Private Club Radio Show
Welcome to the Private Club Radio Show, the industry's weekly source for education, news, trends, and other current developments in the world of private clubs.
Hosted by the talented entertainer and industry expert, Denny Corby,
the podcast offers a unique perspective on the private club industry, featuring expert guests, product spotlights, predictions, and more.
Whether you're involved in a golf club management, yacht clubs, athletic clubs, or business clubs, the Private Club Radio Show is the essential podcast for
anyone seeking valuable insights and information on the latest trends and developments in the private club industry.
Private Club Radio Show
376: Creating Positive Work Environments and Mentorship Strategies w/ Maggie Barragan
Discover how to transform your leadership approach and create a positive work culture with insights from Maggie Berrigan, the dynamic Beach Club Manager at Westchester Country Club. Maggie dives into her fascinating career journey, sharing stories from her early days in restaurants and private clubs to her time at Augusta National Golf Club during the iconic Masters Tournament.
You'll learn how her decade-long commitment to teaching yoga has profoundly influenced her management style, enabling her to maintain focus and calm in even the busiest times.
Maggie’s approach to leadership and mentorship is nothing short of inspiring.
She believes in fostering a welcoming and supportive environment, especially when mentoring high school and college-aged staff.
Listen as she discusses her strategies for shaping young employees into conscientious and capable individuals, emphasizing the importance of leading by example. Maggie provides invaluable advice on the significance of mental health, staying grounded, and ensuring that her team feels both valued and motivated.
If you're curious about innovations in club management, this episode is packed with fascinating insights. Maggie shares details about the enhanced culinary programs at the club, the focus on healthier food options, and the robust employee recognition initiatives that boost morale. From managing the high-energy environment of a beach club during peak times like the 4th of July, Maggie offers a comprehensive look at how positive leadership and wellness are transforming the hospitality industry.
Tune in for a captivating conversation that promises to leave you inspired and equipped with practical tips for your own leadership journey.
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I have some people that have been at the club for a couple summers. A lot of them started maybe when they were in high school and they're in college now, and so I promoted them to shift leaders and they can kind of help oversee and mentor. So I concentrate really heavily on how I mentor them so that they mentor these high school kids, the kids younger than them, the same way. So it's just leading by example. But the point I was making was the board member was saying she's like I love I can see like how they emulate emulate you when they just start to act like you, when they're just calm, cool and collected. I think that's a compliment I get from people. A lot is I make them feel like just calm and cool and collected and no matter what stress is going on, and make people feel welcome, and that's what I want them to do as well.
Speaker 2:Hey everyone, welcome to the private club radio show podcast, the industry's choice for news, trends, updates and conversations all in the world of private golf and country clubs. Whether you're a consummate professional or brand new to the industry, welcome. We are glad you're here. This is the show where we go over any and all topics related to private golf and country clubs, and today I'm chatting with Maggie Berrigan, and she's the beach club manager at Westchester Country Club. I didn't realize how big of a facility and operation they have there, and so I was chatting with her about her whole career, what got her to where she's at managing the beach club and what that entails, because I don't think you see beach club managers too too often. And what I really enjoyed was prior to our conversation here, when her and I were chatting. She works a lot with the youths, the youths, the youths. I like youths. Youths are better Working with youths because a lot of the kids who work down at the beach are in high school and in college and where a lot of it was. No, I'm fortunate to be able to work with the kids at a young age where she can mold and kind of set an example of you know how to be a good human. So it's instead of seeing it as a, as a annoyance or anything, she sees it and makes it a way to teach and make everybody grow. And real quick, before we get to this episode, I just want to say a quick shout out, quick thank you. Quick shout out to some of our show partners. If you are interested at all in learning more about any of our show partners, hit them up, say hello, let them know you heard about us, heard about them or are reaching out because of maybe an ad or a mention here on Private Club Radio.
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Speaker 2:Here we have myself, denny Corby. There's excitement, there's mystery. Also there's magic. It is the most fun member of. At night. You and your club are going to have the Denny Corby experience. There's magic, mind reading, comedy, crowd work From the moment people show up to the time the show is over. It is engaging, it's fun. It's a night they're not going to forget Everything from just a strictly adults night out to some clubs making it a big, fun family event. Want to learn more? Head on over to DennyCorbycom. Enough about us and the ads here. Let's welcome to the show Beach Club manager Maggie Berrigan. What a fun background. You've been in hospitality your entire career, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my whole life basically. When I was how old, was I? 12, 13. I mean really young. My mom's best friend had a catering company and I used to like work in the kitchen, like work in the back of house, like doing prep stuff, just like she was like helping him out and I would help out and never I tried to leave a couple of times and then somehow it just sucks you right back in.
