Mike Hendrix (00:00)
Hello, this is Mike Hendrix. And today my guest is Rusty Grimm from Rustic Golf Properties in Wisconsin. And this is a Tech Caddie podcast.

Rusty, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:27)
Thanks Mike, happy to be here.

Mike Hendrix (00:28)
Yeah, we're really excited. Well, I don't think we've done a podcast the last couple of episodes with an operator. So that's kind of like shame on me. I really want to have more operators on really because I think that other operators obviously watch this and I think they learn best from colleagues. Right. And so that's why I think it's so important to have you on. I, know, we've had Don Ray on, we've had Chad out in Utah and we've had several operators on, but

I really do appreciate you making time to come on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:01)
No, thank you. Like I said, happy to be here and very excited to chat with you. Good.

Mike Hendrix (01:04)
Good. So you are in, uh, in Wisconsin. You're at two Oaks golf course, think today, correct? And for people that don't know, I mean, you, you have one of the faster growing golf companies actually in the country, you all of a sudden have six properties, uh, in, Wisconsin. And I thought it would be good for the listeners just to hear how you got into golf.

Maybe then we can talk about the, you know, how you do these acquisitions and how you decide about the acquisitions. Obviously we want to talk to you about technology because that's what we talk about on every episode, but share with us a little bit of how you got into golf. What kind of got you to be a small business owner? Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:52)
Sure. Absolutely. Um, so yeah, so like I said, I'm at two Oaks North in Watoma today. This is actually where it started for me. Um, this course opened when I was 13 years old, um, heard that the course is being built in the small town here that I live in. And I was a kid that loved golf. So I applied for a job and I got hired as a cart kid. Um, so of course opened in August that year, you know, parked carts, gas carts, kind of did all that normal cart kid stuff. And it was a nine hole course at the time.

over the years, just that next, next summer I started working in the golf shop and then through the years, just kind of kept growing with the company and, know, got to a point where I was running the golf shop and then doing a little bit more of the entire operation. And in, in that time, it had expanded to an 18 hole course and, he's fast forward almost 30 years later. And, you know, I was still working for two Oaks, and, and, worked out a deal to lease the course from the ownership. there was a absentee owner.

wasn't here a whole lot, worked out a deal to lease it from them and then actually in 2019 kind of pulled the trigger and bought the course from the previous ownership.

Mike Hendrix (02:53)
Wow. So, you know, let me ask you, did you along the line become a PGA golf professional or go to any kind of formal training or just all hands on?

Speaker 2 (03:02)
Just all from the golf side of it, all hands on. did go away to college for a year. Wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do. Went a little, little far from home, got a little homesick and decided to come back home, take a, you know, take a semester off of school and knew that I wanted to do something in golf. And just again, kind of fell back into the position here and really all of that. It just kind of learned everything as I, as I went, you hands on at this property.

Mike Hendrix (03:28)
That's awesome. And so, you know, the other thing I kind of took from that was, but that sounds like you actually did get exposed to construction because the course moved from nine holes to 18. So you must have kind of been hearing and learning about how people are building greens or how they're thinking about design. You must've been exposed to that on some level.

Speaker 2 (03:47)
Yes and no. mean, that was, that was back early on again, it was a nine hole. I was a 13 year old kid. Um, they added the back nine, I think the second or third year. So I was a 15 year old, 16 year old kid did not really, was not involved at that, at that time. I mean, got to see it happen. Um, but not real involved in it. You know, I was, I thought I was going to be golfing on TV someday. So, you know, I was just more interested in golf and then really at that time, what was going on with the business side of things.

Mike Hendrix (04:12)
Yeah. When you were, you know, 16, 17, you know, by then, everybody I think knows that watches this. If you work at a golf course for a couple of years, you've learned a lot, right? I mean, you really do understand how to open the place in the morning. You may be even get exposed to making a bank deposit. I mean, you learn a lot. but was the owner, you know, you mentioned the owner was absentee. Was the owner absentee even back then, or did you get to see the owner in action, so to speak?

Speaker 2 (04:38)
It was absentee ownership. There was a general manager that was very involved back at that time. So I was very involved and got to learn from him and see some things that way. Got to experience some of early tech, mean, back when four reservations and some of those systems were out there.

Mike Hendrix (04:57)
Harry Ipema, our good friend Harry, yes.

Speaker 2 (04:59)
Actually,

one of the user conferences, I think when I was 19, 20 years old, that was an awesome deal.

Mike Hendrix (05:04)
down at the McDonald's campus, essentially. Yeah. I think we've mentioned that user conference once or twice before, but I wish more companies could afford to do that today. I still think that that was one of the best things that we saw in the tech space in golf.

Speaker 2 (05:18)
Yeah, it was great. Like I said, I was a kid at the time, but it was was really neat to see that see the operators come together to chat with them about what's working, what's not, some new features, things like that. was amazing.

Mike Hendrix (05:29)
We're having a conference in Ohio in early March. I do feel like our conference could evolve into that. We are inviting people from states like where you are, know, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Pennsylvania. And I, and I acknowledge that people probably from California are not going to fly in for a one day conference in Ohio. But I do think that there's a.

a space for that in the industry. So Rusty, you have this one golf course, right? But then you start adding locations and you tell us maybe it was last year or two years ago that you really added a lot, like walk me through, you know, how does that work? You get close with a small banker in town and you've got a source of funds or like, how do you start making these other acquisitions

and really wake up one day owning six golf courts.

