MC Fireside Chats – April 5, 2023

[00:00:00] 

Brian: Welcome to another episode of MC Fireside Chats, my name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks here as always, with Cara Csizmadia from the Canadian Camping & RV Council, who is a little bit under the weather, so we hope you feel better, Cara. Probably nobody would’ve noticed that, but I just felt, there should be a sympathy play on the show just in case you say something, later you regret or something.

Like you just blame it on the sickness, okay. Great. Super glad to be here for our recurring episode. First of the month we have our open discussion panel. We are missing a ton of people today. We’ve got Scott Foos is in an airplane somewhere. I think Mark Koep is coming back from the California show and said he was stuck in a blizzard somewhere.

Sandy’s traveling. I feel like somebody else is missing too, that I’m forgetting, but Mike and Christine are here, so I dunno what we’re gonna talk about today, but I have a filler topic in case you guys can’t think of anything. 

Mike: I think we just need to basically, let’s start the show.

Let’s, Cara, what do you think the over under is of how many times? Brian says the word ai I think we have to limit him to using it twice in an hour. 

Cara: Twice would be nice. 

Brian: And I can talk about it without saying it. 

Cara: So the thing that [00:01:00] shall not be named. 

Brian: Anyway what’s on your guys’ desk?

What’s come across in the last month that you guys are interested in talking about? That you’ve seen trends in the industry? 

Mike: What have we seen? CRR specifically, obviously as we talked last time, we launched our third party management service, so we’re pretty excited to offer that to the the industry.

So we’ve been going through a lot of inquiries and vetting properties and, seeing what we can do to help properties enhance their NOI. 

Brian: What do you and curious with that Mike and I don’t want you to divulge any secrets about CRR but there are so many of these management companies, and obviously we have a relationship with you, so we know more about what you do than a lot of the other management companies.

But what do you feel has to be a difference maker when somebody’s looking for management of a property? And obviously everybody’s different. Everybody’s looking for their own unique thing, but. There’s only so many ways to do accounting and financing and recommend construction of sites and so what really has to set you apart, do you think, to be a difference maker in this?

Mike: I think what you just said, there’s only so many ways to do it. I don’t know that’s true. I think there’s many ways to do it and how you approach it. Okay. And [00:02:00] your level of detail and competence and professionalism or analytics, those are all difference makers. So how do we approach things differently?

I think we definitely look at things as experiential hospitality, right? We don’t just look at it as a transactional property, what is unique to the area. And as we know, our primary goal is we focus on revenue enhancement. We think that is the key to driving, obviously, owner profit, NOI and asset value.

So we focus on that considerably, whether it’s through marketing or whether it’s through experience, or whether students activities, or whether it’s through ancillary as many ways as we can to drive revenue. And then to your point, how many ways, can you slice an egg?

I think I just made up a new analogy. I’ve never heard that, but how many ways can you slice an egg, Cara? 

Brian: You need to research this and tell us next month on the show.

Mike: But I think, our vision is evolving the industry for the modern world. What we’ve found is, a lot of the campgrounds and resorts are a little bit antiquated, both in their systems and their approach.

And, whether it’s operational efficiencies or labor management or energy analytics or, it doesn’t mean that people aren’t working hard and grinding. Absolutely. You [00:03:00] can see people are passionate about this business, but, applying principles of analytics and, data and efficiency that’s what we do.

We’re a bunch of nerds, maybe not as much as Brian, but for the most part we’re a bunch of nerds that that, are about process improvement and everything we do. So I think that’s how we look at it a little bit differently. 

Brian: But just to clarify, I’m a geek. 

Mike: My apologies.

Yeah. 

My apologies. 

Brian: I was a nerd when I was younger cuz I had glasses. That’s the difference. Between nerds and me. 

Mike: I’ve got glasses…

Brian: ….so has the pocket protector yet because I don’t wear a shirt, so I haven’t had the opportunity to test that, but… 

Mike: we’ll call ourselves nerds.

We’re proud nerds. We are, curiosity is one of our values. So we’re definitely nerds. 

Brian: It was actually really interesting, and I don’t wanna talk about this too long, but I was watching a video about the different types of personalities. Who will be best set up to win the future or whatever in all things technology.

And, I haven’t said the word yet by the way but it was all things technology and they were talking about generalists and poly mass and I’d never heard that word before. But it’s really interesting that I think it fits a lot of [00:04:00] my personality and how I know a little bit about everything, but I’m not a jack of all trades because I specialize in a couple things really well still.

So it’s interesting in how that kind of analogy when we were talking. 

Mike: There you go. That you’ll be successful in the future. Brian, we’re…

Brian: It was just one guy’s YouTube video opinion, right? I don’t really… 

Mike: if you use those things that won’t be named, that’ll probably help you as well take over. 

Brian: But it is an interesting point about being a generalist when, everybody has always told me, as long as I’ve grown up and what I’ve heard, from in schooling and things, right?

You have to pick one area to go into. You have to specialize in something specific and be the best you can at it. But maybe that doesn’t fit everybody and maybe that’s not really a good strategy for the future when certain tools will be able to do one thing very well and leave you with no alternatives.

Mike: I grew up in this world as a general manager and what I always told everybody is I generally manage I know a lot about, a little or a little about a lot, whichever way you wanna frame it. And I think, when you become a business leader, a business owner, an enterprise leader, how can you not?

The successful folks [00:05:00] absolutely know about insurance or law or business or finance or construction or guest service or operations. And if you can’t, it’s to your own detriment. Yeah, I think, certainly, we all start off with our area of focus, whatever it might be.

And then if you evolve you have to evolve, then you gotta pick up, some of those other skills along the way. So it’s my thought anyway. 

Brian: Yeah, it just, it stuck out in my mind because one of the quotes they were saying was like, you don’t wanna mess with a guy like that who was having fun while he works.

Which was really interesting to me. Cuz that’s what I, that’s what I posted on LinkedIn yesterday. I’m legit having fun doing all of this. 

So good. That’s 

good. But anyway geeks and nerds turned into that, but what else do we have? .

Christine, what’s going on in your world? 

Christine: Yeah, I guess I can tell you that the ever increasing type of employment lawsuits keeps coming in. So be very careful for how you’re managing your employees, how you’re hiring your employees, and how you’re firing your employees. Cause I woke up this morning to yet [00:06:00] another Campground being sued on unemployment matter.

