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From Broccoli Farm to Bold Playbook: Barry Forth's Lessons for Public Golf Clubs

Running a public golf course today takes more than great turf and tight operations.

It takes creativity, courage, and an unwavering sense of identity.

Few embody this better than Barry Forth, Owner and General Manager of Copetown Woods Golf Club, a standout public course built atop his family's old broccoli farm in Hamilton, Ontario.

Barry joined us on The AceCall.ai Podcast to share the incredible story behind Copetown Woods—and the bold, often unorthodox strategies he uses to keep it fresh, profitable, and beloved by golfers year after year.

Here's what every public golf club manager can learn from Barry's journey.

1. Know Who You Are—and Who You’re Not

Barry’s mantra is simple: We’re not a private club pretending to be public—we’re a damn good public club, period.

From the way his staff greet golfers by first name to the relaxed vibe throughout the property, Copetown Woods owns its identity.

They don't try to mimic exclusivity. Instead, they double down on accessibility, authenticity, and experience.

"We didn’t build it to be the best golf course—we built it to be the best experience for public golfers."

Takeaway: Clarify your course’s identity and lean into it. Trying to be something you’re not confuses golfers and kills loyalty.

2. Experiment Boldly—and Publicly

Barry doesn’t just talk about trying new things. He does them. Quickly. Often. Publicly.

From dropping bunker rakes permanently to potentially launching a tongue-in-cheek “Clown Show Woods” merch line and tournament, his playbook is filled with test-and-learn experiments—some wild, some wacky, but all intentional.

“If I think of something, I just do it. And if it flops? Great. Now it’s content.”

His now-famous Long Weekend Series is a case in point:

• One bundled package per long weekend

• Includes golf, themed merchandise, food, and fun extras

• Creates urgency, community, and shareable moments

Result: 475 packages sold over a single weekend—and hoodie sightings across town weeks later.

Takeaway: Build a culture of experimentation. Start with low-risk ideas and keep what works. Public golf needs more energy—and less fear.

3. Ditch the Membership Model (and Still Create Loyalty)

Copetown Woods has zero members—and that’s by design.

Barry’s father was clear: “I’ve run this farm 30 years without anyone telling me what to do. I’m not starting now.”

Instead of memberships, Barry created the Public Player Society:

• Golfers pay $75/year to join

• Get 20% off green fees + 10% off merch

• Fully trackable, loyalty-based program (no reselling)

Result: 1,600 golfers joined before the season even started.

“It gives people a sense of belonging—without the politics of membership.”

Takeaway: Loyalty doesn’t require a private model. Find ways to reward repeat golfers while keeping operations lean and data-rich.

4. Ditch the Rakes, Too

One of Barry’s most controversial decisions?

Removing all rakes from bunkers—and never bringing them back post-COVID.

His logic is sound:

• Most golfers don’t rake properly

• Poor raking punishes the next player unfairly

• No rakes means faster mowing, quicker play, and fewer complaints

Golf Canada sent him a long email citing the rules. Barry’s reply?

"This is why I hate golf."

Takeaway: Don’t let tradition get in the way of progress. If a rule slows play, frustrates players, or adds costs with no upside—rethink it.

5. Make Your Golfers Your Marketers

Copetown Woods spends zero dollars on advertising.

Instead, Barry turns his golfers into brand ambassadors.

How?

• Limited-edition merch drops (hoodies, balls, hats)

• Instagram reels and memes that humanize the brand

• Casual, personalized service that makes people feel seen

"I want them to wear something that makes their friends ask, ‘Where’d you get that?’ That’s the conversation that gets us new players."

His Instagram strategy is especially effective.

During COVID, Barry turned to short, honest videos to communicate protocols.

It snowballed into viral content—and over 7,000 followers.

Takeaway: Let your golfers carry your brand. Give them something to talk about—and something to wear.

6. Let Staff Be Themselves—And Expect Accountability

Barry runs Copetown like a pro sports team—high standards, but lots of freedom.

Managers are empowered to make decisions.

Staff are expected to treat golfers how they want to be treated.

He hires based on vibe and work ethic, not just resumes. And he leads by example.

“If a golfer is rude to a staff member, I step in immediately. Always.”

He also builds staff loyalty through trust, flexibility, and referrals.

Siblings work at the course.

Students come back year after year.

Takeaway: Protect your culture, empower your team, and let word-of-mouth recruiting do the rest.

7. Use AI and Tech to Unlock Human Moments

Barry sees tech—especially AI—not as a replacement for service, but as a way to enable more of it.

“If it frees me from my desk and lets me get out talking to golfers, then it’s a win.”

He’s exploring everything from autonomous mowers to AI-powered reception and booking tools.

The goal?

Reduce admin, increase face time.

Takeaway: Use AI to eliminate distractions, not human connection. Let your staff focus on what matters—serving golfers.

8. Don’t Try to Please Everyone

Copetown Woods doesn’t host tournaments.

Doesn’t run leagues. Isn’t for juniors. And they’re okay with that.

Barry’s unapologetic:

“If you like it here, awesome. If you don’t—that’s okay, too.”

This laser focus lets them serve their core audience better than anyone else.

Takeaway: You don’t need to be everything to everyone. Be unforgettable to someone.

9. Turn Criticism Into Content

When a hater called Copetown Woods “Clown Show Golf,” Barry didn’t delete the comment.

He turned it into a viral campaign.

He asked ChatGPT to generate a photo of him as a clown, posted it to Instagram, and got great engagement.

He may even decide to sell clown-themed merch.

“If someone’s trolling you, they’re still watching. Let them boost your algorithm.”

Takeaway: Own your quirks. Flip negativity into brand equity. Have fun with it.

10. Treat Every Golfer Like It’s Their Best Day

At the core of it all is a simple philosophy:

“Golfers show up thinking today might be the day they hit their best shot, get a hole-in-one, break 80. Our job is to make them feel that way the whole round.”

From flexible policies to playful banter, Barry’s team is trained to create moments—not just manage transactions.

Takeaway: Every round is a chance to create a memory. Operate like that, and people will keep coming back.

Final Thought: Leadership Without Permission

Barry Forth is a reminder that bold ideas don’t require permission—just conviction.

Whether it’s rethinking pricing, shaking up loyalty, or posting clown photos on Instagram, his approach is refreshingly clear: test fast, stay human, and build a brand worth following.

Not every course can be Copetown Woods.

Every course should be themselves.

But every course can learn from it.

🎧 Want to hear the full story? Listen to the episode here or search The AceCall.ai Podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your shows.

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Call +1 (866) 838-8581 and ask our Voice AI receptionist for The Golf Club A.I. Amplifier™. We’ll email it to you instantly.

#PublicGolf #GolfClubLeadership #GolfInnovation #CopetownWoods #BarryForth #AIForGolf #TheAceCallAIPodcast

Full Podcast Transcription

Clay (00:03)

Welcome to the Ace Call AI Podcast, where we help golf clubs win with AI. Owning and operating a golf club today is harder than ever, so we created simple AI solutions and a podcast to make it easier for you. I'm Clayton Elliott.

Brad (00:17)

And I'm Brad Milligan. Together, we bring a mix of entrepreneurial innovation and decades of golf club management experience to help you optimize your club, increase profitability and elevate the golfer experience. So let's dive in. Today's guest is someone who embodies grit, creativity and authenticity in the golf business. Barry Forth is the owner and general manager of Coptown Woods Golf Club, a stunning public course in Hamilton, Ontario, that his family built 20 years ago, right on top of their broccoli farm.

Barry's LinkedIn headline says it all, love to try new concepts to make golf less boring and okay if they fail. The failures make for great content. That mindset has helped Copetown Woods stand out as one of the most talked about public courses in Ontario, not just for its layout, but for its fresh ideas, championship culture and loyal following. Barry also serves on the TaylorMade Canada Advisory Council and the Canadian Golf Industry Advisory Council with Golf Canada.

giving him a front row seat to the future of the game and a voice in shaping where it's headed. He's a relentless operator, a generous share of ideas and someone who isn't afraid to mix tradition with innovation. Whether it's pro shop merchandising, team leadership or bold experiments in growing the game, is always pushing forward. Barry, welcome to the Ace Call AI Podcast. We're thrilled to have you here today.

Barry Forth (01:38)

Yeah, thanks guys. I appreciate you having me on.

Clay (01:41)

Yeah, right on, welcome.

Brad (01:41)

Awesome,

Yeah, really cool story. So Barry, your story isn't the typical golf club GM origin. Can you take us back to the early days? How did a family broccoli farm become a public golf course?

Barry Forth (01:54)

Yeah, we're anything from the norm here. And starting with how we got to where we are. we kind of work our way all the way back to kind of like the mid 90s. I was in my second year of golf, sorry, of sport management at college. And my dad happened to call me up and say, what would you think about if we were to build a golf course? And I was like, what?

Like, what are you talking about? This has never been something we've talked about. My dad didn't start golfing until he was ⁓ almost 50. I golfed a little bit, like occasionally, not really, more than probably a handful of times a year. I was not going to be a farmer. I knew that 100%. I'm the youngest of five. I four older sisters, so I was supposed to be the chosen one. And I had no interest whatsoever in doing that.

So when my dad started golfing, he started going to golf courses. This is kind of like right in the tiger boom kind of era. So golf courses were jammed. ⁓ There wasn't as many as there are now, obviously. So he started going to golf courses and looking kind of at what they were doing, how they were operating, and the fact that they still had full parking lots and how they were operating in that he didn't feel like they were operated very efficiently. And some of the places he went, they weren't great. At that same time,

He had a piece of the property that we currently that I'm sitting on right now That wasn't great for growing vegetables really really sandy soil. So it never provided a good yield and growing up on the farm working on the farm I know exactly, you know the spots where you know You get the sporadic growth where you'd get no yield off of certain parts of the property but great for golf in terms of how it drains and and to be able to build the golf course and such so that was kind of the start to

I guess that was probably closer to maybe 97, 98. And that started the process of getting to where we are. By the time we went through, got all the zoning and permits, that was kind of end of 2001, April 1, 2002, the first bulldozer was on the ground. June 2, 2003 was opening day. We opened with full 18 holes, clubhouse, practice facility.

Basically, we learned from other golf courses that had opened in the previous years that had opened with maybe a trailer as a clubhouse, which would have been far more economical for us to do at that point. But we wanted to kind of make that first impression out of the gates. Yeah, and so that was June 2nd, 2003. My dad still farmed for 10 years after that, kind of on the property where I grew up across the road, down the road a little bit.

And then sold that farm and sold everything in 2014 and and ⁓ now ⁓ now we're just golf.

Brad (04:51)

That's amazing. Kind of reminds me of like Field of Dreams. I'm sure you've heard that before though. You know that Kevin Costner movie?

Barry Forth (04:55)

Yeah, yeah,

I mean, every once in a while, I just like, kind of think of myself as Shoeless Joe as I'm coming out of the bush looking for my golf ball. I kind of come walking out, I'm like, you know, same, same, not really though.

Brad (05:02)

Yeah.

