MC Fireside Chats – July 5th, 2023

[00:00:00] 

Brian: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Before I get started, guys, I just wanna try something real quick. ChatGPT edit my intro to take out Cara cuz she’s no longer a host. Okay. It didn’t work yet. We’re not there yet. All right. I was just hoping. I had to try.

I don’t have enough time to do that, but for those of you who don’t know, Kara is no longer my co-host, only because she has this super big, important role with CCRVC now, and she’s got way too many things in her plate, so we’ll miss her. But that was the reason. Apparently wasn’t because she didn’t like me enough, that is a thing with a lot of people, so it’s possible.

But super excited to be here for our first week episode. Again, we’re welcoming back some of our Currenting guests. Christine Taylor from the Town Law Firm Sandy Ellingson, Mike Harrison from CR Hospitality. Sandy, what is the name of your company? Like you need to put a dash there 

Sandy: sandyellingson.com.

That’s the name of the company. 

Brian: I feel like that would be easier if we all just called our companies that 

Sandy: I know. 

Brian: What do you think Mike CRR hospitality [00:01:00] renamed to Harrison Hospitality, Inc. 

Mike: I don’t think anybody would stay with us. 

Brian: I don’t know.

I don’t know about that. Certainly more than they would stay with me, all right. What do we got on our plates here for the last month? What’s been happening in outdoor hospitality? We’ve had a big, huge July 4th holiday. How did occupancy go, Mike, at your properties, and Sandy, obviously you probably touched on this, and Christine, we were talking about your park too, so everybody can jump in.

Mike: Remember, most of our parks are in Arizona currently. 

Brian: What are you saying? They’re not patriotic down there, Mike? 

Mike: No, we’re very patriotic. We had slow rolls and flags, but we also had record temperatures of 116 degrees. So July 4th. It is busier than summer of the summer. It’s not a busy holiday, like the same thing.

 Or up north it, it was hot. 

Brian: Yeah. I have. Seen that and I’m relatively enjoying Canada right now, so feel free to come visit Mike if you want to. 

Christine: I think they said that Monday was like the world record for heat. 

Brian: Usually it was even hotter. I did read that on CNN [00:02:00] this morning.

Christine: Yeah. That the entire planet was hot. 

Brian: Average temperature of the whole world. Yeah. It was 17 degrees Celsius or something. 17.1 on Monday and 17.6 on Tuesday. 

Christine: So we, yeah, it was even really hot up here, which is brought with it some insane thunderstorm. So that’s been interesting.

Brian: That’s very pleasant here. The invitation is open to everyone. It’s wonderful. 

Mike: Google 17. 

Brian: So true. Oh, yes. I forgot Christine’s blessed with having a husband in Canada, right? Or family in Canada. 

Christine: That’s true. 

Yeah. Both. 

Brian: Yeah. So yeah we up the top half the Brian Searl’s and the Christine’s on the top.

We operate on what the rest of the world does, and then there’s America.

Christine: Canada, America’s hat. 

Brian: You guys wanna chart your own path, but. 17 Celsius is what about, I don’t know, 60? Something like that. 

Mike: 62. 6. 

Christine: Yeah. 

Sandy: So I have heard [00:03:00] some of the conversations about trying to do the analysis on the 4th of July occupancy and factoring in different variances because it was off from what, last year, obviously?

Yeah. It was a little bit lower than what was expected. But they felt again, the weather was a big deal. We had really bad weather across a significant section of the east over the holiday weekend that people talked and talked about in advance. And so people were canceling or changing their dates in advance.

The holiday fell in the middle of the week, so there wasn’t a clear hot 4th of July weekend for people. And then the heat other than just storms, but the heat was a significant factor. A lot of the parks that normally would’ve been sold out a hundred percent still had occupancy. 

Brian: Do we really think that this is, and I’m just asking them, playing devil’s advocate or, I’m not saying I believe this but let’s just play devil’s advocate because it’s very easy to make an excuse forever perpetually that something happened because it wasn’t right.

And I understand those are all [00:04:00] valid reasons, and I’m not suggesting that they’re not true. But it’s very easy to continue that discussion forever and just continue making excuses as to why parks aren’t full. And I think there’s could be a danger in that if one day it becomes not true. 

Christine: Sure. But I would say for the fourth in general, that one’s notoriously not as full as the other holiday weekends.

 I think Memorial Day and Labor Day, even in the years that like I grew up in it, were always quicker to be sold out than 4th of July because they’re always attached to a weekend, like Sandy was saying. Whereas she’s right this midweek one our Campground, if you looked at like a four or five day stretch, you would say We were sold out. No one could have stayed there, come in and stayed like for that whole period. Had some people come in on Friday, some people come in on Saturday, some people come in on Sunday. So it was they, instead of them all coming in on like Friday and leaving on Tuesday.

It was like very spread out. My husband had to work on Monday, so we had a lot of people who were still there just for a regular Camping [00:05:00] weekend. 

Brian: Your husband’s in Canada. 

Christine: No. He’s here. Says Monday wasn’t the holiday. 

Brian: So Monday up here was a holiday.

That’s why I was asking cuz Canada Day. 

Christine: Was it Canada Day Saturday, was it? 

Brian: Canada Day was Saturday. But the federal holiday that we had, like all of our holidays are on Mondays. Yeah. Almost every single one of them. Long weekend. We have one long weekend, like literally almost every month.

Christine: So that’s the problem in the US with the 4th of July is since it moves every year in years like this, when it’s in the middle of the week, if you don’t get, if you only get off the fourth and you didn’t wanna take that as a vacation day. So we had a lot of people who treated this past weekend, like a regular weekend.

Came in on Friday. Left on Sunday. 

Mike: Yeah. If you look at some of the bigger indicators CampSpot sent out their monthly transport. Yes. And basically they were, they saw a softening, of course, an occupancy for the rest of the year and an uptick in a R. However, for June they [00:06:00] saw that same park bookings while it was down in April and May, June was up 4%.

And July and August improved by about a hundred dips. Also and then the fourth Q4 is stable. It hasn’t been that continued low as me, we’re all gonna die. 

