Tyler Arnold Eagle Club Systems
Episode 1

Tyler Arnold Eagle Club Systems

Tyler Arnold, CEO of Eagle Club Systems, discusses the company's golf management software and its success in the industry. He highlights the flexibility and simplicity of their system, as well as their focus on customer support.

microphone icon

Tyler Arnold

simple clock icon

35min

green horizontal play episode button
spotify icon greenround red youtube play buttonpurple apple podcast icon

Description:

Tyler Arnold, CEO of Eagle Club Systems, discusses the company's golf management software and its success in the industry. He highlights the flexibility and simplicity of their system, as well as their focus on customer support. Tyler also shares their plans for future development, including enhancements to food and beverage management and simulator capabilities. He emphasizes the importance of their US-based tech team and their ability to quickly release updates. Tyler discusses their pricing strategy and their ability to cater to a wide range of golf courses. He concludes by providing contact information for those interested in learning more about Eagle Club Systems.

  • Eagle Club Systems offers golf management software that is flexible and easy to use, with a focus on customer support.
  • The company has experienced significant growth and has a high customer retention rate.
  • Their software modules can be customized to meet the specific needs of each golf course.
  • Eagle Club Systems integrates with various payment processors and offers options for hardware compatibility.
  • The company's future plans include enhancements to food and beverage management and simulator capabilities.

As Promised:

EagleClubSystems.com

Company ph: 727-433-8707 | Tyler's cell: 850-333-8297

Magic Clips:

Jason Pearsall about Building Club Caddie, Autism and the Future

Jason Pearsall, the founder of Club Caddie, shares his journey of building the company and the importance of understanding the day-to-day operations of a golf course. Jason has the unique perspective as a golf course owner as he purchased Warren Valley Golf Course in 2022. Club Caddie started as a food and beverage delivery system called Golfler, but quickly evolved into a full clubhouse management software. Pearsall's experience as a golf course owner and operator have allowed him to build a product that solves real problems for golf course operators. The company has experienced significant growth and success, winning deals with management companies and continuously improving their product.

microphone icon

Jason Pearsall

simple clock icon

1hr 11min

Overwhelming Support for LA City Golf New $10 Player Deposit Tee Times

Kevin Fitzgerald, Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, provides an update on recent meetings regarding the implementation of a pilot program for golf tee time bookings in Los Angeles. The Golf Advisory Committee and the Recreation and Park Board of Commissioners both endorsed the staff recommendation for a $10 non-refundable deposit per player when booking a tee time.

microphone icon

Kevin Fitzgerald

simple clock icon

34min

ezLocator founder Jon Schultz conversation on The Tech Caddie podcast

Jon Schultz, founder of ezLocator, discusses how their solution helps superintendents find the daily optimum hole location and enhances communication within a golf facility. ezLocator now include AI to improve the customer experience.

microphone icon

Jon Schultz

simple clock icon

35min

Inside the LA City golf tee time controversy

In this episode of the Tech Caddie podcast, Mike Hendrix speaks with Kevin Fitzgerald, the Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, about the intersection of golf and public policy. Included is the TikTok video from Dave Fink which helped expose the gray market on the KaKao app, used by hundreds of golfers to score the best tee times available at the LA City municipal golf courses. Aaron Gleason from Golf Geek Software, discussed their solution called FairPlay Guardian, which uses machine learning to detect fraudulent activity in tee time bookings. Matt Holder from Loop Golf emphasized the need for operators to understand the pricing pressure and revenue management opportunities in the golf industry.

microphone icon

Kevin Fitzgerald, Aaron Gleason, Matt Holder

simple clock icon

54min

Aaron Gleason, Golf Geek Co-Founder, announces FairPlay Guardian

Aaron Gleason discusses the issue of reselling tee times at LA City Golf courses and how Golf Geek's FairPlay Guardian technology can help detect and prevent fraudulent activity. He also spoke about the importance of knowing the conversion rate of a booking engine and how marketing automation can help increase revenue.

microphone icon

Aaron Gleason

simple clock icon

29min

Kevin Fitzgerald from Southern California Golf Association

Mike Hendrix and Kevin Fitzgerald, the Assistant Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association have a conversation about golf in Los Angeles. They discuss the role of the advisory board for Los Angeles City Golf Courses and the intersection of golf and public policy. They also peer into the issue of reservation systems and online brokers in the golf industry and specifically the City of Los Angeles.

