MC Fireside Chats – April 30th, 2025

Brian Searl: All right, so that was super weird. I don’t know if I’m broken over here or not, but did you guys see the intro stutter or did it play okay for you? 

Heidi Royle: It played fine for me. 

Brian Searl: Okay, so it’s just me. I’m broken over here. Like I couldn’t operate my mic before the show. These wonderful women were trying to hear me and I couldn’t talk into the right mic.

And then the intro is like all stuttering for me when it was playing on my side. So I’m glad it worked out well and I just emBahrassed myself for no reason. But anyway, welcome everybody. It’s, see another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks slash Modern Campground here for one of our kind of rare fifth week episodes where we just have a couple people on here, no regular guests but it usually ends up in an interesting conversation.

So excited to be here. Do you guys wanna go around and just introduce yourselves real quick? And is that fair? Like I say guys, and I really didn’t mean to say that, but I realized I said it, so I’m sorry. Or I dunno.

Mychele Bisson: That’s totally fine. 

Brian Searl: Go ahead, please. Whoever wants to start. 

Mychele Bisson: I guess I’ll start. My name’s Mychele Bisson. We purchase campgrounds around the country and we try to revitalize them. So we buy them from mom and pops revitalize them. Try to add new elements to them and then push them out. But we wanna keep them true to the legacy of the family that actually created them.

Brian Searl: That’ll be interesting to talk about. Okay. I don’t know if I ever knew that about the legacy portion, so that’d be

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. We like to keep ’em as true. Like it, that’s the thing is mom and dad like build these things to last and then, go through life and realize their kids don’t wanna take it.

’cause I saw mom and dad running it their entire lives and they were tired and exhausted and so we just, to keep that memory alive for them. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s gonna be a cool story. We’ll talk about that after we talk about like your core business of course. But I wanna, I want to try to come up with hypothetical scenarios where you would break that rule.

Mychele Bisson: Okay.

Brian Searl: So it’ll be interesting. Maybe it’ll be interesting for me. We’ll try to make it interesting for you. Mary, go ahead. 

Mary Sparrow: Hi, my name’s Mary Sparrow and I, with my husband, we own a boatyard on the Norfolk Broads in the east of England, and we have floating glamping pods. And they’re kind of unique to the area and they’re really lovely.

And we started with houseboats, but we added glamping pods when some of the houseboats were about 80 years old and a boat drove in the side, put a big hole in it, and we thought maybe we need to change it. And we’ve won the East of England Glamping Camping Award for 2025. And we are finalists for the UK Glamping Camping Awards in Brighton next month.

So we are looking forward to find out whether we’re bronze, silver, or gold. 

Brian Searl: Obviously it’s gonna be gold, so there’s some mystery here. But thank you for being on the show. It looks like Yeah. You have a great place. We got your website pulled up. We’ll share some pictures with everybody later.

And go from there. Heidi? 

Heidi Royle: Yes. My name’s Heidi Royle and I own the Grove Glamping. It was an idea I had. I was a solo parent, who in Covid, got a little bored. I was working like three part-time jobs and decided why don’t I also start a glamping site. So we are right across from a state park, like a favorite state park in Minnesota, and we’re really close to a very quaint little small town.

And so just have a really special experience. We feel like we get a offer to our guests who come in and it’s a lot of fun. 

Brian Searl: Let’s start with you Heidi. You’re right here. So how did you get, how did you get started? How did you decide? One is are you from Minnesota, I guess is the first question.

So let’s do that. Are you from Minnesota? ’cause that’ll inform my next question. 

Heidi Royle: Yes. Yep. I am from Minnesota. I live in the Twin Cities, so I’m about two and a half hours away from our glamping site. But I put this site on some land that my family’s owned for years. Okay. And in the small town I grew up in, the town is like 850 people.

So it’s one of those towns that like triples in the summer and then dies 

Brian Searl: Yes. As a lot of Minnesota and Wisconsin does in that area. 

Heidi Royle: Yes. 

Brian Searl: I’ve been to Minneapolis, St. Paul, I’ve driven across there, but I probably haven’t been to your small town. Yeah, that was more where my question was gonna go.

Like, how did you end up in Minnesota and then you answered all the things by saying I was born in Minnesota and my family had a plot of land here. And so that’s good that it’s right outside of the state park. That would probably keeps you busy without trying too hard. 

Heidi Royle: Yeah, it’s really helpful. The state park has gotten more popular and they put in two yurts in the park and those were really booked out, so that kind of made me feel a little more assured that there’s plenty of visitors coming to the area. They have a great like bike trail that’s right across the road from us, and you can bike into town or you can bike through the park. And just a lot of access is really close. 

Brian Searl: So what’s the big draw for the state park there? Is it just like a, I don’t wanna say typical state park because that undermines the beauty typical state park. But I think you understand what I mean. 

Heidi Royle: Yeah. I think it’s really gorgeous woods. There’s just something about the woods up there and being able to like hike through them.

And then there’s also a chain of lakes that goes through the park. So we are like right next to the creeks and so you can get on the creek and you can go through four different lakes if you want. And the creeks are like crystal clear water. It’s amazing up there of just how clean the water is.

So, we kinda have like our secret little loop that we tell guests of like where they can do like their own lazy river float. And then we partner with, a boat rental company and they rent out paddleboards and kayaks and canoes and so there’s a lot of fun lake things to do really close. 

Brian Searl: I will tell you that crystal clear water thing, like I never used to imagine that was a thing.

Like I always wanted to be around water. I always wanted to live on the river or I always enjoyed going the oceans when I was kids or a kid to the lake, whatever else. But and I can’t remember ever obviously it exists, you’re saying it does in the United States. I was born in the United States, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio for all of my life moved up here to Canada four years ago in Calgary.

It was about 45 minutes from Banff and that was the first time going to Banff on a hike when I came here that I like remember seeing like completely clear, like all the way to the bottom water. And it just is, if you haven’t seen it in person, you, there’s no real way to explain it. 

Heidi Royle: Yeah, it can be pretty amazing.

You can go out and see 30 feet down on some of the lakes, or if it like, freezes perfectly in winter before there’s snow. I always love that. ’cause you can like, walk on the ice and watch fish swimming under you. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, I think it’s for sure.

Heidi Royle: But nothing like Banff. We’re no Banff. 

Brian Searl: Well but the clear water, right?

Heidi Royle: It’s own beauty. Yeah. 

Brian Searl: I’m for sure it’s spoiled, like to be clear, right? Yes. But yeah, like the clear water thing is just that, I don’t know, it’s just a draw. Like I think it for sure keeps people coming back.

Heidi Royle: Yep.