Speaker 2:But was there anything you learned back then that still sticks with you at all Like? Was there any like sayings, phrases or any like little, like tips and tricks you learned at that age, Just like working in the back of house, you know, like in in the roots, just in it? Is there anything you like picked up that still to this day You're like oh, that was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's like a tip, it's just like the work ethic that I'm watching the people around me and how hard they worked and how much fun they had while they were doing it. I think that's what really attracted me to the industry. And I started working in restaurants, like when I was in high school and I worked in restaurants and um in college and I started working at a club in college private club in college and that's what you know. You get to see the same people every day and talk to the same people and that's what drove me to like, stay within this, this private club industry, this sector of it. So it's?
Speaker 1:I think it's just the work ethic. That's what, what gets me and keeps me in it.
Speaker 2:Where'd you grow up?
Speaker 1:South Carolina small town it's called Lancaster. It's like right below Charlotte, so it's like basically a shove over Charlotte, North Carolina.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. And then how'd you get linked up with the Augusta?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so with the masters, yeah, that was so much fun. Um, I, they recruit a lot from university South Carolina, which is where I went. We had a great relationship. They have a great relationship with our professor there. Her name is Kathy Gustafson. She's retired since now, but she, I think actually I don't know what's the name of the GM there, his name is escaping me but yeah, him, that guy, that guy I think he went to USC and a couple other people also went to USC.
Speaker 1:So I went down there, I interviewed a lot of my friends. I ended up working and I actually was like I can't remember what position I interviewed for, but they're like, hey, how about you have, like you know, experience serving tables? So why don't you work on the terrace? And I was like, yeah, sure, I didn't know what the terrace was. It turned out I was working on the 18th hole, for the area only reserve, only people that could dine. There were members and players. So it was pretty wild. It's all tables of like round tables of six and there's two managers there and they're just basically seating anybody anywhere. So you can have like a two you know Arnold Palmer sitting there with a friend and then you're just you know Joe Schmoe is coming to sit with him and you're just constantly moving around and it was crazy just the amount of people that would go through the doors during a four-hour lunch period. It was a lot of fun, though.
Speaker 2:Great experience. You're pretty involved in the yoga world too, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:I've been teaching for just my 10th year, teaching 10th, 10th year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did. I taught full time for took a little break from the industry in 2014, 2015. Part of 2016, I taught, was teaching full time down in Charleston, moved to LA for a little bit, but just wasn't I don't know One. You don't get paid a lot of money teaching yoga, so that was certainly something, but I miss the industry and now I still teach like part-time now and it keeps me a little bit grounded what?
Speaker 2:was there anything in that time period or just anything with the yoga that you've been able to bring over to the hospitality of the club world, the management side? Um, you know, because yoga is very fluid and movement and sometimes I feel like clubs are more rigid and not uh.
Speaker 1:So I think it's a funny like mesh there yeah, I would say so, um, I mean, I bring it into my. I say I bring it to my everyday life, my yoga. You know, I think the important part is yoga. So you know it's a physical practice, right, but there's so many different elements to yoga. So you want to live your life, um, off the mat, the way you live it on your mat. So you know it's a physical practice, right, but there's so many different elements to yoga. So you want to live your life off the mat the way you live it on your mat. So how you practice is how you live.
Speaker 1:And you know, in the club industry, every day you're challenged by, you know, maybe your staff, or maybe it's a member or a board member or a committee, and how can you like take a deep breath, pause before you react to something? I think that's probably the number one thing that I brought to my everyday career is just taking a pause tell us about the unique to me, I think it's a unique position that you're in now beach club manager.
Speaker 1:That sounds so much fun yeah, it's very, I mean my. I get to walk around in sneakers and sunglasses all day long and it's probably the favorite part of my job is getting to wear sneakers and run around. I mean, you know, I'm outside all day long, the members are just. It's a different environment, right, like even from our main club, which is, you know, there's the golf course and there's, you know, the racket sports and there's the gym there and it's just.
