MC Fireside Chats – August 26th, 2026

 [00:00:45] Brian Searl: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Excited to be here with you. That was close, guys. Like, I was two seconds, I forgot my hat. I had to go find it during the intro. I was like, almost didn’t make it, sat down half a second before.

Uh, but I’m here. I made it, so not, not that anybody’s excited. They’re all here to see you guys. But, uh, excited to be here for another week four episode of, uh, MC Fireside Chats. We’re gonna talk about AI technology. We’ve got a couple special guests, some new people here. Uh, let’s go around the room and briefly introduce ourselves ’cause some of us haven’t been together for a while, and then we got some new people too.

So, uh, Matt, you wanna start us off? 

[00:01:20] Matt Whitermore: Yeah. Hey, everybody. Matt Whittemore here, director of market expansion at Climb Capital and Unhitched Management. Uh, national platform, growing quickly, adding parks through both third-party management and through our investment platform. Uh, always enjoy these chats, Brian, so appreciate you having me on and excited to, uh, dig in here.

[00:01:40] Brian Searl: Yeah. Thanks for being here, Matt, as always. Ravi, our new recurring guest for week four. 

[00:01:44] Ravi Parikh: Hey, everybody. I’m Ravi. I’m the, uh, CEO of RoverPass, which is a property management software company 

[00:01:55] Brian Searl: That’s it? You’re just gonna undersell yourself like that, man? 

[00:01:58] Ravi Parikh: Uh, well, I mean, I use AI about 10 hours a day personally, and, uh, our whole team uses it, so I’m, I’m excited about, you know, I can, I can s- speak to the gospel of AI for hours and hours on end.

So, um, yeah, we’re, uh, we’re a very AI-pilled organization over here at RoverPass. 

[00:02:20] Brian Searl: Awesome. Glad to have you here, Ravi. Uh, Mychele? 

[00:02:24] Mychele Bisson: Um, I’m Mychele Bisson. I am the founder of Wayhaven Resorts. We own, uh, campgrounds and marinas from Alaska down to Florida. Um, and I’m always trying to be here, but I’m usually in my campgrounds during the summer, so I’m glad to be back today to be able to have these conversations with you guys.

[00:02:42] Brian Searl: Yeah. Thanks for being here. Appreciate it. And our two special guests. Caleb, you wanna go first? 

[00:02:46] Caleb Cook: Sure, yeah. I’m Caleb Cook. Good to be with you guys. Uh, and I’m from CampLife. Um, I was formerly the marketing and creative team lead, but actually just made a, a leap into the product design side, so I’m kinda joining you from both perspectives today.

Um, and yeah, CampLife is, um, like RoverPass, a, a reservation and park management system. Um, and now a marketing system too. We recently, uh, released some email marketing tools too that we’re pretty excited about. Um, so yeah, that’s, uh, that’s kind of the 40,000 foot view. So. 

[00:03:18] Brian Searl: You know what we should do, Matt?

Matt, you and I should have a project where we bring back MTV’s Celebrity Deathmatch with AI, and then the CampLife and RoverPass guys can fight it out.

[00:03:31] Matt Whitermore: All right. I’m in. 

[00:03:32] Ravi Parikh: Yeah, let’s do it. 

[00:03:33] Matt Whitermore: All right. 

[00:03:33] Ravi Parikh: We’ll, I’ll build a, I’ll build a little robot where me and Caleb can go head-to-head. 

[00:03:40] Brian Searl: All right. Last but not least, Mr. Nick Purslow, who, Nick, are you still three hours north of me and still haven’t come see me? It’s raining up there. 

[00:03:45] Nick Purslow: Ah, no, totally. You haven’t come see me.

Um Yeah, I mean, I mean, Edmonton, you’ve upgraded the, uh, the intro music since the last time I was been on here. It’s great. Um-

[00:03:57] Brian Searl: Yeah …

[00:03:57] Nick Purslow: but yeah, and- You- Sorry, go Uh, yeah. I, I’m Nick Bisson. I’m a co-founder at Posh Outdoors. Uh, we partner with landowners, uh, through revenue share partnerships, so they want to add, uh, you know, unique year, year-round kind of modular lodging structures on their property.

We’ll install them, provide marketing services to ensure that they’re filled, uh, and take a percentage of the revenue. So we’ve got, um, one project up near where Brian and I, uh, Brian and I are in, in the Canadian Rockies, uh, and we’ve got a partnership in Texas as well, and we’re hoping to scale, um, heading into the next year.

[00:04:32] Brian Searl: Awesome. Excited to hear what you’ve been up to. Yeah, I’ve only been to Edmonton once in my life, man, so don’t like-

[00:04:36] Nick Purslow: Yeah …

[00:04:37] Brian Searl: take offense. I went up there with-

[00:04:38] Nick Purslow: At the same time … 

[00:04:39] Brian Searl: I went up there to catch a train last year. We took like one of the sleeper trains across to… Well, it wasn’t a sleeper for us, but we took it across to Winnipeg and then went up north to Churchill, so- 

[00:04:49] Nick Purslow: Nice

[00:04:49] Brian Searl: And I went to a really good brewery and pizza place that I gotta remember to tell you about. I’ll f- I’ll… I don’t remember the name of it off the top of my 

[00:04:55] Nick Purslow: head, but- Isn’t, uh, isn’t Churchill where they have the polar bears? 

[00:04:57] Brian Searl: Yes. Yeah. 

[00:04:58] Nick Purslow: Oh, nice. Yeah, that’s 

[00:04:59] Brian Searl: lovely. Over the years, like 10,000 beluga whales- Nice

so you can… It’s crazy. 

[00:05:03] Nick Purslow: Yeah. 

[00:05:04] Brian Searl: Yeah. Really good place to visit. Okay, so to our recurring guests who, uh, are typically here with us, Mychele, Matt, uh, Ravi, you’re a recurring guest now, so you can weigh in if you want. Uh, is there anything that’s come across your desk in the last month or so that’s related to AI technology, stuff like that, that we should be talking about or you guys wanna talk about?

[00:05:24] Matt Whitermore: I would 

[00:05:24] Brian Searl: say my- 

[00:05:24] Mychele Bisson: Got so much 

[00:05:26] Brian Searl: Oh, we all went at once. Okay, go ahead.

[00:05:33] Ravi Parikh: I’ll 

[00:05:33] Mychele Bisson: I mean, I was gonna say, go ahead, Ravi. You, you said that you could talk about this for hours, so. 

[00:05:38] Ravi Parikh: Uh, I mean, there’s so much. I mean, every week there’s something new. Um, I’m a subscriber of x.com, formerly Twitter, and the Twitterverse is popping off about the new Grok bot, um, which is a competitor to Hermes and, uh, OpenCloud.

That’s the latest. Um, and then Claude released, uh, a better version of Claude Remote, so you can basically code while you’re walking your dog, um, or, uh You know, wherever, like hanging out with your friends, just pop open your phone and start shipping code while you’re doing that. Um, so I would say those are like the latest small things that I’ve seen come up.

P- and I don’t know, GrokBot might be big, but I haven’t messed with it yet personally. 

[00:06:30] Brian Searl: Maybe, maybe set the stage for our audience and, and I don’t know, Matt, if you’ve played with any of this or Mychele, but like set the stage for our audience for who th- who don’t know about OpenClaw or Hermes or- 

[00:06:40] Ravi Parikh: Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:41] Brian Searl: So- Because like GrokBot is, I think the consumer geared version of like your easy way into that world. 

[00:06:46] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. So the first version of this was OpenClaw that came out, I don’t know, it’s probably been like seven, eight months now. A guy named Peter Steinberg, uh, released it for free on x.com and then OpenAI ended up hiring him, uh, as sort of their, uh, I don’t know exactly his position, but it’s essentially like he’s building what everybody’s gonna use as their personal assistant.

So like Iron Man’s… What’s the name of Iron Man’s, uh, assistant? Uh, the voice- I don’t know.

[00:07:24] Brian Searl: I don’t know what you’re talking about. I can’t remember. ‘Cause it was played by Gwyneth Paltrow, right? Like, 

[00:07:28] Ravi Parikh: I don’t remember the name. Not, not Cortana. That’s, uh… Man, I can’t remember what it’s called. But anyways, the idea was that everyone’s gonna have a personal assistant, OpenAI got excited about it and then hired this guy Peter Steinberg.

