MC Fireside Chats – June 24th, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks, Modern Campground, and my dog here who is a lap dog and will not leave me alone but loves the outdoors. So say hello to Riley. Excited to be back here for another episode.

 It’s our fourth week episode. We’re going to talk about AI, technology, all kinds of stuff like that. We got one of our recurring guests. It’s summertime, Matt, like everybody seems to be missing and out having fun except for, us.

 But welcome back. Matt’s one of our recurring guests. I think maybe Cara will show up, but we’ll see. She’s supposed to be here today, but then two of the people are traveling Mychele and Kurtis is busy too.

 And then excited to welcome two of our special guests, Craig Alsup and Scott Lengel. Did I pronounce your guys’s name right? It’s really tiny on my little screen. Scott Lengel. I forgot an L, didn’t I?

 All right. It’s really small. You have no idea how tiny this is on my phone because my studio is in the back of a running. But anyway, so we’re going to have a good conversation about AI, talk about a bunch of guys’ companies, things like that and some of the stuff that’s happening in the world with technology.

 So let’s just go around the room and briefly introduce ourselves. Matt, you want to start?

[00:01:44] Matt Whitermore: Yes. Hey Brian. I’ll be gone next month. I do have a family. We do go on vacation, so I’ll, 

[00:01:50] Brian Searl: not on Wednesdays. What day do you go on vacation, man?

[00:01:55] Matt Whitermore: Yes. So I am director at Unhitched Management and Climb Capital. We are an operator and third-party manager and investor in campgrounds, RV parks. And we are approaching 40, 40 assets either under management or owned.

 We just closed on one in Branson, Missouri as of yesterday. So that’s exciting. New market for us and that one should be a lot of fun. Excited to jump into AI.

 I I spend way too much time on Claude code about 12 hours a day. Love, love to talk AI.

[00:02:28] Brian Searl: Which one did you, it’s, I’m assuming since it’s closed, it’s public, so you can say which one in Branson?

[00:02:33] Matt Whitermore: Yes. It is called Musicland Campground in in Branson, Missouri.

[00:02:38] Brian Searl: I’ve been to the KOA there a bunch of times. We used to do work for them way, way back when I don’t know, eight, nine, ten years ago. It’s a good property, but yeah, Branson’s an interesting city, especially during Christmas time.

[00:02:50] Matt Whitermore: I’ve only ever been for the conference. I gotta check it out for Christmas time, 

[00:02:53] Brian Searl: the conference is almost during Christmas time. Christmas in Branson starts in I actually, I don’t even think Christmas in Branson stops, but I think it actually starts in like September or October. All right, Scott, introduce yourself, please, sir.

[00:03:09] Scott Lengel: [inaudible]

[00:03:10] Brian Searl: we can’t hear you, Scott. You look like you’re muted.

[00:03:17] Scott Lengel: [inaudible]

[00:03:17] Brian Searl: Still nothing. All right, Craig, you want to go while Scott figures out his mic?

[00:03:21] Craig Alsup: Yeah, hey. So I’m Craig Alsup. I own Askew’s Landing RV Campground. We are a family campground in Central Mississippi, right along Interstate 20.

 We’re pretty close to the Vicksburg National Battlefield and some of that sort of Civil War history, stuff like that. So we get tons of guests come through that are going to the parks and doing those types of things. So yeah, I do a little consulting with other park owners here and there just around marketing and systems and things like that.

 Some of the stuff that I’ve learned over the last few years of turning around a really old campground. Because that’s where I started out in this world. 

[00:03:58] Brian Searl: Awesome. Welcome to the show, Craig. Appreciate you being here. Looking forward to hearing what you got going on. Scott, you got your mic going?

[00:04:02] Scott Lengel: Yeah, can you hear me now? Testing one, two, three.

[00:04:05] Brian Searl: We gotcha.

[00:04:06] Scott Lengel: Hey guys, how you all doing? So yeah, I’m Scott Lengel, the CEO and founder of a company called AdventureGenie, which is an AI-based trip planning tool, application, system, website that caters to the RVer, the camper, the traveler even the road warrior. And we started a few years ago after I had a quite a long career in the technology industry.

 I spent a couple of decades with a little firm out in Seattle called Microsoft. And then me and my wife retired, started traveling the world. COVID happened, started RVing, and the rest is history.

[00:04:49] Brian Searl: Never heard of Microsoft. I’ve heard of Macro Hard that Elon is starting, but I haven’t heard of Microsoft. Welcome, Scott. Appreciate you being here.

 Excited to jump into more about what AdventureGenie does. So typically I’ll ask and start the show to our recurring guests, like just Matt this week, but something that’s come across your desk. But I want to kick off something first, Matt. And I want to just talk a little bit about the adoption curve of some of this technology.

 So we, we have these shows once a month, obviously. I do my Outwired podcast. I’m big into AI. Matt, we’ve covered your journey and how you’re getting big into AI.

 Obviously I’m sure Scott is, we’ll find out how much Craig is, right? But one of the things that interests me in this industry is, and you’ve always heard this narrative long before AI, right? Is that campgrounds are further behind in technology than hotels is the common theme, right? And I talked to a guy yesterday who does like flooring or something like that.

 And he was like, the flooring industry is so far behind the campground industry. And I thought we were behind, but then I come into campgrounds and I see this. And so I want to talk a little bit about this adoption curve and get you gentlemen’s thoughts on some of this stuff because it confounds me, to be honest with you. And I know that, and I know that people take time to change, and I know people take time to adopt new technology.

 The speed at which AI is moving is obviously a whole different animal. But I’m just curious of your thoughts as to why that happens. And here’s what triggered this conversation for me. I was looking at Mark Koep’s Facebook group the other day, and someone, I don’t even remember his name, but you can go find the post if you really want to know who it is.

 posted about I’m getting quotes for a new miniature golf course at my property. And stay with me, I promise I’m going to loop back around, right? And he said, and in the comments they were like, we’ve gotten quotes from people who will build this miniature golf course from $15 to $20,000 a hole. And a nine-hole golf course he wanted to run was $175,000 is what he was quoted by a couple companies to build this thing at his campground.

