Wellness by Design: Building a Truly Holistic Hospitality Experience

Welcome And Why Wellness Matters

Speaker 0:03

Welcome to the Outdoor Hospitality Podcast. I am your host today, Shari Heilala. In this episode, we are going to take a very deep dive into wellness and outdoor hospitality. We all hear about the wellness trend, the importance of wellness, especially for people seeking outdoor experiences. But today we're going to talk to a founder and owner of a glamping resort that has taken wellness to a whole new level based on a personal story and a real true holistic approach to wellness at his resort. So today we introduce you to Justin Kamm of North Star Farm. Welcome, Justin.

Speaker 2 0:47

Hi, Shari. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 0:49

Yeah, you bet. So tell us a little bit about North Star Farm, where it is, what you offer, and then maybe we'll get into the story of how it all

North Star Farm And Guest Market

Speaker 0:59

started.

Speaker 2 0:59

So North Star Farm is a 75-acre property in the Western Catskills in upstate New York in the town of Franklin. Currently, we have a 15 acres of blueberries. We have three three fields. Two of those fields are UPIC fields, and we use one to harvest for ourselves and for our guests that we host at the farm. We have a chestnut grove, which is about 700 young chestnut trees at this point, which should start fruiting this year. So we'll probably have our first crop from the chestnut trees in the fall. And we are growing our venue to be more of an experience as opposed to commodity crop farming. And we can get into that later, but small farms are struggling. And one of the ways we are defending our way of farming and that way of life is through hospitality. And we built lamping domes, geodesic domes on the property that we opened a little over a year ago, Memorial Day last year. And that has been an incredible success for us.

Speaker 2:00

And how many domes do you have?

Speaker 2 2:02

We have four units right now.

Speaker 2:05

Got it. Got it. And are you who's your target market? Is it the families, couples?

Speaker 2 2:13

We serve, I found there's kind of three different customers that we have. There's younger couples and older couples. So younger couples with you know disposable income that travel a lot are looking for new adventures. Older couples, empty nesters with disposable income as well, who you know are just looking for weekend getaways, more or less. And then also families. And they come up for a number of reasons. One is just to experience the farm and expose their children to a working farm and learn what that's all about. And we also happen to be situated in an area where we're about 20 minutes from the Cooperstown summer baseball tournaments, which, if you're not familiar, are a very big deal up here. People fly in from all over the country, families, so their kids can play in the tournaments all summer long. So that's about 16 weeks long, and we do get some residual business from that.

Speaker 3:02

Oh, that's a huge demand driver. So where are most of your customers coming from and how far away typically do you think?

Speaker 2 3:11

We are about two and a half hours from New York City, once you get out of the city. And so the majority of our guests come from the New York metro area, whether it's Long Island, Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and northern New Jersey and Westchester County, just outside the city. But say if if that's 50% of our guests, that's about right. And then the rest are a mix. Some drive in from kind of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania area, some come from Boston and surrounding areas in Massachusetts or other towns in upstate New York. And then we do get a handful, maybe 10 to 15%, that actually fly in from other places, whether it's for the baseball tournament, or I think one of the things we've done well is establish ourselves as a destination, not somewhere to stay when you're going somewhere else, but people actually want to come to our property and just to experience our property, not what is going on in the area.

Speaker 4:02

How how did that come to be?

Social Media That Builds A Destination

Speaker 4:04

Your marketing strategy, word of mouth, both? How did you how are you getting found as a nation in itself?

Speaker 2 4:12

Yeah, we've done a really good job on social media. So we started posting just visuals about the farm. It's it's a beautiful property. And we had a photographer and videographer come in and create a media library for us when we first started. And I think the visuals do more than anything else to sell the property.

Speaker 4:29

So great, great photography and video combined with good social media seems to be the winning, the winning combination. I see your kitty behind you.

Speaker 2 4:40

One of one of three that we have.

Speaker 4:42

Nice. I bet they're are they indoor outdoor? Do they get to enjoy the farm?

Speaker 2 4:48

They are indoor cats who are perpetually trying to escape and get outdoors. But um we brought them on functionally originally to keep mice out of the out of the house because you know field mice are very prevalent, prominent around here, and uh they do a good job of that.

Speaker 5:04

So nice. So let's back up.

Illness, Mould And A New Path

Speaker 5:09

You're running a farm. Do you have any background in farming? What what's your background? And fast forward to how did this all get started?

Speaker 2 5:19

I have no background in farming, but I do have deep experience in growing businesses. And I have found, and I tell people this all the time, the only thing that's unique about businesses are the product or service they offer. And all of the infrastructure around that product and service is the same. Every business needs marketing, sales, finance, customer service, human resources, all the basic fundamentals. And those are things I know very well. And the farming part has been a bit of a learned experience. So, but backing up, the farm was something of an accident. We about five and a half years ago, I was still working in finance. I had a career in venture capital, building businesses, and I did that for about 15 years. And then, long story short, got really sick one day. And it wasn't really one day, it was building up for a long time, but there was one day in particular where my body just gave up, completely dysregulated. I started having seizures. And I spent the next six weeks after that. I lost 40 pounds. I couldn't breathe, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. It was an absolute nightmare, just desperate running around looking for answers, which I never really got, at least not in the short term. And so that led to two years of essentially being housebound. Couldn't really leave the house, drive anywhere, do anything other than go to doctor's appointments. I saw in that first year 37 different doctors who put me on 54 different medications, and nothing seemed to help, and everything seemed to make me worse. And a few months into that, my son actually got very sick as well, started having neurological issues. He was diagnosed with things like Tourette's syndrome and autism. He was a perfectly normal, healthy kid. And it was just like the next day, he just started having these episodes. So that's when we started to make the connection. It had to be, it couldn't have been a coincidence that we both got so sick in the same time frame. And so Western medicine wasn't cutting it for us. Doctors weren't helping. So we started seeking alternative treatments and practitioners and trying to find some answers and wound up going down the path of functional medicine and Chinese medicine and naturopaths and homeopathy and learning about all these different things. And so did a bunch of different tests diagnostics and made certain connections where we found out we were in a very moldy home situation, like black mold. We had a lot of water damage to our home. And that's how we started connecting dots. And not that this is a health podcast, but things like mold, especially when they happened during the COVID era, when you also have COVID. And so once it comes out, you know, you have a lot of a long road ahead of you for recovery.

