The Hank Haney PodcastHank Haney gives an update on where everything is at with his new golf studio that's going up near Chicago, Illinois! He explains how it got delayed and when it should be finished.
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I'm gonna tell it like it really is. When No Haney doesn't give us silencing ridics and then the name missus too, chips never except on't shoulders to get better. Everybody knows the name, read about it or Golf Teachers Hall of Fame, never doubt it. It's time for the truth. He is our Do you listen in the Hany? You listen in the Hani. You're listen in the Hany. It's time for the truth. Here is our dude. You listen in the Hani. Listen to.
M hm h m hmm. All right, Welcome to the Hank Hany Podcast, brought to you by Hani University dot Com. Go to Hani University dot com and you will find out information about everything I have going on, from golf lessons to my new Hank Hanigolf studio to my online lessons that will be starting up soon. That's the place to check it out Haniuniversity dot com. I thought i'd give a little update today. I've been kind of missing an action for a while. I have been working on various projects, and of course it's been the holiday season, Thanksgiving, Christmas coming up, and uh I've been watching what's going on in the golf world. And I've been working on my end of the golf world. So let's start with the update there on thee where I am on my Hank Haneygolf studio. Because I've had a lot of people say, HENK, I heard your podcast on the new place you're building. First, people think I'm out of my mind. I mean, I'm sixty nine years old and I'm starting a new business, Like why are you? Why are you doing that? Well, you know, I mean, I'll tell you what. I love coaching golf for years. I mean, let me think how many years it was. It was like ten or twelve years. I didn't I didn't really teach. I mean I taught my friends. I did my video lesson series with Performance Golf, my one Shot Slice Fixed, which is still still going on. I'm still still doing good and love doing that. I did a lot of corporate stuff, but I didn't teach golf. I mean I hadn't really talk off for a long time until I started up again, like like three years ago. Obviously, taught Tiger for six years, and for those six years, I really just taught Tiger. I mean I really didn't didn't teach anybody else. I thought, you know, and I'm going to give this my best shot. I'm going to devote every dot of teaching energy I have to helping him be the best he could possibly be. And I enjoyed those six years. And then after that was over, you know, I was kind of pretty much done teaching for for quite a while. Obviously, I did still teach golf, and I taught friends, and I you know, taught corporate outings and things like that, but I didn't teach teach privately. And then then I decided that And it really started when I saw all these these indoor golf studios and golf simulators, and I decided, you know what, I'm going to build a place. And I did this. And when we lived in Paradise Valley, and I built a golf studio in my garage. We had this big garage. Well, we had like a five car garage, and I don't have five cars, and we got two cars, and I didn't need all this garage. And I thought, you know what, I'm gonna take We had two garages, and I said, I'm gonna take one of those garages. I'm gonna make it into a golf studio, but a foresight golf simulator in there and fix the whole place up, and next thing you know, I was teaching golf and I really really enjoyed it. So then we moved to Chicago Glencoe, Illinois to be specific, that's where our house is, but we are very close to where I grew up, which is Deerfil, Illinois. And I saw this location. We're at the bike store, this Eric's Bike Store in Deerfield, buying a bike. This summer. I got some great trails to ride bikes on around here, and we do that almost every day. So anyway, we bought a new bike, and I got one that had a little pedal assist, you know, so when you pedal it like electrically, it's assisious. So I can keep up with my wife, who buys the pedal assist but doesn't use it because the bike is heavier and she can get a better workout. I got the pedal assist so I can keep up with her without having the work so hard. So we're at Eric's Bike store and I see this sign up and the building is a cool building. It's kind of like a brick building, got brick walls, inside and it's got this wood trust ceiling, real high, super high ceilings out that is this is a really really cool building. And I see this sign and the space next to this Eric's Bike store and it's kind of in the back, and uh, you know, it says fur lease, And I think, you know what, may you know what? I wonder what that place looks like in there? May you know, maybe I'll open up a place. Maybe I'll open up My wife's been bugging me to do this. She said, you want to open up one of these indoor golf places. And they're popping up all over the place, and you know, the golf simulators and people go and they you know, practice or they play golf courses, and it's really become a big deal, especially a big deal up north where it's it's so cold, and up north, by the way, is where there's so many people that play golf. I mean, uh, you know, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, I mean, the cold weather states, to believe it or not, have the highest percentage of population of people that play golf. And of course in Canada, I mean, golf is like huge in Canada. So I saw this spot and I said, I'm gonna you know, I think I'm gonna look at this. So I go in there to look at this space, and it's like a mess. I mean, it's like an absolute mess. They made it into this workout studio and they it's had some kind of workout thing they did with like this loud blasting music, so they soundproof this place, and they put in the ceiling and they insulated the ceiling, and it was like and I thought, man, but if all this was just I just need to tear all this out of here, you know, this would be a good spot. And I started penciling it out and I thought, you know, this could be a decent business. I don't know if this is the greatest business, but