Welcome. I am Mike Hendrix from SMB Golf. And my guest today is Robb Smyth from Cobalt Software. And this is a Tech Caddie podcast. Robb, welcome to the show. Good morning, Mike. How are you today? I'm doing wonderful. I see you do have on your Ohio State, you know, pull over and I will say I'm drinking on my Ohio State cups. Always, always a pleasure to talk to a fellow Buckeye fan. Robb, I

I wore this especially for you. So the people that watch this podcast know I like to work in logoed vests on every episode. This is the first time I've busted out the Ohio state. I've worn the Appalachian state, which is where I went to school.

Right, but I am coming to you from Upper Arlington, Ohio today. We could walk to the stadium and watch the game tomorrow, so that's awesome. You know it's kind of ironic. I get teased a lot that you know I have basically three or four different shirts and it's either Ohio State logoed. It's Cobalt logoed or have two others to be born raising camp in Ohio. They're either Firestone or Brookside Country Club, you know shirts, so I kind of have a pretty limited selection of the shirts that I do wear just because obviously what I like. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Canton, Ohio is, you know, it's, just such a really cool place. You know, the cradle of football really. I've got one son at Miami, Ohio, which is the cradle of coaches, but, but Canton, Ohio, the cradle of football. And it's cool to be from there. I think you guys have sent people to Penn state. You've sent people to Michigan. You've certainly sent people to Ohio state, but it's been, it's been awesome. Yeah, for sure.

So, so Robb, so for people that don't know Robb, no, I've known each other for a long time, actually competed against each other for, for many years on the sales side. and it's, it's for like real golf, insiders and long timers. If you, if you hear Robb's name, Robb Smyth spelled S Y T H you start to think like, Hmm, I wonder, is that Smyth systems? And this is, Robb from Smyth systems. And so

Robb, I thought it'd be cool to have you on today to not only talk about your journey, but you're one of the few people in golf, golf technology that is, that has this really cool perspective of the difference between family owned businesses, businesses that get private equity money put into them. like you've really seen a lot of different angles of that. And so I thought that'd be cool to talk about today if that's okay by you. Yeah, absolutely.

So I believe in my mind, when I think Smyth Systems, I think early, early 90s. And I think it was your father, Robert, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, it started in probably the first install of a club's golf point of sale system started in probably the mid to early 80s. He was a member of Brookside Country Club in Canton, Ohio. And the golf pro there was Jim Logue, and they needed some assistance on just managing the inventory and so forth.

My family's business at the time was also in retail stores. And if you can believe it or not, being from the Columbus, we actually were doing software for the limited locations way, way back when they're early beginnings, because we actually had a retail division that did multiple store locations like Hot Topic, the things you see in the malls, nowaday, everything rubber made. So we had a retail application that was something that pulled stores and shorts.

store to store transfers and receiving and you pretty high end retail stuff. Right. And so Robb mentions the limited in Columbus and for people that don't know. So Columbus, Ohio is the home of the limited lane Bryant, Victoria's secret, the whole thing that Les Wexner, built. it's interesting that you mentioned Jim Lug because, you know, Jim's family still remains in golf today. I think maybe one at Springfield country club. And, so that's a really strong lineage.

that name. And so yeah, and so it makes it does make sense to me. It's interesting you mentioned retail and point of sale, because actually, we're starting to see that some of like with the square, right? Or or or light speed actually would be a good example to these people that are saying, I actually am not from golf, but I want to be in golf, right? And so maybe we can talk about that later. But so

At what point do you start working for your dad? I don't know how old you were when when when Smyth got started, but at what point can you start to contribute to the company? You know, and I started thinking about this. So I started working summers doing a couple different things, but primarily the manual labor, right? Mowing lawns, moving office furniture and stuff. I was doing that started in 1988. You just kind of working on the demo system and help build certain things, you know when it was raining, but mostly you know, doing the manual labor moving offices and filing cabinets and

and so forth. And then once I graduated, I did go to University of Toledo. So I'm not an Ohio State, you know, alumni, but obviously growing up in Ohio, there's it's much easier to root for Ohio State than you know, because you see them on TV a lot more than Toledo. But as part of that, then I probably started going to my first PGA show in 1992. And this actually was the PGA West show even before I moved to Vegas, was actually in Los Angeles. And so that was my first PGA show.

So I think it was almost like 37, 38 years of consecutive years ago into PGA shows, you know, since 1992 up till the, you know, about five, six years ago, when I stopped going to shows. So it's been, you know, I'd say starting at that point, but really diving into the software and being a part of that was probably started in 92. And then 96 was when I really came into the software full time after college. and was your father a coder?

Maybe he was simply a great project manager and could find people to write. So like talk to me about how that even came to be. Yeah. So my family's business actually started in 1949 and his father started it and it was more on the cash register side of things. had a, we had really three divisions of Smyth. One we called the district or the cash register where we would supply grocery stores with the big NCR grocery store, scanning equipment, cash registers, SWEDA.

NCR, Data General, right, some of those old technologies. And then it had immediately moved into my dad more had a background on the retail side. And then so with that background in retail wasn't a coder ended up actually becoming roommates with a gentleman named Bob Duncan, who was really kind of the brains of really the coding and the software components. And they ended up being roommates. Yeah, kind of got introduced. And my dad was looking for somebody and my dad actually wanted to go into politics.

And his father was the business was struggling a little bit. I have a couple uncles that were in the business as well. And so he decided he'd come into the business, help get things back on their feet, and then obviously never left. Got it. Okay. And well, then I'm glad he stayed out of politics. That's good. Me too. And so, listen, my perspective would be, and so in 92, where you go out to LA, you really are starting to self train on how to sell.

Right. You're starting to learn about building relationships, asking, probing questions, learning what clubs need. Jeez, tell us a little bit. Where were clubs in 92, 93, 94 in terms of the technology they were using? Were they all giving you the Heisman and saying, stay away, we don't want technology? What was it like at that time? You know, it was just getting started, especially as you got a little bit more towards the mid 90s where Windows really started to come out to make something

you know, easy to do, right? So prior to that, in most people, you know, depending on the age, we were dealing with really Unix boxes, you know, big commercial grade Unix machines, dumb terminals, which is monitors and keyboards that were still connected back through something was called a Digi board, right? A big 25 pin, you know, connection back to the server somewhere, you know, usually, obviously in the same building. So as part of that process,

Everybody was interested. They wanted better reporting. They wanted better analytics, right? They didn't want to do, and some golf shops are great, just working out of a cigar box, right? Take the money, throw it in the cigar box. But then there's operations that really did need something specific. And one of the benefits that Smyth brought into this was the uniqueness of being able to do private, semi -private, and daily feed. So we could do the smallest municipalities.

We could do the mid -size, semi -private clubs. Then we start naming some of the clubs and resorts that we got into because of our retail background. At one time, you started naming the Woodlands, Kapalua, Oakmont, the Muirfield Village. You started naming all these operations because they had a significant need for retail applications like Doral is another great example. Smyth could go in... all these clubs you just mentioned were Smyth customers?