He released this product called OpenClaw, and OpenClaw basically connects into like everything that you’ve got. Google Calendar, your email, uh, Google Drive. Uh, it can make phone calls for you. It can do all these different things. So like you just tell AI like, “Hey, schedule me this meeting,” or, “Call this restaurant and make this reservation,” or whatever.

Whatever you want it to do it can do. Then, uh, the next one was Hermes that came out, which was like… I don’t know if it’s Hermes or Hermes like the designer bag brand, but, uh, Hermes maybe. Um, they were kind of the next iteration on OpenClaw. Um, and then the Twitter sphere was going crazy about that. Um, and then the next iteration i- of that is GrokBot, which is Elon’s, uh, competitor to Hermes and OpenClaw.

It seems like OpenClaw has kind of like died off. Like I don’t really know what happened to it. And so like in seven months time, we’ve sort of like released three different versions of your personal assistant. At some point one of them’s gonna take off. Um- I don’t know which one yet. I kinda gave up after OpenClaw and haven’t messed with Hermes and Grok Bot, but I need to.

I need to spend some time kinda trying to set them up. 

[00:09:03] Brian Searl: Yeah, for clarity of our audience, like I think an easier way to understand this is like, and you tell me if I’m wrong, Ravi, with how I’m perspecting or perceiving this or explaining this or whatever, right? Uh, is, is that, you know, your regular Claws, your Chat GPTs, your Geminis are…

While they can connect and search your inbox for Gmail and do things like that, they’re mostly like conversation in, conversation out. Search, give me ideas, write me social media posts, write me code, do those things. Whereas these tools that we’re talking about, OpenClaw that came out in January, Hermes, the Hermes that followed, whatever we’re pronouncing it as, Grok Bot now is the idea of more taking control of your computer and operating it as a human would.

[00:09:43] Ravi Parikh: Yeah, like I mean the, the big ways that you use these tools, uh, you can connect it into your iMessage, you can connect it into WhatsApp, you can connect it into Slack or Microsoft Teams, you can connect it into your email. So like every which way that you could possibly talk to it in all of the different channels.

Like if you’re on your phone Um, you might not have the Slack or Microsoft Teams app, so you wanna send it a voice note, right from iMessage. That’s the first part is capturing all that data, and then from there it’s connected to all of the data sources that you have. So it could be like work data sources, it could be personal data sources, anything, and it can access those data sources and then do certain actions based off them, based off the tools that you give it.

Like if you wanted to connect it to something like Twilio, which is used for like placing phone calls or sending text messages, it can place a phone call or it can, it can send a text message for you. If you’re like having a chat with somebody via text message… This always happens to me, like I’m like, I get an introduction to someone via text message and I’m like, “Man, like I can’t connect my Google Cal to my text message to schedule this.”

So you just add your OpenClaw or your Hermes or in this case I guess GrokBot to that text thread, and it can be like, “Hey, here’s all the availability,” and then you… it can handle scheduling for you. So it’s like really like your personal assistant for everything, right? Like every morning I had it send me a Slack message that’s like, “Hey, you forgot to answer all these emails.

Um, you need to look at these conversation threads inside of your Slack account because your team is like talking about all these different things and they need your weigh in.” Um, and then it sends me like a, a series of metrics on RoverPass every morning or every week or whatever fixed schedule that I told it to.

So it can consolidate all of that into one and then present that information to you in which if you wanna text with it, if you want an email, if you want a Slack message, um, it can kind of give you all of that information. 

[00:12:01] Brian Searl: And I think the intention behind GrokBot, and we’ll have to see if it goes there, is, is to make it less head explody for all the people who are watching this, like what’s happening.

[00:12:10] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OpenClaw was made clearly by a developer that was building it for himself and it like feels like you’re on the command line when you’re trying to use it, which is not super accessible for like everybody. Whereas GrokBot is kind of like, “Hey, I’m gonna build this like nice consumer slick interface,” like, you know, the Elon way of doing things and make it easy for people, right?

Like it’s the, it’s the Apple-ified version of, uh, of OpenClaw. And it’s more stable from what I hear. Like I always had problems with OpenClaw where like it would just kept breaking and that’s why I stopped using it, ’cause I got tired of trying to fix it and I was like, “It’d just be quicker for me to do this myself than trying to fix you constantly.”

So hopefully, hope- hope- hopefully that one is more stable 

[00:13:02] Brian Searl: Matt, have you played with any of this new stuff? 

[00:13:06] Matt Whitermore: I haven’t yet, but I’m, I’m on the edge because, you know, I was gonna jump in and say personally, I’d say the last month or so, and I don’t know if this is like AI psychosis or not, but, um, I’ve been disappointed with, with, uh, Opus 5 and Fable 5 on Anthropic models.

Uh, you know, I feel like there’s been this cycle of whenever they’re about to release a new model The performance just deteriorates, the model gets dumber and just it, it gets, right, it, being, right, trying to keep yourself on the cutting edge of AI is one of the most frustrating things. It’s, it’s amazing and it’s incredible and it’s mind-blowing and exciting, but it’s also insanely frustrating for a lot of reasons.

There’s, like Ravi was saying, there’s a new feature every week, every day, right? I’ve tried to kind of quiet my mind with that and like, right, focus on agent skills and automations and just try and stick to the things that will, uh, translate from, uh, provider to provider, agent harness to agent harness, model to model.

Um, because I’ve kind of been anticipating this. It just feels different for me for the last month. I don’t know if anybody agrees with, with anthropic models. Um- 

[00:14:28] Ravi Parikh: I-I think anthropic’s freaking out about Kimi 3 coming out. So Kimi 3-

[00:14:33] Matt Whitermore: Yeah …

[00:14:33] Ravi Parikh: for those that don’t know, is the Chinese equivalent of, uh, Opus 4.8, which w- which, well, I guess Fable 5, which is Anthropic’s latest, most advanced model.

A Chinese company released something that is like one-twentieth the cost that’s just as powerful, and so they’re like, it’s kind of this like interesting tit-for-tat war because the Chinese people, the, the, the Chinese are distilling their models from Anthropic and OpenAI. So they’re basically, what distillation is, it’s basically like at, they like at scale send a bunch of questions to Claude or OpenAI and read the outputs, and then they train their models based off of the output.

So it’s like kind of this like warfare that’s happening between the two countries, and like China is like usually like three to six months behind the latest model. So then if the US is supposed to compete against China, and all the US businesses are supposed to use a model that’s 20 times more expensive than a model that is just only three months behind the latest model, wouldn’t all the US companies just switch to the Chinese model?

Which is we, we did do some of that, uh, because it is- 

[00:15:52] Brian Searl: No, I do, I use Chinese models in everything. It’s open source 

[00:15:56] Ravi Parikh: I mean, it’s one-twentieth of the cost, right? So it’s like- Yeah … not everything you do needs to be the most cutting edge. Cutting edge. Right? Like- Yes … uh, so it’s just this like, it’s interesting how these like war dynamics are playing out.

But for us consumers, uh, I love it because it keeps bringing the cost of AI down, right? It’s like a real fierce competitor- in the race, uh, and it makes compute cheaper for all of us over time. So I think it’s a good thing. 

[00:16:27] Brian Searl: Yeah, I mean, we saved almost $15,000 a month in our AI bills by moving to this stuff.

And they’re, and they’re all open source, and you can s- you can use providers that don’t log your data, that don’t save your stuff, that have the privacy in, in, you know. I mean, everybody’s logging it anyway. Claude’s logging what you do. OpenAI’s logging what you do. So, like, whether it’s the Chinese or the Americans, someone’s keeping all your data, putting it somewhere, and doing something with it.

It probably isn’t something like this. 

[00:16:49] Ravi Parikh: Well, and, and, and the n- the latest thing is that, uh, just, like, two days ago, Apple released their MacBook Studios, uh, because I think everyone’s been wondering, like, where is Apple in this whole thing? Like, why do they not ha- like, why is Siri so dumb? Like, really. Like, you c- it, like, barely can set an alarm for me.

Um, and, and I think Apple’s response to all of this is that they want people to run models locally on their computers. So they actually released, uh, these, like, super powerful studio desktops where you can lease them for, like, 200 bucks a month, and then there’s another company that you can rent your compute power to, so then they’ll pay you, like, 250 bucks a month.

