A Resort Name That Dares You to Relax and a Developer Who Built It to Last - Justin McWilliams of Camp QYB

Welcome And Justin’s Backstory

Speaker 1 0:05

Welcome to the Outdoor Hospitality Podcast. I'm your host, Shari Heilala. With me today, I have Justin McWilliams, developer and owner of Camp QYB, the recent winner of the Glamping Resort of the Year by TACO, and a resort that has a special place in my heart that I was able to visit several months ago, and it is truly unique and spectacular. Justin's got a great story to tell. Welcome, Justin.

Speaker 0:38

Well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 0:40

Just before we get into all the all things camp QIB, could you give the listeners a little bit of your background in business and development, et cetera?

Speaker 0:51

So I've been doing construction, land development, everything you can kind of imagine in related to land development or construction for the better part of 40 years. So land development, homes, home building, commercial construction, hard-bid municipal construction. I've done extensive amount, very fast pace for a long time. So I've learned a lot. And you're still always learning.

Speaker 1 1:19

Well, for once, I don't feel like the oldest person in the room. Thank you, Justin, because I've been in the business 35 years. So maybe tell us about what brought you to this site and dream of this project.

The Lakefront Vision Takes Shape

Speaker 1 1:37

What made you buy it? I I will say it's one of those sites that pictures can't really tell the full story when you drive up because of the terrain of the site and its location on Lake Bridgeport. Tell us a little bit about how everything evolved.

Speaker 1:52

Well, like I said, my background was a lot of developments. And when I was a kid, one of my fondest memories was my granddad had a place out on Eagle Mount Lake. He was one of the first ones out there. So I grew up at the lake. Our family was always at the lake. And then when I was older, after I got married, I relocated and bought a place on Eagle Mount Lake. And my mom and dad moved after 40 years, they moved next door, and my mother-in-law-law moved on the other side. So my older twins ended up growing up on the lake, too. But we actually lived out there. We went out there all the time. And they could go back and forth between both grandparents' house. And, you know, people would ask me how I keep my parents from just coming over all the time. And I said, you know, they know when I want to visit, because I would just unplug the electric fence, you know. So keeping them away. But so I I really always been drawn to lakes. And so when I was doing my subdivision developments, I spent a lot of time all the lakes in North Texas. I would drive around, find developments, and I did quite a few developments on lakefront developments. And that's how this originally came about. I was driving around, I found some land, and I bought originally 23 acres, and I was going to do a subdivision development. And I was going to develop, I was going to keep the point for myself, build a house down there. And but it's very seldom you get this much waterfront. So it had a mile of waterfront with this 23 acres of land. And at that point in time was right around when COVID was happening. We were doing entitlements for manufacture home communities and RV parks and other stuff. And we would buy land, we would entitle it, then we would find these kind of mid-market companies to buy those, go actually do the development themselves. And so I remember exactly where I was at. I was out at a point. And I had this vision of doing this. It was my first vision. And then the next vision was holy crap, that's going to be a lot of work, you know. And five years later, here I was after design and building and doing all that stuff and everything else. I ended up with what we've got now, you know. But it was an intense amount of work. That was my other vision I had back then too. The only way to eat elephants one bite at a time, so you might as well just start. And it was kind of a passion project, you know, coming through wanting to do something. I saw, you know, a lot of these places would have certain aspects of things, but nobody put it all together, you know, and had a lot of unique, different ways to stay and and that kind of stuff. So I could I kind of had pretty detailed vision of the place. And then I ended up starting doing it. I wouldn't do anything until I walked the property, felt the property, and got a certain vision that would come to me, and then I knew it was right, then I would start building it, you know. So that's kind of it's kind of evolved.

Speaker 1 5:04

So well, and I have to back up a little bit because you mentioned Texas. So you are about 75 miles northeast of Texas. Is it technically called Runaway Bay or is it Bridge?

Speaker 5:17

Yeah, we're actually in Texas, but outside of Dallas Fort Worth area, we're about an hour to an hour and a half out of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex area.

Speaker 1 5:26

So it's really Did I say, did I say 75 miles northeast of Texas? Texas.

Speaker 5:32

Yeah. So you can thank you for saying that. Yeah, we're actually in Texas. So but we're about an hour to hour and a half from about eight million people. So the locations, you know, up front, if somebody would have looked at that site and thought about doing what I did there, they probably would have never done it. But now when people see it, they're like, oh my gosh, this is the perfect place to do it. But it was not that way up front, you know.

