MC Fireside Chats – December 13th, 2023

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Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian [00:02:00] Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here with all of you. It’s our second to last episode before the holiday season. I think next week we’re gonna have a really cool wrap up show. So be sure you come back and check that out because there’ll be more guests here.

And that means less talking for me, so that means there’s always a better show. But super excited to have a couple people here on to talk about the glamping industry again in our regular focus show here. So we’ve got Dave from Canadian Sleeping Barrels, he’s going to talk to us about his super cool accommodations that he has.

We have Tyson and Audrey Leavitt. Is it Leavitt or? Leavitt. Yep. All right. Good. I got it right the first time. Nailed it. I’m just introducing myself for no reason. So super excited to have these guys here. They are not too far from me in Lethbridge, Alberta, but I have really super cool.

I’m not even going to spoil it. Super cool things to show you from the glamping side. And then as always, we have Zach from Clockwork, our resident architect, genius, speaker, all that kind of stuff. And super excited to just talk to you about glamping here. So why don’t we just go around and we’ll just start with a little brief introductions.

And Zach, of course, if you want to just start and tell us briefly about Clockwork for those who don’t know. Sure, 

Zach Stoltenberg: I’m Zach Stoltenberg. I’m the Outdoor Hospitality [00:03:00] Director for Clockwork Architecture based in Kansas City, and we work with wonderful folks all across the country to help them design and brand and master plan and build their glamping resorts.

Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you, Zach, for being here. Dave, you want to go next? 

David Byers: Certainly. Dave Byers, we’re on Vancouver Island. And several years ago, we were told there was a staff accommodation shortage in Euculate and Tofino. So we took our largest barrel sauna, put a king size bed in it and a pullout table.

And turned it into a sleeping barrel and sold 60 of them, and we continue to open up different resorts. The Cumberland Lake Provincial Park just purchased 5. We’re selling them all over mostly Canada, starting to get into the United States a bit. That’s awesome. And the entire barrel sells for [00:04:00] 20 grand, so renting it out, you can pretty much pay for it in one season.

Brian Searl: Very cool. We’re going to dive more into those barrels. I didn’t realize, for whatever reason, that you were on Vancouver Island too, so I was going to say, I was about to say, before Tardy Chris showed up to the show. And we had a late entrance that it was going to be all Canadian consulting, but now Christmas is in Melbourne.

Tyson and Audrey. 

Tyson Leavitt: TYson and Audrey Leavitt from Lethbridge, Alberta. We build storybook homes and we we started by building playhouses and shipping them all over North America for clients and celebrities and influencers. And then we adapted our playhouses into accommodations. Where we launch Charmed Resorts.

And now we are completing that resort, and we’re looking for opportunities to license out our product throughout America and beyond. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Super excited to talk to you more about that. Audrey, I didn’t want to, do you have, do you want to [00:05:00] introduce yourself too, Audrey? Because you’re equally as important, you’re probably more important than Tyson, let’s be honest, but Probably.

Audrey Leavitt: SUre. Yeah, I’m Audie Levitt. I’m responsible for the social media and decorating all of our little fairy tale houses at the resort. 

Brian Searl: Awesome. Welcome. I can’t wait to share your website and all that kind of stuff. Chris, I feel like I shouldn’t let you intro yourself since you were late, but go ahead, man.

Chris Jeub: Yes, my name is Chris Chube, I own Monument Glamping here in Monument, Colorado. I also per develop YouTube videos for other glampers under Glamping Guy, and I help other glamping operators develop safe, legal, and profitable glamping operations on their private property. I have two properties.

12 units, lots of neat things going on here in Monument, and I just like to journal my story online for others. 

Brian Searl: Alright, I’m not a hard hitting journalist. This is the toughest thing I’m going to ask the entire show for anybody, but why were you late, Chris? Explain it to me now. I was 

Chris Jeub: actually on the phone with my son.

We are hiring a [00:06:00] new outfit, a legal outfit, to push through a modification that we have, as well as a second special use that we’re pushing through big news for Zach. I got to get ahold of you, Zach, because you’ve been a, you’ve been a part of hold this the politics here in, in El Paso County, not so much politics.

It’s the it’s the permitting processes that are going on here. And it’s been I’ve been up to my eyeballs and trying to make things work. But yeah so we’ve got some, some big dogs in the fight that, that will help help not only me continue to do what I’m doing, but build on what I’m doing.

Brian Searl: I just want to bring up that before the show started, we were talking to Dave here from Canadian Sleeping Barrels, which we’re going to explore more about if we could take one of his barrels over Niagara Falls. And if you I think, and I’m not saying you should do this to be clear, Cause there’s probably needs to be a terms and conditions that anything that comes out of my mouth should not be taken seriously in the show.

You could put your neighbor inside one of Dave’s barrels. You’ve heard about my neighbor. 

Chris Jeub: Oh my goodness. What a neighbor. [00:07:00] And yeah. The Okay, for the viewers, this is what I’ve got going on. I have a next door neighbor who is adamantly against my glamping operation. The thing is that most of my neighbors are actually for it.

So it’s not a situation where I’ve got this huge uprising against me. I’ve got this one neighbor who’s just loud and proud about being against it. 

Brian Searl: I don’t know, Chris. I heard about it all the way in Canada, so.

Chris Jeub: Yeah, she’s loud. She’s loud. And and just recently last week, she was getting little traction with the El Paso County Sheriff.

Because she was calling the sheriff on me for duck hunting on my property. So I was down at the Creek with my sons and she calls every single time. El Paso County sheriff, we call them before we go hunting. And we just say, Hey, we’re going to be hunting. If our link calls, they’re, Oh, sure thing, Chris, we’ll got you on this thing.

And that’s how it goes. Every time we go hunting, it’s just one of those neighbors. She took it to social media and she went on next door neighbor. and posted that there was a [00:08:00] live shooter on that Monument Glamping property. So she’s against Monument Glamping and she’s using social media to try to shame us and try to get a mob against us and then attribute my control to it. 

What’s that?

Brian Searl: Like she literally panicked people, like she made it seem like there was a Yeah. 

Chris Jeub: Oh yeah. You can go to next door. 

Brian Searl: It doesn’t have to be illegal in some cases right? 

Chris Jeub: yOu need to talk to a lawyer about that, because at first, picture this, I’m down at the creek with my, three of my sons, and we are all hunting and having a great time.

And by the way, I let all my other neighbors know. I’ll let Arlene know too. I let all my neighbors know when we’re hunting, they’re all fine with it. We’re out in the county. That, that’s just the nature of it. But I’m down there on my phone while we’re hunting, noticing this and yeah, Arlene, this is, it’s me.

We’re out here hunting. We’re not active shooters out down here, hiding behind four wheelers. [00:09:00] And but what happened is that really next door pounced on her and made her look really silly. Some other hunters got on there and said, Hey, it’s perfectly legal. What are you talking about?

