MinnieMom Campground

kzrooster - nice! Is this the floorplan for your new home on wheels? I really like this layout. The bathroom gives good separation between living and sleeping areas for a couple while grandkids can easily sleep in the convertible sofa/table when they are along for the ride. Plus two big rocking chairs are a huge win for comfort while traveling. That's a nice size fridge for an RV as well. Really cool!




Ya'll, I had a brainstorm yesterday morning. I've been trying to figure out how to sell stock/bonds to the wrong audience. It occurred to me that instead of finding individual investors, I should be focused on financial advisors. Once we have our package ready to go, getting it in front of a few good fiduciary financial advisors would exponentially widen the potential audience instead of tracking down individuals.

If anyone following has a great financial advisor & would be willing to share the advisor's contact info, would you please message me?

That’s it!
We really wanted a split floor plan like that plus we wanted that second entry door into the bedroom. 
We probably won’t have grandchildren along but my SIL and her husband are will to sleep on the dinette and couch!!!! 
Bonus is the fridge is gas and electric. Apparently they’re going away from that and mostly just electric. 

I suppose they are finding that most people who buy these types of campers these days are not doing the "off the grid" camping? Like deep in the woods with no hookups. Those people are too busy buying the Sprinter-based campers and then making blogs about being an "overlander"

Hi again - time for another short update already. It's been a busy, busy week. Social media reach continues to grow. We are making slow progress on funding/financing. The new place is beginning to feel like home, with the first art up on the wall. Yes, it's Disney art! Below is what I recall off the top of my head for this week's happenings. Fairly normal juggling life + dream (work). Fun stuff!


Monday: BFF came to spend the day. Dig into email and logistics like ordering dumpster for site clean up and tossing all the stuff that didn't survey move/storage before 7am. Wait, BFF is coming. Not here yet, I have time. Make sure the electronic info packets I put together over the weekend got to multiple vendor/consultants for different $$ aspects. BFF arrives! To to lunch, desert and some shopping in downtown Hartsville. I chatted up a few fellow small business owners and was impressed by how fast and how accurately news of Standing Pines had spread locally. The level of interest and hope Standing Pines works out is evident with these other owners - they clearly see the potential benefits. Afternoon at local water park, then take BFF on tour of property. Visit local nail salon. Cute, impeccable clean. Felt like a chain to me, no particular warmth or vibe. No bad, just not great.

Tuesday: Marketing work, follow up with multiple vendors/contractors, another round of emails with two banks, finish revising notes for Thursday BOD meeting. Help DH move more furniture and boxes into our new house. Start homeschool for DD. Social media - publish post asking for LOCAL FAVORITES which gets some cross marketing and make internet search algorithms happier. Extra bonus helps us find new places to try, then review positively and post to keep building a library of things to do for future guests

Wednesday: Go with DH to NC to pick up some furniture another friend gave us. 10 cafe tables and chairs for the cost of picking them up, check! Also meet with attorney to discuss bonds. Looks viable. Another critical permit gets email approval, gotta get that printed, proofed and in the mail tomorrow

Thursday: Dumpster arrives, deal with location and payment. Print, proof permit letter. Review engineer plans. Write check, get package ready to go to post office. The rest of DD homeschool curriculum arrives. Pause everything to unbox and celebrate. Check agenda for BOD meeting. One of my directors is 20 minutes later for meeting; recap and get her up to speed. Get formal approval from board to go ahead on bond issue + offers of help with marketing to their network when legal/marketing packages are ready. Check email. Prior bank now interested in talking again. DD remembers cat is out of food. Haul her to town to drop permit package at post office to get tracking number, then go chat up new small local business owner at the pet store. DD approves of small store & owner. We'll be back there a lot. Get home & see Spectrum van pulling in ahead of us. Internet! We will have home internet soon! Deal with dogs while DH deals with service tech. And now, at just after 6pm EST, we have home internet!!! That's super major win.

