MC Fireside Chats – June 10th, 2026

[00:00:45] Brian Searl: Episode of MC Fireside Chats my name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks and Modern Campground and my sucker here that I probably should put away for the show because otherwise it wouldn’t be professional. I was twirling it in my fingers, right? But I was telling these guys before the show, and I think you’ll agree, Joe, I don’t know if I asked you this, but like we definitely were talking about it with Jeremy and Devyn.

 If you offer somebody a sucker and they’re an adult obviously kids will always take suckers, and they refuse the sucker, either one, they’re diabetic, which is okay, or two, they’re just weird and they’re not somebody you want to know, right? There’s only one of two options.

[00:01:18] Joe Duemig: Sadly, I think I fall in the weird category. I typically don’t go for suckers. I guess I’m just weird.

 But we’ll take that. I actually, I’m fine with it. 

[00:01:28] Brian Searl: like people who like, I used to say my thing used to be like people who you don’t know anybody who doesn’t like donuts. And four people in a row, including David Basler, were like, I don’t, I hate donuts. I don’t want donuts.

 I used to say every, like you don’t know anybody who likes donuts because they’re all probably in prison. And then four people in a row, 

[00:01:46] Devyn Johnson: That makes sense. So that makes sense. But I’ll pick 

[00:01:52] Brian Searl: welcome to everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. We got a couple recurring guests here with us. Joe Duemig, who’s about to move to Spain, gonna tell us about the outdoor hospitality industry in Spain, Joe? 

[00:02:00] Joe Duemig: maybe. not sure. trying to more ingrain ourselves in the local culture rather than travel too terribly much.

 We’re obviously, if we’re going to be in Europe for a year, we might as well visit some spots, but I don’t want to get into the place where we’re just traveling all the time and not life like it’s lived the area we’re at.

[00:02:16] Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. It’ll be interesting though. Jeremy, welcome back as always.

 Kona Hills Campground. Welcome. Let you guys introduce yourselves in a second.

 We got Devyn, our special guest. We’re missing a couple of people here today. Said they were gonna come, so we’ll see if Jayne Cohen pops up or Casey Cochran or Zach Stoltenberg. not. Some, they’re probably out doing more important things than being on the podcast. But let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves real quick. Joe, you first.

[00:02:42] Joe Duemig: Yeah, I’m Joe Duemig. I am the founder of mobile app for RV resorts and campgrounds to enhance communication and guest experience.

[00:02:54] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Joe. Jeremy?

[00:02:57] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah, I’m Jeremy, one of the co-owners of Kona Hills Campground. We are located in Marquette, Michigan on the shores of Lake Superior. And we are officially in camping season.

 We opened two and a half weeks ago or about. So we are rolling.

[00:03:14] Brian Searl: All right, excited to hear about that and how the summer’s going so far. Devyn? 

[00:03:18] Devyn Johnson: Devyn Johnson. I’m the manager at Canopy RV Resort here in New Braunfels, Texas. We’re open year-round and we’ve been, we celebrate our third anniversary in a couple weeks here.

[00:03:29] Brian Searl: Awesome. Thanks for being here, Devyn. All right the show. I’ll talk to our recurring guests, Joe and Jeremy.

 Is there anything that’s come across your desk in the last month since this group has been together? Longer for Joe. But that you guys feel like we should be discussing.

 Obviously, Jeremy, you mentioned the start of camping season. We all got like this backdrop of is it going to be good? Is it going to be bad? But what else is there? What are you thinking about?

[00:03:52] Jeremy Johnson: I’m getting really focused on driving driving demand right now. We have a lot of inherent demand with our campground being that we’re like right next to a national park. But, really trying to see what we can do to drive occupancy rate, whether with social content or other technology. that’s where my focus has been in the last four weeks since we last talked.

[00:04:12] Brian Searl: Okay, so just, I want to, when you first said it, I was picturing in my head like driving demand, like people driving to you, but then I realized that you were…

 To be fair to be fair on me, okay, we’re developing a product with route intelligence that we’re about to sell. So that’s why my brain went there. But go ahead.

[00:04:29] Jeremy Johnson: No, the same thing. Yeah. But driving demand to our campground. Specifically driving, although being in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan most of our guests are driving. I think, one of the things that we’re seeing is, a lot of, I, I guess I don’t know if people are booking less flights, but we’re seeing really strong numbers summer reservations. guessing, lot of people at least in the Midwest are looking to drive for vacation rather than fly for vacation right now.

[00:04:56] Brian Searl: Yeah, the CPI numbers came out today. We can see our price inflation or product inflation, whatever it is. Price index, thank you, Joe. There’s too many numbers I was looking at this morning. And it’s, I think airlines is up 27% year over year for airline tickets. So I think, yeah, for sure there’s more people driving, which is good for our industry to a point, right?

 And then we’re not at that point yet. I don’t think. So it’s good to hear that people are, like, things are going pretty good for you so far. What kind of strategies? Because you’re always one of those forward-thinking people. I try to learn from what other people are doing.

 At least that’s my sense of you, right? Don’t get me wrong. I’m giving you a compliment. You can say no if you want. You’re usually one of those forward-thinking people who goes around and looks at what other people are doing and tries to always think outside the box. So are there strategies or things that you’ve learned or thought about that you’ve found success in early on? 

[00:05:44] Jeremy Johnson: just getting started with it. We didn’t do too much with demand drive, other than SEO. SEO was like our main revenue generator in our first year. Which worked out really well for us because we didn’t have a lot of competition in our area. So all we had to do was be visible on Google. But now it’s okay, we know what our baseline occupancy rate is.

 Can we actually create demand ourselves rather than waiting to capture that demand? And that’s where to your point, Brian I do like to look at what other people are doing.

 And one of the, one of the things that I’m doing right now is I’m working I, I’m sure you guys know who Ben Wolff is. He runs like Onera and some of that stuff down in Texas Hill Country. So he started a marketing cohort where he’s teaching people how they do demand creation and generation with his with his properties, but also with Oasi, which is his agency.

 So we’re going through that right now and learning how they create content at scale, what KPIs they’re looking at. And we also are trying to define our user persona a little bit.

