Investing in RV Parks with Don Spafford

Josh
 Good day, fellow dealmakers. Welcome to the deal scout today. We're going to talk about investing where you play with Don. Welcome to the show. 

 Don
 Budget here. 

 Josh
 Are awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I'm looking at your logo and looking at the name of your company. Happy camper capital. What the heck is that? 

 Don
 Yeah, well, for the most part, it's pretty self-explanatory if you think about it, we are a syndication investment company, but not with your traditionally think of with syndications like multifamily or mobile home parks, but we've focused on RV campground resorts. So we're outdoor hospitality investment group. 

 Josh
 Super cool. Super cool. All right. Give us an idea of what a typical day looks like for you and what kind of deals do you guys like? 

 Don
 Sure, boy. We're, we're actively pursuing RV campgrounds across the country. We're not necessarily focused one specific state or region. We have several team members that are dedicated to just finding deals. We look, literally everywhere and we have deals sent to us all the time as well. So, our average deal we look for is typically, will say about at least 100 or so existing cap sites. That could be mixture of both RV camp sites for the RBS plus, like dry camping with contents or some like cabins and things of that, and we look for properties that are within about maybe a two or three hour drive of a major metropolitan city. That gives us a built in user base for people like to get out and go camping and dig their armies out and just go have fun. Those are the two basic criteria, what we look for. 

 Josh
 Okay. How in the world did you guys choose this asset class? Do that kind of walk us through the company's origin story and how you guys decided this route? 

 Don
 Yeah, so it goes back a couple of years, the original founding members, Adam, Mandy, and Justin Hyatt, both are in the Denver, Colorado area. They're both avid outdoors people, they do a lot of hang-gliding particular. They, they enjoy doing that. And, and now, of course RV camping, salt, they met actually, I think it was on a hang-gliding outing and kind of, instantly hit it off with each other. They were both, as it turns out, active in real estate investing as well. Justin had done several multi-family properties of his own. Madam was a commercial broker. They, instantly, he said, Hey, we love outdoors. We love real estate. The RV area just kind of came about as like a natural place to go. They saw the need for, of course, being themselves, going out, camping all the time. They see the need there. They see the potential there for people that are coming to say these places. 

 Don
 That's kinda where the idea began with them. They alone took down their first property in Iowa. After that realized that, in order to grow the way that they want to do that, they needed to expand the team and bring on more team members. They hired another person or brought in that person for acquisitions. I came on shortly after that with the investor relations side of things, and then we added on more people after that. We've kind of continued to grow over the last year really. And, and so, yeah, so we're just, people in general that, we love outdoors and love the opportunities that are there in this space. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Now you mentioned your side of the coin, that the area that you put your focus into, I didn't quite catch it. I might, I might've missed it. What's your area of focus within the organization? 

 Don
 Sure. I, I, I joined with them particularly focusing on the investor relations, getting the word out, bringing on more investors into our deals. I've actually since moved up and joined part of the executive team as well, but I still have my major focus on essentially this investor outreach. I come in on like your podcast and talking about what we're doing, getting the word out for people to know that this asset class exists and, people can find us, come to us and hopefully invest with us. 

 Josh
 Awesome. So what is your background? Right. You're doing investor relations and moved up into executive management. You guys are doing some cool things in the world of camping. Now I love camping. We, we've done a lot of RV thing and I've done a lot of dry camping growing up, but like, what is your story? How did you get tied into this world? 

 Don
 Well, it's so my background is in general is, has been around finance and investing. I have degrees from the university of Nebraska Omaha with majoring in investment science, before the management finance banking. I have this investor finance background anyway, and I've been working in that industry for, almost a couple of decades now, but I, as myself have been investing in real estate for the last five years, I started with small multi-families and got into other development projects and another commercial deals. I myself for the last say about a year ago, I, I was like, most people searching for something better is out there. There's gotta be something, some great deals in and everything I was seeing at in the, in the general syndication world for multi-family in particular, just for me, we're not producing the returns that I was wanting, for myself, I, I was not satisfied with just an average type deal. 

