Beyond Airbnb Building a Scalable Glamping Business with Garrett Brown

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of the Radical Hospitality Podcast. I'm your host, Zeke Friedman. Today I'm super excited. So I've got someone I was lucky enough to spend some time with in person at uh, Gideon Spencer's event. Had a little micro resort event a few weeks ago and we were hanging out on the boat together. And I'll tell you, this guy, he just thinks hospitality in a way that's like down to earth. He's a fellow Texan, so I relate a lot to what he's been going through down here and just approaches, uh, things in a way that gets things done. So I love it. I've really enjoyed having a conversation with him there. I'm excited to bring him here on the podcast, talk about some of the work he's doing. So just a quick background. Garrett is a, uh, graduate of the University of Houston's Hilton College of Hospitality. Uh, he came out with a foundation there and then he been, he's been building this Cameron Ranch glamping. It's a really cool brand in Texas and he works with biggerpockets as their short term rental expert. He's also the author of the Glamping Investor, which is a practical no fluff framework for building hospitality focused real estate business. So I'm excited to have you here, Garrett. Welcome to the Radical Hospitality show.

Speaker A: I'm super excited to be here. I, I wish we were still on the boat because that was a really fun time. But I do, I do like being here, you know, virtually, uh, with you right now. But we'll definitely have to redo the boat, the boat tour again. We have to tell Gideon to put it together.

Speaker B: That was super good. One thing I do miss about Texas is just being out on the water. It's, it's beautiful down there.

Speaker A: Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So I'm excited.

Speaker B: I want to start with like, we were hanging out and you told me this crazy story. We're just going to hop into it of uh, uh, ah, of some of your glamping calls that you've gotten. And so, yeah, I'll just set this up a little bit. So it sounds like you would, you had kind of first year into running one of these glamping sites and the question was, you know, what's the craziest call you've ever got? Uh, running a glamping site?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, I typically win this conversation. There's a lot of them, they're like, hey, what's the craziest, you know, short term rental story you have so My first year, this was. I'd had a few airbnbs before in condos downtown Houston, but this was. And I'd done that for a few years, but this was when I first opened my glamping site. This was the second home we've been open for three months and I get a call from my partner who was leaving and was like, hey, I think we just had a goat sacrifice at our, ah, at our property. And I'm like, well, how do you know? Right. Well, because. And she goes, well, because there are goat heads on sticks lining the street. And I'm like, okay, that, that's a pretty good, pretty good explanation. And I can agree with her. So at the time I, and you know, even, you know, as me and you were talking before we even jumped on, we're like, I've learned over time that, like, there's always a solution to a problem, but that's come with experience. At that time, though, I was a little newer to things and I kind of freaked out. You know, I didn't know what the, who knows what the solution is to that. So I ended up getting Airbnb involved. They, uh, they ended up having my back, even though I didn't need to really have much proof. They, you know, they ended up paying out like 20, $500 or something like that for the damages of leaving the goat heads. We found out it was like a religious ceremony. So that kind of like we called the cops, you know, the sheriffs and all that too. They couldn't do anything because of the religious part. Airbnb didn't really disclose much information to me. And I could, I could go into hours of that story about, like, what, you know, like how you could avoid it and all that, but it really, there's no way to avoid these kind of things. Like, I had cameras up everywhere. I, I vetted the guests. It was through Airbnb. Like they were there for a week. You know, it wasn't like a one night rager party. You had no idea this was going to happen. Uh, but that is, that was my introduction to outdoor hospitality or nature hospitality at the time. And ever since then, pretty much every single problem has been just, you know, rolls off my back basically because, like, you'll never compare to the goat sacrifice. And I want everybody out there to. I, uh, like telling this story because everybody will have something wrong in hospitality at some point. And I just always go, don't worry. I got through a goat sacrifice on my property and I still have some of the most profitable glamping units in all the country. So if I could get through that, I'm pretty sure you can get through the stained towels that you had from your guests and things like that. There's always a solution. So that was, that was my, uh, intro to not dwelling on the problem and then finding the solution. And, and as a CEO, owner now of, you know, a, uh, 20 unit plus glamping business like that is a day to day. And like we mentioned before, we got on like every day. Now there's a problem. We just find a solution for it, and that is part of what we sign up for. But, you know, pros and cons to everything in life, because all the pros of all the benefits that I get from running this type of business completely outweigh the, you know, the minute issues that tend to pop up every once in a while.

Speaker B: I, uh, love it. You know, now that we just, like, convince everybody to get into glamping because, yeah, 100%. Yeah. So good. Um, yeah, you'll come across these, you know, the wild experience of being in, uh, hospitality, short term rentals. You never know what you get, but it is a great business.

Speaker A: Yeah, those things are rare, too. Let me. I just want to caveat that, like, obviously my story is super rare. I teach this full time at bigger pockets, and I have not met anybody out of the thousands and thousands of people I talk to all the time that have beat that story. So I tell you all that to go. I got through that and made some money and still have an extremely profitable business that has grown tremendously. So these things shouldn't scare you because they're super rare, but you can see that there's. These things are all fixable, you know, in the end, you know, So I do, I don't want to scare people. I tell people that to, like, encourage them to know that that's probably the worst you could, you know, knock on wood, worst you could happen. And you still made it through, through that episode. So that, that is my, still my pitch to get into glamping in outdoor hospitality world.

Speaker B: All right, guys, I've got one quick favor to ask. If you've been enjoying radical hospitality, if these conversations have inspired you, encouraged you, or help you think bigger about what it means to create spaces that truly serve people. Would you hit the subscribe button? It's a small thing, but it makes a huge difference for our show and for our team. We're working hard to bring some of the most thoughtful entrepreneurs, builders and visionaries in hospitality, people creating meaningful spaces all over the world. And your subscription helps us keep getting better every single week. And if you're someone who's dreaming about building a hospitality project of your own, that's what we do at Root Architecture. Every single day. We help clients design and bring those spaces to life. You can book a discovery call with me or someone on our team@therooteam.com. thanks so much for being a part of this journey. It really means a lot to me. Subscribe, stay with us. Uh, and let's keep building cool stuff that serve people well. I. I don't mind starting with a good filter of like, hey, if you're not ready to like, you know, deal with some goat sacrifices with the dirty towels, maybe this isn't business for you, but 100%. Yeah. So how did you get in into this? So you came out from the traditional nice, clean towel world of, you know, Hilton's traditional hotels. What got you down the route of experiential outdoor hospitality versus, you know, just doing traditional Marriotts, Hilton's and, And regular hotels. Yep.

