MC Fireside Chats – September 23rd, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: So everybody, it’s another episode of MC Fireside Chats literally today, but I’m gonna turn around ’cause it’s not really warm here if I’m facing away from it, so I just wanna like to have the proof in the background that I’m actually doing it. Uh, but Fireside Chats, welcome here to everybody. Uh, excited to be back for another episode.

We’re gonna talk about some AI tech. Uh, we got some special guests here, some of our recurring guests, so, uh, Ravi, uh, Matt Whitemore back with us, uh, and then a few special guests. We got Alex, Tessa, and, uh, Mitch from Northgate Resorts. Uh, Alex, sorry, you’re from CRR. I didn’t mean to lump you into that whole kind of group there.

I guess I should have paused and put some kind of comma there or something. But, uh, welcome everybody. Let’s go briefly around our, uh, the room and just introduce ourselves. Uh, Ravi, you wanna start? 

[00:01:24] Ravi Parikh: Uh, yeah. I’m Ravi. I’m the founder of, uh, RoverPass. We’re a management software company that, uh, about 1,000 campgrounds across the US use to run all of their reservations through.

[00:01:38] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, sir. Alex?

[00:01:44] Alex Burkett: Hey everyone, uh, my name is Alex. I’m GM at, uh, COTA RV Park right on site at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, uh, which is managed by CRR Hospitality. 

[00:01:55] Brian Searl: And you’re gonna later describe how you woke up this morning for us, right? 

[00:01:59] Alex Burkett: Sure. I can, I can replay that. Yeah. 

[00:02:01] Brian Searl: Well, sure man, like it fits into the branding.

You can promote the park, like wow, man. 

[00:02:07] Alex Burkett: For sure, yeah. We’ve, we’ve been blessed. We have a, a company called RideSmart that does a lot of like, it’s like a motorcycle school, um, which I’ve been kind of shocked by the amount of like amateur racing that actually occurs on the track when there’s not like a major event like F1 or Moto.

Um, so literally about 7:00 AM this morning, woke up to, you know, motorcycles racing 100 miles an hour, you know, right outside your RV. Uh, pretty, pretty incredible experience. Definitely, um, very experiential and, you know, if you, you’re looking for adventure, this is, this is the park for you. 

[00:02:37] Brian Searl: Yeah, I mean, it’s not probably the park for me.

Like I remember the, the, the only time I remember waking up to something was at like a KOA somewhere in Kentucky, like in 2012 when we were filming videos of them, and it was like a goat screeching at like 4:00 o’clock in the morning. Like I’m not… Yeah, I need to sleep in till I wake up. I don’t like alarms, but more power to you, Alex, like you’re a better person than me.

Uh, Matt first and then we’ll do the Northgate duo. 

[00:03:02] Matt Whitermore: Yes, hello. Uh, gonna throw you for a little bit of a loop here maybe, Brian, we haven’t talked, but, uh, new, new role, new company, uh, this, this month. Uh, so after a really fun, rewarding, meaningful year, a little over a year with, uh, Climb Capital and Unhitched, um, decided to make a move over to a, a company, a startup in the AI and tech space and commercial real estate space and outdoor hospitality space called Travo.

Uh, so I’m manager- managing director with, uh, Travo. Uh, happy to talk more about that, but, uh, you know, first, first and foremost, a huge thank you to Bob Preston, Dave Wilner, uh, all of the Climb Capital and Unhitched teams for a really fun, rewarding year and, uh, you know, still, still big fans and, uh, a lot of exciting stuff going on with those, those two teams.

Um, but new, new opportunity, uh, for myself here, so good timing, kind of an announcement here. 

[00:04:00] Brian Searl: I don’t mean to like… I didn’t, I, I would have preferred to tell you this privately, Matt, but Bob was sending us checks to have you on the show every week. Just, uh, kidding. Welcome. W- I’m glad, glad to hear it, man.

Congratulations are in order, I assume, so, uh, obviously good role to good role, but like glad you’re growing and moving and doing what you wanna do. Exciting to see where you go from there. Uh-

[00:04:21] Matt Whitermore: Thank you …

[00:04:21] Brian Searl: Mitch or Tessa, who wants to go first? You guys wanna fight over it or? 

[00:04:25] Mitchell Spence: Ladies first. 

[00:04:27] Tessa McCrackin: All right. Uh, yeah.

So I’m Tessa McCracken, I’m the CMO here at Northgate Resort, so I’m overseeing all of our marketing for all of our locations, and Mitch reports directly to me. That’s a joke. So Mitch can introduce himself. 

[00:04:39] Mitchell Spence: I wish. 

[00:04:42] Brian Searl: Go ahead, Mitch, please. 

[00:04:43] Mitchell Spence: I, M- Mitch Spence. Uh, I realized I didn’t put my last name on there, but I’m the chief commercial officer at Northgate Resorts, so oversee a lot of the just commercial strategy, uh, revenue management, that kind of thing 

[00:04:54] Brian Searl: Awesome.

Well, welcome everybody. So we typically start the show to tossing it to our recurring guests. Guess we only have two today, Ravi and Matt. Uh, is there anything that’s come across your guys’ desk in the last month since we’ve been together? Primarily kind of staying around the AI tech area, but if you have something else that’s important, you know, throw it out there that you think we should be talking about

[00:05:14] Matt Whitermore: I’ll jump in. I, uh, since we spoke a- about a month ago, I’ve just opened my world. You know, I was a, uh, a loyalist to, uh, Claude and Claude models and Claude Code, um, and have since broadened my horizons to, uh, Codex and, uh, OpenAI models and, uh, Cursor and Groq models and GroqBot, and have just really, uh, kinda gone to town on, uh, testing and experimenting with different models and really trying to, um, become model and, I guess, app agnostic, which is, has been really eye-opening 

[00:05:55] Brian Searl: Yeah, we use that.

I think I’ve said it on the show before, like, and for the people who, um, you know, who are watching the show and, and don’t speak geek like Matt just did a bunch of different AI models that do a bunch of different things that, uh, you know, uh, from different providers. But basically for, for most of the people who are watching this show, you’re gonna find a lot of these are similar, but Matt loves to experiment.

He loves to do a lot with Claude Code, kind of like I do, and build things, and so, so, and Ravi too, uh, and maybe the Northgate people too, and maybe Alex too will get there. Um, but, uh, you know, just different things, different tools for different use cases, and so, uh, it’s kinda good to kind of grow and expand and see what different providers offer.

Uh, Opus 5.5 is out now, which is good, so. 

[00:06:34] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. That was the-

[00:06:36] Matt Whitermore: Yeah …

[00:06:36] Ravi Parikh: that was the drop this morning. Or was that yesterday? 

[00:06:38] Brian Searl: It was yesterday. 

[00:06:40] Ravi Parikh: Oh, okay. 

[00:06:40] Matt Whitermore: Yesterday. Yeah. 

[00:06:41] Ravi Parikh: I feel like the biggest news in AI in the last 30 days has been Facebook dropping Muse, which is-

[00:06:47] Matt Whitermore: Yeah …

[00:06:48] Ravi Parikh: basically like a, a personal assistant. Well, I guess Grok Bot too happened this last m- 

[00:06:54] Matt Whitermore: Yeah

[00:06:55] Ravi Parikh: I don’t know, that’s probably been, like, 60 days now. But the AI personal assistant wars are, are firing on all cylinders now. It seems like all the big guys have, have a claim in that battle. 

[00:07:12] Brian Searl: Well, before we get into the geeky stuff, why don’t we go to, like, let, let’s start with Alex, right?

Alex, like, so first tell us about your role at COTA and, and what, what you’re kinda doing, anything you wanna take in.

But then my second question is, is how are you utilizing some of this AI in tech for the work that you’re doing for either in your personal life, you wanna do that, or work for COTA? 

