MC Fireside Chats – December 11th, 2024

This is MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and outdoor hospitality experts who share their insights to help your business succeed.

Hosted by Brian Searl, the founder and CEO of Insider Perks, empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the industry. Welcome, everybody, to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. 

Brian Searl

00:00:56.133 – 00:01:44.627

My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks, Modern Campground.

Super excited to be here with you for our second, I think, to last episode of 2024. It’s strange looking back on this, guys. I know you’re special guests here.

You’ve only been here for one episode, but, like, I started this in 2020 ish, I think, during the pandemic. And I mean, almost every week for four years. I don’t know what in the world people still watch for.

Obviously, it’s you guys, Bret and Laura, the special guests, not me. But just interesting to think about that stuff and how far the show has come since then. We just started as a Covid update thing.

Like, that’s literally how the whole thing was born with, like, let’s pay attention to what’s happening with COVID So, yeah, like, I mean, you know, good things come out of it. Right. So, but, Laura, you want to introduce yourself first, and then we’ll have Bret.

Laura Mooney

00:01:44.771 – 00:02:10.335

Sure. Laura Mooney, co owner of the Mohican Street House Resort in mid central Ohio between Cleveland and Columbus. We have nine tree houses.

We’re building a 10th tree house right now. We also have ground cabins and a couple Airbnb like, country homes that are part of our inventory. But open 365 days a year. Yeah.

And just, you know, day by day. Getting through it 

Brian Searl

00:02:10.635 – 00:02:19.699

365 days a year.

I have a Christmas song I was telling you about before the show that we generated with AI about campgrounds, but it’s about a seasonal campground, so I don’t know if it’s going to help you.

Laura Mooney

00:02:19.827 – 00:02:20.307

All right.

Brian Searl

00:02:20.371 – 00:02:24.995

It’s kind of sarcastic and funny, but, yeah, that’s right. Bret.

Bret Bullock

00:02:25.815 – 00:03:23.285

Yep. My name is Bret Bullock. I’m the owner of Pine Harbor Campground in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Yep. So we are seasonal.

We’re open from the beginning of May to the middle of October. We have 65 campsites. You know, 25 of those are seasonal. So, you know, they come and set up at the beginning of the season. They stay here.

You know, they keep their campers here over the winter and come back year after year. That’s great. So then that leaves the rest for, you know, RVs, tents, and so, you know, we’re a private campground where people come on the weekends.

Some people stay for a week or longer. But yeah, it’s a nice area in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. You know, nice and wooded. We’re kind of that smaller type of campground.

We don’t have, like, an arcade or a pool. So we have a very unique clientele that are here for, you know, kind of the traditional version of camping.

Brian Searl

00:03:24.065 – 00:03:38.313

Awesome. I’m excited to explore more about that with you. People may or may not be watching the show now.

I just got a notice from my team, literally just put it in Slack, that Meta is currently experiencing a major outage. Facebook, Instagram threads, messenger, and WhatsApp are all down apparently.

Laura Mooney

00:03:38.489 – 00:03:38.985

Wow.

Brian Searl

00:03:39.065 – 00:04:06.145

So that’s fun. But we’re on YouTube for whoever watches there, and maybe, maybe it’s working. I don’t know. But that’s currently what it is.

So that’s, you know, great timing, Meta. Thanks, Zuckerberg. But, yeah, let’s talk about. I mean, there’s lots of things going on. The holidays are coming up. Let’s.

Let’s talk about, I think first maybe how. How did your seasons go at your respective properties? Because there’s been a lot of change. Right.

We went through, I mean, the last few years, depending on how long you guys are both on your property for Several years.

Laura Mooney

00:04:06.445 – 00:04:07.477

Yeah. Thirteen.

Brian Searl

00:04:07.581 – 00:04:21.815

So, like, so it’s been. Yeah, like, we. We saw the ups of COVID and outdoor hospitality and everybody getting outside.

Then we saw the moderating, and then we saw the maybe downs, and then we. Who knows what we’re going to see now? So how did it go for you guys? Who wants to start? Bret, you want to start?

Bret Bullock

00:04:22.675 – 00:05:43.909

Yeah. So I’ve. I’ve been the owner of this campground, Pine Harbor Campground, for six years now.

So that was kind of starting out was Covid, which was by far the highest for us. You know, luckily we had updated our WI fi system so people were able to work from their camper, and that was huge.

You know, we had multiple people here for multiple weeks, months at a time. And so, yeah, so that was the highest. And, you know, we actually, when I bought the place, it was 45 campsites. Now we’re up to 65. We added that in.

So obviously that was a huge bump in revenue. And we’ve continuously grown since 2019 was my first year owning, so that has been a continuous growth in revenue.

And now we’ve kind of plateaued, just as we’ve kind of reached our maximum potential, which is fine.

But this year in particular, I think, was the Main question at hand, this year was kind of rough for us actually between May and June in northern Wisconsin, there was a lot of rain. Minnesota was actually flooded out. And people know that we get a.

Brian Searl

00:05:43.917 – 00:05:50.541

Lot, obviously North Carolina you hear about and the hurricanes and the weather damage down there, but I didn’t hear about Minnesota.

Bret Bullock

00:05:50.733 – 00:06:03.397

Yeah.

And so we’re about an hour from the border and a lot of our guests from Minnesota and there were bridges out, they couldn’t travel and obviously when it’s rainy. So that had.

Brian Searl

00:06:03.501 – 00:06:21.545

Why we don’t hear more about this stuff? Right.

Like, yeah, I mean you hear about all the national stuff like the big hurricanes and maybe I’m just not reading the right places, but you would think that that would be. There would be some resource for the travel industry as a whole to reference that from a data standpoint.

Maybe we just need to cover more of it on modern campground. But. Sorry, continue.

Bret Bullock

00:06:21.925 – 00:06:46.985

Well, yeah, I mean it is a weather dependent industry, so that happens.

You know, the majority of our reservations are made ahead of time, but you get those cancellations and we have our cancellation policy in place for just to protect ourselves. But. But that’s just sort of the risk you take with, with a business like this.

Brian Searl

00:06:47.145 – 00:07:14.475

Well, yeah, but I mean, I think it’s different is what I’m trying to say, when bridges wash out and stuff like that. Right.

And also like from a two sided standpoint, one is like, I would like to know that and lots of people would like to know that who own campgrounds who maybe aren’t in Minnesota and didn’t read about it or aren’t close. Right, sure.

But two, like, we need to let guests know that yes, the bridges are out, but you could maybe get to it a different way or like you can still come and have fun or we’re fine over here or so I don’t know.

Bret Bullock

00:07:15.095 – 00:08:04.005

Yeah.

And I think that does just kind of come down to, you know, the business owner themselves that, you know, there’s that marketing, outreach, social media, you make your own, you send out your own information and those types of things that, you know, you have to be proactive and just say, yeah, we’re open, you know, there’s still activities to do for our location, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, where we have a lot of tourism attractions where, you know, you can camp, maybe it’s raining at the campground, but there’s still a lot of indoor activities to do in the area. So again, that’s sort of, you know, on the business owner to advertise that to say, yeah, there’s still stuff to do.

Brian Searl

00:08:04.985 – 00:08:32.367

So walk us through the founding of Pine harbor here. Right. So 2019, you come in, you buy a property, you probably got a good deal at it, comparatively speaking. Right.

Versus if somebody had known whatever was coming in 2020. I feel like you’re probably not walking into this thing. Like, I even have a pandemic in my vocabulary. What is that word? And then everything changes.

Right. So you had plans going in. Let’s start there. What were your plans going in before everything happened?

Bret Bullock

00:08:32.511 – 00:09:08.865

So actually bought the campground in 2018. My wife and I had the plan to. We wanted to start an event venue. So we were looking at.

We were living in Madison at the time, and we were looking at, like, buying an old, like, farm and turning that into a wedding venue and living in Madison, working in the event rental industry in Madison. I found there those types of businesses and venues were very. The market was just very flooded. And so we were like, you know what?

Let’s look somewhere else.

Brian Searl

00:09:08.945 – 00:09:12.005

Right. Like, it’s a. Isn’t it more of a corporate. It’s the capital, right?

Bret Bullock

00:09:12.375 – 00:09:55.825

It is, yes. Madison’s the capital of Wisconsin. So, I mean, a lot of opportunity, definitely a lot of business and events going on in that area.

