‘The Campground CPA’ shares how to think strategically about your business instead of panicking during crazy and chaotic situation and circumstances – pivot don’t panic.
Hi it’s Michael Elliott, “The Campground CPA” with Camp and Park Accounting, coming to you today with Question #4 in our “Ask ‘The Campground CPA’ Question Series.”
If you’ve got a question that you want to ask a CPA who specializes exclusively in serving Campgrounds and RV Parks, send them over! We would love to answer them on a future episode of the“Ask ‘The Campground CPA’ Question Series.”
Today I am going to address a question I have been hearing more and more recently and that is, “What am I supposed to do in the midst of these chaotic situations? How do I think about my business? Should I change my business strategy? How should I budget, etc.?”
Today I want to talk about the difference between panicking and pivoting.
When a business is in the midst of chaos, they need to be think, “Pivot, don’t panic.”
So what do I mean by that?
Whenever we are faced with difficult situations or circumstances (whether it’s in our personal life or in our campground business, etc.), our natural inclination is usually to go into this fight or flight mentality.
We tend to go into this panic mode where we begin to scramble around. Our minds start to get carried away. We begin to worry about the future instead of focusing on what we can do today to plan and prepare for tomorrow.
That’s what I would call panicking.
Panicking is letting your emotions control the decisions you’re making in your business.
My recommendation right now to Campground and RV Park owners is that this is not a time to panic. Yes, things are certainly up in the air and there is a lot of uncertainty in the market depending on which state you are located in, etc.
But I believe that this is also a really interesting time.
We need to be focused on and thinking about how you can pivot your business into a position where it will be successful moving forward. Pivot, don’t panic.
That’s easy to say but what are some examples of that?
For some parks, you may need to change your target market. Maybe you’ve been principally a campground that services folks coming into your area for large events. But that may not work for you in 2020 because those events may be canceled. It’s probably time for you to think about how you can pivot your business to put yourself in a position to be successful down the road. Maybe you need to serve another target market. Or your target market needs to be more monthly/seasonal campers. Maybe it needs to be more full-time RVers or RV entrepreneurs.
There are a lot different markets out there and I’m not saying one is better than the other. I think it’s very specific, unique and individualized for every park. However I do think there are opportunities out there for everyone to pivot out of this downturn. Parks today are going to find alternatives to their existing business model that they will be able to use for a springboard to even greater things in the future.
You may have had a great 2018/2019 and 2020 may absolutely suck, but I think if you use this opportunity correctly you could potentially have an even better 2021/2022 and forward.
For some businesses, this downturn is an opportunity for you to pivot your business.
Pivoting may mean becoming more customer focused, to have more of an emphasis on your relationship with your existing seasonals with selling some sort of membership program, etc.
I recently had the opportunity to give a talk at the Back to Camping Summit put on by Mark Koep. During that talk I made sure I emphasized to Campground owners that I think the best is yet to come. I think this time is just a blip on the radar. People who are going to be successful in the future are those parks who are able to pivot out of the mess of the current situation that we’re in and do something great in the long term.
I shared the illustration, and I’ll share it again here, of the stock market. Some of you may follow the stock market and some of you may not. But if you’ve ever followed the stock market you see this graph that is steadily increasing over time.
But what happens when something like COVID-19 strikes? The stock market that is on this upward tractor all of a sudden has a sharp blip downward. Everyone starts to panic. The market goes down 20% or 30% or even 50% like it did in 2008. Everyone’s panicking….the world is falling apart.
In the moment, it looks really bad when you look at that graph. In the moment, a 50% downturn looks really bad or that daily decline of 10% looks really terrible.
But what happens when you zoom out on the graph and instead of looking at a 30 day period of time, you look at a one year period of time. Guess what happens to that little blip of a downturn? Over a year long period of time, that blip looks a little bit smaller than it did when you were looking at a 30 day period of time.
And what happens if you zoom out to five years? That blip looks even smaller. And if you zoom out to 30 or 40 or even 50/100 years? All of a sudden, you can’t even see that downturn anymore or at least you don’t notice it because during that period of time, the overall economy has grown.
And I think the same thing will happen with Campgrounds and RV Parks.
I believe that 2020 is a blip. The majority of parks are not going to have better years in 2020 than they did in 2019. Some will – I know several specific parks that we work with will have better years this year because of their states and things like that. But some parks will not.
But I believe if we zoom out and decide to take a macroeconomic view on our businesses as a Campground owner, I believe you will end up finding out that 2020 is just a little blip on the radar.
I will believe that you will find out that in the grand scheme of things (even over a five period of time), 2020 will end up being almost insignificant to the overall five-year economic position of your campground.
Now I think you have to do things right.
We’ve got to pivot. Pivot, don’t panic.
We may have to pivot into a different kind of capital expenditure plan. Maybe we have to pivot into a different type of staffing model because maybe we were spending too much on staffing.
Maybe we are not a big branded campground and we need to pivot into being a branded campground or vice versa.
You need to look at pivoting in your business to take advantage of what is coming in the future.
One thing I can tell you for sure is that when we look back at a period of 50 to 100 years in the midst of downturns in the economy, that’s when the truly wonderful, amazing, creative businesses are developed.
So my message to campground owners today is let’s take a macro view on our business. Let’s not just look at today.
Now we do have to survive today so I’m not saying we aren’t going to have to get through a rough 3 to 12 month period. We do.
But let’s think about how to pivot, don’t panic with our business.
And if you were able to do that I think you were going to see tremendous success in your Campground or RV Park moving forward.
Super excited to be able to answer this question with you guys today. Again I’m Michael Elliott, “The Campground CPA” with Camp and Park Accounting and this is the “Ask ‘The Campground CPA’ Question Series.”
If you would like me to answer one of your questions on a future episode, please send me an email at michael@campandparkaccounting.com or go to our website and fill out the contact form. We will happily answer any questions that you’ve got. If you ever need anything, please reach out to me.
All the best to you with your Campground! And remember…..pivot, don’t panic!