So they’re quite prolific right now. 

Brian: Now here’s an interesting so you talked about, this is what we talked about last month, right? You went into depth about, we were talking about work campers and things like that. And you are a little bit quiet with your mic. But I can hear you, I can make it out, but you’re to be quiet.

And so what do you, just briefly recap this for us so we don’t need to deep dive into it like we did before, but briefly recap for those of us who, who weren’t watching last month or right. 

Christine: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I’ll speak a little louder. Instead of playing with technology, so generally employment law can be all sorts of things.

And what I’m talking about is there’s a couple realms. So part of that could be like we’re misclassifying the employee, we’re calling them one thing when they’re really another. So in some cases people have independent contractors that aren’t independent contractors. You shouldn’t have volunteers. You need to understand the difference regarding overtime, what an exempt and non-exempt [00:07:00] employee is and what that really means.

There’s frequency of pay, like how often you have to pay people, what tax holdings you have to do, and then what the other kind of side of the coin of that is that how you’re managing them. It seems weird, but as the employer, you’re responsible for how your employees treat each other. And if you don’t handle situations where someone’s treating somebody incorrectly, whether it’s a sexual harassment issue or a discrimination issue or something like that you’re looped in as the employer because you have a duty to your employees to provide a safe environment.

And if you’re not, you can be looped in that. So there’s a lot of places where you can get sued for employment issues and they just keep going up. I have never had so many employment law cases as I do right now. 

Brian: Now here’s interesting question and I wanna keep this serious, but also what it constitutes a safe environment.

If you run a glamping resort on the side of a volcano, can you be sued for that? 

Christine: It depends. So [00:08:00] there’s physical safety and then there’s kind of emotional safety, I guess is the other way to talk about. 

Brian: So emotional is the more important, is what you’re saying. 

Christine: It’s what more lawsuits are about, really physical safety.

You generally know what you’re getting into. They chose to be employed at a job on the side of a volcano. So if they tried to come back later and be like I applied to Volcano Resort and they, their attraction is that it goes off every five minutes, then, I.

Brian: It’s actually a really cool attraction.

I don’t very strategically positioned the tents, but… 

Christine: I’m not sure you’ll find anyone to ensure that. But so that’s like your physical safety, also in that realm is an unfortunately a discussion we’ve been having a lot. Unfortunately, hot button is active shooter because you have to provide some safety in that realm as well.

We could spend hours talking about active shooter policies, but that’s the physical safety piece. If I also get word that I have a particular guest that’s Super aggressive or violent. I can even remember when I was a kid, this camper got really mad [00:09:00] and we had glass doors to our store.

So his like last retort was to punch the glass door that I was standing on the other side of. Very aggressive. I worked for my family, it’s a little different, but if I was just a regular employee, that employer would have a duty to remove that guest cuz he threatened the physical safety of the individual.

But the other piece of that, when I like, it’s not called emotional safety, but it’s that piece as well. If someone approaches you that another employee is making them uncomfortable, either passing, bad comments or physically trying to grab them or treating them differently. Saying all sorts of things.

I’ve had things from people harassing their coworkers with certain songs to try to get a message across. That sounds crazy. But given the lyrics in some of these songs and what they were referring to and race of the individual or the religion of the individual, they knew what they were being harassed for.

If I as an employer get wind of that, I have to do something [00:10:00] immediately. I also can’t try to have blissful ignorance. I can’t be so hands off that I’m like, I had no idea this was going on. That’s not gonna fly either. You gotta check in with your business to make sure that your employees are treating each other correctly.

You know that’s a duty that you have, that I can’t just. Fan off on somebody else. So those are the realms and the laws have been shifting. Like for example, in New York, it used to be that the harassment or the discrimination had to be what we called pervasive and severe, but they actually changed it now that it has to be more than teddy and trivial.

So the standard has come down. So before I could, knock out some of these lawsuits being like, oh, them making one comment, one time, isn’t severe. But now if it’s petty and trivial, like that’s a pretty low bar. I have a duty, even me as a law firm have a duty to provide an environment.

So if I had a client who was super aggressive [00:11:00] to one of my fellow attorneys here, I would have a duty as their employer to, cease that relationship and protect them from that client. 

Brian: Is there a danger in overreacting if you’re an employee, because I’m listening to you think, I’m listening to you, describe some of these employees who would sing songs or do gross things, right?

Like my, like I would fire them in 10 seconds. Is there, and I know you’re shaking your head, Mike, but that would be my instinct. He’s right. No, he’s generally, I’m not saying I would actually do it, but that would be what I would want to do. So is there a danger. In overreacting? 

Christine: No, actually that’s a better response than doing nothing.

The alternative is some people have a demerit system in the complaint system, usually firings better. The only time termination can get you in trouble is if you had an employment contract. And that wasn’t one of the reasons you could terminate somebody for, and then they tried to sue you for the remaining term of the contract.

Brian: So why are you shaking your head, Mike? I’m talking, to be clear, I’m talking about firing the person who’s doing the harassing. 

Mike: I, first of all, I was chuckling cuz when you were just saying fire him [00:12:00] immediately I just I figured you’d have a specific tool, do it for you. Via text. But I just, and 30 years in the hospitality industry, I’ve seen my share of associate issues.

And, and Christine, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but the very last thing you do is you make an immediate. Decision without conducting an investigation. And cuz you never know, you know what comes of it. And you have to be careful of, retaliation, claims or, are they, that’s what, yeah, that’s what I was asking.

Are Are they high risk? What’s the risk category that everybody belongs to? And it’s a mess. 

Christine: It is. And you also have to treat everybody the same. So for example, if I got word that Brian was making mean comments to Mike, but I knew Cara was also doing it, I couldn’t fire Brian and not Cara because I wouldn’t be treating them the same.

So you have to treat everybody identically. You should investigate. I have had false complaints filed so you should do that. But if the result is that the complaint is valid, there should be some repercussion for doing that thing is [00:13:00] immediately termination. Maybe not, but is it like, here’s your final warning or, Here’s some kind of demerit system.

