Every entrepreneur has that lightbulb moment, a pivotal point in life where your understanding of how the world works and how you want to work converge, and — lightbulb — you have a business idea.
For Jeremy Timco, his spark of entrepreneurial inspiration came when he couldn’t find a place to park.
Like so many Americans stuck in the persistent paradigm of “corporate job + rampant consumerism = the rat race,” Jeremy had enough. He made the radical decision to buy an old RV. He intended to fix ‘er up and drive around the country for the better part of a year. There was only one problem, it wasn’t always easy to find a place to park an RV. Even RV parks were problematic, their infrastructure was dated and the customer experience could use a massive makeover.
Thousands of people were hopping in campers, pulling teardrops, and converting vans and school buses to live like an elevated nomads, for a weekend or for a lifetime. And what about work-from-anywhere corporate types and solopreneurs, travel nurses, adult children wanting to be close to aging parents, freedom-seeking retirees to people just like him, fed up with working all of the time to support a life that was no life at all and living life on the road?
In an instant, Jeremy saw the future…and the future is mobile.
He soon made another radical decision, embarking on a small business adventure with his family. After all, eight months of adventure travel wasn’t enough to satisfy Jeremy’s idea of his family living their best life. He wanted a full-time transformation and freedom from the hamster wheel.
What’s more, the industry numbers don’t lie, the campground ownership and leisure/adventure travel enterprises were growing like gangbusters. The iron was hot. STRIKE!
It wasn’t easy to find an existing campground that aligned with Jeremy’s vision for his quality-of-life upgrade and small business proprietorship, but he persisted until he secured a distressed concern in Holden Beach, NC. And thus, Holden Beach RV Campground was most definitely “a thing.”
And it was no easy thing.
Jeremy still held down a day job and a long commute. His kids were young and his wife was left to lean on her ingenuity and pure grit to hold it down at the campground.
His idea of their best life was more fits and starts than financial freedom.
What’s more, no one had the bandwidth to run the business like a business. Because he couldn’t be proactive about his financial foundation, Jeremy missed out on opportunity after opportunity to bolster the company coffers with loans or incentives.
Filing tax extensions didn’t buy him time, it cost him growth and expansion…and delayed his dream of quitting that distracting day job.
The learning curve was hard on Holden Beach RV Campground. The Timcos knew just enough to get by, doing their own Quickbooks and preparing taxes with the “help” of a local CPA who didn’t pay them a lot of attention or provide bookkeeping. Ouch.
Despite these pain points, Jeremy was dedicated to cleaning up the campground and getting scalable. He launched a $1mil expansion and the financial management was a behemoth. Tax bills were getting higher and things were piling up; the cost of “not doing it right” was starting to get real, very real.
When Jeremy ran into Campground Accounting at an industry trade show, it couldn’t have come at a better time. Although onboarding professional accounting and CPA services was a big investment, and he didn’t yet fully understand the benefits of this kind of business partnership, he was relieved to find an industry-focused and proactive team player who would become actively involved in the profitability of Holden Beach RV Campground.
Flash forward four years, and the buzz around the campground isn’t about how we’re gonna get everything done in a mere 24-hrs a day; it’s about the new Cruisin’ Tiki boat attraction and community events happening up and down their newly expanded property line. Jeremy and his wife have been paying themselves, consistently and well, providing consistent income to the family.
Holden Beach expanded; a second business, a management company, was formed to optimize business models and structures. This campground was going to be a gamechanger for generations of his family.
Jeremy credits this expectation-smashing growth and development to top-notch accounting and business development in partnership with Campground Accounting.
“I trust Donna so much at this point,” he shares, “she is so invested in capturing opportunities and she always sees the bigger picture. Donna is proactive, she sought out government programs that enabled us to buy 27 acres of land and accelerated depreciation of a miscategorized asset that resulted in a $40K swing in taxes.”
Jeremy adds up the money he has saved with elevated accounting and compares it with the spend— it’s a non-issue. And now, professional partnership and upleveled relationships are non-negotiable.
Which brings us back to his lightbulb moment, you don’t need a house to live in this world.
“That RV Life” is a freedom-focused lifestyle — and it’s also inexpensive housing. Holden Beach RV Park has a mandate of stewardship and a responsibility to reliably provide safety, electricity, and WIFI.
Those who do it right will invest in more than just infrastructure, they will invest in creating more unique experiences for people. Hello Glamping!
For those of you building your own spark of entrepreneurial inspiration around campground ownership, Jeremy has some advice. “Slow down. Stop being so cheap. Pay for services. This is how you grow.” (While this may seem like a shameless plug, it is indeed a fact that empowering a team is the key to sustainable and exponential business growth in alignment with your intentions.)
Now, about that Water Park…..
Bringing Jeremy’s vision to life wasn’t easy, but it sure was fun. When we first met Jeremy, he was dealing with an old maintenance problem and had big plans with no time or financing. He had been running Holden Beach RV Park for a few years and the lift of managing everything was starting to dull his enthusiasm for campground ownership. Over time, we built a rapport until he felt comfortable and confident making sophisticated and informed business decisions.
Together, we:
Entrepreneurs, legacy-builders, and stewards of family businesses, if you want to make the most of your campground investment without it taking the most out of you, meet Campground Accounting. We are the full-service CPA and RV enthusiast team that delivers a way out of operations overwhelm, decision-fatigue, and fear of surprises…. because there’s more to taxes than being on time, and there’s more to life than business.
Get to know us. Pull up a camp chair at campgroundaccounting.com.