Tomorrow - Friday: Follow up with free SBA consultant who's been busy this week working a new financing possibility. Make sure I have two new info sets ready to go with marketing, financials and status updates just in case I get the call a new bank wants to play. Do first week review of homeschool with DD; then follow up with homeschool curriculum coach to see if the high school level entrepreneurship class we created for DD is approved yet. Help DH with more furniture move and unboxing. Send BOD the notes from meeting, confirm in writing the plan for bond and other agenda items covered. Pause to do happy dance to have home internet again. Spend lunch with DH playing pokemon go in town. Block 3+ hours in the afternoon to work on Forest Friends novel. Handle whatever unplanned event comes up.



Aside from the occasional moments of terror, I've never had this much fun working. The intellectual, social, emotional and design challenges are enormous and my whole life is a continuous learning curve for at least another 18 months. It's fun! I am loving the challenge and the opportunity. The ground breaking event last week moved this from a dream to a concrete work in progress for DH and I. The continued momentum this week keeps us moving toward the goal of opening to guests in April 2024. Life is good!

I have a little good news to share from last week.

#1) The validation study, which the bank suggested as an additional review of our business plan to help with the request for the higher loan amount, came back from a neutral industry expert consultant all thumbs up. As soon as we get the final costs from the GC, bank seems ready to close on the loan.
#2) A friend of a friend is a financial advisor. I had a great chat with him. I spent the first 5-10 minutes giving a summary then asked about what advisors might look for in an investment package. He stopped me & said I'd already covered the key items. Then he said he had investors who would be interested and asked for my NDA so we could start talking in more detail. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high, but that sounds really promising.
#3) Another lead for funding got back to me on Friday with another name. Again, promising.

Between these 3 updates and my friend who is also a director for us offering to run the investment past her network, I'm confident we will pull that last 10% of funding together. Now I need to get the attorney doing the legal side of this to move a little faster.

The social media for Standing Pines continues to grow. It is still a small page, but check out these states for the last 28 days:
Followers: 596
Post Reach: 9,885
Post Engagement: 5,658
New Page likes: 224

That is all organic growth, no ads. Perhaps more importantly, I found a state camping group on Facebook and asked the admin if I could share the announcement on Standing Pines. She agreed and that has really taken off. In fact, some members of that group are now actively speculating about trying to book out our grand opening. It is early days for sure, but 100% occupancy at opening would be jaw droppingly amazing.

The other thing about finding that group of SC camping enthusiasts is now I have a handle on how to do some social media outreach once we get further in construction and open the reservation system. I can look for similar groups for SC, NC, GA and VA. I'm sure not all will be so gracious about allowing posts, but I also think once word of mouth starts, it will quickly spread.

The local community continues to be very interested and supportive. Working through the chamber of commerce, 4 locals volunteered to establish a local advisory committee for Standing Pines last week. I interviewed them all and am confident this will be a good resource. It is simplifying a bit, but here are the trends of those conversations. They can teach us about the community, about the needs and resources locally. They are very interested in learning more about Standing Pines and willing to help share accurate information. They also understand this is a volunteer board (unpaid) and are excited to help because they see it as a fun project that will add to the community. Down the road, they are willing to give feedback on local requests for sponsorship/community giving as well as assist with sharing investment opportunity data. Anyways, so far the board is two from the local university, one from the largest hospital in town and one from the local Duke power plant. All are avid campers and really come across as wanting Standing Pines to succeed.

While it was mostly good news this week, timing continues to be a challenges. I need my GC to get moving on some things. To be fair, I have not pushed because until last week I was not sure of funding. Now that we have a viable path and I feel confident it will come together I will start pushing again.

Our facebook page is www.facebook.com/CampStandingPines. That's going to get the most frequent updates as well as little mini reviews as we start some cross posting on local businesses and things to do. Should be fun!

Aw, thank you!  If you ever do find yourself out our way, please PM me to let me know. I'd love to show you around!