microphone icon

Kevin Fitzgerald

simple clock icon

43min

Matt Holder from Loop Golf clears the air on The Tech Caddie podcast

Matt Holder from Loop Golf joins the podcast to discuss Loop Golf. Matt talks about the early days for Loop and mistakes made along the way. Mike and Matt go into detail about tee time scraping and how Loop helps golf courses.

microphone icon

Matt Holder

simple clock icon

29min

Don Rea, golf course owner and VP, PGA of America talks tech

Don Rea joined Mike Hendrix on The Tech Caddie podcast for a conversation about the technology Don uses to run the golf course he owns in Mesa, AZ - Augusta Ranch Golf Club. Don is the VP of the PGA of America and he speaks about operating technology from that perspective and from his knowledge gained as a podcast host with Jay Karen, the Executive Director of the NGCOA.

microphone icon

Don Rea Jr.

simple clock icon

48min

Del Ratcliffe, Founder Kodology - PITCHcrm, joins Mike on The Tech Caddie podcast

Del shares his background as an entrepreneur and his life in golf. He discusses the history of Seven Jars Distillery and the discovery of buried treasure on his family farm. Del talks about entering the golf business and the importance of technology in the industry. He shares his experiences with EZLinks and Fore Reservations, as well as the development of Kodology and Pitch CRM.

microphone icon

Del Ratcliffe

simple clock icon

1hr 6min

Morgan Kimmins joins Mike Hendrix on The Tech Caddie podcast

Morgan Kimmins from Springfield Golf Resort in Chandler, Arizona discusses their use of Lightspeed technology and the impact it has had on their business. He highlights the benefits of Lightspeed's punch pass feature and the ease of use of their booking engine. He also discusses the importance of communication and the use of technology for frost delays. Morgan emphasizes the value of support and training provided by Lightspeed and the positive experience they have had with their customer service.

microphone icon

Mogan Kimmins

simple clock icon

42min

Dave Vanslette joins Mike Hendrix on The Tech Caddie podcast

Dave Vanslette, Founder and CEO from FAIRWAYiQ discusses the evolution of the company and its focus on data and automation in the golf industry. They have developed hardware sensors and software solutions to optimize golf course operations and enhance the player experience. They are focused on reducing friction and improving efficiency in the golf industry through AI and automation. The company has a strong customer support system and aims to provide value to golf courses of all types

microphone icon

Dave Vanslette

simple clock icon

51min

Brendon Beebe formerly foreUP CTO

Brendon Beebe, former CTO of foreUP, discusses his experience in the golf industry and building a successful company. He emphasizes the value of bootstrapping, hyper-focusing on specific market segments, and building a flexible system to meet the needs of different golf courses. At the end of the episode, Brendon asks Mike about how he would compete with GolfNow if he was to build a tee time aggregator and how he would use GolfNow if he was a golf course owner.

microphone icon

Brendon Beebe

simple clock icon

51min

Allison George Toad Valley Golf Course

Allison George, a golf course owner and operator, discusses her experiences with various technology platforms in the golf industry. She shares personal updates, including her involvement in the golf industry and her use of technology in her golf courses.

microphone icon

Allison George

simple clock icon

55min

Dathan Wong Noteefy

Noteefy is a waitlist software that aims to help golfers play more golf and golf courses make more money. The product allows golfers to set their preferences for tee times and receive alerts when those tee times become available.

microphone icon

Dathan Wong

simple clock icon

36min

Tyler Arnold Eagle Club Systems

Tyler Arnold, CEO of Eagle Club Systems, discusses the company's golf management software and its success in the industry. He highlights the flexibility and simplicity of their system, as well as their focus on customer support.

microphone icon

Tyler Arnold

simple clock icon

35min

Transcript:

Okay, Tyler Arnold, thanks for joining us on The Tech Caddie. And welcome to the show. How's, how's everything as you guys prepare for the PGA show? Thank you. Thanks for having me. Um, yeah, it's been great. We're just putting all the pieces in line and ready to get down there and get things going. That's great. Tell us, uh, just, you know, brief overview, what you all are selling to, to golf courses today.

And then we can kind of get a little more detailed from there. But just for the, for people that aren't familiar with Eagle Club Systems, just a brief overview. Sure. Yeah. It's golf management software. Um, you know, everything from tee times and point of sale, food and beverage, uh, marketing website, all that stuff, uh, including indoor golf, simulators, pickleball court reservations, uh, those, uh, aspects of the industry of the business as well. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think. I think that kind of gives us the brief overview there.