Speaker 8:22

I think, you know, we're not a health podcast, but wellness is a core part of outdoor hospitality. And I think that whether someone can relate personally to what you're talking about, most people can for themselves or someone that they know that's close to them. So where did you go from there?

Speaker 2 8:41

Yeah. So about two years in, I started feeling a little better. And I we found, to the best of our ability, kind of the most expert people in the field of mold remediation and creating healthy homes, and linked up with a couple of different people after trying several that were very knowledgeable and capable and on the forefront of research in the field and what healthy homes mean. And we developed a relationship and I began speaking to a lot of families because I still wasn't working and I had the time sharing our story. And I found out the more that I shared our story, our family, the more people had similar stories in return. This is actually a very big issue that is going to continue to get worse in this country when it relates to chronic illness and mystery illness. And I spent a lot of hours and shared a lot of tears with a lot of other families who were going through similar things and trying to help them. And I realized something needed to be done. And we had an opportunity to do that. And we found this farm for us personally. We were looking for a kind of a weekend getaway, a property that we could, you know, we're living in this area just outside New York City and somewhere we could get away to on the weekends. It was just less stressful and healthier. And so after some months of searching, we came across this blueberry farm in upstate New York and absolutely fell in love with the property when we set foot on it. And what's funny is I drew a lot of parallels when I started learning more about the farm and going through the purchase process about how the farm was also sick, right? It was a dying farm. There were 18,000 blueberry bushes planted on it, and all these chestnut trees. The blueberry bushes were 11 years old at the time when we were looking to buy it, and they looked like they were two years old. They were just undergrown. They were not getting the proper inputs, they weren't getting enough water. And there was a pasture that was overgrown. The chestnut trees were looked like dwarf chestnut trees. They just weren't growing the way they should. And so I drew the parallel between the farm and our health as well, right? And so I was in the same boat. My body wasn't getting the healthy inputs that it needed to thrive and produce the way it should. And so it felt like it was meant to be. And so we dove in with the intention of kind of fixing this farm up and going up on the weekends. And that was where the kind of the initial capital after we bought the property went to. We finished an irrigation system and you know, cleaned up the pasture and fixed up the house, the barn that was on the property. And sure enough, the farm itself started to thrive. The blueberry bushes started to grow, and they've more than tripled in size now in three years since we bought the farm.

Speaker 11:29

Just through the irrigation primarily?

Speaker 2 11:32

Just through water, sun, and we stopped spraying. It was always an organic farm. We still grow organically, but they're spraying organic fertilizers, which we found out were harmful. The soil is actually fantastic for the blueberries. They have everything they need, and all they need is sun and water. And so once we took away all the bad stuff and started giving it the good stuff that it needed, it started growing again and started thriving. And so there's a lesson in there for us humans as well. But we decided we love the lifestyle at the farm and we wanted to make it our full-time occupation. And so we wound up selling our house in New Jersey and concurrently, while we were fixing up the farm and kind of ramping up to run this business as a blueberry farm, my business mind kicked in and my experience in venture capital and watching businesses grow. And I realized that commodity crop farming is just not a sustainable business.

Speaker 12:27

So when what year was that?

Speaker 2 12:29

Well, we bought the property at the end of 2023. And so we, as we approached and got into the 2024 season, blueberry harvest is in the summer. That's when we dove into the blueberry business. That's when we came to the realization that we were never going to be able to make it work as a commodity crop business. So we had to figure out how to make the farm viable and how to make it generate enough revenue to create a living for our family. And what we landed on was farm stays and overnight accommodations.

Turning A Blueberry Farm Into Glamping

Speaker 2 13:01

And so we set out to build units on our property where people could come and stay on a working farm, learn about how food is grown, reconnect with nature. And the other thing we wanted to do was help those people understand what it means to live in a healthy home. And so we purpose-built the geodesic domes on our property with a lot of care and a lot of intention toward healthy living. The structure itself is a very eco-friendly build. So very low impact from a manufacturing standpoint. They ventilate very well. It's literally impossible for them to grow mold in the way a home would that's sealed up and insulated. Every product and material we chose for inside of the domes is eco-friendly, low or no VOC, no odor. All the stuff that we, you know, we provide cooking spices and condiments, they're all organic. The soaps and shampoos and other products that we provide in the bathroom are free of any kind of harmful chemicals and we're very carefully chosen. Even the utensils that we provide in the kitchen are environmentally friendly and healthy utensils and materials. And so the whole thing is built around the idea of healthy living.

