How to Invest in RV Parks & Campgrounds | Cap Rates, Syndication & Scaling

Danny Mulcahy (00:00)
Right. And I mean it is by far my favorite quote. And I think about that maybe at least weekly I think about that. Right. ‘Cause that’s that’s how it is in business, right? Is everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so what I try to do is just make sure I’m communicating with investors all the time, candidly, so that when things typically don’t go wrong overnight,

but often it often sponsors don’t tell people until it’s already shit the bed.

Freddie Steen (02:05)
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast brought to you by Real Estate Pros. I’m your host, Freddie. And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Danny Mulcahy of USA Camping Company, who’s been making serious moves in the industry asset class that’s almost least known about. And I’m excited for you to know what he’s been doing.

In helping us enhance and gain our leisure by being immersive outdoors. Danny, glad to have you here. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re welcome. And I think they’re going to take something away how you’re approaching pivoting from commercial real estate into an asset class that very many of our Real Estate Pros audience do not know a lot about.

And then being able to scale that in multiple markets. So let’s dive in. First off, for people who may not be familiar with your world, for the investors in our audience, Danny, you lived all over the globe growing up. Did you build this business because you saw how other countries treat outdoor leisure? Or was it just a passion project turn commercial juggernaut?

Danny Mulcahy (03:27)
Yeah, it’s probably passion project return com commercial juggernaut. I mean ultimately I got in, I’ve been doing commercial real estate for twenty-five years now. Wow. I couldn’t find I couldn’t find an asset class that provided a better risk adjusted return than RV parks.

Freddie Steen (03:45)
Explain.

Danny Mulcahy (03:46)
Well, outside of doing new construction in commercial real estate, industrial office, what have you, it’s hard to get to reasonably project a 20% IRR and be able to do current distributions, say in the eight to ten percent per annum range to at the investor level. You get one or the other typically. You either get good distributions, you buy an existing retail center, buy an existing

industrial park and you you might make six to eight percent per annum. Yeah. But you’re definitely not going to make a 20% IRR. When they sell that asset, your your total IRR might be in the low teens. You could get lucky, I guess, and get into the high teens. Or if you go build something new, you can get to that 20% IRR, but you pretty much never had any interim distributions.

And you had all the exposure of that development has. So at the end of the day, when I did my analysis, I could reasonably project investors getting, you know, above market annual returns in those say eight to ten percent per annum. And when I was projecting to sell them in five years, still reasonably project a twenty percent IRR as a total return.

Freddie Steen (05:54)
Love it. Danny, what’s your main focus these days? And what markets are you operating in?

Danny Mulcahy (06:00)
So w we know we focus in this campground space. We’ve we’re predominantly below the thirtieth parallel, so that I can keep year round operations across the country. But we’re in s we’re in seven states. Yeah, we’re in seven states with twelve properties. We do about eleven million in gross revenue. Have about a hundred and twenty employees in I don’t know,

A thousand RV spaces, close to a thousand RV spaces and probably fifty, sixty glamping units and I don’t know, fifty boat slips and some storage.

Freddie Steen (06:35)
Incredible. What markets as far as the states and geography are you in right now? Just give us a thirty thousand foot view.

Danny Mulcahy (06:42)
I have a concentration in Texas, five parks. I have two in Oregon, one in Utah, so Moab, Utah, Austin, Texas, wow Lake Ozarks, the Oregon coast, the Florida coast.

Freddie Steen (06:55)
Danny, you have over 20 years of institutional background in traditional commercial real estate, investments, and finance. What data point or macro trend made you realize that traditional brick and mortar was crowded, shifting your focus entirely to nature immersion destinations and outdoor hospitality?

Danny Mulcahy (07:19)
Well, you know, I had a I’ve been working with investors and doing syndications now for for those twenty five years or so. And you know it was a confluence of events. At the end of the day I wanted, you know I was wondering about RV parks and when I started to run the numbers and I saw how how lucrative they could be, and then I realized that, you know, it gave me a story.

