that's one of the big ones
is it's not about closing deals, it's about building relationships and then the deal
comes later. And what about That's awesome? That is absolutely fabulous. I
love that. What about Somebody once told me in an early episode that you
don't do business on the golf course, which is basically you're saying, is
you learn about whether or not you want to do business with that person absolutely
on the golf course. Because of character, and golf exposes character. Yeah,
I actually I just I just posted this the other day on our LinkedIn
page. But there's a stat that was that came out. It was a
study done. It was as a survey sent out to Fortune five hundred CEOs,
and fifty four percent of them said that they believe that the way someone
conducts themselves on the golf course is the same way that they conduct themselves in
business. Yeah. I want to say that the other forty six percent don't
want to admit that their poor behaviors affecting their bottom line. And so that's
so true. You learned so much about somebody, and so in a scenario
that you're not going to get in a conference room, right, you've broken
down so many barriers through golf. That's a more casual setting, Like you're
going to have more conversations based around personal things. It's not all business.
And you're sitting on the same playing field too, right, Like there's always
you're taught in negotiation courses in business school that where you sit in the room
is important. On a golf course, Yeah, you can set up the
golf carts in the right way and you can drive and there's a few little
nuances that you can do there, but at the end of the day,
you're both playing the same course. Yeah. What about gambling on the golf
course with somebody you're trying to do business with. Yes, gambling always enters
the conversation when you're playing golf, right. Yeah, I'm a big fan
of playing five bucks, you know, never big money. I you know,
if you're and not jumping into it right away either, if you're playing
with somebody for the first time, I highly advise against gambling with them.
Yeah, that's probably good idea. Yeah. And then the other this is
another myth too, that is people feel like you need to make that person
win so they feel good about themselves. I don't agree with that. Good
for you because you do too. Yeah your game, Yeah, play your
game and and show that you are a person of character, because I think
letting somebody win is almost a form of lying, right, It's like I'm
sand Baggett and I'm going to do what i have to to make this person
like me instead of just being a likable person. But yeah, I'll play
five dollars a side here and there, and that's always fun and it's a
good tool to use when you're playing with people of very different abilities. So
you know, I'm a fairly good player. I'm a low single handicap,
single digit handicap, and I'll play with a lot of guys who are higher
handicaps. And what we'll do is we'll play two month scamples, right,
and we'll put me with the person who's not of great ability, and that
helps them feel better about the day because they have a chance to win something.
And you build good camaraderie that way. With the team meet with a
team game as well, like you're showing teamwork and you get to learn more
about how somebody responds in a team setting too, right, Right, that's
interesting. Letting somebody win is like lying. It's so powerful and so true.
Great, great approach. You mentioned LinkedIn that you you did a post
on LinkedIn the other day. Have you found have you for your company that
one social media element is better than the other for what you're trying to to
expose? I think for me, yeah, LinkedIn has definitely been the place
to be just because of the nature of what I'm talking about and what we're
teaching. It's very business driven, very business focused. LinkedIn is used by
a lot of people for sales, and so they kind of see what we're
what we're talking about and kind of get into that. Okay, great,
Yeah, I'm good at the online you know, lead generation or whatever it
is. Now I need to actually start putting stuff into practice. I need
to get that in phase per you know, one on one interaction. And
so yeah, we've we've found some success there. You know, I think
Tiger just came out that there's a video of Tiger that was posted the other
day about swing tips on YouTube. You said, quit watching YouTube and just
get out there and start hitting balls. And I kind of agree with that
a little bit, where you know, the other social media platforms will lean
into kind of these swing tips and and things like that. Well, there's
some great stuff out there. It's really hard to build a complete swing on
on YouTube tips along. That's why you needed this podcast, yeah, right,
just to remind you that, you know, the swing is not the
whole thing, right, I mean, it's it's it's being on the golf
course, it's learning every shot, it's there's and it's not beating yourself up
as we talked about already. Yeah, what about other rules and myths that
you like to present when you're talking to a group. Yeah, I think
golf etiquette people make way more more complicated than it needs to be. And
so what we really talk about is there are three things that you need to
make sure that you're following every time you're on the golf course, and the
rest of it is all subjective. And those three things are not creating a
distraction while somebody else is hitting, so you hear don't talk into backswing.