Speaker A: No, that. So I left. You know, when I left the Hilton College, I actually had a focus more. I wanted to do more bar and restaurant style was kind of my hospitality focus, but I also was like, engaging with a possible, like, you know, maybe go and be, you know, uh, an assistant manager at a hotel or something. But actually, I got really far into music at that point and I got very lucky to have a, you know, a small career in music. For about 10 years, I. I was a travel DJ. I produced music at a studio, all kinds of things, and it was great. It didn't make a ton of money, but it did well. And I. And, uh, it's my creative passion that was the biggest thing. So I'm in music. I'm probably six or seven years in. I'm making like 40, 50 grand a year. You know, pretty, pretty small. Different than what people think you make. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, all right, what can I actually do on top of music that's a little flexible but like, can actually build generational wealth at that point. And so I got into real estate. I became a real estate agent. I started that. I hated being a real estate agent. I'm not a salesperson. I didn't. I. This is not up my alley at all. So I started pivoting and I'm like, I start talking to some people that were investors and they were like, you know, they're asking me when I was an agent, like, hey, do you work with Investors. And I was like, sure, of course I do. And I didn't have any knowledge of this at the time. I found bigger pockets. This was eight or nine years ago. Learned, uh, everything I know about investing through them, which it's kind of full circle that actually work for them now. But I started flipping houses, doing, like, doing everything under the sun, and it was all okay. I had a couple wins, couple losses. But I got into Airbnb. I saw that, and I was like, okay, I, I had three basic condos in downtown Houston. This was like 2019. They, uh, were doing okay. But then Covid hit and all the big institutional money came into Houston. And at that point it was just drop your price as low as possible to see if you get booked. And so I saw the writing on the wall. I was very big on YouTube university. I was always just studying new things to do, and I came across the glamping style. And this is 2021. And I'm like, okay, that sounds pretty cool. I love nature. I'm creative. I can build some crazy cool stuff, which kind of, you know, scratches my creative itch. And I just kind of went down the rabbit hole and was like, you know what? Screw it, I'm going to do it. And then I sold my little three condos. I had, I put it all into, uh, my first site. I didn't know anything about, you know, developing land or anything like that. And I built a geodome, which is, you know, really cool structure. I didn't, you know, I didn't know a whole lot, but I learned a lot through that process and it went really well. And then I got a partnership with a company called OUD Mirror House, which we delivered the first OOD mirror house in the United States. I was their first partner. And then once that, once that came, it kind of took off like a skyrocket. And we've, we've, we've expanded 3x every single year between units and revenue since then. So now we have, I think, 18 units across three different sites, two markets. And then now we're adding another operation that's going to be 20 units on one site, which is my biggest one to date. But I've learned so much. I went small at first, and then now the more I've done it and every, Every single time, I just get better and better. Every single cabin I built keeps outperforming the last one because I just, I keep learning more every. And I learn more about the guest needs and, like, what truly matters to build that guest experience. There you know, and we talk about like why I didn't go the Hilton or the Marriott route. It's because I saw the writing on the wall that that's, you're just a commodity with that. But like how you get out of the commoditized space is to build something, a brand and an experience that is very hard to match and people will pay a premium for. That's the reason why Marriott and, and all these people are, are buying up places like Getaway and, or uh, postcard cabins as it's called now. Like they see the writing on the wall as well too. So I'm no idiot if, if big hospitality is pouring a lot of money into that kind of side and it's early on I believe, then I believe I'm on the right side of like where this, this, this angle of hospitality is going. So I went all in on it and I don't plan to stop anytime soon.

Speaker B: Love it. Uh, so let's kind of, you've covered like a couple of different areas for those people who aren't that familiar. Let's kind of break down the, the pros, cons and definitions of short term rentals, glamping and maybe micro resorts. And you know, because you kind of have had your hand in all three of those, you know, if you could just kind of walk through each of those definitions. Pros, cons, what's working today?

Speaker A: 100%. So short term rentals is just literally what it sounds like. Vacation rental, most, most people know it as Airbnb. It's the same way with Uber. Uber is ride share. But when you say Uber, people think of the actual, you know, the, the, the actual action of it or the, the prospect of it. It's the same with short term rentals. That is literally where you just rent out a house, cabin, condo, whatever for less than 30 days typically. Um, and so there's a myriad of ways to do that. Pros and cons to it are, you know, if you go. I always am a big advocate for going the vacation rental side as opposed to like, I don't really like business oriented short term rentals personally because I think they're a little commoditized. Like you know, getting a condo in downtown Houston and having it for, you know, like workers and you know, businessmen or business women coming in to do, you know, stay in for like a week. That's not my bread and butter. So I always, I always advise people to, if you're doing that route, buy a home that's in a traditional vacation rental market. For short term rentals because one, you know, the regulations probably aren't going to affect you because they make a lot of money from that and they probably have been doing vacation rentals there since, you know, since we can even think back in time. So then we talk about glamping. Glamping is just luxury camping, glamorous camping, what, you know, whatever acronym you want to put around it and things or you know, however you want to be a wordsmith with that. But it's just luxurious camping which each year it has gotten elevated. When I first found out about it, people were still doing safari tents and it was kind of like that. As long as you had a memory foam bed and like an AC unit and a little water. That was usually glamping at that point. But now, you know, glamping is like you could build an amazing tree house and like you're charging a thousand dollars a night or like me with the mirror houses, like it's elevated every single year because people are trying to outdo each other pretty much. And so, you know, glamping could be as little as 1, 1, 1 cabin on, you know, some land in the middle of a, a rural area or a vacation rental area and that it could be considered glamping. But what I have kind of geeked out over and uh, me and you kind of connected when we even talked about everything was like how I, once I found out the power of commercial real estate, you know, like how much easier it is to drive the valuation of a site in a, in a, in a micro resort because commercial real estate is valued on the net operating income as opposed to residential, which, you know, which if you have one unit, one vacation rental, one glamping site, you know, one or two, like you're going to be considered residential pretty, you know, there's some variance there and it's not always a hard and fast rule, but you're always going to be, you're always going to be at the mercy of all the comparable sales in the nearby area. Once I started seeing the commercial real estate side which they truly value it based on your assets and also how much income that property brings in. And you can change that in many different ways between, you know, different revenue sources, you know, amenities, all these things too. That's when I really started to be like, all right, I need to start building out micro resorts as opposed to just one off cabins in the woods and other things too. So that's when I really geeked out and like truly started looking into the economies of scale which you Know, lines up with commercial real estate, which is like I have, I have seven cabins in one market and I have 11 cabins in another market right now. But they have gotten way cheaper to operate and become more valuable because I'm using economies of scale, which is like I have one operations manager overseeing all of all of my sites. I have one maintenance person that oversees all of my cabins in one market. I have another maintenance person that oversees all of my cabins in another. I have cleaners that oversee each department, each market I have, I have a marketing team and we only, as opposed to marketing for 10 different brands, we get to market for one brand, which it becomes cheaper, uh, you know, essentially when you add more revenue sources into it because the marketing goes further. Your mark, your lifetime value of a customer is probably a lot higher or your customer acquisition cost is a lot lower because we have different channels. And those are just a few examples of economies of scale without getting like too much in the weeds about it. But that's why I really started getting into the micro resort side because it truly can be based off of commercial real estate, which is how hotels and you know, uh, RV parks and other things like that are valued. Mobile home parks, like those are truly what I've seen build generational wealth. I don't think one off single family homes. I don't believe one off one, you know, one cabin in the woods, like those are going to do okay for you. But if we're talking building generational wealth and generational cash flow, it comes with the economies of scale of building out commercial micro resorts that operate like a hotel. And so that, that is kind of, you know, maybe a mid level definition of each one and kind of pros and cons. But I think commercial real estate by far has the biggest, it's the biggest risk, but it's, it's not even close on how big of a reward it is compared to some of the others. But, but they all have great, you know, like it all. The thing that's really good about real estate, and I talk about this all the time at Biggerpockets, is it is truly one of the investment vessels that you get to make fit your lifestyle. Like if you, if you want one vacation rental and that's all because you, cause you say you love your job and you don't want the headache of building a business and all these things and, and you just want that vacation rental to offset your mortgage and you get to go visit it sometimes, but it's still getting paid down by, you know, renters and eventually you sell it in 10 years and you know, you make an equity profit and all that. Like that is your lifestyle and that's awesome. That works for you. I'm a little crazier and I'm like cool. I'm going to build massive businesses while doing this full time and stuff too. So every uh, there's different flavors for everybody and that's what I love about real estate and that's what I learned. Like even I was flipping houses, I was doing buy and hold. I, I have some long term rentals and stuff. Like I didn't necessarily like it but it was, I learned from that. And then I just found the part of real estate that I genuinely like which is short term rentals or micro resorts, commercial real estate in the end, love it.

