MC Fireside Chats – December 17th, 2025

[00:00:00] Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground. Our last episode of the year. This is the festive, best festive thing I could do on short notice.

[00:00:10] Brian Searl: It’s actually been here since last year, so I didn’t do any work. It was just sitting in the right hand side as the background. Don’t give me any credit or anything like that. But welcome, appreciate it. December 17th, 2025. We got two weeks off here for the holidays after this, and then we’ll be back in early January.

[00:00:23] Brian Searl: But before we do, we’re going to have a great conversation here with some of these special guests who have been on our show throughout the year. Let’s just go around the room and briefly introduce everybody. Do you want to start, Kristin?

[00:00:34] Kristin Andersen Garwood: I sure will. I am Kristin Garwood with Sage Outdoor Advisory. We do feasibility studies and appraisals. Along with we collect our own market data. We have our own proprietary database across the country. That’s what we do.

[00:00:48] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Kristin. Dave. Just want to let you go before you get another appointment in the showroom. 

[00:00:54] David Byers: Yeah. Yeah, I’m the CVO, the Chief Visionary Officer, and I have four different companies. Canadian Sleeping Barrels for resorts and Airbnb. Cedar Yurts, it’s an insulated log we invented to replace round tents. One of a kind, we make barrel saunas. And High-R Logs is the insulated log company. Howdy, everybody.

[00:01:24] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Dave. Appreciate you coming back. MacKenzie?

[00:01:28] MacKenzie Whitsell: Hi, I’m MacKenzie Whitsell. I am the founder of Wild Ride Mustang Sanctuary. We’re located in Sterling, Connecticut. And we offer glamping as a way to get people out here to see our formerly wild horses and our herd and experience nature and do so in a little bit of luxury and comfort.

[00:01:52] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, MacKenzie. And Elizabeth?

[00:01:54] Elizabeth McIntosh: [No audio]

[00:01:58] Brian Searl: Can’t hear you, Elizabeth. You seem to, you might be muted.

[00:02:02] Elizabeth McIntosh: Is that better?

[00:02:03] Brian Searl: That’s better. Yep.

[00:02:05] Elizabeth McIntosh: I’m located up near Toronto, Ontario, up in Canada. And I’m a founder of a four-season geodesic dome luxury glamping. We have seven domes on site. We’ve been open about three years.

[00:02:19] Brian Searl: And you’ve, has everybody been here before? I know, Sandy, you have to introduce yourself, but everybody’s been on the show before, right? I’m just old and don’t remember.

[00:02:26] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yes.

[00:02:27] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Yes.

[00:02:28] Brian Searl: The only one I wasn’t sure about was you, Elizabeth. That’s why I asked. 

[00:02:31] Elizabeth McIntosh: I think it was back in the summer with a girl from Cal—Clayoquot?

[00:02:38] Brian Searl: Maybe. Now you’re even challenging me even more. You’re just going to embarrass me more, so just stop. 

[00:02:42] Elizabeth McIntosh: Maybe it was your Canadian show. Yeah.

[00:02:45] Brian Searl: Sandy, go ahead, please.

[00:02:47] Sandy Ellingson: I’m Sandy Ellingson. I serve as an advocate between the RV industry and campgrounds. My passion is my campgrounds. We are, we have been in the past full-time RVers. Now we’re on the road about 10 months out of the year. And my background’s technology. So I like to rely on Brian a lot for the latest in AI.

[00:03:06] Brian Searl: And they’re all Canadian shows, by the way, Elizabeth, because I’m in Calgary. We just, once in a while we have American shows. All I appreciate you guys all being here.

[00:03:12] Brian Searl: Let’s start off. You’ve all been on the show before. We’ve all talked a lot briefly about your businesses and some of the things you have going on. So tell us, is there something that you look back on 2025 and say that this is a really memorable moment? This is something you’re proud of that you accomplished in your businesses or your lives that you’d like to share?

[00:03:28] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Absolutely. I’m happy to start. Thanks. We this past year, we put together I would say at the beginning of the year, we put together our first glamping market report. We do a free US report and then we do put together several states reports that you can purchase on our website.

[00:03:47] Kristin Andersen Garwood: And we’re actually about to come out with our Q4 report. We’re really probably going to be starting to blast that out in January. And we just recently put out now our RV market report for the US. We also do it regionally. It’s a free US report that you can just go to our website and download. Not a problem. And we’re actually been really expanding our proprietary database even more.

[00:04:15] Kristin Andersen Garwood: We’ve added hundreds of more properties and units throughout the US. So we’re continuing to grow that. And we’re now looking to expand internationally and put together some data internationally for primarily glamping. So that’s some exciting stuff we’ve got in the hopper.

[00:04:37] Brian Searl: Awesome. Who wants to go next?

[00:04:40] David Byers: Yeah I’ll go next. For 30 years we’ve been doing barrels sleeping barrels and barrel saunas. And for the first time in 30 years, we’re now going to start building rectangles and square saunas.

[00:05:00] Brian Searl: Okay.

[00:05:00] David Byers: Which is just totally blowing the boys out of the water because they’ve never had me ask them to do that ever. And one of the things we do every sale, we ask people to send in their pictures and we do a calendar. And if anyone wants a copy just send me your address and I’ll be happy to.

[00:05:18] Brian Searl: Is it like a, is it a fireman’s calendar or is it like a work safe calendar?

[00:05:22] David Byers: It is one of our products. So this here is one page. That’s a barrel sauna. And you can see right here, that’s up at Whistler Mountain. There’s three up there and they get about five feet of snow every year.

[00:05:41] Brian Searl: Nice.

[00:05:41] David Byers: I’ll just show you a couple of other pictures that people have sent in. That’s in a person’s backyard. If you’re wondering what a sleeping barrel is, there is a sleeping barrel. So the entire back wall is a large acrylic bubble. And everything now-a-day is really heading toward ADA. So we’ve also completed a wheelchair accessible sauna.

[00:06:18] Brian Searl: Okay, very nice.

[00:06:19] David Byers: If you’ve never seen what an insulated log is, there’s a small version of our insulated log. Western red cedar on both sides of foam. So it makes the building for a sauna easier to heat. Takes a lot less energy. And for our Cedar Yurts, we’ve married that up with a standing seam grain bin roof. So we’re replacing soft wall yurts and ours are good for a hundred years in all kinds of weather.

[00:06:54] Brian Searl: Dave, will you send me a sauna? I’m willing to do the show from inside one every week.

[00:06:58] David Byers: Yeah.

[00:06:59] Sandy Ellingson: Me too.

[00:07:01] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Yeah. Me three.

[00:07:03] David Byers: Saunas all around, yeah.

[00:07:06] Brian Searl: Thank you, Dave. I appreciate it. Congratulations on the new products and the new categories and stuff. Who wants to go next?

