MC firefight. MC Fire. What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of MC Fireside Chats. My name is Brian Sirill with Insider Perks. Hi Michelle. I was just like we started the intro without you Michelle. You were behind camera cuz Jessica didn't hear you beep and come in the waiting room. And so I like turned to Jessica, where's Michelle? She's supposed to be here today. She's like, "Oh, she's right here. I just didn't toggle the switch on to let her in." So, uh, welcome to the show.

It's It's exciting. Here we're here for a second week of like something that's I guess maybe a passion obsession of mine, obviously marketing, but also AI. Uh, so this is kind of the show that we're going to focus uh a little bit on those kinds of things going forward. And so we have a couple recurring guests here with us. We're missing Greg Emert today. He's gratefully super busy with a bunch of clients and couldn't make the show. So he's swamped at his desk. Uh having a lot of success with his new company, Vio. So we're proud of that and we'll we'll have him back next month hopefully if he doesn't get even more busy. But we do have Kurt Wilkins from Our Journey. We have Michelle Bone. It's a bone right?

>> If you say crunchy.

That's what I tried to do and then I just I had too many S's. Is that what like the one of the S's is almost silent or?

>> Well, I just say you say it's snotty. It's bon but it we just say it's bison.

Okay. Yeah. Like everything that's why I get into this argument with my girlfriend like cuz she's from Canada and she doesn't she learned a little bit of French over the pandemic. Uh, and so like she I don't know any of it, right? But like I like the German language better than I like the French language. I don't know either of them, but when we traveled like right across the border like it just German feels like a cooler language to me. Whereas everything you say in French just sounds arrogant. It just does. I'm not saying everybody's arrogant. I'm not saying that's the French people. I'm just saying it sounds that way when it comes out of your mouth. Even the English words do.

>> Oh, no. I actually say the same thing to my husband when he says no because I'm like nothing.

Exactly.

>> Because it just sounds snotty. It's just I don't know. It's just a weird way that they say it. So I

>> They're wonderful people, right? Like nobody say

>> They're beautiful people. Yes.

Uh, anyway. Okay. So, uh, welcome back, Michelle. Uh, and then we have a couple special guests here. We have, uh, Kieran and we have Jeremy. So, we just go around the room real quick and we want to introduce ourselves. We can start with our recurring guests if you want. Kurt, you want to start?

>> Yeah. My name is Curtis Wilkins with Our Journey. Um, we manage and own uh, 43 different campgrounds and we have been in the industry through different verticals since 2017.

Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us again, Kurt. Michelle.

>> Uh, my name is Michelle Bisan. I am with Bison Peak Ventures. Um, I feel like I'm kind of the newbie to the group. So, um, we own six campgrounds, um, from Alaska to Florida and we've been in the business for almost two years now. Um, and we're just growing our portfolio and learning as we go. So, I'm excited to be here and learn from you guys.

Well, we're still learning, too. So, you might be on the wrong show, but we'll try. Uh, and then we have Jeremy. you want to introduce yourself?

>> Yeah. Hey guys. Uh my name is Jeremy. I am uh in the upper peninsula of Michigan and uh I'm probably truly the newbie here. I just opened my first campground. Uh we've got 80 acres uh 40 rustic tent camping sites. Um and we're on the southern shore of Lake Superior. Um, it took about five years to get through the entitlements and permitting process. So I learned a ton. Uh, yeah, it was it was a it was quite the journey. Um, but I'm I'm like already ready for the next one. So, too soon, you know.

Well, so that's why you're braver than me. I can't ever own a campground. Like, I would drive myself crazy if I had to go through five years of permitting.

>> Yeah.

Like I would probably end up in a mental hospital somewhere because I would just want to scream at all the counselors and all the permitting people and all the like cuz I'm the entrepreneur. Like I just want it to be done my way. Like I I I know best until you prove me wrong or Chat GBT does, right? Like I don't really know best, right? But I think I do. Uh, so anyway, but uh kudos to you. I'm excited to talk about your your campground and uh learn about what you've got going on up there. Kieran.

>> Yeah, my name is Kieran Wild. I own a company called First Nature. We're a destination management company and tour operator focusing on the West Coast of North America. And I also own a company called Fur Haven, uh which is a freestanding guest house, uh kind of like a glamping setup with A-frame cabins in the Columbia River Gorge. Uh, and we're the in-house experience provider uh for a couple different setups in the Gorge region, including uh Under Canvas, which you're probably all familiar with, which is just opened up at the end of May out here uh and one called Wind Mountain Ranch uh on the Washington side of the Columbia River Gorge.

Awesome. So, experiences for glamping providers and you glamping, too. So, excited to talk to you about what some of those offerings are. Uh, before I before we get to kind of the regular thing, like I've got a couple things I want to talk about today. We're going to dive into a little bit about just because the theme is AI marketing. I want to talk a little bit about uh the new chat GBT agent that was released last week. We're going to take a look at a couple brief videos, see what that's all about, talk about how that's going to impact the future of is currently impacting the future of marketing uh and AI and then uh a little bit about comment browser released. Um, but is there anything Michelle or Kurt or Chris from your uh pressure from last?

>> Michelle? Did you do you catch any of that?

I actually didn't. I was hoping you did.

>> I didn't catch any of it either, Brian. I am so sorry.

That's okay. Is my mic is Check my mic, Jessica. Like, click.

>> That sounds good.

Oh, you're back now.

>> Oh, I'm just I just got in and out. Like, can you hear me really deep or does it sound like I'm far away? It sounds perfect right now.

It was garbled before.

>> Oh, okay. I don't know. Anyway, all right. I was just making sure the right mic

>> out is German.

Last week I was at a remote cabin trying to do it from my phone and I ended up being vertical and then but the week before like I had it it was like picking up from my webcam all the way over there. So that's how I was making sure that it was like this nice. But anyway, uh typically we ask our recurring guests like is there anything that came across your desk in the last month or so that you guys feel is important for us to bring up? And then I don't know if you caught it, but we're going to talk a little bit about chatgbt agent uh and some of those things and how they're going to impact the camping industry. So, anything that's come across your guys' desk?

>> I mean, I feel like we're constantly getting new things across our desk, but um I mean from you know, all kinds of things from employ.

I'm trying to think. I know like for us we're going um, we're going to start really heavily going into using some of the AI stuff. So I'm excited to talk about that.

>> Okay. Very cool. K.

Um the the only thing that's really come off of my desk or came across my desk in the last like three weeks has been a lot of acquisition news. I've been seeing a lot of consolidation big deals. And so that's uh that's really interesting. Um, but other than that, um,

>> a lot of the AI news, right, we've kind of talked about in the in other episodes, but that's that's ever evolving and I'm really excited and looking forward to a lot of integrations there.

Do you want to share any of the secret due diligence numbers behind your potential acquisitions with us?

>> They're not my acquisitions. They're just deals that have are happening in the in the space.

So like competitive like you have agents out there spying at everybody else and you just know, right? No. Uh, we just have clients and I know that they're making some big moves.

>> They do have like China has that little like fly that can land on the wall. It's like a bug. Like literally a bug. Uh, so you can monitor your competitors. Just send it right in there. Have be a fly on the wall.

It's actually a thing. It's actually an invention.

>> So, um, but interesting. Okay. All right. So, let's get to uh let's briefly talk about to our special guests first. Uh, I want to make sure we get enough time for them and then we can dive into a little bit of the agent stuff and the perplexity browser. Let's start with Jeremy. Um, Jeremy, you said you went through like this five-year process. So obviously it's something that was important to you. You're passionate about you. How long had you wanted to do it? How did you get in your head that you wanted to start a campground?

>> Yeah, that's a good question. Um, I would say it is it is important to me and I am passionate about it. Obviously spending five years opening one project. Um, but the actual idea of opening a campground was kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. Um, a lot of my background is in, uh, residential real estate investing, uh, single family and a little bit of multifamily. Um, and I'm in, we were talking about this earlier, but I'm in Marquette, Michigan, uh, in the upper peninsula, which is pretty tourism heavy. Um, and right around, uh, I mean, pretty much, you know, as soon as the pandemic kicked off, um, you know, as a residential investor, we went from seeing, you know, three-bedroom, two bath house in Marquette, uh, go for about $180,000 to $250 overnight. And now, you know, a three-bedroom, two bath in the city of Marquette today in 2025 is $400,000. Um, so over a 100% increase in a very short amount of time. And uh, you know, we back in 2020, we we kind of came to this point where we're like, man, I don't know if it makes sense for us to be in this residential market right now. Um, the prices just weren't making any the math wasn't adding up. And then at the same time like from a from a personal perspective um I really didn't like contributing to increased housing and you know gentrification of the place I grew up in. Um, and so we came across this 80-acre parcel on the edge of the city. Um, it's actually the entrance to our campground is the last parcel in the city of Marquette which is part of the reason it took five years to go through this whole process. We sit in three different municipalities. Um, but we came across this 80-acre parcel that would have been impossible to develop housing on. And uh, it just made sense to be a campground. And I thought like what a what a better, cooler way. Like it it was this beautiful piece of land that overlooks Lake Superior that nobody had access to. And so I thought I want to open this up. Even even as somebody that grew up there, I had never been up there. So, I wanted to open it up to the public, but obviously I had to do it in a financially stable or or sustainable way. Um, and then I wanted to diversify my my portfolio, if you will, you know, so camping seemed like a fun thing. Um, and on the on the side, I've worked at in the outdoor industry as a guide for probably 15 years. Um, so it was right up my alley along with my two partners.

