The Real Estate UNLOCKED Podcast
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The Real Estate UNLOCKED Podcast
RV Park Investing for Beginners: Start Earning Today! | Episode 20
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of RV park investing? đđ° Whether you're new to real estate or looking to expand your portfolio, this video is your ultimate beginner's guide to RV park investments!
Join Joseph Marohn and special guest Mychele Bisson, an RV park investing expert and fund manager, as they break down everything you need to know to start profiting from RV parks. Mychele not only shares her step-by-step approach to finding and running successful RV parks but also reveals how her RV park investment fund offers a hands-off way to get in on this lucrative market.
What Youâll Learn in This Episode:
- Why RV parks are one of the most profitable real estate investments today.
- The key steps to finding your first RV park deal.
- How to evaluate an RV park to ensure itâs a winner.
- Building a team, managing the property, and maximizing cash flow.
- How you can invest in RV parks without owning one through Mycheleâs fund!
With the RV industry booming, thereâs never been a better time to dive into this market. Whether youâre dreaming of passive income, wealth-building, or financial freedom, this video gives you the tools to get started.
đ Donât miss this chance to learn from the bestâwatch now and take your first step toward RV park investing success!
What up everyone and welcome back to the Real Estate Unlocked podcast. I am your host, Joseph Marohn, and today we're going to be breaking down one of the most exciting and profitable avenues in real estate investing. I'm talking about a game changing strategy to transform overlooked rundown gyms and turn them into cash flowing machines One of the most rewarding paths to financial freedom while simply creating unique spaces for community and travel. While simply creating unique spaces for community and travel Today we're going to be showing you guys why you should be investing into RV parks. Rv parks are simply dedicated spaces designed for travelers to park and stay at their recreational vehicles. They offer amenities such as power, hookups, water and sometimes communal facilities. As more and more people seek affordable housing and flexible travel options, the demand for RV parks has continued to returns, with relatively low maintenance costs and the ability to generate steady cash flow to build long term wealth. Now, if RV parks is a path in real estate that sounds like you should be focusing more on, then stay tuned, because we're going to be giving you all the gems you need to acquire your first RV park today. Now you know how we do it on the Real Estate Unlocked podcast. If we're going to do it. We got to do it right. We can't just bring on anyone to speak about RV parks.
Joseph Marohn:Today, our special guest on the podcast is Mychele Bisson. Mychele is a dedicated real estate investor and fund manager focused on RV park acquisitions. In the past year, she has acquired three parks with 500 pads and has two more under contract, totaling $11 million in assets. Known for spotting lucrative investment opportunities, Mychele delivers strong returns for investors while enhancing property standards and community engagement. She is actively pursuing new ventures in the expanding RV market. Mychele joins us today to show us not only how lucrative the RV park space can be, but also how to buy them with little to no money out of pocket to maximize our cash flow. So, without further ado I've been talking long enough Everyone. If you will, please allow me to formally introduce to you Mychele Bisson Mychele, what's up? How are you doing today?
Mychele Bisson:Hi, joseph, it's great to see you. Thank you so much for that intro. That was amazing.
Joseph Marohn:Thank you. Thank you, I don't have much left to say now. I'm good, absolutely. Hopefully. I pronounced your last name correctly. Is that how you pronounce it?
Mychele Bisson:It's Bisson yes.
Joseph Marohn:Bisson Okay, great, great, okay, so the day is treating you well this Monday.
Mychele Bisson:It is. It is actually. We are in the middle of packing snowstorm for the last four days and got like four snow, so we've been locked in our house for four days actually, which actually was really really nice.
Joseph Marohn:So sometimes you need that quiet time to get away and just silence the world right.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, no, it was really nice. We put up the Christmas tree. I hung out with my youngest, it was great.
Joseph Marohn:Awesome, awesome. Well, Mychele, welcome to the Real Estate Unlocked podcast, a place where we bring value to new and intermediate investors by bringing on guests who are extremely knowledgeable, such as yourself, to cover real estate topics on a very basic entry level. Now, I'm excited about this topic because RV Parks is a very interesting business model. I literally had no idea how interested I would be in it until you and I had a conversation about them, so I know your schedule is extremely busy and crazy, so thank you for taking the time to come hang out with us today.
Mychele Bisson:Well, I'm just incredibly honored you invited me. But yeah, our conversation started with 15 minutes and it ended up going like two hours.
Joseph Marohn:I know I was. I was looking back and I was like man, that could have been a podcast right there in itself. We were talking about so many gems on that conversation, so thank you for that.
Mychele Bisson:Thank you, thank you.
Joseph Marohn:Okay, awesome, so let's just dive right into this. So, Mychele, can you start by sharing what inspired you to invest in RV parks? Why are they so unique and attractive compared to like other real estate investments?
Mychele Bisson:Well, I originally actually started in single family homes and so we had built up a long-term rental portfolio and then went into short-term rentals because we were looking for a larger cashflow. And then from there, we actually built a resort in Scottsdale and you know great cashflow. But when we really started looking at everything and started really going through numbers, we wanted something that cashflowed immediately at higher numbers, with more doors, and something that was a greater return with less maintenance, and we actually found all of that in RV parks.
Joseph Marohn:Interesting, interesting. Okay, so for me, and maybe I'm just on the outside looking in, but I'm, like Mychele, caught on very quickly to this and I'm just curious how are you finding so much success so fast? Like, how did you become so knowledgeable about them?
Mychele Bisson:You know, what my thing is is that if you're going to do something, especially in something as big as real estate, you need to focus, focus, focus and learn everything that you can on the one asset that you are working on. So I know there are people who are constantly jumping back and forth between different things. I've just found that our success has always been to focus on one path, master it and then move on to the next one, and so we've done that repeatedly over the course of the last five years with our investments, and this last year did the same thing with RV parks. We knew where our path was. We set out a goal and we just went for it. Fully in Like, we moved into the park, our first park, we lived there for three months and we did everything on our own.
Joseph Marohn:Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, I know what you mean. It's real easy, especially being in like Pace Morby's mentorship, to get shiny object syndrome, because there's so many challenges, there's so many different ways you can invest in real estate. But the fact that you honed in on this one topic and you just really dived in and really mastered it, you know that's incredible. Now, did you have any resources or mentors that really helped you accelerate your knowledge in this space?
Mychele Bisson:You know, I really there wasn't a lot of information on RV parks when we went into it, like that was kind of the thing that I thought was a little crazy. There's not really a lot of good books or a lot of good. I mean, there's Heather Blankenship, who I love and adore. She was great. I get a lot of information out of her. We talk pretty regularly. But I think that you know, as in book wise, she just released a book which has been extremely helpful and that was probably the first book that I found that actually gives you a lot of good information. But going into the space, there wasn't a lot of people doing it and so we really had to kind of figure it out, figure it out, and what we ended up doing was we went to different conferences and things where there were a lot of owners and just started really networking in the groups and getting to know different owners and learning from their past mistakes and the things that they were successful with.
