One of the less-pleasant side effects of knowing a lot of people in this crazy business is that they occasionally get fired and call me for advice. Nearly every time I get one of those calls, the first question I ask them is simple: “Have you talked to Bruce yet?”
I refer, of course, to Bruce Williams. Unless you just crawled out from under a rock, you probably know the basics about him already: He’s the son of a former GCSAA president who went on to lead the association himself in the 1990s. He’s had just two jobs in three decades and they were both world-class positions. He’s taught more seminars and networked with more people than just about any superintendent in history. And, when it comes to employment in the profession, he is – quite simply – the man.
Williams literally grew up on a golf course – Beverly Country Club in Chicago – as the son of the legendary Bob Williams. (“My sandbox was a bunker and my playground was a fairway. I thought everyone lived like that until we moved into a different house away from the course,” he recalls with a smile in his voice.) He did a lot of the usual son-of-a-superintendent work at Beverly and other clubs, but his dad never tried to push him into the business and Bruce ended up heading to Cleveland’s Baldwin-Wallace College to study education, English and speech. He even taught at the college for a while before the siren song of golf called him back. He enrolled at Michigan State – studying under Dr. Ken Payne, who later became a close friend and business partner – and worked at courses around Chicago.
He finished at MSU in 1975 and went to work as an assistant at Bob O’Link Golf Club, where his dad was superintendent. When his dad retired, he succeeded him and began a long tenure as superintendent at the club. He also began to spread his wings as an instructor for GCSAA, the PGA of America and CMAA, focusing on critical non-turf skills like communication, negotiating and business management.
His friendships with Ken Payne, fellow GCSAA past-president Jerry Faubel and the great Robert Trent Jones Sr. also grew into a promising idea: creating a firm that would help clubs find the right superintendents and other key managers.
“Mr. Jones was frustrated that there wasn’t some better way for clubs he worked with to find great superintendents to care for his designs and it kind of grew from there,” says Williams. The concept eventually became Executive Golf Search and it’s still the profession’s top search firm today.
Williams’ long involvement with GCSAA leadership also reaped another benefit as he got to know Gary Grigg during their time on the board and learned about a line of biostimulant products Gary had been working on. He was so impressed, he became a stockholder in what is now Grigg Brothers and still holds a seat on their board today.
Last year, Williams accepted an early retirement offer from his employer of 12 years, Los Angeles Country Club, and decided to reinvent himself once again – this time as an executive with ValleyCrest Golf Course Maintenance, a relatively modest golf subsidiary of the enormous California-based landscape company. His job description is brief: Go find good courses that want to outsource their maintenance operations to a highly qualified company.
So we thought it would be a good time to catch up with Williams and talk about his life, his career, his views on the market and, of course, the state of employment in the profession.
What’s the first six months been like after leaving LACC and starting the new job?
When I took the retirement package, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. I thought about doing consulting or expanding the headhunting business but I really didn’t have a plan. I never applied for anything or even sent out a resume. Then Greg Pieschala (president of ValleyCrest Golf) called me. I’d done some searches with them over the years and we knew each other and I really liked the opportunity. So I finished at LACC Aug. 31 and started as director of business development for the west for ValleyCrest Sept. 1. It was the world’s shortest retirement.
My role is to help them grow. ValleyCrest is one of the largest landscape contractors in the country, but we’re trying to build our golf business as well. We want to add quality properties to our portfolio, which is about 60 facilities right now. We’re strictly in the business of outsourced golf course maintenance.
I make contacts with owners, banks, resorts, government agencies, etc., to come in and find good partners for high-quality maintenance at a fair and reasonable price. We’re trying to grow in every category – resorts, clubs, daily fees … you name it. There’s no focus on any particular kind of facility, but we do try to cluster (multiple properties close to each other) to share manpower, equipment and take advantage of the efficiencies.
How’s that going given the new set of economic conditions we face?
The business is obviously different than it was three years ago. Today there are great properties that still have to reduce costs significantly just to keep the doors open. They have to do something different just to stay viable. There’s going to be a “new normal” out there, because most people just don’t have unlimited funds for maintenance anymore. I don’t know exactly what the norm’s going to be yet, but it’s a different world. There may be a few courses that are untouched by the economy, but I’m not seeing them.
We provide courses like that what they want. We develop written standards that we’re held to. Things like height-of-cut, green speed, mowing frequency, etc., are all spelled out in the contract.
We agree on reasonable, measurable standards and then we deliver them. In some cases, circumstances change economically or otherwise and we’ve been able to adjust some of those to cut costs even further.
What was it like to move from a club to the corporate world?
It was a huge shift … the biggest difference is not having dozens of reports and hundreds of members to worry about every day. Now it’s kind of just me and I’m accountable to an executive team that really gets it. I like that a lot. On the other hand, you don’t get that instant gratification that comes with daily course maintenance. It takes time to build things up and get a contract signed. That’s different from that “we’re ready to go” feeling you get as a super. Instead, you have to be happy about the small successes along the way.
You also don’t win every contract. You have to get used to not winning every time. That’s been hard because I’m a perfectionist and I’ve spent decades providing tournament conditions every day. Failure was never an option; now it’s a reality of my job. I just try to keep it from happening too often.
