Josh

The filter for picking a business: fragmented, complex, meaningful

Josh and his partner reverse-engineered what business to start: a market large enough to matter, with high ownership fragmentation, operational complexity (so you can add value), and meaning so team and customers feel good. Campgrounds fit all four.

“We were looking for a business where two non-technical founders could hopefully have a winning situation, and we wanted a market that was large enough to participate in and interesting, one where there was an immense amount of fragmentation with ownership, one that was operationally complex, and one that was meaningful where the team members would feel good working there and where the customers would feel good about being part of it as well.”

Steal thisScreen new businesses for: big market, high fragmentation, operational complexity, and meaning.

Be the succession plan mom-and-pop owners call when they retire

Josh acquires family-owned campgrounds by being the trusted succession plan — multi-year relationships where the owner cares who takes over their community. One seller he's been talking to for five years before they're ready to sell.

“So we are oftentimes a succession plan. For these sellers. And so these are multi-year relationships. We've got a couple under contract right now. One of them I've been talking to the seller for 5 years. And generally what happens is we maintain the relationship and when they're ready to sell, we get the call, hopefully.”

Steal thisFor fragmented mom-and-pop acquisitions, position as the trusted succession plan and nurture the relationship for years before they sell.

Buy a campground, double NOI, refi your cash back out, repeat

Josh's first campground near Yellowstone: bought for $3M (80%+ SBA loan) doing $150K cash flow. They doubled NOI to ~$300K, refinanced a couple years later to pull all their cash out, and used it to buy the next one — the flywheel to 16 properties.

“Well, we were able to refi a couple of years later, so took all of our cash out.”

Steal thisImprove NOI, refinance to recover your down payment, and roll the freed capital into the next acquisition.

Why campgrounds beat other real estate: yield, complexity, depreciation

Josh's case for campgrounds over multifamily or office: strong yield, operational complexity that creates room to add value, and manufactured-housing-like depreciation (you can depreciate roads and infrastructure with little land or building value) that appeals to tax-sensitive investors.

“Strong yield. It's operationally complex, which means there's opportunity to drive value and really attractive depreciation characteristics that are similar to manufactured housing, for example. So you can depreciate the roads and the infrastructure. There's very limited land value in a lot of these more rural markets, limited building value. So the depreciation characteristics are also really attractive to people who are tax sensitive.”

You can't outsource culture, so we built the opco in-house

Josh planned to hire a third-party manager after learning ops firsthand, but realized you can't outsource culture — critical when replacing a beloved mom-and-pop — and no competent third party could scale with them. So they built the operating company in-house.

“And what we realized is A, you can't outsource culture. So that was going to be really important for our success. And B, if we wanted to scale, there weren't really, at least at that time, competent third parties that could scale with us. So we made the decision to build an opco in-house and have been managing our properties ever since.”

The convicted bank robber on the campground payroll

Josh's outlier hiring war stories from running campgrounds across 10 states: they discovered they'd employed a man who had robbed 9 banks, and Josh had to fire him in person. Separately, staff were caught cutting down and selling the campground's trees for cash on Facebook.

“We had a situation where we found out we had employed a convicted bank robber who had robbed 9 banks. I had to go personally fire him in person.”