Brian: I don’t know if I, did I ever see that? I don’t know if that was ever my, but no. 

Mike: I think, but that’s been some of the talk as 

record you, et cetera, et cetera. The other thing that just came out this week also was the, US consumer confidence spiked in June, from a, obviously it was a low kind of just near the end of 2022 and it was almost 80 in June, which I guess, above 80 is indicative of.

Brian: That’s fascinating to me, right?

And I don’t want to get into a discussion about consumer confidence, but why? What in the world happened to make people be like, yes, let’s just go spend more money. And we’re confident now. 

Mike: I’m certainly not an economist, but I think, gas prices stabilized considerably over the last three or four or five months, [00:07:00] right? I think. 

Brian: That’s right. But that wasn’t a June thing is what I’m, or a May thing. 

Mike: But I think it’s taken that long for people to get their shivers, away. I think inflation has certainly, there was a continued spike in, and it has softened in terms of the progressive, growth that it had been.

So I think, the fed, the interest rates had gone up and up and up and up. And then obviously we saw this in the housing industry and our other businesses, went down a point and, q2, Q1 was, The halls were empty. Q2, was great.

That one point reduction in the interest rate made a considerable difference. So I think there’s a lot of indicators of why does that mean everybody’s outta the woods? No. Does that mean, smooth sailing forever? No, but I think the, fire drill nature of it certainly has softened a little bit.

Brian: I think it’s a, again I’m not gonna take this down this path, right? But I think it’s just a fascinating discussion because I think the whole problem with this economy right now is that the people with the investment banks and c NBC and everywhere else are saying like, the Fed is gonna pause, the Fed is gonna pause, they’re gonna cut rates to the end of the year.

And the Fed is no, you guys [00:08:00] are idiots. We’re not doing that. And no one is listening. And that’s just delaying the inevitable. It’s causing consumers to continue spending and businesses to put off layoffs. And I think when they finally realized that the Fed is serious, we’re in a whole heap of trouble.

Mike: Not in kill, but because, none of our investors are saying that. 

Brian: Oh yeah. I think it’s the small businesses, like the dealers know what’s coming. 

Mike: Our partners in the bank, same thing. We’re, I don’t haven’t heard anybody say that really.

It’s, the end of the years. It’s great. 

Brian: I continually hear that on cnbc, but you’re right. Like the people that.. But that’s what the consumer is listening to and that’s what small business owners are listening to. And so I understand what you’re saying.

I agree with you a hundred percent. The banks and everybody else who are in this every day are not saying that, but Main Street hasn’t gotten the message yet. I don’t think so. Anyway. We don’t wanna take it down at that. Sorry. 

Mike: Fair enough.

Brian: But yeah. 

Mike: You asked. 

Brian: Because I’m not an [00:09:00] economist and I’ll say something stupid, I probably already have said 10 things, stupid.

But so what else? So July 4th, I’m gonna have to ask this question real quick. Sandy, Christine. Christine, what’d you see at your park? And congratulations, by the way on doing.. 

Christine: No, it’s good. Honestly, both, personally and other clients and things like that more of the same legally some of the similar things.

There’s some more litigious people out there, trying to do what I call like the 5K slip and falls and stuff like that. I’ve seen that there’s a somewhat an undercurrent of disgruntledness in some people who, would poke at things they had at before. I’ve had a lot of guest removal issues countrywide.

People have had guests that were problematic that they’ve had to remove or their belongings, like some abandoned campers. So the trend that I’d seen over the last few years’ just continued. We have more employment lawsuits. What I guess would be the newest [00:10:00] thing is that. I’d say the governments had been pretty busy and backlogged during 2020.

So now if they had felt that they weren’t being paid correctly or they hadn’t been doing their inspections of your property, I have a lot of people who newly gotten hit with fines from their various dates because they have finally caught up on their paperwork and inspections. So I have a lot of people contending with different state agencies right now, either for, failing to pay or renew or inspect or a whole host of things.

But I feel like the governments have finally caught up on their backlog and now are investigating those things they had been ignoring for the last three years. 

Brian: I don’t think that’s fair, right? If we can pause student loans, we should be able to pause all penalties for businesses for a couple years.

Christine: You would think so, but unfortunately there’s no. There’s no precedent for it. So unless somebody’s willing to litigate about the same, which most people don’t want to [00:11:00] we’re just stuck with what we got. 

Sandy: Something you said Christine really kinda sparked my interest because for the first time this year I’m working with a lot of parks in the north and so I’m learning a lot from some of these parks that might be just seasonal.

They’re only open part of the year, but they allow people to leave their rigs year round, or a lot of parks that are long-term stay that are now trying to shift to transient, which I’ve always worked with, but it feels like the numbers are bigger. But one of the things that’s interesting is, back in 2007 when the economy crashed, a lot of people who were into mobile home park got left where people abandoned their rigs and it cost them a lot of money to try and move them. And that’s when they kinda went into the RV park industry with long-term stay because the idea was you were safer because they had wheels and you could get ’em off. But a couple of the things I’ve been seeing recently is exactly what you said is I’ve been [00:12:00] seeing parks that have really been left with these old rigs because they’ve allowed ’em to come in and sit there either seasonally or long term, and then the person just abandons it.

And not only do they not tell you they’re leaving, they leave all of their junk. And so it’s still costing them $2,500 to haul it off to get rid of it and all that kinda stuff. And I’m just wondering if, I’m seeing that increasing. I’m wondering if it’s an increasing trend already. I mean if more parks are seeing that and there’s something we should be doing proactively to try to address that.

Brian: I think we need to be clear, we wanna dive into this topic in a second. I think we need a show. Like they have the Storage War show, right? Where you just auction off, you don’t know what’s in it and it’s closed. Like you just need to have people show up and bid on the closed trailer.

Christine: And well, funny that you say that. So different states actually have the ability to do that. So in New York, for example if you get all the way to that part of the process, they [00:13:00] allow you to use the lien law, just making this short that eventually lets you auction off their camper to recover any fees they owed you for it.