this could be a decent business, so I can maybe put this thing together. And the best part about it was, you know, I could visualize this business a little self serve deal where people get a tea time and they book it online and they go in and they use the simulators and they practice and I really don't need to like employees, which I like. To me, the best business you could have is one that doesn't have employees, or at least the least amount of employees. You could have. So I thought, you know, and I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna do this. So I leased this space out and I've told this this story one of the other podcasts. How am I I was coming. I had to go through all this permitting processes. Well, I finally got the permit from the city of Deerfield. They rang me through the ringer a little bit, but it's all right, you know. I mean, I didn't mind, you know, I mean, but it's interesting. I stood up in front of the city. I'd done this before, you know, and I built a golf course in the city of Texas, Arcana, right on the Texas Arkansas border, and I had to do the same thing there. I'd go and get my speel in front of the city council. Then they had to vote, and so I knew kind of the routine. And I did this thing, and I finally got my special use permit, which means that, you know, that doesn't mean you think, okay, I got my special use permit. I can open up tomorrow. No no, no, no, no, no no no no, we're just getting started. You got you. I got my I got to prove. But then I got to get approved by the city Council, and then you know, the city Board, and then you know, I mean, my god, So finally I get this, I get the special use perm and then I can apply for my building permit. Well, I don't really have to build anything. I just need to. I just need to. I'm really just putting up simulators. Inside. I got a putting thing that's a platform that sits above the ground. It's going to be really cool. It's called the well Putt Big Tilt, so it tilts and you can hit hit different putts on it. And I like that because I want to be able to teach putting, and I really love that aim point putting. So I wanted a putting thing that tilts and I could teach people to read the slope with their their their feet. That's what the aim point deal does, you know, the deal where people are holding up their fingers. I think it's the best putting system there is. I mean, like I always I go so far as to say that anybody that doesn't use that aim point it's just, uh, you know, really miss it out to be honest with it, and probably pretty lazy because it's not that hard to do it. Really isn't. It's easy to learn. So I got the I'm gonna have four simulators in there, and I'm gonna I've changed the design. At first I was gonna have five. Now I'm down to four. You don't want to have a little room in there, maybe a place for people to sit down and you know, watch a little TV, watch a little you know, golf on TV or whatever, and uh, not a lot of construction. I just got to tear things out, you know. I mean, that's that's all I'm really really really doing in there. But I got to get the permits. I got to get the I gotta get so they let they won't let me apply for the building permit until I got my special Use PROMT. Well, I finally got my special Use permit. Now I apply for my building part and I'm trying to apply for my building point. And I got an architect and he's helping me, you know, and and he's really just he's the same guy who did the building for the uh exercise deal that was there. It's called SHRED four fifteen. Knowing what that stands for, but shreg it. I guess the shred is self explanatory. But the four fifteen out. Don't know what that is. But anyway, he did the building originally, so he had all the plans so it wasn't really a hard deal for him to do. Great guy, uh you know Jeff, and he's helping helping me out on this steal and he uh, he's doing up the drawings and we're just trying to return it back to where it was. And I'm like, I really need I'm not building anything. Do I need a building? But yeah, yeah, yeah you gotta have You're gonna have a building. But but I'm not but I'm about building anything. I'm just like I'm taking a wall down. Well that that counts, okay. Well, you know we're gonna we're gonna gonna put the permit. I try to try to apply for the permit and they go, you're you're you gotta do it online, and so not being accepted. I'm like, well, what's not being well, what's not accepted? Well, you know, there's something wrong with the permit. And like so it comes back to my contractor, who's who's a buddy of mine, Jason. He's helping me out on the steal, and he's doing it as a favor I mean he's a great guy. Teachers do kids, great guys. So he he's my contractor. Okay, Jason needs to register sure with the city, all right, all right, So Jason's got to go in there, and he pays like one hundred dollars to register with the city. I mean, I don't know, you know, he's just just so he's on city records. A way for the city to make a hundred bucks. That's okay, no problem. I said, you know, I knew I was gonna have expenses on all this stuff, so well, you know, we'll you know, pay for that. And then he says, we need to know all your that this is the permit. It says, you got to know all your contractors. And I'm like, oh, man, Jason, I so you got these guys. You know, we need a plumber. There's a big water heater in this place, and they were, you know, a workout place. They had showers in there. I might, I might keep a shower, but I don't need like four showers. I don't need quite that big of water. He think I got the biggest water he ever seen in your life. I mean, this water heater is like the size of a bathroom. I mean it's like huge, So that that's that's gonna go. I need that space for my my putting area. And I need a plumber. I need, I need an electrician. I need, I need somebody to put in some tile. You know, like a thousand square feet of towel. It's not a lot of tile. I just got to need to put a little tile in there. I'm gonna put in some carpet in there too, that's not a big deal. All these are those carpet tiles. You know, they're easy to put down.
