MC Fireside Chats – August 20th, 2025

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Hopefully you guys can hear me okay. Everything’s working well. I’m in a remote location here. Don’t have my normal studio, everything behind me, but at least we’re in like horizontal mode this time.

I think, was it you, Robert? You were on the show last time, right? With us. It was this show. We were like in vertical. We were switching everybody back and forth. So I’ve managed to do that right this time. But so welcome, everybody. Excited to have another show here. We’ve got a couple recurring guests, as always.

I mentioned Robert Preston from Unhitched RV. I’m gonna let you introduce yourself next time, Robert, but we’ll have you introduce over a second so you can get your company name right. Jeff Hoffman is back with us. Sandy Ellingson maybe, or maybe not, is here. She was there and there’s a, did she open the door and just leave?

Maybe she got offended by something I said.

Jeff Hoffman: There she is.

Brian Searl: And there she is. Okay. And then we have a couple special guests Amanda, Will and Rylan is, am I saying that right? Rylan? 

Rylan Blowers: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. Okay, cool. I just didn’t know if you misspelled Ryan, so I just wanted to make sure I didn’t call you Rylan.The,

Rylan Blowers: I have been misspelling for 30 years. I you’re the first one to notice. 

Brian Searl: No, that’s fine. I like it ’cause like my, I’m Brian and I think people with creative names are much more interesting to talk to. I’m, I still, it’s on my agenda to talk to my mother about why she wasn’t more creative. 

Rylan Blowers: Yeah. My parents made interesting. Just throw an extra letter in there just to confuse people, so.

Brian Searl: I like it. All right, so let’s go around the room briefly introduce ourselves. We wanna start with our recurring guests. Wanna kick it off, Robert? 

Robert Preston : Hey, good afternoon everyone. Robert Preston, CEO of Unhitched RV, and Unhitched Property Management. Thanks for having me on Brian. Looking forward to this discussion. 

Jeff Hoffman: Appreciate you being here as always, Robert, Jeff. Hi, I’m Jeff Hoffman. I’m the founder of Camp Strategy and we’re based out of Ohio, but we work across the nation trying to help campgrounds get profitable. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Jeff. Sandy?

Sandy Ellingson: I am Sandy Ellingson and I’m an industry advocate, which means I spend my time connecting campgrounds with the RV industry and making sure we do things together collaboratively. 

Brian Searl: Sandy, you look like you’ve been on a beach in Mexico for too long. You look a like sunburn. Is it just me? She looks a little sunburn, doesn’t she?

Sandy Ellingson: I think it’s just the lighting, but I have been at Lake Okeechobee in the sun for while. 

Brian Searl: It’s a good place to be too, while it’s pretty cool. Yeah, it’s pretty nice down there. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. I’m loving the alligators 

Jeff Hoffman: You doing Down my old stomping grounds. 

Sandy Ellingson: Working, of course. 

Brian Searl: Have you ever been super close to an alligator, like really close?

Sandy Ellingson: Oh yeah. I was about three feet from one, just a few minutes ago. About 11 and a half foot. 

Brian Searl: We were like I remember going down to the Everglades so far off topic, but I remember going down to the Everglades years ago and we were at one of the state parks there. And there was a barrier right between us but you could I was probably like, I dunno, maybe less than two feet away from the alley.

Like you could hear ’em hiss and I never knew they hissed before that. It’s just really interesting to me. So anyway oh yeah, I’ve been to Okeechobee. Very nice place. Who’s next? Who wants us kick us off from our special guest perspective? Who wants to be the brave one that goes first? 

Amanda Buswell: I’ll go.

Brian Searl: Okay. 

Amanda Buswell: Hi everyone. My name’s Amanda Buswell. I am the regional manager for Purity Spring Resort. And I also serve as the general manager for Danforth Bay Camping and RV Resort in Freedom New Hampshire. 

Brian Searl: And do you work for a larger company, Amanda or? 

Amanda Buswell: So I work for the Hoyt family. They own Purity Spring Resort in Madison, New Hampshire. Purity Spring operates Purity Spring, which is a lodging business. They also operate King Pine Ski area. They operate Camp de Comea POG for boys, Danforth Bay Camping RV Resort, and then also Traditions Restaurant. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here. 

Amanda Buswell: Thanks for having me. 

Brian Searl: Will you want, will you wanna go next?

We’ll say, got full name last, just Will now? 

Will Kuntzelmann: Yeah. Will Kuntzelmann the owner of Smuggler’s Notch RV Village in Smuggler’s Notch or Cambridge, Vermont. So we’re a pretty new Campground. It’s our second season yeah, happy to be here. 

Brian Searl: But you made up for the Will with Smuggler’s Notch. That’s Steve Gold Campground name.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good, that’s a good plan. 

Rylan Blowers: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: Rylan. 

Rylan Blowers: Yeah. Yeah. We have a lot of New England representation here. I’m just down the road from Smuggler’s notch. They’ve done an incredible job. I didn’t know you were open for two years ’cause you guys seem like you’re crush it. But I’m in Burlington, Vermont, and Rylan, I’m the co-founder here at Park Software.

We are Campground management software, and we’re, our whole shtick is that we’re the world’s easiest to use Campground management software, and we’re always free for our parks. And today we work with over 500, mostly small, medium sized RV parks. So a lot of folks like yourself, so appreciate you having us on.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Appreciate being here, Rylan. So how we typically start to show up. I’ll talk it to our recurring guest first. Jeff, Sandy, Robert, is there anything that’s come across your desk in the last month since we’ve all been together that you feel is vital worthy of talking about when need to address anything like that?

Robert Preston : Sure I’ll start, a couple big things that, I don’t know, I think it’s been the last 30 days since we met, but of course the lots of huge tax benefits that have come down the road with the passing of the big, beautiful bill. And that’s gonna be, instrumental to, I think the investment side of it.

The fact that we can, get that bonus depreciation back to a hundred percent and the ability to write off the vehicles themselves. And the interest now from the customer perspective, right? So if you buy a new RV a lot of that interest or most of that interest now can be written off even for the general customer.

So hopefully that starts to push a little bit on the unit sales. So that’s some pretty exciting news. I think it’s been the last 30 days, but I may have been wrong. It’s close enough, right? Close enough. 

Brian Searl: So I think that’s a, I think that’s a worthy discussion to have though, especially ’cause we have Jeff Hoffman here who’s an accountant, just briefly, and Sandy can weigh in and then everyone else can weigh in too. Regardless of what you like, I like things Trump does. I like, I don’t like things Trump does. I think we’re all in the same camp, but he there I think we’ll all can agree that we don’t like paying more taxes. And so we had this big, beautiful bill.

There was obviously a bunch of stuff in it. It was unrelated to taxes, but a big chunk of it was what Robert just talked about, depreciation and helping, like it’s gonna help a lot of owners in various different facets. Without me talking, I’m not the accounting expert. I’m not tax expert. Jeff is, I would call Jeff an accounting expert.

Would you, Jeff? 

Jeff Hoffman: No, not anymore. 

Brian Searl: Mediocre. 

Jeff Hoffman: Not on tax law.