Speaker 1 6:00

Is that because of the condition it was in or the slope of the site, or why well when we bought it, it was just completely trees, but there was a lot of topo on the site.

Speaker 6:08

The surrounding area was really rough, you know. There was anytime you get around lakes, you end up with I call waterheads. You know, but you get kind of a mixture of people, you know. And yeah, but to be honest with you, once we started building this and doing this, that all kind of cleaned itself up. So so we've done a lot of lot of stuff through there. So and it's kind of evolved. The land values around us has gone up. We bought up more properties, so now we have about 50 acres around us, but up front us originally, I think 21 or 22.

Speaker 1 6:46

It's really pretty. It it has a Texas Hill Country feel, and being on the water is is pretty special.

Why A Big Mix Of Stays Works

Speaker 1 6:53

So I'm trying to think how many different units you have. You have a variety of lodging and clamping units in our V sites. So you've got park model cabins, you have Conestoga wagons. Is that right?

Speaker 7:08

Yeah. And um planescraft. We actually use planescraft, but planescraft wagons, we have airstreams, a couple of retro air streams, we have family cabins that we actually designed, site built. Then we have some Green River cabins that we just brought in, that we have a large model that's got kind of sky deck or sky sky view decks of the that are built in. Then we have the the smaller trailblazer cabins, and then we have the vessels that are kind of futuristic capsule homes from from China. So I wanted these. That was one of the things that nobody really had a big mix. You know, they might have one one thing or a couple of things, but they didn't have as much of a mix, different ways to stay. And that was kind of one of the things that, you know, if you built it and you had it to where it's more, I think people have more hard mentality. A lot of people say they want glamping, they want to get out, but they get out in nature and there's nothing else to do. And yes, I like it for a little bit, but I'm very social. I want to be talking to other people and meeting people from other areas, and that's what my idea of glamping is people interact with others. You know, I went to the uh glamping convention first few years that they had it, and it's one of my favorite conventions because it's really a lot of interaction like that. People are sitting around talking, you know, they set it up outside, and that's kind of more, you know, what my philosophy is here that people really want interaction with others, you know. Hey, where are you from? Where are you from? You know, and kids running and having fun. Kids will have fun by themselves. You don't necessarily have to have the huge water parks and all that stuff. They they have a blast and the parents relax, they can let them just the kids go by, you know.

Speaker 1 9:06

Yeah, they don't normally get that kind of freedom. So I agree. Yeah, and so and then you have the RV sites as well. 25?

Speaker 9:15

We got 50, 48 RC RV sites right now. Okay, that's eventually we're gonna build more across the street, but you know, it's just that co kind of whole interaction with everything. We just had a guy, there's a he started a group, North Texas RVs, and I think they have 30,000 in the group, and he's like phenomenal, you know. So he's doing a big write-up on us and stuff. He was just out there for the first time, and oh great, you know, it was really good. And you know, my granddad's the one that told me you need all these different sites because not everybody wants the same thing in this world, you know. People want different things. He said, if everybody wanted the same thing, they would have all wanted my grandmom, you know. So that's funny.

Speaker 1 10:08

There's there's the jokes. I'm sure there'll be more to come. So I get to stay in the vessel unit. And I I do have to say that was a pretty cool experience right there on the lakefront. And thank you for that. And you have so much more than just all the varieties of ways to stay.

Old West Town And On-Site Experiences

Speaker 1 10:28

You have extensive food and beverage, a really cool event venue and beer garden with a lot of eclectic rustic metal art, which I I truly love. And then you have an event hall. It's basically like an old western town you've created in the middle of the resort.

Speaker 10:49

Yeah, yeah. We built our whole old West Town, we have an old saloon, we've got five different restaurant concepts. So we have the Sacred Cow Burger Company, and then we have my wife's name's Joe. So I named the Italian restaurant, Joe Mama's Italian kitchen, you know, trailer park tacos, you know. We have the chill station, which is like frozen margaritas, ice cream cookies, you know, cakes and and sweets and all that kind of stuff. And then we have the fired-up barbecue. So and then we have a general store that's got some stuff there, and merchandise and those kind of things as well. And then we have a lot of activities. We've got pontoon boats and pedal boats and kayaks and golf cart rentals, and then we do a lot of different activities on site, fishing tours, those kind of things.

Speaker 1 11:40

So that's it. That's all. You also have probably the nicest campground laundry and shower rooms I've ever seen.