Speaker 2 (06:20)
Yeah, yeah, it's happened pretty fast. So like I said, I officially bought two Oaks from the previous owners in the end of 2019. I'd actually worked on a deal to lease it in 2017. So I basically ran it as my own business then. As far as finances, money, I didn't have any, I don't have anything, but I was pretty good at coming up with some creative financing, owner financing on that deal. then I guess I got to the point, you know, that was still when golf was, I golf's always going to be a difficult business, but it was very difficult.

17, 18, 19, the rounds of golf weren't there. But we were doing okay at Two Oaks. We were paying the bills. You it was, it was working. And I got to the point that I kind of needed to prove to myself that I could do it somewhere else. I mean, I had been at Two Oaks since I was a kid. So everybody knew me here. I knew all the regulars. I knew all the vacationing groups that had come up over the years. But for me personally, I wanted to kind of see if I could do it somewhere else. And I had always thought that, you know, if I could have a second course, 15, 20, 30 minutes away,

I don't need two of me. don't need two superintendents. I don't need two aerators. can save on equipment. I don't need a tournament fleet of carts. I can just bounce them back and forth. And so just kind of looking around and found a little nine hole course about an hour away. So a little farther than I wanted. Wasn't initially excited about nine hole property. Was really looking for another 18 hole course like we had, but couldn't find anything for sale in the area. again, with.

With no money, it had to be creative. So I kind of was just searching around for, know, ownership that was looking to retire possibly, maybe a course that had been struggling a little bit. And well, I'm sorry, short found this nine hole course where the ownership was looking to retire. And, again, kind of worked out a creative deal financing with that, but, yes, to the banker comment, very lucky to have a local Baker who kind of saw what I did at two Oaks, and believed in me. I mean, he tells me I'm crazy now every time I talk to him, but.

but he's been easy to work with and that helps a lot.

Mike Hendrix (08:13)
So yeah, when I was my first business was in the restaurant world, I found I put together a business plan. You know, I had one location and that was fine, but I did decide like, hmm, I want to have many locations and I actually want them to be close to each other. So really similar to what you're saying. In my case, I found a local bank that was looking to grow their footprint in Ohio. And so he was just I just got lucky.

He was just in a mode of like taking on lots of SMBs and had the money to lend. To this day, I always feel like I was just so fortunate that I kind of fell into that relationship with him, but a local banker can make a big difference.

Speaker 2 (08:54)
Huge

and I'm lucky enough he golfs out here a little bit at two oaks. So he's kind of seen what we've done here. And that made the conversations a lot easier, you know, with him when I go asking him for money to do these deals. But typically we do it in a way where if there's some owner financing, you know, he's not on the hook that much. It's, you know, less risk for him and everybody so far in the deals we've done, most everybody's worked out. It's worked out good for everybody.

Mike Hendrix (09:16)
Yeah, that's great. That's great. And so you, I think you bought one this past year, right? And in 2025, you bought your sixth.

Speaker 2 (09:24)
Yeah. We bought our fifth, December 30th of 24 and then the sixth one here in October. So yeah, a couple of them in the last 10, 11 months. Uh, so the new one is, again, an 18 hole course, 45 minutes from written center. All of our courses are written central Wisconsin. so this one called Unica golf course is in Oshkosh. just a 45 minute drive or so from here where I met in Wachoma, um, similar footprint daily fee, 18 hole course.

Mike Hendrix (09:32)
So tell us about the new one.

Speaker 2 (09:51)
owners had had it for 12 or 15 years, I believed. And we're just kind of ready to retire and ready to move on.

Mike Hendrix (09:58)
does it work, Rusty? I'm actually, I've got a couple of owners in Ohio that have been contacting me recently saying, Hey, I'm getting close, you know, to an acquisition. I'm always curious. How does it begin? Do you just walk in the front door and say, Hey, I'm Rusty or how does the initial relationship start?

Speaker 2 (10:17)
Sure. So, so this most recent one was listed, well, listed with a realtor. So that was the easy contact. in, believe all of our other deals, yeah, it's just pretty much been a, either they've heard that I'm looking to expand and they've contacted me, or I've literally just picked up the phone, called them and, know, just said, Hey, you know, if you're ever looking to do anything, give us a call. We're interested in, our deals have all worked out pretty quickly. typically.

I think just about every one we've closed within about 45 days of first stepping on property, is the sellers are thrilled. I'm thrilled to get in and try to get into the properties right away and start doing things.

Mike Hendrix (10:55)
When I know part of your business too, you do have a location that we talk about as a resort. I mean, it's really kind of much more aligned with stay and play. So that's a different type of business for you guys. How big is that for you? You know, does that make the overall company work better? Talk to us a little bit about, about stay and play.

Speaker 2 (11:15)
Sure, sure. That was an opportunity that someone reached out. Actually, a friend of my business partner and superintendent reached out to him that there was this beautiful 45-hole resort property in a small town, Michicot in Northeast Wisconsin. They said, hey, the bank's got it. You got to do something. Somebody's to come in and buy it. You guys got to come in and buy this place. Come check it out. And initially just hearing that, mean, we're daily fee 18-hole golf.

Decided to go look at it. Exactly what he said. Beautiful 45 hole resort property, 100 room hotel in the middle of it, 45 holes, two club houses. and it was a bank deal. So the price was absolutely phenomenal. I wasn't quite ready to get into the hotel side of things. I've never done that. I've got two kids still at home that keep me busy. so long story short, we worked out a deal where actually that person purchased the hotel side of things. And then we purchased the golf.

