MC Fireside Chats – April 15th, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: To another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. We’re here with our recurring guest, Robert Preston from Unhitched RV, and new special guest, Cody Fall from Happy Grounds Camping, is that right, or Campgrounds?

[00:00:58] Cody Fall: Campgrounds, yes.

[00:00:59] Brian Searl: Campgrounds, okay. Welcome, Cody.

We’re light on guests today, apparently. Everybody’s got more important things to do than talk to us on the show. But we’re gonna have a good show anyway.

Robert, do you want to briefly introduce yourself, and then Cody can do the same?

[00:01:10] Robert Preston: Sure. Hey, afternoon again, everyone. Robert Preston, CEO of Unhitched RV and of our investment arm, Climb Capital. Happy to be back today.

Nice to meet you, Cody. And Brian, thanks for having me.

[00:01:22] Brian Searl: Yeah, thanks for giving us your time. I appreciate it. Cody?

[00:01:25] Cody Fall: Thank you. Cody Fall with Happy Grounds Campgrounds. 15 years in the hospitality industry.

A little bit newer to the campground world, came in a couple years ago, but excited to be here. Part of this growing brand with Happy Grounds, so it’s been a very exciting ride so far. Happy to be on the show.

[00:01:39] Brian Searl: All right, my first question, Cody, is tell me about the guitars.

[00:01:43] Cody Fall: Oh, they don’t get used half the time. I have a Fender back here, I have a Schecter, and then a throwaway gift guitar.

[00:01:52] Brian Searl: There’s got to be a story behind this, right?

[00:01:53] Cody Fall: Unfortunately, there is not. A youthful experiment that died quickly in adulthood when children came along.

[00:02:00] Brian Searl: Let’s revive it right now on the show, then.

[00:02:03] Cody Fall: Yeah, I don’t know if you’re paying well enough for that.

[00:02:04] Brian Searl: That’s fair. I’m definitely not paying well enough for that. Welcome, everybody.

Robert, is there anything that we typically toss it to our recurring guest singular, apparently, this week, everybody else is busy. But is there anything that’s coming across your desk that you feel like we should be talking about before we dive into a little bit about Cody and Happy Grounds?

[00:02:19] Robert Preston: Oh, man. I wish there was something exciting to talk about, but my head has been stuck in the ground with K-1s, taxes, and investors, and all that type of April 15th and March 15th deadlines. So that’s where my life has been.

And, of course, there’s always AI stuff, Anthropic changing their billing system, which I’m sure you’re probably way more up to speed than I am and can explain it better, but that’s thrown a twist into our business here in the last couple weeks that we’ve been working through.

Yeah, there’s nothing really that much fun that has to do with outside hospitality this week for me. It’s just more of the monotony of running the business.

[00:02:59] Brian Searl: Yeah, I’ve been in, my head that, my head’s been down in data the last few weeks trying to put together databases and stuff.

When you talk about Claude, you’re talking about the fact that they won’t let you use the unlimited data without using API anymore?

[00:03:10] Robert Preston: Correct. Yeah. That they’re, if you’re using OpenClaude or something like that, that you have to go through the API data processing, not underneath your personal account, which basically, you know, from my understanding that 10 to 20x’s our expense in that process. So that’s a, yeah, that’s been a big change.

[00:03:33] Brian Searl: Do you want a free way to solve that problem? Just offering free advice. It’s not literally free to solve it, but you don’t have to pay me.

There’s a website called OpenRouter.com that you can go to, and you can use, like many people are under the mistaken impression that they need Claude for everything or they need ChatGPT’s latest model for everything. You don’t.

[00:03:51] Robert Preston: Yeah.

[00:03:52] Brian Searl: A lot of these, as long as you’re willing to, depends on where you’re putting your data, right, but a lot of these open-source Chinese models…

[00:03:58] Robert Preston: Yeah.

[00:03:59] Brian Searl: …are actually like a hundred times cheaper and do 95 percent of the same job for much, much less cost.

[00:04:06] Robert Preston: That’s, I think that’s what we’re really digging into right now. One, the security side of it.

Hey.

[00:04:13] Angele Miller: Hey.

[00:04:14] Robert Preston: Digging into the security side of it and then the cost side of it. And then I think the model we’re trying to build is Claude has being the brain orchestrator and then using one of the cheaper models for the LLM side of it.

And you know, I think we’re even looking at the local, local models, right? Figuring out Google’s Gemma or, again…

[00:04:33] Brian Searl: A lot of those Chinese models you can use locally if you have a powerful enough computer.

[00:04:38] Robert Preston: Right.

[00:04:39] Brian Searl: And then you don’t have to worry about, then that’s the ultimate data security right there.

[00:04:42] Robert Preston: Right. So.

Yeah. And that’s what we’re trying to move to is having actual hard devices in office more often than not and building our own, not necessarily cloud, but building our own local assets as much as possible.

[00:04:57] Brian Searl: Yep. Smart strategy. Angele, how are you doing?

[00:05:00] Angele Miller: I’m great. And you?

[00:05:02] Brian Searl: I’m good. It’s been a while. Where have you been?

[00:05:04] Angele Miller: Yeah. It’s been so busy. I know. I really was missing all of you. I couldn’t wait to get back.

Yeah. I just, I’ve opened, like I’ve opened a restaurant, a big wellness center, a big Nordic spa. I’ve been full out in major expansions, so I’ve been busy with that.

[00:05:21] Brian Searl: What happened? What’s going on? Tell us a little bit about your projects. I think we’d love to hear it if you don’t mind sharing.

[00:05:25] Angele Miller: Yeah, for sure. So we wanted to become a destination in our area, like in the province of New Brunswick. So we’ve created, on top of the accommodation, we just built like a huge wellness center where we do like a massage, we do vitamin IV therapy, we do lymphatic drainage therapy, red light therapy.

And then we really scaled a Nordic spa experience, like we built a huge Nordic spa with a mirror dome with culinary experience, and then we put a salt cave, hot tubs with waterfalls, like, we really went all out with that kind of expansion.

And then we built a restaurant on site with fire cuisine and just hired a chef and we’re just kind of really creating like a full-on destination so when people come here they can get all of the luxury in nature and enjoy everything from the wellness to the restaurant to the accommodation.

