Easy Reservations with Park’s Rylan Blowers on The Park Pod

Can you believe it's already November 2022 here on the Park Pod. And this month we're excited to have our guest Rylan Blowers from Park on the Hats Off portion of today's podcast. While he didn't actually provide us a hat, we are going to forgive him for that. And we had a great time chatting with him about his reservation application that is super simple to use and a great tool for RV parks to implement. So definitely check that out as well.

We always chat about a little bit of news going on in the industry. We'll be touching on Clamping and Go RVing so check that out. And as always, there's a little pro tip for you in the marketing game and so you want to stay tuned to that as well. We'll talk about Google business profile, so thanks for joining us today. Stay tuned.

Here we have our website, Restrelaxroi.com. Check it out. You can download our free ultimate RV park marketing checklist. Have it, take it to with. It what you will hopefully learn and better yourself in your park and your marketing. What do we do with the M5 system? So this is where we put all these pieces together to improve parks entire marketing operations.

We start with a reputation. We move on to resell, reach and retarget. Those are the four areas that we primarily focus on. So check that out as well. You can check out our blog and while you're checking things out, this is like you're at the grocery store. You're going to check out the Instagram and our social media. Be sure to follow us if you haven't already. We'd love to connect with you. Now we're on to the next thing.

November Campground News

Now it is time for the news. Alright, we always like to check out Woodalls and so we are at Woodallscm.com this is the November issue of the Campground magazine and we're going to take a look at info about Go Rving where they are celebrating 25 years of this image building asset, which as you read in the article, it is for RVIA and RVDA. Two big associations coming together to get this campaign off the ground. Here's a team that's been working on the new campaign and everything that's going on with that this year. So congrats to the ladies there. We're going to have a little quote here by Karen Redburn who is the Chief Marketing Officer over there and overseeing this.

"One of the goals of Go RVing is to bring some of those people into RVing earlier so that we can have them growing their experiences and staying committed to RVing and bringing their families along with them. We just thought it was time for our brand to be refreshed just a little bit to present new appearance to the consumer and really talk about what we are trying to achieve and who we are. So we went through a process of rebranding, come up with a look that we want our brand representing to the outside world"

They're excited about that. You get a little sneak peek of that up here. Part of the rebrand, there's definitely a lot more great information about that campaign. The message for the 2022 was go on a real vacation. So there you go. That's a little bit information on that.

Also, we always like to check out what's going on modern Campground and I did mention in the intro that we're talking about Glamping. And so the Glamping show was earlier this fall and Timberline Glamping Company gets some recognition for innovation and pioneering in this space. So it's pretty cool to see.

You can read about Nathan and Rebecca Self and what they're doing over there with Timberland Glamping Company. They started this up in 2018 and became the first to franchise Glamping and that's pretty cool. Congrats to them for their success in business and being recognized.

So there you have it for the November 2022 news. There's obviously a lot more. Go check out Moderncampground.com, as well, to see what's going on in the industry.

Hats Off to Park's Rylan Blowers

Mark Rowan: Well, welcome to the Park Pod and we are excited to have Rylan Blowers with us today and as a part of what we're doing with getting experts on the podcast and letting them educate us about what they're doing. Rylan, thanks for being on with us. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Rylan Blowers: Sure. Park on the Park Pod. Yeah. I really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to chat here and it's always good to catch up. And I love what you all are doing in the industry as well. 

Super high level on what we do and kind of what we're going to get into today is we're probably a newer kid on the block when it comes to property management and online booking reservation options. Our kind of key tenants are that everything is free and simple. So with the parks, I presume are going to be the listeners to your audience here. Everything we do, we do that's at no fee to you. It's a service fee that we pass on to the camper. So we try to set everything up insofar because it's a win win for both parties. And that's if they choose to book online, of course, they can always call or show up. As many of you have been running your parks for decades successfully, but trying to bring them into the kind of the modern age and give an online booking option. And then most importantly, it's just simple. We love building software that's intuitive and this applies to both the campers really like start to finish, you should be able to book in 60 seconds and then for you as the campground manager and owner, we want to make your life easier, not harder with technology that makes sense and is intuitive. So excited to kind of dig into it and everything we're doing here today.

Mark: Obviously you're a software guy, so how did you get into that? Were you always a huge nerd?

Rylan: Haha, Yes, I was. So actually interestingly, I'd say kind of more entrepreneurial than software related. I think that's been in my DNA since growing up on a farm and selling the extra eggs at the end of the day. Like there's always been in my DNA to kind of start businesses or creating iPhone apps in high school in the back of the class. And so I think there's more entrepreneurial with my focus and my interest and software is almost a channel to get there.