Brian Searl: Entry level, whatever it was.

Jeff Hoffman: I was, yeah, I was a CPA at one time. But tax law, as changes dramatically year to year. Administration. Administration. But yeah, I was. Active with OHI in advocating for this bill to get included and make sure that it passed.

So we are very happy at OHI to make sure that it was included in the new bill and it will benefit all Campground owners 

Brian Searl: So how is what I want to get to, right? So there’s obviously the political people who sell it and say it’s a good idea and we know it’s a good idea. And like for the people who know about depreciation and those kinds of things, it’s easy to understand.

But for the regular Campground owner here who’s looking at upgrades or changes or maintenance or improvements or capital, whatever, how does it benefit them? 

Jeff Hoffman: It’s, yeah, it’s gonna allow them to write off their depreciable assets sooner than they would have. Basically you’re gonna be able to take a hundred percent deduction on quite a bit of equipment purchases and everything else that you’re gonna buy into.

So your tax, your tax basis will be, you probably can get it down to close to zero if you’re building your park out or adding stuff. So it does help with with that, I watch depreciation because I have my own little theory about depreciation in that you can’t always count it as a non-cash item.

You do have to have a reserve, and that’s what depreciation is supposed to be. But it does cut, by having depreciation, it cuts your taxes and it allows you to write off your capital quicker than you would get any other way. 

Brian Searl: How so Robert, you started this conversation, right? So how is this gonna impact some of the things you’re doing around your properties?

Or how do you hope it does? Maybe 

mute Robert? Yeah, you look like you’re on mute.

Robert Preston : Now? 

Brian Searl: There you go. Yep. Sounds good. 

Jeff Hoffman: Okay. Now, you’re good. 

Robert Preston : Yeah, so it certainly affects, investment side, right? A lot of it, a lot of what we do investing is for depreciation. It’s one of the main reasons that makes real estate such a lucrative, valuable way to build wealth and for the long term.

But what I think is really important for all of us is that this, for, this is one of the first bills that actually helps with the customer too. So yes, we get the bonus depreciation, we can move that forward. We can do cost sags, we can do all that kind of cool, fun stuff. But in the bill actually, and in the bill, right? The interest cost of the RV itself for the customer is now a write off, right? 

That, so that’s a big change. So this helps all customers, not just the park owners and investors. So in essence, it makes the ownership of an RV less expensive, right? Which we’d assume and hope that then would drive up the sales, which then would increase the number of RVers out there, which, helps us as park owners and helps the software managers and helps everyone.

And and I think it’ll affect, my opinions is that offset of interest or being able to deduct your interest, RV probably is most, most applicable in the higher ticket unit, right? The motor coaches, the big fifth wheels. ’cause the price tags of those have gotten pretty expensive. And if you look at the sales side of it from the manufacturers.

We’re back to a pretty normal unit count sales for the year, but most of that’s made up in the travel trailer in the fifth wheel segment. The motor coach and RV segment is still way down the cost. We would probably expect to see hopefully, I think the intent here on that bill and what we’re expecting to see is hopefully that motor coach component and the more expensive RV component sales would start to increase back up because of the tax benefits that are now in place for those buyers.

So that’s the extent of my tax knowledge. I’m not a tax accountant. CPA make sure you call yours before you do make any. 

Brian Searl: None of what you hear here is tax or investment advice, whatever else we have to say to disclose all that stuff. There’s my disc clearance. What if it was, you should for sure not listen to anything I said.

You shouldn’t listen to me. Maybe what Jeff says, but not what I say. Yeah. It’s the first time I’ve heard about that though for the RVers. So what we’re basically talking about and this is again coming from somebody who’s not an accountant, not a whatever, I don’t understand this maybe as good as I should.

But what you’re basically saying is when they buy an RV, they take out a loan on that RV to purchase it. The interest payments that would be attached to that loan now are a write off for that.

Robert Preston : In some instances. Exactly. Yes. So you’re, if you own your home, the interest that you’re paying for your home mortgage, there is a write off on your taxes, is you can deduct that from your earnings.

Again, not a, not the I-R-S-C-P-A, but the new bill would allow for that cost of your interest if you borrowed money to buy an RV to then be deducted off of off of your normal income rollable taxes. Yeah. 

Jeff Hoffman: So yeah, basically if you paid 60 grand for an RV and your interest rate was eight which hopefully that comes down, but that would be like $4,800 a year in interest. Your tax savings off of that would be whatever tax rates you are. So say 25% of the $4,800. Would be your tax write off. 

Brian Searl: So only if you’re making like pretty good chunk. Only if you’re positive and owing taxes. This isn’t refund stuff. If we back. Okay.

Jeff Hoffman: Actually you probably paid in, so unless you’re if you pay, yes.

If you, unless you’re a business man that’s making estimates and everything else. Generally most of the public, the only taxes they do is off of their payroll taxes and generally those are overpaid. So they actually then would get a refund off of this, which then they can. 

Brian Searl: Strategy for somebody like you, Jeff, to just buy us all RVs and save money.

Since you make a lot more money than we do, is there a strategy where you can just save on all your taxes and get us all RV? 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. Yeah, not a problem. Okay. Yeah, as long as you can’t at all my clients’ parks and you pay triple the rates, it’s not a problem. 

Brian Searl: Are those deductible too? Is there an interest savings on those?

I need a lot. I don’t have enough money to say they’re for us. 

Robert Preston : We’re in the industry tax write off doing research. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah, I was gonna say it’s a hundred percent right off for me. My new rig is 100% going away that on my taxes this year. 

Jeff Hoffman: My, my CPA is so conservative, he doesn’t let me write off my RV. Even though I use it for my office.

Brian Searl: I might get a new p 

Sandy Ellingson: I rented a stick and brick just for that reason this year. Because it can’t be your primary home. Yeah. So it’s not, even though I am in it 12 months outta year. 

Brian Searl: What you would, you go in it, look at Jeff’s primary home. He’s got a swing pool in the background. It’s nice and tropical. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. Yeah. I’m squatting again. Yeah. I don’t know whose house this is. 

Robert Preston : Same one. Amanda’s in. 

Amanda Buswell: Yeah.

Brian Searl: Oh. Oh, that was interesting, Amanda. I didn’t see exact same spot. I think we’ve just proved the existence of parallel universes. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah.

Amanda Buswell: That’s funny. 

Brian Searl: We could, yeah. Okay. So I think though this is important for again, we’ve talked about the depreciation.

We’ve talked about the different things for RV owners. Like I think it’s important for maybe it’s just me and I’m not an RV park owner, but I think there are a lot of owners out there who are unaware of some of the unique things and advantages they can take of take advantage of twice in the same sentence as part of tax law.

And so I think it’s even more vital, like to look at somebody like, I know Jeff, you’re not doing a CPA work anymore, but there’s a lot of these companies that exist that serve campgrounds, RV Park specifically. They could take advantage of some of these deductions. I can’t remember, I haven’t seen them any in a while, Jeff, but there’s like camp and park accounting that’s in Ohio, right?

Yep. And a few other ones. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yep. 