But this is a twofold issue. One, the process sucks. I’m gonna be honest. Unlike a storage unit, because it’s a, it’s a vehicle, motor vehicle depending you have to do a lot of lien searches and you have to notice people. So if it’s a newer camper, there’s a chance they still owe money on it. And we have to notice the bank first cuz they’d get first bibs.

And then if it’s an older camper, it might not be worth anything. So it’s not worth the process to go through it. So yes, we could. 

Brian: That’s why you don’t tell him what’s inside it, right? Like it could be.. We heard that he was an ancient Egyptian historian. Archeologist, and there could be untold treasure plan.

Christine: That’s right.

Brian: Whatever you wanna do. 

Christine: New Indiana Jones. 

Brian: I think that’s where he went, and he probably got lost in a cave somewhere, and that’s why he didn’t come back. 

Sandy: I’ve had , two instances where a rig [00:14:00] sat in a park for a month and a guest, kept complaining about the smell.

And they actually found the man in there murdered by his wife. That was a very interesting situation.

Hey, this is a really great park. Owner owns four parks, but but this was a crazy work. She told everybody that her and her husband had to go back to Texas to take care of a sick family member and that they were leaving the rig, but they’d be back. She made phone calls every week to check in.

The whole time she had dismembered him and put him in the shower. 

Brian: You see how much value we bring to you, Mike, while you could be doing real work? 

Sandy: And the second one was we literally had a manager that had a heart attack and died in his rig. And because he was the only person working on property, it took weeks for somebody to actually say, Hey, cuz it was a long-term stay park.

Yeah. To say we [00:15:00] haven’t seen the manager in a while and nobody had reported him and it was pretty sad. But I was wondering, one of the things I suggested in just the conversation was that if, if you put in a lot of parts to say you can’t come unless your rig is less than 10 years old.

But then what if you put in, if you wanted to do that, that it had to pass an annual inspection and you put those things in there, like the tires had to be good, they couldn’t be rotted. If it were a drivable, it had to be able to be cranked and moved. Those kind of things. Because already you do the inspection is my question.

Would they have to be required to foot the bill themselves? 

Brian: I would think that might shaking his head like, no, that’s not gonna work. Go ahead..

Sandy: Do the inspection every year. If you wanna stay and, it covers a ba and I’m, when I say inspection, I’m just saying you take a look at it and you go, this thing is probably still road worthy.

We’re okay. Or it campers aren’t complaining about it. It doesn’t make us look like a park that, you know, that where nobody wants to come. This is where trailers come to die. [00:16:00] So anyway, I don’t know. I just, I think it’s an intriguing conversation and I always like to be proactive cuz right now if it’s starting to happen, we’re being reactive and how do we change that reactive to proactive?

Brian: People are abandoning skyscrapers in San Francisco that are worth billions of dollars and not paying those mortgages. So maybe this is just a trend. 

Sandy: Yeah. For the most part, the ones I’ve seen are older units. They’re not units. The bank will come looking for it, somehow if it money is owed on, it’s definitely a lot of older rigs. And a lot of older people who have parked those rigs there and have no way of moving them, they don’t own a truck to tow it with anymore.

Brian: I want to know why Mike was shaking his head.

Mike: It’s not worth getting Everybody’s different. For us, for us, we got 400 something sites at each park and who’s gonna manage the administration of inspecting all 400 sites [00:17:00] and keeping the paperwork and then there’s gotta be some kind of fair, not fair housing, how do you unilaterally administer the policy on what you determine, there’s legal implications on that.

So for me, I just think I look at the administrative burden it would put And is that worth it? You mentioned proactivity, Sandy. I think, for our approach and again, we’re a little bit different. We’re more upscale the, not that we don’t have issues, of course we do, we’ve got deaths also and, various incidences of course.

But I think you just gotta uphold your rules and regulations proactively as opposed to reactively. And you address those ones, you can tell typically which ones are gonna be your problems, and if you hopefully eject rather than evict before they become a problem. That’s how we would approach it.

I wouldn’t wanna, for us anyway, have to put a whole burden on inspecting every rig. 

Brian: Oh, I wouldn’t, weren’t we looking for a use for that robot dog, Mike? 

Sandy: Yeah. I wouldn’t inspect every rig, I’d only inspect those that were outside the age limit, but, and I do, I feel like people [00:18:00] come in at different times.

So you would do it on the anniversary of their check-in date? Not on January 1st of every year or anything like that. But anyway, I just. My strategic..

Brian: There are no bad ideas, like we’re just think, right? Like certainly I’m no expert 

Christine: I think it’s might be somewhere in between the two of them.

What Mike said is certainly important. You definitely, you gotta have those rules first. I’d say that’s number one. Yeah, there’s been a movement towards that, there are a lot of people who still have nothing in writing, and if you don’t have any rules and people don’t know what they are, then enforcing that, has all of those issues.

The second thing is if it’s a movable. RV such that they have an R V I A sticker and we’re claiming that they’re an RV for a whole host of reasons. We don’t want them to do anything to change the permanency of that structure. So like I’ve had some campgrounds who when they went to go to remove something looked to find on the outside, but the floor must have rotted at one point and the people had their slide outs out and redid the [00:19:00] floor at the slide outs out such that you couldn’t push the slide out in anymore.

So then it was no longer towable. I could see why you would want to inspect in that kind of thing, or bolting the deck to the camper. As long as you have clear rules about that. So that’s not happening such that they remain towable. It shouldn’t be that big an issue. And you’re right, Brian, what you said and Sandy, about the bank coming to look for it.

I’ve had a couple people whose campers have been repossessed. I think this is somewhat Showing what happened and what’s changing with the economy, what we were talking about, A lot of people bought campers, when they, that was the only mode of vacationing at the time, and some people got campers that they probably couldn’t afford.

Maybe their financial situation has changed. But I have to be honest, I had never really had to walk a Campground through a repossession of a seasonals camper. And now I’ve had a couple of them in the last, 18 months or so. So I think there’s a little tip tiptoe there. But really the crux of any operation is, [00:20:00] To have rules and guidelines and be very transparent about them and enforce them equally.