[00:07:11] Elizabeth McIntosh: I can go. I feel like this year was big where we completed our site plan. We started with three domes and our goal was seven. So this was our year that we finalized our max occupancy. And now we’re moving towards creating different magical moments around the property.

[00:07:29] Elizabeth McIntosh: So we also opened a library in the forest that guests can go and explore and enjoy. And we also have been focusing on expanding our staff hiring managers this year. So as owners, we can be a lot more hands-off. And we’re starting to think towards a second a second project within our area. So in the beginning stages of planning and negotiating a lease for a really cool property about half an hour south of here.

[00:08:00] Brian Searl: We all know how terrible my memory is, so did we talk about how far you are from Toronto last time?

[00:08:05] Elizabeth McIntosh: Two hours.

[00:08:06] Brian Searl: Two hours. Okay. North or northwest?

[00:08:09] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yeah, like northwest-ish.

[00:08:11] Brian Searl: Okay. So how, I’m interested, just talk to us a little bit about winter. Like how did, because obviously you’re not maybe as bad snow wise as Calgary and Edmonton are in Toronto, I don’t think. But maybe, actually you are northwest, you are, yeah, you are. Sorry.

[00:08:22] Elizabeth McIntosh: No, but where we are—because of the lake effect. We’re around all the Great Lakes. We might have six feet of snow and Toronto might not have any. So snow squalls are very come and go in our area. We’re known as the snow belt. So it, it actually is great.

[00:08:41] Elizabeth McIntosh: We, our domes are very well insulated and guests are very comfortable. And so I find winter is very busy for us. Like it sells out I find quicker than the spring. Like obviously summer and fall are also busy, but winter is quite easy to sell. As people want to experience a snow globe and experience winter glamping done in really comfortably.

[00:09:05] Brian Searl: Is it more difficult or easier to market an experience like that? Because I think the general mindset of a consumer is like that stuff’s, the outdoor camping, glamping stuff is not available mostly in the winter.

[00:09:16] Elizabeth McIntosh: I have found it easier. Like TikTok right now is loving our winter glamping. I feel like it’s really blowing up, which that doesn’t always happen in our summer content. So I find it’s actually easier to romanticize because there isn’t as many unique things to do in the winter. And so it’s really standing out in the algorithm.

[00:09:35] Brian Searl: And is there anything that you build as part of the experience in addition to the accommodations? Or you don’t need to, but I’m just curious.

[00:09:41] Elizabeth McIntosh: Like we have a sauna in the forest. Like each dome has a private hot tub, that obviously helps with the winter experience. And then like I said, we’re just trying to build different like moments around the property that people can go and explore. This library that we just opened. TikTok also really likes it. And I find it really drives bookings. When people see an experience that is really aesthetic that they want to see that they want to come and check it out.

[00:10:09] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thank you, Elizabeth. I appreciate it. Who wants to go next? We got two people left. MacKenzie and Sandy can fight.

[00:10:17] MacKenzie Whitsell: I’ll go. We’ve done a lot of good stuff this year. Getting the kind of infrastructure between the different areas up and running. So we have our horse area and our glamping area. And previously you’d have to walk back through the parking lot and go through the equestrian area.

[00:10:45] MacKenzie Whitsell: So we basically took our big herd of wild horses and split it right down the middle. And made a fence on either side so that people can walk from the camping area in between the two herds of wild horses up to what we call our pony petting pavilion. Which is a wooden round pen where the horses can come up and you can pet them if they want. And we do some training demonstrations there. And so that is, is going great. And of course we had to do like the magical lighting. And so there’s lights hanging throughout the trail and along, along the path. And it really, it’s right by our pond, so it really looks beautiful all lit up at night.

[00:11:25] MacKenzie Whitsell: Especially now that we have snow and it’s just very picturesque. So that’s been really great. And yeah, just trying to, it’s, this was our first full season. So trying to work out the kinks and figure out scheduling for oh, how often do we need to power wash the domes and all of the nitty-gritty of running a glamping resort while also taking care of 30 horses.

[00:11:50] Brian Searl: And are you guys open in the winter or no?

[00:11:52] MacKenzie Whitsell: We technically are, but unlike Elizabeth, we have not had a lot of success so far. I haven’t really been advertising it that much because I’m still, I want to make sure our guests have a really great experience. And so testing it out myself, making sure that, even though our domes are insulated, they have wood stoves in them and we’ve had guests comfortable in very low temperatures.

[00:12:16] MacKenzie Whitsell: But little things like walking, we don’t have bathrooms in the domes. So you have to walk to the bathhouse. In the middle of the night, if it’s 10 degrees out, like I don’t want to sell that luxury experience until I am confident that people will feel like it’s a luxury experience. But there are, there’s definitely the right demographic out there who’s looking for, to actually go outside and to have to go outside, and you walk by all the horses to get to the bathroom and you are immersed in nature. And it’s a different experience than the the snow globe where everything you need is right in that spot. You can sit by your panoramic window and just watch all the things going on.

[00:12:53] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah, I’m trying to dial in the experience to get it as comfortable as possible before I really hammer on the advertising to get people out here. So we’ve been getting feedback from the couple of campers that we’ve had that everything’s been really nice. So hopefully we’ll ramp up soon and get more people in here for the winter because it is a magical experience with the snow all around and the horses running outside the window.

[00:13:16] Brian Searl: Now you know, you did when you’re ready, TikTok is the answer.

[00:13:19] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah. Yeah. I gotta get on TikTok.

[00:13:22] Brian Searl: All right, Sandy. Last but not least.

[00:13:25] Sandy Ellingson: I’m just inspired by these other ladies here and gentlemen, but I love pouring into younger people, so it’s making me so excited to listen to some of the younger people and listen to what they’re doing. What I do is so much less sexy than what you guys are doing because I’m a data geek.

[00:13:41] Sandy Ellingson: And so the excitement on my part is having worked the last six months towards getting us to a place where we’re going to be able to be proactive because of the data we have access to instead of reactive. And I’m super excited about that. I’m really happy to see, Kristin, I’m happy that you’re doing some additional research to see people putting value in that.

[00:14:03] Sandy Ellingson: And especially people that know our industry that are doing the research because so often I see people spend a lot of money with a company who has absolutely no idea what we do in outdoor hospitality. And the data literally comes back and it is, it’s worthless because they don’t understand the perspective and the culture of the guest that we’re reaching. I’m excited about the data, but I’m also excited about being MacKenzie’s guinea pig because I’m a Southerner, so I’m afraid of anything lower than 60 degrees. But I’m willing to chance it for you.

[00:14:37] MacKenzie Whitsell: Awesome.

[00:14:37] Brian Searl: 60 degrees is death. I don’t know what area of the world you live in, but the rest of us are on Celsius and that’s really hot.

[00:14:46] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Oh, wait I’m on Fahrenheit myself, but I live in the Colorado mountains. So I can I can take it. I can take the cold.