Speaker B: Uh, I want to share screen and take a look at these projects and one of the things I, I, I like what you said is that you know all of us kind of come into real estate with our, a little bit of our own personality, a little bit of, of our different approach. I mean we essentially went from you know, building One Tree House short term rental to building a 22 unit boutique hotel. Like you know and because I saw immediately like there's, because we were doing design and we were helping clients build out these boutique hotels and I just immediately saw the, the benefits of scale that you're talking about here, of having systems, having people to be able to hire and run, be able to have the cleaners. But what I like about what you've done is you've kind of, you know, and the approach of assembling a short term rental portfolio along with the other things that you wanted to build out these micro resorts and creating that underneath one brand. You know one of the things I learned, I said to Alice, Sarah Dussek and she talked a lot about, yes, there is kind of short term rental where you're selling on comps, there is cap rate where you're selling on your net operating income. And then there is really when you start to sell something as a multiple of EBITDA based on a brand and you uh, know companies like, you know, Starbucks and these other companies will sell off a multiple of a brand. And so I think there's some real benefits to start thinking about. You know, if, if you've been in this short term rental market for a while, how do you package things up so that they're full brand? And I think that's one of the cool things that you're doing here is you're taking all Your components and you're packaging not only the, you know, the benefits of scale but also building the brand out. So I've got your site up here and you know, at first I thought I was going on, you know, typically you come up to a site like this and you're looking at one location. And one of the things, quick things I noticed is uh, oh, this is one brand. But I can rent from multiple, you know, sites, locations that you pulled together. So you know, maybe walk through a little bit of how this portfolio got developed, how it started, a couple of the different projects that are interesting that you know, fit into the different categories and buckets.

Speaker A: Yep. So it, you know, it all. I never planned to go to another market. I was always planning to stay near Houston which it was kind of like where I first started. But one thing that I developed over time and I had to learn this skill. This is one thing that I did not have prior to getting into this, this world of micro resorts is partnerships. Um, I was always very anti partnerships.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Because I didn't, I, you know, I was kind of hard headed.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I'm a Texan. We kind of think we know too much sometimes. And I was like no, I know how to do it. I don't need, I don't want somebody telling me their thoughts and, and all this. And you know, it was me. It was naivety if anything but as I got into it, I developed a partnership with the Oud Mirror House company. It came early on because it was, it was kind of a rare win win partnership side where I, they, they, they were trying to break into the United States market. They opened up their first factory in Houston and I just happened to message them at the right correct time of them looking for partners to do a revenue share model with, with, with, with glamping sites that were already built out. So we, we talked for a few months. We, we, you know with my background of hospitality and all that, we ended up coming to an agreement on the revenue share where they, they gave me the house without I'd have to pay a dollar for it. I had to, I had to, you know, do the utilities, I had to do the landscaping and some of the amenities. But what came with that was a revenue share model where I, you know they get a percentage of the revenue for everything that we sell so early, you know, because again I, I didn't have partners. So I didn't, you know, I don't have hedge fund behind me. It was just, it was just me bankrolling whatever I had from Selling those condos. And it was probably like 100 grand or something at the time. But that led to. I have the first OUD house that I got with them is the most profitable partnership they have in the world because we. We. I'm, um. I'm really good with marketing. I'm really good with branding. Those are kind of my. I believe my. My super. Are my super skills within some of this that my. I always tend to lean on. But the first house performed so well. So then because of partnerships, OUD was. Was forming a partnership in Austin area with a government entity called lcra, which controls Lake Bastrop out there. It's a pretty big lake out there. Not. Not as big as some of like, you know, Lake Travis and other. Uh, we were around, but OUD calls me and goes, hey, we. We're putting. We're putting a couple units on the lake. We don't have anybody to operate them. Like, do you want to do a revenue share model over there? And I didn't have to put any money down because I don't own the land, which I always like owning the land like that. That's the one thing I love about my Houston sites is I do own that land, so I'm really driving the value. But the economies of scale were really, like, interesting to me. And so I was like, absolutely, let's figure it out and then see if I can build out an ecosystem out there. And I did pretty quickly. And, uh, that led to. Now those have been super proud. I think we're at like 85 to 90% occupancy on those mirror houses. But that also led to me forming another partnership with another company that is out there on Lake Bastrop already that is partnered with lcra. LCRA saw how well we were doing, and they go, hey, we want to connect you with this other group that they. They're builders, but they're not operators. You should operate for them. And so then we added nine more cabins into our portfolio that are in the same lake. So economies of scale kicked in. I don't own the land, but I. We get all the cash flow. I have my same cleaners that work on all of them. My same operations manager can oversee everything. My same virtual assistants that see over all my sites. You know, it got very cheap to increase it basically, and also get a ton of cash flow. So now we. We dominate that market. We are still expanding. We're. We're expanding over there. We're adding probably six or seven more units pretty soon. And. And, uh, you Know, no money out of my pocket because you know, the partnership, they pay for these units. We just operate them. And then we also are adding more units now in Cold Spring, uh, which is the land that I own and, and in general around that lake. So that's kind of how I ended up in those markets. But I do say that to say I am not a fan of being in a ton of markets. I, I, I, like, I'm not, I don't plan on expanding to any other market at all anytime soon because it's very hard to build a system and scale out there unless, unless we take on like a boutique hotel or a micro resort or something like that that has 10 plus units or something. I, I've never been a fan. Like a lot of people will teach like oh, get, you know, get a short term rental in, in Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, get one in Gulf Shores, get one in Joshua Tree, get one in Sedona. And it's like that sounds terrible because you have, you have one cleaner for each. You got one handy part, you got an AC that goes out. You have to have a different, you know, manager that kind of over, like you just have so many moving parts that it's, it's, it gets exhausting. I, I'm exhausted having two markets and I have, you know, the same people that report to me and deal with everything. I couldn't imagine being in like seven or eight markets with like one or two houses or like you know, one, one tree house or something like that because I don't, to me personally it just sounds like an operational headache. And so I do say like I'm in two markets, but I, I, I am a big fan of getting into one market and dominating it before you even think about going to another one unless some great opportunity presents itself. Kind of like it did with me. But we already did kind of dominate the Houston market. So I felt very confident with the systems and structure I had built up to go to Austin again. It's not that it was like, you know, it's, I kind of live in between both sites. So it wasn't a big uh, like it wasn't a big like out of town project for me. I, I kind of could visit both if I needed to when I was setting up everything, but I, I am a big fan of getting into one market and absolutely dominating it. Before thinking about spreading yourself thin and being in a ton of markets, I, I just don't think that's traditionally probably going to work out as well for you as you would think, yeah, no,

