Acquisitions Anonymous - #1 for business buying, selling and operating - $8.5mm Ski Resort For Sale - Acquisitions Anonymous 183

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

Michael Girdley (@Girdley) and Mills Snell (@thegeneralmills) need to take a due diligence trip to British Columbia for this one...-----Thanks to our sponsors!CloudBookkeeping offers adaptable solutions to businesses that want to focus on growth with a “client service first” approach. They offer a full suite of accounting services, including sophisticated reporting, QuickBooks software solutions, and full-service payroll options.Subscribe to weekly our Newsletter and get curated deals in your inboxAdvertise with us by clicking here Do you love Acquanon and want to see our smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. Do you enjoy our content? Rate our show! Follow us on Twitter @acquanon Learnings about small business acquisitions and operations. For inquiries or suggestions, email us at [e-mail]

Hey, Michael here. Welcome to Acquisitions Anonymous, the Internet's number one podcast about small business, buying, operating, and making jokes. Me and Mills had a great time talking about a ski resort for sale that is listed up in British Columbia, which is 11 hours north of Vancouver. And we went all kinds of places about ski resorts,

how to think about them, why you're the lucky buyer, and then maybe how to make this deal work. So pretty fun one. And I hope you enjoy. it as much as we did making it. Here's the episode. Hey, Michael here. Want to talk to you about today's sponsor for the episode, which is cloudbookkeeping.com. So cloud bookkeeping is actually run by my neighbor, Charlie.

So I've met him in person and can attest that he's a real human being and a good person. And what cloud bookkeeping does is offer a full suite of bookkeeping services all in the cloud for you around QuickBooks and other technologies that you're using as a a small business owner. So if you're interested in getting the bookkeeping part of running a business off of your plate and focusing on running your business, Charlie and his team are one to call. They can put together a bunch of other stuff in terms of helping you manage and grow your business besides just bookkeeping, sophisticated reporting, definitely helping you get your quickbooks online set up in the right way, and a number of things around payroll as well. So

definitely know them and recommend them. If you want to find out more about cloud bookkeeping, you can go to their website at cloudbookkeeping.com, reach out to Charlie. I know many of you have and see if he can help you, make running your business easier and more fun by letting them help with a lot of the bookkeeping solutions. And when you call, mention this podcast, it would help us and help Charlie know that we're supporting him as well. So thanks a bunch. and cloudbookkeeping.com as the sponsor for today's episode. Mills, I think we had another, it's time for an emergency pod moment.

And it was last night when I saw this ski resort for sale in British Columbia. It's following on Twitter right now. Everybody's signing the NDA. The broker's inundated because one person tweeted it. Let me share this. Well, the funniest thing is, let me talk about how it went down. So if you're on YouTube, you can see this. If not, I'll walk us through it.

So this showed up on YouTube. There's this whole community of small business Twitter, which probably a lot of our, would you say somewhere between 100% and 100% of our listeners come from Twitter? But anyway. Don't forget about our moms. Our moms make up the 1% that are not.

99.99%. By the way, we just have had, and thank you for everybody that's subscribing. please subscribe on all your devices. We have passed $60,000 downloads per month across the episodes we're doing. So that's $720,000 a year run rate. So we're not that far away from getting over that million download a year thing, which is kind of crazy compared to where we started, Mills.

We were like 200. 200 listens, yes. I remember when like 800 listeners was like, a big deal, you know? Yeah. And it's true. Like something like this, you just got to keep grinding out and making good content. And it just snowballs over time by just making sure you deliver something people want,

which turns out to be jokes about deals that we don't like. So there you go. Our favorite pastime. It's fun. You know, there was another comment on YouTube where the guy's like, why don't you do some deals you do like? And I'm like, it comes back to this theme. Like, we're trying to make this real.

for folks and find interesting deals and go dig into them. But at the same time, it reflects how real life really works. Like, you're going to have to go look at 100 or 1,000 deals to find one that really looks good. And, like, either we fake it and lie about the deals or only come up with good deals or, like, we make it real. And I think we've chosen to make it real. Yeah. And I mean, I think it's indicative right of what people who are searching for a business to buy really go through, which is that, you know, you can be super discouraging because you keep looking at things and you find reasons not to buy, but it only takes one. All right. So let me, let me pitch you on this deal. So, you know, I'm a big skier. Love skiing. My favorite, my favorite winter activity besides sitting in