That kind of thing. You could say the smear backfired on her and she became the smeared based on our, on her own folly. But when I got back up at the house, like after we, we were hunting and we’re bringing our birds up from the from the creek I got to thinking of it. It’s good grief. She single pointedly said, there is a shooter behind a four wheeler hiding in the bushes with a gun.

And that’s what she said on her post. Guess who did? That was my 12 year old son, and I called the sheriff and I said, this is serious. It’s like crying fire in a theater. If you, if I could use an analogy and the sheriff said I don’t know, he took the peacekeeping angle at it.

And said you got a point, but it’s we don’t get into social [00:10:00] media tiffs. 

Brian Searl: But if it had been in the middle of a crowded space, right? That could have, anyway. 

Chris Jeub: Yeah. What if a neighbor took a vigilante kind of justice type of thing and. Shot one of us or something.

Brian Searl: Here’s the thing, this is Christmas though, we have to be happy. So you need to figure out a way to kill her with kindness. Give her a Christmas gift, Chris, make it all go away. 

Chris Jeub: We’re gonna load up the car and go and sing Christmas carols in front of her window. 

Brian Searl: I don’t know that would be the best, perhaps, thing that I would, yeah.

Chris Jeub: No and, also 

Zach Stoltenberg: How can you chalk quicker? 

Chris Jeub: The plot thickens a little bit, because right now we’re going through a modification for our special use and because of her she actually wrote a letter to 200 neighbors of mine, and and to complaining about Monument Glamping. Because I’m making a simple modification to my special use.

My special use allows eight units on my property and the modification is to allow some of those units to be recreational vehicles and and instead of just all [00:11:00] tents. So that’s, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s in a nutshell. And it’s simple modification. The commissioners are all on board with it.

The planning commission’s on board with it. She’s not, even though it’s an upgrade to tents, even though it’s a, it’s an improvement to my special use. So she sent a letter out as if I don’t have a special use and just complained about our glamping operation. And out of 200 letters, I got about a dozen written in about angry neighbors who just jumped on the bag and people who never drive by my property ever.

And then they submitted their opposition. So because there’s about a dozen letters of opposition, it’s going to go to Planning Commission and the commissioners rather than getting administratively approved. 

Brian Searl: All right we can circle back to neighbors in the end, but we got more happy things to talk about.

Chris Jeub: Okay. 

Brian Searl: I promise you we’ll get back to you if we have time. And I’m sorry you’re going to do that. I don’t, obviously we can’t solve it on the show here. 

Chris Jeub: We work through it, we work through it rationally, [00:12:00] logistically, we make it, we do what we need to do to make it happen. It, it always ends up to be a better product in the end. I I’ve legitimized my property, I’ve built better structures, I’ve upgraded things that I probably wouldn’t have upgraded if I didn’t have this neighbor with a microscope looking at me and trying to complain about everything I’m doing.

It actually has made things better. 

Brian Searl: See, and that’s a positive. I’m all for that, right? Every time I fail or mess up something, which 11 times a day, it’s a success because I learned from it, right? So that’s, and I do enjoy I appreciate hearing. From you and other people about all the things that are real.

With business operations, right? Because everybody will get on social media and share only the good things. But very few people hear the struggles and trials and tribulations and everything else that you have to get to, to get where you are today, right? Yeah, I really appreciate you sharing and all that kind of stuff.

Let’s go to Dave from, we’re going to save you Tyson and Audrey. We’re going to save you guys for [00:13:00] last because you might be the best. Don’t tell anybody else that I said you were the best, but let’s go to Dave for Canadian sleeping barrels. Dave, tell us about your super cool sleeping barrels. I know you briefly introduced it, but how’d you get started?

David Byers: Basically we make barrel saunas cedar yurts wooden hot tubs, anything round, bent, or curved, and the sleeping barrels seem to fill a fairly good niche market in the glamping industry. They’re a little better than a tent, and they’re portable. They don’t need any permits. They’re under 100 square feet.

Brian Searl: How portable are they? Can I push it down a hill if I want to relocate it in my glamping resort, or? 

David Byers: You want me to donate one for the neighbor there? 

Brian Searl: I’m just, no, not my neighbor. No, we would never actually do that. 

David Byers: Not your neighbor, no. 

Brian Searl: But seriously, you just wanna, you say portable, so I’m just curious.

I’m giving you a hard time, Dave. 

David Byers: You can pick [00:14:00] them up with a forklift or a little bobcat with fork extensions. We ship them with crane trucks, little high app crane trucks, and they arrive fully assembled. Other than that, we can take them apart, and it would take two to four hours to reassemble it if we were to ship it somewhere.

Brian Searl: So tell me, how did you get into this, right? What sparked the idea for you to do all things round in the beginning? 

David Byers: My original trade dried up. My original trade, believe it or not, is church furniture. Church pews, courtroom seating, religious carvings. 

And when the Catholics started selling all their properties to pay court costs, I found another niche, markets. And I love anything round, bent, or curved. So that was the kind of scenario. 

Brian Searl: You’re continuing your passion of working with wood. That’s a fascinating origin story to me. [00:15:00] 

David Byers: No, it’s it’s rewarding. I’m 70 years older now and I’ve been doing this all my life. So it’s, it’s a never ending pursuit of what’s next. We’ve got a wine cellar in a barrel. We’ve got an office in a barrel that come out of COVID. A lot of realtors and people working out of their house wanted to get out in the backyard and get away from screaming kids or whatever. It’s always a progression we put them on floats, uh, we did a one with a tiki bar and a wood fired hot tub, so there’s all kinds of fun, fun stuff that we’re doing with them.

Brian Searl: What’s the, of all the things that you’ve done with it, and I know we’re going to talk a little bit about your climbing accommodations briefly, but of all the things you’ve done with it, the office and the Maybe or maybe not putting kids in or out of it, or adults in or out of it. What’s the most thing, what’s the thing that’s been most exciting [00:16:00] for you out of all of it?

It’s been like, wow, I can’t believe I did that. 

David Byers: Basically we’re starting to get into all of the provincial parks now. So we just have five ready to deliver to the Cumberland Lake Provincial Park. Shipping them elsewhere, we make a big wooden crate. We just shipped three to Lake Nipigon. They just ordered another one we’ve got five at the

Hatchibat First Nations Campground in Port Renfrew. And that’s been an interesting experience having them on First Nations Campground. We got a call two years ago that a bunch of little kids got up one morning and took some baseball bats and busted all five bubbles. So we had to go out and replace all five bubbles.

Brian Searl: I’m sorry to hear 

David Byers: that. It wasn’t under warranty. 

Brian Searl: I’m [00:17:00] curious, just for the people who have not heard of your company, like we have a lot of large audience in the United States and maybe one or two people who live anywhere else. I’m kidding. We’re good. But for all the people who have who’ve never heard of your company, talk to us about we see a lot of glamping structures down here that are the traditional, more traditional, your tents and cabins and things like that.