Speaker 1:It's much more formal at the main club. But when people come down to the beach club, you know there's no dress code whatsoever. Pretty much they can wear t-shirts, they can wear jeans, they can wear cutoff jeans, they can wear pretty much whatever they want, like I said. But they're more relaxed and they're in a better mood sometimes when they come down to the beach club and I get to just walk around. I get to just walk around. People are hanging out at the bar and I just all I do is basically just walk around. I check on my staff, I get to check on members.
Speaker 1:We have we do have like one formal restaurant at the Beach Club, so it's, you know, a little more. You know you can't wear jeans and you have to wear a color shirt, but for the most part it's just a casual atmosphere and we'll see anywhere I think on 4th of thousand people there, which was pretty wild Uh, lots of, lots of people running around and that was we did our, probably our highest numbers we've ever done at the club. So it was. I feel like I'm yes, I feel like I'm still recovering today from it, today's Monday.
Speaker 2:No four days later. It's a lot of people. That's a lot of people.
Speaker 1:You know, and it's very big, the beach club is 62 acres. So I I mean I probably walk 15 to 30,000 steps a day, just depending on how busy we are. So I'm always I'm just walking back and forth and like sometimes I need to get from like this part of the club to this part of club in a very short amount of time, like I need a segue, but um, and then you get stopped every five minutes or something, like just wanting to chat or like you know, oh, my chicken sandwich was burnt, or whatever it might be, or they just want to stop and chat with me for a few minutes. Sometimes it's so hard to get like down to where I'm going, but by the time I get to where I'm going I'm like I don't know why I'm here. So it's a lot of that.
Speaker 2:yeah you definitely need a golf cart. No westchester country club, so so what else is going on there? I forgot that there's so many aspects to it.
Speaker 1:Yes, three golf courses. Well, two 18-hole golf courses, a nine-hole executive course. We have the sports house, which houses a gym, an indoor pool. This is all the main club Squash house we have oh gosh, I'm thinking how many tennis courts. We have 24 tennis courts, I think. I think about 24. Six to eight paddle courts, just. We're almost finished with our pickleball courts. Those are, I think, they just paid to the line, so those would be ready, I think, within the next couple of days. Two ballrooms, a hotel with 40 guest rooms, residences we have 40 guest rooms and we have 40 apartments, member apartments with about 60 members living on property. What else do we have? Giant driving range golf simulators.
Speaker 2:Okay, what don't we?
Speaker 1:have. I know, yeah, not much. We don't have Padel, that's. I don't know that. People are like, oh, you got to get Padel now. I'm like, oh my God, another racket sport. But yeah, we have a lot of everything.
Speaker 2:That's pickleball where you can just. It's the whole room, right, I think it's the whole room, it's just. Everything is like a fair game, no matter where the ball hits.
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure. I've seen people play it on. My husband showed me some videos on youtube with it. Um and it's. I think there's a pinel court here in connecticut somewhere. But yeah, I think it's in glass. You're just like the balls coming out from everywhere.
Speaker 2:But just it never stops yeah, never stops, yeah endless yes and then what's usually funny is it has to be awkward to play, because I've only seen it like watching from like a second level down. Yeah, it has to be so intimidating just to have like all these in, like a little box, all these balls flying at you. Oh, that's all these people just staring as well. Yeah, so how many employees total are at Westchester?
Speaker 1:Inside of the season we're just under a thousand, I would say yeah. So about three ish hundred of those are at the beach club, all seasonal employees, and on just about out of that, 300, I would say probably 250, or like high school, college, eights kids. So between the lifeguards for all of them um, I don't have to so much oversee the lifeguards, thank god. Um, but yeah, all food and beverage um front house, back house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that falls under my, under my purview now, I, I, I, I remember when we, we, we first chatted briefly, uh, and you, I, when I, when I, we started talking about this and I was like that's a lot of students, and you stopped me and made a point and you said you actually enjoy it because you can be a learning you're, you can be in a position to, to, to teach these kids to, because they are so young and so malleable that you can train them to be good people. Uh, and that's why I really want to chat too, like, oh, that was such a good because so it's such a good point of view, because so many people and it is so easy to go like, oh, it's these kids these days, because, like I know, I find myself saying stuff too, but like, just that narrative and that frame of mind and that mindset I just loved. Can you touch more on that?
