Founder Insights: Jeffrey Danner - Golf Course Architect & Landscape Architect - Pangaea Golf Architecture

Firm & Founder:

This week’s case study is Jeffrey Danner - a golf course architect, licensed landscape architect & co-founder of Pangaea Golf Architecture based out of Mountain View, California.

Pangaea consists of Jeffrey, and his partner Stuart, based out of Glasgow. They founded the practice together just over a year ago as a joint entity of their own golf course design practices. On his own, Jeffrey runs Danner Design Golf Course Architecture, Inc. which is primarily used for solo projects and as a lead generator for bigger projects for Pangaea. Together they work on designing golf courses from all around the world.

Jeffrey holds a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, which included an Independent Study focused on Sustainable Golf Course Architecture. He maintains a dual membership in the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) and the European Institute of Golf Course Architects (EIGCA). He is a licensed Professional Landscape Architect (PLA) in California, Arizona, and Florida, and a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA).

With all of his experience, Jeff still brings a fresh take on the early days of running a golf course architecture practice as a joint partnership.

Key Takeaways:

• The partnership between Jeffrey and Stuart allows for flexibility. Both run separate legal entities and collaborate under the Pangea name. Depending on the project, they determine who leads and how costs are shared.

• Despite not initially planning to work together with Stuart, their friendship and aligned interests led to the launching of a strategic partnership under the Pangea umbrella.

• The early days of Pangea involve both partners grinding to secure work. They are managing a significant project in Scotland and pursuing prospects in Asia and India.

• Golf course architecture is a niche field with fewer diverse job opportunities compared to landscape architecture and architecture.

• Networking is crucial for securing projects. Word of mouth, relationships, and past experiences are key to gaining new clients. Social media and advertising play a secondary role in maintaining visibility.

• The speaker uses Autodesk ReCap to process point cloud data, turning it into legible topography and base maps, especially for clients who lack the resources to do so themselves.

• Time management and prioritization are the biggest challenges. Choosing the right opportunities and staying focused on long-term goals is essential.

• Patience is key in the golf industry, where projects take time due to permitting, approvals, and client-specific delays. Jeffrey emphasizes the importance of playing the long game while staying present and addressing immediate needs.

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Q&A with Jeffrey:

How did you come about your partnership with Stuart?

Early on Stuart and I kind of recognized that each one of us was already kind of in the golf industry, and we were already showing a little bit of of talent. And it was one of those things where, you know, talent, just kind of recognized talent. Obviously, we were both golfers and had a lot in common, so we became friends. Now, we never really talked about working together much, except for kind of joking around having a few beers at that time. But after we got out of the course our lives kind of went parallel paths. We're always kind of keeping in touch and watching each other from afar. So we just started talking a few years ago about doing something together.

Right last year actually is when I launched Danner design (his solo practice). And so we talked through the fall, and kind of worked everything out, and then we launched in November.

We've tried to keep a friendship first mentality for this partnership. Right now, it is kind of a strategic partnership. He still has his entity, and I have my entity and they come together under this Pangea umbrella.

How would you say kind of things are going right now? Compared to what you think things will be going like in 2-3 years time?

Well, I hope it looks different three years from now. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but we're kind of early days of Pangaea. This is where we're both kind of grinding, looking for work. And we are getting work. We have a nice, big project in Scotland, thanks to Stuart's efforts and proximity over there, it's right next to Royal golf courses that need to be remodelled. So that's been keeping us pretty busy.

And I've been doing prospecting, you know, with the contacts I have over in Asia and India and places like that, and some of those are getting really close. But these things take time, right Everybody I talked to in the industry who's gone off on their own or started their own company has basically told me the same thing. One of those things is that they wish they'd done it sooner. The second thing is it's going to be hard going for a while even if you are getting work with all the things that you have to consider and worry about with running a business, it takes a little while to get the machine kind of well oiled, if you will.

