Latest / Outdoor Hospitality Podcast: Glamping, STR, Resorts, Unique Stays, RV Parks, RV Resorts & Campgrounds / Pt. 2 The Glamping Collective- A Mountaintop Retreat Near Asheville, NC with Matt Bare (Founder Story)

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Pt. 2 The Glamping Collective- A Mountaintop Retreat Near Asheville, NC with Matt Bare (Founder Story) · Outdoor Hospitality Podcast: Glamping, STR, Resorts, Unique Stays, RV Parks, RV Resorts & Campgrounds

• 0:00
  Connor Schwab: Thank you.
• 0:12
  Connor Schwab: Welcome back to another episode of the Unique Hospitality Podcast.
• 0:15
  Connor Schwab: I'm your host, Connor Schwab, and we're back with Matt Baer for part two of his episode.
• 0:21
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 0:33
  Connor Schwab: So welcome back, Matt.
• 0:35
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:16
  Connor Schwab: If someone wanted to add a hot tub to their property, what should they expect, basically?
• 1:20
  Matt Bare: Yeah, I think the place to start is with the Department of Health.
• 1:23
  Matt Bare: It's typically where that lives.
• 1:25
  Matt Bare: They're going to have their own set of guidelines and rules.
• 1:28
  Matt Bare: First understanding, well, I guess if you're operating at scale.
• 1:33
  Matt Bare: If you're operating like an individual Airbnb, man, probably just go for it.
• 1:38
  Matt Bare: It's kind of the Wild West for a lot of individual Airbnbs in a lot of markets.
• 1:43
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 1:51
  Matt Bare: Multiple units is what I mean when I'm talking about at scale.
• 1:53
  Matt Bare: You've got to be tied into the Department of Health and just understanding what their requirements are, what they want to see.
• 1:59
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 2:12
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 2:26
  Matt Bare: Um, but these are private hot tubs on a personal deck.
• 2:29
  Matt Bare: Like they don't like, there's no reason that's any different than you policing the 2000 Airbnbs in the area.
• 2:38
  Matt Bare: Um, and them having a private hot tub, just cause we have 26 units on one site doesn't make us really any different.
• 2:44
  Matt Bare: So, and it was a journey.
• 2:45
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 2:57
  Matt Bare: Like in a nice way, but also like just not stopping at no.
• 3:03
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 3:10
  Matt Bare: Or just wing it like we did.
• 3:15
  Matt Bare: and find your way out of the hole.
• 3:17
  Matt Bare: But, and then, yeah, I mean, it's draining the hot tubs.
• 3:21
  Matt Bare: I mean, you know, take this with a grain of salt because your local government agency is going to have their own requirements.
• 3:28
  Matt Bare: But there's meeting their requirements and then there's being like guest ready.
• 3:32
  Matt Bare: So we talked about having hot water fills.
• 3:33
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 3:40
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 3:49
  Matt Bare: And one, you'll burn your guests if they show up.
• 3:51
  Matt Bare: Two, you'll probably destroy your hot tub.
• 3:54
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 4:00
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 4:08
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 4:15
  Matt Bare: tub out after we service it.
• 4:17
  Matt Bare: So that's a pro tip there, hot water fill.
• 4:20
  Matt Bare: Put that on the outside of your unit.
• 4:23
  Matt Bare: Have your plumber go ahead and I just, we mount a cold water hot tub, cold water, hot water side by side.
• 4:30
  Matt Bare: We use spray paint to color code the nozzle so the staff knows what they're looking at.
• 4:35
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 4:42
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 4:49
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 5:03
  Matt Bare: 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?
• 5:12
  Matt Bare: That's a whole design methodology.
• 5:13
  Matt Bare: How's my maintenance team going to use this?
• 5:15
  Matt Bare: this?
• 5:15
  Matt Bare: That's a whole design methodology.
• 5:17
  Matt Bare: How's my housekeeping staff going to interact with this?
• 5:19
  Matt Bare: That's a whole design methodology.
• 5:21
  Matt Bare: So a little off your original question, like how do you maintain a hot tub?
• 5:23
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 5:38
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, super interesting.
• 5:40
  Connor Schwab: 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?
• 5:49
  Connor Schwab: Was I understanding you correctly in how that works?
• 5:51
  Matt Bare: So it's off the hot water heater for each unit.
• 5:53
  Matt Bare: So each of our units has their own hot water heater and we're pulling hot water off of that.
• 5:57
  Matt Bare: So most of our units have instant hot water heaters.
• 6:00
  Matt Bare: So endless hot water, tankless water heaters.
• 6:03
  Matt Bare: So we're doing it through that.
• 6:06
  Matt Bare: Not like a centralized storage.
• 6:08
  Matt Bare: We've looked at that as well.
• 6:09
  Matt Bare: Didn't seem to be cost effective at our site.
• 6:12
  Matt Bare: If you were more dense, if you at higher density, it might make sense.
• 6:17
  Matt Bare: But for us, it didn't make sense.
• 6:19
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 6:30
  Matt Bare: And then we did that.
• 6:34
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 6:40
  Connor Schwab: I remember someone saying that their room turnover service, they said if it was raining, it took them...
• 6:45
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 6:56
  Connor Schwab: Um, so just interesting things like that, that you don't expect.
• 7:00
  Matt Bare: Yeah.
• 7:01
  Matt Bare: Yeah.
• 7:01
  Matt Bare: That one's probably true for us too.
• 7:02
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 7:13
  Matt Bare: And they do a phenomenal job, but, uh, Um, yeah, but those are tough ones on rainy days.
• 7:18
  Matt Bare: Those are, those are tough for outdoor hospitality.
• 7:21
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, for sure.
• 7:22
  Nick Purslow: I'm going to be doing an episode soon about, um, just like a SWAT analysis on, on the glamping or landscape hotel market.
• 7:30
  Nick Purslow: And that's probably one of the biggest like weaknesses or difficulties of our industry is, is the housekeeping, you know, for that reason.
• 7:37
  Nick Purslow: And as well as for, you know, staffing in remote areas and things like that.
• 7:40
  Nick Purslow: Oh, well, that's probably a good segue.
• 7:42
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 8:01
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 8:24
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 8:37
  Connor Schwab: So it's a good fallback.
• 8:38
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 8:49
  Connor Schwab: But if they don't, it's still a good deal, good idea business practice-wise to have it.
• 8:53
  Nick Purslow: 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?
• 9:06
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, so the why are they coming to our property is getting to a place where you can rest, heal, and have adventure.
• 9:14
  Connor Schwab: So one of our our slogans are kind of our main thing is where luxury and adventure collide.
• 9:20
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 9:37
  Connor Schwab: And we got that feedback a lot as we were developing.
• 9:41
  Connor Schwab: And that was never even on our radar to like not have private bathrooms.
• 9:45
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 9:58
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 10:04
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 10:22
  Connor Schwab: It's just a miniature full oven.
• 10:23
  Connor Schwab: People think it's a toaster oven, but it's actually a full-blown like $350 oven in a small package.
• 10:29
  Connor Schwab: So we wanted to kind of do that.
• 10:31
  Connor Schwab: We haven't got that done.
• 10:32
  Connor Schwab: It's still on the list.
• 10:33
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 10:39
  Connor Schwab: But yeah, so that's a bit of a diatribe there, but really just thinking about Like we want to hit on luxury.
• 10:47
  Connor Schwab: Like we want people to be comfortable.
• 10:49
  Connor Schwab: We want people to feel safe.
• 10:50
  Connor Schwab: We want people to be able to get away from all of the noise and come and experience that.
• 10:55
  Connor Schwab: And if we're going to hit on all those things, right?
• 10:57
  Connor Schwab: Have 160 acres on the top of a mountain, have luxury, have all the things we're going to have.
