I Dream That The World Could Be More Like The Masters with author John Sabino

twenty twenty four for eighty nine hundred dollars. So that tells you number one, Anything with a Master's logo on it is worth something. You can travel anywhere in the world and people know what the Master's logo is about. But it also it's one of the ten principles I talk about in the book how do you use scarcity to create value? They've perfected that you can only buy their things seven days a year in person.

We never learned John's name. He was anonymous at the time because he was on episode number fifty two in two thousand and six, episode number one hundred and eight in two thousand and seven, and then episode one fifty nine in two thousand and eight, and what we were doing at the end of each year you had I don't know how you found me, but it was early on in podcasting days, and you reached out to me to say, I'm trying to play the best golf courses in the world, the top one hundred courses, and so

you gave us a recap of your year of what you were doing. And I do distinctly remember in two thousand and eight, I think it was you felt like there was one course you would never get to.

a board meeting that week and he couldn't go. So he called my boss, who lives in Charlotte, but he had played it already, and he did the most gracious thing anybody could do, and he said, well, John needs to play. Let's give it to John. And that's how I got on and I ended up.

up playing. That was the last course I played, obviously, and I played with Marco Mera the day before the Masters in twenty thirteen. Yeah, it was. It was quite an event. And we played on the front nine Mark and I played alone, and then on the we were going and on the tenth tee Jose Maria Olthabo came off the practice putting green and said, oh, do you guys mind if I join you? And Mark said, it's okay with me. Let's see if John wants you to join or not. So he turned to me and he said,

is it okay if John joins? And what am I going to say? Fred, Like, Yeah, we're in a groove here. Mark, let's just keep going. So I played the back nine with two Masters champions and it was phenomenal because they're friends, and you know, there was a very comfortable pairing and they would each drop a ball on different greens and say, when I won the Masters, here's the pot I had

on thirteen, and they recreated shots for me. It was there's only one way to end a quest, to do what I was doing, and that's the way I did. I tell people now, I'm probably the only golfer maybe in the world that doesn't want to play Augusta because nothing I could do with top the experience I had. So if I ever got invited again, I would I would pay it forward and invite a couple of my friends. Yeah, I have a living you wanted hand up the others drop out, Fred, I'll slought you in Okay.

well that was pretty awesome. We got three years. I wonder whatever happened, and your name came up to me in twenty ten when I was playing at Harding Park with the two crazy Kiwis.

his name? When I asked, He's like, no, I can't really tell you.

going to ruin their lives. They picked too early. You can't, Like, that's right. Think about think about how great that is to play golf for sixty five days in a row.

my handicap. You know, Mark was very gracious. You're extremely nervous when you play Augusta under any conditions, of course, So on the first two holes he played the members teas with me instead of playing the proteas, just to sort of, you know, help me get into the situation and make sure I wasn't too nervous, which I was. But I hit the first fairway, I parted the second hole, Yeah,

I did, Okay, I played to my handicap. The greens are insane, They're extremely difficult, and they were tournament speed. Like on eighteen, I hit above the hole and I just tapped the pot to try to get it to the hole, and it ran off the front of the green and then Jose Maria comes up and it drops the ball and he says, there's just nothing you could do. There's no speed you could hit it to stop it. He goes. The lesson is you just can't be above

some of these holes. So yeah, it was. It was really interesting.

hard time getting out. And part of the reason for that was on the ninth hole, Tiger Woods had just teed off and he saw us and he came walking over. So Mark introduced me. So I got to meet Tiger and had a little chat with him. So even though I threw the first eight holes, I was fine after meeting Tiger. It took me two holes to settle down, Like I was hyperventilating. That Caddy saved me. He's like he came over. He said, Okay, just take deep breaths.

It's gonna be okay. Don't worry about it. And luckily I rallied frame end quarter.

is Bob is it Bob Ford? Doug Ford? Excuse me? So we we uh. They let us play through. We hit our shots, and down at the green, I said, I said, I recognize Goldbie's name, but who is Doug Ford? And he said, well, he won the Masters in nineteen fifty seven. If you could imagine, I'm like, how how is this person even alive? So yeah, I pulled that shot pretty good too, because I had a couple of Masters champions watching on that. But if you let it

get in your head, it's intimidating. I mean I had played obviously around the court core world on very good courses and sometimes playing with golfers that were plus two and plus three handicaps, which can be a little bit intimidating. But I think because it was Marco Mira and he's just such a gracious person, a nice man, it was just the nerves weren't as bad as I thought they were most of the round.

go thirty five feet. Yep, there was that. But the fact that like the second cut, which is you know what everyone else would call it rough, seemed to be like most of the putting greens that I play.

