MinnieMom Campground

Ya'll - - - the county water line extension project has started!! There is pipe on the ground, the line area has been marked and this is huge news!!

One of the key elements the larger campground investors evaluate when considering properties is the availability of public utilities. There are usually 3 services considered - water, sewer and power. With the county line extension, we have two of the three covered. We will have a private sewer system, but that is the simplest to manage in house once operational. So this is good news for the project overall and great news if we ever decide we want to sell some day in the far future. Internet companies will tell you they are the 4th utility. I think there is some truth to that, but people can live and vacation without the internet. We just don't want to unplug. For sure I don't want to unplug! Vacationing without power, water or sewer would get terribly unsanitary very quickly.

Also, the bank is driving me nuts. I just got an email that has my head rolling. It can't be right. If it is, a bank policy on use of funds just took a million dollars out of my budget. That may cause me nightmares tonight.

Catching up from last week, we wound up taking 25% of the welcome center out. That's almost all in bathrooms. We went from a planned 10 toilets to a total of 5 and a planned 10 showers to a total of 6, with 4 being outside showers. It did not take 25% of the cost out, which was what I needed. I'll talk to architect tomorrow, but it may be that we've reached the point where it just doesn't make sense to cut anymore. Oh, and even with those reductions we are still well over the required numbers for minimum bathrooms. So no worries there from a code perspective. It may be a worry from a guest perspective, so that is something we will have to watch closely.

I met with our consultant today. We worked on the press release for the groundbreaking ceremony next month. That was exciting.

And that's been fairly typical of the project. Good news mixed with bad news and all of it an emotional roller coaster for me.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.........

I like the new take on the accommodations poster. I've asked the artist to do a couple more pieces for me, but I think this is enough to get started on brochures, rack cards and some other marketing pieces. Here's how I put it together to give us a distinctive look to guide our branding efforts.

You keep keeping on, I’m sure all your hard work will pay off. Not that it’s been a easy process.

I’m bumping this thread because I’m expecting a fun update from Amy soon and because…… we just bought a travel trailer! We bought it with retirement in mind, hoping in the next 3-4 years. I know that early to be buying but this was too good to pass up.
Absolutely no promises but Standing Pines sounds like a place I might want to try……

Thank you!  It will work out.  It has not been easy, but as my circle of advisors mentions every once in a while, if it was easy everyone would do it. 

Thanks Sherri!   I love the encouragement.  It means so much! 

Oh My Gosh!!!   I'm so excited for you!!  What kind?  Have you tried it yet?  Can I send you a s'mores package to celebrate?? 

Several local business have reached out. Some simply wanted to welcome us, some wanted to make us aware of things they offered that we might need. Some of the most savvy IMHO reached out to note that what they offered might be of interest to future guests. Several individuals have reached out to say they are interested in working for us. The first time that happened, it caught me off guard. Now I'm collecting resumes, with a sincere thank you for the interest and a expectation setting comment that we expect to start hiring in January 2024.


While I am super relieved and happy we went ahead with the groundbreaking event, because we needed that infusion of good energy, we are not out of the woods yet on cost and funding. The bank is good, provincially, with upping our loan to cover 90% of the construction costs. That translates into more homework and yet more spending on professional services. Sigh. The last 10% is the real challenge. Banks are not interested in second position as lienholder without additional collateral. I'm tapped out. There is no more collateral.

After a strategy session with our accountant this week to follow up on the funding work, I think we have a viable path now. We need to raise another $670,000. That's a lot, sure, but based on the overall money for this resort, well it is the final 10%. The accountant suggested that instead of stock or some other options considered, we offer a convertible bond to investors. This would be a bond investors could purchase with a set interest rate and maturity period. At maturity, investors can choose to cash out or convert their bond to stock.

I feel good about this as an investment option. It gives me something I can feel comfortable selling. It has tangible benefits, defined cash to investors better than any savings account I've found anywhere and gives that potentially very lucrative option to convert to stock if we do as well as I think we are going to do. We will also tag a few campground specific benefits to the package to intrigue investors. Those who purchase $$ in bonds will get a free RV storage spot. Those who purchase $$$$ will get 7 free camping nights per year. We will do a few variations on these bennies, but keep it to 5 tiers or less. As an immediate benefit for us, these bonds would be payable at maturity, not monthly. That lowers monthly payments for the critical first year, also a huge deal right now. So it gets us, at least in theory, that last 10% we need for funding while offering a good investment product at good terms for us. Win win.