[00:14:54] Sandy Ellingson: And the other thing I love is seeing the emphasis on working with the horses. I’ve worked with two campgrounds in the last year that are both agrotourism parks. And one of them has horses which they are partnering people to come in for equine therapy. And it has been the neatest thing to see how that is happening. And what, the other thing that’s so interesting is his demographic when he started this shifted from people within 100 miles of where they’re located in Florida to now 90% of his guests come from the Northeast. And what the other thing that’s so interesting is doctors are sending them. And they are coming because they’ve never seen a horse. They’ve never seen a cow. They’re coming from these densely populated urban locations. And so everything they do at this particular park is so interesting. So I love to see the growth of that.

[00:15:47] Brian Searl: All right, does anybody else have anything that they feel like we should be talking about before the year wraps up? I’ve got a couple of other questions I can ask, but I’m just curious if I throw it open-ended if anybody wants to bring up something that we haven’t talked about.

[00:16:00] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Are you all going to be shy?

[00:16:04] Sandy Ellingson: I want you to tell us what you, what AI says is going to happen to campgrounds next year.

[00:16:08] Brian Searl: You don’t want me to tell you that in a pre-Christmas episode.

[00:16:12] Sandy Ellingson: Oh, okay.

[00:16:12] Brian Searl: You do not want me to tell you that. Outwired will talk a little bit about it in January. But it’s a really interesting thought process that we’ve run through and we’re going to start releasing some industry reports, I think, as Outwired because I feel like that’s a nice, for those of you who don’t know, Outwired is my other podcast that we it’s like my uncensored Joe Rogan style podcast that I do with Scott Bahr. And Ari Smith has been joining us too. I don’t know if Ari, Sandy. He owns a $2,500 night glamping resort in Northern Vermont. And he has a background in, like he went to MIT and so like he owns this big huge AI consulting company that works on like really high-end corporate stuff. So he’s been playing with like robot dogs at his glamping resort and all kinds of stuff hasn’t worked and…

[00:16:56] Elizabeth McIntosh: What’s his resort called?

[00:16:57] Brian Searl: I don’t know. Oh no, I do know. Ballance Farm. Sorry. I was testing my memory. Ballance Farm. I think it’s Ballance.farm is the website. And so anyway, Outwired is that podcast, but I think we want to use it as more of a vehicle too, in addition to the podcast to release some industry reports that are intentionally done with, like thoughtfully and carefully with critical thinking, but by AI. And almost release like AI’s opinion of things and see what, how close AI is to the future and what data points it can discern and stuff. Radically different from the really strategic stuff that Kristin is doing, right? But I think Outwired is a good vehicle for that speculation. And it would be interesting to have that stuff out there if done I think.

[00:17:36] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Oh, AI is so amazing. It really just, we do a lot of still very hands-on analysis and work. But, just having AI give us some general overview too. And we’re trying to, incorporate that, make sure that we don’t fall behind the times too. So we are definitely focusing too on, on AI. We’re still seeing and maybe it’s all doom and gloom, I love the idea of what MacKenzie and Elizabeth are doing. So Elizabeth has been really utilizing social media, right? To get that out there. And really that is one of the items that we stress is marketing. Marketing is so important to new or wanting just to keep up with the Joneses for glamping resorts, RV resorts. And then also, having something unique with what MacKenzie is doing with the horses and the horse therapy and having just just something different and unique that, you will draw people back again and again is so key I think to future success with a lot of these developments.

[00:18:47] Sandy Ellingson: And you, Kristin, going along with what you’ve said, one of the things that I’ve found especially in communicating in the outdoor hospitality industry, because we have so many parks that are still owned by mom and pops. Old model. When they hear marketing, they think I gotta pay for paper clicks, I’ve gotta do, all of this stuff. And what I’ve tried to do is stress more of what I believe you’re doing, Elizabeth, which is engagement. And when TikTok first came out, everybody was looking at how are we going to monetize it. And they still have no real clear monetization model, but they are killing it, right? 

But it’s because of the engagement. And so I think it’s so important and I think this is where at some point we will use AI to kick its butt because while I know Brian can be very negative, I can be very positive because I love to take AI and twist it and use it. In fact, I literally had this situation this week where I was using an AI bot that I’ve trained. I asked it a question and it happened to be one that I absolutely knew it was wrong. And I said, you gave me this answer, it’s absolutely wrong. Did you lie? And it came back and said, I didn’t have an answer so I made something up. 

Literally that was the response from AI. I did a screenshot and cracked up, right? So it’s still, it’s coming, but it’s got a little ways to go. But I do think there are so many ways we can use it to improve what we’re doing, to make it us be able to do it faster, and to do it on our own without paying somebody to do it for us. So I, yeah, so building engagement is where I would say is the most important thing we can do.

[00:20:25] Brian Searl: Don’t throw me under the bus too much. Like I’m just, I’m a realist. I’m really not negative. I’m actually optimistic about the future. But I’m realist about how we get there.

[00:20:34] Sandy Ellingson: You set yourself up to make us think you were going to give us a negative picture. So that’s why I said that.

[00:20:40] Brian Searl: I did that, to be fair, I did that off air before we started, like not in front of the whole audience. But all I will, we’ll release the, we’ll release the data and I hope, like I, I hope it’s all bad. Or I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong about what the data is what I mean.

[00:20:54] Sandy Ellingson: I have at least already said too, Brian, that I lean on you because I do think you are one of the forethought leaders in AI and have been speaking to this issue for longer than anybody else. And so I do really appreciate it and I appreciate that you brought me along kicking and screaming.

[00:21:11] Brian Searl: All right let’s talk positive then. Elizabeth, what’s something really cool and positive you’ve done with AI? For your business or your personal life? Whatever you want to talk about.

[00:21:21] Elizabeth McIntosh: I just use AI a lot for my marketing on social media. So making reels, captions, promotional ideas. I find it, it’s very creative to brainstorm with. If you’re coming up with a promotion for a season, it helps me like fine tune what an idea would be. Really good with wording. It’s basically just like a marketing assistant writing emotion, email promotions. I find it’s really good with words. When you’re selling an experience and an emotion it does that for you.

[00:21:50] Brian Searl: I think it’s really interesting for promotional photos. And before you guys attack me because like obviously you can’t have a fake photo of your property.

[00:21:58] Elizabeth McIntosh: Oh, yeah.

[00:21:58] Brian Searl: If you take a still photo of your property, and we’ve done this dozens and dozens of times for clients. If you take a still photo of your property that you had a professional photograph, photographer take, like an empty RV site or the outside of a cabin that nobody’s therein. And you take that into Gemini, into their new Nano Banana Pro image model, you can literally prompt it and say put a couple, I had a this is the last one I did. 

Put a couple outside sitting with a glass of wine at sunset. And it turned the sky sunset, and it put the cl—the couple outside sitting at the picnic table that was already in front of the cabin with a wine glass, like sitting there naturally. To me, that’s no different than hiring a paid actor to come for a photo shoot. It is real, it’s not deceptive, because a couple can reserve that cabin, go there, sit at that picnic table, have a glass of wine, and have that exact same experience at sunset. So those kinds of things I think are really good use cases for AI. Like just push the limits of what it can do. And it’s really int—and then you can take that whole thing and by the way you can turn it into a video in Gemini too.