 And so I went and did the math with AI, right? And I said, if you have, let’s say a seasonal campground that’s 100 sites, you’re 70% occupied. You look at your 12 to 16 weekends over the summer where you’re probably that high occupied and then midweek and then you, that ends up being like, and then you throw in like 2,000 extra people randomly who might just hit you weekends. If every single person who stayed with you, every single one of them played miniature golf for three to four dollars a hole, or three to four dollars a round, right?

 It would take him nine years to break even on building that miniature golf course. So this is what sparked the conversation for me. I’m like, obviously not all owners are like that. He probably has his reasons for doing miniature golf, right?

 Not saying that he’s wrong for his campground. But it makes me wonder why people are willing to strongly consider miniature golf courses for 175,000 or even 125 or 100 or 75,000. But we can’t get them to spend $100 a month, $200 a month, $300 a month on Facebook ads or Google ads or marketing or let alone AI, right? So I’m curious, Matt, what’s your take on that first? Do you mind sharing? Just off the cuff?

[00:07:54] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, to address the the miniature golf piece of it, really interesting conversation in that yeah, the ROI maybe doesn’t sound that appealing, but maybe there’s an idea that it’s going to drive occupancy or it’s going to drive ADR. It’s an amenity that’s going to lift, things that are not right in the ROI of selling golf itself. But, it’s so funny. We I’ve been diving deep into a marketing project, a couple different marketing projects conversion tracking, which is a whole new world for us, right?

 We went crazy with paid ads, but we didn’t really understand how, what the ROAS was. We didn’t really have the metrics and the analytics to tie that in. So it’s, that’s a world that I’m so deep into right now that we spent a bunch of money. This is before my time, but, years ago, spending a ton of money on Facebook ads, paid ads, Google ads without really measuring anything.

 And then that, that became untenable and we just shut everything off. And we haven’t really been running Facebook ads or Google ads or anything for quite a bit of time. We’ve been surviving as the, most of the operators that you describe of word of mouth, repeat customers, occupancy is fine, ADR is fine. We don’t need it.

 And we’re, I think we’re experiencing the ups and downs of the transient market that’s, documented in all the different publications. And we’re realizing that we need to perform, right? We there’s no excuse not to manage revenue and make the properties perform to the best of their ability. We have all the tools, we have all the efficiencies.

 We’re figuring it out. I’m learning it as I go. But that’s, there’s no excuse to not have the knowledge anymore, to not have the tools. Everything’s at our fingertips.

 And that’s what it makes me think of is that, with all these advancements in technology and you’ve, it’s not even just about AI, right? It’s, one of my, one of my focuses has been, and as I’ve become a little bit more knowledgeable in this world of technology and coding a little bit, it’s, AI isn’t always the answer. It’s often not the answer. A script or an automation or n8n or just more efficiently integrating some systems is a lot of times the answer.

 But AI, if you’re not if you’re not advanced in that world, AI will help you get to that non-AI answer that much faster. And that’s what I’m trying to adopt and live by these days.

[00:10:39] Brian Searl: So two things there, right? I want to play devil’s advocate, right? Number one is, I think unless there, unless and until, and maybe this, hopefully this is just a dip and everything comes back and the industry will be great in the second half because gas prices are falling and we’ll be fine in 2027 and whatever else, right? Doesn’t matter what I believe or what I think is going to happen, but hopefully that’s what happens.

 But I’m on the, I’m on the same kind of pages you, I think, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but this is what I heard, is to agree if you want, right? Is that there needs to be an impetus for adoption of the technology. There needs to be a reason for you to go out and say, I need Google ads, I need Facebook ads, I need marketing, I need a new website, I need AI, I need whatever it is. And if that impetus isn’t there, because let’s just pretend we’re in an industry that’s been almost completely full and recession-proof since 1960, and has never had anything bad happen to it then the impetus hasn’t been there.

 Is that generally the first part of what you’re saying, Matt?

[00:11:37] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, and that’s, the way I think about the industry is that was, the impetus really has in some ways nothing to do with technology. It has to do with the economics of private equity coming into the space, right? I tell new investors this all the time that you may feel like you’re getting a smoking deal on a campground investment, oh great, it’s a 10% cap rate or whatever, and you’re going to get seller financing. But you’re resetting the basis of that investment, right?

 Mom and pop might be into that campground for $500,000 total basis. They built it themselves. They’ve been at it for 40 years. They’ve never had a mortgage on it.

 Now you’re paying $2 million for that campground. They could get by on low ADRs, mediocre occupancy, no marketing because they don’t have to pay a mortgage that’s $10,000 a month. You do, probably. And right you might feel like you’re getting a smoking deal on a, on this great new investment opportunity of outdoor hospitality.

 But I try to caution people that you’re putting yourself in a box financially where you have to crush it and you have to perform to the best of your ability just to stay alive in a lot of ways, which I think people don’t realize a lot of time.

[00:12:59] Brian Searl: But that’s still the same impetus, right? You get in the box through your own will, whether or you’re not, you’re getting into the box when you are, you’re into it now. And then the impetus is, oh shit, I’m in a box.

[00:13:08] Matt Whitermore: Yeah. Yep. And then you have to leverage the technology to become more efficient and to hit your mark. That’s the way I look at it.

[00:13:15] Brian Searl: Yeah, or find somebody who can help you with it. And that’s the same going back to I took paper reservations and I want to do online reservations, right? It’s all the things, it’s not just AI and marketing, right? It’s the impetus of all that stuff, which lends itself mostly to technology, but it’s always that thing.

 But then there’s the other flip side of it is the miniature golf course is the, how do, and do you see this changing? Because I texted this to a couple people yesterday and they both said the same thing to me. And I won’t name them, right? But they both said the same thing to me.

 They said, yeah, basically the industry hasn’t changed in 15 years. And I looked back on it and I’ve been in this industry since 2011, right? 15 years, 16 years almost. And I realized they’re right.