So much so that even after school I decided despite studying computer science that I wasn't going to be an engineer. I went into sales and tech sales because I basically knew whatever business ends up being, I definitely didn't know it would be RV park management software I'm going to need to be able to sell and if I don't have that skill set, I'll always be able to code. But unless I develop that so I'm really kind of just taking steps throughout my life to get closer to being a business owner like yourself. It's kind of a dream.

And that ended up not only getting closer to the startup world but also getting closer to remote work. I have a bit of an authority problem. That's probably why I'm an entrepreneur, because I'm not good at working for people and so also kind of getting closer to work. Remote work before it was cool, which was kind of what led me to be living in an RV full time and traveling out of the country during the pandemic and eventually starting a software company in this industry. I'd say iterative steps along the way has led me to where we are today with Park and super grateful to just be able to run our own business. And that's the dream, right?

Mark: We got a couple of egg sellers here. I don't know if we knew this about each other, but I also sold some eggs on a farm as well. I guess that's a key component.

Rylan: All net protein. What was your genesis story for getting started as an entrepreneur and today? Running. Rest & Relax.

Mark: Yeah, so just being in the marketing industry for a long time, helping people with that. Back in the late 90s, not everybody had a website, but that's when I started helping different people with that and that's really kind of what ended up getting me into the agency work and then we now are alongside the software as a solution, as we are a system. So that SaaS capability for the parks to be able to manage their marketing on a level. But yeah, so it's like one of those things you keep showing up and you find your place.

Rylan: I like it.

Mark: Yes, sir. All right, so you mentioned a little bit up top ... Well also tell us a little bit more about getting into the RV park industry in particular. You mentioned being on the road and being remote. How did that all shake out?

Rylan: Yeah, so very serendipitous. It's something serendipity can create, but I was trying to search for that and living in an RV and crossing the country kind of creates a lot of that. So I think it's a pretty quintessential, like, solving an immediate problem that I had type story to start a business. It was during the pandemic, I bought a 27 foot RV and pushed off across the country.

And very soon, very shortly into that trip, I should say I was frustrated with the software options in the industry. Most parks today don't even have online booking still, and the type of camper I am, which is probably more than new age type of camper, is, let's say, procrastinating, I'm usually booking for that night. I'm on the highway, I'm on my phone, where am I going to stay that night? And so obviously, if a park doesn't have an option, I'm not going to call them at 07:00 pm at night. I'm not going to fill out a contact form, or if I do call, they might not pick up because obviously park owners want to have a life as well. And then there's a few parts that did have online booking.

It was incredibly cumbersome to use. I definitely couldn't do it from my phone, and it was just frustrating as the consumer. And so that was, I'd say, like the genesis of the idea. But it really kind of came to fruition when I was in Texas with my co-founder John, who's an incredible software engineer and designer, and we had planned this trip around Texas to do a bunch of national parks. And this is where I told him how frustrated I was, and him being the incredible human he is, saying, all right, let's build it. And I was like, all right, absolutely not. We're not, we need to validate this idea. We're not going to build an entire incredibly complex property management system overnight because I pitched you this random idea. So let's get some validation.

And as luck would have it, that night we stayed at a park in West Texas and I pitched the owners on what we were trying to build to make their life simpler, be free for them. And in their case, his mother had to sit at the phone all day long, every day. She was like in her 80s. And that was how they took business. If they didn't have that, then they wouldn't get business. And so they were interested.

We stayed up all night coding this, basically a demo of this, MVP of it, and showed them that the next morning, and they were super excited and, okay, we're doing this. So it was like a whirlwind of 24 hours that led us to building the initial footprint and then basically to seed our foundation was just me traveling across the country.

Getting to see all of our incredible national parks and obviously being very embedded in the RV space myself and kind of the trials and tribulations that go along with that and just talking to hundreds of campgrounds and building exactly what they need. Even if it wasn't a fit for them. Of course, I try to pitch everyone, but even if it wasn't fit for them, then I get as much information as I could about how we can build a perfect system that allows them to run their park smoothly. And so that's really how we built it and traveled across the country. And it was an adventure of a lifetime and led us to where we are today still as an RVer, although not full time anymore. Got to now manage parks across the country. It's a little harder to do that from the deserts of Arizona. Yeah, we'll get back to that someday, definitely.