And, I appreciate that you wanna be proactive, Annie, but besides the administrative burden, Mike briefly talked about the legalities of it hard. And I’m sure it would open up to why is Sally’s camper okay, mine looks the same. Is it just because you don’t like males or whatever it is. 

Brian: You just need to get in there, right?

So what if you just call the FBI and report you saw a most wanted fugitive and they bust down your, and then you can get into.. 

Christine: You never know. That is a way, but I try to stay as away from people units as possible because I don’t wanna expose myself to any more liability. So as long as from the outward view, I can see that everything’s okay, such that if I had to tow them off the property, I could, that would be my baseline.

But if you didn’t have agreement, Or rules in place. You really got to, I think that a lot of these people are. This is the reactive piece wishing that they [00:21:00] had something, especially if they’re in a state that..

Brian: After it happens to you the first time. 

Christine: Yeah. Especially if you’re in your state that doesn’t have a statute.

Some states have really clear statutes about campgrounds and what to do with them in the northeast and other places and some places don’t. And if you’re in the state that doesn’t have anything in the law about campgrounds, you better hope you got your paperwork. Cause that’s the only way we’re gonna be able to prove, that you’re okay and you’re in the right.

So I think the more proactive approach is to make sure. Your staff is trained correctly and your paperwork’s in order. And that’s the movement I’ve been trying to shove people to. 

Brian: And it’s tough, right? Like it’s tough as a small business owner to foresee absolutely every potential thing that could possibly happen and have paperwork for it.

Christine: Sure, nobody wants to read all that. Anyway. It’s, that’s part of the pushback too, is that if I tried to cover every situation for you, it would be insane. And I know there are some attorneys that do that. I read a waiver that another attorney had made for a Campground, and I was curious, so I like copied and pasted all into a Word document to [00:22:00] see how long it really was.

Once it was off this website and it was 15 pages long, and that was just a waiver and release like, But that was one of many documents that I gave you. You would never wanna come, like you would be like, that’s crazy. I don’t sign that, to have surgery. I absolutely understand that there is a fine line between a protecting yourself and operational standards, and do better. It’s never gonna be iron plaid or the best if you actually want to have guests come to your campgrounds. So I am aware of that. 

Brian: Yeah. All right what else do we have that’s not legal and sad and depressing? 

Christine: It’s not always depressing. 

Sandy: So I’m working on something that’s really fun.

Brian: And are you gonna tell us or are you just gonna tease us?

Sandy: Yes, its and it’s nothing that’s making me money, so it’s not an advertisement. But looking at forming some awards that can be [00:23:00] given out each year for all, for multiple areas of the industry as innovators. And it’s coming out of the first innovator summit that we had in Elkhart, but finding Camp Browns that are being innovative in some new way.

And then being able to individuals be able to say, I wanna put them up for entry. Is using an 

AI chat bot count? 

Yes, it would too. Yeah, absolutely. So like technology product and then for, and either a supplier OEM kind of person, like who is as a consumer, who do we see being innovative?

Not them telling us they’re being innovative. But having the consumer tell them what they’re seeing as being innovative and what are the things that they’re already doing versus trying to create this wishlist. And it’s been..

Brian: We have too many awards already though. I’m being good just again here.

Sandy: I do think it, I think it, it’s fun and I think there’s a way of gamifying it once you do it, that really [00:24:00] makes it fun. . But I also feel like so many people are doing things that are innovative, but they’re doing them in a bubble. And so there’s other like, somebody might be creating a really great product, but the Campground has no clue what this product is or how it works.

And it happens to be going on every RV. But they need to know about that. Or, the manufacturers are coming up with some neat things, and again, the Campground may not know about it. So how do they prepare for that? So I just think being able to share the areas where we’re innovating and who’s being innovative and doing what in an, again, a proactive way, really makes it interesting. So we’ve got.. 

Brian: I like that almost more from an industry to industry peer to peer standpoint though, than involving the consumers. 

Sandy: We’re, we’ve already started it peer to peer, and so we’re meeting twice a year now and different people are being invited to be a part of the group as it grows, but then there becomes the consumer part of it.

Do we need to add a [00:25:00] piece to that where they actually can, maybe they see something we don’t see. 

Brian: Maybe. But if it’s just innovation, I don’t think the consumer is necessary. What do you think, Mike? 

Mike: The consumer won’t know. More than else.

Brian: Whether it’s candidate or not. 

Mike: No. They’re not gonna know until it’s done and implemented.

And even then it’ll probably take two or three or four years for consumer adoption. I like, first of all and this is not a call for me to prove through everything Sandy says. It’s like the 

third time Sandy said something.

Brian: We love Sandy. He’s got so many good ideas. We just gotta pick and choose.

Mike: That’s what I mean, it’s an amazing idea. It’s, we’re just talking about approach, right? So it’s just, different approach. So I think it’s an amazing idea. I love the sharing, I think innovation, collaboration is how this industry grows. I think it’s awesome. I think, Brian, your point is a salient one solid one is that it’s, I think it’s more, the industry partners as opposed to the consumer that can share it, and some of that’s proprietary in nature, of course, but, the [00:26:00] best practices, I believe, rising tide rates is all ships.

And we’ve gotta continue to push the industry forward. And I think that’s, as we, like you’ve heard me say this, There’s, 40 different booking sites you gotta go into for an RV, search, boy, for a consumer, it’d be great if there’s two or three or four. And so I think a lot of these things fall into that category as well.

But I love the idea. 

Brian: I will say from my perspective, right? Like the problem with, if you look at the industry awards, and we’re not gonna pick on anything specific, right? But the places where a Campground gets an award from a peer, I think a big part of that process problem in almost every instance, and there are exceptions that do it differently, is that you can nominate yourself.

And then there are so few people who actually nominate themselves that it ends up either being the same park every year or whatever else, and then the judgment is done by four or five people, and then you get like best website of the year and it looks like everyone else’s website. There needs to be some kind of [00:27:00] criteria here to where an award actually means something to where the association, if you’re giving out awards, they’re going out and looking for these people and going and they’re not letting people self nominate.