[00:06:21] Brian Searl: Very nice. Congratulations on all that stuff. Are you sold out for a while? It sounds like you should be.

[00:06:27] Angele Miller: Yeah. Yeah, the accommodation is almost sold out till the end of summer. So that is moving, but the restaurant is just opening on June 1st officially. But we do have a lot of bookings already and reservation. People calling.

And the wellness center, it’s starting to roll, like we just opened the doors last week, and we have a lot of people, especially massage and all red light therapy and all these things, like a lot of people are pretty excited to have that on site. So yeah, it’s starting to get busy with that as well.

The big Nordic spa, so that will be Nordic Spa number two we have on site, because we already had a Nordic spa, but we just opened a way bigger one, and this one is opening May 20th officially. Yeah.

[00:07:12] Brian Searl: And you’re, you’re pulling, to make the economics work on this, are you pulling local people from the local area as well?

[00:07:17] Angele Miller: Yeah, we have to. It’s a major project, like it was a big investment and for us like, it’s not, yes for sure like it’s a plus for everybody that comes on site and stays with us because they get to to enjoy all these things.

But we’re also bringing local community and the local market. And hopefully people will come from all over the world to experience that eventually, but right now we do get a lot of local audience as well, for sure.

[00:07:46] Brian Searl: Awesome. I’m excited to, to keep following your success here.

[00:07:50] Angele Miller: Yeah.

[00:07:50] Brian Searl: We’ve got Cody here, and I think you know Robert, you’ve been on a show with him before, I think.

[00:07:54] Angele Miller: Yeah.

[00:07:55] Brian Searl: Cody from Happy Grounds. Cody, tell us about Happy Grounds, because you guys got a lot of locations.

[00:08:01] Cody Fall: We’re, we’re starting to come out the woodwork you could say. Yeah. We rebranded a little bit or pushed this brand a little over a year ago. It started as an investment opportunity and then as it became successful, they put this brand in front of it and that’s my job, is to run the operations, run the brand strategy, and so far seems to be working.

You all called me, so that’s a good, that’s a good thing. It started with one campground back in 2022, and we’re at 16 campgrounds today. So we’re picking up steam and focusing mostly on the Northeast.

That’s working out really well for us. We’re starting to look a little bit outside of that scope, but I think our focus is really paying off and it’s nice to keep a tighter geographical region.

[00:08:46] Brian Searl: So tell us about the, like the company, the philosophy, like how you guys got started.

[00:08:51] Cody Fall: I’m not the person to talk about the start. I wasn’t there at the start. I came in when we were about four campgrounds, but from what I can speak about the starting process is it was a real estate opportunity, and to the owners, investors, took on that opportunity to run the campground, and it went well.

And they bought another campground the next year, two campgrounds the year after that, and we’ve been on a scale of doubling our size pretty much since 2022.

As far as today, that brand strategy is really shifting more towards how can we, as a growing company, combat this idea of being a corporate campground, right? Which kind of has a negative connotation in a lot of, in a lot of spaces.

How can we combat that and bring the same experiences, the same culture that a mom-and-pop brand brings with some of the better benefits that you get from a larger investment kind of campground. Like repairing the infrastructure and adding better amenities.

Balancing that has been the challenge of the last year and really building our brand around what we want that to look like. So we want to maintain that family feeling but still give it a lot of those amenities and the features that the campgrounds, the campers are looking for, without diminishing and making it feel like it’s cookie-cutter or bland or where they are just to blow up their rate, make money, and squeeze everybody out.

So that’s been the hardest part of the job for the past year, is as we continue to scale and as people start to recognize us and know our names, the, that’s almost a good news and bad news situation, two sides of the same coin, where having the recognition is great.

But having the recognition associated with, ‘oh, you’re one of those types of campgrounds’, combating that initial feeling has been one of our bigger strategy points, and I think for the most part we’re doing a good job navigating that.

And trying to maintain that original feeling of that campground. We tend to promote campground managers from on the camp, really trying to push internal progression and showing that the camper base that is there is important to us.

And I think in general that has translated really well to a great sticky base with our seasonals, they’re not turning over as much as they might have, and we’ve been able to also navigate the rate structures well very consistently over the past couple of years. So.

[00:11:22] Brian Searl: What’s the most important thing you think when you come into a situation that you need to have a handle on or a grasp on to make sure that that kind of corporate, in many ways it’s unfair, right, but that corporate perception doesn’t take hold?

[00:11:39] Cody Fall: Well, I don’t think you can avoid the perception taking hold, right? I think the bigger we get, the more that is just going to be part of the dialogue, no matter what we do.

But how can we position that instead of it being a negative, make it a positive? I think that’s the flip that we need to make in that conversation.

So I often find myself flipping the conversation back on the, on that person pushing, saying, a lot of, I guess the one thing people say a lot of is, ‘oh, you’re just buying it to sell it. You’re just buying it, you’re gonna push everybody out and you’re gonna sell it.’

My thought around that is, I don’t know the future, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I do know that this campground is likely struggling. The infrastructure is old. The current ownership can’t afford it. We are coming in to fix it.

In the worst case scenario that campground does get sold, then now it’s a campground for another 20 or 30 years. We’ve reinvigorated that campground. We’ve allowed this campground to exist longer than it would have if it just went to another mom and pop or just the person that owned it didn’t have anyone to pass it down to and nature took it back. So ultimately, there isn’t a negative associated with someone like this buying it.

The other thing I get a lot of is, ‘oh, it’s gonna be a real estate play, right? They’re gonna sell it for a development.’ We actually like campgrounds. We like camping, we like the people. So the challenge really around people being afraid of the corporate thing is the unknown. They just don’t know.

So they make, they tell these stories in their head and we’re a shadow for them, like a shadow enemy, something they don’t understand so we’re gonna make it villainous. When really there’s a lot of great opportunities that can come from an investment like this into the campground and it can blossom instead of die.

[00:13:36] Brian Searl: What do you think, Robert? Because I know you and I have had conversations on the show previously about a little bit some of this stuff.

[00:13:41] Robert Preston: Yeah. I think the main point here that Cody is articulating is that in a vacuum of information, it is always filled with the most negative, negative possibilities. The more information and story that you can fill it and eliminate that vacuum, the better.