Yeah, good comparison though. ⁓ so Barry, so what advice would you give then to someone taking an unconventional path into golf management today?

Clay (05:10)

Same, same, but different.

Barry Forth (05:22)

That's a difficult question only because the nice thing that we have here is, A, I don't really have anybody to report to. When we first opened, I left school and went and worked at privately owned sports facilities, so more on the hockey, baseball, that side of things. Still didn't have anything to do with golf until I came back here.

You know, my sister, one of my sisters worked as a server at a restaurant before. She came and opened up the F &B side of things. We hired a chef, we hired a ⁓ golf course superintendent that knew they kind of, were experts in their field. We were just kind of winging it and I kind of still joke to this day that we still do that. ⁓ But yeah, really, I mean, my path was interesting to start in that sense of, you know, 2003 we opened the golf course. I was kind of overseeing the golf side of things.

I ended up leaving the golf course for seven years from 2013 to 19 and went and worked at a sports marketing agency in Toronto and where I did a whole bunch of things in the last four and a half years. I was overseeing RBC's global golf portfolio and so doing deals with, I did the deal with Dustin Johnson and it became part of Team RBC and traveling and running 30 events across North America. so when I left to go and do that, I was going and running these events at some of the best private and

and public golf courses in North America, always with that kind of golf management lens on of, you know, if you're, whether you're at the Floridian in West Palm in Florida, which is a very, very high end exclusive private club, well, there's things that they do there that we can do at Copetown Woods at a $69 public green fee that don't really cost anything. There are things that they did there that I've looked at and was like, like they could probably take some lessons from us. So.

always going around and here's the beauty of the golf industry and running a golf course, we're not splitting the atom. And that's not to take anything away from what anybody in our industry does. At the end of the day, we're here for the experience. We're here to provide that experience. And what I always say to my staff is when golfers show up, when they come in the driveway, every single time they play, doesn't matter what the weather's like, doesn't matter how bad of a day they had before they got here.

Today is their day. they're making sure their best score. Today, they probably are gonna step up to the par threes and like, you know what, I might get a hole in one today. They've got that mindset coming in. So if we can leave them feeling at least that good, we have more than done our job and we'll make them wanna come back here again. And so again, it's really, it's about treating people the way that they wanna be treated. And when we first opened, it was, you my gosh, you guys are opening a golf course.

like you've never done it before, like how did you do that? Well, if you go to a golf course or you go to a restaurant or you go to the movie theater or you go to a baseball game or a hockey game, what do you want to see? And at the end of the day, that's really what it comes back to and ⁓ find good people and ⁓ surround yourselves with those people that will kind of give you that extra mile and go that extra mile for you and ⁓ good things happen.

Brad (08:41)

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And the what you mentioned there about traveling around to other clubs, there's so much benefit to that and bringing your team there, right? Not just you going, but getting them to experience it. We would do when I worked at Scarborough, ⁓ we'd go down to the golf show, obviously in Florida. ⁓ But, you know, Chris, the head pro there, he would make sure that we played some golf. And it wasn't it wasn't just like to have a great time and you crack some beers and all that good stuff.

It was more like, see what this operation's doing. Let's see what they're doing here that we can, you know, not steal, but use for our own property. And ⁓ once you start bringing those ideas to your members, they're like, well, these guys really care about us. We're going, they're going above and beyond. And same thing with a public golf course. When you go there, a lot of people have that critical lens. If they're playing the first time, if they're playing their 40th time there, they're always like, well, is this place innovating or are they kind of stagnant? And I think that's what separates, you know, ⁓

the ones who are gonna move forward in this industry as golf continues to kind of strive upwards, hopefully, that's what's really gonna separate, you know, the ones who are kind of falling behind or stuck in their own little bubble, we've always done it this way. And that separates them from the innovators and people saying, there's always that 1 % or 2 % better we can do every single season.

Barry Forth (09:59)

Yeah, exactly. The quickest way to not have your job back the following year here is to be happy with what we did last year. And it really is, that's kind of the, I brought that into when I was running RBC's golf portfolio, there was a lot of things that they had done consistently from a hospitality standpoint year after year that I tried to kind of push them out of and was successful in doing that. ⁓ But you can only go so far when

Brad (10:08)

Yeah.

Barry Forth (10:29)

when you're dealing with a large corporation. I use this term all the time, is that a camel is a horse built by committee. When you have this great idea and it goes up the chain and by the time it comes back down, it's something completely different. It's like, that wasn't really the intent of it and what I was really hoping to achieve by it. Well, now here, I quite literally, if I think of something, I just do it right away. I don't...

When I came back here, the first year back after leaving for seven years was 2020. Like COVID happened, everything went crazy, golf went, if you were in the plexiglass mask or golf business, you've significantly benefited from COVID and I'm not, would never shy away from saying that. ⁓ But when I came back here, I started kind of coming up with some ideas and I didn't rock the boat too much, left the staff,

just kept everything in place. And by August of that year, I had brought in a couple new managers, a food and beverage manager, golf services manager. And it was at that time I said to everybody, said, okay, you know what, start really checking the boxes of those that you want back. Let's cut the dead weight of the people that have been here for maybe too long. They've been okay with what had been done before. ⁓ And the very first day that I came back, was December of 2019, and I sat and had a coffee with my dad.

And I said, okay, there's this, this, this, this, and this wrong that need to be fixed right away. And he said, Jesus, you've been here for 10 minutes and you've told me there's five things wrong with the place. I said, okay, well, I've only been here for 10 minutes. So be prepared, because I'm gonna tell you what you need to hear, not what you wanna hear. ⁓ And the biggest thing I said is, it's so boring. I mean, I live in Dundas, I only live 10 minutes away. And even when I was working downtown Toronto, I still live there. And so I would bring my kids up and we'd use the range.

Clay (12:10)

Hahaha ⁓

Barry Forth (12:25)

you know, maybe occasionally play. But I always said that, you know, it was just, it was so boring. was quite literally, they were trying to be the, this is still happens with other public golf courses, which is fine and to each their own, but it's, you know, we're a public golf course, with a private field. So what I've done is I've changed that and I've, we're a public golf course. We're really frigging good public golf course.

that we didn't build it to be the best golf course, but we're a public golf course. We're not going to, it's not, Mr. Milligan, it's great to have you back. Thanks for coming. It's, hey Brad, like I'm like, as I kind of look left, my office door is shut, but my office is in the shot, is in the golf shop, which is like, has many pros and cons to it. ⁓ You know, mainly because I don't get any work done if the door's open, but it's not, Mr. Milligan, it's great to have you. It's, hey Brad, good to see you again. You know.

Heard you birdied 17 last time you were out, know, see if you can do that or, or, hey, OB to the right of the first hole. If you lose a sleeve, you know, in there, come back and see me after the second, we'll get you another sleep. It's just that kind of more, a far more casual approach is, it's taken our age, our demographic of golfer, COVID helped with this too. Our demographic has like, continues to decrease year over year. And I don't actually,

Up until now, I haven't really truly had the data to prove that. I now have kind of some systems in place to be able to know more, which is good. ⁓ yeah, there's no... There are a lot of people that think that there's a ⁓ textbook on how to run golf, a golf course. ⁓ And I don't believe in that.

Brad (14:16)

Yeah, you have to know who you are, right? Like you have your own identity over there, right? So you're not you're not trying to be some high end private club. And I've played at those clubs where it's like they're they're trying to be something that they aren't like. And that's where like, you know, a guy like yourself, Barry, you're just like honest about what's going on here. Like and that's what operations need. They need that that honest individual that they trust. And they're like, if he's telling the truth, we got to listen to him and we got to make some changes here.

You can't just hide from all of these things that are realities because it's going to hurt you in the end. I think some private clubs I've played at, they're not trying to be that private club. They do want to have that feel where everybody's on the first name basis. It just depends what they're looking for, what their culture is. ⁓ But I agree. I've played at some public clubs where I'm like, you're lying to yourself. You can't be this. Be who you are and do it as...

the best possible way you can and just embrace that, take it in and people will flock to it because you're being real, right?

Barry Forth (15:19)

Yeah, and I mean, everything I do, I am fully transparent. I'm transparent about how I operate. I'm transparent about, know, if you show up for your round and your buddy Doug doesn't show up, you know, if Doug had a ticket to a Leaf game or to a Jays game and Doug barfed on his carpet, he can't go to the box office and ⁓ ask for his money back, you know.

The other thing I kind of explained to my staff to communicate and it being fully transparent. The golf course is here and that's great. We don't sell golf, we don't sell anything, we sell time. And this is from a business standpoint and this isn't necessarily what golfers want to hear but our business is time. It's no different than hotels or airlines. As soon as that 10 minutes goes by and there's nobody on the tee, that's money. I can't take that time and put it back on the counter and sell it at a discount for later.

like it's a piece of pro shop merchandise. ⁓ And so, if we can educate, again, half of what I do is educating our golfers on how we operate here. And it might not be the same as the golf course around the corner or the golf course in Vancouver, but this is how we operate here. And if you like it, great. And if you don't, that's okay. That's okay. The one thing I know is, Coptown Woods is not going to be for everyone. We're not.

We're not a junior facility. We're not a facility that runs leagues. We don't run leagues. We don't run tournaments. We are strictly daily. We have no members. ⁓ And if you're good with that, to come in and have a great experience with a pretty good golf course that's in unreal condition, with great facilities, then we probably fit your bill.

Brad (17:07)

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So, so how exactly are you are you ⁓ keeping Coketown Woods relevant year after year then? Like, what are some things you're doing over there?

Barry Forth (17:16)

Yeah, so I I've always kind of considered myself, and it's kind of cheesy as it sounds, more of an ideas guy and creative. There's a lot of those things that I come up with that I have no idea how to actually do myself, but I can find myself the right people that can, whether that's from a graphic design, a technology, construction standpoint. So always trying to do to...

always keeping something in my back pocket to keep fresh ideas for kind of that next season. A lot of times it's something that one thing may lead to another. Sometimes it's just kind of new ideas that are kind of net new. And one example is this year we, the one thing that historically, and we haven't knock on wood, we haven't really had any problems with this in the last few years because since COVID, and we certainly are still not, we haven't.

We're through one long weekend right now, but long weekends historically for us had always been, if there was going to be a weekend that it might not be as busy, it might be a long weekend, where people are away, they go to the cottage, they go wherever, they're spending time with the family. So what I've decided to do this year, I'm my own worst enemy, because when I think of ideas, like I said, I literally, like, I just do them. And so I didn't think of this until, like, you know.

January and if I had a thought of it in November it would have made my life a lot easier. ⁓ But so I created this thing that we're just referring to as the CW long weekend series. All it is is it's a round of golf but you get a whole bunch extra stuff included with it. You get some swag, you get some you know some food. We're kind of theming things around you know about the long weekends a little bit and it kind of what basically what my these my how my brain works is it

creates these different, you know, I think of these different things and then again, like I said, find the right people. So I connected myself with a guy, ⁓ a graphic designer named Seth McWhorter. ⁓ He's out of Georgia. He's done a whole bunch of really cool stuff for the tree farm for Zach Blair's golf course ⁓ in Georgia, I think. Pretty sure it's in Georgia. ⁓ That his, the way he designs things is exactly kind of what the feel that I wanted.