That is correct because not only could we handle the tee time application, any membership application, but we had such a high end retail store to store transfer open to buy right all the stuff that most golf shops don't need because of our experience in the retail space. So if you went to Kapalua, all the retail shops in the hotel, plus all the retail shops in the golf side of things, all the different clubhouses, we're all using Smyth, you know, so Doral and their five courses, the breakers, right, even all the sundries, the men's shops, the ladies shops.

you know, so we would handle all that and then do the communication back to hotel charging. And so it got pretty complicated, you know, even back in the early 90s on what the system could do technology wise. Wow. And so so Robb, one of our business lines here at SMB is we track data. Well, we don't we track software that golf courses are using, that becomes data and we share that data with different companies. And so

that does get into market share. And I'm curious, in 94, 95, who are you competing with? Where do you where does Smyth stack up in the in the ecosystem of, say, club software, club technology vendors? Right? Well, I think definitely by far, depending on the market, because our competitors at the time would paint us into a certain market that was opposite of what we're competing against. So if I'm in a private club environment,

you they would tell everybody, well, they're just a semi private daily fee system because that part was true. would, you know, so depending on the salesperson that we were competitive against, would dictate what people would say. But I think when you run into that, there's the benefit of having diversity into certain things. But I'd also think that's, you know, could be a little bit negative because you don't, you know, leave the main thing, the main thing, you know, so as, as part of that, if we would have just focused in one particular area, obviously the system could have grown at.

you know, certain speed for that particular market share. But because we dealt with daily fees, semi private private, right, we had to divide our resources on where that software could grow. Okay, that that's good to know. And so, and I think we'll get into this a little deeper. You're coming at this from a classic family business, you know, you're probably talking to your dad at the dinner table or something constantly about this deal or that deal and growth. And you know, here are the challenges. Are you

Are you competing against like, so for people that don't know, there was a Gary Jonas had like a Gary Jonas software. think it was called or something like that. I mean, who, what are the names that you look at that you were competing against? it was definitely Jonah software, you know, kind of started in around the Gary Jonas became Jonas for people that don't know. Yeah. And then Crescent software was out in the nineties. there was Fore Reservations that started becoming pretty popular, but took a completely different approach.

We still had in the private club world, there was another family owned business called Diamond Management Systems. There was another one called Country Club Systems. then Country Club Systems and Diamond Management merged to create a company called CSG. So Club Systems Group, right, which is also now owned by Jonas. So the absolute kind of getting ahead of ourselves. But Smyth was Jonas's first acquisition in the early, early 2000s and CSG was their second.

You know, I think now they're up to like 180 companies underneath the Jonas umbrella. And that again, I don't know. last time I checked, it was pretty extensive. Someday we're going to have to do a podcast with either somebody from Constellation or, or, know, Joe Oswald just recently left. think Jonas off to get Joe on. Maybe he's a little freed up to talk, but it's amazing that that story is an amazing story too. Yeah. And you do met, he just did share with everybody. So ultimately Smyth gets acquired. Yeah.

Talk us through that journey a little bit. At what point do you, are you starting to listen to offers? Why does your dad decide this is the right move? Share, share a little bit about that. So I think you're kind of what's missing here right around in 1998, my father passed away. And so his right hand man, Dwight Jellison, who I still stay in touch with and do consider also what, you know, one of my mentors in a lot of different ways and have a lot of respect for him as well.

I kind of took over, it was very logical next step. I had two uncles in the business. They kind of stayed involved. We had offices in California and Denver and Texas. So as they were managing different parts of Smyth, you know, just made sense for Dwight to kind of fill those shoes. So as this kind of time went on, we were at the time our product was written in a code base called iCobol, which is, know, something way back from the, you know, the early 80s and was just one of the one of the original developing code software.

So we have then started to write the software in a sequel based application starting in the late 90s So we had started releasing new software and probably one of the first sequel based applications to come out to the space late 90s early 2000s And then really as part of that process, I don't know if anybody's familiar with bill booth right from a private club technology standpoint He used to work for a company called McGladry

Yes, which used to be RSM. And so his job there was to really help private clubs start to look at club technology and help them from a consulting standpoint, select, you know, their new system. You know, so as people were either on abacus 21 or club tech, right? Again, some of these are very old systems. You know, what do they do as they migrate forward? Right. And we're also talking at a time where most people didn't have food and beverage point of sale, right? a private club environment, they were really doing handwritten chits.

you know, and entering those in the back office at the end of the day or the next day. And so as part of that process, know, the technology was changing so fast that these clubs and particularly bigger clubs really needed to have somebody assist them and what to select and why to select them and questions asked. And those presentations, I always kind of refer to those as a billbooth demo, because it would take the entire day. You would show up at eight o 'clock, eight thirty, set up and then from nine to five o 'clock, they're rotating in each department.

And you're going through accounting functionality, food and beverage, golf, tea times, right? All the different software modules, you would spend the entire day there going through that process. So we really started kind of, especially down in Florida, I moved down to Florida in 2001. And right about to 98, 99, I started spending a significant time down here and really started growing the Smyth database, you know, client base.

you know, from at the time, probably 10 to 12. And now we're up to almost 30. And so we really started, in my opinion, kind of taking charge in a market that is probably one of the better, you know, markets for golf technology, if you're going to make it anywhere, if you can do it in Florida, you can do it just about anywhere. And so as part of that, I think we got people's attention pretty quick. That was normally would not be going to a Smyth client, right? All of a sudden now, because I'm there, I'm spending time, I'm building the relationships.

I think when you are, and this is kind of consistent throughout my career, when you're not the leader in a space, right, there's things you have to do differently. And not that you're doing them differently intentionally, like you have to check all these boxes, it just becomes innate to what you need to do to win. Right? And you want to do it in the right way. You want to do it to make sure it's a good fit. you want the business to last, you're not looking to win a one year or two year deal. Right. And so that to your point, you got to do it in the right way.

That's right. So I think we just, you know, through maybe just dumb luck of what I did and how I watched my dad or whatever else, I knew how to, what I believe was to outsell the competition, right? To be able to understand it. Now, also with my background, right? Growing up in the private club world, spending time, you know, watching the installations go on from such a young age, I had a great understanding to how to connect, right? What technology can do to what the life of the operator goes through.