 Don
 I like to get the most bang for my buck that I can get and not have regrets later. Like, oh, I could've invested in this, but now I'm going to set up in that, ? So, so I was always holding off for something better. It was actually on the podcast about a year ago that I heard something, I was talking about campgrounds, something that I had myself had never considered before. For where I live in Eastern Idaho, we're like an hour and a half away from Yellowstone park. So it's a very high camping area. Anyway, all my neighbors have RVs and it's just part of the lifestyle here. I was like, okay, that could be something there. You know? I started going more to these like meetups and webinars, talking about campgrounds and connecting with people in that space. Just in doing that type of networking, connecting, trying to try to find some initially I was looking for people that are looking to buy in my area in Idaho. 

 Don
 It's like, Hey, I could be your boots on the ground and go check it out. You know, my wife's a realtor. We could help with the purchase and all that. Just in doing that type of networking, it's where I met Adam Monday, who said was one of the founding members from happy camp capital. He and I talked and, hit it off and got discussed our goals and what I was wanting to do and where they're going and the kinds of returns that they're getting already with these types of properties, which of course blew me away. I was like, wow, that's definitely something that gets my interest, ? If nothing else, I was like, Hey, I'll probably invest with you guys, but I'm not sure if I want to join with you guys just yet. I still wasn't sure. If this was, something that's going to really take off or not. 

 Don
 And, but I did my personal due diligence, I went through a lot of networking events anyway with investors and I just brought up the, the questions like, Hey, what do you think about campgrounds in NGO? I never got a negative response. Everybody thought it was a great idea. Especially people like yourself that have been camping or been, are being, there's like, yeah, there's huge potential there. So I'm like, alright. I talked to my neighbors, I I've discussed my neighbors before about to investing in multi-family and they were always like, not down for a multifamily, they don't understand it too. They're scared of it. I mentioned, what about investing in campgrounds? That's now a totally different conversation because they are, they get excited about that. Like, yeah, this is something I would like, I would enjoy that. I would like that because again, they're, they like yourself, they understand it. 

 Don
 They're out camping all the time. That's something that they're not afraid of. So, so I was okay. Yeah. There's definitely some potential here. So, so I agreed to, to join up with the team and, I haven't looked back since I'm so glad that I did. 

 Josh
 Yeah. You actually, you approached them or started the conversation about, Hey, let me just invest with you guys. You guys are getting great, great returns. You got to see the process, you got to see the team, you did some due diligence and you're like, I actually want to join the team. You moved up into a position of leadership within the team. Is that, did I get that right? 

 Don
 Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. 

 Josh
 Okay. Very cool. In the process now, were you a camper growing up or do you guys, you mentioned all your neighbors had RVs. What about. 

 Don
 Yourself? Well, we here from Omaha, so I did not have an RV yet. So growing up with my family. I actually did live in Idaho when I was young and my family went camping quite often. When we moved to Omaha area, growing up, my family didn't do a lot of camping, but I was actively involved with the boy Scouts. I did a lot of camping with the boy Scouts, a summer camp and winter camp outs, that kind of stuff. I had camping experiences, like I would say, I didn't necessarily enjoy those scouting, camping experiences, Chanel. They were always just really fun. At least the, the sleeping in the tent part of it, we did different activities, but, sleeping on the, especially the summer camps has canvas tents that are filled the spiders whenever citing. But, but yeah, I enjoyed, the, the outdoors and camping experience. 

 Don
 Later I myself became the scout master and went camping with the boys as well. So, so I I've seen it from that aspect of things, not necessarily the fun RV, camping type thing, so, but being here at night as well, I, I, I still have an RV yet, but I have been to several of the RV campground sounds around here just to go and hang out with, we do a lot of our neighborhood and church has a lot of outings out there, so my father and son type camp out. We go that those types of events and get to join the experience anyway. 

 Josh
 Yeah. It's a lot different from going on a scout, a scout camp trip to dropping up in a class a or something like that. He got AC got shade, instant, hot water, right. Like there's big difference. So, 

 Don
 Yeah, but for me, that's my, what I would use to consider, to call it to my wife. This is, this is a clamping really. Cause my wife is not as much down for the tent, camping universal. Yeah. I'd have to go in an RV or something of this. I have a comfortable bed to sleep on and not worry about bugs and bears and so she's down for RVs for sure. 

 Josh
 Yeah. It's a game changer. In the process of what you guys are doing, you guys started going after, groups, you're doing investor relations, what kind of milestones? How, how long have you been with the organization? 

 Don
 I officially joined with them in November of 2021. 

 Josh
 Oh, wow. Okay. So. 