 So we’ve got four users that we think are most likely to visit our campground. And then we’re creating content based on those user profiles. And then we’ll, test it out on social and see what drives engagement and what doesn’t.

[00:07:00] Brian Searl: Yeah, the personas have always interested me. And Ben Wolff does I have never taken his program, but I’ve heard good things about what he does. I’m where I’m on the fence with Ben Wolff, not specifically, but his strategy I think it works for the people who have something really interesting to share on social media.

 If you’re a, I don’t want to call you I don’t want to make it sound bad, but let’s just say a regular campground, right? That’s where I’m wondering is all that content creation worth it? Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know.

[00:07:25] Jeremy Johnson: I think you either have to have scale or you maybe not just two things, but you either have to have scale or you have to be interesting. For example, I think it’s really hard to drive demand with a short-term rental in downtown Chicago. What makes you stand out of the crowd there? But I might not be the most interesting campground. We’re fully rustic, but I have scale and I have demand a high volume area. So just because I know that people are wanting to visit Marquette I can, our angle is rustic camping, right? if you look at our Instagram account right now, you’ll see the content that we’re pushing right this moment is we’re actually talking about the lack of amenities that we that’s our point right now. It’s hey, this is… 

[00:08:04] Brian Searl: makes you different though. 

[00:08:05] Jeremy Johnson: and so that’s our, what we’re testing right now. As I was talking about that, and we got our, got like our urban escapee, our weekend warrior, our outdoor enthusiast couple, and then our silent sports enthusiast.

 Like those are the four groups we’re trying to attract with content right now.

[00:08:24] Devyn Johnson: I want to say we, my background’s in social media marketing before I started here. And I became the manager here about a year ago and I have hired somebody specific for social media here. And our numbers have our occupancy have grown about 15 to 18% in the last six months because of our online presence.

 So like here, we’re very saturated. We have, we’re within walking distance to three other campgrounds. We are the most, we offer the most, we’re the largest in that area, but we are also the highest priced.

 So for people right now, they’re looking for cheaper rates per se, but we sell who we are through social media. So if y’all are working on social media, I think that’s like a really great thing. We’re also seeing younger people and millennials and they’re really big on social media too.

 So I would definitely say keep going with that.

[00:09:20] Jeremy Johnson: You said you grew 15%, was it?

[00:09:23] Devyn Johnson: 15%.

[00:09:25] Jeremy Johnson: I, if this results in 15% growth for us, I’ll be pretty happy.

[00:09:29] Devyn Johnson: Yeah, just be consistent.

[00:09:31] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah.

[00:09:32] Brian Searl: To be fair though, you said online presence, which is a bigger umbrella than just social media. Were you able to track that 15% directly back to social media through or… 

[00:09:42] Devyn Johnson: we have tracked a lot of it. I don’t want to say all of it was tracked from online presence, but our numbers, we, when I took over, we probably had maybe a hundred followers on Instagram, maybe actually we didn’t even have a TikTok, probably about 500 on Facebook.

 Now we have, our views on TikTok average 8,000 views every video at least. And we’re just, we’re really, I think I’m saying online presence, but we’re trying to not only advertise locally, but really our focus has just been online. So we’ve upped our Google ads and SEO budget. We also been working with Good Sam a little bit and they have some opportunities for marketing and stuff as well. We actually use My Community and that’s been something that like we have put everywhere. We put links on our social media, we put it on our website, and every person that comes in, okay, I say every, 90% of the people that come in comment about how great it is to have a technology aspect at campground.

 Because, there’s a spot on there where we can say, you have something going on after hours, click it. Leave us a Google review here. So I guess I’m saying online presence and social media, it all flows together.

[00:10:59] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah, that’s cool. That’s really impressive. 

[00:11:01] Brian Searl: And we know we know social media works, right?

 And I just wanted to clarify the whole umbrella of what you were doing because certainly a big chunk of that is social media, I’m sure. And, but I think that’s what the message that some people need, like I’m a marketing guy too, we work, we do marketing for four or 500 campgrounds. I think that’s something that people need to be cognizant of is what Jeremy is talking about with these buyer personas. And how you communicate to your audience and what you do and what you say and how you portray yourself. Like Jeremy was saying with the, the definitely advertising more of the traditional or non-amenity style stay at his property.

 I was talking to a client this morning about the same thing where they had, won’t name the city or the client, but like they’re in a city where they had three new parks built near them. And it’s not Texas surprisingly, it’s somewhere else. Three new parks near them within the last three years that have taken a majority of the business.

 They’re newer properties, they have more amenities, they have lazy rivers, those kinds of things, right? I told them like, you, you need to do what you do best. Embrace the traditional.

 I think maybe that’s the word, maybe it’s not, right? But embrace who you are, tell your story, communicate that because there’s a whole lot of people who don’t like change. There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want to be near the chaos of all the amenities.

 And I think, and maybe you can shed some light on this too, Joe, or, Jeremy or, But I think there’s been a kind of a race toward let’s promote as many amenities as we can in our industry the last X number of years.

 And there’s been a about the people who don’t necessarily, like we like amenities, but that’s not really the number one reason we’re coming. Maybe there’s a different reason we’re coming for quiet or for nature or for peace or that’s the same or not change or stability or whatever, right? What do you guys think?

[00:12:37] Joe Duemig: I feel like the first probably four, 2020 through 2024, it seemed like every park was coming, like there were parks coming on left and right and every park was going to have every amenity possible. And it’s what it felt like. And there’s different campers. probably are a little more, like our family is probably a little more amenity rich. That’s what we’re looking for. But we have relatives that they would rather go to a state park.

 And if they could get a state park that they knew was going to be a little bit nicer, they would go, have everything, but have be wooded, basically Jeremy’s park. Then they would transition to that if they could, a few a few like not upscale, but nicer activities to do, not your, tie-dye, more cookie cutter things that everybody’s doing.

 But having those like more catered experiences or curated experiences. I think a very large market for that. And I do feel like the campgrounds we’re seeing coming online now are not like, they’re starting to become a little less amenity rich.

 That is what it seems to me, but 

[00:13:42] Jeremy Johnson: think there’s a difference between amenity rich and curated, right? Like just because we don’t have mini golf course doesn’t mean that we’re not curated, right? And so just like that focus of hey, we’re gonna, we might not have mini golf, but we don’t have this today, but one of our plans is to have, a common area for so like that curation of amenities I think is changing and what people are looking for potentially.