[00:07:31] Alex Burkett: Yeah. So I think, you know, one, I have a, a unique perspective as kind of the, I think, only one on the call that operates a single campground location from, you know, primarily the, the day-to-day operations as the GM.

Um, so I actually credit, like, Ravi, to you in, in the last episode that I listened, you know, with this and you talking about how, you know, interconnected a lot of the tools, um, that, that you use were with AI. And, you know, I kinda took that from that, you know, prior episode and challenged myself to say, you know, “How can I use Copilot more, uh, to, to look at emails?

How am I better utilizing data to impact our guest experiences, our major events happening on campus?” Um, you know, I’m fairly new to the property, um, and, and with CRR as well, and, and Brian, you know, you’re a big part of our, our AI strategy here and a lot of, um, you know, what we believe, trying to be AI forward and AI first at CRR.

And for me to step into a new park and a new role, there’s a lotta data that you have to kinda cover, you know, out of the gates. So I think that’s kinda the most tangible impact that I’ve seen in the last 60 days, is really- Utilizing it to my advantage to download the things that I need to understand quicker here, to then be able to go into how am I making the experiences better, um, you know, how are we gonna be preparing for F1 coming up, right?

All, all the things that I really should be doing and spending my time on. Um, so really just how I’ve kind of connected things from the start and started downloading things has been, you know, pivotal for me. 

[00:08:52] Brian Searl: Okay. Uh, Tessa, how are you using it at Northgate? 

[00:08:56] Tessa McCrackin: Yeah. So, um, in the marketing department we’ve been using it a lot to create dashboards and automate reporting.

I think over the past couple years we used it to automate a lot of the, um, you know, kind of menial tasks, and now we’re moving a bit beyond that. So something that we’ve been doing for the past two years, it kind of just keeps getting better and better, is helping us, um, assess and respond to guest reviews, complaints, feedback like that, and, uh, assess the trends, but then also get back to them.

So, um, that’s one thing. But then we created a lot of dashboards this year with just different, um, purposes, you know. So we have dashboards for everything that we’re trying to track, and it makes this a lot easier for us to surface, um, the answers to ourselves and to stakeholders too. You know, before someone might ask us, like, “What’s going on with this here?”

And we might spend all day trying to track down the answer to it. But, you know, now it takes, like, five minutes to find that answer for someone. Um, so that’s been a huge help for me so I can spend more time thinking about the creative and fun things and less time just hunting down the answer to, you know, some question that someone has in the office here.

Um, but Mi- Mitch and I work really closely, and he does a lot with AI as well. 

[00:10:01] Brian Searl: Do you have a secret to getting people to actually view the dashboards that you create? ‘Cause I haven’t figured that out yet. 

[00:10:07] Tessa McCrackin: Yeah, you know, we… If you automate the report and send it to their inbox, there’s a, you know, 15% chance they’ll look at it.

So if you’re not doing that, try that. 

[00:10:18] Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s what I think I’m missing. I’m like, I created all these fancy dashboards, and then they just want emailed reports. I’m like, “What did I make the dashboard for? Like, it took me forever.” 

[00:10:25] Tessa McCrackin: Yeah. You know, and we’ll get a question like, “Is there a dashboard for this?”

And, you know, you kind of just have to smile and say, “Send it again,” you know. But it’s helpful. 

[00:10:33] Brian Searl: Mitch, how about you?

[00:10:38] Mitchell Spence: Uh, I don’t know. What don’t I use it for, I guess 

[00:10:44] Brian Searl: Well, you can start with that. Like then we, we can problem solve together. We can help you work and use it for that if you don’t use it already

[00:10:54] Mitchell Spence: Um, yeah, I, I, you know, I use it for almost, almost everything day to day, things through it just to see how it works and, and, uh, what, where it can be useful and not. It’s really, really helpful at scale for us to run reporting and to look at things, uh, across, um, large swaths of data and, and reach, you know, options that we haven’t.

But I don’t know, I use it for all kinds of stuff just to see if it’s helpful for it and try to train, um, try to train my model to be able to automate and, and reach conclusions faster and automate things faster. And, um, we run a, we run a, a lot of programs through it really at this point 

[00:11:38] Brian Searl: Yeah, this is where I’m at.

Like, I, and I, and I started thinking about this I guess a few months ago. We had a, it wasn’t an AI show but we had a podcast where Sandy Ellingson was on. She’s a recurring guest in week one, and she was, she asked me like, “What’s the latest in AI?” Like, “What’s the latest thing you’ve been working on with AI?”

And I’m like, I stopped and I couldn’t think ’cause I like, I’ve been coding with AI and building databases and all kinds of features and things with Camp Vantage and, but like I hadn’t really, I didn’t have an answer for her ’cause she was asking specifically about AI. And I realized then that the kind of like, there’s, there’s places that we’ve taken this, and Tessa you mentioned reviews so I’ll give that as an example, ’cause we still manage review responses for I think, I don’t know, 150 parks or something like that, uh, even though we’re trying to wind that down.

But we’re looking at like, okay yes, we can analyze the text of the review, like kind of use those models to say like what is the emotional tone of voice that this guest is speaking in. Are they angry, are they upset, are they not? And then obviously sometimes a human being can read that but, but a model can pick up nuances better.

And then responding based on that and, and taking into a context. You know, I wanna make a personal response but also understanding, empathizing, which is sometimes hard for owners or managers who it’s their baby and, you know, how dare you talk about me that way, that kind of thing. But then taking it to the next level is what interests me, not just with reviews obviously, but everything else.

So an example would be like how do I connect the data we have in a Campspot or a Newbook or a Staylist or whatever your PMS is, RoverPass, et cetera, right? How do we connect that data to the guest so that when we’re responding to the review we can link it to the person and we can make the response like 100 times more personal.

I, I don’t know that we’ve solved that yet with every PMS out there, but it’s an interesting place to take it, so I think that’s, not to tout our products or anything, we don’t have that publicly. But just to say as we move forward I think that’s where the kind of next step comes from is, yes, we can take it and respond to reviews or we can write blog posts or social media, or we can analyze spreadsheets, but how do we not just automate it, but how do we automate it in a better way than was being done before?

I don’t know. 

[00:13:40] Mitchell Spence: And trust the outputs. 

[00:13:44] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. And I, I think like the next evolution of AI is gonna be on workflows. Um, I mean, that’s already here. Every- a lot of people are doing it, but I think, uh, most people are using it for like reporting and data analysis. But like when you start evolving from just reporting and data analysis to actually letting the AI control workflows, and they’re called evals, right?

You, you, you send data through, and then you look at the output, and you do that a whole bunch of times to see if it’s a consistent output every single time. When you can start to think about your business from the perspective of just like workflows, which most businesses really that’s… If you break it down, everything is sort of like a-

[00:14:31] Brian Searl: Process

[00:14:31] Ravi Parikh: workflow or a process, right, at its core. That’s when you take a company that is, uh… That’s when you can call… And, and you inject AI into those workflows, that’s what an agentic native organization looks like, right? Every part of the business has AI injected into it, whether it’s marketing, sales, support, product, engineering, um, like anything, any department, any, any part of it, and there’s a brain that all of this kind of feeds into.

And then I think our, in our industry, that brain in most cases is gonna be the PMS system because it’s got like probably a PMS system and your CRM platform, right? Those two together really probably have most of the data that you need to be able to then build workflows on top. Um, so I, I mean, I think that’s gonna happen over time, but you don’t wanna lose the personal element of the business ’cause we’re in the hospitality industry too, so, um- 

[00:15:33] Brian Searl: Yeah, we’ve talked about that on the show before.

Like I think, I think the ultimate answer with technology is, is you wanna, especially in our industry, in outdoor hospitality, it’s never gonna replace the human being. It’s never gonna replace a CMO like Tessa with good strategy or what Mitch does at Northgate, but it’s gonna enhance their workflow, allow them to, to, to do things that they’d probably rather do with their day instead of finding the, you know, spending six hours trying to find the data point like Tessa said or whatever that was, right?