Speaker 1 14:31

Hello, listeners. I wanted to share a quick story. I recently started to help a client set up their three properties, two RV resorts and one glamping resort. And they wanted me to help roll out their new tech stack. And at the center of that is the PMS or the property management software. These clients decided to go with storable new book, and thank goodness they did because the property management software is the nucleus of everything that you'll set up your website, your social media, your bookings, your cleanings, everything. And it really handles the entire process from both the front customer-facing side as well as the back end and coordinating cleaners and things like that. So it's, you know, setting up your photos and your pricing and your dynamic pricing and revenue management and your unit information and ensuring a smooth and customizable shopping cart experience to ensure a high conversion rate with your customers. And then they have all these great automations. It can send texts and emails to your guests before they arrive, on the day they arrived or after to get feedback and reviews. And you can track all your financial performance. And then it also helps with the back end and analyzing your data. I honestly couldn't be happier with the experience. If I called the New Book helpline, I get an answer right away with someone who can help me with like three or four standing meetings each week with different members of their teams to set up the different capabilities and softwares. We're even using them to set up these property websites, we're using them for digital marketing services and SEO. And honestly, it has been excellent. So I chased down storable new book to ask them if they would be sponsors of the podcast because I really believed in their product. Fortunately, they were willing. So they are today's sponsors. So if you're unhappy with your PMS or you're launching a product and shopping, definitely give them a call. They'll give you a free software demonstration. And if you let them know that you came from the Outdoor Hospitality Podcast, they'll give you 15% off your new book signature subscriptions. Can't recommend storable new book highly enough. Go check them out.

Building Healthy Domes And Cost Lessons

Speaker 1 16:31

Thanks.

Speaker 16:31

Wow. I have so many questions on a personal level. I'll try to stay focused in outdoor hospitality there. So who is the manufacturer of your domes? And tell us a little bit about what you did differently in them, how much was modified? Because I I've always been very curious. And and the what is the outer canvas material? Can you dive into all that a little bit more?

Speaker 2 16:59

Yeah, I'm not an expert on the construction process, but I can certainly answer a lot of that. And so we I didn't want to create, I've seen the geodesic domes on other properties and I found them interesting from a health standpoint. And but I didn't want to build the same experience that most of the people who buy the geodesic domes built. I wanted to build a I'm not I was never big into camping, but I like the idea. I like the idea of being outside and in nature and having that experience, but I like my creature comforts, you know. I want my plumbing and I want my air conditioning. And and uh and so we built them to be more of a higher end type of experience. And in order to do that, I couldn't, you know, that's not a kit you can buy from a single company, but spent some time sourcing materials. There's these wonderful people, Brian and Joanna Linton out of Pennsylvania. They run a business called Finding Promised Land. They help people set up lamp grounds. They were our supplier for the domes and the hot tubs and the saunas. And I encourage anybody who's looking at doing geodesic domes or campgrounds to go seek them out. The we have interior modules that house the full bathrooms. There are loft beds. So we have two queen beds in each unit. They're all they're about 700 square feet. They're big domes. We have kitchenettes and uh the we sourced those from a company in Poland called Fdomes. So the website's Fdomes.com, which you may be familiar with. So those modules have been great. So we drop those modules inside the domes. And the other big construction deal with the domes is that our property is not flat. We're on a slope. And so we had to engineer platforms on a hillside, really. So all the mechanicals and everything that come into the domes are situated below the into the platforms. So they're heavily overbuilt. They have concrete pillars and they're very large. They're 30 by 30 decks. And so there's a bit of an engineering undertaking there. And we built on raw land, and so we had to drop in our own septic system, run electrical from another part of the property over to that part of the property, and uh drill a well for water source. And so that took about a year to build total. But yeah, the outer layer of the dome is literally just canvas and and it's it's draped over a PVC pipe shell.

Speaker 19:25

That's different for for compared to a lot of domes out there because they're a plastic-based cover, correct?

Speaker 2 19:34

Yes, there's other varieties too of people doing fiberglass or even concrete now domes that they're building. So there's companies doing some very innovative things.

Speaker 19:45

So did you you touched on construction? So how did your construction costs end up in the end compared to what you expected? Where were the biggest surprises?

Speaker 2 19:58

Well, one thing I learned in venture capital is that for any project you're planning, it's going to take twice as long and cost twice as much. And that certainly held true in this case. And so I think we rushed a little bit. If I had to go back again, I'd take more time sourcing contractors and builders. And I tried to generate GC it myself, and I don't have a lot of experience in that other than you know, home renovation. So I've never built a commercial project. So I definitely made my share of mistakes. We had a original contractor, was not, they were a new business, and they ran out of capital and stopped paying subcontractors. So subcontractors stopped showing up at our property, and we ran into winter. And anybody who's been through a winter in upstate New York knows it is not the easiest thing in the world to deal with. And so a lot of what they built in the months prior got ruined and destroyed and had to be rebuilt the following spring when it warmed up a little bit. And yeah, that was difficult, but we made it through.

Speaker 21:02

Good. Yeah, I think it's always hard. You know, the first construction project I ever did, I, you know, I was running my business at the same time. So, and so I didn't have the option of thinking I could learn through GCing. So I hired the most reputable firm in town, and that paid off in spades. So, you know, it's tempting to hire to save money and hire someone you can make a deal with that that's maybe newer or do things yourself. And sometimes it works out, but that definitely gave me peace of mind.

Speaker 2 21:35

And you know, one of the one of the challenges of little America is I found that that there's just not it's difficult to hire hire people to do things, right? And so if you're in the New York City area, you have your choice of probably 25 to 30 contractors who would be great and do a good job and are all priced around the same thing because it's a competitive market. In where we are in the area, it's just not a competitive market. And there's people who will do it very cheaply and not do it well. And then it's very hard to find people who are very good. And they're definitely going to be more expensive because they know they're good and they have plenty of work because there's only a few good ones that you can find and they have wait lists. And so if I understood that beforehand, I would have planned a lot better.

Speaker 22:24

Gotcha. Yeah, I think for our clients too, we always encourage, even at the feasibility study stage, to start reaching out to contractors. Really, it's more for preliminary budget check. But that's a really good point. It's also good to have that relationship early on if they've got a long waiting list. Then you're ahead of the game at that point. So did you build all four domes at once?

Speaker 2 22:50

We did.