Brian Searl: I think it’s know some of these nitty gritty unique things that you guys can take advantage of because yes we all can joke around and say we don’t like paying taxes, but also if you don’t have to pay taxes or as much taxes. This something should, 

Jeff Hoffman: yeah. Going along your line there, Brian.

I would say most people, if they would hire an actual CPA firm to do their taxes, even though they, it seems expensive, in the end, it’s going to be cheaper because they’re gonna know every deduction, everything that you can take versus the bookkeeper that’s doing your taxes generally doesn’t know 90% of the tax law that’s out there.

And that’s, tax code is, ever changing rulings are coming out all the time, so you really want somebody that knows the code to save you the most money. And yeah. 

Brian Searl: Even if you’re doing that full time, you can’t keep up with it all. Like I remember I have a cross-border accountant we work with in Calgary that’s I have a US company, I have a Canadian company, and then I have a couple other companies.

But doing that cross-border tax law, even like I use chat GPT to help her be like, oh, I didn’t realize that law passed. Let’s shift your income from the US to Canada to that business makes more sense from a tax they just can’t keep up. Just like I can’t keep up with AI. Even it’s. 

Jeff Hoffman: Same reason I use a CPA firm. I can’t keep up, so I hire a firm to do all of the work. Some crazy ideas once in a while, but. 

Brian Searl: What else we got? Sandy, Jeff? Anything else come across your desk or Robert too? 

Jeff Hoffman: And going on Robert’s point with the tax abatement. And then also the interest deduction RV is, I would say about 95% American made four units sold in the US.

So anything that stimulates the RV business is actually gonna stimulate our economies that are based off of the RV industry. So I do think it could help because the RV industry actually was a boom during COVID, but right now we had a lot of people enter, they added a lot of production and now it’s stagnating a little bit. So anything that can help that industry grow is gonna be great.

Brian Searl: Yeah, for sure.

Jeff Hoffman: That would be more Sandy’s forte than mine. She’s definitely in that business. Yeah. Is there. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. I was gonna say, we we’ve just been doing some research and the results aren’t out yet, so I’m it’s not all been analyzed yet, so I’m talking off the cuff here.

But I have been very interested in what’s happening with occupancy. And I understood somewhat last year where we were with occupancy, but this year I expected to see occupancy improve and we haven’t really seen those expectations. And so some of what we are discovering is that there is a direct correlation between what’s happening in the RV industry and what’s happening with our occupancy.

And a large part of that is that we have a, an entire generation of people who, one, have not been like their parents didn’t introduce them into the RV side of the industry. So they’re having to discover it on their own. Two, we don’t have the onboarding tools that we used to have to get this younger generation into RVing.

And so what’s happened is we now have more people retiring out of, and I’m not talking about Camping, I’m talking about RVing. Okay. We have more people retiring out of RVing than we do going into it. But what’s interesting is that in other areas, people are creating their own onboarding methods. We are just not taking advantage of that.

I was having some conversations with a bunch of the people that are in the Overlanders group and it’s 17% of the people we surveyed that are in Overlanders also have an RV, but they’ve never equated the two together. And we are doing nothing to try and meet them where they are. They had a huge conference, they do four a year.

The only company representing the RV industry at all at this event was Dometic. And my question to the industry is, why are we not there? Because, and they’re like we don’t sell Overlanders. We don’t sell the cars, and we don’t, that doesn’t matter. This is your onboarding point. And I think while the industry needs to see that, the campgrounds need to understand that too and help process.

Brian Searl: When you say onboarding, you mean upsell point, don’t you? 

Sandy Ellingson: No, way. How do you get somebody into, no. How do you get somebody into the Camping and, lifestyle? How, what do they see? How do they get into. 

Jeff Hoffman: How do you get them from Marriott to campgrounds? 

Brian Searl: But that’s not all through RVs, right? Like it’s one path. 

Sandy Ellingson: That’s exactly right. And but the problem is that they’ve, the industry has so much focused on just the RVing piece of it. And campgrounds have relied on the RV industry to be selling rigs to bring new people in. Years ago, most campgrounds stopped taking tent campers. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah. 

Sandy Ellingson: Which was the gateway drug and the entry, the onboarding process to Camping for the person that was just starting out.

So we’re seeing the value of all of that come out in some of this data. And it’s gonna be really interesting to see the results of all this when it gets tied together. 

Brian Searl: I think for sure there’s a lack of, and we’ve talked about it in this show before, maybe not with you guys specifically, but on this show before about there’s a lack of cohesive strategy to get people interested in the outdoor lifestyle period.

And that goes to Earl with black folks camp too, that goes to the RV industry with what you’re talking about. That goes to urban people who live in Manhattan who don’t have a car, and no way to get to a Campground like all kinds of different segments. And there does for sure need to be, I think a more cohesive educational effort of introducing people, especially when they’re young and they’re kids, into the joys of not just the outdoor lifestyle.

’cause if you’re, that’s a big piece of it, right? If you’re a kid and you go to a lake is behind me, or you go hiking or you go mountain biking or you go whatever, then you’re for sure gonna have a greater appreciation. If you’re fishing with your dad, I think you’re gonna end up having a greater chance of him being willing to at least try RVing or Camping or whatever else and being more open to it.

So I, I don’t think we’re gonna solve that on that show, but it’s a good thought. It needs called out, right? 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. And there are a lot of opportunities coming up and there’s, that’ll be bringing out some of this research for my campgrounds to find out about all these different things that are going on and how they can incorporate new onboarding processes and new new ways of marketing themselves as an as.

And marketing the experience over just the Camping, like what we found too younger people aren’t looking for a place to park a rig and camp. They’re looking for an experience. And we’ve already been testing this in some of my campgrounds where we should have higher occupancy and we don’t. When we do a standard, regular weekend where it’s just a regular marketing campaign versus a marketing campaign where it’s an all inclusive weekend and we throw in some of the new technology like Stretch Bill or some of those other things where the younger person can pay over three or four pays we see occupancy automatically rise amazingly because they’re looking for the experience.

An example is we did a one weekend, just a regular Camping. The other weekend we did a sandcastle tournament and then a training class for kids. We were literally within five hours of releasing that email to an existing email group. So we didn’t even have to pay for it. We were a hundred percent sold out on a part that had 78 sites.

Brian Searl: Yeah, you’re not gonna get any argument from me. That experience is the driver of everything. Almost everything going forward. And I’d love to hear your thoughts about this, Robert. I wanna get to Will and Rylan and Amanda. Do you actually, will, what are your thoughts on experience?

Let’s have your, let’s Will, and Amanda, let’s have you guys talk with me talking. 

Will Kuntzelmann: Oh, yeah. So our our Campground here, it’s 60 sites, smaller Campground. But we don’t have, a ton of amenities. We don’t have a pool, we don’t have, it’s basically just the Campground we’re working on adding some stuff.

But but yeah, the experience is very important. Everybody who’s coming to our Campground is here to get out and experience the area. When a guest arrives, I’m usually, I have all kinds of, I have everybody’s email and phone number. So depending on what those people are there to do, I have an email that goes out that, gives them, okay, here’s all the here’s all the hikes in the area, here’s all the waterfalls, here’s the swimming holes, or the, restaurants, breweries.

