Welcome in Aaron Gleason from Golf Geek Software into the Tech Caddie podcast. So Aaron, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me, Mike. It's been a while, man. Good to see your face. Good to talk to you too. So we're here to talk about LA City Golf courses. That's really the theme of this entire podcast. We're going to have a couple different guests in the podcast.

it occurred to me that we rated your booking engine very high. I think it's the number two booking engine in all of golf. So that's an extremely high rating. And because your booking engine is also newer, I thought I wonder how those guys would handle some of the tech issues that the team at LA city golf courses are struggling with. And so I thought you'd be good to come on now in exchange for your time. I'm going to let you talk a little bit about your company overall. We'll get to that in a minute, but let's

Let's, I know you've kind of studied this LA city course thing to a degree. Let's talk about a couple of different things. So, so as you know, and as a lot of our listeners know, there seems to be some people call it a black market. Other people call it a gray market, uh, because maybe there's nothing illegal happening here, but there's clearly reselling of tee times happening where someone gobbles up a lot of tee times. They then transfer those tee times to the, the, the proper golfer name once.

someone has come to them and said, I'll pay you 50 more dollars per head or something like that. I know you guys would ever thought who would ever thought the golf industry would have this problem, right? Exactly. Exactly. And, and it, it, it does make sense. It would happen in LA because they don't have a lot of holes of golf in that way, at least at least public golf. So, so talk to, you know, if,

You guys are big into solving problems over there. I know that's your big mantra at Golf Geek but if you all sat around and we're going to solve the problem, talk a little bit about what your thoughts are and how you would handle it. It's interesting that when that came up, we had already kind of been rolling out some problem solving tech techniques and tech in general for our client out in Sacramento, who's runs the municipal properties for the city of Sacramento.

They were having some issues with people making tee times fraudulently. And so we rolled out or are in the process of rolling out some new tech that allows us to detect that fraudulent activity. We call it the FairPlay Guardian. So literally what it does is, and it's in the, right now we've released it and it's in its learning phase, learning what normal activity looks like.

Okay. So then it can then detect that fraudulent activity. Let me just jump in. So we're kind of, I didn't know that. So we're breaking a little bit of news here. So you've got a new piece of tack. That's part of your booking engine. I think you just called it FairPlay Guardian but it sounds to me like it includes some machine learning then you're saying you're in the learning phase. That sounds to me like there's some AI machine learning. Yeah. Essentially what it needs to do is it needs to learn what normal activity on the engine looks like. What does a normal booking look like?

And so the more data that it has to compare to obviously the smarter it's going to get regarded in regards to how will it detect that fraudulent activity? So the problem they were having is very different from what the LA City golf courses are are having people weren't buying at the times and reselling them people were buying up tee times in front of their group and Like they would buy for tee times

And the three in front of them were completely fake. And they would just book them back, back, back. Right. And so what would happen is they'd get two or three no shows and then the group would show up. So it was actually costing the Sacramento golf courses, you know, tens of thousands of dollars over the course of time. And really, because what we try to do is solve problems. Like you said, we wanted to solve this problem for our client, which is the golf course, right? Our customer is the golf course.

the problem that LA city's having, it sounds more of a golfer problem, but oddly enough, I think the system that were in the process of rolling out would help solve those problems as well. Okay. So, so in, in a, also in this episode, we're going to have Kevin Fitzgerald on who, who chairs the golf advisory board for the city of LA. And I do think what you just said, Aaron is correct that, um, it's a golfer problem that actually for years, it's been hard for golfers to,

get tee times at these golf courses, because again, they don't have a lot of holes of golf. But what they've recently discovered is there is some nefarious activity going on. And actually this was this came from a TikTok video where someone showed the marketplace that you can go to and pay additional fees to to get these tee times. So go on. You're right. LA City Golf courses. It is more of a golfer problem than a golf course problem. You've made it clear here your customer is the golf course.