Nice. is a, it's a great property, different from anything else that we have, but has really fit into well with what we're doing. I think 75 to 80 % of the rounds are stay and play packages. But we've noticed with our other golf courses, our membership, our regulars, they're making trips up there. They've got some great stay and play deals for them. We work our, our, our memberships where a membership is good at any of our courses. So we've got that's added.

pretty good value to our members at our central wisconsin courses that now they have a another course to play and they can see there at a at a reasonable deal

Mike Hendrix (12:37)
Yeah. and so you've got, kind of have like an operating business partner over there with the hotel. mean, right. I'm sure you guys have to coordinate a lot with each other and talk to each other and that type of thing.

Speaker 2 (12:48)
Correct, They, yeah, two separate businesses, but they run the hotel, we run the golf courses, we do book all the golf packages, so definitely work hand in hand with them.

Mike Hendrix (12:56)
Yeah. It's like my good friend here in Ohio, Kelly Morrow, he is a PGA professional. He created a stay and play package called the nine stars of golf because the two courses were both rated four and a half by golf digest. So they came up with kind of cool name and they built a website and everything for it. But very similar to you. He doesn't own the hotel or the lodging, but he's built partnerships around town. and so they book all the golf packages.

once you really get a golf package business humming, it becomes a real business in and of itself. It's, it's really something to watch him manage it. I was just on the phone with him today and he was saying PGA tour radio was talking about his golf package because they do this thing at the end of the year. They mail a really nice book to, and it's a different book every year. It's always about golf, but they mail a book to the captain of each group.

right? Because they really want to give them a nice, genuine Christmas gift and something that the person will keep on their shelf. Well, long story short, someone on PGA tour radio got the book was blown away, starts talking about on the radio. And I told them today, said, well, you earned that man. You've been doing this for 20 years, you know, eventually you got to get some, some lucky things to go your way. Yeah. So, tell me, I know, I think you had watched a podcast that we had done earlier.

Speaker 2 (14:13)
Yeah, that's awesome.

Mike Hendrix (14:21)
where we talked about Golf EMS helping Chad Pettengill out in Utah with golf packages. And I think if I'm not mistaken, you guys kind of copied that and now you do the same thing.

Speaker 2 (14:32)
We did. It was actually perfect time. And I think I just listened to your podcast and we bought that property just over a year ago, again, December 31st of last year. And, right under the gun where all these golf packages are wanting to book. so I just happened to hear your podcast, talking about, you know, how they, how they use golf EMS, reached out to James, over at golf EMS and took a look at their stuff, implemented it within, I mean, within hours. And I think the next day we were using it and it's been awesome.

Absolutely phenomenal. mean, it's, like I said, we, we, we advertise the golf packages. We book them. So I need something that I can create a form that I can shoot over email over to the group leader that they can then forward on to their group. So everybody can pay. We collect all the money and then I go and re reimbursed the hotel. I reimbursed the restaurant. but that golf EMS has worked perfect for us. I mean, I can get off the phone with the group, in minutes we can put together that form, that contract, shoot it over to them and.

their golfers can start paying.

Mike Hendrix (15:30)
Cool.

And I guess, so, so I don't know exactly your location. How far are you from the Wisconsin Dells And for people that don't know, that's kind of the Gulf vacation area of Wisconsin. If I'm not mistaken, Rusty.

Speaker 2 (15:43)
Definitely the vacation area. mean, a lot of water parks, things like that. We are about an hour and a half from there. So our courses are kind of more centrally located, I guess a little north central of there.

Mike Hendrix (15:56)
And are you getting people from Minnesota and people from Michigan? I mean, are you getting out of state people that are, that are coming to the, to the property?

Speaker 2 (16:05)
A little bit, getting a lot of, we get a lot of Chicago traffic to the, to the Michigan resort, to Fox Hills resort. A lot of Milwaukee, so still in in-state, but a lot of Milwaukee, Chicago, I would say would be the majority of our traffic.

Mike Hendrix (16:18)
Got it, got it. And do you, there is a Fox Hills, like 45 hole facility or something in Michigan, right? Does that, does there ever a confusion there?

Speaker 2 (16:27)
I guess I didn't realize that.

Mike Hendrix (16:29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I might have it wrong. Maybe it's Fox 10, but I think that's right. So anyway, so the golf package business now is strong, right? The reason I reached out to see if I could get you to do this podcast, especially right before the PGA show, a lot of people know this, but we track a lot of data at SMB golf. We're always trying to figure out what tee sheets being used, et cetera, et cetera. And a couple of weeks ago,

all these properties turned to TenFore Golf And I thought, what, you know, what is this? Yeah. And lo and behold, it was, it was your courses. And the first thing I thought I was like, man, I he'd have called me, know, maybe we could have talked about this, setting that aside, you, you, you've changed, uh, from, you've moved from Lightspeed to TenFore and nothing against Lightspeed or anything like that. But, you know, people make changes. I thought it would be really cool just to talk about

Talk about that process. Talk about having gone through it. What did you learn? This is really the part where I'm hoping other operators that listen to this will say, yeah, that I need to pay attention to that too. Or yes, that's a question I should ask, but share with the listeners, everything you've kind of learned going through that change process, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (17:46)
Sure. So we've learned a lot. I've learned a lot with it. This isn't our first change. We've changed a few times in the last few years. I think a lot because our business model has changed so quickly. Again, four or five years ago, we had one property, 18 holes, and now we have 108 holes. So we've grown really fast. We're still learning as we go with these technology changes. I mean, there's so much out there. There's so much changing every day.

I would say, you know, what we're, definitely, for us personally, we look for software that really fits our multi-course setup. We do things maybe a little bit different than what a lot of places would do. Like I mentioned before, our memberships, if you get a membership at Two Oaks, you can use it at any of our other properties. So we, we always look for a system that can handle that, that I can be logged into one location behind the Pro Shop counter. But you might call me for a tee time at Two Oaks, we're full.

