06/11/2024
On the four month anniversary of launching Gather Campgrounds we hit 100% occupancy with a 4.9 star rating on Google.
We’re feeling excited, grateful, cautiously optimistic, and aware of just how much we still have to learn and improve.
Here are some initial takeaways:
The energy I bring into the project is the energy that manifests in the project. Every thought I have ultimately either adds energy or takes away energy from my teammates, our guests, our partners, and our community. There is no scenario where a bad attitude, negative mindset, or imperfect morals creates a world-class team and joyful customers. We create value because we believe we are valuable and have something to generously offer others. It boils down to love, loving what we’re doing and bringing that energy every day. Our love permeates our guest’s experience, and in turn, it gives us even more energy to serve them. Go look at how our guests talk about our team in their Google reviews.
The team is everything. The team makes the dream. There is no five star review without a five star team behind it. We strive together because winning together is always more fun than winning alone. Losing together is always more valuable and a more powerful learning experience with more brains to reflect upon the experience. In our business, the team comes before the guest, because without the team Gather Campground does not exist and there is no guest to serve.
Create standards of excellence and inspire your teammates and guests to strive towards them. We’ve tied all of our standards of excellence back to how it impacts our guest experience. We strive for Gather to be beautifully manicured and immaculately clean. Our guests see and feel the devotion we put into the property and upholding our standards. They love staying at a place so well taken care of, because ultimately they see it as “they are taking care of me” and in return they show us gratitude, they contribute to keeping it clean, and share verbal praise to our team that further inspires us to push hard for them. Standards have also helped us attract the right types of teammates and guests, and deterred the wrong ones too.
Working ‘in’ the business has been paramount for our learning. Either Hale Youngblood or I (mostly both of us) are at Gather Campground every day. We’ve done it all; cleaned toilets, picked up trash, made reservations, dealt with challenging guests, fixed equipment, cleaned the pool, stocked the Camp Store…you name it. Being ‘in’ the business has given us the granular insight into understanding how things work and what can be possible for when we’re more strictly working ‘on’ the business and implementing our expansion plans. I’m not sure it’s possible to teach someone how to cook an omelet if you’ve never cooked one yourself, so we’re making a lot of omelets.
If you’re ever in doubt about how to engage with and/or serve a guest (especially in a difficult situation), choose the path that’s more expensive to you as the owner/operator. We’re in business to create joy. When we look at a situation from the simple frame of, “what will create joy for our guest in this moment?” it’s typically pretty simple to make a decision. Whether we’re refunding a reservation for a guest in a tight personal spot, staying late to solve a technical issue on site, delivering an important package after hours, taking the blame or responsibility for something that wasn’t completely our fault, or even paying for a guest’s dinner who has had a very challenging day, the expensive moves seem to always create joy for our guests and a more positive experience for our team. A little discomfort on our end goes a long way to show our guests just how far we’re willing to go to make them feel valued and cared for. Ever been someplace where everyone feels valued and cared for? Yeah, get that right and everything else pretty much takes care of itself.
There’s still a lot of learning and maximizing ahead of us at Gather Campground. We’ve done a pretty good job celebrating the wins. We’ve been intentional to fully feel the spectrum of emotions that comes with the challenges of the business that inevitably arise. Mostly, I’m left feeling an immense sense of gratitude to be on the journey, in the thick of the experience, creating joy for others, and expressing my creativity and passion in ways that make a direct impact on the people and world around me.
More to come.