So, what was your goal or what was or is your goal with Kona Hills Campground? like what are you starting with? What are you like just RV sites? You going to do some glamping or are you going to like what's your vision for it?

>> Yeah. Uh, so we originally the vision was uh three to five uh cabins. You know, we wanted to go higher end. We wanted to like make it, you know, this this glamping experience. Uh, kind of like maybe like landscape hotel. I hear that thrown around a lot, you know. Um, but we we found out pretty early on in our permitting process that the municipality that most of our land is in, they actually anything more than two units for short term, they require you to to get a campground license from the state of Michigan. Um, the state of Michigan is one of the the few states that actually requires licensing at the state level. Um, and so when we found that out, obviously that kind of changed the the uh economics of the deal. Um, and we ended up saying, "Let's just get our campground license." And we opened with 40 rustic tent and car camping only spots. Um, we're now going through the process of permitting and raising funds for seven cabins. Uh, four of them are below the cliff that we sit on. Uh, and then three of them are above the cliff with those views of Lake Superior. So, a as we go on, you know, like the the goal is really to continue to develop the property and add additional types of accommodations and amenities, but do it in a way where you're still immersed in nature and we're not, you know, if you if you go and look at our Google reviews, almost every one of them mentions like, I love the privacy. I love that this isn't a parking lot full of RVs. Um, you know, people people like being immersed and so we don't want to take that away. We want to add these accommodations mindfully.

So, what were some of the things and I'm just curious, this is sort of about your campground and sort of about your experiences because we've talked about this on the show previously. When you talk about the target audience that you currently have, tent campers and car campers, there are a lot of people in my experience in our industry that are hesitant to welcome less so tent campers, but more so car campers >> into their RV parks, let's call that, or glamping establishments, right? Because there's a stereotype and I don't know if it's entirely unjustified but in the past or currently there are I don't want to say significant number a portion of people who car camp who are like long-term seasonals that don't take care of their sights they're in every vertical right uh it just happens to for some reason be more a little bit more visible with car camping and tent camping or stick out in the minds more of owners so what has been your experience with that because like I push back against this with some of our clients I had a conversation with one uh earlier this week where they were talking about how, you know, we're hesitant. We want more business. We don't know where to get it from. And I was talking about some of these niche places that you can open up like allowing 11-year-old rigs instead of 10-year or allowing, you know, deluxe tents or, you know, car camping. And she she said the same thing to me and I said, "Well, like I mean go YouTube. There's a go YouTube and look at the camping and Tesla Model Y. It has camping mode and it has an air mattress that Tesla sells and like these are $90,000 cars that people are tent camping in and so I don't and she's like, "Oh, I'd love to have those people." Like I wish you would, right?

So I'm curious what your thoughts is and your experiences with us.

>> Yeah. I mean, we you know, I kind of man I maybe it's just like the age range that I I'm in. I'm I'm 36. I'm a millennial. Um, but like truck camping and car camping was like cool for us, you know, and I I I think like when we were going through this permitting process, we got a lot of push back from our local community about this concept of like truck and car camping, you know? They were like, "Well, we don't want homeless people at your campground." And I'm like I'm like, "Guys, these are these are $200,000 Sprinter vans we're servicing here." Like, you know, I I I hear you. like we got everybody's got to be responsible, but like man, I I love it. Like it's it's low maintenance that it's low impact on the land. I'm not dealing with a 40-foot RV. Um, and it allows us to be more unique, you know? I mean, our our entrance to our campground, like I said, we're 200 feet above Lake Superior. Um, you couldn't get a 40-foot camper up our driveway. We got 9% grades. Um, so to like open an an RV park up there is impossible. But now I can have, you know, Sprinter vans that with a or even an old Ford with a Quigley 4x4 conversion on it. They can make it up that hill and they can go and find like a super cool remote spot tucked away amongst like the rock out croppings that we have. Like to me, that's awesome. I love it. Um, and and even like one of my neighbors uh who came to our grand opening, our ribbon cutting, you know, he he kind of refused to see the project. he was against it, this whole homeless concept. And when he came up for that ribbon cutting and saw what we did and saw the people that were coming up there, he came up to me afterwards and he was like, you know, I just want to say this has been a long process, but you guys did a great job. This looks amazing and we're happy to have you as a neighbor. Like that that was a great moment for me. It is it is interesting to me like we did we have another podcast that I do uh called Outwired after this and last well two weeks ago we took last week off we did a show about the 1975 to 2025 and the evolution of camping and the different types of you know pop-up trailers they had and rigs and all kinds of things and it was quite fascinating to learn about and today we're going to do 2025 to 2075 and give some kind of crazy predictions. Um, but it is really interesting to me to kind of learn about like I'd love to do a show I think on Outwired about how we evolved to be the industry we are today specifically with I mean I know there's a good reason behind it, right? I just don't know what it is because I haven't researched it. But it would be interesting to see why were many RV parks built the way they were with sites so close together and so narrow and like they were obviously built for a certain type of rig, but why did they not emphasize more tent camping or more car camping or more nature experiences or I'm sure it was built for a specific type of audience, the people we call boomers today who were obviously not boomers back then, but it would be fascinating I think to to understand how we got to where we are because I think that the future of where we are Boeing is still RVing, is still car camping and tent camping and all of the above and glamping and everything else, but I think it's a whole lot more of nature and experiences and we've seen that that people are demanding this stuff and Marriott's getting into the game. Um, but I think it's way more of that and I don't think there's a clear guideline blueprint for many park owners out there. Certainly people like Curtis, you own multiple parks. Michelle, you own multiple parks. you can look at this and you can step back and see what works well one other place and doesn't another, right? And you have key takeaways, but I don't think there's a really good blueprint for how do I build an RV park that's not a typical RV park.

>> Yeah, I don't know that there is either. And I' I've actually had people tell me, you know, they're like uh, you know, some of these modular uh units, whether it's like a, you know, the the zoot cabins or the the what is it? ood houses, you know, some of some of those people that sell those are like, "Oh, you know, like we don't actually want our units to be located next to tent sites because we feel that it devalues the that that property." And I I just don't know that I believe that personally. Um, I'm I'm like the, you know, I'm the new guys. This is my first campground, but like from my experience and my customers and the way our our park is set up, like you could be at a zoo cabin in the north corner of our property and there could be a tent camper and you'd never cross paths, you know? Like I I think those experiences can go hand in hand more than people realize. Now, you know, if you put a oud house in the middle of an RV park, that might not work right.

Well, that's the thing. I think that's what they're talking about. They're talking about a stereotypical RV park. They think you're going to put it literally right next to a tent site with a paved gravel driveway and right or something like that. And so I don't think that they have your park in the picture of their head when they're saying no to you. I also think it depends on the landscaping and how you design the park and >> and things like that. I'm curious for the people here who are looking at maybe maybe I want to offer tent camping in the future. Uh, maybe I want to offer open myself up to a little bit to car camping. How do you market to those people and find them?

>> So I'm I'm lucky. Um, I I have what I call inherent demand. Um, I'm I'm 40 minutes away from Picture Rocks National Lake Shore, which sees 1.2 million visitors every year. I'm I am the closest I'm I'm the only privately owned campground in the city of Marquette. Um, although it's just my entrance that's in the city and then the rest of the campgrounds in Sans Township. Um, and and like there's two privately owned campgrounds maybe eight miles away from me. Um, and Marquette sees a million visitors every year between summer and winter tourism. So, I I I also have a background in SEO and digital marketing. So, I list on I list on Google. I don't list on Hip Camp. I don't I did it was too much of a pain. Um, I don't

>> Can I ask Can I ask why?

>> Um, the honestly the back end of Hip Camp has not been the easiest to work through. Uh, and it's really hard to set expectations across multiple platforms. Um, I think you know channel managers are more popular in the Airbnb space um even in the hotel space but like you know I I use Park uh if anybody's familiar with that for my reservation manager which is a, you know, um great great team relatively new company um but there's not a lot of channel managers for tent camping and so there's just too much too much um confusion with setting expectations you know, like we're a self-service campground too. We don't have a check-in center and so I need to be able to communicate effectively with my customers via email and SMS. Um, and Hip Camp just didn't quite allow for that to to happen. So, we, you know, after maybe three or four weeks, we de delisted from being able to book on Hip Camp and all these other platforms. And I mean, we're we're 100% direct bookings at this point. So, for me, it's just all about making sure I show up when people Google camping near me or camping camping in Marquette. Um, and then Google reviews, you know, I've got I think now we're up to 36 reviews and we've got, you know, an average rating of 4.9 stars on Google. Um, you know, I'm I'm com the the only other park that ranks above me has 600 plus reviews. Um, but I'm right behind him, so it's just about visibility.

