The Unique Hospitality Podcast
The rise of glamping and short-term rentals has created a golden opportunity, but there are a ton of hurdles to navigate. We grill elite operators in the space to arm you with all the knowledge you need ----- “I've been a loyal listener to your podcast, and it’s been a game-changer. The insights have been incredibly valuable" - Remo Kommnick, Owner of Doah House
The Unique Hospitality Podcast
Pt. 2 The Glamping Collective- A Mountaintop Retreat Near Asheville, NC with Matt Bare (Founder Story)
Matt Bare returns for part two, sharing the real-world challenges of hot tubs, designing a landscape pool, and surviving a hurricane. From health department battles to designing for both luxury and efficiency, this episode reveals what it takes to deliver five-star experiences where adventure and luxury collide.
Learn more on the Glamping Collective website or instagram.
Sponsor: Clockwork Architecture and Design Website the outdoor hospitality industry leader in site design, entitlements, permitting, and architecture.
Email Christian Arnold at christian@clockwork-ad.com to see if their services are right for your project.
For inquiries or feedback email Connor at schwab@sageoutdooradvisory.com
If you appreciate this free content, please consider leaving our podcast review!
Key Words: glamping, landscape hotel, landscape resort, real estate, investing, entrepreneurship, outdoor hospitality
Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Welcome back to another episode of the Unique Hospitality Podcast. I'm your host, Connor Schwab, and we're back with Matt Baer for part two of his episode. If you haven't already listened to part one, I was so enthralled with this story and we went down so many good rabbit holes that for the first time since I've been hosting, we had to split it up into two episodes. So welcome back, Matt. Yeah, we, man, I think where we, where we left off was we've just finished talking about hot which is something that I always am always interested in talking about one thing that came up you'd mentioned talking about just like the maintenance of hot tubs and it's one thing I'm always curious of like just how how those operations work like and you mentioned there's basically always someone full-time working on them is it is it because I don't know do hot tubs have to be drained like once a month or in between guests and or is it balancing the chemicals or, you know, use shock, like
UNKNOWN:.
SPEAKER_03:If someone wanted to add a hot tub to their property, what should they expect, basically?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I think the place to start is with the Department of Health. It's typically where that lives. They're going to have their own set of guidelines and rules. First understanding, well, I guess if you're operating at scale. If you're operating like an individual Airbnb, man, probably just go for it. It's kind of the Wild West for a lot of individual Airbnbs in a lot of markets. Not all markets, and it's certainly changing, but if you're operating a glamping property at scale or a unique hospitality property at scale. Multiple units is what I mean when I'm talking about at scale. You've got to be tied into the Department of Health and just understanding what their requirements are, what they want to see. And don't be afraid to push back because, as I mentioned in the last episode, they told us we had them all ordered, we had them all paid for, and they shut it down and said, no, you can't have private hot tubs on them. And we had to go through a process of making our own case of saying like, this is no different than if I had one Airbnb and I had a hot tub on one deck, I was like, we are going to meet all of your criteria, all your guidelines, all your things. Um, but these are private hot tubs on a personal deck. Like they don't like, there's no reason that's any different than you policing the 2000 Airbnbs in the area. Um, and them having a private hot tub, just cause we have 26 units on one site doesn't make us really any different. So, and it was a journey. Like it was a two to four week journey of back and forth and making our case and just asking them for like what precedent there is to tell us no. Like in a nice way, but also like just not stopping at no. So that's one thing, start with your department of health, make sure you know what you're getting into before you pull the trigger and buy 20 some hot tubs, like that's just good advice. Or just wing it like we did. and find your way out of the hole. But, and then, yeah, I mean, it's draining the hot tubs. I mean, you know, take this with a grain of salt because your local government agency is going to have their own requirements. But there's meeting their requirements and then there's being like guest ready. So we talked about having hot water fills. In my opinion, if you're a high volume property, meaning you're doing a lot of same day turns, that's an absolute must. But you have to train your team on that because typically hot water comes out of a hot water heater at 120 degrees you pump 120 degree hot water into a hot tub and call it a day. And one, you'll burn your guests if they show up. Two, you'll probably destroy your hot tub. I'm not a hot tub expert in that sense of the mechanics, but I know they're not really made to have 120 degree water in them. So we use a hot water, cold water mix, which helps the hot tub fill faster, but it also gets us to like a target temperature of like 98 degrees. And then the system, you know, the heater and the system will pick that up and get it to the hundred that we typically leave a hot tub. tub out after we service it. So that's a pro tip there, hot water fill. Put that on the outside of your unit. Have your plumber go ahead and I just, we mount a cold water hot tub, cold water, hot water side by side. We use spray paint to color code the nozzle so the staff knows what they're looking at. Because from the store, they come the same color, just spray paint one of them, take it off, spray paint it, and then you're good to go there. And then we typically tuck that away in a spot where the guest can't get access to it or doesn't necessarily readily see it. But also just thinking about where your hoses are going to be kept and some of those things, because you don't want to be dragging your hose through the dirt and then throwing it in your clean hot tub that you just, you know, refilled because now all of a sudden you've got grass and dirt and other stuff in your hot tub and you're cleaning it all over again. So it's just thinking through these kind of things when you're designing your property to say like, okay, really like, how's my guest going to use this? That's a whole design methodology. How's my maintenance team going to use this? this? That's a whole design methodology. How's my housekeeping staff going to interact with this? That's a whole design methodology. So a little off your original question, like how do you maintain a hot tub? But like you just got to think through all that stuff to really operate with maximum efficiency and maximum guest experience to be able to just hit it out of the park every time and reduce the number of hurdles that you're going to run into.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, super interesting. You said there's now does each hot tub unit have its own hot water storage that that has hot water ready to go for a refill or is it like a centralized area? Was I understanding you correctly in how that works?
SPEAKER_01:So it's off the hot water heater for each unit. So each of our units has their own hot water heater and we're pulling hot water off of that. So most of our units have instant hot water heaters. So endless hot water, tankless water heaters. So we're doing it through that. Not like a centralized storage. We've looked at that as well. Didn't seem to be cost effective at our site. If you were more dense, if you at higher density, it might make sense. But for us, it didn't make sense. So we just pull off the, we just ran essentially, we tapped into our hot water lines that come off our hot water heater and we ran an extra line to the outside of our accommodations. And then we did that.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's interesting what you said about like dragging the hose through the dirt and how those such small things can make such a big difference. I remember someone saying that their room turnover service, they said if it was raining, it took them... like 50% more time to do, to clean a room simply because of, uh, having to take shoes on and off and having to be so much more careful going from one unit to the other. Um, so just interesting things like that, that you don't expect.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. That one's probably true for us too. Being individual units that are spread out for privacy sake on a mountaintop, man, our, our housekeeping team works really, really hard to deliver that five-star clean that we expect and that our guests expect. And they do a phenomenal job, but, uh, Um, yeah, but those are tough ones on rainy days. Those are, those are tough for outdoor hospitality.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, for sure. I'm going to be doing an episode soon about, um, just like a SWAT analysis on, on the glamping or landscape hotel market. And that's probably one of the biggest like weaknesses or difficulties of our industry is, is the housekeeping, you know, for that reason. And as well as for, you know, staffing in remote areas and things like that. Oh, well, that's probably a good segue. How, how did you, um, how do you go about well maybe let's uh let's back up to maybe like your first year in operation so we kind of covered how you selected your units did you have did you have a target customer or like a target guest experience that you were going after um and what were those
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah well to wrap up on the hot tub the last thing i'll say is keep a log book keep a log book of all your readings when you finish the hot tub because it is easy to it's easy to be moving so fast you forget those things but that's your fallback if a guest ever says they have an issue with a hot tub, which at some point you will get a guest that says they have an issue with a hot tub, whether they created the issue or whatever, we'll leave that be. But somebody will have an issue and your log book is a great fallback to just say like, well, here's the condition that our staff logged when they filled and cleaned the hot tub before your check-in. So it's a good fallback. Doesn't mean that you won't ever have refund issues or anything like that, but that's one you just, it's a good, and a lot of a lot of local agencies will require that logbook too and they'll inspect that logbook. But if they don't, it's still a good deal, good idea business practice-wise to have it.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, who is your target customer and what was the, I guess from my business school, our professors would always ask us, why are customers, I guess in this case it would be, why are customers coming to your property?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the why are they coming to our property is getting to a place where you can rest, heal, and have adventure. So one of our our slogans are kind of our main thing is where luxury and adventure collide. And as we talked about our target market and I talked to a ton of friends and people that weren't friends, but just in the industry and really honing in, like I think, and then obviously glamping means a lot of things to a lot of people, but there was a lot of, oh, I don't, I would never do that because I don't want to have a shared restroom. And we got that feedback a lot as we were developing. And that was never even on our radar to like not have private bathrooms. but we knew right away with the experience we wanted to provide to our guests that we wanted to, you know, nail that and then be able to have private restrooms, have a kitchenette in the accommodation. We knew we wanted to be kind of remote, so that kitchenette felt important to us to be like, you know, we can prep simple meals here. One of the things that was in our dream book that we haven't got done was actually partnering with a celebrity chef to do like a glamping collective cookbook and having them come up and just do to a cookbook specifically designed around our cooking equipment because it is a kitchenette, but we have a full oven. It's just a miniature full oven. People think it's a toaster oven, but it's actually a full-blown like$350 oven in a small package. So we wanted to kind of do that. We haven't got that done. It's still on the list. We had somebody lined up to do it and they had a family emergency, had to bail at the last minute and we just never picked it back up again. But yeah, so that's a bit of a diatribe there, but really just thinking about Like we want to hit on luxury. Like we want people to be comfortable. We want people to feel safe. We want people to be able to get away from all of the noise and come and experience that. And if we're going to hit on all those things, right? Have 160 acres on the top of a mountain, have luxury, have all the things we're going to have. We knew we've got to hit a particular price point with our accommodations to make this work. And then making sure that we're designing everything else to be able to support that price point. You know, and that's part of that is is private restrooms and not just private restrooms but like beautiful natural slate tile showers um with the right color grout
SPEAKER_02:with the right with the right tiles
SPEAKER_01:yeah um you know so we just really wanted that experience like showers big enough for two people you know like that's um you know part of that vacation experience just to be able to like slow down have that time together um positioning things to maximize privacy and there's so many decisions that go that are informed by that, you know, as far as like how far apart we want the accommodations to be. Because so many glamping properties, and rightfully so, it would be so much easier, but they buy campgrounds and then they convert them into glamp grounds. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's a great business model. They're probably making more money than we are, but it just wasn't what we wanted. It wasn't the guest experience we wanted. It wasn't where I would want to go. And as we talked to people that we felt like were at our target market, it just wasn't It wasn't the experience that they would want to have. So we wanted to do that differently. And part of that also was most people buy in the valleys and they look at the mountains. We knew the only land we looked at were mountain top sites. We knew, and this might sound, I don't know, conceited, whatever. It's not that. It's just a different thing. But it's like we knew we wanted to be on the mountain top looking down at the valley, not in the valley looking up at the mountain tops. because literally we wanted to provide a mountaintop guest experience. And that's where everything started. And then we worked backwards from that. So, okay, now everything has to line up with this mountaintop guest experience.