That's right. When they talk about, how does this work? It's not showing them a feature list, right? Of saying, well, this, can do A, B, C, and D, right? You're there to solve some problems and show them solutions. That's right. I've always felt, at least in this space, the best salespeople are actually the people that are product experts, right? And actually have spent time in the golf shop, have done installations. They understand all those, but those become

the best salespeople and that's essentially, you basically created that model, right? That model. I mean, it was just kind of what I fell into. I've always hear exactly what you said. You have to be a chameleon. You have to be able to, especially in a private club world, right? You have to understand what the golf shop operations goes through, what the accounting goes through, right? And so it's a lot of hats. Yes. No matter what your background is, unless you have significant time in the industry, it's hard to know those stories. It's hard to understand.

why we build minimums a certain way and why you do tee times with rules and guest play rules, you know, and how that relates so they can understand what you, you understand their business, right? It's a feature list, right? You actually understand. Now the other, you know, kind of superpower you would have had at that time is even if it's not intentional, the way you're speaking with people is you're saying, well, this is why

We built this. This is what my, this is why my father did it this way. That's so powerful when the person you know, you're, you're, sitting with is realizes, this company is in this person's DNA. They wake up every day and they think about their wife and their kids and this company. That's all they, you know, that, that, is what this person is. And so I just feel like that is such a, an advantage. now

There's also a danger with family businesses that some people can become entitled and lazy. And that just gets into how you were raised. Frankly, if your parents raised you in a way that you could do that or not do that. clearly that didn't happen with you. This, you know, Smyth was, was in your blood. You, you talk about the acquisition a little bit in detail, but then let's, let's kind of follow on.

The Robb Smyth journey, right? Because it really starts to get interesting. Go Yeah, so once Jonas acquired Smyth, you know, I stuck around for a little bit, right? You know, I was still fairly young at the time. I just moved down to Florida, right? You know, I envisioned my livelihood, you know, it's been this for my whole life, right? I didn't think anything other than this is, you know, where I work. I live and breathe and I end up dying here, right?

So that kind of, you know, upset the apple cart a little bit and and as part of that and not saying one thing is is better or worse, right? My background my experience my journey When you're dealing with corporations or you're dealing with venture capital money, it's right not saying that money isn't important to everybody but it seems like sometimes there is a Priority that is different than a family -owned business right when it's your livelihood is probably the best way to do it

Yeah, it's my dad was the first one in the office second, you know, the last one to leave every day 12 hours a day, right? I mean, it was there was passion there. It was not you're not there to punch a clock to get. And by the way, that's how we built this country. We built this country through, you know, millions of small businesses like that. So yeah, as I would move down to Florida, and then I kind of the way Jonas did things at the time, there were there was a dealership network. So I kind of got absorbed into a dealership network. And then I kind of just

kind of lost my way a little bit because it was just so dramatically different. Again, not right or wrong, but to my journey. You know, when you get away from the family owned business, you lose what I would call a passion, right? You lose that desire, you lose that, that craving to be number one and do everything you can every single day, because it's somebody else's money, right? At the end of the day. And again, that's just a personal opinion. And, and that's only because that's how I was raised inside of this world. That's what I've known.

So I kind of after a couple years of doing that, I was very fortunate to actually sell the first Jonas system from the Smyth group that got absorbed. Actually, it was down in Miami and it was the Indian tribe that owned a golf club down there. And so I was able to kind of transition to do that. And then at the same time, there was a club that was transitioning up in Vero Beach. They were transitioning from Smyth to Jonas and they were owned by a company up in Massachusetts.

And so at the time, the general manager Smyth called me and said, Hey, you know, they need some help transitioning. So I went up there and met with the CTO, there was the guy was the original designer of Hallmark music cards, right? Super smart guy. And so he goes, Well, obviously, you know, Smyth, and you know, Jonas, and I said, well, turn the card over, right. So I had two side business cards, one that Smyth on one side, one had Jonas on the other. Let's just let me just put a pin in that for a second. So

Jonas decided or maybe constellation, however you want to say it. Jonas opted to keep the Smyth system for quite a while. The Smyth name, I'm sorry, for quite a while, correct? That is correct. I mean, even today, when you go to the PGA show, their booth has a tower and they still have the Smyth logo on it. Right. Okay. And so, but like you said, you got exposed also to the Jonas brand and just help us understand the Jonas brand really does come from Gary

Jonas, Gary Jonas, compute. And so Constellation, when they bought Gary Jonas's company, they just opted to keep the name Jonas. That is correct. So again, these are some of these things, obviously, I've come from secondhand nature. But when you look at what Constellation does, they go in and buy the industry leader. Yeah, they kind of go down and start gobbling up the other leaders in the space and roll them up into one. which is the same model that we did at golf now.

That's golf channel, I guess you would say we bought the number one, then we bought the number two and then more. So yeah, so obviously that business model has worked out extremely well for him and constellation has been widely successful, you know, and all the different software, you know, tech that they've eventually rolled into. so, so when you go up to this Massachusetts, you know, and, and just as a side note, when Robb says a company owned this country club,

there was a time that insurance companies and other companies owned a lot of clubs, right? That we went through a period in this entire industry where there were country clubs all over the place that were owned by the Hartford or IBM or what it was. was a different time. anyway, so you, when you make this trip to Massachusetts, Smyth and Jonas are two separate products. Is that, is that correct?

That is correct. Being kind of sold at the time that, you again, I think that, and this will be able to repeat the same history here with EZLinks and IBS here in a minute. But as part of that, was, all right, so let's go ahead and use the Smyth software to do the daily feed, the semi -private, and keep Jonas running the private club and, you know, kind of separate those out a little bit. It was kind of the goal. And it gave the dealership channel, I think, probably eight or nine different dealers around the country that built significant businesses off of this. And there's one or two still in

in business today doing that for Jonas. But the next - dealer, just to translate for today's, it's a reseller, right? That's right. They were a reseller. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And so as part of that process, they gave the reseller really another channel to go after that they could not do with just Jonas. Yeah. And there's times they would go to a daily fee or something, but it wasn't designed. It was definitely around, you know, around peg and square hole situation. Right.

So you have this interaction in Massachusetts and that leads to Yeah, so then I started doing kind of a consulting job for this club in Vero Beach for about a year. And throughout that process still be you know, working in the dealership still working as that consultant. And then I ran into at the time, I don't think he was president of IBS as of yet, but no, it's a VP of sales guy. name was Jeff Klein. Probably a lot of people on this call are going to know Jeff Klein, he works for club car now.

But he's the one that kind of brought me into the fold at IBS back in 2005. So he's the his his kind of experience my connectivity, right? You go to PGA shows for so long, you're going to start running into the same people, you know who all the players are, you have the relationships, right? You run into people at you know, out at night. And so we just had a good relationship. I felt my culture fit in pretty well. Yeah, and that's the point I wanted to make. And what was attractive about IBS, you know,

is, you can see this family business thing again. that's what I remember. That's how I grew up in this space. That's appealing to me, which I to some degree, right? I really felt after after meeting you, I knew I liked Jeff, right? I like Jeff a lot. I think our personalities are pretty similar. And then once I had a chance to meet Anthony strange, who was the owner at the time, really just had a great connectivity with him. And you know, so I said, you know what, I've kind of lost this

Yeah, I'm the only Smyth that's still a part of this Smyth Jonas. I mean, there's no real personal tie. And I think what really started happening in that situation is there were so many of the clubs that were still on Smyth that I had great relationships with that would call and say, I can't do this anymore. Can you help me do this? Their connection to me to get something done, whether it was a significant support increase or whether it was programming issues or whatever. It made no difference what my last name was, right? Because I no longer had any

you know, significance to be able to help those clients the way that I used to. And I gave it probably two and half, three years. So mean, I really did try to make that work and see what that looks like. But then again, at the end of the day, just like you said, to me, from a fit perspective, I felt like I cared more than the people I was working for, you know, to make sure client satisfaction. Again, Jonas supports great. So it's not, you know, not that side of it. But from different things, it just

That was just different for me. And so I didn't feel home. Now, so Anthony's in Virginia at this point? Yeah, Richmond, Virginia is where IBS was. right. And so, but I don't think you moved to Richmond, did you? I did not. I stayed in Florida and have been ever since I moved down here in 2001. And at what point did, do you, you know,

can just share with us at what point did IBS even come into existence? What you know, when did they see an opportunity to maybe solve some problems that other technology companies weren't in? That's a great question. So it was ironic that recently had this conversation, IBS actually came into play with their second client was American Golf. And right before that there was a company for those people.