[00:22:57] Elizabeth McIntosh: That’s cool.

[00:22:58] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yeah.

[00:22:59] Sandy Ellingson: I was just going to say I used that exact same tool this past week when I was in Indiana and it was seven degrees and we had 12 inches of snow. Of course, again, I’m the Southern girl so I’m like snow! And and I was taking all kinds of pictures. And some of them were great except there was the crappy car that was in the way, or there was the telephone pole. And so I just said, hey, remove this, add this. And I got some of the best pictures ever. I may become a photographer.

[00:23:27] Brian Searl: It’s a good idea. You should.

[00:23:30] Kristin Andersen Garwood: And hey, the mom and pops out there, Sandy, really, they need to, add better photos to their websites and, all that kind of thing. And it doesn’t have to be a super expensive, type, you don’t always need a professional photographer or maybe just come out and do a simple shoot and then go from there. And I think the advocacy of getting the mom and pops up to speed on some things, can only help them.

[00:23:54] Brian Searl: That’s the win right there, right? Like you, like again I’m not dissing professional photographers. Like I used to actually, the beginning of Insider Perks was me going around to campgrounds and KOAs and taking photos and videos for people. 

So I’m kicking my own butt when I say this. But you absolutely do not need a professional photographer anymore. There’s nothing that you need a professional photographer for at a campground. Because you can walk around with your cell phone and even if you’re not a great photographer and you don’t trace the outsides of the lines, and even if the photo is crooked, all you have to do is take 80 different shots of every single site that you have and amenity. It doesn’t matter who’s in it or what the sky looks like or like maybe if it’s raining and it gets all over the lens, right? But other than that on a nice sunny day, just go around and do this. 

And then you can straighten the photo, you can change the sky, you can put people in the picture like I’m just talking about with wine glasses. Not deceptive. Do not remove the dumpster that’s next to somebody’s site. Don’t mislead people. But if you’re authentic with it, it’s no different than doing paid actors. And you, there’s no reason that you need a professional photographer anymore. You can hand those off to somebody, maybe your website developer, maybe somebody who knows how to use AI really well, and they can return back to you a suite of photos that you can use in so many different places on social media and marketing and blog posts and email marketing and your website and everywhere else. 

[00:25:13] Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. And the cool thing is so much of this technology is free. And then on top of that, it truly is just talk to it, right? You don’t have to know coding language, you don’t have to speak in a certain way. You just sit down and say, hey, this is what I’m thinking. This is what I want to have. And the more you can just have a conversation with it, the better the results are going to be. And pretty much everybody can do that.

[00:25:39] Brian Searl: The easiest way you can do this, anybody who’s listening to this or anybody who’s a guest on the show, the easiest way you can do this, go to Gemini, or go to ChatGPT, or go to Claude, which is the best one in my opinion for coding. Go there and just say, I want your help coding game, website, app, to-do list, task, calculator, sliding website thing that compares properties in Texas, like whatever else. 

And have it say and come up with a prompt that you want to design and say improve this prompt, make it better for me. Like I don’t want you to execute, I just want you to improve the prompt. And then at the end say use Canvas or select the tool, they all have Canvas. Gemini has a Canvas tool, Claude has a Canvas tool, ChatGPT has a Canvas tool. And say code it for me. And it will code it for you and it will preview it on the right hand side. And you can play the game in your browser or you can play, you can navigate the sliders on an interactive website in your browser. 

We had the whole team do this morning as part of our AI, like we have weekly AI training with the team. And we all vibe coded together for an hour and a half this morning. And they made super cool like to-do task lists and memory matching games and half these people have no idea how to code. But the amount of eyes that will open in your brain like, wow, if I can do that, if I can create my own video game, I can do almost anything with AI. So that’s what I would do first if you were trying to get people involved. Who else has done something cool? Dave, what have you done with AI at your business?

[00:27:05] David Byers: We were doing some marketing in Costa Rica and I sent off a reply but I put it through ChatGPT first. And AI actually asked me if I wanted it in Spanish as well. And I, it was just mind blowing because I hadn’t even thought of that. And I’m in marketing and sales.

[00:27:25] Brian Searl: Yeah, the amount of things that I do every day that I don’t think about, that AI is like. That’s why I put, in my AI I put use the Socratic method. And at the end of it, it’ll always ask me like three questions that I didn’t think about before. Oh, I had no idea that I should ask that, right? 

[00:27:40] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Oh, that’s a great idea, Brian. I’m going to start us—I’m going to steal that.

[00:27:44] Brian Searl: Yeah, it’s really good. MacKenzie, anything fun you’ve done?

[00:27:48] MacKenzie Whitsell: I, you know what, I’m listening to all you guys and I’m totally slacking on the AI because and it’s crazy. I use it at work, my day job. So I have a day job as a business consultant and software developer. And I’m not even mad that AI is going to replace my job of writing code because it’s I can get so much done so much faster. I’m like, hey, write these, this subroutine or my terrible messy code and I just put it in there and hey, can you make, refactor this and make it better? 

And it just rewrites everything and comes up with the, these ideas that I didn’t think of. And it’s magic. And now I’m realizing I’m really missing a lot of opportunities to use it to market the glamping because even just the pictures do you know I, I always got, have my phone with me and I’m out there like trying to catch the perfect image. And oh no, I, my battery is at 3% and I’m like, wow I could have just had a computer get the perfect image out of the very many plain photos of here are the domes and make it sunset, make it snowy, add people. So yeah, I gotta get on that because I do rely heavily on AI for lots of things, but I’m not not using it to its full potential.

[00:28:59] Brian Searl: It’s really interesting to me how some people view this because there’s for sure like this, there’s two sides of people everywhere. The “that is not authentic, that’s a lie, people, if you add photos, if you change it with AI,” right? But to me like, again, I’ve mentioned the actors already. But like you can have a professional photographer do the same thing with real guests if they’re at your property. But still anybody who comes after those guests is never going to have that exact same experience. 

The weather’s not going to be the same. The horse is going to be in the same position. It might be happy, it might be sad. It might be muddy, it might not be. They, like it might be cold or warm. Like they’re never going to have that exact experience. So I think as long as you’re making sure that they can have that, like they can still see the horses, they can still get in that position, they can still, walk that way or experience the glamping domes or whatever, right? As long as it’s authentic. 

As long as they can replicate 95% of the experience in your photo and none of it’s deceptive and there’s no dumpster gone like I talked about, right? I think it’s fine. I, obviously that’s my opinion. Lots of people argue with me, but I don’t see any problem with it whatsoever.