So essentially what I said is I wanna create a long weekend series badge, think of a camping, a national park camping patch. I wanna, you know, kind of have everything living within that, but then I wanna have a unique icon for each individual weekend that I can pull out, use on merchandise, use on different things. So I gave him kind of a series, you know, these five long weekends, starting with May 2, 4, at Thanksgiving with these individual unique icons. And basically we put that out to, ⁓

to book in advance, we only do two weeks advanced bookings. For the long weekends, I wanted to be able to put that out as far as we could, so we're booking into every long weekend right now. Through the first long weekend, May 24, instead of your $79 green fee and $21 cart, it was 165 and you got a nice level wear hoodie and a sleeve of TP5 balls and a bunch of different things, all with these kind of unique logos on it. So just.

kind of enhancing that kind of normal, regular round of golf. So what that did for us is, you know, we, I think we ended up with maybe four, 70, 475 people throughout the weekend that bought into that long weekend series package. A week in advance, we opened the tee sheet up to be able to kind of fill those gaps, fill around it with just regular priced green fees. The amount of people that came in that only, you know, were,

had purchased the regular price green fee that wanted to take part in this long weekend series to get the swag, to get all that stuff. So again, there was not a whole lot extra for us, but it created that a little bit more sense of excitement, little more ⁓ reason for people to kind of come and people played here all the time. So now the nice thing out of that is now from a, I guess a partnership standpoint for myself with TaylorMade, well,

between the five long weekends, I'm gonna buy probably an extra 700 dozen golf balls that are all logoed with the Long Weekend Series logo on it. Level Wear this past weekend, or that May 2-4 weekend, we did 475 hoodies. It would take me like three years to sell 475 hoodies, and I did it in three days. So every long weekend is gonna have a unique gift. They're gonna get a sleeve of balls, they're gonna get food. So that was just kind of one example of a lot of the people that play here all the time.

They, you know, they opted in for it and now they can't wait to do it again for, you know, Canada Day and August long weekend, Labor Day and Thanksgiving. yeah, anyways, again, it's nothing more than just kind of taking things up to another level and including some things that they may not otherwise get and introducing some people to Copetown Woods that maybe haven't otherwise been here before.

Brad (22:33)

That's fantastic. That's an idea that people are gonna steal right away. That's a great idea. Because you're right, selling that many hoodies, like it takes an individual to come into the shop and be like, I need a hoodie today. Right? And like they might look at it, not even try it on. I'll get it tomorrow. But this one, it's like hoodies are going out the door.

Barry Forth (22:38)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, like, and I literally like this, it's been two, three, two weeks since then. And I'm gonna say probably five times, whether I was at Costco or Home Depot or wherever, I've seen these, and it was like, it's a giant campfire. the May 2, 4 Long Weekend icon was a campfire with very subtle branding to it. I don't think I have anything in front of me here, but subtle branding to it where it,

It doesn't, it's not in your face, Copetown Woods logo. I have more of a vested interest than anyone to wear that logo, and I don't want to wear it all the time. So, having something around, you know, that, and that was what my message to this graphic designer was, I want it there somewhere, but make it small, make it somewhat subtle, because what I want is, I want you to be wearing it, and somebody else to come up to you and be like, what is that? I want that conversation to happen, and that's what gets people excited.

instead of just the logo, it's like, yeah, there's another Copetown Woods logo, or maybe they don't understand what CW means. Now, people are having that conversation and ⁓ it's kind of a, okay, that's cool. And then that may spark them to be interested.

Brad (24:07)

Yeah, your golfer is always your best marketing tool, right? As you send them out into the world and they're gonna say, you know, if they love the experience at your club, they're gonna say the best things about it. Cause it should be kind of their home away from home. So if they're out in public and somebody's like, hey, what's that about? They're gonna be like, I play at this golf course. It's amazing. You know, they have this on long weekends. The course is in amazing shape. It's a great layout, right? They're gonna be your best advocate. So that's really smart stuff. I love that idea.

Barry Forth (24:36)

We don't spend a dime on advertising. That's the goal. My goal is to always let other people sell for me. The more people that want to go out there and promote what we do here, that makes my job a whole lot easier.

Clay (24:53)

Yeah, for sure. And you know, in business, there's like impressions. You pay for impressions or you pay for conversions. And who calls an ad they see on a billboard? Who calls an ad they see in a magazine? Some people do. They don't have zero conversion rate, but you're really paying for impressions and getting brand exposure and that kind of stuff. It's not a direct conversion. ⁓

But the referrals, referral marketing is the highest ⁓ conversion, it's the most expensive marketing you can get into. If you wanna get into software that manages referral marketing, it's tens of thousands of dollars for some of the software because if I tell Brad, hey Brad, if I called him up today and I say hey Brad, listen, I know you probably have plans this weekend, but today we're gonna go, or this weekend we're gonna go to Coketown.

We're going to go to Copetown Woods this weekend. He's like, I never heard of what's Copetown. I'm like, listen, man, I just went there last weekend. I had the best time of my life. You have to come. Brad's knocking at second guess me one more time.

Barry Forth (25:54)

Right.

Clay (25:54)

He's just gonna be like, cool, I'll grab my clubs, let's go. Because he trusts me, I'm his friend. He knows I was not paid to say that. He knows I had a great time and I'm telling him about my great time and I wanna share my great time with him. And you didn't pay me, so that didn't cost you anything. If anything, I paid you to come to your club and then I went and told my buddy about your club too. So it's the best marketing. It's the hardest to nail, because you really have to focus on the individual customer and the satisfaction they have. And then you need to train them and engage them.

Barry Forth (26:01)

For sure.

That's right.

Clay (26:24)

⁓ and incentivize them one way or another through just patting the pat on the back or shaking the hand or cash in pocket or or perks or prizes or bonus whatever as long as they're doing that and they're getting out in the world and they're telling people about your club and your products and your experience ⁓ it's the best it's it's by far the best advertising and you know like like you said earlier

about knowing your niche. You know your niche. You know what you are. You know who you are. You know who you're not. And you're not trying to be who you're not. You're not trying to pretend who you're not. And because of that, you're the people that come to your club will more and more and more identify with your club because there's a saying in marketing, they say, I like you because I'm like you. So if I'm laid back, if I'm relaxed, I want to a good time, I want to some fun and some stuffiness, I know where to go to get that.

Barry Forth (27:06)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Clay (27:14)

And

I know, you know, I got to go to Copetown Woods to get it. So, yeah, it's all great stuff. could talk just about the things you already shared. I could probably ramble for the rest of the episode just on that. But, you know, and I'm an entrepreneur and I'm a big time experimentation advocate myself. So I really love your take on testing and trying new things out even really quickly. Right. And just getting it out there and getting some feedback, creating a data, a feedback loop and getting data and making decisions based on that, presumptions or assumptions or estimations. You have an estimation.

Barry Forth (27:37)

Yep.

Clay (27:44)

presumption you start with that and then quickly rubber to the road out into the world to test it out and get that feedback it's the scientific approach it's and you can apply it to like everything we do and you know you can always pivot you can always iterate you can always stop you can always improve you know very few things are actually like set in stone in life and in business and things it takes talent to be able to do this it takes good instincts

Barry Forth (27:52)

Yep.

Clay (28:12)

knowing when to experiment, when to innovate on something that's working or maybe not working the best and when to double down on what you're doing that is already working and that is, know, don't, if it's not broke, don't fix it kind of thing. So how do you decide what ideas are worth testing in regards to like, there's obviously little things you can try that you can.

Barry Forth (28:28)

Yeah.

Clay (28:38)

come up with the idea today, test it tomorrow, and in a week you have feedback. But some things require a little more involved planning, preparation, execution. How do you decide? What ideas are worth testing? Both small ones, I guess small ones are easier to test because there's less risk, less cost, and less time involved. But the bigger ones that take more time, more cost, more people, how do you decide what's worth testing, what's not worth testing in that sense?

Barry Forth (29:03)

Yeah, I mean there's sadly sadly for me. This is like the I mean that I guess the good and bad part is that There certainly is nothing scientific about anything of kind of how I approach things ⁓ and I'm I've said this to a lot of different people in the industry that like I I have way more leeway to do what I want then then most right like I you know, I spoke at different, know different associations different things

where I always tell people that, like, you may, there are probably a hundred other people that have the same mind as I do, the same brain as I do this, would love to do the same things I do. They just don't have that leeway because it's not a family-owned business. It's not, they have other people to answer to, right? And so that's where, that's where I, you know, I benefit from all of, you know, from that. ⁓ But, you know, from a, you know, new idea, new concept, ⁓

I'll use this kind of another new one that again, I wish, this one I thought of even later than the Long Weekend series. I didn't think of this one until like mid-February. And this was a way bigger, a way bigger change for us. We've always done the same. We've always sold green fees the same way since we opened. So again, we're fully public. Since 2003, we sold green fee packages. So you could buy, let's say a 50 pack. That was kind of that highest threshold of

You buy a 50 pack, you save 20 % off your regular green fee rate. It's pre-purchased. You can buy as many as you want. They're fully transferable. So let's just say the two of you guys go together. You buy a 50 pack. You've each got 25 rounds. once you leave, Clay, you come in and you buy that. Brad pays you back. Once you leave the golf shop, I don't know who has those. I don't know if you gave those to some clients, if you brought friends, if you sold them on Facebook Marketplace. I don't know where all that went.

Clay (30:57)

you

Barry Forth (31:02)

kind of trying to think of different ways to kind of work our way out of that. And also at the same time, kind of work our way out of ⁓ kind of the existing TTIME software that we had that I kind of adopted ⁓ when I came back that was brought in when I wasn't here. ⁓ So this whole kind of thought changed. So last year I created this thing ⁓ called the Coptem Woods Public Player Society. I created this last year out of kind of the reasoning.

The reason that I created it was we had so many people that because we're fully public, people want to be members here. People want to, they want to belong here. They want to be a member. They begged me to start selling memberships. And I'm pretty confident if I decided to sell, turn this place private, I could sell it pretty quick. But 2002, back to then, I said to my dad at the time, said, okay, I know we're not gonna go private, but are we gonna go semi-public or fully public? And he looked at me.

Two things that he looked at me with a straight face and he said to me, he said the first one was, I've run this farm for 30 years and have made enough money to build this golf course with nobody telling me what to do and I'm not about to start. Hence no members. And I've got that same mindset and so we'll never have any members here. ⁓ And then the other thing was about, that he was dead serious about that we still operate the same way today. I said, I don't have a clue how to set a budget to be able to create.

to forecast how many rounds and to forecast push-up sales and what our wages should be and blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. He said, what do you need a budget for? If the sun's shining, the parking lot better be full. If it's raining, you better cut your staff and minimize your expenses. Done, perfect. So we don't forecast, we don't budget, we don't do anything of the sort whatsoever. We can obviously compare historical numbers and compare, but until you actually compare that kind of apples to apples of, you know.

weather and all of the other societal factors that you can't ever really compare. So anyway, that's kind of neither here nor there, but we created this public player society to give people kind of that feeling of belonging. And that's what it was, is you're not a member, you belong to the public player society. Last year we got, I think we had about 150 people sign up, it was $300. You got a couple little pieces of swag with it, you got a couple rounds of golf. So this year I took that and kind of went completely opposite way.

