Author: John Quinn

10 minutes from success

I have a very simple system that I call my 10 Minute MBA.

So called because it takes approximately 10 minutes for most of my clients to absorb the information before I see their face light up.

After 10 minutes they suddenly understand something so key to their future success and that of their business that I usually call a coffee break right there and then, only 10 minutes into a meeting!

They need this time to absorb Read more

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Stand out from the crowd or get lost in it…you choose!

When I speak to golf clubs in trouble and ask the question:

“What makes you unique?”

They invariably sigh, then tell me that they have a golf course or courses and that due to that; they sell golf. They then usually (not always) go on to tell me that golf is golf is golf and…(they sometimes add the suffix…STUPID) as  a result, they cannot differentiate themselves from other golf providers. Of course I try not to take it too personally, but I usually tell them to have a re-think about that last statement.

Step 3 of my book: Golf Business Turnaround, the 7 Essential Steps to Success is called“Uncovering Your Golden Niche (and how to dominate it)”.

Let me tell you that once you have mastered this one step, you can look forward to a rejuvenated business that operates almost as if in a vacuum, in other words, almost entirely unaffected by the local competition. In this step you will learn how to make your business truly unique, but it doesn’t stop there, you will also:

  • Know exactly what your chosen market wants and how to “ringfence” those customers for yourself.
  • Have a “company wide” vision about your competitors and know how to leave them languishing at the starting post.
  • Have the knowledge and confidence to market and sell to a clearly defined customer base and be 100% certain that you are reaching them.
  • Own and thoroughly understand a technique you can use over and over again to effectively prime your staff to understand and effortlessly sell for you at every opportunity..I call it the 10 minute MBA.

You can get your copy of Golf Business Turnaround, the 7 essential steps to success by simply clicking here.

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Waste Excitement

One of the most talked about steps in my book Golf Business Turnaround the 7 Essential Steps to Success, is step 6, which reveals a formula for finding extra profit (a lot of extra profit) from what is essentially waste at present.

Now as I strain to point out in the book, waste auditing and reduction, although a very exciting prospect when you see 20-30% extra profit winking at you, is not something that you should set out to do at the outset of the turnaround process (that’s why its step 6) as the process will be more productive and you will understand it better after you have implemented the first 5 steps. This ensures that you are auditing a smooth and stable business.

However, all that said, the waste reduction process is a very exciting phase of the turnaround work laid out in the book and can genuinely add 20-30% to the bottom line for no extra cost.

You can get your hands on your copy of the book right now here.

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Is Your Golf Business “Wasting” Away?

Well things are “hotting up” here in anticipation of the imminent arrival of my new book Golf Business Turnaround-the 7 Essential Steps to Success, available here from Monday 25th January.

In what is essentially a step by step blueprint for saving and turning around a struggling golf business, I will reveal many of the advanced techniques and strategies I use with paying clients; and apply the kind of thinking and business innovation that has attracted clients both at home and abroad to seek out our help here at hole18.

All this week I have been sharing some of the breakthrough content you can expect when you get your hands on a your copy on Monday…

…oh and by the way you can literally get your hands on it on Monday, because due to popular demand we are making it available to download directly from this site. Just think, by Tuesday you could easily be on your way to turning your golf business around for good. Imagine what a great year 2010 could turn out to be if you suddenly have a Blueprint in your hands to take you step by step through the total renovation of your business…this is a New Year Resolution on Ice!

Today I want to talk briefly about Step 6 in the book…and what a step it is! This is where I am going to show you how to add Read more

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Special Delivery

If you’ve been tuning in this week, you will know that I have been sharing with our readers, some of the groundbreaking, “golf business saving” content from my upcoming book.

So far we’ve looked at how you can use my “paint by numbers” formula in your golf business to:

  1. Get your cashflow (in and out) in great shape…fast.
  2. Positively differentiate your golf business from all of the others and give yourself a distinctly unfair advantage in the marketplace.
  3. Attract all of the new business you could ever want…and on your terms! (We’re definitely NOT talking about 2 for 1s or desperate giveaways here!)

In Step 5 of 7 in my new book Golf Business Turnaround-the 7 Essential Steps to Success, available here from Monday 25th January, I take you step by step through a system that will set up your golf business to run like clockwork to produce all of the profit and/or business you need with a positively awe inspiring formula for managing your day to day operations.

In what is essentially a step by step blueprint for saving and turning around a struggling golf business, I will reveal many of the advanced techniques and strategies I use with paying clients; and apply the kind of thinking and business innovation that has attracted clients both at home and abroad to seek out our help here at hole18.

“Operations” or the day to day running of their golf business is what gives most owners and managers the biggest headache. The minutiae of running a busy (or not so busy) golf facility can easily become a massive burden even for the most level headed and organised managers. If we pile business worries about cashflow and survival on to that its no wonder that many people cave in.

In Step 5 we do the equivalent of playing some soothing music, giving you a shoulder massage, pouring you a stiff drink and letting you put your feet up…yes this is where your role suddenly becomes very, very clear and you start to instinctively know what to do and when to do it.

More importantly, by filling in the blanks in this section (not literally of course, there is a little more to it than that!) you will build yourself a business operation that swishes along gracefully making all of the money you Read more

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Promising Outlook for Your Golf Business

Marketing is a critical business process that many Golf Clubs do very badly or not at all in some cases. With many clubs, marketing always means print advertising and indeed when speaking to some clubs, it becomes apparent that they actually refer to print advertising as “marketing”, as if this is the only way to attract customers!