Mark: So you've alluded to it on some level, but give us your key. Differentiators for park, there are several options, and some of them are very robust as far as that goes. So what's different about what you do versus some of the other folks?

Rylan: Sure. And also maybe who's the best fit for this. So, as you mentioned, there's a ton of great options out there today, especially on the bigger side. If you're a resort and you've got hundreds and hundreds of sites, there's really robust options that have all kinds of bookkeeping and time tracking for your different employees and full on, really in-depth solutions that probably would be the best fit. I'd say our sweet spot has been traditionally with family run operations. So campgrounds, like 20 to 50 sites has been our initial sweet spot that are directly tied to being able to run the machine and if they want to leave, at the end of the day, the machine grinds to all. And so those are the folks who really work with simple and efficient, and they can get more campers with way less work. And obviously, as with any business and any good business that you're iterating on, you kind of grow up market. So we're at the point now where we have parks across the country, but we certainly grown into, I'd say, bigger shoes and future parity with what else is out there, but kind of, yeah, bread and butter is those family run camp rounds that really, I'd say, put a lot of emphasis on simplicity.

And then, as I mentioned, beginning the most important thing is that it's free for the parks themselves. We want to set everything up, that it's a win/win and there's no risk. We don't have any terms or contracts because we never had a park lease, because it doesn't cost you money and you make you have more campers with way less work. And so it's my full belief is that if you send. People will be grateful to use that. And so we don't need to do any contracts or anything like that. And everything is just set up such that it's like a service fee that's passed onto the camper if they choose to enact the online option. But they always have the option to just still call in and do what they've been doing traditionally. But obviously parks will find that 67% of their phone calls can just book on. They just start booking online and they'll get more campers with all of us work. So, yeah, free and simple of the two main things, and that's really where we kind of found our foothold and continue to grow from there

Mark: All right, so what is it that you enjoy the most about working in the RV industry?

Rylan: Good question. I'll ask you the same as well. I think for us, it's how tangible and this positive feedback loop is when we're working with these family run campgrounds. So it's a patient example of our first campground over two years ago at this point. I got a call about a month or two after we launched with them, and he literally told me his mom retired because of our software. He used to have to sit there just waiting for the phone to ring, and she basically unlocked her life. And that was such an impactful moment for me.

I just love doing this. I love building software that's intuitive and beautiful and to create that amount of value and impact on people's lives, especially with we were so connected with them. These are people that especially when I was going across the country and going into their offices and many times homes and meeting their families, it's a very just family oriented industry, more so than pretty much every other industry. Kind of trickles to the top. There becomes a few large players that eat everyone up. I think the camping industry has retained its independence, and we just get to work with families all across the country and get this really incredible feedback loop that's just super validating. I'm just grateful to be able to do what I love and do it with people that are also incredible. But what about you? Because I know you've done marketing with a lot of folks. How did you settle in the RV world?

Mark:  I grew up on a campground and part of kind of life on some level, and so it's kind of got a special place in my heart. It's just a sense of being connected with an industry that's kind of built around exploration and adventure. That's just a fun type of thing to be involved with. We've met some good folks as well, and that's about relationships, right. It's part of business, and when you find people that you enjoy working with.

Rylan: Definitely overall, both campers and just campground owners in the industry, it's a very warm industry versus obviously I work in the corporate world, and it's a little bit different when you're just so many levels disconnected from the company itself. And this is everyone is very welcoming and kind, and it makes the day to day a lot better. I think I just love talking to great people. It's a lot better than when I lived in Manhattan and had to talk to people all day. That necessarily I didn't think we're gay people, so it's something to be grateful for. It's very evident when you talk to anyone at these conferences and campgrounds, et cetera.

Mark: Awesome. All right, so let's tackle the biggest challenge that you face as far as maybe running a business or just whatever you feel like is something that you're coming up against maybe in the industry or just running that software business.

Rylan: Yeah, I say the biggest challenge of running a software business in an industry that has not traditionally been very technically inclined is just overcoming that, like, leap of faith, helping folks overcome that leap of faith because in many times you've been running this camp around in your family for 20, 30 years. That's spending your family's lifeblood, and it works the way it has worked. And it's a scary thing to be like, okay, we know we need to bring this in the 21st century. We're doing pen and paper, excel sheets or campground master, something. We need to bring online booking. We need to modernize this because there's this new generation of campers. We need to add that layer. But that's a scary thing, and I understand that.