It just so happens you think probably fix this issue as well. Yeah. So the idea behind what we're rolling out is going to be if fraudulent activity is detected by the technology emails will get generated or texts will get generated to the operator saying, Hey, we've detected this. This could be fraudulent. Please take a look. And that's a time saver for the operator because we know that some of the operators at LA city have said,

We do occasionally catch people, but this is a full -time job to monitor how much fraudulent activity is going through the booking engine. And so really what you're saying is you've created a time saver. I'm assuming you're probably, I know you, I know you guys, there's a lot of marketing automation with Golf Geek. I'm assuming you've probably leveraged some of that to build your, your FairPlay Guardian. Yeah. The idea was we didn't want to.

have the technology, especially initially, have the technology override anything or block anybody from doing anything, right? What you don't want to do is create a scenario where you're making it difficult, excuse me, for the 99 % because you have 1 % of your customer base doing something they shouldn't be doing, right? So if you don't want to be in a scenario where you get online, try to book a tee time and the system says you can't do it because it thinks you're doing something you shouldn't be.

So we thought it better to notify the operator via the texting or email system so that the operator then can find out for themselves if indeed it is fraudulent or not. And I would assume then the operator can block, you know, can essentially disable that account from booking in the future if they decide that that's the appropriate action. Right. Yes. Got it. Okay. So we're also going to have, um,

Matt Holder on from a waitlist company. He wanted to chime in on this. I think he's a little cross with me about some things that we put in an article, which is fine. I'm happy to have the conversation. I imagine that. Yeah. I think it's good to have conversations, frankly, you know, of different opinions. And I know Golf Geek does have waitlist functionality. Does waitlist play a role here or not so much? What's your thought on that?

It can for sure. I mean the idea behind waitlist, the reason we developed it, I mean we were of the belief and I think this isn't some great epiphany, but we were of the belief that waitlist in our opinion should be a feature of a larger system. We were having a problem within our atmosphere, our environment of having notions.

With the increased demand that we're seeing, we were seeing an increase in no -shows and we needed to find a way to try to alleviate that. So kind of the arc of why we developed Waitlist started from the no -show side of the business, trying to make it very easy for golfers to cancel, right? We were of the belief that if we can make it really easy to cancel tee -times, then we felt like people would actually do that.

In our previous scenario, we were having golfers, even when they booked online, might have to pick up the phone to call and cancel that reservation. We felt that that was a hurdle to them actually canceling. So we made it very, very easy. So we send out text reminders on any interval you want. You could start sending them a week in advance. You can send them 48 hours in advance, 72 hours in advance, whatever you want to do. But in two clicks, a golfer could cancel a reservation. So literally, they get the text, they click.

It takes them right into their bookings page within the Golf Geek Software. They click another link says cancel reservations canceled. Okay. So let me just get this straight. So, so this is outside of your wait list tech, if you will, you're saying you before you built wait, less wait list. You built reminders or I don't know what you call it, but you built something that would nudge the golfer to say, Hey, now remember you've got a tee time booked here.

And oh, by the way, if you don't want it, just click this link and we can take care of that for you. I see. Yes. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's crap. I mean, I get my haircut, you know, and I get multiple reminders from my haircut place. I mean, the golf industry. Interesting that you took a dig at me there. It's an interesting movie you just made on me there, but go ahead. That's fine. It's fine. You know, exactly. Yeah. But you know, it just, I don't see that happening in the golf industry on a regular basis. There are companies out there that are doing it, but.

We just, that was the first part of it, right? So we felt that we can make it really easy to cancel. People would cancel. They're not, I don't think vast majority of people want to no show or just, you know, so I think if you made it easy and we've come to find that it, that it's reduced our no shows by upwards of 60%. So it's been very impactful, right? So that led us into the idea of, okay, so if we're sending a reminder out 48 hours in advance, if someone cancels, how do we assure ourselves that that tee time is going to sell?

And that led us to the idea of waitlist. So essentially what we did with the waitlist is very similar to the reminders in that we wanted to make it super, super easy, right? So you can go on if you don't see a tee time that you want in a particular day part, time range, you can sign up for a waitlist for that particular golf course. You can pick every Saturday for the rest of the year. You can pick that particular Saturday.

so that you only get this notification one time. And then once again, when that tee time is available, everyone on the wait list gets a text. And when you click the link out of the text, not only does it take you into the booking engine, it takes you directly into the tee time that came available. So if the 9:12 came available, you're going to enter right into the 9:12. If you're already signed into the system, you get one more click and that tee time is rescheduled.

It's interesting you say that. That is technology that different vendors have been chasing for a while. I can tell you way back in the day when we were working with W5 as GolfNow Answers, we very much wanted to be able to deliver a link to a golfer that really it was for that specific tee time. And frankly, we found it hard to do. We found it hard to build. So.