To tell investors that they weren’t hearing anywhere else. Nobody else was sitting there talking to, you know, John Smith saying, Hey, why don’t you jump, you know, why don’t you jump into this RV park investment? You know, there’s a dozen people offering, you know, luxury apartment buildings and industrial buildings and retail centers. There’s always there’s always those deals on the table. But nobody was offering RV parks.

Freddie Steen (08:08)
Danny, for the investors in our audience who are grinding through compressed margins in multifamily or single family flips, what does the yield and cash on cash return profile look like in the outdoor experiential space compared to standard commercial assets?

Danny Mulcahy (08:26)
Well, as an example, right now, in May, I bought two properties. One was a thirteen cap, just over a thirteen cap, and one was a seven point nine cap. You know, if I wanted to get into apartments or industrial, even in today’s market, I think everything is still selling at below an eight cap, right? You might not be getting the same three and a half, four caps.

In multifamily that the people were at one time, but I’d I’d expect multifamily right now is probably trading at five to seven and industrial is probably trading at six to eight. So you know I think you know so th that’s just in on the top line. I’m getting it for close to ten and thirteen.

Freddie Steen (09:11)
Wow. Danny, I’ve got to ask you a quick longevity question. I mean, the pandemic triggered a massive nature rush, if you we can remember that. But we are well past that initial spike, right? Through the lens of the USA Camping Company, through the lens of the USA Camping Company, what specific consumer behaviors are you seeing right now that prove outdoor hospitality is a permanent

structural shift in real estate rather than a passing travel trend.

Danny Mulcahy (10:19)
Great question. Right. So there’s a couple of things. First off, there was record prior to the pandemic, there was record RV sales almost every year from 2011 to 2019. There was year over year record RV sales. If you if you if you Google search it right now, I I think I’m right. I haven’t done it in while, but if you Google search it right now,

And you looked at I always forget the acronym, but it’s you know, CAGRs you know, the fastest growing industries outside of tech is the outdoor industry. Tech is growing, say, fifteen percent per annum. And when you look at outdoor industries, say anything from chairs and coolers to RVs and tents, when you look at that whole industry or outdoor apparel,

that whole industry is growing at seven to eight percent and there’s really nothing else that touches it. Every if you watch TV, eight out of ten commercials show people doing things outdoors. Right? Every single TV, every commercial, you could be selling potato chips or restless leg syndrome, right? Or headaches. The commercial is going to show people out there going outdoors and enjoying themselves.

Freddie Steen (11:38)
No question. Danny

Danny Mulcahy (11:39)
So

we had fifty three million and I think we had fifty three million people go camping outdoors last year. So we had a spot

Freddie Steen (11:50)
Three million. Fifty three million. Wow.

Danny Mulcahy (11:54)
Right.

I don’t know. But so and then you get, you know, maybe we have twenty to twenty-five thousand campgrounds in the country, right? And you have fifty-three million people choosing the same weekends to go camping, right? Everybody wants to go camping on Fourth of July weekend or Labor Day weekend. So, you know, and there’s really only a hundred to hundred and twenty days a year that people are going camping.

I mean winter camping’s growing at at a rapid clip right now. Probably ten to fifteen percent per year growth.

Freddie Steen (12:27)
Really? Tell us about that.

Why?

Danny Mulcahy (12:33)
Well people are just disconnecting. They’re just disconnecting and and and and as the weather gets as the weather’s getting hotter and you know there certainly no snow falling in Colorado last winter, right? Right. So, you know, so people can go camping in more places. There and then I would also say that, you know, there might be a call back to the office by industry s after COVID.

But the ex but the acceptance of working remotely at least every once in a while is now there because people know that people can be effective, especially in the professional class, right? So you might not be able to work from home all the time, but you know, if you have seven days vacation, your employer probably still let you work remotely for five, seven days a year at least.

If not 20 days a year. So you know you can still get your family out camping and work remotely from a cabin, from a hotel room, from an RV. And so I think there’s a lot of reasons. And honestly I mean the the summer’s gotten so hot it’s better to go camping in the spring and fall. And so yes I I think I think winter is a is a big is a big opportunity for people.