Joseph Marohn:Interesting. And then you mentioned Heather's book. Do you know the title of that book so we can pop that up on the screen here?
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, it is actually. I have it right here. I think it is campgrounds real estate campgrounds.
Joseph Marohn:Real estate campgrounds. Okay, we'll make sure to pop that up on there in case anybody else wants to take a read, because you said it was very beneficial for you. Anything kind of stood out in that book that you, that you learned on there.
Mychele Bisson:I learned a lot, actually, about the different types of campgrounds and just different ways that you figure out whether they're worth investing in and things like that. But the thing is is that it came after I had started investing, so if it would have come out beforehand, I think I would have jumped on this asset a lot sooner, but definitely now that we're in it. As I was going through the book, there were a lot of things in there that I wish I would have known going in.
Joseph Marohn:Got you Okay. So then, like for the people like that are out there, like myself, that don't really know too much about investing in RV parks, maybe talk about some of the key benefits and potential returns of owning an RV park.
Mychele Bisson:Well, one of the biggest key benefits is that I know a lot of people that are, you know, deciding whether they want to do something like multifamily or RV parks or storage mobile home parks or storage units and one of the biggest assets, one of the biggest things that RV parks actually give you is one they give you the immediate cash flow, which I find amazing. As opposed to multifamilies, where it's kind of a longer play. You invest, you kind of wait RV parks will give you cashflow starting from day one. You can reposition them and put lots of multiple different businesses inside of each RV park. So, instead of like mobile home parks, where they have long-term guests, or storage units, where they don't have guests at all, or multifamilies, where you're kind of limited, in RV parks, I kind of have an open arena to do whatever it is that I want. So I've added we have golf carts on a park that make an extra $100,000 a year We've added ice machines that can average anywhere between $30,000 to $70,000 a year.
Mychele Bisson:You can add in community centers that you can rent out community stores for your guests to buy things from. They love to buy gear that reminds them of their favorite campground. One of our campgrounds has a huge water slide and arcade and we sell daily passes for people in the community to come in and use our facilities, which is an added value. We also have, like paddleboard rentals, a giant lake where you can catch and release fish. We can do anything from daily to weekly to monthly stays, so we capitalize on if the economy is not going so great and everybody needs a more affordable place to live. We're probably one of the most affordable places that you can live in your in any town On the other side, if you know things are going great. We also have the nightly and weekly where you can come in and stay with us for a night or a week and we actually benefit from dynamic pricing.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, that's incredible Because now you've created not just a space to live, but you created this experience right for them to have, and now you've opened up other avenues and streams of income that you can create with other businesses you can put on there. That's thinking outside the box there, Mychele. I like that. Thank you.
Mychele Bisson:Thank you. Yeah, we've actually learned quite a bit just doing different things. I mean, one of the things that we learned this last year was that we could sub to and seller finance RVs, and so, as people were selling them, we were buying them and putting them on our parks and renting them for nightly stays, and that way we're, you know, helping the people who come in, who have guests, who can't don't necessarily have RVs. They're renting them from us to stay with their friends on the campground.
Joseph Marohn:That's smart. Where are you finding these RVs that you're able to do a creative finance deals on?
Mychele Bisson:You can find them pretty much anywhere. You can find them either on Marketplace, on Facebook. We have found them from people who have come and stayed with us or selling theirs because of life changes and things that have happened, that they no longer wanted to travel or needed to upgrade.
Joseph Marohn:Awesome. Now what are the first steps a new investor should take when they're considering investing into RV parks?
Mychele Bisson:I would definitely say that one of the first things they should do is they need to start learning about the asset. You want to make sure that you know kind of the ins and outs of an asset. You want to know what you're going into, what kind of work is expected from you in them and what you can expect when you go in.
Joseph Marohn:Got it. Got it Okay. Now I know there's RV parks pretty much everywhere, right? Rv parks are in every state. How do you know what's a good market or location for an RV park, and are there any specific criterias that you look for to evaluate if it's a good location?
Mychele Bisson:Well, the biggest things that we look for is one we like to be in a tourist area, so someplace that has like a national park or something that has a large drive of people that come to the community for a reason or two.
Mychele Bisson:Anything that has a large festival. One of the things that we do try to avoid is a place that has a large festival that's only one time a year, because that limits all of your money into one week and then you're capped kind of, on what you can do. So, like one of our parks is in branson missouri. There are 10 million people who come into branson missouri every year, so they come in from march until december. That is a solid 10 months of people flowing in and out of the city, which is amazing. You want to look at something like that, where there's lots of things like that, or like one of our other parks is actually a destination area itself where people come to, specifically come to that park.
Joseph Marohn:Got it, got it, okay, and then. So how many RV parks total do you have right now?
Mychele Bisson:Currently we have three under ownership, one under contract, and then we're working on a couple more.
Joseph Marohn:Awesome, and where are yours located? What market are you in?
Mychele Bisson:Right now we're mainly in the Midwest, so we've got a few in Missouri and then another one in Virginia.
Joseph Marohn:And then a couple of the others we're working on are a little more to the West. Got it, got it. So correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a lot to handle for a solopreneur, right. So what type of team do you need to put together to successfully operate an RV park, and is it a good idea to use a third party management company?
Mychele Bisson:So my thing is is that I think one you should always go into your asset and fully know it. So we moved into our first asset by ourselves and like learned how to run everything excuse me, everything ourselves. Like we learned backend systems, putting in advertising, putting in like redid piping. We did all of that ourselves for three months so that we could really fully understand what we were getting into and so that we could fully go into a new park and know exactly what it is that we would have to do in order to set a new park up. And I think that's really beneficial because then when you have managers in your parks and they talk about a certain situation or something, you have firsthand knowledge and you can say well, I know that you know these water pipes do this over here, or you know this bathroom does this, or the back end system does this, and so it makes it a lot easier to help your managers, especially if you're not on site all the time, if you fully understand what your asset does and how it works and runs.
Mychele Bisson:But one of the big things that we've done is we have put in managers that we have found either through work campers or through connections. I'm very, very thankful that I've got wonderful friends and family who are all willing to go on adventures with me, and so, like right now, I am currently placing my best friend and her husband as managers in one of my largest parks. That's awesome. Yeah, they're excited to go out there. I'm very surprised, but it's literally an hour away from family and it gets them back out to the Midwest so they can be closer.
Mychele Bisson:They just recently went through some family changes and needed to be closer to family and through our parks I was able to help them do that. So that was exciting. As for third party management companies, you know, I feel like you kind of have to really vest them and really know them in and out. One of the things that I'm not particularly fond of when it comes to third party and, um, uh, campground, uh managers, is they tend to take full control of your park and I don't feel like there's a lot of transparency in that. Um, I like to kind of know.
