MC Fireside Chats – October 16th, 2024

This is MC Fireside Chats, a weekly show featuring conversations with thought leaders, entrepreneurs, and outdoor hospitality experts who share their insights to help your business succeed. Hosted by Brian Searle, the founder and CEO of Insider Perks, empowered by insights from Modern Campground, the most innovative news source in the industry.

Brian Searl:

Welcome everybody to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Searl with Insider Perks. Super excited to be here with you for our week number three of campground owner focused stuff. I keep getting lost, Greg, because I know we’re going to change the show around in 2025. We’re going to make some changes. I’m going to have a pretty studio. We’re gonna change the topics weekly And so I always like try to introduce that stuff because I’m excited for it to come and then I’m like no wait That’s not here yet, but still it’s gonna be a good show. So how do I reframe that? But anyway, that’s not your guys’s problem, but super excited to be here with you guys We’ve got some special guests on the show today. I’m gonna go around the room and let everybody introduce themselves But then you know, we have our one recurring guest Greg like Joe Domeg is popping in and out here But something about a new computer is not tech savvy. I don’t know how the guy builds apps for a living, but I All right, where do we want to start? We’ll just go to the left. We’ll start with Danny.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Oh, my name is Danny Mulcahy. Thanks for having me. I’m the president of USA Camping Company. We have 12 parks across the country. And that’s the short story.

Brian Searl:

So that’s why you need two people on the show from your company, because 12 is a lot to manage. That makes sense to me now. That’s Tim.

Tim Dea:

Hi, I’m Tim Dae. I’m at Rainbow Valley Campground in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And we’ve just got the one part, but we have a ski hill, urban ski hill here in the middle of the city. And we’re just getting that underway and wrapping up the camping season.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Excited to talk to you, Tim. I am in Calgary, and I will absolutely be getting your thoughts on the camping industry, the hockey game that recently happened, anything you want to talk about. Stephanie.

Stephanie Culver:

Hi, guys. Thanks for asking me to be here today. Stephanie Culver with Buzzworthy Property Management. I own three parks, one of which we did a groundbreaking ceremony on this morning, right before this, and I also manage other people’s parks as well.

Brian Searl:

Why did you- Congratulations. … groundbreaking ceremony for us? Thank you. If we could have had that live on the show, could have popped some champagne, and it would have been wonderful.

Stephanie Culver:

That would have been fun. Yeah, it was really great. This particular park is in Lake Fork, East Texas, and we had five, four chambers and the Lake Texas Sportsman’s Association in presence with us today.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. We’re excited to learn more about that, but next time. And I’m in my RV. Greg is probably seriously going to cry after the show because he missed that experience. All right. Last, but maybe first, but not last, like another USA Camping person. Look at that.

Scott Cleveland:

Yeah. My name is Scott Cleveland. Uh, I’m the director of marketing for USA camping company. Uh, so like Danny said, you know, we own 12 actually now just, we just opened up 13. We closed this week on our 13th park. And so, um, wanted to be on the call, kind of talk all things digital and, and marketing that we’re seeing in the, uh, the competition, the competitive landscape.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Thanks for being here, Danny. I just want to call it like, that’s a great marketing guy. You got two people on a podcast for you. I do marketing. I’m not even sure I could do that. Right, Greg? Like,

Greg Emmert:

I don’t know, you’re pretty good, but I would say that your presence alone accounts for two, though, Brian. I would say that your presence alone accounts for two people.

Brian Searl:

In a noisy, obnoxious way, maybe. Maybe that, yeah. Anything on your desk, Greg, that you’ve seen in the last months since we’ve crossed paths? I know we went to The Glamping Show, we were on that kind of thing. We cut you off at the end because Lisa did a bad camera job before the battery died, one or the other. Sitting right next to me in the room over here, by the way. Anything across your desk that you want to talk about that you think is important before we get into our special guest stories?

Greg Emmert:

Nothing super huge. Still just working with current clients right now and definitely have some traction from The Glamping Show. There were a lot of really interesting people there as we covered on that live broadcast. That show is always so exciting and innovative and meets so many people there that it’s just so different from the crowd at Ohio or COE. It’s been a lot of fun. So probably the most exciting thing was the contact that I’m now in touch with in the Galapagos. It would not disappoint me at all to pick up a contract there and have to travel to that part of the world and see them. So that’s maybe the big one. It’s just a perspective, but I’m keeping them all crossed.

Brian Searl:

I mean, I’m willing to do free marketing for them, if that’s the case. And so I’m just throwing it out. I’m not going to be as Scott. So let’s just set that table like Barlow.

Greg Emmert:

Absolutely. But let’s just put it out there as a package. Brian and I come together. It’s all pro bono. We’re ready to go.

Brian Searl:

You just call me, Scott, and mislead them a little bit, right? That’s exactly right. Child, I’m sorry. You’re expecting Scott Cleveland, but. But you got Brian Searle. All right. Let’s talk to Danny first, since we’re picking on USA Camping Company and this wonderful marketing person. 13 parks, we’ve talked, like we do a lot of, like I work with four or 500 parks and do marketing, so this is why I’m kind of joking around, right? Some of the bigger players, we’ve had them on the show too, you know, just some of the people who manage a large portfolio of parks and who are growing quickly, especially who got their start, I don’t know if you did, but you’re going to tell us in a second during COVID. So tell us how kind of USA Camping Company got started. And I’m assuming, Danny, like if you guys want to just say, no, no, no, no, no, that’s Scott’s question, then you can.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Yeah, no, I’ll pass off to Scott on occasion for sure. But no, we got started before in sort of 2018, 2019 is when we bought our first, I bought the first property in Florida. Yeah, pre-COVID. And initially, I had a two-year-old daughter and my plan was really just to buy two parks and just sort of operate on myself and raise my daughter outdoors. That was what my plan was. But once I got into it and had such a good time with it and saw the opportunity, I decided to start putting them together and running with it. Our criteria really is, would me and my family vacation at the property? Would we stay there for a weekend or a month? That’s what we do now. Pretty much everything is on the water. or water adjacent, so on the lake, on the beach, on a river.