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And and then I need, you know, I need somebody to paint. Okay, that's not you know. I got a painter. I got Dale the painter. I need a fire guy. And I need it because they got the sprinklers in there, okay, And this they drop down the sprinklers down from the high ceiling. It's like a eighteen foot high ceiling. It's dropped down. It's all, you know, really cool ceiling. You know, wood trust, you know what, it's like the wood frame, and it's really nice. And they dropped the ceiling down though, and you can't see all this stuff. So I gotta I gotta get rid of all this stuff. Then I got to move the electrical back up. I got to get the sprinklers that are down. I got to get them back up. Actually, it turns out I just needed they were extended down and the original ones that we are still up there at the ceiling. So all I gotta do is just really get those taken off. Not a big deal. But I need a few guys. I mean, I need to need a few contracts. Well you can't. You can't put the permit in until we know who all those guys are. So we got to got to put all those guys on the deal. And and you know, Jason puts them all on the permit and we get it all on there and then and I said, no, it's it's there's something else is you know, something else is wrong? Okay, Well, so so it turns out what's wrong. I couldn't get my thing. I couldn't get my building permit filed. Okay, And I wanted to file this ahead of time. I said, you know, hey, I'll pay if my if my special permit gets turned down, No big deal. I'll just you know, you guys can keep the money if I don't get it. I knew I was going to get it. If you guys, you know, if I don't get the permit, you can you can keep my fee whatever I pay. But you know, I'd like to have this all ready to go. So the day you get you issue me the special permit, I can I can get started.
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We can't do that. You can't do that. That's against against the rules. You got to know these rules. See, this is the thing that Trump's talking about, all these rules and regulations. It goes right down to it. You know, this is not a federal thing, but it goes down to the state level, city level. And you know why they do it like this, because they've always done it like this. That's why they do it like this. There's no logic to it. It makes no sense. Wouldn't you want to have a business there. Wouldn't you want your business to be like? Wouldn't you want businesses to occupy all these empty spaces as fast as possible so that the city could make revenue. I mean, you know, I mean tax dollars. I mean, why make it? Why do they make it so hard to open a business. It's crazy, Like I'm watching all these businesses around here because I'm looking for place to play pickleball, and there's all these new pickleball places going on. It takes them for these places are easy buildouts, and it takes forever to open up something. And it's because all these rules and regulations. So Jason, my contractor, fills out this thing and uh, you know, we're going to apply for the permits, and they said, no, something's wrong. It's got it's not going through and it won't get accepted because it's online. It won't get accept unless everything is perfect. So it turns out that what's wrong is Jason lives in Northfield. But Northfield is a small town. It uses the same ZI code as Winetka. So Jason puts down when netca you know, six, oh, oh, I don't know, three four whatever it is, I don't know. And it gets turned out because his address is wrong. Well, the guys lived at the same address forever. I mean, it's like it's his addressesn't all. He knows his address, but he puts down Winetka or he puts down Northfield, and it's and north All the mail goes to the same place. It's like, you know, either one to work, but in their in their computer. It had to be down as Weinetka, and he put down Northfield, even though it's like the same town, same address, same everything. So finally we get that straight. Okay, this is this. This sets me back another week or so. Okay, but in the meantime, in the meantime or you know, Jason is determined to get started, and I'm like, but are you sure we can do this thing? Yeah, I've been talking to them. You know, I think we can. You know, it's not going to be it. I'm gonna get a dump strover there. We're gonna just start tearing stuff out. It's just cosmetic. It's not, you know, just a cosmetics. I said, you know, it sounds because I'm kind of for that, you know. I mean, let's just you know, I said, I said, are we you know, are we asking you know, do we ask for permission for this? Nah? I said, Nah. I said, Uh, we aren't asked for permission. Weren't asked for forgiveness. And I kind of like, I mean, I like, I like your style there, but I mean that's how you know, I like that said, We're not asked for permission, We're asking for forgiveness if we need it. So we get in there and we got it. We got to you know, some guys in there. Well, we go to start on a weekend, okay, which is probably a good time to start because you got, uh, you know, none of the guys are milling around the inspectors or whatever. So we're in there and they're just tearing and we're tearing stuff down. We're just leaving it in there, and we're leaving it in there, just on the floor. So you know, nobody, you know, we got six guys there in there, just