Speaker 11:51

Oh, yeah. My my idea is we can design stuff to make it look, you know, so I I wanted everything to kind of have that Colorado and Montana Lodge kind of feel, you know. Yeah. So we use a lot of wood, metal, you know, then I do a lot of taxidermy and different stuff to make it, you know, that kind of feel. And I have extensive taxidermy collection. And you I've been to so many different antique stores and everything else. Sourcing this stuff was fun, but it was, boy, was it a lot of work. I mean, just when I built one cabin, I ended up getting, I think, 200 mounts, you know. But I found animal board. People ask me, Did you hunt for all these? I'm like, absolutely, on Facebook and eBay. You know, for everything.

Speaker 1 12:39

That's some hard work right there.

Speaker 12:41

Yeah, it is.

Animals, Atmosphere And The Name

Speaker 1 12:42

Yeah, and speaking of that, you have some adorable live animals on your farm as well, right?

Speaker 12:48

Oh, yeah. So tell us about those. Petting zoo. I ended up, you know, kids like that, you know, and adults like it too. So we just have all miniatures. So we have the three pigs, we just had a baby donkey born miniature with a pair of donkeys, and they just had a baby, and and then we've got ducks and chickens and miniature horses and all of that stuff, you know, right there. So then across the street.

Speaker 2 13:17

Right in the center, yeah.

Speaker 13:18

I've got more across the street, too. So it's just that way people walk around. It's just something about animals are common. Nature's common, you know. They don't have all the worries we have, nothing else, you know. And that's matter of fact, you know, the that's where the name came up with that saw the name originally. And we call it Camp QYB for short, but we call it Camp Quitcherbut as the the real name, you know. So we spell it a little bit differently. And but originally I kind of struggled with I was going to use that name or not. And then I just more thought about it with everything that was going on everywhere, and everybody's uptight. You got the, you know, everybody fighting with each other and all this other stuff. We need a place to relax, have a good time, leave your worries at home, you know. It's not allowed here, you know, the bitching's not allowed here, you know. So I even had some people early on say, well, how do I tell my Christian friends and women they can't quit your bitching? And I was like, Well, they need to read the Bible. I think it says in there too, talking about Moses was delivering, you know, the to the promised land, you know, the Israelites, and they were going to the promised land, but they gripped and complained about everything the whole way there. And the story goes that even God can have enough. He's like, all right, that's it. Trip canceled, you know, they spent 40 years in the desert. They never made it. That's the irony of the story, because they gripped and complained about everything. So I think that's what we need to do is just quit gripping, relax, be in the moment for once, you know, and just take the hello listeners.

Feasibility Studies And Appraisals Message

Speaker 1 15:04

This is Sherry Halala, founder of Sage Outdoor Advisory. If you're launching an outdoor hospitality project like Lamping, we can help. We offer feasibility studies and appraisals. What that means is we look at your specific market and propose business offering and complete an in-depth analysis to make sure that your planned business will be profitable. Getting a second opinion on your proposal and forecast financials is critical to understand before you spend years of your time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is particularly important if you are looking to raise money for your project from a bank or private investors. They are going to want to see this type of deep dive analysis from an independent third-party specialist in the industry. We at Sage have completed well over 250 feasibility studies and appraisals and outdoor hospitality in North America in the last four years. So we understand what it takes to bring a project from concept to reality. If this sounds like it could be helpful to you, you can go to our website, SageOutdoorAdvisory.com, and schedule a call with our team. While you're there, check out our proprietary glamping database map too. Thanks. Now back to the show.

Designing For A Feeling

Speaker 1 16:05

I absolutely 100% agree. So how how tempted has your staff been to use that line on people and do they use it on people?

Speaker 16:14

Sometimes we do, actually. So, but for the most part, people, man, it really took off. You know, so many people resonate with that. And I understand it's just a play on stuff and like some of our stuff that we do around there. It's just, hey, it's meant to have fun, you know, and literally relax. And this is one of the places because I'm constantly going at a really fast pace. And when I came out here originally, man, I just get out here. As soon as I got here, I just relax. I mean, you would just, it's just something pretty magical about the place. And I didn't want that to go away. And people really, I've had people come out even at night, the lighting we do, those kind of things. They've said it's just like whimsical, you know, they feel like they're in a different world, you know. And like you said, it's really hard to capture that with social media or pictures or anything else. It's more of a how do you capture a feeling, you know? It's very hard to capture a feeling, and that's what it is. It's a certain feeling the place gives you when you the when you're there, you know.