I think helping campgrounds and helping these owners overcome that initial leap of faith is probably the biggest challenge we face. Once it's live, it's always great because it's magical. You have 20 sites listed and every night 20 RVs pull in, money gets deposited, bank out, and they fall in the morning. Like that's a magical thing. But to actually get to there is an on boarding process. We try to make it quick, but it's a lot of hand holding, especially for that first call or two to get everything set up.

But that's why we're trying to make it as simple as possible and show that it's really not that scary. Within five minutes, you can be an expert in managing your park no matter what that level of efficiency you have.

Mark: It's spooky season, but it doesn't have to be scary. Actually, we're recording this before Halloween, but it will be after Halloween. It will be no longer spooky season. So there's the reference.

Rylan: Right. No more integrity in that joke.

Mark: We are about marketing here at Rest & Relax ROI. So what kind of marketing advice would you have for RV parks as you've had this chance to interact with some of the different ones?

Rylan: Yes, I would start by saying that what you are doing is incredible because I think it's something that's an afterthought in many cases, the industry not entirely there's, of course, outliers, but tends to be kind of reactive people, they might come off the highway, they might see their spots, but there's not a lot of proactive marketing during an outreach. And so what you all are doing to enable that is super powerful and much needed because there's a lot of volume campers any more than ever before. And they just need to know about how great your park is.

I'd say obviously, I'm not the expert in this, you are. But the base level thing that every park can and should do is get their park listed and their listings updated on the dozen or so free RVing apps. Doesn't cost a list. When we onboard parks, we have a checklist of here's all the apps here's where you go to edit your information or update it or add it, and you can sit down for an hour. And by the end of it, you have tens of millions of campers, literally, that now have visibility into your park.

And it's something that it's such a foundational thing and it doesn't cost you anything. Along with, obviously, Google Maps and Google My Business, that you can just create an organic groundswell of campers that now know you're there, wherever channels they're using. So that's like something we certainly do. That's about as far as our marketing arm extends, and we hand them off to you for real marketing. But that's something that I would just recommend every part to you. You can double your campers overnight if you add online booking and then make it bookable from all these free apps.

Mark: And you actually have a resource. You shared it with us, and I think we'll try to make that available. I know I have it myself, but I'm not sure if you have a link or not. But if we do, we'll make sure it gets put in the description and that sort of thing. So people want to take advantage of that.

Rylan: Definitely a little homework. It's just like checkboxes, here all the things you should update.

Mark: You mentioned Google, and that's our latest webinar that people can check out. You'll be able to see it on this channel and other places. We're going to deep diving into how to optimize that as one of your main business listings.

Rylan: That's the most important because that information ends up propagating and trickling down to these other apps. That's where generally they pull that data from. It might take time and you should just update them directly for the best, most granular data anyways. But yeah, I'm glad I saw you guys are doing that this week. And that's so infinitely valuable and underutilized in many cases.

Mark: Yeah, definitely. So moving forward, the future of the RV park industry, what do you see happening or what's your assessment and how it moves forward?

Rylan: Yeah, I mean, obviously these last couple of years have seen an immense swell in interest and demand for campers, campground, spots, all of the above. And I think part of that stems from people like myself that were just going through the crazy and abandoned and still wanted to be able to live their life and see this beautiful country in a way that was safe to now it's just people realizing, oh, this is like a way I can live my life.

And as remote work becomes more and more commonplace, I would expect that more young campers like myself, I mean to be fair, I was probably the youngest camper in every single campground, I'd say that. But starting to see more and more young campers that are working remote jobs, you can do everything from a hotspot and that's going to cause this ship in the industry that definitely parlates into having technologically enabled campgrounds. Those folks are used to AirBnB, they want to be able to just book right away and have a quick feedback loop. And so I would expect that to continue as it becomes not only in a common place but actually dreamed of.

You see all like van life and there's hundreds of YouTubers that are now writing this and people want to do that. Obviously it's an incredible life to live. I would expect the industry to continue to expand and to cater to younger and remote friendly workers.

Mark: We're wrapping up our time together but we always like to ask our guests about their favorite camping memory. So it could have been something that's happened in the last couple of years or maybe when you were a little taught and had a family experience.

Rylan: But yeah, I like that a good way to wrap it up, obviously. Yeah, I've got fantastic camping memories as a kid growing up and a fisherman, my father. But I will actually give one that is in the reference of also the genesis story of this company. So this was a week after we had first launched our app. We had a lot of work, we set it up and I was with my co-founder. We were driving across the country as usual and basically we just got out of the deserts of Nevada. We were like so ready to get out of the desert. And we came to California, this beautiful little Garden of Eden slice of greenery and we pulled off at a campground, did my usual door to door pitch. This is like the early days. We had to really hit the grindstone for every park and we pretty much immediately fell in love, like they were in love with what we were doing. They were getting, I think it was 90 or 100 phone calls a day. So they were just drowning in the amount of phone calls being off the highway in California.