Speaker 1:yeah, for sure, because I feel like I've heard it so many times referred to as like I think we're the same age, like our generation, like maybe the boomers are like oh, millennials this and millennials that. And I don't want to ever fall victim to just looking at kids, because I was in that position too. We were all like 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, once 18, 19, once like just being I wouldn't say dumb kids. It's just you don't know like how to necessarily act in the workplace or in society, right, but no, I like I love the kids that work for me. I try my best to like lead by example with them.
Speaker 1:I even have like a board member I was talking to the day and she was commenting no-transcript making, was the board member saying she's like I love, I can see like how they emulate, emulate you, when they just start to act like you and they're just calm, cool and collected. I think that's a compliment I get from people a lot, as I make them feel like just calm and cool and collected and no matter what stress is going on, and make people feel welcome. And that's what I want them to do as well, and know how to care for people. And I remind myself too all the time like, hey, we're not here, this is not a hospital, we're not saving lives, we're not curing cancer here not to demean what we do for a living but at the same time like, take a breath, like it's at the end of the day, it's not all that serious, but I still want you to care about what you're doing.
Speaker 2:So I do want to go on the record for a second time saying you are saving lives, alfredo. I have the episode out with Alfredo and he said we're not saving lives and normally I would agree, but think about some people. Like you know, mental health is a big thing, that's true, and you don't know. You know people are coming in. They might not be, you know, in the right, but because you and the team are so nice and friendly, you know no, that's a good point.
Speaker 2:Or like you, you don't, like you know, and then even like an employee I was talking, you know it could be an employee could be happy to have culture, like, oh, a good place and they're happy to have, uh, but no, that that was just, but no, I, I, I totally with you with that. What are some so like you know, as as be, like what, what's a day in the life you know at, at the beach club of you, beach club manager, what are some of your KPIs? You know what?
Speaker 1:are your, you know when, when, when things are firing, you know, just like this past weekend, what was it? What was that like for you? I mean, I can refer to like the 4th of July was our Super Bowl, as we call it, so it's like the height of summer for us. We knew we were expecting it and there's no reservations necessarily for the club, so it's you don't really know what to expect.
Speaker 2:Black Friday. You're just opening the doors and just whatever rolls in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we all got there at like seven in the morning and the club opens at 10, but like 9.15 people are walking in. I'm like what are they doing here? And they're like they're going to reserve chairs and they're we do like the swimming race at 10 o'clock. So like I mean they were getting there a little bit early to do that, to get ready for that. But I was like, oh my God, they're all here already. Um, but normal day I mean like there's no normal days, I would say, but I'm, I'm, I'm coming in, um, no-transcript. So I usually I work out or I do yoga or something like along those lines, and then I head to work, usually just check in with my management team, make sure everybody's got what they need to get the day started.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we do like on the fourth we were doing a girl's station on the beach.
Speaker 1:So you know, having our, our maintenance team helped me set up these girls on the beach and we made some really cool banners and making sure I have two interns as well. So they helped me with all of our um, our branding and our signage and, you know, food signage and we had these cool surfboards we painted of a chalk paint and we can paint. You know details on them, upcoming events or what the station entails, um, but just making sure all those things are in place, making sure everybody showed up to work I will say it's been a great summer with. I've never had even last summer I've never had anybody not show up to work, which I think says a lot for for what we're, the program that we're putting out. You know people want to come to work, so yeah, and getting the team excited, making sure all our decorating was done for the fourth. Um, the day was such a blur, oh my god. And you know it's like a 17 hour day and I don't know.
Speaker 1:I can barely tell you what we did that day, but it was just like a lot of running around and making sure things are in place, making sure people showed up and you know we had a lot of meetings prior to the day and making sure people knew exactly what to expect and making sure our staff, for their first summers, knew what the day was going to entail. And grill stations and we had we do like a Hoffman 500. So there's like a swimming race. It's 500 meter swimming race. So making sure that that team you know the aquatics team handles that and we have an egg toss game the day of what other games do? We have Tug of war big thing. Everybody shows up for tug of war.
Speaker 2:That is fun to watch.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, right on the beach. Um, but it's, you know, a normal day is, it's it's just me making sure people are in place and having the the how do they have what they need? This summer has been terrible with our refrigeration systems. You know, we're right on we're literally right on the water, so salt air is constantly coming in. So I spent a lot of time walking around checking refrigerators. To be honest, that's a very big part of my job is checking equipment, making sure things are working, calling our service providers to come in. So it's just checking things, that and being a support system for my chef. My chef's been there at the club for many years. He's been with Westchester for 30 plus years, the Beach Club about 50,. He's been the executive chef at the Beach Club for about 15 years. So I spent a lot of time with him. You know, coming up with new ideas.