How's the, how is the simulator business for you? You know, that's been our number one, uh, requested demo here in the past, probably three months alone has been a lot of, uh, majority of standalone indoor golf facilities or golf courses that have a simulator that want to see how it interacts with golf tee times and simulator tee times and kind of how that differentiates, how much of a challenge has that been for your tech team, but how does that technology differ?

Yeah, so it initially it was a challenge right when we started up. We had probably gosh our fifth or sixth ever customer come to us and they were a simulator place and we weren't equipped for that at the time and kind of devoted gosh probably two or three months just on simulator flexibility and functionality alone, which is really benefited now in the long run to be able to compete with those other companies that are out there that do simulator, you know, tee times and such so.

It's become a huge asset for us. And do you find yourself in competition with companies that we might not be familiar with the companies that are only focused on indoor golf? Yeah, it's tough, um, to kind of move people away from what they're used to. As is always is the case with any sort of switch that you make, uh, especially in the golf industry where we have, you know, golf pros have been in the business for, you know,

30, 40 years and hey, I've used this system the whole time. I've been here or come across some that built their own. So anytime you try to switch from something that, you know, is already out there, it's hard. But yeah, we've gotten a few things in line to kind of break that barrier to entry and make that as easy as possible when it comes from switching to, you know, something else to us, definitely when it comes to indoor golf as well. Well, good for you.

You mentioned in your first five or six customers that somebody asked for simulators. What, where are you nowadays on customer count? How have you guys grown? Well, we are up about just over 300% in the past 12 months alone, which is huge. I'm a big advocate of managed growth just because of the fact that if you grow too fast you start losing more. And so we wanna make sure we can support that.

And that's been our number one asset as far as what strength we have over everybody else is just the customer alone. The customer support alone has been huge. And that loyalty that we've been able to establish with our customers, with our golf courses, is been, I think, the thing that's been driving us to the growth that we've had so far the most, just because now we're starting to get referrals from our existing courses. And they're saying, hey,

Why don't you check out Eagle Club? I've used them for X amount of time. Um, and then, you know, they're come to us and say, Hey, I heard from so-and-so. And so it's, it's been awesome. So hopefully that's going to start to snowball here over the next, you know, six to 12 months as we gain more customers. Um, but yeah, that customer support that's, that's number one in my book to be able to, you know, you're nothing if you don't have a, you know, a support product to be able to fall back on to help you.

Yeah, there's no question that your customers LOVE And I wouldn't, I won't use that word a lot on this, these episodes, but your customers love your service and support. Yeah, I have never seen Tyler a company between our review website. So our review website is Golf Course Technology Reviews and then Google. Between those two sites, you...

have over 30 reviews and every single one is a five star review. And I don't think, you know, people aren't familiar with us that much. We certainly are not a pay for play website, right. We're just going to be straight. You know, if the customer says that that's what it is. So we're not pay for play. And I don't believe Google is pay for, for play. So you, you genuinely have over 30 reviews that are a hundred percent five star. And that's.

You just don't see that. Uh, so that it's impressive. Now go back to what you said a second ago. Uh, what we'll use buckets. Can you tell us, can you give the listeners an idea? You're somewhere between 30 and 50 clients, 50 and 75. Like what, what kind, where do you kind of fall in terms of client count? Yeah. And, uh, probably by end of March we'll be over a hundred. So that's kind of, yeah. So we've had a lot of growth here. Like I was saying in the past 12 months alone. Um, so that's the, it's a big deal for us. Cause that 100 hundred was a.

you know, that centennial mark, if you will, is kind of gonna put us over to the next, you know, 100, 200, again, start to get those referrals, but yeah, it's been huge in the past year. Yeah, no, that's outstanding. So by March at 100, I would assume that then puts more strain on service and support. You'll have to bring in more people to help with service and support, but it sounds like, again, and I applaud you on the managed growth.

concept as well. But it sounds like, okay, you're going through one of these growth spurts, where you'll have to bring in some more bodies. Yes, exactly. And that's something we've already started to kind of put those pieces online to be able to make.

that have already contacted me from some of our golf courses to say, hey, I want to get out of the green grass side. I want to come over to your side, but I don't have to work on holidays or weekends or whatever. Granted, we're always open seven days a week as far as the support goes, but not to have to work as much. So yeah, we have a pool of candidates that's already kind of select from without me having to even reach out to Indeed or anything, any companies like that to kind of post a job service. That's great. So you are...

