Episode: What Kuo Got Right, And What He Missed — A Response to Howard Kuo’s Essay on International Club Design – Read Article – Designing for Difference Howard Kuo’s Spring/Summer 2026 Forum essay argues that domestic private clubs have lessons to learn from international club models — and on several counts, he’s correct. But the […]
Category: podcast
You Are Not Augusta
Why Imitating the Famous Clubs Produces Awkward Copies Instead of Confident Institutions The overwhelming majority of American clubs are quietly modeling themselves after a handful of institutions they are not, cannot be, and should not try to be — Augusta, Pine Valley, Cypress Point, Seminole, Winged Foot, and a few others whose influence over boardrooms […]
The Broker Who Knows Your Members
Why the Residential Real Estate Market Around Your Club Is Telling You More Than Your Board Realizes There is a person within fifteen minutes of your gate who knows more about your club’s actual market position than your board president does — and your club has almost certainly never had a substantive conversation with them. […]
The Last Six Months
How Projects Die Slowly at the Finish Line The hardest stretch of any clubhouse renovation isn’t the design phase, the demolition, or even the month-eight budget crisis. It’s the final six months — the period between drywall and ribbon cutting — and most clubs enter it structurally unprepared. By the time a project is four […]
Every Three Years: The Discipline of Listening
Episode: Every Three Years: The Discipline of Listening — Why Member Surveys Fail and What Strategic Listening Actually Requires Most private clubs run member surveys. Almost none of them run them well. The questions are drafted by the wrong people, fielded at the wrong intervals, analyzed without segmentation, and followed by silence — a sequence […]
The Kitchen You Can See
Episode: The Kitchen You Can See — Why Open Kitchens Are Now Expected — and Why Most Clubs Get Them Wrong By the mid-2010s, the visible kitchen had stopped being a differentiator in contemporary dining and become a baseline expectation — yet most private clubs are still cutting holes in walls and calling it an […]
What the Vendor Sees
Episode: What the Vendor Sees — The Industry Intelligence Network Your Board Never Taps The wine rep who’s been servicing clubs in your region for eighteen years knows which boards are about to fire their GM, which clubs are substituting cheaper products under the same menu prices, and which operations are quietly stretching payables to […]
The Twelve-Mile Bubble — Why Your Real Market Is Drive Time, Not Demographics
Most private club boards assume they compete within a metropolitan area, a regional reputation, or a demographic archetype. The actual competitive boundary is a drive-time radius of roughly twelve to eighteen minutes from your front gate — and inside that boundary, the total pool of households that can afford sustained full-service club membership, haven’t already […]
The Strategic Plan Without Numbers Is Just an Opinion
Why Most Club Plans Are Aspirations in a Binder Most private clubs spend between seventy-five and two hundred thousand dollars on a strategic plan that nobody uses to make real decisions. The leather-bound, consultant-facilitated, member-survey-informed document sitting on the GM’s credenza is not a strategic plan — it’s an opinion in a binder. This episode […]
What “Raising the Bar” Actually Costs
The Architectural Reality Underneath the Trends Built around Chris Lewis’s article “Changing golf clubhouses to meet member expectations,” which ran in the July/August 2026 issue of Golf Inc. and featured insights from Susan Castor of Castor Design Associates and Brian Doerr of Strategic Club Solutions. The article catalogs the trends reshaping the private club industry […]