Speaker 22:52

And then how about amenities on site? Is it mostly the farm? Is there how do you do check-in? And was that done? Was all that done?

Self-Check-In And Direct Booking Systems

Speaker 2 23:02

Yeah. So one thing I'm really good at, I think, is operations. And so my role when I was in Venture Capital was more of an operating partner. And so we would find a business to invest in and we do about one a year. We're very active investors. And I would parachute in as interim CFO or COO or as a board member. And I would literally spend a year with a company and with management teams helping them fix their operations and building processes and systems. And so that's kind of what I view as my core competency. And so I was very conscious of that when we were building our operation of making sure we had the right booking software and the right processes and automating it as much as possible. And so we have a fully full self-check-in process. So you book online through our website. We do 99% of our bookings direct through our website at this point. And so we don't really use OTAs. I'm still listed on Airbnb and booking, but I'm about to disconnect those at the end of this season, probably. And so people get an automated email with the check-in instructions that are very thorough. And they check in themselves. There's a one of the things that's been really important, I found, is a guidebook that we put together that's super comprehensive. So when somebody walks into the dome, they have a big book to read with the instructions on how to operate everything from the mini split, you know, air conditioning, heating unit to the wood-fired hot tubs and the wood-fired sauna, and how to check out, how to wrap up their dirty linens and what they can do while they're on their property and what all the options are, things to do in the area, what to expect from a working farm, you know, all the information, all the frequently asked questions you could possibly imagine. And what that does obviously is cut down on the number amount of time I spend with guests and helping them through issues. And so I think 75% of people who show up here, I never hear from. They kind of check in themselves, they have a great time, they leave a great review afterwards. And that's that's been one of the great things that we've accomplished, I think, so far.

Speaker 25:16

Oh, you've reached the holy grail and direct bookings, obviously, through marketing and probably reaching back out. Do you get a lot of repeat customers or is it usually mostly first time?

Speaker 2 25:28

Yeah, this is only our second season open, but we have had you know many people come back a second time already, even within the same season. And so that's been awesome. And word of mouth has played a big, big deal. We kind of underpromise and over-deliver. And one of my famous, one of my favorite business books of all time, maybe the greatest business book ever written, is Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Goudara, which I'm sure everybody listening is kind of if they're interested in hospitality, you've read or are aware of. And we really take that to heart. And that's been a big reason we've been able to book so much directly, I think. I draw this parallel between stories and place. I think a place can create great stories, and great stories can make a place stronger. And there's a reciprocal relationship there. And so every time a guest comes on the property, we we start thinking, how can we create uh create stories for these people? How do we, you know, the farm is a container for memory. So how do we create memories for people? And we've kind of become a place where people come to create memories. And more than half the people who come are celebrating. We specifically ask when somebody books, do you have any special requests? Are you celebrating any special occasions? And so birthdays, anniversaries, wedding proposals is the majority of the people who come to stay. And I think that's an awesome thing. And you get to help people create those stories and create memories in their lives. And when that happens, they go back and tell somebody else about those stories and about those memories because they get repeated and they want to tell everybody. And so I think that's been a big engine of growth for us.

Speaker 27:09

That's beautiful. Well, so walk me through the guest experience. I mean, you know, with your guide book in the units, people can be sort of self-directed and have that piece of solitude with you know, with their loved one or even themselves. So and then how are those memories created? Can you create, you know, a visual picture of experience for us?

Speaker 2 27:36

So the way you create that experience is you have to understand all of your customer touch points. And so from the very first time they discover you on social media to when they visit your website, what is a feeling you give them, right? It's not just about you can't just say we have hot tubs, we have a sauna, we have sheep, we have blueberries, and we have these domes, and the beds are really comfortable. Come stay with us, right? It's more like anybody who's a good marker understands that it's not about the features and the benefits, it's about the feelings and emotions, right? So when you create an emotional connection to a place, that's the beginning of creating a story. And once those stories are created, you create that emotional connection, which makes the place stronger. And so they come to the website and then the booking experience, what's the booking experience like? How much friction is there along the way? Do you give them a good feeling when they go through and they enter the dates on the website to book and all the other information that they're reading there in that listing? How does it make them feel? And so if they have a good experience there, then they're excited to come when they stay, right? So now they've booked, they receive an email with the information of what to do to check in when they arrive at the farm and what to expect. And there's like a three email sequence between when they book and when they arrive, right? So we'll get another one like the day of the day before with more instructions. And what are the words and the text that you actually use in those communications to make them feel a certain way and to raise their expectations, right? And then they arrive on site. And what does it visually, aesthetically look like when you pull up to the property? Is there proper signage? Is it easy to get to the domes? What condition is the road in that goes up to the domes? What do they see on the way up to the domes? We planted wildflowers along the road that leads up to the domes in the back of our property, just so you have a more beautiful approach to the domes, right? And then when you pull in the signage that is there at the dome, it's all hand drawn, branded content. And so all the domes are named after animals. There's bear, coyote, deer, and eagle. And they're all themed in that way, right? So you pull up and you get this feeling like it's special, like, oh, I'm staying in bear. You know, it's just like this that's better than coyote, or it's not, it's better than eagle. And then you walk in and there's just just a gift basket waiting for you, local coupons, different places to visit, recommendations. You get a s'mores kit that you can go fire up in the in the fire pit. There's a handwritten note that my wife wrote writes for everybody who comes and welcomes them to the property. And every time it's unique, right? It's not the same one over and over. And the the, you know, there's a trend I've noticed in hotels and luxury hotels. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but I'll give you the example of my family took a road trip down to South Florida back when the kids had spring break a few months ago and to visit some family. And we made multiple stops along the way. And when we passed through Savannah, Georgia, I'm gonna call out the hotel by name because it's really still bothers me. The Thompson Hotel, which is a high-end hotel brand. And it was awesome. Their website is great. All those customer touch points I talk about. We walked in, the person who was there waiting for us was amazing, and they give you a free beer when you pop in. There's a little gift bag that they give you too. And I was like, oh, this is excellent hospitality. And the lobby's beautiful, and they have food options, and it's in this cool downtown area. The elevator was nice when we walked up as a smooth elevator ride up to the room. You walk in, the room is beautiful. Put my stuff down. I laid down on the bed. The bed is like laying on a concrete slab, and the pillow is about that thin. And I needed like six pillows just to support my head. And it was just one thing that was wrong, and it completely ruined the experience. And this is not unique to the Thompson Hotel in Savannah, Georgia, right? This is happening everywhere. I used to travel for business a lot. There's some companies that do it well. The Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles, for instance, does an incredible job with hospitality. But as these brands scale, I think they lose some of that, you know, what's actually important to the customer and giving them a good night's sleep. And so we take that lesson. And, you know, we have very high-end linens on our beds. It may not be the cost most cost-effective thing. It may cut into our margin, but like you're gonna remember, like Weston did years ago with their, you know, their dream sleep beds, cloud beds, whatever they want, they called them, you know, you're gonna remember that the bed at North Star Farm was so comfortable and you had the best night's sleep ever, right? And so I will take less margin all day long for in exchange for people telling the stories about how intentional and how perfect their experience was. And if you go look at our Google reviews that we've curated so far, every single one is comments on the attention to detail and how everything is done with intention and how special the experience was. And you don't get that response if you have thin pillows and five-card beds.

