The quick answer is “absolutely not”!

But only if the model is used exactly as intended. The model is divided into two initial phases: a Player Acquisition phase and a Player/Customer Development phase. To get the most out of this model, owners and operators are asked to make use of all the available tools and resources and to adhere to the program as specified by their project manager. At a later date, the third and fourth phases of this growth initiative—Player Persuader and Player Retention—will be introduced.

There are only five possible outcomes for this model to go wrong, and they are all caused by ignorance or human error:

1. In order to save costs, an owner or operator chooses to imitate this campaign, replicating only the one aspect of it that they and the rest of the world are permitted to know about—the price point, also known as the hook. They are only allowing a nickel to stand in the way of a dollar by doing this. Because of their inexperience and ignorance, they exclusively draw Core and Avid golfers, which invariably results in tragedy. This tactic typically destroys the market in addition to hurting their business. One of the reasons MMC is implementing this new method is so we can someday conduct these campaigns for free, doing away with the need for greed. Owners and/or operators like them are one of the reasons for this.
2. Many owners live month to month, borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. This is a reality for most businesses, not just those in the golf industry. Past-due bills pile up on their desk like Pringles in a can. Bookkeepers dislike picking up the constant stream of phone calls from furious vendors demanding payment every morning. They spend most of their mornings coming up with new defenses for why the vendor shouldn’t be paid again. One day, all of a sudden, money starts pouring down on their workplace from the sky, and they start writing checks as rapidly as they can move their pen. In doing so, they neglected to keep in mind that the money contributed at the beginning was meant for the direct mail part of the campaign, which, incidentally, is the only way Casual and Non-golfers can be distinguished with any degree of precision. As you have relatively few Casual and Non-golfers without direct mail, your sales are now limited to Core and Avid golfers, who should be paying rack rates given their consumption. Selling Core and Avid golfers is only done as a sacrifice bunt to advance the campaign to direct mail, which is its main driver. Game over if you are thrown out at each of the bases for failing to carry out the model’s strategy.
3. The objective of this model is to advance your profession, the game, and your business. Players that are acquired by MMC are immediately locked up in committed partnerships, giving staff members plenty of time and opportunity to grow them as players and customers. MMC provides a number of complimentary mini-in-house promotions to entice these new players to spend money in the profit centers like F&B, range, leagues, excursions, banquets, and so forth. We offer educational videos to all of our clients once every two weeks to help them build their customer base and boost operating income. Given the number of new golfers the MMC campaign has attracted, which is normally over 1,000, any facility we deal with should succeed even if they just utilize 10% of the materials we supply them. It’s unfortunate that this isn’t always the case. A small number of owners and/or operators forego the development phase because they assume their future success is a given. Players lose interest and abandon their membership when this happens.
4. MMC campaigns yield a substantial influx of cash within a short timeframe, which can be an unprecedented experience for many course owners. Dealing with such a significant amount of liquid cash can sometimes be overwhelming, particularly for owners who have faced financial challenges for years. In some cases, the sudden liquidity tempts them to impulsively spend the money as quickly as it arrives. While such occurrences are infrequent, they have happened, and unfortunately, the consequences of lacking self-control affect everyone involved.
5. The fifth potential failure lies not in the campaign itself failing but rather when an owner sells the course after running the campaign without facilitating proper introductions between the new owner and MMC. Neglecting to inform us and neglecting to introduce us to the new ownership can result in confusion and bewilderment for the new management. Since they were not involved in the campaign, they might not fully grasp the philosophy or the tremendous opportunity they have just acquired.

Had the previous owner simply reached out to me on my direct line to announce the sale and introduce our staff to the new owner(s), we would have gladly volunteered our services without charge to facilitate a smooth transition. Prioritizing the growth of these new players and explaining the model’s guiding principles could have significantly eased the transition process.

Improved communication would have benefited everyone involved. The previous owner might have felt less guilty about the sale, the new owner(s) could have recognized the immense potential of their newly acquired business, and the new players would have received the respect and appreciation they deserved. Such positive word-of-mouth publicity would have likely led to exponential growth for the business.

With that said, the vast majority of MMC’s clients adhere to our program to the T, particularly during the acquisition phase, which is when we communicate with them frequently, and a large portion of those owners and/or operators use at least some of the available tools and resources during the development phase. We are extremely proud to say that 100% of those facilities are enormously successful, and 95% of those that do not have a strong development program are also very successful.