Whatever it is, there should be something because if the person who was the victim goes and reports you to, whether it’s the E O C or the state human rights board, you, your number one defense is gonna be, I followed our procedure. This is the procedure I follow all the time. I looked into it, and you know this, I did do something like I didn’t just ignore when Cara came and complained to me about Brian, like that kind of stuff.

Brian: It’s just a really interesting dynamic to me, right? Because obviously I would do an investigation because somebody could be retaliating or making up something that somebody’s saying, right? It’s different if it happened right in front of you. But it’s a really interesting dynamic on how you react to that, right?

Because let’s say you do an investigation and you come to the conclusion that it wasn’t that, but then the employee who feels like they were a victim, assuming they were being legit, is actually unhappy when they come to work now because they feel like you didn’t side with them. And maybe they’re still nervous around that employee.

It’s a man. It can be a minefield.[00:14:00] 

Christine: It can, and like I said, nothing stops anyone pursuing you. So as long as she, that person will say it’s Cara, it’s still within the timeframe, which is usually, depending on what it is and where you are, could be between a year and three years. They could still bring that complaint even if I had done everything correctly and came up with a conclusion that there was nothing actionable there.

So I would just wanna make sure that before any of these situations happen, I had some kind of internal policy and procedure that you. This manager is the one who does those investigations every time. So that way, if I had to defend myself, I could be like, look, Mike knows what he is doing. He’s done this every time.

This is the procedure report to Mike. He did this investigation. This is what we uncovered. Cause those people have heard me say forever. Nothing stops anyone from suing you. You just make it go way quicker. So that would be the thing. The other thing Mike touched on, which is also super important, is if they could tie it to something else that you did wrong.

Termination is a little scary. So if there were some, if Brian was [00:15:00] harassing Mike, and I’m like, cool, I’m going to remove that. But I knew also that Carol had been harassing Brian for something, and all the time it happens because of something, and he could maybe make a claim that I didn’t fire him because of him harassing Mike, but I really fired him because of these discriminatory things, that were happening on the other side.

So it’s always good to keep really good records about employee kind of behavior. And just even if it’s an email that you contemporaneously sent to yourself or someone else, there was this incident, got it here, so that way I could show that I fired them because of X and not what they’re alleging, which is Y.

So you know that is really important. We have what we’re call in the United States anyway, protected characteristics which can be race, religion gender identity. Sexual preference, all these sorts of things, national origin and you would never want them to be able to tie to that.

The other new one that keeps cropping up everywhere is as marijuana [00:16:00] is legalized, a lot of these laws say you can’t penalize people for recreational marijuana use. 

Brian: That’s interesting. 

Christine: Yeah. So when it first rolled, In New York. So a couple, what was it? Two summers ago there was a case where this employee got hurt on the job, and pursuant to this employer’s internal policy, when someone got hurt because of worker’s comp, they used to immediately send them for drug testing, and one of the drugs they tested for was marijuana.

And in New York for example, you can no longer te test for that because it stays in your system so long that the timeframe in which they would still pop a positive versus them working doesn’t line up anymore. So they blanket fired them because they tested positive for marijuana and they actually had to undo that whole termination, pay the person for the time period they were fired and rehire them because that was no longer something they could fire them for.

They tried to say afterwards that they fired them because he wasn’t a great employee and stuff like that, but that wasn’t the picture they painted. So you have to if you [00:17:00] were not in the thick of it, if someone was looking on the outside, which link would they draw to? Was it that you fired them for their marijuana usage or was it you fired them cuz they were a bad employee and.

So if it’s enough that you can establish a causal link between the bad thing you shouldn’t fire them for, you’re gonna have a bit of a battle. 

Brian: So a lot of this is really fascinating to me cuz I like, I’ve always been like on the, I don’t I don’t think I’ve ever drug tested an employee or alcohol tested employee.

Sure. Like my line. And it’s not, and I don’t know if you don’t know what’s really stated, the employee handbook, but my line is like, as long as it doesn’t impact your performance when you’re working for me, do whatever you want. I don’t want to know. I don’t care. Like I know Mike, I’m just telling you like I’m not saying I’m encouraging the activity or if I knew about it, I wouldn’t consider thoughtfully what would but I don’t like What would you do in your personal time if it is not impacting work or your performance or your relationship with your colleagues or anything that I would normally oversee, then I think you should have a little bit of flex. Not to do things that are illegal, but you should have flexibility.

Christine: Every, [00:18:00] employers can choose within certain realms what they wanna do, but again, whatever policy or procedure you put in, you better be enforcing that against everybody. I have some people who are like, man, I really like Mike though. So Mike gets a pass, but Cara, on the other hand…

Brian: I know it’s different, Mike I want you to explain please while you’re shaking your head but I know it’s different when you’re like guiding RVs into sites and then they can prove that, right?

So like, all my employees are remote and they work from home, so it’s definitely different for me. 

Cara: The operating heavy equipment, all those things are huge factors in. So… 

Brian: I’m only speaking from myself and my perspective. But please expand on it, Mike, if you have something to say.

I just, I’m an idiot. I’m happy to listen. 

Mike: It’s and, I fall in the Christine world where, we mitigate risk. And when I hear you say things like, you know what you do on your own, like we wouldn’t even say that, right? We have a handbook. 

Brian: No, I would never say that.

Mike: Christine’s gonna have to represent you…

Brian: I didn’t qualify and say that’s not in my employee handbook. And. It’s like telling people. 

Mike: That’s why I shook my head. Cuz you did [00:19:00] say it out loud. So you asked. But no, that’s why we have in the associate handbook we have very clear, guidelines about and I’ve, we’ve had both, I’ve worked for companies that require the drug testing after an incident like Christine.

And we had a lot of discussions about our own handbook about, do we wanna require drug testing? And so we currently don’t just anybody’s curious, but we do have, strict, alcohol and drug policy guidelines. And we’ve had, I used to work in Denver and, that was, I think the first city that passed, recreational drug use.

And our, we had multiple properties there and we had to look at revising our drug policy. And we’re going years ago, right? Maybe four or five years ago we removed it from. Our testing criteria. And that was a big discussion, right? And it’ll continue to be a big discussion you know about that.

And that’s, like you said, it’s a little bit of a nebulous, ambiguous, especially since it varies from state to state and, so well.. 