 Don
 Not seven months or so. Yeah, 

 Josh
 Pretty recent since then, like what have you learned and what are some things you could teach to us about why RV parks versus multi-family versus self storage versus fix and flips, like why should I consider campers? 

 Don
 Yeah. Well, there's lots of things to consider, so of course all going to be based on your personal profile for your, risk tolerance and what you're looking for and returns and all that. For me, the things that I've kind of picked up along the way, again, first of all, for me, what got my attention initially, of course, was just the returns. If we start with this, that will say, just in general, not giving you specifics, but generally speaking, we're looking at probably about double the returns you're seeing in most other syndications, so our average target on our typical campground is about a 15 to 20% cash on cash return over a five-year average with the generally about a 2.5 to three X, multiple, over that five-year hold. So, so again about at least what I've seen about double most other types of syndications, and then on top of that, and that's, and then good for us, we consider those numbers to be relatively conservative. 

 Don
 There's a lot of, there's lots of different aspects that we can put into our projections that we don't include just to be conservative. So, as great as those numbers sound, I think we can do better. We tried to, of course, under promise over deliver. It's what we wanted to do. So, so even with that, again, those numbers sound quite insane to most of the people, but, there's, there's things about the campground space that is very different and unique as opposed to like multi-family for example, there's, I don't know how to put this really, I guess, but as far as what we do, we are purchasing value, add properties, so we're not just buying a turnkey and leave it as is cash flowing. They would still do well, but we of course want value, add where we can do something to improve the value, improve the income. 

 Don
 With that, in most cases, these are, as we refer to them like mom and pop owned property. Except some family owns been in there for probably decades. Most cases, they, they, the people that are operating them or doing the job of like five to six people, so they're in most cases not managed properly to get the most efficiencies because they're only doing what they can handle and therefore trying to keep things simple, ? They have this like a flat rate every single day of the year. This is what it costs per night, no matter what they take phone call reservations only, so we can come in there and just improve those systems, like get them online, have online reservations with dynamic pricing, in which that alarm course is going to just bring in more people, they can find you online and make reservations online because these days, most people are not going to pick up a phone to make a phone call. 

 Don
 So, so that alone is going to help you improve the revenue that at the bare minimum, then of course you want to add on additional amenities and things that will bring people to that campsite, even people they're not just there with an RV or for camping, they might come for some glamping experience, like to get some, Instagram pictures or whatever, we might have, depending on the location, we might do some like, weekend concerts or things like that. They'll bring people for different events that are there just to have fun and not even be there at all for camping, ? So there's different things we can do. What I like about that is that, there's with, if you think about it could compare with like multifamily, you, you do a, multi-faith a value-added, multi-family, there's only so much you can really do to maximize that, that market rent you can get to, so, even if you go play the toilet, you're not gonna get higher rates than what the maximum market rents wouldn't really allow. 

 Don
 You know? With the campgrounds that are hand, it's kind of different than where there's almost, let's say unlimited upside potential, as far as whatever you can add on to bring in additional revenue streams, we'll continue to add value to that property. The thing that me personally, that I didn't think about this again initially, but over time I've made this realization myself is that this kind of goes back to my personal, I guess, beliefs, feelings and consciousness, I guess, for, for my family value added most cases that the whole point is to raise the rents, right? You want to raise the rents to increase that income on that property. When you're raising rents, you're therefore now effecting people's personal lives, their budgets, what they have for living expense to, for housing, for food, for whatever. Increasing that rent for most people is gonna hurt them considerably. 

 Don
 That's going to be a big budget cut on what they need to find a new place to live, or they need to cut back on the food, or maybe, and that can be hardship for people. And, and I don't really like that, for the most part, even early on, when I, before I even bought my first property, I visited a property. There was a, this one that we looked at that had a very, I would say, ugly looking bathroom that, most people putting up would not want to even live in. I asked the guy, there was like, if we fixed up this bathroom and the kitchen make it nicer for you, what are you willing to pay more rent? They're like, well, we like having the cheap rent, cause that's what they can afford, ? So, so I understand that, and so with, with the campgrounds now, people are not generally living here. 