But that kind of extends to don't make it, don't you know, distractions,
movement, shadows that all that kind of fun stuff. Don't open a
bag of potato chips and start chumping on right on, silent, not vibrate,
so you don't hear it. Right, That's that's playing a theme song
to some movie. Right. The second one, it kind of extends into
the into uh, not creating a distraction, but walking in people's lines on
the green that one should go without saying that one's pretty obvious anybody not to
everyone. Yeah, I know, I see it a lot. I play
with a lot of people, and then you're kind of like, what,
really, I'm working with my six year old on it. He's getting better,
he has he has a pass. Yeah, that's right. And the
third that we really stress that I think a lot of people miss is cell
phone use. On course, I think that that takes you away from what
you're trying to accomplish. It tells people that I would rather be anywhere else
but here because this phone call is coming in and talking through those types of
things. Being present in the moment, I think is is That's the third
thing that we really hit on with golf etiquette is is if you can do
that, don't cause distractions, watch where you're walking on greens, and be
present. All the rest of it's going to fall into place. I've got
a friend who is on his phone, like when other people are hitting at
the te box and there's four guys standing there and this guy's just on his
phone checking Twitter or X or whatever the hell it's called, and then you
know, checking to CV, he's got any messages and texting people. It's
like, am I here with you? Are? Like? What R?
Why are you doing that? It's like I find it distracting when somebody else
is on the phone just to themselves. But I feel like, if you
don't want me, you invited me to your club, if you don't want
me to be exactly well, and you run into other things. I mean,
you were talking earlier about about your son playing all these incredible golf courses,
and some of those will have rules against even having your phone out right.
And I've run into that before, where you know, the Sali Country
Club. Here's a nice club, and they're a tuck in your shirt and
wear a belt type of club. And there's people that don't understand that.
It's not something that's commonplace, and especially for some business people that don't play
golf very often, like they're not going to know those kinds of things.
Yeah, So that's what we tell people that too, Like if you're inviting
somebody to a nice club, make sure they understand the rules before they get
there, so they're not embarrassed before you even hit a ball right right,
And you know, and some of those rules are archaic, and some of
them are a stuffy and and a lot of them give golf a bad reputation.
I really believe, why would you. I mean, okay, I
won't wear cutoffs, but why do you care if my shirts tucked in?
Right? Really? Yeah? And then there are courses they have rules where
cell phones are not allowed, but cigars are yep, exactly. I find
that really interesting. That's like, oh, okay, you know. The
thing of it is, there are all these strange rules, there's all these
things that don't make a ton of sense to a lot of people are outside
of the game. But if you look back at it and really kind of
go back to the roots of golf, it's all rooted in respect, right,
respect for the game, respect for the course, respect for your playing
partners. And that's why all these little silly rules exist. You know.