Clay (32:58)

it.

Barry Forth (33:26)

lower the price down to $75. Learning from some different people in the industry and Fraser Stocky from Interkip Highlands and Kitchener, they've got a similar program that they've run. It's really not much different than, let's say, a Costco membership where you pay a $75 fee up front and then every time you come in thereafter, you end up, you basically save 20 % off that green fee rate. So now, Clay and Brad, you guys come in, you guys had always bought the packages.

Well now we don't sell the packages anymore. Now you have to pay $75 upfront. Now every time you come in, Clay, and Brad, you come in, we know exactly how many times you've played. We know the days you play. know all the information that we should have known before, but we just didn't. We just didn't have that data before. But now instead of the people that you bring in every once in a while that maybe play once, twice, three times a year, well now they don't get to piggyback off of your discount. Now if they want to be able to receive that same loyalty discount, they need to be loyal.

Clay (34:09)

Mm-hmm.

Barry Forth (34:25)

So if you're pay that $75, people can kinda just do whatever math they decide to do and figure out, well, it'll probably save about 15 bucks a round, so then it'll pay itself off after five rounds. And so doing that ⁓ was a big change that also brought with it a whole new, we changed complete T-time software program. It was a gamble of how many people are going to

Clay (34:25)

Yep. ⁓

Barry Forth (34:55)

want to do this. How many people are gonna buy into this? How many people are, you ⁓ we're now, we sold a thousand before we opened and I think we're at like 1600 now. You don't get any pre, you don't get any, you know, a better booking window. Everybody gets the same. There's no gray area with any bookings. don't, nobody gets pre, you know, advanced bookings. Everybody has the same booking window. ⁓ You get, you know, you get a 10 % discount in shop merchandise.

Clay (35:07)

Nice.

Barry Forth (35:23)

the 20 % off your green fee. ⁓ But now from a testing standpoint, this is what I don't know and I won't know until the year's done, is I know historically about a third of our rounds were paid for by those pre-purchased green fee tickets. So a third of our rounds were called discounted. Now I don't know what that magic number is for us, of how many rounds every person that buys into this program

I don't know how many rounds we're going to have that are going to kind of be that discounted rate. So this year is going to be a bit of an anomaly of, let's see what happens. Our average green fee price might go down, it might go up. I don't know. ⁓ But so from a testing standpoint for that, there was no way to really test an idea like that. And so it literally is just similar to what I do with most things that I do. I just double down right away.

It's like if I'm gonna do this thing, I'm going all in every single time. I'm gonna put everything I've got behind it and I'm gonna get as many people on board as I can to act as advocates for whatever that is and whether those are golfers that play here all the time or whoever it might be. that's kind of like we're in real time testing mode every day and kind of seeing what percentage of golfers.

are part of the Cope Town Woods Public Player Society. And a lot of people come in, they're like, oh, so is this for all public golf courses? It's like, well, no, it's just for here. Like, oh, okay, cool. But again, 1600 people. And the nice thing, again, from a partner's standpoint, now I can look to my partners, and I'll just use TaylorMade as an example. Well now, I've got, I know, I have actual data of 1600 avid golfers.

And I'm not taking that list and selling that to any of my partners. But how can I provide additional value for those golfers? By saying, hey, we've got this great partnership with TaylorMade. Instead of that $74 dozen for TP5 balls, we're gonna do kind of an opportunity buy. We're gonna give it to you for 65 or for $62 or 60 bucks or whatever. I lean on TaylorMade to be able to take my price down a little bit.

but it brings my, by bringing my buying power up. And so a lot of little things and it's funny the amount of little things that are kind of falling into my lap of, I've got this guy, a golf travel company that wants to, it's common for private clubs to do kind of a member trip. He's like, would be wonderful. So I've kind of floated that idea past a few people and they're like, my God, I'd love to do it. And so anyways, it's just, it's a double down of the idea and then.

Now there's like all these different little kind of pieces that are coming together of, okay, now we can build this thing and grow it. I might not want to grow the actual number of people involved in it, but maybe next year that takes it from it. Maybe instead of $75, maybe it's $100. if I get 400 less than 1600, well, I'm still making the same revenue in terms of that, of that kind of initial fee, which isn't making, that's not making or breaking our year, but it's a little bit more to...

to kind of have some fun and create some cool different concepts.

Brad (38:56)

Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. Really great ideas there, Barry. I think the I mean, the luxury you definitely have right is kind of just the man behind the whole thing as opposed to a private club because they're so different, right? So when you have your private club, things don't move as quickly as what you have the luxury of doing there because you have to go through boards, right? You have to go through, ⁓ you know, you have to go through committees. It's like there's so much time spent in the background and then you have all these

Clay (38:57)

Very cool.

Brad (39:26)

these favorites emerging, you know, it's like, well, this is the president of the club. I've got to treat him this way. And it's like, what you have there is you can actually have like legitimate equality where it's like a green fee is a green fee. It's like, I obviously care about the individual who's playing, but that person is the same as the other person playing, you know, whoever's playing at 9 a.m. is the same as the person playing at 5 p.m. Right. There's no there's no different differentiation there. And there's no favoritism, which you do see happening at private clubs quite a bit.

Barry Forth (39:56)

Sure.

Brad (39:56)

So

that's a really nice luxury that you have there.

Barry Forth (40:00)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and people see that too, right? People know that we're, people have seen how I operate and whether they follow our Instagram, where it's my goal to completely ⁓ bastardize people's algorithms in the stupid things that I do, ⁓ or the,

Clay (40:19)

Please follow his Instagram.

If you're listening, please follow the Copetown Woods Instagram. It's great content, man. It's great. I checked it out. It's very good what you're doing there. It's very unique. It's very unique and not a people are doing it and it makes you stand out. It's great.

Barry Forth (40:26)

Yeah, and you know what, it really-

yeah, like-

Yeah, I don't take myself too serious. I'm the first one to be able to make fun of myself. But a lot of time, the message that I want to get out, there's so many things, there's so many ways that people consume information now. And I started doing that, kind of how I run our social channel now, our Instagram channel, is I started doing it during COVID when every week

maybe three times a week, there was a different process that was put in place that we had to abide by, that we had to communicate to golfers that you can come in the clubhouse, you can't come in the clubhouse, you have to wear a mask, you have to have a divider up in your car, all these different things that I kept on sending these emails out, and then people would show up and they have no idea what I'm talking about because it's just white noise, trying to read everything. So that switched me to, okay, I don't have the time to continue to write these emails and people aren't paying attention anyway.

So here's what is, here's what we're doing today. Take a video, 30 seconds, and post it. And then as I kind of went through and found the stupider I looked, the better the engagement. As soon as I screwed something up, if I stumbled on my words, or some golfer came behind me and pushed me, engagement goes up, and then those shares go up, then that, so it kind of grows and grows. ⁓ Yeah, mean, this past weekend.

There was a guy that obviously had, you know, he got into the sauce this weekend and at like two in the morning, started commenting on, you he went down a rabbit hole of all the videos that I post and just continued to comment of, you know, telling me that I'm a loser and you're a clown and, you know, golf course should be called Clown Show Woods. So I made, literally had ChatGPT make a picture of me dressed as a clown and I posted a video of, you know, we are now Clown Show Woods. And you know what?

I might actually get some merch created with me as a clown and I'll probably sell it. Yeah, it's hilarious. Again, it's just, I have the, as you said, Brad, I've got the luxury. People would normally probably consider that a luxury where they can post videos of themselves dressed as a clown. ⁓ But I have the luxury to be able to do that and people appreciate that. ⁓

Basically what I said to my dad after I started making some of these videos at first, he's like, what in the hell are you doing? Why are you doing this? And I said, there's nobody, this place needs to be humanized. There's nothing, there's nobody to speak on behalf of or whatever. And I probably shouldn't be that person if we wanted to, if we could find a better looking person, a more well-spoken person. But I'm free, so here I am.

Clay (43:04)

You

Brad (43:27)

No, I, sir, go ahead.

Clay (43:27)

Well, I just on that last point,

I think even if you hired someone and you're like, listen, you have carte blanche, you have free rein, be funny, be human, be relatable, experiment, try stuff. Even with that permission, they're like, yeah, but if I don't do it well enough, Barry can still fire me. So as much as he's given me license to do these things.

I still have to make sure that he'll like it, because he writes my check. But if you just do it yourself and you write your own check, then you don't have to worry about, like you said, there's no one that's gonna come and tell you, listen man, you kind of crossed the line there in that last post, and you're just like, oh man, I gotta get pulled in the office, and I gotta review my, that changes my whole content plan for the rest of the season that I mapped out. Oh man, so it's just, you're doing it, it works. No one has to, you don't have to check with anybody, you don't have to reply back to anybody.

Barry Forth (43:51)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

Clay (44:18)

like it and people are engaging with it and you know on the comment I think you'd sell it if you clown merch you'd sell it and and even if no one out there in the world

looked at that hoodie or that sweater or the shirt, t-shirt, whatever, and someone was like, ⁓ Coptown Woods, I gotta go play some golf there. They won't make the association. But everyone who watch your Instagram channel will. And if anybody's walking through Costco with the big clown hoodie on and another Coptown Woods golfer walks by them, they're gonna stop them and poke them. They're like, hey, clown, hey, hey, clown. And then they're gonna be like, haha, you know, hey, you know, you know what's going on. You know what the sweater's about. And it's that insider. It's not a private membership, but you can create those

Brad (44:52)

I'm

Clay (45:00)

kind of insider ⁓ jokes, it's literally an inside joke. It's an inside joke. If you know, know, and if you don't know, you don't exactly. But back to your comment on ⁓ the hoodie as well, to get 450 hoodies with your logo out there, even if no one sees the logo, the person wearing the hoodie.

Barry Forth (45:04)

The old if you know, you know, right? That's what comes down to it.

Clay (45:20)

looks down every time and they're like this is my copetown woods hoodie even they know they're putting on your flag on their on their back and walking around public with your flag the only reason they're wearing it is because the cw is not right across the chest blaring out like a care bear but

It's there subtly, but it's the fireplace. It's the art, it's the design, it's the design and the image that makes them more comfortable wearing it. And then they're still putting on your flag on them as they go out in public, which makes them more loyal. And even if they come back more often, but the hoodie doesn't result in any net new, golfer is coming, but it makes that person more retained and increases their retention, then it still serves the purpose of increasing your sales. Yeah, very cool.

Barry Forth (46:03)

Exactly. Yeah.

Brad (46:06)

Barry, I'm getting ideas here for like ⁓ a, you know, one of those like tip and tucks at the end of the year, like a full, you you have the superintendent's revenge, right? So a tournament, right? You could have a full blown clown tournament with like closest to the clown and like popcorn and like, you should just fully embrace this and go just like balls to the wall here.