Obviously we see that the design of yours. is different and unique and that certainly sets it apart by itself. But what goes into the kind of craftsmanship here that if somebody were to look at one of these they could be confident they would last a long time? 

David Byers: We have Alaskan yellow cedar cradles, which is cypress.

They’re good for sitting in the mud for about 300 years. The entire barrel You tested it for 300 years? I just want to make sure we don’t I don’t look, I don’t look that old, do I? 

Brian Searl: No, you look really young, but you could have something that we don’t know about. There could be a supplement that you’re taking.

David Byers: Now, alaskan Yellow Cedar has quite a long history of [00:18:00] being able to be in the environment and not rot. 

Brian Searl: Okay. Similar to like a teak or? 

David Byers: No, it’s just got more tannins in it. Red Cedar has natural tannins that prevent decay. Yellow Cedar has more. And the entire barrel is made with Western Red Cedar, so it smells sweet all the time.

We have been able to put a wood stove, in fact, you can see in the picture behind me, there’s a little mini wood stove. So if you wanted to extend your season and rent it out in the winter months or the cooler months, we also have a fridge unit with a Keurig coffee maker, a little fan, USB charging station, and we have air conditioners that can go underneath.

The king size bed [00:19:00] platform, we just keep modifying it based on customer requests and needs. 

Brian Searl: I have a great idea. 

Zach Stoltenberg: Do you have any that have a restroom in them? 

David Byers: Yeah, we have a portable sink and toilet. What we can do is extend the barrel to 16 feet from 14. And don’t put a little porch, just have a little vestibule or a separate room and we can have it vented out.

And it’s not a composting toilet. It’s not something that’s plumbed in. But if you get up at three in the morning and you want to have a tinkle, you don’t gotta get dressed and go to the washroom or whatever. 

Brian Searl: So I’m curious, have you ever, and this goes on to his washroom question he was asking, have you ever put two barrels together to extend them like a modular capacity where you would have more room to maybe plumb in something if somebody wanted to?

David Byers: [00:20:00] Basically, the ones that we have put out there, it’s quite unique how some of the people are configuring them. Uh, but no, we haven’t put two together per se. 

Brian Searl: All right. And I, Tyson and Audrey and everybody else, you’re more than welcome to, I know you haven’t been on the show before, but we’d love to have somebody jump in.

So I don’t want to bore everybody with my conversation. So if you have anything to say to Dave or anybody else, feel free to jump in. But I want to come back to you, Dave, but let’s go to Tyson and Audie and hear a little bit about the cool things that they’re doing. So first, what is, what’s Charmed Resorts?

Tyson Leavitt: Go ahead and take over. Okay, sorry. wE are in Corozas Pass, Alberta, which is just like real close to the BC Alberta border, and we currently have 13 storybook cottages there. And so when we say [00:21:00] storybook, like a lot of people look at our stuff and they instantly are like, Oh, you’re doing like Disney castles or whatever.

And it’s no, we’re not. What we’re doing is we grab storybook, like classic fairy tales. We go back to the source material and we try to retell those stories with our structures. So we have Rumpelstiltskin out there. We have Rapunzel out there. We have Jack and the Beanstalk, Hook. Peter Pan, Tinkerbells is being delivered next week.

So we’ve just got a large variety of storybook films. 

Brian Searl: I got your website pulled up here because you really just have to see this stuff, right? 

Tyson Leavitt: So which one? Yeah, it’s hard. 

Brian Searl: Tell me where you want to click. 

Tyson Leavitt: Go click on we’re going to have to move our camera here, but we’ve got to plug in our laptop.

So go look at Beast Castle. Beast is my new favorite. 

Brian Searl: Is it? [00:22:00] Okay, it’s on Explore More. Yeah, click on that. Sorry, the sun is literally in my eyes. I’m not squinting at your website. Wendy’s, Expired Ship, Hatter’s House, Beast Castle. Alright. So this is what I think we’re 

Tyson Leavitt: I think your screen might be frozen because it’s not showing it on ours.

Brian Searl: Oh, hold on. It opened in a new window, so that’s okay. 

Tyson Leavitt: So Beast Castle, we just delivered that one, is that a month ago now? yEah, it was five weeks ago. Five weeks ago we delivered this one. So this is part of our Beauty and the Beast collection. So we have Bell’s Cottage on there already. He sits right beside it.

We tried to go back to like classic fairytales that people really resonate with and really enjoy. And we do a lot through our social [00:23:00] media. Audie makes content daily, uh, where she puts polls out there and talks to people who follow us. We have around a million and one followers or a million followers, something like that.

And so she tries to get the feedback constantly from them, and we take that information and we adapt it to what we can do, and we try to mobilize actually quite quickly. We’ll go from building a cottage, we’ll design, completely build, install, in a matter of 6 7 weeks. 

Brian Searl: Go ahead, please, continue. 

Tyson Leavitt: Yeah, so we built quite a few different iterations of our cottages, and there’s been a natural evolution of the things that people need and want at our resorts, and because we’re able to be to adapt so quickly, we’ve been able to change [00:24:00] as our cottages have progressed.

So we originally started with just doing like a storybook cottage, which is our mid summer cottage. It had the bathroom separate. We were going to have shared bathroom accommodations. But then that changed to, no, we need to have a bathroom attached. And we were already building our Rapunzel cottage at the time.

So we cut a hole in the wall. We built a bathroom that attached to it. And then we found out, okay, people want. Tables inside. That came later, but a sink. They wanted a sink to wash dishes. So we extended our bathroom unit and did a kitchen and then I guess you can talk about the rest that we’ve adapted.

Brian Searl: I want to talk, I want to definitely give her, Audie, a chance to talk about the inside because that’s what, right? The outside is great when you first see it, but the inside is what makes the whole stay. But tell me first how, like back up for the people who don’t know Charm Resorts, we’re not part of the million plus followers on social media.

How do you end up doing something like this? [00:25:00] 

Audrey Leavitt: We started building playhouses like eight ish years ago. And our company very quickly went from our initial intention was, like, you can see ours in the backyard, it’s stuffing crazy, um, that’s the first playhouse we ever built, and our intention was never to build anything too crazy, just for the average family, but very quickly, the demand led us to building very luxurious playhouses for customers that can afford a 100, 000 playhouse.

And so the resort became a way for us to offer what we do to regular families like our own. 

Tyson Leavitt: And part of that adoption came because when you build like a 10, playhouse and you ship it across the nation, oftentimes your shipping for that is going to cost you 5, 000, 6, 000, 7, [00:26:00] 000, 8, 000, right? So it had to It only made sense to make that product luxurious so that the shipping was actually the cost compared to what you were actually getting on that shipment.

And so we, we quickly pivoted from, our 10, 000 to 20, 000 playhouses to 100, 000 playhouses. And when we did that, like right at the gates. We actually got picked up by a TV show, we did TV TLC Discovery, and so we were able to get our brand out there initially, but we saw that there was a piece of the market that we were missing, which is the mass population who cannot afford our playhouses.