All the same points, right? Someone has to revitalize these properties, the owners are not doing it. We’re usually stepping into a distressed situation. There’s usually something there that needs to be fixed, both from a culture, operations, CapEx, infrastructure.

I don’t know, I think we have not run into this that much because of those situations. We’re a lot of times stepping into a very distressed situation or maybe it’s a KOA or something, so it’s already an institutional type of a thought process. So we’ve been able to do that.

And we, I think our approach is very similar. All but two, I think, of our managers, live are RVers and live on the property. So they are the neighbors, they are the culture, they are the stuff.

And so it’s pretty hard for a guest to have a legitimate, like, ‘Hey, you guys are just a big corporate, big corporate company that doesn’t care about us’ when the property manager is living the lifestyle and is hanging out with them for dinner.

And so that goes a long ways. And I think that’s an important part of our success is building the culture inside of a park by people who are RVers. And Happy Grounds, I’m an RVer, I love it. So it’s part of my life too. And that’s what, that’s our approach too.

[00:15:13] Brian Searl: I think this whole thing is interesting to me. Scott Bahr and I were talking about this on Outwired last week. He actually brought, I wasn’t prepared for it, but he brought like this 15 minute video that was all AI generated that one of the influencers posted on YouTube that was, I don’t know if you’ve seen it Robert, I’ll send you the link separately if you were interested.

It’s quite funny. Every image in it is AI generated with like trash heaps and the whole thing is about like corporate parks leaving trash and coming in and raising rates to a thousand dollars a night.

And so we, but we were talking on this and we were thinking like, is this really that pervasive? Cause we, I’m not sure that it is. I think there’s conversations that are being led by a few people who have a voice in the industry.

[00:15:53] Robert Preston: I agree. And I’d love to get Cody’s thought on this. The few parks that we have run into a little bit of pushback fit much more in the Northeastern, Midwestern demographic and are primarily like this seasonal, our family’s been doing this for 30 years.

We come here, and I’m not saying that any, any of Cody’s parts are like this, but the ones we’ve run into from the guest side is that they’ve been coming here and doing what they’ve wanted for the last 10 years and running the place into the ground and running the owner’s nuts, and whether it’s getting too much partying and all the various things there and then we’re coming in and saying, ‘Hey guys, we’re trying to make this place a little better. Let’s not get in fist fights with your cousin every night. We’re not gonna do that.’

And then it’s all of a sudden, ‘Hey, you’re a big corporate company, you’re changing the way that we want to do things.’ So that is the one instance that we’ve had to deal with some internal politics, whereas the parks that are Southeast or very transient or either one of those spectrums seem to adapt very quickly. To me it’s the seasonal summer month crowd that is a little bit more challenging.

[00:17:04] Cody Fall: Nailed it. Absolutely right on the head as far as what I’m seeing as well. In our portfolio we have a couple of campgrounds that are really long-term. They’re there for many months at a time, and they had no issue. It was just a new person, new name to put on the check. No big deal.

Transient model, doesn’t matter to them. They just want, they actually prefer it in some cases, nice, clean, I know I have structure now, that’s great.

But you nailed it. It’s the seasonal campers that have been coming there for x years, the mayors of their own little cliques. They’re the ones that are stirring it up, and they are filling that void of information with their narrative.

And it’s unfortunate because the truth is, one thing that we implemented was we call ’em a town hall, where one of the senior team will go to the campgrounds at opening or at closing or both and get all those seasonal people together and talk about some of the maybe more challenging things, meet it head on, and talk about some of the plans for the year.

Pump everybody up, and every time, it’s ‘what you didn’t do’, or ‘we could have done’, and ‘why didn’t we this’. It’s, it’s looking for a fight, right? They’re just digging. And I get it, we’re changing it, we’re moving it forward. But it is adding all those things. It’s adding structure. It’s adding reduced liability. It’s bringing value where there was none.

Wi-Fi didn’t exist. Septic was leaking the year before and what I find is the biggest request are the shiny things. I want a new playground. I want, I want new gravel on my site.

But they’re not noticing the $3-400,000 CapEx project that went into bringing 50 amp to 70, 80 percent more of the sites. They’re not looking at the new septic upgrade and it’s translating that down because they don’t see it. It happens all in the off-season. They come back and everything looks fine.

This is what this is where we’ve been working on bringing to you is the camper. And I think once that, once that conversation happens and you get rid of that narrative that someone else is spewing out and you discredit it, now everyone’s happier.

Once after the transition happens, one, one or two seasons in, totally gone. Completely gone. It’s just that growing pain part of it. But because we’re scaling as quickly as we are, we’re seeing it a lot. We’re dealing with it a lot.

A big part of our operational hurdles is to get through that initial resistance. Get that trust built and move it forward. But we are starting to see the other side of it, which is good. It’s taxing. Fight that fight all the time.

[00:19:40] Brian Searl: It sounds like a lot of work there. You could just build a Nordic spa like Angele did and that’s really visible when they come back for the summer season, and they don’t question the investment that goes into that, yeah?

[00:19:50] Cody Fall: I did take some notes on that. That sounds to be a great investment for us.

[00:19:55] Angele Miller: Yeah, you know what like the whole Nordic spa like wellness tourism industry for us here in our region is growing about 10 percent a year and people like just, they really gravitate to that kind of experience.

To the point where now for us like most accommodation when people reach out to us to book accommodation, literally the first question they ask is ‘Do you have a hot tub? Do I have a sauna? Or do I have my private hot tub or sauna?’ And it gets more and more.

But that’s the thing for us, like the whole thing with the to be able to adapt and change and shift as the market changes and grows, is very important, and we’re always trying to lead with innovation so we can we bring people and we fill up non-stop from all over, but the big thing, even with the salt cave, we added a salt cave, and I know we’re the first one in Atlantic Canada with a salt cave.

I don’t know about all of Canada, but I know that for our region we are the first to do something like that. And it’s to really think outside the box, right, and create unique experiences, but in nature and bring the luxury and the whole wellness.

And when we created that, the salt cave, we were thinking how are we going to build that? And we actually had to call many companies. They thought we were crazy. How are like ‘what are you talking about?’ Because we were calling these big these companies that built septic tanks or big culverts out of concrete because we needed a really solid concrete structure that’s really big and fits people in.