Brian Searl:

That’s what we focus on. So walk us through like, because that’s a big difference in my mind, right? Stay a weekend or stay a month as a criteria, because let’s take Las Vegas, for example, right? Like, I would love to stay a night, maybe two there, longer than two nights, you’re getting into trouble. I don’t want anything to do with Vegas, right? So there’s obviously a clear difference is what I’m saying between staying a weekend and staying a month. So what are those philosophies look like? Like, what’s your criteria for this is going to please me enough to buy in a weekend, and then a month separately? Well, yeah,

Daniel Mulcahy:

Yes and no. I mean, really it comes down to sort of its location as being, you know, number one, right? Is it the destination itself or is it arguably maybe a base camp or destination? You know, we’re not like side of the highway or affordable housing or in the middle of a field, right? You know, those aren’t our type of RV parks because I don’t want to camp there. I mean, plenty of people do. Right? And I’m sure plenty make money. It’s just not what we do. I want to ride our mountain bike from the park onto the trails. I want to walk to the water from my trailer. I don’t want to have to pack the car up or truck up. That’s sort of what the criteria is. For the most part, except for our Oregon properties, we’re below the 30th parallel. so that we can stay open all year round. It needs to be a camping experience also, not sort of a big parking lot experience where it’s the 400 or 500 unit type properties. It still has to have that camping experience.

Brian Searl:

How do you feel about birdwatching? Because I’m on the fence about whether those people are weird.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Well, they might be. But we have a great property for birdwatching in Carabao, Florida. You just have to give them a dinghy to go over to the Bird Island.

Brian Searl:

Greg’s an obsessive birdwatcher, that’s why.

Greg Emmert:

Birders, that’s great. We all like to be.

Brian Searl:

I mean, if you’re going to get on me for it, at least get an opinion to insult your… Please get the term right.

Greg Emmert:

It’s a bird.

Stephanie Culver:

Do you have bird feeders on your windows?

Greg Emmert:

And then some. Yeah, on the windows in the yard, birdbaths, heated birdbaths so they stay thawed in the wintertime. Like we go all out. And I think, Dani, I think you’re really smart to approach this the way that you are. Because I see people do this a lot where, and it’s different if you’re going to be someone who’s going to just buy things, put them in a portfolio, try to earn money from them, you know, hand them off to third party, right. But if you’re going to build a system, and you’re going to be involved, especially maybe on the day to day, By God, buy parks and build parks that you want to be at. Those days are going to get really long. Why not be somewhere that you enjoy being? Why not buy a park, build a park that you enjoy being at? And honestly, the the finding nature based, you know, parks that are near water or near the mountain bike trails. So smart. You know, people in the States They spend upwards of $100 billion a year to watch wildlife, to travel, to do conservation-based pursuits. You’re playing right into that hand and it’s really smart. That’s in the 2022 U.S. Fish and Wildlife report on conservation spending, which I will be discussing at Ojai in my session. Shameless plug. Please continue.

Daniel Mulcahy:

In that same vein of thought, though, I was just having another conversation with a group, and I’m like, almost every manufacturer of everything, whether it’s restless leg syndrome or Ford Broncos, is spending marketing dollars towards our industry. I mean, you know, seven out of 10 commercials on television are somebody hiking or off-roading or fishing or something. I mean, you know, the American public is inundated with, you know, with advertisements promoting the outdoor. And so I love that idea of all those marketing dollars, you know, flowing towards awareness of the industry.

Brian Searl:

And I think that’s I think that’s how the outdoors and I don’t want to go down this path too long because I want to talk about everybody else and continue to asking questions about USA Camping Company. But I think it’s how it makes us feel. Right. Just even if you just see it on TV, I mean, what’s the alternative? Like, you know, you need this better car to drive quicker through the McDonald’s drive through. Like, I feel like it’s probably not a great commercial. Right.

Daniel Mulcahy:

So like, but you know, your intro makes me want to go camping. Right. I mean, that’s such a great intro to your podcast here is like, I watch them like, man, I want to get outside. Right.

Brian Searl:

So anyhow, so we’ll so walk us through, you know, one of the things that interests me as you’re talking, and Greg is talking back and forth, right, is we hear like, and I’m gonna say this out loud, and Greg will probably know who I’m talking about. And it’s not one person, right, but it’s a type of people who have invested in campgrounds is that I think there’s a need and there are a lot of good companies who do this to be clear to balance the investment with the need to make money with the love of the outdoors and the joy that people get from going camping. And I think that there’s an interesting trend that I’ve seen over COVID specifically, where a lot of people are getting into this and only focusing on margins and only focusing on return on investment. And obviously, that needs to be in place for any business to thrive or survive, right? But I think there’s been such an overemphasis on us. And we have clients like this, too, which may or may not be my client after the show. You know, like, I mean, there’s there’s there has to be that balance between like, I want to give a great experience. I want to live, you know, provide long lasting memories for families and things like that to make it a little, you know, affordable, but also to as a business, I have to run it. So how do you strike that balance, Danny? Because you’re looking for campgrounds that clearly, as you just said, speak to your heart. Is that fair? And then thus, you would want those campgrounds to continue speaking to similar hearts, which I think is a lot of people. So how do you balance that with, I need to make a profit and what does that profit margin need to be? Like, don’t give me exact numbers, but just tell me.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Right. Well, no, I mean, that is, that is actually the dance that we do every day. Right. I mean, we have a list of priorities, you know, ranked A, B, and C at every property. Some generate revenue. and some don’t, but they provide a guest experience. You know, we just did a, we just invested about a hundred grand in our Moab RV park where we built a viewing deck, about a 1500 foot viewing deck. And, you know, it was sort of a balance of, okay, do we build a pool at this park or do we buy some more cabins or what do we do? And, And so, I mean, the jury is still out, but we just dropped 100 grand on a on a deck, which was a hard thing to swallow. But, you know, I had an investor who was there a week ago, and he sent me a picture at night. He said he counted 39 people up on the deck at nighttime, sitting in the furniture, you know, drinking and, you know, having glasses of wine and what have you. And so, you know, we’re hoping that, you know, sort of that do what you love and the money will come type thing. In my mind, we’re sort of like, create the experiences and the money will follow.

Brian Searl:

And that’s what we’re trying to do. It will. You know that. And Scott knows that. And Greg probably knows that. Greg, you know that, right? Except for birding. Yeah, I knew that. I don’t know if money ever comes from birds.

Greg Emmert:

Oh, don’t get me started.

Brian Searl:

But like, like, I mean, I think I share the same sentiment. It’s how I built my company, like I go, you know, again, we’re not talking about me, but going above and beyond giving the experience that like I expect, or I feel is missing from a customer service experience or whatever it is, right. And the money will come like it takes took me 10 years for the money to come right, but that’s okay. And so I think that How do you like I think this is a challenge that many people come in the industry face and whether you have If you’re lucky enough to have investors you can understand that or not How do you look at that and explain it to them and maybe you didn’t get the question, right? of great they’re sitting on the deck, but how does that make me money, but a lot of people have and And so how do you balance like if someone were to come and say like, well, that’s great that they’re staying out there. But can we put a food truck there? Can we put a beer cart there? Can we sell glow in the dark sticks? Can we? I’m just making things up, right? I get it. How would you address that if you ran into that?

Daniel Mulcahy:

Well, I do I do run into it all every day. And Yeah, they’re investor, because I do use, I do have investors, which is, which, if it was just my money, I would probably be much more cavalier with, with, you know, with it than when I have investor money, right. And so I do balance that and, um, And every instance is its own. Like right now we’re debating about, you know, hardened, hardened accommodations like a cabin versus a tent. Right. Or a teepee or a yurt. And, you know, you return on investment. You know, how long does it take to pay for itself? You know, how long does it you know, what’s the return on investment on an annualized basis? What’s the return on investment on a on a sale basis? And every every decision is a balance. And, you know, Yeah, and that, you know, if an investment is arguably underperforming, you know, profitable, but underperforming, then you know, we probably aren’t investing in the guest experience as much as we would we would like because we do have to pay our investors.

Stephanie Culver:

I’d like to interject something. Daini, I think you’re on the right track because you have to know the characteristic of your park, right? And building the observation deck over a pool was genius because of where your park is. You have to know what your guests are wanting to when they come to your park, right? You do like a survey analysis of like mentally and you look at the people in the park. What is it that they’re desiring in this particular park? It wouldn’t be a pool, right? That observation deck was genius. You have to think of the park’s characteristics because every park has its own personality.

Brian Searl:

Please, Danny, if you want to say something, go ahead.

Daniel Mulcahy:

No, no, no. Keep going. Just to answer your question, though, there’s no easy answer to it. Every dollar you spend is a discussion, at least internally with me, is, you know, am I going to get a return on this investment? It is. Every single, you know, how we answer the phones, how much Wi-Fi service we provide, whether we put asphalt down or leave it as gravel.

Brian Searl:

You know, understanding the character of all parts is important. Like, only some of that you can measure in actual dollars and say, I know for sure that this led to more reservations. And the other ones, like, you don’t even have to tell a story. You kind of know that paved roads are a better experience. You know that the viewing deck is a better experience. You can’t, like, trace back Tom, who went at the viewing deck and then came back and was, like, so amazed that he bought a T-shirt from your store, right? Like, it’s just, it probably happened. But you can’t trace it back.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Quantifying it is very, very difficult. Yeah. I mean, you really don’t know until the end of the day, right? When you get to year five or seven or ten, whenever you try to sell the asset, that’s when I guess you’re looking back and go, well, I blew some money there or I invested it wisely.

Brian Searl:

I’m curious what Scott thinks about this, because like we’re both in the same field, sort of, Scott, right? Marketing or one head of my field is marketing. And so this is very easy. Like this is the hardest thing sometimes to explain to people. And I’m sure you run into it, right? Is there’s generally speaking, brand awareness and direct ROI. You both know leads to ROI, but you can’t prove it in a click to a reservation. So what’s your. Tell us what you think of that.

Scott Cleveland:

I’m going to leave it intentionally broad. I think you’re absolutely right. There’s things you do, organic social media for instance, where you’re just showing beautiful photos of your park. People are commenting. They’re sharing it with their friends. There’s no direct return on investment that you can see from those organic social posts for instance. But on the other side of things, you start seeing an increase in Google searches. And you’re saying, OK, I can track that Google search to a purchase. So that’s direct ROI versus the Facebook is just the brand. And you can start to see. And what we do is we’re very data centric. One of the first things we did when I came in here about three years ago and joined Danny was we set up a Google Tag Manager infrastructure. We set up our websites, our Facebook pixels, in order to be able to track that. Not only what is causing direct referrals or what is going directly from Google and clicking purchase on an online button, but how are people talking about us? What is our Facebook organic reach? And we look at that on a weekly and quarterly basis as a company and are very cognizant of the more Facebook likes and comments we get, we can actually see an increase in organic Google traffic. And while it’s not a direct correlation, you know, they work together. And so both are very important. You know, you can’t really do one without the other.

Brian Searl:

And there’s a lot of different philosophies on what might suck, right?

Scott Cleveland:

Like, I mean, you can look at the data, like, you know, if I were to stop doing any Facebook, you know, you can look and or then Facebook is just one of the many things we do, right? You got to have the multi but you can see a pretty direct correlation between stopping one and starting another and what that looks like. To answer your question, we’re very data-centric, but we also understand that reviews are very powerful. To Danny’s point, when we put up that 360 viewing deck in Moab, You can just see our reviews go up. You can see the amount of times that it gets mentioned in a beautiful fireplace evening on our deck. You know people are talking about it. Word of mouth as far as marketing goes and campgrounds is about the best thing you can ask for. It’s easy. It’s cheap. The quality of your park determines the word of mouth and thus helps you a ton. It all matters and it’s a balance to what Danny said. You got to do a little bit of both. You got to make sure the amenities are there and the resort experience is there in order to then promote that and get more momentum building.

Stephanie Culver:

One thing I’ve done before is, which you could do to try to track some of that movement or the analytics on your sky deck, is to hashtag it. Say this is an Instagramable moment right here and have a certain hashtag for it. I do that at one of our parks because we have a water tower that towers over our park that they just spent a million dollars on renovating with lights and stuff. So have Instagrammable moments in your part with specific hashtags, and then you can kind of track a lot of that movement too.

Brian Searl:

Or even facial recognition. Just be creepy and track them. I saw Tim’s face out here, and then 10 seconds later, he’s in the store. It’s coming. That’s it. Let’s go to Tim. Tim, what do you think about the flames? Oh, I mean, sorry.

Tim Dea:

They’re off to a hot start, but that’s about all I’m going to say.

Brian Searl:

In Edmonton, sorry, is what I meant to say.

Tim Dea:

Oh, they got a win finally.

Brian Searl:

Did they?

Tim Dea:

Yeah, they beat Philly in overtime.

Greg Emmert:

Gentlemen, don’t make me have to separate you. Let’s let’s keep this off the Calgary and Edmonton discussion.

Tim Dea:

It’s all right.

Brian Searl:

So, OK, so, Tim, tell us about your your property in Edmonton.

Tim Dea:

So we’ve got 46 powered sites and 23 non-powered. And then plus we now, we just opened up three glamping domes, which are three season. We are a legacy type of campground in a municipal park. The campground started in 1961. And we took it over in 94 from the city of Edmonton. The ski hill we took over in 1982, but we’ve been here since 1948. The ski program is clearly where the money is. However, the greatest capacity is summer operations. And our industry, the ski industry, is certainly seeing that for sure. And so our campground sort of gave us a leg up immediately. To Scott and Danny’s point, we’ve been adding features along. We added a climbing tower, a KT tower, seven years ago. This year, we just added a mini golf at the bottom of the hill, which we just basically picked up and put away for the winter. And of course, we have our food and beverage, which hosts weddings and things like that in the day lodge. which means we can’t do that sort of operation in the winter. However, it’s quite lucrative in the summer as a unique operation with free parking in the middle of the city. So it’s been doing very well. And to what Scott was bringing up about data, we’ve been trying, we’re actually playing catch up. you know, getting online presence and actually doing more specific advertising for the campground. So it’s, um, I’m listening and learning at the same time. Um, but it’s, it’s a very interesting, uh, it’s, it’s two different businesses entirely for sure.

Brian Searl:

Well, I’m curious how you, like, how do you balance that as a, I’m assuming you use your ski hill for something during, or is it used for something in the summer when they’re not skiing?

Tim Dea:

We have, uh, well, only the, um, the, Uphill portion is used for a driving range. So we built that. And then we’ve actually used another slope. We’re extremely small as an amphitheater. So we had the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra come for four nights. So we’ve used it sparingly like that. And so that’s really another one of our opportunities.

Brian Searl:

So how do you I’m curious how you balance the like obviously it’s a little bit different for you because the bulk of your ski Hill business is in winter when your campground is closed right, but generally speaking like we deal with a lot of you know these They both been on the show and I’ve crossed paths with them at you know various conferences and so is Greg and things like that and Stephanie probably There’s a lot of people who are in the business who no longer just have campgrounds. They have campgrounds and marinas. They have campgrounds and in your case, ski hills. They have campgrounds and restaurants they have. So how does that push and pull work for you from an operator standpoint? Like, how do you decide? Again, it’s a little bit different with you being winter, summer. But how do you decide what to prioritize and what to focus on at any given moment?

Tim Dea:

Basically, seasonally, I mean, I try and like, so everybody just going in is what you’re saying?

Brian Searl:

Yeah, we’re just going to winter. Yeah.

Tim Dea:

We’re just going into winter now, right? So by January, as far as I’m concerned, winter’s over and I’m starting to begin my summer programming.

Brian Searl:

From a mining tech standpoint, you mean? Yeah. Definitely not over in Edmonton in January.

Tim Dea:

No, we have a fair bit of snow. And, you know, the other part is, you know, we have to make all our snow. So it’s not a matter of we just wait for it. It’s as soon as it gets cold. we have 12 snow guns covering 10 acres in five days. It’s quite the turnover. So our focus is almost, you know, half a season ahead of the next season. And resources are more on the ski, but now I’ve steered it more towards, as far as advertising and marketing, and that’s more my spot towards certainly the camping and the summer attractions.

Brian Searl:

Greg, I’m curious, do you have any examples of this, of people you’ve just consulted? Because I think it’s a good question, right? Like, I think Tim cheated a little bit, but he’s from Edmonton, we can expect that. I’m sorry, just kidding. So, but Greg, like Tim doesn’t even know me, hopefully he’s not gonna hate me over this show. Just so you understand. I’m googling you. Yeah. But, but Greg, like, do you have any people you’ve consulted with who, like, kind of, I think it’s a good question, like, how do I balance my attention being in, like, basically pulled in three different directions? Like, if you look at Amir Harpez, right? I think you’ve met him like he’s got a great place. He’s opening in on a Cherokee Indian reservation And he’s got a campground and he’s got a marina and he’s got a restaurant and obviously he’s got people to run it But how do you like decide what is the priority for today?

Greg Emmert:

Yeah, that’s that’s tough because um, you know each one of those things uh kind of goes back to a little bit of what stephanie was saying how each place has its own rhythm and cadence and They each sort of speak to you about what they need. I remember when I still owned my park, I would go to work thinking that I was going to accomplish letters A through F on my list. And the park would look at me and slap me across the face and go, that’s what you thought. Guess what’s happening today. So sometimes it’s just an organic, you get your butt kicked and you don’t get to do anything you thought you’re going to do. And she or he or they tells you what you’re going to be doing the rest of the day. You know, and Stephanie might be able to speak to this a little bit too, because she’s got, I think you said today you just did, you did a grand opening and it was, it’s RV sites and storage, right? So it’s very similar kind of thing. And trying to balance it is, is always difficult. It is, at least for me, and the way I advise my clients, it’s like, you can set out those plans, but you really need to be ready for this shift when it tells you you’re going to be doing something different today. And you can’t fret about that. You can’t be super rigid in your thinking or your framework. You’ve got to be able to either have staff in place that can handle those things when they come up and good systems and procedures. But even those, they’re going to break down eventually. And you’re going to need to just, you know, put on the extra eight hats and go out and do those things and then try to get back to ground zero.

Brian Searl:

Yeah, I mean, I feel that in my business, too. But Stephanie, any thoughts?