We couldn’t even afford our own playhouses that we were building, right? Like the one in the back is, a 10, 000 or 15, 000 playhouse that’s, middle class is already an expensive purchase. We came up with the idea of doing Resort Accommodations. [00:27:00] We built one, tested it, it sold out literally like we posted it when an article came out with National Archives article data, and it sold out literally in a couple of days, and for the summer, so we knew we were on to something, and this was right as COVID was taking off, and so coincidentally we had playhouse shops that canceled because of COVID.

Our resort accommodations took off during COVID becausefriend. com was They were single households where people could go to, they never got shut down, and it took off and we pivoted and now we’re doing both, we’re doing playhouses and resorts, but it was good timing for what we ended up deciding to do.

Brian Searl: Alright, so talk to us, obviously, was it fair to say that you’re the master of the outside and Audie is the master of the inside? Is that fair? 

Audrey Leavitt: I’d say so, yeah. 

Brian Searl: Alright, so we’ve talked about the outside, we’ve looked at some of the pictures, talk us through why it’s so important and [00:28:00] critical to have the inside look the way it does.

Audrey Leavitt: I Think a huge part of our audience is women my age and, generally moms and I just wanted to create that whole storybook experience. For this day, so my dream as a kid was to walk into a real storybook, so we had to make sure that it feels that way inside and out. And it’s a lot of work, like they are fully themed.

All the way through, we think of me and my kids, we read the story that we’re building about, and we look through all the little details, and we find every little decoration that can go with the story whether it’s the animals that are part of the story or plants, or whatever colors we pick out every detail that we can from the original story and add it to the inside, and a lot of people will miss a lot of the clues if you’ve only ever watched a movie about that story, [00:29:00] you might miss a lot of the clues, but if you’ve read, if you’re a sleuth and you’ve read the original stories, you’ll be able to go in and find all these Easter eggs from the story, and it makes for a really fun experience.

Brian Searl: Now I need to go back. So I did stay in the gingerbread cottage, right? And we had, we saw the huge book in there of, I think it was, I can’t remember, was it Jack and the Beanstalk? Was that, or what? No, it wasn’t Jack and the Beanstalk. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know. Oh, it was the collection of all the Grimm’s Fairy Tales, was the book.

There was a bunch of books in there, but that was the one we were picking out. So we were paging through that, and I was trying to get my girlfriend, let me tell her a story. She just isn’t the type that wants to be read the whole original fairy tales. But anyway, now I have to go back, and I’ve learned the whole story, because I feel like I missed stuff.

Tyson Leavitt: Did you notice that the bunk bed was a cage? The top one? Yeah. That was all a cage. It was like beautiful spindle work. Maybe not. 

Brian Searl: You can see it. I thought it was enclosed, but I don’t know if that I recognized it was a cage. Now I feel terrible. 

Tyson Leavitt: You can see it on our website. If you click on the gingerbread cottage, you can [00:30:00] see the interior photos of that.

Brian Searl: Thanks for embarrassing me, Tyson. I’m a terrible person now. 

Tyson Leavitt: I didn’t notice anything. It’s subtle. It’s subtle details like that. And then, it had an oven in there, but. 

Brian Searl: Do you do anything like that on social media? I know you talk about, and I’ve seen it on your show, I watched a couple of your episodes, right?

And how you do the decorations for the playhouses, or did at the time the show aired, right? I’m sure it’s the same way. But do you tell any of those stories on social media about the little hidden things? 

Audrey Leavitt: Yeah, for sure. I try to, I tell a lot of it cause we do full tours. When we’re done each project, we’ll do a full tour and then we’ll redo it later.

I try to give as much details as I can when we’re doing full tours, but then there’s always something, or not always, but often something that we’ll save for the guests. I don’t want to share on social media because I want it to be like, something you discover. And I want to give an example, but then I’m 

Brian Searl: Then you’re going to tell them.

Audrey Leavitt: Yeah.

[00:31:00] Yeah, we did have like in Hook’s pirate ship, I’ll give a partial clues. Like in Hook’s pirate ship, there’s a map with a clue on it and something to find that’s hidden throughout the rest of the ship. I don’t know if I’ve ever said that or not online yet, but.

Brian Searl: Don’t worry, nobody watches our show anyway.

It’s fine. 

Audrey Leavitt: Perfect. 

Zach Stoltenberg: I think it speaks really well though. We talk about this a lot, I think on the show. The difference between accommodations and experience. And I think all those things that you guys are describing are the things that create the experience for the families and the guests that stay with you.

And ultimately that’s really, that’s the business you’re in, right? It’s creating that immersive experience. 

Tyson Leavitt: True. And we honestly feel like we’re so far away from where we want our experience to be for people, but 

Audrey Leavitt: We’ll often hear people say oh my gosh, you thought of every detail.

And me and Tyson are like, no, we literally walked around [00:32:00] after and picked out every single thing we wish we would have done in the cottages, but also like at the resort as a whole. We have so much left to do. We’re always 

Zach Stoltenberg: our toughest critics, right? 

Tyson Leavitt: Yeah. Yeah. I just envisioned our resort like 10 years from now looking completely different from how it is today.

We want it to be the most luxurious experience that you have, but you literally feel like you’ve transformed into a different reality when you come through our gates. And so we’re looking forward to trying to do that as we continue to grow. Oh, and 

Brian Searl: Tyson, 

Zach Stoltenberg: you guys build these.

Yourselves too, right? Like you’re not hiring some contracting manufacturing company, to do this. You guys have really bootstrapped a lot of this, poured yourself into these units, and so I think anytime you’ve built something yourself. Yeah, you have the tendency that you walk around and see all the things that didn’t go right.

You see all the [00:33:00] things that, oh, that’s still broken. I’ve been meaning to get that fixed, for the last three days or whatever it is. You’re going to notice those things because it’s part of your story. You built it. Whereas the average guest is going to come in and just be blown away by what they see.

Tyson Leavitt: Yeah we literally started the resort probably a little naive. Like we started with 0. foR the project, fortunately, we’ve had incredible occupancy on our stuff and it gets a strong nightly rate. Like our nightly rate ranges from 350 to 500 a night, and we’ve been able to take that revenue and roll it back into our projects put some short term money into it.

And then we were actually able to do a really innovative. financing deal with the banks like recently, just RBC, uh, and we were able to do a deal that was like, never has never been done in Canada before to help us to grow our [00:34:00] organization. And with that there’s lots of little things that we wish we could do today.

But because of the cash flow of building an expensive resort our units are 200, even 400, 000 a unit, depending on. Which one we’re doing. So you can imagine how much money we’ve had to put into this to be able to get to where we are. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, and I’m not building anything as amazing as those kind of unique, really good glamping, really amazing glamping accommodations.