And instead of having you hang up the phone, I can just say, Hey, well, let me look, we on white lake is 30 minutes away and we can get you out at 10 o'clock out on white lake. so again, that functionality of that, you know, that tee sheet that, very easily I can bounce from course to course. it's really one the main things that we look for.

Mike Hendrix (18:53)
Do you, do you all do any billing directly out of your software? They, it sends the invoice to the golfer directly.

Speaker 2 (19:00)
We don't, we don't utilize that. What we utilize a lot is more what we call club credits. You know, more people prepaying gift cards, things like that. That's also a big thing. We look for a system that not only can you use that gift card in the golf shop, the bar, the beverage cart, but also at all of the properties. So that's very important to us. Being in Wisconsin, beverage cart is a big deal.

For us, I actually just kind of ran some numbers at the end of the year and at two of our properties, it's 10 to 12 % of total revenue.

Mike Hendrix (19:30)
is beverage cart. Holy cow.

Speaker 2 (19:32)
So we're probably a little different than maybe a lot of other places. But we really look for that same functionality. Whatever I can do in the restaurant, I need to be able to do on the beverage cart. From taking a payment.

Mike Hendrix (19:42)
How many restaurants do you have, Rusty?

Speaker 2 (19:44)
So all of our properties have something, whether it's a snack bar grill, three of them are more full blown, what I would call restaurants. And then there's three that are more of that snack bar type area. And then we, have another business that we actually, don't own the golf course, but we run the restaurant at their golf course.

Mike Hendrix (20:05)
interesting. What, with the hopes that one day you will run the golf course or what?

Speaker 2 (20:10)
No,

that's a municipal course. It's one that I used to run the restaurant for them, you 10 years ago or so. It's the small town that I live in about an hour north of Wautoma. And they were just a municipal course, courses busy all the time. They were just looking for somebody to run the restaurant. They had a leasee in there that bailed on them and I just kind of asked a favor and I kind of fell into that.

Mike Hendrix (20:30)
What technology does that golf course use? ⁓

Speaker 2 (20:32)
That

golf course uses foreUP, I believe.

Mike Hendrix (20:35)
Okay. Which is good. mean, at least you get a little exposure to foreUP if you ever wanted to change the foreUP.

Speaker 2 (20:40)
Right.

Yep. Yeah. They use that. think they're happy with it. We've just, just because we only run the restaurant, we've just used the Clover system there. at some point we want to integrate that in with all of whatever we're using at our other properties. But, again, with everything happening so fast, again, we bought the two businesses in a year. We actually bought a, business, a little dive bar, you know, this, this summer as well, mid season. So, we've kind of had a lot going on, so we haven't quite cleaned all of that up, but eventually that would be the plan is I would like the same system.

across all properties.

Mike Hendrix (21:10)
Sure. You know, you're clearly an entrepreneur, right? You've got this bar, you've got this golf course, restaurant, et cetera. Has it occurred to you like, geez, I employ a thousand people and the summertime collectively, I've got a large amount of people working for me. I would think you literally are one of the larger job providers in the area. Do you ever process that? you ever think through that?

Speaker 2 (21:36)
It a little bit. And yeah, it is kind of neat. We, just had our, our year end, know, Christmas party for the staff. And we tried to do that with all the staff and we don't have a thousand people yet. We have, I would say we have between 175 and 200. Again, about a hundred, 150 of those 170 of those being part-time seasonal. Sure. I guess what I'm proud of is if we've, have 35 or so full-time year round. Staff for golf in Wisconsin. That's, I don't know if that's real common.

Now again, yes.

Mike Hendrix (22:06)
Those

are the people, to, I mean, everyone matters, right? But those 35 people, you do impact their life. You know, I mean, you'll have an impact on if they send their kids to college or not. You'll have an impact on if they have a 401k. I mean, that core group, that's what always started to occur to me later on as I owned these businesses. You know, sometimes I would watch somebody's kid grow up.

you know, from the age of two to the age of 16 or something like that. And it does start to impact you. And frankly, it impacts some decisions that you make along.

Speaker 2 (22:43)
It does, right. It's not just me anymore. We have a team and we have a pretty big team. So yeah, it's exciting. We're proud of where we're at from that respect.

Mike Hendrix (22:52)
You mentioned that you mentioned the superintendent, which I always think, I don't think we talk about superintendents enough on this podcast. Certainly where you live, but I know Minnesota golf pretty well because I covered Minnesota for quite a while. The superintendents are very often are like the general manager. The superintendent is the one that has all the knowledge about keeping the golf course in a, in playable condition. The budgets, the superintendents manage are really important.

talk about that, like just talk about like how important it is that your partner is a superintendent and all the benefits that come from.

Speaker 2 (23:24)
Yeah, absolutely. And I, and we couldn't have gotten to where we are now without him. So like I said, I had two Oaks. I purchased it in 2017, 2019. I officially purchased it. Um, when we looked at the second course, um, end of 2021, um, I'll admittedly say, I know very little about the grass, the outside end of things. I'm pretty good on the inside. can, I can run a bar. can run a golf shop.

I feel like I can market pretty well. I know very little about the equipment outside and how to, how to take care of a golf course. had a, brought on, Eric Buchholz, as superintendent, he was superintendent general manager at a, at a nearby property, for a lot of years. And, he came on kind of has, it has the same vision as I did, at the time. And, and yeah, he's young helped us get to where we're at. mean, there's no way I could.

try to oversee six properties. Yeah. Without someone like that on the outside end of things.