Mychele Bisson:I'm one of those people who kind of needs to have a little bit of a hands-on experience on what's going on. I want to see how my parks are doing. I don't want to leave that fully in the hands of somebody else. So I don't know if I'll ever be comfortable fully giving up control of our parks that way. But we do have a wonderful manager that we actually just recently moved into an acquisitions part where she is going to be hired by our main company and actually go to different parks and help train our managers in our culture.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, I could see that, you know, because we've had some bad experiences ourselves with, like using third-party management companies. And you're right, a lot of times they're like, they're like completely all hands on, they don't give you a lot of access to like the systems and stuff like that, and obviously a lot of terrible things can go wrong if the relationship goes sour, right?
Mychele Bisson:So and it's really hard to because, like, if they have control of all of your Facebook pages and your system and they've put all those things in place, the exit is always a really hard situation if you find that you guys aren't compatible, and so, thankfully, in the experience that we had, I kept control of most of our platforms myself and that actually helped when we transitioned out.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, and I think, like, as you continue to scale out, you know, and really build up you know more RV parks in your portfolio, I think it'd be wise to possibly even build an in-house, you know property management team and then that way you have that full control and everything's in-house.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, and that is ultimately the goal, especially since we have such a big goal in the next two years to acquire. We want to be at 10 or 15 parks, so we're going to need an in-house team that just does everything, which is where we've pulled this new manager and we've decided that she's now going to be the one who goes out and trains all of our new managers. For us, that's kind of the start of doing all of that, so that all of our parks have the same exact customer service. They have the same exact onboarding systems. Everything works exactly the same, like that was the goal in that.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, that sounds like a smart plan. Now what are the day-to-day responsibilities of running an RV park and how do you manage reservations, customer service and maintenance?
Mychele Bisson:So we actually, depending on the size of each of our parks, it depends on who we have on staff. So all of our parks have one main manager that keeps everything going. So she takes care of all of our backend systems. She ensures that all of the check-ins are done. She makes sure that you know everything in the park is running up and going every single day. All the bathrooms are cleaned, all the facilities are checked on, all of our maintenance stuff is up to date.
Mychele Bisson:We usually like to keep one maintenance man on staff. That's usually at the park at all hours so that if anything happens there he's on hand right away where he can help fix pipes or fix whatever happens. And then everything else from there is just kind of based on the size of your park and what you have going on at your park. But we like to keep an assistant manager on as well, just in case our park manager wants to go on vacation During downtime. It's a little easier for them. They just pick and choose days where they're busy and not busy and then they take their days off as they go. But during peak season they're back to back. So it's you know there are times where we have like six to 10 different people checking in at any given time, and so it's nice to have somebody who can give them a day off.
Joseph Marohn:Right, right. And are they? Are they on site at all times, or are they just on call?
Mychele Bisson:So all of our parks, except for one, has a manager that's on site.
Joseph Marohn:Got it Okay, that makes sense.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, and the one that does not is fully automated and everything. All of the systems there are streamlined, so she comes in on days when it's busy and then everything else is handled through her phone on days that it's not. But we do still have a maintenance man that is on site to oversee everything while she's not there.
Joseph Marohn:Makes sense. Okay, so I know most people have no idea where to even begin looking for an RV park. I mean, I run a wholesale business and I've never came across one once. I mean, we we might find a house with a hole in the roof, with 20 cats in the front yard, but we're not finding these right. So where are you finding these type of deals, Mychele? Um, do you and Pace have an inside source or what? Let us in.
Mychele Bisson:You know what? I think that it really depends. A lot of people will do cold calling. Prop AI is amazing for all of that, so a lot of people are using Prop AI to do cold calls. You know, if you personally travel in your RV, I suggest talking to the people that run the campgrounds that you usually go to. Eventually they do want to retire and if you show an interest, that's a really good place to start. Check in your local neighborhood. Maybe there's an RV park locally within the next 50 miles of you that is probably looking to retire.
Mychele Bisson:You'd be surprised how many times that happens, and maybe it's just you sparking that conversation with them that will actually get them to stop and say you know what? Maybe we should be looking at what our exit plan is. A lot of these are mom and pops and so what happens is is they don't plan on an exit. They started these when they were younger and they built them up over the last 20 or 30 years and they never thought about, well, what happens when we want to get out? It was always, you know, oh, we're building this and we're raising our kids here and our kids will want it, and then they get to that point and their kids don't want it, and so you know, sometimes you sparking that conversation is exactly what they need, and so I think those are really great places to start for my team in particular, we get a lot of off market leads and that comes from being just in the industry. People know what we're doing and so they'll have a deal.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, and they'll come and they'll say hey, have you met this couple? They buy up parks and they actually like care about what it ends up looking like, and so one of our big things for our particular group is we like to ensure the seller that we want to keep your legacy alive. We just want to make sure that we upgrade the bathroom facilities and make sure that it's continuing on to the next century. But when you come back with your great grandkids, same campfire, just a new bathroom. That's so awesome, yeah, so that's kind of the big thing that we have.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, you get to really build out their dream that they originally had planned and, for whatever reason, it didn't come through, come fruition, you know, and you're able to kind of put that and piece it together. So that's incredible.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, and it's a big deal for us. I know that a lot of these mom and pops, when they went into it, they do have really big dreams and goals and aspirations for their park and for some reason or another, they get caught up in the day to day and they either don't have the capital to do what they want to do or they don't have the time. And so we come in with capital and time and say, okay, you know what? We've got systems that we're going to place in, put in managers, and then we're going to build out what you dreamed of doing in the first place.
Mychele Bisson:So so it's important for them to continue into retirement, keep most of the money that they've invested into it, if not more, get closer to their selling price and actually be able to live comfortably after knowing that their park isn't going to turn into a multifamily after they leave.
Joseph Marohn:Now the parks that you have in your portfolio. Were these all purchased creative finance or did you come out of pocket on these?
Mychele Bisson:No, they were all done creatively, actually. So we have been very, very lucky to have met great sellers who have worked with us on ensuring that they can retire comfortably, and so it has been a wonderful thing that we've been able to go into each of our parks without any money out of our own pocket. We have 100% seller financed deals, we have hybrided deals, we've brought in money partners on deals and now that we have our fund, we're actually bringing in investors, and what we're trying to do is to continue buying these parks as creatively as possible and going in with as little money as possible and using the fund to actually reposition them so that we can get them cash flowing at capacity as quickly as possible.
Joseph Marohn:I love that. Yeah, that's very strategic right there, and you mentioned a fund. You started up a fund. Is that correct? We did.