Barry Forth (46:15)

Enjoy it.

Clay (46:21)

That would be hilarious.

Barry Forth (46:25)

Absolutely. The

clubhouse turns into the big top.

Brad (46:29)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, just go full bore here.

Clay (46:32)

And

everybody comes and they're dressing their best clown outfit.

Brad (46:35)

Yeah,

Barry Forth (46:35)

Yeah. Exactly.

Brad (46:35)

like you're just a bunch of clowns playing. You make your carts into clown cars.

Barry Forth (46:41)

Absolutely.

Clay (46:42)

You know, it's so funny.

You know, it's so funny about that is if you did that and everybody started posting on social that guy who's spiraled on you would probably go and engage with the content so much and because the media that social media they don't care about bad comments good comments and critiques as if it's engagement they will pump it in the algorithms. So if people are hating on it, they're like this is stupid. You're a clown be like, yes, we are tell us more how we're clowns. Keep up with our sales. Keep up with our algorithm, you know.

Barry Forth (47:01)

Right, yeah. No, exactly,

Yeah, yeah, well that's it. Yeah, that's just

exactly. That's, yeah. There's one other guy. So that guy was just a burner account. There's one other guy, and I know who he is. I don't think he knows that I know who he is, but I know who he is. That he will, every once in a while, he'll just keep coming back like I can't believe this loser's still running this golf course and I can't believe people pay attention. And my comment to him is, yet you're still here.

Brad (47:35)

Yup.

Barry Forth (47:35)

Like,

it's you know, yeah, it's like a, I'm literally like a train wreck, right? So, and you can't drive by without looking at it. Here I am. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly. He probably plays you like three times a week.

Clay (47:44)

Would I say you're living rent free in his head? That's it.

Brad (47:48)

yeah.

Clay (47:51)

Next time you say something, yeah,

that's fine. Brad, sorry, I keep cutting you off, Brad, go ahead.

Brad (47:56)

No, no, good. Let's, ⁓ well, we're not ready. I mean, we can talk about this stuff forever. I think, I think Barry's got a clown tournament coming up in November or something, but let's, let's talk about the balance between respecting golf traditions and trying something new. I know that tension kind of lives in every golf course. How do you navigate that? Very.

Barry Forth (48:14)

I mean, jumping out of the clown tournament into the traditional golf is there. Let's still. Yeah, that's a great transition. I would say, ⁓ yeah, I would say I'll use one example that is a constant. It's a constant, I guess, conversation that I have with golfers ⁓ where during Covid ⁓ we were so I guess from a traditional golf standpoint, I mean, we're.

We respect the traditions of the game and everything and how our golf course is set up and what golfers would come to expect. I mean, we have it all. We've got everything here. ⁓ But the ⁓ one big change that we've made, ⁓ so during COVID, you had to take rakes out of bunkers. So rakes, because you couldn't have, they didn't want people touching them.

So rakes came out of bunkers, everybody got used to, okay, you can kind of pick your ball up, smooth it out, or play it as it is, whatever you want to do. Once we were allowed to put those rakes back in, we put them back in for about a week. And I said to my superintendent, take them out, get them out of here. We're not putting rakes back in the bunkers. And we haven't had rakes in the bunkers since. So we've had rakes in bunkers for one week over last five years.

The reason behind it is, again, traditions of the game, bunkers, you have to rake your bunker. Golfers, just being fully transparent, they either don't rake the bunker at all, or they'll rake where they hit their ball and they won't rake their footprint, or vice versa. There's no PGA Tour caddies walking behind these golfers raking on their behalf.

So they just do a half-assed job and then me as a, know, 10 handicap, I hit my ball into the bunker and it goes into Clay's footprint that he didn't, you know, that he didn't rake. Well, why am I being punished because Clay didn't rake his bunker properly? Like the rules of golf, ⁓ this is where I kind of pushed the tradition of golf. ⁓ The rules of golf are not conducive to a

⁓ an efficiently operated golf course, let's just say. So, without rakes and bunkers, our turf crew, they don't have to get off their mower and move five rakes for every bunker, and then they have to get off again and move them back. Golfers, from a pace of play standpoint, don't have to go and find that bunker rake that somebody left on the opposite side of the bunker, and come back, rake it, and then put it back. So pace of play, works.

We can pass on those savings and we do pass on those savings by not increasing our rates like crazy. ⁓ Because, you know, we're saving a couple hours a day on our turf crew. We're saving on that pace of play. ⁓ And at the end of the day, for me, you know, what I say to people is place yourselves, do what you want to do. I definitely got a slap on the wrist about that ⁓ from ⁓ the governing body of golf in Canada. ⁓ I had an email that was about this long from

the head of rules saying, citing all of the rules of this, ⁓ all of these reasons why you can't tell people that they don't need to their bunker, they can move their ball, they can do whatever. I don't think I ever told people they can move their ball, you do whatever you want. I don't actually give a shit. I don't know if I can say that on this or not. I don't really care. ⁓ How you do it. ⁓ And my reply to that email was simply this and only this.

Clay (51:51)

Target.

Barry Forth (52:03)

This is why I hate golf, send. And the rules of golf, everybody talks about over the last five years has talked about the growth of the game, all of these new people that have started playing the game, juniors, seniors, women, whoever, the person that played five rounds is now playing 10 rounds. Everybody talks about how do we keep them? How do we engage them? And how do we keep them to be playing golf? My answer is really simple. It's quit making those barriers to entry so difficult.

Clay (52:15)

Thank

Barry Forth (52:32)

Quit making, when you hit a ball to the OB, quit making them hit a second ball from the same spot that they just got the shippet out of them the first time. Create it as a lateral, move it up. Take the worry about hitting out of a terrible lie in a bunker, take that out of play and let them smooth it out. Make those rules of the game easier for just the average golfer. And the average golfer is quite literally the only way that the golf industry survives.

without sounding, without coming across cocky, the golf courses, the people that own golf courses, whether it's individually owned golf courses like our family, or it's privately equity based membership that they own the golf course, whoever owns golf courses, they're the ones that are keeping the golf industry going. It's not the governing bodies, it's not the professional tours, it's not, if we don't operate this golf course well, people aren't gonna wanna play golf here.

And if the next golf course does the same thing, then guess what? Golf goes this way because they don't have the right experience. But if you can let a golfer go stand out on that tee, know that they're not gonna get beat up, know that they're gonna have an enjoyable time, know that they're gonna get through in a good pace because they've got other things to do and we're fighting against, know, everybody's lives are different than they were 30 years ago. That will make everybody's experience so much better. And so,

That's where I guess, you know, me versus my thoughts and kind of how I operate versus the traditional way of how a golf course should be run. That's where we sway from things. Now, on the flip side of that, it's funny because I've been asked to sit on panels, ⁓ you know, with governing bodies to talk about why I have no rakes and bunkers and was asked to sit on this Golf Canada industry advisory council. ⁓ Maybe not necessarily for that.

but because I'm not shy and it's not that I'm outspoken. I don't go out of my way to spread, you know, what I think is the right way to do it, but I'm not shy to share in conversations like this.

Clay (54:45)

Very cool.

Brad (54:45)

Yeah, that's.

Yeah, that's great. I can agree more Barry. Like I'll go play with a 25 handicap. Right. And I'm like, if they want to roll it in the fairway and hit it and it makes it makes their contact better. Right. And they're not entering scores anyways. A lot of them. Right. It's like, who cares? Right. It doesn't matter if that person's going to enjoy themselves. There's nothing worse either than driving a ball right down the middle of the fairway into a spot where people hit wedges from and your balls in a divot and you can't roll it out of the divot. Right. I'm just like, like

Okay, in a tournament like have have your different set of rules here have a set of rules for like tournament play for your your elite golfers and then have that and then have your your everyday play because you're right. You need to move people through the golf course. If somebody's hitting three balls off a tee and they've got this wicked slice and they just keep there's there's no stakes or anything like that to show them. Hey, here's a drop zone. Go go drop it over here. Now you got 100 yards in and you're going to finish the hole make a double get out of there not have the worst day of your life. But if this guy is like

Barry Forth (55:22)

Exactly.

Yeah.

Brad (55:46)

Even good players has a wicked slice that day and you've got this like 200 yard par three and the guy can't cover this lake and there's nowhere to drop it. He's hitting one after the other, right? And he's just one goes in the lake. One goes way way OB and he's hit four off the tee. Then you got groups behind you piling up. You have to make the golf courses completely playable for your average Joe who's playing it all the time. When you might host a tournament at this golf course, like an elite tournament once a year. And that's a whole different ball of wax, but

That's great you're sitting on those committees. think that's extremely valuable to have somebody who sees the average golfer playing his golf course and is like, this works, this doesn't, let's move forward.

Barry Forth (56:16)

Thank

Yeah, and like you said, we're hosting, ⁓ Golf Canada asked if we would host an event for them, so we're hosting next week the USGA Junior Am Qualifier. Golf Canada gets one of that one single event to qualify for the USGA Junior Am. They asked us if we would do it. ⁓ And so fortunately, the Rakes are still hanging in ⁓ the turf shop. The Rakes will come out for that day, and then we'll quickly get ushered back into the barn and hibernate.

Brad (56:57)

of that.

Clay (56:57)

That's cool. And you know, the key to quality in anything is quantity. Like if you started doing something and you're not good at it and you keep focusing on how bad you are at it, and because of that you get discouraged, demotivated, demoralized, so you don't put in the reps, you don't put in the quantity, the thousand swings, the thousand hours, 10,000 hours, so on.

you won't will elude will evade you. There is no chance to get quality without the quantity. I'm not very don't know. I don't play golf. I'm not a great golfer.

Brad's a good friend of mine, he's a professional golfer. And over my whole life I've wanted to go play, but people who are going to play, they play all the time, they're so good. And I'm like, I don't wanna be like the gimp tagging along behind, just throwing balls down and being like, hey, I just wanna come and hang out with you guys. And I'm paying money to do this. So I've always been discouraged. I've gone to driving ranges a number of times and tried to get my drive going, but I never had a coach. So I'm just doing it myself. I'm just trying to figure out with buddies and my brother who's a little better than me, but not much better. And I've never put in the reps.

And because to go to a nice club, I'm discouraged and I'm intimidated. been in, I'm not, using the present tense. I was discouraged and I was intimidated because of my lack of quality. And I didn't have enough time and effort to put in the quantity. If people can come to your course and they can play.

without the pressure of performance and the burden of performance, they'll come and they'll come once, they'll come twice, they'll come 10 times, they'll come to the driving ranges more often. I would go to a driving range more often if there was a course close by that I could go to that I didn't feel the pressure of performance when I was actually doing 18 rounds, I would do more driving range trips. I would do more putting golf trips just to get good at putting and driving better, because I know I wanna come out to your 18 rounds and I wanna... ⁓

just do better than my previous experience. I'm not competing with my buddies, I'm not competing with my playmates, I'm competing with myself from the previous game I just played. And that's how I'll improve with the quantity. So I think with little things like that you guys are talking about, if I could not have to stick to the rules, the professional tournament rules ⁓ so closely and precisely, it would be more fun and I'd be more likely to do it. Because I wanna get better at it, I just don't wanna... ⁓

upset people who I'm playing with or the, not even my friends who playing with, the ones behind me, right, that are coming up behind us, or people at the chorus, just, they'll go, there's Clay again, he doesn't know the rules, he's a beginner, like you said, we're the people, people like me entering the market to play and buying our first bag of clubs and doing all this stuff, we are the ones that are gonna drive the industry forward and keep it going because we're the largest in any... ⁓

Barry Forth (59:30)

Right. Yep.

