Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Awesome, man. Well, I'm glad I ran into you. A friend of mine, Mike McAllister, said, hey, this guy's going to be here. He has an RV park podcast. You should go introduce yourself to him. So I just kind of bumped into you. That's how I think. It's kind of funny, but, you know. So how are you involved in RV parks? And what do you. What capacity are you at?
[00:00:16] Speaker B: I've been involved in RV parks for probably 15, 16 years. So we got started in, like, 2000. I guess it's fair. The company started in 2009. We got started in RV parks with KOA in 2011.
If you want to know the backstory, I can tell you that.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Let's get it.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Okay. So the backstory is. Is like, I cold called Mike Gast, who is the VP of public relations at koa we were going around, basically. The company was originally founded as a travel video company, so back when travel blogging was getting really popular and stuff. Yeah, I didn't want to write. And so I have a background with video. I work with CBS News, the Cleveland Indians, went to broadcasting school, that kind of stuff.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: And so I was traveling around the country doing videos of museums and tourist attractions and working with CVB's and all that kind of stuff.
And I cold called Mike Gast from
[00:00:59] Speaker A: KOA I love it.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Hadn't been camping since I had done it for, you know, when I was, like, 13, 14 in my family's travel trailer or whatever.
And so cold called him. It took me, like, two months to convince him to send us to. He sent us to Sugarloaf Key, Key West, KOA we stayed in a tent.
It was still a beautiful location. Right. But we did a video of his. Did a video of his property.
And then he loved it so much, he gave us vouchers to do 90 different corporate parks. And we went all the way up and down the East Coast, 95 there.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: So for, like, for content or just for them? For their website?
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Like, for editorial videos. So, like, these were, like, not promotional videos. I mean, I guess they were in some ways. Right. But I didn't let them have control over the content. I just went and shot the campground interview. The owners talked to them as more content. Like, it was an influencer, I guess, if you could say that.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Okay, cool.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Kind of don't like that word, but that's what. Anyway, that's what it was.
And so in the course of all that, we came across a KOA owner in Ashland, Honey's Nest, KOA in West Virginia.
And we were just chatting outside the cabin one night after we had done, you know, we're done shooting his park and he's like, I'm paying a work camper like 10 bucks a week to do my social media. This is back in like 2011, when nobody knew the difference between friend profiles and pages, all that stuff. Right.
So I'm like, all right, I guess I could probably help you with that. Like, I do that for my company. And he was like, all right, I just made up a number and I said 50 bucks a month. 33 koas later, nobody told me no.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Hell yeah. Another business was started.
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Yep. So that was our, that was our original business.
And I, like, now we work with four or five hundred, you know, campgrounds. We do, we do marketing, websites, everything you expect an agency to do. But I'm really hard pivoting into AI now is the answer to your question is we're doing AI chatbots, a phone, agents.
We're doing like custom automations with AI for owners.
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: Just helping them figure out AI.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Because I've heard some pretty good stuff where you can pick your voice and it's becoming more fluid. But, you know, the common objection is like, I don't want to talk to a robot.
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Well, that's interesting. Right? So the first time I posted about the phone agent that we were building that would answer questions, it's like a year and a half ago, two years ago, when we started building it right. On LinkedIn, somebody commented that exact thing on the LinkedIn post and they're like, I never want to talk to a robot. And my reply to that was, of course you do. The first time you call your cable company and that AI can solve your problem without transferring you eight times and keeping you on hold for two hours, you'll never want to talk to a human being again.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Asking the same questions over. Did you reset your router? Yeah.
Right.
Do you see any pushback on, like, hey, there needs to be a local person, somebody's asking about the weather, or does this want a local vibe touch to it?
[00:03:29] Speaker B: I mean, I think the interesting thing is we've designed this with the guest experience first. So everything that we do, whether it's chats or phone calls or the automations that we're building, has to in our minds, like, forget about whether the owner wants it or not. Because they should. Right. But some do, some don't.
Every product we put out has guest experience first. So it's not like the UPS spot that you call on the phone. You're pressing one frantically and you're yelling at it and screaming at it. I just want to talk to you.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: I already told you. Yeah.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Like, our idea is like, you call and it can answer what time is check in, check out, pet friendly cabins, all that kind of stuff. But if you say, I want to talk to a human, or you say, is my package there behind the front desk? It knows that it can't handle, that it will just instantly transfer you to a human during opening hours.
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's boring because I compare campgrounds to real estate agents. A lot of times it's half of them. Don't answer the foam. No.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: So. So who cares what your objections are? At least do that. So you answer that.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: So you're not missing the resin. Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: Because RVers, you know, if it's nightly or just whatever it is, if you don't answer the phone, they're going to call the next park next to you.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Like, are we censored? Can we say? Or. Yeah, yeah, I just want to make sure.
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: You said fn, so I didn't want to.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
[00:04:33] Speaker B: By the FCC on your podcast.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: No, I don't know. I just throw it all out there. We'll see what happens.
[00:04:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: That's how I live. My life is here.