Brian Searl: And helps ’em tell their story. So tell us about your clamping operation. You just do what’s what do you have there for accommodations? 

Heidi Royle: So we have currently we have five glamping tents, and then we have a shared bathhouse. We’re looking at building out potentially to nine to 10 sites just we’re working with the county now to see what approval we need.

But yeah, it’s just on a five acres of land. And then just close, right close to the park. 

Brian Searl: So for all the smaller operators out there, what are some of the struggles that you ran into when you were first trying to promote the site to get people to be aware that you were there? Those kinds of things. 

Heidi Royle: At first it was helpful, I think what’s actually been most helpful for us is like at the beginning I just did a, some exchanges of stays for influencers to do some posts and that has probably gotten us the most attention. To be able to just let people know that there is glamping in Minnesota and that it’s accessible and all the things to do in the area.

So that was and continues to probably be our most helpful way to promote our site and bring awareness. 

Brian Searl: That glamping word is so interesting to me. And if any of the other two, Mary or Mychele, you wanna ask questions or you feel free to interject I don’t mean for this to be like a turn base thing.

‘Cause the less I talk, the better the show is. But like for the word glamping is interesting to me. And we talked about this like for 10 seconds before the show. But just the fact that like in the UK for example, Mary knows this glamping has been around for a long time. The United States and Canada, I feel are just catching up to what glamping could be.

But also like we technically have had glamping for a long time ’cause there’s been campgrounds with yurts and there’s been campgrounds with cabins, if you consider that glamping. Like I think the consumer definition of glamping is something that really interests me because like I was over in the Netherlands a couple years ago in Amsterdam and there’s this huge I don’t know, crane hotel that you can go stay up in.

They call themselves a crane hotel. But I consider that glamping. Like I’m up in the air, I’m in the middle of nowhere. I can go out on a hot tub and a balcony. Like I can see it with a city. So to me that’s glamping. But it’s interesting how consumer behavior shifts into, now we’re gonna search for this word or that word, but it’s the same thing.

Just maybe a little bit more different and unique and able to be marketed more broadly. Does that, you guys resonate with that or, 

Mychele Bisson: I think personally that it was one of those. Oh, sorry. I think it’s one of those things that it’s been, it might have been something that has been out there, but it wasn’t something that had a label to it until people started actually putting it out on Facebook or Instagram or anything like that.

And then it morphed into this whole thing of its own. And and then from there, I think the first glamp ground that I ever heard of was owned by who is it? It was the guy who, owns Ted’s Montana Grill. He owned a big glamping ground up in Wyoming and it had all these tents with all these amazing luxurious beds.

And then he would bring in like a cook who would cook over an open flame, but they called it something else. At that point it was like dude ranches or something.

Brian Searl: I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of that. Like I’m sure I must have come across it at some point, but like mine was under Canvas collective retreats, I think for the first time when I realized it was a big like thing that was gonna be right.

But yeah, please, no, sorry. Did I cut you off? I didn’t mean to if you had more to say.

Mychele Bisson: Oh no. I was just saying I think that a lot of it has to do with that whole Instagram movement where everything in Instagram just started propelling everything forward. And then as that started getting more and more people started doing it, and then it started like morphing into these other things like houseboats or the domes or tree houses and all those other things.

And so it just became its own beast. And now it just blankets this whole term of lots of different experiences. And it’s not so much just the RV anymore, now it’s like these experiences that you have. So when you’re glamping, you’re expecting an experience. 

Brian Searl: Which I think is good, right?

Like I, we were talking, I think our last week our show was the RV Industry Outdoor Rec, and we had RVDA on here and we were talking a little bit about the end, about like flying cars and how they’re gonna be a thing. And there’s companies that are getting FAA approval this year, and that’s not the thing I wanna talk about, but we were talking about how like, recreational vehicle can mean so many different things.

And so the RV industry actually has this huge opportunity in front of it if they wanted to really redefine what a recreational vehicle is. Just like glamping can redefined to be anything they want it to be. But yeah, like I wonder, it would be interesting to do a study on that because again, like Mary, have they called it glamping for, they call it glamping for a while in the uk, haven’t they?

Mary Sparrow: They have glamping, remember quite a bit, and glamping really is, it started out in the UK as people who were like me, I’m not really into getting a tent down, putting up. You turn up and everything’s put up for you and it’s all there and you’ve got a comfortable bed. So that was great. And then when I went glamping before we bought here, I didn’t like the fact we had shared showers and stuff.

I was like, oh, I’m not so keen on that. So the way that we’ve put glamping here is, everyone’s got this almost like a luxury hotel room floating on the river. Really. And there’s glamping sites full of trains, glamping sites full of airplanes. Like you used to describe the place in Holland, there are some really quirky way out places to stay and they all come under this big loose umbrella of glamping.

And when we were trying to get, we had something called Visit England here, where you get a status, a star rating. When we were asked them to assess us for a star rating visit England, they were like we can’t really assess you under self catering because your properties are a bit small compared to self catering.

But they’re really interesting, they’re really different, they’re really unique and we have a glamping. Area so you can get a status as a glamping site. And I think in glamping now, really anything goes, if you can make it a nice place for people to be and somewhere different

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Mary Sparrow: Then it’s glamping.

Brian Searl: That’s the most interesting part to me is the the inability to sometimes find a category and then they have to dump you into different things. And that’s like we we’ve talked, we’ve heard those conversations quite frequently in the United States with the permitting and the, the towns you have to go to and what are you actually, what does that mean?

What do you do? How do you, how are you different? I even dealt with that like earlier today. I was on the phone with like insurance companies trying to explain like, we do website design and marketing, but also AI. They’re like website design’s risky. We don’t really care about the AI. So I’m like but they still don’t understand all the things.

So it’s interesting how they get you into that category. But I’m glad that something like I’ve known glamping has existed for a while in the uk. It’s interesting. It would be interesting to study how it. Social media for sure played a part in it, but what was that overlap with? Airbnb would be interesting to find out. 

Which one drove the most awareness of the unique accommodation overall? And then the, and then maybe spark the imagination of some entrepreneurs like we were talking about, to create something really cool. 

Mychele Bisson: Don’t you feel like Airbnb though was like pushed in a certain direction because of social media?

Because I know like when I first started doing Airbnbs, like they were literally you could tell that they were these houses that they had, that they would throw like their extra furniture in. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. Oh yeah, I completely agree with you. 

Mychele Bisson: They bought, yeah, and then all of a sudden it became an experience and then they needed to like up the game and that’s when all the other kind of experiences and like the Instagram walls and the pools and, the hot pink, backyards and all that stuff came about.