This is, I don’t know, and maybe that’s not as big as big of a problem as I see, but I don’t know. Like I was told for seven years in a row, I would win supplier of the year if I just nominated myself and I refused. I’m not interested in nominating myself. If you think I’m good, let me know. But that’s the thing, right? And that’s how it works. 

Mike: But that kinda builds Sandy’s point though, that there’s more authenticity. Authenticity, that’s a good word. Authenticity. If a consumer votes for it and kicks it. As opposed to, 

Brian: And I agree, like I think there is a lot of value, that’s why I’m bringing this up, I think there’s a lot of value in the peer-to-peer aspect of it, but I think the peer-to-peer aspect needs to focus more on really deep diving as a committee or a board or a group or [00:28:00] whoever’s in charge of it, instead of letting everybody else come to them. So I think, again, I’m very much saying that it’s a good idea, Sandy.

Sandy: And that’s kinda why I like the idea of it being focused around being an innovator because there’s a very clear definition of what we’re looking at and what qualifies as an innovator for each of the different categories. And so it’s not just like best website, cuz you can have a terrible website win because nobody knows, what is, if there is no real best website out there, then.

The lowest common denominator wins. But invader means you’ve got to be doing something that nobody else is doing, or nobody has done in the industry already way already, or doing something new in a creative way. And and I think those things are inspiring and to what Mike said, we just kinda raise everybody up when we talk about innovative things.

Brian: So what is the, I’m curious, what is the incentive for this? And I know you don’t, you may not have an [00:29:00] answer yet, but let’s, I’m just curious because I think some of the other issue why people don’t really necessarily go in droves to nominate other parks is what is the incentive when the park wins?

I get a little badge on my website that says, X Association, or X Company says, I’m the best Campground in the world. I’m number one in USA’s today’s 10 best, or whatever, right? But does that really mean anything? Did millions of people really vote? It does. No, I know, it means something from a marketing perspective.

Absolutely. But does it really mean something to the park other than that increased visibility for business, which is probably enough but, and I’m talking about, I’m just talking about consumer awards. To be clear, I’m talking about the peer to peer right now, the industry. 

Mike: You’re asking from an owner standpoint and a manager standpoint Yeah.

 Yes. It’s something to be proud of. It’s something to, accomplishment. It’s something that you can market. It’s no different than in school. I know this sounds very basic, but whether you got a gold star or you were a student of the month, any opportunity [00:30:00] that you had, you got a sticker.

It makes you, it’s proof that, the work that you’ve done is paid off, right? No matter who’s, acknowledging you. Now, again, if the organization like the Sandy’s point, is the trash collectors of the us, RV, Camping awards maybe it doesn’t have a lot of validity, but if an industry professional.

Like Sandy, puts it up and there’s some validity in it, then of course Absolutely. Has value. A hundred percent. Yeah. Okay. 

Sandy: Yeah, and I think it, it saves us all time and money. And I think it, when we are in business, we wanna run lean operations, we all wanna be profitable. Our resources often are challenged, especially in today’s economy.

And so when we can innovate together, and, a great example of this, and it’s been going on for years, is, and it just drives me nuts because there’s already an answer, but people aren’t talking to each other, is the whole charging of an electric car thing. Oh my goodness. That has been around the parks forever.

What do we do? When do we [00:31:00] do it? How do we do it? Why do we do it? Oh, it’s okay to let ’em, charge their car at the 50 amp, post, no, it’s not, there’s just so many things and it, had. When these, if we’re working and we’re watching for what’s going on and we say, Hey, there are a lot of people who are towing electric cars behind their drivable, maybe we need to figure that out.

And then we worked on it together as an industry. We’ve got three of your major OEMs now that have, they are working on a project for fully autonomous electric drivable vehicles. They’re working on the integration between an electric car and an and a towable, but the parks don’t know anything about that.

And while some of it is shrouded under confidentiality, enough of it is not that the conversation should still be had.

Brian: But even if the parks know about this. So I think this is maybe another issue that we are talking about. And so I talk, I saw a Facebook post [00:32:00] in. Perhaps a group that we might be broadcasting live in right now.

But there’s 13 of them, so we won’t, we’ll leave it unnamed, but where somebody said, I’ve gotten totally fed up with electric campers, cars, so we’re just gonna ban all electric cars. They can’t come into us anymore because we’re tired of peop. And so I feel like how many years have now has the industry been talking at conferences about the importance of electric cars and charging stations?

And you’ve heard on the news that electric cars are coming and Tesla and everything else, and yet there’s still people who are like, we just don’t think electric cars are a thing. It’s a fad. We’re gonna bend them all from our Campground. So I don’t know how we solve that. We can get the communication down and certainly organizations like KOA are doing a great job of that, but I don’t know if communication is the only thing we need.

How do we get the duh part about it To some people? Yeah. Like it’s coming and it’s, it like, you might not like it, but it’s fact ? Like, why would you ever kick electric people? And sorry to the person, but I just don’t understand that. 

Sandy: They [00:33:00] don’t like electric cars because they don’t know how to deal with them.

And so it’s an education issue, and if you’re innovating in advance together and then you’re providing the solution, we never get to that point. Because the EV charging or cars provides two things to parts. One, it provides an ancillary revenue stream. There’s three different ways you can do it.

And then it also provides another marketing opportunity because once you have an EV charging station, you are on their map. And so somebody who may or may not even be an RV or could stop at your park, you can sell ’em a cup of coffee or something to eat outta your store while they’re charging, right?

But then they might go, wow, I saw that cabin. I think I’d like to come back and stay here sometime. So it’s that passive marketing that we can do without having to pay for it. 

Brian: But how do we get ahold of these products and communicate this message more than we’re already doing? It’s in Woodall. It’s in Modern Campground. It’s at KOA. It’s on our show. It’s Sandy’s talking about it, and Mike’s talking about it and everybody. [00:34:00] But they’re still not either hearing the message or they’re not understanding it. And I don’t know. Like it’s important. Yeah. And the innovation awards and thoughts and things would certainly help with that, but I don’t know what the answer is because I feel like, and I’m not trying to actually criticize that person.