And so when we would call the companies, they’d be like, ‘you’re trying to fit people in a culvert stuff? Or in a septic tank? How is this going to work?’ And it was hilarious, and we finally found a company we could work with and build this huge structure, but to bring that and push that into a hill and turn it into a salt cave was quite a unique experience.

But I think it’s part of what brings people also makes it more interesting and also keeps the evolution of this kind of industry moving forward.

[00:22:01] Brian Searl: Yeah. I think there’s, there’s two things right, like Robert and Cody are talking about the things that are necessary, that need to be done first, the fundamentals, right? And Scott and I were talking about this too.

Everybody wants to complain that you’ve raised the prices because you come in and you’re a corporate park whether that’s true or not true, fair, unfair is a different discussion right. But in most cases you are. But the reason you’re raising the prices is not just to be greedy, it’s because you’re putting in a whole lot of money and for infrastructure you’re making everything better.

And also by the way they printed a lot of money and money isn’t worth what it used to be. And there’s, you’re talking about taxes and accounting, Robert, right? So they just, it’s a lack of, I think understanding, not a willingness to understand or capability to understand, but just they have other priorities in their lives.

And so how do you communicate that to those people in a way that calms them down, diffuses the situation? But I still think it’s the minority.

[00:22:53] Robert Preston: Is it? I, I agree Brian. I think it’s just a very small minority. People inherently do not like change. So that’s I think where the seasonality pushback comes from is you’re changing something that they’re expecting. It’s their summer vacation spot and if anything changes, that’s stressor number one.

I don’t think most of this is has to do with economics. Everyone inherently knows that things cost a ton more. Like literally a candy bar is two dollars and fifty cents now. That’s always been my measure of inflation. Right? You go up there to check out at the gas station, and I see a Snickers bar that’s 2.50 or three bucks.

[00:23:29] Brian Searl: Is it an extra large Snickers bar or is it just…

[00:23:31] Robert Preston: No, it’s just like the regular sized one. It’s crazy. It pisses me off.

But and we’re not talking like, and then the beauty of the from the investment side of campgrounds is that you can change the rates a relatively small amount. Two or three, five bucks a night is not frankly, it’s just not significant to a single person’s stay. To maybe add 10, 20, 30 bucks to their stay.

But that expanded out across the, all the nights and all the sites from a percentage wise, that’s a significant increase in revenue. Right? And so it’s the law of small numbers that we like and enjoy on the campground side of it. And converse the option the opposite happens. So, I don’t think anyone is, there’s not very many people who are legitimately not staying at a campground because there is a five dollar per night increase, and they’re getting all these better things. I think it’s a fringe voices, fringe complaints.

I do think if you are a, there’s probably some pushback happening because of the number of I what I would say, exposure that people marketing for investors or hyping up the investment side of the business and bringing the asset class to, and of course they’re pushing the, they’re pushing the, oh, what’s the word? They’re pushing the marketing to attract more investors and more there.

And so to do that, then you have to talk about the investment side of it. We’re gonna increase the prices and increase the revenue, increase the NOI and resell and all this stuff. And when you’re doing that and that audience gets intermixed with the consumer, the guest, then that’s a pretty tough narrative for them to stomach.

Because they’re not thinking about it as an investment, they’re thinking about it as a vacation. And frankly, there’s a couple of the larger names out there pushing some relatively false narratives on what it means to invest in campgrounds and to be a campground owner. And there’s some, there’s certainly some backlash happening from that.

[00:25:32] Brian Searl: But you’re right. You hit the nail on the head. Like it really comes down to change. And I’m sure that you, you dealt with that at some point Angele up there too, right? That’s different.

[00:25:41] Angele Miller: It’s different and you know what I would have to say with that too, when it came to pricing, for us and also the market and how do we manage that things, it’s also like for us the big thing is like, change is not easy for anyone and a lot of people don’t like change. But for us in when we look at the pricing, it was also aligned with the type of market and the people we wanted to come to our location, right.

So if we have a certain type of pricing and a certain type of experience, then we know we’re attracting a certain type of customer base, right. And that customer base are, they’re the ones that will spend the money on the spa and the food and all the luxury things. And it’s one of the things I think that we always, people always stress about or contemplate on, or it’s a big part of your business, right?

And but it’s a very important part and I think to really have that structure from the beginning and understand really your market and where you’re going with what you’re offering, then it will make it easier when you come to integrate those things.

I know that, I was just talking to a chef in Prince Edward Island here in Canada, and he’s a top chef. He’s called Chef Michael Smith. I don’t know if you’ve heard about him, but he has his own cookbooks and he was actually on Top Chef Canada also as one of the, as one of the judge.

But he opened a resort in the middle of nowhere in Prince Edward Island. It’s a little tiny place called Souris. Anyways, so it’s a very tiny little place and people thought, who’s ever going to come there to, to, for your cuisine, right? Because they didn’t really have the accommodation that he was wanting at first. He wanted to do like a fine cuisine experience and then open accommodation and a inn and everything.

And, and he was like, I just know that this will work because I’m going to bring the type of clientele I want to bring that will come from all over to experience this. And it hit it in the news in Prince Edward Island, people thought it was crazy because it used to be like a small bed and breakfast before, and some people, some regular customers would even call him and say, ‘I’ll never go, I can’t believe you’re changing it. And it’s not what I’m used to. I used to go every year for my anniversary, and now it’s not at all what I want or the experience.’

And he went with his concept, knowing and understanding his market, and now it’s booked a year to two year in advance. And people fly from all over the world to go to this small place in Prince Edward Island that you drive for hours and there’s nothing else, to experience all this.

So it just shows, but for him he knew his market, right? And he established like a farm to table experience where everything is like kind of wood-fired grill outside and it’s all delivered on a table and it’s all cultivated locally and they do like really unique experience, but it comes back to I think there’s a market for everything and everyone, but it’s all about really understanding that and understanding your market and knowing how your pricing and everything you do will come into play with that.

[00:28:36] Brian Searl: It’s always, it always comes back to understanding your market, right? And Robert and Cody understand their market, they understand that these couple few people who are not comfortable with change will be replaced by people who will greatly appreciate all the things that they’re doing at their properties as far as enhancements go.