Speaker B: I think that's really wise. I think these still require, even if you have remote managers or remote cleaners when they call them, the goat head is showing up. You gotta go deal with it.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep, absolutely. Luckily that didn't happen in Austin, so we'll just knock on wood and keep it tame.

Speaker B: And scalability is really tricky on, um. And one thing I've learned talking to multiple couple people is, you know, there's a certain amount of, you know, capital and real estate you can just go in traditionally and buy. But most people come to a head, a head haul pretty quick unless they've, you know, got some sort of hedge fund behind them or inheritance. And so the rest of us, you know, bringing in these adjacent skills of management, real estate for us as architecture and then partnering with people to be able to offer and be involved in other projects is really what I've truly seen. When you see a portfolio of work is often something like that where, you know, you're uh, you're playing as a team player in a bigger game in this real estate, which, which makes it fun because then you get to work with, you know, guys like you and other guys and you learn stuff from each other. This OOD model I think is really interesting. I, I've never heard of a model where they'll do a revenue share and let you own the models themselves. Is that, is that specifically a deal that you negotiated or is that an open new offering that they have?

Speaker A: So it was, it was, it was an open offer that they had at the time. And again, I, I like, usually they look for places that already have like, you know, like is, is a wedding, like a massive wedding venue or a vineyard or something like that where they can put like 10 units. That's kind of what they look for now, but it's one of those things where I didn't think in a million years they would say yes, to be honest, because I was, I had a geodome. I had a, like, uh, a. I call it the ranch house. It was like a house that we already had on the land. Um, I didn't really have, you know, I didn't, I didn't have a ton of experience or the Texan vacation house. That's what I think it's called on there. We call it the ranch house internally. But they, they, they took a chance on me and you know, it was kind of like one of those things where you don't know until you ask. You know, I might. One of my favorite lines is closed Mouths don't get fed. So if you don't ask or tell people what you're doing, you're never going to. The answer is always going to be no. Right? You know, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take or whatever the Kobe Bryant quote is. So they, uh, they agreed to do it because when I was close to Houston, that was one benefit for them. It wasn't like I was in Oregon or something where they couldn't keep an eye on the site a little bit. And also like, I had my hotel background and they kind of took a chance and it luckily and we, you know, it was a rare win win in partnerships where it was a fully big win win. And now we've developed a relationship where they're there. We're doing a revenue share model for the new place that I'm building out, but they're supplying 20 units over a year. So it, it, the opportunity is still there. But they have, they have dialed it back some where the one off, like one model like I got probably isn't as doable. But if anybody's interested in it, you can definitely reach out to them or re, you know, reach out to me and I can put you in, connect with someone to chat with them and see if you're a fit. They have become way more selective about it because they've had a couple partnerships that didn't work out as well as ours, but they were, they were the first company I ever saw do that. I know there's some others that do that now because they saw OOD doing so well with that. That's why OOD is, has exploded very quickly because, you know, I think they're in like, you know, 40 countries or something like that now because of this model. But there's not many that do that. But, but financing and partnerships have become a little more prevalent in the space though. And you don't know till you ask. Like you always could ask some of these vendors or, uh, there's anybody that you're curious or want to work with, like, the worst they can say is no. Right? You know, that's kind of how I took it with this one. It was like, I'll reach out. I'm pretty sure they're going to say no because I'm just a nobody without, without much money. And they ended up saying yes, which is rare. So. So yeah, I, I'm always just a big fan of asking. You never know what somebody is going to say. And I get, I am dumbfounded all the time by what people say yes to me about, but it's just because I. I have enough, you know, I have enough nerves in me to ask and. And take the no if I get it and just go to the next one if not.

Speaker B: I think there's a lot of people in the prefab space, especially if you catch them early, that are putting out models that want to be able to test. We've been approached multiple times for. If you catch somebody early when they're putting things out, you know, are more interested in getting their, you know, initial because they're taking it. Uh, you're taking a little bit of risk on them as well. A lot of these are coming overseas and trying to get into markets. So I think it's. It's something, you know, willing to have those conversations that, you know, can work, and so be careful on them. What do you. What. What do those generally cost? And I want to kind of just move away from ood like, they are one piece. I think they've kind of dominated the market a lot. And I'm, um. I'm a little personally, like, I'd rather start seeing more unique and different things, but so kind of put that into the category of, you know, prefab cabins. There's a lot of really cool custom cabins and safari tents that I think are all about, like, creating unique spaces when. When you're setting these up, what's kind of the budget range for these different units that. That you've looked at and worked with and maybe lump some of these up in categories?

Speaker A: Yep. So we've. I mean, I have. If you go to my website and look at all the units that we have, we have a vast array of unit styles, too, and that's some. We own some. We've partnered with people. But the things that I have really found out is, you know, my. My. My last model that we've built is. Is one. It's. We call it the Zen Den. It's my most profitable unit. It's in, uh. Yeah, that one right there. That's from a company in, uh, Tennessee called Nordic and Spruce. Great. Guy named Matt runs it. Great.

Speaker B: Dude.

