MinnieMom Campground

dlwdwdvc, you are too sweet! Thank you! While I deeply appreciate the kind words, we are nothing special. Mostly I think our story shows if we can do it, anyone can. Maybe from that perspective it would be worth sharing, as a way to encourage others. I have been keeping notes for writing another book on building Standing Pines. There are not many books in this niche, so maybe ours could help someone else.

DH would love to do a sideline building tiny houses on wheels! But first I need him to build a dozen or so for Standing Pines. Those go knocked out of the current budget, but are very much in the plans for the future. My "paper napkin" sketch for phase III involves building out an adjacent but separate tiny home community. That's likely 15+ years in the future, so lots of time to dream and plan for it.

I think we have a promising new lead for investors. EquityNet.com only deals with accredited investors. They have over 20,000 in their network. Entrepreneurs can list their opportunities on the website. It's free to complete a basic profile, $300 per month for a "do it yourself" option to post all relevant info and communicate with their investors or $3,000 per month to have them feature you as a recommended listing. I had the first conversation with them last week and signed up for one month of the premium service. Since getting back from our anniversary trip Saturday, DH has spent much time with contractors on construction or planning stuff. I've spent just about every waking moment refining our materials and uploading them to EquityNet. We have a follow up meeting at 3pm today. If all goes well, EquityNet will send an email blast featuring Standing Pines to all 20,000+ accredited investors signed up with them next week.

Please cross your fingers for us. We need 18 more investors at the minimum $25,000 each to close the construction loan and keep moving forward. I'm betting on EquityNet as the solution that gets us these final 18 investors. I asked about their email open and click through rates. They said 56% and 1%-3%, respectively. Math: 20,000*56% = 11,200 accredited investors opening the email to read about Standing Pines. Let's say only 1% of them are interested enough to click and go review our detailed profile and documents. 11,200 * 1% = 112 accredited investors reviewing our materials, if we assume conservatively and say only 1% of those accredited investors who open the email click to read our profile. I need at least 16% of those 112 for a total of 18 people to be interested enough to buy our promissory notes. Frankly, that's what I paid the $3,000 for - - access to those ~100 people to try to interest 18 of them enough to buy in. Fingers crossed, prayers said and a little pixie dust could not hurt.

The land clearing going really well. They've rough cleared ~20 acres already, with another ~10 planned in the next two weeks. They are leaving the larger trees for us. We will plan around these trees so that Standing Pines actually has some pines (and oaks and persimmons and assorted other) trees in the primary camping spaces. Plus we will almost certainly transplant other trees once the sitework is done from the 40+ acres of undisturbed land currently just growing trees. I'm about this close to ordering a greenhouse for the backyard so we can start seeds, cuttings and some small plants to get them growing over the winter for late spring planting as the sitework is completed.

Let's see, what else? The electrical designs are (finally!) done. The blueprint for the welcome center is (finally!) done. The pool builder has submitted for permit; that seems to be going well. There are some cost increases that I'm negotiating with various sub contractors. The local advisory team is meeting this Friday, with at least one planning to join me onsite for a preview tour. Oh, last week we invited another long term friend to join the Board of Directors. She's going to be a great add!

And now the thing that makes me the happiest today. Are you ready?

I have a temporary office! Hurray - I'm not working out of my bedroom anymore!!!! We have temporarily repurposed the large two bedroom RV that was our temporary home for a year (and future RV rental) into an interim office. I've my desk set up in the back bedroom, the living room is well set as a temp meeting room and the main bedroom will be where I hide to take an occasional nap. That also gives me the kitchen I used to feed the family for a year as well as the full (TINY!) bathroom in the interim office space. That makes me so happy!

Anyways, overall there are still challenges to be met but it is going well. Here's hoping everyone else is having a fantastic day and week and month! Please drop a note to share a quick hello - it's always fantastic to read other comments here!!!

Hello MO friends! Well, we are rocking and rolling! Land clearing is going well, we are up to $175,00 from investors and the new campaign at EquityNet kicks off tomorrow.

GC and I are ironing out the final details of the contract. He's about ready to sign on the dotted line that the work will be complete by July 2024. Y'ALL!!!!!! We could very soon start legitimately planning to open in July 2024!!!!!! It's later than I wanted, sooner than I feared. I'll take it!

Ai continues to be super helpful. Plus, sometimes it is simply fun. Here's a concept video with music that I completely generated using different AI tools in about 20-30 minutes just to see what it could do. Obviously this is for fun, not a serious commercial attempt at marketing. But it is remarkable in its potential.



I was interested in having some custom music created for Standing Pines until I started pricing it. Um...no. Not yet. Instead, I spent some time searching until I found 5 albums by a group willing to sell complete, perpetual commercial rights to me for $200 for all five albums. That gives me 4+ hours of music for video backgrounds, social media posts, background music in the store, pool and anywhere I want around the resort, in animations or anything else I want to do with it. That's a good deal in my opinion.

Also, the student project with USC yielded some very helpful data from a survey of our target future guests. 80%+ always or very often book their camping trips on a campground's direct webpage. That made the decision to outsource our site much easier for me. Also, happily, the professionals who are creating the new website are working from my beta on canva which reduced the cost to less than $1,000 total. Here's the link to the new website for Standing Pines. I'd love to get your thoughts. I see some things I like a lot and other things I want the team developing this to adjust.

Let's see, what else? We brought a new director onto the BOD, which I think will be helpful. The local advisory board continues to meet once a month. If nothing else, that keeps me on track, making sure I do updates for them. Many of the long lead time items have now been ordered to keep us on schedule.

Mostly, this week has been like:

WOW! We are really doing this!!

Coming soon: land clearing videos - the first visual/physical progress towards creating Standing Pines Resort!

I just watched
Can not imagine needing any further suggestions
Love love love the visual movement and artwork and color and music.
Can I just keep watching over & over again ?
I’ll try to be good until so you can gauge an honest reaction … Haha
Singing “ with every moment we’ll find a new star “ already in my mind After watching just once
Congratulations for the path looks bright for your family dream


“Thanks for singing along to my earth thinking song… “
I just managed to somehow see your private family posts Altho I did not remember my password to sign into google and have never joined in to YouTube , etc.
Anyway I am pretty sure that was your daughter playing on her toy guitar … and singing about recycling as she made up the words to the message all spontaneously. 
I hope you have saved this in other ways to Keep it forever. 
(Hint: Watch the family montage of clips of Taylor , yes that Taylor , to her Christmas song . I do not think she has produced a Xmas album and assume she only has one holiday song . But the song written at a young age and the family video is something I would have suggested for the idea about adding your journey to your new Standing Pines site . A get to know as the pine trees grow . 
I hope you believe I am sincere . Maybe my ideas aren’t helpful and only provide one second of faith and pixie dust or pine seeds falling to the earth . 
P.S? I admit I watched your video again I just had to ! 

As an accountant, if another accountant says something is too dull…

But hey I’ve got football on one of my big screen tvs and Bachelor in Paradise on the other. It’s an exciting life I lead.

Happy Pre-Turkey Day!

Best wishes for all MO friends for this holiday week! Standing Pines Resort continues to inch forward. Now, I'm really looking forward to celebrating the holidays with guests at Standing Pines next year!


Let's see, there were a couple of engineering things to work through this week, along with GC input on some minor changes. The land clearing is almost complete; I expect that to be final next week. Then, excavation for the pond begins, with excess dirt becoming backfill to level out some of the elevation changes. Fun!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nope, they suck.  Thanks, though.