How to Make Members Feel “This Is My Place, These Are My People”
One of the most useful lessons I ever learned about creating connection happened in a hotel bar more than twenty years ago.
I was the magician. My job wasn’t to take orders or handle money. My job was to make the bar the place people wanted to be.
We did it by deliberately engineering three things:
getting more people into the room
getting them to stay longer and engage more deeply
getting them to come back the next night and the night after that
Those three levers created a simple but powerful result: people started treating the bar like their place.
Jay Abraham has written for years that there are only three ways to grow any business or organization: get more people, increase the depth of each interaction, and increase how often those people return. When you move all three at the same time, the results compound.
We lived that math every night.
How We Got More People In the Room
A guest would walk in around 6 p.m. on the first night of a conference. I’d do a few tricks and finish with the card-on-the-ceiling. He’d leave for dinner talking about it. After dinner, 20 or 30 of his colleagues would show up just to see the card still stuck up there. They’d stay, watch more magic, and start talking to each other.
The next morning the story spread at breakfast. That evening the room was noticeably fuller. By the third night it was packed.
Same effect. Same ceiling. Just consistent application of a simple shared experience that people couldn’t help talking about.
How We Deepened the Experience
While I performed I watched the room. When energy started to dip, I would wrap up and tell them I’d be back shortly with something specific. That small promise kept people in their seats and leaning forward instead of drifting toward the door.
The longer they stayed, the more conversations started between people who had never met. The magic became the common reference point that made it easy to talk to a stranger.
How We Made Them Want to Come Back
Some of the most effective tools were almost invisible. The simplest was mirroring. If the room felt a little stiff, I would casually pick up my glass and take a sip. Within seconds others would do the same. Small synchronized actions create a subtle feeling of “we’re in this together.”
We also paid attention to the natural leaders at each table. When that person engaged, the rest of the table usually followed. Belonging spreads from the inside out.
None of it felt forced. It simply created conditions where connection was the easiest and most natural thing in the room.
What This Looks Like at a Golf Club
When I began working with private clubs and member events, I noticed how often tournaments and social gatherings focused on the golf and the logistics… and left the human connection almost entirely to chance.
Members and guests would play, eat, and leave without many new relationships formed and without that deeper feeling of “this is my place, these are my people.”
The same three levers transfer directly to the club environment:
The right shared experience draws more members and guests into the social parts of a tournament or event instead of heading straight to their cars.
Thoughtful timing and pacing keep people in the room longer, giving conversations time to start and deepen.
Small, well-placed psychological and social tools help strangers begin talking, help regulars reconnect, and quietly reinforce the sense that this group of people belongs together.
In one application, we use a simple sequence that makes it easy and natural for members to approach the club’s key people and each other — rather than standing in polite but disconnected clusters. The result is more genuine interaction and a stronger feeling of ownership in the room.
Done correctly, the entertainment or experience portion of a club event stops being just “something extra” and becomes one of the more reliable ways to strengthen the exact feelings that drive retention, referrals, and long-term member loyalty: this is my place, these are my people.
If your club is planning an upcoming member-guest, tournament, or social event and you’d like to explore how these same three levers can be engineered into the experience, I’m happy to walk through it with you.
You can reach me directly at (561) 596-3877 or grab a time at calendly.com/mikeduseberg.