Cara: The problem can be magnified with operators whose staff often lives on site. If you have work campers living on site, now you have this kind of blurred [00:20:00] line around, what’s your time and what’s business time and when are you representing.. 

Brian: Boy, that’s a minefield.

Christine: Yeah, besides all of that if we’re gonna get into other piece of it, it’s, Not to flag if any work campers are listening now, but not to flag for a lot of people, a lot of people have the work campers as their easy security option, right? They pass them that phone call and are like, Hey, if anybody calls you’ll handle it.

And, technically then we put them on what we call on call hours. So if they’re not allowed to leave the property, cuz they’re the ones we technically should be paying them for every hour, they’re in possession of that security phone. Which would accrue some really fun overtime hours for most people, but they aren’t usually, they’re like, oh, no one ever calls that phone.

So I don’t pay them, but, they could, I was just at the New York Spring conference meetings last week and I had one woman apply reach out to me and said that she has no work campers anymore cuz she got turned into the Department of Labor five times. It, I.. 

Brian: You’re not wrong.

But you’re also, just to say it like, [00:21:00] cuz I used to work for a cable company and we used to be on call to do outages and things like that. And so we were on call during the Super Bowl and we couldn’t drink during the Super Bowl because you might get called out and you might have to go up a ladder and you might, so it’s the same thing with having that phone right.

Christine: If you, if it inhibits you such that you couldn’t do whatever you wanted with your life, then you’re still a working hour at that point and should be paid for it. It’s crazy and I’ll keep saying it because I think people need to know it. We I, when we all got locked in our homes in 2020, we all started looking at the internet a lot more and connecting on forums and things like that.

And it also caused people to share a lot of information. And disgruntled employees are sharing this information, they’ll be like, oh, my manager, Mike sent me this thing. And everyone will be like, oh yeah, you could totally sue them for this and this, and do they do this? Cause if not, you should file a complaint on them.

Brian: This is why we have Mike on the show, by the way. 

Christine: So I can beat ’em up. But they’re not wrong is the problem is that, even though they might be a little [00:22:00] bombastic in what they think they’ll recover from that, they’re not wrong in their claims. And I hate a pro say client because the judges, do deference to them, that they’re navigating it by themselves and stuff, and there’s no reasonable party to negotiate with.

But, it happens and they keep bringing these and they’re getting payouts and, some of that’s just the economy of doing business, but it’s not great. It’s not going away. So like we used to be able to do. Interesting operational practices, you 10, 20 years ago, but that’s not the environment we’re in anymore.

People are paying attention to Camping, which is great in a lot of aspects, but it also means that they’re paying attention to us, for these lawsuits too. 

Brian: Let’s flip this around, Mike. I know culture is a big thing at CRR, right? so what are some of the ways that you feel people can head some of these things off before they happen ..

Mike: Yeah. And it’s funny you say that. I was thinking about that as Christine’s talking about it. How do you mitigate, these opportunities and no one’s immune, right? It happens if [00:23:00] you’re, top workplace in the country, you’re still gonna have an incident or two.

But I think, we conduct an associate survey a couple times a year and we take those seriously and we create action plans and we, listen to their feedback and we, take actions on that. So I think, that’s part of it. A also, if you ever have to defend yourself to Christine’s point, if you can demonstrate, that we take feedback seriously.

Here are the things we’ve done. Here’s an example of our behaviors. It’s, in the mis risk world, it’s a defensible argument, but just in a general culture creating world, if your associates believe you, listen, in general, you’re going to lessen the feeling of bitterness or cynicism, towards your organization.

If you are consistent Christine mentioned this a couple time I think if you’re consistent in your, administration of policy, procedure, hiring, recruiting, promotion, coaching and counseling, performance management, et cetera that will go a long way too.

There’s nothing worse than when somebody can call out five times and they don’t get addressed and somebody calls out once and they get a writeup. People, the associates talk, right? Why’d they get a writeup or they didn’t and I did, et cetera. So you really gotta be consistent, in your [00:24:00] policy administration.

Brian: You’re right about the feedback though, and I don’t wanna interrupt you, I want you to continue, but you’re right about the feedback.

Like we use this in Slack, which automates all kinds of surveys on how you’re doing and what you’re feeling. And some of it’s anonymous and some of it’s public. you can set up all these custom templates to do agile surveys and daily syncs and team bonding and team wellbeing and how’s your mental health and all this stuff goes out all over our slack.

Almost notice in different ways. 

Mike: Notice the name. Notice the name in the top left.

Brian: Geekbot. I know, not Nerd Bot.

Mike: Not Nerd Bots ,but the Geekbot. And I think, and listen, we as a startup company, certainly we’ve had our own share of hiccups in how we’ve, we’ve had some turnover in certain areas at times as we’ve find our way.

What I think we try and land on always is higher for our values. So we don’t necessarily hire for technical experience, but we’re looking, positivity is one of our values, right? We want no negativity, gossip, soap opera stuff occurring and if you land on that, you’re going to reduce your, and you can never predict it perfectly, right?

You don’t know who somebody is..

Brian: 75% of it out before it even [00:25:00] begins. 

Mike: Sure. But if they’re, if they don’t resonate right with you in the beginning, you just probably got antenna up for a reason. If you’re hiring for your values that you know, you’re going to, to your point, filter out hopefully, less propensity to hire, a bad egg.

So it’s a two part relationship, right? You wanna hire the right associate cuz there’s nothing to do. You could never. A Celtics fan to be a Lakers fan. It’s impossible. And, so if you hire a bad associate, there’s nothing you can do sometimes if they think a particular way, but then the company also has the obligation to, administer, consistently as we’ve talked about.

So it’s, it is a two-part relationship, to get that success formula, to try and create that environment. We got, it’s interesting because, Chris or Cara had mentioned operations, we just our latest associate survey was above, was in the.

The mid nineties which is an excellent score. But we’ve, there’s not as many operations people in the census survey as there will be when we have the other three resorts open in the next couple months. And I fully expect that score will go down. Just because the nature of operations versus a, at-home per, there’s a lot more [00:26:00] dissatisfiers, right?

You can see your fellow associates not pulling their weight, being treated differently. I’m happy about this. I don’t have the right tools and supplies to do that. And we’ll, we should still have a good solid score, probably a mid-high eighties. But, based on, certainly our experience in the hotel hospitality industry, operations businesses are just they’re a grind.