Speaker A: I just bought two more units from them, actually. That cabin right there was half the price of an OOD cabin. And it's beautiful. It's. It came. Comes turnkey. Uh, you know, a lot of positives to it. The thing I have learned and that that's my most profitable unit right now, it makes like $13,000 a month, which beats out every single other cap. One bedroom, it's one of the most profitable, I think if not one of the, if not the most profitable, one of the most profitable one bedroom cabins in all of Texas based on square footage. And so the thing I've learned is that people and my friend in the the in London who runs a really big site out there, his name's Dairy, he runs Secret Garden Glamping, which is a massive portfolio out there. He was the first one to tell me that you know, the units need to be Instagrammable, right? Like that always stops people like you need something cool. But he was like the thing that has truly moved the needle for us is we spend as much money on the outside as we do on the inside. So if you look at that cabin right there, that cost me about $65,000 to buy. The cool thing about that cabin is it's on wheels. It is a park model. Uh, so I was able to finance that as equipment for five years if. And I'm paying like 8% interest or something and like I pay like $1200 a month. I put like $2000 down or something like that. So I spent, you know, I didn't even spend $60,000 because I was able to finance it very easily because it's a park model which is, which is a, is a key for anybody to think about. If you don't have funding and you don't can't do a partnership model, look into park models because you can get those financed a lot easier because the way the banks look at it is if they got a repo it, they can come just pull it out because it's on wheels. So I say that to say I spent about $60,000 on the outside with the hot tub, ah, the sauna, the landscaping, the fencing, the, the, the little kitchen we put outside. But that you. Because I spent the money on the outdoors. That unit has done insane number. It's we, we that there's a video that we've put in like some, we've gotten really good video content but we've had that, that property, the Zen Den hit a million views at least six or seven times on Instagram already. And it, I personally don't even think it is visually as appealing as the Mirror House. It looks really cool. But my point there is that you don't always have to have the most insane build ever to go viral online and, and do amazing numbers. It really comes down to making a very, you know, make you want a unit that stands out. But I don't, you know, you don't have to have some you know, five hundred thousand dollar bill to do that. But, but I sell the experience. When you see the videos, you see the outdoor landscaping, like, you know, it is exactly what people are craving when they come out of Houston, which is where most of our people come from, because that's something you can't get inside the city. So most of the time, like, you know, that's what I was saying, like the cabins can vary. But most of my projects now that I'm building are about 100 to $125,000 all in per cabin. I try to spend my, my goal every time is to spend a hundred thousand, make a hundred thousand the first year. And it always sounds crazy, but we've done it at least four or five times over and over. And the OOD models are a little pricier. I think when I'm all in for those, it's usually about 160 to 170 with landscaping. But they're built like tanks too, so they are great. But there's, you know, there's safari tents you can do. There's other, there's, there's so many really cool prefab cabins now that there's a myriad of choices out there. You're not going to run out of, run out of choices. It really just comes down to what, what you think fits your, your demographic and your, your, your guest avatar that is coming out there that wants to stay with you. And then don't go cheap on the landscaping, outdoor amenities. If you go cheap on anything, it's try to go cheaper on the house. Like, like don't go cheap on like the, the actual infrastructure of it. Like, make sure it's well built and all that. But you don't need to buy, you know, you don't need to build some $600,000 tree house to make a lot of money with this. I would rather see you get a park model of something like this for 60, $70,000 and then spend 40, 50, $60,000 on the outside. And if you get in the right location and you have good marketing, you can easily make, make that back within the first year and a half to two years, if not quicker, in my opinion. I've done it several times.

Speaker B: Usually when I'm used to seeing these, you're kind of in a lineup of, you know, 6 to 10, you know, kind of micro resorts. When I'm looking on your site, it looks like you got a little bit of both, so. And um, maybe I'm wrong where some of these are sitting on just their own piece of Land versus building out a, you know, a landscape, hotel or micro resort with multiple of these. What are you seeing for zoning land cost? Can you do just individual ones? Do you feel like you need to, you know, if you're going to go through the effort of putting this together, put it together as a combined package of, of multiple houses before it makes sense. What, what's kind of your experience?

Speaker A: And, and so, yeah, so, so I'm in, I'm in Texas. Luckily we, I mean, we're probably one of the most relaxed building states, if not the most relaxed building state. And in my area, when I first started that, uh, so the Cold Spring site we had, we're gonna have five units on there pretty soon. We already have four. It's on 11 acres right now. When I first started, when I built that Geodome, my whole thought was that, oh, these places have to be so far apart, they have to be super spread out. And then I have backtracked on that over time because I talked to other people like Dairy and the in the UK and he has 11 units on three acres. And his whole thing was if you build fencing and they can't, if they can't look left and look right and see anybody, they're going to feel private. And I used to always be like, I feel like he's exaggerating a little bit. And so, uh, the geodome is kind of on its own little parcel of land. The, uh, first mirror house I got is kind of on its own little parcel of land, but they're all on the same not parcel. Let me correct that. They're all, they're all on their own little bit of land, not their own parcel. But when I built the Zen Den, that one is in the middle of my property and I did the fencing around it and uh, it's still like, it blows my mind how, how profitable that unit is. And it also shows you that you usually don't have to space them out as far as. As you think. So my, my gripe with a lot of micro resorts is when they do slap places together is that that doesn't feel private. And you're not building like, you're not building, you know, either like natural landscaping to add privacy, whether it's trees or bushes or something, or fencing, like I did. That is what truly, like, that's what allows somebody like Dairy at the Secret Garden glamping to put 11 units on three acres. And that's what allows the Zen Den for me to be my most profitable and most private one, even though it's literally in the middle of my land between all my other units. But guests don't feel that way because of it's facing an open piece of land, it's fenced in very well. So like they look left, they look right, they don't see anybody and you know, they don't really hear anybody either. So my, you know, I, I always, I kind of teach now that I, I believe more, you know, in zoning. Every county is different. Talk to your local permitting department. My, my county was pretty, is pretty lax. You know, like I could build as long as the septic requirements are there and some other things too and, and I get permits for whatever I'm building through a real site design. I could probably build, you uh, know, at least 5, 15 units if I wanted to. But again I'm in one of the most relaxed areas of Texas and of the country. So work with it, Work with a, with, work with a uh, site designer. Talk to the local permitting department for your county. Work with a good architect or a contractor that like knows some of these things. Like don't like lean into the local people that know what exactly is needed and what you're going to be able to do for that area because there's, every area is different. My advice though is try to you know, I, when uh, I first started I only had the envision of building one geodome and just like going from there. But I wish I would have saw like my 10 year vision and like thought about how many units I would want in a perfect world and then, and then you know, worked my way back from there because I would have set up the site a little different. But you don't know what you don't know. And so now when my next biggest project that I'm doing, I've learned all this stuff early on. So I'm able to uh, make the changes now with a much bigger, bigger project and you know, and like, and get all, you know, all those things were just lessons. I don't, I don't take them as a failure. I take them as like cool. I learned not to do that necessarily because I don't have to. And for my next biggest things I can implement these learnings and you know, just keep growing and developing these things at a better and higher pace every single time.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like the density question comes a lot back to uh, one, like land cost, you know, if you're like in our area, very expensive land. And then two is, I like to think of this idea as like base camp. Like are you Creating a base camp that's adjacent to something that then people are coming in and going to. So there's some benefits to being in your own unit that feels a little bit more private. You know, maybe you have a walk out tub to hot tub. But if, if you're coming there and then staying and then going out for an adventure for the day, you know, for us going to, you know, Red Rocks concert or heading up to, you know, the mountains to go ski, I think you can kind of push that density a little bit tighter versus if you're creating a destination resort where this is the space, you know, you think about like live oak or something like that, where you're going to go, there's maybe 10 units or something around a nice lake. And then you're going to hang out at the lake. You want a little bit of privacy, you know, for your experience there. So I think those two things kind of have some input into it as well as, you know, what, what is the cost you're trying to distribute over the land and then what am I doing when I'm coming there? Is that my place to hang out? Is that my place where I'm going and doing things? Yeah, so I don't, it's, it's super interesting. And even growing up here in Texas, this wasn't really a thing when I lived there. And so to see this now get developed, you know, I, I grew up kind of running around in, barefoot and fishing in these ponds, you know, not ever thinking about making these ponds like a destination thing. And I think it's cool. Like I, I loved my, my childhood there and uh, that's really where I got a, you know, a love for nature and, and, and getting out and you know, people who lived in the cities, you had a different experience. And so I think opening that up is, is, you know, nature looks very different from Colorado to Texas, but there is a, you know, a real beauty in the different places of Texas that especially as areas like Dallas and Austin and Houston get built out, that you need some breathing room. And finding these places people can go to, it's is really important. So I love that you're doing this and creating those spaces for people. So I think it's a high win in both. Where are you really focused and working on and right now what's kind of your in the hopper.