SPEAKER_03:I often tell people like there's, you know, you either have to have excellent and unique units, you know, whether inside or outside, just like beautiful and aesthetic. You even need to have a phenomenal property in views. And then if you have both, then you're in really good shape. And then also like a minute are important, but it sounds like you have both. Is there any food and bev on the property, or is it all self-serve at this stage?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, at this stage, it is all self-serve. Some of my favorite times up there, we have actually invited in a local chef and done these mountaintop chef dinners that have just been mind-blowing. We had it on the docket for last October when Helene hit, so it got scrapped. We were going to do a bunch of them last October, so it didn't happen, but that's kind of on our list to bring back up. We do have steep mountain roads. So to get like a traditional food truck up there or whatever would be pretty challenging. And one of my other just kind of mindsets is like just trying to keep it simple, like keep operations simple. I'm just not that smart. So I'm very much like a keep it simple, stupid kind of guy and subscribe to that KISS mentality. And like the more complexity you have the harder it is to deliver on operational excellence. And sometimes I feel like businesses, and I think this happens a lot as we pursue getting better, which we talked about that on the last episode, like we want to get better all the time, but that doesn't mean we want to do more all the time, right? So we talked to the team, like we have to keep doing things that make us better, but we also have to eliminate things that don't make us better because otherwise you just end up doing a hundred things when you should really only be doing 40 because 60 of those things don't make you any better. They're just things that you tried and you kept doing them even though they didn't make you any better. So it's navigating through that. And for me, a restaurant is so complex. While I love food and would love to do it, it's tough. It's tough. And I know there's so much data on occupancy rates and rep bars and all that related to if you have a restaurant. So I haven't said I'm never doing one, but I've been about as close to saying I'm never doing one as I can be so it's tough it's tough we are looking at we're doing this absolutely incredible pool at our Chattanooga property that's going to be a mountain top cliff edge infinity pool with a 25 foot waterfall that falls into it it's like all the things it's like a pool on crack like it's just all the things and we are looking at doing a pool side bar for that which would also serve for our corporate retreats and weddings and things like that. But, but it was literally just on the call for this, this morning, like, is this a good idea or are we just adding unnecessary complexity that's not going to move the needle? So those are hard decisions to make. You know, we're, we're into it for a while and we're still making those decisions all the time. So.
SPEAKER_03:I love it. And it's a lot easier to run a pool with a cool waterfall than it is to run a restaurant.
SPEAKER_01:For sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was looking at a glamping I was mentioning I'm going to Zion in a week or two and I tried to book a stay at this glamping place I think they have like 10 units open sky yes open sky they have like it looked like they had like 10 units it looked incredible but they have a restaurant and I'm like and I get you can bring outside people into your restaurant it's not just guests so maybe that's it maybe like it's really just two businesses that happen to be on the same property and a lot of the revenue comes from outside guests maybe you know the answer but I was like how are how are they making this work with 10 units or whatever it is, 12, 15, it's not a ton.
SPEAKER_04:Connor, do you want to talk about glamping permits for a second?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's hugely important. The two biggest roadblocks to getting glamping projects built is the funding and the entitlements and the permitting. So it's a really big deal.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and it can be a very challenging and sometimes quite intimidating process, not just putting all the materials together, but presenting it to the county, often going through the public hearings process which can be really scary and sometimes quite nasty and that's why it does help to have people who are used to doing this on your side and that's why we're delighted to announce that today's sponsors are clockwork architecture and design they're an architecture firm based in kansas city they have a specialist outdoor hospitality division they've done tons of work in the glamping and rv resort space the experts at designing and permitting glamping resorts or whatever kind of outdoor hospitality project They'll come to your property, walk the land with you, work through a concept with you, design the whole layout of the site, and then gather all the materials for the county, deal with the county, deal with the public hearings if you'd like them to. And they're just all-round fantastic partners to have on your side. And Connor, I know you and Sage have had some pretty good experiences with Clockwork as well.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, we've been working with Clockwork literally the entire time that I've been at the company, so for four years. And so we've done dozens and dozens of projects with them and love the chance to get to work with them because they are the best and most experienced in the industry. They really know outdoor hospitality and they've designed some world-class sites. It's just, yeah, they're very talented. You'd be in good hands to work with them.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I can't vouch highly enough for Christian Arnold at Clockwork, the owner. He's a fantastic guy who cares about what he does, looks after his clients, very reliable communication-wise as well. And yeah, we super excited to partner with them on this so if you are looking for site designs entitlement help whatever it may be in that field then do contact Clockwork Architecture and Design and the way you can do that is by emailing christian at clockwork dash ad dot com all the details will be in the description as well so go check that out if you want so yeah thank you Clockwork we couldn't recommend them highly enough go check them out
SPEAKER_03:so you have got to go to OpenSky and actually I've been as we've been having this podcast and this conversation, you remind me so much of Big Null Dutson, the founder of that property. He's a good friend of the show. He's been on like three or four times. Super, very similar journey. Ran into tons of roadblocks. An amazing problem solver. Dedication to excellence and the customer experience. Unflinching in his dedication to the property layout and guest experience. The property is stunning. It's probably one of my favorite properties that I've ever been to. So, you should definitely go and I'd be happy to introduce you to Bignall. And I think you'd have a lot to talk about. Because you guys are definitely on parallel paths.