Speaker 1 17:21

So yeah, you're right. I I tried to take pictures of the lights because it did it did make an impact on me, and you can't the it's hard to, especially with an iPhone, to really.

Speaker 17:31

It is, and it's way bigger. Most people, when they get there, they don't realize it's way bigger. You can see the lens will capture an area at a time, but when you're there, just the way it flows and that kind of stuff.

Building On Rock And Reusing Boulders

Speaker 17:45

And there was, I mean, a lot of trying stuff through the development of this place. I mean, it literally was like building a resort on top of a rock quarry. Every time we would turn around, we were hitting these massive boulders, and I'm like, holy mackerel, what am I going to do with all these rocks? And I mean, I had boulders everywhere, but we repurposed them all in there, and it worked out almost perfect. We were able to use them for building walls, and and they're they were kind of a big flat sandstone boulders, and they stacked really good, you know. So we're able to use them for retaining walls and for our seawall and just on and on. And I recently last year took a trip over to Croatia and they were talking about some of these mountains and some of the rocks that they had over there, and they said they had built these rocks, dry stack these rocks. And they were like, These walls have been here for thousands of years. And I'm like, I just did the same thing. So it's gonna last for like a thousand years. Right. Some days people are going, yeah, this was done by the ancients, you know.

Speaker 1 18:52

So I love it. Well, what other what other challenges did you have to overcome during

Occupancy Assumptions And Financing Reality

Speaker 1 19:01

construction? Anything else you can share that happened that wasn't expected?

Speaker 19:06

Well, some of it when we went through, you know, so your assumptions and those kind of things, it's hard to go find the right information. And then sometimes it's even backed up from appraisals from banks and those kind of things, and it's still wrong. And so, you know, originally we had uh underwrote that we would be, oh, we're gonna be more than anybody else. We may get 60% occupancy. That's not right. You got to really underwrite it at 35%, is what industry standard that I found out later. Your expense ratios, you know, 45% expense ratios. You just gotta underwrite it at that, and if it works. And up front, I ended up not having enough spaces with the amenity package I made to make it cash flow with the right numbers. So I ended up having to get more sites to get the whole thing built out, you know. The original lender I had didn't lend me. I actually wanted more to build the whole site out. They wanted me to phase it. Well, when you phase it, when the your assumptions are off, when your assumptions were that, oh, it's gonna be 60 or 65% occupancy, the numbers work. But it doesn't work if it's 35%. So we literally had to make it some adjustments quickly and had to get in there and make those adjustments and say, oh, we gotta have these other sites, you know. Well, interest rates went up during that period of time. Everybody sitting there wondering what's gonna happen, you know, those kind of things. So there was a lot. When I first started this, the interest rates were in the twos. And I was gonna go get a loan then, but I couldn't get water and sewer. I had to go fight the city to go get city water, city sewer. I had to sew them in federal court and I had to go through through all kinds of stuff. But looking back at this deal, I've told so many people this is like a crash course in development, construction. My kids, you know, have learned so much going through this. I mean, my son is a beast now, you know, with construction, but he got a little bit of everything crammed into this six days a week for the last five years. And now that we built stuff and we're coming out the other side and we're getting stabilized and we're getting stuff done, you know, and it's coming to an end. Man, he could take on anything now. So the growth that we've experienced through that's irreplaceable to me, you know. So that was originally what I built it was for us, you know, for the family.

Speaker 1 21:43

That's an amazing legacy for your family.

unknown 21:45

Okay.

Speaker 1 21:46

I want to circle back to your discussion about occupancy because you know that's that's part of what what I do in my company. When you say, you know, 35%, are you saying That I mean, year one, that makes sense to me. No one would expect 60% occupancy year one. But are you saying on a stabilized basis you would underwrite it at that and only go forward at that?