 Don
 This is they're coming out for fun. This is disposable income. Usually people that have RVs and campers tend to have a higher income, that they can afford those kinds of toys anyway. We're not directly affecting their lifestyle and their living. They can choose to come or not come, but it does not, we're not putting people out in the streets or forcing people to find a new place to live, and that kind of thing. That, for me personally, I liked that aspect a lot that, I can sleep with a clean conscience that, I'm not, kicking out a single mother with kids trying to tend to live, , 

 Josh
 Got it. Philosophically, this kind of investment aligns with you, right? 

 Don
 Yeah. 

 Josh
 You say, like I preferred this versus, and multi-family now alter, we have conversations on the deal scout about all different types of deals and why people like those kinds of deals, but for you said with that you raise rents, which is kind of a normal thing in multifamily. There's some value adds, you could add a coin laundry, you could add self storage on-site. You could add things to it, boat storage and all that stuff. Over here, you're saying, this is disposable income, a rent raise here. It doesn't really impact the people and they're doing it for fun and love. Like for you, if you wait them out dollar to dollar, you would, this one fundamentally makes more sense to you. You said it makes higher returns based on what your experiences. So that's really cool. I love to hear the motivations of dealmakers of why they choose different deals. 

 Josh
 Some people like, Hey, I make less over here, but I enjoy it more. Why not do something I enjoy, but if you're making more and enjoy more, why not? Right. You go through this process, give us some tips on acquisitions. I know that you guys won't give away, all the secret sauce and such, but like, mom and pops reaching out to them, they're all they're working themselves to the bone, working for four to five different jobs onsite, and then you guys call them up or email them or postcard them. Give me, give me some tips on what you guys have found works well. 

 Don
 So I guess did this some clarity. I, myself am not directly in the acquisition. I might not be the perfect person to ask on that. But, but generally, like I said, we're, we're dealing with mom and pop owners for the most part. In some cases they're not ready to sell yet. They're still hard at it, but in some cases or most cases to say that they've been doing it for long enough that they're burnt out, they're tired that they're happy to get out of it. Their kids will be not wanting to take it on or anything like that to keep the family. So they're ready to sell. And it's mainly for that. They're, they're like, we're ready to retire. We want to just relax now and, and not keep at this. I've got one I'm working on myself here locally, where I'm at, that does kind of that same type of thing. 

 Don
 It's a popular location that the people of rank great, but their kids aren't interested in taking it on. They're just, they're looking to retire very soon. Some of that is just, of course, building up the relationship was good, is similar with multifamily and say, you build up that relationship, but there are to sell. Now at some point down the road, they will be, and you'll hopefully be the first one they'll call. So, so we can come on there and tell them, Hey, we, we, this week, tell them what we're doing or we're, in most cases, this is like their baby. They don't want some big institution to come and just, completely change how things are. And that's not what we're doing. Of course, we're going to come in and improve it, make it better, maybe expand on it. For the most part, we want to keep that uniqueness of the property there as it is. 

 Don
 And, and, we're not here to make a cookie cutter campground across country. We want each place to be unique in its own way. So, so the owners will most cases you like that, they're like, okay, we can keep it more or less how you had it, but, we're just gonna make it better. So, we come in there at horsetail and we're, we're open to, closing their timeline. We can be flexible on what they need. We try to get seller financing. If we can, we've got a field in there right now that you have seller financing on them. They don't always go for that. But, you know, we try. Yeah. With that, once we get at least a initial, we'll say, LOI accepted in there, then we'll do a site visit, check it out in person. In many cases, we'll find that we're surprised that there's more than we thought there would be. 

 Don
 There's know some things that they maybe just take for granted that, oh, this is just here as part of the thing. They don't even think it's anything unique for us. Like, Hey, there's a huge opportunity. Right. Like maybe they maybe have a huge area of that they have for storing RVs and boats and things, and don't charge people for it. Like, Hey, there's a huge opportunity there just to charge for storage. There's, there's things like that just kind of come up from the site visit, which is great, which is why we do a site visit just to see. In other cases that may be something that could be a big negative thing. They didn't tell us about that. What would make us back out of the deal? You know? So, but once you do the site visit and we get some ideas of what we can do with the plan is to do, then we'll go back and again, review our plans for it. 

 Don
 And of course, we're our numbers. Make sure it's going to make sense. It's going to get the kind of returns that we're looking for our investors. If it does not meet our criteria, then of course we'll pass on it. Honestly, I'd say in most cases, we pass on the majority, they might work for, for some other people, but for us in these kind of returns that we're trying to get to our investors, we're not just taking on every single property that comes up where we're being very picky about that. Only getting the very best provide those investment options for our investors. 