[00:14:11] Joe Duemig: Yeah, and what I was saying was I was looking at your park as being the curated amenities. for your camper, for what your camper likes as opposed to some of the mass mass scale like, oh, all campers like tie-dye, all campers like mini golf.

 You’re catering, you’re curating to the camper that you’re expecting to be there that is going to be a little more rust- they be camping but have have an experience, right? It’s experience management.

[00:14:36] Devyn Johnson: I was going to say that too. I think a curated park is just creating a cohesive experience where, can cater to the four or however many different guest types that you have and want to market to.

[00:14:48] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. We’re, and we’re learning what our customer wants. Like we, we had somebody last week who came specifically just for the rocks at the campground.

 Like they’re like, that’s why we’re here. We’re here because you have old rocks. And I was like, okay. How do I sell that?

[00:15:05] Brian Searl: you did. You did Like you figured out a way to sell it. That’s why they were there.

[00:15:11] Devyn Johnson: Yeah. Highlight that on social media. around and put, say hey, there’s really cool rocks, fun facts or something like that. That would be pretty cool.

[00:15:18] Joe Duemig: Gotta start naming them.

[00:15:20] Brian Searl: We’ve had these conversations on the show before, right? Where we talk to people about I have so many marketing people or campground owners who call me and say, I want to do marketing, but you want to reach RVers. No, what, you haven’t put any thought into this.

 And you did, and most of them haven’t done feasibility studies or haven’t had the market change on them like it has this year in the last few years, both up and down, right? And you’ve got to look at your, like what Jeremy is saying, your buyer personas. If you think this is complicated, you have ChatGPT in front of you, you have Gemini, you have Claude.

 This is much easier than it ever was before to say, go research my park, it will go out and look at everything you have, fill out some information and say, create what are, what is my ideal customer profile? What are four different types of buyer personas or six or eight that would stay at my property? And then use that as a basis to tailor what you’re talking about in your messaging online, not only on social media, but on your website, on, Google, on everywhere that you can.

 And if you shape that content toward the individual people who are best suited for your property, both what you want it to be suited for and what you can have it suited for, you are able to, right? Then you can attract a bunch of people who will probably fill up your park easier than going after all 

[00:16:28] Jeremy Johnson: We didn’t I wouldn’t say this is one that we necessarily wanted to go after, but another one that we found out and to your point, Brian, like we can easily cater to it because of the geography of where we are an eagle’s nest on site, which is a little rare.

 And then have a, the Kirtland’s Warbler is very, which is a very rare type of warbler. It for whatever reason, they like our campground area. And we get, people find us from the birding apps.

 They say, I saw somebody take a photo at Kona Hills Campground of this specific type of bird, and so I wanted to stay here and see if I could see that bird. 

[00:17:08] Brian Searl: the thing, like, where we’re talking to people in a world of AI, where AI can eat all of this content and then serve it up to the exact bird watcher or the exact person who’s obsessed with rocks or whatever it is, right? The more information that you put on your website, because you can do it faster now with AI, if you put a page for birders and a page for, I don’t know if the rock watcher person is enough to put a page for, right? But if you had 10, 12, 15 of those pages to work campers, traveling nurses, construction workers, everywhere else.

 Then that gives AI a thing to look at and say, this park is geared toward this person and here is why. Not the same thing on every single page, but different things, and that will help you fill up too.

[00:17:46] Jeremy Johnson: That’s a really good point. I didn’t even think about it, but as people continue to use AI as like a personal assistant, like they, it probably already knows you’re probably already asking it about birds, like you’re probably like, maybe you’re uploading a photo of a bird and asking what it is. It knows you’re a birder.

 And then, you might not ask it what campground is good for birding, but it’ll, if you say, hey I’m going to Marquette, Michigan, where should I stay? It’ll be like, oh Kona Hills is a campground where there’s rare birds and an eagle’s nest. And, it makes that connection automatically.

[00:18:19] Brian Searl: And it will only get better at that. Gmail has already said you can connect your Gmail to Gemini and Google Search. You can connect your photo library, it’ll look at your old photos.

 It’s going to get creepy from a privacy perspective, but it’s going to get super helpful too.

[00:18:30] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. good point. I didn’t think about it like that, but that’s a very good point.

[00:18:35] Devyn Johnson: Yeah, I will say started to get dive into this AI world too. And when I’m on ChatGPT and I, ask a question, it’ll say, because you like, this type of blah, blah, blah, like it will literally know me. It knows me better than I know myself sometimes.

 So we, we’ve just started using AI more for like keywords and things on social media too. So when you, like Jeremy, if y’all start using did you know or fun facts around the campground, like you can go on there and say, what are people really looking for right now? Or if they are into bird watching, what are the keywords that they’re searching?

 That way when you post anything and in your caption or your hashtags, you’re using those same words.

[00:19:17] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. That makes sense.

[00:19:19] Devyn Johnson: Yeah.

[00:19:21] Brian Searl: Do you do any is there any analytics tracking, Joe, and who’s interested in what area on the app or anything like that? What’s going on?

[00:19:28] Joe Duemig: So all of our projects are, all of our projects are segregated, right? So we don’t really mix too much data between customers. So we don’t we’re planning on doing some aggregated data around But most of our stuff is, most of the things that happen are just directly in the While they might be searching, they’re typically searching for things they know is already in the campground. So it’s just a little bit different face because for the most part, our people have already booked at the campground before they download the app in the first place.

 And so it’s not really a a marketing to find the campground. It’s more so relationship marketing after they’ve already booked and making their experience better. So it’s just different.

[00:20:08] Brian Searl: Yeah, but if you could pull out that data, and I know you just literally said that you’re not, they’re all isolated, right? But if you could pull out that data and see what people are searching for, like I remember a long time ago we were talking to a park about, could we use AI in their security systems to monitor what amenities are being used? Sure, you absolutely can, right?

 You, and you can even monitor like how long they’re waiting in the check-in line and how often your pool is used and what day and when the cabanas are free and send them an alert to their cabin on their Alexa device, right? All that’s possible. So I think aggregated data like that from a big company like you, Joe, might be useful.