SPEAKER_01:Love the introduction. They were booked up when I tried to book them. So maybe I can stop in and say hi when I'm there. But we can't stay there. But yeah, I would love to swing in and say hi. Maybe we eat at the restaurant.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and so we have talked about his restaurant on the show. And his big thing is like the glamping golden hour. And he's basically like... We knew that guests are really paying for the two hours before sunset on our property. By the time they get in or their travel plans, and a lot of people are traveling in or they're going to see the national parks, they have busy schedules, but the real magic happens at those two hours. Once you're asleep, you're asleep, and once you're in the unit, that's cool, but what's really special is the glamping golden hour. We knew that if we didn't have a restaurant on property, then guests would have to leave at that special time to go get food or to go get drinks and we wanted to make sure they had the ability to stay on the property and And then yeah, he's like, you know, it's it's a challenge It's it's been a real big challenge for him and I think they started as it's basically like a food truck Essentially is like what the kitchen is but he got a really good chef that was excited about it and then they opened up to the public Do you know help help? make it more profitable and keep people going. And it's an awesome concept from a restaurant perspective. And I know that if I ever go to Zion, I would 100% eat there because half of what's so cool about Open Sky is just being able to get on the property. And I personally can't spend$700 a night to go sleep in one of the tents. But if I can go spend 80 bucks on a dinner and still get to enjoy the glamping golden hour, it's a pretty cool win for me. Yeah. Um... And on the food and Bev topic, I mean, it sounds like you're already aware of this. And you've done the two biggest things that I say like move the rates on needles is having a really nice private bathroom and then having hot tubs. And then the third one is a dining service, like a real dining service. And it was funny, I was just doing some consulting last week for some guys and looking at just the Colorado data specifically. And we know nationwide that properties with a dining service like a cocktail bar and hot dinners and things like that, they're almost getting twice as much as properties without that. It's
SPEAKER_01:all of them.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, at least the ADRs. At least the ADRs. And yeah, so the data is just so conclusive on that. And I'm in the exact same position as you where I would like to open my own glamping property someday and I have no intention of running a restaurant. It's just like that... I cook the same breakfast and pretty much the same dinner every night if it was left up to me. So I would totally step away from that. But one of the things I would be interested in doing is seeing if there's any restauranteurs in Asheville or in North Carolina and being like, hey, I've got this really special property. I know nothing about food, but I know hospitality. Would you ever be interested in partnering? We do a JV. You handle all F&B in this one building and the design of it and I'll do everything related to overnight lodging and everything else so
SPEAKER_01:yeah I think if we did it that would be the way I would do it and we've looked at that model a little bit my friend up in the Hocking Hills has a restaurant he owns it doesn't do that model does more of the traditional restaurant model but yeah I mean I think that would be the way to go you know you'd have to be very equally yoked because the concern would be just that commitment to quality and that commitment to excellence if you don't technically own it obviously I think we would own the space that they operated in so we ultimately controlled it but but yeah it's it seems like an operational risk but man I hadn't heard the data that I mean I would have guessed maybe$100 a night higher but that they're that they're doubling ADRs man that's
SPEAKER_03:that's strong yeah I can send you some of the some of the stats after like that takes into account everything across the nation it's very compelling and and oh what was I going to say and that doesn't even take into account you know if the restaurant is making money that's just the nightly rate
SPEAKER_01:yeah for sure you've inspired me now the chef that we work with maybe I'll just build like I can build a restaurant that's no problem it's can I operate one that's the problem maybe we love the chef we work with for our mountaintop dinners maybe we look at that maybe we talk to her and bring her in and say hey like you know we'll build you a restaurant you know can you operate it make it work
SPEAKER_03:and then what you guys are sitting, basically the way I look at it for a property is it's going to be, in my opinion, in all the analysis and data that I looked at, is it's really hard to break through the$400 or$500 a night price point without the fine dining. It's possible. There are properties that do it, but for the most part, folks that are north of$500 a night almost always will have some sort of dining service if it's a larger scale operation. The units themselves aren't absolutely insane. And so tell me a little bit more about how your first year of operations went. Or like launch, maybe launch first and then
SPEAKER_01:the first year of operations. Yeah, oh man. It was awesome. You mentioned our reviews, so our guests didn't know the chaos, but I felt like we were a duck that whole first year. We looked calm, cool, and collected on the surface, but we were just paddling like hell underneath, like, you know, coming at it. So we went straight from like zero marketing to 85% occupancy in our second month. So open Labor Day weekend, October hit 85% occupancy. So it was just like, there wasn't like this calm, peaceful ramp. It was just like, bam, here we are. And my manager was like, man, I had no idea we were going to ramp like this. And I was like, well, like kind of told you like that was the plan. Like we're pretty exceptional. And they were like, I know, but it just, so it was a lot. It was a lot to figure out. A lot of operations lessons a lot of challenges learned a ton but learn the importance of redundancy you know just redundant systems to back things up we ended up drilling a second well after our first year and they both feed into the same holding tank but so if one of them goes down for any reason we've got a second well to feed that because you know water is kind of a key ingredient to the whole hospitality experience so we had a lot of well issues just with you know pumps breaking or trip and breakers and just lots of things we broke a 40 year temperature record our first December 23rd so we were sold out for Christmas and we set a new record low like it was like actually negative 10 and the wind chill was like negative 40 on the mountain that was just you know sheer chaos you cannot freeze proof when it's that temperature so like don't even try but even normal temperatures a friend of mine I was a glamping business it has some domes has some other things too he came and did a site visit when we were pretty close to done and he was like Matt like none of this is freeze proof like none of your stuff's gonna like survive the first cold blast and I was like no like the plumber told me this they told me that like they tell me it's like you know we spray foamed everything we and they were like he's like nope he's like he's like my first winter we did we did it all and we ended up digging out all of our spray foam and heat taping everything. And man, it was like three or four iterations. And where did we end up? We dug out all of our spray foam and we heat taped everything. Like we did exactly what he said we were going to do. It just took us a while to get there. But like, you know, chasing freezing water lines, chase like, you know, just a lot of those things. Fortunately, our team is phenomenal and the service recovery from some of those issues was great. And I guess we're super understanding. So a lot of challenges but you navigate through it, you know, like it's, it was, it took a lot to get there. It takes a lot to construct a property out of nothing, let alone on the top of the mountain. And then everything that comes with that, you know, the wind chill factor and those crazy cold, like negative, whatever blasts of temperature, which we don't expect in Asheville. You might expect them. I actually listened to one of your podcasts. I think with the guy in Canada who has the glamping domes where it's like crazy cold. I listened to that. With the tank? Yeah. learn some things. Like, uh, so we went, we went through the ringer, but overall, like we were just blown away. Um, you know, when you're so close to something, you're like, you kind of won in the beginning. You think it's the coolest thing that's ever happened because it's yours. But then over a period of time, you get a little bit used to it and it doesn't, it's still special, but it's not like the same. And honestly, one of the ways I survived development was taking friends up there. And as an when before we were done, but casting vision for those friends and being like, and over there, it's going to be this. And the guest experience is going to be this. And we're going to have a hiking trail that goes there. And like, let me take you to the top of the mountain. And like those times where like everything is going wrong, nothing is working. No one is showing up to do the job they're hired to do. And we're over budget and it's COVID and it's snowing again. Um, it's just like those moments where I was able to bring friends on site, um, and be able to cast vision and which that's like where I I operate like that's my sweet spot, but I mean, everybody has their own, but like know your sweet spot, know how you're gonna get some life out of the project because in those dark, deep moments, whether they're operational moments or construction moments, you need to be able to like lift yourself out of it. And those were some of the ways that I did that leading up to our first year, but then in our first year being open, like just trying to navigate through some of that difficulty and adversity, because there's a lot of it.
SPEAKER_03:Did you have any like business partners or managers that you were able to lean on like really heavily or was it kind of like you just had to just grit your teeth you know like and you're just you know mainly the sole driver behind this whole operation
SPEAKER_01:yeah construction wise I was the sole driver like obviously we had a crew but I GC our project we did not have a GC so that was that was not intentional but that was nest like became a necessity and I would not advise that but but our managers our general managers that run the day-to-day operations for us are phenomenal they are one of them is incredibly strong on the guest services side their husband wife team one's really strong on guest services one's really strong in like operations mechanics those kind of things and they just do a phenomenal job of taking care of our guests right in the day-to-day operations and and i can't give them and our team enough credit because a day-to-day now that we're open like that really falls to them like i'm still involved and i'm still on property a good bit but i'm not on property every day and And, you know, we're off developing our second location. And so there's just there's just a lot of things happening. You talk a lot about like last time you said, like marketing is half the job and then operations is half the job. So they take the operations half. I lead the marketing half. And we work together as a great team and we just deliver on that guest experience. Like that's really what it's all about.
SPEAKER_03:As a marketing guy, what is what is your marketing team and and efforts look like? Is there anything that you've done that is just absolutely critical that you could never do without? And is there anything that you've tried or spent money on that you just didn't really get much returns on and you kind of cut it or defunded it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, always. You know, it's always a process of experimentation. There's a book, I think it's called Little Bets, but read it years ago. And I'm a huge believer in just that mentality of like, don't bet the farm, but always take little bets. Now, I bet the farm when I built the Glamping Collective. But from a marketing perspective, we're kind constantly taking little bets and looking for the next opportunity. And I think one of those lessons for me is just like, just because something doesn't work, doesn't mean it's not the right thing. You might've just done it wrong. But yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a lot of things we have leaned into. We were super fortunate out of the gate. We did not lean into influencer marketing, but because of the way our photos blew up on Instagram, we had a lot of influencers book and pay for stays and then just come stay and post about it and we got a ton of business from people you know not asking for a free stay as an influencer but coming paying to stay we didn't even know who they were until they started posting content we were like oh wow and I mean I think like our first weekend we had one that posted some incredible video content they didn't even know it was our first weekend they just stumbled across it had no idea it was our grand opening but we left little grand opening gifts for everyone in their accommodations just to try to buy some goodwill for the stuff that might go wrong grand opening weekend but and then we had another one I think like the next weekend come that just you know just really helped you know generate a lot of activity and interest but some influencer marketing is big and can be done on a shoestring budget you know certainly you know don't not saying just do everything in trade like some of them are worth paying for but there are a lot that are good but maybe don't have quite the following that will do it as a trade based opportunity and we've had really good success with that I think we probably have a bit more success maybe than some other properties we've talked to just because these people are approaching us as opposed to us approaching them a lot of times. So that's a big one. Back in my agency days we managed a ton of Google advertising, a ton of Google paid advertising. So that's a really big one. We generate a massive return on ad spend from our Google advertising budget. We are trying to do more paid social advertising. That's one of those that I've learned like you can do it and waste. And this is also true of Google ads. You can waste a lot of money really quickly if you don't really know what you're doing. Um, but, uh, but you can also do really, really well if you do know what you're doing. And that's been a learning journey that I'd say we're still very much on where I think we have Google ads pretty well licked. Um, like we have our, all of our settings or systems, we're generating a really strong ROAS. We're still on that learning journey from a meta advertising perspective.