Stephanie Culver:

Oh, yeah. So just for instance, this last week, the last 13 days in Ennis, Texas, at our luxury RV resort. They have a race. We were 100% full. The pool pump broke. We had an RPC that blew up. We had electrical outlets going out on three meters. And then the Wi-Fi decided to go down. That was Spectrum. And I had a full park and I had an employee that took off or two employees that took off during this time. So, and not running my company, I have been running an RV part for the last two weeks. So today was a relaxing day for me. Oh my gosh. And I’m not a marketing graduate, but I love marketing. I study all kinds of stuff about marketing. I love marketing.

Brian Searl:

Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you. Please go back to your point. Cause I think it was going to be a good one.

Stephanie Culver:

Oh, no, it was, yeah, just like Greg was saying, you know, you think you’re going to go and I’m going to like greet people with champagne and wine. I’m like flinging, you know, maps out. I’m like, here’s your spot. Go this way. And I’m over here trying to, you know, turn water off because it’s shooting high up in the sky. So you never know what’s going to happen and what direction you’re going in any day.

Brian Searl:

And then you’ll get the Google review that says lady was really rude and stressed. Didn’t stop running around. Maybe busy. One star. Yeah.

Stephanie Culver:

Well, I, you know, this park is brand new too. It’s only been open since June. So I just said, we’re just working the kinks out and just hang with us. And they were really nice. Our, a lot of our guests that actually have been there two and three times already just since June. So that was impressive. And they were like, man, we’ve seen this park before. We love it. And we know y’all are, you know, trying to work out the kinks and we’re hanging in there with you. And I’ve even had, I had two guys that were in the park. There are plumbers. They were like, I can help you with your RPC.

Greg Emmert:

Oh, that’s great.

Tim Dea:

I would agree with that assessment that there’s never two days the same and that you’ve just, you have to be prepared. Like you said, you’re ready, A, B, C to F, and then you end up doing something else entirely. We find that more in the winter than the summer, just because weather can affect you on a day-to-day basis. In the summer though, we really can’t do a lot of stuff without getting permission from the city, because there are landlords. And being in what they deem the river valley, it’s got another layer of oversight that I don’t think a private park on private property would certainly have. Oh yeah, lots of fun. The national parks have less layers than we do.

Brian Searl:

Wow, is there an interesting thing? So that’s an interesting question though, because like, obviously, you know, I come from the United States, right? I was born and raised in Ohio. And so like regulation is very quickly become a dirty word. And I don’t think that anybody loves more regulation, except for maybe that planes need to be safe and not have doors ripped off of them. Um, but you know, generally speaking, uh, regulation is a dirty word, but when it comes to the environment and burning and protections and things like that, I think most people would generally agree. that those are good things to protect, especially when we’re trying to, as Danny said, like get people outside and cultivate places that we want to stay ourselves for a weekend or for a month or whatever, right? So how do you, like it’s another thing, right? That’s another balancing act. How do you, how do you view that as a, as someone who’s directly impacted by more so than many people are?

Tim Dea:

We, well, you know, we just sort of project by project, we have one person dedicated to writing out the project plan and approaching the city. And then even with the climbing tower, they wanted a environmental assessment. And we were like, oh my God, like those aren’t free, but we had one done for the building I’m in right now. And we said, well, how about we submit this one? It’s only two years old. And they went, oh, okay, that’s fine. So we really felt we dodged a bullet because we have a Creek sort of wrapping around us. the White Mud Creek, which feeds the North Saskatchewan River. So, it’s a project by project. I mean, even to get a lift station for sewage, that’s a $3M project we got to walk through that may not even get built until 2028.

Brian Searl:

How do you, how would you consult your clients through this, Greg? Like not necessarily his specific situation. Right. But if you had to deal with either regulations or permitting or things like that, because it can get frustrating really, really quick. Right. And that’s something that people maybe don’t understand going in. And then it obviously naturally frustrates them when they’re like, oh, I wasn’t expecting this. And there’s 80 things now.

Greg Emmert:

Yeah, absolutely. And we actually, I feel for Tim, we have a client who’s here in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, not too far from where I’m at in Akron. They’ve got a glamping property. It’s called Valley Overlook. It’s a beautiful place run by a wonderful family, Terry and Janet and their son, Andrew. It’s only a couple of years old and Jeff and I are sort of helping direct them now into maybe what the next expansion is. And we’ve had quite the education from them because they have, so they’ve got, let’s see if I get this right. They’ve got state, county, city, and then national park. So they’ve got added layers and the national park is actually the most restrictive. They own, the acreage escapes me, but they’re only allowed to use a really small portion of their acreage to build their business on. I think it’s over 80% of their land is locked up in easements, and it’s theirs, but they can’t build on it. They can’t do anything to advance the ball for their business if they wanted to put in more tents or more accommodations, hard sided accommodations. They have a very small footprint they can do that in. So it’s really about just doing your homework ahead of time, right? Which is, that’s the key. That and If anyone is listening out there, because there there may be no more dangerous animal on the planet, especially when I’m talking, there may be no more dangerous animal on the planet than a campground owner with a roll of duct tape and nobody looking. We are really creative people and we will get outside of things really fast. If there’s one nugget of advice I can throw out today, don’t just stop yourself. The idea might be really cool. Do it at your house. don’t do it at your business. Sooner or later, an AHJ is going to find that and go, what the heck is that? Tear it out and do it the right way. And by the way, now that we found that we’re going to look at all this other stuff. So really, the biggest key is just get with those A. H. J. people in ahead of time, so that when it comes up, we just had that done tw you think maybe we could you’ve got a good rela folks because you’ve bee way they like it and the you’re much more likely t say, yeah, you can use tha ago and you can save the That’s that’s always the end. And too often we get the calls from people when it’s too late. It’s, oh, my gosh, we’re in this spot now. How can you help us? And it’s well, you know, we can try to cultivate a relationship with these people. But really, there’s not much we’re going to be. You know, regulations are what they are. Permitting is what it is. You certainly don’t want an issuing body to overstep. Right. You want to make sure that they’re not forcing you to do things that you are isn’t necessary, which we’ve seen. Um, but man, just, just do what they ask in the way they ask it. It might be terrible, but if it’s on the books, there’s nothing you’re going to do to fight it at the moment. You could always go to your legislators later on and say, Hey, I think we should take a look at some of these processes there. You know, they’re tough on businesses. You start there, but at the moment it’s happening, just comply and keep moving forward.