And then we were just so excited to be in this park and have someone that was super excited about what we're doing. So we stayed up all night. We built everything for them before everything was operationalized. It was pretty much the Wild West. And the next morning they were so excited about it that they said, we have a surprise for you. Like, follow us. Owner at Mountain Valley is the RV park. We'll give them a huge shout out because they've been our champions from pretty much day one. So the owner, Vicki, she said, we have a surprise for you. Come outside. And this campground is on an airstrip for Gliders. Interestingly. And they were like, we wanted to give you guys a glider ride as a thank you for everything you're doing for us. And so they took both me and my co-founder John, up in these gliders, tens of thousands of feet up and without an engine, we glided down. And it was the most incredible euphoric experience that was like in terms of the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey. That was a very literal and metaphorical peak. We were just so high on life with the business and getting new customers and then being in glider overlooking the incredible California mountains, Sequoia National park. It was pretty much a peak that I will always hold very dear to my heart and definitely shout out to Mountain Valley for giving us that opportunity and being one of our champions ever since.

Mark: That's definitely a cool perk. As long as you're not afraid of heights.

Rylan: Exact opposite. I, like, want to become a glider pilot now.

Mark: Very cool, very cool. But we want to make sure people know where to go. We'll have the links in the description, but is it reserved by park?

Rylan: It's either poweredbypark.com it's kind of a lengthy one, or you can just use our shortened it's parkwith.us. So go to just parkwith.us and you can book time and we can get you all set up. Again, we really appreciate the opportunity to sit down here and if that was fun to kind of rehash our life stories. I'd also end with asking you as a fellow entrepreneur if there's anything that we can do to help you out and rest and relax, either now or later, always let me know because I love what you all are doing as well.

Mark: I think just like you, we're always open to have a chat with folks and just get to know them. Really, that's all part of what we like to do is just have a conversation with them and see if there's anything we can help with. We have a little bit more, different kinds of things that we're doing. You guys are really hammering on the simple, effective solution, which is awesome. A lot of people can take advantage of that. And we're super glad that you were able to jump on the Park Pod with us today, Rylan.

If you're watching this and you are a park owner, you can let us know if you'd like to jump on and be a part of the Park Pod too, because we'd like to tell the story of folks that have these. They're all different, right? I'm sure you've noticed this as you traversed the nation. No two parks are the same.

Rylan: Oh, yeah. But you have to have sold eggs to get on the Park Pod, though.

Mark: That's a given, right? Any final words?

Rylan: No. Again, thank you. We appreciate it. Like I said, we are doing some incredible, I'd say the biggest challenge, which is the leap of faith into the world of technology. You're almost like shamans that can lead them through that. You're the experts in that. And so I'll continue to work together and continue to make this industry as technologically enabled and as beautiful as possible.

Mark: That's right. Thanks you guys for tuning in. Thanks to Rylan and Park. You guys have a great one. Happy trails.

R&R ROI Marketing Tip

We are keeping it professional on our marketing tips. And this pro tip is about posting to Google Business Profile. Now, we had a whole webinar on the GBP, as we like to call it, and you can check that out on our website, on our YouTube, that sort of thing. So let's figure out what is this post? They are a microblogging element that's in the listing. You can have a photo, a video, you want to have a call to action and a link to your site or other things that you are talking about.

You can have up to 1500 characters and there is no minimum on those as well. So there's all different things you can post about. It helps your SEO. It can integrate with voice search to really help people find you. So let's go over here. This is really what I want to talk about. And this tip is some best practices for your GBP. Only the first 100 words are visible. Keep that in mind. Use 750 by 750 pixel images. That's the best possible size. Always link it to the correct page. You don't want wrong links. And if you're doing multiple posts, they have the carousel functionality, so only the first two are going to be visible. If you're doing more than one image, like four or five.

And then always remember to keep a meaningful headline and post. Keep it short and to the point. Even though there's 1000 characters, make sure you're not just bobbing on for no reason, like I'm doing right now. I'm kidding. That was an amazing pro marketing tip, and I hope you can take it and run with it.

Thanks for tuning into the Park Pod. Don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. We really need your attention and value. Seriously, we can't go on without it. For additional episodes and more, visit restrelaxroi.com. Join us next time. Until then, happy trails.