But, you know, so there’s one that’s one half that the market was flooded and saturated, but the other half was thinking, what if this doesn’t work out? If the events. If we don’t get enough events to really keep ourselves afloat financially, what’s our backup?

And so we started looking for just other land in general and came across a lot of campgrounds for sale in Wisconsin. But that was the idea that if events don’t work out, then the campground will kind of be a good base financially.

Brian Searl

00:09:56.205 – 00:10:00.865

So God or some higher power was like, don’t do this. This is a bad idea.

Bret Bullock

00:10:01.725 – 00:10:42.945

Yeah. And that’s kind of. After six years, I’ve learned to just go with my gut. So back six years ago, it was sort of a.

I wasn’t as aware of my gut feeling, but that’s exactly what it was. Was, you know, maybe this isn’t the best way to go. So started searching for campgrounds and.

And I’ll keep going back to our location, Chippewa Falls, Eau Claire.

There’s so much going on, and there’s so much of a population where, you know, the event industry, the event potential to have guests and patrons is sort of there in the. In. In our region.

Brian Searl

00:10:44.885 – 00:10:52.985

Okay, so you buy it. You buy the campground. Right. What was the plan for the campground when you initially bought it before you knew 2020 happened.

Bret Bullock

00:10:54.005 – 00:10:58.053

Well, that’s kind of what it was, was to turn it into an event venue.

Brian Searl

00:10:58.149 – 00:11:05.021

Okay, sorry, I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you were going to buy an event venue and then you changed your mind. I apologize. That was my fault.

Bret Bullock

00:11:05.053 – 00:11:24.207

Yeah. So that was the plan, was that we were going to kill two birds with one stone. We actually bought the place in 2018.

And that year, part of the agreement was said, I’ve never run a campground. So to the previous owner, I said, you need to teach me how to run this campground.

Brian Searl

00:11:24.311 – 00:11:24.951

Okay.

Bret Bullock

00:11:25.103 – 00:11:26.751

And so that was like, yes, we’re.

Brian Searl

00:11:26.783 – 00:11:29.055

Excited to stay after we have all your money.

Bret Bullock

00:11:29.175 – 00:12:05.505

Yeah, well, they were open to it. So, you know, that was, that was a big part of the, the transaction.

And so, yeah, that was kind of the plan is take the first couple of years to, to kind of get our feet under us, get the campground kind of running smoothly, and then focus on events. But that was. Yeah, so that was the plan as far as covet. No, obviously we were never expecting that. And know who was, I mean, had no idea.

Brian Searl

00:12:05.625 – 00:12:10.245

Maybe the people in the lab in China, where apparently it came from. Now that we’ve studied this for years.

Bret Bullock

00:12:11.465 – 00:12:48.757

But either way, it was definitely one of those things where I had no idea what to expect. I did know, you know, northern Wisconsin is a, is a great place for camping, it’s popular, and that’s where people want to go.

So it was definitely kind of a no brainer. Like, this is going to be a good business.

Even if, like, I guess the one thing I would say we may have been expecting is like, well, what if a recession happens? You know, I was in College in 2008 when that whole, you know, recession happened or started.

So that was kind of in the back of my mind of like, well, what if, what if we have a down year?

Brian Searl

00:12:48.861 – 00:12:53.045

Well, for sure, everything, I mean, economics, right, Goes up. What goes up must come down, et cetera.

Bret Bullock

00:12:53.085 – 00:13:14.239

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

And so from that standpoint, it was definitely the idea that, well, tourism doesn’t usually take that big of a hit in a recession or in its sort of economic downturn. So that was the idea that it would still probably be pretty good even in a, in a down year.

Brian Searl

00:13:14.407 – 00:13:29.489

Okay, all right, so you buy this. You’re. You got your plans all set. What changes in March of 2020, besides, like, you’re not all gung ho on events, right?

That’s the obvious one, right?

Bret Bullock

00:13:29.537 – 00:13:40.965

Yeah, exactly. So there wasn’t a whole lot that changed other Than we had to close our store. You know, we have a small store with, you know.

Brian Searl

00:13:42.985 – 00:13:56.945

Sorry, I guess I really mean.

And I didn’t mean to cut you off, but I guess I really mean, like, what changed with your plans of, like, you have these plans to build this event center or, you know, create all this stuff. So, like, what business operationally forward thinking changed, I guess, is what I was trying to say.

Bret Bullock

00:13:57.325 – 00:14:55.963

Yeah, so, yes, events. We just sort of said, you know, so that was our second year running the campground. So the events weren’t necessarily the first year.

We didn’t do any events. We were just again, trying to get our feet under us running the campground just as a. As a core business.

And so the second year, I had like one or two events sort of planned out, but not very well established. So in March of 2020, just said, all right, scrap the events.

We’re going to have to focus on how to be, you know, compliant with the CDC and all those types of regulations. But business plan did not really change. We were very confident that, you know, camping was a good business model for being able to social distance.

You know, we’re part of the Wisconsin association of Campground Owners.

Laura Mooney

00:14:56.059 – 00:14:56.499

Yep.

Brian Searl

00:14:56.587 – 00:14:58.175

No, Laurie, she’s great lady.

Bret Bullock

00:14:59.075 – 00:15:30.305

And so they were very, you know, they were communicating very well. Like, we won’t have to close our doors.

You know, obviously, restaurants and hotels, all those types of businesses needed to close down because of COVID So we were very in the loop of understanding that we’re going to be fine, we’re not going to have to close down anything like that. So there really wasn’t a whole lot of changing the business model.

Brian Searl

00:15:31.045 – 00:15:52.915

Okay.

So fast forward, we got, you know, you’re building up your business over the years, you went through the COVID boom, all that kind of stuff you said at some point, like, you plateaued, like, what does that mean to you? Because it interests me from a business perspective. I’m a marketing guy too. Right. But I think, like, there’s plateaued as a number of sites.

There’s plateaued as in, I think I can’t make more money or charge more. Like, what is it for you?

Bret Bullock

00:15:53.895 – 00:16:25.283

Yeah, it was really more just the fact that we had. Yeah, we have been growing consistently. We’ve been adding all these new features. You know, we were raising prices more so just to stay competitive.

But yes, it was definitely one of those things that we need to look at how we can make more money. What can we be doing differently? Our advertising. We really weren’t doing any advertising at all.

Brian Searl

00:16:25.419 – 00:16:27.483

No, you didn’t have to during COVID especially.

Bret Bullock

00:16:27.579 – 00:17:09.321

Exactly.

So that was the thing is we were doing so well and continuously growing that it wasn’t a high priority to try and find extra forms of revenue, streams of revenue. So that’s kind of where just my mindset as a business owner was that I didn’t see the necessity for anything like that. And then.

So, yeah, I mean, now that we’re at that point, it’s definitely changing my mindset of. All right, let’s. Let’s look at. See what are. Where are our opportunities.

Brian Searl

00:17:09.513 – 00:17:28.125

So what do you. Now that you’ve gone through the summer of 2024. Right. And we’ll talk about 2025 later after we hear Laura’s story.

But now that you’ve been through 2024 and known what this looks like and what maybe might possibly happen in 25, what. What are your plans for revenue there? Like, how do you adjust?

Bret Bullock

00:17:29.344 – 00:17:41.576

Well, I would say advertising is the big thing because there’s a lot of people, locals in Chippewa Falls that everyone says, oh, I never even knew this.

Brian Searl

00:17:41.600 – 00:18:07.197

Place was here for sure. Yeah, they say the same thing about KOAs. The most famous one I remember was a KOA in Twin Falls, Idaho, I was at in 2012.

I think it was owned by Oscar Carranza. I think he just sold the park, actually.

But like, he told me, like, I’ve been here, like, the park has been here for 50 years and 75% of the people in town have no idea I’m here. And that’s a bright yellow, like, KOA branded sign right off the interstate, Right?

Bret Bullock

00:18:07.341 – 00:19:42.125

Yep. So, yeah, so that’s what I would say is just advertising. You know, we get so much in the mail about, hey, support this or be a sponsor for this.

And every year I say no. I mean, because we are a smaller campground, I always.

And because we’re seasonal, I’m always kind of cautious of money towards certain things, you know, as you should be. Yeah. It’s always a question of, are we going to make it through the winter? You know, we. I don’t want to use. I don’t want to say sell out.

When I talk about having an arcade and having a pool, all those sorts of things guaranteed, that would highly increase our revenue.

