How to Raise Money for Your Glamping Business

Most of you know all about my capital-raising journey with Posh Outdoors.

I won’t bore you with the details again.

Today’s email is pure actionable advice, from someone who went through a 13-month cap raise that ended with $748k in the pot.

If you’re planning on raising money to fund your resort, you should read this.

The Glamping Insider, reporting for duty.

1 - Never, ever be afraid to ask for investment. Rejection isn’t scary. Nobody’s going to rip your head off for asking them for money. The worst they can do is say no.

2 - Be shameless. If someone expresses interest in investing but goes quiet, be shameless about pinging them. Seriously, email/text/call them dozens of times if needed. Nobody has ever complained to me about excessive follow up, but I generated a ton of investment from people who loved the hustle.

3 - A “no” now can become a “yes” later. I kept a “Close but no cigar” list — prospects who declined to invest but felt like they might come around later. Sure enough, after showing them our progress (e.g. construction and booking data), that list brought in significant capital in the end.

4 - Momentum and progress are everything. You don’t have to finish your cap raise before starting construction. We placed the order for our first 5 mirror cabins 7 months before finishing our raise. People’s perceptions of us changed when they saw we’d installed units on site, allowing for a strong end to our raise.

5 - A deadline is an effective closer. This is deadly when combined with momentum and progress. At some point, consider setting a hard date on when you’ll stop taking investment. We raised more than $200k in our final month, and more than $100k in our final 3 days.

6 - Talk about your progress publicly. You need to market your raise just as you’d market any other business. Tell people about fundraising progress, construction updates, booking data, etc. LinkedIn is particularly great for this.

7 - Prepare to be ghosted. Just before Christmas, we were within days of securing an investment worth at least half a million. Then the guy completely ghosted us, and we didn’t hear from him for 3 months. Things like that happen in the course of a cap raise. Don’t celebrate until the money is in the account.

8 - Work hard. The most obvious piece of advice in this list. If you’re not prepared to put in the hours, don’t bother.

9 - Short emails work better than long emails. During the Posh raise, I spent hours crafting the best copy I’d ever written in an attempt to convince prospects with the written word. It just didn’t work. You’re better off sending a short memo with a request for a call.

10 - Use your existing investors’ network. We generated plenty of funds after our existing investors shared the opportunity with their networks. Encourage yours to do the same

Sorry this is the first email for a few weeks. Things have been crazy as we prepared for our first guests to arrive yesterday.

Things should be normal-ish again soon.

Nick