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Welcome to the RV Park Mastery Podcast, where you will learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, renegotiate, finance, turn-around and operate RV parks. Your host is the 5th largest owner of RV and mobile home parks in the United States, Frank Rolfe.
When you own an RV park, you will get lots of opinions. Lots of people will come out of nowhere offering their expert guidance on everything known to man, and it's up to you as the business owner to sort out the good ideas and the qualified opinions from those that are not. This is Frank Rolfe for the RV Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about navigating the whole universe of experts and people's opinions on things and trying to sort the good ones, the valuable ones, the ones that will benefit you from the rest of it, which is basically just a bunch of noise. Now, the first thing you have to remember when you own an RV park and run an RV park is that you have to only listen to yourself for the most part, because you always have to run under the assumption that everybody is lying to you. That's why we've always been huge advocates of doing great due diligence, because we know that when you do thorough due diligence, you eliminate the human error of getting other people's opinions.
So when you start from scratch with the RV park, going through all of the different steps to vet its revenue and its expenses and its operating license and all of that, it's key that you don't listen to others. Particularly the seller or the broker, because more than likely they're already disqualified as an expert because they're simply trying to get you to buy and they're trying to screen you from the information that might cause you not to buy. So the first rule when it comes to experts is assume everybody on their face is not telling the truth. Do not suddenly jump onto someone and say, okay, that person seems nice. They're taking me under their wing. They're gonna only give me good advice. That's a great way to get burned. Instead, you have to be the most important expert you know, because you've got good common sense. You understand how to protect your interests. And so you must always rely on yourself first and foremost. Now on anyone else who wants to give you their opinion, the first thing, the methodology would be what is the qualification? Why is this person's opinion more important than yours? Because you're smart. You're an adult.
You've been around the block. You've got good common sense. If someone wants to tell you something, how are what they're saying of more importance than what you already know? So always check the qualifications of anyone trying to give you advice. And if you say, well, this person actually is much more qualified than I am to speak on the issue of this water well, to know how long it will last and what the cost would be to fix it because they've got 30 years of experience with water wells. Okay, then they've got good qualifications. But if it's just some stranger you don't really know, maybe the next door neighbor to the RV park pontificating on all their thoughts, well, they're not really qualified then to tell you that. And the next issue is with any expert giving you information is are they corrupted? Do they have any kind of financial gain from lying to you? Going back to the example of the seller or the broker? Yes, of course they're corrupted. You can't really listen to them because they're going to tell you anything they think you need to hear in order to pull the trigger and buy that RV park. So immediately their input is pretty much off the table.
But there are others out there who also can be corrupted financially. For example, if you talk to someone who services the water well at the RV park, how do you know that the owner hasn't paid that person or dangled a bonus if the deal is completed? And the answer is you really don't. So often the input that you get needs to be weighed against, wait a minute, now is this person really telling you the truth? And it's not just someone who might have been impacted by the current owner that could have been corrupted. But say, for example, you're concerned about the electrical system in the RV park that you're looking at buying. So you go to an electrician and say, okay, what's your expert opinion on this electrical system? And they give you their answer and they say, well, I think you need to replace the whole thing. I think we need to pull out every pole and every wire and start from scratch. Now, even though the owner of the RV park certainly didn't tell them that, they'd never want you to know that. What you also have to wonder is, are they just telling me that 'cause they want to install all those power poles and all those wires? Vendors frequently will make up stories, kind of as crazy as old fishing stories from people who claim they caught seven foot long catfish. And they'll suddenly take things that are in no way broken or needing replacement and puff those into huge issues that will require massive amounts of capital when it's completely untrue.
So it isn't just always the seller or the broker gets to people, manipulates what they might tell you. But also, there's a lot of people out there who will falsely give you information simply 'cause they wanna make a lot of money off of it. Also, look at the qualifications of whoever's giving you the advice as to whether they actually have any skin in the game. In other words, if you've got someone whose license bonded goes through some kind of state certification program, they have much more skin in the game on what they tell you than the average person. Because theoretically, if they give you bad information, you might complain to the state or whatever group gives them that license and endanger their license. And without the license, their business career is over. So people we have found that are licensed under state level or county or city, those are the people you can typically trust a little more because they have a lot more skin in the game than people who don't have any of those licenses or requirements. But probably the big thing is when you hear the information from people who seemingly are qualified, who don't appear corrupted, you still want to go one more step. And that's to potentially get a second opinion.
It's kind of scary in life when you hear stories or you yourself have in your life had situations where people who seemingly qualified, educated, not corrupted, tell you one thing, and then you later find out it was completely false. They had their opinion, but nobody else shares their opinion. You hear this a lot in the medical community. You probably have friends who thought they had cancer or some other disease. They went to the doctor and the doctor said, oh, yes, I'm afraid you're in terrible condition. You had this terrible issue. And then it turns out later to be nothing. You go to another doctor and they say, no, that's not what's wrong with you at all. How shocking. You might have made terrible, terrible changes to your life over bad information from an expert who seemed qualified. And nevertheless, you took action on it and it benefited you zero. And that's why particularly on big decisions, bigger items, you want to get several opinions.
Going back to the example of electrical in the RV Park that the one person is telling you, oh, you know, it needs to all be replaced. Don't do that just based on that one person. I would want to go out and get the opinion of at least one, if not two other electrical companies and say, what do you think about the power system in this RV Park? And don't coach them or guide them when you do that. Don't say to them, well, this expert said this is wrong with it. Do you agree? That's opening the door for them. If they're corrupted to say, oh yeah, you got to replace it all. That's for sure. Instead, just say, Hey, we're buying this RV park. We want you to go in and look at the electrical system and just give us the thumbs up it's all fine. And see what they come back to you with. If the first person tells you the whole thing needs to go and the second person tells you is completely fine. I think I would get a third opinion then the tiebreaker to see how they cast their vote. If they come back and also say, yeah, it's looking fine.
Well then that's probably the correct answer. There's always safety in numbers when you're dealing with these kinds of issues. And any expert who's good should have no problem in you getting the second opinion. I've never seen a surgeon or an issue in the medical community where they said, no, you can't get a second opinion. You rascal. I won't work with you ever again if you get that second opinion. Most experts realize that their opinion is just that it's an opinion based on experience, but others may have not shared that same experience subset and they may render different judgment. There's nothing wrong with that at all. The bottom line to it all is when people give you lots of information and you will get a lot of it pouring in the door with any RV park. You have to realize that most people are good natured. They're well intentioned, but a whole lot of their input is not something you should even ponder or act upon because they're simply not qualified or disqualified. And at the end of the day, what's the most important decision you can humanly make is what you think, because you are the greatest expert of all. This is Frank Rolfe for the RV Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.