Speaker 32:47

Right. Good, good on you for that. I totally agree. So you talked about margin.

Occupancy Pricing And Careful Growth

Speaker 32:54

Maybe we'll get into your business performance a little bit. I know you've you just opened last spring. So how did last year go? Do you operate in the winter? And then how are bookings looking for this year to last?

Speaker 2 33:13

Yep. So we opened Memorial Day last year, and all we did in terms of advertising and marketing was social media campaigns and not paid, just organic, and started just posting very aesthetic reels on Instagram. And yeah, I think we maybe got a little bit lucky, but the we did not have a single weekend open all last season. So from May through November, and yes, we are seasonal at this point, there was not a single weekend date open. Every single Friday and Saturday for four units was booked. I was shocked. I think it speaks to we got a little bit lucky with our marketing. Some of our stuff really went viral, more or less. Influencers were huge. We reached out to some people who we thought were doing a good job with travel content, like user-generated content on Instagram. And two or three of them had very viral posts that helped and drove bookings. That's something if you can find some good people to partner with on, is really, really worth it. And so the issue we had last year was trying to fill in the weekdays. We got kind of a late start, obviously, launching. And so, yeah, we're maybe when you talk about occupancy rate and and average daily rate. Last year we were probably at like 40%, and we did average daily rate was something like $350. And that was exceeded my expectation for year one because we didn't do any advertising and got a late start. But I was really encouraged by what that meant for the next year. So we shut down on November 15th and we opened back up on March 1st. That is due to a town regulation. We are seeking a variance this year to be open in the winter. But again, the logistics of being open in winter in upstate New York is something else to consider. And so there's a lifestyle question there of what we really want to do. But I think we're going to try and stay open for most of the winter this year, if the town will let us. But we did a much better job over the winter with our content and preparing and ran some paid ads for this upcoming season. And we've just absolutely been crushing it. Our occupancy rate is closer to 70% this year, and our average daily rate is $527 a night.

Speaker 35:35

Whoa, that is progress.

Speaker 2 35:38

Yeah. And uh, I know I could push that higher, but I don't want to right now because I want to. There's a certain expectation that comes with a customer who pays $800 a night as opposed to $500 a night. And we're not ready for that yet.

Speaker 35:49

So how how close does that get you to your dream of a viable business to support your life with your family? Are you are you there with a seasonal operation of four units? Do you are you looking to expand? What's the goal?

Speaker 2 36:07

Yeah, we are since demand is where it's at, we're definitely looking to expand, not in a huge way, but maybe four more units for next year. And we're very conscious of kind of losing the sense of experience and that sense of place that I spoke about earlier by overbuilding. And so we're going to be very cautious about that. But we are profitable off of four units. We is it where I want to be with my revenue run rate for our lifestyle and my family? Not quite yet. For some people, it might be. But I think this is a and we're not striving for margin yet. I'm really focused on occupancy rate and average daily rate and kind of dialing that in. And then operations will get optimized as we expand a little bit further. And so I'm not really running numbers on margin gross margin versus net margin, but my my key performance indicators are occupancy rate and average daily rate at this point.

Speaker 37:14

Got it. So you and your wife are involved in both involved in the day-to-day operations. Is that correct?

Speaker 2 37:21

Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 37:22

And then what other what other resources does it take to get the job done? Do you have, you know, um ground maintenance? What else?

Speaker 2 37:31

Yep. I do a lot of the ground maintenance. I have a part-time, we have three part-time employees. So I wouldn't call them employees part-time help. They probably put in 20 hours a week or less, each of them, but two of them are turnover for the rooms. So my wife and I don't do the cleaning, we do the decorating aesthetics, and our team helps with that at this point because they're starting to understand it. But you know, we're still writing the welcome notes and putting the gift baskets together and still fixing hot tubs and and you know, water issues. And and I do have another person on the farm who helps with farm type things. But as far as the hospitality stuff goes, we just have two part-time people on the turnover team for four units.