But because I do strongly believe in having a campground for kind of the traditional camping of, you know, get the kids outside, get them learning about the environment and things like that, our revenue is limited. So, you know, a lot of business owners would tell me, you gotta just make as much money as possible. Well, that’s not. That’s not why I got into this.

And what. It’s not what I believe in. So as far as, you know, advertising, that’s something where I might.

I need to just change my mindset to say, you know what, we can allocate certain funds towards advertising in order to boost our revenue.

Brian Searl

00:19:43.185 – 00:20:33.997

Well, yeah. I mean, you do it the smart way. Right? Like, and there’s lots of people out there who are smart, but yeah, I mean, you go the same mindset.

I think it’s the same mindset for any business owner, regardless of whether you’re a small campground, a big campground, a company like mine, a news organization, whatever you do. Right. It’s the same mindset of, you should always be careful where you spend your money.

You should always demand explanations and advice and reasoning and get second opinions and all that stuff. Right. Like, obviously, you need to be much more careful in your situation when any campground that’s seasonal. Right.

But then let alone a smaller campground. So, yeah, I mean, I think it’s. It’s something that a lot of campground owners who are watching the show, who are.

That we’ve talked to, have probably thought about the same way you have. Like, what do I do? This is new, right? For a lot of people, they didn’t. I mean, even if you owned your park in 2008, it’s still new.

Bret Bullock

00:20:34.141 – 00:20:34.733

Right.

Brian Searl

00:20:34.869 – 00:20:46.169

This is not the same thing as 2008. Not even close. And so I think that’s a conversation maybe we have after we hear Laura’s story. Laura’s been patiently sitting there waiting.

Laura Mooney

00:20:46.337 – 00:21:25.373

No, I. It’s so refreshing to hear from other entrepreneurs.

Because, honestly, I feel isolated in my business because there’s so few people that can relate to what I experience and the business goes through, you know, week in and week out, the amount of decisions that you have to make and just relying on your team and, you know, maybe a few outside people, you know, questioning, like, what are other people doing? You know, it’s just so nice to even hear from one person who has been on this journey similar to us. Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:21:25.389 – 00:21:29.185

If you’re an entrepreneur and you don’t feel isolated, you’re doing it wrong.

Laura Mooney

00:21:29.685 – 00:21:45.523

Yeah. I mean, because you are, you know, you’re in your head all day, every day about it’s. You live it, breathe it, drink it, every single day. It’s.

It’s, you know, it’s just why you’re doing what you’re. You’re doing. It. It. It is you. Um, so difference.

Brian Searl

00:21:45.579 – 00:21:58.979

Right. That’s kind of the. Like, I Don’t know. There’s a difference to me between a business owner and an entrepreneur. Right.

And again, like, both are amazing. Not saying one is better than the other. I just think they’re different. But that isolation, like, I’ve been doing that for 15 years.

Laura Mooney

00:21:59.147 – 00:22:00.019

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Searl

00:22:00.067 – 00:22:03.289

Like, I gave up, like, all my friends, except for, like, two. Right.

Laura Mooney

00:22:03.387 – 00:22:15.585

Like, yeah, yeah. I, you know, people are like, where are you? And I’m like, I’m at the business. I’m working. I’m caring for this and nurturing this.

And, you know, I just. I can’t help not because I care so much.

Brian Searl

00:22:16.765 – 00:22:22.705

So walk us back. Where does that start for you? Where’s that? You’ve always had that grind, or did you discover it or.

Laura Mooney

00:22:23.285 – 00:23:35.921

Yeah, always had the grind.

My husband and I, you know, met in high school, married, two kids by 20, both in college, you know, trying to make ends meet, and, you know, got through school, worked in corporate America, and my husband had started a business. He’s very entrepreneurial. He’s very outside the box kind of thinker, very creative.

But we’re both in financial services and just that journey is like, from black and white, from where we started to, like, you know, 40 years down the road. But, yeah, we, you know, we’re always juggling different projects.

Buying a rental house that was just, you know, the rated the worst house in the city. You know, going at night with the kids in carriers and painting the walls and just, you know, it’s been. That’s been our life. So start a business.

It’s just more of the same of who we are and what we’ve been doing. But we bought a property out in rural Ohio so our kids could ride dirt bikes because our neighbors were losing it.

You know, our boys riding their dirt bikes up and down the driveway.

Brian Searl

00:23:35.993 – 00:23:40.353

So I don’t want to interrupt you, but isn’t all of Ohio rural? I feel like I can say that because I was born.

Laura Mooney

00:23:40.489 – 00:23:49.313

If you’re not from Ohio, it’s farm country. But if you live in Ohio, it’s all big cities. Our perspective is completely distorted. But.

Brian Searl

00:23:49.369 – 00:23:50.521

Okay, sorry, please continue.

Laura Mooney

00:23:50.633 – 00:24:12.683

Yeah, no, no. People in Cleveland did not like that.

So we started coming out to the country, had the property, spent, you know, massive amounts of hours with our kids out at this property, and then they went away to college and nobody cared about the property anymore. They’re kind of moved on. So we. We got the idea to build some cabins, really.

Brian Searl

00:24:12.819 – 00:24:13.535

Okay.

Laura Mooney

00:24:14.195 – 00:24:19.709

Down the street. And this is a vacation area. Sounds like similar to where Bread is a state park.

Brian Searl

00:24:19.867 – 00:24:21.033

Yeah, Mohican. Yep.

Laura Mooney

00:24:21.129 – 00:26:15.701

Right. You know, it’s very popular for vacation. For vacationers and campers and canoers and things like that.

So we built some cabins playing off a zip line that had opened at the end of our road.

They were kind of dipping into the industry, so we kind of played off that and built some cabins and then got involved with the treehouse industry through Pete Nelson, who. Somebody who paired us with him. And then we, you know, looked at revenues, like, is this sustainable, you know, into the future?

Can we make this a viable business? Built a wedding venue on property in the midst of all of this. So, you know, here we are. That was 2010.

Started weddings in 2012, and continued to build tree houses and grow the business. But to address your question specifically about this year, so challenging with a changing environment.

You know, I feel like in the early years, with growth and the growth of the treehouse industry, we were like new kids on the block. That industry had eyes on it like crazy. So we benefited from that. And then you have Covid, which we benefited from. From. And then things tempered.

The, you know, in the economy cooled off.

So I guess this year, for the first time, working harder for every reservation and having to play with pricing, running promotions, and just babysitting that process week in and week out, watching our reservations and our occupancy percentages and looking, you know, four or five, six months out and just strategizing on how you navigate this and maintain revenue this year is. That’s what this year looked like.

Brian Searl

00:26:15.893 – 00:26:29.117

I mean, let’s have. Like, I want to.

I want to talk more about your property and the unique things about it, and then I want to get into the, like, not happy part of the show. We want to do that. But, like, I feel like there’s a lot of people. Right. Who are in the same situation that both of you are.

Laura Mooney

00:26:29.181 – 00:26:29.733

Yes.

Brian Searl

00:26:29.869 – 00:26:43.801

They’re sitting here like, you know, I mean, if you go back and I’ve said this, you know, I want to get to you before I, like, talk too much about this, but, like, there’s never been an issue like this that has existed since 2011. Yeah, right.

Laura Mooney

00:26:43.913 – 00:26:44.233

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:26:44.289 – 00:27:14.951

Like, it’s been cheap money. It’s been an up economy.

It hasn’t been as skyrocketed as Covid, but, like, so I think probably, and I’m just making up a random percentage off the top of my head, but I would guess 80% of people didn’t own a park in 2011 that own a park now. Probably. Like, it’s pretty high. It must be Pretty high. And whether that’s just inherited, like, from your.

You took it over from your parents and you weren’t running it back then or whatever, I’m lumping all those people into it, too. But this is new. I don’t think anybody knows what’s due. Well, some people do, but.

Laura Mooney

00:27:15.063 – 00:27:21.519

So you’re saying the growth in the number of campgrounds and RV parks has grown. That’s what you’re saying?

Brian Searl

00:27:21.607 – 00:27:55.495

I’m saying, like, the ownership has changed. Lots of the campgrounds were here pre 2011. Right.

What I’m saying is the owners who owned them or operated them back then, I think probably 70 to 80% of those people were not running a campground pre 2011. So they don’t have any idea of what to even do during any recession, let alone what we’re about to. I think we’re about to go to.

But we’ll talk about that in a second. Okay, let’s talk about your. Let’s talk about your park. So you got this thing going. Campgrounds. How did you decide to add cabins?