The stack, if you will, is built somewhat in a mod. Assumably there's a green grass tee sheet module. Perhaps there's an indoor module that's separate in terms of reservations. There's point of sale. You mentioned marketing, there's email. I know we had spoken, geez, over a year ago, and I was impressed with some of the text marketing or text communication that you guys were building.

What is, but if you, if you break out those modules, what do you think your client appreciates the most? What do you see the greatest adoption of in terms of those different modules? I think it's just the simplicity of it all. A lot of companies like to, you know, we, obviously we always listen to our customers and we've already established that in this podcast, but the, but some people take it.

too far, right? They'll say, hey, I see you want this. We'll go ahead and do it. But then it affects golf course A, B, C, and D because they don't want it like that. And now it becomes too complicated for them. So we kind of have to, we want to make sure that we do things in a way to obviously help our current customers help us grow. But at the same time, we don't want to make we don't want to have to take any steps backwards. So that's huge for us. But I think to kind of answer your question is the

The flexibility of the system, we can make it do as little or we can make it do as much as you want. We have one guy, you know, just last week, wants to just have one simulator and use it just for a T-sheet only, no payments, no anything. And he said, look, let me start there and then let me advance it to maybe adding another simulator, adding payments, and then maybe moving into the golf course that they run. So yeah, it can start, like I said, as little or make it as intuitive and as advanced as you want it.

You mentioned payments and I know that your customers, at least some of your customers are using some Clover technology, I think as it relates to payments because you've got some on-course functionality that's pretty good there. The emerging trend in the golf industry is that every point of sale company, every tee sheet company, however you want to refer to them,

they're all becoming payments companies, right? That ultimately it's payments that will drive all of this. Payments theoretically replaces barter, right? So there was a time where barter would be your form of payment. Well, now what we'll see is thousands of golf courses say, well, you can be my payment processor, but I want all the technology for free, right? And so payments essentially replaces barter. But talk to me a little bit about where you guys are with payments if you're-

aligned with someone or just what does the world of payments look like for Eagle Club Systems? Yeah. So we are not anywhere remotely close to or wanting to become our own payment processor. That just want to establish that first and foremost. We want to partner with the companies that do that and do that well and have them handle all those logistics on the backend.

in order to help us acquire more customers, help us grow, support the system and not have to worry about payment side of things. The, who we're partnered with and integrated with right now is the CardPoint Gateway through CardConnect or Fiserv I guess, as well as a partnership with a Honda Group who the NGCOA merchant processing provider there, their partner.

And so between those two and as well as global payments integrated is the other one that I think you're actually going to hear from Harvey Silverman next week with his talk at the Eagle at the golf business conference and for the payment side of things about who we're integrated with. So we want to give options, but also not limit you to use your own if you want to. But I always beg the question of why, because we'll just match whatever rates that you're.

currently using, you know, at right now, cause we don't want to lose business over, you know, nickels and dimes as far as your credit card rates go. We just want to get you as a customer and again, help us grow. You've become a referral and just, you know, kind of snowball from there. That's great. And so just to, just to be clear, that sounds to me like Eagle Club Systems can work with any payment processor, that ultimately the operator can choose what they want to do. Yeah, they can. It just, if you want to use your own, it won't be a hundred percent integrated.

just because you'll have to, you know, do your thing on the machine for that, you know, company and then in our system, ring it in. But they won't talk to each other. But I mean, yeah, that's what they want to do. Great. But yeah, we also have the integrated concept as well. If they want to do that. Gotcha. Okay. So, uh, you know, we're a, a technology, uh, review brand, right? And so, uh, try to not go too, too deep on the business terms, but we are interested in the technology. And so I, you know,

My sense is you must have a tech team, as well as a support team, as well as a sales team. And you're the Uber leader above all those teams. Tell me a little bit about your tech team. How big is it? What's the background? Have you attracted talent from other golf companies? I don't think a lot of people in the industry know about your tech team. And I think that'd be interesting to hear. Yeah, so it's a US-based team. We've acquired them from a previous medical software company.