Cool. Thank you. I app Is there anything we missed talking about that you want to throw in there about Kona Hills? We want you to join the conversation as we keep going along. But

>> yeah, no, I mean I if you haven't been to the UP, I would highly suggest it. It's a lesser known gem. Uh Kyrion said he's been there because he grew up in Wisconsin, but not a lot of people make it up there and um I love it and I'm glad that I get to represent it, you know.

Awesome. Well, thanks for being here, Jeremy. As we can keep going and we talked to a few other we talked to Kieran and we talk about AI and all the things like if you have anything to say, please jump in. Just ask questions. Feel free.

>> Yeah. And I don't mean to discount Hip Camp, great platform. And if you are getting Yeah.

>> If you are getting started in in tent camping and you you know, like I'm I'm in Southeast Wisconsin right now. I stayed at a hip camp two nights ago because guess what? Everything in southeast Wisconsin is RV parks and I don't want to stay in an RV park. I wanted privacy. So I booked at a hip camp. Um, and and the hip camp, you know, most of them down here are one to four sites. Amazing for that. But when you get when you get scale, like, you know, I'm I'm trying to own my customer relationships. I don't really like dealing with marketplaces and having that intermediary. I I want to talk directly to my customers, you know.

>> Yeah, for sure. I mean, I I know Alyssa, I've known her for years. Uh, it's a great company. It's a and I frequently tell people to list on Hip Camp, too. Like, if you're in a good position like you are where you already have the built-in demand, it's a little bit of an easier tradeoff, right?

>> Totally. Um, but if they're not charging you, like we went through this with a couple sites where people were asking me this, I think last week, where do I list? How much do I pay? All these people want money from me and my stock answer is is without looking at them individually. If they're trying to charge you a monthly fee, without guaranteeing they're going to deliver anything, don't do it. But if they're willing to charge you a percentage, then really there's no harm as long as you are doing other than the, you know, once in a while the problems like you're talking about that you run into that maybe it isn't a good fit for your park. Uh, there really is no harm to putting yourself out there as long as you're doing your own marketing and still trying to drive your own traffic because you don't want to pay that 12 and a half percent forever.

>> Yeah.

And the person I was talking to didn't have online reservations. So I said, you know, like obviously you need something, but uh get your Campspot or your new book or your Res Nexus or whatever up uh and do that stuff first.

>> Yeah. Uh Kieran, how you doing there?

>> Yeah, I'm good.

Are you in like what are you in right now? You're in You said you're in your van. It's a nice van. It looks like it. Uh,

>> I'm in one of our Mercedes. See,

I can't even afford a Mercedes.

>> Jeremy probably sees a lot of converted into campers, but our this is a passenger van.

Curtis, will you buy me a Mercedes Sprinter van so I can do the show from it?

>> Oh, maybe maybe Brian, come down to Washington. We'll see what we can find.

Uh, Karen, tell us about First Nature Tours.

>> Sure. So yeah, first and foremost, you know, it's industry speak, but we call ourselves a destination management company for the West Coast. So, um, what that kind of means is we package experiences together with accommodation, attractions, all those things. Uh, and we often sell them, uh, to tour operators that are sending people from other places to this destination, especially the Pacific Northwest region of North America, like Alaska down to like San Francisco. Um, and we have our own guides. We have our own sprinter vans. Um, and we're working on our own hospitality component as well. But I've been in the industry for about 18 years now, focusing on the Pacific West. Uh, and I I saw a need for hospitality components, especially in the Columbia River Gorge, but selling the region at large where those kind of like opportunity spots exist. Um, so that's kind of why we decided to get in the hospitality as well. Not just like operator, you know, exciter component, but also like a

So, how do you end up going? I mean, obviously 18 years is a long time. I've been in business 16 years. Uh, like everybody seems to think I'm an overnight success, but I spent 16 years doing it. And I know I'm sure you spent 18 years doing it, too. Uh, and Kurt and Michelle, well, Michelle is just getting started. You're only at two years just and you're already at six parks. you're going to be at like 800 by the time you have 16 years in.

>> That's going to take a lot of systems in place.

Well, that's all right. Systems are going to get easier with AI. We're going to talk about that on the show.

>> Um, so, but uh like tell talk us through the story of how like how do you get started with this and then how do you grow to be you said you're a vendor for Under Canvas, right? Which is probably a highly competitive and sought-after position.

>> Yeah. Well, I mean, just being around long enough and knowing the right people is nine ten of it. Uh, so like I said, 18 years of industry experience, uh, focusing mostly on the West Coast, we know the right people. There's not a lot of people that do the kind of higher-end luxury type travel, custom private experiences that we do. So, there's not a ton of competition in that realm, honestly, where we are. Um, and I physically relocated, me and my family moved out to the Columbia River Gorge, the National Scenic Area about two years ago. So, um, you know, we're just a natural the natural fit for Under Canvas out there. Undervas, you know, talking about permitting and like barriers, uh, politically and legally to getting these kind of things off the ground. And I mean, they struggled for many years to try and get uh that location uh approved and I think they still have ongoing litigation going on with some nonprofits in the area. Um, and we've run into our own roadblocks uh trying to do the Fur Haven project out where we are. or we bought 20 acres, you know, thinking because it was a conditional use um allowance for campgrounds and then found out that there's like some fine print somewhere in there that the conditional use uh requires uh some kind of a natural feature, which was very vague to me, or else a hunting and fishing ground adjacent to it in the county that we're in. So, you know, I I don't know what that means, but um, you know, we had we basically bought 20 acres adjacent to where our house is and then found out that we couldn't at least without a ton of probably litigation and many years of what Jeremy went through before we could actually get it off the grounds. So, um, we found a property that was already permitted, uh, that used to be a Thousand Trails property, uh, which is kind of like a KOA.

>> Yep. And so we found one out here that uh had been purchased by somebody who was using part of the property for a totally different usage. And uh it had had a fire go through and burned down like pretty much all the infrastructure, but it still had like all the like level perfect little spots already set up. Uh, so you know that's kind of actually worked out really well because then you know we're actually able to just pay a land use fee, you know, per booking for the spots that we use when we use them and we don't have to own own the land outright and it's already, you know, has historical usage as a campground. So, that was kind of a win-win um in the end and it allows for a lot more capacity like if we want to like grow and expand because right now we're really in the early phases of you know getting units built and and you know, kind of taking the taking group business on a case-by-case basis for like summer camps, corporate retreats, that kind of stuff.

So, what's your what's your vision of it when it's in let's say it's midstages? Where do you see it going if you have everything go the right way? So, the focus that we have is really on the mobility of these uh units. They're like a they're basically on a trailer um but unique in the sense that they're an A-frame uh and you know very very simple but very elegant styling and they can you know the key part of that is they can be moved. It's not a permanent structure. So, you know, if the relationship with the landowner changes, uh, we find a different location to move them to. And like in the in the long run, what I see is finding um places that are attractive seasonally and have that demand have that demand for overnight accommodations and being able to to relocate them to those places. And we saw that happen with uh the 2017 eclipse here. you know, a big event like that where all of a sudden you have literally millions of people coming to rural places in a state like Oregon that, you know, in rural areas does not have the infrastructure to handle that many people.

Uh, you know, you can find a land find a land owner, you know, put like 12 of these units on it, like move them over to where they need to be, and then, you know, you've got a a instant hospitality setup and you build the experiences around that, which is what we specialize in. Um, and you know, you can you can meet some of that need at least and and make a lot of money doing it because there's a huge demand for those kind of things, concerts, you know, all that kind of stuff.

Well, and I'm told that anything on wheels, and I'm not an accountant to be clear, but I'm told anything on wheels is now a wonderful tax deduction due to a new law we have in the United States. So, or you guys have in the United States.

>> Yeah.

So, depreciation and all those kinds of things. So whether you whether you like it or whether you like the man or don't like the man, uh, we'll all pay a little bit less taxes probably, right?

>> I'll be on board with that.

So So tell me about some of your experiences. What are some of the things that people can expect if they if they go to an under campus or go to your campground or or go to uh someplace that you service? What are some of the experiences that they can look forward to that your company offers? So in We are

>> We're losing you a little bit, Karen. I don't know if you hopped back in your van, but you started breaking up a little bit.

We'll see if you come back in a second. Um

>> Oh, no. I was really interested in that.

I I was as well. Uh

>> there he is. He's might He might be back. You're back, Karen. Are you back?

>> There we go.

Okay.

>> Did you No, you were just breaking up a little bit. So, did you hear my question?

The question and I was trying to answer it. I can restate it if you can hear me now.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah, I think we can hear you now.