 Josh
 Awesome. Yeah. Talk to me about market opportunity, right? Let's just say I joined your group and whether an investor or I come in and I pick up the phone and start dialing, how many RV parks, mom and pop RV parks with over a hundred, a hundred sites and within two, three hour drive of a major metropolitan area, how many are there out there that we can do? 

 Don
 There's there's a lot, honestly, there there's a lot at the same time, not enough, as it is now, if every existing campsite were to be used again. Everybody that owns a camper RV, if they all went out on the same weekend across the country and wanted to go to everybody's distinct RV park, there would not be room to hold them all. There is a demand for more, in fact, there's, I just distressed statistics that our day about new ones being developed this year, we actually have plans ourselves to start developing some new ones down the road here, but cool. But, but yeah, there's, there's definitely enough out there now based on how many there are willing to sell right now, of course it makes it also a bit of difference. They're not all ready to sell at the moment, which for us also provides another opportunity. 

 Don
 We have a sister company called Deondra camp that does campground management. Getting those owners that are maybe burnt out, can't quite handled, but don't want to sell. We can offer them to take off that management aspect of it for them to do that, that those daily tasks and handle the staffing and all that stuff where they can just relax and collect their income from the property. That's, this gives us another avenue to pursue when they're not ready to sell just yet. Of course then when later on, they are ready to sell, we're already managing it. It makes it much easier for us just to take it over and take it. But, but yeah. If you started dialing in, you could just pick a, even if you want to stay yourself in a specific region where you're at, there's plenty around you that there would be opportunities to define stuff. 

 Josh
 Yeah. Super cool. Yeah. It's a great idea to not only focus on the acquisition side, especially if you guys are owning them, but also have a, a management company that can do it. Right. Cause then you could get services and you can get things at scale and you have better efficiencies than what people could have on their own. In the world of multifamily. We talk about, doors under management, right? How do you guys, how do you measure? It like sites under management sum or something like that? Or how do you guys do that? 

 Don
 Yeah, it's definitely a bit different, like, like you, even though you're talking about valuations, as you say, we paid this price per door, now we don't really have a price per campsite or anything like that. Cause it's going to fluctuate and vary. Cause there's lots of different variables involved, but yeah, we, we just, personally we don't count them. The numbers would say campsites, I think we did. We say that the properties we own and manage. So, so as of right now, we're just basing on the number of properties. 

 Josh
 Copy. You take a look and you're like, how do you guys do calculations for valuation? Like when you're coming up with an LOI and you're taking a look at, if someone's like, yeah, I'm interested in selling, make me an offer. Right. You're like, okay, how do we come up with a number? What are some of the things that you guys think through when coming up with an offer valuation? Sure. 

 Don
 Yeah. Well, it's definitely a bit more complex than your standard multi-family because there's multiple factors that involve, it's not just a straight line rental income or rental and laundry or something else. We'll of course first take their previous year's income P and L and all that stuff to kind of compare what they've done, their income, their expenses. Of course look at our own projections of what we could do with it. But there's multiple line items. You're going to have your standard, we'll say like this, the standard RV camp sites, right? There's you got your alarm term stairs, people that didn't stay for seasons, like they'll come for the whole summer or winter. Let's not even say six years, six months out a year or so we prefer the more transitional campers that are there for chance are changing the campers that are there for like a shorter term, maybe I've took a month or so. 

 Don
 So, so we'll of course try to turn that dial to be more transient than less long-term. But, but so we'll have line items for the longterm landline names for the transient. Then you got my names for safe. There's like a gift giving the store, the sales and constant consult kind of stuff. There's others, other things that could be in there. Like you could have bought rentals or, other types of services that are there. There could be up to like, let's say 10 to 20 different line items for free income sources. So we'll take your course. The, the, the main thing would be that the big ones they're there, the rent and inner things and kind of course compare that to two ones that around the area. Kind of just like you do with anything else, we're going to do some comparables and see, okay, what's the one, 10 miles the drawn, where they renting for and what do they, what's the standard going rate in this area? 

