MC Fireside Chats – April 17th, 2024

This is MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and outdoor hospitality experts who share their insights to help your business succeed. Hosted by Brian Searl, the founder and CEO of Insider Perks, empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the industry.

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside [00:01:00] Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here with you for an episode number three of our monthly series focused on campground owners and whatever we decide to talk about. It’s supposed to be focused on campground owners.

I don’t know what the actual plan is for today, what we’re going to talk about, if it’s going to relate to campground owners, but that’s the overall theme. So just roll with it if you’re listening. So super excited to have a couple of our current guests here. Candice McNamara from Steelers, Greg Emmert from Camp Strategy.

I’m going to let you guys introduce yourself in a second. And then we have some special guests, Bobby Sorden from Supplier Spot, Craig Alsup, and Richard Chandler, who are going to introduce themselves as well. So let’s just start with our recurring guests here. Let’s go with Candice. I was going to go Greg first, but then Greg missed my bird thing that I had going on last week.

So Candice, you’re up number one. Candice is muted. She doesn’t want to talk to us this morning. Candice. 

Candice McNamara: Hey, this is Candice McNamara. I’m the Chief Business Officer at StayList. Really we’re a all in one platform for reservation software that also includes a point of sale system and all [00:02:00] the other bells and whistles.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Candace. Greg. 

Greg Emmert: Hi, Greg Emert, co founder at Camp Strategy Consultants. My partner Jeff Hoffman and I are like Swiss Army Knife to the campground industry. So we’re not into management, but we can help you with consulting. SOPs, operations, design, all the like. So looking forward to the conversation today, Brian.

Thanks for having me. 

Brian Searl: Great. I don’t want to give you a hard time, but why Swiss Army knife? Because I own like a Leatherman and it’s got way more tools. 

Greg Emmert: We can go Leatherman. If you want that, I suppose is the cooler one. Maybe I’m too old. I still love the idea of the old, 5 inch thick Victrinex red plastic scales on the side and there’s 100 tools in there, you gotta move 6 out of the way to get the.

That’s true. I guess if you get the really fat one. Yes. Yeah. The one that doesn’t fit in your pocket. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. 

Greg Emmert: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: Richard. 

Richard Chandler: Yeah, I’m Rich Chandler. 10 years ago, we bought a failing campground. We’re in Wisconsin in the central part. We did have three and a half inches of rain last night, but we’re opening this weekend.

We’re open six [00:03:00] months a year. We have 140 sites, about half of ’em weekend and half of ’em are seasonal and 70 acres. So we kinda learned we weren’t not in the industry at all before. So we’ve learned the hard way, but we think we have learned quite a bit. 

That’s okay. I learned about it every day and it’s been 15 years and I don’t think I’ve figured out anything way ahead of where I’m at, so Craig! 

Craig Alsup: Hey, yeah, Craig Alsup here. I’m the owner of Askew Landing RV Campground. We’re in central Mississippi right off of Interstate 20, like Richard bought a failing park. We bought it last year though, in June, and have learned a lot already, but we’ve turned it around a lot.

I think every month we’ve made more money than the previous owner was making monthly, so that’s nice. Even when we went from 70 something sites full to about 15 or 20 on purpose. But yeah, it’s been good. So excited to chat. [00:04:00] 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Super excited to hear more about your park. Excuse me if I could talk. Jeez. Okay, Bobby, introduce yourself before I can just choke more. 

Bobby Sorden: All right, yeah, I’m Bobby Sorden. Thanks for having me, Brian. Fun to be here. I’m with the Supplier Spot. I’ve been in the industry for about two years now as a supplier part of the industry. I’m an avid camper, 36 foot fifth wheel, boat, all that type of stuff.

I used to work for one of the park management software companies in the industry. No longer with them as of December of last year. So I started a supplier spot, a marketplace for campground owners to find suppliers in the industry. So I’m happy to be here. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Excited to hear more about that. Before we got to go around to our special guests here about their stories, their campgrounds, their websites, things like that two recurring guests, Greg and Candice, who are here, if you guys have anything that’s come across your desk in the last month that you feel like is important to pay attention to.

Greg Emmert: Oh, that’s a good one. Candice. Ladies first, of course, I can’t. 

Candice McNamara: I’m not going to lie, I didn’t hear exactly what you asked. 

Brian Searl: What do you mean you didn’t hear what I asked? 

Candice McNamara: You said, did you [00:05:00] have any end up on your desk, and I was like, what? 

Brian Searl: That’s just proof that nobody pays attention to the host. I knew it in my gut, I felt it, but now it’s just proven.

Is there anything in the last month that you feel like has come across your desk that you think is important for us to discuss? 

Candice McNamara: From 

Brian Searl: a campground owner perspective, 

Candice McNamara: yeah, from a campground owner perspective? 

Brian Searl: Yeah. 

Candice McNamara: So I would say a couple of things that have really popped up is this big need for point of sale.

Everyone’s opening up, right? So we’re getting all that glitz and glam around, Hey guys, I want to optimize this. So all the strategies, all the things that people have gone to these trade shows, they’re starting to really implement. So the one thing I can say from the software end is that people are really focused way more on marketing, getting the bang for the buck.

And really optimizing different tools that we haven’t really seen before take off the way that they have. And I think it’s the really adaptation of people focusing more digitally and really trying to capture the income that they were capturing during COVID. So we’ve seen a couple of case study examples have been online ordering [00:06:00] menus have become really big, people opening up new restaurants.

What are some other areas? Oh, RFID bans has been another thing. So just really optimizing. So less of even like around the software, it’s just been a lot of Movement and push, not necessarily switch softwares or do anything like that, but just to bolster whatever offerings they’ve already had.

Brian Searl: Yeah. Tech is one of those things is my dog barks next to me. Tech is one of those things that obviously interests me. I’m a big geek and all that kind of stuff. And I think it’s, I don’t want to say exciting, although it is from my perspective, right? To see all this new technology finally, that’s been around for years and years, right?

I remember going to Disney World. Eight years ago, I had an RFID band and it just seems like a natural fit for a campground to throw that on somebody’s wrist. And then of course, I’m going to buy more things if I don’t have to pull out cash and see what I’m spending. So it’s exciting to see, yeah, some of that stuff take off.

I’m still waiting for the hologram, which honestly should come from StayList. I want a little man to pop out and hologram on my desk and be like, [00:07:00] Hi, I’m here to help you from whatever, from StayList. 

Candice McNamara: You just let us know. 

Brian Searl: I’m Staylister, whatever your mascot is, right? 

Candice McNamara: Staylister, he’s a little, yeah, he’s like our Clippy.

Yeah, no, it’s been, it’s exciting, stepping into the next level. I agree with you, the technology’s been there for a while. People are just really adapting to it, and it’s been magical. I think you hit on one thing before, I don’t want to take the floor too often. But one of the things we really hit on that I really see people adapting to the technology is around cashless park experiences.