Speaker 2:We do stations on the weekends. Yeah, how many executive chefs do you have for the club too?
Speaker 1:So for the club itself there's we have an executive chef and he came to the club kind of the manager team. We all came in together for the most part and our executive chef, kerry, came in just a little bit after we all started so he came in with us so he oversees both properties. We have an executive chef at the Beach Club. Our formal restaurant at the Beach Club has its own chef and then the main club. There is an executive chef at the Sports House, which is our restaurant at the main club, and then there's a banquet chef. We have an executive chef to cuisine. We have a lot of. We have a big back house team, big team.
Speaker 2:That's, that's impressive, yeah, since, since you've been there, are there any, I'll say, innovation, any like innovations or changes that you know, you've implemented, that you're proud of?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let me think. I mean, it's really nice to have members. Yeah, I Brad.
Speaker 2:You know there's something, come on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we get very creative. Every Friday, saturday, sunday at the Beach Club we have a different food station. So Fridays we typically have a big lobster station. We've been going to the club for quite some time. Saturdays we've been trying to get a little more creative. This past weekend we did a soft-shell crab station. It's a huge, huge, huge hit with the members. They've never done that before. Sundays we usually do pasta stations. I've just done a lot of redesigning of a lot of our branding, a lot of our menus just looked a little bit tired at the beach club so I redid all the menus. This year I added an element in our snack bar called the Glover Reef Cafe. So a new espresso machine. So we're doing. We have a huge coffee program, frappuccinos, refreshers. I mean I think we're better than starbucks, but, um, I will say so myself, hard to be. Yeah, right, um, but we do. We're doing like protein smoothies, um, we're doing fruit smoothies for the kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got a cool, actual, like, like, actual, like good style, like protein. Yes, shakes that are like it's not just, you know, because like and I'm just saying because, like it's easy to be like, oh, they're protein, but it's like. Or like you know, but super high. Are they actually like there's like, they're well crafted drinks well crafted yeah, well crafted protein.
Speaker 1:I have one with like a cold, like a cold brew. Lunch is my favorite. A lot of people like that. It's got like cold brew in it. And banana. There's a chocolate protein powder. Frozen avocado makes it really creamy too.
Speaker 1:Chia seeds I wanted to do peanut butter but we do no nuts at the beach so we have a lot of kids with allergies so I can't do any nuts. Nothing with peanut butter, nothing with almond milk or anything like that. But yeah, and cold pressed juices. That was a big thing we added to this year. But that program has been like a huge hit this year. Last year we added a permanent pizza oven outside which is open six days a week. Yeah, well, it is what does wood fire? But we have a propane. But it's a huge, huge hit. I mean we sell. Last year we sold, I mean, just this little station alone. I think we sold. How many pieces did we sell? I know it was like $70,000 worth of pizzas. I can't remember how many pizzas that is, but it was a lot of pizza, a whole lot of pizza.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of dough.
Speaker 1:It's a lot of dough. It's a lot of dough. Yes, Come on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they love it, we're going to be here all night. Yes, that's nuts.
Speaker 1:So you have your pizza and you have your protein smoothies and your cold-pressed green juices, so we have to have a little bit of balance.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:What other?
Speaker 2:cool stuff. That's wild.
Speaker 1:That's wild. I think the moms are really happy. This year I got rid of it. You know those frozen icy machines like a 7-Eleven. Yeah, we had one. I got rid of that. I think the moms loved me after that. So that was a big thing getting rid of that. The kids hate me but they're like where's the IC machine? I'm like oh, yeah, it's broken.
Speaker 2:Why did you get rid of it? Was it time? Was it old, was it?
Speaker 1:complaints. Yeah, partly parents were like this thing is just all sugar. I'm like I totally agree. Partly it was just it was constantly breaking and the service was out of new jersey and they could. We could never get them to come up. It would break and I would have it. No one would come up for like three to four weeks and so like it just wasn't worth trying to keep that program going. Um, we have lots of ice cream, though.
Speaker 2:The kids are fine, don't worry, there's plenty of sweet treats for them gotcha, it wasn't like like self-serve, like they can just go up and get it themselves, or was it like, yes, it was, it was a self-serve.