Kudos to you guys for building that. That's a massive time saver and that's a massive time saver for the golfer. The other thing I suspect it does is it really increases conversion. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what we're trying to do, right? So our idea of building Golf Geek is to solve problems and ultimately make operators lives easier and present something to the golfers that is very user friendly so they don't have any hurdles.

of trying to reserve that tee time That's nice. It's almost like your model is if we can reduce golfer friction or eliminate golfer friction, that's the way you grow revenue. Cause I think, I think ultimately every vendor is trying to help their customer grow revenue, right? But it's, there's lots of different routes to get there. Yours sounds like, um, uh, it's a lot of it is about reducing friction. Now I know we, we talked off camera.

there is another issue with the city of Los Angeles golf courses, right? Why would a reseller market be so successful if the inventory was priced properly? Maybe, and look, nobody's here to hurt any of feelings. And I would say old golf guys like us understand different municipalities have different missions. Maybe the inventory isn't priced the way the market says it should be priced. Is there something to that? Is it fair for me to say that?

I think that's absolutely fair. I think if you're if you're if you've priced something so affordably that you you you can create this kind of gray market as you called it. Obviously there's a pricing issue. I mean there it's obvious if someone's paying $50 more in the gray market to be able to buy that same key time that they're selling you know for $50 less. Obviously you could eliminate a big portion of this problem by pricing your golf.

in more accordance with what demand would dictate. But like you said, I completely understand and sympathize with and applaud the idea of municipalities being there to help grow the game of golf. As a PGA member, that's kind of our mission, right? Grow the game. So I absolutely understand why municipalities would try to keep golf affordable in any given market.

So that we can continue to foster the growth of the game. And I think that's important. I do. I think there's a place for that. Um, I just think that you try as best you can to try to eliminate as many problems as you can or fix those problems with technology, um, in order to, you know, ultimately do what you're trying to do, which is help that golfer have access to affordable golf. I have spoken to some people specific to the, um,

Los Angeles city golf courses. I've spoken to some revenue managers that say if there was no ceiling, no constriction on how they could price that inventory, people believe you could see public tee times in the city of Los Angeles at $300 a pop $300 a golfer, not a foursome $300 a golfer. If it could just run, you know, with no restrictions whatsoever, obviously $300 for a round of golf.

at a municipal facility. Now, some people are going to say, what about in San Diego? I get it, right? But that's not what they're doing in LA. Their mission is different. $300 is untenable, really, from a political perspective. It's not good for the mayor if it costs $300 to buy a municipal round of golf, right? And so I'm sure there's some, some seesawing there. There's some balancing that has to happen there.

But I would say, even though you said it's nice that they're trying to grow the game and everything, I would say they still got to find a way to raise the rate somewhat. It just seems to me that it's screaming for some kind of a price bump to help alleviate some of this problem they're having. Yeah. And I wouldn't disagree with that. I mean, obviously there's probably a, um, there's, there's room probably to be able to do that and still be able to help the people that you're wanting to help. I mean, you could do it through programs. You could do it.

Excuse me, you could do it through programs. You could do it through different player types You know there are there are a lot of different ways that you can kind of you know tackle that problem and they probably have in some ways but obviously Once again by Cree if they if they've managed to create this issue by the way, they're priced then yeah I mean, there's definitely probably some room there

So the solution, at least from you, it sounds like the solution in Los Angeles would be a combination of put in some fraudulent technology, some technology that makes you aware of fraudulent behavior and maybe some pricing changes as well. So maybe you adopt some level of dynamic pricing. Heck, maybe in Los Angeles, if you wanna buy a tee time more than 10 days in advance,

there's an added fee or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So there's different ways to do it. Well, I appreciate it. You know, exactly what you were talking about. This doesn't seem to be a golf course problem. It's a golfer problem. So that's very different. You know, this is just not something the industry has seen much of, you know, it's just not, it's not something that is, that's real. I mean, it's, it reminds me of the scenario and, but it's done in a manner of like, they're trying to do it over in Europe with all of the,

brokers that buy up 90 % of all the golf in Ireland. You know, I mean, that's what they do. They, they come up with the cash upfront, sell 90 % of their tee times to these brokers. And then the brokers are on the hook to go resell it. Yeah. And the golf course loves it because it's guaranteed revenue to them. Right? I mean, they've, yeah, yeah. Any revenue manager would like that. The sooner you can sell off your inventory, the better. So yeah, I get that. Uh, well, I appreciate you chiming in on this. Like I said, tell us a little bit about the company. Tell us about.