UNKNOWN:Um,
SPEAKER_01:we are going into a learning journey from an OTA perspective. You know, I think a little differently about OTAs. Most people are like, oh, you want all direct bookings. And that's what I told people when I ran an agency. But the reality is like OTAs own some shoppers. And if you want to grow your occupancy, you have to play that game to a certain extent. So we started at 70% direct, 30% OTA our first three months. And now we're like 95% direct, maybe 98 I haven't even looked at it in the last few months but like it's massively direct and most people are like man that's awesome congrats and I'm like no like we're missing a group of people that we need to reach and that's an area that we've just got to lean into and I've got to understand better we've tried to hire some like Airbnb consultants to help us along the way of like man why are we not ranking better on Airbnb because we used to we used to get massive traffic from Airbnb but as our product prices have increased, we have seen a direct correlation to a decrease in Airbnb bookings. And I don't know if that's just, you know, they're not, they know there's not a lot of people out there that can pay whatever per night. So they don't serve us up as much as our prices have gone up. But, but yeah, we just don't, we just don't get much Airbnb business. So it's,
SPEAKER_03:did the Airbnb consultants you hire provide any insights on that? It's, it's not some I understand super well, like how the Airbnb algorithm works for rankings.
SPEAKER_01:Unfortunately, no. You know, everybody claims that they will and they know, and then it would get down to like, they'd give us 10 recommendations and I'd go through a listing with them. Like, oh, it actually looks like you've already done all 10 of these. And I'm like, great. And you know, it's tough. So I'm still hopeful that there's a guru out there that can help crack that code for us but um and I don't even know if
SPEAKER_03:I spoke with someone recently in short term vacation rental and they said they used IntelliHost and RankBreeze so and it says listing optimization so I don't know if you've ever picked those I've never looked into it but
SPEAKER_01:yeah I've looked at RankBreeze and I've heard of good things I've never I've never taken that next step um but that's definitely on our list to look at because you know I mean Airbnb drives a ton of volume and uh And we think we should be getting more business there. So, and I think it's been more of an issue for us post Helene as the Asheville tourism drop was so dramatic that we've kind of like gone back to like, okay, we really need to, you know, get like build this back. We were really happy where our occupancy ADRs and rep bars were pre Helene. And then we lost$300,000 in a day, like literally refunded$300,000 in a day. Well, technically The refund took a few days, but the day Helene hit and then the three days after, it was just like a bloodbath of reservations. Fortunately, everyone was safe. Everyone was good. We were very, very fortunate and have been very fortunate on the back end, but it was a revenue bloodbath on the back end of Helene. The messaging was just so aggressive that building back from that, it's kind of like... you just look at things a little differently. And I think that's an area where we're like, okay, we still have a lot of ground we need to make up. And it's hard to just wait. You know, everybody's like, oh, it's going to be a two to three year rebuild, like economically. And it's like, man, I don't like, that's a long time. And so just, you know, it's those seasons you go through as a business where you're just looking at things differently. And it's okay, you know, yeah, we're getting 2% of our revenue from Airbnb. Like, how do we grow that and find ways to reach that customer I
SPEAKER_03:do think you're right that because probably post to lean you know people who are looking for Airbnb like they're thinking about just planning a trip to an area but you know as you mentioned in the last episode you know people that are seeing you on social media or like find or getting a recommendation and they find you and go to your website there's probably a pretty good chance that they're going to Asheville and the impetus for them going is to stay at your property and oh it's nice that Asheville's there versus the other way around so that definitely makes sense to me and it's probably a really strong testament to the brand and following that you've built. And like you said about price point too, because exactly like you said, it's like Amazon. It's really hard to sell a premium product on Amazon because you can see right next to it a very similar product that is way cheaper and most of the time people are just going to go with the cheaper thing. And that's what those OTAs and marketplaces you know, it can be a challenge, right? So it's probably a good thing, you know, that you're doing so well with direct bookings and not having to pay those OTA fees. So it's a good testament to you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I appreciate that.
SPEAKER_03:Did you make any big, you know, maybe at the end of your first year, did you make any big strategic changes either with the physical infrastructure of the property or from a like strategic, you know, sales or guest experience perspective that was like a big lesson learned that you changed in year two?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't think there was, I can't think of any like major change we made. I think some of that might be because I've been in the industry for so long that I had a huge canvas to look at and kind of pick and choose what we thought were the best of the best and put those into play. We talked a little bit about that we added hot tubs. So when we opened, only half of our accommodations had hot tubs and the data It was just abundantly clear to add more hot tubs. So that was a big lift. We did that our first winter actually. So it was only three or four months in, but everything was pretty much pre-wired up for it. So it was like ready to go infrastructure wise. We built some more accommodations. So we ended up opening without our full phase one that we had planned just because of all the delays that happened. Like we're like, all right, let's just get open and we can, you know, add more over time. It was a separate area of the property. So we opened without our XL domes and then we added those over that year. That was a planned decision. This last year we added more domes just because of the demand for the domes, which brought us from 22 to 26 units. We had another XL dome and then we added three more of our standard size domes. We added heated toilet seats and as silly as this sounds, like we went on vacation somewhere and had a heated toilet seat. And I say this like not laughingly, but it like changed my wife's life. And that's, I don't know if you're married, Connor, but if you ever get married, put a heated toilet seat in for before you're married and you'll just seal the deal. Like your girlfriend will become your wife instantly. Like she'll just sign up. So I put one in at my house and then it was just like, it was just such a thing. that we put them in and all of our domes of the glamping collective we were easily able to add the outlet behind the toilet we couldn't easily do it in our cabins unfortunately would have been like tearing tile out a bunch of other things and I was like I don't think it's worth that but we were able to easily do it in our domes so we didn't all of them and that's so silly but of everything like the millions and millions of dollars we spent one of the things that just started popping up in our views all the time and guest feedback we got was, oh my gosh, they have heated toilet seats. And it's like, wow, we spent, I don't even remember what it was. I think it was like$200 a unit to add heated toilet seats. And I was like, man, we've spent millions to get here. And then we spent three grand on 15 heated toilet seats. And it was like, people were just over the moon about it. So
SPEAKER_03:that is a great tidbit. It's kind of mind blowing, like how important just everything in the bathroom is to the overall experience. And that is such an area to exceed people's expectations. And I love the heated toilet seat. I haven't heard that one yet on the show. I know a really big one is like, you know, a bathtub or a rain shower or potentially like a view from the shower or from the bathroom, which I really like. I always like have this dream when I was in traveling in Namibia and just super remote solo traveling and I stayed at a property that had like an open air toilet like at a campground and it just looked out for probably like a hundred miles probably similar to like your view but over the desert no walls like no partition like just a toilet like in the rock cropping and I remember there was no one at the campground and I was alone and it was just like a surreal it was a surreal experience to like I was like this is crazy I see like a 280 degree view for a hundred miles and I've always dreamed about like bringing that experience back to the US or like having something like that where you have the view from the bathroom or the toilet
SPEAKER_05:yeah
SPEAKER_03:and then I went to I went to a restaurant in Victoria Vancouver Island recently in Canada and it was a like a fancy kind of old school but classy restaurant and they had you go into the bathroom and it just blows your mind and they had these like ornate toilet seats and they had the the upper flush chain that's like it's the the tank that holds the water that goes into the toilet bowl is elevated it's like above head height and you pull a chain and then the toilet flushes and it's just I think that's how they used to be made back in the day and it's like ornate gold with all these designs and I just remember thinking like that was the coolest that's the coolest bathroom experience I've ever had at a restaurant and yeah and I left a review for that company because I thought it was so cool
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah I mean it's those we were talking and I was talking to my team this morning about surprise and delight and like we were planning some surprise and delight things for our Chattanooga property and it was just like you know I just love it like it's just those kind of moments like that's what makes it fun like how can we build surprise and delight into what we're doing and you know and it's tough because like word gets out over time and then it's no longer a surprise it's an expectation which is a whole another thing had the opportunity to have dinner with Tony Tony Hsieh years and years ago, but that Zappos mindset of just like delivering happiness, which is similar to surprise and delight, you know, learned so much from Tony and the work he did at Zappos and the books he's written and such an incredible thinker, such a huge loss to the whole entrepreneurial community when we lost Tony. But it was, but that type of mindset, that delivering happiness, that Zappos mindset, that, you know, surprise and delight Just look for those things. It's what sets you apart from everybody else that is just doing, unfortunately, even though we're in unique hospitality, there's still a lot of vanilla in our space. And it's hard. Not everything can be the coolest thing ever. But looking for those things to be like, man, just really push the envelope and find new things.
SPEAKER_03:And it's like what you were saying on the last call where it's like, how can we get 20% better this year and you know what's the next thing what's the next surprise and delight that takes us to the next level and keeps us ahead of the competition and keeps us to be the best game in town.