[00:29:57] Sandy Ellingson: I’ve got a friend that, he’s a technology person, has about 200 people working for him out of Chicago. And one of the things he’s doing just so that people will know the difference, and he’s also really big in AI, is he’s chal—he’s created his own AI bot and his name is Ricardo. And so if he does an image or a video or anything like that, he signs it and says Spencer and Ricardo. And so that way people know, and that Ricardo had a part in this. Or if they want to know they’ll ask. But he can always say, look, I am defining all of my AI with a signature. And so I thought that was a pretty cool idea.

[00:30:37] Brian Searl: All right, Elizabeth, what’s something you’re excited for 2026 that you’re going to do new or different or you’re looking forward to accomplishing?

[00:30:45] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yeah, like I said, we’re starting another project. So what that may look like. I’ve been, I’m curious if Kristin has any insight to like farm hospitality. I’ve seen a little bit on Instagram that like really elevated high-end farm hospitality is trending over in Europe. For this like high-scale experience except there’s yeah, micro ag—agriculture and goats and sheep involved and things like that. So this property that we have is like an old mill. 

And there is a couple acres in the back up underneath like the big escarpment. So it is very beautiful. So yeah, and I’m just trying, we’re just trying to brainstorm the vision of exactly that would look like. But yeah, what have you heard about agrotourism and more on a high-end scale than a more in the glam than the not.

[00:31:40] Kristin Andersen Garwood: I definitely think it can very much go hand in hand. Especially if you put anything mini in your on your farm. Mini donkeys, mini goats. I’m not kidding. Anything mini and people just…

[00:31:54] Elizabeth McIntosh: miniature.

[00:31:54] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Yeah, and people eat that up. And I mean I eat it up. I’m a sucker for it myself. And people really want to see, where’s the food coming from or and just even having say some moments like some areas here and there where people can just sit and relax and be with the farm or the agrotourism and just enjoy it and really truly, understand it. I think is great. But quite honestly, yeah, anything where people can be involved with cute farm animals. It’s very successful. Yeah. And sets itself apart. It’s more unique. And it’s fun.

[00:32:28] Elizabeth McIntosh: So yeah, looking forward to maybe developing that vision more. I think 2026 will be the year that we build it and hopefully opening in 2027.

[00:32:38] Brian Searl: I put this into, I put this into Claude in case you’re interested. I said, how do you build a high-end glamping experience? I’m about two hours northwest of Toronto. Need 20,000 foot view, like a abstract view, right? Not details. Highlights, ways to be really different and unique and immersed in it. Blueprint for not the same high-end farm stay. Is that fair?

[00:32:55] Elizabeth McIntosh: Sure.

[00:32:56] Brian Searl: Okay. So it says, the core thesis, sell transformation, not accommodation. Every glamping operation sells luxury and nature. That’s table stakes. The ones that survive the coming contraction will sell identity and story. Experiences guests can’t replicate and can’t stop talking about. Four pillars of differentiation. Working farm as a theater, not backdrop. Most farm stays treat the farm as scenery. Flip it, make guests participants in the living production. Scheduled farm rhythms. Guests can join, not just pet a goat. 6:00 AM egg collection, evening animal feeding, seasonal harvests, cider pressing and cheese making.

[00:33:32] Elizabeth McIntosh: That’s cute.

[00:33:32] Brian Searl: Consequence stakes. Let them name a chicken they helped raise. Send them updates. When it becomes dinner six months later, they understand food differently. Seasonal scarcity. Different experiences generally unavailable at different times. No fake always available menu. March lambing is March lambing. The goal is guests leave with a skill or story, not just photos.

[00:33:53] Elizabeth McIntosh: Right.

[00:33:53] Brian Searl: You want more or are we done? Is that interesting?

[00:33:55] Elizabeth McIntosh: No, that, yeah, that does make sense of. Because yeah, that’s what we’ve learned too is like people come back because they have a story to tell when they leave. And it wasn’t just a nice place to sleep, right?

[00:34:07] Brian Searl: Accommodations as characters. Stop thinking tent types and start thinking named experiences with personalities. Each structure has a name, a backstory, and a design philosophy. One might be a restored 1890s grainery, another a modernist glass cube overlooking a meadow. A third an underground earth shelter. No two should feel interchangeable. Guests should debate about which to book next time. Design for the arc of the day. Morning light, afternoon reading spot, evening fire ritual, and night sky framing. Commission local artists to create one of a kind installations at each site. The accommodation is the art.

[00:36:27] Kristin Andersen Garwood: I, I would agree with that to a point where you do need to have some kind of scale like maybe you have a few of those, a different say I’ll call them premier units. But then you also have to make sure that if you say have more than a few units or, less than 10, you want to make sure that your cleaning crew can get through there and easily flip them and turn them. So you need some consistencies with at least some of the units. But I very much agree with that like you want to have people to come back and enjoy an experience. You’re right. Not a tent. Or, a unit and that’s it. It’s an experience.

[00:37:06] David Byers: It’s funny you mention that because one of the things that we’re we’ve been doing that’s very successful is we have a muralist. And we’re doing murals on the front of our sleeping barrels.

[00:37:21] Brian Searl: Nice.

[00:37:21] David Byers: And basically guests don’t take pictures of mattresses. They take pictures of experiences. And this way the campground is becoming a photo gallery and it’s very instagrammable. And the guests are coming back. Last time they slept in the sleepy the surfer girl barrel. Now they want to sleep in the mud room or the dancing bear barrel or. Each one is has a story. So they’re immersed in the story, not just a mattress and a place to sleep.

[00:37:55] Brian Searl: Will you have any food service, Elizabeth?

[00:37:59] Elizabeth McIntosh: In our at our new place?

[00:38:00] Brian Searl: Yeah. Were you thinking about it?

[00:38:02] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yeah, like we don’t have any experience in restaurant. And anything I hear about the restaurant industry sounds awful. Or just like it’s not very lucrative.

[00:38:14] Brian Searl: Just hard.

[00:38:14] Elizabeth McIntosh: No, just really hard. Really hard, not very big margins. But I also know food is a huge part of the experience. Right now we ha—we don’t have any food on site at Back Forty, but we do a partnership with a restaurant that’s local and they do meals for our guests. They’ve come up with like really good ways to preserve because everything is frozen that we have on site, but they’ve come up with really good ways to preserve these like high-end meals that are so good. 

And so basically it’s like a Hello Fresh kit, but with like less steps for our guests. So it comes already made, but there’s just like a one step either reheating method or combining method that they have to do. So they still cook a little bit in the dome but it’s like very minimal. So obviously we already have that model for this location to be able to replicate it at the next one. But if we’re going to lean into farm tourism, I’m sure a restaurant has to do with that. 

Just a matter of, I find it’s like we built Back Forty just like me, my husband and his brother and sister. And I feel like it’s one thing to do business with family, but now when we’re branching into finding business partners with people with expertise in other areas, obviously feels a little bit more daunting.

