MC Fireside Chats – May 14th, 2025

Brian Searl: Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Brian Searl with Insider Perks. I got like a scratchy voice, guys, like when the intro was playing, I was fine before I started like having this dry cough. So that’s what I have this, I don’t know if you can even tell on the mic, but I like to be transparent on my shows and talk about things that nobody really cares about to start the show.

But welcome everybody. We’re missing like a bunch of people today. Joe Duemig over in Australia. Congrats to him. He’s at a Australian Campground Owners conference over there, bringing his apps into a new market. So super exciting to see his success. Scott Foos has a meeting. Kevin Thueson traveling. Kevin, there’s mobile phones. I just wanna point that out to you, Kevin, like you can jump on. Like look at Sir Glamps-a-lot, Devon, he’s at a job site. He’s all up in this stuff helping us out. 

Devon Towle: Yes, sir. 

Brian Searl: And then Zach and Casey, like Zach and Casey basically just said we accept your calendar invite, we’re gonna show up.

And sorry my dog is messing with me. And we’re just, then we’re just not gonna come on the show. If that happens, here’s my little dog.

Devon Towle: Nice. I got my one.

Brian Searl: She’s got lap dog. She’s gotta have all the attention. So anyway, like I was listening to you guys before the show. I was telling these two gentlemen we’re gonna talk about the businesses.

So I wanna have you guys introduce yourselves in a second. And then we’re gonna talk about Global Glamping, some of the cool stuff they have going on. Treebones Resort. My eyes are better now, John. I fixed that problem. Thanks for correcting me. We’re gonna talk about that stuff and some of the cool things they have going on.

And then maybe we’re gonna have a really cool discussion on 3D printing because both of these gentlemen are involved in some capacity, which I’m sure they will tell you during their intros. So you guys wanna briefly introduce yourselves. Let’s start with John ’cause he doesn’t have a cool name, like Sir Glamps-a-lot. No offense, John, but. 

John Handy: Yeah. 

Brian Searl: I don’t have any. 

John Handy: My name’s John Handy. My wife Corinne and I own Treebones Resort. We built it and opened it 20 years ago. 

Brian Searl: Congratulations, John. I’m looking forward to talking more about that. Devon or Sir Glamps-a-lot, or.

Devon Towle: Yes, sir. What’s up, MC Fireside Chats. My name’s Devon Allen Towle, AKA Sir Glamps-a-lot. I’m the Founder and CEO of a company called Global Glamping. Started off as a architect and housing consultant for Palm Harbor Homes in San Antonio, Texas. Free advertising for them about 15 years ago, and ultimately wanted to do my own little tiny home community before eco tours and glamping was even like a thing.

And so when I moved to Montana seven years ago I have an entrepreneurial background. One of my companies is called Elevate, which is a skateboarding, snowboarding, lifestyle brand, outdoor adventure travel, and wanted to build a little indoor skate park for the local community for the wintertime.

Found out about glamping. I thought it was a legit joke. I didn’t know it was like a real thing. This was seven years, so it was still a brand new industry here in the US. Bought some raw land in Montana, had a warehouse, built a skate park needed a way to cash flow the property. So I put my property on Hip Camp and was doing $25, $30 bucks a night.

Had a little skate park going, saved up, built the yurt. And fast forward a year, we ended up getting nominated for the best Hip Camp in all of Montana. Out of 6,000 locations, I was in the top 10. I ended up winning by the, and then got Forbes and then going through zoning and permitting and all that other stuff.

I recognized that this industry was like the wild west and the industry needed some people to help, guide the industry. And so I started Global Glamping. Fast forward seven years now, we’ve been featured in quite a few major publications. The most recent big award was for business elites 40 under 40, and I just turned 40 last month.

So literally barely made it by the nick of time. So that was super cool. And now we have 15 resorts with over a hundred short term rental in the ecotourism space, about 34 properties. And we’ve literally helped thousands of people with guests and also developments. And so we specialize in ecotourism and developing locations.

I’m actually here at our Guardian Ranch location in San Diego, California, or in Escondido in San Diego, California. With the 3D printed tiny houses from Azure printed homes as a world’s first ever, we’ve been able to get three decks framed out plumbing and water lines done in three days. So all of you that weren’t on the call, there’s no excuse.

Brian Searl: That’s true, man. That’s true. Thanks for being here. Like you’re not too far from me in Montana. I know you’re not in Montana right now. We just covered that. But I’m in Calgary. I live here permanently.

Devon Towle: Oh nice!.

Brian Searl: So just North of you. Not too far away. Did I hear you say like you were bootstrapped, right? Is that what I heard? 

Devon Towle: Yeah, completely bootstrapped. We’ve never had any ambassador. I was just doing this to get people into nature and do some tent camping and it’s become this thing now. So it’s been a really exciting. 

Brian Searl: So this is a super interesting question for me because I am like, I’m also bootstrapped and there’s obviously a place for investment capital for certain use cases, but I think this is an interesting conversation to have simultaneously that will allow us to explore how your business is built or businesses were built.

And that is you see a lot of people on LinkedIn, especially since the pandemic who are, and not speaking negatively for or against whatever, but who are, I’m an investor come investor with me putting money into my company. We’ll give you fractional shares of this or fractional shares of that. Or like you can make so much money in the RV park space or the glamping space or whatever. And that’s a viable path to success in some cases. I don’t know that I fully agree with the fractional share thing, but that’s obviously just my opinion for sure. There are definitely methods of profit behind there.

But it’s not the only way, and I think that story gets lost sometimes, is that there is ways that you can bootstrap from, all the way down to like you said you started, and I want you to talk more about this, but your $25, $30 a day, tent sites or whatever on Hip Camp it’s not as easy as like getting a check written for you for 5, 10, 50, a hundred million dollars, but sometimes it’s more rewarding. What do you think? 

Devon Towle: Oh man, I, and I completely agree, and that’s actually another reason I started this company because I’ve been able to get creative with financing. And even my first deal, I did a, it’s called Glamping Rev Share to where we have five acres. There was a gentleman that was in in Montana, in Florence, Montana, which is the next little town to Stevensville.

It’s where they, to film to show him Yellowstone. And I had, someone had told me that he had a bunch of yurts and so I called them and I was like, Hey man. I heard that you have a bunch of yurts that you’re trying to sell, you haven’t really been able to sell them. I could do a display model as well as, share the revenue with you.

So I was like, I’ll do the management, I’ll do the listing. I’ll give you half of the revenue, help you sell your yurts. And that’s how we got the yurt. I paid for the deck.

He supplied the yurt, place for $ 500 bucks. Built my own little fire. Only had a porta-potty. I was afraid that people were gonna leave bad reviews, but actually again, people get analysis paralysis. And I did add a desperation and sure enough, like we got good reviews because the porta-potty was always clean, and again, like I just had to generate revenue and we were getting $75, a hundred bucks a night, and I knew if I could do it, with one, I could scale it.

And that’s how I’ve been able to scale my business was I do rev share deals with people and then they would generate a cash flow. They’d buy the structure, and then I’d buy them out after a few years. And so now we do that on pretty much all of our locations and we’ll even invest in other sites depending on, if it’s feasible or not.

But we do 50-50 to where we’ll sell the structure, we’ll put it up on our qualified land. They get half of the rental income and then after five years they can sell it to us at an agreed upon price. We can broker a deal and then, sell it to a commission. They can sell it to another, structure partner or they can move it to one of our other sites or move it to their own location.

Develop their own sites because as 90% of the people in the industry, if they, have been in this industry, that’s the biggest thing is finding the capital to do the developments. And so I’ve been able to find a workaround ’cause I haven’t, I didn’t have the best credit when I got started. I didn’t have it going, so I had to get creative and this rev share model has been a game changer for me. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, that’s all that resonates with me, right? I didn’t, even to the last point, like the bad credit when I started like in 2010, 2011 or whatever I never took a big loan from a bank either.

Like looking back on it, I’m like, I can’t believe I was that stupid, but I had no other choice. At one point, I think I had $150,000 in credit card debt, like long time ago, right? But that’s how I was building my business. And then I was turning it over, right? Very quickly.

But that ability to just like, that would never fly with investors, right? The kinds of things that, like I’ve done over the years to build my business that were like, I’m gonna just go all in this. ’cause I think it’s right. And an investor would look to that oh my God, are you crazy? You’re never doing that with my money. But it worked. And so that’s the flexibility is what appeals to me too. 

Devon Towle: The barrier to entry for this type of real estate investment is a fraction of the cost of your typical Airbnb or other real estate investment where you need 500,000 to a million dollars.

You could literally get started with some raw land a bell tent, a little solar battery bank, and two to $3,000. And that’s not the ideal way to do it, but where there’s a will there’s a way.

Brian Searl: Yeah. But that creativity is the key to it, right? And again, I’m not saying that you can’t be successful other ways. Of course you can. There’s plenty of models proven out. There’s lots of great groups out there. Kevin’s is one, right? They have a lot of great investors behind their company and they’ve been extremely successful with KCN Campgrounds. See, I even talked nice about you, Kevin, when you’re not here.

He’s not gonna watch the show, but. But like that, yeah, that stuff, the way that you can just. It’s harder for sure, I guess is what I’m trying to say. It’s harder, it requires more creativity and innovation in the beginning to a certain extent. Especially because you have that ability to be more flexible and thus and I think it also takes longer, but the reward of but your boots into the mud and building the things and doing what you’re doing, standing at the construction site and seeing it all come together, right?

Like you probably at this point in your business, you probably don’t need to be the guy standing there, but I have a sense you maybe enjoy it. 

Devon Towle: Right now as I’m building out the construction crews and everything it is a necessity for me to be on site. I don’t have to be with the guys all the time, the responsible young gentlemen.

But yeah, it is, it’s like I like being out here. I like being able to work remotely. That’s another thing I love about ecotourism and glamping is. You have internet, you have all the amenities that you would normally have at a hotel, but now, my view is overlooking a 40 acre, horse sanctuary.

So it’s a lifestyle man. And, getting in God’s creation, getting outdoors, being able to, connect to community. That’s the reason why I’m so passionate about it. 

Brian Searl: For sure. I wanna come back and look at, talk more about your 3D homes and how the business is going in a second. I wanna get to John. I don’t wanna leave him sitting there too long. John, how you doing?

John Handy: I’m doing well, thank you. 

Brian Searl: Tell us about Treebones Resort and how you guys got started. It’s been 20 year journey, so can you think back that long? And I know I just say that ’cause I have a short-term memory. I can’t remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, so I’m trying, I’m counting on you.

John Handy: It Treebones Resort actually is 20, 20 years old. This past November. But it got started when I was 27. My wife and I were 26 and 27, and we we bought a piece of land in Big Sur and it was a, we did a really risky thing. We bought it, it’s on the ocean. We had an interest only loan with a five year balloon payment at the end, which is a very foolish kind of thing for any young person to do.

But we love the property. We weren’t buying it because it was commercial. A year after we bought it, it got rezoned commercial without our asking, and it’s called Visitor Serving Commercial. So Big Sur actually picked out that piece of land and said that would be a good place for a hotel or a restaurant or store or both.

We changed our dream and we spent about a decade just thinking about what we would do, but this was all money that. Was just a young couple was just putting together to do it five years. After we bought it, we were able to pay off the loan. Good things happened at work for me. I was a toy designer at Mattel Toys. And I was hoping for, that kind of success, but I shouldn’t have been able to bank on it. And then we started exploring what we would do. And the word glamping didn’t exist when we bought the property and it didn’t actually come out until a year after we opened.

So glamping, the word came out in 2005 and we, but we basically figured out what glamping was for us. And I was traveling a lot from Mattel and staying in hotels and they’re like little miniature versions of your home. And it gets old after a while, it’s you’re not really the lodging part wasn’t an experience, so we wanted to make it an experience and we did like to camp as a family.

And one thing led to another and we discovered yurts. We bought our first test yurt from Pacific Yurts. And we loved it on the site. It worked really well. And that’s how we got started. But we got business loans, small business administration loans, construction loans, and we took a lot of risk. I think what you guys were talking about earlier about rev shares and other things are good ways to do it. They’re logical, smart ways of doing it. We didn’t have any of that kind of thought process back in those days. And in fact the Coastal Commission of California and the Monterey County, once they did approve our project it took five years to get the approval.

But once they did, they wanted us to build a whole thing at once. They didn’t, they’ve had bad experiences with, piecemealing something together. So we didn’t really have the option of starting out small. We had to build it out. And then through the years we’ve counted on our staff our beautiful people that come to work for us, and plus all the wonderful people that visit us, they fill us with ideas and thoughts about how to improve and what to make it better. And so over the 20 years we’ve evolved quite a bit, but that’s how we got started. 

Brian Searl: It’s interesting how many different things have to happen to have you end up where you are. I was thinking about this, I dunno, a couple weeks ago because I’m reading a book about it, but how many different things have to come together, decision wise, to leave you where you are today from as small as like the land, like you’re not planning that to the land being commercially rezoned. Had it never done that, would Treebones exist? Maybe not. Maybe you would’ve owned a multimillion dollar hotel empire. I don’t know. Or Right.

John Handy: I think it is a series of minor miracles, or not minor, some of ’em are major and blessings that come into making this happen. And just having the right idea at the right time. There’s a thing in, so my background is product design, but there’s a concept called pent up demand. And that’s something that everybody wants it, but it doesn’t exist right now. And as soon as you make it and create it, they’ve always wanted it.

It’s like the iPhone.

Brian Searl: Yeah. It’s exactly what I was about to say, the iPhone. Yeah. 

John Handy: We never had that, but we can’t live without it. And I think in the case of glamping, ecotourism and Big Sur, it really didn’t exist. And people were waiting for it. They knew they wanted to come visit Big Sur.

And there was a lot of ’em that were looking for the most unusual experience or unique experience that was close to the land that they could get. But a lot of that didn’t happen. There was regular camping and then there was motels and then there was luxury resorts. But this was combining all of those things.

And I think the elements that go into making Treebones successful is the site. Number one is where we are. We’re in Big Sur. We’re looking over at the ocean. We’re on Cape San Martin. So we have 180 degree views of the ocean. Behind us are spectacular mountains that come right down to us.

But second would be our staff that live on site. So 31 people live in this property too, and it makes it so that it’s more personal for them. And then the other part of it is just the amenities. So we have fine dining. We have a sushi bar, omakase sushi bar with two fabulous chefs. Yancy Knapp is the head sushi chef there.

And we have DJ is his assistant and those guys put out a great 14 course omakase meal five days a week. And we also have the lodge restaurant with Kyle Walker is our executive chef. That’s a price fixed dinner. But we didn’t start out with that. We started out with barbecue and Trit tip and things like that. But our guests that were coming from San Francisco, LA and from Europe, were asking for a higher level of food. And so we have those restaurants and then we also massage and yoga and other things that go with it. Pool, spa, jacuzzi. And so in our case Treebones Resort is really, yes, you are staying in a yurt or you’re staying in the autonomous tent or the Cove Azure home.

But you’re not suffering while you’re there. You’re actually living luxuriously. You’re off the grid. You have a low carbon footprint, but you’re enjoying your time and you’re enjoying your meals and your experience. That’s the essence of what we’ve got going on. But that was, it evolved.

Devon Towle: Yeah. We did something similar at our glacier resort because it’s literally an hour in all directions. There’s no cell phone signal, so we were able to get starlink up and running. We got a restaurant and a bar there, ’cause there’s nowhere to eat as well. That’s another, difficulty that you run into with these types of locations is not having those types of amenities.

So a lot of ’em, you have to build it on site. So the fact that you have that sushi bar and then all that other stuff, I’m sure like people would love to have that, because we have simple food, burgers, pizza, stuff like that, chicken wings. But there’s no other place to eat, so you have to have that type of stuff there.

Brian Searl: Yeah, I think that’s interesting. Like just we were talking about decisions and I know you turned off your camera for a second, I dunno if you were walking around and listening to it all. But we were just talking about the number of decisions that come into play as you make and build a business.

And just the different directions that all those could take you. And I think and I wanna see if you gentlemen agree with it, but. I’m reading this fascinating book. It’s called The Midnight Library. It’s total fiction. It’s not about business but it’s about a woman who wants to die, and then she goes and gets stuck in like this purgatory place called the Midnight Library that has like infinite number of books with every possible outcome of what her life could have been like at every decision point, which is basically an infinite number of, right.

It’s a really cool book. And I’m only in the, I don’t know, 10, third or 11th chapter. I was just reading it on a plane coming back from vacation yesterday. But like just thinking about all those different things like you never know where a decision is going to take you. And yeah, that’s one of the biggest things that I try to tell people when they come to me for advice on like entrepreneurship or building a business or whatever else is you think about your decision, for sure, but don’t overthink your decision because you will never know what the opposite impact of that other decision could have been.

It could have been a lot better, it could have been a lot worse. It could have been the same but you’re never going to know the outcome of that. So there’s no such thing as a perfect decision. Would you guys agree? 

John Handy: Yes, I would agree. I love the ocean. I love boats and fishing and things like that. I have a boat analogy though about decisions and about going in a direction. And I think it rings true to me. And one of it is that this concept of playing it safe I don’t think you could really build something if you’re gonna be safe. ’cause the safe thing is to don’t do anything.

So a ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what it was built for. That always ran true to me. And the second thing is that you’ve got this giant vessel with huge motors, but you can’t steer it, unless it’s moving forward you have to start moving and then you can make adjustments.

But if you’re just sitting there without any propulsion, you’re not going anywhere. You cannot steer that boat. It’s steered by motion. And that’s been true of our business where we didn’t take the safe route, we took the riskier route, but we thought about it before we did it, but we still took risks.

And then secondly, we started moving forward before we knew everything. ‘Cause we didn’t know everything about running a resort. 

Brian Searl: And you still don’t do you? 

John Handy: And I don’t. And I have to keep myself humble and it’s not easy. It’s not hard to keep myself humble. It’s easy to keep myself humble because I’m humbled every day by things that I couldn’t predict. Like the global economy shifting right now and travel is shifting from Europe and Canada that were coming here. That’s been really halted recently. And also we have a road closure in Big Sur, North of us. So all of the traffic that would come down, highway one from the north, has to come all the way around a mountain and add an hour and a half to their trip to get to us.

And you can still reach us from the south. But that’s something unpredictable. It keeps you pretty humble when you’re trying to run a business ’cause you don’t know what next year brings, but you have to be agile and you have to adjust and you have to make moves, based on what’s happening.

And also people will tell you. Like I said, coming from the product area. Our consumer was a child and they had no brand loyalty. They were fickle, and they wanted whatever was cooled this year, they didn’t care about last year. But you had to listen to the children to tell you what they wanted.

And we always tease some of the designers in my group would be disappointed by a bad focus group or a bad test result. But I said, what happened? Did the consumer let you down? They will never let you down. They’ll always tell you what is going on. And I think that’s the thing if you keep yourself humble, you keep your ear to your consumers, you can make the adjustments you need to.

Brian Searl: I love your ship analogy. I would add one. Stopped one, one other point to it, right? Sitting in the harbor is definitely, not the death of a business, but the death of major progress in a business. I think there’s another segment of people that is much larger that probably start the engines and head down the safest route possible, like the trade route to Europe that would had been done hundreds of thousands or thousands of times.

But they knew there was no piracy on that route and they knew there was no icebergs and they knew there was no nothing. And so you took that safe lane and that may lead you to a profitable business. And you could do some interesting things on that lane. You could even steer just a little bit left or a little bit and end up at a different port. But you’re not gonna be Christopher Columbus. And maybe Christopher Columbus is the wrong, analogy to give ’cause apparently he wasn’t such a great guy. But either way you understand my point. And so I think that’s interesting to me.

The ability of and I see that as, I don’t want to slight anybody, but like I see that from the outside looking in as what an in invest as a group. Typical group, not all. Typical group with investment capital is almost required to do, in a lot of cases, is to stay in not necessarily the safe lane, but stay in the things that have been proven to work before lane.

Or the things that at certain, and we’ve talked about this on the show before like electric pedestals at your glamping resort or whatever else. You get to a certain point where, the consumer has demanded, X amount of electric cars have been purchased, X amount of campers own electric cars.

The math problem now adds up to me owning pedestals. Instead of being the first mover to add them, and then all of a sudden people come to you because there’s no other place like the burger joint in the middle of Montana.

Devon Towle: Yeah. And back to, you know what John was saying too, and what you guys were, talking about is nothing ever goes exactly to plan, right?

And you can plan all day, you can run all the numbers, you can do this and then that. But there’s engineering permitting, there’s zoning, there’s, manufacture delays. There’s so many different things that happen to where you just have to persevere and you have to be willing to pivot.

Just don’t quit, but pivot. And that’s something that I’ve had to deal with literally on a daily basis.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Devon Towle: So when you go into whether it’s, ecotourism, glamping or any other business, especially as an entrepreneur, you have to be thick skinned and know that, the only time you really fail is when you quit.

And if you continue just to move forward and press ahead and go through the difficult times and know that, you might have to move some things around or pivot on some certain things. And I go to that every day. Knowing that hey, some materials aren’t available or whatever.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Devon Towle: So just knowing that you’re gonna have to use your outside the box thinking. There isn’t a, like we have, guide and roadmaps now, especially, that’s why we offer our consulting because we spent literally hundreds of thousands, if not mostly, it’s been millions of dollars more over the past seven years to help people expedite the process.

And I was looking for a company like Global Glamping when I started because I paid for real ed real estate education when I flipped houses or all that other stuff, ’cause the experts have done it and they’ve made the mistakes. So I’d be willing to pay some money upfront to negate that and collapse my timeline because there’s a learning curve with all this stuff.

So that’s actually how Global Glamping was born, because I was looking for a company to help me with the renderings and the site maps and the proformas and the pitch decks and like the different property manager software. Unless you’re in this business, people don’t understand the whirlwind of different verticals that you have to work.

John, you said you’ve had your business now for over 20 years, so you’ve seen it before. It was, like you said, even camping or glamping. So I know what I’ve been through the past seven years, but I couldn’t imagine, over two decades of having to pivot and figure out which other ways to go and stuff like that.

So I’m sure you could tell us some stories about, having to pivot with your business.

John Handy: Sure.

Devon Towle: And would you agree, like that’s probably one of the biggest things is learning how to pivot and know that not everything works out exactly the way you want it to.

John Handy: I think agility is the advantage that a small company has over big corporations that have multiple hotels and businesses. You’re agile ’cause you’re able to move and change as needed.

And I think one of the things that’s affected us a lot is staying on top of the latest technology. And it was funny because Trevor Noah, on the late show parody of Treebones at one time. There in the morning, CBS news came and talked about the unplugging trend and they used the human nest at Treebones and they said, no internet, no cell service and you can just comment, unplug.

