Welcome to the Fair Play Tennis club management consulting blog. I’m Charlie Ellis, CEO and co-owner of Fair Play Tennis. You can learn more about me in the About Us section of this website.
My blog’s purpose is to share my experiences with the daunting tasks of club management. I will discuss the horrors that make anyone want to walk away, as well as the great and fun times with individuals and communities that make it all worthwhile. Although these will be real situations with real people, I will change names to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent from embarrassment and perhaps censure.
When I managed clubs in the past, often it was difficult to speak freely to company management and/or owners. I often had to guard my words regarding the budget, employees, plant site, leadership, club business model, and established company procedures. I couldn’t always share what was best for the club, business, and customers due to conflicting management needs and desires. If something was wrong or needed to change – for example, a family member had the wrong personality to become the human resources director, the company had the wrong sales approach, or some other potential train-wreck scenario – I could not warn or even suggest otherwise.
I can now say it!
Often club owners or organizations, through no fault of their own, find themselves frustrated as to what to do with starting, managing, or revitalizing a club. Some even reach for quick fixes and find themselves at status quo or worse off than where they started. Their budget numbers don’t look good, the club is stagnant, and the employees are a nightmare.
There are more moving parts to managing a simple tennis and fitness club (and/or pool facility) than the Mars Lunar Rover. Human resources, maintenance, housekeeping, capital improvement projects, administration, programming, marketing, customer service, instruction, accounting/budgeting, nursery, regulatory compliance, merchandizing, and facility renovation/design are but a few departments and issues to deal with.
On top of all that, club management is a highly emotional environment. People work and play in close quarters. It is no wonder many operators want to drink themselves into a stupor late at night after the last club member has finally left…when they really would have liked to see them leave more than an hour before.
For owners and operators, there is so much to learn and most of it can only be garnered through years of experience. There are unwritten rules, methods of training, and schools of thought in managing employees and physical plant sites that are all-too-often ignored by those who think much of their own models, to their ultimate chagrin and inevitable loss of profit.
Though I have made many mistakes, I’ve also learned how to build on my successes. I know those problem areas to avoid and hope to entertain you with the humorous side of the business, while imparting hard-earned wisdom on avoiding the bad and fostering the good.
Stick around! I know you won’t regret it.