>> Okay. Sorry about that. Um, yeah. So to answer your question, uh, you know, this region is really diverse, similar to like I'd say New Zealand in that we can go from the ocean to like rainforest on the coast to 14,000-foot-high snowcapped peaks that are snowy year-round to high desert that gets 10 inches of rain a year, uh, sagebrush. We have all that within a day's drive. It's it's pretty crazy. And a world-class wine country in the Wamtt Valley and uh in the Yakama area in Washington. So, you know, there's a lot you can do. Um, in the gorge, in the Columbia Gorge, uh, thousands of miles of hiking trail and the highest concentration of waterfalls in North America are both huge, huge attractions. U, we also have a really good whitewater rafting out there. People come from all over for uh, steel head fishing. So, and we have great skiing, world-class skiing up on Mount Hood. So, it's it's pretty diverse what you can do. And it's a it's definitely a four-season destination. So your com your company will help people like plan those experiences. So they take them on guided tours or what do you

>> Yes. Yes. And yes. Yeah. We we handle Yeah. We handle a lot a lot of B2B like I said where we'll actually create tour packages for other tour operators or for travel agents that have uh kind of VIP client where they want everything very white glove and like touchdown to takeoff everything handled. Um, we also will do like for Under Canvas or some of the other hospitality. We have a partnership with the Ritz Carlton here in Portland, you know, where we'll do like bespoke packages that they can sell to their guests uh that are very unique and tailored to their brand. Uh, and then corporate events, team building, school groups. I mean, we kind of do do it all. Uh, we have different divisions that kind of handle different things. So, you're obviously targeting the high-end, but what what do you think in your words kind of sets your company apart from the other people who offer experiences? I know you said your market's limited at the high end, but just from an experiential standpoint,

>> it's Yeah, it's not necessarily limited to high-end, but it is it is all about um, you know, the having unique experiences that you can't just easily access on your own. So, that's that destination knowledge that we bring to the table. Our team is like highly trained. our guide quality is, you know, above and beyond pretty much anyone in the region. So, we're offering like that really, really high level of of knowledge that can take you places that you couldn't find on your own, at least not very easily. And, you know, we also are very committed to sustainability. We won a global award last year for our commitment to regenerative tourism and to promoting uh like socially um conscious events, LGBTQ events around the region. like uh, you know, we we're really committed to making a positive impact through tourism and I I think that that's worth mentioning as well and probably one of the things that sets us apart the most is is that commitment.

Michelle and Curtis, you've both been uncharacteristically quiet I feel like for the show. Uh, but I want to make a couple questions here. So I'm curious what you think about the experiences overall. Like if you have questions for Kieran, if you have questions for Jeremy, ask that stuff. Uh, but I'm curious too what you guys think of the overall. we've talked a lot about on the show, not necessarily with you guys, but about how experiences are the future. And I feel like there's just this huge overlooked opportunity for not all campgrounds, but for a large majority who aren't thinking about how I can go that extra mile to curate the guest experience, whether it's through a company like Kieran or whether it's just through like we were talking about somebody uh adding little store kiosks around the park. Uh, so the kids run up there and say like, "Mom, I want the little candy that's behind there and they see it 10 times during their stay." They're going to get that candy. you know they will by the end of it. So you're going to sell more store items, right? Or the QR code by your pool that they can pull up on their phone and they can order a floaty for their kid who just got in. They're not going to pull them out and go to the store, right? So I feel like there's a lot of missing opportunity there that it sounds like small dollars, but I feel like it adds up to big dollars.

>> Yeah.

I know. Like for me, I have to say that one of the best things that I like about all campground industry is that there's so many different things and there's so many different ways and it's so diverse and they all work. And I think that's amazing. like Jeremy with his vision and all the things that he's got going on there. Like it's not just let's go to an RV park. It's like let's go and like camp out next to a rock. Like I love that you can do that and it works and people love that and there are people who look for that as there are people who are looking for tent camping and people looking for RV camping and I love the fact that you know like Kieran's created this whole experience thing where people can go out and have these full-on experiences but those things all work within the campground industry and that's like just why I love this industry so much. I mean, I came from an investor background too. I actually started in single-family homes, started with long-term rentals, moved into short-term rentals, then built a luxury resort in Scottsdale, which I'm actually um, I still own it, but when I moved into the RV industry, it was, you know, look at all the different avenues that we can go down and we can create all of those experiences, but we can do them in one asset class. And that was kind of the fun of going into this was that it was just there's so many different things we can do. And every single one of our parks is completely different from another park. And that I love too. I mean, our Alaska park is literally it it is kind of like a parking lot, but the thing is is people don't go there for that park. They go there for the experience of everything that surrounds that park.

And we just play that up. And so it's just, you know, you can sit in the middle of our park and see six glaciers. We don't have the glaciers inside of our park, but you get access to all of them because you stay here.

We go to a pretty big park to have a glacier inside it. But

>> Right. I know. But it's it's actually the largest park in Alaska. But um, you know, it's just Yeah. When you look at it, it looks like a parking lot, but how many of those people are there? None of them. They're all out exploring the beauty that is Vald and like hiking or mountain biking or out fishing for halibit. And so we will actually have the fishermen bring everything back and we'll do fish fries on the campground once a month. And it's just a great experience of all these people creating this community with people they wouldn't know anywhere else. And that is one of the things that I love above like my resort in Scottsdale is I don't know anybody who stays there. But I can tell you about Jean from Iowa who comes and hangs out with me in Branson.

>> Yeah, I I kind of skipped over this. I I touched on it briefly, but you know, my where mine my park is that we we see again 1.2 million visitors to Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore, which has cruises and tours and all that stuff, and then another million to Marquette. And one of the things that we're working on right now in addition is uh so the the 200 feet above the about seven acres of our property is an old rock quarry that used to go all the way to uh the to Lake Superior. And so that rock corey is a straight 90-degree vertical, 200 feet up and 250 ft wide. Um, and Kieran, you might be familiar with this, but we

Have a in Munising at on Pictured Rocks. We have, um, Michigan Icefest, which is the largest ice climbing festival in North America, and it's been going on for 25-plus years.

"Nice."

People from all over the world come to climb ice on the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for two weeks out of the year. You can only climb it two out of two weeks out of the year, and there's been over 25 years. There's this community that has developed, and people want to climb more. So we now have this cliff that you could climb. You know, it's winter six months out of the year in the UP. You could, instead of two weeks, you could be climbing for six months, and we could be artificially farming ice. So when you look at, like, a sandstone Minnesota, you look at an oay ureay Colorado, you look at, um, key bodies down in lower Michigan where they're farming ice on a telephone pole. Like, those are the types of experiences that we want to curate going forward.

And, and even mountain biking, too. I mean, we, we sit directly behind the uh NTN trail network, which is one of the largest trail networks of single track in the Midwest. I think, I think it don't I, I'm not exactly sure, but I think it's, uh, the largest, the most mileage of single track east of the Mississippi. Um, I think the only, the only part trail system with more is out west. Um, so that's huge for us. And if I don't know if any of you guys are familiar, but like Bentonville is a huge inspiration to what we're doing. And we have, uh, in Copper Harbor, a few hundred miles away from me, just north, we have Rock Solid Trail Building Company, which is the largest trail building company in the world at this point, with over 250 employees. Um, that's owned by Aaron Rogers, who's like a, a crazy amazing visionary guy.

"Um, that's been..."

"Not the quarterback who held out on the Steelers, right?"

"Not the quarterback."

"For sure."

"No. Uh, he's, you know what? Aaron Rogers, the quarterback, is an interesting guy, but Aaron Rogers, the trail builder, might be more interesting. Um..."

"I would probably agree with you."

"Yeah. Look, look, look up Rock Solid if you guys haven't heard of it. But like, that's the stuff that gets me excited in the long run is being able to like offer rock climbing in the summer, ice climbing in the winter, uh, single track all year round, fat fat tire bike, rate, fat tire biking in the winter. Like, I can't wait for that stuff, you know."

"Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be, yeah, it's gonna be interesting. Curtis, do you have anything to add?"

"Well, uh, I wanted to just kind of piggyback one on Kion. I, I love another Pacific Northwest guy getting on the show. Uh, can't shout out the Columbia Gorge. Uh, our, our company, we always kept it, say it's the best kept secret of the United States is the Pacific Northwest. Uh, especially with the Columbia River Gorge. And then Michelle, again, piggyback kind of off of what you were talking about, like unique experiences for each one of our campgrounds. That's one of my favorite parts about our campgrounds is each one is so different. Right. You can go, um, you're right. You, we start off like we have a, the coast, uh, the Pacific coast, right, with Canana, and that park has a very unique clientele. They're very different than the people that stay with us. Excuse me. By the way, I am having terrible allergies."

"Are you allergic to me, or is it something else?"

"I am allergic to pollen. Uh, but specifically like grass and trees."

"And you're in campgrounds."

"And you're, yeah, I was just about to say that."

"And I'm in campgrounds. Uh, I, I do, I love the outside. Grew up camping, so, um, I put up with the allergies, but I just wanted to warn you. So..."

"Totally fine."

"I'm running out of breath sometimes, and that might be why I'm abnormally quiet today. Uh, we also, I don't know if anyone knows, but there's a giant fire outside of our office. Um, it's actually like 45 miles, uh, southwest."

"I did not know that. Like, is it moving fast? Do they have it under control or..."

"Yeah, they're gonna get it under control. We've, there's about, there's 40 miles between us. It's just tons of..."

"Where's your office?"

"Uh, we're in Goldendale."

"Oh, gosh, you're so close to me. I didn't realize that."

"I know. I was like, Kion, I think you're..."

"Bourdain. No, I'm in Bo. The Bourdain."

"You're talking about the Bourdain fire. That's..."

"Yeah."

"Yeah. I'm, I'm way closer to that than you are. I'm literally, I'm five, I'm five miles from that fire. Five miles."

"Yeah. Well, Moer was just on fire, wasn't it?"

"Like..."