And he made fun of us. But he was, you know how there’s always truth to it ’cause he’s saying, I get a load of these places that say, come prepare to unplug. That’s because they don’t have cell service or internet. And it was true, it was a funny skit that he did on his show. But now we do, we have starlink and starlink brings cell phone and there’s probably disadvantages to that in that now people are reconnected again.

But it’s really technology that didn’t exist for us a while back. We had satellite internet, but it had what was called a fair access plan. So it was real slow and you could only use so much data. So it was really difficult. And over the last five years, starlink has changed everything for us, but also we’re off the grid.

We don’t have a grid for us. So the battery storage systems, the lithium iron phosphate battery systems for us have been huge. And it’s allowed us to run off the sun and to use that battery power at night and really, have seamless power. And those are just some of the technologies that have come into, LED Lights as an example, were amazing now that they’re nice and beautiful and warm. And even though our lodging technologies we were talking with Sir Glamps-a-lot about the 3D printed homes. So Azure printed homes we bought one of those because we’re an ecotourist location. But one of the things that haunted me is only 7% of the stuff that we throw into the recycle bin actually gets recycled.

The something like the Azure Home uses 60,000 water bottles in one home and reinforces it with fiberglass and then uses robotic arms to print it. And I wanted to show our guests that’s a really comfortable place to stay. It’s very luxurious and modern. But it’s also good for the environment ’cause it’s a use for all these recycled bottles here in the United States. New technology staying on top of that.

The other one was the autonomous tents, which are really popular for us, but that was invented by Phil Parr, who was a partner with us. But that’s a rev share. Like you guys were talking about earlier, I did a rev share with him because it was an unknown type of construction and he was gonna have to supervise it and be really hands-on.

And so we did that and we formed a partnership and it’s been a really good creative partnership at Treebone. So it’s just like you say, it’s pivoting. It’s watching for the technology, watching for the things that change and don’t hang on to the past. Move on where necessary, but don’t lose the essence that I think that’s what we’re trying to do at Treebones.

And one thing I’m gonna tell you, I might lose power on this. I might have to reconnect. So

Brian Searl: I thought you just said you had this robust solar thing going on, man. 

John Handy: Yeah, I know. I’m not plugged in right now. My iPad looks like it’s got 4% left, so if I disappear, I’ll come back. 

Brian Searl: All right, cool. You could disappear now if you want. We we’ll talk to Sir Glamps-a-lot for a minute if you just wanna go run and get a charger. So Sir Glamps-a-lot let’s talk about 3D printing for a second and then we’ll bring in John for his perspective when he gets back in a second. Tell us about what you have going on first before I ask any questions.

Devon Towle: That was another thing, I was looking for consulting and assistance with, because there’s so many options, right? There’s Safari tents, Tree Houses, geo domes, yurts, aircrete, cabins, A-frames like, oh my gosh, there’s just so many different units, right? But again, the most difficult thing in this industry is the funding and the financing.

And Jean, the, one of the co-founders. Had seen my products and my sites on Facebook. I forget, Instagram somewhere. And he called me and was like, Hey, we really love your business model. We have an amazing product that, the world’s first 3D printed tiny homes. And we would love to meet with you in person to see if we can figure out a way to work together.

So he flew out to our Murfreesboro, Arkansas location, diamond glamping, and we met in person, fell in love with the site and said, Hey I think that there’s an opportunity to work together, since we’re not just selling trucks, the building we work for, we have multiple verticals inside of our business.

And so he was actually able to find an equipment company to partner up with me and I was able to get 25 tiny houses, 20 of the X 180’s and five of the X 360’s. And now over the past, two months we’ve been getting them delivered. I’ve been bouncing around to our different locations and setting them up and everything that I’ve done so far and then like I said, we’ve done domes, tiny houses, cabins, the sheds that you can finish out into, little cabins and stuff like that. We’ve done ’em all. And as far as eco-friendly speed to market, cost effectiveness, ROI longevity, these Azure printed tiny homes are absolutely amazing.

What John was saying is obviously it’s made outta recycled materials, but also they’re plug and play. I got the top tier unit, which has the full insulation, the full solar power battery banks the full bathroom module, the kitchenette, everything. And they were roughly around a $100k.

Their base price was like, $ 59,000 but we were able to rent them out for $250 to $500 night. I think Treebones even rents theirs for $700 to $800 a night, and they’re booked out quite a bit. They do get high returns, but again, like the speed to market, the energy efficiency of them, the eco-friendliness of them, that’s another thing that people love about this industry is it’s they’re temporary structures, right? So being able to have a unit that’s up and running with a matter of days is huge for this industry because, the longer you take to get your side up and running, the more vulnerable you are to losing your business because you’re not cash flowing.

So if you can get things up in cash flowing right away and start generating revenue it’s a game changer. And this has been a game changer for us. This is our first season with all of these units, so we’re excited to see how they do, but already we’ve been able to get up eight of these things and literally less than two months and they’re gonna be generating a substantial amount of revenue.

But yeah, being able to find the right product, the right structure, finding the right land that doesn’t have a ton of restrictions, and have to go through a two to four year zoning process. I got one property right now. The one that actually was featured in Forbes and won of the best Hip Camp.

It’s a good old boys club and they’re very strict when it comes to what they allow and don’t allow in their little towns. Finding the right land that it’s unrestricted, un zoned. And being able to set up your site quickly has been advantageous to the success of our business.

’cause I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t do the same I went through, but again, you having to pivot and learn what works and what doesn’t. ’cause no one’s ever really done this stuff before. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. And that’s the interesting part. John, we have you back, but I think there’s a little bit of an echo coming from you.

We tried to unmute you and it’s making weird sounds, so we’ll try, if you want, I don’t know what’s happening if it’s just an echo, but anyway what, yeah, what interests me is like you talk about all the choices that are available for people now, but like the choices that you have available now is vast seemingly, when you compare. What was available even just a few years ago, but I think we’re just getting started, especially with 3D printing.