Like, you were connected with a guy, but, like, why?

Laura Mooney

00:27:56.355 – 00:30:21.329

Well, the property was raw. Like, we were. It was wooded. There was no infrastructure, nothing. We were coming down with our type of place. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we had.

There was no campgrounds. You know, it was just raw land. We built a cabin for our family, but we weren’t coming. You know, we weren’t staying there.

Didn’t get much usage, but we were just looking for a business opportunity because we were kind of like, you know, where do we. What do we want to do with the next 20 years of our life? We’re, like, in our 40s, and my husband had sold his business, and we’re like, what next?

So we just, you know, he’s like, why don’t we give this a go?

Why don’t we, you know, why don’t we capitalize on owning this property and see if we can develop it into something that’s not corporate, you know, just kind of move away from that. So literally, just. He’s like, why don’t we contract with some Amish?

Because we’re in the middle of Amish country, hired a crew and built three cabins, and we’re just like, let’s see how this goes.

And I think we had always had rental properties since we were really young and managing, you know, renters and how to book things and just kind of navigating that. That process. So it just kind of unfolded, folded. We didn’t really know what the future was told.

We Were kind of like, getting our feet wet, and it was catching on, and we were getting a lot of reservations, and we were working on marketing, and my husband is, like, a genius in that area. He was connecting with people in media, and we were on television shows, and it just kept going. We ended up. We were in the Wall street journal.

Matthew McConaughey stayed with us. You know, it just. He. He was very astute at, you know, fueling that process. And as a part of that, it just was, like, very serendipitous.

We connected with the guy at the zipline who had been to Pete Nelson’s tree house symposium or. No, his. One of his workshops, and said, hey, Moonies, I think you guys have a great property for a tree house.

And treehouse wasn’t really in the vocabulary of the general public at that point. We’re like, treehouse? What do you mean? And so we invited Pete to the property and walked it, and we said, let’s give this a try. Let’s build one.

We couldn’t rent it because people didn’t understand the concept.

Brian Searl

00:30:21.377 – 00:30:24.345

For people who don’t know who Pete Nelson is, briefly.

Laura Mooney

00:30:24.465 – 00:31:09.917

Yeah, he is. I don’t want. He’s one of the very early people in the treehouse industry.

He has been building tree houses for decades, and it was kind of like, in the background. Ended up hosting Treehouse Masters television show on Discovery Channel, which catapulted him into, you know, international fame.

We were contracting with him before the show, and then the show came on, and we ended up being on one of the episodes, which was another ironic, you know, you know, fateful timing thing that we. You know, it was great. You know, they still. I had my cousin called the other day. She’s like, oh, your episode was on Treehouse Masters as a rerun.

And then you see the blip in your website traffic. You know what I’m saying?

Brian Searl

00:31:09.981 – 00:31:40.119

Yeah. It’s fascinating, right? I don’t remember if it was Treehouse Masters or it was another show. I feel like it must have been there.

There used to be a guy who. And maybe it wasn’t.

There was a guy who explored, like, old buildings maybe, or abandoned stuff, but he went to a tree house in Crossville, Tennessee, one time. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the city. Yeah, there’s like. There’s this massive structure that somebody built.

Like, I mean, it’s like a city in the trees that’s been closed down and condemned and fallen apart forever in Crossville, Tennessee. But I remember, like, watching that it was like. It’s basically a tree house, right?

Laura Mooney

00:31:40.207 – 00:31:40.567

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:31:40.631 – 00:31:57.869

I remember going there and trying to get in and like it was. I figured out, I found out it was closed down. Like it was. This is 2012, right. Like they had condemned it and nobody was allowed up there.

I was trying to convince my girlfriend at the time to let us sneak onto the property. She’s like, that’s probably a bad idea. Oh, it’s a tree house. Look how cool it is.

Laura Mooney

00:31:57.957 – 00:31:58.181

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:31:58.213 – 00:32:03.621

So needless to say, I never saw it, but that’s what I think about when I like, that’s the first thing that pops in my head when I hear treehouse.

Laura Mooney

00:32:03.733 – 00:32:08.405

Yeah, well, you know, let’s. We’ll reframe it. I mean, our treehouse, now we need to.

Brian Searl

00:32:08.445 – 00:32:09.453

Right. Yeah.

Laura Mooney

00:32:09.629 – 00:32:31.967

You know, our goal was always to make them as nice as possible. We wanted, not the camping clientele. We wanted somebody who was going to spend, you know, mucho dollars for a, for a different type of experience.

So, you know, as we built each one, each one is unique, style differently, high end finishes, you know, that kind of thing. Granite, counterweight.

Brian Searl

00:32:32.071 – 00:32:43.487

You don’t want the camping audience, that’s for sure. I mean, it’s really, it’s really interesting. Like you, I’ve never thought of this until you just said that.

But like the camping audience has already spent their money on the rv, right?

Laura Mooney

00:32:43.591 – 00:32:48.155

They’re not, they’re not, they do not open their pocketbooks, experiences like this.

Brian Searl

00:32:48.235 – 00:32:52.387

And it’s not a slight on them. Right. They just, everybody spends their money different choice.

Laura Mooney

00:32:52.491 – 00:35:41.845

Right. It’s what, you know, what you’re into and, you know, that’s fine. I mean, I do like RV camping. You know, I. That’s appealing to me.

But if I had already spent, you know, a lot of money and was committed to that, you want to get your investment, you know, return on your investment. You want to be out there RVing. But so, yeah, so we continued to build tree houses. One a year pretty much.

And in the middle of that, like I said, built the venue and are hosting weddings and, you know, that’s 50% of our business.

So we were, you know, juggling both of these aspects of the business, learning as we went, you know, growing, trying to take advantage of the momentum of the treehouse industry and the growth and the interest. So, you know, we’ve been really fortunate in so many ways.

But again, I just feel like, you know, if you’re paying attention and you kind of are very intentional on, you know, what your long term goals are, you know, like with the marketing. Bret was talking about marketing, like making decisions on. It’s very hard to spend money on marketing when you’re not making a lot of money.

And my husband always says, like your sale, your sales. People like to say you had salespeople that you should be, you should be focusing the most on them because without them, you are dead in the water.

It’s, you know, like spending money on marketing and advertising.

So, you know, even when we didn’t have money, that was the money that we decided we were going to spend and hold off on other things because if the phone wasn’t ringing, if people weren’t on our website booking, we could never do what we wanted to do in the future. We just had to feed into that. So, yeah, I can’t.

It is quite a quandary sometimes when you’re trying to grow and you want to do things, but you got to spend big bucks on marketing. And we also hire. We have a hospitality consultant that’s been with us maybe five years who does all our SEO and strategizing.

And very much like I, I talk with him weekly about like, where we are in retargeting and you know, demographics and you know, geography, like where we, where we, you know, where our markets, what’s our goals and. But yeah, it is so important.

I’m a little worried because, you know, when I Google us now, instead of like Google listing everybody, I get like an AI response and I’m like, so my conversation with him is going to be, how do we get into that? Because we weren’t listed number one or two. And I’m like, how did those people end up in that AI search?

Brian Searl

00:35:42.425 – 00:35:43.353

I know.

Laura Mooney

00:35:43.529 – 00:35:47.801

Yeah. Well, yeah, again, he’ll know.

Brian Searl

00:35:47.833 – 00:35:48.841

He’ll have a good answer, I’m sure.

Laura Mooney

00:35:48.873 – 00:35:55.995

Yeah, he will. So I just want to stay ahead of the curve and you know, because you’re right. Environment.

Brian Searl

00:35:56.375 – 00:36:17.769

So let’s, I mean, we can get into some of this in a second. Right. Like, I’m interested in. Okay, you’re. I think you’re probably. And again, I’m just going to completely make up a random percentage number here.

Right.

But I think you’re probably 60 to 70% or ahead of 60 to 70% of other owners in that you even have someone who’s regularly talking to you about SEO and marketing.

Bret Bullock

00:36:17.887 – 00:36:18.461

That’s huge.

Brian Searl

00:36:18.533 – 00:36:19.949

Hired. Right.

Laura Mooney

00:36:20.077 – 00:36:20.405

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:36:20.445 – 00:36:21.665

Is that fair, Bret?

Bret Bullock

00:36:22.285 – 00:36:35.549

Absolutely. I mean, especially nowadays, everybody is.

Would much rather book online, you know, would rather do all their research online as opposed to calling on the phone or doing word of mouth.