I feel bad because they’re going to lose business.

Mike: So I think, and I don’t need to get like it’s all technical here. I dunno if you’ve ever heard of the log diffusion of innovation. If you’re familiar with Simon Cynic, you really, promotes that scientific study.

And, there’s two and a half percent of the innovators, 13 and a half percent of the early adopters. 34% are the early majority, and 34% are the late majority, and then 16% of the laggards, right? Brian, you’re clearly an innovator, right? AI gonna try everything until it breaks. I don’t care if nobody’s done, I’m gonna do it no matter what.

Then there’s the early adopters, et cetera, et cetera. We are still not in an early majority, I don’t even know that we’re in the, phase of early adopters for edf, right? Yeah. So until there’s [00:35:00] enough of a tipping point and then the laggards, Simon Sinek says, they’re the people that, the only reason they don’t have a rotary phone anymore is cause they don’t make them right.

And there’s always gonna be those get off my lawn people. But as far as EV goes, until there’s a tipping point where it hits the early majority, there’s not gonna be an adoption of this, until you see, those electric RVs on the road until you see enough charging stations to get 1500 miles from Texas to California and you can map it out.

It’s be this no. So you just, it’s time. So the continued discussion, the continued innovation that’ll all happen. And we’re taking the same approach, right? And this, we typically we’re the innovators, early adopters. We like to be on the front. We wanna, we want to stuff ev for example, We’re waiting until the early majority, there’s no point in laying out capital infrastructure.

There’s gonna be mistakes. There’s gonna have to be, there’s too much that has to happen yet for us to kinda go, we’re putting all these in our parks, we’re laying all the, because it’s gonna change in three or [00:36:00] four or five years as the technology.

Brian: For sure. Yeah. So I don’t think really I’m criticizing that aspect of it.

And I didn’t mean to if it came across that way. I think I’m just saying like you, it’s very easy to understand whether the industry is there or not, or 10 years away or 15 years away, that electric vehicles are here and they’re rapidly increasing in the amount that they’re selling. And you can see that everywhere.

So that’s the part I don’t understand is why you would wanna undercut yourself in a market. But that’s me. That’s a big problem with my personality. I’ll admit. Like I, because I see and read and research so much information every single day that I guess I don’t sometimes see how people miss things.

But that, that’s definitely my fault. 

Mike: Yeah. So different perspective. Not a fault. It’s just different perspective.

Brian: Right? Yeah. But it’s sometimes hard for me to see that. So I’ll admit that, right? I have a hundred thousand faults and flaws and all that kinda stuff. But so what else is going on?[00:37:00] 

We’ve had a month since we’ve last seen each other, maybe two months for Christine, right? 

Christine: For me, I caught my toddler’s death plague last month. So I spared you all that version of myself. 

Brian: Tell us, so let’s tell Christine’s I’m here normally from a law firm perspective to keep me in check cuz I say crazy things and also to share an insight once, or maybe it’s the other way around.

To share insights and then also once in a while, keep me in check. But tell us about your Campground, Christine, your family got back in. We were talking about that before the show. 

Christine: Yeah, we are. So my family bought a Campground that’s been around for a very long time. And it is about an hour outside of Albany, so that’s where my law firm is Albany.

So not too far. But I do feel a little bit like I’m working three jobs currently as I help with the transition. We took over right as it was opening for the season, so as I’m sure you all kind of test not the best timing for change and getting a handle on things. So I’m sure we’ll have a lot [00:38:00] of fixing of stuff to do this winter.

But it’s been fun and exciting to be back in it. It’s also, and as I was explaining to one of my law clerks earlier today, Fun to see our stuff in action. Like literally be there and see how, what we’ve been telling other clients, how it’s working, how it’s not working. So it’s good to see the adjustment, why whether that’s paperwork or how we’re handling things and stuff like that.

And it is definitely will make my whole conference circuit a little different this fall, having to deal with it firsthand again. It did remind me how both awesome and awful customer service is when you have to see a lot of people all the time. So that’s been interesting. It’s been fun to buy new product from vendors and try out things that we didn’t get to do, on our other Campground what was that like five years ago?

Cause a lot has changed in the five years and It’s pretty interesting because given where this [00:39:00] one is located, we’re actually pulling from some of the same kinds of guest pool that we pulled from the very first Campground my parents saw over in that part of New York. So a little bit feels like coming full circle.

I actually, as a child, had made some really close friends on my parents’ first Campground, who I still talk to occasionally, on Facebook or text message. And I reached out to them to be like, Hey, remember how we met out a Campground when I was nine years old? I know you still live in that area.

Would you wanna go Camping again? Just because it’s been nice to come full circle. So lots of positive, but lots of tired and excited to watch my own child grow up in a Campground since that’s what I did. So it’s fun and exhausting and it has changed a lot and fun to see what has changed, what still works and what doesn’t work anymore, oh back when we first had a Campground to get kids [00:40:00] to do things, I didn’t have to compete with technology, for example. There were no smartphones or wifi or any of that. And now, it’s very different to see what activities kids are still willing to come through and, and give up on that kind of technology briefly or what adults are into and things like that.

That’s been really fun.

Brian: I’m very interested. Mike, can I put you on the spot for a second? It’s a softball question, right? Can I put you on the spot for a second? So I’m curious. So Mike, obviously CRR Hospitality, right? Management company for RV Parks, RV resorts, campgrounds, Camping Resorts, hotels, stuff like that.

I’m very curious if you, and then, not Christine’s parks specifically, but if you were hypothetically brought in to manage, improve a park that had such a long story history that had that brand name recognition, that had the generational right. How would you use that to your advantage in.. 

Mike: Oh that’s, you almost can’t craft a better story, right?

We focus on experiential hospitality and[00:41:00] if you go to the hospitality business, hotels, a room is a room, right? And what’s your marketing is your marketing location and your marketing your identity, right? And so if you’ve already got the location right that’s but then the second part is how do you separate yourself and everybody else is through your identity, if you’ve got that, that legacy brand.