Yeah. Uh, and, and I think that’s where you take it. W- with the guest experience especially, like there are so many ways that like we’re exploring at our company, I’m sure other people are too, how do we personalize the journey for the guest? How do we like, you know, give them things that are unique to their stay that make them have a great first impression of the property before they even arrive, and then once they’re there, the technology’s out of the way.

Like it’s there, but it’s not there. You can’t see it. It’s, it’s underneath the floorboard, so to speak, and I think that’s the best way to use AI in outdoor hospitality. At least that’s my current working theory. 

[00:16:29] Mitchell Spence: Yeah, I totally agree with that 

[00:16:32] Brian Searl: How do you guys, how do you guys handle this at, at Northgate?

Mitch, you said you do operations or is that just your title? 

[00:16:37] Mitchell Spence: Uh, yeah, operations support really. Um, but exactly that, I mean, your points. One, once a guest is on property, they don’t, you know, AI should really have very little to do with it. But we s- we spend most of our time building the systems behind it, you know, um, in order

to, in order to really maximize the experience, you know, for guests that are, um, for guests that are, you know, looking and booking and for guests that are coming to the resort. But AI’s not f- you know, uh, on the forefront of their experience. It’s, it’s working in the background We, we use it extensively for many things, you know?

[00:17:21] Brian Searl: Alex, you got some background noise back there, it’s like mute me, so just… I don’t know if it’s- 

[00:17:25] Ravi Parikh: We 

[00:17:25] Brian Searl: can hear 

[00:17:25] Ravi Parikh: a race car back there

or something. 

[00:17:30] Mitchell Spence: Are, are you playing Gran Turismo? 

[00:17:34] Brian Searl: I mean, maybe. I mean, yeah, like every time I talk he plays Gran Turismo, and then when people say something important he turns it off. Yeah. Uh, but that’s, that’s a real, that’s a real question I think if we can get to the point to with people w- uh, there’s so many people watching this show who are like, “I’ve only played with Chat GPT a couple times,” or, “I’ve done it and I’ve just used it to write social media posts or respond to reviews,” or the basic things, right?

Maybe even come up with an email marketing plan. Um, and, and maybe Tessa we start with you here, right? But like obviously it’s not going to replace marketing, but it’s gonna replace the low-hanging fruits of marketing. But how can operators like kind of take advantage of this to do the things they couldn’t do before?

Like one of the things that we’ll cite on calls with some of our clients is like you used to, you used to have to, if you wanted to create ideal customer profiles or buy a, buyer personas or audience style guides or all those kinds of things, you were paying an agency thousands of dollars a month to do this because they needed four or five people that were making 120,000 plus a year to be able to do all this.

And now with AI you’ve kind of just, it’s democratized it all in a way and, and there’s this opportunity to really, instead of just saying, “I want to attract people into my RV park,” understand who those people are, where they’re coming from, why they’re coming to you. Like, uh, uh, I don’t wanna keep talking forever, but like a good example is like we were talking to a park about traveling nurses the other day and understanding like the psychology behind traveling nurses and how they need a quiet area in the park because sometimes they’ll work overnight shifts and they sleep till 2:00 and they don’t wanna be near the construction worker that’s working on the pipeline at 4:00 in the morning and, and then they also don’t…

aren’t comfortable with monthly rates. And I don’t know any of this stuff, right? This is all AI spitting this out. But they aren’t comfortable with monthly rates ’cause their contract can be canceled with a week notice and then they owe you three weeks. And so all these are hesitations or things that can help set you apart that, I mean, you could have done before, but not easily, right?

[00:19:22] Tessa McCrackin: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean it’s a, it’s a great thought partner if, if nothing else to you if you’re just starting out with brainstorming. I mean, beyond copy, like ideas for the psychology behind things like you said, or, you know, even what, what can you help me do, AI? You know, tell me. So that’s if you’re using, you know, just your, your GPT or Claude or whatever, what have you.

Um, but a lot of the tools that you might be paying for, I think it’s interesting, are al- also integrating their own AI into it. So you can just use some, use the function of AI that’s being built into the platforms that you’re already paying for. So going back to reviews, if you’re already paying, you know, to have something help you manage your reviews, there’s probably built-in AI now that they’ve put into it that you could be utilizing that you might not realize is a feature that’s been added. Um-

[00:20:04] Brian Searl: Yep …

[00:20:05] Tessa McCrackin: I can think of many tools like where that’s the case and you just might need to try some of these things that have- Um, been, been built in so, you know, we don’t need to segment our data using Claude because Salesforce has that built in, doing it its own in the, in the background. And same with, you know, your meta ads, optimizing them.

That’s all AI too, but it’s within the platform, so you don’t need to be, like, doing this all yourself. The, the tools are kind of at your, your fingertips of what you’re already using perhaps. How do you- I mean, I do think results will vary though. Like, the design things, you know, proceed with caution if you’re using it to design your flyers, you know?

But, um, it’s certainly better than alternative of maybe having a kid make something in Word for you, you know? So… 

[00:20:47] Brian Searl: Yeah. How do you stitch it all together, though? That’s the, the kind of thing, like… And, and I don’t know, maybe if that’s too advanced of a question for our audience, I think some will be appreciated and some won’t.

But the question I… Like, like you talked about, like, there’s an AI in Meta, there’s an AI in Salesforce, there’s an AI in HubSpot, there’s an AI everywhere. Everybody’s got their own chatbot doing their own thing. But how do you link those systems together? You know, Campspot just has their new revenue management thing they released yesterday.

How do you link that together without it… Like, it, it doesn’t need to in some fashion or some way, but also it would be helpful if it linked to Meta and everybody understood what the rate individual people were paying, and you could feed all your conversion data back into that. But don’t get too complicated, but I think you understand what I’m saying.

[00:21:30] Tessa McCrackin: Yeah. And I mean, results will vary and, and we’ve been trying to build a marketing dashboard for, for literally years and we’ve, we’ve paid people to h- try to help us build it, we’ve tried to build it ourselves. You know, finally it’s just gotten to a point where we were able, able to build it. But before, things would never match up and still with marketing specifically, like, attribution’s not going to work all the time depending on where you’re pulling the data.

Is it coming from Google? Is it coming from Meta directly? You know, is it coming from Reddit directly with these, these first source, uh, platforms? But we’ve tried to connect everything through, you know, Claude, and Mitch and I have worked together on this because, you know, Mitch and I were having conversations like, “Wait, you actually don’t have access to my Meta results, and I don’t have access to your report.”

So, like, we’ve been trying to connect, um, things so we’re getting a more holistic view and have visibility to things that w- before we were just, like, asking each other for. I don’t know if you have anything to add to this, Mitch, like some insights that you’ve had from having access to my, um, data that you m- might have not been able to see easily before?

[00:22:31] Mitchell Spence: Uh, well, it’s, I mean, a, a simple example is that they gave me the credentials to get into all of their, uh, the, um, meta, all the, all the, uh, digital ad spend stats that are behind it. And with a click of a couple of buttons, I now have, you know, direct access through API into those systems that I can integrate into pacing data, conversion data, like, um, and, and that’s, you know, unheard of two years ago. Um, now-

[00:23:02] Ravi Parikh: Yeah, I have, I have a lot of those problems …

[00:23:03] Mitchell Spence: how the trends of tracking is a lot different

[00:23:09] Ravi Parikh: Um, I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, uh, if you guys care to hear. Um, I think every company is gonna have a brain that is connected to all of their information systems via APIs. Um, and What that basically means in layman’s terms is you have a brain, and then you have all your different software systems, and you give your brain access to all of those software systems via API.

And then there’s gonna be two types of software companies moving forward, ones that integrate AI into their products, so you use the AI in their product, or there’s gonna be companies where, uh, there is no user interface. The AI is used through something like Claude, right? It’s just like an enhancement that you connect into Claude.