Mike Hendrix (24:22)
Yeah, When you say same vision, do you have a you know, we're gonna do this, this, this and it's going to lead to this exit? Do you think about that? Or is that too far off?

Speaker 2 (24:32)
probably should, but I guess I'm one of those people. don't, I don't know if there'll ever be an exit. I feel like as this grows, as the businesses keep, keep, you know, keep growing and running. I enjoy this. I don't see myself ever really stepping away.

Mike Hendrix (24:48)
Yeah. Yeah. I think in the, in, in golf, unlike being in a strip mall or something like that, right? Where, know, you've got an ice cream shop in a strip mall or something, and you don't even really know for sure what the landlord's going to do in golf. Either the land ultimately is sold for development purposes, commercial or residential, or you do continue to operate it as a golf course. And so long as there's demand for golf.

I think you're right. What you're saying is, you either way, you're probably going to, you're probably in a good place. That's the, that's the beauty of owning land. At the end of the day, you've always got the land.

Speaker 2 (25:23)
Exactly. that's, that's, that's played into back to your initial question about, you know, I was looking at some of these properties that's played into a lot of it. The, Tuscumbia the course in green Lake, that's, know, the oldest 18 hole course in the state. We purchased that in, the start of 2023. we found a deal on it. think the land is worth three times what we paid for the golf course, but we want to run a golf course. Like that's, that's our plan. That's our vision. There'd be no reason to ever, you know, ever change that.

Mike Hendrix (25:50)
Yeah. Um, let's talk a little bit, uh, not so much land related. Let's talk a little bit about this concept of off-course golf or what I call indoor golf. Are you all in that business? Do you have simulators at some of your locations or how do you, how do you all think about that?

Speaker 2 (26:08)
So we have, we just have a simulator here at the location at two Oaks. we have one simulator here, probably put it in 20 years ago. would say when it was relatively new, we were kind of one of the, one of the first in the area to have it. Um, it was, you know, it was really neat and you know, nobody, nobody had them. Um, we've, we've since obviously upgraded it several times.

Mike Hendrix (26:30)
What brand and tech do you have? Okay, yep.

Speaker 2 (26:32)
It's the full swing.

And we've been happy with them. Our challenge, we have one of them here. And now, know, fast forward 20 years from when we first put it in, people have them in their garages, you know, the standalone facilities that have six or eight of them that can really create that atmosphere of, you know, fun indoor golf. We lose a little bit of that. Now our simulator, it's busy every day. Are we making any money on having one simulator? That's debatable. But for us, it's...

Again, small town central Wisconsin gives us a reason to keep the bar and restaurant open and keep some people flowing through here.

Mike Hendrix (27:08)
You running

leagues on that simulator?

Speaker 2 (27:10)
We do some leagues. We've actually just the last couple of years, we've just kind of stayed busy with people coming in and doing their own thing.

Mike Hendrix (27:16)
It's interesting. You're giving an answer that's different than what we hear a lot. you know, I get exposed to we, we track for every green grass location. We track if they have simulators or not. It's just one of the things that we measure. now we're measuring all of these other people, X golf and five iron golf and a 16 11 golf down in Texas. mean, there's just a proliferation of

simulator golf that's not at a golf course at any rate. we, hear good things in terms of revenue and the success that they're having. I'm curious, one, are there other golf courses somewhat close to you that you don't own that do have simulator businesses? And then to talk to me a little bit about like bowling and ice hockey, like what are, what are your golfers doing in the winter? If they're not golf.

Speaker 2 (28:05)
Sure, I think our big challenge in the areas where we're at is most of our properties are resort type areas. Not necessarily, again, we have the resort course in Fox Hills, but even Watoma is very busy from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Got We have a lot of lake homes, lot of vacationers. So there isn't a huge population this time of year.

Green Lake or where the Tuscumbia Golf Course is at is absolutely tourist town. It's three months of being busy and it's a ghost town from Labor Day to Memorial Day.

Yeah, so we're really not near any population. What is Watoma?

Mike Hendrix (28:39)
of amazing that your golf courses are successful as they are. That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (28:43)
Yeah, it helps. mean, it definitely helps. You know, again, having that that summer traffic membership structure is a little bit different. And I think we've we've created something that I think we've we're keeping golf very affordable. So we're we're busy. I think we're potentially leaving some money on the table these last couple of years because golf is so busy. But I I'm OK with that because I think it's helping golf in our area long term.

Mike Hendrix (29:07)
Understood. So let's, let's talk a little bit about that. Maybe we'll get back into the tech a little then. it sounds to me like maybe you probably don't do a lot of dynamic pricing.

Speaker 2 (29:16)
We don't. really what we've done and I started this maybe seven years ago at two Oaks is what we call a casual casual golf, rustic golf membership. Which the short of is we charge a goal for a hundred dollars to join for a hundred dollars. You're a member that locks you into paid paying $25 to play 18 holes with cart across our properties. Our rack rate were $60 golf courses. So it's a pretty easy sell at the golf shop counter.

Everybody just buys this casual membership and then they pay us $25 for the rest of the year every time they play. Wow. So again, we're leaving money on the table because we're full at a few places, but it's how we got how we made it through the rough years.

Mike Hendrix (29:56)
And then like you say, that's how the BevCard accounts for 10 % of your revenue, right? And now that number starts to make a little more sense as well. Correct. And so do you look, because a lot of guys look at FNB, food and beverage, a lot of people look at FNB and golf is kind of a nuisance. Maybe you all don't, maybe you all think like, no, food and beverage is important to

Speaker 2 (30:19)
No, for us it's important. That's why we're $25 golf because we're going to sell a six pack and a sandwich at the turn and that's how we're going to get to that ultimate dollar amount that we need per golfer.