During the late summer of 2009 I saw a lot of golf club adverts appearing in local papers around the country. The culprits shall remain nameless, but almost to a man they were the most desperate adverts I have ever seen…you could almost smell the fear as green fees were slashed, catering was given away and hard one reputations were ruined overnight. These were mainly adverts to try to attract the “last of the summer wine” in the form of visitors who hadn’t materialised for one reason or another. I really felt for the club managers who found themselves in the dire straits that produced this kind of desperate action. The result I would imagine in most cases was a loss on the deal, because even if they did drum up some last minute bookings they would be for small groups and they had already given all of the profit away in the advert.

Another common sight was the advert, again in local papers, again with a nice picture of the 10th, but this time offering (in some cases it looked like begging) extremely favourable terms on membership fees for new members. It might have been waiving the joining fee or giving the membership for the remainder of 2009 (this was in late summer!) away with 2010 membership or sometimes both. In a few really bad cases I saw Read more

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Your’s is the unique-est golf business I’ve ever seen!

What a strange (non) word “uniqueness” is, don’t you think? but I hear it used often. The suffix “ness” implies a scale, a measurement or a way of comparing things in an incremental way; like green-ness, red-ness or loveliness. Unique-ness shouldn’t be (and probably isn’t!) a proper word, because there shouldn’t be any way of measuring how unique you are, should there?; surely if you are unique you are simply, well…unique?

Well a lot of my clients fire that one at me because you see, they are all in the same business, namely …golf, and I keep telling them that they have to “define” their uniqueness. This is where the confusion arises, but I do that intentionally…confusion makes them think a bit harder! They invariably tell me that they have a golf course or courses and that due to that; they sell golf. They then usually (not always) go on to tell me that golf is golf is golf and…(they sometimes add the suffix…STUPID) as  a result, they cannot differentiate themselves from other golf providers. Of course I try not to take it too personally, but I usually tell them to have a re-think about that last statement.

You see, every business has competition, and guess what? Read more

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Golf Business Turnaround-7 essential steps

Monday 25th January sees the launch of my new book Golf Business Turnaround-the 7 Essential Steps to Success.

In what is essentially a step by step blueprint for saving and turning around a struggling golf business, I will reveal many of the advanced techniques and strategies I use with paying clients; and apply the kind of thinking and business innovation that has attracted clients both at home and abroad to seek out our help here at hole18.

In this ground breaking new success manual you will discover an incredibly powerful formula that could turn your golf business from brink of failure to roaring success this year.Each day this week I will share some of what you can expect in the book when you open it next Monday:

FIRE-FIGHTING

On day 1 I will take you through a system you can implement almost as you read which will transform the cashflow into and out of your golf business overnight. Suddenly you will realise that you can save your business and move it up a gear to achieve the huge success you’ve always craved. However, your day 1 reading will reveal a whole lot more besides; you will:

  1. Learn a beautifully simple but incredibly powerful technique to help you see your business cashflow process as you’ve never seen it before; suddenly you will see exactly how it works and how to implement two further actions which will allow you to:
  2. Slash your costs without damaging your business, even though you’ve been through the budget 100 times before and thought you’d done everything you could.
  3. Explode your income potential starting TODAY, with real techniques you can introduce immediately.
  4. In addition to all of this you will now have a system specific to your business that you can use again and again to keep the profits rolling in.

Now I’ll let you in to a little secret, even if you were to get your hands on this life changing book today (which you can’t I’m afraid; its not released until 25th) you wouldn’t be the first to read it. That’s because I’ve given it out to a select group of golf industry and business experts. Here is what Kenny Imrie of Golf Architecture International had to say about it:

“Golf Business Turnaround… The 7 Essential Steps to Success” addresses the major problem strangling golf facilities all over the UK: they are being run as clubs and not as businesses. The information is presented in an easy to follow structure and the emphasis is on creating manageable actions, all of which make this a very usable business tool. Above all else, it does one critical thing exceptionally well. It generates the necessary confidence required to transform the fortunes of an ailing golf business and there is not a lot of this confidence going around in the golf industry at the moment! Kenneth Imrie, Golf Architecture International

You can pre-book your copy of Golf Business Turnaround, the 7 essential steps to success by completing the form below: Meantime I’ll be back tomorrow with more news.

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Happy New Year

Well the snow is going now, and whilst it was great to feel is0lated and cut off for a while, the fact remains that even where I live in a fairly remote part of upland Perthshire, there is still a 24 hour Tesco within 30 minutes even on snow covered roads, we still had broadband, digital TV and uninterrupted telephone service; there was a well stocked fridge, freezer , wine rack and log shed, we had great fun sledging and building igloos…oh and yes I finished writing my new book on Golf Business Turnaround in relative warmth and comfort.

We forget just how lucky we are sometimes and even those of you who were dreading this New Year more than most due to the very harsh Read more

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The Recession is going – what next?

You will recall about 18 months ago we launched a report on Golf Club Survival, in fact many of you will have had your first encounter with Hole18 as a result of that report. Well that report was more popular than I could ever have imagined when I wrote it and it caused a rush of activity on the site.

You might also recall the advice I gave in that report and in particular the 5 things that golf businesses MUST do to survive the recession/general down turn in the golf industry. Just to recap these were:

  1. Manage your cash flow
  2. Retain your best people (and exit the worst ones)
  3. Retain your best customers (and exit the unprofitable ones)
  4. Improve your profit (by removing waste)
  5. Guard your energy (you’ll need it when times get tough)

These five strategies were designed to take advantage of the recession and made changes that normally business leaders did not want to do. There were 4 countries that didn’t technically go into recession (Australia, China, India, and Indonesia) but globally things have been tough for everyone regardless of where they operate.

But now it is becoming apparent that most of the world is coming out of the recession, there are some green shoots of receovery as the politicians say. However, you might further recall that I thought back then that many golf businesses were making an excuse of the recession to account for their Read more

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