But you got to study all that stuff in advance, right? And learn what you’re building, why you’re building it, what your mission is, whether it’s luxury or seasonal camping or whatever it is, something in between. I think is the answer.

So tell us more about Happy Grounds, Cody. Like we talked a little bit about like your acquisition philosophy, everything like that, like what you’re looking to build. What’s an ideal, like where do you guys see yourselves in five years other than having more locations?

[00:29:15] Cody Fall: Oh man, that’s a wonderful question. Something we’re starting to reorient potentially on, as we, as these acquisitions come in and we realize exactly what our base is turning into.

I think we are starting to determine whether, or not whether, but how we want to structure our standards on the campgrounds and how we want to move our brand with in alignment with the other campgrounds in our space. Because Northeast has got a lot of campgrounds. Most of them are summer only, right? They’re very short. Between four and six month windows.

Especially as you get into the northern states, the northern side of the states. We’re already doing our best to bring on, introduce winter camping, which is a challenge. Very unique challenge on RV parks in the, in the Northeast, but also putting them in kind of hotel style buckets.

And what I mean by that is, if you go to a Marriott, you go to a Hilton, you are, you have several different layers of service that you expect, right? If you go to a Residence Inn, you can have a five-star Residence Inn experience and talk to one person. And be very happy with that. Or if you go to the Ritz-Carlton and you talk to one person, you had a one-star experience because your expectation of that interaction is very different.

So I am putting our path going down a cultivating with the consumer the experience they should expect, putting ourselves and marketing in that lane. So if I have a campground that’s very quiet, very long-term, low-touch. Lean into that. This, we’re gonna do this thing really well. We want you to understand this is what you’re coming into. So our expectation for the consumer is well managed.

All the way up to the, what it sounds like is going on in Canada right now, some high touch, high luxury experiences. That are just on a different scale. So I think over the next five years, yes, more property. But beyond more property, how can we differentiate some of our properties within that space, within that geographical space in general, and lean into it.

I think that is a little missing in the RV space right now. You have the luxury. You have the resort style. And then you have everything else. And I think there’s a lot that you can do in the everything else to continue to layer it out and create cultivated experiences and expectations from the consumers.

[00:31:49] Brian Searl: Is it only RV? And here’s why I ask, like the, there’s been a lot of data that’s come out. KOA North American Camping Report came out yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to dive into it. Scott and I are going to do it on Outwired here in a little bit.

But there’s been a lot of talk about how the boomers are aging out. The boomers are, maybe more of them are coming in according to Toby, but there’s a change happening, whatever whichever direction is going. And we may or may not be losing Gen Z. We may or may not be losing millennials, depending on the data in the report and how you slice and dice it, and the location and your marketing and who you are, lots of variables, right.

But as you look out five or 10 years, do you see yourself staying the course with kind of supporting the industry where it is today because there’s enough business currently to continue doing that, or do you think that changes and thus the operations of a place like Happy Grounds changes as well?

[00:32:38] Cody Fall: I think that’s a really interesting question, to be honest with you. I think right now building for RVs is a neutral play. No matter what you, if you’re going to add cabins, if you’re going to go glamping, if you’re going to do something along those lines, you still need that infrastructure base, right? You still need the septic, you still need the power, you still need all of that. You still need the space.

So by leaning into what we already know is a good consistent model with the RVers. You’re playing a safe hand, so to speak. But as that does shift and potentially it does into a more of a glamping style model, or the RVs just get really, a lot bigger and a lot fancier, you can even reduce the number of spaces and expand their size and increase the rate. You could do different things like that.

So I don’t think that getting away from supporting and leaning into RV is a bad play, at least in the Northeast where I’m at. I think that’s working. I’m not seeing, I’m seeing tent disappear. Like, I haven’t, I’m seeing very low engagement on tents largely, outside of holiday weekends, it’s very low.

Even our glamping units are, are successful based on geographics. Depends on what’s going on in the area and how close you are to certain other drivers, glamping might be pushed up. But for the most part, RV is just the heartbeat of what we have going on right now.

And I don’t necessarily see that changing based on the campgrounds that I’m running today. I see that as still being a primary driver, I just see them getting a lot bigger and the requirements for power and space becoming greater.

[00:34:15] Brian Searl: Yeah, part of the reason I asked was, and I’d love, hey Robert, if you want to weigh in too in a second, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it, if you have anything to add.

The reason I ask is cause, look, we’ve been running a lot of data at Insider Perks, like we’ve been collecting pricing data from like 12,000 plus RV parks on a regular monthly basis, and I posted the other day about what Memorial Day looked like already.

And it was surprising to me for private campgrounds that lodging actually leads at 64.8 percent occupied for Memorial Day at $202 a night. This is what I was just reading it on my phone to make sure I don’t mess this up right. Because it’s on my LinkedIn. And RV sites are only 58.9. So not a small difference, but six percentage points difference at $80 a night.

And to your point, I don’t know about tent on non-holiday weekends, but tent for Memorial Day is 52.8, so still an audience for tent at 54 dollars a night. So it was just interesting to me and that’s why I asked, like, we’re seeing like lodging booking up quite a bit at campgrounds, maybe more so than we have in years past. And I don’t know whether that’s because RV is going down or lodging’s going up or more people are being pulled into the industry.

[00:35:15] Cody Fall: I would go a third option, to be honest with you. I think what I’m noticing is the glamping options, the lodging options on the campgrounds aren’t simply four walls and a toilet anymore. Or not even, in some cases. Like, they’re getting to be hotel rooms on a campground. And that campground might be better positioned for the experience they want to have without having to necessarily quote unquote rough it.

So I think you’re getting a demographic that may or may not have fit a few years ago more interested in trying out the experience, and the lodging is the perfect entry. They don’t have to buy an RV, they don’t have to pitch a tent. It’s the perfect way to experience the campground without having to get to invest it.

I do think in that case those holiday weekends, and even weekends in general, do really well for the logic. So I would lean on option three out of your option, out of your three presented options there.

[00:36:07] Brian Searl: What do you think, Robert? Do you have anything to add?

[00:36:12] Robert Preston: Hotels, right, if you look at that, that correlates pretty closely with the hotel occupancy rates and what not. The lodging/glamping side of it is a competitor or comparable to hotels so it’s fairly well aligned with what we’re seeing in the industry.