 Don
 Do they do some compares there to see what's what it should be renting for? How, how far under market are they to make some projections based on that. So, but, based on just, anything else, commercial real estate, it's going to be based on the income overall, so we'll try to course base it on the, as is income, not what it could be to, come in with a reasonable number that will work for us scores. We'll do our projections and everything to see, okay, what kind of returns are we going to get based on these factors at the very minimum or worst case scenario, is this going to meet our numbers? If so, then we know we're going to be very well off in the end. 

 Josh
 All right. This is where I would love to hear your thoughts, and this might be more of an acquisition conversation, but when you're having a chat with the mom and pop, and they're like, Hey, we're interested in purchasing your property and they go, great. Make us an offer. You're like, okay, well, give us your financials. Like at what point is it like to break the stalemate? Do they, do you put in an initial offer with a price tag on it or do save to make an educated offer? We need to see that. What, what, how does that work out? 

 Don
 Yeah, we've done both. So, so it kind of depends in some cases, of course we as mom and pop places, they don't always have good financials that are available just in my. 

 Josh
 Shoe box. 

 Don
 Yeah. We'll kind of just get, do those comps and see, okay, well, what, what, w what do you think this should be earning income based off the size, how many campsites are there? And what's the neighboring properties doing? Then we'll use that to kind of give a rough estimate, but yeah, we've had that at times where they didn't want to give us anything up without an offer first. Right. All right. Well, here's what we'll of course put in a low-ball offer. So, oh, here's, maybe say it might be worth like 7 million, but it does not give us anything. Right. Well, here's the 3 million offer. We don't know it kinda at least get, like I said, get the ball moving and see if they just laugh at us or what if they at least say, well, of course we, of course, like anybody, what did you tell him? 

 Don
 Well, we need to see your financials to provide a real offer. You know? Then, once they see we're serious, they'll usually then start to get where they can together and give us what they can we've had. We did have one that I know of that, even it was even with a broker listed property and even the broker, wasn't either not willing or able to get us the financials. Were like, well, if he didn't give us anything, we're just gonna walk away. Cause we need to know what it's actually doing, ? So, so that one we had to walk away from, but yeah, there's definitely more, I say, likelihood of not having good financials available then than with say family where you have a property manager handling it, but just something to do with. 

 Josh
 Yeah, yeah. Now this might be a more of a legal compliance question. I'm just curious about this, right? Multi-family someone, unit three, 12 stops paying rent. You have to go through an eviction process. You, you have to go through this whole thing, late notices, letters and all that other stuff. What's the process like, someone's here for six months or whatever. They stopped paying. They got this big ass RV, like what's, what's that look like? Or have you not experienced it yet? 

 Don
 Yeah. For, it may vary by state a little by the laws, but for most cases, yeah. There's no eviction process. It's just calling the police and escorting a trespasser off your property. So, they're, they're trespassing if they're not paying, so there's no, leases and things that were about that was living here. So, so yeah, for most cases they'd just be considered trespassing and you haven't removed. 

 Josh
 Super cool. I mean, terrible situation if they stop, but like, no, it seems a lot more simple. It seems a lot easier to deal with, those kinds of things. 

 Don
 Yeah, definitely. We don't, we don't have to work what a eviction moratoriums either, like that's going on in some states where you can't get rid of people. It's like, well, we don't have to worry about that. We don't have to worry about replacing carpets and, fixing appliances and all those kinds of things, so definitely a lot less stressful overall. In most cases, again, like people are not gonna say most cases, it's not going to overstay their welcome. They, they have a home to go back to. So, there's here to have fun. 

 Josh
 Yeah. A neighborhood will have an HOA, right. A, a park or camp site we'll have their, their restrictions, certain sizes, certain years, certain shape, like when you're, when you guys are setting up your ordinances, what are some of the, what are some of your go-to rules that you guys think through? If you're open to sharing some of them or does it matter? 

 Don
 I say for most cases, it doesn't really matter. I mean, there are definitely different sizes. Pull ins some that are larger than others. That loan kind of help guide, I guess, that the size requirements of what can go in there and whatnot, but know for the most part, yeah. I don't think really have much for origins of saying you can't come here if you're is older than 20 years or something like that. So, yeah. Yeah. I don't think we have any issues with that, honestly. 

