Club Championship Lessons, the Customer Concentration Trap, and Iron Maiden Beer

Dalton, Chad, and Chris are back with Birdsong Brewery's Hazy Sexy Cool, Stone's Chill Villain IPA, and a Lagunitas Trooper with Iron Maiden artwork on the can. This week the guys cover a club championship that went sideways in three holes, a cramp that ended a round on 14, and what to do when one customer is 25% of your revenue and wants a discount.

Pop That Top & The Scorecard

• Chris's Club Championship Lessons: Rolling in from a board meeting with zero warm-up, Chris shoots himself out of the tournament in the first three holes and posts 85, 79, and 77. The positives: his handicap is now under five, the new driver finally behaves over the last two days, and the company was fantastic.

• Dalton's Cramp on 14: Thirteen over through 13, Dalton walks off the 14th tee and feels his quad seize up. After two days of flu symptoms and a 100-degree round, he shuts it down and hopes it was just dehydration. Earlier, a 95-yard sand wedge got stuck in the grain on the takeaway.

• Chad's Handicap Drop: Chad's handicap has gone from 21.8 in late July to 17.5, which he insists still sucks. The guys debate what makes someone a good golfer, and Chris splits it into two scales: being fun to play with, and single digits.

• Joining a Club: Dalton compares notes on joining a club seven minutes from home, and Chad on joining one of the two private clubs in Lawrence with his niece in the pro shop as a guide.

The Approach: The Customer Concentration Trap

Chad brings the scenario: a $6 million business gets $1.5 million from one customer, and that customer is putting the work out to bid.

• The Math: A 15% price cut to keep the account sounds manageable, but on 30% margin work it takes gross profit from about $450K to $225K.

• Build the Off Switch: Dalton would run a big account like a separate division so it can be cut cleanly. He doesn't negotiate his fees, and he'd treat this as the spark to make sure it never happens again.

• Customer Concentration: Chris wants the top five customers under 25% of revenue combined and asks how many relationships it takes to keep this one. Sometimes it's addition by subtraction.

• Better Than Nothing: Chad remembers discounted "summer rates" that built a book of non-ideal clients, plus a 20% client that sold its company. Dalton's firm cut about 25% of its returns by volume and grew revenue anyway.

Looking Down the Fairway

• Chris won't touch a club this week but has a member-guest in two weeks. Chad is working on the simulator project in his shop. Dalton has a solo tune-up round before a membership round at a freshly overseeded course with long rough, plus new grips on his 56 and 60 and a new SuperStroke Pistol 2.0 putter grip.

The Final Pour

• Three more beers hit the RDTFM Leaderboard. Chris gives Birdsong Brewery's Hazy Sexy Cool, a 6.8% New England IPA out of Charlotte, a 7.5. Chad's Lagunitas Trooper from Petaluma comes in at a 7.6: pretty bitter, pretty dank, and solid, just like Iron Maiden. Dalton gives Stone's Chill Villain a 7.1, calling it better than the regular Stone IPA but a little monotone. And after an all-IPA run, the guys promise a non-IPA week.