And then the RV side of it is not comparable to a hotel. We discuss that a lot, even on this show. We want to correlate it that it is a hotel, but it’s not, it’s a totally different customer. And it’s the question is hey, which one should you do? It depends.

A hotel costs a lot more to build than an RV park, right? So if you’re making twice or three times the revenue, it takes a lot, it takes four or five times the cost to build it, and probably four or five times the cost to maintain it and to operate it. So there’s a counterbalance on that same side, it’s not purely just revenue either.

Yeah, no, I think we are pleasantly surprised just in general of what we’re seeing thus far this year. It’s turning and looking to be a better year than we had expected it to be in the last couple months. And I’m not sure if that’s because of the market or of what we’re doing on our operation side of it, or marketing. But we’re off to a really great start.

[00:37:23] Brian Searl: That’s awesome. Yeah, I’m thinking more like five, ten years out, right, is where my question was geared toward. When I started with Cody, right, is like if you and this is location-specific, obviously, this is case-specific, this is not a macro statement, right.

But if you look at a park that you acquire Robert, or a park that you acquire Cody, and that right now is stable either from long-term or transient or boomers or whatever the audience is you have now, if the data is leading us to believe, and it’s not at a macro level but it is at a micro level right now, that boomers are, and there’s also the inherent duh, boomers are right, not going to be around forever, in 5, 10, 15 years, is there an adjustment period that you go through where you say, ‘The data now is showing us, and KOA’s data and our data too, and Scott’s data, that Gen Z is not coming into the camping market and staying as sticky as the boomers were or even the older millennials were’.

Is there then a point where you adjust that and say, ‘We’re still running a campground, people still love the outdoors, that’s never going to go away, but maybe we do something a little bit different than only focusing on RVs’.

[00:38:24] Robert Preston: Yeah, of course. I think we gotta stay current and stay, stay aware of what’s happening in the market. I think to really answer that question though, we’d have to look at each generation’s whole lifespan, and I’m not sure if we have that data. Maybe you do, Brian.

Like a boomer, when did they become a camper? And did they come in at their 30s and then leave for 20 years and then come back again? So we’d need to look at the totality of a single generation’s lifespan and how they treated it, not just that currently Gen Zs are not camping, as an example. Because at some point they will be Gen Z of… they will be the boomers of our day. And maybe that means they go back to camping.

[00:39:07] Brian Searl: That is an interesting thing. I’m going to bring that up with Scott and see if he can maybe study that. Like we, I don’t think there’s any way to historically go back and gather, because we’re data like data and Scott is like survey data and so, that would be interesting to get that data from Scott, but also like, we’ve talked, Scott and I’ve talked repeatedly about how generations are not generations, and it’s very easy to say as a blanket statement that Gen Z doesn’t camp, but if you had a parent who camped and they took you camping as a child, if you were Gen Z, then you like camping and you’re going to be a lifelong… you have a greater chance of being a lifelong camper.

The problem is is that most Gen Z people did not have that in as large a number as like me, for example, as a millennial or even a boomer who fell out of trees and explored the outdoors and broke their legs and did right. And so they just, they all want to get outdoors, we have that data. They just don’t know how.

[00:39:54] Robert Preston: Yeah, and it’s the phases of life, right? There’s a lot of things that I want to do right now, but I have five young kids, and for the next decade, I’m not going to do those things. But it doesn’t mean that when they’re off in college and high school that I’m not going to go back to something.

So, that data it is important, but it doesn’t, I certainly would not shift because the current 40-year-olds are not camping. I wouldn’t shift what I’m going to do 10 years from now. Unless I could see that whole trend of what the…

[00:40:21] Brian Searl: Curve, yeah.

[00:40:22] Robert Preston: Yeah, what they’ve done in a lifespan. But inherently, we all love the outside, we all love fire, we all love food. There’s things that humans inherently always love and that are attracted to. Water, food, fire.

And that generally what camping is, and bringing people together and fellowship. There’s another ‘F’ in there, I won’t mention, but those things we’re always attracted to. And, and that’s, hopefully what we’re selling and providing is the canvas, the setting for those things to happen and for those connections to happen.

So that will, that’s never gonna go out of style or out of trend. So we just have to figure out how to manipulate or not, how do we adjust what we’re… that our canvas still fulfills those needs for people to find.

[00:41:08] Brian Searl: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t, I mean, I think we’d wanted to change the word manipulate because it has a bad connotation, but I understand what you’re saying.

[00:41:14] Robert Preston: Manipulate what we’re doing to meet the needs of the guest, so yeah.

[00:41:18] Brian Searl: So there’s hope for Cody though, when his kids, when he gets over the curve, he can go back to playing his guitars.

[00:41:22] Robert Preston: Yeah, of course.

I don’t think guitar companies are gonna stop making guitars cause Cody’s generation is too busy running businesses and raising kids.

[00:41:32] Brian Searl: It’s probably true.

Yeah. Alright, let’s spend a couple minutes asking each other questions at the end of the show here. So we’ll start with you, Cody, since you’re a special guest. Typically we’ll end the show and just say Cody, ask either Robert or Angele your pick, a question that you would be answered and we’ll go from there, and we’ll go around the room.

[00:41:48] Cody Fall: Angele, if you don’t mind. I am very intrigued by what you’re doing as a business model, because it’s very opposite of what I’m doing for a business model.

And I’m curious to know what drove you down that path to say, ‘I want to, I want to take this gamble, I want to do, I want to run my business this way’. Because it feels like there’s a lot more capital investment in doing what you’re doing, and potentially a bigger risk, also probably a bigger reward. So I’m very curious as to what mentality was with you when you made those choices.

[00:42:19] Angele Miller: Yeah, no, for sure. And for me, to be honest, I had no experience at all in hospitality. I’m a serial entrepreneur, like I’ve been an entrepreneur most of my life, but the idea came because I grew up on close to the land where we started.

It’s about a 25 acre lot where we built Creekside in a forest and it’s on the side of a creek that connects to the ocean. And I grew up on the other side. So for me as a little girl, always played around, loved the place, like it’s just such a beautiful, serene place.