Mike Hendrix (30:30)
Got it, okay. Almost a little surprised that you didn't explore toast because we know toast now is getting, is into golf. Toast works with sagacity. And so they have this really great golf product. If food and beverage is that important to you, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (30:44)
Yeah, and we had a standalone restaurant seven years ago, six years ago. And we had toast in that. Absolutely loved it. And I remember talking to the salesman at that point, I said, you guys need to do golf. Like, yeah, it was just that was a little bit too early. But now, yeah, it does sound like they're they're in the golf space now.

Mike Hendrix (31:03)
Yeah, yeah, they definitely they definitely are. Okay, so we don't have to get too much into the details of why you would leave Lightspeed. My impression is you do think Lightspeed is a good system. Like it's not, you you don't feel like, you can't book a tea time or something like that. You feel generally like it's a good system.

Speaker 2 (31:20)
100%. I think it's I've used a lot of the systems from a T sheet standpoint. It's one of my favorite T sheets. Very user friendly. I really like the T sheet side of it.

Mike Hendrix (31:30)
Okay. I'm sure there's people at Lightspeed scratching their head that said like, then why did he leave us?

Speaker 2 (31:36)
And yes, the big challenge for us was the food and beverage side. The fact that it was not connected to golf very well.

Mike Hendrix (31:43)
That makes sense. said, think people that watch this podcast know that that is a bit of a bugaboo there. So now that all adds up and I, and especially since you've just said, Hey, food and beverage is really actually important to us. It's we've built a business model where we almost need to upsell people once they're here. So food's going to matter.

Speaker 2 (32:02)
Absolutely.

Yeah, food and beverage. Yeah, we, lot of our golf outing prices is based on knowing the fact that what the beverage carts are going to do by having that outing. I can, I can deal a little bit on the golf and give them a little bit better deal on the golf because I know what that side of it's going to bring.

Mike Hendrix (32:15)
Got

it. Okay. makes sense. we haven't touched on this, but I'm getting more and more exposed to, driving ranges one because I am doing some of this off course stuff for, you know, I'm, I'm going to speak on a panel at the PGA show. And I wanted to make sure I had really good data. So I actually spent some extra time and thinking about driving ranges and all that kind of thing. And then additionally, we started to do a lot of website work for golf courses.

where we really defined like, Hey, you need to have these 13 different pages. And anyway, we're very particular about if you have a driving range, you have got to like highlight that in your website, almost as its own little business. And so we're getting really detailed with the driving range work we're doing. Talk to me across all your properties. Talk to me about the driving range business. Maybe you have short, you know, limited flight ranges or just give us a

perspective on your driving ranges.

Speaker 2 (33:13)
Sure. Driving ranges is lacking at our properties. have the new one that we just bought in Oshkosh does have a range. We have a range at Two Oaks and then we do have one at Fox Hills Resort property. So just only half of our properties have ranges. And there's still, that's an area that we haven't done anything to down the road. I think we would like to, but they're just traditional, just grass, basic driving ranges.

Mike Hendrix (33:35)
So let me ask you, is there like, let's say within 60 miles, 70 miles, something like that of your kind of orb, if you will, are there any shot tracer ranges out there? Not to mention a brand, but you know, outdoor driving range where they can see a screen.

Speaker 2 (33:51)
Yeah, I don't not in that, you know, I think you have to go a little bit farther away to get to that.

Mike Hendrix (33:56)
Maybe there's one or two in the Dells. Who knows, right?

Speaker 2 (33:59)
There's one near the Dells. I know there's one. It's not a Topgolf, but it's a similar, similar feel to that.

Mike Hendrix (34:05)
It's so have you looked at that because generally the people that do well with the shot tracer concept, the outdoor concept, they are food and beverage people. And so it almost sounds like it would be a good fit for you. But then again, you say, well, I've got limited distances. that's it. But I mean, have you looked at that as an option to grow?

Speaker 2 (34:25)
We haven't looked into it enough yet. We're very limited on land. There's only one or two properties where I could see even doing something. Even the driving range here is a little bit short. So we haven't gotten to that point yet, but I feel like it is something that's on the radar. I mean, I look at my daughters, my 16 and 14 year old daughters, anytime we go on vacation, we have to do Topgolf. They love it, but they have zero interest. They will not hit a ball in the driving range or they don't want to golf.

First thing, go!

Mike Hendrix (34:51)
They really do get drawn to that entertainment form of golf.

Speaker 2 (34:55)
Yep, I think that's a, I mean not just them, think that's a percentage of the industry.

Mike Hendrix (34:59)
Yeah, Rusty, that is an alarm yelling at you. Okay. So, okay. Now we understand why maybe you were open to changing the T sheet point of sale. That's what we're talking about for people. What did draw you to foreUP or to 10 form? mean, maybe literally, well, they were the ones that called me, you know, like, but what drew you to TenFore?

Speaker 2 (35:02)
Exactly.

So a few things. I did like the idea of that their system seemed to be all in one, you know, there wasn't that separate beverage app. wasn't, it was, it was one system, something that we sell with our membership structure. sell five to 6,000 memberships a year, across our properties. So they're the fact that they built out their, their online store. So I can sell a membership online and it flows right into the database. So I don't have to, I don't have to manually.

take that order and enter it into the system was huge time saver for me.

Mike Hendrix (35:56)
Yes, yeah. What else? mean, there's got to be more than well, maybe not if you got five or six thousand members, but there must have been other things that drew you to it.