• 11:03
  Connor Schwab: We knew we've got to hit a particular price point with our accommodations to make this work.
• 11:08
  Connor Schwab: And then making sure that we're designing everything else to be able to support that price point.
• 11:13
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 11:25
  Matt Bare: with the right with the right tiles
• 11:27
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 11:50
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 11:59
  Connor Schwab: And there's nothing wrong with that.
• 12:01
  Connor Schwab: That's a great business model.
• 12:02
  Connor Schwab: They're probably making more money than we are, but it just wasn't what we wanted.
• 12:06
  Connor Schwab: It wasn't the guest experience we wanted.
• 12:08
  Connor Schwab: It wasn't where I would want to go.
• 12:10
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 12:17
  Connor Schwab: So we wanted to do that differently.
• 12:20
  Connor Schwab: And part of that also was most people buy in the valleys and they look at the mountains.
• 12:26
  Connor Schwab: We knew the only land we looked at were mountain top sites.
• 12:31
  Connor Schwab: We knew, and this might sound, I don't know, conceited, whatever.
• 12:36
  Connor Schwab: It's not that.
• 12:37
  Connor Schwab: It's just a different thing.
• 12:38
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 12:44
  Connor Schwab: because literally we wanted to provide a mountaintop guest experience.
• 12:48
  Connor Schwab: And that's where everything started.
• 12:50
  Connor Schwab: And then we worked backwards from that.
• 12:53
  Connor Schwab: So, okay, now everything has to line up with this mountaintop guest experience.
• 12:58
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 13:07
  Nick Purslow: You even need to have a phenomenal property in views.
• 13:09
  Nick Purslow: And then if you have both, then you're in really good shape.
• 13:13
  Nick Purslow: And then also like a minute are important, but it sounds like you have both.
• 13:16
  Nick Purslow: Is there any food and bev on the property, or is it all self-serve at this stage?
• 13:22
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, at this stage, it is all self-serve.
• 13:24
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 13:33
  Connor Schwab: We had it on the docket for last October when Helene hit, so it got scrapped.
• 13:39
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 13:45
  Connor Schwab: We do have steep mountain roads.
• 13:50
  Connor Schwab: So to get like a traditional food truck up there or whatever would be pretty challenging.
• 13:54
  Connor Schwab: And one of my other just kind of mindsets is like just trying to keep it simple, like keep operations simple.
• 14:04
  Connor Schwab: I'm just not that smart.
• 14:06
  Connor Schwab: So I'm very much like a keep it simple, stupid kind of guy and subscribe to that KISS mentality.
• 14:11
  Connor Schwab: And like the more complexity you have the harder it is to deliver on operational excellence.
• 14:17
  Connor Schwab: 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?
• 14:31
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 14:44
  Connor Schwab: They're just things that you tried and you kept doing them even though they didn't make you any better.
• 14:50
  Connor Schwab: So it's navigating through that.
• 14:52
  Connor Schwab: And for me, a restaurant is so complex.
• 14:55
  Connor Schwab: While I love food and would love to do it, it's tough.
• 15:01
  Connor Schwab: It's tough.
• 15:02
  Connor Schwab: And I know there's so much data on occupancy rates and rep bars and all that related to if you have a restaurant.
• 15:08
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 15:46
  Connor Schwab: 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?
• 15:56
  Connor Schwab: So those are hard decisions to make.
• 15:58
  Connor Schwab: You know, we're, we're into it for a while and we're still making those decisions all the time.
• 16:03
  Connor Schwab: So.
• 16:05
  Nick Purslow: I love it.
• 16:05
  Nick Purslow: And it's a lot easier to run a pool with a cool waterfall than it is to run a restaurant.
• 16:11
  Connor Schwab: For sure.
• 16:12
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 16:13
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 16:14
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 16:49
  Matt Bare: Connor, do you want to talk about glamping permits for a second?
• 16:52
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, it's hugely important.
• 16:54
  Nick Purslow: The two biggest roadblocks to getting glamping projects built is the funding and the entitlements and the permitting.
• 17:01
  Nick Purslow: So it's a really big deal.
• 17:05
  Matt Bare: 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.
• 17:57
  Matt Bare: And they're just all-round fantastic partners to have on your side.
• 18:01
  Matt Bare: And Connor, I know you and Sage have had some pretty good experiences with Clockwork as well.
• 18:07
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, we've been working with Clockwork literally the entire time that I've been at the company, so for four years.
• 18:12
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 18:21
  Nick Purslow: They really know outdoor hospitality and they've designed some world-class sites.
• 18:26
  Nick Purslow: It's just, yeah, they're very talented.
• 18:29
  Nick Purslow: You'd be in good hands to work with them.
• 18:32
  Matt Bare: Yeah, and I can't vouch highly enough for Christian Arnold at Clockwork, the owner.
• 18:36
  Matt Bare: He's a fantastic guy who cares about what he does, looks after his clients, very reliable communication-wise as well.
• 18:43
  Matt Bare: 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
• 19:10
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 19:19
  Nick Purslow: He's a good friend of the show.
• 19:21
  Nick Purslow: He's been on like three or four times.
• 19:22
  Nick Purslow: Super, very similar journey.
• 19:26
  Nick Purslow: Ran into tons of roadblocks.
• 19:29
  Nick Purslow: An amazing problem solver.
• 19:30
  Nick Purslow: Dedication to excellence and the customer experience.
• 19:34
  Nick Purslow: Unflinching in his dedication to the property layout and guest experience.
• 19:39
  Nick Purslow: The property is stunning.
• 19:41
  Nick Purslow: It's probably one of my favorite properties that I've ever been to.
• 19:45
  Nick Purslow: So, you should definitely go and I'd be happy to introduce you to Bignall.
• 19:48
  Nick Purslow: And I think you'd have a lot to talk about.
• 19:50
  Nick Purslow: Because you guys are definitely on parallel paths.
• 19:53
  Connor Schwab: Love the introduction.
• 19:54
  Connor Schwab: They were booked up when I tried to book them.
• 19:56
  Connor Schwab: So maybe I can stop in and say hi when I'm there.
• 19:58
  Connor Schwab: But we can't stay there.
• 20:00
  Connor Schwab: But yeah, I would love to swing in and say hi.
• 20:03
  Connor Schwab: Maybe we eat at the restaurant.
• 20:04
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, and so we have talked about his restaurant on the show.
• 20:08
  Nick Purslow: And his big thing is like the glamping golden hour.
• 20:13
  Nick Purslow: And he's basically like...
• 20:14
  Nick Purslow: We knew that guests are really paying for the two hours before sunset on our property.
• 20:21
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 20:31
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 20:37
  Nick Purslow: 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?
• 21:07
  Nick Purslow: make it more profitable and keep people going.
• 21:12
  Nick Purslow: And it's an awesome concept from a restaurant perspective.
• 21:16
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 21:27
  Nick Purslow: And I personally can't spend $700 a night to go sleep in one of the tents.
• 21:31
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 21:38
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 21:39
  Nick Purslow: Um...
• 21:39
  Nick Purslow: And on the food and Bev topic, I mean, it sounds like you're already aware of this.
• 21:45
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 21:54
  Nick Purslow: And then the third one is a dining service, like a real dining service.
• 21:59
  Nick Purslow: And it was funny, I was just doing some consulting last week for some guys and looking at just the Colorado data specifically.
• 22:06
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 22:17
  Nick Purslow: It's
• 22:20
  Connor Schwab: all of them.
• 22:22
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, at least the ADRs.
• 22:23
  Nick Purslow: At least the ADRs.
• 22:24
  Nick Purslow: And yeah, so the data is just so conclusive on that.
• 22:29
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 22:39
  Nick Purslow: It's just like that...
• 22:40
  Nick Purslow: I cook the same breakfast and pretty much the same dinner every night if it was left up to me.
• 22:46
  Nick Purslow: So I would totally step away from that.
• 22:50
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 23:02
  Nick Purslow: I know nothing about food, but I know hospitality.
• 23:04
  Nick Purslow: Would you ever be interested in partnering?
• 23:06
  Nick Purslow: We do a JV.
• 23:08
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 23:15
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 23:59
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 24:16
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 24:39
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 24:54
  Nick Purslow: It's possible.
• 24:55
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 25:06
  Nick Purslow: The units themselves aren't absolutely insane.
• 25:09
  Nick Purslow: And so tell me a little bit more about how your first year of operations went.
• 25:17
  Nick Purslow: Or like launch, maybe launch first and then
• 25:21
  Connor Schwab: the first year of operations.
• 25:25
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, oh man.
• 25:26
  Connor Schwab: It was awesome.
• 25:27
  Connor Schwab: You mentioned our reviews, so our guests didn't know the chaos, but I felt like we were a duck that whole first year.
• 25:36
  Connor Schwab: We looked calm, cool, and collected on the surface, but we were just paddling like hell underneath, like, you know, coming at it.
• 25:42
  Connor Schwab: So we went straight from like zero marketing to 85% occupancy in our second month.
• 25:47
  Connor Schwab: So open Labor Day weekend, October hit 85% occupancy.
• 25:50
  Connor Schwab: So it was just like, there wasn't like this calm, peaceful ramp.
• 25:53
  Connor Schwab: It was just like, bam, here we are.
• 25:55
  Connor Schwab: And my manager was like, man, I had no idea we were going to ramp like this.
• 25:59
  Connor Schwab: And I was like, well, like kind of told you like that was the plan.
• 26:03
  Connor Schwab: Like we're pretty exceptional.
• 26:05
  Connor Schwab: And they were like, I know, but it just, so it was a lot.
• 26:07
  Connor Schwab: It was a lot to figure out.
• 26:08
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 27:42
  Connor Schwab: And man, it was like three or four iterations.
• 27:45
  Connor Schwab: And where did we end up?
• 27:46
  Connor Schwab: We dug out all of our spray foam and we heat taped everything.
• 27:49
  Connor Schwab: Like we did exactly what he said we were going to do.
• 27:53
  Connor Schwab: It just took us a while to get there.
• 27:55
  Connor Schwab: But like, you know, chasing freezing water lines, chase like, you know, just a lot of those things.
• 28:00
  Connor Schwab: Fortunately, our team is phenomenal and the service recovery from some of those issues was great.
• 28:07
  Connor Schwab: And I guess we're super understanding.
• 28:08
  Connor Schwab: So a lot of challenges but you navigate through it, you know, like it's, it was, it took a lot to get there.
• 28:16
  Connor Schwab: It takes a lot to construct a property out of nothing, let alone on the top of the mountain.
• 28:20
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 28:29
  Connor Schwab: You might expect them.
• 28:30
  Connor Schwab: I actually listened to one of your podcasts.
• 28:32
  Connor Schwab: I think with the guy in Canada who has the glamping domes where it's like crazy cold.
• 28:36
  Connor Schwab: I listened to that.
• 28:38
  Connor Schwab: With the tank?
• 28:39
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 28:39
  Connor Schwab: learn some things.
• 28:41
  Connor Schwab: Like, uh, so we went, we went through the ringer, but overall, like we were just blown away.
• 28:46
  Connor Schwab: Um, you know, when you're so close to something, you're like, you kind of won in the beginning.
• 28:51
  Connor Schwab: You think it's the coolest thing that's ever happened because it's yours.
• 28:55
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 29:02
  Connor Schwab: And honestly, one of the ways I survived development was taking friends up there.
• 29:07
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 29:15
  Connor Schwab: And the guest experience is going to be this.
• 29:16
  Connor Schwab: And we're going to have a hiking trail that goes there.
• 29:18
  Connor Schwab: And like, let me take you to the top of the mountain.
• 29:19
  Connor Schwab: And like those times where like everything is going wrong, nothing is working.
• 29:23
  Connor Schwab: No one is showing up to do the job they're hired to do.
• 29:26
  Connor Schwab: And we're over budget and it's COVID and it's snowing again.
• 29:30
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 29:53
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 30:06
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 30:19
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 31:12
  Connor Schwab: And so there's just there's just a lot of things happening.
• 31:15
  Connor Schwab: You talk a lot about like last time you said, like marketing is half the job and then operations is half the job.
• 31:21
  Connor Schwab: So they take the operations half.
• 31:23
  Connor Schwab: I lead the marketing half.
• 31:24
  Connor Schwab: And we work together as a great team and we just deliver on that guest experience.
• 31:31
  Connor Schwab: Like that's really what it's all about.
• 31:33
  Nick Purslow: As a marketing guy, what is what is your marketing team and and efforts look like?
• 31:40
  Nick Purslow: Is there anything that you've done that is just absolutely critical that you could never do without?
• 31:46
  Nick Purslow: 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?
• 31:52
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, always.
• 31:53
  Connor Schwab: You know, it's always a process of experimentation.
• 31:57
  Connor Schwab: There's a book, I think it's called Little Bets, but read it years ago.
• 32:00
  Connor Schwab: And I'm a huge believer in just that mentality of like, don't bet the farm, but always take little bets.
• 32:05
  Connor Schwab: Now, I bet the farm when I built the Glamping Collective.
• 32:07
  Connor Schwab: But from a marketing perspective, we're kind constantly taking little bets and looking for the next opportunity.
• 32:13
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 32:19
  Connor Schwab: You might've just done it wrong.
• 32:20
  Connor Schwab: But yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a lot of things we have leaned into.
• 32:25
  Connor Schwab: We were super fortunate out of the gate.
• 32:28
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 33:47
  Connor Schwab: So that's a big one.
• 33:49
  Connor Schwab: Back in my agency days we managed a ton of Google advertising, a ton of Google paid advertising.
• 33:56
  Connor Schwab: So that's a really big one.
• 33:58
  Connor Schwab: We generate a massive return on ad spend from our Google advertising budget.
• 34:03
  Connor Schwab: We are trying to do more paid social advertising.
• 34:08
  Connor Schwab: That's one of those that I've learned like you can do it and waste.
• 34:10
  Connor Schwab: And this is also true of Google ads.
• 34:12
  Connor Schwab: You can waste a lot of money really quickly if you don't really know what you're doing.
• 34:17
  Connor Schwab: Um, but, uh, but you can also do really, really well if you do know what you're doing.
• 34:22
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 34:28
  Connor Schwab: Um, like we have our, all of our settings or systems, we're generating a really strong ROAS.
• 34:34
  Connor Schwab: We're still on that learning journey from a meta advertising perspective.
• 34:39
  Matt Bare: Um,
• 34:39
  Connor Schwab: we are going into a learning journey from an OTA perspective.
• 34:44
  Connor Schwab: You know, I think a little differently about OTAs.
• 34:47
  Connor Schwab: Most people are like, oh, you want all direct bookings.
• 34:49
  Connor Schwab: And that's what I told people when I ran an agency.
• 34:51
  Connor Schwab: But the reality is like OTAs own some shoppers.
• 34:55
  Connor Schwab: And if you want to grow your occupancy, you have to play that game to a certain extent.
• 34:59
  Connor Schwab: So we started at 70% direct, 30% OTA our first three months.
• 35:05
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 35:46
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 35:56
  Connor Schwab: So they don't serve us up as much as our prices have gone up.
• 35:59
  Connor Schwab: But, but yeah, we just don't, we just don't get much Airbnb business.