The bottom line is that even if you simply follow our instructions during the acquisition phase, your campaign will be successful; however, if you implement our development phases, you will exponentially grow your business, career, and the game. This is a collaboration. MMC will identify the ideal customers, acquire them, and lock them into long-term relationships with your facility. We will provide you with the tools and resources to develop them as players and customers. However, you must follow our program exactly as it is designed, keep your new players engaged, and reinvest some of the revenue raised back into the property for capital improvements.

There are only three reasons why more facilities haven’t partnered with MMC yet, and all three are based on fear: fear of cost, fear of loss, and fear of change.

1. Fear of Cost: Running a golf course is extremely expensive. Money flows from the facility like water from a faucet. Everyday equipment fails, chemicals must be purchased, payroll must be met, taxes and insurances must be paid, and so on. Unfortunately, marketing is always pushed aside in favor of higher priority immediate needs. Owners and/or operators spend so much time each day putting out fires that they don’t have time to figure out who is starting all of the fires. Overlooked is the primary goal of starting a business, which is to acquire and retain customers. Without marketing, there are no customers, which means no revenue to permanently put out fires, and the vicious cycle continues.

A campaign of this magnitude is costly to launch. That is simply a fact. Mining data, compiling research, conducting market analysis, and compiling competitive overviews are all extremely time-consuming. As a result, MMC pays for all of this work out of pocket before receiving a single dollar from a client. Nonetheless, we occasionally face opposition due to other costs incurred by the campaign, such as direct mail. Yes, direct mail is costly, but in the case of advertising, you truly get what you pay for. Because of the precise ability it provides in terms of profiling ideal customers, direct mail is an essential component, the driving force of this campaign. This may not be the case in ten years, and DM will, quite possibly, be obsolete in twenty years. For the time being, however, it adds enormous value to the campaign.

It is important to note that the owners do not pay for any of the advertising out of pocket. The campaign must generate all funds to move the campaign forward, or the contract may be canceled at any time. Even with this guarantee, owners believe they are the ones who must dip into their pockets to cover expenses. On some level, this is correct because the money was generated by selling season passes or memberships, but even from this perspective, the revenue funding the campaign is new revenue earned as a result of the campaign’s success.

If you only look at the revenue spent on advertising, it appears to be costly, but when you look at the big picture, the cost is negligible. Once calculated, the ratio of immediate cash collected to total expenses is between 30% and 40%, depending on how well the campaign performs. Take that calculation a step further and subtract the total expenses from the cash collected plus the backend operational revenue generated, resulting in a percentage of between 6% and 10% of the funds raised by the campaign. If you take it a step further and factor in renewals, referrals, buddy green-fees, lessons, clinics, league revenue, the lifetime value of new players, and so on, the expense percentage vanishes completely.

The bottom line is that lowering the costs of running this golfer acquisition campaign is one of the barriers for owners and operators that must be addressed in order for every course owner to want to implement this program in their facility. Since cutting corners is out of the question because it would compromise the strength and effectiveness of the model, we must do everything humanly possible to reduce the necessary expenses. MMC’s goal is to reduce costs by up to 80% in five years. The more business MMC generates, the better prices we can negotiate for our affiliated golf courses. The more assistance we get from program participants, partner golf courses, and supporters, the less MMC has to charge for services to cover costs. We hope to be able to eliminate our fee entirely within the next five years. All of these savings will be passed on directly to the owners with the sole purpose of encouraging more owners to switch to this model. The more money we can put in the pockets of owners, shareholders, and developers, the easier it will be to persuade them to migrate over to this model.

2. Fear of losing core members: MMC has put safeguards in place to make the membership or season pass less appealing to Core and Avid players. We share the belief that golf should not and cannot be given away. Heavy users should and must pay fees based on their usage. With this in mind, we make every effort to keep current members in their current membership category. Nonetheless, owners and operators are concerned that their members will migrate to this introductory membership, which they believe will destroy the business. Our experience has shown that only a small percentage will migrate, and those players already had one foot out the door.

They also fear that by decreasing the entry barrier, they will ruin their brand because the offer will attract undesirables and, as a result, their present members will defect and join somewhere else. Once more, this fear is unwarranted; if you know what you’re doing, there are many ways to avoid attracting undesirables, and the only members who ever abandon ship are those whom owners and operators are relieved to see go.

Another reason we decided to launch this growth initiative is to completely alleviate the fear of losing core members from owners and/or operators in the future by making this program exclusive to MMC-acquired players starting with those who are members of the Save and Grow the Game program.