Good examples of that, uh, are, uh, there’s a company that we use called Data for SEO, and it’s a API that you plug into Claude, and you put your website in, and it gives you, like, the most incredible report on what’s messed up with your website and what you need to fix. Um, and so that’s a company that is API first.

There’s no user interface. You can’t, you can’t see anything. It’s all returned back to you in Claude. Whereas Salesforce, for example, is a company– Well, they kinda have both ways right now. So Salesforce is, uh, a user interface. They have got like a co-pilot in it that helps you use Salesforce better. But for people like me, I don’t want to use a user interface.

I don’t even wanna log in and click on any buttons. I just wanna talk, and it gives me what I want, right? And so Salesforce has a headless version, which just means literally they chop the head off the software and they’re like, “Hey, you’re just an API, and now you just talk to your data through something like Claude.”

So, um, there’s really gonna be two ways that this kinda goes down, um, over time. There might be a third way that presents itself, I don’t know. Um, it’s all evolving so fast. But I think that’s something kind of important to understand as, as AI is evolving, is that Claude sort of is your brain, um, or, or Claude or Codex or whatever is sort of your brain because it’s the processing power, and you need to give it access to the data to be able to do stuff.

And then if you give your brain a database where it can take the stuff that it learned and dump it into a database, now it has access to that forever. So you’re creating insights from your data, and you just store those somewhere. Um, and just kinda backing up, Brian, to your question of how do people start using AI, if you don’t have a paid subscription to Chat GPT or to Claude, you’re- I tell this to people I know all the time, you’re not really using AI.

That’s like, that’s like you’re just using like Google basically. It’s like you are only accessing like 1% or 2% of like what AI is capable of doing. And then the next tier would be a paid subscription. At that point, you’re probably using like 6% or 7% of what AI is doing. And until you move into a command line, which is like Claude’s desktop app, Claude Code, at that point you’ve got access to 100% of AI.

And then it’s about the structure that you stack on top of it, right? Like, how do you architect the AI solution for a company, right? Do you have a brain? Do you have everything connected to that brain? Do you have a way to dump the data out of the brain from the data that comes in from your CRM instance?

So that’s kind of like, at that point you’re sort of like on the advanced tier of AI. But the amazing thing is if you just describe that to Claude in literally plain English, um, and wait for it to give you a response, it’ll tell you exactly how to do that. And like you can just like … It’ll give you like step-by-step instructions like, “Click this button, go to this URL.

If you don’t know where to go once you’re at that URL, copy and pa- take a screenshot, upload it to Claude.” It’ll be like, “Okay, click on that thing.” Um, so that’s the, that’s the amazing part of AI. It’s like knowledge is basically free at this point. Like, I mean, it’s 20 bucks a month, and if you use a lot then it’s 100 and then it’s 200.

But, um, yeah. But, uh, it’s much cheaper than it ever has been. Uh, so I could go on a rant about that for a while. 

[00:28:03] Brian Searl: Well, I think some of the, the issue if you step back and look at like who’s watching the show primarily, like campground owners, managers, vendors, other people in the outdoor hospitality space, right?

But let’s … Like Alex, I’m curious with your take here because you manage COTA and I imagine that there’s probably other things that you do in your day besides sit down and be like, “I wanna learn Chat GPT.” So I, I think, I think that part of the issue here as we talk about this and, and Ravi gets into the weeds and we talk about the things that Tessa is able to do and Mitch is able to do at a corporate level are different from a, we’re telling a campground owner they should learn AI and they’re looking back at us like, “Well, with what time?”

Don’t forget to unmute yourselves 

[00:28:46] Ravi Parikh: We can’t hear you, Alex 

[00:28:50] Brian Searl: Let’s see if I can do it. I tried to do it. Try it now. 

[00:28:52] Alex Burkett: Any better? 

[00:28:53] Brian Searl: There we go. 

[00:28:54] Alex Burkett: Okay. Perfect. Yeah, I’ve definitely fallen into this, this trap myself, and I’d say, you know, to, to Tess’s point earlier, I, you know, as we’ve kind of built dashboards, and Brian, again, I’m gonna plug you because we use it every day at, at CRR.

If there’s, you know, you have some great marketing dashboards that you’ve built for us internally that’s been helpful to figure out, right, how we can pivot and grow. You know, COTA especially, um, we have a, you know, a lot of our demand is based off of these major events that are, you know, 10 to 12 days of our year does a disproportionate amount of our revenue.

So figuring out how we can leverage the demand created from the events, right, which helps us drive rate, helps us drive length of stay, and then sort of using the review piece of carrying that forward and how do we get somebody to come back when it’s not F1, when it’s not Moto, right? There’s still 350 days left in the calendar that, that we’ve got to fill.

You know, being able to utilize the data, and I think, like, we have meetings all the time. Myself as, as a GM with, you know, the, the corporate team that we’re with, you know, bringing your marketing person into that. If you have a revenue management person or if you’re doing that function, like, scheduling the time to actually sit down and review it and have the data that you’re using in the tools already there, like that’s where I actually see it as it’s a valuable use of my time and I actually can…

Right, if I take the time to do that hour meeting with our team, I go away with it with practical things that I can get our team here to do or that I can leave and actually say, “This is gonna move the business forward, and this is gonna give us the financial result that we want.” So just leveraging it that way I think has been helpful in my seat trying to run the operation and, you know, be stretched with my time as it is.

[00:30:32] Brian Searl: Like, I think if I step back and, and I’m definitely, like, way up here on a geek level above every- that doesn’t mean I’m better, it just means I’m… have no life. Um, but, like, if I step back and try to put myself in the, in the shoes of somebody who’s trying to learn this, whether it’s a campground owner or whether it’s a team member who’s an employee of mine or anybody else that I’m talking to, I think the, the barrier really is curiosity for most people.

It’s either you have that gene of I wanna be curious and I wanna keep asking questions and I wanna critical think and I wanna figure this stuff out and I’m willing to go down the rabbit hole like Ravi said, where it’s gonna explain everything and I’m willing to follow it and willing to have patience and understanding that it’s gonna break and I’m gonna scream at my computer.

Maybe that scream at my computer’s just my problem, but, um, but so, um- But I think that’s generally, like, the, you need that curiosity gene or you need an incentive to go there and have it solve a problem for you. And I think 

[00:31:24] Alex Burkett: that- Well, and for, for me, the, the financial part has been the incentive. Like, I’ve, I’ve seen our real growth of, like, where I can justify if I spend an hour this week doing that, I generated X amount that went right to my P&L, which is tied to my bonus as the GM, right?

It’s something that, like, as you said, CRR’s culture is all about that. Like, we’re, we’re all about trying to find that next stone to unturn and, like, what are we doing every day for continuous improvement to drive that additional revenue. So 100% agree with you that if people, um, in the GM seat start to see that connection, I think there’s gonna be more adoption across the industry with that.

[00:32:02] Brian Searl: But then you also look at, and, and everything you said is correct, I’m not saying… I’m saying there’s a flip side, though, of the people who don’t have a support system like a CRR or a Northgate or something like that, right? Or an Unhitched or whoever, that are the, the mom-and-pop operators who have to get on the tractor every day and mow or fix the sewer line or whatever, right?

That are, is the, you have to do that too as a GM, but you don’t also have that support system behind you, like you do, but many people don’t. And so then the question becomes is how do I devote time to learning Chat GPT when my lawn is unmowed or when there’s a busted sewer pipe or when there’s six RVs lined up at the check-in counter and somebody needs to escort them to the place?

And, and I think that’s where you have to, like, you have to have a mindset of, like, and again, I’m not a camp runner, I’m not saying that you should just make the time and find it because it’s not as easy as that is, sounds coming out of my mouth. But it’s a I’m either curious or I recognize that maybe there’s a way I can, I don’t know, teach myself about the latest robot lawn mowers and understand how they work and map them to my property and then not get on the mower as often as I did before.