Freddie Steen (13:51)
Danny Mulcahy, you have traveled all over the world and looked at hundreds of locations. I think this would really help our Real Estate Pros audience that just got off the Google search that you had us do. When you’re underwriting a piece of raw land or an existing campground for development, what are the top three non negotiable attributes that tell you a site can handle institutional scaling?

Danny Mulcahy (15:03)
Well institutional scaling is a is a makes it a little bit tougher conversation. But if you are looking for water, power and sewer, right, are your primary things, right? If you can get city water, city sewer, that’s a huge, huge bonus. Okay. Huge bonus. One, because septic is a pain in the ass, excuse my language, y’all.

But you the reliability and consistency and the quality of the water, right, is important. People want fresh water, right? And so, and then, you know, not having to deal with septic pumps and septic issues, you know, leach fields, leach fields, you know, take up usable land, right? That you would otherwise be able to have tra you know, camp grant camp spots on. So so yeah.

And then I’d say drive distance now is also gonna be an important at attribute from population. And and then your amenities. Can’t are you gonna build your own amenities? Are you gonna put your own fishing pond on or are you are you where people are gonna camp and then go enjoy the vineyards or the hiking trails or the lakes or rivers nearby?

Freddie Steen (16:14)
Danny, we’re seeing a massive bifurcation in real estate. Standard products are struggling, but experiential products are thriving. How are you designing your destinations at USA Camping Company to capture the premium luxury traveler? And how does that affect your average daily rate, your ADR, compared to traditional asset classes?

Danny Mulcahy (16:37)
All right, yeah, that’s also good. And so I do not target that’s a good distinction. I do not target the Class A luxury five star experience. I changed our name to USA Camping Company for a particular reason. I want to sell a camping experience. Right. I don’t want to sell, even though I have glamping, I’m not looking to be the Waldorf in the middle of the forest, right?

I’m not the Four Seasons, even though no pun intended. I want people to ha I want people to get dirty, right? I want them to have dust. I want them to hear birds. And so I don’t know if I was answering your question correctly, but first off I I there there is a whole there’s a huge opportunity. If you look at AutoCamp of you know, they have they’re probably making the most inroads.

Right. They have a whole bunch of Airstream trailer trailers. They’ve parked all you know in in premium destinations. Great product, great marketing, great team. I think they just partnered with Hyatt. No, Hilton. I think they just partnered with Hilton. And they provide a Class A experience. That all you have to do is show up w you know in your car. I’m I’m the

I I’m much more blue collar than that. And so and that’s and that’s because that’s who I am and that’s what I like. I try to do camping as I would do as a kid. Or the camping experience I wanted as a twelve year old and the camping experience I want to do as an eighty five year old. That’s that’s what I’m trying to provide in in the in the portfolio of companies we have.

Freddie Steen (18:15)
Danny, what caught my attention about you and USA Camping Company, and what’s really going to excite our listening audience as we continue to progress through the pod is the way that you have focused in an asset class with culture first. What I mean by that, Danny, is we were able to talk offline prior to the pod, and you shared something very powerful with me that one of the strengths of USA Camping Company, perhaps even

if I can be so dare, dare so much to say that this is a secret sauce, is that you would never invest in a property that you would not live in with your own family. You’ve done this while managing mul multiple markets, still keeping your margin strong. That’s not easy, especially in this climate. What’s been the key to keeping that machine running smoothly?

Danny Mulcahy (19:10)
Good people, right? I mean, having good people around you is is, you know, is ultimately what does it, right? Whether it’s my wife or my COO, and every and all the my and all my park managers, right? Having good people. I mean, I couldn’t do it without my park managers, right? I mean, I have amazing people at my properties and I couldn’t do it without them. You know, there’s a lot of ways to make money in this space. You can be the side of the highway

RV park, you can be at the affordable affordable housing RV park.