"Which makes me feel better about this fire because if it jumps the river, there's nothing left to burn."

"Yeah, that's so tough to deal with. Like, we're up here like I'm up here in Calgary, and my, my girlfriend's parents have a cabin. I was at it last week and on Lake Shushwa, but we were dealing with that for like a couple years up here in BC. Like, we still have some fires up here. But thankfully, like, but like once in a while, like probably two, three days out of the year, the whole city of Calgary will get like really smoky during the summer, and then it just goes away. We were pretty lucky. But, um, like, yeah, we've had to deal with that. Like, we had to almost evacuate, I think, two years ago from our cabin 'cause there's like, you go down, you have to go down a road, like a 45-minute dirt road to get to the cabin. So like that's the only way out. So if the fire is all the way up here, even if it's 45 minutes away, you got to get out anyway. But yeah, it's, it's tough to go through that stuff. I'm glad you guys are safe."

"Yeah. Yeah. So far."

"Um, all right. Do we want to talk about AI, or do we have any other questions for Jeremy or Kieran that we want to do or..."

"A little bit?"

"I mean, Kieran, I, I would love to talk to you outside of this podcast."

"Like, you could probably be there by the time the show is over."

"Kieran, you're in your van. I'm like, I'm probably gonna drive over there. Come see right now."

"Jump in the van."

"Yeah, let's, let's do it. Come to Hood River, Hole, have a beer, and go rafting."

"I like Portland. Portland used to be one of my favorite cities in the US. And I say used to be because I feel like it was just different like six or seven years ago, but it's still a really nice city."

"It's definitely still really awesome. But yeah, it had a little..."

"Yeah, the breweries and the food were my top two things in Portland. And that the little bookstore, like the giant bookstore..."

"Pow. So..."

"Bend. Bend is my favorite. I love Bend."

"Which one?"

"Also very cool."

"Bend, Oregon. Unreal. Yeah, I've been up along the coast there and, um, I'm trying to remember. Well, we're at the border there with California, right? What's that big huge deep lake there? I can't remember the name of it off the top of my head."

"Crater Lake."

"Crater Lake. Yeah."

"Crater Lake."

"For the Shasta, too, is down there by the border."

"Yep. Yeah, there's a ton of beautiful places. I'd love to get there more, but like I also am super spoiled and 45 minutes from B. So..."

"There's a lot of competition for my attention up here."

"So, I'll try. You're..."

"You have plenty of nature on your side of the border."

"I want to come up there and see some stuff."

"Yeah, we've got like, we're, we're definitely spoiled up here. Um, so, all right, let's talk about AI for a second. Uh, last 13 minutes of the show. Uh, Jessica, there's a couple videos, um, that I have. We probably won't get to all of them. Uh, I want to start with, let's start with just the, let's start with the research one. Do the research one instead of the intro. Hopefully, it will be okay. This is ChatGPT agent. This is, uh, you have to share your screen and then, uh, they released this last Wednesday. OpenAI announced this. So like before we play this and you can hit share, but before we play this, I just want to set the preface by saying, like, for those of you who don't know what an agent is, uh, an agent is something that can basically take action on your computer, uh, and do something using a tool. So like send an email, or check your calendar, or book an appointment, or like search for something without you telling it every step of the way to do that certain thing, to follow up, to do more. And these have been out for the geeks, like me, who play with AI. These have been around for two years, probably. They've gotten significantly better. But this, as far as last week, was the first time that ChatGPT or another company really fully dumped this on probably tens of millions of people. I, I don't think it's available on their free subscription, but it's available, I think, on the $20 a month Pro Teams plans, and then it's available on like the one we, I pay for that's like $200 a month or whatever. Um, it's limited in use right now, but this is, this is where our future's going. So let me play this and then we'll talk about it a little bit. So we have been on this journey of like not just improving our models, but the tools the model can use. And it's kind of like a symbiosis of some kind. Like the better the tools are, the better the agent can use it. The better the agent is, the more powerful tool it can use, and it like goes on and on. I'm Dashish. I'm an engineer, and I work on the product team at OpenAI. People in their daily lives, at work or in like personal life, they use like a variety of tools, and we are just training the model to take advantage of all of these things. And you're just giving the agent as much power as possible. Today, I asked the agent to book me an itinerary to go to a tennis tournament in like Palm Springs next year. Find me an itinerary that works around these semifinals because that's going to be really exciting. And the agent is basically going to give me like a detailed itinerary of like how much it's going to cost, what activities we should be doing at every part of the day. And in order to give it additional spin, we also asked it to like look at my calendar and figure out like what flight times would work for me. My dream has come true. I just tell it what to do, and then I can walk away. First thing that the model has to do is like figure out like which tools does it need? It'll bring up the visual browser. I use connectors to connect my personal data. So I give agent access to my Gmail and my Google calendar so that it can access that data. Then the first thing that it needs to do is actually figure out what the tournament dates are, like when I'm available, how much would it cost, where am I going to eat, and when can I get the tickets? And it just like goes through this process for all three days of my itinerary. When the agent is ready, it'll send you a notification on your phone or on your laptop, and you can check what the agent has done, review it. It did, it did pretty well. It figured out essentially that, uh, the tournament is basically happening from like March 12th to March 15th. Then it figured out that my meetings on March 12th end at like 4:30, and it takes about, uh, an hour to go from here to SFO because of the traffic. So it figured out like what time of flights actually work for me. And then it figured out basically like which hotel I'm going to stay at, when I'm attending the matches, and where should I be eating. Everybody has like some, some sort of like uninteresting part of the job, like researching, looking here, doing this. You just want to get to the thing, and agent lets me do that.

"Okay, subject."

"So like, I think it's important for us to say like, is, is, and maybe this looks cool to you, maybe this is scary to you, depending on who you are and who whether you're watching or on our panel of guests here. Uh, like this is just the beginning. This is the baby step, right? Like, right now, what you're seeing is it, like, you can connect your Google calendar, you can connect your Gmail. There's a bunch of other connectors in there, like HubSpot and things like that. Uh, and it will use those and take action on your behalf to like, you said, close the laptop, go away, come back, all the things are done for you. Uh, and yes, you could lightly research prices before. You could lightly have it go and think of itineraries, but you couldn't have it compare that to your calendar. You couldn't have it go through prices in real time. Uh, and the next easy step of that logically is to completely book the whole thing for you. Right. And the only, the only thing that's stopping that in this OpenAI case is that it's doing everything in the cloud. And so then you have to deal with security of your credit cards and all those kinds of things. But where that's going to change is what I'm going to show you right now. Uh, Jessica, go to Perplexity's comment and play that real quick, and then we'll talk about it. Yep. And so Google's coming out with tools like this. Uh, and then OpenAI is rumored to come out with a tool like this. And this is available now to, well, we'll talk about who it's available to in a second, but Pull up the clip of Jensen demoing Perplexity Labs. I've pulled up a YouTube video showing Jensen demoing Perplexity Labs at GTC Paris. It should be at that moment..."

"to formulate what is now a Gen AI. Let's take a look at one example. Let me show you something. It's built on Perplexity. Okay, we're good, Jessica. So, like, this is, um, again, this is early too. There's Perplexity. Perplexity, for those of you who don't know, is an AI search engine that's been around for a couple years. Uh, they're, they're not a challenge to, I mean, they are in some ways, right? But they've only got a couple million, I don't know what, a couple hundred million searches a day or something like that versus 96 billion some for Google. Uh, so they're not really competition, but they are eating away at some of the market share. And they just released this browser. It's a competitor to Google Chrome. You can't go download it today unless you're part of their really super expensive AI subscription for like $200 a month, which I will probably join after this, just for a month to test this out and then cancel it. Uh, 'cause I have other, spend too much on AI is what I do. But so we'll probably try to demo that, uh, either later on Outwired or in a future show. But the difference between that is that it runs on your computer locally. And so you're, you're seeing the early stages of this stuff where you have to type everything in. Everything is eventually going to be voice, or it's going to intuit what you need. It's going to ask you what time of year you want to go camping. It's going to prompt you to say, in February, like, what time, or it's time to book your annual camping trip. Where do you think you want to go? Here's some suggestions I have for you based on what you like before, or what Google reviews you left. Jeremy was talking about, right? I know what you like and don't like because I have access to all this stuff. Uh, this is moving along at a speed and pace that, like, I have a hard time keeping up with, and it's going to be really interesting to start to think how this is going to impact the broader campground industry as a whole. Because while we could take this in multiple different paths, the clear thing that you're looking at right now is a non-human entity browsing your website and making decisions based on your website and its content with a human being never setting eyes on it. And then that human being is getting a summary of what that agent read, and that agent consumed, and that agent understood. And then the human being is deciding based on that agent summary, and not your website copy, and not your agonizing, carefully crafted CTA button that you spent two weeks going back and forth with the marketing department about, right? Uh, and all this is changing, and all of it's flattening. Uh, and I think it's just really interesting. So, does anybody have any thoughts on that?"