So you can actually make, like, $50 a month running a local model on your, on your computer. Um, and so, like, it’s, like, this, like, really interesting, uh- supply chain. I don’t know how to, I don’t even know how to explain it. But like, you went from having to pay Anthropic to now the Chinese are competing against Anthropic to Apple just coming in and being like, “Hey, everybody gets free compute.

Just run, run like Quinn,” or which is like another one of the models, “On your computer for free. Like, all you gotta do is pay for your power.” So then it’s like, man, is everyone just gonna have free compute constantly because they’re just running their, their models-

[00:18:22] Brian Searl: Yes …

[00:18:23] Ravi Parikh: on their local computer.

[00:18:24] Brian Searl: Eventually, and that’s what’s gonna break the AI bubble and bring it all crashing down.

Not because AI is- Yeah … in itself a bubble, but because the companies can never actually make the trillions of dollars that they’re borrowing. But that’s a whole other topic. Mychele, what’s new in your world? 

[00:18:37] Ravi Parikh: Sorry, I digress. 

[00:18:39] Mychele Bisson: Oh, God, I can tell you what, it’s not that stuff ’cause, uh- … that went way over my head.

So I mean, no, I mean, I think the AI stuff is great. Like, I was playing around with it at the beginning of the season. Um, and then we got into the season, and I’m just one of those weird people who kinda wanna be in my parks. So I was actually in the parks for a lot of the season. Plus, like I was mentioning earlier, getting my daughter ready to go off to college and becoming empty nesters.

And so, um, you know, I kinda passed it off to my operations director, and he’s been kinda playing around with it, and I don’t really know where he’s gone, but I’m pretty sure he’s probably launching spaceships out of one of the marinas at this point. Um, it just moves so quick, I can’t even keep up. And just taking a couple months off to kind of focus on what I was doing, I feel so left behind 

[00:19:27] Brian Searl: Well, I think that’s one of the important things that, that we, that I wanna balance on this show as we go forward is, right?

Like technology is moving faster than it ever has before. Nobody on this show is gonna be able to keep up with it, even me who has no life. Or maybe Ravi has beaten me, I don’t know. Ravi …” likelier. But, uh, so we’re not gonna be able to keep up with it, but I think it’s very important to look at where we are as an industry and how this is gonna benefit us.

Mm. Because I think there’s a, a push and pull here between what you just said, Mychele, and where, like, I am with AI in trying to develop products, and Ravi is, and where Matt’s playing with it, and he’s also trying to improve the guest experience at Unhitched and everywhere else, right? Is that I think outdoor hospitality is perfectly positioned for this.

I think regardless of how much da- and I say this to clients all the time on calls, I, there’s gonna be a ton of AI slop out of there, out of h- out here. There’s gonna be, like, you’re gonna, we’re gonna quickly go toward, like, a Ready Player One where people are putting on headsets and living in virtual worlds.

But the one thing that AI will never be able to duplicate is sitting by a river, near the mountains, under the trees, listening to the bir- maybe listening to the birds, we’ll do that, but, like, not the same thing. Um, and so I think we’re perfectly positioned to take advantage of that. So the way we, as for you guys as outdoor hospitality operators, ’cause I’m not an operator, needs to think about this, and the people watching this show too, is how do I use this technology to weave it under the surface so it’s not visible to the guest, but makes their stay and experience better?

Is that fair? 

[00:20:53] Mychele Bisson: No, I completely agree with that. I know that for us, um, we’ve used it as in building a chat model so that our managers can get information quickly so that it’s, uh, really easily trainable so that they can build out training SOP models, um, when we bring new people in. I know that we’re working with a reservation system right now to help build out a new program where they actually, everything is a little less, a little easier on the reservation front.

Um, everything is kinda being AI-driven on that end, um, reporting so that we’re not searching for reports anymore. Now we can just type in what we want. Um, you know, just things that, like, we know will make things easier on our side as operators, making sure that we’re being able to streamline certain things on the back end so that we can really focus on the guest experience so when they come in, we know them by name.

We can da- da- whatever purpose they have in there, whether it’s buying something or, you know, booking the reservation, phone calls, things like that. Like, we’re trying to streamline all the back end so that our people can be completely present. And so that’s the nice thing that I think AI is starting to do for all of us is that a lot of people are afraid of it because it’s not something that they are used to, and they feel like it takes away from the guest experience, and I think it’s completely the opposite.

I think it’s streamlining everything on the back so that we can be fully present 

[00:22:16] Brian Searl: Nick, do you guys have AI in Edmonton or has it not made it that far? 

[00:22:19] Nick Purslow: Uh, not, not, not made it that far in the border yet, no. Um, we– so, like, my, my job is basically we’re, we’re supplying these structures and providing the marketing services.

We’re not kind of in the weeds, on the ground, in the operations, in the back end kind of thing. So my, uh, most of my use cases for it have, have been on the marketing side. Um, so for example, at, uh, our second, uh, location out in, um, the Texas Hill Country, we’re putting together, you know, Instagram carousels where it’s kind of 10, 10 slides each with a very small kind of piece of text to make it as, as readable as possible to, to make the, the reader want to, to read on.

Um, and I just find it a really, really useful tool to basically as a creative sparring partner, and it’s just simple Chat GPT. I’m not as clever as, as, as, as you, Brian, when it comes to setting up all the, the automations and workflows. But just as a creative sparring partner to, um, help ideate. For example, if I’m looking for some marketing copy and I’ve got one sentence in mind, I might ask it to, you know, I might feed it that and then ask it to spit out 10 potential variations of that.

Um, and I hate kind of AI written copy, but it can be a great kind of, um, creative tool to just spit out lots of variations and then relying on, you know, human taste to refine that a little bit. Um, so it just opens up kind of the possibilities for me when I’m crafting copy and, um, I enjoy that, and I’d never want to outsource that, um, to AI.

But it’s very good for, you know, helping, helping take it to the next level. 

[00:23:46] Brian Searl: Well, that’s a good thing, like, to, to– for the people who are listening to this and wanna ground themselves and are hearing what Ravi’s saying and hearing what I’ve said before and hearing what Mychele said and what Matt said and, and every- Caleb I’m sure we’ll get to you in one second.

You’ll say some really profound things too. Um, but just, like, I think it’s important for the audience to realize that, that this is not something where you have to jump in and understand immediately tomorrow what Ravi’s saying. Mm-hmm. Otherwise, you will get completely overwhelmed. Your goal should be to start small, just like, and, and I’m not saying you’re s- you’re small, Nick, right?

With your- Yeah … AI. But, like, start with one thing and say, “What do I need help with in my business that would make me more efficient, that would allow me to go out and serve my guests better?” If that’s analyzing your accounting, if that’s improving your SOPs, if that’s doing your Instagram reels, if that’s whatever, fill in the blank.

I think that’s the place you begin and you start. And then just like we, you know, I told people two, three years ago who asked me how do I start with AI, you go to AI and you ask, “How do I start with AI? This is my struggle. This is where all my hours are going,” whatever. And just the more you do with it, the more you touch and play with it.

That’s been kind of Matt’s growth journey too, right? I think, Matt Like the, it- Totally … yeah, the more you play with it, the more you’ll understand like, oh, I can do this. Oh, I can do that. Oh, I can do… And the goal is not all time consuming, it’s to save you time. So you can go down the rabbit hole like me and Ravi apparently have, or you can kinda go down the rabbit hole and peek and see what’s down there and then come back up and realize that there’s sometimes it’s nice to see what we’ve got.

[00:25:10] Ravi Parikh: We trained our entire team. Um, they may not be quite at the, uh, level of depth that I’m at right now, but, uh, i- it’s all about just thinking about, like if you, if you come across a problem, how does AI solve that problem for you? And like, when should you go to AI versus not go to AI? And, and, and the best analogy that I give to people is like, if you just start asking Claude how to build an airplane, it’s gonna start telling you how to build an airplane and where to procure the parts to do it for and start teaching you about fluid dynamics, right?

So it’s like the, the people who are the most curious about what AI can do for them are just gonna ask AI an insane amount of questions, and then it’s going to give you answers back and teach you exactly what you need to know. It’s like having the world’s greatest tutor in your pocket. Like, you just ask it anything that you don’t know about and, like, pretty soon you’re gonna know everything about that thing.