There was a couple people that, know, Anthony was a developer by trade, you know, kind of a coder. So he was kind of in the accounting world, understood what things needed to do. So he had actually developed the first code and it's going back to 1993. Yeah, so IBS was one also kind of one of those earlier, you know, adoption, but what made IBS so widely successful was the management company side of things, you know, so at the end of the day, as we then eventually got acquired by EasyLinks.

Yeah, we had over 110 management companies with five or more locations. But one of the major benefits again was you also had a product that could do daily fee, semi private and private. Yeah. So it really got to a point where having that mixture, especially when you have these massive, you know, management companies like landscapes and you know, we didn't do a whole lot with Trune, but you have these people that have a lot of different companies, know, different types of clubs, IBS was a great fit. Yes.

now let's just for those people that maybe don't know intimately when a software company wins a deal with a management company, it doesn't always mean that every golf course that uses that management company is going to use that software. There's still a lot more selling to go on. So for some of our younger developers that are out there that are building things right now and they think, I just got to get Indigo sports and everything will be great. Hit the brakes. That doesn't always, it doesn't always work that way.

Yeah, it's a very resource intensive, right? There's a lot of demands, you know, from that standpoint. So as we continue to grow, yeah, at IBS and by the time I got there, they probably had eight, 900 clients. So they were already a significant player at that time. of the eight, 900, what do think the breakout was private to public in the IBS at that time? At that time, when I first joined was very small on the on the private side.

So one of the things that we did, IBM was reselling QuickBooks or Peachtree or something from the accounting side and had accounting integrations to go work with other accounting systems. But to truly get into the private club world, we kind of had this private club initiative. And I told them, you need to develop accounting, right? You have the clubs of these stature and these natures. I, you know, going into a very large private club, if you tell them that your accounting system is QuickBooks, they're not even going to look at you.

Yeah. So at that time, we made a significant investment into an accounting system, brought on a lot of people and then actually then built an accounting system on top of IBS, you know, to roll that out to the clients. Which to this day, and so I mentioned that we track all the softwares that these clubs use. We have a list of clubs to this day that are using IBS. And I can tell you almost 95 % of those clubs, the reason they stayed with IBS is because of accounting.

So your contribution there, Robb, was immense because the accounting piece of IBS became so sticky. Other people that would come and try to get the club to switch to their, it was so hard to get anybody to switch out of IBS because at the end of the day, the person in that CFO controller seat, whatever that title happens to be, they're the ones that are going to decide if they actually appropriate the funds to go buy the new software.

And when they do that, they know they're going to give up the accounting stuff of IBS, and they don't want to do that, right? At the end of the day, these are personal decisions, whether you think they are or not. so IBS found a way to be very, very sticky. Well, know, and how ironic, you know, being at Cobalt now, and again, we'll get there. But I actually just yesterday had a series of demos over the last couple of weeks. But as of yesterday was kind of the last one.

of a club, you know, pretty close to you in that area that I originally sold IBS to in 2012. Right? Exactly. You know, the ability to translate, you know, and asking her different questions and she'll go, well, this is what we can do. And this is what we're doing. I'm like, well, you could do it this way on IBS or this is how you know, knowing both systems inside now was was pretty awesome. And there was even something I told her that the system could always do since the time they had it.

because of their unique situation and she goes, you got to be kidding me. We could have been doing this automated the whole time. Yeah, she goes, I'm not telling the golf shop. Yeah, there are still yeah, I I've lived that exact same story but with other soft. So I hear you. So so yeah, so so at some point, I think I think this is is when I start to get integrated into golf and whatnot. I know

Robb Smyth is this guy that's really good at IBS, right? I know that like IBS has this Robb Smyth guy and, it's difficult. And if I hear that he's on a deal, it's going to be difficult for us and that kind of thing. and, and then consolidation starts to happen, right? The companies start to realize that, wow.

Golf Channel Golf Now is growing really quickly, really, and they're getting really big. If we intend to stay around, we got to grow. It's an arms race, essentially, right? That's why the acquisition that we made two weeks ago, the Internet Golf Database, that's why that founder whose name is Mike Dickoff, that's why he named this stuff Software Wars, right? Because it became an arms race as to who could get big enough to survive.

And so Andy Weeks, well, actually Andy probably would have been gone by that point, but Andy Weeks, a founder of EZLinks, but the team at EZLinks decides we got to buy IBS. Like we got to go buy one of the big boys so that we can at least be near the shoulders of golf now, if you will. So talk about that acquisition and how you ultimately became an EZLinkser.

Yeah, so I got approached by the owner. And again, at this time, we're probably in 2015. I got approached by the owner and at this time also, I'm more of his right hand man, you know, on the phone with them on a constant basis. I'm a part of the leadership team, right? Making, you know, pretty executive level decisions from sales and marketing and direction of the product. And so that process he approaches me and we have been approached many years before that by the golf now people right?

you know, as they were starting to do some acquisitions, and then that kind of tailed off. And then Anthony tells me, I need you to come with me to Chicago. I'm like, all right, well, this seems a little bit on reverse. Usually, I'm asking you to go to Chicago with me for some sort of sales, you know, related issue. Right. Because at the time, know, IBS was running Medina, Conway Farms, Glenview, right. So we had some of the major clubs up in the Chicago area. And I'm like, well, why are you asking me, right? Where are we going to go see you? I'll tell you when you come up.

Right. So he kind of maybe a week before he tells me this is potentially going on, obviously confidential, but we need to go to Chicago. And I want you to show the leadership team in Chicago, the idea of software. And so he brought me along, obviously, to do the full presentation, to show them exactly what all those fine nuances could do. Because I think the issue at the time, right. And where some of these companies struggle is to not really know what goes into a point of sale system.

what goes into what you need to do for membership. You're good at one thing, right? You're great at tee times, but are you able to actually build? And that was one of the issues that Golf Now had for many years, at least from third party exposure, was they could never get the point of sale product really nailed down, even when they tried to spend money and have people develop it and go out. mean, just, G1 is a good example, right? From, yes, again, my perceptive, it was a failure, right? All the money that they spent.