And the idea had just came out of nowhere where I was like, wow, what a great place for people to come and really enjoy nature, because we have a lot of deers on site and all these wildlife and it’s just like really pretty forest. So anyway this idea had came, so for me, I took that idea and I just went to the tourism industry here.

And I asked them based on their data and what they saw happening in the market, was this a great idea to build a resort like that? And I had seen those glamping geodesic domes online, at the time it was more in Europe, like I was seeing those popping out, and I was like, that’s pretty cool, what a great way to enjoy nature because it’s like you have this huge window and you’re, it’s like you can see everything, right?

And it’s more of a glamorous kind of style of camping. I love camping. Mind you, see, I grew up camping every summer and I love that. So for me, the whole thing about nature and that, so when I consulted the tourism industry here, they were saying that it was on a major growth. And there was really a need for that.

And there was one other resort in our province here that did something like that and they were booked over two years in advance. So that’s where for me, like, I took that data and I was like, wow, that’s pretty impressive. And I’m even more in a re- like touristic region near beaches and like a lot of beautiful places here, and we’re famous for seafood and many other things.

So that’s why I, for me, I started really researching it and looking at the numbers and to shift in the industry where a lot of the younger millennium, the one that Instagram, TikTok, do selfies, like all of that, they love this kind of sector. They want to go in nature, but I don’t know if they want to be hauling all the stuff to outside and pitch a tent and all of that, right? But they want to have that experience.

So for us, when we came up with that idea, it was like, we’re going to create the luxury you’re used to in hotels and resort, and a lot of Canadians too, and I’m pretty sure you have a lot in your area where they’re used to going to all inclusive vacation where you show up there and everything’s taken care of for you. So we wanted to build a bit of that concept, partnering with local farms and bringing the culinary experience as well, but while you’re glamping and putting the high end barbecues.

So it’s really, like when I made my research, I saw clearly a need for that in the market. And after consulting the tourism industry, it really reaffirmed everything that I had researched. So we definitely took a risk and went for that, like anything you do in business, you gotta take a risk to a certain level and degree.

And by the time we opened the doors, we were sold out for almost an entire year and we had a cancellation list of over a thousands of people and we had no vacancy ever. It was just out, so if an availability would come out for us, we would have, I don’t know how many people trying to book at the same time, sometime our system would freeze. Like that’s how many people were trying to book it.

So we just, every year we just kept injecting more into this resort to build a full scale resort like we’ve done. So we have a lot of unique accommodation, but it’s creating unique accommodation in nature. It’s really all about bringing people in nature and elevating that camping experience, by putting those fancy outdoor barbecues, so those hammocks, those hot tubs and all of that.

And then now where that’s where we added the restaurant, the Nordic spa, a big wellness center. But we even took a big lobster fishing boat, because we’re in a really big fishing area here, and we turned it into a high-end accommodation on a boat, and we created a tree house and like just different units like that.

We saw the growth, we saw the demand, we listened to customers, so we adapted a lot along the way. People would say, ‘oh you should have this, you should do that’. So now we have fat bikes on site, we have paddle boards, canoes, kayaks, because it connects to a creek. So we just really listened and adapted over the years and just kept evolving from that. And but yeah, that’s what really reaffirmed for us to take that step forward.

[00:46:51] Brian Searl: I think it’s interesting, the one thing I take from all that, and I take a lot of things from that, but the one thing that I want to pull out of that is just is data and research, like we’ve been talking about, understanding your market.

And I think to your point Angele, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I feel like I’m an entrepreneur too, I own multiple businesses. I think it’s less of a risk to your point, Cody, if you have that data.

[00:47:10] Angele Miller: Yeah.

[00:47:10] Brian Searl: Still a risk, for sure, and the greater the risk, the greater the reward, that doesn’t change, right. But the more that you have the data, you start to understand all these little things that incrementally can make a difference and help you be more successful.

Like I texted a client this morning that we’ve been tracking weather data on for a month and a half, and we could show him that if the weather was colder in the where the person was who was making the reservation than where it was at his resort, we were mo- we were monitoring the forecast at the same time in real time, that his conversion rate was 5 percent higher.

Like just data like that is just, then you sort of level the playing field, right? I don’t know. Data has been fascinating to me. But all right. Angele, do you have a question for Cody or Robert?

[00:47:50] Angele Miller: Yeah, for sure. Cody, like just learning how you guys have scaled, it’s pretty impressive, so for, for my perspective, I guess a question I would have for you guys too, is, you obviously did your research and had your data as well, but did you lay out a specific plan that kind of said, ‘Okay, this is exactly where we want to be by this year, and our plan is to acquire all of this’.

 It’s really fascinating to me because, even for me, like I’m looking at scaling the glamping model. To, into more locations, a lot more locations that are standardized in experience and service and quality and expectation. And I’m just kinda looking at what you guys are doing in your model of what you guys have achieved, and I would just like to learn a bit more about that model or if you had any specific, plan in action that kind of led to where you guys are at today.

[00:48:45] Cody Fall: I appreciate that. We are, I would say on business plan for what we’re trying to do. The objective has been to effectively double in size, and we this year might be the first time that we decide to scale that back only sight-, maybe 80 percent growth instead of 100 percent growth, still TBD.

But I think there it comes, there’s a threshold, a bell curve, if you will, right, where you want to try to scale enough to have the foundation that you want, to have the data that you want internally, but you don’t want to scale so hard and so fast that you lose out on maintaining standards and building out something that is valuable to you.

And one thing that I’m reflecting on now as we’re continuing to grow rapidly and I guess advice I would offer is, if you have control over how you’re going to scale and when, start with understanding exactly what it is that you want at a core level to represent. Which it sounds like you already do, know pretty well. And find a way to distill that down to its most, to its simplest base elements.

And if you can recreate those simple base elements, I think you’re creating a synergistic experience at all of your different environments, right? That’s one thing we talk about all the time, how do I walk onto a Happy Grounds campground, make it feel like it’s a Happy Grounds campground without making it cookie-cutter and everyone is exactly the same?

So by distilling it down to those core elements and figuring out what those are for you, you can scale, have a lot of a shared customer base, but still create something unique at your next location.

[00:50:27] Angele Miller: Wow. Yeah, thank you.