Laura Mooney

00:36:35.717 – 00:37:03.625

Yeah, we have office staff, but 90% of their job does not involve being on the phone. It’s managing reservations, following up. We have add ons, you know, romance packages, all sorts of things.

We sell merchandise, you know, with a QR code in our properties through our online website for our shop and just, you know, that kind of stuff. But everything’s coming through our website.

Brian Searl

00:37:04.405 – 00:37:19.251

Well, so let’s talk about OPS for a second because like last week on the show we talked a little bit about the marketing and where I think that was going to go and we can certainly touch on that and give some advice. Right, but, but let’s talk about ops because you bring up an interesting point of ancillary revenue. I think here is what you’re talking about, right?

Laura Mooney

00:37:19.283 – 00:37:27.347

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Especially important now with maybe line in reservations or price points where you’re having to discount to state. Keep it your volume.

Brian Searl

00:37:27.411 – 00:37:37.523

So I’m a campground owner.

Whether I’m Breton, own a small park that’s rural and I don’t have a swimming pool or, you know, I’m a campground owner that has a big resort, whatever I am. Where do I start? From Laura’s perspective, if I want to.

Laura Mooney

00:37:37.539 – 00:39:14.365

Increase ancillary revenue, I look at trends in the industry. I look what the people who are spending money, what are they looking for?

Things like we just connected with a private chef company called Cooking Genie. So there’s a link on our website.

So when somebody books a reservation, if they want a special occasion or if they have a rehearsal dinner, they click that link and we have a relationship with them. So just we basically do nothing. We’re a referral.

But like I said, we also have merchandise that we started our merchandise store about three years ago. So we placed a QR code. We also have like mugs in the properties that they can actually take with them.

We have romance packages that include, you know, champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, we make on site rose petals, those kind of things. Because we have a lot of anniversaries and engagements at our tree houses and all sorts of things. You know, we’re looking at a snack bar next.

That’s next on our agenda. So, you know, soda water, you know, bottled water, some crunchy snacks, some, you know, sweet snacks, that kind of thing. Just grab and go.

You know, we’ll run their credit card for whatever’s missing, those kind of little things. Oh, pet fees was another thing that was huge.

Our consultants suggested we do that because of the pet industry had grown, especially during COVID Everybody got a pet, everybody wants to bring Their pet. So we created pet friendly properties, and now pet fees are a huge part of our revenue.

Brian Searl

00:39:14.485 – 00:39:49.281

Well, I think this is interesting. Like, if you look at, like, I think the first thing is to understand the type of audience that you have. Who’s coming to your property?

Are they luxury or are they, you know, families? Are they middle class? Do they have kids? Do they not have kids? Because there’s all kinds of ways you can slice and dice this.

I mean, there are actually probably somewhere that it’s not a big number, but there are probably people who are tired of being alone and quiet and maybe go camping to have noise. And so I feel like the yogi parks could sell, like, a noisy kid package instead of a romantic.

Like, we’ll just put the noisy kids near your sarcasm a little bit, right?

Laura Mooney

00:39:49.393 – 00:39:50.177

No, no.

Brian Searl

00:39:50.281 – 00:40:04.155

Like, but, but the point is, is that whatever you’re. If you think that you’re not romantic and thus you cannot offer a package, that’s the wrong mindset.

You may not be able to offer the romantic package, but there’s something, if you put your mind to it, that you can figure out.

Laura Mooney

00:40:04.495 – 00:41:00.015

Yeah, there’s, there’s. It’s just again, being creative and thinking about opportunities. And the, the business owner, the entrepreneur knows his business best. He. When.

If somebody poses a question to them, say, let’s do treehouse tours, because so many people, they don’t want. They want to come in and see one, how would that interrupt your regular reservations? Is that viable? Does that make sense from a practical standpoint?

You know, you just keep chipping away and going through that list of, like, possible opportunities, and every, you know, every once in a while you get to one that’s going to work and make sense and is worth your while, revenue wise, you know, So I guess it’s. It’s really just paying attention.

Sometimes I get great ideas because I see it at somebody else’s business, or I’ll travel and I’ll go somewhere and I’ll be like, oh, my gosh, like, look what they’re doing. We can do that.

Brian Searl

00:41:00.555 – 00:41:11.815

I think this is worth exploring. Bret and Laura, if you want to do this with me, I’m gonna.

I’m gonna try to do this a little bit more in 2025, because this is where, like, I geek out is with. Have you. Have you guys ever played with AI ChatGPT?

Laura Mooney

00:41:12.715 – 00:41:16.331

I just downloaded Perplexity on my phone yesterday.

Brian Searl

00:41:16.403 – 00:41:20.355

Perplexity is a good one. The AI search engine. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bret Bullock

00:41:20.395 – 00:41:21.387

I have not.

Brian Searl

00:41:21.571 – 00:41:56.955

Okay, so what I want to do here, and this Will blow your mind too, Bret. Like, I think I want to offer a solution to people who are watching the show, right, for what we’re talking about, because everybody’s different.

And, like, you’re going to get off the show. You’re going to hear us talking about, like, Laura and her romantic packages or luxury, you know, more higher end, glamping property.

You’re going to hear whatever, you know, Bret’s ideas are, you know, but it’s not going to be your campground. And so first you have to figure out what that is. So let’s. Let’s randomly together choose a campground. So let’s first, Bret, pick a state.

Can’t be one you’re in.

Bret Bullock

00:41:57.535 – 00:42:00.671

Sure, let’s say Missouri.

Brian Searl

00:42:00.823 – 00:42:34.891

All right, so we’re gonna go down to Missouri, and then we’ll just zoom in here and we’ll just type campground. And then I don’t know, we gotta get one that’s like high enough rated here. We’ll just do this.

Whatever Longview campground is, hopefully this is a good one. All right, Just to prove that you can do this with that. Makeyourday here.com is their website. Really well. Oh, Long Lake Park.

All right, we need a private campground. That’s the issue. All right, can you guys still see my screen or did I lose.

Laura Mooney

00:42:35.003 – 00:42:35.963

Yeah, I lost you.

Bret Bullock

00:42:36.059 – 00:42:36.403

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:42:36.459 – 00:43:33.205

All right, hold on one second. I’ll get. I’ll get you back in a second. I was trying to switch tabs, so I keep choosing, like, campgrounds on my screen without websites.

So there’s a pro tip number one, you definitely be online and have a website. All these are Minnesota or Missouri state parks. Let’s try RV resort instead of campground.

I promise I do know how to use Google maps for those of us who are watching. See, I’m looking for one with a lot of reviews. Like 80 reviews. Lakeview. All right, cozy corners RV park. Please have a website.

Okay, so we’re gonna go here. I’m gonna share my screen again, and then we will just do this RV park near Truman Lake. Okay, so this is our use case here. You guys can see that.

Cozy corner RV park.

Laura Mooney

00:43:33.325 – 00:43:35.337

Nope, I’m not seeing it.

Brian Searl

00:43:35.441 – 00:44:07.083

Oh, I gotta turn that on. Hold on. I keep forgetting this. So there we go. Cozy corner RV Park.

So this is where are we located at here doesn’t even have their address on here, which is another issue. So contact us. Clinton, Missouri. All right, so like, whatever campground you are, this is the idea. So take the website URL of it.

I gotta switch screens here and go back to ChatGPT. And then we’ll stay there for you guys and we’ll show you about this. Hold on one second.

All right, can you guys see ChatGPT now, or do I need to flip that on? I need to flip that on.

Bret Bullock

00:44:07.179 – 00:44:07.611

There we go.

Laura Mooney

00:44:07.643 – 00:44:08.147

There we go.

Brian Searl

00:44:08.211 – 00:45:18.347

All right. One day I’m gonna figure out how to run technology. It’s gonna be wonderful. So you come in here, right?

ChatGPT, for those of you who don’t know AI, right. You can sign up for a free [email protected] and it’s literally just typing. You just have to have a conversation like you would with a human.

You type or talk, right? Yep. But the input is equal to the output.

And so you can come in here and say, I own the following campground and want to understand the four types of buyer Personas that might stay with me. Be brief and descriptive.

And then you just paste your website URL in there, and it’s going to browse your website, and it’s going to come back, and it’s going to say, outdoor enthusiasts, family vacationers, retirees, and snowbirds and weekend warriors. All right, now, you can get better with the prompt that you put in here.