One that that I've picked up on a little bit later in my life,
and I think somebody down in the South for this, is always removing your
hat when you walk into the clubhouse. Right, That's something so trivial,
and I've never even thought about that throughout my life, you know, especially
at the at the end of eighteen holes and it's been a hot day and
you've got terrible hat hit exactly, don't You don't want to take the hat
off. You don't want to, but it's a sign of respect. And
if everybody's doing it, they've all got messy hot hit. Right. It's
not the thing that you should be necessarily that worried about it. And you
know, after the round, you're sitting in the clubhouse having a drink,
taking your glasses in, your hat off and setting on the table. Shows
Hey, i'm here, I'm present. I want to have a conversation with
you. I'm not ready to just walk out the door. It's the same
thing as being on cell phones. I've got a follow up to that that
we're going to talk about, but we're gonna take another break. Come on
the back. Okay, I've got one for you that you know. Where
does this fall in the whole etiquette thing. Having a speaker hanging from your
golf cart playing music that can be heard over three different holes. This is
when we actually we do address Oh good, because that one kind of makes
me crazy. It's like put on hat phones, man, Yeah right,
you know, it's it's becoming part of more, part of the game,
more and more, and you're seeing golf manufacturers actually build equipment. Bushnell has
their speakers, and you're seeing it more and more. And our take on
it is this is where one of those personal preference things. This is where
that kind of gray area etiquette fits. So I always say, find out
the preference of your playing partners. Right and figure out how they want to
manage that. And then if they do want to play music, or they
are playing music, make sure you're not playing it loud enough that other groups
can hear it. That's not that's what you just said, Like you don't
want to hear that three holes away. I'm not a big fan of music
on the golf course, but I'll tolerate it. It's fine as long as
it's my group and we're aware of what's going on. I was actually playing
in an amateur tournament about a month ago, and the two guys that I
was playing with like, you care if we listen to music, and I
was like, I don't love it, but I also don't mind. Just
keep it low, right, And so it's one of those things. It
just depends on your personal preference, and it's becoming more and more part of
the game. Just don't let it distract the entire golf course. That nots
frustrate me, and I think it frustrates a lot of people. Oh yeah,
It's like when you're driving down the street and somebody's got the music is
it going in their car? Right? That you're like, where's that coming
from? Wait? Wait? What am I do I need to pull over.
It's like, you hear this thumping in the cars bouncing, It's like,
can't you just listen to it in your golf cart? That's fine?
Yeah, yeah, And then when you walk up to the green, Please,
if you're listening to music while we're on the green, why don't you
put it on pause. So we kind of back to causing the distraction.
Right, If it's a constant noise, Like if you're on the course and
there's construction happening, you're not going to be mad about the tractors over there
making noise because it's a constant noise, and so it's less of distraction.
You're not focused on it. But like if the song's changing or it's cutting
in and out and it's doing these things, it's too loud or things like
that, that causes a distraction. Right, So as long as you can
make the music part of the day, part of your ambient noise, then
it's not necessarily a distraction. That's kind of the way that we look at
it. Oh, talk about distraction. I was watching the Tennis US Open
and during the women's semifinals, somebody got up to go to the bathroom.
And the camera picked up on the guy and was watching him, and everybody
stopped and stared at him, and he's like, oh my god. They're
like and then the announcer, you know, the stateiument o, can you
please sit down? I got a piece you cannot be in between during a
point. Yikes, it's still funny. Yeah. If you've played tennis,
you know it's the same thing, right, right, exactly. So let's
get back to your business and and how more people can get involved. I'm
curious when you go and pitch your business to a corporation, take me through
that. Tell me, let me hear your pitch. Yeah. I mean
I covered a little bit of it with just my own personal experience with with
golf and how I've been able to make it a marketable skill for myself as
much as you know I have. I have a background and graphic design too.
That was my first job about of college. I did design work,
so I understand how to do that. I think golf can be almost that
same thing, where it's this is a marketable skill for somebody. When I'm
talking to corporations, it's all about Look, business is changing. It's more
relational than it's ever been. You need to start building strong relationships, and
using golf as a tool is something that anybody can learn how to do.
And so let's start working with your sales team, get them off of the
phones and get them actually in front of people building relationships, because that is
where your business is going to thrive. Yeah. Yeah, And are you
finding that you're doing less and less face to face business pitches and do it
more? Like what we're doing here is looking at each other and talking.
It's not as much as it was obviously two or three years ago. And
I've always you know, one of the on our online course we actually go
through this. We have five levels of communication, starting with cold email outreaches
all the way into playing golf with somebody, And every level you go up,
you're building a stronger relationship. You're creating an environment to share more about
yourself and to learn more about the people that you're trying to work with.
And so if you're missing out on those face to face opportunities, you're spending
a lot of time spinning your wheels, especially with cold email outreach. I
mean, I know we're here today because of a face to face interaction I
had with one of your friends, right, And it was because we were
at a conference together. I went up and said and introduced myself. Hey,
I'm Joe and I happened to be speaking at the conference and I shared
a little antidote that he resonated with and he came up after and said,
this is awesome. I'd love to talk to you more about it. And
so doing more and more of that type of stuff is it's less effort and
it's a lot higher return from what I've seen. Yeah. Absolutely, Okay,
let's talk about what you're training that you do offer at Fairways RM.