[00:20:37] Joe Duemig: From a big company like us. No, we can, we, so like I said, there is, we are looking at possibly aggregating some of our some of our aggregated data. So already aggregated. The thing each customer also has things set up differently. So we can definitely do that and find some of it, but I don’t know, it might be slightly helpful, but I’m not sure how 

[00:20:58] Brian Searl: anytime we have more data, I think that’s helpful, right? Let that people piece through it and figure it out. All right, what else we got? What else do we want to talk about? How’s summer 

[00:21:06] Joe Duemig: Jeremy how kind of airline prices have gone up, so people have been sticking or staying closer to home and driving to campgrounds, it seems I just got back from Australia and there the opposite. I wouldn’t, I shouldn’t say the opposite. Right now when we were down there…

[00:21:24] Brian Searl: Winter now, isn’t it? Am I right?

[00:21:27] Joe Duemig: Yeah, but they’re in, they’re, they don’t have too drastic of a winter. Especially in Queensland. Their big concern is a fuel crisis. talk about our gas prices going up a bit and they’ve gone up a bit. They’re paying closer to to $12 a gallon. And and they’re having anecdotal stories of gas not being available inland.

 And we heard from somebody like, somebody that was there as vendor said that he travels inland all the time and has only ever run into one gas station that didn’t have gas. But it’s reported on the news. So it makes people scared to travel. So camping seems to be down. A lot of the, a lot of the people are a little more on edge, a little more concerned about spending and stuff like that this year than last year. And it seems like that a lot of that was fueled by one or two of the vendors had it on all their stuff, hashtag fuel crisis. yeah, then much more in tune and having trouble with it than we we’ve seen to. We got back and gas prices had gone down about 30 cents between that time, 

[00:22:25] Brian Searl: what is their, what do you know, have a sense of what the normal fuel price is in Oz? Because I had read that too about Australia, it was like around 10 when I had read it.

[00:22:33] Joe Duemig: Yeah I think it was, I think they’re normally running at 150 to Australia a liter.

[00:22:43] Brian Searl: Oh, okay.

[00:22:43] Joe Duemig: Australian a liter. Now they’re running at like 210 Australian a liter.

[00:22:48] Brian Searl: Okay. That’s a quarter more. So they’re normally maybe $7?

[00:22:51] Joe Duemig: Yeah, I don’t know what that maybe six. I think Australian dollars are 65 the…

[00:22:55] Brian Searl: 85. 85. Yeah.

[00:23:00] Joe Duemig: anyway it, they’ve gone up, they’ve gone up over 25%. Which is definitely more than us. they already started at a high price. So if you’re driving a vehicle that takes a lot of gas, problem. There’s something I noticed down there. We were talking about amenities and experience. And one of the things that think I talked about when I was when I came back last year is a lot of the campgrounds down there have community kitchens.

 It’s a very common thing at their campgrounds is to have community kitchens. So they’ll have a covered patio with barbecue or stove type equipment just places to, to and host. And so don’t see that a ton here. have seen them here. And here it’s treated more as an amenity. There it’s treated more as like a, everyone has one and when you have a really nice one, then it’s an amenity. So that, that was just something that, going off the customer experience that I took back from from my trip down there.

[00:23:56] Jeremy Johnson: I think that’s something we haven’t considered a community kitchen necessarily, but community spaces in general, especially because of the rustic nature, like our, like we, we have individual vault toilets then we’ll have a centralized bathhouse. Like where there’s, there are flush toilets, there are showers, like more of community area just because of the way we’re set up. We’ll be going after that rustic feel.

[00:24:25] Devyn Johnson: I’ll say we have so we’ve been open for about three years. We have a grand room, which is like a community kitchen. And there’s, that’s where we do a lot of our activities.

 We have a full calendar of events and then we also have kind of a covered patio with propane grills, big fire pit out by the pool. We last year figured like that was something that everybody wanted was these community spaces because then they travel with, another family or whatever and then they have room to, hang out, cook, do all the things.

 We just also on the other side of our park just created another event space, entertainment center is what we call it. We have some string lights and just tables, some umbrellas and things. that has been like, apart from our pool as well, but that’s something that we have people in those spaces all the time.

 So it definitely is a pull and something that we’re seeing that is very successful here.

[00:25:19] Brian Searl: Are you talking about the individual sites though, Joe? Because I remember like when we first looked at Australia I don’t know, 2011, 2012 when NewBook was first coming into the United States scene. I can’t remember, I think Brad owned it back then before they sold. That we noticed that Australia’s market was way more advanced from a, an amenity on-site standpoint, or at least what we saw. I don’t know.

[00:25:38] Joe Duemig: I didn’t so I don’t notice that. We we deal with some of the more like nicer parks there. And it doesn’t seem like they have more amenities per se. a large amount of amenities in the US is probably higher in Australia. This is actually more, a shared space. It’s not an individual kitchen.

 And I haven’t seen that down there. We have a lot of, that exists here a lot in the you’re looking at the upscale, the motor coach only resorts and stuff like that. They’ll have those private kitchens.

 I know think Auburndale has a bunch of their pull-throughs that have, or pull-ins that have have some private kitchens and stuff like that. But no, this is like a more of their shared, just a shared space. I feel like Australia does the majority of their camping a little more rustic than we do. A lot of the even nicer campgrounds they don’t, they have grass lots. Like they’re not, they concrete and rock lots as, as much as we do. But, seeing the big water parks, yeah, there’s a few, but it’s not near what we have here and stuff like that. 

[00:26:44] Brian Searl: Which is interesting in and of itself. We last week we had Simon on the show, who’s one of our regular guests, you know him from CampMap. And he was showing us the difference between some of the sites in Europe and how they have like really nice luxury RV resorts that have just the gravel sites without the concrete pads.

 And I think he said the difference, like he did the calculation quickly in his head, so it could be a little different with euros. But cited like it’s somewhere between 60 and $80,000 US to build a site in the United States. And the equivalent to build a campsite at a luxury RV resort in Europe is like 10 to 12.