But generally speaking, for the speed of what we’re trying to do as an exercise. Right. You could. You can change this up or whatever. The key is browse your website, look for these types of people, right?

Laura Mooney

00:45:18.451 – 00:45:19.051

Yep.

Brian Searl

00:45:19.163 – 00:46:11.321

And then you say, okay, expand this. Expand these into. For detailed and comprehensive buyer Personas. Okay. And then it will look at what it did before, and it will.

Instead of searching the Internet this time, it will build you the demographics and the goals and the pain points and the behaviors of an example subset of outdoor enthusiasts, of family vacationers, and everything that it needs to know. Now, as it goes through here, this is kind of learning. Like, as it types, it’s learning what.

What it’s typing about, and so it can reference everything above it. But let’s just let this finish for a second.

So we’ve got retirees and snowbirds, and this is good information that you would have spent hours researching before, right?

Laura Mooney

00:46:11.473 – 00:46:11.737

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:46:11.761 – 00:48:47.555

So you’ve got your four things, and then you say, all right, great. I am trying to think of 20 ways to increase ancillary. Can I spell this? Oh, I did Revenue at my campground, comma.

I want to focus on number four primarily and use unique methods, not ones everyone else is using. And then it’s going to give you 20 ways based on just the buyer Persona number four, the weekend warrior.

So we got themed Weekend packages, adventure gear rentals, curated food and drink experiences, experience bundles, digital detox experiences, customizable itineraries. Maybe we should have just done 10. We could have probably driven my point home. But anyway, these might be good for somebody.

Exclusive fire pit experiences, social media photo spots, private movie screenings, luxury camping upgrades, local partner collaborations, on site, mini markets. Good idea.

Pet experiences, personal adventure guides, pop up wellness services, seasonal decor, nighttime adventures, interactive games, adventure subscriptions. That’s interesting. And personalized merchandise. And so this is an idea generator for you. This is taking months.

You don’t have this time if you’re a campground owner or a business owner. Right? It’s true, you don’t have this time and that’s why it never gets done. But now you do.

So let’s plan out number 19 and it will give you all the details, it will tell you everything you need to do. Like, again, this is not like a copy paste thing. Right. But even this, I mean, I’m not saying those pricings, prices make sense, but maybe they do.

And so if you’re looking for ideas and ways to increase ancillary revenue, this thing is free for you. Yes, I’m on a paid version right now, but that paid well. I just increased it to it.

But anyway, it costs $20 a month for access to this GPT4.0, which is their latest regular model right now. And so you look at like again, assuming 100 subscribers, 50 Bronze subscribers. Is. Does that math make sense? Yeah, 2400. $2450.

Like, I mean, again, that’s not a lot of money in this specific instance.

Laura Mooney

00:48:48.615 – 00:48:56.395

And if you implement one per year, it pays for your subscription, you know, I mean, like, you can start building off that.

Bret Bullock

00:48:56.695 – 00:49:09.475

Yeah, yeah, exactly one. One per year where you’re kind of figuring it out, doing trial and error.

And then once you have that one, well, that feature, then you go to the next one.

Brian Searl

00:49:10.255 – 00:49:41.185

Yeah. And so I think we spend like. And this is part of my, like my struggle, right, is I’m a big AI geek, like marketing person.

And like, we have the show and I want to talk about all the things with campground owners, but I know that we can do a better job of communicating some of these tools and resources available to people because, like, you just don’t have time. And these things are free, but you need to see how to operate it. You need to see how to work this thing and how easy it is. Right.

Is anybody scared about how difficult? What I just did was.

Laura Mooney

00:49:41.645 – 00:50:18.925

I’m fortunate that I have a son who is part of our business. He’s 28 and he used ChatGPT and to help come up with the name of our last tree house. So, you know, just whittled way.

I mean it literally we had the name within, you know, by the end of the day. Just looking at our. Just once we narrowed it down to like three, then we picked one.

It’s just the applications, I mean, for something like that even, it was fairly simple, but it really brought in a lot of great options that we never would have thought of.

Brian Searl

00:50:19.425 – 00:50:29.467

If you don’t know how to do it, how else can I use my campground?

Laura Mooney

00:50:29.611 – 00:50:30.835

Right, right.

Brian Searl

00:50:30.915 – 00:50:33.723

Like, and it will answer the question for you.

Laura Mooney

00:50:33.899 – 00:50:34.579

Yeah.

Brian Searl

00:50:34.707 – 00:51:08.975

So, you know, here’s your SEO optimization again. Right.

Like this chatgpt is only going to know what’s been done so far, but guest experience enhancement, revenue generation, staff training and management, operational efficiency. Right. Policies, rules, cancellation policies, local partnerships.

Like, I mean, this is the amount of sheer time that this thing will save you as a campground owner. I mean, it’s just, and I know I’m a geek, but it’s shocking to me. Like, once you see this, you should be all over this.

Laura Mooney

00:51:09.095 – 00:51:35.921

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like the whole AI just chat GPT, any of these platforms, I feel like in the past, like I’m going to say like six months, I’ve been shot out of a cannon. Like I heard AI like last winter. And something has recently happened where it’s literally everywhere I look now because the.

Brian Searl

00:51:35.953 – 00:51:46.721

Companies have been building with it in the background, the early adopters have, and now the enterprises are ready, which is part of what’s going to happen in 2025. We talked about that last week. Like you’re going to start to see layoffs.

Laura Mooney

00:51:46.913 – 00:52:10.971

Every platform that we work with, ring central res, cloud beds, I have in the past couple months gotten communication from them talking about AI on their platform and how it’s, you know, what it can do. Let’s talk about it, let’s get you informed. Where again, you know, that wasn’t happening even six months ago.

It’s like everybody, it’s just like this.

Brian Searl

00:52:11.043 – 00:52:15.083

Massive push forward because they were all building it.

Bret Bullock

00:52:15.259 – 00:52:51.205

I think the, the reason it took so long was there was definitely a stigma against it when it first came out. Was starting to kind of become more accessible. And now, even just now, I never even thought to use ChatGPT just for research. Yeah, they don’t. Yeah.

When you present it in that way, then it makes so much more sense. Like, yes, research would have taken you weeks, maybe months to get all of Those answers within minutes, seconds.

Laura Mooney

00:52:52.065 – 00:53:35.247

I think it’s important to retrain my brain and my habits and like my go to like redirect them. So that do, going through that exercise is part of what I normally do.

Because you know, you, your daily routines and things like that and how you approach problem solving, you have a routine, you have a method that you’ve developed as a human.

I feel like, especially as you get older, just saying, you know what, I got to start using that, I got to start integrating that on a daily basis into what I do every day. Because of the benefits. You know, just your example is just a massive example of, well, it’s the.

Brian Searl

00:53:35.271 – 00:53:59.503

Benefits to you, but it’s also like you talked about with the AI overviews in search. This is going to change the way people discover your property too.

And so you’ve got to be cognizant and aware of what happens if I’m just like you said, not number one or number two in that AI overview because eventually Google’s already said all the blue links are going away. They originally said by the end of this year. I think they’ve missed their timeline. Well, technically they haven’t, but they have.

Laura Mooney

00:53:59.639 – 00:54:07.085

It does still come up. And that’s where all of my focus, our business focus has been. How do we get up there? How are we on the first page?

Brian Searl

00:54:07.125 – 00:54:18.485

You know, that’s what we focus has been on. Nobody knows how to function in this world unless you’re thinking about it right now. And you, it’s going to, it’s here.

It’s not even going to move fast. It’s here.

Laura Mooney

00:54:18.605 – 00:54:31.015

Brian. So what is the answer? So like what should our business be doing right now so that we are a part of the AI answer on focusing on SEO?

Brian Searl

00:54:31.515 – 00:54:52.729

Like we could talk about like hours and hours and hours of this stuff, right? Like we’ve done like I run a 35 person agency. We’ve been studying this for two years, prepping for this.

But like SEO right now is the, is the thing like what, what works on Google really well, which to be clear, 80% of campgrounds are not doing even what you’re doing, Laura.

Laura Mooney

00:54:52.907 – 00:55:23.835

Well, I’m, I find it hard to like, I, I mean we’re all in hospitality but you know, my business looks very different than Bret’s business. Although. But what’s interesting, our bottom lines, we might end up at the same place.

It’s just, you know, like you might end up it, you know, your net income the same as mine, but you get to it by a different method, you know, What I’m saying, like, I.