Just making something up. Maybe you like being on the mower, right? But that’s where I think we are as an industry is, is there’s just not enough time to go around and until there’s an impetus to force that for the people who aren’t curious, there’s an impetus to say, like, I have, like, maybe the economy is perhaps not going in the right direction ’cause diesel prices are at all-time highs.

That could happen sometime. You never know. Uh, then maybe you wanna figure out how to, how do I diversify my audience and reach out to more people and figure out what I can get or what kind of promo I can run to help them save on diesel or whatever it may be, right? That impetus is gonna force the adoption too

Like, what do you, what do you see, Mitch, from an operations support standpoint as you talk to, I’m assuming you liaison with a, a bunch of your different properties. It’s, I’m extrapolating on your role. Tell me if I’m wrong 

[00:33:50] Mitchell Spence: Uh, I personally don’t as much. Okay. Um, I’m kind of, uh, s- on the sideline but watching a lot of those conversations happening.

Um, you know, I, I honestly don’t know how our operators are using it on a day-to-day basis. Um, I do know that I- I’m cautious to push people that I directly work with to adopt it and get into it too quickly, and I think you hit it on the head from the curiosity piece. Um, if, if you aren’t willing to… I, I will say I do use it significantly.

Um, I’m, I’m probably up there, too, on my curiosity and just how often I’m engaging. I get a lot of wrong answers. I get… I don’t know if you f- if you have the same, but I, I get… I, I have to correct it and, and really I found f- you know, from what I’ve learned is, is if you don’t build the guardrails in what you’re trying to accomplish, it, it kind of remains chaos at times.

And, and, and I get a lot of wrong answers on things. Or, like, you know, the model will just openly forget things. Um, and so I kind of recognize that with people I work directly with, that I don’t push them to, to get into it. I let them adopt it at their, at their pace and their speed to learn along the way so that th- there aren’t, there aren’t unintended consequences, I guess.

Um- 

[00:35:16] Brian Searl: Yeah, like I’ve, I’ve run into that constantly, like, where it, it will-

[00:35:20] Mitchell Spence: Context …

[00:35:20] Brian Searl: it has a 10-minute memory. For those people who don’t know what a, a context window is in AI, 10-second primer. It’s the amount of things that it can remember before it, you have to start telling it to go search or read past summaries or whatever else.

It’s al- it’s almost like if you were a human being and you could only remember the last three days of what you had for breakfast and dinner and whatever else, and the fourth day and beyond, nothing was there. Maybe, I, I guess Alzheimer’s might be a good example, right? Yeah. If you can only remember short-term, long-term.

Not at all. And then you… But then the difference is, is that it could go back and it can find stuff for you if you direct it, but you gotta be very intentional about how you direct it, or it’s gotta be in a file, or it’s gotta be somewhere else. 

[00:36:00] Mitchell Spence: How you structure 

[00:36:00] Brian Searl: it. Otherwise, it’s not relying on its full memory.

Yeah. 

[00:36:03] Mitchell Spence: And, and, and I don’t know, I, I, uh, Ra- Ravi made a good point that if you’re curious, just ask it and it’ll point you in the right direction as to how to start to create these things. But what I’ve found as I get further and further in is… ‘Cause, you know, I, I do that and, and it’s trying to remember things, and it’s like, well, if you can’t remember this now, what about five years from now when I have five years worth of information I wanna build upon?

And, um, so what’s a better way to build this so that you, you, you can? And it, it really doesn’t know, um, what’s the best way. And, and there are, th- there is, uh, you know, there is research and there are, um, common approaches, but it’s a totally wide open situation. Um, 

[00:36:48] Brian Searl: well, because best is subjective, right?

That’s the problem with best. Build it the best way, it’s subjective. Uh, here’s an interesting thing for you to try if you’re interested. Say, think about it, think about this problem from first principles and see what it does for you. It’s really interesting. 

[00:37:03] Ravi Parikh: There’s- 

[00:37:03] Mitchell Spence: Okay. 

[00:37:03] Ravi Parikh: So Mitch, to kinda tack onto what you’re talking about, there’s…

I think AI was designed, you know, like Anthropic and Claude, they came out with the idea, they laser-focused in on coding, and because I think in their heads everything boils down to code. And the, the thing is for most AI users, they’re, if you’re not in the software business already like I am, you don’t know what the core tools there are for solving problems like what you’re talking about, like managing context windows.

But if you’re in the software business and you kinda know what some of those tools are, you’re more able to stitch them together. Um, and I actually, uh, uh, did a guest lecture about this, uh, at a, at a school called Maker Square in Austin, um, teaching non-technical people how to use AI. There’s just like basic tools that you actually need.

Like, um, you need to understand how GitHub works. You need to understand what Vercel is. You need to understand, uh, what a database is, like Superbase. Like all these companies in Silicon Valley have made, uh, using AI kind of at like the same level as a software engineering company would so much easier, but non-technical people don’t know what these tools are yet and how they all work together.

Um, and once you kinda get that framework, it starts to click. Like I’ve seen people just start going, you know, for lack of better words, Moto GP on, on their AI, uh, on their AI journey. So, uh, I think it just kinda comes down to like- Somebody needs to train the camping industry on like the fundamentals of AI and just kinda like give it to ’em and so people can, can get, you know, more understanding of some of these tools that are more widespread in the tech industry.

Um- 

[00:39:12] Brian Searl: Matt, what are you doing at your new company? Why’d you tell us that?

[00:39:17] Matt Whitermore: Yeah, an interesting question.

[00:39:18] Brian Searl: Maybe it has to do with what Ravi’s saying, that’s why I’m throwing that out there and saying that. I’m not cutting you off, Ravi. 

[00:39:23] Matt Whitermore: No, it, it, you know, and there a lot of really great stuff Ravi, Ravi touched on that I wanted to jump in on too.

So, um, to answer your question directly first, though, so we are, you know, we’re still a little bit in stealth mode. Um, so I’m gonna have to, you know, give, give you some, some non-answers. But, um, you know- 

[00:39:43] Brian Searl: Well, maybe you want to push through, Matt. Just say what you want, man 

[00:39:45] Matt Whitermore: We, you know, in, in short, I’ll, I’ll be embedding with investors in outdoor hospitality and, and in some other commercial real estate niches.

And this was such an incredible opportunity for me because, you know, 10 years ago, I, I started in, in real estate investments and, um, you know, not having a technical background, I, I built what I call the, the deal machine, right? Uh, a whole integrated tech stack to, um, surface, uncover, get in touch with and close real estate investment opportunities.

And this was essentially an opportunity to, to get in and make that AI native and, uh, kinda do that whole thing over again with the focus in outdoor hospitality. Uh, at least, at least for the near term, and get to use a lot of my relationships and, and, and add value for, for a lot of people in the space.

But essentially just creating a, an AI native acquisitions motion Really just sifting through data, right? Going through an incredible amount of data in a smart way to surface opportunities, uncover opportunities, maybe look at an opportunity with a slightly different lens. Um, you know, it’s, it’s like having a team of super powered financial analysts and market analysts, uh, at your disposal to just cover so much more ground, cover different markets, right?

One of the biggest challenges that, right, uh, any commercial real estate broker or investor faces is something called, like, deal merge, right? We talk about context windows. We all have a, a context window in our brain, right? And, um, you know, I, I think I’ve- 

[00:41:29] Brian Searl: Good story every day, man. 

[00:41:31] Matt Whitermore: Right. And, like, it’s funny, I, I laugh about this all the time ’cause I’ll be saying to Claude and I’m like, “Like, we talked about this before.

Like, come on.” And, like- Yeah … then I think back and I’m like, “I said the same thing to my wife,” and she’s like, “Uh, we never talked about this. You don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I’m like, “Wow, I guess, I guess humans hallucinate and have context windows as well.” So, uh, Alex, Alex is laughing ’cause he knows my wife and probably couldn’t picture her saying that.

