The Story of The Glamping Insider (Part 2)

Part 1 of this story took you through my childhood, the university years, 12 months of grind, and the first whispers of a revenue share model. 

Part 2 is where it gets juicy.

We’re in the spring of 2023. Team Posh Outdoors is working on what feels like a world-beating business plan. We think it’s going to make institutional investors chase us like a half-priced air fryer on Black Friday.

We were so unbelievably wrong. 

The False Start

Most of you know the Posh Outdoors model by now, so I’ll keep it brief. For the uninitiated, we send modular outdoor lodging structures to landowners. They run things on the ground, and we take a chunk of the revenue.

The team consists of:

• Kevin O’Brien - The guy who had the idea and found the people to make it happen

• Lee Pritchard - Kevin’s long-time friend and business partner. Our resident financial wizard

• Edward Haynes - Owner of EJH Distribution. The man in charge of structures

• And yours truly

We spent months on the business plan ahead of approaching some big investors. We went deep on the history of glamping, the opportunity in the market, the daily rates we could achieve, the speed at which we could scale, and the millions and millions we’d make for our backers.

They barely gave us a second glance.

You see, institutions are pitched all the time with opportunities like this. With no developments under our belt, we were probably their easiest “no” of the week.

It was clearly time to go back to the drawing board. We had to figure out a way to fund one small project and justify our bold projections.

But, while we were recovering from the sting of rejection, another opportunity had caught my eye…

Going It Alone

I had an idea to help us raise funds without institutional help. The Glampitect North America community.

At the time, I had a mailing list of 1,500 people with an eye on the glamping industry (pretty much all of them came from the blogs I mentioned in Part 1).

In the fall of 2023, I sent them a vague email, explaining that we were looking at getting into the development game. Anyone interested in investing should fill out a form with their preferred investment amount.

The response blew me away.

Within an hour, I had hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment interest. It soon moved into the millions.

It changed my entire perspective on the audience I’d built. I suddenly realized I had a powerful capital-raising tool on my hands.

The issue was, it made the stake I’d agreed in Posh Outdoors feel tiny. That, coupled with slow progress on the raise, gave me itchy feet. So I thanked the Posh team for the opportunity and told them I’d be pursuing my own developments.

Looking back, it was a bit rash. I should have paused to think about how I’d translate mere investment interest, and no cash of my own, into a property acquisition and subsequent ground-up development.

But I was young (still am), impatient (less so) and hungry to succeed.

I started looking for properties in the Canadian Rockies. I found a gem in Golden, a ski town with no zoning laws. I ran the numbers, found it to be viable, and prepared to make an offer.

That’s where I got stuck.

I had no money (I was barely out of my broke student era), and I hadn’t lined up an investor to cover a down payment on the property. Even if I had, I’d have to raise the rest of the purchase price in the space of a couple of months.

It was never going to happen.

That period was the most stressful of my life. I felt like a failure, and my dream was slipping away.

But while I’d been gone, the guys at Posh had made progress.

The Return

Team Posh did two things in that six-month period:

1. They lined up Skyridge Glamping as their first rev-share partner. Skyridge was a husband-and-wife team who had already built and sold a successful glamping operation on the east coast of Canada. Skyridge had just signed a 30-year lease on a stunning property in the Canadian Rockies, with Posh agreeing to supply some units

2. Posh had settled on equity crowdfunding as their way of raising the capital to fund those units. They’d be doing this through a platform called WeFunder. Anyone who invested would get a piece of every Posh location

The crowdfunding model suited me. I’d already proven I had an audience interested in investing in a glamping project. Despite walking out 6 months earlier, I had a good hand. And I’d learnt a ton. 

So we got back round the table in March 2024, swallowed our pride (it was mostly me doing the swallowing), and cut a new deal within a week.

I was officially back.

A Year-Long Capital Raise

Beginning with around $60k from some of Lee’s friends, we attacked the cap raise with everything we had.

I emailed and called everyone I could possibly think of. The Glampitect mailing list, my industry network, friends, family, anyone. We worked non-stop to get things moving.

But the money wouldn’t come. 

Every day, I’d wake up determined to raise some cash. Every night, I’d end up hunched over my laptop, head in hands, having failed to bring in a single cent.