[00:39:29] Brian Searl: Food is interesting to me. Like I, I went to Ireland probably a month and a half ago, two months ago now. And we went to a glamping resort called Finn Lough and it was on a lake and they had like just your like bubble domes and some cabins. 

But it was on a massive property, like I don’t know how many acres. And we, but you could walk to dinner and they had a high-end like five star chef that was like, it was a really nice upscale restaurant with $150 bottles of wine and stuff like that, right? But that, like in the, they were in the middle of nowhere, so it helped them a little bit. But that’s basically like they had 30, 40 accommodations. They had almost guaranteed dinner every night. And that, it really elevated the experience for us. There was a lot more to do there, but that was a big part.

[00:40:09] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yeah, I guess you need to have higher unit numbers to be able to fuel a restaurant.

[00:40:14] Brian Searl: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:15] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Yeah. And you also have to look at really F&B really, you, it sometimes can even lose a little bit of money, but if you don’t have any say services say in a five to 10 minute drive, it’s really more about consider it another amenity, right? It’s going to drive people to want to stay there and come back because they’re not wanting or to maybe cook or do anything like that, but it’s just another service. 

And so you know we see this time and time again. So many people, so many developers are like, okay, you know what kind of, what kind of net profit can I really see from F&B? And quite honestly it’s minimal. But what it can do is it can raise your rates and it can raise your occupancy. And so that’s somewhat what offsets it.

[00:41:01] Elizabeth McIntosh: So I guess it’s figuring out what your business model is with that partnership though. Because obviously if they’re not going to make any profit, your food and beverage partner, like they’re obviously going to want to share in your accommodation profit.

[00:41:15] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Definitely.

[00:41:15] Brian Searl: This is what AI says. This is where farm stay becomes unassailable competitive advantage is the food. Radical transparency. Guests see the animal, the field, and the process. Dinner isn’t farm to table, it’s that lamb you helped move to the pasture this morning. That would be dicey, but. Chef residency.

[00:41:34] Elizabeth McIntosh: That’s quick.

[00:41:35] Brian Searl: Rotating notable chefs who design menus around what’s available that week. Participatory dining, not cooking classes, overdone. Think guests forage with a guide and chef incorporates it into dinner. They contributed to the meal. And preserved scarcity. Some things can only exist here. Heritage breed pork you can’t buy. Cheese aged in your root cellar. A specific apple variety. The wealthy don’t want nice dinner, they want unreplicable provenance.

[00:42:03] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Very true. I would agree with that. And it’s just a matter of too is there a restaurant say in the area where possibly they can help you out and it’s like a win-win, maybe they and it’s maybe they make enough margin on what they’re providing you and you just break even potentially.

[00:42:25] Elizabeth McIntosh: I’m still listening. I’m just going to turn off my camera to feed my baby. But I’m still here.

[00:42:32] Brian Searl: What do you think, MacKenzie?

[00:42:34] MacKenzie Whitsell: I was just thinking about this because that is one of the biggest challenges that we have is like there’s no food near here. And we don’t provide it. So guests sometimes ask ahead of time, oh, what do you recommend for food? And it’s bring a cooler full of grillable meats. And we’ve got, barbecue stations and fire pits and whatnot, but that’s pretty much, I, there’s one pizza restaurant right down the street and we actually do collaborate with them quite a bit and they help us host fundraisers and do bigger scale stuff like that. But we’re in the middle of nowhere. 

And it’s, I’m trying to think of good ways to elevate that experience. In the past we’ve worked with a company that does like the take and bake meals that are like higher end. So we’ve done that in the past, but it’s not like a very seamless experience. So trying to figure out the best option because I think that is one of the barriers to having people book is okay, but if we come there for a weekend bringing all the food that we need in and all of the cooking stuff. We provide some basic pots and pans and grilling tools and things like that, but it’s a challenge that we are have to deal with.

[00:43:44] Brian Searl: I think you know, and we know the answer now, right? Like it’s AI, but it’s iterating with AI like we just did. AI is not always going to be right. It’s not going to be perfect. It’s not always going to have the best answer. But it’s going to spark a discussion just like we did where Kristin will add to it, MacKenzie will add to it, Elizabeth will add to it, Sandy will add to it, Dave will add to it. And then we’ll come to a oh, this is perfect for me. Now I’ve got, right? I’ve gone back and forth with it. I’ve refined it. That’s the beauty of it. And you said you already know it for your work, right? So there’s, the answer to your problem will come out of it if you iterate with it enough.

[00:44:11] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah.

[00:44:12] Brian Searl: All right let’s do our last our kind of new segment. Sandy, you haven’t been a part of this yet. For the last 15-ish minutes we typically do now a kind of roundtable where we’ll say like, all right, each person can ask one other person a question. So Sandy, if we pick you first, you can ask anybody here the guests, Kristin, MacKenzie, Elizabeth, or David, a question that you would like to hear them answer. Once, if you pick David, Sandy, then nobody else can ask David a question, then David asks somebody else a question. We’ll do process of elimination all the way down. 

[00:44:42] Sandy Ellingson: Okay, I want to ask Kristin a question.

[00:44:43] Kristin Andersen Garwood: All right.

[00:44:45] Sandy Ellingson: What were the top two things that you saw in the research that you just did that just blew your mind and everybody should know?

[00:44:51] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Oh, great. Okay. I actually had pulled up our report. And this is I’m just going to talk about our RV report. We do have a separate glamping report. But, some of the big things okay, we’re seeing, and this is our sample size which again, doesn’t include everything, it’s a large enough sample size that we can get a really good indicator of what’s going on. So right now we’re seeing about 10% of the sites or units are going to be glamping is what we’re seeing right now at RV resorts or parks across the country. 

And, but and we are seeing that starting to shift more. So as the new ones get built, we are seeing glamping become more important because it’s becoming an alternative if not everybody has, an RV. And it’s just makes it a much more seamless process to get say the groups together or other people. And we’re seeing some of the big developers focus on this more. So that’s one piece of data we’re seeing. 

And I just want to see and then there’s a substantial say average rate difference between concrete pads and loose gravel. That’s not nothing new. But that’s over 10%, about 15% that we’re seeing. And we’re also seeing how having hot tubs or saunas specifically at units and having that component can really boost your rates compared to, other developments or projects out there too. So that’s what I’m seeing.

[00:46:34] Brian Searl: Your turn, Kristin. Ask anybody a question.

[00:46:36] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Okay. Let’s see. I would love to hear a little bit more about if, David, are you still there?

[00:46:46] Brian Searl: Okay. MacKenzie.

[00:46:50] Kristin Andersen Garwood: I would love to hear a little bit more about how your guests stay involved with the horses. I know you mentioned the feeding. Is there any other ideas that maybe you had in mind to use the horses to bring in more people?

