Terry Anglin hit the deck running after being brought in to help right the ship at San Diego Yacht Club, and his resourceful management style led to top recognition for himself through the Excellence in Club Management Awards.
For all the money he’s helped to save, revenue he’s helped to generate, and recognition and growth he’s helped to bring to the San Diego (Calif.) Yacht Club (SDYC) in his six-and-a-half years as its General Manager/Chief Operating Officer, nothing comes close to the bang-for-the-buck impact that Terrence J. (Terry) Anglin, CCM, CCE, got from the plastic coyotes.
Achievements at San Diego YC Under Terry Anglin’s Leadership• High level of membership satisfaction (93% very satisfied or satisfied) helped to gain approval for a 38% increase in initiation fee; combined with the success of referral outreach efforts built around an“Everyone knows someone” theme, which brought net gains of 47 new Flag members (with an average age of 40) and a 25% increase in Junior members, a record level for initiation revenues was reached in 2015. |
So before detailing the many other achievements that have earned him The Mel Rex Award through the Excellence in Club Management Awards, let’s first relate the story of Terry, the seagulls and the coyote decoys.
Even though SDYC, which was founded in 1886, has been in its prime location at the mouth of San Diego Bay for decades, it seems that seagulls didn’t come to discover the bounty that could be had by dive-bombing club members’ tables as they dined or drank on the waterside deck until about a year a half ago. Faced with a very clear and present danger that threatened to undermine all of the progress he had made since becoming GM/COO in 2009 to reduce the club’s operating costs (broken glassware was piling up), boost its food-and-beverage business (who would want to only eat inside in San Diego?) and attract new members (it’s a great club, but we do require that you wear this hard hat outside the clubhouse), Anglin knew that finding a quick and permanently effective solution to this new problem had to be an immediate priority.
After immersing himself in research about their likes and dislikes, Anglin discovered that, while they would not seem to ever have occasion to share the same habitat, seagulls have a particularly strong aversion to coyotes. That led to another search that yielded a source for a dozen plastic coyote figurines that would cost all of about $100, shipping included. Once they arrived and were placed strategically around the SDYC property, the seagulls quickly decided to find other targets for their bread-basket attacks. The only thing Anglin and his staff now have to do is move the figurines around a couple times a day to convince the seagulls (who clearly are bird-brained) that they will meet certain doom should they ever violate SDYC’s airspace again.
Setting the Bar Early
The Great Seagull Scare-off was included in Terry Anglin’s nomination for Excellence in Club Management recognition as an illustration of his “extremely innovative and creative” management abilities. But really, those qualities have characterized his performance and contributions from the moment he arrived at SDYC and needed to quickly begin to steer the club through a series of immediate challenges, including its largest capital project in 45 years (replacing four of its six buildings, at a cost of over $10 million) and finding replacements for several key positions (Executive Chef, Catering Director and Controller).
Drawing on career experience from positions he held previously at a variety of properties, including city clubs (the University Club of Memphis), for-profit golf courses (for American Golf) and the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club in Corona Del Mar, Calif., Anglin hit the deck running at SDYC by employing what he describes as his “orchestra leader” management style.
“I’m self-taught in this business,” he explains. “I didn’t go to hospitality school, and my first job in the business was selling lift tickets at a ski resort. I learned about club operations and property management through on-the-job training, and that drove home the importance for me of having a team that knows how to work together.
“I’ve been in ‘silo’ operations where people who are 20 feet apart prefer to send e-mails to each other rather than talk about things, and it’s not hard to figure out why things often don’t work out well in those situations,” Anglin adds. “My approach has always been to hire first for talent, not skills, and then to put a premium on teaching the skills that each person will need to succeed in their job. And as you do that, you also need to put a lot of emphasis on clearing the path of any obstacles that can get in the way of their productivity, and on making sure to recognize the entire team’s efforts and achievements.”
Since he came to SDYC, Anglin and his team have treated the membership to a sweet symphony of increased club activity and more operating funds dropping to the bottom line. Last year, the club’s Board was presented with a five-year financial report that demonstrated how this pattern of progress unfolded in the food-and-beverage area over a timeline that paralleled Anglin’s tenure. It showed that after inheriting an F&B operation that was losing 11% on its revenues when Anglin arrived, F&B sales had since increased by 32%, and the loss for 2015 had been reduced to just 2%.