you know where Golf Geek is today and your progress because you guys certainly aren't new to the industry I would say so it'd be interesting just to get an update. Well Golf Geek is new to the industry. We've been in this demand based pricing game if you will for you know close to nine years now we were you know with our old company dynamic revenue services we were one of the first.

to get into the game. And so what we wanted to do was create something bigger than just a demand -based pricing system, right? Our goal was to create really a sales and marketing tool to fix the problems that we were seeing at our properties that we own and manage in and around St. Louis. And so that's what we did. I mean, we started from scratch two years ago and started building this Golf Geek system. And...

it really, you know, demand based pricing is a really a small piece of it. I mean, it's a part of it. But the bigger pieces of it are the sales and marketing tech that we've built into the system, right? So we have full automated texting, full automated emails that are all based on what the customer's behavior looks like. So you can set up different campaigns and really help drive people to your booking engine. What we've tried to do.

is really simplify what success looks like. And in our belief, the more inventory sessions you have on your booking engine, the more people you have looking at your inventory, ultimately is going to create more revenue if you have a proper booking engine. Meaning that you have a proper booking engine that's priced correctly, that shows inventory in a manner that is very user friendly to the golfer.

we have now nine years of data that shows that conversion for us, and it varies a little bit by golf course, but somewhere between a 10 and 15 % conversion rate is where we live. Yeah. It's interesting you say that the last episode we did was with Don Rea who's the vice president of PGA of America, but clearly an owner operator too, right? That's what I really like about Don he's And I got to tell you,

he does not know what his booking engine conversion rate is, right? I love this guy. And I think a lot of us look up to him, but he's a little blind to his booking engine conversion rate. And I encouraged him when the recording ended, I said, look, I really want to encourage you, figure out a way to know that number. That is a key metric in golf. And I know I've written about it. So you and I are kind of aligned on that piece, but that is a key metric in golf. If you don't know,

how your booking engine is converting. And this, there is an assumption here that you're trying to sell as many rounds online versus the phone as you possibly can. If you don't know how your booking engine is converting, you're a little blind to how your business is performing. That's how important I think that number is. Well, ultimately it's sales, right? I mean, that's one of the things that you and I, you that I've always respected about you was, you know, and you kind of, I'll be honest with you, you kind of, uh,

You really the one of the other mantras of Golf Geek is know your numbers. And that's one of the things you beat into me years ago. Right. So, you know, it's ultimately sales. Uh, you know, if, if you have a sales person and you, you need to know how many calls they're making and you need to know how many sales versus how many calls. That's the same number, right? It's conversion, right? So if you've got a really good sales guy, his conversion is going to be X. If you've got.

a guy that's not making calls, if that same sales guy's not making the calls, then conversion, you know, the conversion number may be elevated because there's not enough calls. But our idea behind conversion was, all right, how many booking engine visits do I get? How many inventory am I looking at? I know conversion is going to remain relatively constant between 10 and 15%. So if I have, you know, 5 ,000 views for a month versus 8 ,000 views for a month,

It's just extra money. And it's really that equation for us. It's just really simple. It's really what it is. The more eyeballs I get, the more money I make. And I, and I'm guessing that's why you built as much marketing automation as you did, because you figure with the more marketing automation, I can put more eyeballs on the inventory. So look, this is like a sales funnel at the end of the day, right? You're in a place where you feel like,

I know I can trust my booking engine. My booking engine works. That's one thing you know is this thing sells. So it really is like to your point about getting more people into the top of the funnel. That's it. Well, the automated marketing is a big piece of that, right? I mean, so especially in today's environment, you know, it used to be that you were so understaffed because you couldn't make any money. And so you had to take it out of their hands. Now it's that they're,

There's so many people at the golf course, you can't expect golf professionals to sit down in front of a computer and build an email and send it out. I mean, it's just too much to ask of them. So one of our goals with Golf Geek was to try to automate as much as possible so that they're able to focus on the things that are important to them, which is making sure that that customer experience when someone walks in the door is second to none, right? So, you know,