Can you hold the green if you're coming in from the wrong spot, And most of the time the answer is no. And then once you're on the putting greens, if you're not in the right spot, it's very difficult to put because they're very fast. That's the challenge of Augusta.

pick up on. You can't find any weeds on the property. Everybody's cheery, there's just you know, everybody's well behaved while there, while they're on property, And every time I left Augusta, I said to myself, how do they do this? You know, this is a perfect place. And then you get out of Augusta and people are rude and it's loud, and everything is commercialized and everything is not perfect. So the idea behind the book was to deconstruct what what it

is that goes into the Masters. How are the members of Augusta National, how have they what's the secret formula that they use? And I reverse engineered and they didn't have access to any members or to the club. I did a lot of research. I read for months and months everything I could about about the Masters and what goes into it. So most books that have been written about the Masters are about the tournament, are about their about the course itself. This is the first book that's

really about what makes it special. And originally I was going to write it as a business, as a just a golf book, but then as I started to get into it, I asked the question, and this was really the driving force behind the book, why can't the world be more like the Masters? Right? It's it's just a lot of people describe it that have been there as an adult disney Land and to many in many respects, it is nobody has a bad day when they go there.

Everybody is going out of their way to please you, and just the way that the patrons behave and the civility behind it. So I went through and I deconstructed

what makes it such a great tournament? That was the idea behind it and the reason I decided to make it a business book is certainly I'd say, you know, the majority of the book, probably eighty percent, talks about the Masters and what they do right, But then I also said, okay, are there other businesses and are there other examples where other companies who take the same philosophy and the same approach can make the world more like

the Masters. So that's that's the idea behind it, to try to spread the formula that they have for people that are in business or making decisions. What can they do to make their businesses operate better, or to treat customers with more respect, or to create a more civil environment. So and as you know, there's a lot that can be done in the world to improve things, and we could talk about some of the specifics.

When they cut the flower bed in Founder Circle, which is at the end of Magnolia Lane, they have a horizontal ladder that they use so that they don't tramp down on any of the flowers. I mean, it's things that it's an insane attention to detail. But you know, let's take two examples. Outside of Augusta. Ritz Carlton also does a fantastic job on attention to detail. You know,

partly they do that by empowering their employees. Partly it's just part of their culture and their those So that's one example, and people are going to think, Okay, yeah, sure, Augusta has a lot of money. Ritz Carlton's a very expensive hotel. If you have a lot of money, it's a lot easier to pay attention to detail. So I also made sure that a bunch of the examples that I gave in the book were not companies that are high and only and my favorite example is a company

called BUCkies. BUCkies runs convenience centers slash gas stations slash superstores along highways, primarily in the South, and BUCkies is interesting. The reason I put it in the book is another thing Augusta does really well. If you've ever been to the Masters and you go to the bathroom, they have an attendant that cleans the stall after each use. It's insane, right, like, it's.

make sure that that's part of their culture. They train their associates to do that, and the place has a cult following. It's it's if you've ever been in one. If you haven't, I recommend visiting they have it's very similar to Augusta. They have tons of branded gear and merchandise that they sell. Everybody is upbeat and cheery. It's just a really good example of yes, there are ways. Not everybody's not going to be perfect all the time, but pick something, pick a couple things, and you can

really help to drive business and make it. And it's a cult brand. People will drive an hour out of their way to go get their gas at Bucket's because they know that they're going to get a clean restroom. So that's just one example that is a way to replicate what Augusta does.

I'll be back in the night. After the bathroom, and there was this young man with the greatest energy and the biggest smile saying, if you gotta go number one, get in line here, you gotta go number two, just wait against the wall, and he was like he just repeated it that his enthusiasm every single time that he repeated It's when I got to the front of line, I was, you know, I was like, did you audition for this job? You know? I said, do you enjoy repeating you? He goes, I love this job. I've been

doing this. He couldn't have been more than twenty five years old. He says, I've been doing this for seven years. I absolutely love doing this.

they're welcoming and welcoming you in again. Like you look at there are businesses that do that. Buckets happens to be another one where you get a warm greeting. Another one I have in the in the book is Public's supermarket chain. Also in the South, and Publics has what they call they have a couple rules. They have a ten second rule, which is every customer has to be

greeted within ten seconds of coming into your department. And it just makes a big difference, right, it's that same and you know it's supermarket, it's not it's not a golf tournament run by a lot of affluent people. But it makes a huge difference, and they have a huge, uh, you know, customer satisfaction rating as a result. That's just that's just one of the small things that they do.

