Booking entertainment at golf course venues can boost member engagement and revenues. Who better to advise club managers than comedian, magician, and Private Club Radio host Denny Corby?

Corby fell in love with magic as a kid growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and he had an obvious knack for entertainment. After balancing college and work for his parents at their paper supply company (yes, it was in Scranton), the real-life cross between “The Office” characters Michael Scott, Jim Halpert, and Andy Bernard went out on his own to pursue his dream.

Corby is now a successful magician, entertainer, and keynote speaker, performing regularly for large corporate clients, small private clubs, and everything in between. He’s been featured on Fox and NBC, and he’s produced an instructional DVD, “Magic Tricks Now,” to help you impress your family and friends.

Late in 2022, he became host of Private Club Radio, a podcast delving into the intricacies of private club industry operations and entertainment.

In this episode, Corby dishes on the telltale signs of good and bad clubs, pulls the rug from under the feet of open-admission policies, shares tips from national venues to help smaller clubs, and tries to make a Houdini-like escape from the interviewee chair.

Clubs are One Member Away from Changing, for Better or Worse

The staff at private clubs often operate under the auspices of a board of directors, and many of those are dues-paying members that earn election or appointment. Turnover on the board can fuel turnover on the staff, which can affect member experience.

Sometimes, the whims of just one director can incite significant change.

A solution? Member vetting.

“Now’s the time for clubs to try new things, be a little bit stricter with their membership, because now there’s a waitlist,” Corby said.

How to Spot a Good Club

Corby has maintained his northeast Pennsylvania roots, but his work has taken him to perform at clubs all over the country. So he sees the same best practices in the better-run clubs.

They include:

• Making staff feel important and part of a family. A nickname goes a long way, like the “Squirrel Squad” at The Country Club in Boston.
• Marketing your entertainment internally, not just externally. Get the employees as fired up as the members for the upcoming performance.
• Get to know your members, and bring in entertainers or speakers that match their interests.

Enjoy this episode of Leadership on the Links with Denny Corby!

Soundbytes

15:13-15:35 “The really good clubs are their own living, breathing thing. They have a value, a structure. They have their mission, their vision, their personality in terms of a club, and they make sure they get the right person in there. It’s not just about filling a body and getting somebody in; it’s getting the right person, the right manager.”

26:27-26:57 “That’s probably a big thing, is that it’s OK to fail. It’s OK to try new things. You’re not going to lose members because you tried an event and no one showed up. Or because it just failed miserably for whatever reason. No one cares. Granted, in that moment, it might suck. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. No one cares. They just want to know and see that their clubs are progressing, trying to be better, and trying to adapt with the changing times, because clubs are behind, I think, in terms of a lot of different aspects.”

Quotes

“So early on, I thought, ‘Oh, I’m going to put up a website, and people are going to book me.’ That’s not how it works. There’s this thing called marketing, and you have to go out there and do things.”

“Why do some clubs let everybody in? I didn’t realize how much people really didn’t vet. Or they say, ‘You’re friends with Bill and Dan? Oh, all right. Good enough.’ But it’s not just that person, it’s their surrounding sphere.”

“I can tell, almost immediately based on the phone call, how the club show is going to go, meaning how many people are going to show up, X, Y, and Z, and how they promote things.”

“I carry a bag of tricks, so it’s probably a deck of cards.”

“I like when people leave a show, and somebody will ask, ‘How was it?’ And they’ll say, ‘You just had to be there.’”

 

Links Mentioned in This Episode:

Tyler Bloom Consulting: https://tylerbloomconsulting.com/

Denny Corby: https://www.dennycorby.com/

Private Club Radio: https://www.privateclubradio.com/

Connect with Denny on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennycorby/