We long talked about owning and operating a campground
someday. It's kind of one of those things where we would
be camping with our families, sitting around the
campfire and we would go, huh, this might be fun
someday. We stayed at campgrounds.
We knew what it was like to be a camper, but we never
ran, owned, operated a campground.
So we were literally trial by fire learning as we go.
There was no breathing time.
We both, I think, looked at ourselves and go, Oh my
gosh, what did we do?
We realized we had sold everything we own.
We knew nobody, but we owned a campground and that
was terrifying.
Hi, we're Mark and Karla Lemoine, and we own the
Coloma / St. Joseph KOA Holiday here in beautiful
southwest Michigan.
We have now 15,000 people every year that come through
this property. And our data says that they're from all
50 states and as many as 15 international countries.
I like to treat each guest that comes in like a friend.
You know, they're coming to visit us.
They're coming to stay with us for the weekend.
I would plan these epic road trips where we would hook up
the trailer and leave Michigan and go all the way
out to Yellowstone out West or Boston and Maine to the
east.
And the kids look forward to it.
Every year they would say, Where are we going next
year?
I asked a successful business owner who I viewed
as a mentor of sorts.
I just told him I was exhausted.
I could not imagine doing government affairs for
another 20 years and asked if he had any suggestions.
He said, Number one, if you could do anything in the
world, what would it be?
And before you answer that question, fast forward to
when you're 80 years old.
Looking back at life, what do you regret?
Not trying. And the answer needs to be the same.
And I immediately said with no hesitation, You're going
to think I'm crazy. But I've always wanted to own
and operate a campground.
He responded, Well, then you got to do it.
When you came home and said, I think we're going to do
this. I want to look at owning a campground.
It just felt right to me.
I could see his passion, but we had two kids in
college and two kids at home, so it was a big risk.
Our entire marriage, we largely lived beneath our
means. We were very intentional about saving for
the future. We were five years away from paying off
our house where we would have been completely debt
free. So we said, Yeah, why not?
Let's leverage it all.
It allowed us to leverage that money without penalty
ultimately to buy the business.
And that was the kicker.
If we really wanted to do this chips all in, we could
make it happen.
I think I said, let's just drive through this property
in St. Joseph. And as soon as we drove in the driveway,
it just felt like home.
We realized that there was a lot of deferred maintenance,
there was a lot of upgrading that would need to
be done.
It just needed some love.
It needed us, you know, it needed our attention to
detail. It needed our hospitality.
Our total assets were about $400,000 of liquid assets.
That was the equity in the house, our 401(k), some Roth
money and personal savings.
I presented our proposal to four different banks and was
able to get two banks willing to partner with us.
We ended up buying the park for $1.6 million.
The very first improvement that we made was in our
store. The store literally became the engine through
which we were able to then begin reinvesting in other
areas of the park.
The business model of a campground, first and
foremost, people are paying for their site.
And then when our guests are here, they often might
need some supplies or want to purchase a souvenir.
We invested in creating a pretty robust cafe.
In 2022, the campground was able to bring in $1.23
million.
For 2023 as a seasonal business, 80% of our annual
revenue comes between Memorial Day and Labor Day
weekends. So far, we have brought in $390,000 and we
have about a half $1 million that has been
received as an advance deposit for guests that are
still yet to come. And we're tracking about 15%
over last year already.
We added things like giant chess, giant checkers,
cornhole ladder toss.
We actually took an old, dilapidated tennis court
that wasn't being used anymore, and we ripped out
the net and refigured that into...
What we now call the family fun zone.
Yeah, the family fun zone.
We have reinvested more than $1.5 million back into the
campground in everything from critical
infrastructure, things like sewer, electrical work,
equipment, mechanicals, all of our furnaces, all of our
air conditioner units in each of the buildings.
Three years ago, we did a pretty big expansion through
which we took another loan.
So the debt service is back up to where we started, but
it's still working and we consider the interest
payments as more just a cost of doing business.
I think we've just come to terms with having a mortgage
on the business is part of doing business and I don't
think it's realistic to think that we're going to
pay it off before we sell the business.
In retrospect, we really saw the wear and tear
corporate America had on Mark in particular, and on
our family now owning our own business where we're the
boss. For us, it was a healthier lifestyle.
The stage that we're at right now is we're in a
zone. We know what we're doing here, and it's
generating enough income for us to be able to now
begin to live a little more comfortably, draw a little
more of a salary.
Our kids to date do not have an interest in owning
and operating the campground. They'll say,
That's your dream, mom and dad, not ours.
While that's sad, on one hand, we get it.
At some point we'll likely pass the torch and feel very
good about what we've done here during our window of
time.
Now, you know, seven, eight years into it, they can see
the benefit where we have more flexibility now, we put
in the hard work those first five years and did
what needed to be done to grow our business.
And now we're reaping the benefit of that with more
off time and leisure time.
I would say because we were campers ourselves, we know
what our guests are looking for.
A nice set of amenities, a hospitable environment
through which they feel special and they feel known.
And we try to create that each and every day.