Mychele Bisson:We did. It'll be two weeks ago. So we are actively bringing on investors. If you want to find it, you can actually find it at Bisson. But yeah, we brought in this. It's a $5 to $25 million fund. We are actively bringing in capital. We're using that capital in order to reposition the newest parks that we've brought on. Virginia will be one of them, which is the one that I'm actually heading out to tomorrow, and that one has a large water park. It's got a private lake that we, you know seeds that you can come out and catch and release. We've got paddle boards, we've got playgrounds, we've got a full arcade. We're redoing the grill, we've got a new manager who's going out, who's going to start doing like strength training classes and weekly walk groups and book clubs, and actually we have an entire full calendar of activities that go on all year long.
Joseph Marohn:It's almost like you've created the Disneyland experience at your parks.
Mychele Bisson:Each one of our parks is different and I love that because it's just a whole different group of different avenue of things that we can do. So that park in particular has that. I mean, we've got pickleball courts, we've got basketball courts and everything else, the one that we're under contract for actually has a marina and a full restaurant that is actually really popular in the area.
Mychele Bisson:And then we've got cabins and we've got lots of room to expand. So we're thinking of adding like 200 more cabin and RV pads and RV pads Awesome, now there's there's tons of different RV parks.
Joseph Marohn:right, you have campgrounds. There's luxury RV resorts, you know. There's seasonal parks. Which type should a new investor in the space target for their first couple of parks?
Mychele Bisson:You know, I'm not wanting to tell you not to go big, but I am going to say that you need to be able to handle the capacity of what you do. You need to be able to handle the capacity of what you do, and so I personally don't believe anybody should go for under 50 pads. But, as a new investor, maybe, try to stay under 100. Right, you know? Just because if you start adding too many things all at once, like the maintenance of water slides, that's a lot of money to like, keep up and maintenance, to kind of go into. So if you're going to be a brand new investor and go into something, I say between 50 and a hundred paths is a really good place to start Starting. Noi, we like to start at $200,000 for multiple reasons.
Mychele Bisson:One, we want to be able to reposition the park and rebrand it. We're going to need to put in backend systems. We're going to have to put them online. A lot of these parks don't have an online presence. Um, and you have advertising. Um, you have to place a manager unless you want to personally run the thing forever, which I was never in that space. I don't want to run my parks, I just want to know how they run and I want to place good managers in them. So making sure that you have enough to pay a good manager, because you do get what you pay for and then room to actually do like what we do, is. We have a hybrid. So we keep a certain group of our pads and we keep them for long-term guests and those ensure that the bills are paid every month, and then everything else is vacationers and those do daily and weeklies. And then everything else is vacationers and those do daily and weeklies, and that is where all of our cash flow comes from.
Joseph Marohn:Now these parks that you purchased. Was there opportunities to add more pads onto them? And if there was, what does that cost? Look like to add a pad and bring on all the utilities and power hookups and everything?
Mychele Bisson:Well, I think it really depends on the actual park. So, yeah, all of our parks actually have expansion opportunities. So one of the things that we're real big on is just one we want to stabilize the asset that we have currently before we turn around and expand.
Mychele Bisson:Because we want the parks to pay for themselves. We don't ever want to have to bring in more capital. We want it to actually just kind of pay for itself as it goes, and so what we try to do is we try to make sure, like our Branson Park is a great example We've got five extra acres that we get to expand onto, but when we went into it, the park was floundering and so we really needed to reposition it and get it stable, and so we're heading into a really solid year of being stabilized and doing a really good job, placing great management. We've got now repeat guests.
Mychele Bisson:We've raised our reviews from two stars to I think I just checked it was like 4.7. So we're just up to five and we've got a lot of guests that are returning or already booking for the following year, which means that our next year is going to be phenomenal, and we've not had it for a year. December 28th will be our one-year anniversary of owning that park, and so now that we're getting that one stabilized, now we're considering going back and rebuilding out to the back ends. So adding pads to that park and building out the back you've got to remember when you're doing that it's not just the pad that you're thinking about.
Mychele Bisson:You're also adding in the electricity lines, the sewer lines, the water lines, um. Then you have to build the roads that go back there, um, and you've got to build out any structures. So like you're going to need extra facilities, like you're going to need an extra set of bathrooms back there for everybody. So all of that, you probably average between $15,000 to $50,000 a pad, depending on how elaborate you want to get.
Joseph Marohn:Got it and then. So, as far as the actual RVs themselves, I know you said you've kind of purchased those creatively. What price are you kind of getting those at?
Mychele Bisson:We usually like to stay just under $50,000 and then take them over seller finance. So the ones that we've actually purchased we've done for zero money out of pocket. We've sold, financed and taken over loans, and then we've probably put about $400 into outfitting them and then putting them on the market, and they make us about $25,000 extra a year per camper.
Joseph Marohn:Got it Okay, and so I know. Obviously, creative finance is always for the win. Right, if you could purchase something with no money down, that's always going to be your best option. But would you say, starting from scratch and building an RV park would be a better approach than buying an existing one? Or what would be the pros and cons to each option?
Mychele Bisson:Well, see, so here's. The thing is that I'm not going to say that it's a bad thing. I think that if you can do it, it's a wonderful, amazing thing. Then you get to build out your vision. But when you go back and actually look at it, as I said before, first you've got to figure out your plan, Then you've got to find your place Right. So now you've got to buy the land. So now you're however much that is then you've got to build, bring in an architect, because you can't just build it with a hundred. You've got to bring in an architect and a designer that will actually help you work with the city. Then you've got permits and zoning that you've got to work out, which can be anywhere from 15 to $50,000 themselves.
Joseph Marohn:And then there's the time. Yes, yep.
Mychele Bisson:Just the time of all of that.
Mychele Bisson:So you know, I mean that can take like six months to a year to just get that built out. Then you turn around and you've got to put in all the horizontals. Then you've got the water sewer. Are you hooking up to the city? Do you need another permit for that? How much is that going to cost? Are you putting in septic? How much is that going to cost? You've got water, water lines where you're going to hook up. So you've got to figure out all of that stuff. Then you've got to put in roads, facilities, amenities, a clubhouse. Those are all things that need to be added to your bottom line. Then, as soon as you get it open, just because you build it does not mean they will come.
Joseph Marohn:Now you've got to advertise it, so you're going to be holding that asset and on average, you usually don't break even on a built RV park for about three to five years. Oh wow, yeah, it does sound better now that you kind of laid it out like that. Yeah, it does sound better to just purchase it creatively. Yeah, I know you had kind of off topic here, but I know you had a new development resort that you build out in Arizona. How long was that project? Just to kind of compare.
Mychele Bisson:Two years.
Joseph Marohn:Two years Wow.
Mychele Bisson:Okay, it was two years, and I mean granted, our problem was is that we also went over COVID. As we were building it. There was a moment where work stopped and then everybody could only come in in small increments, so we could only have like two to six people on job site at any given time for a little bit. So it took eight months longer than it was supposed to, but you still have to do all of you know the contracting, fighting with.
Mychele Bisson:You know the HOA, if you happen to have one of those, or you know council or permits or zonings All of those things come into play. Then there's keeping your builder on hand, so you need to physically be there in order to make sure that things are running every day do you deal with hoa, with rv parks? Um no, not so much with that, just zoning okay, zoning, okay, got it um hoas.
Mychele Bisson:I just thought of that because with where our park is or not our park, but with where our actual um resort or it is, is there's a large HOA area and they were trying to put laws and rules on our land and they weren't allowed to, so it ended up in a big lawsuit.
Joseph Marohn:HOA would never do that, Mychele.
Mychele Bisson:Come on, I know. Hopefully they've backed off now that you know it was definitely a hassle going into it, but I'm'm not gonna say you shouldn't build them.
Joseph Marohn:I'm just saying that at this time it seems less beneficial for me until you get to a point where you can actually deal with the risk yeah, I think once you've kind of built up to like at a point where you're at you, where you have like a couple under your portfolio and you're already cash flowing from those, and you're like, now let's start thinking a little more strategic, let's think a little bigger, let's just go and build one. Like we have the proof of concept, we have the blueprint down, we have the amenities that we're going to add in. Now you can kind of just build out your vision, like you said.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, you know, case in point, like the park, the fourth park that we're actually bringing on, that we're closing on, is a huge expansion opportunity. It's got, like I said, room for 200 more pads. It is not exactly something we would have gone into in the beginning because it is such a large project and we didn't want to build. But now that we've got three that do really well and they're cash flowing and we understand the logistics behind it all, now we're willing to take on a bigger risk.
Joseph Marohn:Makes sense. Okay, so what makes a park a good deal? You seem to have the eye for it, so what exactly are you looking at to determine if it's a solid deal?
Mychele Bisson:Well, like I said, location, location, location is always the biggest thing A place where there's lots of tourists, or become the tourist area. Like I said, virginia is our tourist area. People come specifically for the park. So you either need to build the park that everybody wants to come to or you need to be next to something that everybody wants to come to. Branson, huge town, we always have a steady flow of people. We also have a park that's right off of Route 66. So it's not necessarily near something, but it is on a route that is extremely popular and because of that, we're booked 95 to 100% of the time.
Mychele Bisson:That one actually does really, really well. It just constantly. We're just a revolving door of people all the time, which is wonderful. Room to expand is always a good thing because once you hit your you know, stabilize and limit, then it's nice to kind of consider OK, now how am I going to up more of my revenue? Like I said, we like to have always 50 pads or more in order so that we can, you know, hybrid our park and ensure that one it's consistently bringing in cash to pay all the bills, but also so that we can put everything else as travelers and guests come in and out. We like to start at a starting NOI of $200,000 so that we can make sure that we're paying management, placing good people and ensuring that we have a good customer service experience. We like to start at a 10 cap, at least when we buy, which is really important because that means that you've got a lot of room to value add.
Mychele Bisson:And then we like to look at things that have a lot of opportunity to value add. So can we add a propane tank to increase sales? Can we add a camp store? Can we reposition the community center so people will want to rent it out? Do we add a pool? Does it need a laundry room? Can we add a coin laundry room? All of our parks have coin laundry rooms. Are there other amenities in the area that are needed? Do we add an ice machine? You know something as simple as an ice machine. You can make $30,000 to $120,000 a year.
Joseph Marohn:That is crazy.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, and it's a simple ice machine. Putting in vending machines into your, you know, on the outside of your community center. It ensures that you know what. They come home late at night and they just want a snack. I would rather capture those dollars than have them go down to the local gas station.
Joseph Marohn:Absolutely.
Mychele Bisson:And so those are all things that we look at. Can we add golf carts? You know that's a huge moneymaker. We only have 20 of them on that property. They make us $100,000 a year. Wow, 20 of them. So we're adding 20 more because they're booked 100% of the time.
Joseph Marohn:So yeah, it sounds like the opportunities are endless and you're really limited on what you can think of.
Mychele Bisson:You know, yeah, and that's really the beauty of RV parks is that you really can I mean, you can add tiny homes, you can add facilities, you can add many businesses in them, you can put RVs on them and rent them out. One of our facilities we actually had a U-Haul rental center that was coming out of the office. You can do something as simple as putting Amazon, you know, shipping containers out front so that they can, like, get their Amazon boxes, and which is just an added amenity that you can have. We do movie nights. So you know, we've got a huge, beautiful community room in one of them where people during this time like especially now that it's Christmas you can go and watch Christmas movies on the big screen or one of our parks. Actually, we have a huge screen outside and on Saturday nights everybody comes and they sit and, you know, get snacks at our grill and then put out a blanket and bring up their little golf carts and they watch movies outside on the grass.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, I love that. It just creates a good family fun experience at these RV parks. Yeah, I want to go stay at one right now.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, you know what? It's honestly probably one of my favorite assets. I've been in multiple assets.
Joseph Marohn:Being in my parks is my favorite, so I remember us having a conversation on the phone and you're like, I actually went and lived at my RV park. Yeah, talk to us about that experience.
Mychele Bisson:Um, it was an experience you have to understand. I would live on any of my parks at this point, but the first one that we moved into actually was scary. We had just bought, literally just closed it. I had just kicked out a bunch of drug dealers, it had been overrun, and so it was a little scary, but I felt like I needed to be there, one to learn my asset, but two to ensure that my guests that were there were safe, and so it was a really good experience. I'm so thankful that my first RV park was hard. I feel like it really gave me a lot of knowledge. Going into these other ones, I'm not afraid of them.
Joseph Marohn:Yep, now the other ones seem easier, and I know they're not easy. But that experience built you up for that next journey, right?
Mychele Bisson:Yes, yeah, and I do have to say, if you want to talk about crazy, my first RV park was, it had drug dealers in it, there was a prostitute in it, there were crazy people screaming and yelling. I mean, my husband had somebody scream at him for like 20 minutes because we moved a swing.
Joseph Marohn:That is crazy.
Mychele Bisson:So you know, I mean just the pure lunacy of some of these. I had one person accuse us of kicking him out while he was on his deathbed.
Joseph Marohn:Oh, my God.
Mychele Bisson:And the truth was, is that one? He was actually asked by his doctors to move out of the RV park because he needed to be living in an apartment in a cleaner environment. Um, and he had two large German shepherds in a small travel trailer with him and his doctor wanted him to get rid of the dogs and move into a brand new apartment because he had health conditions and so, um, and he was just a miserable person at it, just in general, like he just and I don't think he meant to be, he just was and so start screaming at people on the campground this is our first one um, and so, about a month in, and we were finally like you know, you really just it's.
Joseph Marohn:We're going to listen to your doctors. It's time to go. Okay, wait. So back to the, to the drug dealers are they.
Mychele Bisson:Are they still roaming the campgrounds, or did you get them out of there? No, no, no, so we actually. So one of the big things that you find out about campgrounds is they're all very close knit and they're like their own little community.
Mychele Bisson:And so right before actually the night before I closed on the park, I had told the maintenance man. I was like hey, you know, we've, we're building up, we're going to redo this park. We want to have a good position. This park had a history of having cops come into it like twice a week, that's how bad it was, and so, um, I told him I was like you know, we're building up a lot of community.
Mychele Bisson:You know help, we're getting to know everybody. One of the big things that we've done is we've actually reached out to the police department, made friends with them, and so we've given them permission to come and train their canine unit on our park. I love that and so literally overnight word got around and about 1am I had people tell me at 1am that guy was pulling everything out. Never came back, scattered like roaches.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, never came back, never asked for a refund. I've never seen him again, as far as I know. I think he moved into the next town. He either moved into the next town or I heard that he may have moved to Arkansas.
Joseph Marohn:Okay. So, yeah, maybe he took over another RV park, huh.
Mychele Bisson:You know he may have, I just know that he's not in mine. And the nice thing is that in the community that you're in, when it comes to campgrounds we all kind of look out for each other. In when it comes to campgrounds, we all kind of look out for each other, and so, like I know, if somebody buys a campground in the area and it's been overrun, people will usually call you and say hey, so-and-so is cleaning out their campground. Don't take any people for the next week.
Joseph Marohn:That's cool.
Mychele Bisson:And so we do the head right. Yeah, so everybody kind of gets the heads up of hey, they're clearing out. If anybody is calling looking for a long term place to stay and they're from the area, they probably came from this park.
Joseph Marohn:OK, now I know not everybody's going to have the opportunity to purchase these creative finance or find these killer seller finance deals. What would funding look like if you were to purchase one? You know, traditionally would you be using private money, maybe a syndication or a fund. How exactly would they fund these deals?
Mychele Bisson:So definitely, I would definitely look at private money. Syndication always a great thing. The thing is is that if you're going into these and you're going to fund them through a bank or get a type of loan of that sort, there are a couple of things that you need to have. So one, you're going to want to go to a local bank. Most local banks are easier to work with when it comes to these kinds of assets. For some reason, the larger banks haven't caught on to how great these assets are yet.
Joseph Marohn:I have a feeling they will soon.
Mychele Bisson:I think so, like they're starting to get such a buzz that they're starting to get it. I think so, like they're starting to get such a buzz that they're starting to get it. But definitely, local banks are always willing to invest in their own community, which I think is extremely great, and you can usually get better terms from them. So, anything that we've ever done, we did do one on a hybrid where we did bring in a bank, a private money partner and seller financed, and that was actually our first park. The local bank actually gave us the best terms. But in order to do that, there's also other things that you have to have in place. So one of the biggest ones is that you're going to have to have a sponsor, and having a sponsor a sponsor looks like somebody who has experience in the asset class or something similar. So our sponsor had built seven hotels in the area.
Joseph Marohn:So basically someone to vouch for you.
Mychele Bisson:Correct. They also have to have a net worth of more than the asset that you're trying to buy and they have to be liquid.
Joseph Marohn:Got it Okay.
Mychele Bisson:And so those are the biggest things that you're going to be looking for when it comes to somebody who is going to sponsor you in something like this and you're going to need one the banks won't let you do a loan with them without one, but the nice thing about it is that, like our private money partner sponsored us in our first park and took us to the local bank, and because he had done so many deals with them, they actually closed our bank gave us the greatest terms. They gave us actually 80%. Most of the time, they only give you 60% in this asset class. They gave us 80% of the loan and they closed within 45 days.
Joseph Marohn:Incredible.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, so they were great.
Joseph Marohn:Okay. So once the RV park is up and running and you have everything pretty much dialed in, what kind of cash flow can an investor realistically expect?
Mychele Bisson:Well, if you do what I said to do and go with something starting at 200,000, noi, you should be able to increase that by 50 to $100,000 in the first year.
Joseph Marohn:Nice.
Mychele Bisson:So all of our parks have increased by at least 15%. I want to say Our smallest park has increased by 15% in stays. Our cash flow has actually increased by $150,000. The first park and that's our smallest park, so that's 51 pads. The other park that we did, we were about $100,000 more this year.
Mychele Bisson:Now that we've taken that one over and then the other two that we're doing, we're actually looking at getting those. Our first park we're hoping in the next three to four years we get it to be about just under a million dollars a year. Our second park, which is our smallest park, we're hoping to get that one to half a million dollars in the next couple of years. Our third park in Virginia we want to get to about one. Right now it grosses one point five, so we do about six hundred. Get to about one. Right now it grosses 1.5. So we do about $600,000 with that one. We want to get that one to be a $2.5 million park. And then the fourth one that we're closing on this month we actually want to get that one to be a $7 million a year park.
Joseph Marohn:Wow, yeah, I love that. You guys created strategies to pretty much maximize your profitability, right? You know you create all these different amenities. You made this fun experience from now. Are you looking at your competition? Are they doing anything similar to what you're doing?
Mychele Bisson:I think some of the bigger people are like Blue Metric, which are more of the corporates that are coming in. When it comes to other, you know, groups that are coming into buy-in, I haven't seen anybody going to the scale that we are, but I think that they'll probably start doing that eventually.
Mychele Bisson:Maybe they're just starting out and they just need to kind of get one or two under their belt in order to get to that point. Heather, I know, has a park that does. I think it's like two and a half million a year, so that one's really good and beautiful and she's got all kinds of things, and I take a lot of things from her and what she does in her parks, so, and then a lot of them are creativity. It's just like you know, like I was just talking to my new park manager in Virginia and she was like I think this next year let's add cabanas to the pool area and let's, you know, charge a fee for them.
Joseph Marohn:And I was like that's a great idea. It is a great idea.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, I mean so you know. Yeah, they were renting out chair seats this last year for $20 a seat for the day, and now we're going to add cabanas and charge, like you know, 50 bucks for the day. So just lots of different value add opportunities. Honestly, the greatest thing about RV parks is that you really are limited by your own imagination. This last Halloween one of our parks they did a trunk or treat and so they use the golf carts. So people rented the golf carts three days before Halloween from us, paid us money for them, bought for $69 a day, rented them for three days, decorated them, paraded them around the park and then did a trunk or treat for the kids.
Joseph Marohn:They paid us for the honor of doing that. That's so awesome.