SPEAKER_00:Hello listeners this is Sherry Halala founder of Sage Outdoor Advisory. If you're launching an outdoor hospitality project like glamping we can help. We offer feasibility studies and appraisals. What that means is we look at your specific market and proposed business offering and complete an in-depth analysis to make sure that your planned business will be profitable. Getting a second opinion on your proposal and forecast is critical to understand before you spend years of your time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is particularly important if you are looking to raise money for your project from a bank or private investors. They are going to want to see this type of deep dive analysis from an independent third-party specialist in the industry. We at Sage have completed well over 250 feasibility studies and appraisals in outdoor hospitality in North America in the last four years. So we understand what it takes to bring a project from concept to reality. If this sounds like it could be helpful to you you can go to our website sageoutdooradvisory.com and schedule a call with our team while you're there check out our proprietary glamping database map too thanks now back to the show
SPEAKER_03:and uh oh and then you mentioned something earlier i was going to comment on and it was uh you know not necessarily making things better but not necessarily more complicated and it reminded me of a great slogan which is less but better which i really love yeah and it sounds like you have that mindset where it's like hey well how can we improve the quality but make things simpler um And that's also what Apple did super successfully. I think like before Steve Jobs came in, they had like a hundred products and then he's like, no, we're doing 12 products and we're going to be the best at them. Or like the in and out burger method where it's like, Hey, you can get a burger, a double burger or fries. Like, you know, we only have three things you can order and we just do them better than anybody.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Which I love. But then it goes back to that restaurant conversation, which is where I struggle with it is like, okay, so we had a restaurant. Is that, is that still less, but better? Or is that like, and it's you as an entrepreneur you struggle with those decisions of like okay I know this would be awesome I know we're 10 minutes from town on the top of a mountain but like you know it's just it's those are hard decisions to make and you build a restaurant like you're in like we're at first it's like a food truck which is kind of a step into the water but but but it's yeah they're just they're just hard decisions to make but that's that's why we're entrepreneurs
SPEAKER_03:very much so very much so and that is something I personally would wrestle with so much because like yeah I always talk about all these things that everybody should do but I also know that like I would never like want to do them like you should do these things but I'm not like that doesn't mean it's easy it's going to be super super complicated and it might not be worth like the hair loss and the headache that comes with it
SPEAKER_01:yeah yeah and I mean you know in that vein I mean as it relates to the business of glamping like we talk a lot to our team about like if we spend money one time versus spending money every time Like I would rather spend money to deliver wow, like one time versus like having to spend money every time. Now that doesn't apply to everything. Like there's still some disposable stuff or consumables that make for a great experience. But generally speaking, like I'd rather buy the car than lease the car. You know, I'd rather like own that than I would have to, you know, pay for it every time. So we try to look for those kinds of things that we can add to our guest experience that we can, own and buy once and try to stay away from some of the things that are more consumables that we don't have staying power.
SPEAKER_03:That's exactly, that's why I lean a little, that's one of the reasons why I lean a little bit more towards saunas personally is because you don't have to deal with the health organizations. Typically in most counties, you don't have to deal with the health to run those commercially. And then you're not dealing with any water changes, any chlorine, you We need to do some basic cleaning, but for the most part, saunas are self-sterilizing. Yeah, for sure. It's much simpler. Once it's there, it's very easy to maintain, but I do think hot tubs is more tried and true, and it's more universally loved. I think more people like hot tubs than like saunas. I think it's probably a better amenity, but we'll have some more challenges and costs associated. Was there any moment, or I'm sure there was many moments, was there a moment when you thought, hey, we're going under, this isn't gonna work? Maybe walk us through that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, man, so many moments. Yeah, I mean, we talked a little bit about them last time where I alluded to them, I guess, more than dove into them, but so many times where, mostly with building a business, officials they because we were the first person to build domes in our county like nobody knew what to do with us so there were so many examples i talked about the hot tubs last time that like we built everything we were done getting our certificate of occupancy and they said oh yeah you can't put a hot tub within 30 inches of a handrail well we are our porches on the cabins are seven feet deep and our hot tubs are six feet so like it just isn't possible to not be within 30 inches of the handrail we ended up recessing the hot tubs we talked about that um but so many things like our domes again we were going for our certificate of occupancy and it was just kind of like an oh by the way you're in 140 mile an hour wind zone here excuse me 125 I think it was 125 where's your where's your wind zone Randy and I was like I'm sorry like we've been at this for a year and this is the first time you're telling me that we're in 125 mile an hour wind zone and I was like I don't know what you're talking about and it was just like oh well you have to have that but no big deal just get back to us and i'm like no big deal 125 miles an hour like we're at the we're in the mountains like these are hurricane codes um and uh never in a million years but there's a sliver through uh the blue ridge mountains uh at certain elevations that has wind zone ratings that i have since learned about um that nobody thought to tell me about before that um and we're done like right we're co we're done we're open and now you ask for this. But, you know, you just go back to the table and you figure it out. Like it delayed us a while, but we figured it out. The same thing with energy rating. They came back on another CO inspection and said, oh, these are gonna have to meet single family residential insulation code. And like, you have to have like tests that say you meet the HERS rating. I think it is for a single family home. And I was like, guys, this isn't a single family home. like technically this is a tent and they were like well it's permanent so it has to meet that it's not a tent in the sense that it's temporary unless you're telling us you're going to take them down six months out of the year and then it can be temporary it doesn't have to and I was like no we're not taking them down six months out of the year well then you have to meet the HERS rating standards and it's just like oh my gosh like just thing after thing after thing that like guys we're done and you're just now bringing these things up like really really wish you would have told me that in a planning meeting because we had plenty of them like we had plenty of planning meetings before we ever bought the property and then after we bought the property before we ever broke ground to talk this through so man it's just like ask those questions because it seemed like and I know it's not true because we're friendly with our building inspections office and we've come to a good place but it felt like it was just like man we got you like we'll make sure you never open like we'll just keep throwing the the book at you and making stuff up until until we you know until we get you to not open and it's again I'm sure it wasn't that but but it felt like that and all I can say is man you got to have perseverance of I don't even know what like but you just got to be ready to go and to to just pick yourself up dust yourself off and say all right let's get to work let's get to work and figure out how we're going to meet this win rating code let's get to work figure out how How are we gonna meet this energy rating code? Like... How
SPEAKER_03:did you, by the way, what was the solution for those two things?
SPEAKER_01:Some of it I can't even talk about. Engineering, right? I think on both of those cases, for the domes, we went to our dome company and said, hey, this is what we're dealing with. They were like, man, I've never, actually both of those, we went to our dome company and said, this is what we're dealing with. And they both times said, man, I've never heard of that. Like... Let us talk to our team, see what we can figure out. And on the wind rating, they went back to their engineering team who had rated them. And some of these numbers might be slightly off because it's been a long time, but I think they had rated them to 110 miles an hour. And then they would just stopped because they were like, well, that's good enough. So they went back and they ran the same tests at a hundred. And these are, you know, these are not like real wind tunnel tests. These are like, I guess, computer tests to see what happens in certain wind loads. And They just went back to the engineers that did it, and they ran them at the right wind speed, and they passed, and they gave us an engineering certificate that had an engineered stamp and signature, and we turned it in, and on we went. But that was a scary month of like, man, we might not ever open.
SPEAKER_03:That's pretty good customer service for whoever your dome, who's your dome supplier?
SPEAKER_01:We use Shelter Structures, U.S. headquartered out of L.A., of course, man. manufactured in China, but, but, and they did, they were, they've had their challenges like anybody else, but we, they have had really good customer service. Like it's, you wish you don't have
SPEAKER_03:to. Yeah. Probably no small thing for them to go. And I mean, maybe, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's not that complicated. They just have their in-house engineer run more tests, but I mean, it's nice that they, you know, helped you solve that, that problem. And I'm surprised that they hadn't gotten either of those either of those requests before as a dome supplier because they're rare, but I have heard of both of those at least a couple times. I know the wind rating is super common in Florida or hurricane areas. And then the insulation one comes up all the time. Well, not all the time, but it does come up. And people are like, oh, you need to have the insulation rating of a house, or you need to have the fire suppression system of a hardwall structure, or you need to have... Those are the two big ones. is like sprinkler systems. And they're like, this is a tent or like, this is a dome. Like, where are we gonna, how are we gonna put this, you know, fire suppression sprinkler systems in here? So, yeah, but.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, we ran into those two. Fire suppression, we navigated through. Fortunately, we ran into that one during due diligence. So we were able to solve it before we'd invested our life savings. It was less stressful at that moment. But we went after that one too and got that one done. And then the HERS rating thing, like I went through multiple people before I found someone who would even agree it's possible. Like the first two or three Herzrators I talked to were just like, yeah, it's not even possible. Like, good luck, see ya. And I was like, okay, this is like, if the people who do this for a living are telling me it's impossible, then we're really in trouble.
SPEAKER_02:Wait, so what'd you do? How'd you figure it out?
SPEAKER_01:So I finally found a Herzrator that was like, it seems impossible, but I think I can make it work. Like, are you willing to do anything? And I was like, Yes, we are willing to do anything. And we just went after it and did some crazy stuff and spent a ton of money. And what was interesting, he was like, I'm going to ask you to do these things and it's going to boost your HERS score. But the reality is it only boosted on paper. In real life, it doesn't do anything. And I was like, perfect. So part of what he suggested we do does nothing in real life. But on paper... And per their test, it works. So we spent$40,000 doing something that in real life does nothing, but on paper does everything. And that hurt. Like we were already over budget. That was after we were supposed to be open. We were like, it was like, I think that was our third CO, like CO vinyl inspection that they came up with that one on. And yeah, to spend another 40 grand, but the alternative was i mean we looked at this like i was in the process while we were pursuing that i was also in the process of designing a new hard-sided structure around our like this basically take the dome off the platform and build a new structure on top of it and i was like how can i make this unique cool and special without a dome like if i have to lose the dome i can't just give up the whole project because i'm in so deep i have to design something something else so we were designing like a hard wall circular structure and it was like it was gonna be awful I guarantee you it wouldn't have looked cool it would have looked like what it was was that we used to have domes and we couldn't open them but like what are you gonna do with your face with that fortunately it never came to that but like we were having like manufacturer conversations about like building these round you know residential walls and trying to figure out what to do with the roof. And it was brutal. It was brutal.