• 36:03
  Connor Schwab: So it's,
• 36:05
  Nick Purslow: did the Airbnb consultants you hire provide any insights on that?
• 36:08
  Nick Purslow: It's, it's not some I understand super well, like how the Airbnb algorithm works for rankings.
• 36:14
  Connor Schwab: Unfortunately, no.
• 36:15
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 36:24
  Connor Schwab: Like, oh, it actually looks like you've already done all 10 of these.
• 36:27
  Connor Schwab: And I'm like, great.
• 36:29
  Connor Schwab: And you know, it's tough.
• 36:33
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 36:43
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 36:55
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 37:11
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 37:25
  Connor Schwab: We were really happy where our occupancy ADRs and rep bars were pre Helene.
• 37:31
  Connor Schwab: And then we lost $300,000 in a day, like literally refunded $300,000 in a day.
• 37:38
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 37:50
  Connor Schwab: Fortunately, everyone was safe.
• 37:53
  Connor Schwab: Everyone was good.
• 37:54
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 38:03
  Connor Schwab: The messaging was just so aggressive that building back from that, it's kind of like...
• 38:09
  Connor Schwab: you just look at things a little differently.
• 38:11
  Connor Schwab: And I think that's an area where we're like, okay, we still have a lot of ground we need to make up.
• 38:15
  Connor Schwab: And it's hard to just wait.
• 38:18
  Connor Schwab: You know, everybody's like, oh, it's going to be a two to three year rebuild, like economically.
• 38:21
  Connor Schwab: And it's like, man, I don't like, that's a long time.
• 38:24
  Connor Schwab: And so just, you know, it's those seasons you go through as a business where you're just looking at things differently.
• 38:30
  Connor Schwab: And it's okay, you know, yeah, we're getting 2% of our revenue from Airbnb.
• 38:34
  Connor Schwab: Like, how do we grow that and find ways to reach that customer I
• 38:40
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 39:14
  Nick Purslow: And like you said about price point too, because exactly like you said, it's like Amazon.
• 39:21
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 39:35
  Nick Purslow: And that's what those OTAs and marketplaces you know, it can be a challenge, right?
• 39:41
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 39:48
  Nick Purslow: So it's a good testament to you.
• 39:50
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 39:50
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, absolutely.
• 39:51
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 39:52
  Connor Schwab: I appreciate that.
• 39:54
  Nick Purslow: 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?
• 40:10
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, that's a great question.
• 40:12
  Connor Schwab: And I don't think there was, I can't think of any like major change we made.
• 40:17
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 40:32
  Connor Schwab: We talked a little bit about that we added hot tubs.
• 40:34
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 40:42
  Connor Schwab: So that was a big lift.
• 40:43
  Connor Schwab: We did that our first winter actually.
• 40:45
  Connor Schwab: So it was only three or four months in, but everything was pretty much pre-wired up for it.
• 40:50
  Connor Schwab: So it was like ready to go infrastructure wise.
• 40:53
  Connor Schwab: We built some more accommodations.
• 40:57
  Connor Schwab: So we ended up opening without our full phase one that we had planned just because of all the delays that happened.
• 41:05
  Connor Schwab: Like we're like, all right, let's just get open and we can, you know, add more over time.
• 41:09
  Connor Schwab: It was a separate area of the property.
• 41:11
  Connor Schwab: So we opened without our XL domes and then we added those over that year.
• 41:15
  Connor Schwab: That was a planned decision.
• 41:18
  Connor Schwab: This last year we added more domes just because of the demand for the domes, which brought us from 22 to 26 units.
• 41:27
  Connor Schwab: We had another XL dome and then we added three more of our standard size domes.
• 41:32
  Connor Schwab: We added heated toilet seats and as silly as this sounds, like we went on vacation somewhere and had a heated toilet seat.
• 41:40
  Connor Schwab: And I say this like not laughingly, but it like changed my wife's life.
• 41:46
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 41:56
  Connor Schwab: Like your girlfriend will become your wife instantly.
• 41:59
  Connor Schwab: Like she'll just sign up.
• 42:01
  Connor Schwab: So I put one in at my house and then it was just like, it was just such a thing.
• 42:09
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 42:42
  Connor Schwab: And it's like, wow, we spent, I don't even remember what it was.
• 42:46
  Connor Schwab: I think it was like $200 a unit to add heated toilet seats.
• 42:50
  Connor Schwab: And I was like, man, we've spent millions to get here.
• 42:52
  Connor Schwab: And then we spent three grand on 15 heated toilet seats.
• 42:57
  Connor Schwab: And it was like, people were just over the moon about it.
• 43:00
  Connor Schwab: So
• 43:03
  Nick Purslow: that is a great tidbit.
• 43:04
  Nick Purslow: It's kind of mind blowing, like how important just everything in the bathroom is to the overall experience.
• 43:11
  Nick Purslow: And that is such an area to exceed people's expectations.
• 43:15
  Nick Purslow: And I love the heated toilet seat.
• 43:18
  Nick Purslow: I haven't heard that one yet on the show.
• 43:19
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 43:31
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 44:18
  Matt Bare: yeah
• 44:19
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 45:06
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 46:01
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 46:11
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 46:23
  Connor Schwab: And it's hard.
• 46:24
  Connor Schwab: Not everything can be the coolest thing ever.
• 46:27
  Connor Schwab: But looking for those things to be like, man, just really push the envelope and find new things.
• 46:33
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 46:48
  Shari Heilala: Hello listeners this is Sherry Halala founder of Sage Outdoor Advisory.
• 46:52
  Shari Heilala: If you're launching an outdoor hospitality project like glamping we can help.
• 46:55
  Shari Heilala: We offer feasibility studies and appraisals.
• 46:58
  Shari Heilala: 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.
• 47:06
  Shari Heilala: 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.
• 47:14
  Shari Heilala: This is particularly important if you are looking to raise money for your project from a bank or private investors.
• 47:19
  Shari Heilala: They are going to want to see this type of deep dive analysis from an independent third-party specialist in the industry.
• 47:25
  Shari Heilala: We at Sage have completed well over 250 feasibility studies and appraisals in outdoor hospitality in North America in the last four years.
• 47:33
  Shari Heilala: So we understand what it takes to bring a project from concept to reality.
• 47:37
  Shari Heilala: 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
• 47:50
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 48:11
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 48:17
  Nick Purslow: Or like the in and out burger method where it's like, Hey, you can get a burger, a double burger or fries.
• 48:23
  Nick Purslow: Like, you know, we only have three things you can order and we just do them better than anybody.
• 48:28
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 48:28
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 48:29
  Connor Schwab: Which I love.
• 48:30
  Connor Schwab: But then it goes back to that restaurant conversation, which is where I struggle with it is like, okay, so we had a restaurant.
• 48:35
  Connor Schwab: Is that, is that still less, but better?
• 48:37
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 49:06
  Nick Purslow: 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
• 49:28
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 49:45
  Connor Schwab: Now that doesn't apply to everything.
• 49:48
  Connor Schwab: Like there's still some disposable stuff or consumables that make for a great experience.
• 49:53
  Connor Schwab: But generally speaking, like I'd rather buy the car than lease the car.
• 49:58
  Connor Schwab: You know, I'd rather like own that than I would have to, you know, pay for it every time.
• 50:03
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 50:18
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 50:31
  Nick Purslow: Typically in most counties, you don't have to deal with the health to run those commercially.
• 50:34
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 50:42
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, for sure.
• 50:44
  Nick Purslow: It's much simpler.
• 50:46
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 50:54
  Nick Purslow: I think more people like hot tubs than like saunas.
• 50:57
  Nick Purslow: I think it's probably a better amenity, but we'll have some more challenges and costs associated.
• 51:06
  Nick Purslow: 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?