 What we’ve done in the industry, just picking on me because I know me, right? With marketing and technology and AI and all the things now, we’ve pushed a couple people forward, a couple large groups, a couple, right? But the overall, by and large, he’s right. The industry hasn’t changed.

 So then the other question is how do we get the industry to not change fully, because they don’t need to. A lot of what they do is correct. Like you said, there might be reasons to add miniature golf that drive occupancy or whatever else. But how do we get them to calculate the actual ROI on things, to look at the purchases theyre making and then have a simultaneous understanding of maybe if I run Facebook ads and I do conversion tracking like you’re talking about, and that’s going to give me a 10x ROI, whereas the miniature golf will only give me a two.

 Because I think I could go to a conference and I feel like drop hundreds of thousands of dollars on a cabin, tens of thousands of dollars on gem mining, a hundred thousand dollars on miniature golf, and they’ll just walk right by all the, most of the digital people.

[00:14:54] Scott Lengel: I have an opinion on that.

[00:14:55] Brian Searl: Please share. I don’t want to put Matt on the spot just by Matt. Matt’s probably I’m never coming on the show again.

[00:15:02] Scott Lengel: I think you do it with data. And I’ve got to imagine that the outdoor hospitality industry, which is more you guys than me, is a gold mine of data. You have decades of reservation data and customer data and preferences. And I imagine you have a really good insight as to what your clients, what your customers, what your RVers, that’s me, are looking for.

 And that is where AI can be a huge differentiator. AI, now I’m not saying it’s easy, and I’m not saying that the mom and pop campground owner can do this on their own. But oh my god, the technology absolutely exists. That’s where AI thrives with these large language models that y’all hear about and probably know about.

 And layering on these reasoning engines on top of them and figuring out what do people like. And it’s hard. Traditionally, this was a software problem, a data science problem, a data warehouse problem that was non-trivial to solve. But with the AI engines of today, I’m not going to trivialize it and I’m not going to say it’s simple, but if you’re looking for patterns and trends that were really hard to find in the past, it’s become unbelievably easy to do right now.

 So the technology is there. The baseline technology is absolutely there. Finding out ways how to harness it. And the scary thing is, as Matt said, he’s already using Claude to write code.

 So these systems are now capable of, used to be like self-healing. Now they’re self-developing. And and it might be a little bit scary, but, used under the right guidance and so forth, it really is all doable.

[00:17:05] Brian Searl: What do you think, Craig? Our only campground owner.

[00:17:07] Craig Alsup: Yeah. You guys aren’t in the club, but something like that. Yeah, I think that, speaking from my specific experience with my park, when I bought into my park a few years ago there was no online reservation system.

 There was no, added amenities that, like we, there’s a 50-acre fishing lake, but they weren’t charging people to come fishing for the day. They didn’t have day, month, annual passes for fishing or swimming or kayaking or, they didn’t have kayaks to rent. So there were just so many sort of low-hanging fruit things, right? That, yeah, for better or worse, I see the owner like previous to me man, he was just tired.

 Like he’d just been doing it for so many years, right? And so for him, like you said a minute ago about just mortgages and stuff he didn’t owe any money on the park. He was doing okay. He was getting, a little pocket money, right?

 Like he, he was making enough off of it that he I don’t think he felt like he had to, right? And so then if we look at like trends, if we look at the stats around campgrounds in the US, so many of them are owned by people probably that fit that bill, right? They’ve owned the campground forever. They don’t owe anything on it.

 They don’t need to go out and learn AI. They don’t need to add a bunch of, things that are going to generate extra income. I feel like at least in the case of many, they are just coasting on what they’ve always done, right?

[00:18:39] Brian Searl: Because their margins are enough higher, is what you’re saying.

[00:18:41] Craig Alsup: And their margins are crazy, right? Like it’s all profit. Like the guy the guy that owned my campground, he had two staff that he was paying very little that basically just, they got a site, and they got their site free and they got a little pocket change. But he wasn’t spending money on anything, right?

 And then I come in and I’m like, oh, we got to redo this. We got to fix this. We got to add this, right? And some of that, man, I’ve had to pull back on a little bit because, do we need all of those different things?

 And really start to look at the ROI of things a little bit closer than I was at first. I think at first it was more of shotgun blast, let’s get this thing way different than it was so that we let the world know we’re here. But nevertheless, a little bit on that and trying to be a little more strategic. But man, yeah the use of AI they’re a group of people that are probably the majority of campground owners in the US at least they’re never going to adopt AI.

 And that just is what it is, right? They’re never going to run Facebook ads, Google ads. That just is what it is. I think honestly we’re talking to the vast minority when were talking about these things anyway right now.

 And I don’t honestly see that changing until all the camp, until more and more of the campgrounds change hands, right? You read the book The Tipping Point before? Yeah, so I think until we reach the tipping point in the industry where it’s you gotta do this stuff or, your business is gonna tank basically. Until we reach that point out of all the parks within a 50-mile radius of me I am probably the most advanced, have the most revenue streams, most of the others are right where my park was when I bought it.

[00:20:27] Brian Searl: but like I think we said, like the impetus then is, it has to be economic, right? And I don’t think we’re, I don’t think we’re having a crazy down year this year. I think we’re having a weird year, but I don’t think it’s a crazy down year. So we’re not quite at that impetus for most of those people who have higher margins yet. Probably not even close.

[00:20:46] Craig Alsup: No I think they can accept the ups and downs a lot better because they don’t have that, the mortgage, they don’t have the high output.

[00:20:58] Brian Searl: Okay. Fair. All right. Matt, any thoughts on that? You unmuted, so I didn’t know if you had a thought. Actually, I’m gonna ask Scott to jump in.

[00:21:07] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, I was in a meeting earlier today and somebody asked me if they thought if the AI hype was coming to an end, right? If it was going to die down a little bit. And I said to them, not a chance, like we’re just getting started here. And it’s, I think you summed it up pretty well that the impetus is economic.