[00:47:03] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah, so we have a lot of different experiences that we offer with the horses. We offer wild horse hiking, which is where we hike the trails inside their habitat. And so it’s really a one of a kind experience because our herd is made up of horses that are ranged from totally wild and you can’t touch them to like very friendly beginner lesson ponies. And they’re all mustangs. And so it’s always a fun surprise when like our wildest one, Hank, comes up to the group slowly and some, and someone reaches out a hand and he sniffs it and that happens once in a while and it’s such a magical experience. So we have the hiking with them. And we also have a wild horse safari. 

So we like this idea because it’s great for accessibility too. So if someone can’t really hike through the trails we have a Land Rover like your typical safari with the open back. And they we can have people pile in the back and do the same thing but from the safety of a vehicle, which is also great if you’re afraid of horses because they can’t really climb in there with you. So it’s great because you can reach right out and pet them. So yeah, we have a lot of different experiences that we offer and letting people learn how to train the mustangs. So our biggest feature every year is our one week intensive mustang gentling retreat, which we’re planning for this year. 

And that’s for people who want the experience of taming a wild mustang that no one has ever touched. And so we pick up a load of mustangs and bring them back and we put these people up in our domes and then it’s a whole, so we start out with yoga and breakfast. We have an onsite yoga studio, which is a clear geo dome in the forest. And then we go and work with the horses and do some training demonstrations and do some like arts and crafts and stuff. So that is a really cool immersive experience that you really can’t get many places of oh, I have no horse experience, but I’m going to tame a wild mustang.

[00:49:03] Brian Searl: I want to do that.

[00:49:04] Kristin Andersen Garwood: I know.

[00:49:05] Brian Searl: How much does that cost? How much does it cost, seriously?

[00:49:09] MacKenzie Whitsell: I think the, it, it’s thr—thr—about $3,000 for the full package.

[00:49:17] Brian Searl: Sandy, will you buy me one? I don’t have enough money.

[00:49:20] Sandy Ellingson: Yeah. I’m going to send it to you for Christmas.

[00:49:22] Brian Searl: Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay.

[00:49:24] Kristin Andersen Garwood: That would be a great TikTok experience to do some filming on and get that out there. I could see that going viral in a second.

[00:49:32] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah.

[00:49:33] Brian Searl: Yep. Yeah. All right, MacKenzie, your turn. Anybody but Kristin, you can ask a question to.

[00:49:37] MacKenzie Whitsell: Okay. Let’s see. David, I have so many questions for you, but most of them are, what, how can I make one of your beautiful saunas affordable to me? Because I would love to have something like that on the property. So I’m trying to think of how do I put that into a question that helps our audience as well of like, how about price points? Do you have like fancier versions or more basic versions? Or are they all basically the same shell and same price point?

[00:50:05] David Byers: No, we have two different diameters, six foot and seven foot. And we start off in lengths at eight feet and go up to 16. The price points in Canadian dollars the small one is six foot diameter by eight foot with a heater is 8,500 Canadian.

[00:50:24] Brian Searl: That’s not bad.

[00:50:25] David Byers: That’s about 6,500 US or 7,000 US. And then it goes up to 20,000 from there depending if you want two-tier seating, if you want the bench in the bubble. A lot of women on a nice warm winter day, they just go out and use it as a she shed. They just lay down in the bubble and read a book. And we also have backrests. You pull the tabs out and they convert into a sleeping insert. So you can put people up overnight or unexpected company shows up or you like to do hot yoga or just lay down while you sauna.

[00:51:04] MacKenzie Whitsell: Sounds amazing.

[00:51:05] Brian Searl: Is that as expensive as you thought it was going to be, MacKenzie?

[00:51:09] MacKenzie Whitsell: It’s hard running a business and running a nonprofit mustang sanctuary because whenever we get funds in, it’s so hard to not put them immediately to all the mustangs. So it’s a balance I need to strike because the glamping is what supports the mustang. So if I invest in the glamping and have more of a secure revenue, it’s going to feed the mustangs. But it’s this week I need a load of hay. So that’s where all the money’s going.

[00:51:37] Brian Searl: Goes right out the door to the horses.

[00:51:38] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Well, MacKenzie, you can raise your rates if you get a sauna on site. So that should offset it because that’s what our, that’s what our data shows.

[00:51:47] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah. Wonderful.

[00:51:48] David Byers: I’ll work a good deal with you.

[00:51:49] MacKenzie Whitsell: Yeah.

[00:51:51] Brian Searl: All right, David. You can ask anybody but Kristin or MacKenzie a question. We got Elizabeth or Sandy. Maybe Elizabeth, I don’t know if Elizabeth can talk or not.

[00:52:03] David Byers: No if I have no questions. If anybody is interested in any information or whatever, just email me or…

[00:52:10] Brian Searl: we’ll do that. But ask a question that you want to know the answer to from Elizabeth or Sandy. Anything you want to ask them.

[00:52:15] David Byers: Where’s the basement in a three-story building? I don’t have any questions.

[00:52:24] Brian Searl: All right. All right, Elizabeth, do you have a question for anybody? Or for Sandy? Or for D—yeah, for Sandy. That you can think of?

[00:52:33] Elizabeth McIntosh: Huh. I’m trying to think about RV life. I can’t say it’s my expertise, but do you see any trends happening with the younger generation trying to get like trendy RVs and doing the Airstream thing? Or do you find RV resorts are still mainly your retired demographic or families?

[00:52:59] Sandy Ellingson: Oh, no. We’re seeing a lot of, and I see it on both the glamping side as well as the RVing side because I do work a lot with the glamping association here in the US. So I do see both. Because, the campgrounds are doing some glamping inside of the campgrounds. But one of the things we’re really following and watching right now is the onboarding paths to RVing to begin with. And why the manufacturer should be interested in that. 

And so for instance, you might think of glamping as being in competition to a campground because campgrounds take RVs and glamping units do not. However, that’s not necessarily true because we consider somebody going and staying in a glamping unit as a gateway drug to out—to the outdoors. And so they may stay at a completely just glamping location one time. They may stay at a glamping location inside a park the next time. And then they may see that RV that’s across the way and go, oh, that’s a great idea. And one of the biggest things that we’ve seen happen over the last really three, 30 years in the RV industry is the loss of gateway drugs. Because it used to be every campground had tent camping. And almost everybody could afford to tent camp. 

So it was the entry level for somebody to get into an outdoor experience. And so we’ve lost a little bit of that. And so if statistically if you look, in a lot of areas geographically, not like the industry as a whole, we have more people exiting an outdoor hospitality stay than we do coming in because of the price points. So we’ve got to create some of these, more affordable ways of bringing the Gen Z and the some of the Gen Ys into outdoor hospitality.

[00:54:53] Brian Searl: I don’t think it’s just price point. I think that’s part of it.

[00:54:56] Sandy Ellingson: Oh, that is one piece, Brian. You’re right.