So I feel like it’s, Airbnb came first and glamping came first, but it wasn’t really projected until we started posting everything. 

Brian Searl: Maybe, yeah, I have no data at all to refute that, and it makes complete sense, so we’ll go with it. So Heidi, where would you take the grove? If you if you had your way maybe you have plans to do this already but if everything went right for the next five or 10 years, where would you see the grow of that?

Heidi Royle: That’s a great question. I would see us built out to nine different sites and potentially like five of those being year round. So it could potentially be like a shipping container kind of set up or like A-frame, just a really like basic A-frame kind of glamping experience. So yeah, I would love to see that 

Brian Searl: We got your website pulled up where we’re looking through.

Heidi Royle: Yeah.

Brian Searl: Anything you wanna highlight on here? You want us to show? 

Heidi Royle: Oh, that’s a great question. I should have thought of that ahead of time.

Brian Searl: We didn’t think about it ahead of time, so don’t be bad. 

Heidi Royle: Yeah, so those are, there’s that crystal clear water you’re gonna see. Those are like the creeks. And then, yeah, we just have each tent set up uniquely and lots of families come out, lots of couples come out, girls weekends.

What I like a lot about our site is it’s a really nice size right now for like groups to rent it. So that has been bachelorette parties. It’s been like family gatherings just people hosting retreats outside, and that’s been really fun. I love when the whole site is taken over by one group and they just get to fully embrace it and have a ton of fun. And so that feels something unique for us and that people really enjoy. 

Brian Searl: That’s really interesting to me too, because like I had, and I’m purposely just saying the state to not narrow it down, to give away who it is, I don’t think they care, but like we had a, we have a client in Colorado who does something similar with a smallish luxury upscale glamping resort, and they were saying the same thing on a call to us the other day.

Like we have, like we were expecting, people to come here and be transient ’cause we’re near a city like an hour away. But we’re getting like just a ton of bookings for weddings that just want the whole thing. ’cause we’re right here on a river. And I think that’s kind, that’s almost a hidden opportunity for people.

Just the, not necessarily like weddings is, of course, and groups, of course. But just the ability for, and this is just me speaking as a marketing person, but just the ability for you to reach out and touch those niches of people who might otherwise not be aware or be searching or be cognizant of the fact or know the word glamping or whatever it is.

And whether you add a page to your website, like what was my advice to them. Add a page about weddings and let’s SEO for weddings in city.

Heidi Royle: Yeah, that’s true.

Brian Searl: Whether you’re doing that for the different types of buyer personas, I think if you can talk to those individual people it would be really interesting.

Lisa’s typing in the chat, in the private chat right now. Mychele, is there a website? Yes, it’s Bison Peak Ventures. We can share Mychele’s website. It’s right there, Lisa. 

Mychele Bisson: Oh, that’s actually our that’s our fund webpage.

Brian Searl: Oh. So she was.

Mychele Bisson: So if you were gonna go to.

Brian Searl: Okay. Sorry Lisa.

Mychele Bisson: Each of our parks and each one of our parks have their own webpage.

Brian Searl: All right which one is the most nicest park webpage that you have to show off?

Mychele Bisson: Let’s see. Let’s go with Papa Chubbies. How about that? papachubbies.com. 

Brian Searl: All right, there you go. Lisa Papa Chubbies. It’s a fun name to spell too. 

Mychele Bisson: Right? 

Brian Searl: While she pulls that up, let’s talk to you Mary. ’cause I know it’s late over there. I appreciate you being on so late. What time is it over there? 

Mary Sparrow: It’s about quarter past seven in the evening. 

Brian Searl: Okay. Not too late, but still appreciate you sharing the evening dust.

Mary Sparrow: Yeah, not too bad. The sun’s still out there. It’s beginning to set slowly behind me, so that’s nice. 

Brian Searl: That’s the one thing that like I miss up here in Calgary is the sun doesn’t set in the summer till 11 o’clock at night here. And then you get up and it’s six o’clock in the morning again, during the summer.

Mary Sparrow: The latest it sets here is gonna be 9:30 in the summer. That’s the very latest sunset for us. But yeah. 

Brian Searl: Tell us about what you have over there with your so start with your background.

Which is interesting to me. You mentioned it was either before the show or in the beginning. I think you talked about the houseboats that you started with.

Mary Sparrow: We started, we bought the boatyard about 11 years ago and we live on a barge, so we needed somewhere to keep our barge and we’d been looking for several years for somewhere to keep our barge and this boatyard came up the sale.

So we bought it ’cause we liked it and we thought we can probably make it work. We had no experience of tourism at all at the time. And, we thought we’ll give it a go. The worst thing that’s gonna happen is it’s not gonna work out and we are gonna have to rethink it. And they had six, five houseboats floating when we bought the business.

And they hadn’t really been touched probably since the 1970s very much. They were very antiquated. And so we set about slowly improved in the houseboats and make better offer and a stronger offer. And then as we did that one day, one of the higher boats around the area drove into the side of one of the houseboats and put a big hole in it.

And we just thought, no, this houseboats seem better days, this isn’t gonna work. And my husband came up with the idea of floating a glamping pod. And just because glamping was, is, was beginning to be a really big thing. So we thought let’s put a floating glamping pod and see how that works out. And we had a look around on the internet, we couldn’t find anyone else who’d actually done it at that point.

So we thought, we’ll give it a whirl and then see what happens. So we did, and it worked. So then we floated a second glamping pod. And then we’ve got a third glamping pod, and that one’s our land-based pod, which always makes people laugh that we say it’s land-based, but it’s got a hot tub and a fire pit.

Because you can’t have a fire pit on a floating glamping pod. You’re not allowed to have fires on the riverbanks of the broad nation. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. I mean you could logistically, but you’re probably shouldn’t is what you mean. And you’re not allowed. 

Mary Sparrow: Yeah. And you’re not allowed to. We get into a lot of trouble, so we’re like, okay, it has to be six meters away from the edge of the riverbank and the broads.

’cause the Broads National Park is a protected area and it’s a beautiful area. So although we own the park that we have, we still have to be custodians of the national park and look after it. 

Brian Searl: Absolutely. 

Mary Sparrow: But it is, it’s lovely. 

Brian Searl: I think I know I think you’ve told us how you’ve come to this idea that you started glamping on boats.

But was it difficult to get where you are now? Did you have to be like how do you turn something like that into a glamping unit, I guess is where I’m going with it?

Sorry, I don’t know if you.

Mary Sparrow: How do you make the glamping pod become a floating glamping pod? 

Brian Searl: How do you make the boat become a glamping unit? I dunno if she can hear me.

Mary Sparrow: I’m reconnecting. 