Speaker A: So besides we're still building out camera ranch glamping a lot like uh, we're adding, I said hopefully six to seven units this year between both markets. Very similar to what we do. But my biggest project right now, now is one, you know, becoming a better CEO of Cameron Ranch. Clamping, like, truly building out the systems and stuff that are needed to elevate that to the level of company that I want it to be. But at the same time, we are developing a new micro resort near our Cold Spring site. We're using the economies of scale. Same maintenance person, same same cleaning crew, all that jazz is going to be working at this new facility that we're. We're building out. Uh, it's going to be called Paw House Resort. It's. It's kind of a new concept I've. I've came up with that I think is gonna. It's already. We're doing some pre marketing. It's always doing very well, but it's basically like we're the world's only dog first luxury nature hotel. I've been having to practice like, what I'm calling it, but I, I was about to build another health and wellness micro resort on this new property that I bought and I'm working with the Mirror House company and we. As I kind of looked around, the one thing I've seen in Texas that just keeps popping up is everybody and their mom has a health and wellness resort now. Like, I blink and every day there's a new one on Instagram. And you know, that, that obviously I didn't invent this, so I'm not claiming that people are copying us or doing that, but at the same time, we have kind of built something that is replicable for other people and they've saw our success. So people are, you know, same with like, Ben, with Oneira and all that kind of stuff too. Like, people have saw the success that we've had and they're trying to follow the same path. So I wanted to come up with something that I didn't see anywhere else. And I didn't. I looked online and I was like, there has to be somewhere that is like a dog, A dog centric nature hotel that humans and their dog can go, that is built for their dog, necessarily, but the humans obviously enjoy as well. And I didn't see anything. And so I developed this concept and we're in construction right now. We should be opening up October or November right around there. And I believe that this is going to be kind of like another revolutionary hospitality concept. Personally, I, I do. I'm building this to scale too. My goal is to have six or seven of these throughout the country in the next five to six years and, you know, hopefully make an exit plan to a Hilton or a Marriott or something there. And, you know, it's. It's the one. And people ask me, they're like, well, how did you know this would, this would work? And besides all my research of everything I've done, the one thing that I would that said instantly was, well, one Airbnb, the number one search filter is pet friendly. People don't realize that sometimes that, you know, people think pets are going to cause damage. And it's like, no, actually, I think kids and teenagers cause way more damage than pets, from my experience. But there's, there was two pieces that really sold me is one, we have people all the time. This is more anecdotal probably than database, but we have people all the time that are, you know, complain about our high prices because, you know, we're a luxury, you know, luxury stay. Complain about the cleaning fee, complain about everything. The one thing people never complain about or ask for a discount on is our pet fee. Every people will pay that. And they don't even bat an eye. They're just so happy to be able to bring their dog along that, that it's, it's just the one thing I've never seen anybody complain about. And so then I'm like, okay, that's, that's a good point. Because now I'm like, so people obviously will. And then we get messages like, I'm so glad I could bring my, you know, dog here to stay. It was great. And we, and, you know, we are pet friendly, but like, we're not designed at, uh, camera range clamping. We're not designed for dogs necessarily. Like, we have, you know, a couple small things, but it's really just pay your, pay your pet fee and, well, you know, you can bring your dog and we'll clean up after them, basically. But at, you know, at Paw House, I was like, we should develop the concept that, you know, still has the health and wellness for humans, but, like, it's going to have a dog spa, it's going to have a dog concierge is what we're calling it. We're going to have a dog experience leader with like, training sessions and all these different, like, fun activities for dogs, but we also will have a human spa at the same time and a human pool and like, things like that to where, you know, if the humans want to get away and like go or maybe go to town and visit the big lake like that. We have like all these things too. We'll have somebody that will to watch their dog or they can, you know, take their dog to the dog dog spa and dog groomers and you know, pay a price for that, to have their dog watched over while they go hang out or do whatever they want. And at the same time we're going to have like, we're going to have, we have a therapist on, a mental health therapist on site that will be able to do human therapy with the dog in the room with them. Like all these things that are based around the dog and the human connection because we just know how important that is. Each unit is going to have like its own little private fenced area, like all these small things that most hotels or micro resorts don't really think about. And uh, again a lot of it comes back to like, you know, like I saw the gap in the market and this is what people are craving because there's nothing like you can take your dog to a dog resort and drop them off and then you go stay somewhere or you can take them to a hotel or a glamping place that is, that is pet friendly but not truly built for your dog and human connection. So we're pretty excited about it. We're, we're, we're, we're pretty pretty much in the thick of it right now with construction and everything set up. And I, I personally like, I do think that this is kind of like my magnum, magnum opus or whatever it's called where you're like, like I've, everything I've learned, it's like I'm, I'm standing on this hill and I'm gonna die on it kind of thing. Right. Like I truly do believe that this is going to take over a lot of my hospitality projects. Cameron Ranch glamping will always be my baby and like I want that to grow tremendously. But I didn't know how to build a business to scale when I was building it, so I kind of just hodgepodge some things together, you know, made it happen and like we've, we've done really well. But this business I am building to scale and to exit to a hospitality brand in five to seven years. And that's kind of my goal with it and all my partners and investors involved are, are very aligned with the same path too. So we're all pretty excited to see where this goes and in the worst case scenario is if it doesn't pan out the way we want, we just pivot back to a health and wellness resort. Right. Like it's not that crazy of a pivot for us in the end, you know, and it's kind of one of those concepts that we, you know, could. Could go both ways, but at the same time, we have pretty, pretty high hopes that it's gonna do what we expect.