You know, the you can be a man camp, right? Outside of oil fields. Okay. Or now or now data centers, right? And so there’s a lot of ways to do it. You know, I do

I only choose places that me and my family would stay because that’s easiest for me to identify what is needed at a park. Right. I’m not I’m not working in an oil field, so I don’t know what’s important for a man camp. Right. And so, you know, I drive I try to find parks and operate parks in the manner that I would do it for myself. Would I stay there?

Well, you know, are they penny pinching me to death? Do they have amenities that I want? Is it safe? Is it clean? You know, those are those are the things that I need. You know, I don’t do huge parks that lose that intimate camping experience. Okay. You can get go find a park with 800, a thousand units. Sure. And you’ll make you will make a ton of money off of it. That’s just not what I want to do with my time.

I want to have an intimate camping experience, right? I want there to be dusty roads. I want there to be birds chirping in the in the air. I want to hear the trees rustling. I want to have the campfire. I’m not looking to do an age-restricted community, right? No, which is what a lot of big RV parks are. They really turn into like 60 year old and over, which I’m old. Don’t get me wrong. So but that’s not what I want to operate.

Freddie Steen (21:08)
Managing a distributed portfolio of outdoor hospitality sites, Danny, is vastly different, I think you would agree, than managing an apartment building. So how have you structured the operation side of the USA Camping Company for our Real Estate Pros audience to ensure a consistent best in class guest experience without having to physically be at 10 places at once?

Danny Mulcahy (21:35)
Yeah, that’s that is the dance, right? That’s the dance that we do every day. Yes. Hiring good hiring good managers on site is the first critical point. And I’ve gotten very lucky that I have a lot of amazing managers. You know, in today’s world with Google Reviews, TripAdvisor, et cetera, you you can get a pretty good look, you know, Airbnb reviews.

You’re getting sort of a real-time feedback on the level of operations that each of your properties are operating at. You know, if you’re seeing reviews about cleanliness or rude rudeness, you see it pretty quickly, like while they’re driving out of the park. That was the worst experience that I ever had, right? Fortunately we don’t get those, right? But but you do you and you know, so we do do that. We have

You know, we use security cameras, and we use Teams and other things and we you know we meet with our people, you know, regularly and then we do site visits all the time. So the corporate team is, you know, constantly visiting where’s you know, it’s gotten a little harder with twelve parks, but our corporate team is hitting these parks, you know, once a month, once every two months at most, physically, and then we’re meeting with them.

In some cases we’re meeting with some managers almost every day. And some managers don’t even wanna talk to us. They don’t even want to talk to us once a month, but we don’t need to talk to because they’re doing such a great job. So, so it’s a it’s a dance. That’s all the best I can say. But we are fortunate that, you know, because w I think we’re gonna serve I think we served eighty thousand people this last year. And

Google Reviews and TripAdvisor and Airbnb, they tell you exactly how you stand. And actually they they really tell you more often than not when you’re doing wrong. And if you’re getting a review about customer service being good, it was probably stellar, right? Because people went out of their way. Correct. You know, people and the old adage is you tell 13 people your bad experiences and you tell one person your good experience.

Right, or three people, your good experience. So if you go through our Google reviews and see how well we’ve done, especially with the customer service, to get that hot that many good reviews, we must be doing our park managers have to be doing an amazing job for us to maintain that.

Freddie Steen (23:53)
Danny, I think our Real Estate Pros can definitely experience this sizzle that you’re giving us today. And we appreciate you being so transparent. You’ve worn a lot of hats in your career, Danny. My crackpot research team tells me that at one point in your career, you’ve been the director of equity for multiple major real estate firms. When you were putting together a deal for a massive land development project under the USA Camping Company.

How are you structuring the capital stack to keep equity investors happy while preserving operational flexibility?

Danny Mulcahy (24:32)
Good one. But you know, it it’s just like my parks. I I structure my deals the same way I would want to invest if I was the investor. Right. Do I want do I wanna jump jump into somebody’s deal if they’re trying to take fifty percent of the profits? No, I don’t, right? I think that’s greedy. Right. So I try to give my investors, I write my operating agreement to try to give my investors as much

Freddie Steen (24:43)
Right. Right.