So they couldn't get that part right. And so again, it's the progression of where some of these companies go. And that's why I feel that you start doing some of these integrations and whether they're commercial grade systems or whatever else. I think long -term, don't, you to me, I don't think that's a very survivable thing. I think you're going to get a pretty good flash from the pan. But at the end of the day, if you don't own the IP, what, what do you really have? actually for people that don't know, EZLinks bought

their point of sale at one time. Easy Links really had developed a T sheet and a call center product, but they ultimately purchased their point of sale. I actually, I'm drawing a blank right now. I think Harry bought his point of sale. So I think four reservations bought their point of sale as well. I have to check them out. I can't remember, but I do know for a fact that Easy Links had purchased their point of sale. Certainly golf now tried to purchase one.

Well, made a lot of purchases, but try to Yeah, so anyway, go on. on. so then as part of that process, again, I stuck around for about another three years. So through that time, we also acquired another company called Course Trends out of Austin, Texas, more of a website marketing, you know, remarketing tool, they had a little t sheet on the side. And Course Trends, you know, that's another interesting story. I'm gonna I'm gonna get Andrew Wood to come on here.

Course trends was really just a knockoff of legendary marketing, right? The whole other story we should tell in the, the golf. Yeah. Yeah. Let's just ask Andrew. He'll drive up in his Ferrari, right? That's right. That's right. So it's, it's interesting, Robb, because at this point, easy links now is really not a family business anymore. Right? There's a lot of investor money in easy links. There's a crazy story that people can go find in the Chicago Tribune.

about easy links and then kind of who they became and whatnot. But I would imagine you got reintroduced to that non -family atmosphere during those three or so years. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, the big part of that was also owned by the PGA tour. You know, and again, to the what level and the outside of kind of play ignorance on that. I don't know to what all the details were. But you know, t -off .com, you know, by PGA tour was an easy links product.

I don't know any of the financial side or how that worked, a part of this was owned by the PGA Tour and part of that was to really protect the golf industry against what Golf Now was doing, right? Is to not be maybe a competitor in that space and that turned out to be pretty similar to begin with, but they really were a great competitor to Golf Now in that regards.

So now we do we have enough I'd say great. Well, it depends on which way you're at it. I'll go competitor. don't know if I'd say great. Obviously, I don't at the time had a long way to go. But when you start looking at, you know, from an application side, right, we had more of the tools, maybe not the quantity of volume that the golf now had. Right. It's because you obviously when you start sooner, you have more clients. And so let me just for some of the people that are new to this space.

So easy links, what ultimately was this, this key sheet and point of sale company, barter started to become a really popular form of payment. Easy links wanted to be able to grow their company through barter just the way golf now was. And so they created a tea time marketplace called P off. And so when Robb mentions T off, because we were talking about easy links, that's all one thing, easy links and T off. And then easy links, of course, makes this IBS acquisition, that really

made it clear to us at golf now like, okay. This is, this is our Pepsi, right? This is who, that's right. So, but, but let's stay with the Robb Smyth journey, right? So you, you get exposed to easy links. Now you're, easy links was really a cool place because easy links much like IBS, they learned the importance of being able to network multiple courses together. that like Trune loved that. Right. And so

That was really kind of a calling card for, for easy links and, and, and easy links was really good in the like transitioning to the cloud. They understood the power of, of being able to get out of servers and that whole thing. And so easing really made a huge contribution to technology. But ultimately you, you, you left the easy links and, and actually

did some things that weren't just golf specific for a short while. And then you come to meet these people at Cobalt and Cobalt software, is such an interesting story as to how Cobalt finds themselves in golf. It actually reminds you of some of the earlier days of how other companies got into golf. And that's where you sit today as a senior leader. Tell us about Cobalt and tell us how that

all those pieces came together. Yeah, that's actually the great place to wrap up. as this going back to probably 2012 2013, when all the club software providers were were connected or kind of reached out with an RFP from Boca West, right in Boca West down here in South Florida, one of the largest club operations right for golf courses, 30 tennis courts, eight pickleball courts, 10 restaurants, know, 3500 residents inside the gates, right? I it's a

a very large operation is probably one of the most well known because of the previous general managers kind of the, you know, really put CMA on the map and so forth, too. So as part of that process, they were really putting out an RFP that said we need significant resources, we want dedicated people for the next five years, you know, to build us something because we're so unique. Well, everybody looked at them and said, Well, this makes no sense. At the time, we all had, you know, 1000 clients or more, and you want us to ignore everybody else and

Focus on that. And honestly, there were stories, Robb in golf. So IBS actually had, I'll call it a mistake. not going to, I'll be the one to say IBS had made the mistake of like doing something special for club link, the big management company in Canada and Florida. And then everybody came to regret the fact that there was this branch off of IBS that was just for club link. And I think people in golf tech learned that long -term is not the best strategy. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah.

And so as part of that process, since everybody kind of turned them down, they're on a very old AS 400. I think part of it was Abacus 21, which is again, was way back from the 80s and 90s from a system that was highly customizable to each install. So as part of that process, our two CEOs knew each other. So the CEO here at Cobalt and the CEO, JM at the time at Bocowest knew each other and Cobalt started in 1991.

So it is a family owned business and they were in the insurance and healthcare world doing basically accounting systems, commission tracking. So if you think of all the big name, know, it's Etna, United Health, right? Some of these major names, not saying they were specific clients, but of that, you know, that caliber, the top 100 health insurance companies were basically using our software, the Cobalt side, obviously not, you Cobalt here. And so at the time, that was the business that they were in as we got approached, you know, from Boco West.

So we made the agreement at the time of 2016 or so it said, sure, we'll develop the software for you. We do something similar, we'll make a branch off and after five years, then we'll take this out to the rest of the market. So in the middle of that project, Cobalt was lucky enough to sell this product, just the software called Vue and that's V -U -E to a venture capital firm or somebody out of New York that kind of then took all that. So at the time, And that's the software.

that Aetna is using, what are some of the like Aetna? Right, right, right. Yeah. So we had at the time we were 600 employees, right? I mean, we're a significant size operation as a company. We sold off basically just the software kept the business as we were getting ready to launch into Boco West. And so we kind of had a fresh start, if you will. And so since 2016 or so, this has been the only thing that Cobalt has done. So we did stay in a management contract with Boco West.

for those five years. And then we have been out to the private club world. Basically the last two and a half years is kind of where we've been to our first club manager show about two and a half years ago. But one of the bullet points is just for people in the industry today, when we say cobalt software, now it sounds like I'm shilling for you, but I'm not. I've never collected a penny from cobalt. But today when we say cobalt software, they are exclusive to the club industry, right? I mean, you're not powering

pinball machines or you know, I mean, that's what you're doing. You guys are in the golf space. Yeah. And dedicated honestly, just to the private club space as of today. Right. And so we don't do it. Don't have some of the functionality needed. Not saying we won't get there, but we're going to be very intentional and where our direction is for the short term to ensure that we don't outsell, you know, our service capabilities, right? We don't

We don't deviate from that plan. So we're pretty intentional to where we're going and why we're going there for the short term. But eventually, it'll be a time where somebody is going to say, we need you to do this. And because we have 25 clubs and some of them don't do that. And that's just something that eventually we'll look at when that time comes. Right. Now, how did they find you? Or maybe you found out how did that happen? And are you back in that family atmosphere again? Yeah. So that's actually a great comment. So the ironic thing is,

as they were starting to finish up the five -year agreement with Boca West, the COO, name is Stephanie Castro, also part of the family. So she's running the day -to -day operations and she's heavily involved in talking with people like Bill Booth, who was a consultant I mentioned earlier. know, what is the software? still in Chicago? No, Bill has actually is retired out of the club industry and he's living in Tennessee. Okay. And he's a professor for hospitality at one of the colleges, you know, in Tennessee. So.