But I understand what you’re talking about from a business standpoint. There’s a list of things 10 miles long that I’d like to get to tomorrow that either it’s capital or people or time or something that’s holding me up. And I think you guys clearly have outlaid that. The important thing is that you’ve outlaid that vision in your head.

And then you just have to be patient enough and know that you’ll get there, which I think you guys do, right? I’ve talked to you several times. I don’t doubt that you’re going to get where you want to go. 

Audrey Leavitt: aNd every year we get to hire new [00:35:00] people that are really good at filling those spaces that we’re lacking in.

And that’s a really joyful part of the job, too, is working alongside people who are So good at what they do. 

Tyson Leavitt: I think we’ve got some of them watching back at the shop right now on this meeting, but we’ve been able to like, we’ve been able to grow our organization to having 30 full time staff.

So we have our manufacturing firm, which is Charm Playhouses, and we have our resort side, which is Charm Resorts. And yeah, it’s been incredible to build that team and we look forward to continue to grow it. 

Brian Searl: So is it fair to say that If you had to choose between where my time goes, your time goes, right?

Is that more into the resorts in the future, or is that equal still? 

Tyson Leavitt: No, it’s actually probably pretty equal. Our company is, we intend on it being much more than a resort company. [00:36:00] We want to exploit the IP that we develop within our company, and license it across many different areas, and really just create It’s a fairytale family brand that will be used whether it’s in home furniture or decorating or storytelling or dog houses, playhouses, experience driven businesses.

There’s a lot of avenues that we can go with our company. As of today, our focus is to get the resorts off the ground, so that the resorts is a driving like a driving factor behind our company, because it gets us out to the masses. And then there will continue to be additional charmed offerings, early resorts and playhouses.

Zach Stoltenberg: Speaking of IP I know, cause I, I do follow you guys on social media. I’ve followed you for about a year now and [00:37:00] props to you, Audie, because I think it’s one of the better channels that I follow. I know that a lot of. The inspiration and the design and the stories that you guys have chosen have been things that are fair use, things that are in the public.

And I’m sure you’ve gotten those requests like, oh, when are you going to do, a Moana treehouse, right? It’s going to be a while before Disney loses the rights to Moana. But there is there is one that’s coming up. I think that Christopher Robb and Winnie the Pooh has been fair use for a while, but I think that the the trademark copyrights on Tigger run out in 2025.

aNd I’m wondering what are the future plans? What are other units? What are your most often requested additions? What’s in the plans? 

Audrey Leavitt: I didn’t, I knew Winnie the Pooh had just gone through, so we’ve actually talked about that one. It would, it would be incredible.

Tyson Leavitt: Zach probably doesn’t know the name of our latest child. We just had a child eight [00:38:00] months ago. Eleven years after our last. His name is actually Winnie. 

Zach Stoltenberg: Oh, wonderful. 

Tyson Leavitt: So. 

Audrey Leavitt: So, anyway, yeah we would love Winnie the Pooh. We’ve we’ve gone back and forth on if that’s if we want to do a whole hundred acre wood.

We have, Wizard of Oz 

Tyson Leavitt: is in our Let’s dive into that a little bit though our debate that Audie and I have had between that is whether or not we want to do something that was distinctly Disney. Even though the licensing has come up, we, we don’t want to be Disney, we want to be Charmed.

And we go back and forth on that, whether or not we want to do that, even though it’s free game. 

Audrey Leavitt: We’ve talked about adding a, like a swear jar at work, where if you accidentally use Disney’s IP, you have to, like, right? For example, and I have actually done it. I’ve done it myself where you’re talking about The Little Mermaid and I said Ariel and I was like, oh my gosh, like no, Ariel is exclusively Disney, but The Little Mermaid is an old classic [00:39:00] story.

So I, I am fairly confident that we have not stepped on any toes because I do know that, each time we do a build, I make sure to know the difference between original story versus is owned by Disney. But,

Tyson Leavitt: And as part of our company, we’re trying to find those great stories that people resonate with. 

Audrey Leavitt: And I think people appreciate seeing something new and different and and it’s worked okay so far. 

Tyson Leavitt: Trying to block that sun with my head. Yeah, 

Brian Searl: I think that’s, and to be fair this is an ignorant question, maybe, but is Winnie the Pooh actually Disney?

Because I didn’t know that, and I grew up watching him. 

Audrey Leavitt: It’s not. 

Tyson Leavitt: They bought the story, right? 

Brian Searl: Okay, alright. But they expired. 

Tyson Leavitt: Just This year. 

Audrey Leavitt: Yes, so it was a story, but it was one of the few stories that actually was purchased by Disney, so it’s unique compared to most of the other ones. Disney’s done Peter Pan themed things, but they’ve never [00:40:00] owned the story of Peter Pan, whereas with Winnie the Pooh, They did actually own it for a while and now they don’t.

And so anything that we did with Winnie the Pooh would have to be straight from that original book. And we’d have to just be so careful that we didn’t accidentally pick something that is exclusive to them. 

Tyson Leavitt: And these companies, like these big companies, they’re smart with their IP. If you’re talking about IP and how they develop it, you look at Mickey Mouse, he is actually coming to be public domain, but just the original Mickey Mouse that is black and white and doesn’t have gloves.

You could actually go exploit that IP, to my understanding. You better go check it for yourself for anyone who’s watching but they, what they do is each year they change their characters and the names of things. Unique spellings and unique way of presenting it to the world so that IP is reset from that time when they’ve made those changes, [00:41:00] right?

That’s why we’re trying to just go back to classic fairy tales. 

Audrey Leavitt: And also to be clear, because we’ll get messages, we get, this is probably the topic that we talk about with our followers the most. We’ll get messages that say, we’ll just Put it in there and don’t show it. Just, do a teapot instead of naming it Mrs. Pot. And people will know what it means, but you’re not, actually 

Tyson Leavitt: Because the teapot’s not actually in the classic. 

Audrey Leavitt: Yeah. The character, yeah. Mrs. Pot. Pots. And it’s just not what we’re interested in doing. We’re not interested in, getting as close to the line as we can.

We’re interested in creating something new, something that’s our own. Our own from old fairy tales, but 

Tyson Leavitt: We don’t want to write Disney’s coattails. 

Audrey Leavitt: No, it’s not fun. It’s fun to create your own. 

Zach Stoltenberg: And if somebody wants Disney, they can go stay at Disney. Because it’s a different experience. 

Audrey Leavitt: Yeah they’re obviously incredible at what Like, this is never to say oh, we don’t want to be Disney because they’re not incredible.

They are incredible, but they’re there. They [00:42:00] exist. And bringing something new and different to the people that kind of want a little bit more of a boutique feeling experience is what we’re interested in doing. 

Tyson Leavitt: We’d prefer Disney to want to acquire us rather than litigate us someday. 

Brian Searl: You have Any writers or I know you have creatives for a build, right?