hot tubs. And so friend of the pod, who offered to be a guest, by the way. And so we always appreciate what people have to be guests, and we didn't respond to him. So sorry, Ben, you seem like a nice guy. But he's up in Austin. Tweets a lot. You can follow him. B-E-N-T-I-G-G. It writes good stuff about small business and has a newsletter. So he says, want to buy a ski resort. Well, now you can for only $8.5 million. Powder King is a Canadian ski mountain in British Columbia with 900 acres of skiable terrain, 37 runs, three lifts, and it even has a lake resort as a bonus. and he says, too bad, there are no loans in Canada. And then he has a couple pictures, which I'm showing here,

of these ski runs that are out. And, man, you look at this picture, Mills, this appears to be out in the middle, nowhere. All the best ones are, right? To some extent, I mean, I think if you look at what makes a ski resort really, really good, like, it's a combination of good skiing and good amenities near the skiing, right?

If you think about in North America, like the best, most famous kind of ski areas, like they all have something in common. Like, it's like Vale, Crested Butte, Aspen, Park City. Like, these are all places in there. I'm certain there's more Stove, Vermont, I guess, is another one. I've never been there, but people talk about it like this. These are places where there's stuff around the ski resort to actually be an actual human. Like, you need a grocery store if you're going to live.

stay there or you need houses, right? All those have to be kind of amenities nearby, and a lot of the best ones have little towns, like right next to them. So this one, I'm not sure it has that, but I think we'll figure that out. And then I would add, there's a second picture I just pulled up,

which appears to be a chairlift that is pretty old. Like, I don't know if you see this picture of this chairlift. That is an old rusty chairlift, best I could tell. So that we have that going on here, with this particular listing. Yeah, I'm with you. Cool. All right, so I will pull up here the listing.

It's actually listed by a real estate broker in McKenzie British Columbia. Do you open to look up where McKenzie British Columbia is? I'm looking up Powder Mountain right now. It's, let's see, Wieskying. There's actually, I think it's kind of confusing because there's a Powder Mountain in Utah that says is North America's largest ski resort.

Powder Mountain, I've been to, and I can definitely tell you a lot of things about Powder Mountain, and there's an interesting story behind Powder Mountain, but it's totally different in a different country. We're in Canada with this one. But pull back up the listing, because I think it says something about... This is Powder King Mountain Resort. Powder King, that's what it is. Powder Mountain is a totally different place. And I think there's actually multiple Powder Mountain.

but the one in Utah, the one in Utah is actually a really interesting story. It is, if you look at where a lot of the ski areas are in Utah, they're around Salt Lake City. And then on the other side of the Wasatch Range, which is the mountain range there, you have a lot of the ski resorts, and some are on the west part of the little mountain range and some are on the east. And so Park City is on the east. Deer Valley is on the east of that mountain range. And if you go up north, north of Salt Lake City, there are some ski resorts around the lake. And so, this little town called Eden, and Powder Mountain is one of those, and it's one of three in the area, and it was originally supposed to get sold to developers who were going to come in and

build all these, like, houses targeting at buyers like me and you from out of state that we're going to come in and quote-unquote ruin the place. And some tech guys from San Francisco came along and bought Powder Mountain. So they were these guys who did event-based stuff and were really good at running tech events. And so they decided to become property developers with the idea of creating like this Powder Mountain type Utopia, which was going to be a place for like the elite of Silicon Valley to come to and there was going to be like this kind of commune feeling to it and like an

elitism sort of thing to it. And I have some friends that kind of bought into this idea and bought lots and all this kind of stuff. And then it turned out that running an event company is really different than developing a property in a community. So it kind of ground to the whole. But the ski area is amazing at Powder Mountain because they limit the number of tickets to only $1,500 per day, and it's enormous. Like, it's one of my favorite places to ski in the whole world. But this is different.

This is some random place in British Columbia. This is Powder King. And I'm just thinking, right, one of the things that you decide when you're trying to decide on a vacation is how do I get there? And I'm not really sure where you would fly in. for getting to, McKinsey, British Columbia. I pulled up the pictures here,

and I guess I'm sharing the map of where McKinsey, British Columbia is. So basically, if you take Vancouver, which is next to Seattle and British Columbia, and it looks like you fly north, like an hour and a half, you end up out in the middle of nowhere of this place called McKinsey,

which is where the ski area is next to a lake. and it's like almost before you get to whatever this next, no, it's like halfway up the province. But like you're so far north, you're almost to Alaska. That's basically how you get there. So you basically drive, you have to drive from Vancouver past Whistler,

which I guess you've heard of Whistler, like one of the best areas in the world. Also famous for mountain biking. And then you drive another like five hours, and then you get to this place. So it is really, really out there. Let me do the math on how long it takes you to get there.