Speaker B: Yeah, I. I love this, Garrett. You know, they always say, like, the riches are in the niches and people are incredibly impassioned about their dogs. Um, I will say. And it is one of those very difficult things to be able to. To travel with. And we have three large dogs. It's hard to be able to go anywhere always for a pet sitter. So it solves, like, a really key problem. My wife is getting ready to fly out this weekend to, uh. I can forget where she's picking this thing up, but she's going to go pick up a newfie poodle. Newfie poo for a therapy dog, you know, and so she's one of these people that is just, like, incredibly passionate about it. Um, and, you know, a space like this where, you know, and she doesn't want to send the dog out to get trained. She wants to be there and involved in it. That's the thing. A lot of people spend a lot of money to go send their dogs out and be trained. You know, if you're training something, you want to be there with it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So I, I think this is brilliant. I think this will do incredibly well. It's also, I, you know, I've heard again, Sarah Dustic with Under Canvas, she talked a lot about, you know, how they begin to make, you know, their spaces family friendly and dog friendly, you know, as a key item. So I think there's other indicators, but I don't think anybody's actually said, hey, let's put this forward and focus. And I think there's so many of those little niche areas, just like you do a spa and help. Help and wellness, that, hey, if I'm going to go spend a week to, uh, you know, train a doctor, therapy, go, you know, whether I'm just traveling with my pets, that will feel like a real specific niche. So I think it's great. And I think this is like, kind of like a good lesson for people. You know, I'm sure you'll get 100 people copying this and doing something similar, but it was just fine. But the real thing is, like, I think you have to kind of look in and say, what am I passionate about? And then you have to look around and say, is anybody else really passionate about this? And then if so, that becomes like, uh, rather than another generic stay, what can you do that fills A need that's missing in a marketplace. And I think that's really the thing to copy and uh, to model is what are those things that you're super passionate about? There's guys that are like Pat Flynn's built a whole thing around Pokemon and surprisingly it's become like a million dollar business because there's uh, lots of people that are passionate about it. You bring people together so you know, thinking through what you can bring people around that you know, maybe you're passionate about, know about, that you can, you can pull people in.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's all about the, and you mentioned it too. Like there's, I already know there's going to be a lot of people that you know. I'm not the first person to come up with these ideas, I'm sure, like uh, maybe I'm the first to like push it forward, but there's going to be people that do the same thing because it's going to work. But this is when you know like branding and marketing, which is kind of my strong suit, like really comes into play because it's the same thing when you think about, I use this example all the time, like people still buy $50, 60 Stanley Cups when you can buy the same exact knockoff that is pretty much the same style of cup for 10 to 15. And why is that? Because Stanley has built a brand and a trust awareness around them that really fits. And that's why I would uh, like being first to market and being really good at the branding and the marketing of it. Like I believe that that is what is going to catapult us, this brand, to be the, the leader of that going forward. Because, and even with the health and wellness space like Cameron Ranch glamping, we've done a really good job of branding and marketing and that's why we've stayed consistently ahead of the curve. And, and that's a, that's a lesson for anybody thinking about this. Like if you're not good at branding and marketing, work with somebody or pay for it. That is because it is so vital in this, in this, in this commoditized world of things that happen that you will be able to stick out and maintain your, your, your leeway above the competition with that one thing. Because people can be, there's tons of really cool places in Texas. But the reason we keep standing out is because of our branding and marketing and, and all the social media content and things that we've done at Cameron Ranch clamping. So, and you know that that is just A lesson for anyone that it's so vital to understand that facet of it before, you know, before you even try to launch your brand. Because if you don't, if you don't nail that and like stay on top of it and keep evolving it and make it stick out, you're going to become just one of many out there. And that, that's not a recipe for success for a lot of people doing this.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. This is one area that we, uh, way underestimated as we were doing the Red Hotel. And so each time we, I start to learn about a different category, I'm like, okay, well we have to go in and do this and we have to increase our budget on it. So we worked with, for us, what this looked like was we developed out our, our brand and so we worked with the branding company. I didn't realize this was a separate thing, but yeah, we went through, we developed a story around the hotel, then we work through that story to use that to develop graphics, logos, colors, messaging, which is a thing. And then now we're getting ready to do launch and we had a marketing budget. Uh, and I've kind of learned there's a more finite PR company that typically helps get into travel magazines, you know, influencers, and then there's social media companies that really specialize on social media and pushing this in. We just, and for us, we had budget for maybe one. Uh, and so we've ended up where I think we're going to work with OASI on our, on our social media. So we're super excited about that. But we did that and elected not to do a PR because we didn't have budget to do both. But what is, what does that look like for you guys? How are you developing, you know, what components are you doing and, and what is, what's working that's actually bringing in, you know, revenue for sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, they are. Branding and marketing are two different things. Like people like, they work hand in hand, but they are too different. And so we've done a lot of it internally because again that is like, that is my, my specialty. And so I haven't had to outsource a lot of it. I've outsourced everything else at the company, like operations, admin, some, most of sales, like all of that because I know where my strong suit lies. So uh, at my company we, we have a very heavy, we have four people that work in our marketing department, including me, that we're very heavy social media. We not as Heavy influencer as we used to be. I kind of think the ROI on influencers is actually down quite a bit in the past couple years for a couple different reasons. But we also very, we're very big on paid, paid ads as well. Meta, meta in particular and then organic search. We dominate organic SEO. Like if you type in glamping in Texas we pop up one or two almost every single time and we, so we dominate that side of it, the branding. I, I kind of have, have done it all myself with help from a few different, you know, different designers. There's things like that, but that's kind of something I've taken on and just done a really good job of uh, because it is the thing I do. And so anybody that if you're, I say all that to say like even on the PR side we've been in almost every travel magazine out there, it's because of me. I go out and find them, reach out to them, call them, tell them the story like it is, it is just like you don't always have to have like a big company doing it. Usually can find contacts for these companies out there or writers or somebody like that and send, you know, and send your story to them and they might be interested in you know, using that to their, to their, you know, for their website and things like that. So on the marketing side I 100% would invest in real deal and you know, that's with oasi, with Ben and them. They're great as well. That social media marketing I believe is the most important out of all the things you said like the branding matters. But I think it's less as important as just getting the places out there and having a very smooth three step funnel that they, you know, the top of funnel is they find you on social media. The middle funnel is they go to your website and you collect their information through you know, email chatbots, through metapixels, a myriad of different ways. And then the bottom of funnel is getting them, you know, having a good strong uh, user experience and a good strong sales implementation to make sure that they're booking. Because most of you that go to your website, they don't book on the first time they go there. They book through a couple different efforts. They book after seeing you again on Instagram, like all the different things you can do to like retarget them. So that's kind of, that is the most important thing I would say. And you're going to spend if you don't, if you're not good at marketing, you're probably going to spend five grand a month to get a badass marketing team to handle all the things that you need to really build. And that's just a, you know, a generic number too. It varies on all sides, but the branding is important. But I don't, I don't, I think it falls under marketing and some people probably disagree with me and that's fine. But I think the marketing side of like having a solid paid ad system, having a solid organic content system is huge. I think though. And like, I could tell I could talk about this topic for hours. Like as I'm thinking, my brain is like, say this, say that. The one thing I will say that I see people mess up on, on the marketing side is they just run. They, they make, they get a couple photos and they just run paid ads and they just put all this money into meta and they're just burning through money. If you, the best thing to do is to put a lot of money into organic content first that you just post up on your own. Because what's going to happen is a couple of those videos are going to do really well and then you take those videos and then they become your paid ads. And because the blending of paid and organic is, um, like they're almost like, they're almost like one in the same now. Like, when you see a paid ad, if it's doing well, it's because it probably did well as organic media too. And so I say that, like, if you do a bad ad and you spend a hundred dollars on it and you get three clicks because the ad isn't good. You know, Instagram and Facebook, they work on algorithms now, even on the ad side. And so if your ad isn't performing well, they're not going to reward you with cheaper leads and all these things too. If you have a badass organic piece of content that did like a million views and you turn that into a paid ad, I guarantee you it's gonna outperform the, the generic ad that you made by like 10x. You're gonna get like a hundred, you know, a hundred leads for a hundred dollars or something. You know, like crazy because it's already been proven to be a good piece of content. Facebook and Instagram, they just want to keep people on their platform. And if you're putting out ads that are not good and, and like people are scrolling away or they're exiting out of the app, like meta and them don't want that. They, they want, they want your ads to be successful because you'll spend More money with them. And so if you have a good organic post, turn that into a paid ad. I just, I just. My biggest pet peeve is when I see people just make generic paid ads and they just throw them up and they're blowing their budget and they're like, well, why aren't we getting leads? We're spending all this money on paid ads. It's like, yeah, because your ads suck. Like, do good on the organic side and then turn that into a paid ad and I guarantee you you'll have a different, like, you know, different tune that you're singing because, like that they're the same now. So I could talk about marketing and branding though, for literally days. So it's like, if you ever want to chat about that, I am always open to go further into it.