So the guests surely appreciate that. I get compliments all the time. Nobody, there’s not a lot of other campgrounds that are doing that. But yeah. 

Brian Searl: Something cool, like I, I’m telling you, I don’t know what your theme is or what your brand is. I haven’t even looked at your website Will.

But if I had a Campground called Smuggler’s Notch, I for sure would be doing some kind of treasure hunt with a berry bottle of rum somewhere on my property. 

Will Kuntzelmann: Yeah. There is a resort right up the road Smuggler’s Notch Resort and they go pretty heavy on the pirate theme. But we have talked about it.

Brian Searl: I think it’s waiting there for you. Yeah. I think the rum would draw like probably packed full weekends. People, it was hard enough to find. But yeah, I mean I think we’ve talked about that and I may not wanna hear your thoughts in a second, but experience is absolutely, is critical and it doesn’t mean that you have to have an experience of a million dollar waterpark.

It could be an experience like Will is talking about where you just take a few extra minutes to email guests the information that they might want to experience in the area that will enhance their overall vacation or vacation, and then invest their perception. Of what you’re offering at your park.

It could be so many different things. We talk, we’d laugh about a treasure hunt, but it could be anything like that, right? Something that makes their, makes them, and we’ve consulted with so many clients on this from the marketing side too, of it just needs to be something that truly sets you apart.

We have clients who call us and they’re like, I wanna spend, I just talked to somebody last week. I wanna spend $20,000 a month in marketing. Okay, but what are you gonna do differently? If we expand your radius out and we show you Facebook ads and we show you Google ads to a larger portion of the population, we can spend that money.

But within that circle, what makes you unique? What is your amenity? What is your activity? What is your experience? What is your standout feature to make them not just drive 30 minutes, but drive an hour and a half, two hours to come to your park to share it on Instagram, social media, whatever else that makes you different.

If you don’t have that, you could spend the money, but it’s probably not going to, at a certain point or radius, get you the kind of attention. Get you attention, get you the kind of return. That you want. So yeah. 

Sandy Ellingson: You’re singing my song now, Brian, I tell my parks all the time. You have to know who you’re trying to target. You can’t just say, I want RVers to come, and they will come. 

Brian Searl: Amanda, what do you think? 

Amanda Buswell: So Danforth Bay actually has two sections to our parks. So we have 600 sites total. 300 of our sites are catered to empty nesters. So it’s the Bluffs RV Park. It’s for empty nesters, ages 50 and older. And then the other section of our park is another 300 or so sites, and that’s geared towards families.

So when we look at our park, like on a broader level, we’re looking to cater to two very different audiences. But essentially we are focused on our proximity to area amenities. We have a lot of great hiking, biking, outdoorsy offerings as well as our proximity to outlet shopping, which is huge.

So we have a lot outside the park to offer people, but inside the park, for us, it’s a healthy balance of creating theme weeks and offerings, some bands and some activities throughout the day, but not so much that people can’t choose what they want to do while they’re vacationing. Like you don’t want an activity schedule that’s so packed that some, they feel like every bit of their vacation is planned out for them or else they’re not getting the full value of their dollar spent. So we also invest heavily in our amenities so people can use them at their leisure. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. Another interesting thing that came out in this that, that’s relevant to this, Amanda, is we are starting to see some reaction and a lot of feedback from pre-nesters. And pre-nesters are people 35 and below.

‘Cause we’re strategically target. 

Brian Searl: You just make up these words. Sandy, I just need to know before you continue, you just make up words like pre nester, just on fly or? 

Sandy Ellingson: No. I had discover these in research, we did make up the word to describe ’em, but we found the people that these are, they’re 35 and under, they don’t have children.

They’re kinda like, our empty nesters where they want their own space. But they don’t necessarily wanna be with kids, but they do actually merge very well with the empty nesters, believe it or not. 

Brian Searl: I think there’s something important that Amanda touched on, and maybe she didn’t intend to touch on it, but like the, and Will has talked about it too.

I’m interested to explore briefly, like the difference between onsite in park amenities and whether that’s the traditional swimming pool, miniature golf, gaga ball, stuff like that. Or experiences or activities like Amanda was talking about versus the out of park stuff. Because there for sure is a lot of benefit in marketing the outer park stuff, depending on your location and your area and what’s nearby you, and if you have hiking trails or biking trails, or if you’re in, I like Kansas, but it’s just corn in all directions, right? Maybe there’s not quite as much to market outside the park as you would have in some other areas.

But what is the, what’s the difference or what’s the waiting there? Because I, and I’m gonna pick on, I’ll probably get email for this later. I’m gonna pick on Go RVing for a second. Go RVing puts together great commercials, but when you see Go RV’s commercials, there’s like a 0.6 second blip of an RV and the rest is like all the outdoor stuff you can see and do.

But you can also do that by staying in a hotel and going to those places. So how much of this is important from a, I need something that differentiates my Campground inside the Campground to, I’m curating experience nearby.

Rylan Blowers: I can, maybe speak from like a I’m not an operator, but I speak from my, we have 40,000 sites, so we manage, so we’ve go for it aggregating data, but proximity to attractions, obviously like national parks, things like that is like the single bus biggest indicator of occupancy that we can see from looking at the data.

So I think communicating that it would lead me to believe that is an obvious thing that that every park should be doing. Smuggler’s notch is a perfect example. It’s like a world famous ski area, tons of outdoor activities that’s I’m sure a massive draw for what you all do will.

And yeah, it’s not just, the things that they can do within that little bubble but also things that are driving them there. And then Sandy, to speak to your point about younger campers that might not necessarily being, or might not necessarily be buying RVs at the same rate. It’s not that they’re not Camping and not going out in nature to, at the same ratio, but it’s just maybe in a different format.

And for them. Yeah, traveling is no problem. If the destination is worth is worth it. And that goes along with just adapting to what your inventory is. Maybe it’s not just RV sites. I would say another trend we’re seeing, which is probably not surprising to you all, is more and more glamping operations, where it’s probably they have RV sites, but then they have some domes and that’s gonna call to a 35-year-old that might not want an RV a lot more, or even, primitive Camping.

It’s really surprising to me I’ll call out one of our parks camp Kona Hills. They, this is their first year in business and it’s a hundred percent primitive sites. I was like, oh man, they’re infra route awakening. Turns out I was the one in for rooted awakening because they’ve had a hundred percent occupancy every weekend of the summer in their first year with zero amenities because it’s a beautiful area.

And they’ve done a really good job of marketing to younger people and, getting Google reviews and building these lists and CRM and, using technology enabled motions. But yeah to circle back to your initial question, Brian I would say that I think if you’re not advocating for the things that just happen to be around you, whatever it is then I think you’re probably, yeah. Missing out on. 

Brian Searl: Is there a balance for that though, I guess is what I’m really trying to like, and it is different. I think if you’re just an RV park. If you’re an RV park, then you’re offering accommodation for people who cannot go stay with their, they could park it in a parking lot behind Holiday Inn, but it’s a terrible experience, right?