Um, and that’s the best way to learn, uh, with AI. It does take time, uh, to kind of figure that out, but you’ll start to kind of spot patterns and see like, “Oh, okay, can I like automate my bookkeeping with this? How do we do that? Oh, you need an API into QuickBooks for that. Okay, how do I set that up? Oh, okay, go to this link, click on this.

I don’t know how this works.” Then you can just take a screenshot of that page and upload it into AI and be like, “Click on that link.” You know, and it can, it can like spoon feed it to you pretty easily and then you’ll, your level will start to advance, right? And you’ll start to understand how all these things work and flow and, and, you know, just go from there 

[00:27:00] Brian Searl: Do you recommend people build their own airplanes?

[00:27:02] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. I mean, just definitely just build a, you know, the W- the, the Wright brothers started one way, right? Now you guys have Cl- no, I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. Definitely don’t do that. 

[00:27:12] Brian Searl: I don’t… Like, it interests me ’cause I’ve always just wanted to have my own private jet, but I realize I’ll probably never have enough money, but also I, I then wouldn’t wanna fly in the jet that I built ’cause I don’t wanna die.

So it’s a quick no for me. 

[00:27:24] Mychele Bisson: Well, it’s probably not a good idea to have a jet anyway, because if you have one, then you have to have two because the other one’s usually in maintenance all day long. Yeah. Plus you have to have two staffs for both of them, and they have to, like, be able to revo- trust me, I’ve talked to people who do this, and they keep telling me it’s the worst thing ever.

Mm-hmm. That’s what they tell me. I think it’s to make me feel better. But I’m going with it. 

[00:27:46] Brian Searl: Makes sense. Well, we’ll go with it too, ’cause I don’t think I’m ever gonna have a private jet either. So, uh, Caleb, how do you use AI at Camplife? 

[00:27:54] Caleb Cook: Yeah. So, you know, it’s, it’s something that we’re really pursuing from a perspective of asking, you know, where, where can we eliminate some of those day-to-day, you know, rough spots, uh, where people are just, yeah, throwing time down a barrel.

Um, and so we, we do have some tools that we’re working on in the back end that are really gonna, um, streamline some of the, the, uh, staffing side of things too. So, uh, that’s gonna be pretty big here coming up soon. Um, where we’re kind of at with AI, I mean, obviously we’re, um, using it in the back end with some of the development processes as well, uh, to speed up our, you know, go to market and our velocity as well.

Um, and, um, yeah, I’m kind of in that same boat of just, you know, asking AI a bit and learning from AI and then just diving in too. Um, it’s, it’s kind of interesting ’cause I’m, you know, this, this is gonna be a little bit more personal rather than a, a company statement per se, but I’m kind of a person that I, in some ways I hate to love AI because there are a lot of questions that I have about it still from a societal perspective.

But looking at what it has enabled, especially for, you know, for some of these smaller park operators and what we can provide for them, um, it’s, it’s pretty exciting. And yeah, definitely having made the leap to the product side, I see that a lot more clearly, um, with what we’re able to, to start building out here.

So, um, it’s exciting stuff. Um- 

[00:29:23] Nick Purslow: Uh- 

[00:29:24] Caleb Cook: But yeah. 

[00:29:26] Nick Purslow: I think, I think we share similar guilt, Caleb. I’m, I’m the exact same. I’m like, “I don’t, I don’t like all of this, but it’s really good.” Yeah. 

[00:29:34] Caleb Cook: True. True. 

[00:29:35] Nick Purslow: Yeah. 

[00:29:36] Caleb Cook: Well, and you know, I think, I think, um, I, I really resonate with, with Brian, what you were saying, and Mychele as, as well, that, you know, we’re, we’re using this as the underlying support to providing good hospitality.

And, um, this is actually something that came up in, uh, a conversation that we had some pa- with some parks yesterday, was- At the root of hospitality is making people feel at home, and you wouldn’t feel at home with somebody that you don’t trust. And so as we’re using this AI, you know, toolbox, uh, we, we have trust to maintain with, with our customers, with our campers.

Um, and so making sure that, yeah, you know, we’re not just using AI sight unseen, you know, that yeah, we utilize it, but we, we do run it through our own human filters to say, “Hey, does this sound like my park?” You know, “Does this preserve trust with my customers?” Um, I think that’s gonna be the big question, uh, that comes up is like, yeah, we know how to use this now.

Now how do we preserve trust and preserve hospitality here? So… 

[00:30:43] Brian Searl: Well, that’s with everything, right? I mean, that’s the same thing with your automated phone systems that you wanna do- True … with a branch and a tree and everything. Like, does this preserve trust or does this irritate my customer? Yeah. I think there’s gonna be a lot of people who do it wrong, and there’s gonna be some people who do it right.

[00:30:55] Caleb Cook: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:30:56] Brian Searl: So hopefully, hopefully we can encourage the, the hospitality of this, the outdoor hospitality industry to, to mostly do it right. 

[00:31:02] Caleb Cook: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, ’cause 

[00:31:05] Mychele Bisson: I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a relationship. Well, I also think that it’s part of the presentation also, though, right? I mean, like if you have something, and I’m just, this is just from my own personal experience of what we’ve experienced in coming into new parks, but it’s all in how you present whatever it is.

Like when we presented an AI answering system for emergency, everybody freaked out at first, and we were like, “Well, this is to ensure that, you know, one, if it’s really an emergency, that we get the, to the right person. But two, if you just need the code, it’s gonna answer a question without waking up the manager who will then be able to better serve you the next day.”

And then it was, “Oh, that makes sense.” I think it’s just all in presentation. I think it’s all in how people perceive things. When you get something brand new, everybody freaks out. Nobody wants change. Nobody wants different. Everybody goes to the worst case scenario of, “Oh my God, robots are taking over the world, and now human-to-human contact is out.”

And it’s like, no, we’re actually doing this so that you can have better human-to-human contact. 

[00:31:58] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. 

[00:31:58] Mychele Bisson: And that is the story of, you know, how you work with people. It’s just how you present it to them, because if you’re not telling them the right story, you know what I mean? Like look at the Grimm Bror- Brother stories.

The originals suck. They are horrible. Disney remakes them, and everybody falls in love with them. So it’s, that’s what I think AI is, is about, is it’s just you’ve got to be able to present it in a way that they can relate to it and not think that they’re taking over the world and we’re all gonna be out of jobs and, you know, subject to being slaves to a machine all of the sudden.

[00:32:38] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it goes back to the example like I, I’ve cited on this show before. First time we released our AI phone agent, like years ago now, somebody commented on a LinkedIn post and said, “I will never wanna talk to an AI ever on the phone, ever.” And my response to them was, “As soon as you call your cable company and you aren’t have, you don’t have to be transferred for two hours to eight different people to solve your problem, and you’re off the phone in 30 seconds, you’ll never wanna talk to a human being again.”

[00:33:02] Ravi Parikh: Well, and, and actually SpaceX, uh, uh, 80% of their customer service is done through voice AI. Uh, they’re able to resolve 80% of tickets through voice AI, and that’s a huge company. I don’t know how good it is, but, um, we implemented phone AI for our support team, and we just… If you wanna dial zero, it just transfers you to a human, right?

So if you just give the customer a way to, you know, opt out, uh, until most people are generally comfortable with these types of AI tools. Eventually, I do think that, you know- industry will get to the point where like, for example, voice is on par or as good as anything else out there. Like I went to Taco Bell like a month ago and ordered a Chalupa, and I was talking to voice AI, and I was like, “Holy crap, that was the most efficient Chalupa ordering experience I’ve ever had.”

Um, and it didn’t mess up my order. And I was like, “That was awesome,” because they always mess my order up. And so, like there will be little aha moments that people start to have around it as the technology advances, and it’s getting better like insanely fast. At this point, the AI is making itself better because it’s, it’s like writing itself.

So, um, yeah, I, I think over time, it, it, it’s gonna improve all of these interactions, and humans will start to understand like what the right cases of it are and what the wrong ca- use cases of it are for. 

[00:34:41] Brian Searl: Yeah, it’s all perception, like Mychele said. But before we get to that, like you didn’t order lettuce at Taco Bell, right?

There was a problem with that. 

[00:34:46] Ravi Parikh: No. Yeah, I didn’t order lettuce. Yeah. 