But do you have any writers on your team? 

Audrey Leavitt: No one specifically, but we have a lot of people who are very good at it. 

Brian Searl: Because this is I think what you’re talking about is very easy to deviate from Disney and I think you already know this, right? I Think the hook is to get them into the Charmed, maybe with Disney because the brand is already there, not with Disney, but you understand what I’m saying.

Disney like. And then I think you have a very it’s just telling the story, just like Disney’s created Mickey Mouse and had to brand Mickey Mouse and get it into the minds of all the consumers so they can understand and appreciate and crave and want a Mickey Mouse experience, right? At the resorts or everywhere else.

I think that’s very easy for you to create a story and brand it, especially if it’s the second time they’re experiencing Charmed. [00:43:00] 

Tyson Leavitt: Yeah, it comes down to the matter of like how much bandwidth we have within our company and capital to be able to exploit that, right? That’s where it comes back to, your question of whether or not Charm Resorts is our main focus.

Yeah, it is today, but down the road, who knows? It could be film, it could be TV, it could be products. We have a whole beautiful merch line we’ve been developing. Right now as well. There’s lots of roads that we can go down. When you’re in the family space and the storybook, telling fairy tales and storybook content, there’s endless possibilities.

Zach Stoltenberg: Dave, are there any classic fairy tales about a barrel?

Brian Searl: Here, are you muted? 

David Byers: I had you on mute, sorry. nO, just songs roll out the barrel. 

Zach Stoltenberg: Sea shanties. 

David Byers: No, no [00:44:00] fairytales. 

Brian Searl: aGain, I think that’s the opportunity. Is to create your own fairy tales. And I think you, in whatever direction you take this, obviously that’s more merchandise. And that’s more that’s even, that you don’t have to toe the line and walk.

But, so I want to give Audie a chance, because she sent in an email and made a suggestion about, I think you mentioned management, right? Where were you going with that Audie, that you wanted to talk about? 

Audrey Leavitt: Oh, I was just curious about anybody else here, if they’ve used any like great tools. We don’t live where our resort is.

We can and then more on Install Weeks, but we have a great manager out there and I was just curious if anybody had any other tools that they use to site management tools. Yeah, sitemap. Thank you. 

Zach Stoltenberg: Brian, this would be a good time, while we’re talking about management, to mention our sponsor, too.

Brian Searl: Oh, yes, our sponsor, because Sharah keeps bothering me with that in the private conversation, because I always forget to do all that stuff. But our sponsor, yeah, is Horizon Outdoor Hospitality. Which [00:45:00] happens to coincidentally be one of many great third party management groups that are out there in the Campground RV Park glamping space.

And so I don’t know, again, I want to talk to you a little bit about that and maybe figure out where I can give a good recommendation if you’re looking for like a total management company, if you’re looking for software, if you’re looking for whatever. But I think Horizon does do quite a bit of that and we’re definitely grateful for them sponsoring the show.

Sorry Horizon that I took 48 minutes and 13 seconds to get you in there, but we love you. Scott Fuse. Okay. But yeah, but talk to us about a little bit of what you’re like thinking. Cause that obviously is a rabbit hole. We only have 10 minutes, right? But I think Zach, could you want to comment on, do you have anything, thoughts on that or?

Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah, I’d say, I think it really goes back to what Tyson and Audie mentioned at the very beginning, which is. What is the guest experience that you want to deliver? We’ve seen a large range in the resorts that we’ve worked on where many of these are a little more hands off, and they rely heavily on a software or an [00:46:00] online booking tool to communicate effectively with their guests.

You’re going to get an email or a text message. You’re going to get a QR code to get into your unit. But, and I think that’s great, and it works well on, on certain sites. But I think, across the board, one of the things that we’ve seen industry wide is just elevated guest expectations.

And I think that translates into the overall experience. From a bottom line perspective, it does have an effect on ADRs. And I think the more hands on, hosted experience that you can create, the better guest experience that you’re going to deliver. And so I think really that’s the first step is deciding what is that guest experience that you’re trying to achieve.

And then I think there’s different tools that are better for different pieces of that. There’s certainly things that as an operator on the back end make your life A lot easier. Some of the things that we’ve seen recently are some really integrated property management softwares [00:47:00] where updating those key codes for your door access, lighting controls smart thermostats, all of these things can be.

Tied into your property management software to where you as an operator aren’t having to go out and make sure, these folks are checking in late, I got to get the porch light turned on or the string lights up front, or I got to make sure the heat’s on. All those things are handled passively or automated through your property management software. I think there’s a lot of different options out there. I don’t know if that really answers the question, Audie, that you had. Letting it be driven by that guest experience is really the key. 

Brian Searl: And I want to let you answer that, Audie. Just to see if that’s what you’re looking for, if we can expound further, but I think that to your point, Zach, like it is the experience and I think you have to decide each individually, each individual person, each individual resort has to decide, what can I automate that would allow me to do more of that guest [00:48:00] experience, right?

For example, like things like that. I don’t need to do that in person. I don’t need to do that one on one because I can automate that. And then that gives me more time to give personalized service in another area. 

Audrey Leavitt: Yeah, 

Zach Stoltenberg: that was described. I could see, because it’s an automatically generated email, right?

So you can send images, graphics, you can format it however you want. I could envision something fitting with your brand, that it’s more of a, an animated scroll that unrolls, and, or a wax seal that gets broken, and it’s this parchment paper with the fancy calligraphy text on it, welcoming your guests to their weekend fantasy, right? The, this immersive experience to get away in a fairy tale for 24 hours. So I think it’s, there’s lots of tools and things, but I think making sure that you use technology for what it’s, what it’s good at, but not let it replace.

The personal touch, the branded piece that you guys have curated and done so well. 

Brian Searl: I gotta let her talk because [00:49:00] we’re gonna get off on a tangent here about what AI can do with personalized videos and scrolls and all kinds of that. Anyway, so go ahead, Audie. 

Audrey Leavitt: Oh man, no, we’d love to hear it. No, for us, like we said earlier, we have so much in our heads that we want this experience to be, that it is not yet.

It’s a good experience, we fully, we’re providing a great experience, but of course. We’ll never stop iterating and trying to make it better and better. And we’re Always in that what can we automate so that other things can get done, but then when we automate, you miss that personal touch sometimes with people, and and I think we’ve learned that actually a lot of people, a lot of people I think they like automation, but in the end, apparently, human interactions, even if we don’t know that we love them, we do love them make us happy anyway.

And we’re in that just trying to figure out the best way of balancing the two. 

Brian Searl: And I think that’s critical that you’re even thinking about that, right? And let’s use an example that’s super close to home that you can criticize me about, right? So we [00:50:00] tried out the Peter Pan bot on your website, right?