I've seen great guy, you know, so as as part of that process, when Cobalt was talking to various people in the industry, and I had gotten out of the industry because I made the mistake of assuming also that family owned business equaled good culture, which I after I left easy links and so forth, I went to a small family owned business. And culture was still a problem even with 20 employees and you know, three or four family members. So I quickly learned that you know, you can't equate the two of those together.

Not always. That's correct. Not always. And so as part of that process, they kept, she kept hearing my name, right? You know, Bill Boother, you know, there's Wendy Zerstat, Tom Smyth, and a couple of people in the HFTP world or the club manager world, you know, said, if you're looking to do something significant in the club space and you're looking to grow in sales and marketing, you know, the perfect person to talk to would be Robb. And so eventually she reached out to me and we started having some really good dialogue.

And once I kind of understood a little bit more about the product and what they were doing, I really felt comfortable with them as a company. And ironically, not knowing they're a family business at this point, which was kind of funny. So she asked me to come down to Delray Beach, and we had lunch and she goes, well, our CEO, Steven is in the office. Would you like to come over to the office? We're based out of Boca. And would you like to meet him? I'm like, well, absolutely. So we go over to the office and kind of walk in and she walks to the back part of the office and a nice glassed in office.

And she goes, Dad, I want you to meet Robb. And I looked at her and I go, Dad, right. I said, I had no idea this was a family owned business. And from that first conversation, he was a mixture of my dad and Anthony Strange built into one person cared more about client first wanted every single client to be happy, right. Was so driven towards client satisfaction that again, we're lucky that we had sold the other software so that we have the runway to do what we need to do financially without any outside investors.

you know, and also didn't know this, but we have six family members in the office every single day. Wow. And so when you're looking at that from in again, I kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, you're really dealing with passion. And this is a this is a lifelong commitment, right? This is something that is do or die. It's not just a paycheck. It's not somebody else's money. This is what you do every single day. You know, could make a decision that takes a company to the next level or not. Right? the CEO

She is thinking to herself every decision I make impacts my ability to put like my dad's grandkids through college, right? It impacts our ability to like do we have something to pass out? mean the decisions just that they carry there. There's more gravitas on those decisions Yeah, Yeah. And so you end up being really smart about those decisions And and very strategic and and it's a great place to be I think

Yeah, yeah, 100%. And so I've been here now full time for over a year and a half, maybe a little bit more. And then before that, I was doing some I'll call it consulting, but just conversations, different things, how I would handle certain things. We were doing with two clubs out in California, and just bouncing off ideas, what would you do? How would you have done this, right? Just kind of walking through some of that. Also, some of the software development things that they were doing, you know,

How do most clubs do this? How do most clubs want this to work? And just kind of walking through those things. So it's been over two and a half years to maybe a little less than that. So I had it really in again to me, it's about the culture. I want to be able to pick up the phone, call somebody. My call is important. My time's important. Their time's important. But we both all are moving at the same speed, at the same goal, which is that level of success. And we need to do what we can to make those right decisions.

And this is the first time really since 2016 that I have felt that, you know, because of again, maybe just the way I was raised and family business side of it. And I don't think if you weren't raised in your own family business that and I think you can, but you really do experience that 24 hours a day. Right? Yeah, I imagine the family down here in Boca, right? They're all very close, right? You talking, you know,

Sunday night dinners, right? That's where they, there's no off switch, right? So, this is something that you bring home. you know, I remember growing up and I had two uncles that were into this and one lived in town. We never spent any holidays with them. So one time, you know, I said something to my dad's like, look, we spend, you know, 60 hours a week together, right? So I don't need to do this over Thanksgiving too. We were really close. So, you know, it wasn't, not a negative sense. It was just one of those things that

You know, they lived and breathed together every day. That's, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. A lot of people don't experience that. So that's good. So I got a little lucky in the timing of this podcast because yesterday you guys pushed out a marketing piece. I think it was yesterday. At least I got exposed to it yesterday. It seems to me, and let me just back up for a second. So we've talked to some of your customers. So, you know, we, we use a lot of tactics to identify

what technology these clubs are using. found clubs that were using Cobalt and we reached out to him and interviewed a couple of them and got strong reviews, actually talked to one club that the club isn't open right now. They've brought you all in, but he couldn't talk to me a lot about the operational aspect of it because he was like, actually I'm not taking tea times right now, you know? And so, but then others, obviously we could, and they compared you to club essential and all kinds, you know, all kinds of different stuff.

lots of positivity there. But yesterday and not, not, but in yesterday, you pushed out a marketing piece that essentially was a message to me of, Cobalt believes in an all in one approach, right? Cobalt believes in an all in one approach of technology to run your club. Now there, you did have some astroses, if you will marketing, you know, that would say, maybe if you're a smaller club, you could make sense of using

Uber eats or something like that, like you did allow for some small branches. But essentially, if I was reading things correctly yesterday, that's that's your value prop. You all are saying why use four different vendors? Why have a key sheet vendor and a member management vendor and this and that when you can do it all in one? Is that is that fair to say? So that's fair to say with one little asterisk, and I'll tie that back to Bocquois, right? The requirements for them

you know, four golf courses, 30 tennis courts, fitness training, know, spa, manicures, pedicures, haircuts, right? We do over 300 ,000 reservations through our system every single year at Poco West, you know, across all those amenities. because 300 ,000, yeah, 300 ,000, yeah, with four golf courses, lottery components, right? There's there's a lot that goes into that. Because we started there with that functionality, because it was required, when we go into a certain, you know,

different club, we are able to replace those best of breed systems, because that's what we designed it for. So you don't need a specialty sheet, you don't need a different website, you don't need a different app. And then when you're dealing with some of these venture capital firms now, and you mentioned one of them, right, they're selling things under one umbrella, but it's technically two separate systems, right. So with our system, and I think where people are just blown away is what you do on the app, what you do on the website, and what you do in the back office is all the same system.