They already have an RV, they wanna stay in it, so those people aren’t going to be served by the hotels. But I guess, so maybe this is more of a question for the people who have Kevin Rentals, glamping, yurts domes accommodations that are trying to convert those people, is there a point where you do need to offer something at your Campground for those people that sets you apart from the hotel?

If you’re all around the national park, let’s use your example. 

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah so one of the things, I think this came out in the KOA research for this year, I’m not sure, but one of the things I found, if you are strategically targeting families with young children, it’s better to have the amenities on site.

They are less likely to leave and go somewhere else when they have small children because of the pain of packing ’em all up and taking off. But those amenities can be very simple. It can be a blow up bouncy house, right? It doesn’t have to be an expensive a hundred thousand dollars swimming pool. It can be things that you bring in to do.

For instance, the park that I was telling you about, the sandcastle competition, they don’t have a swimming pool. They have the basic amenities. We took a field and we had. Sand brought in, and this person that puts this on, she knew exactly where to order it. She was already getting discounts. They brought it in, put it in there, and then we just spread it out to go even in between the grass when it was over.

And so we didn’t have that there. We created it and the cost was all covered by the cost of the state. Yeah. So though for what you’re saying about amenities on site I think it’s young kids, and then beyond that, I think it’s what people’s preferences are. And then of course, if you’re talking 55 plus, that’s a whole nother realm.

And I don’t even go there. I’m too young for that. 

Brian Searl: Robert, what do you think? Do you have a variety of different properties all across the country? 

Robert Preston : Yeah I’m gonna take the, maybe the opposite side of the, this conversation and throw out a bit of a warning that if you start chasing start chasing experiences or more appropriately start changing, chasing, I would say the accommodation types, that can be dangerous, right? So if you’re in RV park, great. If you are a park that has all primitive Camping, great, right? But if you become an, I think we talked about this last week or on our last meeting, you’re RV park and then you want to add one or two domes so you can have that new experience.

You haven’t added just one or two domes to get new experience. You’ve now added housekeeping maintenance. You’ve added a whole immense, so I do think that there is. We wanna always be attracting as many people as possible, but it’s also probably pretty okay. And you have to be very careful from the business side of it to make sure that you are attracting the guest and customer that you want and can handle.

And so if we subdivided this and thought about it from a guest perspective, regardless of their motivation, there’s really two types of guests. Guests that come with their own stuff, that’s RVers, tent campers, overlanders, and there’s guests that come with nothing. And that’s glamping, domes, teepees, hotels, motels, all that type of stuff.

So if we, if you can make sure that with the experiences you’re providing or staying in one of those two channels, I think that’s awesome. But if you’re trying to provide an experience that then requires you to serve both customers, either you have to be a very large resort like, probably that Amanda’s running and be able to equipped and have that stuff or.

Or the negative side of it was you may get the customers, but you’ll be just buried in the expense of payroll and housekeeping and cleaning and maintenance and so on and so forth. So keeping those two segments separated, are you serving guests that bring their own stuff and that’s your traditional tent Camping, RV or et cetera. Or you’re serving guests that you’re competing then with the hotel. So we’re talking about kind of competition with the hotel. I think that could be a mistake if you’re trying to take the hotel customer and turn ’em into a RV, Campground, glamping customer if you’re not prepared for it.

Rylan Blowers: That’s a very good point. Yeah. 

Sandy Ellingson: I totally agree with that. Totally. And I have seen that played out from my big parks to my little parks. I actually was a part of building one of the largest RV parks that’s out there right now. And they literally started out with, they were gonna have 600 RV sites and 400 cabins.

And by the time we got to completion, we had reduced it to a hundred cabins and turned and created 300 premium RV sites that had outdoor kitchens and tiki huts. And those sell out all the time. They never have occupancy problems with those year round because everybody wants to, and there’s no cleaning for those.

There’s no none of that kind of stuff. So I totally agree with that, Robert. You’re right. 

Jeff Hoffman: Think I was looking at, oh, sorry, Brian.

Brian Searl: No, go ahead.

Jeff Hoffman: Was what Sandy was getting to is I think that we have to try to hook people into the Camping industry before they become hotel people. In other words, we want ’em to find out that the Camping experience is a great way when they’re younger and then stay with it as they go through the phases of getting larger and larger units and maybe eventually just settling down to be seasonal at some place. But we’ve gotta get those groups in before they, they find their brand, want them to end up having Camping, be their brand and their go-to not going to a hotel.

Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. And we really learned a lot about that during COVID because we had so many people buy a rig, not because they were interested in Camping, but because they were going stir crazy. And so a big initiative that I was involved in after that was how do we keep these people from dumping all those rigs back onto the market?

Because the last thing that the RV industry wanted was all of their new sales getting eaten up by the people dumping. And we were pretty successful in making that transition and getting people to stay Camping. But it was an education process. It wasn’t just natural. They didn’t just immediately go there.

Their first thought was COVID is over, sell the rig. So we did that by helping them understand, how they could take their unit and turn it into a revenue stream. So we booked them with RV share or Outdoorsy or any of the, their peer-to-peer sharing networks. And those things really, they liked that it helped them pay for their rig and it kept ’em Camping.

Brian Searl: Where is the piece of all this, that like a software system like Park can help enhance the experience for the guest Rylan tie it all together for the operators. 

Rylan Blowers: Can you repeat that question just one more time? 

Brian Searl: Where’s the piece of, we’re the, we’re a park software, like we’ve had camps spot on the show before new book.

We’ve had a lot of other players like your, obviously you’ve a couple hundred parks. Not small. Where’s the piece or role that the Campground software can play in helping tie this together for both the guest experience to understand what I have, what I offer, what I can upsell to, what I can add on but then the operator to help understand what do I need to do differently or better, or not change at all.

Rylan Blowers: Yeah, definitely. So I think just the core software needs to be, easy to use for the operator so that it becomes like something that they wanna take full advantage of as opposed to okay, I need to just enter something into here. So that’s the core of it, but then layering on technology enabled demand generation is what I guess I would call it.

So it starts from the get-go, which is, with whatever the provider is, having online bookings, but also making sure that you get listed on all the directories and and RVing apps, that’s like day one, when we work with park. And then, even things like having a self checkin option.

So if someone’s not in the office, especially for smaller parks where. It’s Will, and your wife, you’re the ones that are managing it many times. You wanna go out to dinner? Great. If someone shows up, they should be able to scan, pay, go right to a site. That’s I think just technology enabled processes are a baseline.

And then the, I think the layers to add on top of that, if you wanna go above me beyond and build an exceptional business is things like, sending automated reviews, asking for or automated message, excuse me, asking for Google reviews. We know that drives probably 70% of local SEO and organic traffic.

Especially in the AI era. We know that Google reviews are the biggest driver of, how folks are gonna find you, especially younger campers that are just looking for something cool to do, within a couple hours drive of ’em. And then I think you mentioned Amanda, something to this effect maintaining UpToDate CRM and sending out coupons, we know that creates a surge of demand and that’s something that probably 80, 90% of campgrounds are not doing, they’re just operating at a certain level. And that’s fine. But if you want to fully Yeah, fill out that occupancy, then it’s using technology to, to do those additional levels that not everyone is doing. 