No more of carrying a credit card or cash or losing all that stuff. Those are as fans, things like that, totally working, and they’re seeing indexes go up. Even within the first couple people have done some soft opens, like new parks people that had taken over parks. But that cashless experience has been lightened in comparison to years prior.

That’s where we’re at right now. 

Brian Searl: And that places the marketing too from a safety perspective, right? Like why get robbed by our seasonals when you could not carry cash and be safe? Yeah. May or may not work anymore. I don’t know. But so what else have we seen guys, the rest of [00:08:00] the people who are on the show, right?

From a technology perspective, what have you seen? And I know Bobby, you for reservation system. So you have some insights here, but you also obviously deal with a bunch of suppliers. Now at SupplierSpot. So what have you been seeing as far as pickup on different areas of technology? 

Bobby Sorden: Yeah, just what Candice was saying is there’s just a lot of this integration development that needs, that’s been wanting to come about.

I know when I was working with the other software company, they were talking about the RFID bands. A lot, I think, which is coming out is, as Brian, you’re, this is right up your alley, of course, all the AI stuff that’s happening as well. I think park owners are starting to grasp onto the concept of utilizing AI as ways to help them with marketing their park or, building out content to help with, digital ads, or if they’re doing any sort of marketing ads and things of that nature.

A lot of the suppliers I’ve been talking to, they’re really liking the concept of, as Canada was saying the cashless type parks. Just being able to, with the software I was working for, you used how to know what your reservation site was, and you could charge everything right to your reservation account, just like the same [00:09:00] way you would at the hotel.

I think it’s just becoming more and more popular. People are just carrying around their phones now. They’re not even carrying around any sort of cash or credit cards or anything. And a lot of the suppliers I’m talking to, they’re just getting on board with that. Especially with the marketplace of Supplier Spot, I, I built this platform where you could actually buy and sell items directly through the platform, whether it be a supplier selling to an RV park campground owner or a campground owner actually selling some pre used equipment.

Everything’s just this integration of software that’s really helping out with everything. 

Brian Searl: So you and I, let’s talk about Supplier Spot for a second, because you and I had a conversation about this and we had talked about those different types of offerings that you offer. That you have. And so I think it’s important to differentiate between the two because they’re both great benefits.

Yeah, talk first about suppliers since you’re a supplier spot and then we can talk about the market. 

Bobby Sorden: Definitely. So my idea came about after I was after I left the other I was laid off from the other job in December, so when I left that, the idea sparked up to me because being a supplier in the industry, I really wanted to build a platform that I [00:10:00] thought a lot of the suppliers and campground owners would really like to use.

So my first inclination was to make it a directory per se, where campground owners could just go and find whatever, services or products are looking for. And then I taught before I launched it, I talked to several park owners and several suppliers to get their thoughts and feedback. And a lot of it was can I sell items through the site?

And I said sure, I can make that happen. So for the supplier piece, there’s companies out there like Liquified. They sell the RV toilet treatment type stuff. They’re their own company. Everything that they sell is through them. So even the Amazon account that they have is their account. So they decided to put the items up on Supplier Spot, and now my job is to help market it to the campground owners for them to buy directly through Supplier Spot.

So that’s the piece of the supplier selling. Now the other piece, though, is you don’t have to be, you don’t have to sell anything as a supplier. You can actually just have a listing on there where, for example, Candice is on there. And Candice, it’s totally ironic [00:11:00] that I scheduled out my content calendar for social media posts.

April. And this day to be on here is the day that I promoted StayList. So 

Candice McNamara: you planned it. It’s fine. 

Bobby Sorden: As soon as you popped on, I was like, Oh, it’s on here. Oh, I promoted the StayList. Yeah. So where I was going with that is just all they are is just the park management software. So they just list on there where if somebody like Richard or Craig was looking for a new software, they could go to supplier spots, send an inquiry to Candice and just start talking to them.

I’m also promoting the associations on there as well. So from the supplier piece and association piece, that’s what the supplier spot is doing at this moment. 

Brian Searl: So tell me what, and I’m just going to give you one hard question, right? Tell me what sets you, because you did tell me, and I was like, I was agreed with your answer, right?

So I want you to just be able to get this out here. So tell me what the difference is between a supplier spot and for example, an association who would list their members or vendors to look at or something like that. 

Bobby Sorden: Yeah. The main difference I believe is just the selling through [00:12:00] the platform. So as I mentioned earlier, say a Richard, we’ll say that you’re upgrading your meters and say, you’re going to like the new wireless meters while you’re Analog meters are just as good, and now you have, say, 50 meters laying around.

If there’s other campground owners, like Craig, who’s expanding his campground, and he doesn’t have the new wireless meters, you could post those meters on SupplierSpot, and Craig could go and purchase them directly from you, and you guys would be able to use them. Figure out the shipping and how to get the meters to each other.

So that’s the big difference, Brian, is it’s not just a place to list suppliers. It’s a marketplace where people can have interactions specifically through the RV parks and campgrounds. 

Brian Searl: So you’re trying to sell Craig old meters. That’s where I ended up with it. That’s all. 

Bobby Sorden: Exactly. Richard is, and I’m just going to get a small transaction piece out of that just to keep the platform running and moving up.

That was the concept behind it. I did talk to one park where they were wanting to sell their old deep fryer from their cafe, they weren’t using it anymore. So they were going to list it on there and sell it [00:13:00] to another park. And that’s where my role comes in. As I have a background in branding and marketing, I’m going to help market it out to the parks.

I’m attending trade shows. I’m a paying, I’m paying to have a booth there and support the associations and let them know that, Hey, I’m coming out to support you. Support you guys. And then when I get new suppliers on the supplier spot, I ask them, Hey, are you a part of these associations? If not, you should register and become a supplier member or go and attend the trade show they’re having or something of that nature.

So I’m all about making the industry just better as a whole. 

Brian Searl: Why sell everything for a fixed price though? You should just run these associations, auctions for them. You can just get up and there you go. Air fryer, we go 20, and then you can talk really fast. Yeah, and then you could make the parks even more money, right?

Yeah, that’s a good idea. It was wrong. It’s a good strategy, but so tell us about, so dive a little bit deeper into that marketplace aspect of it, right? Because I see the value, as I told you on the phone, right? Definitely of the suppliers being on there, gaining more visibility, being able to compare and contrast people from all in one place.

There’s definitely a value in that, but I think it’s like, there’s so many people in Mark Hepp’s Facebook group, who’s a guest, who’s a host [00:14:00] or recurring guest on our show. The first week’s episode and some of those other places that they’re just posting in there and yes, sometimes they’re selling that stuff, but that’s only to the X number of people who are in that group and who are paying attention that day and who Facebook’s algorithm decides wants to show it to them.