Brian Searl: Okay. Yeah, we’ll come back to her in a second. But that’s, that was a hopefully, that’s an interesting question. If you can hear us and reconnect, we’ll get back to you, I promise. Mychele, Bison Peak Ventures you got a lot to talk about over there. Are you busy? I see you everywhere. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. It’s been a kind of a crazy busy year, but.

Brian Searl: That’s a good problem to have though, right? 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah, no, it’s been a great problem to have. And so we’ve been very blessed and it’s been a fun activity to do. We actually had started investing in single family homes and then moved over into building like a stick and mortar luxury resort in Scottsdale.

And so that’s how we started and fell into our first RV park. Almost literally. Weren’t looking at RV parks, really didn’t understand them, didn’t know them. And then happened to see an offering for one at the bottom of an email and started underwriting it. And we were like, why have we never looked at these before?

And so that kind of took us to, okay, let’s go visit it. And then we purchased our first park, which was pretty much a scrap yard at the time that we bought it.

Brian Searl: Which one was the first one? 

Mychele Bisson: It was Hideaway actually. You helped us with that one, I think.

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s what I was asking. I was wondering if how Yeah.

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. Yeah, we bought that one. Had to completely clear it out and start over. Had to creatively figure out how to, get a drug dealer out of it. That was fun. Actually really had this idea to go in and told him that we had made a relationship with the local police department and that we allowed them to train the dog unit, the canine unit on the park, and that they were gonna come in later that week. And he literally took everything and took off in the middle of the night. So.

Brian Searl: That’s a good idea. We’re gonna have to steal that. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. It worked really well. So he left, he took all of his little friends with him and all of his stuff never came back. And and that kind of kicked that off. And so we bought that first one.

Didn’t really know the potential of what we could do with it, and then just fell in love with the space. It was one of those things where we just. Started to see these families come in and started to see these kids like acting like children. They were out riding bikes and meeting new friends and hanging out, and there was these family connections that didn’t involve cell phones and iPads, and it was just this magical kind of thing where I was like, I don’t see this everywhere else.

Like I own this luxury resort in Scottsdale and I could not tell you who stays in it, but I am on this campground and I know all of these people by name. So that kind of actually sparked my first love for these parks. And then we turned around and purchased our second one because we really wanted to grow in the space and went through the same experience, met a lot of retirees.

It’s on Route 66. Brought my dad in to run it for a little bit so that he could see the magic of what was going on. And the whole family got involved and it just became this thing where once we started really understanding what we had we started moving into more family focused park.

So like our Lake Ridge Park is completely family focused, where it’s all about families coming together and we’ve got water slides on it and hiking trails and it’s 94 acres in Virginia and it’s just this great place where I see all these families coming together and I just love to see all of that.

And so from there it just was one of those things where. We decided to build something bigger on just what we were doing. And instead of it being about making money, we really wanted to actually put something back in for all the experiences that we were getting. And so that’s when we decided that we were actually going to build out a bigger plan with it.

And as we’re acquiring the parks, we want to build out heart camps. And my son was born with a heart condition and had a heart transplant when he was 11 weeks old. And so from there he had a very healthy life and we lost him when he was six to rejection. And so family time is very important to me.

Very, Very close to my daughters. But it was one of those things where I was like, it would be really cool if we could take all of our campgrounds and get it so that they were so profitable that we could basically have people with children with heart conditions come onto the park one time a year free of charge and just actually let them be kids and just have a good time and let them have a connection with other families and have that real genuine connection that I see everywhere else with all the other families that come onto the park where they can meet families who just understand completely what they’re going through and like they can just be kids and families having a good time on a campground. And so that’s where we’re going with this vision. 

Brian Searl: And that’s where I like I was gonna, first, I’m sorry for your loss.

Mychele Bisson: Thank you. 

Brian Searl: I, that’s where I was gonna go with it. I like, and then you told your story of how you got to the, I wanna focus on families and maybe that ties in, I’m sure it does in some way to keeping, like you were talking about before the show to keeping the campground like the original owner’s vision.

But yeah there’s so many different ways. There’s so many things I could say here. I’ll say this first. I don’t know if you know this, and maybe this states me, but I used to work for Lakeridge too, way back when Bruce Bryant owned it as part of Legacy RV Resort.

Mychele Bisson: Did you really? Was that when it was the original R and J Ranch?

Brian Searl: Right after that. It was called Lake, it was called Lakeridge RV Resort already when we were so.

Mychele Bisson: Oh, okay.

Brian Searl: Yeah, it was right after. I think he rebranded it, but they still had those really cool cement slides that killed people, like

Mychele Bisson: Yes. And we have pictures of them all over the camp store. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, there’s still probably photos around of my stepdaughter was there. We have pictures of her in the pool.

Mychele Bisson: Oh gosh.

Brian Searl: On the lily pads and in the game room. And I don’t know what you’ve changed.

Mychele Bisson: You’re gonna have to send me pictures of that ’cause I wanna see them. But it’s funny ’cause I have people who still come in and they’re like, let me show you my battle scars. From this concrete slide. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. I miss it. I never went down one of the slides, but I would’ve gone down one of them. This is totally off topic, but if you’re ever on Netflix, you should go watch, all of you, should go watch a documentary called Action Park. It’s in New Jersey.

Mychele Bisson: Yes, I’ve seen that.

Brian Searl: You’ve seen the documentary? 

Mychele Bisson: Isn’t that the one where it was like, it, was outlawed because it was so crazy? 

Brian Searl: Yes. Yeah. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: Like people were getting injured and dying and oh, I can’t remember the different pieces of the show, but not that Lakeridge was that crazy, but something like similar to that Lakeridge is probably like 20% towards that maybe.

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: But that’s what I always think about when people ring up the Lakeridge slides. But back to your, so that the family thing, right? Yeah. That I wanna dive in to unpack that. I think we’ll start, let’s start with the inspiration for the kids to come there, who have the heart conditions.

Because that’s one of the big reasons and I’m sure you’re familiar with Care Camps. 

Mary Sparrow: Yes. 

Brian Searl: We I remember like we, we started working or we not started ’cause we still don’t continually but we’d started doing some things for Care Camps back in 2011, maybe 2012 when it was still KOA Care Camps.

And we went to some of the camps and we did videos for them and they showed it at KOA convention for a couple times. And, but that’s the same, like obviously Heart Condition versus Cancer, but same type of and then I guess the other thing is that Care Camps, which I didn’t understand at the beginning, doesn’t actually do it at KOA campgrounds. So that’s a little bit of a difference that you’re, that you sound.

Mychele Bisson: Oh really? I didn’t know that either. 