Directions to, what's the name of this place again? Powder King. Powder King. Powder King Mountain Resort. So if you want to fly to get to this thing, you can't. It's an 11-hour drive from Vancouver. Okay. Yeah, so there's that.

Therein lies the problem. All right, we have a listing, though. We can read, right? get some more info on this. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Before you start pooping on it, let's talk about it. So we have the pictures that come with it, and it looks just gorgeous. It's just kind of what you'd expect to happen up in the middle of nowhere in Canada. Like, look at this lake. Oh, my God. Look at this boat. Oh, my God. Look at there's a picnic table. Look at this lake. Oh, my God. All right, so I can see how that's appealing. So let's move on. So here's the listing

from Colliers. Do you want me to go ahead and read it, or do you want to read it? read it. Yeah, you go ahead. All right. It's called Powder King Mountain Resort and Collegals, please present the sale of a fully integrated all-season master plan resort located in northern British Columbia. This offer includes both the Powder King Mountain Resort, as well as the O'oh, Azuseta Lake Resort, located the base of Pine Pass, which connects the Peace River District to British Columbia's McGregor-Kar-Caribou region. Together with the Azu-Zeta Lake Resort, Powder King represents a once-on-lifetime opportunity to step into a world-class winter sports haven that lives up to its name.

By the way, this shows you how middle of nowhere this is. They're referring to a bunch of places in reference to how far it is to this place. And I haven't even heard of those other places except for British Columbia. I've never heard of the Peace River District, the Caribou region, the Pine Pass. Like, I'd never even heard of these things. All right. The Pynoddark King Mountain Resort is an all-season destination ski resort that offers over 900 acres of skiable terrain, 37 runs, three lifts, and over 40 feet of average annual snowfall.

The area is world-renowned for snow consistency and quality is ranked as number four in North America, number one in Canada for snow. The resort has a master plan agreement with the province, which allows for base area development ongoing to build-out services and residential hotel development. There's a three-phase development plan which allows for land acquisitions, real estate development, commercial development, ski runs, lifts, and summer recreation activities, listing price, 8.25 million Canadian, which that's what, like $6.5 million? U.S.? Real Money?

It's impressive that they listed it. I was saying, yeah. It's impressive that they listed it with Colliers because Collier's is like one of the largest commercial brokerages. I would have fully expected this to have been like, you know, some local, you know, real estate broker who is like, sure, I'll take the list in. Let's see what we can get.

But, I mean, Collier's has some distribution, which is why we're finding out about it because they are, they're a real firm. They're a legit firm and they're massive. Yeah, super interesting. Okay, 50 room, features a 50-room hotel, a dining room and lodge with a licensed pub, a day-use cafeteria, two cabins with staff accommodations, master plan with extensive expansion, existing development infrastructure, including comprehensive private water systems, sewage treatment, and natural gas, service and accessory building, hydroelectric power, natural gas, onsite, and expandable sewage treatment facilities. And then it has the summer resort as well, which is located six kilometers north of the Powder King Hill. And I guess when you buy 900 acres, that includes a 340 acre of lake, you, you can have two buildings on the property that are six kilometers apart. Is that how I should think about this? I think so. Oh my God, it looks so beautiful. Okay. So what do you think? Are you ready to,

are you ready to make a run at buying a ski resort up in British Columbia? I think it's really interesting that, you know, this is a real estate play, obviously, because, you know, how else are you going to buy 900 acres and buy it as an operating business? I think, though, this is one of those cases that I've seen a bunch of times where the value of the assets is just massive compared to the value of the cash flow that those assets produce. Right. If you look at, you know, like timber tracks and things that are very like kind of commodity-based or, you know, kind of asset intensive in terms of ground floor and kind of the just the capital

to get into it. We looked at a really, really large fish farming operation, and it was like, you know, $100 million was the book value of the assets, but they only generated like a million and a half dollars of free cash flow. So it's like, well, probably not the highest and best use of these assets, right? The land and the ponds and everything. But you look at people who do this professionally by operating real estate and run it as a business. There's a bunch of these kind of in, you know, in different parts of the world. I just went to one not that long ago. really, really nice development called Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina. And really large real estate, you know, private equity firm, a GP bought it.