And so it’s limited. 

Bobby Sorden: Yeah, so the great thing about the marketplace is even for example, say you have an old kayak or something and you’re just not using it anymore, Brian. Say you’re just, I’m not getting out using this thing anymore. It’s 80 degrees. It’s too hot for me, right? 

Brian Searl: That’s what you were saying earlier.

80 degrees? That’s really hot and Celsius. What? So you’re 

Bobby Sorden: like, hey, I’m not using this kayak anymore. You could go and create a listing right on supplier spot because campground owners might want to buy that kayak to have as a rental at their park or their campground. So that’s the marketplace piece of it, is it doesn’t have to be just secluded to suppliers or RV parks or campgrounds.

It’s just a location where anybody could go on and post anything and sell and buy anything he wants. It’s like an eBay, but directly geared for RV parks and campgrounds. 

Brian Searl: Now, I want everybody on this call to know he said [00:15:00] anything. So if you have a stray cat that’s running around your campground that you want to get rid of No delivery, right?

Greg Emmert: You’ve got to come pick it up. You’ll have to figure that out. 

The 

Greg Emmert: great thing is Unruly, unruly children as well. Is that a, is that, now you’re getting traffic. If you do that, you’re getting traffic. 

Brian Searl: We’re getting you’re getting, you’re trafficking something. That’s for sure. 

Bobby Sorden: No. But you do bring up a good point, Brian. I approve all listings before they go live. So something like what you’re just talking about, won’t go on the site without me approving it. So anything asterisks. Exactly. Got a little hashtag, a little disclaimer there. You can go ahead and post it, but I’ll look at it first.

And if it’s something that’s inappropriate or something, it’s not going on the sites. 

Brian Searl: So talk to me about this from a campground owner’s perspective. If I’m a campground owner, am I charged for listing? Or if I’m a buyer, am I charged for buying? 

Bobby Sorden: So the way it’s working right now is it’s a 10 percent transaction for the listing.

I’m not charging any sort of subscription fees right now or anything of that nature. I’m pretty much using this year to see how I can get it built up and see how it’s going to work out. And I’m attending some trade shows in the [00:16:00] fall just to help promote it. But from a park owner perspective, if you listed, say Richard listed his meters on there, And he charged a hundred bucks for five meters.

That’s a 10 percent transaction. So I would get 10 out of that 100. So that just comes right off the top of the payout. 

Brian Searl: Do you have meters, Richard? 

Richard Chandler: No. 

Brian Searl: I’m just trying to get in business. Okay. It’s got to come out of his appearance on the show. Exactly. It’s you’ll think there’s no ROI for being on the show.

You’ll never come back. 

Bobby Sorden: Yeah, so that’s one of the great things about being on Supplier Spot is you don’t pay anything out of pocket right off the get go. The only time you’re making money, or the only time I’m making money is if you’re making money, so that’s why I’m building it out. And I just want it to be a place that people enjoy going to and finding information.

Like I even created a page called Trade Shows Conferences. So I have all the upcoming ones that I know of listed on there with information to go right to the Trade Shows Conferences page. Conferences for those associations so people can get more information. So I’m just trying to get transit to the side and make it [00:17:00] a place that people will really want to go and check out.

Brian Searl: All right. I want to move on to Craig and Richard for a second, but I do want to say just from a marketing idea, I’m full of these. If you just want to book an appointment with me, I’m not saying they’re good. But, I think the Good Sam model or the Southeast Publications model would work well for you.

Just work with a bunch of full time RVers, have them stay at the park, walk around and like randomly scream at the sight of trash or old meters and leave a review on Google and say, boy, there’s a bunch of stuff sitting around this park. It’s so gross. I wish they’d sell it on Supplier Spot. 

Bobby Sorden: There you go. Yeah. I thought I’d just take my phone and list it myself. Yeah. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. 

Bobby Sorden: I’m listening to this and it’s laying next to these trees. 

Brian Searl: Alright, so yeah, anyway, alright, so don’t listen to anything I have to say. Let’s go with Craig. Craig, refused landing RV campground. Tell us what you got there, sir. How’d you get into it?

Craig Alsup: Hey, first of all, I just want to say that I cannot buy those meters because my local electric company swears that there’s a law in Mississippi that an individual [00:18:00] or a private business cannot have meters in their possession or it’s illegal. 

But they’ve, they’re yet to show me this log.

Brian Searl: Did you ask ChatGPT this and verify it?

Cause Brian knows everything. 

Candice McNamara: I just want to talk to you about Wild Energy or any of those guys too. 

Craig Alsup: Cause they might be familiar. I’ve chatted with Wild Energy a little bit. They can’t find that law on the books either, but our electric company swears to us that if if we have those in our possession and they find out, they’ll shut all our electric off.

So we’ll see. We’ll see what happens, 

Brian Searl: which is strange, but 

Craig Alsup: I’ll get into that. I’ll get into that. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, I definitely I want to talk about that, but I feel we should talk about your campground first. 

Craig Alsup: Yeah. Yeah, so bought the campground. It was started in the late seventies within the Aspew family.

We bought it or I bought it last June of 2023. We’ve got 83 sites. We’ve got 100 percent of those sites full this weekend, which is cool. And we’re running about 60 percent full all the time now. [00:19:00] Actually 60 percent plus, So it’s it’s been a, it’s been a long road thus far.

A lot of stuff learned, like Richard said, I wasn’t in the industry before. Just saw a deal I’m a serial entrepreneur and saw a deal, saw this campground looked like it had a whole lot of potential. And just that sort of serial entrepreneur frustration with seeing something that’s underutilized was enough to get me Get me asking some questions.

And so Botham Park and we’ve renovated almost everything. We’ve fixed nearly everything they had and added a ton of amenities and increased the prices about double what they were and still blowing and going. So it’s been really good so far. 

Brian Searl: I don’t like to talk here, for those of you who know, I just only talk because my recurring guests here, Greg and Candice, refuse to talk and ask questions.

Oh, I got a question. That would make it a way, but you can ask the question. But I want Greg from Camp Strategy, who turns around [00:20:00] all these campgrounds and consults and knows exactly what needs to be better to replace. You said you fixed everything. I want Greg to make sure of that.

Craig Alsup: Give me all of your information. 

Greg Emmert: Yeah, I’ll download it. I got one of those plugs in the back of my head, like Neo. Brian installed it at the last convention. So all we need is that piece and just jam it in and I can just send it to you overnight. Perfect. Perfect. And I will say this right off the bat is I know.

I don’t have clients in Mississippi, but I know of parks that are fully metered in that state. Yeah. So I don’t know. Maybe they’re just misinformed. If they’re not misguiding you, with any intent, but I don’t do, I would, my BS meter is going off on that one. So I’m, I’ll do a little poking around and get back to you.