• 51:20
  Nick Purslow: Maybe walk us through that.
• 51:24
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, man, so many moments.
• 51:26
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 53:10
  Connor Schwab: But, you know, you just go back to the table and you figure it out.
• 53:14
  Connor Schwab: Like it delayed us a while, but we figured it out.
• 53:18
  Connor Schwab: The same thing with energy rating.
• 53:19
  Connor Schwab: They came back on another CO inspection and said, oh, these are gonna have to meet single family residential insulation code.
• 53:28
  Connor Schwab: And like, you have to have like tests that say you meet the HERS rating.
• 53:32
  Connor Schwab: I think it is for a single family home.
• 53:34
  Connor Schwab: And I was like, guys, this isn't a single family home.
• 53:38
  Connor Schwab: 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?
• 55:09
  Connor Schwab: Like...
• 55:10
  Connor Schwab: How
• 55:12
  Nick Purslow: did you, by the way, what was the solution for those two things?
• 55:16
  Connor Schwab: Some of it I can't even talk about.
• 55:19
  Connor Schwab: Engineering, right?
• 55:22
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 55:30
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 55:34
  Connor Schwab: And they both times said, man, I've never heard of that.
• 55:37
  Connor Schwab: Like...
• 55:37
  Connor Schwab: Let us talk to our team, see what we can figure out.
• 55:40
  Connor Schwab: And on the wind rating, they went back to their engineering team who had rated them.
• 55:45
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 55:52
  Connor Schwab: And then they would just stopped because they were like, well, that's good enough.
• 55:55
  Connor Schwab: So they went back and they ran the same tests at a hundred.
• 55:59
  Connor Schwab: And these are, you know, these are not like real wind tunnel tests.
• 56:02
  Connor Schwab: These are like, I guess, computer tests to see what happens in certain wind loads.
• 56:07
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 56:21
  Connor Schwab: But that was a scary month of like, man, we might not ever open.
• 56:27
  Nick Purslow: That's pretty good customer service for whoever your dome, who's your dome supplier?
• 56:33
  Connor Schwab: We use Shelter Structures, U.S.
• 56:36
  Connor Schwab: headquartered out of L.A., of course, man.
• 56:38
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 56:49
  Connor Schwab: Like it's, you wish you don't have
• 56:52
  Nick Purslow: to.
• 56:53
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 56:54
  Nick Purslow: Probably no small thing for them to go.
• 56:56
  Nick Purslow: And I mean, maybe, I don't know.
• 56:57
  Nick Purslow: I don't know.
• 56:58
  Nick Purslow: Maybe it's not that complicated.
• 56:59
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 57:05
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 57:14
  Nick Purslow: I know the wind rating is super common in Florida or hurricane areas.
• 57:17
  Nick Purslow: And then the insulation one comes up all the time.
• 57:21
  Nick Purslow: Well, not all the time, but it does come up.
• 57:25
  Nick Purslow: 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...
• 57:34
  Nick Purslow: Those are the two big ones.
• 57:37
  Nick Purslow: is like sprinkler systems.
• 57:39
  Nick Purslow: And they're like, this is a tent or like, this is a dome.
• 57:41
  Nick Purslow: Like, where are we gonna, how are we gonna put this, you know, fire suppression sprinkler systems in here?
• 57:45
  Nick Purslow: So, yeah, but.
• 57:48
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, yeah, we ran into those two.
• 57:50
  Connor Schwab: Fire suppression, we navigated through.
• 57:51
  Connor Schwab: Fortunately, we ran into that one during due diligence.
• 57:53
  Connor Schwab: So we were able to solve it before we'd invested our life savings.
• 57:56
  Connor Schwab: It was less stressful at that moment.
• 57:58
  Connor Schwab: But we went after that one too and got that one done.
• 58:05
  Connor Schwab: And then the HERS rating thing, like I went through multiple people before I found someone who would even agree it's possible.
• 58:13
  Connor Schwab: Like the first two or three Herzrators I talked to were just like, yeah, it's not even possible.
• 58:17
  Connor Schwab: Like, good luck, see ya.
• 58:19
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 58:27
  Matt Bare: Wait, so what'd you do?
• 58:28
  Matt Bare: How'd you figure it out?
• 58:29
  Connor Schwab: So I finally found a Herzrator that was like, it seems impossible, but I think I can make it work.
• 58:35
  Connor Schwab: Like, are you willing to do anything?
• 58:37
  Connor Schwab: And I was like, Yes, we are willing to do anything.
• 58:40
  Connor Schwab: And we just went after it and did some crazy stuff and spent a ton of money.
• 58:47
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 58:53
  Connor Schwab: But the reality is it only boosted on paper.
• 58:56
  Connor Schwab: In real life, it doesn't do anything.
• 58:58
  Connor Schwab: And I was like, perfect.
• 59:00
  Connor Schwab: So part of what he suggested we do does nothing in real life.
• 59:05
  Connor Schwab: But on paper...
• 59:07
  Connor Schwab: And per their test, it works.
• 59:10
  Connor Schwab: So we spent $40,000 doing something that in real life does nothing, but on paper does everything.
• 59:19
  Connor Schwab: And that hurt.
• 59:21
  Connor Schwab: Like we were already over budget.
• 59:23
  Connor Schwab: That was after we were supposed to be open.
• 59:25
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 59:33
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:00:38
  Connor Schwab: And it was brutal.
• 1:00:40
  Connor Schwab: It was brutal.
• 1:00:42
  Nick Purslow: You know, this, this hearing your stories, you know, hopefully the listeners are taking away.
• 1:00:48
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:01:01
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:01:08
  Nick Purslow: I'll figure it out myself.
• 1:01:10
  Nick Purslow: You know, I'm going to call three, four, five, 10 people.
• 1:01:12
  Nick Purslow: And it sounds like so many times in your story, you know, it wasn't the first try.
• 1:01:18
  Nick Purslow: Like you had to go find someone else and just like, hey, we're not taking no for an answer.
• 1:01:22
  Nick Purslow: Like we're going to find a solution here.
• 1:01:23
  Nick Purslow: And just really good general entrepreneurial advice there.
• 1:01:29
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:01:29
  Connor Schwab: No, it really is.
• 1:01:30
  Connor Schwab: And I think you've got to be your own number one advocate.
• 1:01:34
  Connor Schwab: Like hopefully you have somebody in your corner who's cheering for you or more.
• 1:01:37
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 1:01:59
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:02:12
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:02:15
  Connor Schwab: Man, it just caught all of us off guard.
• 1:02:19
  Connor Schwab: If you talk to the locals up there, nobody knew what it was really going to be.
• 1:02:23
  Connor Schwab: And I don't know all the reasons why.
• 1:02:25
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:03:03
  Connor Schwab: So they're, they're painful and you really hate the people who take you, who force you through them.
• 1:03:08
  Connor Schwab: But oftentimes three years later, two years later, you can look back and be like, man, that got me ready for this.
• 1:03:13
  Connor Schwab: And, and we survived because of that.
• 1:03:16
  Connor Schwab: Um, but man, it was, it was heartbreaking.
• 1:03:19
  Connor Schwab: Like it was so, and the timing of it made it so much more heartbreaking.
• 1:03:23
  Connor Schwab: Um, and it, you know, I mean, it was just like all our staff was affected.
• 1:03:28
  Connor Schwab: Um, So you're trying to care for them, love on them, support them.
• 1:03:32
  Connor Schwab: But at the same time, like you're trying to like rebuild and get going and being on the top of a mountain.
• 1:03:38
  Connor Schwab: Like I just didn't really think we would be affected.
• 1:03:40
  Connor Schwab: Like I thought, you know, we also, I'm also involved in a riverfront property and I was really concerned about that.