Brian Searl: I didn’t know that in the beginning either. But no they fund like they do it at like state parks, rec area, stuff like that. It’s different, but they don’t actually do it at private campgrounds to the best of my knowledge. I think it might be an insurance thing or a, anyway. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. Actually, and that’s where I got the idea. So originally the ultimate goal with our entire portfolio across the board was to be able to start building grants to help families pay for medical bills that go with heart transplant with their children.

Because families, they have this brand new baby, they come home and they’re like faced with these huge medical issues and the baby’s got these medical conditions that they now have to deal with. And usually one of the family members has to stop working to be home with the child. ’cause the child can’t usually go into daycare or anything that would promote germs or things like that.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Mychele Bisson: Because they’ve gotta stabilize them. And so originally what we wanted to do was we wanted to build these grants to help and medical costs for a transplant with like after insurance is about $250,000. And so that cripples the family. Like it devastates them and you’ve got this young family with a child with a condition and now you bring ’em into an unstable home.

And it just seemed like this, situation that if we could help somebody avoid that, we would really like to do that. And so that actually was, is the ultimate goal with everything that we’re doing across all our entire portfolio. But then I was talking to somebody at OHI and they had mentioned that there were Care Camps and so they were explaining that vision to me.

And I was like, I would love to do that on my campgrounds. For people with children with heart conditions, because that’s one of the biggest things is we’re so stuck in the day to day and trying to make sure they get to their doctor’s appointment and their medication and their immune suppressants and, all these things that are going on that it’s really hard to just be a family and let the kid be a kid.

Brian Searl: Yeah. I don’t put down, sorry, go ahead. Please. 

Mychele Bisson: Oh no, and I, and and to have people who understand that on the other side of that, to have your neighbor understand how protective you are of your child and know that, you can be protective of their child too, because you guys are all going through the same battles, I think is one of those communities that in the heart community is so hard to come by because there’s not that many of us together in areas like we’re all spread apart. And so it was definitely one of the hardest things was finding a community that understood. 

Brian Searl: Do you have a sense of, because I feel and it’s definitely not the case, factually, but I feel like whenever we hear about large organizations trying to help people, it’s typically Cancer. Do you, but there’s obviously lots of other people with heart conditions and hundreds of other things that could benefit from a program like this.

Do you have a sense of how many kids are out there with heart conditions that would benefit from something like this? 

Mychele Bisson: I remember not too long ago there was a study, but it actually is more children die from heart conditions than from cancer. 

Brian Searl: Wow. I would never guess that.

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. And but there’s so many different types of heart conditions.

They’re not all the same. Like there’s not all the same cancers, there’s not all the same heart conditions. And so it could be something like a minor heart condition or it could be a deadly heart condition like my son was born with. 

Brian Searl: Okay. Yeah, I’m, I like I would love to see obviously I wanna see your program succeed.

I wanna see Care Camps continue to succeed. It would be interesting if there was, maybe we’ll do that with Scott Bahr or something sometime, if he wants to dive into that with me and some of our data just to look at what those numbers are and how many of those kids typically would enjoy the outdoors or could be introduced to it and, ’cause that’s a big thing.

Mychele Bisson: I know my son loved the outdoors. Like he was able to join Cub Scouts for the small period of time that he was actually here, and he loved the camping aspect of it. And so he would come in with all these big handfuls of worms and he would just be so thrilled that he caught all these worms and he could scare his sisters with them. But those are the memories that I remember.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Mychele Bisson: And those are memories that I would like other people to have.

Brian Searl: Yeah. That’s the thing, like I think it’s just an introduction to that experience, right? We talk about it not obviously children are very important what we’re talking about right now, but it’s all at all facets.

Like it’s Earl with Black Folk Camp Too, who’s trying to introduce black people to the outdoors. It’s the people who live in urban areas. Like we were talking about flying cars for a little bit on one of our Outwired shows, 54% of people in New York City don’t have a car. And they don’t, aren’t, how are they gonna get to your campground if they want to go?

Like they might wanna go. So it’s just interesting the amount of people that like we think outdoors is wonderful and it is, but the amount of people who would enjoy it if they were exposed to it, could get there. Didn’t have to fight through three hours of traffic. Like the market is crazy. Which is, and I don’t want to talk about this today, but which is why those flying cars were so interesting to me.

’cause it can just get you outta the city to a campground in 20 minutes. Those are gonna be.

Mychele Bisson: That’s kinda actually awesome.

Brian Searl: But anyway, back to the more important stuff. So, what’s your plans here to put this program together? 

Mychele Bisson: So actually I have to reach out to Care Camps ’cause I was gonna chat with them and talk about their model and plan all that out. But I wanna probably launch it probably in the next two years. 

Brian Searl: Okay. 

Mychele Bisson: And do our first one, we’ll probably do the first one on Lake Ridge because it is so family focused. And the park manager at that park actually is my best friend, who is the mother of my son’s best friend. So she’s like really on board and really wants to be a part of the launch of that.

Brian Searl: Lisa, can we see some pictures of Lakeridge? I just wanna see if I don’t know who does your website now, but I just wanna see like some of the pictures so they can get a grasp of where this is gonna go. But also my daughter’s picture used to be up there still for a long time after we didn’t do the website anymore.

So I was just curious.

Mychele Bisson: I didn’t realize you guys did the website, but it’s so cool that you guys were like, went down there. 

Brian Searl: It was a long time ago. Do you have a photo gallery on here or something, or no? 

Mychele Bisson: I think if you scroll down a little bit.

Brian Searl: Yeah. I think we designed that logo, but when we designed it, there was a water slide in it at the top. 

Mychele Bisson: Yes. That was the logo that was done before the last owners. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. I’m not a big fan of it. Like it was not my, I mean I didn’t design it, but 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah, we weren’t too big of a fan of it either.

Brian Searl: Scroll down. Yeah. But go. Yeah, there, right there. So click the one where the rope swing is there. That’s my daughter or stepdaughter. 

Mychele Bisson: Is it really? 

Brian Searl: Yeah. In the purple, like hanging on in the purple.

Mychele Bisson: Oh, that’s so cool. look at that.

Brian Searl: That’s Sarah. 

Mychele Bisson: Very cool.

Brian Searl: So we came here and we took pictures of it and everything else. So there was a whole suite of pictures. Anyway. 

Mychele Bisson: Wow. See you’re already a part of my campground. 

Brian Searl: It’s memories like you said. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah, and that’s the thing is it’s just, it’s so fun to watch everybody just run around and have a good time. 

Brian Searl: And that’s the secondary piece of it, right? Is the, like everybody, it’s easy for you to say, not you, but people to say that, memories is my most important thing. Families are here, this is what’s critical to me. But you can come into this industry and you can do so many different things. You can take the path that you’ve chosen to take with the heart conditions, but also with families and honoring the legacy of the owners and things like that.