Brian Searl: Where do you envision a software and I’m giving you open here, whatever, wherever you wanna take it, whatever direction you wanna take it, but like where do you envision the software piece of a PMS coming in versus a CRM that’s separate versus marketing that’s separate versus listing that’s separate versus the website that’s separate for somebody.

Like where do you envision, ideally, whether you have it today or you might have it in the future, or you may never go in that direction, but where do you think the software really can help change that for operators? 

Rylan Blowers: Yeah. It’s a fair question. I think, I personally think there’s actually should be a line in the sand between what is your operation, operational software.

Yes, it’s the final conversion point for what’s, where bookings are being driven and where, money is changing hands but a line in the sand between that and your demand generation. You are the only one that fully understands your business to build a beautiful website and to spin up, Google ad campaigns.

If you’re not doing that I think you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. The cost per click is very low for our industry. And like we see time and time again when we hand off a park to a website or marketing partner, their occupancy goes from 20% to 80%. And so I think someone that is just living and breathing in the demand generation side is actually probably the right, mode of operation if you are of a decent size, let’s say 50 sites or more less than that, so long as you’re doing just baseline, the things that we’ll set up with all of our parks, like I said, getting you on all of the apps and setting up, flyers for after hours check-ins, just baseline things you’re already gonna be ahead of a lot of the campgrounds that might not be even have a website or might not even really be participating in the, the internet age, which is actually still a lot as as I’m sure you all know, and those are the ones that, we as a trend are seeing.

They’re either aging out and trying to sell their Campground and someone buys and says, whoa, this obviously is not the right way to run a business in 2025 with a massive stack of paper. Or they, hand it to their kids and their kids say, I also don’t wanna be running it this way.

In which case, yeah, it’s just some like baseline technology and, enablement. We’ll get, you, get you pretty far and then, you can hand it off to the experts if you wanna do something more advanced. 

Brian Searl: So we’ve talked a little bit about the type of people that come to the properties.

We’ve talked a little bit about what they’re looking for or what we want them to look for in the area on the amenities of the Campground, the experiences, things like that. How do you look at this, will, like, when you were starting Smugglers Notch, I think somebody said it was two years ago, right? 

How do you look at what do I wanna provide as I start my Campground? 

Will Kuntzelmann: When we first started I used to have I used to have like panic attacks thinking about how we didn’t have any amenities, I was like, oh my God, we don’t have a pool. What are people gonna do?

And then I actually talked with Sandy, I worked with Sandy a bit in the beginning, and and yeah, I don’t know, did some research and the further we got into it, it was like, if you’re around, if you’re in an area with a lot of attractions, you don’t necessarily need to have all these amenities. And a million things to do. I’m sorry, what what was the question again? 

Brian Searl: You’re gonna test my memory now. Yeah, I know. I really don’t belong hosting the show live in front of people. I think my question was geared along the lines of as you began to start Smuggler’s Notch, and you talked about your work with Sandy and you figured out some of those things. So I think you were on the right track answering the question. 

Will Kuntzelmann: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: But how do you decide, this is where I want to go? Is it a, how do you decide you want a pool or you don’t wanna pool or you want amenities, or you don’t want amenities, you wanna focus on the local area versus experiences or events?

Will Kuntzelmann: I think, based off of of your guests and your customers, I rarely have people, upset that there’s not a pool. As we grow and we build, we do have plans. Like we, we bought a property right on Route 1 0 8 which has, it was an old, there’s nothing has been here since the seventies, but luckily there was an old tennis court on the property.

So we actually just resurfaced that and we’re gonna do pickleball. Between, we’re doing some pickleball. We’re doing we actually have we get a lot of disc golfers coming here to play. There’s two very prestigious disc golf courses right up the road from us.

So we’re actually gonna put in a nine hole kind of pitch and putt, disc golf course around the property. And we don’t have, we don’t necessarily have a ton of room to, build a pool or do all this other stuff. And then, in Vermont it’s difficult to get some of those permits and get the permission to build that kind of stuff.

But just slowly adding over time and just based off what the what the guests are after, I want to build more of a communal area, like a, fire pit. I got some old chair lifts that I’d like to hang around the Campground where people can sit and enjoy themselves. But yeah. 

Rylan Blowers: I just wanna just maybe add to that just a small bit that, like what you were saying, will, is what I always recommend. It’s like Lego blocks. You don’t have to do it all at once. I talk to new owners that are like you mentioned, just like freaking out do I need wifi?

They quoted me this crazy number, and they’re like, and I’m like, all right, take a deep breath. You don’t need wifi. Sure. That would be nice. And maybe someday, you’ll have the funds to do that, but just add building blocks as you go. That’s the right way to do it. And then you can follow feedback.

Community fire pits is a cool one. One tip I will give is that what is it? S’mores kits sell like hotcakes especially. Oh yeah. Community fire pit. That’s a random tip. But anyways, sorry Brian. 

Brian Searl: You sound like Jeff. A cautious patient. This is Jeff, my inner Jeff that I’m thinking about. Take a cautious, based approach. Just build things little by little. I wanna build it all Jeff, all at once. I wanna just everything there.

Sandy Ellingson: Why can’t I do that? I always say build the kind of park that you’re gonna enjoy managing, especially if you’re a small park owner, right? And then let, and then market to the guests that you hope you can host.

But then let your guests tell you during that first year what they want and who’s coming. And that’ll define all that. And so it really goes to what Rylan’s saying too, is you don’t have to do it all at once. You can add it over time as your guest begins to refine who you need to become.

Brian Searl: Is it just you asking your guests that question though, right?

Because there are certainly, there’s some, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, you should absolutely take surveys of your guests. You should ask them on checkout, what can I do better? What would you like to see added? What are the different types of things we could, give you here that would make your experience even better today than it was before?

But like Robert, take you for example, like when you’re acquiring parks, when you’re managing new properties and you made a very good point about how, and we’ve talked about that on the show before, maybe not as eloquently as you put it. But we’ve talked about the need to focus on do one thing that you do well, I think is what I’m hearing you say, right?

The RVs or the and May you said other things too, but if you’re an RV park, do the RV park. If you’re a glamping park glamping, do the glamping. If you’re tent Camping, do the tent Camping. Not to say that you can’t do both and do two things well, but you gotta master one and then move on to the second and then have a big enough, plan in place and all that kind of stuff.

So how do you look at this, Robert? Is you’re looking to acquire new parks or manage new parks, or, and you’re coming in and you’re saying, all right, I’m looking at this property, they’re, let’s just pretend they’re an RV park. They know their target audience well, or they don’t know their target audience well, they know what they’re going after or they don’t, they have a plan or they don’t, they’ve got amenities.

Like how does that process to Robert Preston? 

Robert Preston : Yeah. First thanks Brian for having me on the show. ’cause after this I’m gonna have to hop off and hit a company meeting. So as we’re looking through this, if frankly from a buyer perspective, from an investor perspective. If those are misaligned and they haven’t got it figured out that’s a good thing, right?