 People have to evolve, adversity causes people to evolve. And I think that’s the key here that it was adversity for me that, that sent me into a, two-year deep dive into AI to learn it as fast as I could. Because it was the threat of loss of income becoming obsolete. Just seeing that it was, it’s an interest level it’s exciting to me, but more so than that, it’s fear of, I better learn this or I’m not going to be able to add value to an organization or feed my family or all these things that, it’s, so I think it’s pretty amazing.

 And then you reach this point where and don’t get me wrong, this is not a statement of I know more than anyone else or whatever, I’m still learning. And it’s this big, complex, scary, exciting thing. And then you get to a point and you realize it’s just text. AI agents are just text files. Large language models, it’s just text, right? It’s prediction and it’s models and it’s algorithms, but at the end of the day it’s literally just text. And making text do interesting things, adding some automation to some things some instructions, some context.

 Like it’s huge and it’s amazing and it’s incredible, but it’s, once you get to a certain point, you realize like it’s actually scary how simple it is in a lot of ways. I hope I don’t overstate that, but that’s been something I’ve been reflecting on the last few months that on one end it’s scary and huge and intimidating, and on the other end it’s it’s actually basic.

[00:23:15] Brian Searl: Yeah, I don’t think, I think you have to cross that threshold, right? Like for me, I was on a, I think it was last week on Fireside Chats, Sandy Ellington was asking me like, you’re the guy I rely on to tell me what’s new in AI, what’s the latest, greatest thing you’re working on. And taking it in my head I’m not really, I’m using AI to code, but there’s not really a fancy new feature that I tried in Claude in the last month that I can tell this woman that is the fancy new thing, right? Because just like I think you articulated in the beginning is that I’m using it to code, do research, build functions build polished databases, link systems together, all that kind of stuff.

 And that’s AI, but that’s also the same AI, maybe a new model number, right? But generally the same thing. It’s not a new feature or like we went through this period I think of two, three years where everybody was like, oh, this killer new feature, it can operate your computer, it can do this, it can do whatever. And now we’re just in the everybody build shit on top of it.

 All right, so impetus number one is economic. Can impetus number two be the consumer, Scott? Can the consumer, through either being forced to adopt AI, like on Google and Apple and everything else, right? Or through an expectation of I went to a campground and they had AI chat or an AI phone agent that answered the phone call 24/7, why aren’t you? Can the consumer be a driver of change too?

[00:24:30] Scott Lengel: 100%. And so I had the opportunity to give the keynote presentation at a large OEM dealer meeting, OEM manufacturer of RVs. A large firm, you know their name, but shall remain nameless. And the topic that I gave it on was the future of AI in the RV industry, shockingly.

 And the approach that I took, and I’m getting back to the consumer side here, the approach that I took was, so imagine the audience were a couple of hundred, 300 dealers principals folks that sell RVs. And the challenge that I put out to them is that if you’re not thinking about AI, considering AI, leveraging AI today, you’re going to be behind because, and maybe we put this in the context of campground owners, because your customers are absolutely using AI today. And for the folks that are selling RVs, I came in and said, let’s consider myself as a buyer of an RV. And here are my specs, here’s what I’m interested in, here’s what I’m looking to pay.

 Hey ChatGPT, or model of the month that you want to use, help me negotiate the best deal. So as a consumer, I am way ahead of the game. The dealers used to have all the cards, all the data, all the knowledge, all the strategy and techniques. But now as a consumer, I am suddenly more powerful, knowledgeable, strategic than they are if they’re not using AI.

 And literally what I did was I built two competing chats, two competing agents. And I said, let’s consider me as a consumer coming in as a buyer, help me pitch the best deal here, request the best deal. Let me put on my seller hat, holy cow, that’s what just came in, let me develop the best response, best answers to their questions, and went back and forth. So I would contend that I don’t care what industry or what business you’re in, but let’s talk about the campground industry since we’re here, that if you’re a campground owner or a campground conglomerate, that if you’re not leveraging AI in some way, and you don’t need to develop your own, there’s plenty of systems you could be leveraging.

 If you’re not, you’re going to be behind the game. But Craig and I, when we were in the green room talking a little bit, he said that he was using AI to check to see how his campground was being portrayed and coming up. So your customers, your clients absolutely are using AI to get more insight. By the way, we built an application that does that allows the user to step a level above all that, abstract themselves from all this nonsense, personalize it.

 Quick little plug, an example of what we do with AI. Customer comes into AdventureGenie and says, hey, I’d like to take a six-week trip from Bluffton, South Carolina to the National Parks of the Southwest. Through personalization, we know that they have a certain type of rig, that there’s certain type of campgrounds that they like to stay in with certain amenities, and we know what they like to see and do along the way. And personalize, create that custom itinerary for them.

 And the same thing will happen in the broader world, broader RV industry and in the campground industry for sure. The better that you can provide customized itineraries, stays, and so forth, the better off you are. And by the way, one last point on that, again, you guys have a gold mine of information. You know what your customers are looking for, you know how they like to travel.

 You might even know, oh, if you guys have a network of campgrounds, oh, they were coming from Jacksonville, Florida, and then to Savannah, Georgia, and then to Asheville, North Carolina. There’s a high degree of likelihood that they’re going to go to Nashville next because they they have this particular profile, demographics, and so forth. So you start predicting stuff like that, and oh my god, are you opening up a whole new world of opportunities.

[00:28:58] Brian Searl: All right, so devil’s advocate. I’m a campground owner listening to this show. I just heard Scott and he articulated everything really well, right? Like from my side as an AI geek, I’m like, yeah, I’m on board, right? I believe you.

 From the campground owner side, I’m hearing you say my customers are using AI. Why do I care?

[00:29:17] Scott Lengel: Because they are so well informed and so armed with the information that y’all have to be prepared to respond to that as well. And part of it is just feeding the beast too. The more that, where is this old AI in the sky getting this information from? It’s out there.

 The more that you put out on your own websites and maybe even Meta and Google and so forth, the more that you put out there in a way that they’re looking for it, then the more likely you’re going to be coming up as recommendations or in apps like ours, same way that we do it.

[00:29:59] Brian Searl: But how does it impact me as a campground owner? And what I mean by that, let me try to ask the question in a little more narrow way. Like right now campers go to Google, they, have for 20 years, right? And they see my keyword rankings and I put all this money into my SEO and my website and everything else. And I’m number one or number two in my market.