Um, that they still kind of manage in the meantime, but are now focused, uh, on moving the golf business up, uh, in the world. And you know, they don't have the golf background that I do. And that's what's huge in this partnership I have with them, uh, to be able to say, Hey, look, here's how it is. And here's how it runs in the golf industry.

a little bit different than medical, right? So when they came over from the medical world, they didn't really do credit card payments and that sort of thing, because it was all charging and accounts and invoicing and insurance and stuff. So that was something different. We had to make a credit card integration, but being U.S. based and be able to be on the same time zone as them has been huge because I don't have to rely on anybody overseas and coordinating times at night or vice versa with them and the language barrier that may or may not be there as well.

I mean, we don't have a team of 30 developers like some people might have because obviously, A, that's going to start to be your overhead is going to get huge as far as that goes. But we do take it to heart as far as what you want and what you feature wise is I'll be able to have a meeting with them pretty much daily to make sure that we're on the same page and we have a list of items that need to be addressed and what priority. So we're...

We're very, let me rephrase this, we're efficient and be able to figure out what our priority is without, again, back to my other conversation, without affecting current customers or even future customers, we wanna make sure that we enhance the product to what we want it to be, and make sure, again, we're not taking any steps backwards because as you might know in programming and CodeWorld, if you...

make one thing, make a feature, might break something else. So we want to make sure our QA team is on the point as well. But for that, we have probably four different quality control personnel that handle that. We have a team of about five different salespeople and that's always growing. So it's been awesome for us.

Are you in a cadence where it's every two weeks you have a release or is it, no, you know, we release based on what we're building. Just give the listener a little bit of an idea how frequently you guys are pushing releases. Yeah, with the beauty of our system, we don't have to rely on any sort of third party to do any releases or anything like that. It's all SQL based so we can push it out whenever we want.

I think we pushed out three different updates this past week alone, actually two in the past 24 hours probably. So yeah, we don't have any set time that when we're going to release XYZ, we obviously we push it out to our sandbox, we test it, make sure it's all good. And then we give, you know, I ultimately end up giving the all clear to the dev team to say, hey, go ahead and release it at a certain time. Most of the time it's done, you know, automatically overnight around 3 or 4 a.m. on Eastern time that way we don't affect really anybody.

Uh, that's using the system. We have customers, you know, East coast, we have some in California. So we got to make sure that we, you know, have all our faces covered as far as who's open, do they have a restaurant, you know, that sort of thing. So, right. And are you guys AWS? Are you Google cloud? What, where are you, where's the, we have our own server and downtown Tampa, um, that we've acquired that we've purchased, so we don't have to rely on anybody as far as cloud-based hosting. And.

that really ultimately helps us keep our costs down as well. Cause we don't have to pay Google or AWS or anybody for any sort of database as we acquire more customers, it gets more expensive. So we kind of have that in our advantage right now. Excellent. Uh, and, and so it's interesting while we've been talking, another review came in for you guys and again, it's a five star review. So, uh, that's outstanding. Um, uh, talk a little bit about the future. So I really want to make.

uh, at a habit in these episodes to ask about roadmap. I know some people are, um, very secretive about a roadmap. Uh, but I think it's always good for the listeners to understand that, but there is a roadmap, right? And, and, you know, the biggest thing we're working on today is X and then we know three things down the road is Y or something like that. But if you can give us a feel for your roadmap and, and where you're headed and what you guys are thinking about. Yeah. A lot of our, our next up and coming, uh, projects are a lot to do with food and beverage.

So we have table maps on the horizon, which actually probably in the next two to three weeks, hopefully we should be able to show that and then be able to do statements and things online. So members and such can go online to their online account, pay their statement, see their statement, pay with any sort of payment method, use their club credits, use their gift cards, loyalty points, things like that to be able to make that more efficient.

Right now we've already enabled the ability to text a statement to members. So they can see that and next is kind of be able to tie a payment link to that. So they can get it, boom, pay it, they're done. And then if the course wants to be able to pass on a surcharge for the credit card fee to pay that on the phone, you know, kind of concept as well. So all those things are on the plan for 2024 as well as enhancing our simulator capability to be able to have player-based pricing.

So some people say, hey, look, one player, one hour is 20 bucks, two players for one hour is 30 bucks. Doesn't really add up for 20 plus 20. So we want to make sure we have that flexibility as well. Because a lot of similar places are doing that as well, kind of make it a service. Hey, I want to book a lesson, it's this. But I want to do a two hour Bay rental, it's this. So two different pricing structures, especially if they do prepaid online. So again, that's all coming in, hopefully, the next quarter, the two quarters here in 24.