That’s an opportunity. That’s something we can fix and change and implement as we go in, and that creates value and that, creates a return. So the way that we look at that, and I would tie it back to totality of it, is we’re rightfully we’re very concerned about the guest, but our company on the management side, they’re not, believe or not the guest is not our first priority, right?

The first priority is the team member, the operator. And so if we do that and you make decisions based on those lens, that will help prevent you from doing this scatterbrain approach of what does the guests want? And there, because I’ll take it back to the glamping example. If the team member is our top priority and we’re doing whatever we can to make not their job easier, but their job more efficient and more effective so they can serve the guests better, right?

Which makes the property better, which makes the returns better. So if that’s our starting point, then the question comes up, if we add this one dome, almost one glamping tent, and I’ve got a team of four or six, can they handle it? Can they handle all this new housekeeping, all this new stuff? And that’ll help us, again, make better decisions so that we don’t provide a new experience or a new way of staying that would be perfect for the guest, but then the team can’t support it.

And if the team can’t support it, then the guest is gonna have an less than desirable experience, which then is going to make Camping in general less desirable. Because if it’s their first time, their first go, then we’re holding the responsibility of setting that poor impression. And then, it’s a trick on effect.

And Sandy and I have talked about this quite a bit, if you expand that out to the macro level, that’s the problem with the industry is the manufacturers and the dealers and the campgrounds and the software systems, and no one’s really working together. So if anyone has a negative experience at any point in that path, it affects all of us.

Yet we’re choosing essentially right now, exception of Sandy Saw Commander we’re really choosing to ignore that. And we’ve gotta remember that, our guest, this is generally almost always a vacation, a luxury unlike a car. So if someone has a bad experience with Honda, they’ll go buy a Ford, right?

If someone has a bad experience with. Jayco, they’ll just be done with RVing. And so that’s a big difference. Or they have a bad experience at one my park, they’ll just say, sorry, all RV parks stink. And so I’m rambling and going along diatribe. But if we keep, if we put some metrics in place to help safe focus, it’s not about being just good at one thing.

I think it’s about making sure that your staff can really serve the guests well in what you do. And if you can, that goes wide as you want to, as you want to go. But if you can’t, you should probably keep it to the, to that point that your team can be most effective and most efficient. 

Brian Searl: It’s a really good way of thinking of it. I’ve never heard it. And if you have to jump off, that’s, thank you for being here, Robert. I appreciate it. It’s a really good way of thinking about it though, from your employee team members’ perspective of, that is going to trickle down if you talked about to the guests and to their experience.

And what if they’re running around even you add something like you’re talking about with laundry or even something easier. Where they’re adding this to their schedule and they were already working seven hours a day. Now they have to work eight and maybe skip half their lunch, and then they’re stressed out and then they maybe snap at a guess the wrong way or have the wrong tone of voice and that leads to a negative review, which leads to a, yeah.

So it’s for sure a, I think maybe a lot of owners know that, but don’t think of it in the way that you suggested to approach it. And so thank you. I appreciate you sharing. 

Robert Preston : We’ve made a lot of mistakes, so that’s how we got here. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s the only way to get to where you are. 

Robert Preston : Thank you guys. Have a good day.

Sandy Ellingson: Bye, Robert.

Brian Searl: What do you think, Amanda, of all this, how do you decide what type of guests that you guys have, what you wanna add next? What you suggest to the ownership to put in or not put in? 

Amanda Buswell: So for us, I think it’s mostly about knowing your product, right? So in addition to engaging with your guests and engaging with your staff, we also allow for our staff to stay at our property and really use the facilities and amenities and let us know that, because you’re not always gonna get the most accurate feedback from guests, right?

Like you hope that you will, but your staff is gonna give you pretty accurate feedback. So we allow for them to come stay and play and let us know what works well and what doesn’t. We pull them frequently to find out, where they see the company in five years, 10 years. What they think would add to the value of the park.

And we do the same thing with our guests. After each visit, we send them a survey that they can fill out as well. But it also is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. So wear rate on the lake. So we do a bunch of boat rentals, canoes, kayaks. We make it easy for people to enjoy the lake that we have.

We also play to our weaknesses. We have a huge park, 185 acres. There’s lots of hills, so we rent golf carts. We make it easy for our guests to be able to explore the entire park regardless of whether or not they have mobility issues or if they don’t have a vehicle that’s conducive to exploring the park.

Brian Searl: Jeff, how do you approach this from a consulting standpoint?

Jeff Hoffman: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear the question. 

Brian Searl: How do you approach it from a consulting standpoint, Jeff? If you’re advising a upon cotton what to do and how to do. 

Jeff Hoffman: One of the things I find is most Campground owners will spend themselves into oblivion trying to keep up with the Joneses instead of actually trying to take a look at their park and their guest. Will, you’re doing a great job of what you’re doing and, if you add something, make sure that your return on that investment is gonna pay you off sooner and not drain your cash flow.

Or that if you go into debt, that you’re gonna definitely be able to cover the debt and it’s going to increase your cash flow. So when you take that, you take the customers and we always recommend interviewing your customers, talking to your guests. Keeping track of the data, what’s out there, going to the shows, learning what new products might be out there.

The other thing good about going to the conferences that are put on by various states and national, you get to talk to other Campground owners and the more you know, we’re a strange group because it’s hard to make a living as a consultant because everybody is so free with the information about what they did right in their campgrounds that the best learning sources, the hallways of any conference you ever go to, people love to talk about their Campground, 

Brian Searl: but how do you avoid that trap?

So I’m hearing you say keeping up with the Joneses, and I agree with you that this is a problem. There’s two things that I think I think owners need a little bit more clarity and maybe that’s from you. Or other people on this call. But how do I avoid that trap of keeping up with the Joneses?

’cause there’s two things that you said that almost helped me fall into that trap. One is going to conferences. You sure for sure should go to conferences. You for sure should network. I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t do that. It’s very valuable. However, if you talk to all the Campground owners who have done, like I, I put in a Gaga ball pit and that was amazing.

And you talk to six of them and you’re like, do I keep up with the Joneses and do a Gaga ball pit too without understanding my audience and who they are and whether they want it and all those kinds of things. And then the second piece is, I’m gonna pick on you Rylan and myself too. ’cause I’m a vendor too.

I do marketing for parks for 500, some parks. But if you go to a trade show and all the vendors are pitching the latest, brightest, new shiniest thing that the park down the street has, is that serving you well with keeping up with the Joneses? Sometimes it is, but not always. You started the conversation, Jeff, so I’m curious what you call that.

Jeff Hoffman: Everything has, everything that you do has to fit with your goals. And it goes back to one of the things that I preach is it comes from the EOS system, but basically everything you do in your business has to point to the goals that you’re trying to achieve. So yeah, a gaga pit is gonna cost you 1200 bucks.

What’s the return on that investment? Who’s gonna use it? Is it gonna draw more people? Is it a family activity that people are gonna enjoy and be happy with? That’s a low cost one. Now will, if you’re looking at putting in a pool for the 60 site Campground, I agree with Sandy, I wouldn’t do it.