 And I’m pretty constantly full other than maybe this year is a little bit of a hiccup because of the transient market we talked about. And maybe I’m looking at that, maybe I’m not, maybe I just think I have a down year and it’ll come back up and I’m looking out the window and I’m seeing my park is full. So everybody’s telling me that AI is important, that they’re going to now ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini or AdventureGenie or whatever else, right? But how does that change?

 I’m still here. I’m still fine. Like, why do I need to pay attention to this? Or do I just need the impetus and I have to wait for that impetus? So what is that impetus? When do I start having to notice it is what I’m asking.

[00:30:47] Scott Lengel: Yesterday.

[00:30:49] Brian Searl: We say, right? Like we’re the geeks, like we say that, right?

[00:30:53] Scott Lengel: How about this? I don’t know, I’m riffing here a little bit, but how about as a campground owner, like Craig did, was go out to ChatGPT and say, okay, I have a campground in this geography, here are the amenities that I’m offering.

 What are people looking for? What are RVers looking for that, that fit this these particular criteria? I think you can use AI. Now this is where mom and pop I think could do this today.

 Go out to ChatGPT and say, help me find the best campground in Bluffton, South Carolina. And if you’re, and you own a campground there and you’re not coming up, find out what’s coming up. What is being suggested or come to AdventureGenie. And you could get into a conversation.

 Ask some follow-up questions. Hey, why didn’t my campground show up? Hey, by the way, here’s my URL, here’s my website. Go and scrape my website and tell me why you didn’t recommend me.

 You’re going to be blown, if you own a campground, you don’t need to be a technologist, you don’t need to be writing code for this. Just have a conversation as if you had the world’s best advisor, business advisor sitting at your side. It’s almost as if you have McKinsey in your back pocket for free. It’s hello Mr. Advisor, Mr. or Mrs. Advisor, can you tell me what I need to, take a look at my camp at my website.

 Go and scrape my website and tell me what’s good, what’s bad, what’s ugly. What are the current trends that people are looking for? What am I missing? Just go and have it analyze your website.

 And then go and have it analyze your campground under the covers as well. I think there’s lots of ways that, campground owners can be leveraging this technology today.

[00:32:44] Brian Searl: Okay, and talk us through what you did. Talk us through what you did. When you said you’ve done this for your park, right?

[00:32:55] Craig Alsup: Yeah. Yeah. So I was going to say, in, in some of the marketing talks that I’ve done at the, the conferences and stuff like that, I’ve been at Branson the last couple of years. One of the things that I realized is, I talk about AI and stuff like that with people.

 But for so many parks, just when I talk about optimizing your Google business they’re like, they just look at me with a blank stare, right? Talk about okay, yeah, what are you doing to get your website listed in various local directories like Chambers of Commerce and stuff like that? People a lot of times just look at me with a blank stare, right? And so I think that’s such a big, like there, there are more missing pieces than just the AI piece, right?

 But for me, the AI piece has been so helpful for me to weed through the mess. What you were saying, Scott, about just analyze my website, point out things to me that I should improve and do better, right? It’s like using AI to take, to gather data on what I should do in the real world. I’m cutting so much time off of everything I do, right?

 Scripts for my store staff to use when they answer the phone. Even just I think that for me the most, probably the most useful at least current things that we’re doing with AI are those types of things where we’re using AI to cut to the chase, to, figure out what’s going on and what we need to do differently and then to do it in the real world. Versus, just being stuck in doing the same old things that we’ve always done. So much of mine is just digging into AI and going, hey, give me some scripts for this.

 Help me write help me get, put together a list of things that my maintenance guys need to be checking every day. It’s just I’m not having to use the brain power for those things anymore so that I have more time to pay attention to systems and figuring out, new things to do. I have time to think in my business rather than just spend all my time doing all these tasks and developing all these things that the AI can do far faster and probably better than me. And so in, in a lot of ways that’s what I’ve used it for thus far.

 Now I do have, like I have an AI chat thing on my website that pushes through to our regular phone system. I have an AI system running in the background that’s emailing people sending review requests and things like that to boost up my reviews. And to respond to reviews when they come in through Google and Facebook and all the different places. And I think so much of it for me has just been going like, okay, how can I get more done faster?

 And how can I if Jay Abraham says it like this, like a business that’s unexamined isn’t worth owning. Or a business that’s unoptimized isn’t worth owning. And that’s my take on it is that I don’t know, I, I have no interest in owning a business that just floats. And so for me it’s like an easier I’m easy on the uptake as far as AI and stuff because I’m like, hey man, it’s going to help me cut some hours off the time it takes me to do things, and it’s going to help me to more quickly, more effectively examine my business and look for the nooks and crannies of extra money that could come extra, also just goodwill of our guests.

 And if you want to, if you want to figure out what people like or hate about your, your park, go onto one of the AI systems, give it your review link, for Google or wherever, tell it to scrape all your reviews and tell you, the 10 things that people like the most about your park. And then furthermore, ask it, how should I double down on what I’m currently doing that those people are already saying that they love? And the flip side of that is, what are the things that people don’t like about my park? And what are the best ways for me to fix those the most, quickly, efficiently cost effectively to make sure that we turn those frowns upside down.

[00:37:09] Brian Searl: Yeah.

[00:37:12] Scott Lengel: And what’s the, and what’s the white space? What are the things you’re not even thinking about? People aren’t giving you reviews on good, bad, or ugly today. What are your opportunities to have you leapfrog the competition that, because again, the big brain in the sky has figured out what others are doing really well already.

[00:37:32] Craig Alsup: Yeah. using stuff like that and and questioning, having these chats back and forth with AI systems. At least partly responsible for the fact that we’ve taken our reviews on Google from 108 total reviews when I took over, it was a like 40-year-old park when I took over. We had 108 Google reviews. We were at like a 4.1 stars.

 And we’re at almost 4.9, like I think we’re like 4.88 or something now. And we’ve got we’re closing in on 1300 reviews now in three years. And

[00:38:08] Matt Whitermore: wow.