So I would like to think that three years from now, obviously this project that we're working on is going to be mostly done, even though I think they're going to phase some of it. And I would like to think that some of these other projects that we're chasing will will get across the line, and we'll be going forward, and we'll be that much further along, growing the brand and kind of increasing our presence in the industry.

Relative to what you know about running a more traditional landscape architecture or architecture practice, is there one advantage and one disadvantage that you've noticed with being a golf course architecture practice?

As you know golf course design is a very niche part of landscape architecture. Even though you don't necessarily have to be a landscape architect to be a golf course architect, you can find people with engineering backgrounds and architecture backgrounds and horticulture backgrounds in golf course architecture.

Basically, pretty much anybody can call themselves a golf course architect, which I suppose is a little bit of an advantage for the designer or the person wanting to call themselves a designer. Maybe not so advantageous for the clients or the other designers who are educated about what it is we actually do and what actually needs to be done for their project.

But I would say an advantage of having a golf course architecture firm over a landscape architecture firm is that we can bridge the gap. We end up working with landscape architects all the time because, in theory, they could do our job if they understood golf.

And most of these guys don't necessarily understand golf to the degree that we do so we have the ability to kind of bridge the gap in a multi disciplinary team where you have engineers and landscape architects and all these other disciplines kind of working together. Having the golf expert in the room is obviously the way you get golf course built. The advantage of being a landscape architecture or architecture practice is if I want more job security because usually there's a more diverse offering as far as services go.

As a golf course architect, I pretty much would have to set up a separate business name or something to go out there and install my services as a landscape architect, which I could do because I'm a licensed professional, but because golf is, you know, 95% of what I do, you are sort of, you can be sort of limited in that regard, unless you've worked really hard to go out there and sell yourself as a landscape architect.

The work is kind of one kind, whereas I feel with landscape architects, the advantage they have is there's usually a broader range of services, even if they specialize in, you know, something like playgrounds or parks, feel like there's a broader range that they have, as far as being able to secure different kinds of work.

The companies are usually bigger, which means there's more offering of benefits, and all the things that come with working for a corporation, basically, as opposed to a one man, Joe, you know, all the insurance, all the, all the extras that would come with working a full time job, you know, that's all on me. You know, I have to take care of that myself. Whereas, if you're if you're running a landscape architecture office, chances are you are big enough to be able to get some of those benefits. Whereas a golf course architect, I'm so small, you know, I can't get group insurance rates or anything like that. So there's other advantages and disadvantages, I would say. But I think the main thing is the fact that it's golf versus everything else.

How are you acquiring most of your work at the moment?

Generally networking, relationships, and persistence is all how we get work. We certainly try to keep a social media presence. We are always talking about which advertising opportunities might be worthwhile because like everything else, you want to stay in front of potential buyers. But in the golf business, it really is relationships you're generally only as good as last project that you've done. And you know, you got to have people who are willing to vouch for you and speak to your abilities and everything. So the more you can take advantage of your network, the better off you're going to be.

What does the day to day look like now at a super high level?

It's kind of all over the place at the minute, depending on where we are in a project. Prior to August for three months my routine was going to Scotland once every month just because we were at a point in our project over there where we were doing a lot of site reconnaissance and kind of attending meetings and opportunities with the council to get the project kind of kicked off and also start to put together the big picture puzzle of what it is they need to have done over there.

As far as one day in my life right now I usually wake up early and I'm looking at messages, you know, they come in from around the world, because a lot of my contacts are international contact, so I might wake up to a text message from India.

I try to keep the mornings open for highly focused work like if I actually need to do some drawings or knock out a proposal or write a set of specifications, anything where it requires a large chunk of effort and focused time to really get it done. I try to do that in the mornings as much as I possibly can.

The afternoons will generally be reserved for most of the Zoom calls domestically. Fridays are billing and also accounting type stuff. That's the other thing right now, I'm keeping track of all the receipts and everything and making sure everything's kind of well organized.

There's conferences every couple weeks with superintendents and owners. So I'll be in the car driving three to four hours one way to go meet with them and then come back in the evenings. It really is kind of a mixed bag, which is part of why it's so exciting because no single day is generally the same as the day before or the day after.