3. Fear of perception: The golf industry, more than most, places a keen emphasis on branding. Surprisingly, there are numerous facilities that strive to appear less busy and carefree, despite facing financial challenges month to month. While many courses operate at only 20% to 50% capacity, operators may fear that adding more players to the course could lead to overcrowding, slower play, or diminish the overall experience.

This fear might be justified if the current golfers were willing to pay more to maintain that level of service. However, the reality is that they are not. In cases where facilities are high-end and the dues or fees justify a certain level of experience, such as tee-time availability anytime without reservations, this concern is legitimate.

Nevertheless, in 80% of the cases, this is not the reality, and increasing play at the facility does not slow down play or devalue the experience. In fact, it enhances the product’s value by creating higher demand, while carefully ensuring that this initiative brings in players during non-busy times. By strategically managing the flow of players and introducing new enthusiasts during off-peak periods, we can optimize the golfing experience for all while fostering a thriving and sustainable growth initiative for each facility.

4. Fear of change: For more than a century, the golf industry has been a close-knit community, with the motto “birds of a feather flock together.” The golf industry is one of the few remaining industries where everyone reads from the same page of a book. Unfortunately, that book was written more than a century ago. MMC has made inroads in this area, and many people are taking notice. Once this campaign is launched on a massive scale, the rest of the golf facilities will follow suit. Everyone is just waiting for the right people to give this model their blessing, and when they do, the game, golf businesses, and careers will all grow, and all of this growth will be because we made the conscious decision to make golf affordable, more diverse, and all-inclusive.

There are only three reasons why this model is not the norm for the golf industry and they are, ignorance, egos and antiquated thinking.

1. Ignorance: To understand this remark regarding ignorance, let me define ignorance as simply not knowing something. In this case, it is not understanding the facts about the model, not knowing the buying and spending patterns of the casual and non-golfer, and not knowing the attitudes and views of the Millennials, golf’s core market today and for decades to come. Unaware that the golf industry cannot continue operations as usual. Unaware that golf must broaden its image, story, and demographic reach. Not knowing that golf needs to diversify. Not knowing that in order for golf to develop, it must be affordable to everybody and, hence, be all-inclusive. Golf is everybody’s game.
2. Egos: The presence of egos can pose a significant barrier to progress and growth within the golf industry. When egos come into play, individuals and entities may prioritize their personal interests and resist embracing new initiatives, hindering the implementation of programs like this growth initiative that could benefit the industry as a whole. To achieve nationwide growth, it is essential for all stakeholders to put their egos aside and come together with a shared vision, working collaboratively for the greater good of the golf industry. By fostering a culture of cooperation and open-mindedness, we can overcome these challenges and pave the way for a thriving and inclusive golfing community.
3. Antiquated thinking: Antiquated thinking is taking precedence over forward-thinking. MMC’s approach is free to execute, and it provides a large quantity of cash flow that may be used for capital upgrades and debt reduction or elimination. It may improve backend/operational income by up to 300%, which implies it outperforms 99% of all other investments in the globe, let alone the golf sector. The program attracts new supporters, donors, sponsors, and positive free press. It saves businesses and careers. It broadens the game’s appeal to new demographics and markets, making it more diverse and inclusive. When the market has been expanded, the growth has a positive effect on retailers, organizations, vendors, provides new career opportunities, and so on. Even though the four examples listed above in the first section of this FAQs page were all attributed to human error and greed, there is no “valid logical” reason why MMC’s model should not become the standard in the golf industry, except for antiquated thinking. With the information provided on this website, not knowing is no longer an acceptable excuse.

The simple answer is, absolutely not. Let me explain two reasons why:

1. The majority of MMC acquired players spend between $28 and $78 per round during off-peak times, days, or seasons at golf courses where these rounds are typically sold for the same price. In essence, MMC acquired players are spending the same as core and avid golfers for these rounds.

2. Based on the rounds played, casual and non-golfers tend to spend as much, or even more, than the average core or avid golfer. This counters the misconception that deep discounts lead to reduced revenue.

There is only one sustainable solution to saving and growing the game and that is, to make golf more affordable!

1. The byproduct of making golf more affordable will be, more diversity and all-inclusivity. Support MMC today in bringing this model to all golf facilities throughout the United States and together, we can make golf more affordable, more diverse, and all-inclusive.

Together, let’s improve the accessibility, diversity, and inclusivity of golf in order to preserve and expand the sport.