Danny Mulcahy (25:01)
control and protection as they can while also not tying my hands to be able to, you know, make decisions, real decisions. So so my splits and my returns are in my mind fair. And I try to do better. My honestly, I actually accepted some investors into my deals that I’d classify as very high maintenance.

But I I did it because I knew they were high maintenance and that they would push me to be a better sponsor. And it was

Sometimes I regret it, don’t get me wrong. But but but I did. I after I got going, I was like, you know what, I’m gonna bring this guy in, I’m gonna bring this guy in. Sure. And you know, and and I brought them in and yeah, they they beat me up. They they they changed my operating agreement, they changed how I reported. And I knew they were gonna do that when I brought them in. And so that’s what I would say. If you wanna stay in for the for the long haul, you wanna keep those investors

You communicate regularly, you communicate clearly, and you treat them all fairly. And don’t get greedy. That’s it.

Freddie Steen (26:15)
Well, Danny, you led me to the site I was exactly going to, which is the pitch to traditional capital. Because what our real estate investor pros may not have picked up yet is you are very diversified in what you can bring to the an offer to the table with your wealth of experience as a real estate pro. Outdoor hospitality and commercial land development are highly specialized niches. How do you pitch this asset class?

To traditional real estate investors who are used to tangible walls and roofs and w I mean what is your secret, Danny, to getting them comfortable with investing in raw land or experiential sites?

Danny Mulcahy (26:57)
Well, you know, fortunately everybody knows what camping is, right? And it’s not a hard story to tell. You you have great depreciation, right? ‘Cause it might be it might look like a raw piece of dirt, but I actually pulled water, power, and sewer to it, right? Which makes it an improved property, which may give gives me depreciation. I have really low

CapEx expenses more often than not because, you know, except for my glamping units, I don’t have air conditioners and paint and carpet and beds to do. So I have very low CapEx. I have great depreciation. I have a lot of pricing elasticity. So because I’m not locked in on twelve month leases with tenants, I can raise my rates up and down d based on demand.

And you nowadays we actually even use AI to help us. And so so, you know, it has all the attributes, right? You know, as long as we don’t take too much leverage out, we can and most of my parks have had an operating history in excess of ten years. Some of been operating for sixty or seventy years. Awesome. So so it’s a fairly easy story.

Freddie Steen (28:12)
Danny, you’ve been deep in the direct to investor and equity crowdfunding space since the early days of the JOBS Act. What is one major blind spot syndicators and operators like our real estate pros have today when trying to raise capital online or build a digital investor base?

Danny Mulcahy (28:33)
Well, I mean it’s it’s obviously always tough to get in front of people. What I would tell people though is be careful about the representations that you make to the public and the promises that you make.

Freddie Steen (28:46)
How do you mean? How do you mean?

Danny Mulcahy (28:47)
Well, the SEC, right, and others look at false and misleading a little bit differently than a lot of other people do. If I make a claim that I’ve never missed making a distribution over the last five years, which is a hundred percent true statement, but I missed making distributions the three years prior prior, or I took out debt to to making them last two.

Or I reduce those distributions from 99 cents down to a penny. All of those are material facts that would that would change how investors took my my statement of I’ve never missed a distribution. And so I think I think a lot of investor sponsors can get in big trouble by overpromising. And and then you know the other thing is is you know.

Be conservative in your estimates so that you can overperform for your investors. You know, don’t

Freddie Steen (29:49)
I mean.

Danny Mulcahy (29:50)
Don’t don’t use a refinance three years into your pro forma to get to your yield.

Freddie Steen (29:56)
Right. Right. Right.

Danny Mulcahy (29:58)
I see it all the time, right? So yeah. So it’s funny when investors send me the packages from other people and I can’t believe the I’m buying it at a eight cap and I’m gonna sell it at a five cap. And that’s after I did a hundred percent cash out refi in year three. Right. And so you know you know I just say, you know, ask yourself, would you invest in it in your package? So

Freddie Steen (30:25)
Now every operator I know has a moment where things got real dang. Maybe a deal that went sideways or a time they had to pivot fast. You mind sharing one of those moments for our Real Estate Pros audience for you?