Which is what you’re describing. You leverage that so the cows come home. That’s amazing. Otherwise you have to manufacture it. And we’re gonna have a property out in the middle of the desert in Arizona that we’re gonna have to start from the ground up. That has no reputation, that really has no interesting features, nothing unique.

It’s gonna have location. And so it’s gonna be hard, but location will help if you’ve got both and sounds like you do. Yeah. You leverage that with every bit of marketing dollar you can. Unless you don’t need to. If you’re full and you got great revenue management, then don’t spend a dime.

And then it becomes about ADR on maximizing. 

Brian: Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate it. It’s definitely good insight. So I [00:42:00] wanted, and I always forget, by the way, we’re, and I mentioned it in the Facebook post, but we are sponsored by Fireside Accounting, which we’re super grateful for the first week here.

And I always forget to put up their banner and. Whoop. I just clicked it twice. 

We’re really grateful for Fireside accounting Lindsey Foos and her old team for sponsoring. And it’s one of those things where like you don’t know what you don’t know, right?

And so we’ve talked about in this show previously, a couple minutes ago where we’ve talked about all the different, you don’t know that somebody might abandoned their trailer and so you don’t know to create that paperwork and you don’t know. And so when you talk about accounting, I think the don’t knows are probably 150 times as long as maybe not the legal don’t knows total, but that’s pretty close, right Christine?

Christine: Yeah, I’d say so. I tell all people all the time that I’m not an accountant so don’t ask me accounting questions. I went to law school cause I don’t like numbers. Go find people who know it’s okay to have a team of people who are better at things than you are. 

Brian: Because the amount of money they’re gonna save you in deductions probably far out.

For sure probably far out sets the amount that [00:43:00] you would pay a firm like that. So if you’re in a need for accounting services, our sponsor, Lindsey Fus and her team Fireside Accounting, great people. They’re on a great, very knowledgeable accounting firm, and we’re thankful for their support. We’ve got about 12 minutes left, guys.

What else is on, what else has come across your desk or what are you looking forward to the rest of the summer here? 

Christine: Mike, I have a question. I’m curious. Do your campgrounds do theme weekends and stuff like that? And are you trying any kind of new events this summer that you haven’t done before?

Mike: For sure. Again if you’re a Yellowstone Park, you know the amount of marketing you’re gonna have to do is very different than if you’re not a National Park location. Or if you’re a Florida park, right? You got 85, 90% occupancy, it’s annual, and then you’re just gravy on top of some.

If you’re not, one of those locational advantage properties, then yeah, you gotta create buzz. You gotta create interest, you gotta create. Some marketing opportunities. And so we do that all the time. Our [00:44:00] big events typically are Halloween, right? People love to, come during Halloween.

We have other many small events, whether it’s Father’s Day, or but we, we advertise our slow rolls at the holidays, which is those you decorate your bike or your golf cart or ATV and go for the property. You produce specials breakfast with Santa, for sure.

Depending on the property, we’ll have other larger events, parking lot at one of our properties, and we’re probably, looking to do maybe like a farmer’s market, on a regular basis there to leverage both the community and the notoriety that way. But all of those are marketing opportunities, backlink opportunities, Brian to have, additional things for your website for your customer.

Yeah, I agree. It sounds like you and I wanna have a call. Even if you don’t need to hire us, I’m happy to chat you. 

Christine: Yeah, that’d be awesome. Part of what’s been interest, I’ve been attending the trade shows for, the last five years, but haven’t had any reason to, buy anything, even though I walk around and it is interesting for me to see what [00:45:00] campgrounds are putting in or not.

And the thing that I don’t know if a campground’s done it yet, and if, let me know, but a lot of campgrounds have hired firework companies in the past for the 4th of July. And there was this whole discussion I was reading on this like community page about the movement towards drones instead of fireworks, drone shows.

And I was like, oh no, that actually would be pretty cool. And then your community wouldn’t be strapped. 

So.. 

Brian: They had a really huge drone show at the Calgary Stampede last year that was, oh, it was amazing. 

Mike: Also fireworks, Chris Hemps not on the call, he would cringe like I just did fireworks or.

Terrible for your insurance policy? Oh yeah, absolutely. But it’s not just that there are many of the municipalities that have migrated towards the drone shows now. It’s more eco-friendly if that’s important. Long term it’s cost effective. It’s safer, in terms of buyer risk absolutely.

Drone show is.. 

Brian: I was curious, you asked Natalie set off a firework near the trailer that needs moved. 

Christine: If anyone, there you go. If anyone hears of a [00:46:00] Campground doing it, I wanna know, because I’m very curious how that works in a kind of a smaller setting. Not a whole the stampede or not a giant municipality.

So that, that’s one that’s on my radar. 

Brian: I’m very curious about what is happening with you, Sandy, down there. Like just.. 

Sandy: There was a bug that, just a little gnat that just kept flying by. I kept trying to ignore it, but it was not allowing me to ignore it. 

Brian: So what else is going on in your world? Sandy? What are you excited about for the rest of the summer?

Sandy: I am excited about figuring out, and it’s funny what you were talking about the thing weekends with a lot of the heat and things like that. Trying to encourage people to keep Camping in the heat. We’re trying to adopt some of the things that some of the northern camp towns campgrounds do in the south by theming up some of the weekends to encourage people to get out and still camp.

So we’re doing some of the phone parties and we’re doing literally, I don’t know if any of you’ve ever seen, but they have these pop-up splash pads now [00:47:00] that you can rent or buy, which for some of my older campgrounds that they’re almost landlocked. It’s not like they have a spot they could really build one even.

They, we’ve been using some of those, so coming up with some of those fun weekend kind of things and then we’re bundling them together. So you pay for the weekend, you don’t pay per night and it, kind of thing. It’s if you wanna come to this event, you, it’s the, it’s a weekend. It includes four people and everything is included.