Speaker 38:14

Hello, listeners. 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 proposed business offering and complete an in-depth analysis to make sure that your planned business will be profitable. Getting a second opinion on your proposal and forecasted 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 of private investors. They are going to want to see this type of deep dive analysis from an independent third-party specialist in the industry. We at Sage have completed well over 250 feasibility studies and appraisals in outdoor hospitality in North America in the last four years. So we understand what it takes to bring a project from concept to reality. If this sounds like it could be helpful to you, you can go to our website, SageOutdoorAdvisory.com, and schedule a call with our team. While you're there, check out our proprietary glamping database map too. Thanks. Now back to the show.

Sheep Stories And Low-Stress Stays

Speaker 39:15

You said you have sheep. What other what other animals are on the farm and how much a lot of people dream of that. How much work is it? How costly is it?

Speaker 2 39:26

So we have seven sheep right now. And sheep are amazing animals. I've grown to love them very much. They are low maintenance as far as I think sheep may be the most low maintenance farm animal you can have. We happen to have a breed called baby dolls, which you can run through blueberry fields. And so the structure was already built for them there. I built them a run-in shed where they can go during windy weather and hot weather. They don't like hot weather. They're fine in the cold. But they eat the grass, the pasture grass, and that's all they need, along with a mineral block. And we have, you know, they just need a walk clean water supply, which costs nothing. And in the winter, we supplement with hay. So when there's snow on the ground, they obviously can't eat the grass. And so their food source is gone. And so six, five, six months out of the year, we are feeding them hay. But that's, you know, for seven sheep, you're talking maybe fifteen hundred dollars for the entire winter. So that's that's the real cost, I'd say. As long as they're healthy and not racking up vet bills, it's you know, less than $2,000 a year to run seven sheep. We are we do want to bring other animals eventually, but we have to kind of establish new fencing. We can't really run many other animals through blueberry fields, which is what we currently have fenced in. So we're looking at different options for that.

Speaker 40:49

Got it. I love the animal aspect of it. And do you feel like the sheep have, do they each have their individual personalities? Have you gotten to know them well?

Speaker 2 41:00

Absolutely. I, you know, going back to that information book that we provide in the dome, there's a whole I gave each of them bios. They all have names and jobs, and and uh gave them personalities. And so it's part of the story making, right? And so I also have an Instagram account that which features the sheep that's separate from the farm's Instagram account that's at daily pasture. It's silly, it's it's based on political satire and the sheep's opinions. Obviously, the sheep are a metaphor for kind of like the general population. And well, it's catharsis for me, is how it started out, just kind of expressing what was inside of me and what's going on in the world today. And and it grew into something people started to really respond to and love, and it's about the sheep and their personalities, and they have fans at this point, and there are people who who drive significant distances or even have flown in just to stay at our farm and visit the sheep because they wanted to meet them.

Speaker 42:02

That's fantastic. I because I was gonna ask what you know, there's different angles to what someone why someone might come to to stay with you. And I wondered in your marketing, you know, how much is the wellness angle, how much is the farm, now some some of it specifically the sheep. How do you put that marketing out there and what are people responding to the most? Do you know?

Speaker 2 42:29

It's it's a mix, right? And so I don't think there's any right or wrong way, but for me, I go back to you connect with people through the stories, right? And so we tell stories about the wellness things and that connects with some a certain crowd, and we tell stories about you know nervous system regulation and reconnecting with nature, and that appeals to a certain other crowd. And then I do comedy with farm animals, with the sheep and satire, and that appeals to another crowd. And so you give people stories to follow and give them something to connect to, and then when they arrive, they come to the property not to stay because they're going somewhere else, but because they want to be immersed in your universe and your stories that you've created. So they want to go to this place that's eco-friendly, healthy living, or they want to go to this place to reconnect with nature and see the stars and see pretty sunsets, or they want to go meet these hilarious sheep that have personalities.

Stress Stacking And Environmental Loads

Speaker 43:35

So, how are you and your son doing now? And how has this lifestyle change affected you? Um yeah, tell me a little bit about life now and how you see how you see this contributing to your your wellness.

Speaker 2 43:53

It's been a long road and a frustrating one. And we're doing much better than we were. We are not. Where we want to be, but this place is helping. And, you know, when you go through something like that, you gain an entirely new perspective on what it means to be successful or achieve. I was very much a still am type A personality. And, you know, I used to measure my success through the, you know, the size of my bank account or what I've achieved, right? And like typical Capricorn energy, where, you know, that was a scoreboard. And so I've been forced, I didn't have a choice but to slow down, right? And I still can't put in, you know, eight to 10 hour work days. I'll work for a couple hours and I'll rest for a couple and then I'll work a couple more. And that's hard for me from a personality standpoint, but good for me from a health standpoint. And so, and the the cadence of the farm itself, I can't make the blueberries grow any faster. And I can't make, you know, the sun come out when I want it to. And I can only control the sheep so much. And so, you know, having, you know, I can only control what I can control. And that's been a big lesson for me in my life. And I know when I come out of this in a healthier place, and I'm also gonna be healthier from a personal standpoint, like a mental standpoint, in terms of not always driving for more, more, more, but actually slowing down, being present and giving more to my family and and you know, the things that are actually important.

Speaker 45:31

No, I'm sorry, it's it's still been a struggle, but I think it sounds like there's no doubt about the change being worth it and that it's continuing to support your recovery. What you know, you talked about the mold in the house and everything stacking. How much do you think stress plays a role in all of it on top of it? Is that just one of the one of the things that gets stacked that keeps your body from being able to recover? I think everyone can relate to that in some way.