Speaker 22:14

You might go up a little bit more for if some of ours we were hitting on the cabin's 45%, you know. But it's just, you know, you've got to create enough, it's got to be enough destination. There's a lot of people that are out there. There's a lot more competition than used to be out there. And it's hard to go underwrit a day. So you don't have so many psych nights. And the weekends are going to take care of themselves. And then, but you got the shoulder season. So it's really during the week. How do you get those occupancy up during that week, that Sunday through Thursday time, you know? Now, what we're looking at doing, because we do have an event hall, we have some of those kind of things, is our goal is to try to fill that with corporate during the week. Your families, you're not going to have as much. Now, your prime season, you'll have a little bit more when they're out and stuff. But reality is in certain parts of the year, you're not going to have that. You know, you'll have some, but you're not going to have it full during that period of time. So you got to create a value. You got to create something this uh and corporate, because of the way we are, we can sleep, we can get up to where now we would be able to sleep about 200 to 250 people at a time on site, you know. And it can't always be RVs just to do that. You got to have cabins and those kind of things. So when we get done, we'll have 40, 50, 60, about 250 people we could actually sleep on site outside of RVs. Now you can have pretty good sized corporate, you know, clientele that you can come and have, you know, corporate retreats, team building type stuff, and those kind of things. And again, the name plays in real good with that too.

Speaker 1 23:57

Yeah, of course. Well, I I you know, you touched on something important, and that is, you know, when you have such a strong amenity package like you do there, you have to have the right ratio of revenue-producing lodging units to support it. And a lot of people will take a first dab at the feasibility of their project and say, well, costs are too high, let's cut back on RV sites or cut back on cabins. And while you might be generating some income from F and B or some income from events, that's usually the wrong way about going about making a project work because those lodging units are the moneymakers and they and they support the revenue for the amenities. So we've been through that a lot as well.

Speaker 24:48

Such a chicken or an egg business. Chicken or an egg. That's what I tell everybody. It's like do you build amenities or are they going to come just for lodging out there with nothing to do? Oh my gosh, it's such a balancing.

Events That Sell Tickets Fast

Speaker 1 25:02

Yeah. Well, tell tell us about some of the events you've had or are having in that spectacular central event area you have.

Speaker 25:13

Um, we've had some, we've had some, we've tried different things. One of the things that was absolutely a huge success was the macro wrestling, the little people wrestling. We had 550 tickets sold for that. I mean, it was insane. So how did you market it?

Speaker 1 25:31

Or did they market themselves?

Speaker 25:33

They market it. We put it out on social media. You know, we're actually our social media is actually taking off. We've gotten about, I think about 14,000 followers, you know, we just opened. Wow. We're really growing our following really good right now. TikTok, everything, Facebook. That's on Facebook, I think. But that was they're gonna come back in the fall. And it was, oh, the kids were getting into. I never knew it was so big, but man, we concerts, we do a lot of what I've also found too is we're trying to partner with a lot of charities. So even we give away the event hall, we charge them for food and beverage and that kind of stuff and everything else, and let them. I mean, we've had some really good boots and badges, you know, some stuff with warriors and different kinds of nonprofits. So that it's a really good place to give back to the community. We can do that, do our part of it. And we just recently had a tornado that hit there. And during the week we were slow, we opened it up to some of the families that lost their homes, and the tornado was literally down the street. We were spared. But I mean, literally a mile away, F2 tornado came through. It was nightmare national news, Runaway Bay, Texas recently. And and we opened it up and we had six families come stay for about a week at the camp. And we didn't charge them, we came through. But because of that, some of them ended up said, Hey, we want to stay here, and their insurance now is paying us $4,500 five thousand a month for staying in these little caves, you know. That's amazing. And they're gonna stay here till September, and that's you know, and have the time of their life. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 27:22

Well, I'm sure they're I'm sure what happened was devastating, but yeah, that's a that's a great story and amazing that you did that out of kindness of your heart.

Speaker 27:31

I mean Yeah, we didn't charge anything. We were hey, we're in the community, the community's been good to us, you know, and and we want to be a good neighbor there.

Giving Back During A Tornado Aftermath

Speaker 1 27:41

So what are some of the other lessons learned that our listeners might benefit from?