Um, so yeah. It, it’s… The last year or so has been, right, uh, AI is a force multiplier, so the last year has been using it to go wide and, and look at a bunch of different areas in different operating businesses, and now I’m, I’m narrowing my focus and going deep and using it as a f- uh, you know, a force multiplier to go deeper, get really smart in, in one area, make it repeatable, scalable, um, right?

Do all the things that I’ve spent the last almost decade and a half doing and, and just do it with a whole new lens and a whole new set of tools, which is super exciting. 

[00:42:38] Brian Searl: I wanna step back for a second, and I wanna, like, maybe toss this to Tessa or Mitch if you guys wanna answer it, because I think there’s probably a lot of owners listening to this who are like, “Wait, I can analyze my financials.

I love doing that every day. I wanna do more of that.” Or, you know, “Great, I wanna, uh, sit there and talk about social media posts or do more about that.” But, like, I think there’s probably some use cases here that, like, if, if you look… If you step back and look at it from a campground owner’s perspective- And I, and I don’t mean to stereotype the industry, but there’s probably a good chunk of people who probably got into it because they wanted to be outside and not cooped up in an office behind a computer, right?

To work with their hands, to be outside, to get their hands dirty, that kind of thing. Uh, and I think there’s probably some use cases that would resonate with them a little bit more, talking specifically about how do I operate my campground better? How do I use the information that AI might be able to provide to be able to spend more time outdoors to do what I like?

How can I use that information to serve my guests better, to have them have a better experience? And I think that’s kind of where a lot of this maybe sometimes gets lost, is we need to ground it in the perspective of the owners who are working it this day to day. And so I don’t know if you guys have anything to add.

And you operate so many resorts, I’m assuming there’s something, like something you can share with us that’s wise 

[00:43:58] Tessa McCrackin: Yeah, I mean, I think that every, if you’re just a standalone park, you’re probably operating your own website or you’re paying someone to run it for you and, um, that’s just an important part and the way that people are finding their campgrounds now is changing as people use more AI to plan their travel.

So making sure that you’re optimizing not just for regular keywords, but for people planning their trips in AI seems like an easy place to start and making sure you’re, I mean, this is still a little bit of an unknown, but like are you structuring your website to be set up optimally for people who are planning their travel that way?

That seems like a very, um, you know, even if it’s not your interest, it seems like a bare minimum thing that you should be doing or asking the person that is running your website for you to help you with. Um, so that’s one thing that seems pretty like you just can’t probably avoid it at this point. Um, and then something else that just like dawned on us that we’ve been using a lot, um, is if you’re doing any kind of promotional thing, like it’s not to the point where it creates good videos, I would say, of your property or if you give it a bunch of clips and say, “Mash this together and make a commercial,” that doesn’t really work.

But specifically for doing the voiceover piece of it, it does a great job, you know, uh, in AOI vo- voiceover, if you’re stitching together some clips then you can help it write a script for you and then put the voiceover on, you’re not gonna be, um, you know, we used to work with a lot of like Fiverr contractors or like record it ourselves, but that’s been a really, um, you know, that’d be a really practical solve to getting something that could be really expensive if you were, you know, working with someone freelance or an agency that you might be able to do it yourself now, which is kinda fun.

[00:45:27] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think I s- I said this on a show before I think at some point, or it might have been Outwired with Scott Bahr, I can’t remember, that we do normally, uh, on Wednesdays after the show. But I was talking about how, uh, I was doing this for CRR actually, Alex. They never used it, we were just doing it as a test like a couple years ago we were playing around with it, uh, with Verde Ranch RV Resort and we took like a still image of their photo of their, of their pool at night, like it was a professionally taken image and we took it into Gemini and we said just add people to it and they were just sitting on the lounge chair like at, sitting around the campfire or whatever else, just like you would have professional actors there and I think that’s a good use of AI.

Like and then you can take that and you can also have Gemini turn it into like a short reel video you can post. I think if it’s the real pool, if it’s the real trees behind it, if it’s the real scenery, if that’s exactly what the guest is gonna see minus the people which they wouldn’t have seen had you hired real models anyway sitting by the pool, then I think you’re right.

Like I, I don’t know if that’s what you were talking about, Tessa, but I think that’s a great example of ways that you can shortcut the creative, I don’t know, uh, strain on, on the time you have to spend to do those things. 

[00:46:33] Tessa McCrackin: Mm-hmm. 

[00:46:33] Brian Searl: Or the money you have to outlay. 

[00:46:35] Tessa McCrackin: Mm-hmm 

[00:46:37] Matt Whitermore: Did anyone see the viral, um, staged apartment sublet in New York City?

It went super viral on Twitter. It was about like a, it was like an AI freshened up, um, apartment sublet advertising photo. People losing their minds over it. It’s pretty funny. 

[00:46:54] Ravi Parikh: I think we talked about that last, last time about fake, uh, fake images versus real images and- 

[00:47:02] Matt Whitermore: Yeah … 

[00:47:02] Ravi Parikh: disclosing that or not disclosing that or- 

[00:47:06] Brian Searl: Yeah, maybe it was in show.

Context window, man. We talked about it.

[00:47:09] Ravi Parikh: Yeah.

[00:47:09] Brian Searl: It’s gone.

[00:47:09] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. That was last month. 

[00:47:13] Brian Searl: Yeah. Uh, Mitch, you have anything to add?

[00:47:19] Mitchell Spence: Yeah, there’s, uh, uh, there’s, there’s a lot of things that are low-hanging fruit that are a lot easier. Um, a, a good example, I mean, marketing’s a challenge, um, for single property owners knowing really well how, how to spend money. Um, and, and AI can really help uncover some of that. It’s, it’s not gonna be able to run programs, but for digital ad spends, um, just to ask the right questions of keywords and, and different things like that, you’re, you’re just gonna uncover some insight that you might not have otherwise have seen.

Um, and especially as it pertains to specific markets or, um, something as simple as just going in and, and asking it to aggregate the last couple years of, uh, reviews, and what are trends in my reviews that have, that have, uh, surfaced, and has there any, been any improvements or has there been any declines?

You know, what, what’s a word cloud to just see what’s, you know, what’s my, um, you know, where’s, where’s my biggest opportunities, things like that. Um, just downloading reports that otherwise would’ve been challenging to, to draw insight from. And, and AI is pretty good, uh, on the surface of just finding patterns, um, you know, pacing reports or POS reports, just raw data, um, for specific time periods that you just ask a simple question of, um, what’s interesting here, or is there any insights?

Um, you know, and you’ll be surprised what you get, and especially if it’s your business and you own it, um, you’re gonna have follow-up questions because it’ll intrigue you and you’ll want to try to uncover more because it’s, it’s information, uh, looking at it in ways you haven’t before a lot of times. Um, so those are some like, you know, kind of low hanging opportunities that you’d be surprised what, you know, what you’ll, what you’ll find 

[00:49:16] Brian Searl: Yeah, I think the biggest low-hanging opportunity that we often tell people is like, like every time I, and I’ve said this before I think on the show, but like every time I get on a sales call with somebody and talk about marketing or AI chatbots or the dashboards we’re building with Camp Vantage or something like that, at the end of the call, I always say like, “After this call, make sure before you decide to buy from me, go to ChatGPT and say, ‘Is Brian full of shit?'”

And that’s the biggest unlock I think you have, like, a- as an owner is, is you have all this knowledge now that it knows everything about marketing and advert- not everything, right? But a lot of things about marketing and advertising and construction and operations and building playgrounds and burying sewer pipes and adding cable or Wi-Fi or what systems are good or what systems aren’t that like you don’t, you don’t need to know everything.