What terms? We need to define those. The initial thought going into the conversation with the attorney who will do the legal work on these bonds is 10% interest on a 5 year bond. The stock conversion option would be for non-voting common stock. The total percentage of stock that could be issued with bond sales at the $670,00 we need would be less than 10% of the business. I can live with that, as it leaves control entirely with us as well as over 90% of the total ownership.

So it was a good thing I went back and completely redid all the projections for Standing Pines. While I was doing it, I redid our business plan. Now that file has everything. It has our 5 year P&L, our balance sheet. It has our retail plan, our marketing plan and an exacting level of granular detail on expenses. It has the overview of the intellectual property I am creating for the business. It has the strategic plan and the 15 year directional plan. It has everything needed to implement and execute. I'm calling it the "paint by numbers" RV resort plan!

The projections were so good that I wondered what I'd missed. I mean, really REALLY good. If I am even in the right neighborhood, we will make enough in profit to pay for the entire construction in 5 years. Yep. That's right. A five year break even for a brand new multi million dollar business. If I am close to right, we will be profitable even in the first year we are open to the public in 2024. With that kind of optimism, I needed a reality check. So I asked my accountant, who is a specialist in campground accounting and based right here in SC, to do a full package review of the business plan with these projections.

She did the review in detail. She recommended changing some expenses up and some down. She had specific comments by month on what we would need to do to prepare for higher than projected occupancy by month and which months would need more programming to bring guests in as typically slower occupancy months in SC. Overall, the feedback is the plan is reasonable. I got the strong feeling she thinks we will do better than the plan, but she was careful not to say that.

The bank has colder feet than I do. The accountant review was not enough for them. They want a neutral third party, an industry expert, to do a review. Well, they actually wanted another full blown feasibility study to increase our loan amount by $500,000. I lost it. I refused and for the first time let the bankers who have already given me a commitment letter for over $4.5 million get a taste of my temper. Why, I asked, why would I spend another $20,000 plus on a feasibility study when we already have a full commercial appraisal? Why would I sign up for another 2-3 month delay to wait on a consultant who would not given me data as reliable as that I've already pulled together?

That's when I threatened to walk away entirely from the current bank. It is perhaps not the most professional think I've ever done, but I was done with the hesitations at this point. That got the conversation back to a productive tone. They backed off the request for another feasibility study. So came up with the idea of a reasonableness review, something like a validation study, of the business plan by an industry expert. They agreed and gave me a couple of contact names. I did the work to set that up and have it in motion. For $1,500 and two weeks work I'll have another third party professional opinion letter I can use any way we need. That seems like it could be well worth the cost as part of our investor package, so maybe the bank ultimately did me a favor on this.....let's call it a suggestion.

Late yesterday, our SBA consultant called me with a different funding potential for the whole amount. He's connected with a different expert and there may be a way to go about the financing completely differently. It sounds good, if it works. The problem is that over the past year or so several things have sounded good, then when we did the due diligence did not work for one reason or another. So I'm not getting too excited about this possibility yet. Nor will I slow down on the work needed on the bond option. But considering a new, potentially better loan option with a lower (fixed!) interest rate is well worth working multiple things at the same time on the funding side.



Sometimes I jokingly refer to myself as not working at the moment. One of my friends is quick to correct me. She says I'm the hardest working, non-paid employee she's ever seen. I am simply grateful we had reached the point in life we could live on savings for a couple of years. I cannot imagine putting this kind of deal together while also working full time on something else.


So those are the highlights and lowlights of recent activity. Thanks for hanging in this long! If you'd like to get more frequent updates, please follow Standing Pines on Facebook. (www.facebook.com/standingpines). But that site will only ever get the public story. MO gets the backstory and all the gory details. Please keep that in mind if you check out the facebook site - - it is deliberately an optimistic and sanitized version of reality.


Next time, someone please remind me to tell the architect story and how we are cutting over a million dollars of cost out of the construction budget.

Cheers!

Amy

I have been following this adventure since you first posted back on Mouseowners. It is so exciting to see this all move from an idea, to a concept, to this groundbreaking! All I can say is WOW - you are such an inspiration for going after one's dreams. Thank you for sharing your journey, I have enjoyed it immensely!