Speaker 27:47

Like I said, more planning you do up front, you can't plan for everything. But it would be make sure you you get your numbers, your assumptions down up front. Things are gonna change. You're gonna have the interest rates are gonna go up, interest rates are gonna go down, construction costs are gonna go up, construction costs don't come down very much. You know, when I first started and right after COVID and all that stuff, and construction prices started going up, he's like, Are you gonna wait? I'm like, heck no. I said, it's not gonna do anything. We continue to go up. I'm gonna go as fast as I can go to get it done. You know, so and some of the lessons, like I said, learn. I'm looking at some different models now, different ways to go about. Would I build another one of these? Probably not, because it was so much work. But we've, like I said, we've you take away some life lessons, and there's some things that we can do now. I see a lot of people getting in. I'm gonna be able to build an RV part. And I see a lot of people that were building like a, you know, they get a pot or a pan and they'll think they're I'm gonna open a restaurant. It's kind of the same thing, you know. So, you know, everybody's an expert. They're gonna open up a restaurant or they're gonna they get a hammer on the ladder, I'm gonna go become a builder. Man, it's just got so much, you know, that literally I've been working with some guys today with helping them. We met them at a mixer, we were gonna come through and, you know, they're like, hey, we're about to open this one up in Arkansas, right outside of Bentonville, and it's gonna cost $15 million. And and we looked at their numbers and like, guys, y'all are about to make a major mistake. It's their assumptions were off, their everything was off. They were paying more income than what they're gonna get, more occupancy, less overhead, just all of the same things. And like you're gonna be way off of your numbers.

Speaker 1 29:48

I actually, I think it was in Arkansas, but it was a while ago. We did a study, and the other piece that that sometimes people don't think about is who else might be opening. And the the developers were from out of town. And I hadn't even gotten that far into the study, and I realized that there was a park about to break ground along the same highway. Yeah, like with a slightly better location, exact same type of target market. And that was we stopped the study right there and said, no, I don't think I don't think the market's ready for two at once.

Speaker 30:29

So yeah, self-storage. I just did it, our numbers were phenomenal. We came in and all of a sudden some other people came into the market and cut everything in half. So we didn't start on it, but we were almost ready to start on it. But it's the same thing, you just never know. I mean, you can be be there, and maybe in this part that because these these guys were gonna this guy was gonna build this one a little over in 2022, I think. And Arkansas said it might be the same part, but they're we'll find out to go. Yeah.

Speaker 1 31:01

Yeah. Stranger things have happened. Well, timing is everything.

Timing, Seasonality And A Hard Lesson

Speaker 1 31:05

I know the timing for you when you completed construction and opened made things a little more challenging than it than it would have been. Can you talk about that a little bit? I think people could learn.

Speaker 31:16

By the time I got my loan, got a refinance to be able to go do the development to finish the part that I needed to finish. We're going as fast as we could. By the time we got done, we finished it right at the tail of the season. So we opened Labor Day weekend. Well, you opened Labor Day weekend. That's everything from that point on till this next spring is your off season. So, so you got there and you're figuring this occupancy. Well, you're not going to hit that occupancy during that period of time. And so, you know, and you're having to get the word out, you have to come through, get stuff done. And it takes longer to absorb than people think. A lot of people think, man, I used to tell people I had a dream back in 2008. In 2008, I had a dream. I had developments going, you know, before the market crashed, and my dream said if you build it, they will come. And I really misunderstood it. Really said if you build it, you were dumb. You know, so so you know, so you gotta make sure to listen, you know, and your timing, you know, timing is everything.

Speaker 1 32:22

We might maybe we'll put that in our reports if you have that. You're dumb.

Speaker 2 32:28

Yeah, you gotta make sure.

Speaker 1 32:30

Yeah, and I

Running Food And Beverage Without Waste

Speaker 1 32:32

think so. How have you handled with all the F and B offerings that you have? How have you handled managing what's open, how you're staffing given fluctuations in the season and days of the week? How does that work?

Speaker 32:47

So, some of that same thing when we were building this other is working through that process. I did have extensive background in restaurants and those kind of things, but it's getting the right mix of people in, the right ones. You got to build everything from scratch. So at fun, I had looked at some of these management companies that were out there to come in, but realized they're not gonna be as much hands-on as we are if we go through and we do it ourselves and we figure it out. And so it's a give and take. I went through three different people, you know. I finally got the right mix in. And we're getting our our stuff down, our food costs down. We're getting, we can look at occupancy ahead of time, how many people are coming in, so we can gear up based off of that, you know. We can, and in the way I designed it, I have the five different restaurants, but they're not all in one restaurant. So they're broke out like kiosks, like you can see it's six flags or someplace like that. So we don't have to open all of those at any given time. So if it's going to be slow, we can open one of the venues. If it's busier, then we can open up more. And if we have a big event, then we open everything up, and that helps us separate the crowd. So you don't have a crowd, so we can get our ticket times down quicker, faster, and because not everybody again wants the same thing. Somebody might want Mexican food, somebody might want Italian burgers, and then it's these, you know, good comfort food that's elevated, you know, it's kind of chef-driven, but it's it's it's not just cheap afterthought like a lot of parks do. They do, you know, brothers, pete's checkers, chicken, you know, and that that's all they have there, and it's really not that great a food. Ours is actually elevated and it's excellent food. You know, we get a lot of compliments on it.