"Well, uh, my, my original, or my initial thought, or original thought is that I see the internet and like, kind of like the way we communicate is actually we communicate with agents. We keep UIs available for when the human does want to actually look and explore the website, but it's going to be robust APIs that are going to be running the, like, all industry, right? And how do we document that API and make sure that these agents and these these AIs understand and they can use our APIs to make purchasing events happen and schedule reservations. And that's kind of where I see this next frontier of the internet, like the, the online experience, whatever you want to call it. There's not, like, we don't, it's like the SEO thing we talked about a month ago. Like, we don't really need a name for it. It just is. You just do it."

"Like it's, you do good SEO like Jeremy was talking about, or you do good marketing, right? Uh, it's just something that you do. But yeah, like, I think, I think it's amusing. It's amusing to me sometimes, and this goes to all technology and all facets of things, but specifically with AI right now is what we're talking about. Uh, it's interesting to me how, like, it's only been really like a good solid 20, 30 years since we've probably closer to 30, I guess we're in 2025. It keeps getting closer. A year passes every year. So good solid 30 years since we've really been using the internet to its capabilities, right? To browse websites, to do e-commerce, to learn things, to do social media, to do whatever. Uh, and like, people don't realize that websites kind of suck. Like, they do. Like, the reason that you agonize so much over the design of your website and the navigation and have it always be at the top, and you can't hide it under a hamburger menu on desktop, and you can't put your logo here because that might look bad, or it might confuse it. It's all about not confusing the customer. They're used to seeing the menu up there, so you have to do it that way. They're used to seeing a header image and being, having their attention grabbed. So you got to do it that way. And so, all of this stuff has been designed, or like, and I, I hate to use the word dumb down, but it has been dumbed down for the general consumer. Not that they need it dumbed down, but that every website is different. Every, like, you have to make sure the CTAs are in the right place, that their eyes are going to the right place. And all that's about to change. Eventually, it will go to APIs, Curtis, but all that's going to be changed, and human beings are going to be better for it. We're going to find more information. We're going to discover more things. We're going to have easier booking experiences. And it's just going to be the way the internet works. And everybody thinks it's impossible because that's all they've ever known. But they forget that like 25 years ago, Jeff Bezos was in a garage packing books. This stuff moves fast."

"Well, well, sorry. I was going to say that, you know, I use AI in a different capacity where it's not for my campgrounds at this moment, but I use it more for my investor side. So, I'm actually a partner in a prop AI, uh, business that, um, we can actually use it and it will cold call and make warm leads for, uh, people to sell us properties. And what it does is it actually talks to you. We call her Jen, but you would think that it's me on the phone."

"And it answers in real time. And it's literally an AI that's almost created to be with it has the investor information, but it calls you, has a whole conversation with you, and it can make like 3,000 calls in a second. And so it's just, it's the way that things are moving. And so when I'm using it on that side of my life, um, we also, I've been demoing this, this one AI system called Manis that does what that was just talking about, where you put in the information and say, 'I want to go on a trip to London, stay in the Ritz Carlton. I need extra pillows on the bed. I need a chauffeur car at the hotel. I need the guy's name to be Greg.' Like, you can tell it whatever you want, and it will book the entire thing for you."

"Yeah. Let's be clear. Manis is the Chinese company. I've had a subscription to that for a long time. Um, Manis is far more advanced than OpenAI's agent is right now."

"Yeah. So, it's just, it's been a, definitely it's, it's been an experience to kind of, um, understand how that all works and to see where everything is moving to because that's what we're doing. And I can see like when we're on Facebook and I see the people in the, you know, mom and pop campground owners, they're like, 'Well, I know it was an AI that called me and I just hung up the phone.' And it's like, 'Well, this is where we're moving.' And you kind of have to start, I'm not saying that you have to like jump on board right away, but you're going to have to start embracing these things just as we did the internet way back when, and we don't take the phone calls as much anymore, or, you know, like, it's, it's bridging that."

"Yeah. Before you go, let me just say like, it's been an hour. So I just want to let, like, say if anybody has a hard stop and they need to go, please just like, we appreciate you having here. Please feel free to drop off. You don't have to hang out with us, but we're just going to keep going until the conversation kind of wraps."

"I have a couple minutes left."

"I have a couple minutes, too. But Michelle, I wanted to say like, you know, the flip side of the outbound call side is actually the inbound call side, right? So, like, everybody that is or like that is getting those calls, they're going to be all screened by an agent."

"I love that idea."

"We get a lot of..."

"You know, right?"

"And it's such a waste of time. So I always, I always kind of go back and I think about like, okay, what do I want is like, what would make my life easier? And so I was down at, you know, we all run very large businesses, right? And so on the Fourth of July, that's our Super Bowl, but that's also when our families want to take a vacation as well. And so here we are trying to go on a family trip, you know, enjoy family time, and we're taking business calls the whole time. We've got problems, we're dealing with things, we got to make changes on our website, and the whole time I was sitting there thinking, an AI that can field some of these calls, that has a lot of these policy manuals, has these procedures, right? It's going to take over those responsibilities immediately. And I was, I just sat there..."

"I, you know, I was drinking a water and I was thinking..."

"It's easy to do. Like, it's easy to, like, I cloned my voice through a company called 11 Labs, and I was, I was messing with my buddy the other day. He's like a deep philosophical Catholic Christian guy. Like, it goes back into the deep history of the religion or whatever else. And I don't, like, like, I'm not religious, but I don't like really talking to him about that stuff. One, 'cause I feel stupid, but two, because it just kind of bores me. And so I built like a clone of myself and deployed it, and I was like, 'Just call this number and you can talk to him.' And he was like, 'Really into the whole, like, history of Catholic Catholicism.' And I gave him a role and whatever he was talking to for like an hour. It was in my voice, though. But, but like, Michelle, to your point, like, they are going to have to adopt it. It is here. Google just announced a feature, I think last week or the week before, where they're going to start putting a button in search results where you can call to check prices. And it's not for travel or hospitality yet, like, I think it's for a couple verticals, like plumbing and I don't know, locksmith, and a few other places, right? But this is going to quickly expand to where you can just click a button, the AI will then start a call using Gemini, it will call and talk to the business and report back to you. And if you don't think this is going to increase your phone calls at your property, you better believe it is."

"And they're going to be just like Kieran said, they're going to be closer to the top of the funnel, they're not going to be closer to the conversion. So you're going to have to then decide, Curtis, I know you run a call center, right? Like, you're going to have to decide, do I want more bodies in that call center for lower conversions, or do I want to put agents there..."

"Or do I want to expose an API to the Google? Yeah, there yet, like..."

"For sure."

"And, uh, like, right, what the hotels are doing, and I think like that, exposing those APIs in our sector will get that. Um, and that's, that's, that's, I totally agree with you though, Brian. Like, like, there's going to be millions of more phone calls that are happening. But like, have you guys seen like the way AI talk to each other? Talk to each other. It's pretty a whole different..."

"Yeah. Like they're just..."

"It's an experience. If you haven't seen it on this, if you're listening to this podcast..."

"Well, it's actually like Brian with the gurgle."

"Yeah."

"That was my AI. I was just transitioning because I was late for the show."

"So, I mean, I think it's an interesting thing though. I mean, we're kind of in this, this weird pocket where it's like we've got to, um, adapt to that, but we've also got to be able to manage the ones who aren't used to that. And so we've kind of go back and forth between both of them. So we've got to have the people who are still in the office that are going to answer the phone, and then we've got to be able to handle this AI stuff. But I think that AI, I mean, Brian and I were actually just talking about this with one of my operations directors a couple of days ago, um, when we did a call about this, is having the ability to have the stuff taken off of your plate in your campgrounds to be able to free up your people to do things that are more customer service-oriented. It's a wonderful place to be because we're never going to have campgrounds that are fully..."

"AI or robotic or whatever. And we may, I mean, but I just don't think we're going to take that human element out of it too much because that's what the joy of campgrounds is, right? Is the human experience. And, um, but to take all of that stuff off of the plate of our people who are at the front desk or on the grounds and be able to like make that easier on them so that they can go create, curate those experiences for those people is going to be so amazing for them."

"It'll experience time."

"The human experience is interesting to me. We're going to talk about that in Outwired when we do the 2025 to 20775 thing, 'cause part of the research I did in the prompts with the agents that I had go out and look at this stuff for me is like, I like the human experience is important to camping, right? And so..."

"I think so."

"I, I agree with you, right? But what does that human experience mean? Is an interesting question because like the human experience is, I would say arguably more important from the guest perspective than it is from a staff perspective. So, if a guest can still have a human experience, whatever that is defined as, whether it includes a human or doesn't include a human, who knows, right? None of us can predict more than two, three years out right now. Uh, then that's interesting. Like, I, I don't know what that looks like or what that..."

"Brian, when you said project two to three months out. The last podcast I was on was four weeks ago..."

"And we talked about, we want to talk about operator, and it is obsolete four weeks later."

"It's moving way faster than like we give it credit."

"Yeah. No, I mean, I think that it just depends on again, like the campground. Like we have a family campground in Virginia that is completely family-based, and we get probably anywhere from 1,000 to 500 people in there during a busy weekend, which is pretty much almost every weekend, it seems like. But, um, with that, like we have all these different experiences that are constantly happening. And when I've talked to the guests, like one of their favorite things is our managers just coming around when they've checked in and just saying, 'Hey, are you guys good? Do you guys need anything? You know, I'm the manager here. Let us know. You know, you can call us, whatever.' And that's like that human experience. You can't take away, you know."