Brian Searl:

I mean, that’s, again, one of the reasons I don’t own RV parks. When somebody talks about regulation or permitting, I always think of Ron Swanson in Parks and Rec when he was in his garage. He had to go in there, right? Just take the canoe. I could build you a canoe. But so Danny, I’m curious, how much does this impact you as you look to like, you know, obviously, you started with one, two, and then now you’re 13. I think I heard you say, right? 12 or 13. How does this impact your decision to purchase new parks? Like, does this fact must, right? But how much does it factor in to like, this is a regular, this is an area that is in the city or a state or a park that’s have more heavily regulated someone else. But man, that mountain bike trails beautiful, right?

Daniel Mulcahy:

Right? Yeah, no, I mean, those are a lot of lessons learned, right? Understanding your community and, you know, the their propensity for regulation is important. You know, our property in Oregon, you know, I don’t want to do any more expansions in Oregon, I can tell you that. It’s, you know, what should have taken six months took me almost three years just because of the regulatory oversight. Not that we were doing anything wrong, it was just literally bureaucracy that slowed us down. And I mean, COVID didn’t help, don’t get me wrong, but So, yeah, I mean, understand the regulatory environment is critical when you’re looking at an asset, certainly on the purchase. And, you know, if you need to. If I need to do something material, CapEx, you know, expansion or something to get the yield that I want, I have to look at the regulatory environment carefully before I make that decision. So yeah, it’s a big part of our underwriting process is, okay, this is a great property, but if we can do this, it’d be an even better property, but you know what, that’s in Oregon, so no, we’re not going to do that. So yeah, I mean, you know, there’s environmental regulations, and then there’s the NIMBY regulation, you know, the stuff that’s, you know, not in my backyard, you know, It’s amazing. There’s two different sides. I mean, like Moab, right? They’ve eliminated short-term zoning in Moab. You couldn’t build another short-term zoning property or short-term accommodation property in Moab if you wanted. You can’t even apply for an exemption because there’s literally nothing in the zoning code any longer for you to use for an exemption. Yeah, so whether it’s, you know, septic and sewer, you know, regulations, building on or near, you know, bodies of water from a, you know, environmental quality perspective to just a NIMBY, not in my backyard, you know, we don’t want the density, we don’t want the traffic. You know, yeah, those are all big, big important, big things to consider when you’re buying a property.

Brian Searl:

Stephanie how do you what advice would you give like you do third-party management to you, right? So obviously your struggles that you know what you deal with with the properties you own, but with third-party management How are you talking to your clients about this?

Stephanie Culver:

Well, I’ll just tell you a story of mine. I was purchasing a park in Virginia and It was half of the mountain was in West Virginia. I mean in Charleston. The other was a county And so we spent two years, my partner and I have spent two years, and EDG even drew the plans, put $30,000 into our plans. We did a lot of due diligence, but it’s right on the highway, and the federal government actually wanted us to build a highway that went over Underpass to go up to the RV park. They wanted $16 million. And so, I mean, we spent a lot of money, took a long time, but we finally had to squash the project because we weren’t getting anywhere. Although we had the governor on our side at the time, we had senators, we had the Speaker of the House, we met with all these people. I mean, they were sending us videos and telling us how much they wanted this park, that West Virginia really needed it. The cities needed it. I met with the mayor of Charleston. They all were for it. But then it came to federal funding. They were going to make us put in the $16 million. We’re like, we’re not putting $16 million into a project that, you know, the campground itself is not even going to be that much. But we ended up spending a lot of money on something that didn’t go anywhere. But sometimes you don’t know. It’s always good to do your due diligence, make sure that you’ve met with all the the stakeholders in the county or the city, because I have ran into problems when we built our Ennis Park, working with the city council. I mean, some of them wanted up an RV park, some did not. We are the only RV park there right off of I-45 next to Bucky’s. Now, the whole city is building itself around us. So it’s kind of cool now to see that we have gotten zoning information from a piece of property that’s right beside us Something else is coming in and all these like Lowe’s is going to be built behind our RV park. So it’s kind of funny. The city is wrapping itself around our RV park now. So it’s interesting. Like you said, you have to make relationships. There’s a new mayor now. There’s been a new turnover with council and it’s a a younger generation actually, and they are for the RV park. They are there to help. It’s very important to work in your community, meet everybody that you can, join your chambers. Relationships are very, very important when it comes to trying to build something in a city or in an area that is heavily regulated by rules and policy.

Tim Dea:

Sorry, I was going to jump back. I fully agree.

Brian Searl:

I was asking if anybody wanted to jump in, so go ahead.

Tim Dea:

So yeah, I just, uh, you know, we, and we have made friends. We have an engineering firm, um, that loves to do work for us. Um, we have a liaison with the city, uh, that is responsible for, uh, the businesses that are inside the river Valley and they help us navigate. And, and they do tell us when, yup, I’m going to help you or, you know, this is a non-starter. Um, what we don’t have is a, uh, a political push. We, we, we typically don’t go after, you know, and we’ll make sure we talk to this counselor or the minister for tourism, Alberta, just because it never gets that far. And in our instance, we’re so small that we just immediately fall within either explore Edmonton, which is the DMO for this area, or just, you know, that one liaison with the city saying, go talk to transportation and you’ll be fine. But you’re right, I agree with make as many friends, Stephanie, you’re absolutely right. I mean, even tomorrow I’m going to an indigenous tourism round table and it’ll be just going over and including these guys into our plans. So we can tell more people about Rainbow Valley, which is obviously very small with only 70 sites.

Brian Searl:

Are you saying that you never have it need to get that high up in the chain or that you’re just not able to because you’re a smaller business?

Tim Dea:

A little bit of both, I think, you know, our. I would say our annual revenues, if you divided winter and summer, it would be 80 20 winter summer. So while we lean on tourism to help us with summer, we’re a local recreation stop in the winter. It’s like people don’t drive here from Calgary, let alone Red Deer, to come here to ski unless they have like an event. You know, it’s, we have four hills in town.