Speaker 1:Like they can just go up and get it themselves, or was it like yeah, so it was a self-serve, yeah, self-serve, but it was in our snack bar. So like I mean you had to pay for it, but you know kids would walk up and you know they tip their head back and, like I constantly catch kids doing that, like just right into their mouth, so yeah, when given the opportunity, yeah, as a 10 year old, yeah, and you know you're gonna get in trouble at like the club.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, like they know they can push the limit a little bit, like they.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, these kids aren't dumb and then this, and then we have this snack. While you walk into this route, this area, and it's so busy and so sometimes it's hard to like keep up with, like the kids running around, you know there's so many kids running around. You don't know who's who. We have 1500 member, 1600 member families. So anyway, yeah, they can. They know they can push the limit a little bit.
Speaker 2:So it's a lot of that, yeah any, any cool ways, strategies you use to motivate your teams. I mean, I know, you know, because kids are a you, you know kids, utes are a unique breed. How do you, how do you motivate that age group Like? How do you Like what's your style, what's your vibe Like, how do you get them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, a big thing I like to do is I just listen to them. And this goes really in part with, like the young ladies and young men who are my shift leaders is we do a weekly meeting with them and we go around and I talk to them kind of about maybe some things that I'm seeing that we can improve on, and you know some of our wins. You know you always want to give them the wins too, and then I just listen to them like, hey, what ideas do you have? They usually have some really great ideas for how to improve. Um, and like I can kind of you know, I listened to them talking to the staff and like, speaking kind of in my tone or in my like I hear myself a little bit and then I'm like, oh, my God, that's so nice Like, um, I motivate them with gift cards with employee of the week. Um, I think that's a big. You know that's a big thing. Uh, we do.
Speaker 2:What does that program look like? Or what does that little motivator like? What's that little?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so any, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So any manager, supervisor can nominate someone for employee of the week and we do. I will do, like you know, between the whole club, you know between, like we have our, you know, our maintenance staff, our front house staff, our back house staff and aquatic 10 kids a week that we are kids or employees that we nominate from play the week and they get a nice little plaque, they get recognized in front of their department and we give them like a gift certificate, um, just a way to like you know usually for like 25 to 30 dollars, I think.
Speaker 1:There are um. Our members have an opportunity as well to go onto our website and they can give a five-star review to an employee. Um, and that happens a lot, and when?
Speaker 2:when they do that yeah, when the members do that On their phones like there's, like through the app, they could.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they could do it on the app. They can go right on the website. We make it really easy so they can go on give a five-star review for an employee and then that employee gets like a $100 Visa gift card and they also get a plaque and they get recognized. Put that out into our employee newsletter too.
Speaker 2:So just just an employee newsletter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do. We have a. I think it comes out by by monthly yeah, by monthly um newsletter with our wins. We do an employee of the quarter, we do an all hands meeting every couple of months, um, where we ever the entire company's invited for lunch. Um, and Mark, our executive director, you know, he gives a really wonderful speech and we recognize probably two employees for the quarter as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's cool. Yeah, that is fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So lots of recognition, lots of listening. We do, like you know, employee ice cream day. We get food trucks. We have a big employee party on August 12th. We actually close the beach club for the day and all the employees can come and actually enjoy the beach club and so in the pool, hang out on the beach. You know we cook lunch for them. Last year was peter, director of operations, grilling and I was. He was grilling, I was cheesing the burgers. You know I was, you know I don't. It was, it was a lot but um, for 400 people, but it was. It was a lot of fun. We had a good time doing it. So we're gonna do it again this year.
Speaker 2:That's neat. Yeah, how do you, how do you gather with that many people Like how do you, what's? How do you get good feedback? Cause clearly you, you do that well. How do you get good, good feedback from from your, from your staff and also from your members?
Speaker 1:We do employee surveys. Um, we haven't done one in a a little while, but we did one at the end of last season. You know, we don't. We don't get a whole lot of people responding to it, which is always just, you know. I would love if we got more of a response last season.
Speaker 1:Give them gift cards yeah, exactly yeah to to fill them out. It was such a good idea. Um, I'm just trying to think. You know we use I use hot schedules to communicate with my staff. Um, I like to send out lots of, you know, little notes to them. You know we use, I use hot schedules to communicate with my staff.