If you can think, thank you for that. If you can think back to when you went live with your first customer, which I don't know when that was. Sometime in 22, maybe in 21. Maybe you can share with us when your first customer went live. Yeah, it was actually 2020. When we first started. It was funny, I had a gentleman call me up and say, Hey, I...

I heard from a friend of yours that uses your system and right there I'm like, well, you're the first one to ever really going to use it, but I'm just going to keep rolling with it. So no problem. Somebody's got to be wanting to jump in with two feet, you know, and everybody asks for references and I'm like, well, if everybody banked on references, nobody would ever be able to get off the ground. So somebody's got to be the first one, you know, and do you have that client as a client today? Yep.

That's another thing we hadn't touched on, but I had seen in some of your marketing, I believe you have quite a high retention rate. Yeah, we've, I'd say 99%. We've lost one just because when that course got a new GM, the GM that they had was affiliated with another point of sale processor. It was kind of their hands were tied there. Understood. Yeah. So anyway, what I was going to say was...

If you think back to that first install and then where you are today, do you have a sense for maybe the one or two items that clients have requested that somewhat surprised you? In my opinion, the way simulators have come on has been a little surprising to me in terms of the green grass locations using them. But-

In your mind, one or two things that people ask for that you didn't really think would matter that much, but today it's been very successful for you guys and a lot of your clients use it. I would say the one that's caught me, I don't wanna say off guard, but it's kind of shocked me in the past few weeks is be able to have a block of time set. I wanna have a lesson tee sheet but also I teach on Bay number one.

And so I want those to kind of work simultaneously. So if somebody is end up playing on Bay number one, the lesson sheet gets blocked, or if I book a lesson, the Bay gets blocked. So that took a little bit of work figuring that out, sort of, you know, kind of have, do we, how do we do it? You know, we kind of end up basing it on turn times and do a zero minute turn time. And so as soon as that one gets booked, that one gets booked. So we kind of had that logic built in, but I mean, anything else, I'm not really having anything just kind of pop in my head about any one-off.

odd requests. I mean, a lot of it is based on my time with other companies in the past that I've either used or worked for and kind of have that knowledge of what was what is out there and what was requested at the times I was with those companies and we're still you know building on that to this day. I mean, you know, I yeah, I can't I can't really figure anything else out as of right now. Something comes to me. I'll yell at you.

Well, you mentioned food and beverage and the table things that you're working on today. For the people that don't know, you all recently won the Virtues account just a little bit outside of central Ohio where I am. And for those that don't know, Virtues is considered the number one public golf course in Ohio and certainly a top 100 in America.

very large clubhouse there, you've probably been there, very large clubhouse there, extensive food and beverage operation, et cetera, et cetera. When you bring on a client like that, that certainly is different than bringing on, I'll just make something up, hidden holes and X, Y, Z, city. When you bring on a client like the Virtues, will it push you? Will you have to develop to ultimately be able to satisfy all their needs?

Or do you feel like you're ready right now for that level of dining and that level of service? Yeah, to get the virtues and hung on board here, Hung Chow is the GM, the director of golf, the kind of the guru of all things there at the virtues. And he was able to kind of, we did several demos with him over the course of probably three or four months, kind of showing what we can do at this current time.

and even being more transparent with him as far as what our roadmap is to kind of get him on board with us. And he was able to, or he is willing to work with us and kind of give us almost a, I don't wanna say beta, but almost like a site where we can say, hey, look, we'll deploy it to you guys. You guys test it, grind it out, let us know how it is for you. Cause our thought process with a course like Virtues is if it's gonna work for them, it's gonna work for probably 90% of other public courses in the United States.

Um, so we're kind of have that basis and be able to say, Hey, you know, he's giving us feedback, we give him feedback. We share our sandbox kind of screenshots with him and see how things are set up. Um, but yeah, we do have a few more things to do, but as of, I mean, past Sunday, he finally was like, Hey, look, I like the way the food and beverages right now. Yeah. The table maps are nice to have and that sort of thing, but we still have tabs and you can name it table number or whatever. And fires to the kitchen with the table, you know, all that stuff.