[00:54:58] Brian Searl: Scott Bahr and I are going to do some research on this in early January. We’ve done a whole deep dive white paper into the psychology of Gen Z for both glamping and RVs and outdoor hospitality in general. It’s really interesting and eye-opening. It’s not the same stuff you hear everybody talk about. Like we all want to stay connected, we all want to have Wi-Fi. That has nothing to do with it at all.

[00:55:18] Sandy Ellingson: No. You’re right.

[00:55:19] Elizabeth McIntosh: What does it have to do with?

[00:55:21] Brian Searl: Like it’s the way they were raised. It’s their mindsets. Like you’re teaching me, you’re testing my memory again, which we all know is a bad idea. We’ve established that. But it’s mostly how they were raised. They were raised as disconnected, solo, social media people. Like they were raised on social media. They don’t get together with their friends as much. They don’t have connected experiences. Their parents didn’t take them camping. They haven’t had the entrance into the outdoor hospitality market like Sandy was talking about. And so they’re very nervous.

[00:55:46] Brian Searl: So if if you’ve ever heard of Earl from Black Folks Camp Too. His new company I think is broader and all-encompassing. But his one of his main things was that the, Black folk have never been introduced on the camping lifestyle and how to go camping. And so it’s, they’re scared of the woods because of the history of Black people and also because they’ve never experienced to it. But this is a lot of the same parallels with Gen Z is they don’t like to be embarrassed.

[00:56:09] Brian Searl: They like to be confident. They like to know everything. And so they’re nervous to go try camping because they don’t know how to set up a tent and they don’t want to be embarrassed and they don’t want to fail. And there’s a lot of really stu—interesting stuff that our research has uncovered that we’ll present in January. It’s, yeah, it’s quite, it was quite fascinating to read some of it.

[00:56:26] Brian Searl: And how to appeal to Gen Z because it’s not at all what you’ve heard in the narrative from anyone else that I’ve seen. All right, final thoughts. We’re going to wrap up here. Kristin, any final thoughts and then where can they find out more about Sage?

[00:56:37] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Final thoughts is yes, I think moving forward connection is really the foundation to camping and outdoor hospitality I think in the future too, Brian. And we have a very all-encompassing website, sageoutdooradvisory.com.

[00:56:55] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Kristin. MacKenzie?

[00:56:58] MacKenzie Whitsell: All right. Final thoughts. I guess just check out our website. It’s wildridect.org. And you can see what we have available in terms of our glamping domes and our experiences with the horses. And yeah, that’s we’d love to, come on down. And we love playing host and showing our herd to everyone. And giving them a really great experience.

[00:57:24] Brian Searl: I guess I should ask this too. What are you going to do for Christmas, MacKenzie? Since it’s our last show before the holidays. What’s your plans for Christmas if you want to share?

[00:57:31] MacKenzie Whitsell: I have no plans right now. We’ll see.

[00:57:34] Brian Searl: All right, Kristin. How about you? Any plans for Christmas? Are you excited?

[00:57:37] Kristin Andersen Garwood: I’m super excited. We’re going to hit the ski hill up here. Do some of that fun stuff. Playing in the snow.

[00:57:45] Brian Searl: Very cool. All right, Sandy. Final thoughts, Christmas plans, and where can they find out more about your work?

[00:57:49] Sandy Ellingson: We have planes flying over right now. I apologize. I’m down in the area of Pensacola where the, those special flying guys, they come over. But anyway. I am just looking forward to 2026. I think it’s going to be a very pivotal year for both outdoor hospitality and the RV industry. And I feel more positive going into 2026 than I have any of the years post-COVID.

[00:58:13] Brian Searl: What’s your prediction for the percentage up or down of the RV industry, of RV parks in 2026?

[00:58:20] Sandy Ellingson: I think that if RV parks find the right voices to listen to they have a significant opportunity to increase their occupancy through some of the creative things that are coming through. It’s the challenge is going to be getting them to listen to the right voices. And there’s also going to be a couple of regulatory things that are coming out that we’re watching, but I’ll speak to that at another time.

[00:58:42] Brian Searl: All right. Guess a percentage. I’m going to date you and record you.

[00:58:47] Sandy Ellingson: I would like to see all of my parks reach an annual occupancy of 75 to 80% again next year, which is nowhere near where we’re going to land for this year.

[00:58:56] Brian Searl: So you think up 10% next year? As a whole? Okay. All right. Elizabeth. Final thoughts and where can they find out more about Back Forty Glamping and Christmas plans if you want to share?

[00:59:06] Elizabeth McIntosh: Yeah, we’re actually shutting down this Christmas. I feel like a huge part of our success has to do with our staff loving their jobs. So we wanted to be able to give everyone a break over those three days. So we are closing, which I think is great. And my family, I have a bunch of young kids.

[00:59:22] Elizabeth McIntosh: We like to go to the resort when it’s closed so that we can use the hot tubs. So we’ll be doing that. Awesome. And yeah, follow along on TikTok and Instagram for some a lot of winter content. It’ll be coming in pretty heavy. And it looks quite magical. So you can find us there.

[00:59:40] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here. Last but not least, Mr. David Byers.

[00:59:44] David Byers: Yes. We’re going to be not traveling this year. We usually go to Costa Rica for Christmas and New Year’s. But I’m going to just keep the open sign on. We just came back from the British Columbia Campground and Lodges Association Ideas Show where we sold 15 of our sleeping barrels.

[01:00:04] Brian Searl: Nice.

[01:00:04] David Byers: So we’re going to be doing a lot of work over the holidays. If anybody’s interested in our saunas, go to www.oneofakindcw.com. If they’re interested in a sleeping barrel, it’s www.canadiansleepingbarrels.com. And if they’re interested in replacing a round tent, a soft wall yurt, go to www.cedaryurts.com.

[01:00:44] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Dave. I appreciate it. All right, that wraps up another episode of MC Fireside Chats.

[01:00:48] Brian Searl: For the rest of you guys aren’t sick and tired of hearing my voice, I will be on Outwired live with Scott Bahr and Ari Smith in about 53 and a half minutes from now. For our two-hour kind of episode where we’re going to wrap up the year, talk about all the things AI and automation like we usually do. And if you want something fun, all of you here or if you’re watching the show, to do over the holidays I’m, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I put out a post today.

[01:01:10] Brian Searl: We created the first AI generated Christmas album for outdoor hospitality owners. And it is on Spotify and Apple Music and all the places you can find music right now. There are 11 tracks like “All I Want For Christmas Is A Five Star Review,” “Grandma Got Run Over By A Golf Cart,” and all kinds of other fun stuff just for the campground crowd.

[01:01:28] Brian Searl: So if you want to check it out please do. Otherwise we’ll see you next year. Almost said next week. On another episode of MC Fireside Chats.

[01:01:35] Brian Searl: Thanks for a great 2025 and best of success to all of you next year.

[01:01:40] Elizabeth McIntosh: Thank you. Thanks so much.

[01:01:43] Sandy Ellingson: Merry Christmas.

[01:01:43] Kristin Andersen Garwood: Merry Christmas.