Speaker 2 (36:05)
That was big. I like that they're, they seem a little bit smaller. They're easy to talk to. The conversations I had, I was able to get on the phone with Jonathan, Austin, Jared. mean, we talked to all of them right away. They're, you know, so far through these first couple of months, the customer service has been phenomenal. If we have a question, they answer. And that's a big part of what we look for in a technology partner.

Mike Hendrix (36:27)
One of the things I'm going to do, on another panel at a different time at the show next week. And we actually are talking about, here are the questions that you should be asking. This is specific to making a change because for people that don't know, one of the services that we provided SMB golf, we literally like hold an operator's hand and we set up the interviews. I mean, we do a lot, right? To make sure that it's a good fit. Anyway,

One of the things I believe in is that the tech company should leave you a demo of the tech without them around. Meaning, hey, I've gone through a demo. We've had one or two calls. You all can tell I'm a serious, you know, I'm seriously interested in making a shift here, but I would like to play with this tech sum without you with me.

I'm just curious, like, did you get the opportunity to do that with 10 for, do you wish you had done that? Talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (37:22)
I did not, I do wish I would have. And that is something that, I don't want to ever change software's again, but ultimately it probably happens at some point and, down the road. But that is something that I'm learning as I'm going with this is I will never sign onto a different tech, you know, software platform without touching feeling using it myself.

Mike Hendrix (37:42)
And even, and even sharing it with like your key employees too.

Speaker 2 (37:45)
Yeah.

And I have a food and beverage director who's been, you know, integral. Grace has been integral in helping me, you know, on board with 10-4 and, uh, she's the key staff have to touch and feel and use the system because, know, what I've, what I've seen is any of the demos you breeze through and everything just looks good with every system. Um, you have to, you have to use your specific, you know, set up and really try, try running some transactions.

Mike Hendrix (38:06)
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (38:15)
I would say we have move forward. wish I would ask, have asked over the years more specific questions. Yeah. You know, yes, the system, you know, we've had systems that say that, you yeah, you can make a tee time at any of your properties. Well, yes, I can, but I have to log out of the system, log in as a different course. That's that defeats the purpose. So, you know, or, or a system that'll say, yeah, your customer can put a credit card on file and use it anywhere on property. Well, you only can if it's.

using that, you if it's using a Clover device, it won't work. But if it's using a different device, it won't. So I would just say I need to get better. I would urge everyone to get better at asking specific questions.

Mike Hendrix (38:54)
Yeah. Yeah. you know, and I do know that several providers do offer that it's, not like this is a novel idea. I think, you club caddy asks you to sign something. think Lightspeed will send you a demo version. so I, just the, the same way that I try to

Salute and support companies that will tell you when the system is down, they'll send out a broadcast message. I really believe in that an alert system. I also believe in this concept of you should have, you should provide a sandbox for potential customers to use and, and play with the information. Here's an interesting data point. I don't think we've shared before on this podcast. I think right now it runs at 45%. Call it all half half of the

companies, golf course companies that engage us to help them change, make a change. Don't change. What happens is we're able to kind of sit with them and talk to them about, but you said this, this, and this is your goal. I've showed you how your existing system hits all of those goals. It's, know, it feels to me, Harry, like we just maybe need to do some more training or.

Maybe I can help convince the tech platform to do one development thing that would make, something like that. Right. But it has been interesting to me how many people we take through the process and look, the process is detailed. We, you know, we make these guys do these demos and we make them send these follow-up emails and we, but it's been interesting how many people have ultimately come back to me and said, Mike, now that you showed me all this stuff, I think we're just going to stay with what we have, you know,

Speaker 2 (40:31)
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting that. Yeah, very interesting to me that that's the case.

Mike Hendrix (40:36)
Yeah. Yeah. We, actually, there's been over 400, changes going back to going back to, the end of October. And that actually almost was like an alarm bell to me. Like that's too many changes in a short span of time. And what I'm starting to learn is people are making quick decisions, right? Operators like, like, you know, quick decision. I'm pulling the trigger. You know, I had a bad day and I'm done.

You know that kind of thing and it's almost like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the cakes. Party guy that can just help everybody get along, you know, and maybe we don't have to go through this.

Speaker 2 (41:06)
and unfortunately

Yeah, you would have been good for me the last couple of years because that is me. know, something overlapped me the wrong way or I don't think things were handled the right way and I'll be pretty quick to make that decision.

Mike Hendrix (41:23)
Yeah. But I will say this in your defense, and this is because I lived that life. I lived all those payroll things and workers comp and people not showing up for work. The tech companies need to understand the tremendous stress a small business operator is under. Right. And so they've got to figure out a way that they don't force people like a shoehorn into a shoe that doesn't fit. That's not going to work. It can work for one year.

but it's not going to work long-term. And so we need to get that side of the business just to have a little more empathy. People always say to me, empathy means free. Empathy doesn't mean free. Empathy means understand. And I know you're the kind of guy that you're like, I will pay you a good amount of money if the tech is worth it. You don't mind writing a check. You just want things to be right. And frankly, I think you want the terms to be right.

Don't make me sign up for three years, right? I'm not, I don't want to be a three year guy.

Speaker 2 (42:26)
No, and that's just something I won't do. I don't even like signing any contracts. I feel that, you know, if the system is good, I'm going to keep paying for it. If it's not, then I won't, but I have signed recently some one-year contracts, but I don't even like doing that. I'm more of that handshake person. just, if this works out, we're going to stick with you. over the past, there's been some, and that has caused, I guess that's led to us leaving some companies because they've

They've wanted a two or a three year contract and I just didn't feel like that was right.