 Because they don’t have all the concrete pads and do and to be fair, like full hookup isn’t there like with a lot of places. But still, like these are luxury resorts that people are coming to, like really nice with pools and restaurants they have all different types of sites. Let’s be clear, right?

[00:27:29] Joe Duemig: Yeah. Like I said, a lot of, there’s so many things that go into that. In terms of clientele, what the demand would be for it.

 I think the people driving a Class a diesel pusher they’re not going to ever want a grass lot. fascinating thing in Europe and it’s in Australia and it feels like at least right now, early, that it’s only the United States that has all of that infrastructure, which is good and bad.

[00:27:56] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah. I agree. Yeah. all of our lots are grass lots. 

[00:28:01] Joe Duemig: how many Class A diesel pushers do you have, Jeremy?

[00:28:05] Jeremy Johnson: Zero. Yeah. But that’s product of RVs. And the, unfortunately for them, it’s a really and it’s it looks great, but there’s just so many RV parks so it’s and that, one of the reasons why, we went the more the smaller RVs, the camper vans, it’s because that product didn’t exist in our market. So it was like, look, we don’t have to compete for that. That’s, we’re the only ones that offer that product.

[00:28:08] Brian Searl: But I think there is a market for what we were talking about last week, like I think there and I’m not saying get rid of all concrete pads, get rid of all the luxury… I’m saying I think there is a market for the smaller camper vans for class Cs those kinds of places that necessarily like would be fine paying x number of dollars less for a site without a concrete pad.

[00:28:30] Joe Duemig: I think that’s we were what I mentioned earlier in regards to you know for four years or so everything was trying to have the most amenities and have as much as possible and then you know Jeremy’s been open two years now and he was going the other direction right trying to give an experience without having to have every water equipment every piece of water equipment known to man and spending you know $75,000 a site.

[00:28:59] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah my roads cost more than my sites did. But that’s just that’s cause we’ve got probably like a mile and a half worth of roads across our 80 acres.

[00:29:08] Brian Searl: All right Devyn do you want to defend yourself and your concrete 

[00:29:12] Devyn Johnson: so we actually don’t have concrete pads. We have crushed granite but we do have paved like parking spots at But I think I agree with everything that y’all are saying our owners did a really good job of having higher end amenities but a base amount. So we have one big pool we have a few fire pits we have like bath houses a little kids playground that we try to keep all of our kids and families in one side so it keeps all the families together but all in all the biggest thing for us is those community spaces because we do offer higher end smaller not as many you know we don’t have a big pool or water park or adults only pool or you know anything big like that we have a few great amenities but we focus more on the community spaces and then we also and we have all different kinds of people.

 So I think I’m like we have the retirees the snowbirds we call them winter Texans. Then we have the families during the summer so right now we’re focusing on families. So the way that we differentiate ourselves is more through our calendar of events. So like during the summer we’re doing you know some kids activities in those community spaces during the winter time we do more bingo and meet and mingles with our retirees and snowbirds.

 So I think for us the pads is not as important as everything else that we offer that is you know combined I mean we do get people that say hey we would prefer if you guys had concrete slabs or hey you know you should let your owners know that you should pave some of these sites. But we do offer you know a lot of other things that kind of make the gravel pads less important.

[00:30:58] Brian Searl: I’d be interested to pull this data industry and we will like we went down to Florida and we gave a talk in front of their conference recently in May and we pulled out some interesting statistics in the talk today statistics where we looked at like our database so we have a massive database of like we crawled scraped every single campground website and public private website in North America. It’s basically what we did and we took all this stuff back and we looked at like Florida specifically for the conference. What’s the most used words on Florida RV park websites private ones and it was community followed by bingo and a few other things that you expect in Florida.

 But so community was number one but when you looked at the five star reviews for people who had a good time at resorts almost nobody mentioned community. So it was interesting seeing the disconnect between the owners think the RVers value and what the RVers actually mention when they have a good time. It would be fascinating to see how many people talk about concrete pads and on patio on site patio furniture and stuff like that. I’m seeing more than there are. 

[00:31:57] Devyn Johnson: y’all should look at our Google reviews because we at the beginning it was more so the amenity based right but lately so we had we were managed by a management company and it was all very streamlined and I think our owners made great decision last year where they didn’t do that anymore and they wanted it to be more personable. And I think that in turn has created such an amazing community here and now our Google reviews like every other one will talk about either community our, staff  here, like I think that’s kind of the, the thing now that the RV market, RV campground, everything. It’s so saturated here. The one thing for us is our community that we build, we have a Facebook group for everybody. 

 We have our app that everybody talks about. We have like, I could. Probably tell you, we have 295 sites. We’re about 65% capacity. I could probably tell you at least a hundred people’s first names right now. We make it a point here, like that’s what sets us apart. So I think you’re right. I think nobody focuses on that, but now in the RV world, it’s more, some more so something that will set a campground apart rather than the eight other in our area. It’s the community that we’re building. 

 Brian Searl: Yeah. Don’t, don’t get me wrong, and I’m not minimizing the importance of community at an RVer park or a campground. 

 Oh yeah, no, no, no. 

 Brian Searl: I’m just saying it’s interesting that that’s the number one thing people were marketing themselves as. 

 Yeah, yeah, exactly. 

 Brian Searl: Flip side five start. Right. So I think it’s important, but, and, and there and, and there are places like yours who, like you say, if you build a really strong community, then that’s something that will organically show up. If that’s, if that’s the type of person who’s coming to your property, in your case, it seems like it’s.

 Right. Right. No, I completely agree with you. 

[00:33:37] Brian Searl: Joe, what do you think? You know, most, a lot of people who run your app are communities, right? Well, you are.

[00:33:42] Joe Duemig: yeah. 

[00:33:43] Brian Searl: You’re apping, you’re apping 

[00:33:45] Joe Duemig: i’m apping communities. That’s what we do. Yeah, so I, I would say we have a large, a large amount of, winter, winter Texas, winter Florida, customers, that the, the, the reason the park is going with it is to create community.

Now, whether or not, you know, that ends up being, you know, what they say about the park when they talk about it. I, I, I don’t know if the word community would be used as much. I, I think that it would be more of the feeling that they’re, they have when they’re there, like, you know, listened to or you mentioning people’s pe people by name.