Speaker 1:I like to send out lots of, you know little notes to them. Like you know, after the fourth it was, you know, I sent them a nice note about. You know, it was such a hard day for everybody and that day too, I broke everybody and nobody had to work unless they wanted to a double, so they all could either enjoy, maybe, dinner with their family or enjoy the fourth, you know, with their family in the morning or in the evening, so they weren't working a full day. But I mean, just getting feedback from them is it can be tough. But you know we have a really wonderful um people, we our department's called people and culture department. So we're actually in this, we're in a search right now.
Speaker 1:I think we're narrowing down, I think they're narrowing it down to a couple of candidates, but we're getting ready to hire a new people and culture director, which would be great. We had a wonderful person in for she was there for about a year and she really revamped that department so she left for a different opportunity. But we're looking forward to you know, someone stepping into that role and hopefully you know, again doing some surveys for our employees. We're very heavy in. We have a lot of H2B visa holders that come to Westchester so we try our best to take care of them exponentially. So last year we got a lot of feedback. We got feedback from them on our housing. So we spent a ton of money this year revamping our housing, which is at the main club, and redoing the rooms and getting new furniture and just giving it a refresh, and that was really, really well received. So I think it went a long way. We had a lot of returning employees from that program.
Speaker 2:That's awesome yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think a lot of managers maybe don't utilize technology as well as they could. There's so many different wonderful programs out there. But I talk about this stuff all the time though it's like I love. You know, I get on people all the time like they're using like Excel for their scheduling. I'm like Excel. Why are you using Excel? Like the hot schedules is like $100 a month. Like you can put. Like you can get all your budget, you can put your budget in there. You can put. You can see all your numbers and see your weekly spend, your weekly hours.
Speaker 2:So I think it's a huge program that I use all the time. So it's for scheduling employees. You put all the info in and what? So? It'll just say like, oh, like. I know Mary can't work this system, so it just knows, and so it uses AI. I'm assuming, and whatever the algorithm works, you put in everything and it helps you schedule.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can set people's availability. You can set parameters like don't schedule this person more than 20 hours a week. You put in their pay rate so it'll calculate what you're spending in the week, which is huge for us, what you're spending in the week, which is huge for us. I spend a lot of time working on budgeting and working on payroll, making sure my numbers are in line. It's a big part of my job so I love Hot Schedules. Big proponent of it.
Speaker 2:Is that like an app? What is that?
Speaker 1:It's owned by Forth. I don't know if you know that company, but they're buying up everything. So they bought People Matter, which was actually out of charleston, south carolina, which is they was um like an hr tech company, um, but they bought a lot of different, a lot of different companies, but hot schedules.
Speaker 2:Yeah, love it, highly recommend it good trends, bad trends you're seeing uh. You're seeing in the, in the club space, uh, trends you want to see more of less of anything. You want to get on a pedestal yeah, um, plenty of pedestals here.
Speaker 1:Uh, I see the trend of a lot of managers or people in our industry like and it's such a thing in hospitality in general, like not taking great care of their health, and I've seen that in restaurants, I've seen that in clubs, I've seen it. I mean didn't work in hotels, but I'm sure it exists in hotels. But you know, what are we around all day long in our industry, like a lot of alcohol, um, probably some other things that go on too that you know it's not as widely talked about, but I had a problem too, and like um in our chapter for a while it felt like like a lot, a lot of our education were centering around alcohol, or there was alcohol at everything. I'm like, do we have to learn about club trends or HR without having a wine lunch associated with?
Speaker 1:it, which I think it's a wonderful way to get together. I do drink, but on a social matter, not that much, but just people, just not maybe just taking that great care of themselves. I think if you're not taking care of yourself, then how can you come in and take care of your employees or take care of your members or do your job to the best of your ability? If you know younger, in my 20s and I look back I'm like wow, I was like you know, partying a lot and then I was going to work and I was wondering why I didn't perform at my best all the time.
Speaker 1:So I think that's something I've really gotten into over the last couple years is just trying to take care, take much better care of myself, and I find that I can go into work with a much more clear head and do my job better. So that's something I care about. But I will say people do talk about it more, though. I think there's like more of a sober, curious community out there, and I do love to go out with my girlfriends and, like you know, have a bottle of wine or so, but I think it's just a slippery slope.