SPEAKER_03:You know, this, this hearing your stories, you know, hopefully the listeners are taking away. And you know, what I'm hearing is like when you, when you get these, there's been so many, there's been so many instances in your story where people or officials or even experts in something told you that it couldn't be done. And you basically were like, no, like, no, I'm going to, I'll go talk to someone else or I'll go find someone else. I'll figure it out myself. You know, I'm going to call three, four, five, 10 people. And it sounds like so many times in your story, you know, it wasn't the first try. Like you had to go find someone else and just like, hey, we're not taking no for an answer. Like we're going to find a solution here. And just really good general entrepreneurial advice there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. No, it really is. And I think you've got to be your own number one advocate. Like hopefully you have somebody in your corner who's cheering for you or more. than one person but they have no idea like what you're going through when you run into that kind of stuff so like you have to believe in yourself more than anybody else does because it's the only way you're gonna get through some of it and and you learn a lot like you become an expert and a lot of things you never wanted to be an expert in
SPEAKER_03:So you've mentioned it a little bit so far in the episode, but just tell us a little bit about Hurricane Helene, what that was like, what you did before, during, and after.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Man, it just caught all of us off guard. If you talk to the locals up there, nobody knew what it was really going to be. And I don't know all the reasons why. I know there are scientists who know all those things, but it doesn't ultimately matter what matters is like it just caught the whole community way off guard um for to have that much rainfall uh to have those kind of wind speeds while technically we knew it was possible um and and you know some of my friends say like now on the right like you had to go through that wind speed thing but it got you ready for a lean because you went through the practice and then the reality of it happened um and it's true like you know it's those moments of adversity um, but they bear fruit in the long run. So they're, they're painful and you really hate the people who take you, who force you through them. But oftentimes three years later, two years later, you can look back and be like, man, that got me ready for this. And, and we survived because of that. Um, but man, it was, it was heartbreaking. Like it was so, and the timing of it made it so much more heartbreaking. Um, and it, you know, I mean, it was just like all our staff was affected. Um, So you're trying to care for them, love on them, support them. But at the same time, like you're trying to like rebuild and get going and being on the top of a mountain. Like I just didn't really think we would be affected. Like I thought, you know, we also, I'm also involved in a riverfront property and I was really concerned about that. And we lost nine cabins at our riverfront property, but, but it was kind of expected, like to a certain extent, it still wasn't like, we never thought we were going to have that much water. We, the French broad river broke a previous flood record by 10 feet. The previous record was 22. It went to 32 feet. So it didn't even like break a record. It shattered a record by 50%. Um, but man, it was after everything we've been through to get where we were, all the things that, you know, 10% of which we've described, um, to drive up the mountain onto the property, our staff had already been there, you know, cause we had guests, like we were almost sold out the night the storm hit. And so they had already gone up, cut trees off our roads, like done everything to help people get going. But there was no cell service. There was like no power, no water, nothing. And it was just like trees everywhere. We estimate, because you don't know, with 160 acres, we estimate we lost over a thousand trees on the property. So in the last episode, I talked about how hard we worked to save our trees during the development phase and then to lose a thousand, um, in a one hour span, it was just like personally felt, you know, devastating, heartbreaking, but, um, but our construction crew who built a lot of our site, they showed up that Monday morning after the storm, I showed up, me and my dad drove up. Um, and we had like a 15 man crew just cutting trees for like a week. Um, and then going through the process of like the following week was like, okay, fix and repair. Um, and like get ready to go. And our power came back on after about two weeks and we were ready to reopen. Like the power came back on, our cleaners showed up, we cleaned all the units because again, we were almost sold out. It's like every unit was dirty and we couldn't clean it without water, without power. So to clean the entire site from a tree perspective, leaf perspective, but also then from like a accommodations perspective. So it was a huge effort. And our team, our team, our local community, you know, everybody just rallied in ways that were unprecedented and supported each other and it was incredibly difficult and a lot of painful long days a lot of tears shed by a lot of people but we rallied together as a community and we still are like we're still economically affected like I've heard like from other people in our area that they're still off 40 percent from where they were year over year pre-Haleen and a study just came out that the average small business in western North Carolina, to date, had lost$300,000 to Hurricane Helene. The average small business probably doesn't even do$300,000 in a year, and they lost that so far from Helene. So, man, our community is resilient. We're strong. We are open. We've been open for a long time. We've been open basically since two weeks after the storm, which was almost a year ago now, a Our hospitality workers need people to come back so they can work and they can earn tips and they can do what they love to do, which is show our beautiful part of the country to people, to share it with tourists and to take care of them and provide that awesome experience. So that's my number one thing right now is like, and we did a massive amount of influencer outreach. We talked a little bit about influencers before, but after the storm, we did a massive amount. We almost cut all of our outbound spending budgets because nobody was searching so there was no point in spending money on Google anymore but we slashed so many marketing budgets but like a lot of people who slashed them because they had to we actually had saved money to build more units this winter we took that money and started spending it on marketing because we knew like we want to market out of this disaster not shut down marketing and have a bigger disaster on our hands so we did a lot and really, really heavy on the influencer side, which I think was a really smart strategic move for us. And it was like the thought being the media has basically said Western North Carolina is destroyed. We know that's not true, but that's what everybody else believes because there were some small pockets of Western North Carolina that did get destroyed. And our heart breaks for those small pockets, but they just put that film on repeat and just kept saying all of what North Carolina looks like this. And that just wasn't even close to true. So we knew like if we say it's not true, it's going to fall on deaf ears and it's going to be whatever. But if we can get other people that are known and trusted, the media of the day, the grassroots media of the day, the influencers to come out, post pictures, post videos and be like, hey, I'm up in Asheville. I'm up in Western North Carolina. I'm on this hike. I'm doing this thing. And this is what it looks like. We knew it would be more well-received and reach a lot more people than we could ever reach on our own. And we just went all in on that strategy post Helene. And I think it worked really, really well for us. It was hard because it took us a while to convince even the influencers that like what you're seeing on TV right now is not what's actually happening. And if we don't get over like the media narrative, not only are we going to have a physical disaster, we're going to have an economic disaster and we need your help to prevent an economic disaster in our community. community but so many people were like oh I just don't think I can come tell that story and it's like like there's just this weird like survivor guilt around it that that was something I didn't expect and maybe that's because I've never experienced anything like it but but a big hurdle we had to overcome even once we put the strategy in place was to say okay now we have to overcome this like perception of like oh I can't come up there and tell people to come because it's a And it's like, no, no, no, no. That's the whole point. It's not. Please come tell the story that it's not. Otherwise, all of the employees in Western North Carolina's hospitality industry are going to lose their jobs. And that would be way worse. Like we can come back from the physical disaster. It's going to take some time, but we can come back and we will come back. But like we can't let all these people lose their jobs and just rely on whoever to fund that. So, um, so it was a challenge, um, but I think we did a lot of the right things. Um, and anybody who is, uh, who is listening, I would just say like prepare for a disaster because, um, you will have one, like whatever it is, hopefully I, you know, for your sake, I pray it's not the lean-esque, but, um, but prepare and just be ready, uh, be resilient and be ready to rally around your community, support them and say, okay, how do we need to change our strategy? strategy coming out of this and do things differently to make sure that we reach people and overcome whatever objections they're going to have.