tearing this place up. But it's just ceiling tiles. We're not like doing anything that's that's disrupting anything. I mean, did taking down ceiling tiles, taking down the little grid on the ceiling, taking mirrors off the wall. I mean, this is not a big deal. I mean, we're just this is cosmetic stuff. I mean, you know, I mean, I'm like, what are we doing that's wrong about this? So next thing, you know, we're in there working again. And you know, the next day, the Monday, we got two guys in there. We got two fellows in there, and there's more construction in the same building. Okay, And something happened with the fire alarm. Okay, we didn't touch the fire alarm. There's some panel ors and we didn't touch the panel. We didn't touch anything. But there's something happened in the other side of the building where's some other tenants working on something. They're putting in a new thing. And the fire guy was over there, the marshal or the inspect or whatever, and all of a sudden he comes wandering over to our place, and he wants to know what's going on, you know, and he sees a guy in there taking now a mirror or something, and you care not allowed to do this, you know, Well, you don't have meny permits. And he and next thing, you know, I got a thing slapped on my my window of this place. I read it. I got a red sign, uh stop order and it says do not touch this. It's you're not allowed to remove this this sign. Then uh and we are we are shut Jason called me and said, we have you want the good news. I said, yeah, give me the good news. Then he asked me, well, well, you know, everything's going pretty good. I said, what's the bad news? He said, we got shut down? I said, man, do we ask for forgiveness? He said, yeah, we asked for you. I said, how'd that go? He said, well, I don't think we're gonna get fined? All right, that's good. How long are we going to be before we're back on We got to do this. We got to do that. You know, I'm working on it. We'll get it, you know, get it going. So so we finally got the you know, the application going. We're shut down. We're shut down. I thought this thing was going to go fast. This thing ain't going fast. I mean, this is a pain in the ass. I mean, it's like the biggest path next thing, you know, next, you know, my landlord calls me, oh man, and I could tell well, you know, I'm answering the phone. I mean, like I need this like a hole in the head. You know, I'm sixty nine years old. I mean I was kind of like retired from teaching. I decide I'm going to build a new place. Next thing. You know, I got the I rented this place. I got to it's a big commitment. I got a you know, guaranteed rent everything else. You know. I mean, I gotta make this thing go. I can't. I'm to lose my ass at this place. If this thing doesn't work, and uh, you know, and and now I can't get a you know, permit. I gotta you know, stemp standing in front of the city, you know, give him my speel. They're running me through the ringer, you know, and I can get my building permit. Next thing, you know, I get shut down. I got a red tag on the window, I got the now I got the landlord called me and I could tell, man, she was pissed. I mean, she was not happy. I could tell by the tone of the voice. Said, Hank, what what's going on over there? That's what she and I felt like saying. You know what's going on over there? It's why you're calling me? She said, what's going on? Right? Well, you know, we Jason, my guy, you know, he had a couple We took down some stuff and the guy came over a while. You know, you guys messed up the fire alarm and anyway, we didn't. I called Jason's Jason, I think we messed up the fire. Now, we didn't touch anything, he said, we didn't touch that thing, we didn't touch the panel, we didn't touch anything. They messed it up, he said. I talked to the fire guy the fire Marshall guy. He said, it was in the southeast corner is where the problem was. We're in the northwest corner. We didn't do anything, but I got blamed. I got blamed. But you know, anyway, it's all right. We asked for forgiveness in the world. Okay, we'll get this thing going, but it's going to be a little little delay after the red tag we got. I got red tagged, and the next update will come when we get unread tag. So I'm a little little behind schedule. Still hoping to be open like middle of January because I can whip through. I mean, this is like a three week deal. This is like a three week deal, you know, boom, knock this thing out, clean it up. You know, we got a lockdown already actually, but but I mean they got a lot of stuff in there, and that they soundproof this thing. And I told Jason, I said, man, but we're gonna need some more fellows, you know. I asked the electrical guy, said how long you think this thing's going to take to do? And he says, oh, you know, we'll be done. He could probably be done, he said, you know, if it was me and just doing it. Or you know, maybe if I need to, I can get another guy. I can tell where this guy's going with this. See he's thinking, he can you know, he's gonna he's gonna get a He's going to have a job that he can stretch out for a couple three months, is what he's thinking. And uh, you know, he said, we could probably be done, you know, with the electrical part by the end of January. I'm like, whoa, that's not going to work. That's what I'm thinking. But Jason's at charge of this guy, so I'm not