If I find anything out too, cause that I’ve never heard of that. And maybe once you install them in the sockets, they’re no longer in your possession. If they don’t catch you actually holding it, maybe that’s what they can’t be. The other flip side of 

Brian Searl: this, is this, think about it from an electrical company perspective.

This is a small electrical [00:21:00] company, right? Small electric, or they provide, right? Maybe it’s that they don’t want to meter, so they don’t want to lose money on the power that’s being used. 

Greg Emmert: Yeah, because it does make your guests much more conservative. Yeah. On their, we bought our park when I was still an owner operator, my parents bought our park in 94.

We fully metered the park by 96, and our electric bills dropped by almost 35%. Cause people were, they go from running everything all the time to, holy cow, that’s my bill now. I’m responsible. So it, that, I, that’s a, yeah, that sounds plausible, Brian. I could see that. 

Craig Alsup: Yeah. I’ve chatted with some park owners down on the coast that meter their electric and they are under a different electric company.

But they’re like, yeah, that’s not correct. There’s no law on the boats in Mississippi that you can’t self meter. We’ll see. We’ll get there. We’ll fight that fight. 

Brian Searl: They could cut off your power if they don’t like it, regardless of whether it’s a law or not. So that’s interesting. Bobby, you had a question.

Bobby Sorden: Yeah, I was curious, Craig. [00:22:00] So you said it came from the Ascus family. Are you, is it part of the stipulation that you keep the name for the campground, or do you want to? I’m just always curious about buying a business that has like a person’s name involved with it. 

Craig Alsup: Yeah, so we kept the name. Askew’s Landing is a place name.

It was named after the family that have owned that place since the 1800s. Askew’s Landing was a, the site of a family ferry crossing on the Big Black River that basically connected east, the east side of Mississippi and that area to Vicksburg. And so we, we kept it based upon it being a place name.

There was also some some long history there. Not everybody was mad at them, so we decided to keep it and do our best with just Turning the park around and showing people that it’s still the same name, but a different place. Interesting. 

Brian Searl: So I know we wanted to talk a little bit about, or at least in my notes, the different amenities that you offer, [00:23:00] Craig.

So you want to touch on a little bit about that? 

Craig Alsup: Yeah sure. We have we inherited a saltwater swim and cool. It was being shut down in September of every year and kept closed until May and then they were fighting the fight to get the water right in May and, in April and May every year but we realized that we could just keep it up and running all winter long in Mississippi and not have to fight that fight and we had people swimming in it in November, as late November and we had people get in it this year in February.

He didn’t really call it 

Candice McNamara: polar. I have one. It’s a polar plunge. 

Craig Alsup: It’s a little cold, but it was kids getting in it and kids don’t care if I don’t know. But but that’s so that’s been a good upgrade update. We also have a rental pavilion there. It’s pretty big hosts big parties.

We’ve hosted a couple of weddings thus far this year birthday parties, family reunions, all that stuff. We added a bunch of lawn games, cornhole, horseshoes, all that kind of [00:24:00] stuff. We’ve got a half basketball court. We’ve got a big field for playing sports and we’ve got balls that you can check out.

We added a tennis ball. We added an entire playground for kids with all kinds of playground activities and stuff. Tons of stuff that we’ve added in the camp store. We found out that the previous owner had not revamped or re upped his laundry commitment with the company that was providing laundry stuff to him.

And so we went to them and said, hey, what can you do for us? And they said, we’ll give you all new machines and we’ll give you 10 percent more of the cut of the money that those machines bring in. And now everybody doesn’t have to have quarters. They can use the app or a card to pay and we’ve already seen our revenue from that about double or triple just in the last few months.

So that’s been really good. And then what else? We’ve got docks and we’ve got fishing. We we came in and one of the things that we realized was that the [00:25:00] previous owner was not allowing people to come swim or fish or kayak if they were not staying there. And so we changed that and made day, month, and annual passes available for all of those, and have sold a ton of annual fishing passes monthly swimming passes, people coming out just for day visits.

We started allowing local photographers to come use the site. And charging them 50 bucks an hour just to come and take pictures of other people out there, which, it’s good advertising for us too. Yeah we’ve hosted some big vendor events. We actually have one this coming Saturday with about a hundred vendors scheduled to come.

And we’re expecting well over a thousand people to come shop. And then we’ve got a hundred percent of our sites booked up. So we’re going to be busy this weekend. 

Brian Searl: So I think this interests me as a topic of discussion, and hopefully it will the rest of the people here, because we’ve heard people talk about special events and activities and things like that, but I don’t think we’ve ever gone into the things that you’re talking about with [00:26:00] the hundreds of vendors and the ancillary income that you’re making through some of these things, like fishing licenses and swing passes, both day use, right?

That’s more popular, but month, seasonal, stuff like that. So talk us through, for the people who are watching this, who are either, starting an RV park, thinking about it in the midst of maybe enhancing some of their income, looking at, you The economy and thinking, how can I supplement some of this stuff?

How hard is that to start? Where, what’s the first trigger you would pull that’s easiest? Things like that. 

Craig Alsup: Yeah. I like the low hanging fruit idea when you’re looking for building a business up and trying to boost revenue. The low hanging fruit for us was that we already had a lake sitting there.

Not being utilized hardly at all. We had a swimming pool sitting there, hardly being utilized at all. And so we started to run run some Facebook ads. We started to post on our Facebook page pictures of the lake, pictures of the pool stuff like that. Putting out the information as far as [00:27:00] day, month, annual passes.

And really right off the bat started getting some people in as those people came in, they started telling friends. And so that has really expanded our revenue coming in off those just ancillary things. That was the lowest hanging fruit because it was something we already had. And then we looked around and we thought, okay, what else do we have?

We have a big field that doesn’t have sites on it right now, at least maybe one day. But we have a big field that doesn’t have any sites and we thought, what could we do out there? And so we decided to host a Christkindlmarkt it’s the German word for Christ child market.

It’s a big German Christmas market tradition that they do every year there. Because my family and I went a couple of years ago.

Brian Searl: I went to Germany and did it like 2022. 

Craig Alsup: Yeah, us too, actually. And so maybe we walked right past each other. I thought you were German. I don’t know. But but yeah, so we looked around.

Okay, we’ve got the field. We did this thing in Germany. How can we do that in Mississippi? Name it. Chris Kindlmarkt. Because it’ll grab [00:28:00] people’s attention because they’re like, Oh, what’s that mean? And it worked. We had about 70 vendors register, about 55 showed up. And then we had about 750 people on site that day coming in and about 70 percent of our sites were full for the night.

And that was in late November. And so that was pretty good shot in the arm right there. But yeah, for that. Really, I was posting a Facebook event page. I ran some ads. I only ran ads for a month. For that event ran about 200, 150 worth of ads on Facebook. And we had 750 people come and pay us five bucks a piece to get in the door.