And so when you know, so from that standpoint, people are like, so I don't need a special app, I don't need a website, even again, if it's the exact same company, can I ask you, can I ask you, you just made mention of when you get involved with these private equity firms or whatever, were you essentially they're saying, because the guy that did the deal or the private equity guy, he's gonna say, well, I already have a tea sheet company over here. And now the member management company

Why does why would I approve the development expense of a member manager company building a T sheet whenever just stick them together and everybody will be fine? Because that's just his assumption or her assumption. Fair to say. Yeah, very fair to say that happens. That's that's what IBS did with the know, easy links, right? We use their T sheet and everything else and IBS. Yeah, so those things, right? That makes a lot of sense to take advantage of those, those assets. But I think at the end of the day, when you really make sense for the private equity firm.

That's correct. Right. When you're still, again, you're trying to interface or integrate two products that weren't originally designed together. That's where you start to run into sort of issues. know, some of the people we're talking to now, right, they have a website company that you called as support, and then you have a back office company to call and support because technically, they're two separate companies of being sold under one umbrella, where with our system, right, you're calling support because it's the same system.

You know, so we actually control the settings in the app and the website directly from the back office when you're setting up the T sheet, right? You're saying, all right, now how do you want the app and website to work? You know, so you don't go to different places to do things. Typically, we're replacing three to four systems. We did a very large HOA project in California. You had not just a club, right? A large HOA with different things. We replaced 12 systems. Wow. And so again, that's a huge outlier.

But also having said that is yes, we do. We are kind of that that all inclusive system, but we also do work with third parties, right? We work with like food and beverage inventory, clear sky, food track, Cedar Creek, Yellow Dog as well. Yeah, I Jay Livinggood very well. He also started at IBS. That's right. That's right. know, there you go. Jay had sent me three notes. There you go. You're on the podcast now.

Yeah, so think he's a great guy as well. But I think, you know, we also will work with there's a there's a private club app that's out there pace setter that we're work with. Whoosh is another one now that we have clubs are wanting us to integrate with. So we're more than willing to play with other vendors in the space as long as it makes sense. You know, from that, okay, that, is a little confusing to me, like, especially if I if I read the marketing material yesterday, and then you talk about whoosh or something like that. I don't know that can be

Well, sir, here's a good example because when you're dealing with member facing applications as well Not just behind the scenes if it's behind the scenes and the club staff needs to deal with something They will they'll throw money at it people at it. They'll make it work as long as it doesn't disrupt the member So I'm dealing with a very high level club up in New York and they just went to whoosh, right? And so part of it again, they haven't signed on with us as of yet But soon but they said he look I just did this members like it. I don't want to upset that apple cart

So we're not going to force people again. We do we believe our product in certain situations is a better member experience when the dining reservations the deep time reservations the club reservations right that there's a reason why our app at Boko West has had 7 ,000 downloads right it is used by that age demographic a member because it is so easy to use but if you start convoluting different systems and one system works this way and one system works this way

Yeah, that can be a little bit of a struggle on the member too. I do always, you know, when we're talking to clubs, I do believe that I'm not trying to just push our thing. It's more to me about that member experience because if they know they go to one place and do everything in a similar functionality, if they can make a tee time reservation, they can do a dining reservation. Got it. Right. Right. And so you're competing against everybody, I would think North Star, Jonas, you know,

And then there's some people that you might compete with that others don't know that buzz software right out of Toronto, I think they are, or, or, you know, some of these older, systems, but, know, oddly enough, people like buzz. mean, they have hundreds of clients. People don't realize that, right? They have hundreds of clients. North star has hundreds of clients, Jonathan club essential much, much larger than that. So, here's the beautiful, the beautiful part, I think of the private club business.

are the economics, frankly, right? you just ultimately you have to think in terms of average revenue per customer when you're in this space on the public side, there are a ton of technology companies that are happy to earn somewhere between 10 and $15 ,000 a year from their customer. Right on the private side, it is significantly larger than that. And so you can build a much

larger, I want to say healthy company, much, much healthier company. If you, if you start in private, that would be my opinion. The problem though with that is you're dealing with twice as much software, twice as much support, twice in a longer cell cycle for sure. We know that for sure. a little bit before we go talk a little bit though about how the cell site, the longer cell cycle in private isn't really a negative for Cobalt.

because of the approach you all have taken, at least in these early years. Yeah, that is correct. I think the depending on the club and their seasonality. So knowing that, like, for example, a club in Columbus, Ohio right now, they need to make a decision if they're going to go live before season in April. You know, they need to make that decision today. So if they're looking for that kind of thing, then their timetable gets dramatically increased, right? Or not increased in time, but from a speed perspective. Right.

If I have a club down here in Florida that's talking to me now, they need to be live a year from now. that, you know, that sales cycle is a little bit longer. So depending upon where they are in their seasonality, as well as in their urgency to look, you know, kind of dictates how long or short, but at a minimum, you're looking at six to nine months. Again, depending upon what kind of emergency that is. It's not unheard of to go 18 to 24 months for a cell, right? It definitely can be.

Yeah, and sometimes it's you know, especially us being more on the newer side. Yes, I had a call. It was two days ago with the club. And they said, you know, we've been watching you and we've seen you at the shows, right? You know, you're a little bit newer, you have our attention. But I'm just letting some of those things kind of iron out. And now that's been two years has gone by. And they said, you know what, you know, this is this is something now I'm more interested in taking a look at. So in most of these systems to are usually not I want to say aren't broken.

where you some of the daily fee stuff if it doesn't fit your business, it doesn't fit your business. The private club side right they've been on the system for seven to ten or more years. So things aren't broken they want to do more things. So I have a club up in the Richmond Virginia area that is looking at us and they're like you know Robb it's it's not broken but if you're doing this we'll wait till that following season. We know what we have right I know it can be better you know so I think there's some of that that comes into play as well.

What do you think that what do think the two top reasons are that private clubs switch? What drives a change more frequently than not? I would say number one right now is support, right? And I think this is with any technology system in general, you could have the world's best software, if you have terrible support, it'll be a failure, right? So the goal is to have the best software best support. But when you're talking days to get responses, know, that frustration just builds and builds and builds.

Right. And what I think this industry has really been missing from the family owned aspect is really that partnership, right? I mean, any of the clubs can call our office today and actually get the owner on the phone. Yeah, I don't think and maybe you could call some of the other companies and get to the owner on these venture capital, you know, people but you can't reach out the battery ventures and get to the top person. Probably not. And I'm guessing right? I don't know that to be true. But I'm using that as an example to kind of make my point.

is that this is something that when you're talking as a partner and you care the way you care, development, support, all that matters because it's a reflection on you. so I thought you would say support. But that's why I asked for two because I think it gets really interesting on reason two or three. support aside, what's the next reason they switch? The next is going from multiple systems and frustration of dealing with like good examples when you have a separate T sheet and a separate back office system.

you know, some of these golf pros are spending an hour every day at the end of the night, right? So imagine in Columbus, people are playing golf till seven, eight o 'clock, right? Now I have to spend a whole nother hour taking everything from this tee time system to put it into the back office, right? That's not what you want to do in that situation. It should just be one system. And I'm only, and I'll make this point clear is that because we started much later, right? We have, we have newer technology, we have better

product, we were built for a larger operation. So we didn't have to add things on right, we started up here, then we can scale things down for other clubs, which is a different approach than any other software company has ever taken. Right, right. Where you started as big as you could imagine. But but but very few people are going to use everything that Boca uses that 100%. So I think when we're able to come in and show them the amount of time savings, the the support, right, the ease of use, right, because

these things were, you know, our VP of product actually came from the hospitality world in hotels. So he was the original writer, if you will, of our food and beverage point of sale, right? And so he took everything that he didn't like from micros and Infogenesis and digital dining, right? All the big name ones and actually made it into a club food and beverage point of sale. it's what I saw this, this is the best, best club point of sale in the food and beverage application I've ever seen.