You have a variety of trainings that you do. Yeah, So we do
kind of what I've explained it a little bit with the we sit down,
we do a two hour seminar, go through some workshops, and then we
get on the golf course and actually learn how to play golf and then put
into practice what we talked about. That's what we are kind of bread and
butter is it's a quick, you know, two day type training. We
also do some one on one coaching that helps people understand the value that they
can bring to a round of golf. We go through creating an actual value
statement for you. We help you craft a pitch for how to get somebody
on the golf course, and then we go through these etiquette things. We
go through how you should be acting on the golf course, the values that
you should be emulating. We have a set of fifteen values that you can
emulate through a round of golf. And what we typically do is we have
somebody to do a self assessment on themselves of that Okay, I'm great at
doing this, it's this and this. I'm very honest, I'm good at
you know, I write down the right score every time, those types of
things, and then we pick three or four of those things to work on
and I'll go out on the course with you and help you understand when what
situations you can start to emulate those values and how you can work that in.
And then what we do is we work on follow up as well,
because that's really where the business happens. Like we talked about the golf,
the round of golf is all about building a relationship. And then afterwards is
where you're going to actually close the business. And there's some tactics and things
that we teach and help on that end as well. Now, golf business,
let's say is a twelve month a year engagement. Golf isn't necessarily twelve
months a year. Like you're in Utah, you probably don't get to play
golf twelve months a year. No, I'm fortunate that Las Vegas is only
six hours away, so I'll jump in the car and head down. So
what about those people who don't get to play golf all year long but still
would like to use these methods to improve their business? Yeah? Yeah.
One of the like one of the things we've been talking about a little bit
is it is relationship based, right, and so even though you can't golf
all year long, you can build relationships all year long. You have that
you've built you've played golf. But yeah, we do have some online courses
that we offer that you can do during the winter. And I love to
say, okay, let's get you going through the winter, so when spring
hits and all those scramble invitations start to come in, you're ready to go.
We do some corporate retreats as well. We mentioned Bandon Dunes. We
take groups up there and you can golf year round up there. It's always
sixty degrees and usually rainy. You're windy, but but it's Yeah, it's
one of those experiencedas you got to have. But yeah, that's a year
round place. We take groups down to Las Vegas. That's a year round
spot, and I really like to use that off season is kind of your
your training, Like, let's let's start doing that. And then the other
thing that we've been able to utilize too is the assimulator business that's grown like
crazy out here in Utah. A new one's popping up every day. Yeah.
I live in a little town about forty five minutes from Salt Lake of
about fifty thousand people, and we have three of them in our little valley.
So it's wow, they're all over the place. They're jump, they're
popping up everywhere. And that's something that we've been able to utilize as well.