Speaker 2 46:04

It is, but it's also the one thing you can probably control, right? So for me, and I I assume for a lot of other people, I didn't realize I was stressed. I don't, you know, I viewed myself as indestructible and you know, stress, so what? I, you know, just toughen up and move past it, right? Like that's how we were raised. An entire generation, our generation, our parents' generation, you know, post-World War II is like, you know, pull yourself up by our bootstraps and and get through. So what if you don't feel well? And you know, as time goes on, we're finding that that's not the healthiest way to necessarily go about things. Sometimes it may be necessary, but you know, you can learn to slow down and and not be stressed all the time. And so just learning what that looks like and being able to recognize that has been a big lesson. And the thing about stress is yes, it's another thing in the bucket, but it also makes everything worse, right? And so there are certain people who can be exposed to mold, have Lyme, get COVID, get strep infections, and be perfectly fine because they are nervous systems are in a better place and they are not stressed and their body deals with it better. But when you're in a high stress situation and you're locked into that fight or flight mode, when those things start to accumulate in your body, stress is the kind of thing that just pushes it over the top.

Speaker 47:28

Agreed. So I would see that those people, the customers that you have that come stay with you, if that's the part of the story that they're interested in and part of the focus that they want to have, that is really a powerful factor for wanting to come back because it's very easy, even for me, because we talked quite a while ago, and a lot of what you said resonates with me and some of my personal experiences. And you you reminded me already how much I need to focus a little bit more on lots of levels of living healthy, because you might think that, oh well, oops, I microwave that plastic bowl, I'll be fine, no big deal. But if you're doing a hundred things like that, then you're making it harder on your body to do the things it's supposed to do and support you in a healthy way. So is that is that a am I kind of correct on how some of your guests look at it? And do you think you'll get repeat customers for that? Or I mean, clearly you're making an impactful.

Speaker 2 48:38

Yeah, I do. And I think, you know, the most common peace, common feedback I get from guests, whether it's online on reviews or when I speak to them when they're here, is oh my God, I didn't realize how stressed I was. Right. And I felt myself relaxed for the first time in years. And, you know, hearing stuff like that is like first of all, it's satisfying because that's exactly the effect that we're trying to have on people to help them come to that realization. And so will it drive repeat business? Absolutely. But you know, that's just a byproduct of you know what we've created and and the feeling they get. And there is something else I wanted, you said something interesting about how it's like mold is just like one of a hundred things, and something about health and science that I've realized is that you know, we're very focused on scientific studies and evidence-based medicine and things like this. And when we study things like mold, we always look at it in a silo. And so if you're running a scientific study on mold or the effect that mold has on people, you're gonna get a bunch of people in a controlled study and you're gonna expose them to mold, and you're gonna expose another half to placebo, and the people with mold are gonna show some sort of effect after six months or whatever it is at some rate. And well, that's interesting. And then you can look at that and the scientists will tell you, well, mold's not that harmful because there was only like a 5% uptick in symptoms, and so not that big a deal. But, you know, when you're exposed to mold and you get that extra 5%, and then you get, you know, you're eating processed foods, and then you're putting chemicals on your body when you're in the shower, and then you get, you know, exposed to Lyme. And what does that cocktail of biotoxin illness do to you? Nobody studies all of those things, how that affect it's not like another 5% for each one. Each one exponentially increases the effect that the other one has on your body. So, you know, when you expose to the mold and the processed food and the and the chemicals and the products, and maybe top pad bad water that has chemicals in it and other viruses and other bacterias, that stuff magnifies itself 100, 200, 300, 500%. And you know, there are studies also, yeah. There are studies also. I sorry, I've I've dove into this stuff so deeply in the last few years, but like we don't we don't know what what these things are doing to us yet either, right? Mm-hmm. 5G networks, they've done studies on how a mold in a petri dish in a lab, you expose it to 5G radiation, and the growth of that mold is magnified five times and it grows five times faster than it would if the 5G signal wasn't present in the room. Like mold is everywhere in our environment. So, what is what is the technology doing, the EMFs doing to our to things like mold in our environment? It's not necessarily you'll study the effect of EMF on human beings, but are you expecting, are you studying the effect of EMFs on mold, which then, and then how does that mold affect the human body, right? The stuff when it stacks, it exponentially stacks. It's not just like one more thing on top of another. It's we've reached a place in in the world where nutrients in our soil are declining. So we're not getting the nutrients we need from the food we eat. And there's more, increasingly more exponentially more toxic things we're exposed to in our environment. So where does this lead us? Like, where are we going with this? It's not sustainable.

Speaker 52:26

It's not. Yeah, it's it's a hard more you talk about it, you know, it's a harsh reality to face. So I think what what you've created for yourself is a is a beautiful, beautiful step. And you helping people realize that is, you know, admirable, admirable and hopefully fulfilling for you, which has got to be healthy as well. But yeah, I I just want to immediately move my phone away from me.

Speaker 2 52:58

I tell you, I don't carry my phone on me. I don't keep it in the bedroom at night. I'm not insane about it, but it's something I'm conscious of. We we have a switch on our Wi-Fi on our router at night. It shuts it off at 11 o'clock at night, and they'll turn it back on at six in the morning. So we're not sleeping with those waves going around. And I don't know for sure, but like if there are precautions we can take, like why not?

Speaker 53:19

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. And you don't you don't have Wi-Fi in the domes too? Correct. Yeah. Correct. So it's through and through. Are there any other aspects of the stay that we haven't touched on that gets to healthy, healthy living and wellness?

Learning To Do Nothing Again

Speaker 2 53:39

I think one other thing I would I would add is that there's nothing expected of our guests, right? Like there's no we do a Saturday free Saturday morning yoga class, which is completely optional and free for guests. You can attend, but like, you know, it's there's no like happy hour, there's no meals at a certain time, there's nowhere you have to be, or there's nothing to do, right? And so, yes, there's stuff, there's activities you can create for yourself and you can spend time in the hot tub or go to the sauna, but like none of it's scheduled, none of it's programmed, and that goes back to like the low stress living, like learning how to sit in silence and do nothing is is becoming a skill. It used to be the baseline for us, but like we're not capable of sitting still anymore. So the experience is subtly built around the concept of doing nothing.