Speaker 2:I think. No, thank you for sharing that, Because I don't know when this is going to air, when the other one's going to air, but at some point, who, what, where, when, why it might be before or after, doesn't matter. But I just chatted with Joe Mendez and that's, you know, his big thing. We, we've connected over that and that's what our episode is about. You know, mental health and like sobriety.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Cause that's because that's that's his thing. I've seen him talk a lot about that, a lot, so so he he opened up to us about it and, you know, shared some stories and things, um, but I think it's it because there's nothing to do, because it's it's profitable and that's what pays the bills for things. Yeah, so it's like you know, what do you? So it's just, I think it's, it's a cultural thing, it's you know, it's like, oh it's, oh, it totally is, and we're, you can't just sit there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you gotta buy something so you can't just like sit there and play like a you know the adult arcades, yeah, or like whatever. So it's, it's, it's, yeah, yeah, what do?
Speaker 1:they call it like we're missing, like our generations, like what I think they call like a third place, like that's not work, that's not home. It's a place you can go, like even like coffee shops aren't like. I mean, there are coffee shops around, but not as well and you know it's like a starbucks. Um, my husband and I were in mexico when do we go? In february went down to guadalajara and it's just like the, the culture there, the, the coffee culture there is so huge. There's like more cafes than bars and like that's serving alcohol. They're just, you know, a place you can go and you can sit and no one's like rushing you out. Um, and we just thought it was like so interesting to see that that culture and how it's not everything is so centered on alcohol, so in that particular area.
Speaker 2:So more to explore there yeah, for sure, and they just take it that's good, that maybe that's what the club is, maybe that's what our you know, maybe that's what the generation is trying to get clubs out to. You know, it's the way clubs are moving and coming. In place of that, that third thing, yes, exactly, you know 100 there's.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's people that are there, you know, probably more than they're at their own homes, which is wonderful. They feel comfortable there and, um, maybe they're having a drink or maybe they're just there to like, especially the beach club. People just come and hang out and relax and not necessarily are, you know, having a cocktail. But again, it's like I think it's just not to say focus on alcohol so much as just like taking care of yourself.
Speaker 2:I think it's so important and just being conscious of the choice of what you can put into your body, that you know, like, just even like me, and like you know, me and my wife were trying to be more conscious of our health and things, especially as we get older. And I had a back injury and just like, knowing, like, like, luckily I kept a little good, you know, keep a little good shape, because the injury could have been you know, it could have been down a lot, a lot worse.
Speaker 2:But, I dropped in about like a year. I dropped my cholesterol like 80 points.
Speaker 1:Oh congr points.
Speaker 2:The past couple months it dropped 15 pounds. It's just conscious. If we're going to go out to a Ruth, Chris or something, don't put the butter on.
Speaker 1:Just no butter.
Speaker 2:I'll just get the grilled chicken. You don't have to marinate in butter, just grill the chicken, put it on the plate, just give it some good veggies. Put it on the plate.
Speaker 1:There's times to enjoy but for the most part you don't need to douse stuff in oil.
Speaker 2:You don't need butters like it's like little things um, because man, those fat and carbs sneak up on you fast oh they, they do loaded it is.
Speaker 1:For me it's a sugar like I have such a sweet tooth so I have to like, really be mindful about and I'm at the beach club. So it's like, oh, let me go. You know, I'll go check out. We have a little ice cream shop, not a little, it actually is a little bit um, small but mighty. I will call her, but I'll like, oh, let me go check on the girls, although you know I'm gonna make sure the um software machine is working.
Speaker 2:So gotta make sure that that ratio is flowing lean yeah, exactly, exactly so.
Speaker 1:But I usually get like a little kid cup, you, you know it's about yay big, and I'm just a little bit in there. I'm like, okay, you know, satisfies me enough.
Speaker 2:So the first step is admitting. Yes, I am not in denial about it when the kids in the work in there were like get out.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, maggie. Well, they cut off today. They know when I'm coming over. They're like Like, oh yeah, should we get it ready?
Speaker 2:That's really funny. Yeah, that's funny, but no, thank you for coming on. Thanks for sharing. It was a fun conversation. There's not too many Beach Club managers. I thought that was also pretty cool too.
Speaker 1:No, we're a small group but we got to sit together. Small but mighty, but thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you, maggie, for coming on, really appreciate it. Hope you all enjoyed that episode. I know I did love just learning. Different perspectives, different people, different positions um different stories. Oh, all so good. If you are enjoying the content, the stories, make sure you give a five-star review with a comment, on whatever platform you are consuming on. If you aren't signed up for our newsletter, privateclubradiocom, head on over there. Get some early access to some episodes and some content we don't always announce publicly, and that's this episode. I'm your host, denny Corby. Until next time, catch on the flippity flip.