It’s not always going to be right. But it, we, we used to tell people prior to AI that if you just need to know 5% enough to be dangerous, to be able to understand that you’re not being taken advantage of or you’re not going down a wrong path when you should be on the other path. And I think that AI now can be like a 20, 30% check without you even having to learn that 5%. So next time you’re- 

[00:50:17] Mitchell Spence: Or if you run like a basic ROI analysis on adding an amenity to your campgrounds and, and pulling in the right metrics just to be able to maybe go to a bank and, and say, “Hey, I, you know, um, I need some help with this type of thing.” Um- Or competitor analysis, that’s another thing that’s hard in our industry.

You have to, the, it, it’s difficult to aggregate and to, to find… I mean, we even find when we, when we’re in certain markets, you know, a lot of times seasonal rates aren’t published. But if, you know, if you ask the right question, it’ll drop into the reviews for instance, and it’ll see that somebody said, “I can’t believe they raised the rate to $2,500.”

It’s like, “Oh, $2,500 this year. Great. Okay. That saves a phone call.” 

[00:51:05] Brian Searl: We’re gonna solve your comp intelligence problem. You just give me a couple weeks, Mitch. We’re gonna have something cool coming out for you. Uh-

[00:51:12] Mitchell Spence: Sweet …

[00:51:12] Brian Searl: but anyway. Um, yeah. Look, I think, I think that’s the idea, right? Is, is, is the ROI and, and, and then it, that leads into the, the curiosity of the matter, right?

Like, the curiosity or the solving of the problem. Because you can say, “How much is it gonna cost me to add a playground?” Then I know that the ROI on the playground is much harder to calculate when you’re not charging directly for the playground. And then it’s the looking at, like, you know, we’re going down a rabbit hole.

I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna be Ravi. I don’t wanna be Kiki for you guys too much. He’s got that, that side… I’m just messing with you, right? Um, but like, but, but then, like, understanding your guest as an export from Campspot and how many of those people, I assume Campspot keeps track of this, but how many of those people are adults traveling with children?

And how many of those people with children were families that stayed with you in the last, like, two years who you didn’t have a playground before, now you do. Can you increase the occupancy by 5 or 10% in that vertical? And what does that look like? And then, you know, then doing the math on- 

[00:52:05] Mitchell Spence: Or target them directly that you added it, you know?

Yeah. Send an email that, you know, compile the email list to send to them to tell them about our, our new, uh, our new amenity. 

[00:52:14] Brian Searl: But only to the people who care because they had kids, right?

[00:52:17] Mitchell Spence: Yeah.

[00:52:17] Brian Searl: Not to the older couple who’s tra- Right … yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think we, I think in 10 years we look back on this and we’re like, “The fuck were we thinking sending emails to every single person about every single thing we had to announce?”

Yeah. I don’t know if I can say the F word on my own show, but I don’t know. There’s no FCC, so… And I’m in Canada anyway. They can get me.

Alex, do you have anything to add? You’ve been kind of quiet, man. 

[00:52:38] Alex Burkett: Yeah. I’d say just to kind of like drive the point home, and I’m gonna double down on my comment from earlier, the more that we can connect the real revenue increases and ties back, I think that’s where a lot of, you know, like Brian, as you mentioned, the, the time factor.

Like, owners, managers, right? I’ve seen the impact and it’s the reason that I choose to continue to invest time is because it’s, you know, real financial performance. As we noted, Campspot came out with, right, their revenue management 2.0, you know, just a couple days ago. We’re already starting to implement that and the ability for me to adjust rates, particularly when, you know, at COTA especially, we’re such an event driven, you know, calendar and business that marginal rate loss has a dramatic impact on my P&L at the end of the year if we don’t get that right.

Um, knowing that we’re likely gonna sell out for the major race events, how much more rate could we get for that? Um, do we need to drop rate in any areas and, and solve an occupancy problem, right? So, yeah, I think that, that the revenue piece is ultimately what will continue to push people to, to give it the try and sharing more case study examples of, “I did this, I got this result.”

Um, that is what kind of takes the monotony out of sitting in front of the screen all day and where the owner can go, “Well, of course I’m gonna invest more time in growing my business every…” Like, yes, we love the outdoors, but I assume most of us are in it to, you know, make, make a decent amount of money.

So, um, yeah, I think that’s, that’s to me is, is the real unlock that we need to keep driving home. 

[00:54:07] Brian Searl: Yeah. And then, and then again, everything from first principles. How do I use AI to create something that hasn’t existed before? Here’s a free one for you, Alex. You can take this to Mike and tell him it was your idea.

Nobody needs to know, ’cause nobody watches the show. Uh, tell him you need to buy like six Tesla Model Ys that can auto-drive themselves in camp mode around the racetrack, and people can sleep in those all night. That would be like $500 a night experience right there, man. 

[00:54:31] Alex Burkett: I- if I can get it to work, that would be, that’d be amazing. Um- 

[00:54:36] Brian Searl: Why wouldn’t it work? I, I mean, they have camp mode. I don’t know, like I- they keep the air conditioning on. They gotta be able to drive all night. 

[00:54:41] Alex Burkett: Fair. The, the, the, the track dynamic is always interesting of what can and can’t be done, but- 

[00:54:47] Brian Searl: It’s- … 

[00:54:47] Alex Burkett: I’ll, I’ll, I’ll push for it. 

[00:54:49] Brian Searl: I think it’d be cool. Like, I would pay to do that if I knew it wouldn’t crash.

[00:54:54] Alex Burkett: Yeah, exactly. 

[00:54:55] Brian Searl: Yeah. 

[00:54:55] Alex Burkett: Hey, Austin’s crawling with all those, uh, those CyberCabs I’m seeing all, all over. So yeah, the, the Teslas are all over the place. 

[00:55:02] Brian Searl: Ravi would test it for you. He’s rich and lives in Austin. He’s got money to spend on that. You’re charging $1,000 a night, Ravi will pay it. 

[00:55:08] Ravi Parikh: I, honestly, I, I’ve used the, I’ve used the Tesla CyberCab and it’s pretty cool.

It’s a good experience.

[00:55:13] Brian Searl: Have you?

[00:55:13] Ravi Parikh: Yeah. 

[00:55:14] Brian Searl: The robo- the s- actual CyberCab or just the Robotaxi with the steering wheel? 

[00:55:18] Ravi Parikh: The gold one. No, their gold ones. No, no steering wheels. Yeah. They’re autonomous now in Austin. You can call one, it’ll come to my house, pick me up. 

[00:55:28] Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting revenue opportunity for another time.

But yeah, owning your own cyber cabs and leasing them out. But, uh, anything else that we have to add? Like to spend the last few minutes here, like asking each other questions. Uh, Tessa, you have any questions for anybody that you wanna ask and play host for a second? 

[00:55:45] Tessa McCrackin: Oh gosh. Play host for a second. Um 

[00:55:49] Brian Searl: You can’t do worse than me.

Don’t be nervous. 

[00:55:51] Tessa McCrackin: I’m trying to think what’s a good question to ask. Um-

Trying to think. Some- I was gonna say, 

[00:56:04] Alex Burkett: I’ve got, I’ve got one for Ravi if, Tessa, you need a minute to, to think through. 

[00:56:07] Tessa McCrackin: Yeah, you pop in. Pop in. 

[00:56:08] Alex Burkett: So Ravi, as I mentioned with Campspot kind of launching with the revenue management 2.0 side, is RoverPass coming out with anything similar on that front with revenue management tools for parks?

[00:56:20] Ravi Parikh: No comment today.

[00:56:24] Alex Burkett: Maybe later. 

[00:56:25] Ravi Parikh: Maybe someday, but I will… You’ll know when everybody else knows. Um, I have, I have one thing that I think people should do. Uh, I think you should start thinking about AI like your Netflix subscription and just pay the $20 a month because it’ll change the game for you. If you’re not paying the 20, it’s just not the same.

You’re not even getting close to the same amount of power. Uh, and start incorporating it into your daily life even before you start to incorporate it into your business life. And, you know, do some meal prep planning and figure out like a workflow in your personal household that you wanna automate and then work backwards on that, and then start applying those concepts to your business.