Daniel Mulcahy:

I would say for the other, for the people who watch this later. Yeah. And relationships are very important. And when you can’t, for whatever reason you don’t have the relationships, you’re new to the area or what have you, or you haven’t ever been in this type of business, that’s when you sort of have to hire your relationships, right? You have to find that engineering firm that’s been in the market for a long time and knows everybody on the city council or the zoning attorney who knows everybody who’s on the county commissioners or what have you. even the dirt guy, the septic excavator company, you hire somebody to help you develop those relationships and who can really represent you in front of these other people. Because when you do come in from out of town and start asking for this and that, People can be pretty resistant to that. You know, I just moved to California a couple of years ago, but now every time I go to Texas, I’m that guy from California, right? And it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t born in Tampa, Texas. Now everybody only knows me as the guy from California. So, yeah, if you’re watching this podcast today and you’re wondering about this, finding the right zoning attorney the right engineer or even just the right contractors can go a long way with getting your projects approved.

Brian Searl:

And you’re not, yeah, you’re not wrong. Cause like you don’t even think about it sometimes, right? Like I’ll get the easiest example that’s unrelated in the world is like I’m immigrating to Canada, right? And I’ve been going through this years long process of getting work permits and permanent residency and all that. And like the way you renew your work permit quickly here is like you get all your paperwork, which is like 160 some pages. And then you go through the Calgary airport and you’re like, I need to renew my work permit. And they send you into the little room and you wait there. Well, the first time I did that, like two and a half years ago, I renewed my work permit. I went into that little room, and the officer’s like, you know, you didn’t have to wait as long. I already know who your lawyer is. I trust this is all good. It’s just stamped. You’re good. And so the point is, sometimes you don’t have to think about that. And you don’t have to necessarily set it as a criteria for, like, who do you know? It’s like an interview question for your contractor, right? But if you hire the people with the good reputations who have been in business for a long time, then chances are you’re going to find something that’s going to help you along the way, whether it’s relationships or service or whatever it is, right? Yeah.

Tim Dea:

Go ahead.

Stephanie Culver:

I was going to go back to Brian’s question about my clients. You know, most of my clients don’t even live in the state that I live in, or even live in the state that they have their parks in. So they are not making those connections, right, because they’re off somewhere else. So they’re like Stephanie Page, help me with this. And so, I mean, my first thing is I’m about community. That’s just me personally. I am a big, huge community person, and I relay that into the parks that I represent. I’m like, this is who we need to meet. This is who I’m going to go after. I’m going to talk to this person. I am very heavily involved in all of the chambers of the parks that I represent. I talk to the council members. I talk to city managers. I have a nonprofit myself, and I think it’s important for our parks or our companies to give back to the communities that we’re a part of. We’re not just taking, we’re also giving. So they’re fine. I mean, like if you have a dog park, you know, you could dedicate it to like we want to dedicate one to Chris Kyle because he was from that area, right? If do little things like that and involve your community, it makes a huge difference in how that they will view you as an outsider or you coming in, building a business in their town.

Brian Searl:

Is there a word for that? Because I don’t want to call it bribery. That feels

Stephanie Culver:

Yes, community engagement.

Greg Emmert:

Ah, yes, community engagement. You’re supposed to be the marketing person. She just schooled you on that. Community engagement, drop.

Brian Searl:

I’m not as good as Scott. What do you call it, Scott?

Scott Cleveland:

Well, yeah, no, I mean, I call it that, you know, on the marketing side and on the guest side, you know, a lot of what we’ve been talking about is partnerships, you know, on an operation side. But, you know, on a guest side, you know, I really like what Stephanie was saying is, you know, we look for beneficial partners in the community because We see ourselves as benefiting the community, we’re bringing in new people, we’re bringing in tourism, and we’re sending them out, hey, go eat at this restaurant, hey, go rent at this boat rental. So one of the best things we do is, from a guest perspective, is we work with those local businesses and say, hey, we’d love to refer you. If you would refer us, come stay with us, come check us out, get to know who we are. This is a win-win partnership. Um, and so we do everything we can to do that. You know, one of the things we did most recently at one of our parks in Texas is we threw a fundraiser for the local firefighters. Um, so we had a weekend where we did, you know, raffle tickets and giveaways and all these different things and all the money benefited our local volunteer fire department. Now, when people come into town, the firefighters talk about us, we talk about them. It only helps everyone and guests walk away from that weekend knowing that they helped that community that they were a part of. So we really try to, whether it’s Moab or Texas or anywhere, not only the tourism boards, but just the local mom and pop shops that are constantly talking to tourists who are coming in, hey, where’s a good place to stay? Where should I stay the next time? We’ve seen a huge amount of success on that side of the coin as well.

Brian Searl:

Where is that for the people? Sorry, go ahead, finish, please.

Daniel Mulcahy:

I was just going to add one more thing that if campground owners or prospective owners are watching this and thinking about making changes to their existing property, giving your neighbors a heads up before you do something is also critical. They don’t just receive a notice in the mail from the city saying, hey, there’s a proposed development, you know, next door to you that they’ve not heard about, right? That’s how you get resistance right off the bat. You know, it could be the best property in the world, but as a Jason property owner, each one of us would get defensive all of a sudden with something new showing up on our property boundary. So, I mean, talking to your neighbors before you submit anything to the community is also important, because you’ll get resistance at that community meeting from your neighbors if they haven’t heard from you directly.

Brian Searl:

You’re saying talk, just don’t make them aware. So no low-flying drones, no graffiti on the garage door, just not necessarily making them aware. It’s building the relationship.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Yeah, I mean, you just got it, whether it’s a relationship or not, but you got to give them a heads up, right? You know, you can’t say, Hey, I’m adding 100 RV spaces next door to you.