[00:50:28] Brian Searl: Good answer, yeah. All right, we’re a little bit light on guests, so we don’t have a bunch of rotating stuff. So Robert, do you have a question for Cody or Angele?

[00:50:35] Robert Preston: Sure. Cody, mentioned scaling quite a bit. Curious if you’re willing to share what your leadership structure looks like. So how do you use area managers, regional managers, how many people do they, how many properties people, etc., if you’re willing to share kind of the org chart.

[00:50:52] Cody Fall: Yeah, behind, behind the scenes question, I love it. That is one of our developmental struggling, struggle points right now I would say, if I’m gonna be fully transparent. Six months ago I would have said we were in perfect positioning, right?

Right now, we have myself, we have a capital projects team, we have the operating team, and we also have an in-house sales and service center. Right, so we’re doing a lot of things here at Happy Grounds to maintain a snow globe effect, if you will. Where everything helps each other out and we’re able to share resources, and a lot of ways that’s helpful, in some ways because of our pace of scale, a little bit heavy.

But to answer your question in its most simplest form, the operating side has myself, it has a director of operations that oversees all the campgrounds and interfaces with the other two departments. And then under that we have a regional level that helps support and mentor individual campground managers, and that is on the campground manager after that.

All of our parks have on-site management as well. So similar to your model where the majority of your campground managers live on camp, we are in that same space, and similar to yours as well, they’re all were campers. I think besides one or two, they were all campers at some point on that campground. So that’s the org chart as it sits in the operating level.

On the CapEx level, it’s very much a new thing that we’re trying to build out, but we have someone that is a GC on that side. And then from the base camp level, what we call our sales and service department, we have a group of agents and a manager there that are handling a lot of the admin, the customer acquisition, and baseline sales, and then trying to augment that off of the campground level.

Because what I noticed when I came in was campground manager is going to prioritize getting on the tractor over answering the phone. And by not answering the phone, you let business walk out the door, cause if you didn’t answer and the next campground did, you lost business, period. So now we’re trying to figure out the balance.

[00:53:03] Robert Preston: So you’re running more of a call center for reservations at like a home office level, corporate office level, just taking your sales and reservations?

[00:53:11] Cody Fall: It’s a lot more service than sales, surprisingly enough. Because what people are calling for are bundles of wood, for guest check-in codes, things like that, things that keep the park team occupied in a lot of cases for no ROI. You’re just taking up time, you’re sucking time.

By putting that off, we’re able to reduce the level of campground hourly wage, the exposure of gross labor, while still giving a higher level of experience. So it’s, little unique, little different. Challenging because we’re running all these things in tandem, but I hope that gave you a a peek.

[00:53:50] Robert Preston: No, that’s awesome. Thank you for sharing.

[00:53:52] Brian Searl: Do I take the opportunity Cody to ask the same question back to Robert or do you?

[00:53:56] Cody Fall: I do actually. I do, Robert.

[00:53:58] Robert Preston: Times up. I gotta go.

[00:53:59] Cody Fall: I have, oh, it’s time? Two minutes. I have heard a couple of things, I heard some good things and I alluded to that earlier when we were offline, but what is what is your org structure look like? I’m very curious to know how that structured on your end.

[00:54:13] Robert Preston: Yeah, we continued to evolve and grow as well. The growth is a very real challenge, a real thing that we, I would say we’re, I like to think I’m like the third quarter, fourth quarter of working through the growth.

As we went from, it was, I didn’t realize it, of April of 2025 we had 13 properties that were operating. Today it’s 34. So we tripled in a year. And our target is to be at 50 by the end of the year, which I think we’re on a good trajectory to do that. So there was, there is and was a ton of growth pain in that process.

On the operation side of it, you know, we have basically, property manager, then we have what we call as an area manager, which is a property manager that that kind of assists two other properties. And then a regional manager that doesn’t have a property that is dedicated to them, and they’re typically eight-ish properties per regional.

So we have right now three regional managers and four area managers. They report to the COO. And so that’s the operation side of it.

Of course we have finance team, a marketing team, and we have an investment sort of sidearm that dual hats on the CapEx, management, banking, finance side of it. So not perfectly exactly where I’d like it to be, but that’s the general structure that we operate under.

[00:55:39] Brian Searl: If it’s perfect it gets boring doesn’t it?

[00:55:42] Robert Preston: Yeah. I’ve never been bored, so.

[00:55:44] Brian Searl: Yeah.

[00:55:44] Cody Fall: That’s the best thing about the hospitality industry. It’s never boring.

[00:55:48] Robert Preston: Never boring.

[00:55:50] Brian Searl: Alright, final thoughts Robert, and then where can they learn more about Unhitched or Climb Capital?

[00:55:54] Robert Preston: Yeah, great show. Thanks for having me on again. Cody, Angele. I wanted, one of these times I’m gonna ask Angele how you got the boat in there, but we’ll get that for the next show. UnhitchedRV.com is the brand, UnhitchedManagement.com is the management services side of it. And my email is Robert@unhitchedrv.com.

[00:56:14] Brian Searl: Thanks Robert, appreciate it. Angele, final thoughts and where can they find out more about Creekside?

[00:56:18] Angele Miller: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. And it was great to to be here with you also Cody and Robert. And so for me, you can find me at www.creeksidernr.com for the main resort site. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. We also have the Nordic spa website called Nordicdelavie.com and the restaurant is called lecreekrestaurant.com, so.

[00:56:45] Brian Searl: Thanks for joining us again Angele. And Cody, last but not least, where can they find out more about Happy Grounds and any final thoughts you have?

[00:56:50] Cody Fall: Yeah, again, thank you for having me. Great panel, great discussions. I appreciate the invite. You can find us at camphappygrounds.com. And we have all of our locations listed there.

We have a lot more coming, so please stay tuned. We’d love to be in your backyard and bring you on board as a camper or possibly an employee. You can find me at Cody@camphappygrounds.com as well, if you want to reach out to me directly.

[00:57:13] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you’re not sick and tired of hearing from me, we I will be with Scott Bahr in about 45, 50 minutes and we’re going to be diving into the North American Camping Report, some AI news, security-related new fun models that are apparently hacking the entire world.

And all kinds of other stuff. If not, we’ll see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Thanks guys, I appreciate you.

[00:57:33] Cody Fall: Thank you.