So not necessarily out on the course, but we can do swing lessons
and we can go through all of the workshops and things that we have in
that setting as well. Are there businesses that don't work for what you're trying
to achieve? Have you come across a business that you're going, yeah,
you know what, you're right, this is not the right Yeah, I
mean for you, it could work for anybody. Right. It just depends
on your as long as you have sales and market. It depends on the
on the I mean ticket like that, how much you like what your product
is, and you know it may not be the best thing for you know,
a software as a service type company that's selling you know, one hundred
dollars licenses or things like that. But for higher ticket items it's great because
you can go spend you know, two hundred and fifty dollars, three hundred
dollars entertaining three people for four hours explaining what your product is, and if
that helps you close a three million dollars sale, then your cost of sales
was like nothing, right, right. And that's something that is a little
bit of a learning curve for some companies because they look at it and go,
well, I don't want to go spend three hundred dollars on one round
of golf. That doesn't seem worth it to me. But I don't think
that a lot of people understand exactly how much value they're getting out of that
four hours. Interesting. Interesting, We're gonna take one more time out check
out what's going on this week on golf Smarter Mulligans, and then we'll come
back and continue our conversation with Joe Canfield talking about fairways RM. This week
on Golf Smarter Mulligans, we bring back like a fascinating conversation with golf course
architect Tripp Davis in an episode we call how the PGA Tour impacts golf course
design. The excitement level on the PGA Tour in terms of the number of
players that golfers around the world can identify with and or it excites new people
into the game. It certainly doesn't hurt I think from a golf course construction
perspective. You know, in general, I think what it does follow more
so than anything, is the economy. The last boom really prior of the
late fifties early sixties, was in the twenties, and they're in another economic
band in the United States that timeframe. Actually, you know, we had
Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen and so forth. But you know, if you
look at the period in the thirties and forties and even early fifties when you
had Hogan and Sneed and mister Nelson, there was a broad interest in the
game following those guys that you didn't see much in the way of golf course
development specif the economy, what do they get? Why did you refer to
him as mister Elson and the other guys by their first nap. You'll have
to check out episode two hundred and thirty one of Golf Smarter Mulligans to hear
his response, Part one of two featuring golf course architect Trip Davis on our
sister podcast, Golf Smarter Mulligans, being released this Friday morning. Originally published
in February of twenty twelve. So if improving your game with Golf Smarter only
once per week isn't enough, then don't miss the chance to get two episodes
every week with golf Smarter, the golf podcast that focuses on how to improve
your game, not what's happening on the tour, and Golf Smarter Mulligan's episodes
from our archives that revisit the best of Golf Smarter. They're both available for
free from wherever you're listening right now, Joe, Not all businesses are generating
sales in the millions of dollars. They're they're companies that have smaller Maybe they're
being core by vendors who want to You know, if you have a retail
business or something. But what are the type if you want to take,
you know, treat a customer to to a golf trip. Right, you
guys have played once before locally, you I played another time. You're really
enjoying each other, You're seeing that you're getting closer to closing something. You
can really bring it up. What are kind of trips that work? Yeah,
golf trips slash business outings. Absolutely, Yeah, it depends and it'll
depend on how serious of a golfer that person is. Right, But okay,
any anybody's gonna love and invite to a place like Bandon Dudes, they're
gonna love and invite out to you know, Qua or any of these places
that are these golf resorts that have hosted types of tournaments that are kind of
cemented in golf lore if you will, you know, if you follow uh
it's the golfer's journal. They are always putting on events that these courses that
are that are just incredible. Some of them are exclusive. They you know
they're exclusive clubs. But you know, take a look at you know,
Golf Digest put top one hundred golf courses. Anybody's gonna love an invite there
and a lot of These places have been built around the idea of stay and
play, and when you're not playing, there's things for you to do.
There's places for you to go to dinner, there's other activities and things like
that, and these types of things that the golf trip you always leave those
with incredible memories. Whether whether you're the one paying for it or not.
Obviously it's it's better if it's being paid for for you and you're you're out
there having a great time on somebody else's time. You know, I always
appreciate that. But even when you're hosting somebody, you build these memories with
them, and you build these relationships that make it so that the business comes
easy. They're ready to go. They understand you, they know you as
a person, they know that you're going to be able to come through for
that in any type of situation. These are things that we always look at
when we're doing these golf trips. If you've got a company, a small
company, large company, retail, whatever it is, should you have a
percentage of your marketing budget set aside for golf? Yeah? I mean any
company will know what their cost them sales is right and right if you can
take I always say, look at where you're spending money and where it is
productive. Right. You know, a really good online advertising campaign is going
to get you about a ten percent, maybe a five to ten percent conversion
rate, right, Whereas a golf trip you take eight people out, you
can probably jump that up to seventy eighty percent on your conversion rate. Wright.