Speaker 54:31

Yeah, I like that it it um I I kind of laugh at myself sometime and sometimes in my travels because I get to go to a lot of places. I was near Yellowstone National Park for my work a couple weeks ago, and I had an event in Europe and went to some countries I hadn't been to before, and I don't I don't really part of it's being busy, but I don't really do a lot of research on what I should see and where I should go. I just find myself, you know, walking and or maybe I pick one thing and then whatever I see along the way, I see. And if I miss something, I miss something. And sometimes it's brought me into big crowds that I didn't want to be in. But I I you talking about that makes me think, you know, I think that's just my, I don't want to feel like there's anything I have to do. I just I might not be sitting still all the time, but just walking around is is kind of my way of not having to adhere to a schedule or an achievement or anything in in that kind of off time. So I think that's great. I think I need to come stay.

Speaker 2 55:40

Yeah, you do. That's I tell you, that's my favorite way to travel. No agenda. If you can manage it, it's I think it allows you to instead of you know moving from one place to another and having something to do, you you miss a hundred interesting things along the way, right? When you are don't have anything to do, you can be fully present in a moment and fully observational of your surroundings and you have experiences that you wouldn't have otherwise, right? There's a a French term for that, it's called flanur, and it loot, I think it translates to to wander, something like that. And uh and I think wandering is a lost art and something that would we would all benefit from if we did more of it.

Speaker 56:19

Absolutely.

Advice And How To Find Justin

Speaker 56:21

Well, you've given a lot of great advice to other potential operators. You know, talked about the construction part of it, experience and the marketing. Is there anything else you would have done differently or any advice that that you have for the listeners if they're they're just getting started?

Speaker 2 56:41

Yeah, I am a big advocate of just starting. And, you know, I think until you go down certain paths, you don't know what you don't know yet. Nobody's an expert in everything. And so for me with the construction stuff, and I mentioned, you know, mistakes I made, but I think that was all part of the learning process. And sure, it cost me some money, but maybe I wouldn't have learned that lesson if I didn't spend that money. And so I think it's all valuable. And I think just be comfortable with making mistakes and learn by doing. If you just sit there and you try and make plans and fight, try to find the 100% best option all the time, you're never you're just gonna be paralyzed and you're never actually gonna accomplish anything. So find the 80% right solution and go down that path. And then you can always change it otherwise. But if you don't actually start and actually do it, you're never gonna get there. So just do it.

Speaker 57:39

That you just ended with the Nike slogan. That's beautiful though. I agree with it. And because we do help a lot of clients try to decide what the best option is. They want to do outdoor hospitality. And the reality is there's a lot of good options. And you can have analysis paralysis on trying to compare 10 different options of what to do when really, you know, you should decide on what experience you want to create and how to do it in a profitable way. And the but in one of the best ways. But there's yeah, trying to be perfect with it is is a difficult path. So I like that advice in particular. So, well, what's next for you, Justin? I know you talked about some expansion on the property. I take it you're not going back into corporate finance anytime soon. What's on the horizon?

Speaker 2 58:30

No, I do want to develop this farm a little bit more, get it to a little bit better place with some more accommodations, but not too much. I'm not, you know, I used to aspire to build billion-dollar business when I was, you know, younger. And that's not it anymore. It's about creating a cash flow stream that can support my family and that I can pass on to my kids one day. And so it's it's oddly comforting to have a 20-year outlook on something as opposed to a three-year outlook. And so taking that long-term view is also good advice, I think, for people. And so I, you know, I am going to move into, I don't want to like build this farm hospitality empire, but I love the idea of farm stays and farm hospitality as a way to really help rural American small family farms, which are dying out around the country and disappearing at a very fast rate. And farming is becoming more and more difficult. And I strongly believe that hospitality on farms is a way to the best way to defend rural life in America and the industry of farming before large corporations completely take it over and own our food supply. And so I the next step for me is to continue to build out and improve the model here at North Star Farm, which I'm confident we've done already, but we'll do even better. And then take that, what I've learned here and go help others do the same. And so I think I'm hoping that I can make a real impact on small family farms and helping them run better businesses and do farming in a non-traditional way and help them understand that hospitality and experiences are not a departure from traditional farming, but an enhancement of it and a defense of it and is the way of the future.

Speaker 1:00:25

Oh, that's great. I I totally agree. I we're seeing a huge, a huge boost in in others that are looking to do this. But I I think just the element of helping the farmers in itself while achieving some other goals is is fantastic and well needed. So I I love the way that outdoor hospitality and farms are starting to come together. And I hope it continues. So if someone wants to reach you or come to North Star Farm, how would they do that?

Speaker 2 1:01:01

Check out Northstarfarm.com and you can email me at Justin at NorthstarFarm.com anytime. Check out our Instagram at the North Star Farm and reach out anytime. I'd love to be helpful or just connect and hope to see everyone at the farm one day.

Speaker 1:01:17

Thank you. And what is the Instagram for the sheep again?

Speaker 2 1:01:20

At daily pasture. That's a bit of a different flavor, but yes, you can connect with me there, too.

Speaker 1:01:25

That's what I want to go check out next. Well, Justin, thank you so much. You have imparted a lot of knowledge and inspiration for all of us today. So we really appreciate your time and wish you and your family continued improved wellness as well.

Speaker 2 1:01:44

Thank you. And appreciate you having me on. And I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing too. So I look forward to following you as well.

unknown 1:01:50

Yeah.

Speaker 1:01:51

Great. Thank you.