Exactly.

Clay (59:52)

group of people and everything, the pros are like 1 % of the total demographic population, right? Then you have your advanced people who make up the upper slices of the pyramid, but the beginners are always the biggest chunk of any market. It doesn't matter what it is. And so it's cool. It's very cool to hear that you're...

equalizing it all and making it everyone's welcome everyone can play we're gonna keep it flowing it's not gonna slow down for you but we're not gonna penalize you or make it difficult for you unnecessarily because of your lack of skill and experience we're just gonna keep the flow going and you're gonna get better just keep coming out keep coming out you're gonna get better so it's a good it's a good attitude it's a good ethos and so you know in that line like in the tradition the innovation you know improvements

Barry Forth (1:00:15)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Clay (1:00:38)

in that kind of theme, you know, we're big believers in using tools like AI wherever we can, right? To remove friction, to free up staff, to be more present. And so that ideally the staff can have more face-to-face time with guests and with members and, you know, out in the field not stuck in their computers, know, in emails or just staring at their laptops, right? Or on the phone as well for that matter. What's your take on, you know, where tech like this fits into clubs and their operations moving forward?

Barry Forth (1:00:59)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean I'm all about creating efficiencies and kind of how we can do that and again kind of how I described earlier about our budgeting process and forecasting and ⁓ you know if it's not a if the sun's not shining and I mean then you know if it's kind of a crappy day then cut your staff and you know but when I cut my staff then I'm kind of a lone soldier here and you know that turns into a day just because it might be pouring rain today.

doesn't mean that three days from now isn't gonna be sunny and the phone's gonna be ringing like crazy to book for that day. Well, now I've got nobody here. It's hard to justify having somebody physically stand here on a day when nobody's coming in to hand us money to pay for their golf today, but they wanna play golf Thursday or they wanna play next week. So I think the efficiencies of how technology and AI is going to be able to better that for golf courses. ⁓

Clay (1:01:43)

Yeah.

Barry Forth (1:02:07)

Between that, even the on course, from a turf standpoint, the autonomous mowers and ⁓ all of that kind of stuff where we did a demo this past week, we had an ⁓ autonomous mower that kind of had its own little area to work in and kind of go back and charge itself up and keep coming out and working. Those things, they create efficiencies. ⁓ The one thing I think everybody is, you

we need to be cognizant of is to not lose that personal touch of golf. And ⁓ at the end of the day, we're in the service business, right? But as you said, if it kind of removes that ball and chain from me at my desk to be able to get out and interact and talk to people, then it's great. And so I think the nice thing too is over the years, it's...

You know, it's been around for a while and, you know, I guess the autonomous mower is kind of a really good example of the cost of that was astronomical three or four years ago. Well, now that's coming down a little bit more. And if we can take the, you know, get four of those, it doesn't mean we're gonna cut four staff members. That might mean that those four staff members can edge.

around trees and bunkers and cart paths and things that it's those little things that while you know doing one of those little extra things maybe doesn't make a whole big of a whole lot of a difference when you start seeing it all kind of come together it just elevates everything right it elevates the conditioning and ⁓ so it's ⁓ yeah i think there's definitely a place for it there's definitely ⁓ you know there will be

people that will adopt it, will, ⁓ I guess, be the guinea pigs for it and test it out and, ⁓ you know, I guess, help perfect it before it gets out to the masses. ⁓ But, I mean, you guys are on track with what you guys are doing.

Brad (1:04:24)

Yeah, yeah, there's there's so much to to be done there just to free up staff, I find, ⁓ like you said, to be more golfer facing ⁓ so many things. We have so much tech now ⁓ where we're interacting directly with it on our keyboard, staring at a screen where it's like a lot of that can now be automated through AI. And that will free up your staff to actually, you know, not just sit there, but do other things that are valuable to the operation. I know I'm tons of clubs, ⁓ you know,

If you walk in, you can find dusty spots in the Pro Shop, like in every single Pro Shop. That's something that does get overlooked because you get so jammed up with everything that's going on in the season. It would be nice to have those times where you can actually clean your place and look at things that maybe aren't functioning as well as you want them to and then address them. As opposed to when you get in the thick of the season and your systems are kind of already in place, you just have to roll with it. You can't be...

You know, there's certain things you can institute, can put in the back end, but you know, once you kind of have everything set up, you're like, we've to roll with the punches here. can't be, you know, innovating like crazy in the middle of the season. We can add one or two things here, but we can't be going bonkers, you know? So, kind of in that same vein in terms of, ⁓ staffing, ⁓ a lot of clubs struggle with seasonal retention, especially, you know, us up here in the North, ⁓ where the golf seasons are so short.

Barry Forth (1:05:34)

over.

Yeah.

Brad (1:05:49)

What's worked for you in keeping good people around or coming back year over year?

Barry Forth (1:05:55)

To be honest, I would say the exact same reason that golfers keep coming back and it's letting those golfers sell for us. It's that referral network as you spoke to earlier, Clay. It's, you we have, I think, not including my kids, all three of my kids work here, ⁓ but I would say we probably have six different sets of siblings ⁓ that work here.

or that have worked here over the years that the older brother or sister works here and then the next one comes in and then the next one maybe comes in. So it's good because, and for us the nice thing is when they come in through a referral, they know what to expect. They've already been told the good, bad, and the ugly of what it's like working at Copetown Woods. And so they know.

Clay (1:06:23)

That's cool.

Barry Forth (1:06:51)

kind of what those expectations are. Those expectations are, that tone is set with them by whoever their friend is or their brother or their sister. And so that's a really nice thing. And ⁓ you know, we've always been, you know, the food and beverage side has always been the hardest, I think, in the industry to be able to, ⁓ you know, retain the, you know, especially front of house staff, to be able to retain them. I think we're now going on.

There's probably, I think we've probably got six servers that are on year four or year five that have started, they started working for us when they were in their first year of university, now they're graduating or they're taking their MBA and they're still working here. Now, granted, we're extremely busy. We're sold out basically every day and they make probably more money than I do in tips. So that's a pretty good reason to come back. So that helps. yeah, but it's, yeah, it's, it's again,

The way that we treat our golfers is the way that I treat my staff and the way that I manage. I want my managers to manage our staff is treat them how you want to be treated, right? Like we're, you know, there are certain things that I'm like hard and fast on and, you know, this is what we do. This is the policy, this is how we operate. But there's a lot of, you know, a lot of, I wouldn't say leeway that we give our staff, but, you know, give them enough rope to.

hang themselves, I guess you could say is ⁓ where they'll be able to make some decisions on the fly and be able to ⁓ kind of manage things how they want to manage it. And ⁓ knowing what our policies are, how they see the golf course being run every day, they know what those guidelines are. And as long as they stay within those, then I don't give them like free reign that they can kind of do whatever the hell they want. But.

It's, you know, I don't babysit. I don't sit there with my thumb on top of them and make sure they're doing every little thing right. The nice thing about having my office here, I can hear every conversation that goes on with every golfer that comes in the door. ⁓ And sometimes there's stuff that happens that I may need to give them a hand and help them out, and I will. But oftentimes I'll let them work through that themselves. ⁓ Because again, a lot of the people that work here, a lot of times it's their first job.

⁓ And so having them, giving them the ability to make some decisions and learn how to kind of run an efficient ⁓ business is good for, whether they stay in golf, and most of them won't, or they go and they do something else, it's amazing how many people come back five, 10 years, 15 years after they worked here and be like, man, I miss this place. Like this place, you guys helped me in my career.

People will go and work in other places and when they're walking, you know, walking through their office and they pick up a piece of garbage without even realizing, you know, that's kind of like just intuition for them to stop and pick up that piece of garbage because we tell people here, like my dad, I don't think he does it anymore. He used to take a $20 bill at the back of ⁓ a piece of paper and like crumple it up and just leave it in the parking lot.

and it would have a note, or no, sorry, wouldn't have a $20 bill on it. It would say, bring, it would have something that they would look at and it would be like, bring this to Gord and he would give him 20 bucks. And it's like, now everybody's like, ⁓ is there garbage? Like, where's your garbage? You're all looking around for it, right? Yeah, and so it's, yeah, so it's little things like that. And two, it's, you know, the one, I'm, again, I'm a pretty easy going guy. The one thing that I will never ever back down on is if,

Clay (1:10:26)

That's brilliant

Ha

Barry Forth (1:10:41)

there is a golfer and you're no matter where we're pretty fortunate here with the customers that we have and the golfers and kind of how they treat us and how they treat the facilities. We're a fully public and it doesn't matter, it probably happens at private clubs too, where you're gonna get those people that are come in that it doesn't matter where they go, they're just an idiot. And they're just, they're gonna be rude, they're gonna be, so I waste no time ⁓ taking that on myself.

If anybody wants to have a conversation that could go off the rails, I'm game for it. I'm the son of a farmer and a lot of, yeah, so it's, I've had some good ones over the years, but I will always stick up for my staff, which again, they leave here, they go home, they tell their parents, then their parents are appreciative of, you know,

hey, you looked after Billy, you stepped in and helped him out when needed. And again, it it kind of builds it out like that. so, ⁓ yeah, that whole, change of, and I always hate using the word culture and vibe, but the culture and vibe of me working downtown Toronto, our office was King and Bay, we're going up to, I'm wearing like Chuck Taylor's jeans and a t-shirt.

to work in a sports, you know, a super cool sports marketing office and we're going up the elevator with guys in, you know, $3,000 Hugo Boss suits. That culture and vibe that we had within that office, I wanted to bring that back here because it didn't happen. It was not here and it took time. It took a couple of years to really kind of get the right people in place. But it's good. It's people, yeah, I mean, knock on wood. I feel confident in saying that people like coming to work here.

Clay (1:12:25)

you

Barry Forth (1:12:32)

⁓ And so that's the easiest thing you can do ever to be able to retain staff is make them feel like that.

Clay (1:12:40)

Yeah, definitely.

Brad (1:12:41)

Yeah, great.

Great point there, Barry. Gord sounds like a bit of a legend. Sounds like some of the things he was up to is just just fantastic.

Barry Forth (1:12:48)

He is a farmer

through and through and it's been my job since 2003 to try to keep him behind closed doors. There's often one way to deal with things and oftentimes that involves ⁓ raising your voice. ⁓ mean, yeah, that's my entire life.

Clay (1:12:57)

⁓ That's been a long, hard work for 20 plus years I imagine.