Because you've built these closed, face to face relationships, you've had the
time to sit down and like talk through a lot of the issues that may
come up, right, And so it's so much easier to have those in
person, face to face conversations. And when you're on the golf course,
one of the things we talk about is how to bring these kinds of things
up without making it feel salesy. Right, Where can I add value for
you? Let me listen to what this person has to say, so I
know that when it comes time to do business, I can tell them exactly
the value that I'm going to deliver and how it's going to fix their pain
points. Right. It's no longer a generic message that you hope gets in
the front of the right person. You know that the message you're sharing is
getting in front of the person that needs to be in front of Yeah,
yeah, so wow, I you know, it's true. You're really going
to look at the percentage of what your sales are, you know, and
what you've put into it. It makes a lot of sense to do it
that way. Yeah, I mean. And another crazy interesting stat that we've
come across when doing all this is that people have found that it's up to
twenty five times more expensive to generate new business than it is to maintain current
clients. And so when you think about it in that realm, you're going,
Okay, if I can make it. Only if I can cut that
number in half by taking people golfing, taking people on golf trips and retreats
and things like that, you've already saved the money, right, And it's
hard for businesses to wrap their heads around because it's the savings over over generating
revenue. It's a lot of business leaders and a lot of accountants CFOs they
have a hard time seeing the cost savings versus bringing in actual top line revenue.
Right, yeah, absolutely absolutely. How do people find you and what
do you base your fees on? A percentage on the size of the company
or do you have flat fees? How do you work this? Yeah?
So if we're doing a retreat, it depends on the location obviously that will
vary a little bit with that, but we can do those stars at only
two thousand dollars per person. You can come out here to Utah. We
play beautiful golf courses like Soldier Hollow Wassatch Stay in Midway, Utah, which
is just a beautiful area. We also do them down in Las Vegas over
the winter. We utilize a golf course called Angel Park down there, which
is fantastic. They've got two eighteen whole courses. They're beautiful practice facility,
awesome people and people like Vegas. Let's let's not lie here, yeah right,
exactly, it's fun. We're looking for an excuse, yeah right.
And then we do some one on one coaching and that's we have four and
eight week courses and those are between four and eight hundred dollars, so it's
all really affordable. You get some one on one time with me. And
then when we do come to companies, it just kind of depends on if
we're traveling, what courses we're utilizing and things like that, so varies a
little bit, you know, and if you're in sales, it doesn't matter
what your product is, and most likely you're going to be selling something different
in five years than you're selling today. You know, if you're a salesperson,
you do sales no matter what your product is because you understand that sales
is relationship based. Yep. Absolutely, So it may be the type of
thing if you're a salesperson, it may be the type of thing that you
want to look into taking these courses and getting a fuller understanding of what you
can bring to the table as a salesperson to wherever you're working. Yeah,
Like, like we said, it's a marketable skill. It's it's marketable just
as graphic design and anything else is in our opinion, And for anybody who's
hesitant, they don't want to get in and spend the you know, eight
hundred dollars to go through a course, we do have online courses that started
at forty bucks a month. There you go, and so that's a good
way to just get a start and to get an idea of what it is
you would be learning from us in person. Yeah, get your toes wet
absolutely absolutely well. Okay, so how do people find you? So it's
all at our website just Fairways, RM dot com it's all on there,
and our online course went live. We're actually working on another one right now.
We talked a little bit earlier about gambling, but we're building a guide
to games and gambling that we're going to be putting on there here pretty soon.
So wow, we're hoping that that will be a hit. We think
it will be. I mean, I know a lot of people have questions
around it, but that that one's gonna be fun. Yeah. And social
media if we want to follow you guys have Fairways RM on Instagram. That's
the only one we really utilize as far as that goes. LinkedIn is Fairways
Relationship Management. Ah, so that answers my next question. What was our
m Yeah, yeah, relationship it's a mouthful, so we decided to put
it together. We'll just go ourn that works. Fairways RM Relationship Management.
It's a it's a great idea, it's a great service, it's a great
conversation. I really appreciate you coming on and talk to me to day.
This was a lot of fun. Thank you, best of luck. Yeah,
thanks for having me. This is no pleasure. It's always it's always
fun to talk golf, no matter who it's left. So this has been
fantastic. I do want to thank and welcome this week's Golf Smarter Ambassador,
Ron Salvati from Westchester, Ohio. Ron wrote to me asking about Tony Manzoni's
video, and instead of purchasing it, he received it for free by calling
our toll free Golf Smarter listener line and recording this week's show open. You
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