pictures are ever crooked. They make sure that the pine straw around the trees is raked in a clockwise fashion only. So if you look at at the Masters, Jones was the reason most people came to the tournament. Both fans came to the tournament, and that's the reason it got established as a major, because the pros came to honor Bobby Jones. But everything behind the scenes was really Roberts. Jones really operated at a high level, let's say thirty

thousand feet. Roberts got into the detail of everything and one of the reasons that the Master's broadcast to this day is still so good. Those are the things that Roberts laid down as the law. Right. He didn't want commercials. He didn't want it commercial. He set it up so that the agreements with the broadcasters are year to year, so if they don't like what is going on. They have control over it. And he would sit down with CBS executives after every year and he would critique and say,

I like this, I don't like this. So again, one of the reasons he he made the TV broadcast so good is he said, look, I don't like chatty conversation. I don't like broadcasters talking all the time. And for any of your listeners that watch golf, which I'm sure most of them do, it's very annoying. It's it's it's sort of like the broadcasters feel like they can't have any dead space, they can't have any quiet there.

long pauses and periods of silence even throughout that. After Nant says the bear has come out of hibernation, he's silent and nobody else talks. And the same thing if you look at the most famous call with Tiger woodshot on the sixteenth hole, where Verne Lunquist screams in your life, have you ever seen that? After that, nobody says anything

for twenty seconds because they knew. You know that those are the types of things that Cliff Roberts instilled in it, And the fact that there's four minutes of commercials makes it fantag fantastic. Roberts was just dead set against commercialism. And I think I have a quote in the book on this where one of the former chairmen said, we'd rather shut the tournament down than have it be the pizza hut masters. They just they don't they don't want

commercialism to be a part of it. And that goes back to to what Cliff Roberts said he was, he was the detail man.

flood the zone. They could. They could make Masters items available throughout you know, they could, they could, anybody could buy it. They don't want to do that, they don't need the money. They could certainly raise the price of a sandwich, right instead of costing two fifty or five dollars for a beer, they could double or triple those and people would still buy them. It's just it's it's they it's again, it's part of the ethos and they they Yeah, it's just a core part of the club.

And again I give throughout the book, I give credit to all the chairmen and members of the club over the last hundred years that have stuck to that. It's one thing for Jones and Roberts to say that, it's another thing for the club to live up to those principles.

they issue per year. But I tell us story where and I actually spoke to this individual. It's a millennial. He lives in suburban Georgia. He bought the garden home. The first year it was thirty nine dollars and fifty cents. In twenty sixteen he bought it. He sold it in twenty twenty four for eighty nine hundred dollars. So that tells you a couple of things, right. It tells you, Number one, how much people really value what you know. Anything with a Master's logo on it is worth something.

You can travel anywhere in the world and people know what the Master's logo is about. But it also it's it's one of the ten principles I talk about in the book, which is how do you use scarcity to create value? Right? They've perfected that you can only buy their things seven days a year in person, that's you use scarcity and things create value. And the company in the book that I use as an example where other companies can do it outside is Ermes, the French high

end fashion retailer. You know they make the Birken bags and they also limit those and they don't you basically can't buy them, but they won't tell you how many they make. So again it's just another example of how you can take some of the things that Augusta does and replicate them. But imagine buying something for thirty nine fifty and selling it for almost nine thousand dollars. I mean, hedge funds don't even have that rate of return.

and there was nothing. I couldn't mind anything, right, And my son who he and I have been like who's going to go first? Who's going to go first? You know? And I never thought I was going to get to go, and he was convinced he was going to go. I went Wednesday and Thursday. He went Friday and Saturday. But I was the guest of a member. So he said, You've got to get me a hat from Augusta National. That has Augusta National. I'm like, okay, I will, I

will find one. So I the first as soon as we went through the gates, we went right to the pro shop for the members that we got to go into. We had the special members passes, and I asked him when I said, do you have Augusta National hats? Like, no, only Master's hats. And that was the end of the conference. I'm like, oh, okay, Well, so I text my son, no, there's no it's just Master is not a gust National.