Brad (1:13:01)

haha

Barry Forth (1:13:16)

Now him and I, when we kind of, we don't butt heads very often, but now when we do, ⁓ he was always an intimidating guy to work for, not for me necessarily, but for others. ⁓ having me here now, and he always was, he had the impeccable timing at the worst of times. He would come through and see three servers standing behind the bar chatting. Well, you

five minutes before, they were just like run off their feet for an hour and a half straight going crazy. But he walked in at that time. then he gets and then, know, and then that pisses him off. It's like I'm paying these girls, I'm paying them to work here. I'm paying them their wage. And they're just going to stand there around, they're staying around and talk to each other. And so this is again, this is kind of how I've kind of changed things over the last few years is that conversation that I have with him is A, your timing is garbage.

Clay (1:13:54)

Yeah.

They're not doing anything.

Barry Forth (1:14:15)

showing up at the, I'm not saying they weren't standing there, they were, but the fact that those three girls just worked their asses off and that they wanna stand there and they wanna talk about what they did this weekend with each other makes them want to work here. They like working with the people that they're working with. That makes, we don't have a water cooler. That's water cooler conversation back in like old school office, right? So it's, ⁓ yeah, it's.

Clay (1:14:38)

Yeah.

Barry Forth (1:14:44)

Again, breaking from older generation, my dad of a farmer. if you're not, this is the other thing. So we don't budget anything, but we pay extremely close attention to every single expense that we have here. So if I were to buy a, let's say I buy a case of paper from Staples and it's the wrong paper and I have to send that back and it's gonna be a.

Clay (1:14:48)

tradition.

Barry Forth (1:15:11)

$10 restocking fee or I'm have to pay for the return shipping on it. That's the end of the world. End of the world. Like Jesus, I can't believe we're having to pay for this. Like what a waste. But during COVID, ⁓ when I came back, so during COVID 2020, we couldn't ⁓ have anybody in the clubhouse to eat. So I said, listen, I just spent seven years running Canadian Opens. Whether we were at Glen Abbey or Royal Montreal, Hamilton, wherever it was, we would always put on

a temporary patio on the backs of the golf course out of the clubhouse overlooking 18 to be able to expand that because we had 600 guests from RBC coming in every day. No clubhouse can host that. So I said, why don't we look at expanding our patio? We just had a veranda kind of off the front of it, off the front of the, sorry, off the back of the clubhouse. So we had this company come in. They quoted us right on the spot. It's this much per square foot. Based on this, it's going to cost you X dollars.

and we can have it built in two weeks and we'll have to tear it down in October. They didn't hit the parking lot where he looked at me and he said, we can do this permanent ourselves for cheaper. So not a word of a lie, that afternoon, our superintendent ripped all the boxwood hedges out from in front of the veranda, stripped all the sod. Within two days, we had ⁓ the entire thing formed. We had a concrete company come in. They poured it.

By the time that was done, we took off the forms, we put the railings on ourselves, and within six days, we had a, call it, I don't even know what exactly the square footage, we had an 80 person patio in six days with furniture on it, using it, boom, like that right away. That probably cost us $15,000, but that case of paper returned for 10 bucks still chaps his ass. So.

Clay (1:17:07)

Yeah.

Barry Forth (1:17:09)

Farmer, if there's something tangible, then it's worth the expense. You can see it, I can take care of that, I can manage it, I can maintain it, and it's gonna last me for so long. But if those girls are standing there not doing anything, they could be cleaning, they could be doing, well it's like, okay, but there's that trade off, right? So, yeah, that's half the politics that I deal with is just between him and I. And he's, in the last five years, he's stepped back significantly.

Winters in Florida, he, so I'm like from a day to day standpoint, he questioned a lot of what he did the first two years I came back. He just, him and my wife have the same attitude. They just don't even follow me on Instagram now, so.

Brad (1:17:52)

That's great.

That's great. Yeah, we're always maturing, right? Like it's a it's an ongoing process there. you and you if yeah, it never stops. Right. And I know I know from like when I worked back shop, ⁓ you know, when I first started at a golf club at Rosedale Golf and Country Club, ⁓ you know, I became so good at doing the pole and getting all the bags lined up and everything that I could take 20 minutes and literally just sit there because I became so efficient at it.

Clay (1:17:53)

Hahaha

It never stops.

Brad (1:18:21)

And the first few times ⁓ I had, you know, had golf pros, like assistant pros come down and they're like, what are doing? You just sit in there. Right. And I'm like, well, the entire poll is done. Like for the entire day it's done. Nobody has to come in in the afternoon and do the poll. All they have to do is clean bags. Right. And then, you know, I had them kind of push back against me and I was like 17 or 18. So I'm like not, you know, I'm not really talking back to them, but then I just started kind of.

you know, reverting back to being like, well, I'm not going to pull for the afternoon that if this guy's bothering me, you know, and I just, I just need to look busy. Right. So then, so then I just fell back into this other routine. And then they're like, why aren't all the bags pulled? And I'm like, well, you're either going to let me do it the way, you know, I want to do it and get it all done ahead of time and get the whole day set up. And you guys are happy. You never have to come looking for a bag or put a bag on a card or anything like that. Or, know, and like those are things that you pick up when you learn about your staff. It's like,

Barry Forth (1:18:53)

Right. ⁓

Brad (1:19:15)

you can tell pretty quickly when somebody starts working within two or three weeks, like, is this person going to work out or not? Are they going to slack? Do they have that kind go-getter attitude? Are they good with people? And then it's just coaching them and being like, can this person get better? Or are they just one of these people that is like, we hired you, but it's not going to work out.

Barry Forth (1:19:22)

for sure.

Yeah.

I'll take it a step further. I feel like I've gotten pretty good at being able to pick it up, pick out if they'll be good or not when they come in for their interview, how long it takes them to walk from their car.

Brad (1:19:45)

Yeah. Sure.

Sure. Yeah.

Barry Forth (1:19:51)

Like, are you dragging your feet or are you like walking with a purpose, right? I'm like terrifying myself right now because I feel like I sound like my old man right now. So I gotta just like snap out of it.

Clay (1:20:04)

Hahaha!

Brad (1:20:08)

No, that's good stuff.

Barry Forth (1:20:09)

Yeah.

Clay (1:20:10)

It's so funny my

friend and I had the same conversation 20 years ago I was like we're not gonna be like our dads and now he's like You're just like your dad. I'm like, no, I'm not I'm like that's that's like those are fighting words I'm not just like my dad and I'm like, you're like your dad. He's like, yeah, I am

And I'm like, don't accept that. Don't just be like, no, I've resigned. The guy complained about, I'm just like, no, no, you don't have to do that. But they raised us, they made us. And so we are them unless we really push back against the inertia and be our own person. certain things come out, the pressure rises or the stress. And all of a sudden we're talking and acting in a way where like, I'm defaulting to my dad's way of dealing with things. But again, there's nothing wrong with our dads. They got us this far, right? They're great.

Barry Forth (1:20:54)

yeah, no no, absolutely,

Clay (1:20:56)

But we are our

own men and we wanna be our own men as well.

Barry Forth (1:20:58)

I like I've got the ability to turn it on and off. I feel like it.

Clay (1:21:03)

That's the goal. The goal is take

all the best parts of your dad, turn it on when you need him, turn it off when you don't need him, and that's it. I don't know, my daughters are messed. I don't know how they're gonna do it for themselves, because I don't want them turning on me when they need it.

Barry Forth (1:21:09)

Yeah, exactly.

Brad (1:21:12)

100%.

Hahaha

Barry Forth (1:21:16)

yeah, my oldest son,

yeah, my oldest son, he's like, yeah, he works in the shop and the poor kid looks like me too. And so, ⁓ yeah, there's far too many similarities there. So he's, ⁓ yeah, he's kind of, I think he's doomed.

Brad (1:21:35)

All right, I want to touch on this. yeah, we had some great conversations here, but.

Clay (1:21:38)

You gotta go Barry, you got like five minutes,

right? I wanna be mindful of your time. You just got a couple of minutes, right?

Barry Forth (1:21:41)

Yeah,

I've got a kind of a cool event that we're running in a couple of weeks that's gonna be a live, well, filmed as though it's live, but it's gonna air on TSN on July 1st. ⁓ James Duthie, Jeff O'Neill, O-Dog from TSN doing a match with two NHL players, but they're bringing out a full production truck, like 53 foot production trailer. They were gonna have like four,

Clay (1:21:56)

Cool.

Brad (1:21:57)

Awesome

Barry Forth (1:22:11)

⁓ Four dedicated cams on Scissorless behind greens for a nine hole match. It's insane. So they're coming out with a production team for a walk through today. yeah. Yeah.

Clay (1:22:24)

Gotcha.

Brad (1:22:24)

Cool. So

we'll just do the rapid fire then before you have to go. ⁓ let's see here. So yeah, just say the first thing that comes to mind. These are just quick answers. Favorite hole at Coptown Woods and why?

Barry Forth (1:22:38)

Favorite hole, I would say the 14th hole. So it's a par five. reason why, so Dick Kirkpatrick who designed our golf course, who nobody would, unless you're really deep diving into the world of golf course architecture, would know who Dick is, built golf courses his entire life. This was his first solo design. When he was building that hole, I remember him telling me that the green was gonna be a perfect circle, sloped one and a half percent from the middle to all sides. So a turtle back green.

And I was like, and again, I wasn't really a golfer and still am not, but I was like, okay, this sounds interesting. It is still, it is like the most simple yet deceiving green out there to try and land it, you know, to get on in two, it's achievable. You can do it in terms of distance, but you have a five yard window basically right before the green that's kind of flashed up a little bit.

that if you land it there, it will hit soft enough to stay on the green. Otherwise, you're just like back right over the edge, ⁓ over the back edge. it's such a, just a very cool hole where it's risk reward, but there's probably a lot more risk than reward.

Brad (1:23:48)

Awesome. Dream foursome, dead or alive, any era.

Barry Forth (1:23:55)

Oh, that's a good one. I've been asked this before and I think I just like, you know, reverted to you know, tiger, which obviously would be cool. I'd say, so both my boys now golf, so they're 18 and 17, almost 19 and 17. My 17 year old just started golfing, was always a baseball player and just started really golfing last year. And I think by next year, he'll be waxing both his older brother and me and his older brother.

is now waxing me this year, which I hate. I'm way too competitive. ⁓ And I don't even, if it was playing mini sticks with them in the basement when they were like six years old, I owned them and now they're owning me, which I don't like. ⁓ And I would throw into the mix ⁓ as the fourth, Moe Norman. So Moe played out here a lot ⁓ in 2003 and four. He died in the fall of 2004. He was the first person to ever ⁓ hit a golf ball on our golf course. So we opened.

Clay (1:24:37)

Ha ha!

Brad (1:24:53)

cool.

Barry Forth (1:24:54)

in June of 2003, but in October of 2002, again, I grew up across the road. I looked out and saw this link, sort of this Cadillac parked out by our turf shop and said to my dad, any idea who that is? We had no idea. We got on our ATVs, we didn't have any golf carts, the golf course wasn't open. We drove over and I didn't know who he was. And my dad had kind of heard who he was and he got his clubs out. He was ready to play golf. And we're like, okay, was this guy all there? he was very...