And, it’s hard to be perfect. You can only hope to be excellent. Really in any circumstance. 

Brian: Yeah, I mean it’s, and I, Gary v originally said this, I think, but I’ve picked it up for several years that hiring is guessing and firing is knowing. But that part, like when you’re talking to those I irritate Kendra all the time.

Who does my hr? Cuz I’ll interview somebody. I’ll just hire ’em immediately cuz you can, cause I I’m, and to be clear, I’ve made mistakes like, but I’ve learned over the years and I’ve only think, I’ve only hired two people that I can’t even say I regret hiring them. But that didn’t turn out to be the same personality I thought they were or the same work ethic I thought they were.

But most people like, I don’t know. It’s interesting how you can refine it over the years, especially, I’m sure you understand this a little bit, Mike, being in this industry for so long, [00:27:00] you learn what to. 

Mike: Yeah, I think that the real challenge is, if you’re not always the hiring manager right?

And you’re in a larger company. Yeah. If you’re relying on other people and I’ve got very good intuition, my, my staff, I’ve got very good antenna, I can usually get a sense of a person, I talk to them, but, not everybody’s got that, antenna.

And so somebody else is interviewing and making a decision. You gotta trust that their antenna is good and they’ve got the particular interview criteria that they’re looking at. That, they’re gonna, yeah. 

Brian: I think you can dampen that, right? If you’re the person who hired that person and they turned out exactly how you thought, then those person, those people probably have some kind of emotional intelligence that would lend itself to not again. Yes. It’s more of a chance if it’s not you. 

Mike: Yeah, it’s just, it’s a different level, right? And yes. Maybe you’ve only had two, two regrets, but, again, larger company, you have, and it’s Cascades in a larger organization, right?

If you got a corporate, structure and then you got properties, and I don’t see every. Housekeeper that we hire, right? I never would. 

Brian: Yeah. And that’s different. That’s definitely difficult across multiple [00:28:00] locations and in person and all that stuff. 

Mike: And so you’re, you’re relying on that general -sorry Cara- you’re relying on that general manager to make that good hiring decision, and make those good, HR decision so that it doesn’t get to Christine.

And that’s the real trick. Go ahead Cara. I’m sorry.

Brian: I’m terrified of the, go ahead, Kara. And then I’ll talk. Go ahead. 

Cara: I was just gonna say, in my experience, I obviously had a much smaller team, but it often felt almost like a house of cards for me where if one thing anywhere in the piece, in the team piece came out, sometimes the whole thing would crumble down.

You really not only are trying to find individuals who have the values and things that you’re looking for, but then you also have to manage all these interconnected relationships and. Putting people in the right spot with the right colleagues. It’s, it is, it’s, for me, it was the biggest puzzle piece that I was constantly stressing about and shuffling in those days of my life.

Brian: I’m terrified of when I get big enough that I can’t [00:29:00] have those personal I can’t be the one to hire. I’m terrified. I’m at 19, 20 now, I think. Something like that. I just hired three more people last week, but I’m terrified of that. I still have one-on-ones with my team once a month. Every single person gets 15 minutes, once a month directly with me in my calendar, and I’m terrified of the day. I won’t be able to do that anymore.

Mike: It’s gonna happen. But, and hopefully you have, and I work with a previous company who I started with and they were smaller, and then they grew to, a billion dollar company. And, culture changes every time you add one person, right?

And as you grow things, happen in scale changes. And that’s things, I talk to my team, I said, the thing that I want to protect against is, how do we keep our, integrity to our values, right? Our culture is absolutely gonna change. You can’t help it when you add another person.

 It’s going to evolve, adapt, modify, however. But if whether you’re at 75 associates or 750 associates, can you still, because when you’re at the larger level, there’s, it’s impossible to touch every associate, right?

It’s impossible to have influence at every decision. And so hopefully you’ve trained well [00:30:00] enough, you’ve made, enough good hiring decisions, you have enough structure that it can be. Consistent. Which seems like a hallmark word, several times. Ultimately consistency. 

Brian: And part of that I’ve explained terrifies me, but the other part is everything in my company is my fault.

No matter how, if I have 700 employees and I hired a manager, and then that manager turned around and hired somebody that didn’t reflect the company values, that’s my fault because I either I agree with that manager, right? Or I didn’t ex, explain my expectations or the values that we should seek in employees or and I’m not saying it literally is, but that’s how I feel.

Mike: Yeah. You take responsibility for it. And a hundred percent agree with that, right? You’re the owner and director, right? So everything is your fault or a degree of that. So no, you’re right. 

Brian: I agree with that. That’s how I approach life. 

Mike: Going back let’s move on from misery of employee lawsuits for a second. I want to go back to the tool that should not be named and I’d really, now I would like to see a generated image of glamping units on the side of a volcano.

So I really wanna see what what 

that would [00:31:00] look like. 

Brian: So this is interesting. I’ll show you this, so while you guys talk while I’m doing this, but I will, so I was showing care this before I generated my background. So I turned, let me see, I gotta share this tab. I actually..

Mike: So is that couch a generated background or is that really your living room?

Brian: No, this is really my living room because Restream apparently doesn’t do, yeah, it’s not even my living room. It’s my tiny office with my extra couch in it is what it’s. But, so I trained GPT four here on how to understand how to generate prompts. In mid journey, which is what we use for our art generation.

So this is an example of the advanced things you can do with it and nobody understands how to play with it, right? But so I trained it on all of Midjourney and their entire guide, I just copied and pasted from their website on how to take the advantage of the new version five or whatever. And then I trained it on example prompts that people got from the community.

Not images I created, but images that were great that I liked, right? And so now I can come down here and say, great, I want you to act as a professional photographer because you understand Midjourney. [00:32:00] And then I can just literally type a prompt. What I want you to create is a glamping resort on the side of a volcano.

And all I have to do is type that and it will understand and write me this rich descriptive prompt that I can use in Midjourney. 

Mike: No. I I want an image, right? I want an image. 

Brian: I’m gonna you an image. This is, I gotta generate the prompt for the image first.

Mike: And I want it to be, I want it to be. A cloudy day with a little bit of sunshine poking through.