And I think one of the things that Paige had told me was that we were running into issues where people needed to talk to a human being, right? And they couldn’t get there. And so we actually, not because of Paige, although we’re willing to give her credit if she wants it, but it was a couple weeks before somebody had mentioned to us, like with a resort, what if you put this on Facebook and somebody talks about speeding trucks through the campground, or there’s a bear, or whatever, right?

Same principle, you need to be able to get ahold of a human. And so these are things that we’ve solved now by allowing them to send text messages if it detects it’s an emergency or things like that, but that’s what you’re talking about. There has to be that balance. There has to be a technology is here, but it helps you only to a certain point to where, if you want a human, you can get to it.

And it’s not just with robots, it’s with everything you’re talking about. 

Tyson Leavitt: I think we’re moving into a time when human interactions are being limited. You can think of how many of the big companies that we all interact with, whether it’s Facebook, Google, or whatever, how hard it is to get a hold of these companies when you need to do something.[00:51:00] 

Literally, a majority of these companies do not even post their phone number anymore because they don’t want you to call them. And, which is weird in a consumer how can they get to a place where they’re allowed to do that? I think we all do crave that actual human connection. I thought he was talking about.

Of course we do. It’s the balance between. The automation and when you actually It’s 

what type of human interaction do you crave, right? Like I don’t crave the human interaction to call somebody and wait on hold to talk to them for 20 minutes to figure out what my door code is and the procedures, right?

Brian Searl: But I would love to talk to somebody about a fairy tale experience that I’m having or the unique things that are inside the cabin that I might want to look for. Like the we won’t mention that again because maybe people missed it. The thing inside the hook cabin, make sure you look for it when you get in.

But right, like I think that’s the idea is that we can have that human experience while still being mindful of. What they don’t want to do as part of the human experience or they’ve been trained that they don’t have to do. 

Zach Stoltenberg: iF automation [00:52:00] takes over some of the more utilitarian pieces, like making sure the heat’s on, then that frees up your time as an operator to focus on, the fun stuff and that direct guest connection piece and talking to people when you’re not.

The day to day regular tasks, if we can take that off of an operator’s plate, or they just know that it’s handled, it’s taken care of, then that frees you up to do those other things that are more important. 

Tyson Leavitt: Zach, you actually brought up a point earlier that hit home for me. Where you talked about the lights being automated to turn on.

I’ve never thought of automating that. It’s always been on our checklist for our cleaners and stuff. Make sure the light is flipped on, blah, blah, blah. Because we, every one of our cottages is lit up in what’s called gemstone lighting. It’s like the holiday lighting that people are putting on their houses.

My brother out of Calgary actually invented that lighting, and so we use it on all of our stuff, um, but it would be super nice if it was like 6 o’clock, turns on the [00:53:00] lights, the gemstone lights are all on, the resort is all lit up, and it turns, we can turn it off remotely at whatever time if we want.

Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah.

Brian Searl: All that is, and I know Zach will tell you about a property management system, probably that has done it at one of his resorts, but all that, whether you use that property management system or not, can be automated today. It’s literally just a question of the time that you have to spend if that integrates with your PMS system, and they know the guests You ask the guests what time is your anticipated arrival, right?

And then back that up two hours in advance of that, because people are usually late. And then have the lights come on at that time. It saves you electricity. It saves you time. The guest is ready. Like, all that stuff can be done today. 

Zach Stoltenberg: Yeah, you can send a text message to your guests. Are you still anticipated arrival at 4 p.

m.? They say yes. At 2 p. m., the heat kicks on. The door code gets programmed. You can input sensors, so occupancy sensors, daylight sensors, door sensors to where those lights will turn on at [00:54:00] 

Tyson Leavitt: dusk. Zach, I need this in my life. 

Zach Stoltenberg: We can, we need to talk. I can 

Tyson Leavitt: help you. Yeah, I think there’s a number of things I need to talk to you about.

Zach Stoltenberg: The other thing I think that’s that I’m excited about is the cost for some of this stuff has gotten very reasonable. It’s not putting two and 3, 000 into one of your glamping units in order to take advantage of some of these things. You’re talking about probably five or six hundred bucks in hardware and then maybe eight to ten dollars a month in, in licensing for some of the software services to make it all operate and run.

Tyson Leavitt: Interesting. 

Zach Stoltenberg: And that’s the thing I want to talk to you about too, Zach. We’ll have, book a meeting with me, please, cause I want to see what you’re talking about because we can do it all piece meat on the back end, customized for each business, but if there’s a software that’s better. I want to hear all that stuff, so I want to hear what you’re using too.

Tyson Leavitt: By the way, one thing that I failed to mention earlier but I just want to clarify our cottages are all [00:55:00] built on site in Lethbridge at our facility, and they’re modular, so we ship them all over the place. That’s, and that’s part of our business model, but we’re not actually building on site. For, remote resorts, whatever.

Brian Searl: And we got a little bit into automation, but I did, and I, we, if we, can we go over a couple minutes to listen to an audio, even if, Zach, you have to leave or something like that? Yeah, I’m good. I’m just curious. 

Zach Stoltenberg: I do have another call I got to get to here shortly. 

Brian Searl: I probably do too, but I’m not looking at my calendar now.

So whoever is waiting on me sorry, but I wanted to talk to you about this, the future path of where Charm, and I know many different directions, but let’s just narrowly focus on Charm Resorts right now, right? Is it like, where do you want to take it? But before me, before I speculate, because I’ve talked to you about a couple of things that you want to do, in your own words, where would you like to go?

Audrey Leavitt: It depends which one of us you ask. 

Brian Searl: I asked tyson, I’ve never talked to you, Adi. I don’t think so. 

Audrey Leavitt: His answer’s better though. His answer’s the funner one. I’ll be happy if I can be creative [00:56:00] for the rest of my life. Wherever that goes, I’ll be happy, but Tyson has a different vision for the company. 

Tyson Leavitt: I would like to turn resorts to dot North America, like you would see KOAs.

But, a very distinct experience.

So yeah, I’ve got big plans for it being all over the place. 

Audrey Leavitt: We think it could be, it could compete with the Disneyland experience someday. 

Brian Searl: I think it could too. So that, so the question is do you franchise that? Do you, like what’s going through your head with how you Do you own, do you buy land, do you develop, do you 

Tyson Leavitt: Our strategy right now is I don’t know if I can tell this out here, but Our strategy right now is to license out our resorts to vendors across North America, where we book up our build schedule, so that we can scale our building, [00:57:00] manufacturing facility here in Lethbridge, and make it our headquarters.

That is a whole different experience. Once we get enough cash flow from the licensing deals that we have, that we’ll then go do. Charmed resorts that are owned and operated by our company solely, right? So 

Brian Searl: how do you make sure the quality is charmed quality if you license? 

Tyson Leavitt: We have very strict, uh, contracts that were.

Zach Stoltenberg: Franchise agreements.