"So, I'm just going to play devil's advocate. I'm going to play devil's advocate. I'm not going to say I don't believe this. What's going to come out of my mouth, right? Okay."

"But imagine then a, a cute little robot that goes around to every site and asks, 'Is there anything I can do for you?' And they're like, 'Yeah, I'd love an ice cream cone.' Okay. And it opens up its head and makes an ice cream cone."

"That's better than a human. I don't think that that experience, I think that'll experience will happen. I don't think it'll fly in every campground. Does that make sense?"

"No. Oh, no. No, no, no. And again, I'm not saying I believe that. I think it, but I do think that there are going to be places where people go for just that experience."

"Yeah. Like the Tesla Dino that just opened up."

"Yes."

"Yeah. Yeah."

"For sure. Yeah. And again, I'm just playing devil's advocate. I agree with you. I think there has to be some kind of human experience from our side, from the owner's side, that's still involved. Uh, and that's probably the one thing that I think would probably survive longer than anything else is the person walking around and just being sociable."

"Yeah. But I also think that everything goes in phases, like, like everything throughout life, like as you're going through, you realize that, okay, you know, this is really cool and it's innovative and everybody's on board with it, and then like a couple years later, everybody's like, 'Well, don't you just miss it when somebody would come up and just have a conversation with you?' Like, it's just these different things, right?"

"Sure. You go through life and you're like, 'Oh, it's so cool that we can do these things.' Like big rigs. So, you started off with these tiny little, you know, tiny little camper vans, and they start getting bigger as they go. And now all of a sudden, I'm starting to see people go back down."

"And it's like, it's just the rotation of life. We just constantly like expand. We jump on board with the new thing, and then that becomes normal, and then we're like, 'Wouldn't it be nostalgic to go back to this?'"

"So..."

"Yeah. I mean, it's going to be interesting to see how the future plays out for sure. Like, I, like, I usually pride myself on like seeing early trends and figuring out where things are going and what's the next up and coming social network and what's the next next technology. I can't see more than two years in advance. I don't have any clue what's going to happen. Like, uh, we didn't get to it today, but I have it, I had it pulled up on my screen, but like Donald Trump has this AI action plan that he was talking about today. He's going to talk about it on the All-In podcast, I guess, live later, uh, tonight. So, he's got like an action plan where he's going to try to, apparently, like, the whole big headline was lower regulations on AI companies, which is, I like, I think good and maybe bad, but, uh, it is what it is, right? Like, we're not going to stop the race with China. That's a whole another discussion we can get into at another date in time, but..."

"I think it depends on which side of the AI you're on."

"Yeah, I, I totally agree with that statement right there. Like, uh, you know, we, I don't think anyone here wears tin foil hats and is thinking Skynet, but at the same time, we should put in strong regulation against Skynet."

"Well, we should, but that's the, and again, like, I don't want to go down a rabbit hole. I know we're already over a few minutes, right? But that's, that's the problem is, is that existential race between the US and China. If we decide to regulate it, China doesn't regulate it. Like, you're going to get to the point where you get to, and this sounds crazy, I've said it before, I think publicly, and people look at me like I do have a tin foil hat. You're going to get to the point where China develops a super intelligence first, or we develop a super intelligence first, and then the US is like, 'Do I really want China to be able to get a super intelligence, too? I'll just turn off their power.' And that's literally what's going to be, right? That's what's going to happen. That's what's in danger of happening. Or the general on the Chinese side will give the missiles control to the AI, right? Which is your Skynet scenario. And then like, then the US is like, 'Well, we're a little bit smarter. We don't want to give control of our missiles,' but you're not going to be able to defend against an AI that controls the missiles, so then you're going to have to do it, too. And then..."

"Right."

"Yeah. No, I'm, I always have that like whole situation play. Oh, I come from a military family, so..."

"Yeah. You don't have to worry about Skynet. Like, it's the same thing as us and ants, right? Like, we don't, like ants in our house, but we don't get so angry at ants that we go and try to kill every ant in the entire world. We're going to be like, and this is tinfoil hat again, right? You wait and see how well this ages. We're going to be insignificant to AI. It will not matter. The pollution that we try to put in the oceans, it will just clean up in 10 seconds with technology that it's invented."

"Yeah. Yeah."

"I mean, and that's, you know, that is it's the truth. It's where we're going. And it's just, we keep moving faster and f, and as as it's developing, it starts to move even faster because then it starts just helping the development, and we're just consistently going. And so..."

"That's what Zuckerberg. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. We were just lagging. Go ahead. Please finish."

"Oh, I was going to say, so we're either the leaders in it, or we're falling behind. And you never want to be the ones who are falling behind because then you can't control it."

"Yeah. All you have to do is look at this. Look at Zuckerberg giving hundred million dollar paychecks to people to steal them from Gemini and OpenAI. Uh, you know, buying Scale AI, or well, buying a stake in it, whatever. Really bought it for like $16 billion, I think, or something like that. All these companies are signing contracts for powers and data centers in the tens and the hundreds of billions of dollars. Google and Meta, and I don't know what Apple's doing. God rest if you're invested in their stock, you should sell it now. Uh, but, but like, like all the, like, if you, all you have to do is look at the numbers that are being spent."

"This is not a guess."

"These companies know exactly what they're doing. They're wagering the entire future of their companies on this technology, and it's moving very fast, and they're, like, they're beholden to quarterly reports, and they're doing this."

"Yeah. So..."

"Well, I mean, that's the thing is that it's just, you know, like I just went through this whole thing where I was talking to, you know, ChatGPT, and I was like, because at the end of the day, like, you know, Google and all those things, it's great, but you're going to have to be able to pop up in your chat like, 'What's the best campground in this area?' It needs to pop up in chat. Like, we've got to start focusing on like getting those, and you're either ahead of the game or you're behind it. And so, like, I'm starting to like figure out like, okay, well, how do I pop up in chat? How do I get recognized as this in chat? How does..."

"I have an answer for you. You can just call me, Michelle."

"I know, we had that conversation. So, now we're like working on the backend stuff, going, okay, what do we need to put where? So, I mean, but that's, that's the thing is that's what you have to do. And now that we're moving into this new age, you know, a lot of people are behind the ball already on it. I mean, I'm behind the ball."

"I'm behind the ball on it. Like, it's, that's literally how fast it's moving."

"Yeah."

"Like, everybody looks at me like I'm 10 years ahead of them. Like, I probably am, but I'm still like 20 years behind where I need to be."

"Well, you're 10 years ahead of me, but so that leaves me like 50 years behind everybody else or where I need to be. So, um, but it's, it's a learning process, and, you know, at least we're starting to jump on board. I mean,..."

"You know, we're, that's where I find it so hard with like some of the mom and pops who are like, you know, 'Well, we're not booking.' And I'm like, 'It's because you're not doing the right things, and you're not putting the right websites in place, and you're not making sure that you're showing up in these chat situations, and you're not putting yourself out there, and you're not, I mean, as crazy as it sounds, on social media.'"

"Yeah."

"Yeah. The one of the things that I find so hard about like the advancement, like how fast things are moving is like, so again, Brian, like we talked, uh, four weeks ago about operator. Well, three months ago, we started building our our new website, right? Where it's going to be more, it's, it's focused on AI and ranking and AI and like how do we structure our data sets and give it the social proof, and how do I, how do I position myself to show up in every chat, every time somebody is looking for like one of the best campgrounds in our areas. And operator is obsolete four weeks later. And so we were building towards that, like, and we're like, okay, so now we're building towards, you know, and a lot of what we did, right, the foundation still sounds good, but it's, that's obsolete. And so that's like, it's hard to stay up on it. So Brian..."

"Well, that's what I mean. That was the struggle with us, right? Like, for our marketing clients, like we spent, I, I spent a year and a half coming together with a plan. And and I had to wait to see what Google did at their IO in May. But we had to come up with a plan that was balancing, like somebody talked about the human side of this thing, right? Like the humans are still browsing the websites right now. They are."

"Uh, and so you still need to balance the look and the feel for them and optimize the conversion path to them so that they're making a booking, but also you need to do the thing for robots. And so like, it took us a long time, but we came up with like, we have master SEO plans we're giving our clients now that say, like, here's what you need to build. Here's what we're going to build. Here's the pages. Here's the content. Here's the text. We know exactly what it is. Like, this is it. Like, just approve it, and we're going to give it to our devs, and we're going to go to town. But that took a long time to come up with, and there was a lot of trade-offs that I wanted to do from an AI side that I can't do yet, just to make that, to create that perfect balance where we are now. But yeah, like, I'm confident that'll hold up for probably six or 12 months max, and then like, it'll still be a good foundation. Like, it'll be a foundation at that point, right? Like you're talking about Curtis."

"Yeah. I, I don't know if you're a firm believer in 2027, but that's what the math says is. So sometime in August 2027, that's when AI crosses over and it's now smarter than, smarter than us."

"I mean, it's already smarter than me. So..."

"I was going to say, I feel like it's smarter than me. Oh, I know. Every time I plug things in..."

"Sorry, let me rephrase that."

"How do I do this? And it's like, pops up with this formula, and I'm like, cool. Okay, we're good."