In fact, if I'm home long enough to get into some sort of set routine that might mean there's, there's a problem and I've gotten too comfortable. Or it can also mean that I'm in the middle a big push to get something done. As an example, I would say the next five or six days will all be very similar to me, because we are at a point in our project in Scotland, where we're pushing to get bid documents and construction drawings completed that they can go out to tender on their side and hopefully start some work this fall.

How do you approach your finances early on when it takes a while before any money comes in?

You also have to consider what you're going to pay yourself. I started off not taking a paycheck for a while. Savings were kind of taking care of monthly expenses for my family. Then as money started rolling in you built up a little bit more capital in the bank for the business to a point where you feel comfortable, and then you can start paying yourself. Living in the Bay Area, California, everybody's very quick to remind me how expensive it is out here and I agree.

How is your practice structured? It's like you're your own entity but you still work under the same umbrella which is Pangaea?

We're basically two friends who have agreed that we want to work together. But has his own legal business entity, which he had before, and I maintain mine and they come together under this business as Pangaea Golf Architecture.

Our agreement for the partnership is very kind of informal and casual. Let's say I find a project in Scotland and somebody calls me about the project, well, I'm going to say, Okay this actually might be more advantageous if they just contract with Stewart's entity and we work on it together.

As far as splitting the costs we have kind of a running ledger of shared costs, such as the website, software licenses, and things like that. We're just keeping track of all that so that when the time comes to go pay each other, we have all that factored in.

The kind of agreement we have is that if one person pulls in a project, they will basically take on the other as a sub-consultant to that project. If it's a smaller project, I might say, well, Stuart, I need you for a little bit of this, but not all of it.

And if it's a bigger project we might source the project together. Say somebody in Asia calls us, then we both need to go over there and be a part of work together. Even though they called me, we're basically chasing the project together.

The way we handle that is since they called me I would be the contracting entity, and I would still be leading the project. But because we've chased the project together and landed the project together under Pangea, we're basically going to be splitting the fee down the middle after we've considered things like sub-consultant expenses and any other administrative expenses that come with having to be the contracting entity. Then we'll both work on the project together.

Because it's early days we've formed this as a strategic partnership where the two entities are remaining separate for now, and we're working together under this Pangea umbrella. And we have recently talked about pushing Pangea forward as some sort of international business entity, but it doesn't seem like we're to that point yet.

Do you use any kind of unique tech for your golf course projects?

I do use a program called Autodesk ReCap, which is basically a plugin for Civil 3D that allows me to do point cloud data surveys and things like that very quickly and easily turn it into a legible topography or base map. The thing that we find a lot of times is that the client doesn't necessarily have access to the means of being able to do that. They do get a point cloud or a set of data from a surveyor but they don't have the ability themselves to turn it into a legible base map.

What's the biggest challenge?

It's figuring out the best way to spend your time. I would say as a small business owner, you wear a lot of different hats, you're kind of the the accountant, you're the marketer. You're also the guy doing the drawings and meeting the clients, and you got to be very careful about figuring out is this thing in front of me right now the important thing, or is it or is it something else? I think that's one of those things you just figure out over time.

The other thing too is really kind of figuring out which opportunity is actually worthwhile and which ones are not because sometimes somebody approaches you with a small thing that seems quick and easy and it might be some quick revenue coming through the door or whatever, but it could end up being more complicated than you or the client initially thought, and it could take up a lot more of your time and that's pulling you away from what it is you really want to be doing, which, in our case, would be sourcing big projects or finding the client that has deep pockets and a sandy link site somewhere on the coast.

If you're doing one thing, you're definitely not doing another. So you want to make sure that the things you're doing are the things that you want to be doing, and that you're not just doing something because there's a prospect of making a little bit of money on the front end.

You always have to be patient, in the golf industry, things don't necessarily happen quickly. So you really got to play the long game and sort of have the end in mind at all times but also have the ability to stay in the present and make sure you're addressing the most important thing at any given moment.