Danny Mulcahy (30:44)
Yeah, you know, I mean if you’re doing this long enough, you’re gonna lose money. I mean, it doesn’t matter how safe an investment is. Maybe there’s some guys out there who’ve been doing it for twenty years who haven’t lost money. You know, all I can say is the best way to handle well, what’s funny, you know, my favorite quote is Mike Tyson. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And

Freddie Steen (31:08)
Yeah.

Shout out to Mike Tyson.

Danny Mulcahy (31:10)
Right. And I mean it is by far my favorite quote. And I think about that maybe at least weekly I think about that. Right. ‘Cause that’s that’s how it is in business, right? Is everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And so what I try to do is just make sure I’m communicating with investors all the time, candidly. So that when you know, things typically don’t go wrong overnight.

But often it often sponsors don’t tell people until it’s already shit the bed.

Freddie Steen (31:43)
Give us an example of of a Mike Tyson moment for you.

Danny Mulcahy (31:47)
My park, I have a park that’s it’s it’s on the ropes, right? I have an amazing park with an amazing team. And when we bought the park, we ended up doing seller financing. And but when we bought the park in underwriting it, we had tri we had programmed to do traditional financing. Right before the close, the seller offered me interest only.

And I was like, well, that makes a lot of sense. Two year inter interest only. So I pivoted thinking I was doing the right thing. I took that interest-only debt. Well, next thing you know, interest rates skyrocketed a few years ago and went from zero to five percent in the case course of eighteen months. What did you think? And so well, about twelve months into it, even though I had another even though I had another twelve months of interest only.

Available I pivoted to lock down better debt. But that debt was still fifty percent higher than I had planned, right? I went from four and a half to six and a half, right? That was a problem. Well at the same time we dealt with an oversaturated market. I had a market that had 400 spaces when I bought it

had eight had a thousand spaces, if not more, twenty four months later. So then I had talked about

Freddie Steen (33:13)
Danny, was this some

shifts in Texas? Was this kind of the oversaturation that we saw in Texas or is this another

Danny Mulcahy (33:20)
Yeah,

this is Texas. This is Texas. Right? So all these barriers to entry that I thought we had were non-existent in Texas. And so then my revenue dropped by 20%. So my interest my interest rate went up 50% and my revenue dropped by 20%. Yikers. And so again, the only way to get through this is to be honest with investors the whole way. Yes. And be candid with them. Yes. And in this case

In this case, I’ve actually I’ve actually not charged any of my fees for more than two years on it. Because I’m just trying to protect my investors’ equity at this point. So that’s it. So my only the only way to pivot, there’s two things you can do. Just suck it up, pull the band-aid off, and let the asset go, right? And don’t put any more time, energy, or money into an asset.

Is one way to go and then and then the other way is is you know to try to make accommodations but in in both cases you need to start communicating with investors soon, candidly and frequently.

Freddie Steen (34:24)
Danny, I think our Investor Fuel Podcast listeners and our Real Estate Pros all across the world that are listening can see that one thing that has sizzled through in this podcast is your integrity. That’s the kind of stuff that people don’t talk about. And honestly, Danny, it’s what separates the folks who just dabble to the ones who stay in the in the game long term, like you. Let me ask you this. Danny, what are you most focused on solving?

Or scaling next. What’s the next real goal for you?

Danny Mulcahy (34:57)
So we made, you know, the last five years have been literally the toughest five years in commercial real estate in the last 50 outside the financial crisis in the S&L fiasco. A lot of people failed recently. We made it I feel like we made it through a really tough time and we have a lot of experience that we didn’t have. We’ve restructured our company.

Freddie Steen (35:12)
Yes.