 Josh
 Cool, cool. Cool. As you go through this process, what kind of, as you're, you're looking through cars all day long, you guys are looking through campsites and such like that. What, what campsites, like really stood out, like what areas where you're like, man, I'd really like to own something in that area. I'd like to go visit myself, like yeah. Has anything popped up that interest? You, 

 Don
 We had one that I thought was really awesome. When I joined the team in November, this was the very first one that we started working back. They were already in process when I came on and it's actually the one that got my wife excited about this too, because, even though I was on board with the whole RV thing, my wife wasn't quite yet until she saw the webinar on this property. She's like, okay, now I get it. This, this, that that's, that's invested in these things, but this was one in Florida. It's when we actually had to back away from we didn't, we did not go through with it. We had some issues with the seller and the financing issues with her. I won't give, I guess, specific details on it, but it was in Florida and it was a very cool property. It was very large. 

 Don
 I think it was already, I want to say already had like existing 250 or so campsites that the seller was already processing expanding another 150 or so. Were going to expand on another 300. I was gonna make a 600 plus site by the time it was done being, I was in Florida near Orlando. I guess you can say that. But, were going to possibly add on a, a waterpark there as well, lots of room for storage. This was a huge opportunity to get a huge value add on this property, for sure. It was exciting because of that, the amount of income that was going to produce the devalue that was going to be there, if we would have gone through with it and just, a cool place to go visit, if you're going to go to Disney world, go to this camp site and stay there and be able to fit a short drive to Disney world and then other attractions in the area. 

 Don
 So, so that loan was made, that one were pretty cool just because of location and everything we're going to do with it. Yeah, in the end we had issue with the seller and he ended up relisting it after much higher amount. 

 Josh
 Got it. You and I are going to go do a deal together and we're looking at an RV park. Let's just say the numbers line up. It's a hundred sites, a hundred site, plus it's close to a big, it's close to in Orlando. We're like Disney world or something like that. We're like, oh man, this is kind of cool. Everything lines up numbers, but we look at something and you're like red flag, where out, what are some of those kinds of red flags that would pull the deal? Even if the numbers look good? 

 Don
 That's a good question. Thanks man. 

 Josh
 As a podcast host, I love hearing that like question. I'm like, yeah, I got it. 

 Don
 Yeah. It's not one, not that one. I attend four. I guess so it probably come down to a, if we discovered there's some, potential issues with like, I guess neighboring ordinances or laws or things that could potentially affect us, maybe even, if, I guess the one thing that we, we tried to look for ones that are on city, water and sewer, but that's not always the case. Sometimes you do get well water and septic and things like that. So, if obviously there'll be a problem with the well water, that'd be obviously a big deal, that they have to have that liability. So, we tried to avoid that. There'll be some kind of issue with the well water or something nearby that could affect the well water. That would be a problem. Other red flags, I guess if it's, it's one of the things even, talking about standard multi-family or the real estate, you, you see it on pictures, you see it online that everything looks great until you get there to a site visit. 

 Don
 You'll say, oh, this is next to a homeless camper. So definitely affect the overall value. And, the people want to come there. Things like that would definitely be a problem if we would get there. There's a big eyesore next door that we can't get rid of or do something about. 

 Josh
 Across the street from a prison or something, people might not want to vacation straight across from that. So I get that. What, what do you think, what are some personal goals that you have as you're going, working here and building this organization, doing investor relations, having chats with, visionaries and investors talking about that, like what's one a year, like, man, I really want to accomplish this for myself in the next 5, 10, 20 years. 

 Don
 I guess you're talking about outside of happy camp for capital, 

 Josh
 It could be either Dr. Buddy. 

 Don
 Yeah. So some personal goals. I mean like, so, I of course wanted to see that the team happy camper capital is self become the leader in this space of the RV, campsite, syndications, and ownership. I think we're definitely well on our way for that. We've definitely built up a brand already. That's getting, noticed out there and, we've been invited on multiple podcasts like yours to come and talk about it, but outside of that, and of course what we expect to do and provide great returns for investors and overall the goal of the team is why we do a lot of five or six B opportunities, which means it's open to non-accredited. The reason we do that is because we want to help people become accredited investors over time. You know? If all of our deals were for credit messages only that only helps people that are already wealthy. 