Brian Searl:

They’re surprised. And then everybody who’s surprised, like, again, very few people like change. I’m an aberration and weirdo who does so. But so my real quick, my question to you, Scott, like, because this is, and maybe this is for everybody, but about relationships. If I’m a, again, lots of RV park owners and campground owners are watching the show perspective, and those who have owned them for years or short term, How do I decide who to build these relationships with? Because it’s very easy to say, I will go out and say, you know, if it’s a win-win, right? Those are the ones you want first. The I’ll send business to your miniature golf or your restaurant if you send business to me. What if they say no, but you still know they’re the best miniature golf place or the best restaurant? What if it’s the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld, right? You know, like really good soup. Do I still send them there even though he’s kind of like, I’m not sending anybody to you? Like how do you like give some brief guidance to people how you would coach? Well, you know one of the park managers at your parks

Scott Cleveland:

Yeah, you know, I think honesty, you know, being open and honest, you know, that’s what guests want. That’s what guests what what people want. You know, obviously, you don’t want to send them to your enemy. But you know, if there’s the best pizza shop in town, you know, tell them that that’s the best pizza shop in town. You know, I don’t think there’s any, you’re not going to build any, any badwill from doing that. It’s only going to build goodwill and good in the community. And people will say, Oh, These guys sent me here and whether they like us or not, that’s going to help, right? And so, you know, we try and be honest and transparent and, you know, be the neighbors that we want our neighbors to be around us, right? And that seems to go a really long ways and our, you know, managers and our maintenance and our housekeeping, they’re all in the community every day. And if they’re known as honest, upstanding, good people, you know, we see that as a win. You know, are we going to try and work with partners that want to work with us? Absolutely. Does that mean, you know, there’s a lot of gray area in there and we don’t really draw a hard line. We just kind of, we want to give the guests the best experience, right? Like that is our number one goal. And if that means telling them, that usually means telling them the best places to eat in town, because they’ll remember when they stayed with us, they also had great food or they went on a great adventure, you know, have a great boat rental, whatever that may be. So we always try and lead with honesty and transparency and respect.

Brian Searl:

I like him, Danny. I’m not saying he needs a raise, but… I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that. We have about three minutes left here. Does anybody have any final thoughts about some of this stuff? I think we had a pretty good show, right? Who knows what direction it’s going to go in, but it turned out…

Greg Emmert:

This is exceptional today, Brian. I was just going to say, these guests and the discussion today, I enjoy being on every week or every month. But this has been exceptional. You guys are great. Great discussion today.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Yeah, it’s been a very diverse crowd. It’s been fun, Brian. So thank you again for inviting us. And it’s been a pleasure meeting all of you guys. Stephanie, we’ll probably run into each other sooner or later.

Stephanie Culver:

I’ll be at Ojai. Are you guys going to be at Ojai?

Daniel Mulcahy:

I might be. That’s what, November 4th, right? Is that right? Yeah. Actually, I just went under contract on another park in Oregon. We closed on one on last Wednesday, and when I went up there to close on it, I made it off the window.

Brian Searl:

We can’t believe any of it.

Greg Emmert:

I know. Now we can’t. I take back everything I said about the discussion. Now we have no idea if Danny’s been on the up and up with us the whole time.

Scott Cleveland:

He just said, we don’t want to expand in Oregon. That doesn’t mean we don’t like Oregon as a whole.

Greg Emmert:

Now the marketing guy jumps in and polishes that all up.

Brian Searl:

That’s good. Is that the community management? Oregon thinks we love them. Okay. So tell us where, where can we find out more about USA Camping Company, Danny?

Daniel Mulcahy:

usacampingcompany.com. Pretty easy.

Brian Searl:

Real quick, where are your locations? Just I know we talked about Oregon.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Seven different states. So Oregon, Texas, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee. Right? I think that was it. Utah.

Brian Searl:

Utah. Yeah. I’m excited to have you here. Thank you so much, Danny. I’m sure we’ll cross paths again at some point. And yeah, hope to see you at Ohio.

Daniel Mulcahy:

Yeah, we probably passed each other at the glamping show. So are you guys going to be at Ojai?

Brian Searl:

Yes, I’ll be at Ojai. I’ll be at Ojai and KOA and the Canadian show too. But how are you going to do that? What if you keep acquiring and you’re like, there’s this really badass campground that has a mountain bike trail and it’s in Canada, but I’m USA Camping Company. How do you handle that?

Daniel Mulcahy:

Well, we actually have a transitionary name coming out called Outdoor, was it Outdoor Ventures? Is that what it is? Outdoor Ventures, yeah. Outdoor Ventures. Yeah, to accommodate that exact thing. And we do more than campgrounds too. We have five miles of caves in Tennessee. Oh, nice. And we have marinas and stuff like that also.

Brian Searl:

Very cool. Well, thank you, Danny, for being on the show. Where can they find out more about Buzzworthy Property Management and everything you have going on?

Stephanie Culver:

BuzzworthyPM.com. That’s where you’ll find me on there and Facebook, Instagram, and I love TikTok.

Brian Searl:

Awesome. Thanks for being here, Stephanie. Tim, where can they learn more about your property in Edmonton and your ski hill for winter?

Tim Dea:

Well, SnowValley.com brings you to a splash page with all our properties, the ski hill, the Rainbow Valley, Rainbow-Valley. dot-com is our is our website direct and of course at snow valley ski is our handles for social media Awesome.

Brian Searl:

Thanks for being here tim. I’m, sorry for giving you a hard time about the hockey team, but After all you guys are in the standing cup finals. You always have that to like knock on my head, right? Scott anything you want to add that danny didn’t cover?

Scott Cleveland:

No, everything’s on usacampingcompany.com and if you’re looking for more information, we do work with investors as well. So that’s something maybe we talk about next time. Awesome.

Brian Searl:

And Greg, Camp Strategy, where can they find more information?

Greg Emmert:

Yeah, you can find us at campstrategy.com or on LinkedIn and let’s go Red Wings.

Brian Searl:

No, Greg’s banned from the show. Tim, do you want to co-host with me?

Greg Emmert:

You might want to use that bleep button now.

Brian Searl:

You might want to use that bleep button. The Red Wings have no place in this conversation, right?

Tim Dea:

Well, the Red Wings, Edmonton was the Red Wings farm team for years. My dad’s cousin played on the Red Wings.

Greg Emmert:

We got to talk, Tim. I’m making a note.

Brian Searl:

Yeah, thank you guys for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Uh, the great discussion as always, we’ll see you next week for an RV industry kind of outdoor rec focused episode, but thank you guys. I appreciate it. And we’ll talk to you soon. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

For this episode of MC Fireside Chats with your host, Brian Searle. Have a suggestion for a show idea? Want your campground or company in a future episode? Email us at hello at moderncampground.com. Get your daily dose of news from moderncampground.com. And be sure to join us next week for more insights into the fascinating world of outdoor hospitality.