So all that's there, it's just the visual aspect of seeing the overview of a floor plan and what's taken and what's not is, the only thing really missing on that regards. But yeah, to your point, yes, it was a huge, kind of like a breath I had to take. I was like, okay, wow, we're gonna get the virtues. This is gonna be a lot of work, but it ended up not being a lot of work. Ended up being a lot of things we already had and he already won it. I was just, we were making it a bigger point than it really needed to be. Right, understood.

So tell me, and I want to make sure that you know, and for people listening, we will provide contact information, I owe you for 30 minutes of your time. So you ought to be able to get something out of this. But before we get into that, share with me what's been the biggest challenge, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you're an entrepreneur, right? You're an entrepreneur that happens to be in the technology space, and then a little more specifically, the golf technology space.

But there's challenges for everybody that started business. And, you know, certainly funding is always a challenge and staffing is a challenge. And then it's taxing on your home. I mean, all those things that entrepreneurs go through. What's been difficult for you? Well, I think the biggest thing is difficulty wise when we first started up is not having that biweekly or monthly paycheck, you know? And that was the biggest, you know, scare factor is I've never.

kind of branched out on my own. I've always relied on that, you know, being a W-2 employee kind of concept. Once I got past that, then the next issue became, what do we do? What do we do first? What do we program? Do we, you know, do a point of sale with food and beverage and all that fancy stuff? Do we build a tee sheet that you can make a foursome? Do we, you know, what do we do? And so we started kind of taking a survey of all my peers and all the people that I know in the golf industry, saying, hey, what...

What do you want? You know, if you could build your dream software, what do you want? And kind of taking that feedback and kind of running with it and then say, okay, well, I see you want these 10 things. Okay, give it to me in order. You know, what's your priority? What's your biggest want? Versus, hey, what can you wait a little while on? And so that's how we kind of built our software is based on the feedback from people in the industry and not just, hey, what do we think is gonna work? It's more of what we know is gonna be needed.

is kind of how that right and fair to say, and correct, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but fair to say, your big biggest differentiator today is price, right? That you, your thesis is, I don't think this technology needs to be as expensive as others have priced it at and we can win on price.

maybe we'll match you on features, but we'll win on price. Fair to say that that's kind of where you guys are. I think that, but I think number one is back to earlier is our customer support. I think that's our biggest asset there. But you would, it takes you a while to prove customer support, right? To your point about the first person that signed up with you, it couldn't be a referral.

You have to, you know, it took you a while to earn all of these five star reviews. It took you a while to earn the ability to say my retention rate is over 95%. You know, between that and five star reviews, we must be doing something right, Mr. Operator, right? Um, and so yes, I agree with you. Like I listen, I think you're going to be at the PGA show next week. The PGA of America should have you on a stage talking about whatever it is that you all do to deliver support, because clearly you lead the industry in support. But.

With that said, chicken and the egg, right? But you needed a low price point to get people to try it. And then you could prove to them who you guys were ultimately gonna be. Yeah, that's what it boils down to. And like I was saying earlier with the, we don't have all the staff and overhead that other people may have is we're able to kind of have that lower price point to where we don't really need to cover too much. Obviously we wanna make money. Everybody's in it to make money, right? I mean, nobody would do this for free. There's hard costs involved, things like that.

But yeah, we're able to kind of lower it to where it's a little bit more affordable, especially for these mom and pops and these nine hole courses and these municipalities that can't afford too much, you know, things like that. When you get up into the resort and the private clubs and the money is they're like, oh, you can give it to me for free. I still want it to do X, Y, Z. If it doesn't do that, I don't care. You know, I agree with that. I agree totally with that, that there certainly is a certain level of golf course that would not take the product for free.

It's much more about, you know, really what you bring to the table. But to your point, when you're working with a golf course in Elmire, New York, or you're working with a golf course in Troy, Ohio, right? Or you're working with a golf course outside of Louisville, Kentucky. There's a certain demographic there where price is going to be a driver. And I think you guys have clicked into that. Okay. Let's get in a little bit of the, what it would mean to become a customer.

type of thing of Eagle Club Systems. First question I have for you is, what's the install process? How long are we talking about from A to Z until I'm bringing people up? It depends on what you want, right? So obviously if you're taking payments, the credit card process is just slightly longer depending upon the underwriting and things like that, which I mean, it can go through instantly as soon as you fill out the app or it could take three to four days, just depends on the situation.