Clay (1:25:22)

You

Barry Forth (1:25:24)

very

unique and anyways we went out and we played to the 17th hole of par three that was grown in pretty well and he's like okay where do want me to hit it and we're like I don't know like I've got back of the green hits one of the back and I'm like okay front hits one of the front and anyway so he that was the first time I met him and then I got to be kind of in I was fortunate to be part of his probably few people that he actually talked to he'd sit in my office he literally would come in and sit here and

I could be on this call right now and he'd be sitting across from me, staring at me, bouncing his ball off his driver face. Best ball striker in the world. Best ball striker in the world. Piker who? Piker who? He's sitting right here. And he would just sit there for like an hour and do that. And then he'd go out to the range and take like $500 in cash and jam it in the pocket of a back shop kid. And the back shop kid would be like, I can't take this. And I'm like behind Moller, I'm like, just take it, just take it.

because he didn't want to offend him. anyways, yeah, was, it was a pretty cool thing to have him spend as much. He was probably here two days a week. ⁓ That he'd just come in, park his car, get on a cart and go play. All my staff just knew, just let him go. Just let him go. If anybody asks, just let him go.

Clay (1:26:44)

Yeah. ⁓

Brad (1:26:44)

And the Moe Norman stories,

they're just like, they're the best golf stories. All these Moe Norman stories, like, we could do a full episode on those.

Barry Forth (1:26:46)

They

Clay (1:26:51)

Brad, you

know other Moe Norman stories?

Brad (1:26:54)

My uncle caddied for Moe Norman one time in Montreal. And then he asked my uncle Bob, he goes, they're on some hole, think at Royal Montreal maybe. And he's like, how do you play this hole? And he's like, oh, he's driver seven iron. So Moe obviously takes out a seven iron and smashes seven iron down the middle and it lands in a divot. So this ball's sitting in a divot and then.

My uncle, he's like, you got to pitch out. Like, what are you doing? Right. And he's like, no, give me the driver. So he takes this driver and then beats it out of this divot onto the green. Like that. This is how good this guy was at hitting golf balls. And like my uncle's jaw is like on the ground. Right. He just played the hole completely backwards. Like he's like, driver seven iron. He gets hit seven iron, then hits driver out of a divot onto the green. ⁓ Wasn't big on putting. So he kind of walks up in two pots and goes to the next hole. like this clay, if you don't know, like you have to look into the Moe Norman thing. It's like.

Barry Forth (1:27:29)

Great. Yeah.

honestly just

Clay (1:27:49)

I'm going to, I'm going to right after this. I'm gonna look into him.

Barry Forth (1:27:49)

watch videos just watch watch videos of him it's like it's incredible like yeah yeah

Brad (1:27:51)

It's... ⁓ man.

Clay (1:27:55)

Okay, sounds like a character.

Brad (1:27:56)

These

clinics that he's like the sound of the golf ball coming off the face is like mind melting. You're just like, how is he like, it's so pure over and over.

Barry Forth (1:28:04)

During

Canadian Open Week, he would put on a clinic, he would literally just be on the range and all of the best PGA Tour players in the world would be there standing around in awe of what he would do. he, yeah, so yeah, there's a million stories and as much as, yeah, he was very unique, no doubt.

Brad (1:28:25)

for

sure. Okay, we got a couple more here. We'll bang them out. Most underrated job or role at a golf course.

Barry Forth (1:28:33)

Underrated, I would say anything that's not management. ⁓ Everybody thinks of, when you think of a golf course, you think of the golf pro or the superintendent or the food and beverage manager or the chef, but we as the kind of at the top of the chain are the puppeteers to a certain extent and ⁓ it's the little things that make great things ⁓ that without.

the back shop, the 14 and 15 year old back shop kids and ⁓ the guy or girl that's washing dishes and the turf guy that is quite literally edging around trees and ⁓ sorting garbage and stuff like that. Without that kind of stuff, nothing happens. I would say all of the above aside from management because we get the accolades.

Brad (1:29:28)

Yeah, couldn't agree more. What's a recent failure that taught you something valuable?

Clay (1:29:28)

Right on.

Barry Forth (1:29:36)

like to talk about those guys. I'm just kidding. Yeah, well, and you know, and that's the funny thing is, is that it quite literally is like, there's just some things that I don't, it's like so cheesy to sound, but like, there's really nothing that is like, necessarily failed. There's maybe some things that maybe didn't work, didn't get quite the reaction or quite the, ⁓ you know, the response maybe that I would have hoped, but

Brad (1:29:38)

Hahaha

Clay (1:29:39)

It was just an experiment.

Barry Forth (1:30:04)

That's the nice thing about doing what we're doing is that we'll try something with anything that I put out. Obviously we've got high expectations, but there's a reality of tempered expectations. And because I'm not, I won't be mad if it doesn't work as well as what I had hoped. so that's ⁓ a tricky one because I literally, anything that kind of doesn't work very well, I just tweak it and make it just.

fake it till I make it.

Brad (1:30:34)

Nice.

Clay (1:30:35)

That's it. That's a good

answer. That's good.

Barry Forth (1:30:36)

Yeah,

I'm like the I'm like I'm the person in the job interview of like what is your biggest weakness? Like I'm just I'm I just I just like to work hard.

Clay (1:30:46)

You

Brad (1:30:47)

Yeah, yeah.

Clay (1:30:49)

It's hard for me to, I'm just so good I can't think of any weakness.

Brad (1:30:51)

Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I mean, any day at a golf course is a good day if nobody's dying, right? I mean, it's like, seriously, like, obviously, there have been people who have died at golf courses. But like, like Barry said earlier, like this is this is not, you know, surgery. It's not it's not something where we're doing anything drastic here. People are coming and hitting a ball around a property and trying to have a good time. And that's basically what it is, you know. So

Barry Forth (1:30:52)

Yeah.

Brad (1:31:17)

One more here. ⁓ One innovation you think every public golf course should try within the next two years.

Barry Forth (1:31:28)

I would. ⁓

I mean, not to blow smoke to you guys, but I would say, take the leap and try some pieces of AI to be able to see what it does for you. And I think there's a lot of, and I'm first to say that as well, because I don't think, there's probably more AI than I know of in certain things that I do and certain things that we, our T-sheet software and how we operate in that. But I would say,

try some things, ⁓ even if it's something small to begin with, just to see how it might be able to create some efficiencies in your business. Because I think at the end of the day, those efficiencies can help in pass on savings to golfers. And if we don't always continue to have to raise our rates because of all the rising costs around us, we're not competing against other golf courses necessarily. We're competing against everything else that goes on around us, right? So it's, if we can take that, ⁓

you know, the thought of golf as being expensive, of being elitist, of being, you know, all of those things that it's not, it's not like it was, then let's, ⁓ you know, if we can keep those rates down, we'll keep that, you know, the participation up. And at the end of the day, that's, that's what, that's gonna make, make all of our lives better.

Brad (1:32:55)

Yeah, couldn't agree more. Thanks for playing along with that little rapid fire there. Barry, this has been incredible. Your story is a reminder that creativity, risk taking, and community building matter more than ever in today's golf landscape. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Barry Forth (1:33:10)

Yeah, it was good guys, I appreciate it and look forward to chatting more.

Clay (1:33:14)

Yeah, really appreciate it. Thank you, Barry. And you know, we're happy to do another one, end of the season, and hear a little more about ⁓ how your ⁓ live time, currently in experimentation mode, ⁓ experiments, how they turn out end of the season. Because I you said, you you're kind of living one right now, and you'll have some data come October, November, I imagine. So we'd love to speak to you then and hear about how they worked out.

Barry Forth (1:33:40)

For sure, yeah, absolutely.

Brad (1:33:42)

Mainly the clown, the clown tournament, I think that's what we're really looking forward to. Oh yeah, let's go. Yeah, I'll dress like a clown, man.

Clay (1:33:42)

Cool. for...

Barry Forth (1:33:45)

Yeah, well, I mean you guys are gonna be part of it,

Clay (1:33:51)

will come. I will come. Like no one's gonna be like, who's that clown?

Barry Forth (1:33:51)

Yeah.

Clay (1:33:55)

You'll be my coach, Brad, and I'll be the clown. We'll both be in clown costumes, and I'll be the beginner, and you'll be the expert, and it'll be great pair.

Brad (1:33:59)

No, but-

Barry Forth (1:34:02)

No, no, no, listen, listen, here, listen. There's no, there's no beginners or expert clowns here, okay? We're all the same, we're all the same. We're all the same. We're all hitting it through the same windmill, all right?

Brad (1:34:03)

This is going be amazing.

Yeah, everybody's a clown. Everyone's a clown. Exactly. Exactly.

Clay (1:34:07)

We're all clowns. Everyone's a clown.

Brad's gonna

chuck me pitches and I'm hit like a baseball bat and just like, there you go. That's the day. Right on, cool.

Barry Forth (1:34:18)

Perfect.

Brad (1:34:19)

that's the day. That's the day right there.

Barry Forth (1:34:21)

Perfect. All right, boys. Well, listen,

I appreciate the time. I do have to run. ⁓ But yeah, happy to chat again. yeah, fire off the... Once you guys get this posted, then I'll make sure that I push it out on my channels too.

Clay (1:34:26)

Jump off, yeah?

Right on, that's great. Thanks for joining us, Barry. Take care. Bye.

Brad (1:34:37)

We'll do.

Barry Forth (1:34:37)

Cool. OK, thanks, boys. All right, take care.

Brad (1:34:39)

Thanks, Barry. Take care. Bye bye.

Barry Forth (1:34:41)

Bye.

Clay (1:34:46)

I'm gonna keep recording because I'm just gonna close out now and we can cut this out after. Easy enough.

Brad (1:34:49)

Yeah, yeah, I'll just cut it.

Clay (1:34:55)

And for anyone listening, go follow Copetown Woods Golf Club on social media and see how Barry runs the Copetown Woods Instagram account, as I mentioned earlier. You can learn a lot from him about social media for golf courses. He's got amazing content there and he doesn't take himself too seriously, which allows him to just churn out.

prolific amounts of content. I think there are over 7,000 followers on there, which is an incredible feat for golf clubs to be able to have that kind of following on social media. You can do it too. There's nothing he's doing that is beyond your reach. So take advantage of it. There's all these amazing marketing tools available to you, but most people do not take advantage of them like they could. And if you got friends or family in or around Hamilton, tell them to get out there and play around one of, by far,

one of the most creative and innovative public courses in Ontario, one that we've come across. And last but not least, if you're curious how AI can help your club get ahead, call our Ace Call AI receptionist at 1-866-838-8581. You'll get a free copy. Let them know that you're calling about the Golf Club AI Amplifier. And it's a tool that we built to help golf club owners and managers and staff win with AI.

regardless if you're in a public, private, or semi-private club, just ask the receptionist and we'll send it right over to you by email. And that's it. Thanks for tuning in to the Ace Call AI Podcast, where we help golf clubs win with AI. I'm Clayton Elliott. And we'll see you next time.

Brad (1:36:29)

and I'm Brad Milligan.