[00:38:09] Craig Alsup: Complete turnaround on those. And you look at all the parks around me, actually I have painstakingly through AI looked at all the reviews for all the campgrounds in my state, that I could find through AI. And we are beating almost all of the state parks that have been around forever in number of reviews and ranking. And we’re beating I think all but maybe two parks in my entire state as far as number of reviews and then, ranking we’re up there as well in the top, top. So I think, if you don’t care about the money of it, at least care about the customers.

 And if you care about your customers, use AI to make your systems, to make your park run perfectly, to figure out what they love and what they don’t love, and make that better.

[00:39:02] Brian Searl: Okay. So the impetus is, maybe impetus is economic, maybe consumer, but we still I feel like we still haven’t closed the loop here yet. I don’t know what that tipping point is. Like consumer mass adoption is one thing, but the tipping point where the campground owner notices it enough to make action, I still think that just lands back in the economic bucket.

 Like I think there’s going to be some campground owners like you, Craig, for example, and Matt, like what you do at Unhitched and private equity and as management groups take over and new owners come in who are using these tools, that’s going to be an impetus. But I don’t think the consumer is going to be the mass adoption impetus that we thought it was. Like you look at something like email marketing, right? This is a massive thing in campgrounds.

 Everybody get on my email list. I’ll email all 5,000 people who stayed with me for the last three years and talk about the cabin that I have available open this weekend. Doesn’t matter if they’re in an RV when they stayed with us and they don’t have any interest in a cabin, I’m just going to blast my list and blast my list and blast my list, right? But that’s changing.

 Now we have Google who’s announced AI inbox and Google and Apple are both going to summarize your emails for you. And all of a sudden those emails that you’ve worked on for hours and hours agonizing over the design and the layout and the buttons and all the action and everything else aren’t even going to be read by the consumer anymore. They’re going to be summarized, if they’re even summarized in the top most important things the AI decides. So then how does that change?

 Like I feel like you’re going to see people blasting 5,000 people on their email for the next 20 years and not still having that impetus from the consumer to recognize that nobody’s opening my emails. Does that make sense? So that’s why I’m saying maybe it’s not the impetus, the consumer is the impetus, it’s the economic downstream of the consumers not opening my email anymore, consumer doesn’t have as much brand recognition of me, will remember me as much, and then I’m also not doing enough to be showing up in ChatGPT, which downstream leads to economic issues.

[00:41:02] Matt Whitermore: yeah, we’re jumping into, you mentioned email marketing, we’re jumping into a big project to revamp our email marketing. And, after scoping it out, the real big lift with AI is just much more efficient, automated segmentation of the list. And personalization of the marketing message and content, right?

 Do they have a pet? Do they have kids? Are they a prior customer? What kind of rig do they have, right?

 So we’re essentially building a database of all of our customers and everything we know about them safely and securely. And that becomes a knowledge base, right? And then we plug Claude into it and Claude helps us segment that and then message to those different segments. And it’s nothing revolutionary, but it’s something that we wouldn’t even have dreamed of attempting to do two years ago because, we don’t have the marketing staff to, to make that happen.

 We’re plugging in an Airtable database with an n8n workflow with Claude API with Klaviyo, and into our, we use Newbook for booking. So it’s all this flow of data which is, pretty amazing because I’m, I’m 35 years old. I grew up with a computer. I’ve, in that respect, I’m expected to be, tech native, but I’ve done plenty of exporting a spreadsheet, exporting a CSV from this system, doing a little processing to it, uploading it to this system.

 And there’s some leakage and, you’re not going to, you get busy with other things and you’re not going to always do that. And that’s like a, should be a thing of the past. And I think people have these big ideas of building AI agents and AI employees and it’s no, it could just be a really simple reasoning step that gets plugged into a Zapier or a Make or an n8n with a database and just connection, right? Connection of systems, integration of systems that two years ago, three years ago would have been hours and hours of import export processing spreadsheets that you just don’t need to do it anymore.

[00:43:28] Brian Searl: Yeah, and the database is the smart way to go. It prevents the hallucinations for the most part, right? Because you’re actually feeding it the data versus asking it to come up with data or find data or analyze whatever, right? Like here’s the data, use this data and then tell me about my customer list or what can you take away from it or where do they come from or how far are they driving or what all I know about them or when do they stay or things like that, right?

 I think it’s interesting is what I like to add. Whenever I’m analyzing data because sometimes there’s a specific question I want, but many times it’s the question that I don’t know to ask. And so if you ask a especially like a perplexity computer or a Manus or something like that can really dig into these files on a long-term basis. Claude’s great, Claude code can do that.

 I was talking about Claude on the desktop, right? But just really digging in there and just saying, what’s something interesting that I might not have known about this list of 2,000 campers? Oh, really? 

[00:44:26] Scott Lengel: I think you go ahead.

[00:44:28] Brian Searl: No, finish your thought and then I have a question for you. 

[00:44:30] Scott Lengel: Yeah I think you touched on something really important. It’s having your own data as well. And that’s where these AI workflows, systems really become powerful because, there’s a massive amount of information available now out in the large language models and it’s very generic and that works great to solve the general problem. But when you couple it like Matt’s doing and you mentioned there Brian and Craig you probably are as well, when you couple it with your own custom data, your own databases, your own client lists, your own, website information, when you couple that public LLM knowledge with your private information, that’s where magic happens and you become unbelievably powerful.

[00:45:18] Brian Searl: All right, so you’re, I have a question for you, Scott. It’s about AdventureGenie. I’m going to give you a hard question, okay? Don’t shoot the messenger.

 I just, I’m curious of what your thought is on this, right? Yep. So nobody really knows what the future of AI is, where it goes, where it ends up, right? It probably never ends up anywhere, it keeps progressing.

[00:45:35] Scott Lengel: Yeah, Claude knows, but go on.

[00:45:39] Brian Searl: Claude fabled it and then there was an export control. But specific to AdventureGenie and your business and trip planning, like obviously there is still a tremendous amount of use in the visual interface of the trip planning piece, right? Where do you see that going in the future?