And that has been really surprisingly successful and we’re actually marketing it to guests who’ve already been there. So we’re not even out trying to reach at this point, guests that have never been because we have enough to pull from in our own, in the databases to pull those in. So that’s been fun.

And then the other thing I’m super getting into lately is the idea of agritourism. I actually started working with a park in central Florida that’s licensed for agritourism and I’ve never done anything like that. And it is unbelievable how many [00:48:00] people come from northern states that have never seen a cow.

Never seen a goat. It just, and these kids are just having so much fun and people are spending a lot of money to fly to these campgrounds for agritourism. So that’s another one of the things I’m really excited about. If you, there, there is a park in Central Florida. If you Google Central Florida and Agritourism, you’ll find it.

So I won’t promote their name necessarily, but everybody should go to this. 

Brian: You say the name, you already basically told everybody to go do it. What is the name? 

Sandy: I don’t wanna feel like I’m playing favorites, but.. 

Brian: Wil you just did say the name. Come on, Wil 

Sandy: Wilderness Shores RV Resort is the name of it.

And on his pro, he, there are multiple ponds on the property, but he’s got Longhorn cows. 

Brian: Mike’s googling it right now? He needs to know the name. Yeah. 

Sandy: Wilderness Shores RV Resort. 

Mike: You put on those search criteria. We, Kiva falls for every young one you just said didn’t come up. 

Brian: … [00:49:00] falls is a very nice resort.

I’ve been, there used to be a KOA Anyway, sorry. Not everybody’s googling it. 

Sandy: Yeah, and they do great on hip count, by the way, but anyway, it’s you know what, it’s weird their website’s not showing up when you Google it. 

Mike: Huh. Interesting. Feel free to have them gimme a call, Sandy. 

Brian: I have to go figure that out. But anyway they’re mascot is Ferdinand the Bull and his from Tip to Tip, his horns are like 78 inches. There’s about 40 of these and they do the cattle drive twice a day and they have a, a. They pull a trailer with the little kids get on the back and they get to throw the treats out and they are calling the cows and they think the cows are following them because they’re calling them.

It’s totally awesome. 

This is actually, I don’t wanna, I wanna let you finish, but this is actually another you could put a red flag on the abandoned trailer and let.. 

Sandy: Exactly. 

But they what’s, they just do a lot of neat [00:50:00] things and they only have about 20 RV sites that are hookups and then they have.

Several sites that have power, but not hookups, just regular power and water. But they have unlimited tent Camping sites. And it’s we went tent Camping again for the first time just to try it out. And we had so much fun. I was almost ready to sell my rig and just tent camp. 

Brian: No, you weren’t. Come on. 

Sandy: Oh yeah. It was that much fun. But we had some near encounters with alligators and we got chased by the cows and I ended up with a goat in the tent with me one night because she kept squeezing out and finding me. It was amazing. So, and all these little kids who are like, for me, growing up in the South, I’ve seen a cow, I’ve seen a goat, I’ve seen pigs.

No big deal. But for them it’s running into something. They’ve never seen, they’ve only seen in books and so it’s amazing. And they do education too, of course. While they’re doing this, [00:51:00] which is the big, a big cool thing about agritourism. 

Brian: Christine, I have a question for you. Just so we’re, and to be clear before you answer this show is a hundred percent private. We’re not broadcasting live. No one’s seen it. 

If you did sign, if you did have something, sign a waiver for a random bull running around the Campground, or you did have them sign a waiver that they knew fireworks were gonna be set off is that a loophole?

For abandoned trailers? 

Christine: No. 

Good try. Here’s the thing is just generally people should know that just because there’s a waiver or release doesn’t mean they’ll stop the person from suing you. It just means they have a document..

Brian: That if they abandoned their trailer and you can’t find them, then how are they gonna sue you?

 Come get your trailer we know where you’re.

Christine: The non-legal advice. If they’re not coming back from their trailer, then it probably doesn’t matter what happens to it. \ 

Yeah. 

Sandy: Jason said, do an outrun the gator weekend. I like that idea. I refuse to [00:52:00] sleep along the edge of the one of the ponds for that reason because I was afraid I was gonna have to out renegate her.

Christine: I gotta say that is a lot and they, I guess they would be on notice of the risk of having their camper where there was a bunch of wild animals. 

Brian: So as long as you.. 

Christine: Creative I guess, but Uhhuh there is not a legal solution for that, so I would not recommend that. I don’t think your insurance company would enjoy hearing about you doing that.

I would probably suggest passing on that idea. 

Sandy: We like the idea Jason, but the attorney poo-pooed it. Sorry, creative creative events and creative of problem solving, but probably not legal problem solving. 

Brian: All right. So we might or might not have a solution. It’s just not legal. Yeah.

Makes sense. So you never heard it here on this private show? It’s not being broadcast anywhere. All right. One minute left. Anybody have any final parting thoughts [00:53:00] besides Mike wondering why he’s giving an hour of his week to spend it with me? 

Mike: That’s right. 

Brian: That’s literally the only reason he shows up is you and Christine.. 

Mike: And Sandy just innovated.

Jason Goss had just posted up on the chat that there’s an outrun the Gator weekend. So there’s your event. Christine, we come full circle. 

Christine: I cannot wait. I can only imagine. 

Mike: There’s a lot of gators in New York, right? There’s.. 

Brian: Don’t wanna speak for Chris Hippel, but I feel like that’s a shoe-in for an idea.

Christine: So exciting. I could maybe dress people up in gator costumes.

Mike: We have a gator mitigation budget for our property in South Carolina. 

Christine: There you go. I can’t wait to see what July brings now. So when we reconvene in August, I can’t wait to hear about how this idea really had legs.

Brian: I think it’s a perfect idea. All right thank you [00:54:00] guys all for joining us in another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Next week is our glamping episode, so be sure to come back and see us. We’ll be talking with Ruben Martinez and Irene Wood and a bunch of other people who I can’t think of off the top of my head who may or may not show up depending on their work schedules, but it’ll be a good conversation anyway.

So take care guys. Thank you all for being here. I really appreciate you and we’ll see you next month. Bye later. 

Mike: Bye. See you.