[00:34:19] Brian Searl: Yeah. 

[00:34:19] Joe Duemig: Instead of seeing the general manager, you know, and, and when they, when they mention Devyn instead of the GM at Canopy 

[00:34:26] Devyn Johnson: mm-hmm. 

[00:34:27] Joe Duemig: while they’re not mentioning community, they just did. Right. And so that might be one of the disconnects that, that you might also be seeing there, is that, you know, they’re, they’re feeling closer to the people as opposed to, acting as a business. 

[00:34:40] Brian Searl: Yeah, I mean my, again, my argument is like you should build community at your resort. I’m just saying it might not be the number one thing that you market your resort. That is all I’m saying. 

[00:34:48] Joe Duemig: Yeah, 

[00:34:48] Brian Searl: yeah, 

[00:34:50] Devyn Johnson: yeah. We go back, say we go back and forth, like we have tried to market all of these other things, but because I, and I think that’s where my explanation is coming from, is because there’s so many people in our area.

I mean, we’re close to Canyon Lake, there is probably a hundred campgrounds within 50 miles of us every way. And I think for us here, the way that we keep our occupancy up is that community base. So we, we encourage all of our employees, our staff members we have 15 16 now sat on our staff they we encourage them to build those relationships. So that way we do set us apart in that area because you could go 10 miles down the road and find almost the same you know base amenities or same base sites.

[00:35:37] Brian Searl: Yeah what sets you apart what’s it brings us back to the beginning of the conversation 

[00:35:41] Jeremy Johnson: yeah. That makes a lot of sense I mean if all the other sites are if all the other campgrounds aren’t as community oriented and you can be that can be your niche that makes perfect sense. But then you got to tell your story right so we’re back to telling your story and communicating that to the niche you want to draw in.

[00:35:59] Devyn Johnson: Definitely.

[00:36:02] Brian Searl: What else we got guys? What are we expecting summer to look like for on a macro level for the camping industry recession proof are we not recession proof?

[00:36:11] Jeremy Johnson: Probably depends on your product I think to the conversation that we’re having right now there’s a lot of different products and the different types of sites mean I can at least say for us and again I’m only in year two we’re already over 33% of the way to how much revenue we did in 2025. We’ve been open for three weeks and we’ve already done one third of the revenue we did all of last year. So feel and a lot of that’s pre-booking you know a lot of that’s July July August September but feel good about that you know I’ve made one third of the amount of money I did in all of 2025 so far.

[00:36:52] Brian Searl: Okay it’s definitely macro versus micro I think on a macro level and there will be micro cases where this is not true but on a macro level what I’m expecting the rest of the summer is the people who are the same for whatever reason right haven’t differentiated themselves in any way through their marketing or through their on the ground experience those people are in trouble. But I think the people who are doing things differently like Devyn with your community and Jeremy you are with your marketing and I don’t know what you do Joe but let you know but I think the people who are setting themselves apart right in that niche going after that person provided they’re they put some science behind it and they’re actually not just trying to go after somebody who’s not there I think those people will be much better suited will they be up 10% maybe not but they probably won’t be down 10% either.

[00:37:38] Jeremy Johnson: Yeah I can agree with that I mean I don’t know the numbers but I know that there’s a campground you know maybe 10 miles away from me that opened two years ago same time we and it’s just it’s more of the same you know and I don’t know what their numbers are but I sure see a heck of a lot of paid ads for them everywhere so I’m guessing they’re probably trying to drive their occupancy 

[00:37:59] Brian Searl: they don’t have a difference maker. 

[00:38:01] Devyn Johnson: that’s when you can bring in your social media and say look at all these cool rocks that we have.

[00:38:35] Brian Searl: and you look at social media and you talk about their paid ads, it’s the same thing I think I heard it from like a GaryVee video like four or five years ago, right? But he was basically like, if you run organic social media content and it doesn’t perform well, you should never run a paid ad based on that same organic social media content because the algorithms know what people want to see.

 And you’re just trying to force an ad in front of you. So it’s the same thing. If you have the same RV sites, the same amenities, the same thing as everybody else in an overcrowded market, you’re not differentiating yourself.

 You’re not going to sell your site, probably. You’re going to sell more sites for sure running Google Ads if you do a good Google Ads strategy. But you’re not going to fill up the way you want in a crowded market just by bumping yourself to the top.

 Most consumers are too savvy to see right through that. 

[00:39:25] Jeremy Johnson: part of that social media strategy that I talked about earlier is we run all these organic posts and see what people actually engage with and convert from, we’ll create paid social media posts based on the ones that worked, we won’t put dollars into the ones that didn’t work. 

[00:39:43] Joe Duemig: a lot of it my assumption for the summer is that it’s going to run the same similar to where we run anytime there’s uncertainty, which is typically the destination still do fine. The along the routes for long haul destinations, long haul drives don’t fare as well. Your overnight stops on, on long distance travel, people out west, right?

 There might be a lot of people, a lot less people, that’s long drives with not much in between it. So there might be a lot of people doing less that. And so you might see those stop along the ways some trouble.

 But most years if we’re having problems like that, the destinations still do very well. You talk about a differentiator and being unique not necessarily that you need to be changing. It’s that you either need to have name, that, that name that people have been coming to forever and not have changed possibly. And then you have the, the startups that are making a name for themselves, making a brand for themselves. And so I think I think those do fine that’s typically how it runs anytime there’s uncertainty in our market, I think.

[00:40:51] Brian Searl: We looked at that in Florida too. The the amount of the number of parks who we could not locate a social media profile for by scraping their website, they weren’t linked to Facebook or whatever else, right? And who really didn’t have an online presence or online booking engine actually charged more money than the parks that didn’t and were better occupied in Florida.

 Because they’re the old parks that have been there 30, 40 years. They have a loyal following. People are coming to the same thing.

 They don’t like the change. And that stability, and that will be, those people will be fine for probably four or five years longer than the other people in the market will because they’re established. Now eventually the boomers are going to be like there’s only so many years we can live and travel healthy, right?

 But that’s, but they’re going to have five or six more years on top of that to figure out that next audience who 

[00:41:38] Jeremy Johnson: that’s really interesting. makes sense. There are a couple parks in my area that are what I would call like legacy parks that they put very little marketing behind it.