And and we actually didn’t charge vendors for that event because we just wanted to see what would happen. But then we’ve got this upcoming event happening this Saturday that we’ve sold for 25 bucks a piece. We’ve sold about a hundred vendor slots. And then we’re going to charge five bucks to get in the door again, to anybody [00:29:00] coming in.

And we started advertising it in January rather than Only having one month, so we’re expecting it to be a much bigger event than the last one. But really, I think with things like this, it’s just like deciding you’re going to do it, looking around, seeing what you’ve got available as far as space and time limitations and stuff like that, and then just getting started somewhere.

Brian Searl: And all of this ties together, right? So I think it’s interesting. I’d love to hear from Greg, from your perspective of as you go in and consult with some of these campgrounds, and I know Jeff’s the finance guy, right? But you have, you’re really smart with that too. Maybe just not all the numbers and writing down, right?

But so as you consult for some of these campgrounds, how do you look at some things like that and pick them out for a campground of I’m walking through your park and here’s what I see that maybe you’re underutilizing or not utilizing if you take advantage of or charge for or not charge for or things like that.

And then I think it plays through to Candice, I’d love for you to talk about some of the opportunities for them to market some of those ancillary things. Through Campspot, [00:30:00] or not Campspot, I’m sorry. Ooh, you’re going to slap me for that one. Through Staylist as part of the reservation process, add ons and things like that.

And Campspot because I was talking to somebody yesterday about add ons and they were using Campspot. That’s why it was in my head. So it’s a match. And then I really think it flows through, right? So if we can teach Richard how to do big He can burn through electrical meters, pass them on to Craig, they can do a stunt supplier spot, everybody wins, and they’ll show.

Greg Emmert: Circle of life. Love it. Yeah, absolutely circle of life. Yeah, it, it very much depends on we obviously try to make all of our solutions custom tailored, so it, a lot of it depends on just taking the pulse of the people that we’re talking to, because some folks are, they’ve got 15 sites, and they’re completely burned out, and those sites are full like 20 percent of the time.

They don’t want to add anything else. And those are, that’s typically the type of park that a serial entrepreneur like Craig sees and goes, Wow, they are not, they’re, there’s all this low hanging fruit. In fact, it’s laying on the ground, spoiling, [00:31:00] right? So we take their pulse first, and then we go from there.

But yeah when you start eyeballing those things, even if you’re really my old park, we were very busy on the weekends, but through the week why not sell swimming passes for, we have a beautiful swimming pool that I built in 2012. Sell swimming passes from Monday to Thursday. At first we thought, eh, nobody’s going to come for that.

Of course they did. Kids are out of school, mom needs something to do. We’re not just swimming in a pond anymore. It’s a very upgraded experience. So even if it’s small, we always encourage owners again if it seems like they’re going to be into it, we try to steer them that way because that money typically falls directly to your NOI.

There’s. What is your additional cost? You’re already there operating, if the pool’s already open and you have to have lifeguards because it’s open, then put people in it. An empty pool, I used to look down at mine and we didn’t have to have guards. It made me nuts. I’m like, there are people in the park and no one’s in the pool, but I have to run the pool.

I still have the same cost. So if [00:32:00] you can bring that revenue in, it’s dropping straight to your bottom line, which is straight into your pocket after taxes and things. I’m not saying that you should put anything in your pocket without going through all the proper channels. Let’s get that out there first.

But all of those things from the festivals that, that he’s talking about, the vendor fairs. If you’ve got the space and you’re near, and again proximity to a population center is obviously going to be important if you’re on the edge of a national park, you’re maybe not going to be able to build this stuff in because people maybe have to drive hours to get to you.

Then again, if you’re on the edge of a national park, you’re probably so full you don’t need that stuff anyway, right? You really don’t have any more time or space to get people in because your park’s just full all the time. Yeah, looking into those ancillary drivers is really important because too often owners look at their park, they see the campsites, and that’s the end of it.

That’s as far as their imagination can take them. And they’re just missing out. That’s the best part, frankly, about investing in campgrounds, in RV parks and campgrounds. If you’re [00:33:00] into the mobile home industry, you’ve got your site rent and maybe your monthly fees. That’s the end of it. You don’t really have the opportunity to Open a store and lead activities and do golf cart rental or pedal cart rentals and have festivals and sell swimming passes.

RV parks and campgrounds offer the commercial real estate investor, the serial entrepreneur, multiple revenue streams on one property. And then you dovetail that right into a property management system like Staylist, where you can easily. track all those expenses and, it’ll also help you I don’t know, Candice will StayList help you market those as well?

Or is it just going to help me, sell the wristbands and keep track of the cash from that? 

Candice McNamara: So internally yeah, you have the ability to use two way texting. You also can do email marketing through it. So it really just depends on what way you’re trying to market it and who you’re trying to address.

I would say think of it as more of like In real time, people that are physically there you’re going to use conduits, like you talked about [00:34:00] earlier of Facebook, SEO, hit up Brian, Insider Perks. Those type of flows are going to, PPC paper clip. Those areas are going to really drive the business there.

But once they’re physically there, trying to address it, like you said, having people, looking down at your park and being like, there are people here, two way text them, tell them, Hey guys, today we’re going to have this ancillary opportunity, and that’s, and it could be something along the lines of, if you bought like an ice cream Cabana area, where you’re just selling ice creams, something like that, something simple.

And then you’ll just see that ebb and flow income come. 

Bobby Sorden: Yeah. One thing I’ll throw out there too, if you don’t mind me jumping in here like Craig and Richard, what I’m starting to do, and we’ve got a couple’s plan already is some of you probably don’t know about my background, but I have a DJ business that I started back in 1999 here in Colorado and throughout the years, it’s been very successful.

My son’s actually starting to take over on the DJ side of things, but part of that business is I started doing trivia. And Trivia, a friend of mine owns some bars and grills, and I started hosting there, where I actually found a system where you could [00:35:00] utilize your phone or an iPad as your buzzer device, and then you can broadcast the questions up, has a scoreboard.

So where I’m going with this, like Stavis people in your park, and what I’m doing at these trade shows, I’m actually going to be hosting a session called Suppliers Trivia, where I’m getting questions about suppliers, but the, Key part about it for the campground owners is I’m going to actually show them the system that I use and they can bring it back to their campgrounds and do this fun trivia where they just plug it in.

You use your own router. I bring a router with me and that way you’re not using the wi fi and take it down. So just going out there to Craig and Richard and what Candace was talking about is you could two way text them saying, hey, trivia’s tonight. Or even if you want people to come in from outside the park and play trivia.