[00:34:49] Brian Searl: Okay. All right. Uh, so um, so the, yeah, it’s all perception with the guests though. Like right now people have a perception of chatbots as the stupid, horrible things that you would yell and curse at and just say human on the bottom of a website since 2013 or ’14.

They were never good. Yeah. And that’s what most people think a chatbot is. The same way as most people think an automated robot answering system is the press one, press two. It can barely understand you, it can’t transcribe your words correctly, and you just want a human. Eventually that’s gonna flip, and it’s gonna happen, I think, sooner than most technology does.

Yeah. And when that does, then that’s gonna be better. And again, to Mychele’s point then, then allow us to go back to focusing more on the guest experience. 

[00:35:29] Ravi Parikh: Well, we- And, um, the- … we as humans can’t like do everything, right? There’s just only so many of us, but the AI is on 24/7, 365, and doesn’t sleep. So for, for simple things, hopefully it can get pretty, pretty effective at, at helping people out 

[00:35:48] Brian Searl: How do you think it changes social in the future?

Like I know what, what you’re using it for right now, but as we see more of this, let’s call it AI slop for what it is, right? As the attention gets pushed and pulled, as people become more used to things not being real or not being able to tell they’re real, how does that impact how a property does social media in the future?

[00:36:07] Nick Purslow: I, I honestly don’t know. I’ve, I’ve been noticing more and more, um, Instagram reels, uh, with AI models. Um, and my first thought when I see it as a consumer is like, “That looks crap.” Um, but the, the, the, the numbers, the numbers are doing pretty well. I don’t, I don’t know, you know, people don’t seem to care or, you know, but the engagement’s pretty good.

Um, so it wouldn’t surprise me if, for example, properties just, you know, and, and obviously the technology’s gonna get better, so it wouldn’t surprise me if, for example, you know, you don’t need models anymore kind of for, for a photo shoot or a content shoot. Um, at the minute I just wouldn’t do it just ’cause I think, I think it looks so much better with real people.

Um, but given we’re so early and people … I’ve, I’ve seen people using it and they’re engaging pretty well. Um, that’s one immediate thing where I think, you know, and then- 

[00:37:00] Brian Searl: My worry, my worry is the depth and authenticity of it, right? Yeah. So this is my worry. Like right now it’s, it’s, it’s not fun for me, but apparently it’s fun for some people to scroll through the AI slop and leave and react and do all the things, right?

But when we get to the point where people are starting to use this with their campground, and I saw KOA do this, like AKOA, not corporate KOA, but I saw AKOA do this the other day where they posted a picture of their train and it was clearly AI ’cause there’s neon lights on the cur- on the thing at night and they made it look like this really cool experience and I don’t think they were intentionally trying to mislead anybody, but there were a lot of people that were like, “Hey, I live in the local area.

Can I bring my son or daughter to come to that?” And they’re expecting something I think- Yeah … rightfully or wrongfully that what isn’t actually what they’re going to get. Even if it’s a small difference- Yeah … like neon lights. So that’s what worries me. 

[00:37:48] Ravi Parikh: I think there’s a, um … I listened to a podcast called The All In Pod and like a couple months ago there was a topic where they were talking about Congress is Potentially thinking about passing a law that identifies on social or, or, uh, graphically generated content that you have to say that this is AI, right?

Like, or like there’s like a watermark or something so people know that this is AI generated versus, uh, you know, if it’s real or versus AI. And I, I think that’s a good, good thing, uh, to know whether what you’re looking at is AI generated or not. Uh, because it’s starting to get kinda hard to figure that out.

Like, like, like Nick said, when you’re, when you’re scrolling through L- uh, you know, uh, Instagram reels, it’s like, “Is this real or is this not real?” And like, that makes fake news kinda scary. Um- Yeah. 

[00:38:49] Caleb Cook: Mm-hmm. 

[00:38:49] Nick Purslow: I think it is tricky as well. Like say if, if you’re, t- you know, using AI to create models like, you know, human models, that’s not…

You’re not giving a false impression of… It’s not like you’re, you know, generating a, a brand new unit that does it all like that. It’s just literally just filling that unit with people. Um, but yeah, I’d, I don’t know. I’d be interested to see, see how it goes. I’m su- I’m sure we’re gonna see, see it getting a lot better and, and a lot harder to tell.

[00:39:13] Ravi Parikh: Um- A- Anthropic actually started putting watermarks inside, like hidden watermarks in anything that’s AI generated text. So if you use Claude to, um- write any copy on your website, there’s some hidden metadata in there that says, “This was generated by AI,” which I do think, uh, Google’s gonna start picking that up and kind of maybe giving SEO penalty for, uh, AI written content, but TB- TBD, like we don’t know yet.

[00:39:45] Brian Searl: Yeah. I come, I come down a little bit in the middle on both of this stuff, right? Because I, I, I don’t think anybody should be misleading their guests, but I also think there’s a benefit to specifically what you were talking about, Nick, like the model thing. Mm-hmm. Like, a small campground can’t afford to pay models to come into their thing and do a photo shoot.

And so if you can take a real photo, and we’ve done this like years ago with like, we did it as an example for one of the CRR properties. Like, we never used it online, we just, you played around with Gemini and showed it, where like you had a, a beautiful picture that maybe a professional photographer had taken years past of their fire at night around the pool, and there’s just nobody there.

And so you just insert a couple people there. I don’t know if that’s misleading. I think it’s a fine line, because like the, the models that you would normally shoot aren’t gonna act that way for the guest anyway. So is it a benefit or is it a harm? I don’t know. I think I’m kind of in the middle. 

[00:40:35] Nick Purslow: Yeah. I, I think it’s-

[00:40:36] Caleb Cook: So a couple of different stor-

[00:40:36] Nick Purslow: Go ahead.

[00:40:37] Caleb Cook: Oh, sorry. Go for it, Nick. 

[00:40:40] Nick Purslow: No, you go. You go. 

[00:40:40] Caleb Cook: A, a couple of different stories on this note. There was actually a, um, a retail company that used AI generated product photography with models and everything. Um, and they found that their social media interaction rate and their purchases tanked after using it.

Um, now on the flip side of this coin, uh, there was a- 

[00:41:04] Brian Searl: Hold on. Hold on one second. ‘Cause did their customers know it was AI? 

[00:41:08] Caleb Cook: They were, they, they did not, it was not called out to them, but-

[00:41:13] Brian Searl: Okay …

[00:41:13] Caleb Cook: the customers were starting to call it out as, “Oh, I see something that makes me believe this is AI generated.” 

[00:41:18] Brian Searl: But that, but that’s the reason though.

It’s not like if you, if you do quality good AI, right? I don’t know. 

[00:41:24] Caleb Cook: Right. Yeah. And presumably, like I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was good AI. Um, but I think we have, we have a- A market now that is on alert for AI. Um, and kind of on the flip side of the story is there’s a professional photographer that posted some ph- some food photography that they did for a client, and somebody on their socials was like, “That’s definitely AI.”

And so she was, like, posting all these process photos of saying, “No, this is how I made this.” And so we’re in this weird space of everybody’s, you know, uh, everybody’s guard is, is up for AI content for good and for worse, you know? Um, so I, I tend to, yeah, kind of fall in that, that midground with you too, Brian, um, from the perspective of saying, um, “Let’s, let’s do what,” you, you know, in a sense Photoshop did to photography, you know, years ago.

“Let’s use reality and help people to see themselves in that scene more.” And some people will like that and… Finish. Sorry, go ahead. Please finish … the question always is too, is like, yeah, what’s, what’s your market? And what’s interesting with, with, uh, the retail brand is it was primarily Gen Z and late millennials that were, uh, the target market for that.

And these ones are like, they’re like hardcore calling it out. And so that’s, that’s a question for us too, is like, who, who are we trying to reach with our AI content? Um, and that may answer some big questions too. 

[00:42:55] Nick Purslow: There, there’s a, there’s a, a certainly a real anti-AI movement, I think particularly kind of Gen Z in particular.

Um, for example, like one of the things that I, I would just never, ever use it for is, is music. I just would never listen to AI-generated music. I think that’s a pretty hard line for me, and there are so many other people that are saying if you go on, you know, if you’re looking for a YouTube kind of DJ set or whatever, um, you’ll pretty quickly find like s- in the, in the titles, a lot of them have, you know, no AI or no AI slap, whatever.