Tyson Leavitt: They’re not franchise agreements, they’re licensing agreements, but similar to a franchise agreement that we’re spelling out what things we’re going to be controlling, what it looks like, how it’s interacted, and the penalties associated if people decide to go off on their own Try to change what that experience looks like without our permissions.

Brian Searl: So [00:58:00] where do you feel like you fit best? If you look at a are you looking at just licensing to solely glamping resorts? Are you looking to license that people who have RV resorts and want to add glamping? How do you feel you best fit into what exists already?

Tyson Leavitt: So we will not like go mix it with.

Other accommodation type of stuff. It’s going to have its own entrance way into Charmed Resorts. It can be on a neighboring property that is all owned by the same people, but it’s going to operate as an independent business and no it’s not with RVs It’s not with tenting or any of that kind of stuff right now.

It is a charmed resort that has storybook cottages and then restaurant experience, storefront experience. 

Audrey Leavitt: And then picking partners whose values are going to align with ours. Like I don’t think we’d mesh well with someone who just wants to go out and make. We mesh well with people who are excited about this excited about[00:59:00] the family experience, about the aesthetic of what we do that it’s really important that they.

That they understand what we do because the experience is so important to us. 

Tyson Leavitt: We a lot of times will sacrifice revenues for the sake of beauty in our cottages. Because we believe that long term, that’ll pay us back. rAther than, punching something out that I feel like I could rent all night long.

We, yeah, remember you said that. Yeah, I know. It’s a constant, it really is. It’s a constant battle within our company because our stuff is not cheap to build, like they’re unique, each one of them. 

Brian Searl: I’m curious, Zach, what you think on the balance between experience and profit, cause you work with so many of these different designs.

Zach Stoltenberg: I tell everybody like not every decision should be Made or driven by the bottom line. But it doesn’t matter how [01:00:00] pretty and cool and fanciful we can design something if we can’t afford to build it and we can’t afford to, pay that loan payment at the end of the month or we’re uncomfortable doing that.

So I think it’s about, the biggest bang for your buck, right? Every project we do, we start with a master plan that’s a maybe a 10 or 15 or 20 year vision and then we’re going to pare that back down into bite sized pieces of what can we accomplish now in the short term, where do we want to be over the next three years or five years, and then, what are some of those big ideas that we’d love to eventually get to but it’s not in the cards right now and so I think it’s, It shouldn’t be, budget’s always a factor.

It shouldn’t be your first factor. It shouldn’t be the thing that drives that decision. That should go back to who you are as a brand, as a company, and that guest experience that you’re trying to deliver. And it helps if it makes you more profitable. 

Tyson Leavitt: [01:01:00] Yeah, it’s one of those things that you roll the dice with, right?

Is this gonna pay me back? I hope so. 

Zach Stoltenberg: And I think it’s not being afraid to make mistakes and be wrong. There’s a lot of times where you can try something and be like, this isn’t working or we built this but it’s our lowest renting unit. And so those are the things you look and say, is there a way that we could repurpose this?

Is there something we could do different? Is there something we did wrong here? And don’t be afraid to make some of those mistakes and react to it too. 

Brian Searl: Because then the dice becomes a weighted dice. You get a bigger advantage every time because you learn from your 

Audrey Leavitt: Yeah. Totally agree. I actually feel really relieved when some mistakes are very stressful, but a lot of the mistakes Almost give me a sense of relief because I’m like, now they know they just learned the best lesson they can learn, right?

With everybody in the company that’s the only way we can learn is by trying something and it either goes right or wrong, but when it goes wrong, you [01:02:00] sure remember. 

Brian Searl: That’s the same thing I said my best successes are my failures. Because they lead to greater success.

But all right, do we have anything else we want to talk about before we, I know everybody’s here late, really appreciate you guys staying here, but Chris. Dave, I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk to you guys more today. 

Chris Jeub: I’d just like to say, you Tyson and Oddity you guys touched on some really nice nuggets that, that are important for all glamping owners, owner operators especially.

So you’re very encouraging and keep up the great work. 

Audrey Leavitt: Thank you. 

Tyson Leavitt: Thank you. Appreciate that. 

Brian Searl: Dave, any last words about your amazing sleeping barrels? Amazing sleeping barrels? 

David Byers: No I’m Totally impressed with Tyson and Adi’s work. Never seen it before. It’s great. 

Tyson Leavitt: Thank you. And if you’ve got any saunas, send them our way.

We’d love to see what you have. 

Brian Searl: You know what? If you’re looking for constructive criticism, that was the only thing that I didn’t, that we didn’t like when we stayed there. Was that, and it wasn’t your fault, we [01:03:00] wanted to go back and enjoy the hot tub, but we never got to because the neighbor put their picnic table behind their house, like whatever one that was next to us, right?

They had like outdoors people there and we were like we’re going to get in our bathing suit and sit outside and have 15 people crunching down on watermelons and barbecuing next to us. 

Tyson Leavitt: That will change as well as we get our, as we get our landscaping all done. Right now we’ve got minimal landscaping, basically nature because we got to move in our cottages.

We left in our cottages in a matter of a day, an afternoon we left it in, and then we spent a couple days just to fix it up and get it ready to operate. The landscaping is all coming probably this summer. 

Brian Searl: And we figured that, right? Again, just constructive criticism. I think you’ve already thought about it, but yeah.

And then I’ll come back. Let me know when it’s done. Yeah. Okay. Zach, any final thoughts? I don’t want to skip you for your final thoughts. 

Zach Stoltenberg: No, I just, I really [01:04:00] enjoy getting to meet new people every month when we do these things. And like I said, I’ve been following you guys for at least a year.

Was really a joy to get to know you and talk to you a little bit. And discovering new products. I think this is my first time seeing the sleeping barrels. I’ve seen the cedar sided hot tubs and the saunas. I’ve, seen those numerous times before. And I think there’s a lot of different companies doing them, but these are really cool and I need to go check it out and learn more about it.

Brian Searl: Awesome, thank you guys, I really appreciate you. Dave from Canadian Sleeping Barrels on Vancouver Island, I’m gonna have to come check you out sometime, you’re not too far from me. Chris, as always, thanks for being a recurring guest. Sorry we didn’t get back to your neighbours, but I really hope you resolve that in your favour.

Maybe invite make your own special charmed resort or something. We should have her on the show. It’d be great. That feels very not ideal. A little debate round. We could put her on the show and pretend she’s live. And then that would work. [01:05:00] Zach, as always, thank you from Clockwork. And obviously Tyson and Audie, we really appreciate you sharing your story with us and all those kinds of things.

And to everybody Who’s the brains behind the operation walking back in the warehouse. So we’re doing all the hard work, right? Thank you guys for watching as well. Appreciate you. And we will see you next week for our wrap up show for 2020. Other than that, we’ll talk about Glamping in 2024. Thanks guys.

Happy new year. Merry Christmas. Is there anything else? See you later. 

Tyson Leavitt: Alright, bye guys. 

Audrey Leavitt: See ya.