And you talk about Azure having this company that does a few different models. I’m looking forward to what we’re gonna see in 15, 20 years. I think there’s a way, I think there’s a thing where

Devon Towle: I’d say less than that man. I’d say five.

Brian Searl: I’m always the quick person that like, wants to jump forward. So I try to be more conservative sometimes when I’m talking to shows like this. I agree with you. Like it just depends on the scalability of technology. Like can they 3D print full villages in Mexico years ago for $4,000 for a little hut, right? So like these things are gonna get pretty cheap, but imagine when designers like our company, we do marketing and advertising. Imagine when we get our hands on like the 3D CAD designs and we can design some of this really cool stuff, or AI can do it right? And then come up with one.

Devon Towle: Yeah, I was actually gonna mention AI. Pretty soon you’re gonna be able to just put in a design on an AI and then it’ll print it out with a 3D printer. So that’s where we’re headed.

Brian Searl: And that excites me because then Sir Glamps-a-lot, you can go to I don’t know, like a LA Raiders game or whatever else. Is it LA Raiders or is it Oakland Raiders? I don’t know. I think it’s LA Raiders now. Whatever, I just made up a team. 

Devon Towle: Las Vagas. It’s Las Vegas Ranger.

Brian Searl: I’m a miserable Cleveland Browns man. I dunno,

Devon Towle: I’m not from California. I just have a project out here. So that’s more probably John’s.

Brian Searl: All right so anyway, like whatever, a football team, basketball team, college, whatever imagine just showing up like a night before a playoff game or two nights before a playoff game and renting like a lot where you can put up temporary football helmet style glamping, right?

And then you let people stay in it for $500, $700, a thousand dollars a night and then you take it all and recycle it. ’cause NASA’s been doing that on the Space station for 10 years. And then you just pack it all up, take it to the next place and print something new. That’s gonna be cool. 

John Handy: Yeah.

Devon Towle: Yeah. That’s awesome.

Brian Searl: John, welcome back. 

John Handy: Thank you. Sorry for the technical difficulties, I guess Trevor Noah is correct. We’re making excuses.

Brian Searl: It’s a good problem to have I realized this the other day and I don’t wanna spend too much time on this ’cause I don’t like to talk about myself too much ’cause we have you guys here.

But I realized that when I was on vacation, like I don’t take very many vacations. I work seven days a week, 16 hours a day. ’cause I really love what I do. But when I do take a vacation, I try to disconnect and it’s been harder now that like lately, ’cause I’ve been dealing with AI and like things are moving so fast.

That’s just my little corner of the world that I play in. But I realized like walking along a beach in Vancouver Island with my girlfriend over the weekend, like this is a whole different world out here. Like it has such a huge benefit to what you do normally in your day if you were able to truly disconnect.

I think there’s a huge benefit there that so many people in our society, because of the constant noise, don’t realize that they’re missing until they like actually experience it. 

John Handy: Yeah, that’s right. I got a call from the Wall Street Journal, like first year we opened and we put on our website, come prepare to unplug. And they wanted to know about that trend and I said, no, it’s not a trend, it’s just that’s what’s happening here. And they asked me if we ever get any executives that come to stay at Treebones and what’s their reaction to no ability to talk on a cell phone or the internet back in those days.

And I said to be honest with you, a lot of them get very nervous about that and they get upset. And I said, my personal experience has been that when I leave on vacation, I go to a place like Alaska or somewhere where I’m not gonna be able to be in contact if I call the office and say, you’re not gonna be able to reach me on a regular basis.

I can call in maybe once a week or twice a week, but just take care of everything and just do the best you can and I won’t criticize you. And my team always rose to those occasions and the world will work without us. If you go and look at astronauts and go into outer space, that world is just existing just fine without your intimate little involvement.

And I think we get too connected to our devices and we need to unplug sometimes, we need to get away and at least at Treebones, we focus all the internet on the main lodge. So that’s the hub of activity. But when you go back to your individual lodging units, with the exception of the Cove, which is the Azure home and the autonomous tents, they have full speed internet, but everything else doesn’t.

And that way you have that option just to unplug and be away from it. And, just even kids with video games learning that they can live without it. It’s amazing. 

Brian Searl: Can you live without video games?

John Handy: I think so.

Brian Searl: I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I don’t even play video games. 

Devon Towle: I used to be a huge gamer and then I realized there was more important things in life. And I don’t play video games. I haven’t played video games in almost a decade. I used to love Halo and FIFA and

Brian Searl: I just played the builder ones, right? So I’ll still play like Fallout or something where you have to build a city or make so many decisions. ’cause I like to do that from an entrepreneurial standpoint.

So I’ll play those once in a while to just de-stress at night. But I’m far from a gamer. Like I’ll pick up a PS five controller once every couple months. For a couple hours.

Devon Towle: Maybe later on when I have more time, again, I might get back into video games.

Brian Searl: You’re never gonna have more time. You’re enjoying what you do Too much, man. I used to say that to myself too.

John Handy: The game is real life.

Brian Searl: If I have more time and then I’m like, lemme do this other thing that’s gonna stress me out. And then I. 

Devon Towle: Yeah, for sure. I like John’s, the game of real life, that’s for sure. 

Brian Searl: It is and it’s interesting, like you can, and I think we’re blessed, at least I consider myself blessed to be in this industry of glamping, camping, RV parks, all that.

’cause there’s a subset of many more people in this industry who have already experienced that disconnection, either through their own parks or through traveling to other people’s parks, or just having a love of the camping glamping industry and coming into it and purchasing a property to do that same thing.

But for sure, I can tell, like when I talk to a client, like you talk about going on vacation and disconnecting, there are clients who, and most of them are this way who are like totally fine. Like I understand you need to take a vacation. Your team is there, I have 35 people or whatever. Like they’re not gonna be the same as you, but we can deal with that for a week or two.