Um, and there’s a clear market for people who, who are actively against AI. And so I’m wondering, you know, even almost as like a counter-positioning marketing tactic, particularly if you are seeking kind of younger demographics is, you know, almost be like, we will ne- yeah, we will never use AI. Um, I think that, that can, that will really resonate with a select group of people, but I’d be interested to see whether that grows, you know, over time with, you know, tech bros getting more and more influence and power, whether that, you know, whether, whether that, that movement will grow or whether it’d be a flash in the pan.

But I would… Yeah, I, I don’t think it’s necessarily gonna be automatically accepted by all generations that this is just the way it is, even if that’s kind of the way it’s been painted a, a little bit. Um, so I, I’m curious to see how that plays out. 

[00:44:12] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think you’re always gonna have to find a balance, right?

‘Cause like I, I mean, this is, this is not a new argument. There’s always going to be people who will, for AI, and then we’ll go historically, right? There will always be people who are anti-AI. There will always be people who are for AI. I think most people end up landing somewhere in the middle. But this is an age-old argument.

I remember working… We used to work on trade in like 2012 with a tiny hotel in Daytona Beach called Dream Inn. And back then was my first exposure, like we were doing, like we were actually going around taking pictures of campgrounds and hotels at that point with, I had a DSLR and whatever else. And he was the first person who brought to my attention, like, “I have 50% of my guests who don’t like seeing anybody in the pool, in the pool photos because they can’t envision themselves there with somebody else in the pool scene.”

But that, but it, but then there’s the 50% of the other people who are like, “I want people in the photos to see how happy they are and how they interact and everything else.” So there’s always going to be a push and pull with everything, I think. I don’t know that that ever gets solved. It maybe gets solved for your specific park, your demographic, who are your users, what do they want?

How do you make them happy? 

[00:45:13] Caleb Cook: It all comes back to that knowing your, knowing your camper well 

[00:45:20] Brian Searl: Matt, how do you do this? ‘Cause you’ve probably got a bunch of different types of campers at all your, in all your portfolio, right? Mychele, you, if you wanna take that after this. 

[00:45:28] Matt Whitermore: Yeah. Uh, it’s a really interesting question.

I am on the side of good content is good content, whether it’s, whether it’s written content or whether it’s, uh, an AI-generated image. I mean, we’re, I think we’re at the point where the quality of the image models and the video models out there, right, if someone’s gonna take the care to, to generate AI im- you know, AI-generated videos and photos, w- we can all be fooled, right?

I- if they’re really taking the time to do it well, none of us would have any idea. What gets me is kind of the lazy use of AI, right? It’s so funny, I, there’s this, uh, I’m in Syracuse, New York, and there’s this local, uh, Instagram account called Stop the Slop 315, which is, uh- … is our area code here, and they just, they, they’re, like, kinda mean, right?

They, like, they single out local restaurants that have the classic AI posters, right? And they’re horrible. But, like, that’s a mom-and-pop restaurant that doesn’t have high margins, probably doesn’t have a lot of revenue. They don’t have a marketing agency. They don’t have a graphic designer. And they just go on their free version of Chat GPT, and they give a one-sentence prompt that says, that’s probably copying another AI poster, and says, “Make me a version of this.

Here’s my menu, and here’s my website.” Um, and, like Right? It’s, it’s, there’s levels to this and there’s t- everybody’s in a different position, and that’s probably somebody who’s, I’m gonna, you know, stereotype a little bit here, but a little bit older, a little bit less tech inclined. Um- 

[00:47:10] Brian Searl: But even that, but even that person, right, there’s a benefit to that, isn’t there?

Because I can imagine… I, I remember traveling, I used to travel 300 days a year when we were building this company, and we used to go to so many restaurants who had no menus, who had no online booking, who had no… And so even if it’s AI looking to us, doesn’t, isn’t that helpful to their guests? 

[00:47:31] Matt Whitermore: Well, in that case, the alternative is they probably weren’t gonna post anything, right?

Mm-hmm. Uh, ’cause they weren’t gonna have the time to do it. When I look at Unhitched in our portfolio, this, it’s funny, this has been an internal debate, right? Um, the, the internal stance was never any AI generated images, and we’ve never done it. I am on the other side of that argument though, ’cause, uh, the way I look at it is, right, the w- like the way I would approach that is let’s go have a professional photographer go photograph and video and do the 360 video, and then you give that to your a- your image model, and then you have an unlimited real loop of, right, this is what my property actually looks like.

This is what our guests actually look like, and you iterate it. And the benefit there is that I don’t have to go send a professional photographer every season and every year and every time the leaves change or whatever, right? You’re, you’re not totally cheating, you’re not skipping all the hard steps, but you’re making it a lot more scalable.

And right, I would approach it from the standpoint… And it’s not to fool people, right? It’s, it, it’s that good content is good content and authentic content is authentic content. Whether or not that first draft was written by AI, I could care less. 

[00:48:54] Ravi Parikh: I think if you identify that it’s AI, people will be a little more kind of disarmed by that.

Like, it’s like it’s when you try to- Totally … fool them that people get frustrated about it. But if you’re like, “Hey, this is AI generated,” and we acknowledge it, then it’s like, okay, well, we know that this is AI, so we kinda get it. 

[00:49:16] Matt Whitermore: Right. 

[00:49:16] Ravi Parikh: Um- 

[00:49:16] Matt Whitermore: I mean, we all see the, we all see the content on LinkedIn and, right?

Yeah. Like, people screenshot it and make fun of it, and like, I, I laugh at that. And it- it’s right, it’s not about the use of AI, it’s about the lazy use of AI. Yeah. The short prompts- Yeah, because- … the not, not giving it the context. And I think we’re in a world where a few year- may- even today, maybe a few r- year- a few, you know, years from now, 95% of the content you read online is, is gonna be, there’s gonna be AI involved at some point, right?

Most of the stuff that I write starts off as an AI draft, and I, the way I, uh, look at this is, right, it gives me unlimited capacity to generate that first draft, and then I can spend all my time on refining it and making it authentic and putting the real human stuff into it. The alternative was I was gonna wake up at 5:00 AM and stare at a blank screen and a blinking cursor, and it was gonna take me an hour to just type those fir- first, you know, two sentences.

Now, have unlimited drafts and un- unlimited material I can read through, and I can pull that, and then I can say, “Okay, this is halfway there. This is directionally I like this, but…” Right? And then you’re, you’re an editor, right? You, you, you, you’re an orchestrator and an editor, not a, not a drafter. Same thing with, right- editing photos.

Like, I laugh, right? Do you, like, do you get offended when, you know, you’re looking at somebody’s Instagram photos and then it’s edited, right? Is that not authentic, right? Oh, it’s not just the raw photo? Like, where, where do we, where do we draw the line with this stuff? Uh, I think it’s really super interesting conversation.

[00:50:58] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think we’re all gonna figure out that line, I think we’re all gonna figure out that line together as society moves forward. I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer, because I’m in Ravi’s camp partially, where, like, our AI phone agents that we have, we tell everybody, “You should have your AI phone agent answer the phone and say that they’re an AI.”

Like, we should disclose that. And then I’m with you on, like, some of the s- the slop on LinkedIn should be disclosed as AI or regulated or however we wanna do it, whether that’s by LinkedIn or the government or whatever else. Probably by LinkedIn would be my preference, smaller government and all. But, like, but, but then there’s some things where I’m like, “Do I need to disclose this?”

If I’m, if I’m not intentionally misleading and/or I’m stepping back, maybe this is a one-two punch and I’m stepping back and saying, “Could this potentially be misleading?” Maybe I even run that through an AI and ask, like, “Hey, I edited this AI photo. Is this misleading to my guest?” If I’m just adding those people, like I was talking about, near a pool in a, at their ranch, and again, they never use this photo publicly, right?

But if I’m doing that and the pool furniture’s the same, the colors are the same, the fire didn’t change, the, the nighttime didn’t change, the moon is still aligned, the trees are the same, everything is exactly how that customer’s gonna see it except for that lady is not gonna be there when they get there, which wouldn’t be there in a model shoot anyway.

Should I be disclosing that’s AI? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but that’s me. 