Mike Hendrix (42:56)
You would, you would have loved me back in the day because it, you know, I mean, we got golf now to, to 4,000 golf courses without contracts. It was, it was awesome. We could get a quick decision. And then I felt like, and I ultimately had a team that I was managing and that kind of, I felt like every day we woke up in the morning, we had to earn it again. Right. we kept us super honest. Right. And the operator was like, this is like, how could I complain about this? They don't even make me sign a contract, you know? Right. And I,

But I will also say I've gotten old enough and mature enough to understand why a fortune 500 company wanted us to have contracts. I don't blame Comcast at all for that, but I'm just saying that there was this time that we literally just earned it every day. I kind of that resonated with me. like

Speaker 2 (43:45)
No, absolutely, that's how I feel it should be anyway.

Mike Hendrix (43:48)
Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about, we're kind of running out of time, but let's talk about other tech, right? I mean, and I'm talking about like, because we'll, know, we'll be at the PGA show. There'll be every technology company in the world. You know, what are you doing for payroll? I had a member from the Ohio owners association call me yesterday and he said, schedules are driving me nuts, Mike. I need to find an app that makes it easy to make the schedule out. So like, what are you doing for tech? That's not.

10-4, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (44:17)
Sure, yeah, not a whole lot, I guess now that you mentioned that scheduling, we use seven shifts.

Mike Hendrix (44:21)
Seven shifts and I just saw people use triple seat or but going

Speaker 2 (44:24)
on.

Yeah. Seven shifts. Very inexpensive in my mind and phenomenal scheduling software. mean, scheduling, use that for scheduling and time clocking. I mean, very happy with that. don't know.

Mike Hendrix (44:37)
golf EMS, you use 10 for what are you doing for like a for website?

Speaker 2 (44:45)
website through 10 for they're square 205.

Mike Hendrix (44:47)
The deal was square. It makes

sense. Any other marketing software or anything, you know, like that.

Speaker 2 (44:55)
That's so initially, this is maybe where I didn't do my due diligence. 10FORES marketing software currently is a little bit weak. So we're just, we're using a, you know, I forget what it's even called, B-Free, I-O, email template builder. So we use that and then basically can, you know, put the code into, into 10FORES marketing software.

Mike Hendrix (45:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

And what about tournament management, league management?

Speaker 2 (45:20)
We don't really do a lot of most of our leagues are all people run them on their own. We don't we don't organize much for leagues. We've kind of gotten out of that. So tournament management, we we had used golf EMS for a couple years. Don't or not golf EMS. I'm sorry, golf genius for for tournament scoring. We don't do a whole lot of that. So realistically, we I mean, we use golf EMS for for our stay and play resort packages. Then we also use that for

for the online signups for our events.

Mike Hendrix (45:45)
Gotcha. And are you, mentioned golf genius. you a G are your gin core or your courses, gin courses, or what are you doing for handicap?

Speaker 2 (45:53)
Yeah, so it's handicapped through the Wisconsin State Golf Association, which now uses gin.

Mike Hendrix (45:57)
Got it. Okay. Yup. So that makes sense. And so, I think there's, that gives you some level of access to golf genius if you wanted it, I believe.

Speaker 2 (46:04)
Yeah, we haven't looked into a whole lot of that just because we don't have a most of our rounds are our daily fee. We don't we don't see a lot of use for that.

Mike Hendrix (46:12)
Gotcha. So, let's just kind of wrap things up. mean, who knows, maybe you buy two more courses this year, but the point of the question is where are you headed? What, what do you think the business becomes and what's it look like maybe in another two or three years?

Speaker 2 (46:26)
Yeah, my hope is to keep growing. We've always kind of looked at right near here, near Wautoma, near central Wisconsin. I feel like we're almost running out of courses. I mean, we have so many in the area. We're pretty close to where we're going to start looking outside of the immediate area. My goal would be to continue to keep growing. I think our business model is working and as as my banker keeps saying yes, I think we're just going to try to keep going.

Mike Hendrix (46:53)
you, are you like with the six courses, is it still one airfication machine? You just move it around or like, how are you doing that? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:00)
We're still, we're still able to do that. That has been some of the growing pains. Again, my initial thought was with two or three courses, I don't need two of me. I don't need two superintendents. Now that we've gotten to six, we have, you know, had to bring on other people, but, again, we have great people and we still try to run it where, you know, like a key assistant superintendent might be covering two properties and things like that. golf carts, we've been able to acquire and kind of have our own tournament fleet. So that kind of helps.

bounce around and

Mike Hendrix (47:30)
What's your, what's your golf cart brand? Yeah. Across the board, right?

Speaker 2 (47:33)
Yamaha.

We, yeah, for the most part, we have some club cars that we're still in place at some of the properties, but slowly trying to, we're trying to upgrade one property every year.

Mike Hendrix (47:46)
Yamaha always makes me think of the NGC away. Are you guys members of the NGC away? We are okay. Because so then you get the Yamaha discount, right? People love the Yamaha discount as part of the NGC away deal. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's that's really good. So okay. Well, listen, I know it's it's impossible to catch up in the summertime because you're running a million miles. But I saw you guys made that tech change and I thought I got to get them on the podcast. So I really do.

Speaker 2 (47:58)
Absolutely.

Mike Hendrix (48:13)
Appreciate you coming on and, you know, helping us learn about how you go from one course to six and all the things that go along with that.

Speaker 2 (48:21)
No, and thank you. And you've helped me tremendously. I mean, I love listening to your podcasts. You know, learned a lot. It's great hearing from everybody you have on here.

Mike Hendrix (48:29)
That's great. I appreciate that very much. Okay. So that is Rusty Grimm from Rustic Golf Properties in Wisconsin. And this was a Tech Caddie podcast.

‍