Brian Searl

00:55:24.855 – 00:55:26.475

Hope you get to this time.

Laura Mooney

00:55:27.135 – 00:55:34.223

Like, how much are we able to, you know, net every single year? That’s really what it’s about.

Brian Searl

00:55:34.319 – 00:56:16.209

Yeah. However you get there is fine. Right. There’s no. Well, there probably is a wrong answer. Is what I was. I mean, there probably is, but figure it out.

You know, you have to do it wrong to do it right, but people need to. I just don’t think people are prepared for this. Right. And you’re not even talking about ranking. Like, forget about.

Honestly, like, Laura, like, you need to pay attention to the ranking, but forget about the ranking because the answer isn’t even going to be in text. Like, I mean, I mean, if you look at this right, like, if we go back to ChatGPT for a second, like, the future of all this information is not text.

The future is this. You know, tell me a little bit more about what you just said.

Laura Mooney

00:56:16.257 – 00:56:22.485

Ah, okay. I’m sorry, I. So you’re. Okay. Okay. Yes. Spoken word interpretation.

Brian Searl

00:56:22.525 – 00:56:30.869

Let’s dive a little deeper into how ChatGPT can specifically enhance your Campground One marketing and guest outreach. ChatGPT can help.

Laura Mooney

00:56:30.957 – 00:56:33.933

Okay, well, thank you. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Searl

00:56:34.109 – 00:57:05.179

I mean, we’re not gonna listen to the whole thing, obviously, but like, but, but that’s the. Like, everybody’s gonna discover campgrounds through an actual thing that works. So Siri just announced this this morning, by the way, on Apple.

Well, they announced it back in July, I think, but there’s an update rolling out literally today where Siri, on your iPhone, you can type to it now. And as a fallback, it will fall back to ChatGPT when it doesn’t know the answer to something.

And eventually that is going to be a billion people that never search on Google again.

Bret Bullock

00:57:05.347 – 00:57:57.915

Right, well. And back to your question, Laura, is what do we do? I think you’ve already done it.

You’ve identified that the issue of how Google search results come up, you’ve identified that you’re no longer at the top of that search result. So now that you’ve identified it, then it’s just adapting to. Okay, well, how are search engines working now?

And Brian, to your point, if Siri or Google Assistant, whichever program is changing, then just us as business owners are adapting to that. We identify that’s where the industry or the. Not the industry, but the search engine industry. Yeah, just the world in general is going.

Us as business owners need to adapt to that and kind of implement those industry trends.

Brian Searl

00:57:58.815 – 00:58:26.221

I mean, I think the thing that concerns me most is the speed at which this is moving. Right. I mean, it’s not like when computers came online. It’s not like you can slow walk in and take 10 years to do online reservations.

This is a thing where, like Laura’s example is a perfect case study of where you’re not visible right now. Yeah, that’s a big issue. Especially if we’re also headed into a down economy. You need to pay attention.

And if you don’t have the time to do this, you need to get somebody who does.

Laura Mooney

00:58:26.373 – 00:59:21.593

Right.

The gentleman who, you know, like, in the winter months when you’re slow reservations are down, you know, when you pay that person every month, you know, I’m like, ouch. You know, like.

But his role is so important and it’s so specialized, is not anything that I could ever do well, nor would I want to spend the time to learn how to do it. You know, it’s just. It’s so important that we maintain. He. We just did a big Black Friday sale. You know, it’s. It’s.

We started doing it last year because post Covid our winter reservations went down. We’re like, oh, my God, like, we got to get back there. So we started a whole Black Friday Cyber Monday campaign. He said normally in December.

You know, last year we backed off a little bit on our SEO spends and things like that, because it’s a quiet time. Anyway, he goes, yeah, I’m going to suggest we not do that this year.

Brian Searl

00:59:21.729 – 00:59:22.405

No.

Laura Mooney

00:59:22.825 – 00:59:28.791

He’s like, we need to keep feeding that based on what’s going on for sure.

Brian Searl

00:59:28.863 – 00:59:33.831

And here’s the thing. Like, there’s not even a line item in 80% of the campgrounds budgets for SEO.

Laura Mooney

00:59:33.983 – 00:59:41.795

Yeah. Brian, do you think, like, I want to, like, I want to bring in branding in the conversation because.

Brian Searl

00:59:43.175 – 00:59:51.231

And by the way, like, we’re. I know, we’re like an hour. So if you guys want to drop off, if anybody needs to go, go ahead. Otherwise. Yeah.

Laura Mooney

00:59:51.343 – 01:01:21.625

Okay. I just want to touch on it. Yeah.

Because your commitment to branding and developing your brand and things like that, I feel like a lot of things go with that, with how you spend your money, what kinds of things you do.

Like, we developed a logo and spent time and effort in that so we could open our store because we wanted to develop a brand which will in turn determine your market. So as a part of that, you know, we could have not done a lot of those things 5, 6, 7, 10 years ago when we started the business.

And we probably, you know, ultimately, I mean, because all those things cost a lot of money. It, you know, you get money, but it’s also costing you money.

But the ultimate goal was to have your opportunity for revenue growth, to keep getting bigger and bigger.

Maybe those new things that you’re bringing in as part of who your brand will be, what your brand will be, you know, maybe the margins aren’t as great as a tree house, you know, reservation, but I feel like your decision as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, if you want to start going down that road, all of these things come with it. Otherwise, it’s okay just to stay in a certain zone, you know, But I think there’s limiters to that. So I just think, like, brand is.

Brian Searl

01:01:21.665 – 01:01:41.485

So is. Is number one, right? Yeah, Everything. Everything has always been about brand, to be clear. And it even more so is going to be in the future.

But brand is not just a logo.

Brand is your tone of voice and your font and how you treat customers and what the guest experience is and what your marketing is and what pictures you use and everything. Yeah, everything is brand.

Laura Mooney

01:01:42.105 – 01:01:51.405

But if you want to grow a brand and develop a brand, I think the types of things that we’re talking about, like ancillary revenue and.

Brian Searl

01:01:51.785 – 01:01:52.537

Yeah.

Laura Mooney

01:01:52.681 – 01:02:15.805

And, you know, market placement and, you know, search optimization, all of those things. Like, I feel like that is almost like the catalyst for us. It was, do we want to be a visible brand? Do we want to be viewed as this?

What kinds of things do we need to do to get there? But it.

Brian Searl

01:02:16.265 – 01:03:08.029

Right now, it scares me because I would never want to be someone who is trying to start a new brand now, because it, like, and I’m not saying that I’m right and I’m not discouraging anybody from starting a brand. To be clear, like, if you haven’t started one, start one now. But we’re.

But starting today versus starting pre AI was much, much easier because now there’s 150,000 times more noise out there. It’s harder to get visibility.

And now you’ve got all these, they call them LLMs, right, the AIs ChatGPT who have been trained in all this data already. It already knows all your competitors and all the things in the area. So how do you get your brand into a conversation in.

Into a model that’s already been trained on knowing everything about your competition when you didn’t exist as that brand? I’m not saying it’s not possible. I’m just saying it’s much harder today than it is ever been.

Laura Mooney

01:03:08.117 – 01:03:21.625

It seems like, like muddied, you know, like, you don’t exactly Know, like, you start a business, there’s a traditional path that everybody always anymore. So. Yeah, well, okay. Myself lucky you cheated.

Bret Bullock

01:03:22.565 – 01:03:30.705

Well, I kind of disagree with that, Brian. I think if anything, you know, AI could potentially help with that.

Brian Searl

01:03:30.865 – 01:03:36.005

Oh, yeah, to be clear. Yeah, it’s. I’m just saying it’s harder. Right? Like, I’m not, I’m not do it.

Bret Bullock

01:03:36.745 – 01:04:27.835

Yeah. I think it goes back to just utilizing kind of the, the, the technology and the resources at hand for, for a business owner.

I mean, so, yeah, I mentioned the Campground Owners association in Wisconsin, but then the Chamber of Commerce having those types of resources and even AI to say, okay, what are my opportunities? What market am I neglecting or just missing out on?

You know, I think that could be really where, all right, I have this brand or I have this idea for a brand that where am I going to get the most bang for my buck, you know, in order to identify and to target those additional, you know, revenue sources.

Brian Searl

01:04:28.815 – 01:04:35.035

But yeah, I mean, using that as the answer, you’re right. But most people, again, we’re back to the, like, most people have never touched ChatGPT.

Bret Bullock

01:04:35.735 – 01:04:36.263

Sure.

