In the past 20 years, Bobby Jones Links has grown as a company in many ways, not just in terms of size. We’ve made mistakes, celebrated victories, and continued to pursue being just a little bit better each and every day.

This is not atypical. Companies of all sizes and purposes advance through predictable phases of growth. With a quarter of businesses in the United States remaining in businesses for more than 15 years, Bobby Jones Links has done many things right having touched more than 200 clubs in the past 20 years. However, like other companies who have successfully navigated the life cycle of a business, Bobby Jones Links has not done so without evolving and adapting to today’s economic environment including changing work environments and consumer behavior. This includes our company’s core purpose, which is a company’s reason for being.

A core purpose captures the soul of a company. For instance, Disney’s purpose is simply to make people happy. Nike’s is to experience the emotion of competition, winning, and crushing competitors. Over the years, Bobby Jones Links defined and re-defined our company’s core, slicing and hooking and thrashing about, always aiming to make a difference for our clients and customers. Recently, the Bobby Jones Links leadership team spent multiple days discussing our collective goals, what we do well, and how we can continue to better serve our clients.

With that, we came to the conclusion that Bobby Jones Links’ core purpose is to make a difference. That’s it. Something we have always done, but never clearly identified as our core purpose. It can be applied in everything we do, from serving customers, working on the golf course, giving lessons, making a sandwich, cleaning a cart, completing a report, to keeping kitchens super clean.

Whether it is improving a club’s profitability, service in the pro shop, course maintenance, a customer’s dining experience, the quality of a tennis lesson, contributing to our community, or a response to a customer complaint, making a difference matters. As a team, we are able to accomplish something collectively that we can’t accomplish separately.

As a member of the Bobby Jones Links family, we expect our teams to make a difference in their area of responsibility as well. We want our employees to do everything they can to make a difference at work, not just go through the motions.  We reward our staff on their success in doing so, but whether they are with us one week or 20 years, our aim is to help our staff grow and prosper too. They can take these skills wherever they go. Are you making a difference that matters?