That’s easy money. Especially if you have a bar and a restaurant, you can do food and drink specials and, give them an extra point if they buy the food special. A lot of cool ways of getting more entertainment into your park. Very simply and cost effective. 

Candice McNamara: I love that. And I owe you trivia.

I’m so sorry. So [00:36:00] I did want to answer one thing. Greg, I didn’t want to be rude. If you were you done with your thoughts and stuff on, I knew you were asking about stay list. 

Greg Emmert: Yeah. For the most part, I was just going to throw in one more my favorite of these, the ancillary incomes.

And I don’t see enough. Especially smaller parks. Anyone can do it. If you’ve got a pool and you’ve got a deck and even if it’s not a pool, if you’ve got a swimming pond, if you’ve got a swimming feature at your park rentable cabanas just the canvas sided, you can get them at Lowe’s, Home Depot, any of the big box stores, they don’t have to be a commercial setup because you can put them up, take them down when you’re swimming is closed.

If you’re on swimming, you can leave them up, but having those things up and making them rentable, To people, you put a red rope, red velvet rope across it. It’s very it’s bougie. It’s exclusive, right? And I can, oh, how much is that? It’s 50 an hour. If I get my kids out of the sun for a little while and we’ve got a little place we can sit in here, we’re still right poolside, but we have our own private little cabana and I can draw that curtain if I need to.

I don’t know, change a diaper or something, whatever it is, those things are maybe my favorite. And I don’t see enough parks doing them. [00:37:00] They rent so well. At the parks that I do see doing them anywhere, on an hourly rate or on a daily rate, that is probably my favorite one. 

Brian Searl: How do you handle the guests though, that get like way too big of an ego from staying in them?

Like the woman where you just walk by her and she’s stop looking. 

Greg Emmert: Yes. If you have poolside cabana Cairns. You just double the rate. 

Candice McNamara: That’s it. 

Greg Emmert: If you have a cabana carrying, you just double the rate. And if she pays it, you double it again next time until she stops paying it. And then it clears it up for guests that aren’t going to carry you to death.

That’s Sorry to carry you everywhere. I’m sorry. 

Brian Searl: That’s what we needed. We need to get I had to grab that. I feel bad because you’ve let Richard go here. So tell us, Richard, about your campground. 

Richard Chandler: For way too many years, I was in IT project management. My wife is still in IT, so she’s got a day job. The question was, what are we going to do when we retire?

And that’s when we decided that we’d go into A business [00:38:00] that’s dealing with people, that’s dealing with the outdoors, that has projects that it can actually complete, not like an IT project. So things are different. When I take a look at the background of everybody we all come from diverse backgrounds.

We, we’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re in the middle of Amish country. We don’t have a big audience that we can draw from. One of the first things we did is put in a three quarter acre swim pond, blind, sandy bottom, 12 feet deep. We’re only open six months of the year because we’re in Wisconsin. And one thing, one advantage that we have here is the Wisconsin Association of Campground Owners is one of the best in the country.

We’re very active in that, and they, we have vendor fairs in our annual meeting, we have 160 vendors that show up for that. We’ve learned a lot from the sessions there and from other campgrounds, and now I’ve hosted a meeting of the maintenance managers of parks in the area, so it’s more regional than the whole state.

So we’re doing things like that. But our big thing now I think, is [00:39:00] that we make almost no money. We’re not doing the smart things that , why are you laughing about that? 

Brian Searl: You’re not gonna be laughing about that one. 

Richard Chandler: As an example, we have an annual music festival. We, and from Friday noon until the wee hours of Saturday night, we have 33 bands on three stages.

Wow. We charge $40 for people to come in. They can stay for an hour or they can pitch a tent and stay for two nights. So we’ve brought in a lot of people. We bring bands in from about five different states and our total cost for the bands has been like five or six grand. So we’re at break even but we’re not making much money on it.

We have 15 vendors that come in for the weekend. It’s different. Another thing that, that we do is we have a number of thing we get. I have a question. 40 for the whole weekend, yeah. 

Brian Searl: Oh, wow. I think, I feel like maybe that’s why you’re not making the profit. 

Craig Alsup: I would immediately bump that to [00:40:00] 60 per day.

Richard Chandler: It’s probably not a bad idea. We also have a number of weekends. In Wisconsin, almost every campground has a theme for their weekend. It’s just the big thing. One of ours is we have Rescue Fest, where it’s a fundraiser for a local fire department. They’re bringing in fire trucks and helicopters and canine units, so they’ve got a lot of different things, but it’s a fundraiser for them.

We get just about nothing out of it except the sale of some t shirts. We have Survivors Weekend. It’s free camping for cancer survivors right at the end of the season. I’m a cancer survivor and it just seemed like the right thing to do. Another thing that we have is discount for veterans. It’s interesting.

People can guess my background where if you’re a veteran, you get 10 percent off. If you’re a Navy veteran, you get 20 percent off. If you’re a Vietnam veteran, you get 30 percent off. And if you’re a Service Academy graduate, you get 50 percent off. [00:41:00] And if you’re not a veteran, you get 50 percent more?

If you’re an Army veteran, you get 50 percent more. Air Force will charge 40 percent more. 

Brian Searl: Makes sense, okay. 

Richard Chandler: Yeah, so we do a lot of things that aren’t really raising money for us. We put all the money back into it. I’ve planted over 300 trees. We have three miles of trails now that go through the woods and it’s just a whole different mindset.

We haven’t really focused on it. Our day passes right now, our 10 on a weekend, 8 on a weekday, and we did raise a substantial amount of money doing that because you get the mom and the two kids coming or the group of ladies that want to come out during the workday, so we’re having some things like that where we’re doing some revenue production.

Our store is pretty active. We probably do 100 grand in the store a year. So we’ve got opportunities that we’re just not taking advantage of. 

Bobby Sorden: Hey Richard, [00:42:00] are you allowed to sell liquor at your campground? 

Richard Chandler: Packaged goods only. 

Bobby Sorden: Okay, 

Richard Chandler: so we were, our township was dry until we petitioned them about five years ago and, Wisconsin and dry don’t go well together.

So now we have beer, wine and liquor in the store. 

Bobby Sorden: Okay, but you can’t pour it. It has, they just can buy the bottles themselves, right? 

Candice McNamara: Richard, I have a question. During, I heard, one of the biggest things that I heard from you was, I’m closed six months out of the year, therefore I can’t make X amount of money.

Have you ever thought about doing long term storage? And does your software have the capability of doing that? Which I think they do. So like storing and then moving them, out. 

Richard Chandler: Oh, we could do that, except with our seasonals, they bring in their campers and we let them stay on their site.

Okay. Twelve months a year, they just can’t come in for six months. They’re, they’ve got that. We’ve got a field out in the back. We could think about having some storage for other things, like boats and things like that. Definitely. Yeah. 