[00:52:19] Mychele Bisson: Well, I think if everything is not misleading and everything is exactly the same, I don’t think that’s misleading at all. I mean, we do a lot of organic content, so everything we do is shot in the park with our people, like, you know, with activities going on.

So all of our social media, pictures, videos, all of that stuff is organic. Um, and we just felt like it was better that way because we wanted people to actually get the real experience and to feel what our guests were feel- Like, we did a shoot with some of our guests a couple weekends ago in one of our parks where they, the kids took the GoPro and went down the water slide with it, and they did an amazing job, and we’re gonna reuse that forever because it’s just a- amazing shots.

So I think, you know, if I could… I mean, I guess I would reuse that in AI. If I could redo it in there, I would use it if it was the same exact information and the same exact everything except the people, ’cause those people, like you said, aren’t gonna be there anyway. But we do, we do a lot of organic stuff, and it does really, really well.

I mean, our social media, well, my social media alone is, is, does really well, um, just because I feel like it is organic, um, and I feel like I’m taking everybody on a journey with me. 

[00:53:33] Brian Searl: And I’m not, I’m not making an argument where we should default to AI. We should default to human, but if you don’t have a budget or you wouldn’t otherwise post in the case of a restaurant, or you have a great photo and there was no people in it and you need people in it for…

Then that’s where I’m saying, like, there’s a little bit-

[00:53:48] Mychele Bisson: Yeah …

[00:53:48] Brian Searl: of flexibility. 

[00:53:50] Caleb Cook: 100%. 

[00:53:50] Mychele Bisson: No, I think- Well, I mean- I think I agree with you in the side of if nothing is changing and it’s not misleading and it’s exactly the way that it would look if they were there, I… Totally for it. Like I said, I would take that same footage that we have of the kids and redo it for years with different people in it or different things as long as everything looked exactly the same, just change out maybe the people.

Um, I just- I’m on the side of I just don’t want anybody to look at it and be like, “That is not there.” Because they call it out. Yes. Like, we had a weird shot of one of our, um, one of our marinas. We had a shot that people don’t usually see ’cause it was from the water, and it was just the way that it looked at it.

It even fooled me, ’cause I was like, “That’s not our marina.” And so I’m looking at it trying to figure out if they maybe took one of our other marinas and put it into the picture and they messed it up, and I’m looking at it and I’m looking at it and I was like, “That’s not it.” And so then somebody else was like, “No, that’s that…”

And then somebody else posted, a guest posted a picture underneath the same thing and they were like, “This is the marina. This is where the angle came from.” And I was like, “Okay, well they saved me,” ’cause I didn’t even realize it was my own marina. So I think, you know, like that, I, I… Like, when people get…

‘Cause they do, they nitpick, and they’re… You know, ’cause they want the same experience. They wanna know, like, “This is what I’m gonna see,” and they will pick it apart if they realize it’s not the same picture. ‘Cause there were like 20 people on this thread going, “This is not that marina. I don’t know where this came from.”

And even I was fooled by it because of the angle that it came from, but then somebody was like, “I’m literally sitting in the spot that they shot the picture and here it is.”

And so that, you know, that saved that post, but it’s just if you change anything, I think everybody is on high alert because everybody wants to be the detective and be like, “That’s not real,” right?

And so- Yep … I think that’s where the problem lies is just when it doesn’t look the way that it should or if you add something or make it look different, you know? I mean, I can go out and AI myself into looking like Christie Brinkley. Everybody’s gonna be like, “That’s not her,” ’cause they’re gonna see me in real life and realize that’s definitely not me.

I wish, but no. Like, it’s just, it’s those things that people nitpick because they’re gonna say, “That’s not what it is.” 

[00:56:03] Nick Purslow: I think you’ve always gotta make allowance for- 

[00:56:04] Mychele Bisson: I may have just aged myself because I don’t know if everybody knows who Christie Brinkley is. I just realized that. 

[00:56:09] Brian Searl: I know Christie Brinkley.

[00:56:12] Nick Purslow: I, I, you gotta, uh, make an allowance for, like, there’s always gonna be crazy people in the comments regardless as well. Um, like we did a pre-sale campaign where we just used like artist impression renderings. It wasn’t AI, it was just, you know, traditional, like, um, kind of animation. And people were like beating us up for that.

And it’s like, well, you know, right now the property’s an, an empty lot. Um, and this is what we’re gonna build and it’s quite clearly, you know, animation. Um, and so some people you, you just, I think you gotta accept that, that there’s, there’s gonna be no convincing them and that there’ll always be crazy people out there, so.

[00:56:47] Mychele Bisson: Oh, there’s always crazy people-

[00:56:48] Brian Searl: All right. Let’s- …

[00:56:48] Mychele Bisson: out there trusting all the time. 

[00:56:52] Nick Purslow: I’m just gonna give you a hundred percent- 

[00:56:52] Brian Searl: Let’s spend the last few minutes of the, let’s spend the last few minutes of the show asking each other questions. So, uh, Matt, do you have any questions for anybody here? Just a que- question for one person that you wanna know?

[00:57:04] Matt Whitermore: Oh, that’s a good one. Um, Nick, we haven’t caught up in a while. Uh, what’s, what’s, uh, new in the land of Posh Outdoors? What’s, uh, what’s been going on? 

[00:57:13] Nick Purslow: Uh, lots going on. Um, we’re always kind of in cat raise mode, but we’re really ramping up now. We wanna get to kind of 2, 3, 4 locations by kind of mid next year.

Uh, and I’ve just been deep in the weeds of social media marketing and really kind of figuring out that code and how to speak to people, um, through social media. So lots going on, on, on, on my end. Curious to know what’s going on, on, on your end too. 

[00:57:39] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, no, appreciate that Mm-hmm. 

[00:57:41] Nick Purslow: What’s, what’s going on in yours?

[00:57:43] Matt Whitermore: Uh, just growing fast. Um- Yeah … you know, we’re, uh, ho- hopefully some exciting announcements soon with some, some, uh, you know, big, big adds to the portfolio. Um, you know, management side, investment side. Been, been keeping busy. Um, try- trying to scale, you know, with a corporate crew of about 20 in headquarters has been tough.

Doing a lot of AI stuff to- Mm … get more efficient behind the scenes. So that’s been my, uh, my day-to-day focus. 

[00:58:14] Nick Purslow: Nice. 

[00:58:16] Brian Searl: Nick, do you have a question for anybody? 

[00:58:18] Nick Purslow: Uh, that was my question. 

[00:58:19] Brian Searl: Oh, you’re gonna take it

[00:58:20] Nick Purslow: That’s what I was gonna ask …

[00:58:21] Brian Searl: take it easy on them? Okay, all right. 

[00:58:23] Nick Purslow: I, r- r- it’d be good to know how, you know, what Ravi’s best use case is for AI, um, given, you know, your position.

[00:58:29] Ravi Parikh: Oh, best use case. Um- I don’t know what the best use case is, but I pretty much wrapped our AI around, like every problem I face, I try to think of it AI first now. Um, you know, something cool we’ve built at RoverPass is this concept called SETT Com. Um, we call it SETT Com because I think central command sounds cool.

Um, but it’s basically connected into every part of our business, uh, HR, finance, support, product, engineering, everything. And so like our whole team now, uh, essentially can just ask questions and it can look at our code base and answer questions. It can generate FAQ articles on the fly, uh, based off how features work.

So I don’t, I don’t know that I have like the best use case, um, but there are just so many unlimited use cases that we’re constantly finding every single day. Um, but like one thing that we’ve started doing is identifying loops within our workflows. So it’s where, let’s say like, like we implemented voice AI in our support.

Like when a campground owner calls us, if for some reason we can’t pick up the phone or it’s after hours, it defaults to voice AI. And the problem was is that we didn’t have training data to train the voice AI on like what to do and what not to do because we didn’t use to record our calls. So it’s like how do you train AI on an infinite number of possibilities?

Like if you’re like, somebody asks you what the Cowboys score is on a call, it’s like, uh, like what, what do you do in that case? So we’ve got like AI agents that grade the call after the call based off how it’s supposed to run and then it, it fixes our prompt based off of what that other AI agent thinks the voice AI agent screwed up and then if it doesn’t have an FAQ article to answer the client’s question, it automatically creates the FAQ article and queues it up for our support team to, uh, approve that FAQ article.