There’s no cost benefit. There’s so many other things that you could do that would be way less than a pool that are gonna give. They guest a better experience. So you have to weigh out what your cash flow is, what your debt limit is, and take a look at that along with your guest. Everybody, I wish I owned a Lamborghini, but I don’t, I own a Kia because it’s practical.

So it’s the same thing in your Campground. Yeah, you wanna be a Lamborghini, but if your budget puts you down at buying a Kia, stay there and be the best Kia you can be. And that’s what you’ve gotta look at is how do I become my best Campground, not somebody else’s best Campground. What’s good for you?

What’s good for your market? And I always tell like the smaller campgrounds, you’re generally running around and it goes back to Robert’s point. You already work 80 hours a week? Do you wanna work 82? If you put something in, it’s gonna cause I like working 82, but yeah. And Sandy works 102 and Brian, you work fulltime 24 hours with your stupid AI robot that I talk to all the time thinking it’s you.

What is that thing’s name again?

He has his own for when you write him emails and stuff, that Chats back with me and then all of a sudden I realize it’s not him. Okay.

Sandy Ellingson: I always wanna get really cheeky when I get one of those emails back, but I haven’t had the courage to do it yet. 

Jeff Hoffman: Then I put some, the way I find out is I put something totally nonsensical, but.

Brian Searl: I’m gonna go and prove it now, going, doing, but yeah, like I think you bring up good points. Although I am picturing you, Jeff, in a Lamborghini with your hair blowing back behind, you’re going down the highway at hundred 20 miles. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yeah, I do own a race car, but it’s a Subaru, not a Lamber. 

Brian Searl: Alright, let’s we’re a couple minutes over.

I wanna be cognizant everybody’s time here. So we wanna give final thoughts, just any final thoughts and where can they learn more about your properties. Amanda? 

Amanda Buswell: I’m sorry? 

Brian Searl: You wanna go first? Just any final thoughts you have and then where can they learn more about the two properties or that you’re representing?

Amanda Buswell: Yeah for sure. So I guess in closing, I would say just to choose your price point. What do you want your, the price point of your park to be? Because you can have all of the best, latest, greatest everything, but then are you going to be affordable for your area? So that’s something that we always look at as we’re making decisions as well, because we don’t wanna price ourselves out of the market.

We wanna be very family friendly. We want to cater to the people that are just introducing themselves to Camping. So that’s always at the forefront for us. And in terms of where you can find information, I always refer to our website, so danforthbay.com. We put a lot of effort into making it easy for our guests to learn more about us, even, after we’re not staffing calls for the day and that sort of thing.

Yeah. And thanks for having me. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, thanks for being here, Will. 

Will Kuntzelmann: Yeah, as far as finding out more about us smugglersnotchrvvillage.com, we have a whole lot on there about, where to go, what to do in the area. So I think it’s really helpful for some of our guests to like research ahead of time and find out. What they want do while they come visit. But yeah that’s. 

Brian Searl: Any final thoughts about our discussion or, 

Will Kuntzelmann: No. First podcast yeah. Thanks for having me.

Brian Searl: This is my first podcast too. Don’t worry about it. Thank you. Great. Great. Jeff, 

Jeff Hoffman: The final thoughts would be just it, you have to take a look at it. It’s your Campground, it has your personality and try to make it your own. Just like looking at what guests you wanna do, what rate structure you wanna do, who you want to bring in. And I’ve owned a lot of campgrounds.

Every one of ’em had an individual personality. I’m a great systems guy and thought I could systematize everything, but it, it doesn’t work out that way. With campgrounds. I can do the internals, but the externals, which is your guest, can’t be systematized. So keep that in mind. Don’t don’t chase everybody else. Chase your own dream for your Campground. 

Brian Searl: And campstrategy.com. 

Jeff Hoffman: Yes. campstrategy.com. I forget the plug all the time. 

Brian Searl: Thank you for being here as always. Jeff. Sandy?

Sandy Ellingson: Oh, come back to me. Let Rylan go first. 

Brian Searl: Ry I want you to not tell me your final you tell me your final thoughts, but I also have another question for you briefly. I want you to tell me away what is the one thing that sets park software apart, and you can’t say ease of use. 

Rylan Blowers: Okay. Let’s say that it’s always a hundred percent free for the Campground. That’s the number one thing. And then final thoughts would be that, yeah, I, I agree with all, all this and thank you so much for having me on and for everything that you all do to guide the industry. It’s pretty cool that to be a part of this conversation. Yeah, I love what Jeff was saying about de-risking yourself along the way, whether it’s a campgrounds or, anything else in life just de-risk yourself and make, responsible decisions and build great businesses and you all are evidence to that.

Yeah, appreciate it again and you can find us at parkwith.us is our domain. But yeah, I look forward to hopefully chatting again soon. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks Rylan. Appreciate you being here. Sandy, you have a good answer now that I saved you last. I think. 

Sandy Ellingson: I know. And you know what? I’m never plugging myself because the people that need me seem to find me. And so I’m good with that. But I have to say that this episode has blessed my heart ’cause we have so many young people on here and it’s so important to me to know that there’s, that I can leave a legacy that others are gonna pick up and carry. Amanda, I love listening to you and what you’re doing.

Will, I love you. Rylan, I’m just learning about you. So y’all, you guys have really made my day. I just want you to know that. And Brian, you’re always at the top my list. Or 

Brian Searl: Jeff? Jeff’s young too.

Sandy Ellingson: Jeff is in my zone and you guys are in another zone. That’s why I didn’t single him out. 

Brian Searl: I’m not.

Sandy Ellingson: But he knows I love him

Brian Searl: Look at my bald head. I’m up there. I got a lot of gray hair. Look at this stuff. I’m really sophisticated. Old.

Sandy Ellingson: I was gonna leave you out ’cause you are at that crest, right?

Jeff Hoffman: I’m old at a new level this year.

Brian Searl: All right. Where can they find more about what you do, Sandy? 

Sandy Ellingson: This.

Brian Searl: I know they’re gonna find you anyway, but where can they find out more about you generally? Yeah. What you do? 

Sandy Ellingson: Me? sandyellingson.com or outdoorhospitality.com. 

Brian Searl: Cool. Thank you so much, guys.

Appreciate you for joining us. Another episode of MC Fireside Chats. For those of you who are not sick and tired of hearing about me yet, or from me we have another podcast coming up in, I don’t know, 45 minutes or so with myself and Scott Bahr We’re gonna talk about food, retail, the future of that, how we can implement some of that stuff using futuristic technology and some other things that are available to you guys today that would help you maybe do that differently than most people have thought about.

So we’re gonna talk about that, dive into some data with Scott and all kinds of different things. If not, then we’ll see you next week for another episode of MC Fireside Chats, thank you to Will, Jeff, Rylan, Amanda and Sandy, and take care guys. We’ll see you later. 

Rylan Blowers: Alright. 

Jeff Hoffman: Thank you, Brian.

Amanda Buswell: Thank you.

Jeff Hoffman: Always a pleasure.