Brian Searl: I think [00:43:00] this is interesting just listening to you talk and this is partially how I’ve built my business, right?

I put all my money back into the business. I want to constantly just either hire new people or invent new technology or sign up for new software that makes the services better. And so I’m looking far ahead and I’m thinking, okay if I build this, then I’m going to start to, and I already am, right?

But I spent the last first eight years, not but I’m setting myself up for a future where I can make a lot of profit. And I feel like that’s what I’m hearing coming out of you is I’m setting a foundation for when I’m ready. My wife and I are ready to retire. That this is going to be able to operate itself a whole lot easier than jumping into a campground, like we make fun of people who are just going to retire.

Richard Chandler: And that’s why it’s part of the reputation we’re trying to build. Since we opened, every Saturday at four o’clock, we have happy hour. We provide free popcorn. And it’s a social hour where everybody comes up by the store and they bring their drinks or they buy them from the store. So people get a feeling after a while, 70 percent of our visitors are repeat visitors.

So we get people coming back again, [00:44:00] but we don’t do a good job of marketing to get other people. We’ve got huge tent areas. It feels like you 

Brian Searl: maybe do, like you might not do the Facebook and the Google ads and the things, but it feels like what you’re doing is very good marketing actually. 

Richard Chandler: It’s a lot of word of mouth.

And that is the most effective, but we should have other things. Like how do you appeal to tent campers? Most people, 47 percent I think of people say they camp in tents. I don’t believe it, but that’s what I’ve read and we get very few, but we’ve got 20 acres, 25 acres of woods that people can go and they can be as remote as they want.

They can be like in a national forest. So we just, we haven’t figured out how to reach some of those target markets. 

Candice McNamara: Are you marketing? 

Richard Chandler: We’re not marketing much at all. I use chat AI and I send out a constant contact periodically, but that doesn’t go very far. 

Candice McNamara: Have you heard of Insider Perks? 

Richard Chandler: I’ve heard of it.

Candice McNamara: Yeah, excellent. I’ve had him on several of my [00:45:00] clients and truly has changed the landscape and exactly what you’re asking for. I know he can help you with it. 

Richard Chandler: No, it’s something I’m going to have to look at. Yeah, good. 

Brian Searl: We’re not trying to sell you anything. We’re trying to make you money from your electric meters.

That’s the purpose of the show. Yeah. Yeah. Always happy to have a conversation. I think it’s interesting to me though, that forward thinking, talk more about that mindset briefly, because obviously it’s a situational, not everybody can buy a campground and then all of a sudden just wait to make a profit.

For a number of years, but talk to us about that mindset and why you think it’s going to be successful long term. 

Richard Chandler: Thank goodness. My wife has a good day job, so we do have some income to pay the bills, but. To me, we changed the name of it, of the campground when we bought it, because it had a terrible reputation.

And over time now, we’re, people say, oh, that’s such a clean and safe campground. People feel comfortable there. And that word is getting out more and more. We’re getting people, we [00:46:00] go to a couple of trade shows RV shows, and I don’t know how we can quantify it, but I think that we are making the campground better and people see it.

They feel it. And as we get more capital in, we’ll do some more expansion and we’ll be able to do some more. I think one of the things that you wanted to talk about here was suppliers and partners. And I think there’s a huge difference. I think we have a few partners, but we mostly have suppliers. And there’s a challenge to get People into a different relationship with us because we don’t have a whole lot of choices out here in the middle of nowhere.

Brian Searl: You’ve got 160 vendors and orders of each of them, how many do you want? So talk to me, I think the last question I have for you just in, obviously, unless anybody else does that I can think of right now is talk to me when it’s, when does it get to the point? Is there a fixed date or time or scenario or amenities that you want to add when you [00:47:00] get to a point where you flip the switch and say, I want to start making money?

Richard Chandler: I don’t know. I think we’re there now. Because we now, because everybody, when they look at it, it’s silly, I think, because new campgrounds don’t, they can’t show a strong NOI because we’re putting money back into it. I had to buy a tractor. We didn’t have a tractor. I had to buy a skid steer. We didn’t have a skid steer.

I’m expensing a lot and a lot of it’s capital improvements. But for me, it’s not like I’m a third generation campground owner where everything is paid for already. For them, the net is going to show up as being a lot stronger than ours. So what we need to do is start improving our net so that we can get a better multiple of it.

But I, I argue that’s not the only predictor of what something will sell for. I don’t think that’s right. 

Brian Searl: I tend to agree with you. I don’t know if the banks would agree with us, but that’s the hard part. I’m on your, I’m on your side too. I think, okay, so does anybody have any questions for Richard before I 

Candice McNamara: No, I have more of a comment.

I just want to, like, all of the owners [00:48:00] here really give you kudos. I’ve been looking, if you see my eyes wandering a lot, it’s because I’m looking at your websites and I’m listening to your stories as I’m seeing the visual storytelling. And I can see some really amazing amenities that you guys put in place.

And even, even though you’re saying, hey, I’m not doing a lot of marketing, I’m not doing this It would draw me in, and I’m picky, right? So I just want to really commend you all on A, being really raw and honest, because I think what this whole purpose of why Brian put this all together is to really inform campground owners on everything, and I think there’s a lot of people that feel that way, Richard that also, but it’s a little harder, and pride may get in the way to say, Hey, listen, I know I should be making more money.

I know I should be doing these things. I don’t know how to do it. How do I get there? I think that this speaks volumes to character. I think it also shows that both players, Craig and Richard, who are running these perks, and then Bobby bringing all those worlds together with suppliers and connectivity is a really beautiful thing to to hear out loud.

So I just want to commend both of [00:49:00] you guys, though it might not feel perfect what you both are doing I think is going to really speak volumes and I think it’s going to help a lot of people. So more than, asking a question, you need to get that validation because it’s not easy what you’re doing and you’re doing it really well.

And yes, there can always be criticism, but congratulations. 

Bobby Sorden: Thank you. If I can, Brian, if you don’t mind. 

Brian Searl: Yes, and then I want to have Craig read your list, Craig, because only we can see that. Not everybody can see that who’s watching the show. 

Bobby Sorden: Okay. Yeah, but following up on that Richard and Craig, the reason why I wanted to stay in this industry is because of RV park and campground owners and the people like on this call.

I used to teach business and marketing in a public school. I didn’t like that. I went to the corporate world. I’ve been laid off twice. Don’t like that. So when I got into this industry, I went to about 15 trade shows over the last decade. Over last year, going to those conferences and those trade shows and just talking with park owners.

I wasn’t trying to sell a product to them. I was the marketing person. I just marketed the product or sales team was there selling, but the connections I made with [00:50:00] everybody just hadn’t gave me like a real good feeling. And that’s why I was like, I want to stay in this industry. And like what Candice is saying, you guys work hard with what you do all the time.