So I'm still looking around and I'm shopping, and my first shopping experience while I was there and I buy the hat that I'm wearing right now for you. And then my son, when I saw him two weeks later, he's like, where'd you get that hat? And I said, well, I bought it in the pro shop. It was the one that I kind of liked it a lot and it fit me really well. So yeah, I bought this hat and he goes, well, that was only available in the member's pro shop. Why didn't you get me that hat.

I'm like, I had no idea. They just told me there were none, and he's like, well, give me the hat. I'm like, no, I'm not going to give me the hat. I love this hat. I'm going to wear this hat a lot. And I don't wear baseball caps, but I'm going to wear this hat a lot because we know you got to give it. I'm not going to give it to you. I love you, but I'm not going to give you my hat. And he goes, well, that's okay, I'll get it when you die. Okay, great, that's something

to look forward to. Then that's all you're getting from me is my hat.

because again it's that whole scarcity factor. They asked one of the ladies that was working check out, what's the biggest purchase she ever saw, and she said twenty thousand dollars, So that could be there's a lot of people that just go to the Masters and get tickets just to sell on eBay. She said, basically they bought like three

of everything. To me, that sounds like a reseller, which at some point, you know, it's very very difficult, if not impossible, to resell Masters tickets now they're all coded and if you try to sell them, they'll deactivate the ticket. I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they do the same thing with people that are trying to resell, because they really One of the things that they do exceptionally well, and I go through this in the book is nothing is more important than the brand. You alluded

to it, right, It's not about money. They could certainly make more money by doing a lot of different things. They could start to charge the broadcasters, for instance, but they are just very protective of the brand, which in the long run makes all the sense in the world. Right, look at that little logo on your hat. How much that's worth. That's the brand, exactly right. It's not always about money, yeah, but.

manage talent. And the example I give is they hired someone who ran the merchandising operation for Walt Disney, and I think that person's been at the club for a dozen years or so. And if you look at what they've done in terms of merchandise and what they offer over that dozen years, they've greatly expanded the size of the of the pro shop that you go into buy Master's gear, and they now do brand partnerships with selected brands that are only high quality. That's just one example.

So obviously, you know, the three hundred members of Augusta are all very successful people. They can't do the day, the day today, and when you go, if you sit down and you have lunch, you know, to a person, all the people that you're dealing with are cheerful. And I don't I don't know any other company or brand or location in the world. You know, Disney's probably the closest where everybody is that good. So again I couldn't find out what they do exactly in terms of their

training program. But I don't know how you get every single person on a location to be that up beaten, chirpy all the time. It's it's it's an exceptional part of what they do, and to me, they don't get enough credit for that. But again, I think it's talent management. It's going out, it's finding the right people, it's paying them well, it's grooming them and taking care of them. There's there's just so many and that again, that's one of the reasons when where I started out as a

golf book and then transitioned over. You know, it's still seventy eighty percent golf and golf fans will will really enjoy the book, even if they're not, you know, into making business decisions. But it's just really interesting some of the decisions that they've made. The other thing that they don't get enough credit for. Right, It's it's essentially a

lot of wealthy people that are successful. They're not young, you know they and I give an example, they have a technology committee and the average age of their technology committee is sixty five years old. But arguably they are one of the best users of technology in the world across any industry. If you use the Master's app, if you look at what they do in terms of their broadcast, or you can go and you can just watch Amen Corner. You can watch every shot of any player they're on.

I think it's fifteen different social media channels. I mean, you know, you and I aren't aren't Spring chickens either. But they're huge users of TikTok. Right. The average age of a TikTok user is is high teens, right, and most most TikTok users are in Asia or Latin America. They're very sophisticated in terms of how they use technology. And it's and it's one of the lessons that to me that really came out as I started to analyze

the company. And frankly, when you go outside the Master's most you know, Masters only uses technology to help you. And most technology and I use a couple of examples in the books. Try calling your cable company or your power company or ups. First of all, you're not going to get anybody. You're going to get at some phone tree that's mind numbing and it's going to take you

five minutes to get through that. When you get through that, you're going to get to some chatbot that doesn't work, and then maybe you're going to be put on hold for twenty minutes. That's the way most companies use technology. They're using it to prevent you from getting to a person. They're using it to save money. And again there's a huge lesson in there about how you don't have to do that. And I use a company in of all places, a pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, called you Line, and they sell

shipping supplies and cardboard boxes and stuff. When you call you Line, the phone never rings. Go look up their eight one hundred number and dial their number. I guarantee the phone will in a second or less. The head of the company says, we pick up the phones faster than nine one one when you dial nine to one one, and he's right, it's incredible. That's that's an that's a brilliant use of technology. So again it's a it's a small,

relatively small, privately held company. It's just another good example of how if you use technology wisely, you can actually help people and create a better environment. And it's another good example of how the world can be more like the Masters if more companies and decision makers decided that it was it was a good goal and worthy to do that.