I want to side of the volcano prompt to be sheer cliffs. 

Brian: Okay, what do you want? Right now on the side of volcano, what is it? 

Mike: On a cloudy day with the sun peeking through with a steep grade on the volcano and a winding road all the way from the base up and around the volcano to get to the resort.

Christine: Do you own this property? 

Brian: A steep grade on the volcano with a winding road. What, 

Mike: Up and around the mountain to get to the resort from the base?[00:33:00] 

No, Christine, cuz nobody would insure it. 

Brian: That look good on the side of a volcano, on a cloudy day with the sun peeking through a steep grade on the volcano with a winding road to get to the resort from the base of an mountain. All right. That’s, now it’s gonna write a better prompt than that based on that information, but, and then I’m gonna take this and put it in discord and entering.

We’ll get an image, but this is an idea of some of the advanced things that you can do with it. Everybody just goes and types in two words, because that’s what we’ve been trained to do in 24 years on Google. So it’s really, 

Mike: I didn’t type in two words. I gave you some good description. 

Brian: Yeah, you did, huh?

Yeah. 

Mike: I have, see, I did this to myself. I brought this back up. This is my own fault..

Christine: It’s still not going anywhere. If anything, it’s gonna become more prolific. So it’s my, one of my law clerks came to me other day in a panic asking, do you think I’m gonna still have a [00:34:00] job? And I was like, it’s gonna be a while before it replaces you. 

Mike: It’s and then, yeah, I’m mean the regulation, et cetera, but where’s our image?

That’s what I really wanna see an image. 

Brian: I’m going to discord so you can actually see it generate in real time. 

Mike: Clearly the tool that should not be named is slow. So slow.

You imagine. 

Christine: I couldn’t paint it any quicker. So I guess there’s that, 

Brian: it’ll take a minute. Like it takes a minute or two to generate now.

But 

Mike: no, those are, is that because the user pro, the user census is a lot bigger? Or just cuz it’s what? 

Brian: I don’t This is the brand new one they just released a week and a half ago for Midjourney version five. So it’s a little bit slower because of that. But compared to everything, like this is still, we’re complaining about being slow.

This would’ve taken like months to conceptualize and do even six months ago. 

Mike: Yeah, true. After I see the images, I’m going to hop off so I can, I got another call. But I’m now, I, now I have to see the results of your work. Do you have a name for yours [00:35:00] that’s not campy or is it just ChatGPT? 

Brian: Oh, for what? This Midjourney thing? 

Mike: Yeah. You don’t call it like Rodolfo Hey, let’s put that in Rudolfo. See who comes back, 

or no, this isn’t my boss. I didn’t code this. This is just me, Mike. 

Cara: Lemme wait. Do you feel like talking about Camping, how do you, how’s things going with 

Brian: We can, there’s the images though.

They’re done. Does that, I don’t know if that’s, there’s a little bit of a winding road here. 

Christine: Oh, I can’t see. I can’t see your screen. 

Brian: Oh, you can’t see my screen? Why not? Nope. Nope. Oh, sorry. Here we go. I forgot I had to toggle it on. I thought I was sharing the whole time. Sorry. 

Mike: It’s okay. You gotta make it bigger.

Brian: I can make it bigger when you tell me. I don’t know if I can make it. Can I do this orientation? Not available. I don’t know. Like I, if you pick one that you want, I can blow up one of these images. 

Mike: I can’t see. Take the far left corner. Yeah, the top left corner. All right. Here, let me, go all for it.

Cara: So since no one will insure it and we can’t actually build it, who’s gonna invest in building this [00:36:00] VR resort to visit with your VR headset? 

Brian: Somebody will, for sure. Probably AI will you should see the text to stuff like I was playing with text to video, which is gonna come out in weeks. It already is, but it’s gonna come out really good in.

Hey, I played with a platform that’s text app, so you can design an can’t code the app, but what you could with chat g pt. But in one step you can say what you want and it’ll design you like an entire app for your phone. So eventually it’s gonna be that good. So here’s the first one like this, Mike.

Mike: Not quite 

what I envisioned but yeah. Yeah.

Brian: That’s the first one. Here’s the second one.

Here’s this. Volcano. 

Mike: Honduras, here’s the third one. 

Brian: I don’t know, we didn’t specify where the volcano was. You have to like, you have to be descriptive.

Mike: I didn’t realize there was so much grass in a volcano and in jungles. 

Brian: Maybe it is dormant volcano. You didn’t ask whether you wanted an active volcano.

Mike: True. 

I should have said active volcano. That’s really what I was thinking. Like fire [00:37:00] coming down 

the side. 

Yeah. Ash Road right here. 

Ash, yeah. , 

Brian: it could very easily be like, this is real. This looks real.

Mike: It’s awesome. Yeah, no, answer to your question, Kara, on our website, for example our videos are AI generated, so if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know really. They’re pretty cool. And, campy, we’re in the very very early stages.

We actually have a call tomorrow to talk about analytics and, what’s it doing and all, the way I explain it to people is, when we first rolled it out, it’s like, it’s in kindergarten, right? Yeah. And then we gotta teach it and learn it.

And then, a couple weeks later, it’s then in middle. And then a couple weeks later it’s in high school. And right now I think, my opinion is, it’s it’s in college, right? Yeah. It’s still doing well. Hasn’t graduated yet. And it’s certainly we’re tweaking it.

 it’s fun. And so I would say 80% of the time the answers are very good. Very effective. Yeah. And the other 20% of the time, it’s gotta be clarified or they’re not perfect or clear. And then obviously the ultimate part, is it cool? Who cares? Maybe the Geek Nerds care. But from a business owner standpoint, why do we want it? How do you [00:38:00] monetize it? That’s, I think, mine and Brian’s ultimate goal is, in a couple months we understand, what level of efficiency does it provide so that it.

Chases out Christine’s law clerks but could it be more efficient so that your cus your guest service representatives are spending more time with your guest that, your reservationists are fully focused on being able to book more business because they don’t have to field questions.

And so that’s what I think we’re trying to identify in the first 90, 120 days is, how many Chats, how many inquiries, how much time do we think it’s saved? And then, putting a value to that to understand is it, driving either productivity or revenue. That’s, to me that’s number one outcome of it other than just being cool.