Were you ready for all the non-turf aspects of the job?
Without knowing it, I’ve been prepping for this for 40 years. All of my teaching and my education focused on communication skills, business skills, negotiations, consulting, dealing with boards – basically everything else except the agronomic part – made it a natural shift. The one thing I didn’t have was any formal training in sales, but every good superintendent has to have some salesmanship skills or they’d never get a budget or a project approved.
Are you still active with Executive Golf Search? How have things been for the group given the economy?
I’m absolutely still involved along with Jerry Faubel and (fellow GCSAA past-president) Tommy Witt. Jerry handles a lot of the administration and Tommy and I lead the searches. It complements my work with ValleyCrest extremely well.
Simply put, supply and demand in golf has taken a weird shift. The surge is over. When the shakeout in the business is done, we might be down more than a thousand courses from where we are today. There are too many people and not enough jobs. And there are going to be more closures, but it’s a very difficult time for superintendents to look at changing jobs.
So what do you tell someone who wants to change or is forced to change?
My advice in this current game of musical chairs is to make absolutely sure there’s a chair to sit in. You have to be 100 percent sure the offer is solid, the deal is clearly spelled out and the club is what you think it is, particularly in terms of their finances.
Superintendents are very leery of changing right now and clubs have been holding tight with existing people. When they do make a replacement, they’ll usually hire someone less expensive. Even at the high-end, they’re tending to hire people who can grow into the job and are more affordable.
Still, we’ve had a full complement of searches the past year. There’s plenty of business in the upper-bracket clubs. They have the business sense to realize that a company like ours can help them find someone they want to be married to for anywhere from six to 15 years. We help them find that guy who’s a good grass grower, a good leader, a good business person and a good fit personality-wise. Our retention rate is greater than 90 percent five years after we help fill a position.
How many jobs have you personally done placement on?
I’ve probably directly consulted on over 100 searches through the years. But I’ve also taken countless calls from folks just fishing for information. I wish I had $100 for every one of those calls I’ve had. But, that’s something I’d do even if we weren’t in the search business.
Compare what you do with guys like Paul R. Latshaw who also help lots of folks find jobs.
Paul is quite diversified and does headhunting and consulting. Executive Golf Search exists solely to help clubs find the right match when looking for a qualified golf course superintendent.
What’s your best advice for a superintendent who’s nervous about his employment right now?
Hang in there, but it’s actually not a bad thing to be nervous. There may be reasons beyond your control – loss of members at the club or your experience may be greater than what the club can afford right now. Keep your head on a swivel and pay attention to everything going on internally. If you do move, be positive it’s a for-sure offer. Do your research on the job and the club’s finances. Make sure you’ve got the deal you want before you give up the deal you have. And remember the devil you know might be better than the one you don’t.
You’re tuned in to a lot of the major superintendent job searches. What’s the best compensation program you’ve ever seen or heard about?
Mine was pretty good at LACC! (Laughs.) No, I’m kidding. Through EGS or working independently I’ve negotiated a lot of really good packages either on the way in or the way out.
I try to focus on the full package. I’ve worked directly with more than a dozen guys who ended up with $200,000-plus cash value deals. I’d estimate there are about 150 or so jobs that pay in that range nationwide.
The high-profile jobs are interesting, but I really get excited when we can help someone make a big jump. When we help someone go from an $80,000 job to a $130,000 job, that’s really gratifying and fun.
Talk about the compensation packages you put together.
You have to be creative with packages today. The club might balk at a salary number that creates problems with the salary of the pro or GM. So, you have to think about what the alternatives to traditional salary numbers.
Can you do $150,000 plus a signing bonus instead of a higher annual salary? You have to look at all the alternative ways to get the value you deserve for the position. It doesn’t matter if you go in the front door, the side door or the back door … as long as you get in for dinner.
You can skin the cat a dozen different ways: deferred compensation, bonuses, a good 401(k), housing or vehicle allowances, insurance, project management fees, etc. You’ve got to be creative at that level. I don’t take a lot of stock in base pay. At the end of the day, it’s the total package. Non-taxable stuff is perfect and there are ways to do that. Providing a membership at another club is one example. Never lose sight of the true value of the total package.
Put on your GCSAA past-president hat for a minute. Things are tough for the association financially right now. Any observations?
There’s a new sense of “normal” everywhere in this country and the golf business is a part of that. GCSAA has had to react to that and, more importantly, stay ahead of it. You can’t be reactive to the business climate a year later and expect to survive.
Look, I’ve never hesitated to be candid when I thought they were going the wrong direction, but right now I’m confident they’ll “lean” things down appropriately. Call it right-sizing or whatever euphemism you want to use, but they have to respond to the fact that revenues are down. It can’t be easy, but they have to find efficiencies I don’t envy the job Mark Woodward has ahead of him.
Final thoughts on “reinventing” yourself again and launching a new, updated version of Bruce in 2010?
I guess I am reinventing myself in a way, but it’s really more a natural evolution for me.
Whether I knew it or not, this is the skill set I’ve been developing my whole life and I think the new version of me will have a great time working with an outstanding team at ValleyCrest. I’m invigorated, excited and probably as happy as I can be right now.
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