SPEAKER_03:Man, I just bet you never in a million years thought you'd be dealing with this scenario, you know, and let alone like in your second year of operating the business. And what an immense thing to go through just personally to live in a community through such a disaster and then also to be, you know, launching a business that you you've put it all on the line as well. So just like that double hit. And it's also what a proactive and smart strategy to go the influencer route. And I could only imagine, it sounds like that had a good impact on your bookings, but I imagine that had some really positive ripple effects on the community. Not only one because of guests who came and stayed at your property and then went and shopped and did activities and went to restaurants in Asheville, but also there's probably a ton of people who saw that videos and went and stayed at other places or came and just kind of like spread the word. Did you work at all with, is there like a visit Asheville or like a tour Asheville tourism board or anything like that? And do you, do you work with them at all? Or was this just all on your own accord?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So there is, there's a well-funded explore Asheville. Technically we are outside of the County. We are just across the County line in Haywood County. So we we don't get to participate. We don't pay our tax revenue to them. We pay it to Haywood County. So we have our own visitors bureau, which is significantly smaller. And they're great. And they were doing a lot as well. But we just felt like we wanted to control some of the messaging and the narrative because we didn't necessarily feel like it was coming down the way it needed to come down. So we wanted to do things on our own. So we really just went to other local businesses. And we, um, we just got after it. We just said like, we're not going to rely on the government or anybody else to, to go to bat for us. We're going to go to bat for ourselves. And we, we just, we just did a lot. And all of those influencers that we were reaching out to, um, many of them are other businesses chip stuff into like, you know, um, have them down for dinner at the restaurant or take them on a tour or cause we all had, we had plenty of availability all of a sudden. So, uh, we, We had the ability to do that. And to your point, like we really wanted it to lift the entire community. One of the ways we did that was through a specific, like we invited a ton of people out on their own time whenever they could come. But then we also hosted a big influencer event and did one of those mountaintop chef dinners. So we did like, invited a ton of people out, put everybody up. A ton of different outdoor brands sent gift packages. So we had like, when they checked into their accommodations, we had a gift package worth probably like$1,000 of outdoor swag from incredible brands like Rumpel and Blundstone and Camelback. And I apologize, I'm leaving a bunch out, but they just threw in a ton of gear. So they walked into their domes or their cabins and this massive pile of gifts, which if you go back through our Instagram feed, it was last November, so it was two months after the storm. But you can see some incredible content from it. we did the mountaintop chef dinner one of our other local restaurants hosted everybody for a bourbon tasting dinner at their restaurant which was in their private dining room or one of their private dining rooms the owners of the restaurant came out paired a different bourbon with every course it was phenomenal food was phenomenal we did so many things I can't even remember them all so many people chipped in tours like there was so much contributed tour wise we just couldn't even do it all which we felt bad about because like people were like giving tours and we we just couldn't even send people to all the things um but we spent a ton of money putting that event together just to try to change the narrative um and like show the outdoor beauty that is western north carolina after a lean and say like yes our heart breaks for the areas that were heavily heavily impacted but the majority of western north carolina is beautiful and open and desperate for you to come back and visit and um And that was big.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. What a, like, I guess, special silver lining of just kind of everyone being galvanized and coming together and, you know, all those different partnerships that materialize, you know, to support. So that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. And that's all you can do. You got to rally together and support each other.
SPEAKER_03:How did you approach hiring and, like, maybe for your key hires on the team as someone who's, you know, owned businesses before and presumably scale? pretty big teams. I think you mentioned you got your marketing company up to 50 or 80 people or something like that. So how do you approach hiring?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we were at 50 when I exited that company, or right about 50. It's a tough one. So in this case, I went out and hired our general management team, the husband and wife team I talked about, and then they have hired pretty much everyone else. So it's different. And I give them a ton of credit. Like they are just boots on the ground. Like we don't put ads online and wait and see who comes. There's a couple of things we do. Like we look for exceptional talent everywhere we go. So like if we're eating at a restaurant and whatever, like we're always on the hunt for like exceptional talent people who can deliver a great guest experience in whatever business it is that they're working for. With cleaners, with housekeeping teams, that's a lot harder because you're not like, well, you don't call down to the front desk at your hotel and ask who cleaned your room because you want to thank them. They're not going to tell you. But my team's done a phenomenal job understanding where do those people go to lunch? And we'll just go down and buy people lunch at the place that the housekeeping people all tend to congregate to eat lunch or like just be very guerrilla marketing approach to it and just like go find these people and or just walk up to people like our landscaping company we just walked up to them on a job like we saw them there we thought there's a place we've driven by a bunch of times and thought it always looked pretty and and the first time we hired them like we just walked into their truck and we're like hey like this is who we are this is what we're doing and we'd love for you to come see it. But just like, that's what it takes of just really, especially in a small rural community. Like there's just not a lot of people. And then really investing in training. Like there's a couple of pieces that I think make our team exceptional. One, we invest a lot into training and have very high expectations of what success looks like and inspect that regularly. And then the other thing is because we have high expectations, we want you to have high expectations of us as an employer. Like we have high expectations of you and it's fair that you have high expectations of us in return. And the simplest thing that can look like is we pay our team about twice as much as they could make working anywhere else. Um, but with that, we want the best of the best, right? Like you're not going to come in here as like a two-star employee and make twice as much as everybody, as you could make working somewhere else. You're going to come in here as a five-star employee, delivering a five-star guest experience and make twice as much as, as you could work as make work somewhere else because we just want the best of the best and being being slow to hire and quick to fire which is an easy thing to talk about it's a hard thing to actually do but if somebody's not cutting it by like day two they're not going to cut it like if they're you know if they're putting in their all and they're falling short in a couple areas sure you can bring that person along but if they're just like you can usually tell like two days in boots on the ground cleaning side by side with somebody or doing maintenance side by side with somebody, if by day two they're dragging and they're walking slow up the hill and they're walking slow between things or they're complaining about things, cut it off. Culturally, it just doesn't work for us. You're not gonna succeed in our environment.
SPEAKER_03:I've asked that question a lot and I've got a lot of different answers, but I think that's the first time I've ever heard anyone say, we're going to physically go where these people congregate or we're going to do it the good old-fashioned way before the internet. We're going to find them at restaurants. We're going to see them working and go talk to them. For a small town, that's super applicable because a lot of these more blue-collar or more entry-level type positions, they don't have a LinkedIn. They're not searching the job boards. They probably don't even have a resume sometimes. That's That's a great tidbit that I haven't heard before. And I like what you said about slow to hire, quick to fire. It sounds like your GM team that you hired is doing most of the management. Is there any sort of core values or mission statement that's involved in the hiring process that you're looking for? Or is it more just kind of felt? Is there any granularity around that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we talk about that five-star guest experience and that commitment to excellence through the process it's not in my last company we had I mean the core values were like obnoxiously on every wall and hanging from the ceiling and like we were very much like if you study a lot like gazelles is like a business I'm sure it's a book but like strategy about growing and scaling like highly successful organizations and we followed a lot of that mentality similar in some ways are like traction which might be a more common one people are familiar with but in this case we haven't maybe I don't know if we're not there yet organizational maturity wise or if it's just just having people more distributed you know across the site or what exactly it is or maybe those are all just excuses but like we haven't really tackled you know that exactly in that way so we really try to boil it down to like that operational excellence and five-star guest experience and like go after that and speak to that and really speak that in and give people a why. Like helping people understand like you clean this unit three times a week, but the person who's checking in, it's the one time they're going to check in. So like it might feel mundane to you. It might feel like, gosh, I've done the same thing in the same unit three times a week and I've got 10 of them. So I'm really doing it, you know, 30 times a week. Not that anybody cleans that many units, but like, you get the point it just is repetitive and it's like but every time is so important and I talked a little bit about it I think last time but just making sure that we are casting the same vision for our housekeeping team of like why it is so important like you are the most important person here right now because when that guest checks in if it is perfectly clean when they walk in the door they will relax and they will start to focus on everything else the view the dome the cab you know, all the little touches we've put in all the little places. But if they walk in and it's not perfectly clean, everything, they're going to go nitpicky. They're going to start looking for everything that might possibly be wrong. And if they relax and just let go, there might be some things that are wrong, but they don't even see them anymore because they're just looking at everything else. But if they go in and it's not perfect, they just start nitpicking the whole thing and it starts to unravel. And I think just really leaning in Because sometimes the housekeeping team, they literally have to deal with the worst of some things, especially around Valentine's Day. They deal with the worst of it. But making sure that you are leaning into them, helping them understand how important they are, why what they do is important, the why behind what they do, the customer experience, the why the customer is even coming in the first place. They've saved up their hard-earned money and their hard-earned PTO to come on this vacation. They've seen us on Instagram They're coming in and their expectations are up here. We've got to deliver up here or we're missing it. And if we miss it, like, man, we've missed it. And that's just really, really, it's a letdown for people. So same with the housekeeping team, same with our maintenance team that oversees our hot tub, our grounds team that takes care of our grounds. Like we routinely spend a lot of money taking care of 160 acres, which I think a lot of people don't really understand what goes into that. But like, it's a lot to take care of. But we're stewards. like we're stewards of all those things and we have to do each of those things exceptionally well and help the team understand the why like it's so simple but so profound in a lot of ways too of like we always have to lean into the why behind what we do it's like we're not scrubbing toilets like we're preparing it to be perfectly clean for this person who's arriving today that just survived cancer and they're here to celebrate or they just lost their mom or they just lost their partner or they're writing a book or whatever it is that they came here for, we have a responsibility to deliver on five-star experience so that they can relax and enjoy all the things or heal from whatever it is or celebrate whatever it is. We want them to come, give them a space where they can come do that and feel like they're taken care of and loved on in that journey.