Wow, the integration of table management dining reservations, know, a member could make a reservation on the app, it shows up at the host to stand, they can apply it to a table, and then they roll it right over into the point of sale minutes. It's all instantaneous. Right? Those things most most clubs, you could do dining reservations, but it's not integrated to the point of sale, you know, or it's a separate system, right? And you got to keep them in. if it because you do have experience in the public space.

If I'm building a public company, if I'm 10 -4, if I'm member sports, if I'm Eagle Club Systems, be great on support. I think this is what Robb Smyth would say, be great on support and make it so your customer doesn't have to use a lot of different apps. It's a seamless user experience. And that's why IBS was successful too, right? You want to supply as much as you can that fits in your wheelhouse.

right? You and stay away from those special projects, you know, that are one off situations, you know, that would definitely be my recommendation, you know, and I think I read something you put out there, right? There's over 2000, you know, it's the t time systems or whatever you would put out there. there's there's there's I think we just we just logged our 59 company that that helps golf courses sell t times. So you start looking at that and you look at the let's just say 17 ,000 golf courses and there's let's say 6000 private clubs.

that really fit what we do from the bigger side, right? And then you kind of remove maybe the top, the other remaining 5 % or 10 % that are always just going to still use a cigar box. that's a lot. That's a very small market for 59 different vendors, right? I hear you. hear you. How do you monetize that down the road? That to me is when you have such big players out there that are significant size. Yeah, monetizing that long term is hard. But

The newest way we see to monetize is through credit card processing, right? So many of these companies have, have, learned to monetize through, processing. I am curious though, because I think it matters more in the member side. And so maybe you see it more than some of the public, clients that we have. How often when they're shopping cobalt, do they say, now show me the member experience and I'm talking UI now, right? I'm talking about press this button or that, but how often are they asking about,

But what is the member experience going to be? Because Robb, that matters a ton at Muirfield Village. Or I imagine you were probably referencing Wingfoot or something like that earlier. Like talk about that a little bit. I would say that there's been a huge transition shift, maybe started about five years ago to show me more of the member experience versus in the past, it was let's start with General Ledger. Let's start with accounting. Show me what financial statements I can get because the

especially after COVID, right? The experience of what members want to do and now are willing to do on their phones is dramatically different than it was, you before COVID. So when I actually do presentations now, if I'm doing a module or overview, right, I start with the app, right? That's first thing I do a company overview, I start with the app and say, this is what your members will see. And then I roll it into show the websites the same. And then I roll it into Alicarte Dining, right, and say that was a reservation I just made.

Now let's just follow it. Then I turn it into the application. So every one of those modules, I start with the app to show what a member goes through. And then I leave that into directly showing what the effect is on the back office. it. Yep. Yep. Well, listen, you know, growing a cobalt is a lot of work. It you're gonna you're gonna crawl before you walk and walk before you run. And so we understand the where you are. To me, I actually

had looked at Cobalt from an investment perspective a couple of years ago, but I think before you were there. I've known about Cobalt for some time. But when I heard that you were there, it honestly got my attention. I thought, okay, well, this is actually going to now have a chance to work. I knew the Boca story right away, which I thought was kind of different. But

but I think it's really cool what you guys have built. I think there's a lot of people rooting for you and here's the new family company. And there's a bunch. There's another guy, Jay Snyder in Louisville has this company called Pro Shop Tea Times, refuses to grow more than like 10 % a year. He told me a couple months ago, Mike, I can't have more than this many new clients. And I thought, I appreciate that. He's sticking to his plan.

And I know you guys are doing something similar. So yeah, we are. very excited about it. The attention that we've been starting to get, the name recognition that we're getting, you know, showing up at the shows. I've done so many speaking engagements on AI and some of the things we developed internally with AI. actually going up to Washington, DC next week to speak to a group of private clubs from around the country. You know, so it's, it's to the point where the recognition is now there.

And it is, you know, we're a real company doing real things with really great clubs. mean, our partners are some of the most well -known clubs that you could imagine. And it's kind of fun to go into a city. I won't name it because the three clubs would be pretty obviously to define, but to go into one city and go to three different clubs that have national name recognition using three different systems that are all interested in looking at you, you know, it's never, it never had that at IBS, right? We were always there, but it was.

you know, we got painted into different corners. And so what we've done, what the ownership has done and the direction that the team has taken the product and the company just it does makes me feel at home. I couldn't be happier. And as we're now trying to grow the sales team, because we've grown every other department, some of the people that we've been reaching out to and actually have had interviews recently, one of the guys I've known for a while was talking to Stephanie, who's our CEO.

And she goes, Well, you know, why would you now consider, you know, coming on to co -op? He goes, Well, to be honest with you, I've been watching it for a long time. And the fact that Robb Smyth has been there now for almost two years is a pretty good litmus test to whether a company is going to be there or not. That's right. That's a pretty good compliment. Yeah, I think I think I'm glad they found you and I'm glad that that you know that you found them so that 100 % I couldn't be happier with what we're doing in the direction and again, back to that. Let's take over the world, you know, one one club at a time but

give clubs what they deserve. And that's really to treat the art clubs the way they treat their members. Right. That's what it boils down to. We'll have to get you you'll have to win the Scarlet business. Right. Scarlet's hosting the corn fairy tour this week, by the way. When the Scarlet business and then you can knock down Muirfield Village in Scioto while you're in town. And maybe even the golf club in double legal and then you get that's That's a pretty trifecta right there. That was pretty good. Yeah, there are some good clubs here for sure. So yeah.

Well, listen, I appreciate you giving us as much time as you have. Your story is amazing. There's a lot of other family companies in golf and then there's companies that aren't family companies and both can find ways to be successful for sure. Right. But but it's it's worked out really well for you in that in that family environment. So we're happy for you. Wonderful. I really appreciate it, Mike. Thank you for the opportunity. Always great to catch up and go bucks, right? Yes, go go bucks. I think it's Marshall.

this week and eventually it will get real and the guys up north come to Columbus this year. We gotta win, find one out of four years we gotta take this one. That's right, that's right. Thanks Robb. Take care Mike, appreciate it.

‍