 Don
 We want to help people that are not wealthy yet to have that opportunity to build wealth and, and improve their lives overall. That's the overall goal of the company and my self, my own personal, I guess, alignment with that. Those are the deeper, so I, I lived for two years in Argentina, in Northern Argentina. So a very poor area. My wife is from Paraguay as well. So, we've seen what, most people consider true poverty. People live in dirt floors, no running water and things like that. I have my wife and I have an overall long-term goal that at some point we want to do something to go back and help the people of those areas, whether it be, providing some kind of job opportunities, ways to improve their lions and provide a, a real living wage, part of the course of her, my wife's family, number one. 

 Don
 Outside of that, people we know and love their fans and family and just people in the, in that community anyway. You wanna do a lot to, just to give back and help people in those areas to just, have, have opportunities to really live. So tell me, you've seen that firsthand. You, you don't really get it. 

 Josh
 Yeah. It's super cool. Don, during this interview, there's probably some questions I should've asked you that I completely screwed up and I have not asked you what are those, 

 Don
 I'd have to think of the tooth, but I guess, well, you'll probably get to the end is how people can. 

 Josh
 I, will, you can't use that. You can't use that one yet. 

 Don
 And I'll save that one. So outside of that, I guess, . Maybe I guess, for maybe me just my personal stuff, I guess, what ultimately led me to investing in real estate to begin with and what would even led me down this path to get into real estate, which then ultimately got us to happy camp Gavin. Right. Going back, I started investing mostly about five years ago, at that point, like I said, my background was in finance and investment science, mostly focused on stock investing and things like that. But, but w with investing in stocks, generally we see like any immediate return. Yes, you see these values go up or down, but it doesn't provide income really. I was at the point where, in my personal life, we're, we're kind of struggling with our finances deep in debt, trying to find a solution a way out. 

 Don
 And, and luckily, somehow real estate came up as a viable option, even though we had no money to invest with, I was like, there's gotta be a way we've got to find a creative solution that they're getting start investing. I actually, myself personally, I bought, we bought our first properties of fourplex. I borrowed from my 401k for most of that down payment. So, also I found a creative solution that they get, it found a local lender that does a 10% down payment for properties. And I pitched it like that. Even though it was something totally scary to do, it was our very first investment, something that size, huge risk, if this was, just totally go wrong and blow up in our faces, we would be on the streets probably. It was a huge risk, but it was one of the things I like, we've got to take this chance because it's not the only thing that's going to solve our problems, get us to where we want to be. 

 Don
 That was, five years ago, once we got past that fear and when we said, okay, let's do it. We closed on that property that just started building up that momentum that started the process of just growing wealth and seeing more opportunities and starting to connect with more people like yourself, other investors and people that are in this space to learn from them and just kind of, I'm so grateful looking back that we did that, I had no thought that five years later I'd be involved with these major syndications and thick, crucial stuff. I thought my plan was to keep buying fourplexes and well, yeah, just because of that, our, our, of course our wealth has grown and our knowledge has grown. And, I can't even imagine what the next five years is going to look like. Honestly, I just, what, I was already done this first five years, the next is this going to be in the same? 

 Don
 I'm I invite anybody that's has not yet invested in real estate, just thinking about it to not wait, get involved in, start investing today. You can start seeing those fruits of that, that I guess, work for towards that to help build your wealth and change your future. 

 Josh
 Yeah. That's super cool, man. And I'm glad you did that, man. Fear is the, that little hurdle of fear making that first, I'm cashing out on my 401k, I'm putting it into something, that's terrifying and you did it. And, five years later, you're now on the executive team at a capital company and buying stuff and doing some good things. Good work, man, probably now here's the time. If someone wants to connect with you and learn how to do a deal, Don, where could they connect with you and have a chat? 

 Don
 Yeah. Well obviously if you can go to a happy camper, capital.com, you'll find us there. You can talk to any of our team there, but you go to the about us tab. You'll just, you'll see my information there. You can set up a county link with me there too. Sometime time to talk. You can also, of course, find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active there to, just kinda chat and see what I'm posting about and learn more. So, yeah, I'd be happy to talk to anybody that's interested. 

 Josh
 Sounds cool. Thanks, Don fellow dealmakers, that's always reach out to our guests. I thanks for being on the show. If they're working on a deal that you're interested in, just connect with them directly, all their contact information will be in the show notes below. You'll be able to connect with them and maybe do a deal. That's the mission and purpose of this show. Now, if you're working on a deal and you want to talk about it here on the deal scout, head on over to the deal, scout.com, fill out a quick form and maybe get you on the show next till then we'll talk to you all on the next episode. See you guys.