SPEAKER_03:Powerful stuff, and I couldn't agree more. And it's true, right? It's all true, right? And it's just about making sure that narrative is communicated and like making those people know how important the work is that they're doing. Cause they probably don't, they rarely get to see it. So like being the, as management, being the conduit to like communicate to them, the impact that they're making, it's probably just so important for them having job satisfaction and having a why. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And like practically that can be just as simple as sharing five-star reviews. Like they're probably not checking your reviews, but you're checking them all the time. So like, especially when people get mentioned by name, like an a daily huddle or whatever, anytime somebody gets mentioned by name, call them out and celebrate. Be like, Joe, who was here last week, talked about the housekeeper he met. And even if that housekeeper isn't the one who cleaned Joe's unit, they don't know that. But if somebody gets called out by name in a review, man, just celebrate them and celebrate that opportunity.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I love it. It actually reminds me. I work really closely with Sandy Vans. It's a company I helped start in San Diego. And I I'm not an operator anymore, but I've still get to, I'm still a small owner and I'm just going to like text our CEO right now and be like, Hey, we do in our monthly meetings, we should read all the Google reviews that we get as like a part of that as a part of that process. Yeah. You know, it reminds me of when I was playing football in high school, our coach, he, he would make a very big point to have the linemen there. We call them the franchise and like so much of our like culture and traditions like basically like prioritize the linemen and gave them the credit as like the most important people on the team because it's not a very glamorous job and you know most people would like want to look at the quarterback or the running back and give them the credit but he would always you know like linemen get in line first the franchise get water first the franchise you know that's how we got this win because it's you know it's not the most glamorous but they're you know the workhorse that's makes everyone else look good and it's interesting having that almost like bottom up mentality and hospitality business where it's like, hey, our room turnover service, you know, like that's the franchise. That's they make this, you know, they make this all go. So I love that attitude. Yeah. How is 2025? You know, last eight months. Yeah. How's how's your you're you're getting into you're finishing your third year. How's that feeling? What's the year like?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's it's been a challenging year, I think, mostly due to just being on the back end. I think we're seeing some economic headwinds, too. that are making things difficult. You know, it seems like we're seeing articles from destinations all over the US that tours was down this summer and so forth. You know, we can't control the economy. We can't control those things, but we do what we can do and that's just respond. So it's not, 2025 is not the year we had hoped it would be from a, you know, a P&L income statement kind of perspective. But with the guests that we had we're hitting it out of the park and that's really what it's about like we can't necessarily control how many people come but we can do our absolute best every day for the people that are coming and um and that's what we're doing so in that sense like we're loving it we're loving 2025 we're loving what we get to do every day we're expanding into another market um we're loving uh building you know from a blank slate all over again like that's just so fun um but most important like we're just loving providing the space and the opportunity that we we talked about, for people to come, get away, have an adventure, find rest, heal, like celebrate, like those things are what we are all about. And that's, we're getting to do that in 2025, like a lot, maybe not quite as much as we wanted and quite as much as we thought we were positioned for, be that economic headwinds or be that Helene or be that some other factor that we haven't been able to identify yet. But overall, like we're loving where we're at, we're loving what we get do we love the awe on people's face when they arrive we have an influencer up there on the mountain right now and he posted a video I think he tagged us in it so it's on our Instagram although this will air who knows but his comment was I just saw the best sunset of my life and like that's what it's about you talked about the golden hour a little bit ago and it made me think about that but like that's it like this guy who travels for a living and does this, just saw the best sunset of his life and posted some incredible content of it. And that's what we get to do for people. We get to show them the best sunset of their life. And that's such a gift. It's such a special thing that transcends economies and natural disasters and everything else. And we get to show up for the guests that are coming today and do an exceptional job. And that's it, man. That's the dream. That's what it's about.
SPEAKER_03:You got me so fired up to go open my own property. I got to hustle up. All right, and what's, you know, looking to the horizon, what's next for the brand? What's next? So the Chattanooga location, is that, do you own it? Is it underway? Like, where are you at in that? I guess, yeah, let's start there. Where are you at with Chattanooga?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we broke ground in Chattanooga April of this year, and we are well underway. We've got a phenomenal team working on that site. We are blowing our pace away that we hit in Asheville which people told me was fast, like to go from first shovel on the ground to opening day in 14 months. Like we were planning to do it in 12 in Asheville. So, or excuse me, in Chattanooga. So we're really excited about that. Love the piece of property that we found. Love the vision that we have and the amenities that we have there, the pool and our adventure trail that we're putting together. It's play off of a hiking trail. It's a hiking trail, but with some cool things that we're, we're just working into it. That land is a little smaller, like it's 37 acres instead of 160. So in that sense, it's a lot smaller. But I have never been on a piece of land that is so packed with like natural features as that piece of land. And being able, like we have multiple caves on the property. We have like, it's just, the whole thing has, sits on top of an 80 foot cliff. So you've just got the these incredible views out from it. And then you've got this vertical cliff face and then internal to the properties and other cliff face that goes from like zero up to about 60 feet. So when we've strategically positioned units around those cliff faces, it's just like, it's crazy. Like I talked in the first episode about like, how could we ever top what we did at Asheville? Like, did we set the bar too high? And the weird fear that comes out of that. But I think I think what we have planned for Chattanooga is going to do it. I think you could go to Asheville, have an incredible mountaintop experience, and then go to Chattanooga and be like, this is different, but even better in so many ways. Not that it, you know, they're just different. So it's hard to even say it's going to be better, but they're just different. And we're at a different place. We're at a different place in our journey. We're thinking different thoughts than we were thinking then. So it's really, really exciting. So Chattanooga is here. It's now. We're planning to open early spring 2026. Those things are difficult to exactly pin down. Our contractor is telling us that he's going to be done by Christmas. And he probably won't listen to this, so I could say this, but I'm not holding my breath for that. I'm holding him to that, but I'm not holding my breath for that because I've been down it before. And I know how painful it is when you do and you don't hit it. But we're shooting for early spring 2026, which we feel like the pace we're going, like he's on his way. his pace to be done by Christmas. And we've overcome a lot of, you know, the early challenges that would have slowed that down. So it's moving along. And then from there, you know, we specifically didn't call it Asheville Glamping or the Asheville Glamping Collective or Asheville anything because we wanted to be agnostic of location and agnostic of unit type. So we aren't the dome glamping collective. Like that's just... We didn't want our brand to be wrapped around a unit type or location so we could go anywhere and we could do anything and the brand would still be the brand. And so from where do we go from there? I don't know. You know, we have a vision to keep going. We have a vision to keep growing, but growing well and in a place where we can deliver on that same guest experience. You know, you're not going to see us buy 40 acres in the valley. and throw up canvas tents 10 feet apart from each other. That's not a brand for us, not to dog on that at all. Like that's a great experience. And again, those people are probably making more money than we are. We just, our brands wrapped around like going and doing hard things with exceptional delivery. And at the end of it, you have this exceptional product that I think is unlike anything else we've seen on the East Coast from a glamping perspective. and that we're really, really proud of. So we're excited to see where locations three, four, five are. We've got a dream and a vision for that. We're trying to figure out how to pay for those things right now. But we believe there's a way to do that and excited to keep growing the brand. So.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. Very cool. Are you planning to, is it going to be domes and cabins, domes and glass cabins at Chattanooga?
SPEAKER_01:First phase is going to be domes. And then we have two additional unit types planned for a phase two and phase three that I won't talk about partially because I don't have it fully fleshed out partially because it's you know there's some things we're thinking about that that we don't want anybody else in Chattanooga to do before we do it so but phase one is going to be all domes they're just man people love them and the way we're able to put them together and the way that it blends in with the the site that we have we just feel really really good about it and And we're taking everything we did in Asheville and just trying to do it better. So as simple as it is, we use standard treated lumber in Asheville, like everybody does. In Chattanooga, we had the opportunity to buy a massive amount of teak at a really good price, which is still way more than standard treated decking is. But all of our decks and privacy walls in Chattanooga, which are almost finished are built out of this absolutely stunning teak wood and it's just like we're trying to take everything we did in Nashville and just like go there like go there like we've you know had that meeting of like man we love what we did in Nashville but how do we do it even better like what does better look like what does 20% better look like in Chattanooga and I'm really excited about some of the stuff that we're coming up with to just kind of push that envelope a little bit further so that our Asheville guests can come to Chattanooga experience expecting us to be up here and we just over deliver for them. Yeah,
SPEAKER_03:I'm excited to see it. Now I'm on the edge of my seat. Look at you building the suspense. Are you familiar with my co-host on the show, Nick Prislow and his company, Posh Outdoors?
SPEAKER_01:Through listening to some of your episodes, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, it would be worth checking them out. You guys should have an exploratory conversation because one, they have these beautiful skybox units that are somewhat similar to what you've done with the glass cabins. But basically they're, you know, they're helping excellent property owners by financing the units. So it just, you know, obviously you can do it all yourself. Then that's great. But if you're looking to grow fast and the cost of the units is prohibitive, that's one of the things that they're doing. So it might be worth a conversation. And I think it could be a really cool pairing and their, their units are awesome. Yeah. And yeah, man. Wow. Well, I'm so excited to see what happens next. And do you have any, you know, asks of the audience? Just
SPEAKER_01:come to Asheville. Like we're excited to see you. Like Asheville as an economy, as a community, specifically come to Canton, North Carolina, which is, we're technically in Clyde as the post office would tell you, but really we're in Canton. And that's the community that we tie into. So come to Asheville, come to Canton. Our community is ready and excited to see you. to welcome you with open arms. And there is so much outdoor adventure to be had, from hiking some of the most stunning East Coast mountains, to the fall foliage that's coming, to fly fishing in our rivers, to they're just starting this river snorkeling thing that's pretty cool, to just see the different wildlife in the rivers. Absolutely awesome golf scene, brewery scene, restaurant scene. It is the place to be, especially if you're in the East Coast or the Midwest. trip to the Asheville area plan a trip to Waynesville Canton kind of some of the smaller mountain towns outside of Asheville come see us we'd love to take care of you and just have a great time like go on vacation have a great time that's my ask of you just to go on vacation have a great time and support Western North Carolina
SPEAKER_03:heck yeah Matt wow what two I thought maybe this part two would be a little bit shorter but we still you know went over an hour and a half so this has been so much fun and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show. I look forward to staying in touch.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Thanks, Connor. It's been fun, man. Appreciate the opportunity to tell our story.