And there was ample evidence that momentum could be building toward a breakthrough that could put F&B into the black. On the a la carte side, dollars-per-cover had increased by 7%. The catering department, meanwhile, served nearly 1,200 events during the year, to post revenues that were 4% higher than 2014 and 8% higher than 2013. SDYC’s nearly $4 million in annual F&B sales are split 50-50 between the two areas, and collectively their monthly cover counts had increased to nearly 11,000 per month in 2015.
Beverage sales were also outpacing the previous year by 6%, thanks to boosts from an expansion of the club’s craft-beer offerings, an enhanced by-the-glass wine menu and the continued popularity of the “The Darren and Terry Show”— monthly wine-pairing dinners featuring Anglin (who is on the Board of the Club Managers Association of America’s International Wine Society) and Executive Chef Darren Denny that have sold out for four years running (usually reaching that sellout status three months in advance).
Chef Denny, also known as “the Surfin’ Chef,” routinely draws 250 patrons for his “Grilling with the Surfin’ Chef” events on the now-seagull-free Front Deck on Friday nights, and an equal number for “Beer Can BBQ Wednesdays.” Overall, the buzz created by SDYC’s dining program and members’ clear satisfaction with its direction has led to approval of a kitchen renovation and an exploration of how more outdoor dining space could be added.
The excitement over F&B has contributed to an even bigger payoff from new-membership development efforts. With the theme of “Everyone knows someone…” included in virtually all club communications to help raise awareness about the value of referrals from the existing membership, and with a Membership Development Committee performing numerous outreach efforts to encourage referrals, SDYC brought in record levels of initiation fees in 2015, representing a 29% increase from 2014. This gain was helped by a 38% increase in the initiation fee, which the Board approved on the strength of the results of a 2013 survey, which showed that 93% of the membership was very satisfied or satisfied with the club, compared to a national average of 81%. In addition, that same survey showed that 83% strongly agreed, or agreed, that they received value for the cost of their membership, vs. the national average of 62%.
The breakdown of the particulars behind the record initiation-fee performance were especially impressive. The club not only showed a net gain of 47 Flag members (its full-privilege category) in 2015, the average age of those new members was 40, a full 16 years below the club’s existing average. In addition, the number of Junior members grew by 25%, and substantial success was also registered from the Provisional Associate category, which was created to extend a “try before you buy” nine-month trial membership opportunity. In SDYC’s fiscal 2015, 15 Provisional Associates moved to Flag status, and their spots were quickly filled with even more “PAs” who signed on for trial periods.
The success of the Membership Development Committee reflects another notable aspect of how SDYC functions. There are no less than 31 functioning committees at SDYC, representing interests as unique as amateur radio operators. Instead of being smothered or thwarted at every turn by a committee structure, Anglin’s management team embraces their importance and works closely with each to help develop and pursue their goals for enhancing the club’s culture.
Staff support was bolstered last year with the addition of two important new positions: Communications Coordinator, charged with taking responsibility for the social branding of SDYC as a leader in its field, and a Partnership Coordinator, tasked with identifying and securing corporate partnership opportunities, to help defray the rising costs of hosting regattas by providing mutually beneficial branding and sponsorship opportunities around those events.
In the first year of that effort, nearly $60,000 in cash and in-kind relationships were secured through SDYC’s partnering efforts, which were carefully defined and controlled so they would be acceptable to the membership. The partnering concept was already promising to be another testament to Anglin’s creative and resourceful management of SDYC—but even with that level of initial success, it still couldn’t come close to the ROI produced by the plastic coyotes.
Honoring ExcellenceThe Excellence in Club Management (ECM) Awards were established by the McMahon Group, Inc., the St. Louis-based consulting firm, in 1997 and have been co-sponsored by Club & Resort Business since 2006. Awards in four categories are given each year: A Selection Committee comprised of a peer group of leading club managers conducts the judging for the ECM Awards; the McMahon Group and Club & Resort Business are not involved in the selection of the winners. The Selection Committee for the 2015 Awards was chaired by Kevin Vitale, CCM, General Manager/COO of Baltusrol Golf Club, Springfield, N.J. A full listing of judges, in addition to information on past winners and on how to nominate candidates for future years’ awards, can be found at the special website for the ECM Awards, www.clubmanageraward.com. The deadline for submitting nominations for the 2016 ECM Awards is November 11, 2016. In addition to in-depth articles in Club & Resort Business that detail the achievements of each ECM |
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