you know, I didn't, I didn't say anything, but I dialed up Jason. I said, Jason, by your electrical guy. He uh, he's he said, he said, uh and uh end of January. It's going to take him to fix this. Ah, he said. He said, don't worry. I said, but that's not going to work. I said, we need some more fellas. I said, we gonna we need electrical army. We don't need an electrical guy. I said, we need electrical army. This is not that big a chop. I said, this is not this guy. I said, I think this guy's going to try to drag this thing out for a couple of months. You know, he's got a nice little job. He's gonna do everything himself. I said, well, we need some fellas, like a lot of guys. Maybe we need we need we need. We don't need an electrical guy. We need electric army. So uh yeah, and we're gonna get that. We're gonna get some guys there. We'll get this thing knocked out and we'll get get that thing open. And uh, I think it's going to be I think it's going to be pretty good. You know. My concept on this is, I don't know, I don't know what people you know. I've run this concept by a few people. But there's you know, you pay a monthly membership and you get to come use the simulators and uh and that's all. That's all good, you know, and it's not super expensive or anything, you know, you know, I don't know, like two or three hundred dollars a month, something like that, three hundred dollars a month and then and you can use it like unlimited time or your book a time or certain you know, ten hours a month or week or something. I don't know, you know, I'm still working on the concept here a little bit. But My big thing is is I want to tie lessons into it because I think, you know, people want to get better at golf, and I like to help people get better GoF So I'm going to give like a lesson. I'm gonna make this thing a no brainer. For the price of what it would cost you to get a lesson is what the membership's going to be. And you get the lesson and you get the place a place to practice. So I'm not looking for a thousand people. I want to get like one hundred people. That's all I want. I just want to one hundred people that really want to get get better golf. So that's kind of my game plan. I'll get this place open probably like middle of middle of January. But this is an experience I love. I love building these things. I got like a vision, you know, a vision of how it's gonna look. It's gonna look really cool, uh and uh seeing it come together. But I have to admit, like the most of the times when I've done when I because I built a lot of stuff, I built a lot of businesses, and uh, some of the times I built it like I was in unincorporated areas, you know where I didn't need all these permits and stuff. But my god, the bureaucracy, the regulations. I mean, this is this is what bogs things down. It's just like and the purpose of it is what, you know, what you should be able to do? If they if they really because they really just want to make money. That's the biggest thing. I know. They want to regulate things and stuff, but they want to they want to They want to make money is what they really want to. They should just have a deal where you you know, Okay, this is what it costs, and it's going to take you take your you know, two months, three months to get your permits. Okay, Well what what if I pay double? Then when can I get it? What if I pay triple? When could I get it? Buy? There should be some price, like cities want to make money? Why it just like, actually, what does it cost for an expedited permit? Okay, permit costs you know, you know, two thousand dollars for and it takes three months. Okay, how about ten thousand and it takes takes one month. Well I don't understand. Why wouldn't you do that? I mean, it's just like I don't get it. It makes it makes no It makes no sense to me. I mean it's pretty simple supplying demand. How could something take take? Like we're going to review the permit, Like how long does that take to do? Like how many? This is not a big town, Like you don't have a lot. You don't have like a million permits in there you're looking. You don't have a thousand, you don't have one hundred. You got a few, you know, Charge more and hire another guy, you know, pay a guy over time, you know, charge charge me, you know, twenty thousand dollars and pay that guy over time to work on the weekend and and pay him triple overtime. Charge me, you know double at a you know, exorbitant rate which you're already charged, and charge me double charge, pay that that guy overtime, pay him triple time, and have them work on Saturday and have my permit on Monday. What what? I don't get it. It's just this is this is how uh you know, things work, and it's just like some ship just drives me crazy. This is this is like one of those things. But anyway, it is what it is. So that's my update podcast on the Hank Haney Golf studio. Uh, and when I get it going, and you know, I'm gonna take some pictures and show it so people can go online and check it out. But you know, I gotta I'm gonna have something to take a picture up first, so it's it's gonna take me a little while, not too long, but a little while, all right. Hope everybody enjoyed my story. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Hit the follow button on the iHeartRadio app wherever you get your podcasts, and we will uh, we'll talk too soon on a hank Any podcast