That’s the harder path, right? We talked about entrepreneurship versus business ownership and all that stuff versus investment even, right? I think there’s probably a third category in there. And so there are easier paths to making a lot of money with RV parks and campgrounds. Not that’s a wrong path, but it’s a different path.

So. You’re laughing. Like maybe is it you’re, you can say it’s the wrong path if you wanna say it. I’m being diplomatic. This is not my controversial that’s coming up in two hours. 

Mary Sparrow: No. 

Brian Searl: Go ahead. Pick your mind. 

Mary Sparrow: I, no, I agree. My husband and I, we had careers before we ran a glamping site, and we always say, if you wanted to make money, you wouldn’t go into running a glamping site because it’s a lot of work.

And the profit on them isn’t necessarily great unless you can scale up like you are doing Mychele, like scaling up is what’s gonna do it. But unless you can scale up and make lots more of it, it’s not profitable, but the lifestyle that you get from it is second to none. So for us, it was a massive lifestyle choice to do what we are doing so we could spend time with our son growing up and enjoy being with him rather than being on the grind and working and coming home for maybe three hours and maybe seeing him two hours a week and possibly at the weekend if we weren’t too busy.

So it’s glamping is about making memories for everyone, and it’s when you run a glamping business and a small glamping business, you’re also making a life and memories for yourself. And I don’t, I’ve never earned as little money in my life as I did since we’ve run a glamping park. I’ve never enjoyed my life so much either, so I agree with you.

Brian Searl: And that’s the interesting part, right? Like we talk about these I talk about these three different verticals, right? The business owner, the investor, and the entrepreneur. Like the people who are probably really successful are the ones who are blending all three together in some way form or fashion.

But, and neither one of ’em is better or worse than the other. But the investor comes in and typically has other investors or co-investors or goals to take that investment and make x amount of profit from it, right? And there’s nothing wrong with that. You can do that and you can also do that really well while prioritizing families and prioritizing an experience and picking one of the parks to live at, or something like that, right?

And then there’s the business owner who I think you also are Mary, right? Like you’re clearly an entrepreneur because you built something unique in my mind. But like you’re also a business owner because like you’ve created this unique business and you’re not really looking to scale it like somebody isn’t. I don’t know. Anyway, like we get into definitions, but I think that’s I think that’s really interesting, like to talk about that blend and how you don’t have to pick one. You can accomplish at least two outta three, right? But maybe three outta three and really have the best of both worlds.

It just depends on what your ultimate goals are and who the people are who are behind you, pushing you in certain directions, right? 

Mary Sparrow: Yeah. And life has a way of throwing you curve balls. I’ve had cancer, but I’ve had it twice. And the second time I had, it really made me reconsider what was I here for?

Was I here to work and not spend time with people? Or was I here and wanting to spend time with my husband and son and enjoy life and have a great time while I was here. And spending time with family took massive priority and it was a bit of a kick up the backside, but it was a good kick up the backside. So it made me rethink what’s important to me, really. 

Brian Searl: And it’s what’s important to you that ultimately matters, right? Like obviously the people around you. But what’s important to you is typically, like in your case, is your family and your husband and your lifestyle and all those kinds of things, right?

And those impact so many other people through the people who stay at your glamping resort. It’s interesting how that crossover is. 

Mary Sparrow: Yeah. And it was interesting listening to Mychele talking and Heidi talking about watching young people having fun and getting back, because everyone who stays here gets use of a rowboat.

They get us, they can try sail pack and try sailing and because it’s safe in our river base, and parents can sit in the evening, they can have a cup of coffee or a glass of wine and watch their children playing on the water. And it’s really wonderful listening to children laughing and having fun and splashing each other and swimming and trying rowing and sailing and it going wrong.

And you can see them, they’re making experiences and they’ll come back time and time again because they really enjoy old fashioned fun. Premo fun. 

Brian Searl: I really think that’s the diff, and this is gonna be controversial maybe a little bit, but I like for me, but I really think that is the difference between a successful glamping camping experience that’s long is somebody comes into it with a purpose other than to just make money.

Now you can make money and, but if it’s just make money, I think that’s the problem, right? But if you come into it with a purpose whether it’s to spend more time with your family or to get better experiences for kids with heart conditions or to what to invest and then I think like those experiences for people, whether it’s a boat or family time or cool water slides or, yurts outside of a state park or whatever it may be, I think those are the long the businesses that are gonna have longevity. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. I think that it’s a special thing that we are in a space where we can actually. Do that. And we can create experiences for other people and we can create all kinds of different, ’cause all three of us have different, completely different models of a business.

And we get to create these experiences for all these different people and all these different kids. And I think we all said the same thing, is just being able to see families connecting and actually hanging out and not watching a TV, which is what they do when they’re at the hotel. I’ve been at a hotel with my kids.

We’ve gone to Disney and we sit in the hotel at the end of the night and they’re in their room and we’re in ours and we’re connected, but they’re like watching TV or their iPad or whatever they’re doing on their phone. And we’re just exhausted. So we’re just watching TV in our room, but we’re not really connecting.

We’re at a Campground. I see them at the end of the day sitting around a campfire roasting marshmallows and giggling and telling ghost stories. And so it’s just a whole different part of an experience that you get to. And it takes me back to when I was a kid and we used to play outside all day.

And hang out with my cousins around the bonfire at my grandparents’ ranch and like those are the experiences that I remember growing up and that I value. And that’s where I learned all my lessons from my family and got to hear all their stories. And so being able to pass that on to a new generation is magical, I think.

Brian Searl: It’s interesting how you grow up shapes how you perceive the world, right? Because I’m in your camp. I grew up, mom I need something to do, go out in the backyard and play with sticks. We used to go to the mall to meet our friends and we had no idea meet me by the water fountain over here.

And then like, where were you? You never showed up. I was at the water fountain at the other end of the mall. We can’t text each other and everything else. And like all the parents complain about social media today and say my kid’s on social media and I don’t know what he is doing.

What do you think he was doing when he couldn’t share it on TikTok, you think like at least he’s sharing it there now you can try to follow him and see what’s happening. But it’s interesting how those perceptions shave our lives. ’cause I like the outdoors. I like nature, I like doing all those things.

We went camping a little bit when I was a kid, mostly in a trailer. But I think there’s value in all those experiences. Like as much as I love the outdoors, and it almost pains me to say this I think there’s value in the digital experiences too, but you have to have that balance.

Mychele Bisson: Yeah.