• 1:03:46
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:03:57
  Connor Schwab: We, the French broad river broke a previous flood record by 10 feet.
• 1:04:02
  Connor Schwab: The previous record was 22.
• 1:04:03
  Connor Schwab: It went to 32 feet.
• 1:04:05
  Connor Schwab: So it didn't even like break a record.
• 1:04:07
  Connor Schwab: It shattered a record by 50%.
• 1:04:09
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:04:29
  Connor Schwab: And so they had already gone up, cut trees off our roads, like done everything to help people get going.
• 1:04:37
  Connor Schwab: But there was no cell service.
• 1:04:38
  Connor Schwab: There was like no power, no water, nothing.
• 1:04:40
  Connor Schwab: And it was just like trees everywhere.
• 1:04:45
  Connor Schwab: We estimate, because you don't know, with 160 acres, we estimate we lost over a thousand trees on the property.
• 1:04:53
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:05:17
  Connor Schwab: Um, and we had like a 15 man crew just cutting trees for like a week.
• 1:05:23
  Connor Schwab: Um, and then going through the process of like the following week was like, okay, fix and repair.
• 1:05:28
  Connor Schwab: Um, and like get ready to go.
• 1:05:30
  Connor Schwab: And our power came back on after about two weeks and we were ready to reopen.
• 1:05:35
  Connor Schwab: Like the power came back on, our cleaners showed up, we cleaned all the units because again, we were almost sold out.
• 1:05:39
  Connor Schwab: It's like every unit was dirty and we couldn't clean it without water, without power.
• 1:05:43
  Connor Schwab: So to clean the entire site from a tree perspective, leaf perspective, but also then from like a accommodations perspective.
• 1:05:52
  Connor Schwab: So it was a huge effort.
• 1:05:54
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:06:34
  Connor Schwab: The average small business probably doesn't even do $300,000 in a year, and they lost that so far from Helene.
• 1:06:42
  Connor Schwab: So, man, our community is resilient.
• 1:06:45
  Connor Schwab: We're strong.
• 1:06:46
  Connor Schwab: We are open.
• 1:06:49
  Connor Schwab: We've been open for a long time.
• 1:06:50
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:07:15
  Connor Schwab: So that's my number one thing right now is like, and we did a massive amount of influencer outreach.
• 1:07:22
  Connor Schwab: We talked a little bit about influencers before, but after the storm, we did a massive amount.
• 1:07:27
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:08:08
  Connor Schwab: And it was like the thought being the media has basically said Western North Carolina is destroyed.
• 1:08:14
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:08:23
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:08:30
  Connor Schwab: And that just wasn't even close to true.
• 1:08:32
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:08:38
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:08:51
  Connor Schwab: I'm up in Western North Carolina.
• 1:08:52
  Connor Schwab: I'm on this hike.
• 1:08:53
  Connor Schwab: I'm doing this thing.
• 1:08:54
  Connor Schwab: And this is what it looks like.
• 1:08:55
  Connor Schwab: We knew it would be more well-received and reach a lot more people than we could ever reach on our own.
• 1:09:02
  Connor Schwab: And we just went all in on that strategy post Helene.
• 1:09:05
  Connor Schwab: And I think it worked really, really well for us.
• 1:09:07
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:09:15
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:09:29
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:10:00
  Connor Schwab: That's the whole point.
• 1:10:01
  Connor Schwab: It's not.
• 1:10:02
  Connor Schwab: Please come tell the story that it's not.
• 1:10:03
  Connor Schwab: Otherwise, all of the employees in Western North Carolina's hospitality industry are going to lose their jobs.
• 1:10:10
  Connor Schwab: And that would be way worse.
• 1:10:12
  Connor Schwab: Like we can come back from the physical disaster.
• 1:10:17
  Connor Schwab: It's going to take some time, but we can come back and we will come back.
• 1:10:19
  Connor Schwab: But like we can't let all these people lose their jobs and just rely on whoever to fund that.
• 1:10:29
  Connor Schwab: So, um, so it was a challenge, um, but I think we did a lot of the right things.
• 1:10:33
  Connor Schwab: 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?
• 1:10:58
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:11:09
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:11:17
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:11:31
  Nick Purslow: So just like that double hit.
• 1:11:33
  Nick Purslow: And it's also what a proactive and smart strategy to go the influencer route.
• 1:11:40
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:11:48
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:12:04
  Nick Purslow: Did you work at all with, is there like a visit Asheville or like a tour Asheville tourism board or anything like that?
• 1:12:11
  Nick Purslow: And do you, do you work with them at all?
• 1:12:13
  Nick Purslow: Or was this just all on your own accord?
• 1:12:15
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:12:15
  Connor Schwab: So there is, there's a well-funded explore Asheville.
• 1:12:20
  Connor Schwab: Technically we are outside of the County.
• 1:12:23
  Connor Schwab: We are just across the County line in Haywood County.
• 1:12:26
  Connor Schwab: So we we don't get to participate.
• 1:12:29
  Connor Schwab: We don't pay our tax revenue to them.
• 1:12:32
  Connor Schwab: We pay it to Haywood County.
• 1:12:33
  Connor Schwab: So we have our own visitors bureau, which is significantly smaller.
• 1:12:37
  Connor Schwab: And they're great.
• 1:12:41
  Connor Schwab: And they were doing a lot as well.
• 1:12:43
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:12:54
  Connor Schwab: So we wanted to do things on our own.
• 1:12:57
  Connor Schwab: So we really just went to other local businesses.
• 1:12:59
  Connor Schwab: And we, um, we just got after it.
• 1:13:02
  Connor Schwab: We just said like, we're not going to rely on the government or anybody else to, to go to bat for us.
• 1:13:08
  Connor Schwab: We're going to go to bat for ourselves.
• 1:13:09
  Connor Schwab: And we, we just, we just did a lot.
• 1:13:13
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:13:27
  Connor Schwab: So, uh, we, We had the ability to do that.
• 1:13:30
  Connor Schwab: And to your point, like we really wanted it to lift the entire community.
• 1:13:35
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:13:42
  Connor Schwab: But then we also hosted a big influencer event and did one of those mountaintop chef dinners.
• 1:13:47
  Connor Schwab: So we did like, invited a ton of people out, put everybody up.
• 1:13:50
  Connor Schwab: A ton of different outdoor brands sent gift packages.
• 1:13:54
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:14:07
  Connor Schwab: And I apologize, I'm leaving a bunch out, but they just threw in a ton of gear.
• 1:14:14
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:14:25
  Connor Schwab: But you can see some incredible content from it.
• 1:14:28
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:15:31
  Nick Purslow: Wow.
• 1:15:31
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:15:42
  Nick Purslow: So that's pretty cool.
• 1:15:43
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  Connor Schwab: And that's all you can do.
• 1:15:45
  Connor Schwab: You got to rally together and support each other.
• 1:15:46
  Nick Purslow: 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?
• 1:15:58
  Nick Purslow: pretty big teams.
• 1:15:59
  Nick Purslow: I think you mentioned you got your marketing company up to 50 or 80 people or something like that.
• 1:16:04
  Nick Purslow: So how do you approach hiring?
• 1:16:06
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, we were at 50 when I exited that company, or right about 50.
• 1:16:11
  Connor Schwab: It's a tough one.
• 1:16:14
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:16:22
  Connor Schwab: So it's different.
• 1:16:25
  Connor Schwab: And I give them a ton of credit.
• 1:16:27
  Connor Schwab: Like they are just boots on the ground.
• 1:16:29
  Connor Schwab: Like we don't put ads online and wait and see who comes.
• 1:16:32
  Connor Schwab: There's a couple of things we do.
• 1:16:34
  Connor Schwab: Like we look for exceptional talent everywhere we go.