 They just have that customer base.

[00:41:48] Brian Searl: Yep. They already got the customer and they, it’s very hard to steal that. Unless you have a difference maker.

 And if you have a difference maker, that’s great if there’s a market for it. All right, let’s spend the last few minutes of the show, let’s go around, we’ll do our question and answer things. But Devyn, do you have any questions for either Jeremy or Joe? 

[00:42:05] Devyn Johnson: I think let’s see. I think actually my question would be how, this is more asking for advice, but we are mostly a long-term park and actually Jeremy and I were talking about it before y’all got on too. We’re right now we’re struggling and goes in with what we were just talking about with our short-term guests because there’s so many people out here and there’s so many campgrounds and, we’re right in the middle of a big metroplex.

 There’s three cities near us. But we’re still not seeing a increase of short-term weekenders. Like what, because Jeremy is mostly weekenders, like what advice do y’all have to get those type of guests in?

[00:42:47] Brian Searl: Who do you want to ask? You have to pick somebody.

[00:42:49] Devyn Johnson: Oh, I have to pick?

[00:42:50] Brian Searl: Yep.

[00:42:50] Devyn Johnson: Oh okay, I’m going to pick on Joe because Jeremy and I already about it. Sorry.

[00:42:56] Joe Duemig: I’m probably the worst person to ask this question 

[00:43:00] Devyn Johnson: get to see a bunch of different types of campgrounds. So I think that’s where I’m coming from. Like what, for those campgrounds that do have a lot of weekenders, what do you notice that might be a little bit different than a long-term park? 

[00:43:13] Joe Duemig: in terms of bringing them the first place, I think that kind of goes to the marketing. And so if the marketing that you’ve been doing so far has been based on the current experience that you’ve been giving given to your long-term where that it would need to change and have something to cater to that short-term. A lot of our campgrounds that are that have a higher percentage of short-term, they also have, and this might not be useful for you mainly because they have an amenity that draws it, but they might have day use during the week or something like that to also just get people out to experience the park even if they’re not camping.

 So that’s actually a semi-common thing that I’ve seen. But I think it would be most likely a different style of marketing hearing marketing too, because not trying to sell someone in Austin to come stay for winter. So your locations wildly different and what you’re offering is wildly different than what you need to offer that person in Austin, maybe maybe if you’re trying to bring in some of the people from Austin you’re trying to get people that would have gone to Austin to come to your park would be music, right? bringing in talent that people know of but maybe don’t want to go into the city to experience.

 That can be something that might make a lot of sense for a park in your area.

[00:44:28] Devyn Johnson: Okay. Nice.

[00:44:29] Brian Searl: Should we say hi to Jayne here or should we just she showed up with minutes left in the show.

[00:44:33] Joe Duemig: I think Jayne might have had us down an hour later, huh?

[00:44:37] Jayne Cohen: No, I’m sorry. Sorry everyone. I actually was on the RVIA that they do once a quarter about the economy.

[00:44:48] Brian Searl: What came out of it? Give us the highlights real quick. 

[00:44:50] Jayne Cohen: it was a bit depressing, to be honest. will say that at the end when they asked for questions, no one had a question. And it was the kind, it was news that they didn’t, that in the last quarter they were hoping they weren’t going to give it to us, but pretty much they’re adjusting shipments down.

 And discretionary spending, RVs are discretionary spending and they expect that to go down. I think we’re in a, at a time where it’s buckle up, tighten your belts. We got to really pay attention to what’s happening in the economy right now. I don’t necessarily think that people not buying RVs completely affects us immediately. And I say this because, there’s all these RVers out there already that own RVs. And, right?

 And given the choice people usually don’t give up their vacations even during bad times. They just change how they vacation. So I don’t necessarily think bad news for RV dealers translates into immediate bad news for us.

 However, obviously good news for them is good news for us, right? The more RVers there is out there. 

[00:46:12] Brian Searl: the long-term tail. the if it continues as bad news for RV dealers for two to three years, can be bad for the camping industry, but not short-term. I agree 

[00:46:21] Jayne Cohen: most prudent operators, they’re aware, we’re all aware of what’s going on the macro economy. And it just, proceed with cautious optimism, 

[00:46:35] Brian Searl: are we still at cautious optimism? That was the 2024 buzzword.

[00:46:39] Jayne Cohen: I know. I think I’m back there. I prefer to be at least cautiously optimistic.

[00:46:47] Brian Searl: I’m mostly a realist. Jane, I’m mostly a realist. People tell me I’m negative all the time.

[00:46:53] Jayne Cohen: I just say sometimes I think you’re on the verge of negative, Brian.

[00:46:57] Brian Searl: I am. Not on purpose. Like I want to be optimistic.

 I’m just looking at the numbers. Anyway, what else they talk about the economy? Anything else?

[00:47:10] Jeremy Johnson: just to be real to your point about it, the entire socio-economical atmosphere has changed, like people, the reality like we no longer have 3% interest rates and, gas. We live in a different world than we did four years ago or five years ago. And so I don’t know, I think you just have understand what the customer wanting and able to accomplish at this point in time and it’s not what it was in like it’s just a different world. 

[00:47:39] Devyn Johnson: I think what Jane was saying too goes back to what we were all talking about. If we don’t know how to market to certain guests, then we’re, we are going to fall behind. I think the, those campgrounds that work hard enough to earn every booking and they’re pretty knowledgeable about who’s traveling is going to be the ones that are successful. 

[00:47:58] Jayne Cohen: I agree with you, Devyn. And, one thing that happens is sometimes sometimes when things are tighter, like people cut out marketing, right?

 Which to me certainly the kiss of death. Like you need to do more of it because possibly the repeaters won’t be repeating as much. And their referrals that normally would come camping might not be camping as much.

 So that means we’ve got to put more pressure on getting some new people in. And that’s where marketing becomes really important.

[00:48:36] Brian Searl: Yep. Agreed. Let’s keep going with our questions at the end here. Devyn Jane or 

[00:48:44] Jeremy Johnson: I’m gonna go with Devyn. we talked about this before the show but my sister lives just around the corner from your RV resort. got to find some time to go visit her so what’s the best time to visit New Braunfels Texas?