Speaker 1 34:41

So wow, that does sound

Concert Series And Charging For Entry

Speaker 1 34:44

good. Do you have people from outside the resort come to visit?

Speaker 34:49

We do. We open ours up, and one of the things we're doing now is we're doing a summer music concert series. And so we're actually charging entry into the park. Okay. If they're there right now, we're playing around with that to see. So we spend a little bit more and a little bit better acts, but we may actually even change that. We're talking about maybe having the acts inside of the ballroom. And then we charge additional entry even if you're there. You can get the free guy at the at the saloon. But if you want to go here, somebody is up in full band in that experience, and we have a separate bar in Delato's ballroom, then we're we're gonna try to do that so we can you know at least cover our cost of our bands, then our ancillary income, our food and beverage, and everything else is on top of that. But you know, there was a lot of sounds like a good idea. Yeah, so we're we're we're working through that to see what works.

Speaker 1 35:46

So very nice.

Ancillary Revenue And Pricing Strategy

Speaker 1 35:48

Well, how are things going today then? You were before we recorded, you started telling me about how full you've been. How's it going?

Speaker 35:58

It's definitely picking up faster and faster. So that we were 100% full. We just literally got 18 of the new cabins online last week, all full. So as fast as I can get these, we've got basically 40 cabins total that we just brought in. All the other lodgings full, you know, so that will get us to where we're we're turning decent money finally, you know. So, so I can definitely see, and what happens is, you know, it's not just your your sites that you get, it's all your ancillary income that each one of those site like site nights create. So the more people you can get there, you know, you want to hit that $80 a night in ancillary, you know. So this weekend, I think we ended up doing somewhere just in total ancillary income around $30,000. I mean, which was excellent for us. That's not food than anything else. So uh it's going the right direction for sure.

Speaker 1 37:03

So that's a really good point. You know, some resorts have a lighter kind of ancillary income potential. Maybe they don't have food and beverage. It's some general store items and some late checkout fees, but so the game is a little different in terms of looking at how you maximize revenue and occupancy. But your your revenue maximization is is a lot more price sensitive to trying to try to get to get your occupancy up, it seems.

Speaker 37:38

So well, up front, I ended up, you know, up front was thinking, oh, we're gonna have our house prices higher than everybody. But that doesn't work. You gotta occupancy trumps ADR up front, you know, so you gotta get the occupancy there to create the demand, then you can arrange the the prices up. So I was fortunate enough to to have Sean help, you know, he came in, was helping me, you know, understand some of these numbers, and he's been through it before, you know, and and and knows it as good as anybody I've met in the industry. And it helped me a lot, you know, shortens your learning curve because anytime you can find somebody that will share their information and knowledge and that kind of stuff. And I try to pay the same four thing forward with other people, we're helping these other booth right now just because I didn't want them to go make a mistake, you know. So you help others get what they want. Usually you get back what you get, you know, what you want comes back to you, I think.

Speaker 1 38:46

So you don't know what you don't know, and you get you get what you put out. Absolutely. That's great to hear. Well, I I think that's all of my questions, Justin.

Modular Housing, Expansion And China Sourcing

Speaker 1 39:00

What is next for you, be it with Camp QYB or something else? What's next?

Speaker 39:07

So I've actually been, you know, like I said, we learned so much by going through that process. I just got back from China. I was over there for two weeks. I went to Guangzhou and Fosh and sourcing a lot of stuff over there. So looking at modular housing over there. My next venture, what I'm looking at doing, because we do really good at the entitlements. That's what my bread and butter has been. We've probably done more manufacture housing sites than anybody else in Texas, you know, as far as getting the entitlements and the puzzle figured out. But now I'm looking at buying and holding long term. I want to do like a 200-unit, almost like a stupid stay hotel, but bring in modular housing, one bedroom, one bath, two-bedroom, two-bath, clubhouse pool, but do, you know, these that are ran weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, yearly. And they it's ran like a hotel, but it's, you know, separated about 14 units an acre. And that's kind of my next project that I want to do. But I want to be the I want to be the developer all the way through, the construction, and then we buy everything down, we can buy down, so we're in it at a very low basis. Again, like I said, that's the theory. We'll see how it works out. Because if you want stuff, you don't know. But but that's what we're looking at kind of an extension. And still continue building this. I probably got two more years of construction. The expansion of this, looking at adding a pool at some point, the miniature golf, and probably another 150 or 200 RV sites.