We’re not gonna die. But there are some clients who like feel like they are gonna die for that week or two weeks that they can’t talk to Brian. And I think those are the people who are generally speaking stereotypically, are nearer to the business, haven’t learned how to disconnect, are involved in too many things that are stressful at their business and haven’t sorted some stuff out, but they’ll get there.

But I think we’re at a great advantage of being in this industry from the get-go. Would you guys agree? 

John Handy: Yeah, I think so. 

Devon Towle: Yeah. It’s so untapped still. People like us are the ones forging and pioneering the entire industry. So.

John Handy: It’s easy to think of yourself as absolutely critical to your business. And I’m sure there’s an element of that’s true. But what I’ve discovered too is if I delegate things to my other family members and to other people that I’ve hired, we have a great general manager at Treebones and if I delegate to them and give them the proper amount of instruction and maybe some learning ahead of that great things happen and I’m ready to expect the unexpected.

And that’s how we’re gonna get to the next wave of whatever’s happening at Treebones is through the next level of teamwork and staff members. 

Brian Searl: Yeah. And the only way you figure that out is to fail, right? So what I think John is saying is if you’re an entrepreneur out there, the more vacations you take, the more ways you realize your business fails without you, the more things you can fix, the better you are and the calmer your vacations will be in the future. So just take a vacation every other week.

Devon Towle: That’s not the best advice, guys. In case people are out there that was sarcastic.

Brian Searl: They know if they watch this show, they should never listen to anything that comes outta my mouth. But yeah I mean where do you guys’ businesses go in the future, John? Like what are your future plans for Treebones?

John Handy: It is interesting that we have had lots of investors come and ask if they could buy or buy into Treebones or have us franchise it and move it other places we haven’t been wanting to do that. Right now there’s nothing against that, but there’s a lot of movement for people to invest in ecotourism because there’s a lot of people that they only wanna put their money into something that is environmentally friendly.

And so I’ve noticed that trend happening in the last few years. We’ve been a approached a lot of times, but for now, I talked to my whole family about it. And we don’t have any other partners. We own it fully. We’ve paid off our loans. But I think we’re gonna keep it as a family and let the next generation take it.

My wife, Corinne and I have been very hands-on for 20 years while we’re running this. And then, all the years that went into planning it and building it. But now we’re ready to let that next generation start to step up and move on. And our kids have said they’d rather have Treebones than the money, ’cause in the end it’s theirs.

But we’re gonna keep it going. And then our guests have told us, please don’t ever lose the essence of what Treebones is, even though we are improving and changing things. And the essence of Treebones isn’t yurts and or anything like that. It’s the idea of perching lightly on the land.

And it’s the idea of living simply. And being close to nature and being able to hear nature and see nature and touch it and feel it, but also be safe and warm in your own place to, to go to bed at night. So if we add anything, it’s gonna be with that essence in mind. And we’re gonna keep it family oriented.

I’m not saying that’s the only way to do things, but there’s a lot of corporate hotel chains and there’s fewer and fewer family run businesses that the owners and you know the family, and we know our guests, and I think that’s what’s working for us right now. So that’s what we’re gonna stick with for the future of Treebones. 

Brian Searl: That’s awesome. Beautiful. I think there are certainly different paths you can take as, we’ll just call it for the sake of argument, a regular small business owner outside of our industry. Not sliding at all, but we’ll just call ’em regulars for the sake of argument.

But if you’re in the glamping business, there’s so many different ways you can take it and all of them can be right for you.

John Handy: Sure.

Brian Searl: It depends on your audience and who you’re targeting and what you want to be. And if you want to be family owned or you want to be investor driven or you wanna be something in the middle, which we talked like Kevin is one of those groups, I think I can say that I would say he’s in the middle right where he is. We have to focus on the investment side of it. We have to give an ROI to our investors, but also like we care about the people who are here. We care about their experiences, we care what they’re seeing, doing, touching, tasting, whatever. And those things are like built into our, like you can come invest.

And I don’t know that this is true about Kevin, just to be clear, but you can come invest in us, but these are our ground rules. We’re gonna provide good experiences where people were gonna do that. And I think that whether that’s Kevin’s property or like we’ve talked to dozens of others that we’ve entered that’ve interviewed on the show, who all have their different philosophies of things they’re gonna do. There’s no wrong way to do it unless you’re not understanding your market and you don’t have a plan or a vision that you’re going after. Is that fair? 

Devon Towle: Fair. 

Brian Searl: So what’s, yeah, I was just gonna ask you Devon, what’s the future for you too? 

Devon Towle: Yeah, so I saw this happening about 15 years ago when I was doing the tiny houses and the market, I just turned 40, like I said, and if I didn’t have this business, I still wouldn’t be able to afford a home like this.

Being, getting creative with financing and working deals and stuff like that is the only way I’ve been able to purchase units is because mortgages are insane. The prices of houses are insane. The median income price of the United States home right now, is over now eclipsing some places over $500,000.

People can’t afford places to live, so offering affordable. Eco-friendly, available structures in communities that are, escaping the Matrix. Being in the outdoors has been the most rewarding thing for me. And people have gotten engaged at our properties. They’ve had weddings, they’ve came back for their honeymoons, connecting people to nature.

Just like John said, that’s been the most rewarding part of the business for me and our business has really become a ministry of TLC man togetherness, love community, connecting people to outdoors, showing them more affordable options for, midterm and long-term living.

Right now my goal is to get enough cash flowing assets so I could get like a 25 50 million, a hundred million dollar capital raise or funding. ’cause I want to open up legit communities like this for midterm and long term living. And ultimately, not like a timeshare where you buy a couple weeks and then you go to a location or another location.