And just being out there, making sure that your people, your campers are there to have a fun time or relaxing time. It makes a big difference on the down to earth type of people that I like to be around. And that’s why I told my wife I’m like you, Richard, my wife has a very good job and I told her, Hey, I’m going to ride your coattails for a little while I get something built up because I don’t want to work for a corporation anymore where I build a product up, I give them 10 times the revenue or ROI or whatever you want to call it.

And they say, Hey, thanks. You’re laid off right before Christmas or something. Now I’m going to my little SAP story here, but where I’m going with this is I met so many great people like you, Richard and Craig. And Craig, before we got on this call, I was already talking about how I followed you for the last year and not being a creeper or stalker or anything, but in those Facebook groups, I was watching all your posts and your messages and just seeing you build out this [00:51:00] park.

Here it is, a year and a half later. So just same thing Candice is saying. This is why I want to say in this industry is people like you, it’s just a down the earth. Good old type of people to be around. So I just want to say that. 

Brian Searl: I’m here to balance everybody else. I’m not the down to earth.

So thank you, Bobby, for the non compliment. Okay. Anyway, I agree. So I think we have a comment here from Facebook that I want to just, before I read the comment and we briefly talk about this for the next five minutes before we end the show, that’s from Jerry Kitterman. Before we do that, I want to say, I want to invite anybody who’s watching from the IRS to go ahead and disconnect from the call to sign to talk about tax things that may or may not work.

Don’t pay attention. Jerry Kiderman’s comment here is, Can I put solar on my unit and sell my surplus back to the campground? Now, I don’t know who Jerry is. But what I , he’s one of our seasonals. 

Richard Chandler: He Jerry’s one of our seasonals. Okay. Highly intel, highly IT oriented. And he’s done a lot of work here at the Campground [00:52:00] Forest.

Brian Searl: Then you answer his question before I misinterpret it. Tesla, can he do that from your perspective? And then I’ll twist his question around. 

Richard Chandler: I have no idea how we would handle that. I don’t know. We have 11 different services. We can only bring in a certain amount of wattage. for each of them, and we’ve got every one of them, every meter has to be read, and every meter we pay 35 a month for, whether there’s any current running through or not.

I don’t know how we would physically handle that. I like the idea, but I don’t know how we would do it. 

Brian Searl: So here’s the answer, Jerry. We don’t know, Richard doesn’t want to lose you. But if you have 150 friends that can go down to Craig’s park, gather up electricity and sell it to him so he can meter it, 

Bobby Sorden: that 

would work.

Bobby Sorden: There 

you go. 

Bobby Sorden: Yeah, I understand Jerry’s question. It’s like when you have solar on your house, whatever you don’t use, you sell back to the grid. 

So that’s a good concept. Here’s my thinking though, from a tax perspective when I read it, because I thought maybe Jerry owned a campground, right?

And so my thinking [00:53:00] would that actually work? Because none of us are tax professionals, right? But in theory, couldn’t you do that? Couldn’t you like have your own personal Side hustle where you sold business back to an LLC and then somehow wrote off electricity costs or something like that.

That’d be interesting. Wouldn’t it? I 

Greg Emmert: don’t know if you can do it with electricity because since you can’t, you’re not a licensed supplier, right? You can’t upcharge on your electricity. You could put in a I need a reading fee or something like that. 

But you’re the person, right? So if you’re the person selling back to the electric company, if it’s on your home, 

Greg Emmert: Yes.

So 

couldn’t you sell it back to the 

Greg Emmert: campground, and then the campground is 

less efficient? 

Greg Emmert: I don’t know. The campground isn’t supplying electricity. Now, if Jerry puts solar on his unit, and it takes him from, using 157 kilowatts a month down to 6, he could certainly lower his electric bill, because he would be using less of Richard’s power.

But I don’t know. I don’t know what the legality would be there. That’s interesting. I’ve never heard that before, but I don’t know, since Richard is not able to be a supplier, 

but [00:54:00] we’re all at that time of year where we’re doing our taxes for our companies and businesses and thinking of ways that we can pay all the taxes we want, we love you IRS, obviously.

But it’s interesting. It’s an interesting thought, I think. 

Richard Chandler: Along, just one other thing along those lines is, so far, we’ve never been able to find somebody who’s really understanding the campground industry from the financial perspective. My degree is in finance, but I have not been doing it for years.

There’s got to be a way, if we buy a new skid steer, that we can buy it through an LLC and do a sale lease back, or some arrangement like that is tax advantageous to us. It’s interesting that we have not, in this area, have not been able to find anybody. Who knows how to do some of those things? 

Greg Emmert: Oh, my, I’m not going to argue with that.

Yeah. But maybe he doesn’t want to do that, Jeff or Greg. Don’t put words into his mouth. Yes, he does. No, you, Richard, you shoot me an email when this is over. I sent you my email address in [00:55:00] the chat. I’ll put you in contact with Jeff and he’s, yeah, when it comes to financial side, the financial side of campgrounds and accounting and all that, he’s.

He is the man. That’s why he’s my partner because we have such great skill sets because I know a little bit about the financial side, but Jeff is like a walking encyclopedia. That’s right. 

Brian Searl: So Greg has camp strategy and then there’s camp tax avoidance and camp all kinds of stuff. We just don’t talk about this publicly.

Okay. Any final thoughts before we go here, guys? 

Bobby Sorden: Thanks for having me, Brian. Appreciate it. It’s been interesting. 

Bye y’all. Actually you guys have been here for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Thanks for Bobby for Supplier Spot. Bobby, where can they, SupplierSpot. com? 

Bobby Sorden: Yep, SuppliersSpot. com, plural, two s’s, SupplierSpot. com. 

Brian Searl: Okay, Richard, where can they learn more about your campground? 

Richard Chandler: At GlacierValleyCampground. com. Greg. CampStrategy. com or GregAtCampStrategy. com. 

Brian Searl: Alright, fine, Greg. I said Craig, but I didn’t pronounce it right. Oh, [00:56:00] you gotta enunciate it. I’m sorry. Craig. That guy. Yeah, sorry. 

Craig Alsup: Mine is just askuslandingrv. com. 

Brian Searl: And Candice. 

Candice McNamara: Alright, 

Brian Searl: Thank you guys for joining us on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Really appreciate you all being here. I’ll see you next week for an RV industry focused episode. Take care guys. We’ll see ya. 

Greg Emmert: Thanks Brian. Bye bye. Thanks. 

Joining us for this episode of MC Fireside Chats with your host, Brian Searl.

Have a suggestion for a show idea? Want your campground or company in a future episode? Email us at Get your daily dose of news at hello at ModernCampground. com. Get your daily dose of news from ModernCampground. com. And be sure to join us next week for more insights into the fascinating world of outdoor [00:57:00] hospitality.