• 1:16:37
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:16:49
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:17:00
  Connor Schwab: They're not going to tell you.
• 1:17:02
  Connor Schwab: But my team's done a phenomenal job understanding where do those people go to lunch?
• 1:17:07
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:17:44
  Connor Schwab: But just like, that's what it takes of just really, especially in a small rural community.
• 1:17:51
  Connor Schwab: Like there's just not a lot of people.
• 1:17:52
  Connor Schwab: And then really investing in training.
• 1:17:56
  Connor Schwab: Like there's a couple of pieces that I think make our team exceptional.
• 1:18:00
  Connor Schwab: One, we invest a lot into training and have very high expectations of what success looks like and inspect that regularly.
• 1:18:09
  Connor Schwab: And then the other thing is because we have high expectations, we want you to have high expectations of us as an employer.
• 1:18:16
  Connor Schwab: Like we have high expectations of you and it's fair that you have high expectations of us in return.
• 1:18:20
  Connor Schwab: And the simplest thing that can look like is we pay our team about twice as much as they could make working anywhere else.
• 1:18:26
  Connor Schwab: Um, but with that, we want the best of the best, right?
• 1:18:29
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:18:35
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:19:27
  Connor Schwab: Culturally, it just doesn't work for us.
• 1:19:30
  Connor Schwab: You're not gonna succeed in our environment.
• 1:19:36
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:19:50
  Nick Purslow: We're going to find them at restaurants.
• 1:19:52
  Nick Purslow: We're going to see them working and go talk to them.
• 1:19:54
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:20:06
  Nick Purslow: They're not searching the job boards.
• 1:20:09
  Nick Purslow: They probably don't even have a resume sometimes.
• 1:20:11
  Nick Purslow: That's That's a great tidbit that I haven't heard before.
• 1:20:16
  Nick Purslow: And I like what you said about slow to hire, quick to fire.
• 1:20:20
  Nick Purslow: It sounds like your GM team that you hired is doing most of the management.
• 1:20:25
  Nick Purslow: Is there any sort of core values or mission statement that's involved in the hiring process that you're looking for?
• 1:20:35
  Nick Purslow: Or is it more just kind of felt?
• 1:20:37
  Nick Purslow: Is there any granularity around that?
• 1:20:41
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:21:51
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:22:00
  Connor Schwab: So like it might feel mundane to you.
• 1:22:03
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:22:08
  Connor Schwab: So I'm really doing it, you know, 30 times a week.
• 1:22:11
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:22:46
  Connor Schwab: But if they walk in and it's not perfectly clean, everything, they're going to go nitpicky.
• 1:22:51
  Connor Schwab: They're going to start looking for everything that might possibly be wrong.
• 1:22:54
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:23:03
  Connor Schwab: But if they go in and it's not perfect, they just start nitpicking the whole thing and it starts to unravel.
• 1:23:08
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:23:19
  Connor Schwab: They deal with the worst of it.
• 1:23:21
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:23:35
  Connor Schwab: They've saved up their hard-earned money and their hard-earned PTO to come on this vacation.
• 1:23:41
  Connor Schwab: They've seen us on Instagram They're coming in and their expectations are up here.
• 1:23:45
  Connor Schwab: We've got to deliver up here or we're missing it.
• 1:23:49
  Connor Schwab: And if we miss it, like, man, we've missed it.
• 1:23:52
  Connor Schwab: And that's just really, really, it's a letdown for people.
• 1:23:55
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:24:01
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:24:09
  Connor Schwab: But like, it's a lot to take care of.
• 1:24:10
  Connor Schwab: But we're stewards.
• 1:24:12
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:24:57
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:25:05
  Nick Purslow: Powerful stuff, and I couldn't agree more.
• 1:25:07
  Nick Purslow: And it's true, right?
• 1:25:09
  Nick Purslow: It's all true, right?
• 1:25:10
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:25:18
  Nick Purslow: Cause they probably don't, they rarely get to see it.
• 1:25:21
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:25:31
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 1:25:32
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:25:33
  Connor Schwab: And like practically that can be just as simple as sharing five-star reviews.
• 1:25:36
  Connor Schwab: Like they're probably not checking your reviews, but you're checking them all the time.
• 1:25:39
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:25:48
  Connor Schwab: Be like, Joe, who was here last week, talked about the housekeeper he met.
• 1:25:52
  Connor Schwab: And even if that housekeeper isn't the one who cleaned Joe's unit, they don't know that.
• 1:25:57
  Connor Schwab: But if somebody gets called out by name in a review, man, just celebrate them and celebrate that opportunity.
• 1:26:04
  Nick Purslow: Yeah, I love it.
• 1:26:04
  Nick Purslow: It actually reminds me.
• 1:26:05
  Nick Purslow: I work really closely with Sandy Vans.
• 1:26:09
  Nick Purslow: It's a company I helped start in San Diego.
• 1:26:11
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:26:26
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 1:26:27
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:26:37
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:27:16
  Nick Purslow: That's they make this, you know, they make this all go.
• 1:27:19
  Nick Purslow: So I love that attitude.
• 1:27:20
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 1:27:21
  Nick Purslow: How is 2025?
• 1:27:22
  Nick Purslow: You know, last eight months.
• 1:27:26
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 1:27:26
  Nick Purslow: How's how's your you're you're getting into you're finishing your third year.
• 1:27:30
  Nick Purslow: How's that feeling?
• 1:27:32
  Nick Purslow: What's the year like?
• 1:27:33
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, it's it's been a challenging year, I think, mostly due to just being on the back end.
• 1:27:39
  Connor Schwab: I think we're seeing some economic headwinds, too.
• 1:27:42
  Connor Schwab: that are making things difficult.
• 1:27:44
  Connor Schwab: You know, it seems like we're seeing articles from destinations all over the US that tours was down this summer and so forth.
• 1:27:49
  Connor Schwab: You know, we can't control the economy.
• 1:27:53
  Connor Schwab: We can't control those things, but we do what we can do and that's just respond.
• 1:27:57
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:28:08
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:28:52
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:29:07
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:29:47
  Connor Schwab: And that's what we get to do for people.
• 1:29:49
  Connor Schwab: We get to show them the best sunset of their life.
• 1:29:52
  Connor Schwab: And that's such a gift.
• 1:29:54
  Connor Schwab: It's such a special thing that transcends economies and natural disasters and everything else.
• 1:30:01
  Connor Schwab: And we get to show up for the guests that are coming today and do an exceptional job.
• 1:30:06
  Connor Schwab: And that's it, man.
• 1:30:07
  Connor Schwab: That's the dream.
• 1:30:08
  Connor Schwab: That's what it's about.
• 1:30:09
  Nick Purslow: You got me so fired up to go open my own property.
• 1:30:12
  Nick Purslow: I got to hustle up.
• 1:30:15
  Nick Purslow: All right, and what's, you know, looking to the horizon, what's next for the brand?
• 1:30:20
  Nick Purslow: What's next?
• 1:30:21
  Nick Purslow: So the Chattanooga location, is that, do you own it?
• 1:30:24
  Nick Purslow: Is it underway?
• 1:30:26
  Nick Purslow: Like, where are you at in that?
• 1:30:27
  Nick Purslow: I guess, yeah, let's start there.
• 1:30:28
  Nick Purslow: Where are you at with Chattanooga?
• 1:30:29
  Connor Schwab: Yeah, we broke ground in Chattanooga April of this year, and we are well underway.
• 1:30:35
  Connor Schwab: We've got a phenomenal team working on that site.
• 1:30:38
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:30:49
  Connor Schwab: Like we were planning to do it in 12 in Asheville.
• 1:30:51
  Connor Schwab: So, or excuse me, in Chattanooga.