So like looping is sort of like the next, uh, frontier of AI, I think. It’s like identifying these like recursive loops in your workflow and then having AI improve those so you can start to compound from there. So just like, I don’t know if that answers your question directly, Nick, but there’s just so many use cases that we’re finding, so I don’t know if there’s any one best 

[01:01:25] Brian Searl: The best is the best for you, and th- and that’s what, like, you gotta start your journey like we talked about, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Start your journey with something small. Yeah. And you’ll figure, your, your best will be something today, and then it’ll be different tomorrow, it’ll be different next week, it’ll be different next month, it’ll be different, right? So- 

[01:01:39] Ravi Parikh: And the, and the crazy thing is you couldn’t even do half of this stuff until, like, December of last year when Anthropic released Opus 4.5.

Like, AI wasn’t as anywhere near as good as it was, um, until like late last year. So it’s crazy how fast this is all moving. 

[01:01:59] Brian Searl: Caleb, do you have any questions for anybody? And if anybody needs to drop off, I know we’re a little bit over, so- 

[01:02:03] Nick Purslow: I’ve gotta dash to another call. Thank you, Brian. Okay. Nice, nice to meet you all.

Thanks for your time. Thank you. Yeah. 

[01:02:06] Caleb Cook: All right. Yeah. I’d be curious to, um, uh, Mychele here, just how, uh … I know it’s been a little bit of a unique season, uh, across the industry, and so I’m curious, uh, how marketing has gone to, uh, recurring guests or past guests and how they’ve responded to that. 

[01:02:26] Mychele Bisson: Um, actually, we had a great season.

Um, we started off really slow because of the, I think it was mainly the weather and the gas prices. Um, but we kind of pivoted to marketing closer to home and actually kind of booked out our parks most of the season. Um, I think for July 4th we were like at 106% across the board. Um- Nice. Yeah. So we, we did really well.

I mean, August is always probably our slowest month because everybody goes back to school, and so I was just talking to my team right before this about, “Okay, well, let’s give all the locals a bigger discount just to get them all in.” And we’re doing like f- first responders. Like this is when we do all of that stuff so that we can just get people and heads in beds because we know August and September everybody goes back to school.

So I think it’s always just kind of understanding who is where and who’s coming to the park at what times to understand how to like switch your marketing up. But I think because we are a smaller group, um, we’re able to pivot really quickly. 

[01:03:21] Caleb Cook: That’s awesome

[01:03:21] Brian Searl: All right 

[01:03:23] Mychele Bisson: Yeah

[01:03:23] Brian Searl: Mychele, you have any questions?

[01:03:24] Mychele Bisson: I think, I think we’re probably done for the day

[01:03:26] Brian Searl: You lost everybody

[01:03:26] Mychele Bisson: Yeah

[01:03:27] Brian Searl: You, you lost everybody but like the other day was the day- 

[01:03:28] Mychele Bisson: Well, actually, my question was for Caleb anyway because I kind of wanted to know, so with CampLife, how are you guys integrating AI into your systems? 

[01:03:36] Caleb Cook: Yeah. So there, there are a couple of things we’re working on the backg- in the background.

Um, I don’t actually know how much I can divulge on a couple of the- 

[01:03:45] Brian Searl: Nobody watches the show, Caleb, so just say whatever you want. 

[01:03:48] Caleb Cook: Okay. But yeah, what I’ll, what I’ll say is there are-

[01:03:52] Mychele Bisson: They’re everybody excited …

[01:03:53] Caleb Cook: there are some big things… Yeah, true. So there are gonna be some big things coming. Um, we have, we have some things on both how we help parks strategize, um, both on the, the rating side, and then how we help parks, um, manage those front desk operations.

Uh, so one of the things that we hear from a ton of parks is that they just have a hard time hiring for people, and, um, a hard time, uh, just staffing through the year. And granted, this, these, a lot of the cross-section are kinda these smaller parks, you know? And so we’re looking at really ways that we can help streamline things for people that are strapped, uh, for operating income or operating resources on the, the staffing side.

Um, so I think I’ll, I’ll kind of leave it there for the time being, but we are, uh, following up on the email marketing releases with some, some 2.0 tools that, um, that really do, do leverage kind of, uh, sometimes AI, sometimes not AI, but AI structure, if you will, um, to prompting out, “Hey, I wanna send emails to all my guests that stayed within the park, you know, between X days on this site, um, so that we can really re- effectively retarget, uh, those customers.”

And, uh, we honestly find that, um, a lot of our, uh, our customers don’t really leverage that returning customer base even when there’s a very high percentage of g- of campers that are likely to restay, um, or revisit a park. So that’s, that’s kind of where we’re putting a lot of our focus right now is just, yeah, how do we streamline the staffing side?

How do we streamline the remarketing side? 

[01:05:42] Mychele Bisson: Yeah. I actually think that’s a huge thing ’cause I know like for us, when we acquire a park, the reoccurring guests are like our biggest, they’re our biggest advertisers. Oh, yeah. So we go after them hard. So yeah, and it pays off, so. 

[01:05:59] Caleb Cook: Good. Glad to hear that. Glad to hear you guys had a good season too.

That’s awesome. 

[01:06:04] Mychele Bisson: Yeah, we actually had a really good season. It was a great one. We were actually, um, last season we were, um, I think it was 8 to 12% above where we were the year before, and then this season we were actually, I think it was 16 to 25% above where we were last year. 

[01:06:20] Brian Searl: Nice. 

[01:06:20] Caleb Cook: Very good. 

[01:06:21] Ravi Parikh: That’s good growth.

[01:06:22] Mychele Bisson: Yeah, so depending on the park. 

[01:06:25] Brian Searl: All right. I wanna be cognizant of everybody’s time here. So Ravi, final thoughts and any, where can they find out more about RoverPass? 

[01:06:31] Ravi Parikh: Uh, software.roverpass.com or just reach out to me, ravi@roverpass.com. Um, I guess final thoughts, um- AI is here, and I think just learning to use it.

Education, I think, is the most important part of this. This is like a brand-new technology that’s moving at a speed we’ve never seen before in any kind of technology, so just spending more time teaching yourself how to use it, I think, is something everybody should just slow down for a second and do because it will really up…

You know, if you spend two weeks just deep diving into AI, and if you’re an investor like Mychele, uh, you will make back those two weeks of investment in, like, two to four weeks, right? So, like, objectively speaking, that’s, uh, an incredible return if you can make your money back in two to four weeks.

That’s literally all it takes. So, you know, if you wanna start small, just start, you know, tinkering. Like, that’s the best way 

[01:07:44] Brian Searl: Final thoughts, Caleb, and where can they learn more about CampLife? 

[01:07:47] Caleb Cook: Yeah. Software.camplife.com and, uh, forward slash email dash marketing if you’re interested in learning about that, uh, new feature release specifically.

Um, and yeah, final thoughts is, um, you know, at the end of the day we’re in hospitality and building relationships, so, um, that’s kind of the, the filter that I would encourage everybody to run things through, and it’ll be different for everybody. Um, but we have, we have relationships to maintain and people to make feel at home.

Um, and so that’s, yeah, that’s the goal with all of this too. Um, and that’s what I hope for our industry too. 

[01:08:26] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Caleb. Last but not least, Mychele, where can they… or final thoughts and where can they learn more about Wayhaven? 

[01:08:32] Mychele Bisson: Oof. Final thoughts. Um, I agree with both of you guys.

Um, I think that we are completely a hospitality-driven business, and we should never lose sight of that, but we should always find ways to be able to streamline things on the back end so that we can be fully focused on the hospitality side and ensuring that our guests do feel like they’re coming home every time they visit us.

Um, and where can you find me? You can find me at, well, wayhavenresorts.com is where you can find my portfolio. Um, you can also find me on social medias at Mychele Bisson anywhere from YouTube to Instagram to LinkedIn and michelebisson.com. 

[01:09:07] Brian Searl: All right. Thank you guys for being here, for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chat.

Scott Bahr and I are off today. Again, we’re just, I, I’m taking the whole month of August off, I guess, ’cause we’re busy. We’ll be back with another episode of Outwired next week, so until then, uh, take care. Have a great week. Thanks, everybody. 

[01:09:20] Mychele Bisson: Bye, guys. 

[01:09:21] Caleb Cook: Thank you.