Mychele Bisson:So I mean it's great.
Joseph Marohn:Yeah, it is Definitely Okay. So I think a lot of people and I know I've even including myself, I've done this I think a lot of people confuse like mobile home parks with RV parks. So, with that being said, how do RV parks differ in cash flow and returns versus something like a mobile home park, or maybe even storage units and multifamily properties?
Mychele Bisson:Well, I think one of the biggest ways that they differ is in the cash flow, because one you know when you go into like a mobile home park, an apartment or a storage unit, you pay a monthly fee. To like a mobile home park, an apartment or a storage unit, you pay a monthly fee. So it's like $120, say, for the monthly fee in a mobile home park or storage unit. For an apartment, it's $1,200 a month, right?
Joseph Marohn:Right.
Mychele Bisson:It's one payment Well, mine. You come in for daily, weekly or monthly stay and it's all done on dynamic pricing and so if I have a really busy weekend, I'm not charging you $69 for that same pad on a really busy weekend where I know we're booking up really quickly.
Mychele Bisson:It automatically goes up into dynamic pricing. Now we're charging you $75 a pad for the night, and so it completely changes the game plan. I'm not going to make, you know, $160 for the month for you to do a storage unit. I'm going to make $2,000 on that same pad in that same month.
Joseph Marohn:That's awesome.
Mychele Bisson:And so my cashflow is a lot higher, because I can change the dynamic of my park at any given time.
Joseph Marohn:That makes sense, and are most of your guests that stay there? Are they typically long-term? Are they short-term? What does that scenario look like?
Mychele Bisson:So we always have a hybrid. So we look at our parks individually and say, okay, if we wanted to keep all of the lights on, make sure that all of the bills are paid and all of our investors get their payments, what does that look like? So then we break the park up and say, okay, this is how many people we need to have in here all the time, and so like, for example, we have an 80 pad park, in order to keep all the bills paid on that one, we need to have 20 pads full on a monthly fee. So we keep 20 pads. We actually keep 25 pads full because we like to have it padded. And they keep all of our bills paid, everybody paid back, all of our loans serviced, everything is done through them. Plus they pay for their own electricity, so we don't pay for that. That comes out of them. And then the rest of our park, the 55, what is it? 60, 60 other pads, 55 other pads we rent out for nightlies and weeklies and we charge anywhere from $40 to $65 a night.
Joseph Marohn:Awesome. Okay, and so I want to. I want to talk about a little bit about the red flags. You know what? What type of red flags or specific issues should we be cautious about when evaluating potential RV park investments?
Mychele Bisson:Um, some of the biggest red flags are do they have septic issues? Those are probably some of the most expensive things that you're going to look at, um, don't always tell you right off the bat. So you need to kind of do some a little legwork and find out. Like some of the questions we ask is when was the last time you guys renovated and what did you guys do? Um, and so that kind of gives us a good idea. Then we start asking questions like you know, if you had a bucket list of items that you would do what? Like you know, if you had a bucket list of items that you would do, what would you do? And that's kind of when some of that stuff starts to come out, because they'll say something like oh, I changed the septic system. Okay, well, let's talk about your septic system. What's wrong with it?
Mychele Bisson:Flooding flooding is a big one that people don't always ask about. Like you know, you need to know if you're in a flood zone. You need to know if there's something like a reverse surge that is going to happen if you're next to a river, because we looked at a property in Colorado and every year there is a problem with the river that runs right through it and it does this overflow and it floods out part of the park. Well, you need to know if you're going to be down for part of the season and can you handle that. Do you have a bad reputation? I'm not saying don't go into a park with a bad reputation. We did that and repositioned it and now it's a great place, but you need to know what you're going into. Does it have a bad reputation? Look at reviews. Find out what people are complaining about. Find out what people think are great. Is your manager horrible? Is that what one of the you know? Is that a main issue that you see on your review? Maybe you just need to change your manager. Your bathrooms are always dirty. Maybe you need to hire a better cleaning company. When was the park built? It'll give you an idea of the systems that they have in place and exactly what you need to do it.
Mychele Bisson:Look for their online presence. Do you need to add a webpage? Do you need to have a one click button that will book you for the night? It probably. You probably do A lot of parks. Parks aren't do not have an online presence at all. Um, so those are kind of the things that you need to look for. And then you need to find, figure out, what's going on in the neighborhood, you know. Do you have large things that are coming in? What brings people to that area? What are the other parks doing in the area? What are their prices? Do you have room to expand your prices?
Mychele Bisson:right so those are huge things that you can look at.
Joseph Marohn:Good stuff, good stuff. Now I know with my multifamily unit I'm required by the city of Dallas to have a COO, basically a certificate of occupancy, right Now, are there any permits or licenses required to run a park?
Mychele Bisson:licenses required to run a park. You, I mean the. The. The other glory of RV parks against multifamily is that we also have less regulations and less things that we have to go through, but one of the things you do have to have is you do have to have a business license, and so you apply for that every year. You also have your tax license. You have to have all that stuff in place.
Mychele Bisson:And so just go into your city, township, your County or your city and just find out what those rules and regulations are. I mean, we're on a great first name basis with a lot of the officials at our city, just because we like to know who we're working with. And actually one of the things that we found out when we bought our first park was that they had rezoned it into a non RV park and so we had to get it rezoned back.
Joseph Marohn:I wonder why they did. Why did they do that?
Mychele Bisson:It was just a mistake on the previous um from the previous owner and also the previous administration. They'd gone through and actually sent out postcards to everybody stating that they were rezoning things and that you needed to reply to this postcard. Well, the previous owner didn't get the postcard or didn't send the postcard and never didn't reply in time. So they just kept going. And then the owner that we bought it from actually didn't have a business license on it, so he never found out that he wasn't supposed to be there. And that is one of the things that you do have to be careful with with mom and pops is that you know, sometimes they've had these parks for so long that they've kind of slipped under the cracks of the rules and regulations and then when you go in you find out that they either don't have a business license or they're not zoned.
Joseph Marohn:Okay, Now in your experience, Mychele, what has been the best way to market your RV parks and attract guests?
Mychele Bisson:One of the best ways that I've seen is definitely from other guests Making sure that you land in the top searches with Google. Good reviews are amazing. Like to bring in a thing called campground views, where they actually come in and they will map out your park, but they show you video. One of the biggest reasons why people will leave a park in the first night is because they didn't get what they expected, and so if you have a really good video on what your park looks like and what to expect when you come in, you have a less likely chance of somebody leaving and asking for a refund.
Joseph Marohn:That's awesome. Yeah, that's a good idea actually, to put like a whole video together and just have like this whole visual experience of what you can expect when you get into this park. That way, when you get there, you already know what to expect. You know what I mean. So, yeah, okay.