But Team Posh doesn’t quit. 

We kept going, and going, and going. We believed in our offer, and we weren’t going to give up without a fight.

On the morning of May 9th 2024, we landed our first big investor.

Later that day, we hooked another one.

We suddenly had $166,588 in the pot. Posh Outdoors was back in business.

That small flurry of investment gave us momentum. In late July, we hit $275k. By August we’d passed $400k and had placed an order for 5 “SkyGlass” mirror cabins.

Today, the pot stands at $597,447, with plenty more arriving before we close the raise on Wednesday. It feels like we’re at the end of a long and arduous journey.

But the capital is only a small part of it.

We also had to build the damn thing.

The Skyridge Build

For months, our only job was to raise capital, but we soon had to enter the world of construction.

(Small caveat here: I’m deadly (in a good way) behind a laptop, but I’m even more deadly (in a bad way) with a tool in my hand. So this was all going on while I was typing away.)

Construction comes with a ton of challenges. I won’t bore you with the details, but we’ve had to deal with unit design, building code, utility connections, screw pile installations, unit delivery, and UV wrapping to stop birds flying into the mirrors.

Two weeks ago, we installed our first 5 mirror cabins at Skyridge Glamping. It felt amazing to a catch our first glimpse of the stupendous view through the huge panoramic windows.

Construction is almost finished. The utilities are connected. The decks are being built as I write. Yesterday, we hit “buy” on the interior furniture.

After all these years of dreaming, things have become very real.

Of course, this is all pointless if we don’t have any guests. So, two months ago, I began an advertising campaign to ensure Posh Outdoors would launch with a bang.

The Launch

Since early March, I’ve been advertising the launch of our SkyGlass mirror cabins on Facebook and Instagram. 

People who see the ads can click a link and pay a $35 CAD deposit to get:

1. First access to the booking calendar when we open it (early May)

2. A 20-30% discount on their multi-night booking

3. Access to our “Skyridge VIP” Facebook Group, where I post construction updates

The ads have been a storming success. As of today, we’ve had more than 1,200 VIPs sign up, which has brought in $42,000 of deposit revenue. This has almost covered the ad spend (fronted by our rev share partners).

We’re on track to have at least 1,400 VIPs by the time we open the calendar. If just 10% of those go on to book, we’ll be looking at more than $140,000 USD of booking receipts, before the units even open.

Secretly, I’m hoping for a higher conversion rate and more than $200,000 of booking receipts.

Then you throw in the extra bookings when we open the calendar to the wider public, and things are looking rather bloody good.

I’m not losing my head just yet. But if we bring in a cent more than $150k, I’ll be celebrating like I’ve won the World Cup.

You see, I’ve sacrificed a lot to get here. 

I’ve moved across the Atlantic, away from friends and family, in pursuit of a dream.

At times, my social life has suffered. Think of that year spent alone in Leicester, or the late nights spent in our Edmonton office.

Above all, there have been moments of real stress. Where I thought the dream was about to die, or that I’d be returning to the UK as a failure.

I wrote a dispatch a few weeks ago about how incredibly hard it is to get a glamping business off the ground. I can say that with confidence, because I’ve lived it.

I don’t think I’m particularly talented. I can’t personally design a beautiful glamping site, or film a viral Instagram Reel from scratch. But I have work ethic and stamina, and I know where the pieces need to be placed to get glamping projects over the line.

And that’s what Posh Outdoors will do. We’ll work like our life depends on it, and we’ll put the right people in the right places to ensure every single one of our resorts is a world-class destination.

Step 1 is almost complete. Skyridge Glamping opens in a matter of weeks.

Step 2 is even more exciting. We’ll build Location 2, then Location 3, and so on. We want to do dozens of these.

The Posh Outdoors community round closes in 5 days. Minimum investment is just $100.

If you want to be part of the journey, here’s what you need to do:

Ready to invest?  Head to our WeFunder page and hit “Invest”.

Got questions first? Reply to this email, or schedule a call with me (make sure it’s before April 30th).

Not interested in investing, but like what we’re doing? Please forward this email to anyone who might want to take a look, before we close the round on Wednesday.

No referral links this week. All focus on the cap raise!