It’s OK to be proud of being the owner of an RV Park, but you still want to build a firewall to protect your private time. In this RV Park Mastery podcast, we’re going to show you some real-world tricks to maintain your privacy and give you the freedom to be both an owner but also someone who has a happy home life.
Episode 120: How To Stay Anonymous Transcript
I've never met an RV Park owner who was anything less than proud of the asset that they owned. They love telling people, "Yeah, I own this RV Park." They would proudly tell all their friends and family of the RV Park that they purchased. However, at the same time, you have to weigh the benefits of having a private life and perhaps being a bit more anonymous. This is Frank Rolfe of the RV Park Mastery Podcast. We're going to talk about methods to stay anonymous. Methods to build a firewall between your business life and your private life. Now, why would you want that? Well, here's the problem. When you buy an RV Park, unless you're going to self-manage it, and even if you do self-manage it, you want to have a nice blend of property ownership, along with time with your spouse, time with your family, private time, the ability to sleep. You don't want to have it to consume your entire life. Most people do not buy an RV Park, because the intention is they were so bored they wanted to have something new that could just totally satiate all of their energy. No, most people want the RV Park as an investment.
They like it, they enjoy it, but they want to have other attributes to their life, too. And the problem is, if you don't take steps to build that firewall between your business and your private life, then it will overwhelm it. You'll start getting calls 24 hours a day, and next thing you know, you don't have a very good private life. And then what's the point of making money with the RV Park if you don't enjoy your life? So here are some very simple, practical methods for all RV Park owners to remain more anonymous. Number one is simple. Get a separate cell phone just for your RV Park business, super simple. Instead of carrying one phone, you'll have to start carrying two phones. But you know what? Cell phones are so tiny anymore, you'll never even notice the difference. This is not like the days back in the '80s and '90s where cell phones were like bricks with an antenna on them. It'd be nearly impossible to carry two of them. It was hard enough to carry one. Today's modern cell phone slips effortlessly into your pocket, only occupying even a tiny portion of your pocket. So yeah, you could carry two of them.
And cell phones are very inexpensive. If you get a second cell phone on your existing cell plan, what is that going to cost you? Not very much, $20 to $50 a month, probably additional to have that phone, you don't need a fancy one. Any old phone will work yet you can still get a nice iPhone, but it would be separate from your private life. Now why is this important? Well, because a lot of people, when you give out your number, they're not going to be so gracious as to when they call you. And you don't want to get a call at 2:00 in the morning over basically nothing. So when you have the separate cell phone, what do you do? Well, you can turn the ringer off whenever you decide, "Well, that's it for today." And then turn the ringer back on when you're like, "Okay, let's start the day now." Have an event you have to be at with your family, then you'll turn the phone off. Have to go to church, turn the phone off. Anytime that's not appropriate, anytime that you want your privacy, you can simply turn the phone ringer on and off.
That alone is probably the best way to have the separation. It also might help you if you utilize a PO Box for your mailing address as opposed to your home address. Now why is that necessary? Well, people will send you things from time to time if you give out your home address. You know the drill. In today's Internet, anyone can find anything if they have your address and your name. So better yet, maybe don't give people your address. If you don't have a business address, just create one. PO Boxes are crazy cheap, not expensive. Every city in America has them, every small town has one. But if you separate your cell phone, where you have a business phone and a personal phone, and you turn the business phone off at the same time every day or anytime that you prefer, and you take all your mail for the RV Park through a PO Box, well then right there, that's the best two steps I can think of. But here are some others. When you're out on property and if you don't self-manage and you have a manager on the property, don't use your last name.
I know this sounds really, really weird, but there's no law in America that says you have to use your last name. So I like just to be Frank from the management company, because if I don't give anyone my last name, they can't just go to Intelius and try and find Frank with a nationwide search, that isn't going to come up with anything. You got to have the last name in there. And we all at the time give out our last names, I think because we were classically trained as children to do so, maybe in the roll call in school or whatever, but you don't have to. You could just be Frank from the management company. There's no law that says, "Oh, no, here's my full name." In the army, if you get captured, you have to give them your name, rank and serial number, so they do have a law on it. But in a non-military world, no, it's really not required. Also, don't carry business cards around with you. Because when you carry business cards around with you, they often have too much information, namely your last name. Once again, nobody needs your last name, not a customer, not the manager.
No one needs to have your last name, not ever. And if you don't give them business cards with your last name on it, they'll never figure out what it is. So why in the world would you carry them? Besides that you have to pay for them and then you have to remember to carry them. For the last 20 years now, when people say you have a business card, "No ran out of them." "Well, who are you again?" "I'm Frank from the management company. Here's my phone number," which of course ties to my other cell phone. Also, you always want to be from the management company. You never want to be the owner of the RV Park. Again it's good to be proud. It's good to have an ego. It's good to say, "This is my property and I'm proud of it." But the problem is "What are you getting from that?" And sometimes you're going to give up your privacy, if you go around all the time saying, "I'm the owner." When you're from the management company, you're never going to get as much pushback from managers, customers or anyone, because you don't seem to be the decision-maker.
And people don't tend to press as much when you're not the decision-maker. So just being from the management company is probably a good way to do it. And don't ever tell anyone, "Hey, I'm the owner." Also, don't ever get too friendly with a manager, if you're not going to self-manage. If you self-manage, it doesn't matter. But if you're not going to self-manage and the RV Park is just an additional asset you own, additional income stream, then don't get too friendly with the manager. That's where a lot of things go bad. Because when you get too friendly with them, you drop your guard and then suddenly they do figure out everything about you and that only can cause you problems. So you want to have a good business-working relationship with people. But if you need friends, don't look to your RV Park manager for that, find friends outside of work is probably a good way to do it. Also, if you are a non-resident managing owner, then it would behoove you not to show up at the property, when you do show up, in a fancy car or in fancy clothes.
It's probably not going to help your RV Park, if you show up in a Lamborghini. Even though you're proud of that Lamborghini, I would suggest you take the worst car you own. I have always used either a pickup truck, then I had a Jeep Cherokee, now I have a Dodge Challenger. But I've never gone for really high-end cars, simply because it sets probably a bad standard for the manager and it may offend people and so just drive a normal car and such. And then finally one of the best moments in life, if you truly want to separate your business life and your personal life with an RV Park, and you may not be able to achieve it on the first one, but if you have at least two of them, you may want to hire someone as the layer between you and the manager, because that takes you completely out of the loop. Then no one's looking to you, nobody calls you. The chain of command is if there's a problem in the RV Park, they contact that intermediary shock-absorber person and then that person talks to you, but no longer do you converse with anyone in the field. Now the downside, of course, is you may not get a lot of information flow when you do that, because it's filtered, right? So that's a problem.
If you're going to do that, you're going to have to go out in the field and see your properties more often. You might want to be much more watchful of social media reviews, things like that, because you don't want to have someone tell you, "Oh, things are going great," when they're really not. But at the same time, when you have someone who interfaces with the manager outside of yourself, it does open up a lot of time and freedom on your part, because you are truly out of the loop. The only time your phone then rings is if there's something that that person can't answer and that gives you a lot of relief. And don't forget that one of the great assets of being an RV Park owner is in fact time. The magic of time is the most precious of all commodities. We can't buy time, no one can buy time. So you want to control your time. You want the peace of mind that your time is your time and not let people interrupt it. This is Frank Rolfe with the RV Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.