Danny Mulcahy (35:23)
So it’s time for me to scale up. And I think there’s a lot of opportunities. I think we have the institutional knowledge now to to be able to grow effectively. And so my next challenge is to go from twelve parks, arguably to fifty or sixty parks. It’s not I want to become synonymous with camping. That’s what my goal is. So

I’m not, you know, I don’t have a like a monetary, you know, goal, right? Everything I do ahead of me should be accretive to me. So I’m fine. I love what I do. I love this product type. I like the people. I like the investors. I like my guests. I like I certainly like going to visit these locations. I like striking the deals. Yeah. I like the hunt. And so

Yeah, but my goal now at this point is to become synonymous with with camping. And how do I do that? Do I get can I pull that off doing five six single purpose LLCs with five and seven year time horizons? Probably not. I probably have to tr pivot here to being become a a a non-traded REIT is probably what my next step is. But that’s a whole ball of

That’s a level of sophistication I’ve never operated at, but that’s what I’m probably working towards.

Freddie Steen (36:43)
Danny, when you look at the growth trajectory of Outdoor Capital Management over the next five to ten years, what you’re doing with USA Camping Company, what is the ultimate vision for the footprint that you want to leave on the outdoor hospitality industry? And let’s include the fact that your culture is steeped in family.

Danny Mulcahy (37:06)
Yeah. So well, you know, it’s that’s the number one rule of camping is to tread lightly, right? Try to leave the wherever you’re hiking, wherever you’re playing in the outdoors, you’re supposed to leave it better than when you got there. Yeah, you don’t leave trash around, you don’t break branches or cut down trees or do stupid shit, right? You try to preserve nature and and make it leave it better than when you got there.

And so that’s what we try to do with our RV parks and our campgrounds is make hopefully we’re gonna leave them better than when we got them. You know, better I guess better community, a better camping experience. We’ve contributed to the the to the surrounding community and nature, and that’s what we’re that’s the legacy that hopefully USA Camping Company leaves is that they were a good steward.

Of nature and of the campgrounds that they’re a part of and of the communities that they’re a part of.

Freddie Steen (38:08)
Big. I mean, especially when you’ve already got a legion of 120 people under you that are helping you see this vision out in multiple markets in place. The next move can either compound things or create chaos depending on how you play it. Now, I know a lot of people listening are either earlier in their journey or looking to level up. And I think they benefit from hearing this.

When it comes to building relationships and growing your network, Danny, what’s made the biggest difference for you?

Danny Mulcahy (38:39)
Well, you know, I my biggest problem when I got into real estate in 1999 is I was very blue collar. I grew up military. I never met people with money and never really met business owners or anything. I didn’t know how to talk about money, talk about investments or anything. And so it took a long time, but you know, at the end of the day,

People do business with those they like and trust. And so, if you’re trying to grow your network, be people be genuine. You know, again, would you invest with you? That’s all I can say.

Freddie Steen (39:14)
Danny, yeah, you can’t fake that. I mean, relationships are everything in this space. All right. Before we wrap, gratitude again for your transparency and your thoroughness and the fact that you are definitely an expert in this niche asset class. If someone wanted to reach out, Danny, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing. What’s the best way for them to reach you?

Danny Mulcahy (39:42)
I’m always available to my guest and to my investors or whoever. I love this stuff. You can reach me at Danny at USA Camping Company. You can find my contact information there. Call any of my parks. Anybody else can give you my phone number if if you can’t find it otherwise. But I love talking about this. I love doing deals. I love people coming up in the business.

You know, learning how to s structure syndications, what’s important in an operating agreement, what’s important for investors to look at in an operating agreement or in evaluating an investment. I like talking about all of it. Probably too much actually. So but I’m more than happy to answer as many questions as I can for anybody. That all they gotta do is call me. I love it all. So

Freddie Steen (40:28)
Danny, from me and our Real Estate Pros audience, we want you to know you can never, ever talk too much to us. Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story, and your perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing it the right way. So Danny, thanks for being here again.

Danny Mulcahy (40:51)
Freddie, thank you for for ta having me on and having this such a good conversation. I’d really appreciate it

Freddie Steen (40:57)
Gratitude. And for those of you tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations coming with operators just like Danny Mulcahy and USA Camping Company, who are out there building real businesses just like you. We’ll see you on the next episode.