"It's smarter than the smartest human in every, all combined, right? Is what you're talking about. That's like the..."

"Yeah."

"All combined. Uh, and so that's, it's really interesting to me. And so that's supposed to happen mathematically sometime August."

"I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if it happens before then. Like, whether we know about it before then, we might not. Um, but it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's coming really, really fast. And and I don't know what this world's going to look like, but I know that you better pay attention to it. It's not optional anymore."

"Well, and I think, you know, that that plays into all kinds of things. It's just, you know, like where are jobs going to be? Where are people going to be working? Like, how is this all going to come together? It's just, it's, there's so many up in the air questions, like just from a broad perspective, not just from a campground perspective, but it's..."

"Oh, yeah. I mean, it's everything. Nobody understands, like, nobody knows. Like, I, I think 95% of jobs are going away."

"I think so too."

"There's my tin foil hat, right? But nobody wants to talk about this."

"Nobody in government is talking about this. Nobody's talking about this on, like, there are people in my circles in the AI world who are talking about this, but nobody wants to say it publicly because it scares people and it gets people nervous."

"Like, we have to talk about this, or otherwise it's going to be even worse."

"Everybody's just going to go on vacation, Brian. They're all going to..."

"Eventually they will. But that's a good thing, right? But we have to get over this. Like, it's going to be five to 10 years."

"Yeah."

"Like, it's going to be five to 10 years of really painful, like, the wealth gap is going to grow even bigger."

"Is what I'm, 100% agree with that. It's just, it's going to get wider, and it's just, it's definitely something that as I'm watching everything, like, even the other day, I saw a, a robot that does massages, and apparently it does it."

better than humans. Like you can program it completely to do everything and it's all run off of like, I don't know, but it's just it was amazing and I was like, well, there you go. There's another job that's gonna go. Like, it's just it's crazy how much all of this is changing and how fast.

Yeah. I mean, you're not even talking about humanoid robots, which we talked about on this show and Outwired before that are coming probably in less than two years. You wait till you see what the prediction we have on Outwired is if you guys have a chance to watch it. But like the humanoid robots in less than three years, you'll be able to, the only bottleneck will be manufacturing.

Mhm.

You'll be able to buy one for less than like, I don't know, 75 cents an hour to work around your campground and do everything you want.

Yeah.

Like, and it'll be like, be able to mow the lawn. It'll be able to clean up the miniature golf course. It'll be able to clean the swimming pool. It'll be able to do everything.

Yeah. And when they start looking more like humans, it makes it even more of a human experience. I mean, you guys see all those crazy movies? Haven't you guys seen those movies where they like have the AIs or the robots that look just like humans?

Well, that's what I mean. That's what I mean when you talk about the human experience, right? Like, and and like I, I won't take credit for this. I first heard Gary Vaynerchuk utter it, but like I fully believe it. Like, anybody who's alive right now who's under like, let's say 40, their grandchildren will have people who are married to humanoid robots. They will.

How weird.

I know, but it will happen.

Yeah, it, I mean, I, and I can see that happening. It's just it's it's such a weird, like, when do we start completely like moving away from just having, I mean, when you're just at a point of, is that person a human or is that a robot?

That's the whole argument, right? So, it's really interesting. You should go look it up. It's, it's by, there's a, there's a woman you probably know her. I want to say her name is Corey or Cody. Uh, she's a real estate lady on YouTube.

Cody Sanchez.

Yeah. Cody Sanchez. So she sat down with Gary Vaynerchuk and they talked about this stuff and they were talking about like, what, where's the line of cross, right? And I'm not saying I believe this. I'm just telling you what the conversation was. Like, I, I do believe the grandkid thing, but I'm not saying I believe all the other stuff, but they were talking about where's that line where you become not a human versus a robot because like, there's already all the boob jobs and the lip jobs and the, right, the Botox and like all the things you're putting in your body already. So, what's the point where you are you already not human? Where's the line?

Well, it's like that Stepford Wives movie from like, you know, what was it, the 90s or the early 2000s or something where like Nicole Kidman was in it and they had a little button and you could literally change her physically however you wanted her.

Yeah. I mean, that's

She'd go make you a sandwich or she'd like, you know, go to the grocery store and buy you potato chips or

I think that makes society worse when that happens for the reasons that we stop respecting certain categories of people, right? Uh, so I don't know that I want that, but it's absolutely going to happen.

Yeah. It's just it's a scary thought to like get into all of the tin hat situations that you just this whole thing can spiral down into. But I do think, you know, going back to all of it, it's just it's crazy how fast everything is evolving and how much we have to adapt and just the resistance against it from so many people and I just don't think they realize how much that's going to hurt their own businesses by resisting so much.

Yeah. Imagine not answering the call from Google.

Yeah. Did you guys, I mean, did you guys watch the uh, so Tesla released their autonomous cab? Oh, the robot

and Optimus. Optimus, which is a robot forum, was the catering company and the bartenders for the release.

Yes, except they were human controlled during the, yeah, year ago. You're talking about when you announced it. That was almost a year ago.

No, no, no. This this happened like three.

Oh, maybe I missed it then. I don't know. I remember like when he first announced the robo taxi, they had robots that were catering.

No, no, no. They were releasing taxi in response to

I don't know about that then. Uh, and so I'm like, those robots, but the robots kind of stole a show on that release. And so like that

$15,000 humanoid robot you can buy from China right now. And there's videos on YouTube of people having them wash their car.

Like it, it's here, guys. Like I, I'm not, I'm sorry that I'm the baby bad or good news to the people who are watching, but this is not coming. This is here.

Yeah. And all I want to know is how I can get one to a lot of people, right?

Against somebody giving me a chef that's programmed with all of like, you know, the Michelin rated recipes in it that I could just walk home and say, "Hey, I want this." And it whips it up. I totally

Well, that's the thing. If you talk about the 40-year-olds or anybody who's under 20 who has anybody who has a kid who is in elementary school still, they will never know a world ever where they grow up and aren't able to have Michelin recipes on demand, a robot chef in their kitchen, AI with them everywhere they go. I've had these conversations to the to the terrible like detriment of my girlfriend who probably wants me to shut up, uh, a lot of the times, but like

Brian's like in his element right now.

Yeah. Oh, my wife has told me that we can't talk about AI at the house. So, like you're gonna see survival of restaurants like for sure because there's the same human element. People are going to want to go out and socialize. But I think there's a whole lot less physical restaurants, but does that mean then that you can license a recipe from the great steak shop in Portland that you want to just download to your robot and have for one meal and pay them a fee? I bet there is. There's a business there. I mean, but think about the amazingness that you of that of how that would work out though is you can go to your little, you know, hometown restaurant and have an experience from a French chef in France for this one recipe that he has specialized and everybody knows about around the world.

That would be amazing.

And

and they would still get paid on it.

And then you, yes. And you would probably that it would be more of a social experiment as well, like where because like the reason you go to the restaurant now is to see other humans, right? Like that's the reason why you're going camping is you're going camping to have a unique human experience.

Well, in that robot place to have human interaction and all of that.

Well, what happens when the robots want to go camping though? Are you are you going to ban them? Like not you guys, but are you going to ban them like car camping? I don't want robots. We only take humans. What if they've got a credit card and they're in society and they want to pay you money?

I don't know. There's a lot of

That's an interesting question, Brian. Oh, you're putting me on the spot. I haven't even thought about that. Uh

anyway, we should probably go. Like, it's it's like one

Yeah. All right. I actually have a hard stop here in like 20 minutes ago, man. Nobody believes you anymore.

I bumped it. They said they were okay. I was really enjoying the AI conversation.

All right. Well, any final thoughts, uh, Michelle or Curtis?

No, I mean, this was all great. Like, we're going to have to continue this conversation on the next one.

I know. It'll probably obsolete by the time we get to the next one. Michelle, I'm I'm only

No, I mean, honestly, that's probably true because by that time we're going to be talking about, hey, did you guys see this new robot in a campground?

Well, GPT5 might be out by that time. So, supposed to come out in the next few weeks is a rumor. So, we'll see.

All right.

And they already have a model that beat the math Olympiad. Google and chat GPT do that's not that's they're not gonna release supposedly for a couple months. So anyway, all right. Uh, tell us where we can learn more about Bison Peak Ventures.

Um, well, you can actually follow me on Instagram at Michelle Bison do, uh, which I always talk about how we're, you know, innovating and changing our campgrounds and tips on how to buy campgrounds with no money down. Um, and then, um, you can also do it at, uh, rvresortinvestment.com.

Awesome. And Kurt Chris our journey. You can find ourjourney at rjourney.com as well as our management division, uh, which is advancedoutdoormanagement.com.

Uh, feel free to reach out to us. We also have our socials as well, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

Well, thank you guys so much for joining us for another episode of MC Fireside Chats. If you're not sick of hearing from me, uh, I will be in 34 minutes hosting another two-hour show, uh, Outwired with Greg Emmer and Scott Bar. Uh, we're going to dive into the future of campgrounds and all that kind of stuff. If not, we'll see you next week on another episode of MC Fireside Chats. Take care, guys. We'll see you.

Bye, guys.

See you. MC Firefight.

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MC Fireside Chats - July 23rd, 2025

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