Brian Searl: And that’s different for every person. There’s no wrong way to do it, I don’t think, except maybe to be glued to a tablet 24/7, but that’s just opinionated, that can’t really say that’s fact either. But it’s, yeah. All that stuff fascinates me how people get to where they are and because you see it’s even as simple as you hear the campground owners say why would people ever go to a hotel when they can be outside and talk to people?

Maybe they’re grumpy. Maybe they don’t wanna talk to people. So anyway. 

Heidi Royle: Yeah. I think there’s something just unique about nature is such a healing place. And so I think it’s even all three of these sites that we’re talking about is when people do want to get disconnected. Like that’s one of my favorite things of like disconnect from the world, reconnect with nature.

Like when they’re at my site like that, people would just really wake up to the bird singing. Like I just, I feel like there’s a refreshment that happens for people like in their soul and in their body when they’re outside and they’re playing and they’re, and these experiences because of technology are getting farther and farther in between.

And so I just love all the sites and all the different locations that are offering these experiences for kids and families and couples, because I also think it’s this place where people connect and they have the conversations that they haven’t been having, or they ask the questions like when all those distractions are gone.

That is, like my favorite thing to hear from guests at the end. I love hearing reviews and hearing what they saw and what they experienced and just how they feel leaving and if they feel cared for and they feel refreshed. It just feels like such a win. 

Brian Searl: The technology piece is interesting to me because I agree with you that like the more kids play or people play on technology or use technology, the less outdoor experiences they tend to have.

But there’s also a flip side of that argument because I don’t think technology is necessarily the problem. I think it’s the way we use or take advantage of the technology. And I think there’s a lot of people like in, for adults and kids and teenagers and everybody in between who just doesn’t perhaps market to the right audience through their website or through imagery or through online directories or, we were talking the other day about, I was talking to a client about this.

And like these are some of the crazy things we have on client calls. We were talking about how like Meta’s VR worlds and things like that are gonna be a thing in the very near future with AI. And I dunno if any of you guys saw Ready Player One or whatever, where they’re strapped in the chair and that’s how they lived or whatever, like that’s gonna be a thing and people are gonna be able to literally do anything they want and feel like they’ve been there and remember like they’re gonna be able to go to the Grand Canyon and feel like they have been there. But what if you could introduce them to the outdoors through your campground there and I don’t know, charge a dollar a night to a hundred million people. That’s some good money. 

And then you could introduce them to say okay, now you wanna come experience the real thing. Look where I’m at now, that you’ve had a taste of nature for all the people who don’t have cars or for the kids who’ve never seen this. Or for the black people who’ve never been experienced it for Earl’s organization.

So I think there’s ways that we can use technology to further our goals, is what I’m trying to say. 

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. I think that’s a big thing is like learning how to work with the technology that’s coming about and be able to push things forward. It’s like with AI, everybody’s not everybody, but a lot of people are all up in arms about the whole idea of integrating AI.

I think we were on a post together about it where somebody was like, I would never do that. And then I was like no, there’s like systems out there that will call and they will book everything for you. And I’m on one right now that we’ve been testing out personally not on our campgrounds yet, but and, but people are like, I would never take a reservation from that.

And I’m like, but you’re gonna get to a point where you don’t realize it and you just, you have to learn to embrace it because, and younger generations come up and they learn certain things and those are the things that they need. And if you don’t roll with the times, you’re gonna die.

Brian Searl: Yeah. You’re already there. And I’m rarely if ever self-promotional, but that’s like kind of what we do is the AI Chats and AI phone calls. And we’ve integrated with like systems that like spot and we’re gonna move to New Book. And so you can do the full reservation, right?

But that’s the argument that I made in the beginning is people were like I don’t ever want to chat with somebody. Like, why would you wanna introduce more tech? The answer is because that tech can get them to the outdoors faster. And then why would you ever wanna talk to an AI on the phone?

Because the first time you talk to the AI on the phone, let’s use a cable company for an example, the first time that AI can solve your problem in five minutes without transferring you to nine different people. And then saying, it’s done, but it really isn’t done. Then you’ll never wanna talk to a human again.

Mychele Bisson: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: But yeah, those creative ways to use technology I think are very important because not only do they introduce new people, but they just, yeah. Anyway, that’s my main point. Mary.

Mychele Bisson: Yeah, I just think that you have to embrace it, so. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, for sure you do. Absolutely. Mary, we, you got cut off earlier.

I was gonna, I was asking you a question about how hard it was to turn and whether it’s permitting or the legalities of what you have to do, but like, how do you turn a, I guess a regular boat into a glamping pod? 

Mary Sparrow: Okay, so it’s, when we bought the boat yard, there’re already houseboats here and they were things.

Brian Searl: You can play that video, Lisa.

Mary Sparrow: Back in the forties and fifties.

Brian Searl: Sorry, keep going. 

Mary Sparrow: Yeah, it’s a nice one. And it was back in the forties, fifties. So our planning permission for having floating pods predates ever needing, planning permission so we can keep the same amount of floating pods as long as we stay within the same amount because it’s predates planning permission.

If we try to put extra in now, that would be a challenge. So they don’t, the floating ones don’t have engines in them, so they can’t go anywhere. They’re not boats that go off, but they do have, everything else in them. And often people use it as a kind of step towards a boat.

And the challenge of making it floating is the one that you’ve got the video on there, the pontoon that it’s on, is a pontoon that can take boat that weighs up to 60 tons. But the pod only weighs one and a bit tons. But if we had a pontoon for a one ton boat, every time you stood on it, it would be doing this tippy.

So you have to think about the people want to float, but they don’t want to be falling all over the place. 

Brian Searl: They want the nature experience without the bugs. It’s similar.

Mary Sparrow: Exactly.

Brian Searl: Or you balance on the dock. That’s scary, but I wanna be outside by the water. 

Mary Sparrow: Yeah. So it’s all, it’s all very different and the pods are all absolutely beautiful and they’re small and this one’s small and compact.

Some of them are a little bit bigger, but they’ve all got a great big deck outside that people can sit on and they know they’re sitting on the river and the swans are coming up and they’re feeding the swans and the kingfishes are flying past and all the different wildlife is happening. And you can watch people, you can go out and your paddleboard from your front door.

It’s quite nice. So it’s a challenge and I think people wanting to do it elsewhere in the UK it’s getting harder and harder to get more in spaces that you can use and get planning permission for it. So it’s a tougher thing to do than it was when we first we were lucky we owned the boatyard, we owned the river and we predate planning permission, but I’ve tried to support other people to get things floated in the local area and it’s harder starting out from nothing.