• 1:30:54
  Connor Schwab: So we're really excited about that.
• 1:30:56
  Connor Schwab: Love the piece of property that we found.
• 1:30:58
  Connor Schwab: Love the vision that we have and the amenities that we have there, the pool and our adventure trail that we're putting together.
• 1:31:06
  Connor Schwab: It's play off of a hiking trail.
• 1:31:09
  Connor Schwab: It's a hiking trail, but with some cool things that we're, we're just working into it.
• 1:31:13
  Connor Schwab: That land is a little smaller, like it's 37 acres instead of 160.
• 1:31:19
  Connor Schwab: So in that sense, it's a lot smaller.
• 1:31:20
  Connor Schwab: But I have never been on a piece of land that is so packed with like natural features as that piece of land.
• 1:31:30
  Connor Schwab: And being able, like we have multiple caves on the property.
• 1:31:35
  Connor Schwab: We have like, it's just, the whole thing has, sits on top of an 80 foot cliff.
• 1:31:41
  Connor Schwab: So you've just got the these incredible views out from it.
• 1:31:44
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:31:52
  Connor Schwab: So when we've strategically positioned units around those cliff faces, it's just like, it's crazy.
• 1:32:00
  Connor Schwab: Like I talked in the first episode about like, how could we ever top what we did at Asheville?
• 1:32:04
  Connor Schwab: Like, did we set the bar too high?
• 1:32:06
  Connor Schwab: And the weird fear that comes out of that.
• 1:32:10
  Connor Schwab: But I think I think what we have planned for Chattanooga is going to do it.
• 1:32:14
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:32:25
  Connor Schwab: Not that it, you know, they're just different.
• 1:32:29
  Connor Schwab: So it's hard to even say it's going to be better, but they're just different.
• 1:32:31
  Connor Schwab: And we're at a different place.
• 1:32:33
  Connor Schwab: We're at a different place in our journey.
• 1:32:34
  Connor Schwab: We're thinking different thoughts than we were thinking then.
• 1:32:36
  Connor Schwab: So it's really, really exciting.
• 1:32:39
  Connor Schwab: So Chattanooga is here.
• 1:32:41
  Connor Schwab: It's now.
• 1:32:41
  Connor Schwab: We're planning to open early spring 2026.
• 1:32:44
  Connor Schwab: Those things are difficult to exactly pin down.
• 1:32:48
  Connor Schwab: Our contractor is telling us that he's going to be done by Christmas.
• 1:32:52
  Connor Schwab: And he probably won't listen to this, so I could say this, but I'm not holding my breath for that.
• 1:32:58
  Connor Schwab: I'm holding him to that, but I'm not holding my breath for that because I've been down it before.
• 1:33:03
  Connor Schwab: And I know how painful it is when you do and you don't hit it.
• 1:33:06
  Connor Schwab: But we're shooting for early spring 2026, which we feel like the pace we're going, like he's on his way.
• 1:33:12
  Connor Schwab: his pace to be done by Christmas.
• 1:33:13
  Connor Schwab: And we've overcome a lot of, you know, the early challenges that would have slowed that down.
• 1:33:20
  Connor Schwab: So it's moving along.
• 1:33:22
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:33:37
  Connor Schwab: So we aren't the dome glamping collective.
• 1:33:41
  Connor Schwab: Like that's just...
• 1:33:41
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:33:52
  Connor Schwab: And so from where do we go from there?
• 1:33:56
  Connor Schwab: I don't know.
• 1:33:57
  Connor Schwab: You know, we have a vision to keep going.
• 1:33:59
  Connor Schwab: We have a vision to keep growing, but growing well and in a place where we can deliver on that same guest experience.
• 1:34:07
  Connor Schwab: You know, you're not going to see us buy 40 acres in the valley.
• 1:34:11
  Connor Schwab: and throw up canvas tents 10 feet apart from each other.
• 1:34:17
  Connor Schwab: That's not a brand for us, not to dog on that at all.
• 1:34:20
  Connor Schwab: Like that's a great experience.
• 1:34:22
  Connor Schwab: And again, those people are probably making more money than we are.
• 1:34:25
  Connor Schwab: We just, our brands wrapped around like going and doing hard things with exceptional delivery.
• 1:34:33
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:34:41
  Connor Schwab: and that we're really, really proud of.
• 1:34:43
  Connor Schwab: So we're excited to see where locations three, four, five are.
• 1:34:48
  Connor Schwab: We've got a dream and a vision for that.
• 1:34:49
  Connor Schwab: We're trying to figure out how to pay for those things right now.
• 1:34:51
  Connor Schwab: But we believe there's a way to do that and excited to keep growing the brand.
• 1:34:59
  Connor Schwab: So.
• 1:35:00
  Nick Purslow: Wow.
• 1:35:00
  Nick Purslow: Very cool.
• 1:35:01
  Nick Purslow: Are you planning to, is it going to be domes and cabins, domes and glass cabins at Chattanooga?
• 1:35:06
  Connor Schwab: First phase is going to be domes.
• 1:35:08
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:35:47
  Connor Schwab: So as simple as it is, we use standard treated lumber in Asheville, like everybody does.
• 1:35:53
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:36:07
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:36:45
  Connor Schwab: Yeah,
• 1:36:47
  Nick Purslow: I'm excited to see it.
• 1:36:48
  Nick Purslow: Now I'm on the edge of my seat.
• 1:36:50
  Nick Purslow: Look at you building the suspense.
• 1:36:52
  Nick Purslow: Are you familiar with my co-host on the show, Nick Prislow and his company, Posh Outdoors?
• 1:36:58
  Connor Schwab: Through listening to some of your episodes, yeah.
• 1:37:01
  Nick Purslow: Okay, it would be worth checking them out.
• 1:37:03
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:37:11
  Nick Purslow: But basically they're, you know, they're helping excellent property owners by financing the units.
• 1:37:18
  Nick Purslow: So it just, you know, obviously you can do it all yourself.
• 1:37:21
  Nick Purslow: Then that's great.
• 1:37:22
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:37:27
  Nick Purslow: So it might be worth a conversation.
• 1:37:29
  Nick Purslow: And I think it could be a really cool pairing and their, their units are awesome.
• 1:37:33
  Nick Purslow: Yeah.
• 1:37:34
  Nick Purslow: And yeah, man.
• 1:37:38
  Nick Purslow: Wow.
• 1:37:38
  Nick Purslow: Well, I'm so excited to see what happens next.
• 1:37:41
  Nick Purslow: And do you have any, you know, asks of the audience?
• 1:37:46
  Nick Purslow: Just
• 1:37:46
  Connor Schwab: come to Asheville.
• 1:37:47
  Connor Schwab: Like we're excited to see you.
• 1:37:50
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:38:02
  Connor Schwab: And that's the community that we tie into.
• 1:38:06
  Connor Schwab: So come to Asheville, come to Canton.
• 1:38:08
  Connor Schwab: Our community is ready and excited to see you.
• 1:38:11
  Connor Schwab: to welcome you with open arms.
• 1:38:12
  Connor Schwab: 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.
• 1:38:32
  Connor Schwab: Absolutely awesome golf scene, brewery scene, restaurant scene.
• 1:38:36
  Connor Schwab: It is the place to be, especially if you're in the East Coast or the Midwest.
• 1:38:40
  Connor Schwab: 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
• 1:38:58
  Nick Purslow: 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.
• 1:39:13
  Nick Purslow: I look forward to staying in touch.
• 1:39:14
  Connor Schwab: Yeah.
• 1:39:15
  Connor Schwab: Thanks, Connor.
• 1:39:15
  Connor Schwab: It's been fun, man.
• 1:39:16
  Connor Schwab: Appreciate the opportunity to tell our story.