Going back into the business element of.

it's employee owned. And eighty percent of the companies that I ended up comparing to from in the book were either employee owned or privately owned, and the other twenty percent, and frankly most I give a lot of examples of companies that do a horrible job, almost all of them were owned by they're either public big public companies, or they were owned by private equity. So it's not something I came in and said, this is something I want

to try to prove or disprove. I just looked at and analyzed as I went through it, and I think, fred it comes back to just money. If if you're in private equity and you're investing in something and you want to get a return on it, what's your time horizon? Right Augusta's time horizon. They're looking at twenty thirty years and they're thinking about the brand. They're not thinking about money.

So same thing. If your employee owned, you're going to do everything you can to make sure that the company is successful, because if the company does well, you do well. It's just a matter of the incentives, I think. And obviously there are public companies like Disney that do a good job. But my experience, the bigger the company, the more bureaucratic, and companies that are that are owned by private equity and and and other owners that are just looking to milk it and make money out of it,

to me, they don't. They don't live the principle. Certainly, there's going to be exceptions. I'm sure I'll get calls from people that are in private equity complaining about that comment, but as a general rule that that's what I found as I analyzed.

one day. Leukemia is cancered the blood, and I had a particular strain that is very deadly, unfortunately, so they put me in an ambulance. I went to the hospital. I wasn't allowed to leave for thirty days. I had a bone marrow transplant and since then, you know, there's a lot of complications. I'm lucky to be alive. Let me just say first and foremost that I'm not complaining about anything. Every day is a gift. I'm happy to be here. But you know, I deal with a lot

of issues from the bone marrow transplant. And it sounds goofy, but you know, when I was in the hospital and I had some moments that were not so great, and you know, I obviously wanted to get out to be with my family and my friends and so forth, but I also dreamed about one day, like returning to go back to the Masters. As odd as that sounds, because you know, I'm stuck in After you have a bone marrow transplant, It's sort of like the Seinfeld episode with

the bubble Boy. You're stuck in a room. When nurses and doctors come in, they have to put on special equipment. You're not allowed to leave the room for thirty days. You know. I'm hooked up to five or six different monitors and ivs and so forth. It's such an antiseptic environment and it really just crushes the soul. And to me, the best place in the world. And you've been there, anybody that's been there. When you're standing by the thirteenth

Green or you're near Amen Corner, it's heaven. And I just you know, one of the things that motivated me to write the book is I just wanted to know more about it. I wanted to go back, and I did a couple of years after. You know, my doctor said, no, you really can't go. You can't fly. You don't have

a good immune system. You know. She was hemming and horn and eventually I say in the book, I say, you know, like most people don't know a lot about golf, the majority of people out there, but they know what the Masters is. And you know, she's seventy years old, my oncologist, she has no clue about golf, but she knows what the Masters is. You know, she recognizes the theme song and she'll watch on Sunday. That's the only

golf she ever watches. So she gave me permission and we ended up going back and I said, you know, that's when my mental healing began. You know, the doctors that treated me did a phenomenal job. I'm forever grateful to what they did, but it just beats you down spiritually and mentally, and for me, everybody's got something different. That's one of the things I really wanted to do.

So call it an obsession about Augusta National or the Masters, whatever you want, but that's one of the things I dreamed of and I've been working on the book for three years and it's just been a dream project for me because I can't get enough things Augusta. I just love everything about what they do because, as you know, you've been there, and hopefully you know, people listening if they haven't been able to go and keep trying the lottery, eventually you'll win. I won the lottery last year for

the first time ever. It took fifteen years to win, so there's hope for anybody to go. And it's I think it should be a life goal of anybody because you know, Disneyland is for kids, but Augusta's for adults.

And it's hard to describe right, as much as I try to do it in the book, unless you have actually been on property and experience at firsthand, it's very difficult to relate that, which is why people are so insane when they come back from the Masters and they lose their minds when they go into the pro shop, because it's like you're a kid at a candy story. You're like, I finally made it, and I might never come back. So I'm going to buy everything, and I'm

going to give a gift to everybody I know. Yep, it's not uncommon, Fred, not uncommon.