Speaker 1 40:52

150 to 200 RV sites?

Speaker 40:55

Yeah, additional RV sites. So that would give me like some of these larger ones, like Paradise Ranch or or Margaritaville, some of them have 300 plus RV sites.

Speaker 2 41:07

Absolutely.

Speaker 41:08

And then fill up on the weekends, and then they're down, dude. Up and down. That's why underwrit at that 35% occupancy, you know. So but that makes all your ancillary, like I said, you don't necessarily count that revenue. The ancillary income is more than the software on those, you know, for the resort for sure. So yeah.

Speaker 1 41:34

Well, that sounds sounds like a good idea on the modular housing. Well, I guess.

Speaker 41:40

It was pretty unbelievable the things that we saw over there. And it was, you know, just just unbelievable. I ended up just one of the packages I put together that I bought from there, sourced from there from my camp, say we 400 grand on just one package that I got what it was gonna cost me here. And that's when I'm like, holy mackerel, you know, so I'm gonna source everything I can, you know, direct. And it's just, you know, a lot of work, but once we do it, we got it down, you know.

Speaker 1 42:14

So um so is that your secret, you know, a lot of people would worry about the quality of the products, but your secret is to go there and verify everything yourself so that you know you're getting it.

Speaker 42:28

We'll have boots on the ground there, so we make sure we maintain quality. Not everything from China's cheap. They have a lot of good stuff now that they're coming through. They've won, you know, you just gotta make sure that you get the right stuff. I mean, we've had solar lighting that we got from there, that has just been absolutely phenomenal. Cost me nothing. That whole storm that went through, I had I had literally tennis ball-sized hell hitting these and it didn't affect them. And and it cost me zero electricity. They're a hundred percent solar power, you know, but they're commercial grade solar power. And they were ended up costing me a couple hundred dollars of light compared to over here, the same lights are fourteen hundred dollars. And they're the same thing, same factory. It's just a difference of you know going these suppliers and picnic tables and trash cans and all of the barbecue grills, all of that stuff, four hundred thousand dollars because I went and sold it all.

Speaker 1 43:34

I saw them, they look nice. Yeah, kudos. That's fantastic. Yeah, the solar lights, they fully charge from solar, you never they never run out.

Speaker 43:45

They're not hooked up to the grid, but we put one on every site. We can change the colors, we can make them red, green, blue, off-white, bright light, you know, but they're all LED, solar power. And man, the technology's here. It's it's unbelievable. And it's so pretty. You can change all the lights up blue, and it just gives it a different look through the whole camp. I turned down the first row one time and I had to wave off a plane. I think they thought it was a runway.

Speaker 2 44:16

You were red, huh?

Speaker 44:18

No, go ahead.

How To Visit And Contact Justin

Speaker 1 44:23

Justin. Well, I think that wraps it up for today. I I know I can tell listeners that your resort website is www.campqyb.com, correct?

Speaker 2 44:39

Yes.

Speaker 1 44:41

And if somebody wanted to reach you, Justin, what would be the best way to do that?

Speaker 44:45

They can actually send a message through the camp and it will come to me. Yeah, that's the best way. So we've got all the all the stuff we have contact on there, everything else on the website to get a hold of us and it'll get to me. I'm out there usually too on the weekends. So pretty much every weekend I'm out there unless I'm traveling or something. So besides that, I'm out there.

Speaker 1 45:10

So I encourage anyone in the industry that's in the Dallas area to try to come by and check it out because it's it's definitely unusual for everything that it offers, and it's done in a really, a really high quality, spectacular way. So congratulations for that.

Speaker 45:28

Thank you, thank you. And they're talking about OHIA is going to be in Fort Worth this year. They were talking about maybe busing some people out there to do tours and stuff out there. So yeah.

Speaker 1 45:42

Well, absolutely. I will see you. I'll see you in Fort Worth, and maybe I'll see you at the campground. Perfect.

Speaker 45:50

Great to have you back out. You'll see it all done, what we've been doing. And then you see it in full full swing.

Speaker 1 45:57

Yeah, that'd be really fun.

unknown 45:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1 45:59

Well, thanks, Justin, for all your time. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 46:04

All right. Thank you, thank you.