We've tried to surround you. We were very fortunate in that. Since 2020, we've been in a good position like a lot of golf courses have and operationally, our goal was to continue to enhance the customer experience, whether it be through proper customer service or through added amenities, reinvestment in the clubs so that we continue to raise rate. Right. So it's all about.

it's all about the value that someone sees, right? So, you know, part of our system is also measuring that value. So everybody who books a tee time, we're asking them, how was the value today? And we can compare that easily, you know, week on week, month on month, year on year. Let me ask you, are you doing that verbally? Or is that part of Golf Geek where there's some golf or survey thing? Oh, really? So there's some golf or survey component. That's interesting. That's a good idea. Um,

You know, you remind me a little bit of a podcast we did early on where Allison George talked about like labor, right? That, hey, I've got to figure out a way that I, we just saw in California, minimum wage go to 20 bucks an hour. And a lot of different restaurateurs making different decisions around that. But I guess the marketing automation is also helps you manage labor. Because, you know, I know you were saying,

It's unrealistic to think I'm going to a golf professional could take the time to send these emails. But there's some people that still probably would try to, there's probably still some golf course owners that say, no, that's just the cost of doing business. I have to have a full -time marketing person on staff. You're saying, nah, with technology, you don't it's you want to automate. I'm saying that the more you can automate the better off you can be to actually, you know, it's the old adage, you know, are you working?

You're so busy working in your business, you're not focusing on your business, right? So, it's the idea of use technology to your advantage and make sure that you're freeing up your staff to do the things that they need to do. If you can afford to have a marketing team at your facility or group of facilities, man, go for it. I think it's great. I mean, we work with our client out in Sacramento. They've got a full marketing team and man, does it...

turn out some good stuff. I mean, it's, uh, they're, they're great people and, uh, they do some really good things that you can automate. Right. So by doing a lot of the automated marketing for them, um, they're able to go out and do, you know, YouTube videos and, uh, you know, they, they get on the golf course and do stuff on their track, uh, uh, uh, top tracer range and do stuff on the golf course on how to play a hole. And they do a ton of video with their staff that, you know, you can never automate that. Right. So.

That's the type of stuff that allows them to do so that they don't, they're not focused so much time on, you know, creating, you know, emails that go out. Got it. Yeah. So, okay. This has been good. I feel like we learned some things about your platform because one of the things you said was it's a sales and marketing platform ultimately, uh, that has pricing functionality built into it that comes with a booking engine, et cetera. Maybe the, you know, the booking engine isn't.

maybe the star of the show, the star of the show is helping the guy make more money. It's just the booking engine is part of the means to the end. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair. And I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you and catch up a little bit. Uh, you know, you need to get to St. Louis every now and again. So we can say, huh? Yeah. Well, maybe, uh, maybe a Cardinals game. We've done that a couple of times. That would be fun. Listen, I,

And I don't think your intention is to come on here and try to sell your technology to the city of Los Angeles. I'm sure you'd love to do that. No, yeah, yeah, of course it is. What's happening in Los Angeles is an interesting moment for a lot of people in golf technology. And it's, I think it's an opportunity to ask yourself, could we solve that problem or could we not? And then secondly, and I kind of tip my hat to you guys for this too. Do we even think about solving problems? You know, some people think about just building cool stuff and it doesn't solve a problem for anybody. I think.

you're on the right track in that if you're, if you, if you begin with the problem, then and handle it the right way, then things will take care of itself. So that that's, it's good to hear you guys talking that way. No, I appreciate it. And like I said, thank you again for the opportunity to talk a little bit about what we have. Uh, like you said, you know, golf geeks, you know, really brand new. We've been using it now for about 18 months within kind of our, you know, own ecosystem. Um,

So it's tested and it's proven. We have numbers to show what we're able to do for operators and for golf courses, but it is definitely new to the industry. I mean, we just started trying to roll it out to anybody in January. So we're a fledgling little company that's trying to have a little bit of fun and make operators some more money and solve some problems. Well, that's good. And so we definitely wish you the best of luck. The other thing is,

We'll circle back with you and check in on this FairPlay Guardian, right? Like it would be interesting to hear how many, uh, key times in April you all flagged as, Hey, this is potentially fraud. That would be super interesting to look at. I'm interested in that as well. Well, very good. Very good. All right. Well, thanks for coming on the Tech Caddie podcast. That's Aaron Gleason from Golf Geek Software. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Mike.