Speaker B: We'll be hitting you up on that one. One nuanced question to this. It comes to hospitality. I. How do you turn like an Instagram million view, you know, where they're talking about their great experience into an actual lead? You mentioned like, hey, that, that, that million view. Unless there was like in my mind, I'm seeing. Well, an actual lead actually needs to, you know, capture an email or get them to the website to book. You know, when you're posting these, you know, here's me and my wife out of the beautiful sunrise. How does that go from that to a booking?

Speaker A: So it, so it kind of follows that three step funnel that I'm talking about. And I don't want to give away all my secret sauce, but I will give some of it away. It's not anything revolutionary. Other people do this. But on. So like let's take Instagram for example, because every platform is a little different. TikTok is different than Instagram, Instagram's different than Facebook. Let's just talk Instagram. So on Instagram we. One of the ways. There's many ways to do this too. This is not a, you know, there's a million ways to skin a cat or whatever this, the saying is. But this is one way that we've done it very well. There is, you know, and uh, you've probably seen this when you have a post, it goes well and you put up a, uh, cta, which is a call to action. And it says comment the word glamping or whatever word that you want and we'll send you the link. I'm sure you maybe have seen that before on some post or something. It's pretty prep pregnant prevalent. Now that is a, that is a software. It's called Mini Chat. There's also another software that we use now called High Level, which this is some secret sauce. So if um, I'm getting it out, I wish, I hope they give me a sponsorship for this. And then if you use Mini Chat or go High Level, what it will do is they'll comment the word glamping, right? It will automatically send them the link. Because you can't put links in a comment, you know, on your page. So you, it will automatically send them, it's all automated. If they comment that word, it will send them a link or whatever you want it to say to their Instagram dm. So what happens there is they then click on that link. Uh, Instagram DMS people check those all the time because they think it, you know, a message is a message. It's like a text message almost. They'll click that. They're already very, they have high intent because they are wanting, they already have caught, they've already committed to commenting, which takes a moment of their time. So they have the reciprocity effect to you. They get that link, they click on the link, then they go to your website. And this is kind of what I was mentioning earlier that they, they typically don't book instantly because they went to your website. But then this is where the secret sauce comes in. There's three ways that you can capture maybe four. There's three ways you can capture that guest content or uh, that guest information, right? Then you have a metapixel and if any don't nobody knows what a metapixel is. It is meta's. It's a, it's a small code that's on your website that when somebody visits your website, Meta. The scary thing about it is Meta knows everything about everybody. Uh, it will shock you the amount of crazy information they know about every single person that has a Facebook or an Instagram or a WhatsApp. But it works for the, it works for us as business owners. So they go to our website and then they now meta is tracking them because they know where their IP address and all this stuff came from. So this is how like when you visit a website and then you go back to Instagram or Facebook, you get all these ads for that website. It's all because of this meta pixel. But that's just, that's just one way though. The other way is we have a pop up that comes on the website that says hey, do you like, we used to do one that said do you want 10% off your first day? Um, you could do like, do you want a hundred dollars off your first day? You could do. What we do now is do you want to enter a free giveaway for you know, a site? And we do giveaways every month now. But that pop up comes up and they can enter their email and their phone number and it goes into our CRM which is we use high level Go High level is our CRM. So now that's another way we capture the guest while they're on the website because most people that go there, they're not going to book uh, instantly. But then the other way that we really have revolutionized it is we have an AI chatbot on our website now. And this alone is, it's so now that lead on the chatbot, the whole chatbot's goal is to, is to act like a real person and then capture this person's a, like what they want and then B their email and their phone number. And so now we're able to get them into our database. So now, and now we can remarket to them, we'll send them emails, we'll send them text messages like it's, it's a me. And then, you know, and then we stay in touch to make sure that we're sending them, you know, like offers. And like we recently did a 15% off weekday promotion and I think we sold a hundred of them in like a couple days to all of our cabins because we had all their information. I think we have, I think we have 50,000 emails now and like 10,000 phone numbers from non guests that we can market to. So it's just building, it's, it's just all the proprietary funnel of top funnel, mid funnel, bottom funnel. And if you don't understand that, just look it up and like research what, what a, what a marketing funnel looks like. And that's what's truly going to turn these people from, we say from lookers into bookers Harris.

Speaker B: But a lot of those things we've started to implement a little bit a lot of these things like to dive into deep and I hope if you're out there listening to that, you guys take advantage of some of those concepts and ideas. So I think that really makes the difference in between, you know, having a good hospitality project and a highly successful one is how well you're implementing these things. So if someone wants to get in touch with you, work with you, follow you, invest with you, what are the best places for them to be doing that?

Speaker A: Uh, you can reach out on my Instagram, it's Garrett Brown G A R R E T T brown like the color. And then re for real estate that I'm on there quite a bit. You also can, you know, if you want to, if you want to talk about investing or anything, contact me there if you want to talk. Anything short term rental and get advice. Anything in that world. I teach this full time at Bigger Pockets. We are a free real estate investing resource for everybody out there. Feel free to send me an email Garrett Brown at biggerpockets. Com anytime, and I'll be happy to help you out whenever I get a moment. Awesome.

Speaker B: Uh, Garrett, it's good to hang with you again. Next time you're up in Colorado, give me a holler. Appreciate you being on the show.

Speaker A: Likewise. Can't wait.