Mychele Bisson:And that is definitely one of the biggest things is that a lot of people will come into and they'll not get what they expected and that's why they don't want to be there anymore. And so, if you can have them like, they'll come in. Campground views is great. They actually start from your entrance and they will actually go through and show you each pad as you're driving through, and so everybody knows exactly what they're getting, they know exactly what they're coming in for, they know what every facility in the park looks like, and it gives that there's no questions.
Joseph Marohn:OK. So what's the end game? What is your exit? Are these like long-term holds or is your plan to build them up and then eventually sell Like? What is your plan with these?
Mychele Bisson:Well, I think it depends on each park. So what we're doing with our fund is right now it's a five-year hold, and so we want to buy 10 to 15 parts with our fund and actually be able to reposition them and get them to the highest cash flowing that we can possibly get them at. And then we will evaluate each park as they come, as they mature, and at that point what we'll do is we'll decide which ones we keep and which ones we sell. If they're cash flowing well, what we'll end up doing is we'll actually roll it into a fund too and give our investors the option to invest in the second fund so that they can continue to grow their money with it. And then, if they're, you know, at a point where they're pretty maxed out and we can't cash flow them more than what they're at and we don't know, and we want to acquire more assets, then what we'll do is we'll just sell them and you know, cash everybody out with that.
Joseph Marohn:So Got it, so it's more lines of.
Mychele Bisson:we always think of the end goal. The end goal is to cash flow them as much as possible, but if they are not performing to the standard that we want them to, or if we feel like we have an opportunity to take on another asset that will perform better, then we'll sell it and reinvest that capital into something else.
Joseph Marohn:Makes sense. Okay, so if you could take the knowledge, that you have right now?
Mychele Bisson:go back and talk to Mychele before she bought her first RV park. Would you do anything different, and what single piece of advice would you give yourself to be?
Mychele Bisson:love that I'm supposed to be there, like I feel like there's just this thing in the universe that whatever is meant for you is always going to happen for you, and it's always that way. Um, so I don't think I would change anything. I'm actually very pleased with how fast we've moved. Um, I'm very much an activator and I just jump in full force. I think that if I were to give advice to anybody on the other end of this who is starting out, my biggest piece of advice is just to jump in and do something, and you know, imperfect action is always better than perfect action not taken.
Joseph Marohn:Yes, Stop overthinking over thinkers.
Mychele Bisson:I'm going to tell you like everybody sits here and they're like, oh my god, I can't believe how fast you moved. The only reason we moved fast isn't because I made perfect choices or perfect decisions. The reason why we moved so fast is because we were okay, being imperfect yep, I love that yeah, and that is honestly the biggest game changer is just knowing when to just make action happen and just do it imperfectly and learn.
Joseph Marohn:You could have sat on the sidelines and thought I'm just going to read another book or I'm going to watch another video on RV parks, and maybe in a year I'll be ready. And look, you could have held yourself back and you would have never accomplished what you've accomplished. You know, like you said, take imperfect action. Who cares? You're going to make mistakes, even the best of the best. Make mistakes, right. Just get out there and take action.
Mychele Bisson:Yeah, I mean, I'm going to tell you never been in an RV park, never owned an RV, never even knew they existed before I bought my first one and now I'm closing in on five. We've increased our net worth by $20 million this last year and we are buying parks that are like $11 million at this point. So imperfect action beats imperfect action, not taken every single time.
Joseph Marohn:Life-changing yeah. Okay, Now for those who are ready to take action today, what's the next step they should take right after listening to this episode?
Mychele Bisson:Well, the first step, I would say, is go out to my webpage, Mychele. I do workshops, we do webinars. You can also invest in our fund.
Mychele Bisson:You can find all that information there. If you're not a part of the Sub2 community and you want to learn about creative financing, you also have a link out there that you can join, which I think is amazing, because I learned so much about creative financing. Learning that I could buy assets without any money was mind blowing to me. Yeah, just completely life changing, like I wasted so much time buying things conventionally.
Joseph Marohn:You live and you learn.
Mychele Bisson:You live and you learn, but you know what? It's all part of the process, it's all part of the journey and, honestly, my biggest advice always goes back to just jump in and learn and do something.
Mychele Bisson:Don't sit on the sidelines and read another book. Don't say I'll do it in a year, you won't get to it. Something always happens. Something always changes. The market is never perfect, you know. People always say that too. They're always like well, I'm going to wait till the market gets better. I'm going to tell you this last year, everybody complained about the market and it was probably the best time to get in, because I am positioned for the growth and I'm positioned on either side. I can take people when times are bad, I can take people when times are good and I'm going to cash flow either way, because I took action.
Joseph Marohn:Especially with creative finance. We don't care what the market's doing. We're capitalizing.
Mychele Bisson:Yes, yes, absolutely.
Joseph Marohn:It is the biggest game changer Awesome. Well, Mychele, you're an absolute badass. You've accomplished so much in such a small timeframe and I can only imagine where you're going to be next year, let alone another four to five. I'm truly honored to be a part of the same tight knit community as you and also have the pleasure of calling you a friend. So thank you.
Mychele Bisson:Thank you, I have the honor of calling you a friend and thank you so much for inviting me on. This was so much fun and I enjoy talking to you so much.
Joseph Marohn:Same here and, by the way, I am planning on making it to one of your next two day workshops as well, so hopefully I'll be seeing you and Patrick soon.
Mychele Bisson:Yes, absolutely. I think we're going to hold one in Scottsdale next. But yeah, I can't wait to find out that you're under contract on your first park.
Joseph Marohn:I will be doing it. You will be hearing soon, so, okay, perfect. So, Mychele, where can people get ahold of you?
Mychele Bisson:Definitely find me on Instagram at Mychele. It's M-Y-C-H-E-L-E-B-I-S-S-O-N. I do answer my DMs if you're curious, so that would be one of the best places, and you can also, like I said, sign up and be a part of my webpage. So one of the things about being in my workshops is that you get to be a part of my deals that we actually don't take, but are still good deals through there to my students. So Awesome.
Joseph Marohn:Now, if you guys are finding value from this podcast, don't forget to show your boys some love. If you like what we're bringing you, don't forget to subscribe. It helps us continue providing value to others by reaching a broader audience. We're out here to serve, learn together and help as many people as possible, so it'd be much appreciated. Make sure to also smash that like button and drop a comment down below telling us what you found most valuable from this topic. And, if you're ready to dive into the RV park investing yourself, appreciate all the continued support. And, guys, stay tuned, because we're pumping these episodes out every two weeks. I got some awesome topics and guests coming up next that will change the entire way you do business. You definitely don't want to miss out. Best believe i'ma keep bringing you that fire Peace. Thanks, Mychele.
Mychele Bisson:Thank you.
Joseph Marohn:Thanks for watching.