Brian: And we know it is already, like the question is what does that growth trajectory look like? That’s what interests me because right now I think a lot of people don’t want to interact with chatbots cuz they think they suck For the last five or six years, they have sucked. Yeah. And so it’s gonna be interesting to me the more these pop up on all these different sites, Like Delta will add one and Coca-Cola and all the airlines and all the like Marriott.

The more people get [00:39:00] used to, oh, these don’t suck anymore. How, what is that chat volume? Then I feel like it’s gonna go really fast. 

Cara: I’m curious to know, Christine, from your perspective, do you foresee any potential hurdles with concerns around, providing wrong answers and maybe not the right, not the best information on these channels?

Bye, Mike. Thank you.

Christine: See you guys. Bye. Yeah, so I actually think it’s really interesting. Someone’s gonna be the test case. There’s a two, two venues where I see issues. One is, Right now we’re utilizing other things. So I know if you’re building something separately, the license to use, it’ll be interesting cause a lot of people are using free programs and right now they just give you the stuff.

But I see it eventuality where we monetize that. And the other one would be, if you answered the phone for me as my employee gave bad information, I’d be held liable for that. Because you’re my agent. Yeah. Are we going to [00:40:00] say that these Chats are the agents of these businesses? I could see someone saying that they, if they relied on that information and it was incorrect to their detriment, yeah.

Someone’s gonna test it. I don’t want to be it, but I think someone’s going to, know, but I dunno what that’ll look like. 

Brian: That’s part of the legal framework that we need from people like you, Christine. Like we have this generic thing on the bottom of very, of all of our client. But I’m just pulling up Verday because we were just talking about it.

Hold on. I can’t find it now, but anyway, we have terms and conditions that are somewhere that I’ll find. I just don’t know the link to it, but I’ll find it in a second. But we have conditions.. 

Christine: You definitely can’t find it. 

Brian: That’s not a problem at all that we can’t find it. The AI probably took it down.

Yeah. But yeah, we have I can’t find it right now, but we have it on our Insider Brooks website and all that kind of stuff. Maybe that’s actually there. 

Christine: Part of that is gonna be like, I imagine, when we talk about the validity of e-signatures, for example, on like documents we talk about that they [00:41:00] have to have been stopped such that they had to acknowledge in some fashion.

So I can’t generally just say, oh, they agreed to this waiver cause I posted on my website. I have to have collected something. Either made them hit a button or write, wrote in their initials so I could foresee something like, I know right now when a chat window pops up, sometimes you have the have to put your name in or whatever to use it.

I could see something like, oh, when they put their name in, they’re agreeing to link to this disclaimer and they can’t talk to that bot until they put their name in saying they agree to that. Maybe that’ll do it again. Like we are what we call, at least in Yeah. It’s this part of the world, a common law system.

So if people are gonna have to test it out and until there are, laws or cases..

Brian: It’s gonna be used before that happens. But this is the best we can do right now is the terms and conditions that are written like this, and then they’re down here in the bottom of every chat. And then you disclose I’m an ai, I’m an [00:42:00] ai, I’m an ai.

Christine: Yeah, I would, I would honestly, if I was thinking about this maybe, and maybe this isn’t doable, but I remember using, so like our. I legal software, if I want to use their chat feature first, I have to fill out like a little form before it opens the box where I put my name in and things like that, which stops me from using it.

Before I do that, I think it’s probably they want some internal record. It’s not for liability at this point, but I could see that kind of being the norm for these that it forced. Whether they actually read the terms or not, but force them to read them or say that they read them before they chat with the ai.

Maybe that’s a solution cuz we slowed them down. I literally can’t force you to read a contract even if I printed out and put it in front of your face. But if I did all of the things possible to delay you such that you were given opportunity and things like that, I think it would be much stronger than I had to, of my own initiative.

Click the [00:43:00] separate link to get to that. I don’t know. It will be interesting. You’re right I try to get through a real representative as quickly as possible most of the time and avoid all sorts of..

Brian: Chatbox aren’t helpful because the menu systems on the phone aren’t helpful, but they’re about to be.

 Imagine the scenario where you call the customer service representative on the phone. And you’re bounced between seven departments because they’re all specialized in their department and only told, you can answer question, but the AI will know the whole company.

Yeah. Integrate with their systems and be able to now.. 

Christine: It’s not even alleviated the whole time that I spend on phones. I really appreciate it. I’m always, I I’m excited for what technology will add instead of what it takes away. If esp even in my profession, I know there’s a lot of squirmy worms about it.

People always get nervous whenever a new thing comes out, but, if we were so resistant to technology, I’d still have to go drive down to the courthouse library to look up things instead of being able to use a case software. So there is, there’s always benefits. And I was [00:44:00] actually talking to another attorney in another state recently about how she was using even just the free version of chat G p T to help.

Her narrowed down her research. She was like it first gave me things from pre 2018 when the law changed in 2018. So then I had to educate it. No, only give me things post 2018. So there’s still a knowledge piece, just how like we talked, have to know enough to ask the right question, but she said like the search terms she would’ve used were so broad that even with, the traditional terms and connectors 

Brian: that’s goes back to the thing.

We’ve been trained in Google to type in two words. 

Christine: It was hard to get the right result. 

Brian: So that’s gonna change so fast. Like this is a company, and I don’t, I’m not gonna play this whole video, but this is a company that does customer led AI on the phone already. Now listen to how real this.

Audio from Video: Hi. I was expecting a package today, but I was out and it wasn’t delivered. I have a [00:45:00] concierge. Can you contact the driver and let him know you deliver with them next time? 

I’m afraid we can’t deliver your parcel to reception. It’s for security reasons. Would you like to rearrange your delivery for another day?

That is kind. I’m calling to make an appointment with Dr. Garcia. My name is Chevon Murphy. 

Brian: And it understands. Understand. See what it’s understanding and pulling from a database. 

Audio from Video: Okay. I’ve got your records here. 

Can just confirm your date of birth, please? 

It’s the 20th of March, 1993. 

That’s great. Okay. There’s an appointment on July 13th.

Does that work for you? 

Brian: And that’s available today. Like you can go buy this right now. 

Christine: That is pretty 

Adapt, adopt. I think it’s so helpful. Honestly, even, look, I actually was having this conversation with a, with one of our paralegals recently who has never actually been Camping herself.