That’s how I got my wife to… She’s not quite as AI pilled as me, but she built a WhatsApp app to meal prep for our son, and she’s a dentist. So, um, you know, start there if, if that’s where… If you can’t think of practical applications for business, there’s tons of them for your personal life. 

[00:57:36] Brian Searl: And if you’re short on money, cancel Netflix because there’s better shows on Apple TV and Amazon anyway.

Uh, I haven’t opened Netflix in a couple months, so. Um, but yeah. Tessa, did you think of a question yet? 

[00:57:49] Tessa McCrackin: I’m still working on it. This was– I– Now I’m thinking about meal prep. Um 

[00:57:53] Ravi Parikh: Well, Brian put a lot of pressure on you. 

[00:57:56] Brian Searl: Sorry, I did. It was, it was last night. Mitch, you got something? It’s your first podcast. 

[00:58:01] Mitchell Spence: Uh, my question’s for Matt, and the question is, you said you’re, you were a, a big, uh, Claude guy, and then you’ve been exploring, um, exploring other, uh, options.

What, what are some of your takeaways? 

[00:58:18] Matt Whitermore: Um, that I now probably spend six hundred dollars a month on, on AI subscriptions because with just the way things, uh, change so quickly, right? I, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this where, right, I, it was Claude Code or, or nothing else for, for a year. And, but there were times where I would just feel like either Claude got dumber or slower or whatever, and it, it would go on for like weeks at a time.

It was maybe right before a new model was dropping or whatever. I don’t, I don’t pretend to know why, but there was just stretches of time where I would get so frustrated and just know that the performance degraded. It just wasn’t working the way it was the day before, the week before. And so in those moments, right, I, I, I kind of knew I needed to jump in, and I saw it as like such a huge undertaking.

Oh, I gotta go learn Codex now, or I gotta go learn Cursor or Groq. Now, with the desktop apps, the interfaces are all exactly the same. The– It’s the same app. There’s minor different features, but right, if you just set up your workspace in a way that it’s just, it’s on your machine, they’re all just coding assistants.

You could point them at the same stack of files. They all understand it the same way, and it– Like we’ve said a few times on this show that, right, if, if you’re hitting a blocker, just ask it. I just went in and said, “Hey, I’m in Codex now. I’ve used Claude Code. What are some things we need to translate?” So just like, you know, set up some basic files, some pointers, some symlinks to skills, and like it just took five minutes for it to be like, “All right.

I fully understand everything you were doing in Claude Code. I’m in Codex now.” And then same thing with, you know, in Cursor with the Groq models and… What was really interesting was, was Grok Bot. I haven’t messed with Muse yet. I’m assuming it’s pretty similar. Um, but I spent like 1,500 bucks in Grok Bot in like a day.

It just went crazy and you re- like, you’re like, “Oh, just spin up an army of agents and go to town,” and like then you’re broke. Um, so like I feel like it’s a consumer thing, right? If you’re, if you’re fluent in, with a coding assistant or any- anything Agentech, I feel like kind… It’s cool, it’s awesome, but like you can just build your own Grok Bot essentially.

You already have your own Grok Bot inside a Claude Code or a Codex or a Cursor for the most part. So ho- hope that helps. 

[01:00:52] Ravi Parikh: I gotta run, y’all. It was, uh, it’s always a pleasure. Thanks, Brian, for having me on. 

[01:00:58] Brian Searl: Yeah, I was gonna say we gotta wrap up and be cognizant of everybody’s time. Ravi, can, where can they find more about RoverPass?

[01:01:02] Ravi Parikh: Uh, software.roverpass.com. 

[01:01:06] Brian Searl: Thank you, sir. Appreciate you being here. Alex, final thoughts- Yeah … and where can they find out more about COTA? 

[01:01:11] Alex Burkett: Yeah. A- as always, really enjoyed this week episode specifically. Um, you know, I learned a lot from Ravi. Matt, as, you know, talk to Matt all the time, um, on and off camera and just wealth of knowledge and info.

Um, you can find more about COTA at, uh, cotarvpark.com. Um, and obviously our, our parent company crrhospitality.com if you’re looking for third-party management. 

[01:01:34] Brian Searl: And sorry, go ahead and plug your match show if you want.

Outdoor Hospitality Weekly? 

[01:01:41] Alex Burkett: Yes. Uh, we- it’s been a, a minute since we’ve, we’ve done a, uh, a new episode, but Outdoor Hospitality Weekly is, uh, another podcast that Matt and I do. Um, I would say- Yeah … more one-on-one interviews or, or discussions, not necessarily the same, you know, round table style that, that Brian, you have here.

Um, but that is ohweekly.substack.com. Free Substack to join with podcast videos, et cetera. 

[01:02:04] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Alex. Matt, final thoughts? 

[01:02:08] Matt Whitermore: Uh, just, just, you know, if, if you don’t have the time to do it, hire a consultant. Uh, you know, I think, right, like either you gotta jump in and learn it and take the time and clear some stuff off your desk, and if you really can’t do that, get somebody that you’re gonna, you know, attach to at the hip that does understand it and can understand your business and really embed with you and, and, you know, help you along the way.

Because, you know, you- you we’re at the point now where you’re, you’re starting to fall behind if you’re not, if you’re not staying on top of it. Um, and yeah, we’ll, we’ll… Alex and I will get back on that. We’ll get a, we’ll get another show out soon. So, uh, and you can learn more about Travo at travoai.com and you can email me at matt@travoai.com.

[01:02:53] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Matt. Tessa, final thoughts? 

[01:02:57] Tessa McCrackin: Um, I guess all this AI stuff just seems kind of, uh, serious and daunting, and if you’re like a laggard out there and a campground owner perhaps, it maybe it seems, yeah, just too daunting. But it’s really fun, you know. Sometimes we’ll just, you know, be playing with AI and we’ll almost like, you know, whoo, like squeal with delight at times about like, “Oh, we didn’t know it could do that.

Look at what it did.” So I think it, just a reminder, uh, yeah, that it can be fun. It doesn’t need to be so serious. Um, you can find us at northgateresorts.com. Mitch too. 

[01:03:24] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Tessa. And Mitch, last but not least, how was your first podcast, Mitch? 

[01:03:29] Mitchell Spence: Yeah. Great. I don’t know. How did I do? I… Thanks for having me, I suppose.

Mm-hmm. Um, Tessa just emails me things and I just say yes and don’t read it, and then, you know, two weeks later I- I realize I signed up for a podcast. Um, 

[01:03:43] Tessa McCrackin: but- You know, when I was, when… Yeah, when Mitch was, you asked Mitch how he was using AI, I was really holding in that he, that’s how he responds to all of the emails that I sent him, so 

[01:03:51] Mitchell Spence: Yeah.

But it was actually Claude that signed me up for this- Yeah. … when it responded to Tessa’s email. Um, so yeah. That, that… So, so that’s the important, you know, cautionary tale here in all of this, is that Claude is really fun and, and has a lot of great, uh… Or AI in general. And so there’s a lot of, uh, really, um, really, really great outcomes, but there’s also, uh, unintended consequences and it’s not a, you know, um, it, it doesn’t solve all problems and it’s certainly not a, a fantastic decision maker.

Um, aside from me being here, I, that was a, you know, it made the right call there, I suppose. 

[01:04:28] Brian Searl: Thanks for being with us, Mitch. I appreciate everything. You did great, and like I told you before, this is the worst podcast you’ll ever be on. It’s only up from here. Maybe they’ll have you on Outdoor Hospitality Weekly.

That’s a better podcast. Uh, they’re professionals. They… Look, Alex even has a mic. I don’t even have a mic. I’m just holding my phone here. So- … standard of quality. Uh, thank you guys for being here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Uh, we normally have Outwired after this, but, uh, we’re gonna take a week off, myself and Scott.

So we’ll see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Appreciate everybody being here. Take care, guys. See ya.