But I wanna sell. Ecotourism, long term and midterm living memberships to where they can buy into our different developments, and then they could actually travel around the world and become digital nomads, and then we’ll help with entrepreneurship. We’ll, be able to have all of the onsite amenities from internet to spa stuff, I know health and wellness is huge for Gen Z and younger generations these days, people don’t want to drink as much. I’m six years sober now too, so I’ve. Nature and this industry has been huge for me as far as mental and health wellness stuff. There’s just so many different check boxes that ecotourism and glamping, check for not only myself, but for people and wellness and lifestyle in general.

That makes me so passionate about it. And that’s really what I want to be able to do is offer communities for people that they can actually live in these types of sites. It’s more than just a short-term rental for me at this point right now. That’s what I’m doing to be able to get the cash flow and show the business model works.

But I wanna open up, long sustaining communities for people to be able to live in full time. That’s my main goal. And then also we’re developing an app that almost gamifies, ecotourism because each location has unique things to do. So I know, I’m sure John, his location has, some cool stuff in the area that is only specific to them.

Same thing with Glacier National Park. We have the Glacier Mountains and then and Diamond Glamping. We have Murphysboro, Arkansas, which is a creator of diamonds where you can go mine diamonds. So finding locations that have cool, unique experiences showing affordable housing, building communities. And, being eco-friendly is really the mission of Global Glamping, and it’s an exciting time for the industry.

Brian Searl: I think my hunch is, and just call this a prediction. We’ll see how this ages that I think even if you don’t get a hundred million dollars investment, you’re gonna build something pretty fucking cool.

Wait, I’m sorry, that’s, I can’t swear that’s on the leader show, I do. Just kidding. Sorry. Like we have another podcast called Outwired that I’m gonna do in like an hour that’s more of a Joe Rogan style where we actually drink whiskey and let a few swear words go. But really I think you’re gonna, and I think you know that, I don’t think you need me to tell you that.

But I think that slow burn of the patients thing that you’ve already experienced and you already know how to handle is gonna make a more rewarding company. And I think also, like you’re gonna be able to turbo that anyway with robots and AI to where you won’t even need that investment at the scale that traditional people would need capital at, but.

Devon Towle: A hundred percent.

Brian Searl: Yeah, I’m excited to see what, both of you guys continue building. I’ll be building here on my side too with AI and marketing. It’s definitely gonna be an interesting world. But the disconnection piece, the technology that blends with nature the ability for people to still disconnect while being connected in some ways to their own choosing, I think makes for a really fascinating future. Any final thoughts, John? 

John Handy: No, I think that the future is bright for ecotourism, glamping, and camping. I think it’s one of the things that, it’s written into our vision is to make sure we are inspirational to the people that come and visit us, as well as being inspired by them. But I think that when they come and they stay in a an Azure home or a yurt and they’re comfortable and they’re living off grid, there’s also ideas that they can take home with them.

I think nothing better than going on a trip somewhere and then coming home feeling inspired. And I think that’s our big thing is how do you inspire people to have their own organic garden, to compost their waste, to get their electricity from the sun? To live in a recycled home. And even when we were off air, Brian, you mentioned something about going beyond the Azure home and making things you could buy in the store.

That’s an exact vision we’ve had where we recycle our own waste on site and turn it into products you can use. That part of that isn’t that the 10,000 people, that’s about what we get a year coming through Treebones to stay, that’s not gonna in itself change the world to take those people’s recycles and turn ’em into products.

But if they’re inspired, if you take even a percentage of those people and they’ve gone and implemented something of that on their own, it makes the world a better place. And that inspiration gets passed on. And I think that’s the big vision that we would all like to, at our place, would love to see. We’d love to feel like someone walked away and had a new idea. 

Brian Searl: And they are. And I think that’s the point, right? Is that the way you inspire people to do all that is to show them that it’s possible. Whether it’s a 3D printed home or through off the grid living that’s just as comfortable as home or whatever it is, right?

John Handy: It’s possible, but not painful. 

Brian Searl: Yeah, exactly.

Devon Towle: And it exists already.

Brian Searl: Yeah.

Devon Towle: Because it’s in our DNA to be in nature.

John Handy: Yeah.

Devon Towle: To be connected to the outdoors, to be in community. And that’s like the biggest draw for people that are just sick and tired of living in the city and, being controlled and all this other stuff.

And this is that opportunity and that outlet to be able to experience that now. ’cause before it really didn’t exist, now it does. So it’s like John was saying, we want to pave the way, give people a visual and be immersed in the outdoors. And it’s gonna take people like John, myself and you, Brian, just to continue to share the vision and get people outdoors connected to nature and escape the matrix, man.

Brian Searl: Yeah. And all it takes is that experience like just on Vancouver Island, and I still have them, right, I appreciate this just as much as you guys do, but I still have them. We were in Vancouver Island, took a boat tour out eight hours, two hours into the middle of nowhere, up into the North Islands, and we did a grizzly bear tour.

And just sitting off the shore, like we got to be the first people to see it, the bear was named Thimble, come out with her two cubs that were like in their second year of life and just playing and wrestling with each other on the shore. Like you just can’t, like that’s a whole different world.

And if you can, there’s so many people I’m sure who take that tour who will be on their phones taking pictures and I like, sure. I took some pictures too, of course. But really won’t see the bears. When you see the bears. And imagine what it’s like to just be them and their simplified nature and walking through the forest and picking berries and if you can identify with that’s when you truly get the inspiration. I think. 

Devon Towle: A hundred percent.

Brian Searl: Cool, guys, I appreciate your time. It was a wonderful show. If you guys wanna hear more of me, not you two, I know you guys are busy, but everybody who’s watching us wants to hear more of me talking. In about an hour, we’re gonna do a show on Outwired. We’re gonna talk about niching down into your different groups of people you wanna target, figuring out who your audience is through marketing with a lot of different data and insights and things from Scott Bahr and Greg Emmert, my two co-hosts.

So other than that, we’ll see you next week for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Thank you, Devon. Thank you, John. Really appreciate it.

John Handy: Thank you. Enjoyed it!

Devon Towle: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Searl: Take care guys.