Uh, but man, we can have you booking tee times and doing pretty much everything except processing a credit card and probably 24 hours. You know, I could have, you know, a database built and created, uh, granted, we probably still need to get your data and products, customer list, all that stuff imported. Uh, but yeah, I can give you access to in less than 24 hours. Okay. And, um, uh, what talk about hardware. Do I need to purchase?

Hardware are you going to give me hardware like we'll just walk us through the hardware Piece of this proposition if you will. Yeah, the beauty of this is most courses probably already have the hardware they need For instance, I've yet to run into a course where unless it's a Bluetooth receipt printer that their receipt printers will work with our system their Windows their Mac their Chromebook their iPad whatever it is will work with our system

So the hardware is kind of a less of a barrier to entry for us than it is to other people. Because that's, you know, Mike, you touched on probably the top three questions I get after a demo is, you know, number one is probably what hardware do I need? And then, you know, the credit card machines as well, depending upon, you know, the price and the, you know, with the rate and how much they process. Sometimes we're able to give those out for free. It just depends on, you know, the situation.

or we can lease them as well to kind of lower that cost every month to the end user. So they don't have to shell out so much money. But yeah, hardware is essentially whatever you have right now most likely work. And that just, you know, makes me curious. Is anybody like, can I run the T sheet from my phone? Yeah. Excellent. That's excellent. Recommend the larger screen, you know, cause it gets a little small, but you know, for those older staff members that, you know,

need to be able to see a lot. Well, no question, but I've always felt like, you know, a lot of a lot of customers, especially during certain months of the year, it's a one man show. And so if you're out pulling carts or something like that, and something pops up that just to have the convenience of being able to do it on your phone, I think is great. Nice, you know, you're sitting at home and you're, you know, in the wintertime, you don't know what time you need to be there tomorrow. What time is the first tee time you can pop open your phone and look at it and say, Okay, I see I need to be there at whatever time and

not have to rely on a server-based system or something that you need another device to see and so things like that. That's right. Before we give out your phone number and how to get in touch with you and whatnot, just touch on integrations. Are you working with, beyond this 100 group that you mentioned, are you integrated with any other Systems that we hear about a lot in golf?

Um, hear about a lot in golf, not really. I mean, maybe E-range and range servant, uh, for PENCOs and that sort of thing. For that. You do have integrations with those guys. Yep. Um, but after that, um, we don't really have any sort of integrations yet, uh, other than like, you know, email marketing tools and such. That's great. So, uh, I don't think you're the sales guy, but, but listen, you're the CEO. So you're always the sales guy. What, how do people get in touch with you?

Do you like people to come in through your website and fill out a form? Well, you know, how can golf course operators, owners, managers learn more about what you guys have? Whatever is easiest for them. I mean, there's multiple options, obviously our website, EagleClubSystems.com You can give us a call. My numbers is on the website as well. You know, we have our support line, sales line, they're all kind of one and the same, 727-433-8707.

or you can call me directly at 850-333-8297. That's my cell phone. So you can text me, call me, whatever. And that's, again, that separates us from the rest as I'm able to kind of just take the call, the text, whatever, and help you out with whatever questions you need and whatever day. I mean, I was texting some customers on Christmas, texting them at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night. It's do whatever it takes to help them out. That's right. Let's do whatever it takes. You're exactly right.

Well, listen, we'll put all that in the show notes as well. So we'll make it easy for people to get to you. But I appreciate you coming on. I, again, the level of support that you guys are getting and then that people are acknowledging it. I'm looking at it on one of my screens right now. It is impressive. And I will say my experience has been even if the support is amazing, if the tech doesn't work, they're not gonna give you five stars, right?

So the tech seems to be working. My goodness, if you're gonna be at 100 golf courses before The Masters, essentially is what we're talking about. That's outstanding. What's the, of those hundred, how many would you say are green grass? Oh, 85%. Okay, so a large number, yeah. So that's outstanding. So again, thanks for coming on the Tech Caddie, Tyler, and enjoy your time in Orlando at the PGA Show. I know it'll be a ton of work.

but hopefully it's fruitful for you guys and you add some more clients. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. All right, thanks.

00:07

Host

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

00:43

Tyler Arnold

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

01:34

Host

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

01:50

Tyler Arnold

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

illustration of woman opening envelope of a newsletter delivery - icon format