 Because it interests me I think we’re headed very quickly toward voice being the interface for most things. But there’s still going to be a loop that needs closed with some kind of show me photos, whether that’s on my TV or a hologram device or my Meta glasses or whatever it is, right? But where do you see that interface going? Because I’m not one that I believe in the model and the value I think of AdventureGenie.

 I’m not sure they’re going to go to adventuregenie.com forever. What do you think?

[00:46:23] Scott Lengel: Okay, great question. I love provocative questions, by the way. I’m going to rewind a little bit because the question could also be, why the heck would anyone use AdventureGenie when they have ChatGPT? And so I’m going to start there.

 And really the difference is, it’s like going to Netflix or Amazon and getting the same answer for everyone. And if you go to ChatGPT, pick your favorite tool, you go to ChatGPT today and say, I want to take that trip from A to B, it will not be customized for you. It doesn’t know your preferences. It doesn’t know very much about campgrounds sadly right now.

 So it really doesn’t have a lot of information about campgrounds. And it’s horrible at routing. So a generic system like that today is not going to suffice. And that’s why we built AdventureGenie.

 It’s highly customized, personalized, RV-based safe routing, RV safe routing, things to see and do along the way. And we know a lot about campgrounds and make a great match for you. So we will say, Brian, in this location, this particular campground with a 97% likelihood, you’re going to love it. While Craig, that might not be your cup of tea because you want something more luxurious or less and so forth.

 So that’s the differentiating thing there. Now to the question about the interface, that is again where we shine. You can use ChatGPT and you’re not going to get a nice little route and you’re not going to be able to zoom in and you’re not going to be able to zoom into the campground level and even look at the how you traverse your campground or look at the individual sites. So I don’t think that stuff ever goes away.

 You can go back to TripTiks from decades ago or the Roadtripper paradigm, folks are very visual. They want and we have not reached that tipping point that I heard about earlier, especially the largest population I believe still, what’s the average age of a camper today? When I look around my campgrounds, I see a lot of gray hair still. And, those folks aren’t, I did see one guy wearing the Meta glasses the other day, which was pretty cool, but generally that’s not where they are just yet.

 Five years from now, Brian, I’m probably with you. Yeah, it’s going to change drastically. Will they ever want to, they do want to get away from paper, 100%. Nobody wants paper anymore.

 But, if you get it on your phone or on your tablet or in your glasses, now we’re talking something really compelling. And I don’t know, let’s ask one of the models what they say.

[00:49:00] Brian Searl: to be clear, I’m saying, I’m not saying AdventureGenie can’t have a place in your glasses. I’m just saying adventuregenie.com might not be the answer.

[00:49:09] Scott Lengel: Yeah. Yes, absolutely. 100%. And by the way, the inter, we provide both a traditional interface, point, click, add stop, search, we provide all that stuff.

 But we also provide a beautiful natural language. Literally describe what you want to see and do and how far you want to drive. And you and then natural language processing reasoning engines, all of that stuff kicks into play. Could I speak to it?

 Here’s the interesting thing about speech. We don’t have to build a single thing into adventuregenie.com or, we don’t have a mobile app because we don’t believe we need a mobile app. But if we had a mobile app, there’s nothing stopping the user from hitting that little microphone button where they should be typing and let the native operating system or platform that they’re using and do the text to speech part.

[00:49:59] Brian Searl: But you could do it better, Scott. Google sucks so bad at that. It doesn’t even understand what I’m saying half the time.

[00:50:06] Scott Lengel: You should try speaking in Italian and see if it does a better job.

[00:50:10] Brian Searl: I’m an American. I was like, I only got taught one language in school. Like I had Spanish in fourth grade. I know how to say hola, that’s about it.

[00:50:21] Scott Lengel: Como esta usted.

[00:50:25] Brian Searl: How are you?

[00:50:26] Scott Lengel: Yeah. It’s interesting. The, the interface models are, right. Go ahead.

[00:50:32] Brian Searl: No, I’m sorry. I think we’re just, might be delayed on top of each other. I think we are. 

[00:50:42] Scott Lengel: All good. Yeah, the interfaces are going to be, even better yet, why do I have to speak? Why can’t I just think it and it happens, right? We will get there. Believe it or not, we will get there.

[00:50:54] Brian Searl: That’s what I told CampSpot the other day. I told somebody from CampSpot that they announced their new feature, that grid optimization drag and drop thing. And I messaged somebody from CampSpot. I was like, why do I have to use my mouse?

 I just want to look at this thing and think about where the grid could be. Why don’t you build that, man? Yeah.

 Or it’s not too wild actually, because the software should be able to, should be able to predict it and figure it out before you even have to think it. So it’s not really that it’s going to do, actually it is, it’s going to do the thinking for you and it’s going to predict what you want to do.

 But that’s not as cool as Minority Report, man. I want to stick my hand out and move the grid. That’s what I want to do. I don’t know if I’ll look as cool as Tom Cruise ever, but one can hope.

[00:51:41] Scott Lengel: Oh, the Minority Report. I got you. Yeah.

[00:51:46] Brian Searl: All right. Let’s wrap up the show with a couple of questions. Matt, do you have any final thoughts for Scott or Craig?

[00:51:54] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, from Scott, I’d love to hear, I think it’s a little bit of a buzzy topic of discoverability through AI. And I think it can be sometimes overcomplicated. So if you have any tips for for campground owners on how to become more discoverable in the AI age?

[00:52:13] Scott Lengel: I’m going to give you the simplest answer and probably the best, be the best answer. And that’s go to, I’m just going to use ChatGPT as an example, and say, how can I become more discoverable as a campground? You will be blown away by the response.

[00:52:34] Matt Whitermore: Yeah.

[00:52:35] Brian Searl: Do a bunch of hard things that you don’t want to do.

[00:52:39] Matt Whitermore: Yeah.

[00:52:41] Brian Searl: Basically. And don’t be afraid to yell at ChatGPT because it’s not a human consultant.