So it’s easier if you bought something that’s already there and you convert it. If you try to put something in when there was nothing there. That’s a bit of a struggle in the UK at the moment. I think sometimes people are frightened of new things and people are worried it’s gonna ruin. And it’s funny, with technology we’ve created a lot of apps around the broads.

We’ve got a visit the Broads app, we’ve got a HIPS app. Which just puts everyone’s information into the customer’s hand. When they’re on a mobile, wherever they are, around the broad, they can find something to do and it promotes business and it’s an easy way. And when we first started doing it, some of the people who run the park were like, oh, that’s a bad thing, an app. We don’t want an app. Or it’s, it’s, no one’s ever done that. That’s ridiculous. Now they love it. Now put behind that app from the outgoing, and I think that is one of the problems, is people are scared of change. They’re resistant to it, but when they see it working, it’s suddenly their idea.

Brian Searl: Yes. Oh, absolutely. People are terrified of change. We do a whole episode on that, just like we could probably do a whole episode on like, why do the government people always ruin all the fun? 

Heidi Royle: Yeah.

Brian Searl: Like we used to be able to build fires wherever we wanted them. Give us fun. I didn’t burn anything down, so I don’t know. I’m sure there was some kids somewhere. It did. But yeah they take away all the fun. I remember like my girlfriend’s parents own a cabin in BC on Lake Shuswap. Beautiful. Like it’s in a small little community, but they’ve their cabins were built so long ago that they’re like literally this far from the water, there’s a little slope that goes down. But if they had anyone that ever got on fire got damaged or think like they could never build on the same piece of land again, even though they own it because the regulations have changed and they won’t, they have to be set back from all those kinds of things.

I don’t know. I think there’s gotta be a balance there. But that’s a whole, like I said, that’s a whole nother show that’s super controversial on do we like government or not like government, but we’ll save that for another conversation. 

Mychele Bisson: And it’s always dependent on what’s going on at the moment too.

Brian Searl: Yeah, exactly. Like we like ’em when we need ’em and we don’t like ’em at every other time. All right. Do we have any final thoughts? Let’s go with Mychele first. 

Mychele Bisson: Honestly, I think my final thought is that I just hope more people will like, listen and wanna come out to the great outdoors and experience all these different kinds of experiences.

Because between the three of us, we have different, they’re all different. I know if I’m going to the UK I’m definitely gonna hit Mary up to come and stay in her house. And I’m gonna come and try to see if I can hang out in your little glamping ground too, because I think that would be amazing.

Like, I’ve always loved glamping grounds and like taking my husband and going and having those cute romantic weekends. ’cause they’re just fun experiences. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the experience is what makes it, and I look, we’ll have to have you back on the show, Mychele, ’cause I wanna talk, I wanted to talk more about Bison Peak. We just never quite got there. We got to some of your properties. But not as much of a discussion as I would’ve liked to have. But yeah, it’s always interesting those I look for those unique experiences everywhere. When I went to Iceland, I was looking for glamping. And I ended up staying in hotels ’cause Iceland’s really expensive without glamping.

And it was like $900, $1,200 a night or something for like in the middle of nowhere with a field. And there’s no restaurants anywhere. Like this would be beautiful to wake up for, but I’m not quite that rich yet. Not even a sponsor for the show. But yeah, like I’m always looking for that. Like you brought up Holland.

I remember like there was is like a giant sheep or something in Holland you can stay in. Like I remember looking for it and coming across it like a couple years ago. Just really weird quirky stuff all over the place, interests me. Yeah. But Heidi, final thoughts? 

Heidi Royle: I think a final thought would just be that like, all of us and everyone who’s watching the show, that creates these experiences for people. It’s just the encouragement of it sparks something in people. It sparks connection, it sparks their own creativity. Like I think that there’s just something in being in like beautiful, thoughtful places that get our own minds going and get our own creativity going and our own excitement going.

And so I just love all the different varieties that we’ve talked about today and that are out there for people to go and to experience. Iceland’s one of my favorite places to go to, and they do

Brian Searl: Oh yeah.

Heidi Royle: Unique, unique spots. But I’ve never heard of a giant sheep to stay in. 

Brian Searl: Neither did I. Like I didn’t, to be clear, I didn’t stay in there. I think it was like 20 euros a night or something too.

Heidi Royle: Wow.

Brian Searl: It scared me that it was so cheap, I think. But anyway, we only had two days in Amsterdam but we’re gonna find out more about the Grove Glamping. 

Heidi Royle: What’s that?

Brian Searl: Where can they find out more about the Grove Glamping? 

Heidi Royle: thegroveglamping.com. Or you can find us on Instagram or on Facebook or TikTok. Just if you look at the Grove Glamping and just lots of fun experiences there that you get to see. You can book with us right there on our site, or you can book with us on Airbnb. 

Brian Searl: And Mychele, I forgot to ask you that question, but you can’t rattle off like all 26 of your sites. You gotta pick one or two. 

Mychele Bisson: Actually, if you just come out to my main branded site at mychelebisson.com or go out to my Instagram at Mychele Bisson, then I have links to all of ’em on there. 

Brian Searl: Perfect. That’s the way to do it. See, entrepreneur. Know exactly what you’re gonna say. And last but not least, Mary.

Mary Sparrow: I would say, anyone listening, watching, enjoying glamping, just keep trying things. Try different things. And if you’ve got an idea for something and someone tells you it’s ridiculous, then it’s probably brilliant and you should definitely do it. That’s what I think. ’cause people told us we shouldn’t buy a boatyard and we certainly shouldn’t float glamping pods.

And we said we’ll just do it and then see. ’cause the worst thing that’s gonna happen is it goes wrong and you’ll do something else with it and you’ll learn from it. So I think it’s always worth taking a risk. It’s always worth giving it a go and just put yourself at the center of your own life and enjoy it.

Brian Searl: Yeah. The people who tell you shouldn’t do something, unless it involves fire or weaponry, are typically wrong. Yeah. They just don’t have the imagination. You do. So I usually embrace those things. There’s probably a third one out there. Somebody’s gonna call me out on it and send me an email and be like, what about this?

Anyway, thank you guys for joining us. That was another good episode. I appreciate all three of you ladies being here and sharing your stories with us. Excited to see how you guys progress. We’ll be sure to check in with you guys and if any of you aren’t tired of hearing me talk yet we have another podcast coming up in about an hour now.

With Scott Bahr and Greg Emmert called Outwired, a little bit different format, uncensored. We’ll drink some whiskey and have some fun and talk some data and look at KOAs, North American Caming Report and all kinds of fun stuff. We’ll be there in about an hour. Otherwise, we’ll see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats.

Thank you guys, appreciate it. Take care. 

Mychele Bisson: Bye guys.