[00:48:57] Devyn Johnson: New Braunfels has been one of the fastest growing cities for the last six seven years seven eight years something like that in the US. tourist season is right now so I probably wouldn’t say right now but May or September October it’s still warm enough to go to the river and do things outside and it’s a little bit slower than this time of year so definitely like May or October I think would be your sweet spots.

[00:49:25] Jeremy Johnson: Maybe an October visit you accommodate a 24 foot 1990s Toyota Sunrader?

[00:49:32] Devyn Johnson: Oh absolutely we’ll have a spot for ya.

[00:49:37] Brian Searl: Joe you have a question for Jeremy or Jane? 

[00:49:39] Joe Duemig: yeah I in my end of gotten answered last week so I don’t know but Jeremy I was curious if you’ve recently added any new like classes or things like that I know you were doing quite a few of them last year and I was wondering what you’ve added new for this year.

[00:49:53] Jeremy Johnson: What you mean like at the campground nothing new that we’ve added we are expanding some of I’ll call it programming so one of the things we’ll be doing is in our off season in the winter we’ll be doing more winter climbing and ice climbing so like last year for example during Michigan Ice Fest we did one day of classes next year we’ll be doing three maybe four days and then hopefully a full season of climbing that’s really in anticipation of one day being able to be open year round as we add permanent cabins and things so we’re just like trying to build that demand now by doing that programming so then when we open we have that demand for stays right away.

[00:50:40] Brian Searl: Very cool.

[00:50:41] Devyn Johnson: Yeah.

[00:50:41] Brian Searl: Anybody have a question for Jane since she jumped on late or do we want to Jane’s all negatives maybe nobody wants to ask any questions for Jane.

[00:50:50] Devyn Johnson: I just have a crazy question Jane were you at the TACO convention this year?

[00:50:55] Jayne Cohen: Yes I was yes.

[00:50:57] Devyn Johnson: Okay I was gonna say you look so familiar and I know you from somewhere and it just clicked so met you there.

[00:51:04] Jayne Cohen: Yes I actually spoke about guest services.

[00:51:08] Devyn Johnson: Yes that’s right okay it’s good to see you again.

[00:51:13] Jayne Cohen: Nice to see you and I love New Braunfels Texas. 

[00:51:18] Devyn Johnson: Whenever ya’ll want to come visit come on we got a spot for ya.

[00:51:23] Brian Searl: All right. We got a couple minutes left. Let’s wrap it up.

 Let’s go around the room real quick. Devyn, any final thoughts or, and then where can they learn more about Canopy? 

[00:51:30] Devyn Johnson: check out all of our social media. Our TikToks and Facebook a great spot right now. We are growing and growing. Again, we’ve had about 15% occupancy growth in the last couple months and I really do think social media is like the newest, biggest, most important thing in the marketing world of campgrounds. I don’t know. I think this was super fun.

 This is my first time doing a podcast with you guys. It’s great to hear other trends and other viewpoints of people. This is the first time that I’ve managed an RV, actually worked or managed an RV park.

 So it’s great to hear and connect with other people in this industry and y’all are all wonderful. So thanks for having me.

[00:52:11] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Devyn. Jeremy, any final thoughts and where can they learn more about your campground?

[00:52:16] Jeremy Johnson: We are officially in summer here in Northern Michigan. So come visit. It’s beautiful weather. A little rainy today, but 75 and sunny most days. you can book a site at campkonahills.com.

[00:52:28] Brian Searl: Thanks for being here, Jeremy. Any final thoughts, Joe, and where can they learn more about App My Community?

[00:52:38] Joe Duemig: Sorry, no real final thoughts. As Brian said, Brian announced a few times, we’re going to move into Spain, but doesn’t change what we’re doing. Felt like we, things in Missouri here, so we can manage this just fine.

 So we and we’re App My Community, make mobile apps for campgrounds to increase your customer experience. 

[00:52:57] Brian Searl: So wait, next month at this time, you won’t be, you said July 23rd, you’re moving?

[00:53:03] Joe Duemig: I will, we’ll still be around at this time. Yep. July 20th is our move date.

[00:53:07] Brian Searl: Two months from now, you’re going to be on the show from Spain. It’ll be 8 and 8, 8, 9 o’clock at night, right?

[00:53:12] Joe Duemig: Maybe. I was saying it’s going to be pretty late. Lots of children around, so we’ll see.

 We’ll see what that first month brings.

[00:53:18] Brian Searl: It’s not going to be late, man. They eat dinner at 10 o’clock in Spain. 

[00:53:21] Joe Duemig: our kids still start school at 8:30, so we’ll see.

[00:53:26] Brian Searl: You just gotta go on less sleep. It’ll be more charming than kids always are.

[00:53:30] Joe Duemig: That’s right.

[00:53:32] Brian Searl: Jayne, any final thoughts? I know you were just here for a short time, but any final thoughts?

[00:53:35] Jayne Cohen: Yeah, and I apologize for that, but I just want to say I going to say ditto with Devyn. We are finding that social media as a marketing source is becoming more and more important.

[00:53:51] Brian Searl: And where can they learn more about your consulting company, Jayne? 

[00:53:54] Jayne Cohen: right on our website, campgroundconsultinggroup.com, or you can phone me or one of my associates, or you can even ask Brian about us.

[00:54:03] Brian Searl: You want to give your phone number out? Just give your cell phone out.

[00:54:05] Jayne Cohen: Sure, I’d be happy to. My cell phone is 603-455-1884.

[00:54:14] Brian Searl: I didn’t know she was actually going to do it, but okay, cool. I’ll do it. All right, thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats.

 If you’re not sick and tired of hearing from me, I will be on Outwired, our other live podcast, in about an hour with Scott Bahr. We’re going to actually dig into some of the economic numbers that came out today a little bit. And then we’re going to go through like a plan, if you’re a campground owner, how do you react?

 How do you actually find your niche or your experience that sets you apart? And then how do you do all your marketing? We’re going to go through that in a live exercise with AI. So if you want to see that, then come join us on Outwired. If not, we’ll see you next week for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Thanks everybody for being here.

 Appreciate ya.

[00:54:48] Jeremy Johnson: Bye.