 You can yell at it. I went to ChatGPT the other day and I said who has the best, I was on the free version by accident, so I think this is why it answered wrong. I wasn’t logged in. But it’s, I said who does the, who has a report that can tell me about campground pricing?

And it was like, nobody in the industry has a campground pricing report, but you can check KOA’s North American Camping Report. I’m like, what are you talking about? And I yelled at it in all caps. And it was like, oh, in fact.

[00:53:08] Matt Whitermore: Do you know who I am?

[00:53:14] Brian Searl: Okay. Scott, do you have a question for Craig or Matt?

[00:53:22] Scott Lengel: Yeah, actually for both of you guys like what are the next big trends? What, what’s the next big thing in, in campgrounds? Beyond miniature golf.

[00:53:34] Matt Whitermore: We might need another hour.

 I’ll go quickly and give the floor to Craig. But I sense a reckoning, honestly. I think like most of these campgrounds out there are built for baby boomers that are aging out. I don’t think it’s, I don’t think they are what the, millennial type camper wants, the 20s, 30s, 40s.

 I have a rooftop tent on my truck. I want, and I’m not even that outdoorsy, right? But I want to go out and be in the woods. I don’t want to see somebody else’s camper.

 Those are the things that I want. I don’t get excited about going to a 250-site RV resort that’s a parking lot. It’s just not my thing. I might be a little bit of a special consumer in that, but I think a lot of these resorts are going to have to get reimagined in the next decade or so.

[00:54:24] Brian Searl: Yeah, I don’t think I, I want to let Craig answer, but I don’t think that’s a, I don’t think that’s anything different than what I’ve been saying that, Scott Bahr and I have been saying that for a while, that we’ve been building parking lots for 40 years. And that’s, that was part of my point of miniature golf is yes, there might be a theory behind raising occupancy, but so many people have miniature golf courses. So anyway, we won’t, we’re not going to go back to that. Go ahead, Craig.

[00:54:47] Craig Alsup: Yeah, I think that innovation is going to become more and more necessary and less optional. I think that as more of the parks get purchased by people who are younger, more hip to AI, more hip to systems who, like you said earlier, have, they’ve got money in, they got skin in the game, right? And they got to pay that mortgage every month, right? I think that some parks are going to get left behind in that.

 And they’re going to find their occupancy starting to dwindle. I think there’s going to be a reckoning in that, right? They’re going to start seeing occupancy dwindle because the park down the street that’s absolutely killing it in, social media and Google and chat and all these different, things and that have dialed in who their consumer is. I think you’re going to start to see the people that want the true kind of backwoods experience, right?

 They’re going to be able to find that experience because somebody’s going to build a resort that’s exactly for them, right? And so these places that have been getting by because they are the place that’s closest or the place that’s along the highway that everybody’s driving on or whatever, are going to start to see an economic shift for themselves. And I think it’s, I think it’s going to be interesting. I think it’s a nothing shifts until it has to.

 And I think we’re going to get to a point where there’s enough new players in the game that are optimizing all these things that the players that are, 70, 80% or whatever of the market right now are going to have to shift or they’re going to start seeing massive exodus from their parks. And hopefully we can be the ones that take advantage of, in a good way, take advantage of that and benefit from that. And also just help to lift the industry as a whole so that so that RVing camping continues to grow. And it doesn’t have to be an us versus them thing.

 But yeah, that’s what I do when I talk with people and speak at COA and different, different places and stuff. It’s hey man, yeah I am using all these systems and yeah, I’m figuring it out a little bit as I go. But at least I’m moving forward and there’s always somebody, there’s always somebody that does it quite knows as much as you know at any given moment. So man, hopefully we can all continue to just share what we know and help other people along and we get there as an industry together rather than having too many parks get left behind in the shuffle.

[00:57:31] Brian Searl: 100%. Said. I was going to say something else, but that’s a perfect way to end the show. Matt, final thoughts and where can they find out more about Unhitched and Climb Capital?

[00:57:40] Matt Whitermore: Yes, you can check us out at unhitchedmgmt.com. That’s our our management arm, climbcapital.com for our investment arm and unhitchedrv.com to see all our RV parks. And you can reach me on LinkedIn. Very active on there. So look me up, Matt Whitermore. Appreciate it, Brian.

[00:58:00] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Matt. Scott, final thoughts and where can they find out more about AdventureGenie?

[00:58:04] Scott Lengel: Yeah thanks for having me. Good conversation. I love talking AI and I love talking AI in different scenarios where you never thought you might be using it, a few years ago when AI was just starting to become really popular, I don’t think the RV industry was probably was not at the forefront of their minds.

 So I’m glad to see it happening everywhere. Go check out AdventureGenie at adventuregenie.com. Go ahead and get your seven-day free trial. Try it out, play with it.

 I think you’ll love it. If not, let us know.

[00:58:34] Brian Searl: Is there actually a jingle for AdventureGenie that you sing?

[00:58:40] Scott Lengel: I think you should. I think you should. If there’s not, I think it would be catchy.

[00:58:43] Brian Searl: Okay. It was good, man. I like, I’m a little, I’m a little like 5% just teasing you, but 95% like it was cool. You did a good job.

[00:58:52] Scott Lengel: AdventureGenie, our magic, your journey.

[00:58:56] Brian Searl: All right, Craig, final thoughts and where can they learn about your park or campground?

[00:58:59] Craig Alsup: Yeah, hey check out askewslandingrv.com. And yeah, you can shoot me an email at admin@askewslandingrv.com. And yeah, if I can help any park owner that’s listening figure out some of these Google stuff, AI stuff what to do next with marketing systems I’d love to help. And yeah, reach out.

[00:59:27] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing from me, I will be live with Scott Bahr in about 55 minutes. We’re going to talk about something called Solarpunk and how you can design your campground toward that.

 And then maybe Kevin Costner’s movie Waterworld and personalizing your campground and the future of what we just talked about a little bit more in depth. And then some data and research and things like that. But if not, we will see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Thanks guys for joining us. Appreciate y’all.

[00:59:51] Craig Alsup: Thanks man.