And she’s like, how do people keep track of all this stuff? I was like, oh, we have software now. But I was like, pause [00:46:00] on that. When you first when we first even just took reservations for campgrounds, we were doing it in paper. Like you had a big paper like chart with paper and I can’t even imagine doing that now, but, but I’m sure I say that, but I do know there are still some campgrounds now who are resistant to adopting reservation software.

I’ve talked to them, but, I get it. But embracing change is cool. Like I said, I never wanna be the test case. I’ll let most people ferret out what the problems are. There’s already been some unauthorized practice of law with people trying to use AI to help them be an attorney.

And there still has to be an actual attorney there. We won’t figure out how that works in our system, but, embrace it. When we had our first two campgrounds the idea of text messaging, your guests updates in real as things were happening was never in my, I never would’ve imagined.

Brian: It’s just that’s the thing is this is a shortcut. And the more you like, this is why I’m so a, [00:47:00] not, I’m obsessed with it, let’s be fair but like, this is why I’m so pushing it so hard with people is because this is happening at a speed that we have never seen anything happen in the history of the universe.

And it is only going to get faster every single day. And you can use, like at a law firm, you can use this to speed up your processes. I was talking to a patent attorney yesterday about something that I might invent and then the other last week I was talking to my accountant and we were just looking about deductions.

And because I have such a complex, like I have a US two US businesses and a Canadian business, and then one I own personally, And we just were typing into, I was typing in GTD four what are some uncommon deductions that would work with this, blah, blah, blah. And she’s oh, I didn’t think about that.

She’s she knew it, but it shortcutted her response. To be able to think about those different things. And it’s not like I needed I never want to cut her outta the loop, but if we can help people use these things, then it makes them more efficient. It sometimes can inv in, increase their margins, help them serve more people better.

I think the people that are gonna win initially are the people who adopt this, the [00:48:00] lawyers who are willing to adopt this tech. The accountants who are willing to, because I was telling my patent lawyer the same thing yesterday. I said, at some point your customers are gonna look at you and be like my friend Johnny uses the firm across the way and he got his document back in an hour and a half.

How come it took you two and a half weeks and then they’re gonna leave your firm. 

Christine: Sure. Absolutely. Again, embrace technology. Don’t shy away from it. There’s gonna be bugs. You don’t have to be the first adopter. But I would be an early adopter. I’ve been watching there four law firms in particular.

There’s an AI that a firm in London has adopted across all their offices that I’ve definitely put myself on the wait list to learn more about it. Cause I’m curious and frankly, I, not that I’m trying to chase away business, but I understand as with every piece of it, that we’re merely line items in the overall picture.

And if I can do it quicker for them, cuz all I sell is my time, then they have more money to buy another cabin or, invest in some cool feature that drives more people to their [00:49:00] part or throw more money at Brian so he can do a better job on their website or something, whatever it is.

So I think that’s okay. It’s gonna change and there will be different veins for different people. And I actually, I guess in a good way to wrap up this whole thing. You started today by talking about being a generalist and things like that. And what I had thought of and what popped in my head at the time is I work at what I call a general practice law firm, which means we don’t only do one type of thing.

Like I don’t only do litigation, I don’t only do transactional. So a lot of people would argue, Because you’re a generalist, you’re not great at any specific thing. But where I think the specificity for me is like an industry, right? Like I’m very knowledgeable about how those things impact outdoor hospitality.

I don’t know how they impact, running test the company or something like that. But I know what that means for a Campground. And I think by being able to [00:50:00] utilize this stuff to marry with your knowledge, it will help people be generalists. And, people feel comfort in working with people they know.

So if they can come to me for more things than they could before, because I’m willing to adopt technology, I think that’s just a win for everybody and us generalist, if you will. 

Brian: Yeah. And I think the, and I’ve got this up here for a reason, right? And I know we don’t have a lot of time to touch on it, but this is about to be the most fundamental shift that you’ve ever seen in your life right here with ai.

This is, if you haven’t seen this yet, and I have beta access to it, it’s not publicly available. These are ChatGPT plugins. They literally last week, or I think a week and a half ago, maybe announced it, and there’s only eight apps in here right now. These ones, or maybe there’s a little bit more Wolf or Malfa speak, OpenTable, whatever.

But this is the new app store. There’s literally no reason to have an app in the app store unless you’re playing a game or doing something that this is the new interface. So what this can do now is you can build an app for this just Instacart and Expedia has, and you can talk to chat G P T in natural [00:51:00] language right here and you can select these plugins and it will look for real-time prices on Expedia.

It will be able to book restaurant reservations for you by just saying Book a table. It will connect to your Open OpenTable account and make your reservation. You can ask it for a vegan meal plan and the ingredients that you need, and it will put the items in your Instacart cart and it will order them for you.

This is it right here. You’re looking at the website that you’re gonna come to for 92% of things. This is it. 

Mike: Wouldn’t it be cool if our Campground reservation companies link into that so people could use that? 

Brian: I’ve already proposed it to one. I’m just waiting for them to let me do it because we have developer access to build it.

Christine: Nice. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m excited, but I’m always excited. I always wanna see the new thing that happen. I might be doom and gloom when I tell people about business operations. Willing to adopt new things. I’m for it. And you and I have had conversations. I’d rather stuff be accessible to people.

So if this is a way for more people to get the help they need, then [00:52:00] let’s go for it. 

Brian: Yeah, you can chain ’em all together too. You can say, come up with a meal plan and then book me a flight to do what? And it’ll do it all in three steps right in a row.

Christine: I guess I’m coming to see you guys and we’re going out to eat so I can use it for traveling to Canada and I’m booking us a restaurant.

Brian: Yeah, it’s an interesting world we live in, so I, yeah, I know I sound paranoid and like I’m moving too fast and that nobody understands what I’m talking about, but I can barely keep up with this stuff.

Yeah. That’s awesome. Anyway, thank you guys. I appreciate you joining us for another episode of MC Fireside. Chats. We still, did we never say the word the whole episode? 

I don’t think so. I have no idea. But either way, we’re getting there. We put it up on the screen enough, 

okay. Thank you guys. Take care.

Have a good week. Thanks. 

Christine: Chat soon.