Brian Searl

01:04:36.359 – 01:04:36.759

Right.

Bret Bullock

01:04:36.847 – 01:04:52.075

Especially, I think that’s the conversation we’re having is we’re identifying that if we want to be successful, if we want to create new streams of revenue, those are the types of resources we need to be open to and to utilize.

Brian Searl

01:04:52.495 – 01:05:00.635

For sure. Yeah. But yeah, it’s definitely going to be a challenge and it’s coming fast. You have to learn it.

Bret Bullock

01:05:02.695 – 01:05:04.515

And you need to stay proactive.

Brian Searl

01:05:05.455 – 01:05:17.879

Yeah, but that’s so hard. Right? It’s hard for, I mean, it’s hard for me and I have 35 people working for me because I don’t have time.

I had a huge conversation with my team yesterday about ops. I’m like, I can’t do day to day ops anymore.

Laura Mooney

01:05:18.007 – 01:05:18.415

Right.

Brian Searl

01:05:18.495 – 01:05:26.235

Because if I do day to day ops, what, like the people who want to talk to me, like, they don’t have time to talk to me. I’m the strategy guy.

Laura Mooney

01:05:26.655 – 01:06:11.419

Yeah, right.

We’re all making decisions every day on where we spend our time, you know, and again, if you, depending on how much, you know, what your budget is, how much you can afford to bring in other people, I mean, most of it falls on our shoulders as business owners, you know, like, we are, we are, we need to be everything to everybody. But after a certain point, it doesn’t make sense because our value added in other ways is much more, you know, there’s a lot more potential there.

So I get again, those Are like some of the struggles, I think that we all go to. We all know that we’re supposed to be doing these other things, but weeks go by and months go by and like, you never quite get there.

Brian Searl

01:06:11.607 – 01:06:14.387

For sure. That happens to everybody. Right. It’s human nature.

Laura Mooney

01:06:14.531 – 01:06:16.275

Yeah, it is, it is.

Brian Searl

01:06:16.355 – 01:06:26.979

I mean, I think you’re like, honestly, and I would never say this because I’m not a big proponent of debt, but I think you’re at the point where, like, this is something to go into debt for. Yeah, right now to get somebody working on SEO.

Laura Mooney

01:06:27.147 – 01:06:45.615

No, I agree with you. We’ve already had that discussion. It’s an investment in the future. It will pay for itself over the long haul.

Stretch that debt out for, you know, 10 years or whatever, you know, 15 years, and just, you know, do it now so that you, you don’t fall behind.

Bret Bullock

01:06:45.995 – 01:07:34.297

Well, and I’ll go back to creating a brand. Laura, you were talking about, how do you, you know, justify that or, you know, spending the money there? I look at specifically for creating a brand.

Yes, it’s going to be a lot of upfront crop cost, but once it is established and once you kind of have a good hold on what your brand is, you can carry that through on all of your future advertising. And it’s going to be worthwhile because then five, ten years down the line, you can really use that.

And it’s sort of just a plug and play type of advertising and way to sell, you know, new customers, new guests on what you’re trying to create.

Laura Mooney

01:07:34.481 – 01:07:55.401

Yeah, I agree with you. You know, once it’s in place, it’s in place like, you know, and then like, if you’re going to advertise in a magazine, you just send them your pack.

Like, here’s my logos, here’s my branding pictures, here’s my, my text or my, I forget which, I’m loose, lose my word. But, you know, here’s the wording that I want you to use.

Brian Searl

01:07:55.513 – 01:07:56.249

Yes.

Laura Mooney

01:07:56.417 – 01:08:02.847

Yeah, you’re right. It does that. It is, it’s like an investment in the future again. It’s like a capital improvement, you know.

Bret Bullock

01:08:03.031 – 01:08:22.327

Well, right. And you know, Brian, you talk about how it’s worth it to, to go into debt, you know, but as a business owner, you understand that’s only temporary.

You know, you’re look, you’re always looking at the roi. You’re gonna get it back eventually, as far as it just paying off.

Laura Mooney

01:08:22.471 – 01:08:23.995

Yeah, yeah.

Brian Searl

01:08:24.664 – 01:08:48.000

I mean, yeah.

I mean, and again, with ChatGPT, like, you can build, I think you can build Most of a brand with chatgpt like questions, I think you can if you ask the right questions again and again. I think maybe depending on your skill with AI art generation, you may not be able to have that finalized logo.

But that’s a somebody 100 bucks on fiverr or whatever, right?

Laura Mooney

01:08:48.112 – 01:08:48.480

Yeah.

Bret Bullock

01:08:48.552 – 01:08:49.782

Generate some ideas.

Brian Searl

01:08:49.928 – 01:09:07.187

Yeah, generate some ideas and then go to that person and say, because now instead of paying somebody $5,000 to develop a brand, now you’re paying somebody 200 bucks and giving them mockups and sketches already of this is almost exactly what I want. Or the AI can’t spell the word, so just change this letter or whatever. Right?

Laura Mooney

01:09:07.371 – 01:09:08.095

Yes.

Brian Searl

01:09:08.515 – 01:09:24.041

So you can get there. I think the biggest challenge is distributing the brand. That’s what I think.

I perhaps should have clarified better when I was having the conversation of today. It’s muddy, right? It’s. It’s still. It’s easier than ever to create a brand. It’s harder than ever to get a brand discovered.

Laura Mooney

01:09:24.193 – 01:09:25.969

Yes. Yes.

Bret Bullock

01:09:26.137 – 01:10:26.557

Well, that’s kind of where I was coming from with using the chamber of commerce. Who has all of these statistics. They have access. I’ll speak specifically for Chippewa Falls.

The chamber of commerce has access to all of the, you know, the Google tracking and you know, how the tourism or while the tourist guests, I suppose tourists, where they’re going where, where they’re coming from, where they’re going after they leave all of these sort of statistics and information that, you know, other organizations have access to. So finding those partnerships and finding out who has access to that sort of information will help.

I’m not saying it’s not difficult, Brian, to your point, but at least trying to find those resources is where going back to. I said proactive. That’s the business owner’s job to be proactive and find those resources.

Brian Searl

01:10:26.741 – 01:10:37.265

For sure. All right. I did say we were going to go forever, but I just realized I have a calendar meeting in four and a half minutes, so I guess I have to go.

But tell us where they can find out more about your property, Laura.

Laura Mooney

01:10:38.125 – 01:10:48.893

Www.themohicans.net is our website. That’s the best way. Google Treehouses Ohio will also maybe come right up at the top.

Brian Searl

01:10:49.069 – 01:10:52.573

Maybe. Possibly it will next week after you talk to your guy.

Laura Mooney

01:10:52.669 – 01:10:54.141

Thank you. I’m going to talk to my guy.

Brian Searl

01:10:54.213 – 01:10:56.141

Bret, where can they find out more about Pine Harbor?

Bret Bullock

01:10:56.253 – 01:11:15.495

Yep. So it’s pineharborcampground.com youm can do. You can make all your reservations there. Find out more information.

Yeah, we, we do have cabins I neglected to mention that. So four cabins and a park model and. Yeah. Pineharbourcampground.com awesome.

Brian Searl

01:11:15.535 – 01:11:21.599

Well, thank you, guys. I appreciate you being here for another episode of Weird Disjointed Whatever we did without any of our recurring guests that didn’t show up.

Laura Mooney

01:11:21.647 – 01:11:22.943

So, all right.

Brian Searl

01:11:23.039 – 01:11:38.505

Being here and hopefully everybody has a wonderful Christmas, Happy New Year, all that kind of jazz. And we’re just gonna cross our fingers and say everybody who’s gonna build a brand new chat GPT is going to be just fine in 2025.

Yeah, I don’t know that I believe that 100, but I believe that you’re not going to if you don’t.

Laura Mooney

01:11:38.665 – 01:11:40.417

Okay. So we’ll give you that.

Brian Searl

01:11:40.521 – 01:11:42.761

Let’s go. All right, See you guys later. Have a good day.

Bret Bullock

01:11:42.953 – 01:11:43.737

Thank you.

Speaker A

01:11:43.881 – 01:12:06.075

Thanks for joining us for this episode of MC Fireside Chats with your host, Brian Searl. Have a suggestion for a show idea? Want your campground or company in a future episode?

Email us at hello [email protected] get your daily dose of news from moderncampground.com and be sure to join us next week for more insights into the fascinating world of outdoor hospitality.