[00:04:39] Speaker B: Yeah. You're not wrong. Like, they're like, you're missing all these calls after hours.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: You're missing all these calls on Friday at 4 o' clock or between 2 and 7 o'.
[00:04:46] Speaker A: Clock.
[00:04:47] Speaker B: Everybody's lining up because your staff can't handle the call.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I got a few parks people just like to freaking call at 8pm I don't know why, like on a Sunday or something, but I'm like.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: And so it's better than nothing.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: Like, we fully integrate with Camp Spot now we're working on new book next. And so these agents not only can answer questions, they can give the pricing, they can check availability, they can take your information, they can make powerful reservation availability. Yeah.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: So how hard would it be to incorporate? It's such a. Not the easiest process to get incorporated with the software. Right. It's. It's a process. It's a. Yeah.
[00:05:16] Speaker B: Like, we have to learn their API, we have to learn their documentation, we have to learn how to make it work. But, like, it's not hard either. Like, it took us a year to do the camp Spot one, but I feel like now we have. We understand the process, what we need, how to do it. So we've been working on new book now. We hope to have that out by Q1.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: So. So you're just a. You need their permission to be able to do that or.
[00:05:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we got to call and have a good relationship with them. But I've been in this industry so long, I know most of the players and people.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: There you go, there you go.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Experience pay sometimes and like it's really hands off for them. Right. A lot of them have open APIs. They're like, sure, you can build like we just got to test it. We got to know it's going to work. We got to know it's not going to embarrass us.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So, yeah, that's pretty neat because I can see once you have all the big players, which is I'm guessing 80 of what people use as the top five guys.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah, probably.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Then, then you got something that nobody else has. It sounds like, I mean, that's what the goal is.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean that's the moat. Right. Like, like you can Google chatbot, AI chatbot and you can plug in something for 25 bucks a month and you can upload PDFs to and scrapes your website. But the answers aren't good, the quality isn't great.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Yeah, like it's the difference maker.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: That's the difference maker is tomorrow, like open, I could wake up and OpenAI could release a chatbot maker or a phone call agent. That's super easy for you to click. But they're not interested in integrating with Camp Spot. No, it's too small for them. And so as we move forward with AI services and what we help campgrounds with, the biggest thing for us is nobody knows what's going to happen tomorrow with AI.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: What we do know for sure is that AI is going to move super quick and there's always going to be owners like you who don't know how to use it, deploy it properly, make it efficient, all that kind of stuff. So that's where I'm going to play. Yeah, I'll future proof myself.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's leverage. It's smart. It's getting ahead. I mean, that's very smart. I love it.
That's pretty cool. The integration I think is a game changer. It's positioning. That's pretty neat.
So I definitely, my parks definitely incorporate some more of it. We've been flirting with some, but maybe we could talk some more about that. And I'll offline, but yeah, you can
[00:07:12] Speaker B: come see it in our booth, room 576 over. You can Demo the.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. As soon as we get it wrapped up there, we definitely need to do a demo. That sounds cool.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: All right, what else you got?
[00:07:22] Speaker A: So we covered. Covered your AI. So what, you have a podcast too, right? Is that what's.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: I have two podcasts.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Okay, tell us about those.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: So I've been doing MC Fire, so I own moderncampground.com too, which is a news website for the industry.
And I created a podcast called MC Fireside Chats.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Okay.
Yeah.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: So that's my podcast.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: And I've been doing that since 2000. Probably like. Well, March. Really? March, April of 2020. We actually started a podcast as a. It was really a webinar in the beginning as a way to keep people updated with what's happening in Covid.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: And so we were working with actually Ojai Arvic at the time, and they were doing all these shows, and then they decided, like, well, we don't want to invest the time anymore. It's been like a month and a half. Like, we have more ways we can different support our members, whatever else. Right.
[00:08:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: So we took it from there and we kept updating on Covid on our own without Ojai, and then we just kind of pivoted it. When people were, like, sick and tired of hearing of COVID We started covering other topics. And so it's been growing since 2020. I've been doing an episode live every week.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: No recordings, no editings like that.
[00:08:23] Speaker A: Consistency. I love it. I love it.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: So I do that. And then I have Outwired, which is a new podcast we started in February. It's more like a Joe Rogan style podcast. So we, like. I don't smoke cigars, but, like, we drink whiskey on there and all kinds of stuff. And it's. It's just me and Scott Barr, who's the guy who does the North American camping reports for KOA campgrounds, has done that for a long time. And so we just kind of look at data and analytics and AI and technology and give our opinion on guest services and all that. We don't really have guests.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: The idea is like, let us pontificate and just kind of run our mouths because we like to do that.
[00:08:54] Speaker A: So, yeah, get these thoughts out of our heads and talk about it.
That's pretty neat, man. I appreciate your time coming over here and talking with me.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: I appreciate you having me, man.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I just started this thing a couple months ago, so we're launching it. So now I've just made a decision that I need to just hammer down, keep connecting with people, and just keep this thing going, because it's going to put me on a good path forward.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: So what are you going to do? Cool. Appreciate you, man.
[00:09:14] Speaker A: Yes, sir.