And it is amazing how, you know, how much cash flow they're able to extract out of it. The problem is, is that I think, you know, in real estate, location, location, location, obviously this is very, I think this is going to be very difficult to monetize. They also don't say anything about any of the revenue or cash flow dynamics of this property. right now, current. 100%. So let me read a quote. By the way, people are like,

Gurdley, why do you invest time building an audience on Twitter? It's because if you come out and you talk about stuff that's going on or you share interesting stuff, you can harness the power and learn so much from the comments. You could also be made dumber by the comments.

So the cool thing that Ben did was share this with his whole audience. I think he's got 20,000 followers or so. and if that number's off, I apologize, Ben. But so, like, he put this out there. Here's some of the quotes. One of the replies, this is a terrible business. This tweet should say, if you're looking to light $8.5 million on fire,

this is a great way to do it. I grew up ski racing and loved the sport, and I've seen Mount Burke where I grew up skiing and go through five different ownership groups. This is a, and here's another one. And this is the one that has me most worried about the possible. for this resort. I live in British Columbia and I am a huge snowboarder. This deal floated around a group of entrepreneurs and riders. Unfortunately, the terrain is subpar at best relative to top

ten resorts. The location is terrible. The amenities are not existing and the weather patterns are trash for good show, are good snow. Eight and a half million is a good deal for the current owner, L.O.L. So anyway, just kidding. It's just so good. These replies, you got to appreciate that. I mean, people, people do make money, right, owning assets like this. Otherwise, it wouldn't, right, it wouldn't actually, nobody would own them. They wouldn't be publicly available. I know that some municipalities, like, what's the one outside of Denver, Winter Park, I think, is owned by, I think it's owned by, like, the Denver municipal area. That's how it got, that's how it got started.

There was something a few years ago where they divest. it. Okay. It's privately, but anyway, don't quote me on that. But I think you bring up a really good point, which is like, like, skiing is very much like location, location, location, right? And like, this is one of those markets where you would want to look at it as a buyer and realize, oh, there's really like three types of, there's three main owners, owners of

ski resorts out there. You have Vail Corporation and I'm blanking on the name of the other one that's publicly traded. Like those two are like number one and number two in the market. Like Vale has gone and been inquisitive for a long time, right? They own Park City. They own Breckenridge. They own Vale, of course. They own Beaver Creek, a bunch of different ones, Keystone.

And then they also own some in like New Zealand and Japan, all this stuff. So they've been buying up Stowe and all these kind of premier properties and then turning them into a big network because they realize something very fascinating, which is, you know, skiing as a once in a lifetime or once a year event for people, so they spend up for like a really, really good experience. So like last time I went skiing, do you know what the day pass rate was if you just walked up for a one day pass for an adult to ski? Mills, would you like to hazard a guess? $150 to $175.

I went to a, I went to steamboat Springs, which is not the most expensive resort in the world. You know, it's not Vail or Aspen. it was $275 for no advance one-day purchase. Wow. So some of these other ones like, so what Vail Corporation has realized is they can do two things. One is like they have so much pricing power, right? Because it's a destination thing.

They have captive people on the mountain. Like once you're in Steamboat Springs or you're in Aspen, there's like one choice. You can go to Vail Resorts or not ski. Those are your choices. And then the second thing, Vail has realized is they can create a network and sell subscription passes, right?

This epic pass kind of thing is what they have where you pay $1,000 or $800 for the year and you get to ski unlimited. And so that network- At any resort in their network. At any resort in their network with some blackout dates and all that kind of stuff. And so there's two main passes for that kind of stuff

and then there's a bunch of other random ones. So your third ownership group that you can be part of is random ski resort out in the middle of nowhere. That's not as good as the other one. And so that creates a phenomenal, where the big guys have a huge advantage, and they have gone up and paid up for all the really good resorts.

And so you have to ask yourself, okay, this is one of those times where the market has been rolled up by other players, and you have to ask them why nobody else cares about this mountain. Like, why didn't Vail Corporation buy it? Why didn't any of the other folks buy it, especially during the zero interest rate kind of phenomenon years? So that's kind of your first red flag,

and you want to understand, like, oh, why didn't the classical operator go ahead and buy something like this? And maybe because the snow sucks. sucks. Or it's too far away. I think let's talk about revenue though in in these types of businesses because you mentioned ticket sales, which is the obvious one because it's it's a, it's kind of sticker shock. But the way that these folks monetize professional owners, and I mean, probably even mom and pop owners, but just to a lesser degree, the streams of monetization are fascinating. And they're almost like you have all the power. You have all the

leverage, right? In, you know, in these ski villages over controlling food, controlling alcohol distribution, setting rent, right, for the retail and everybody who else wants to be there. HOA fees are phenomenal in areas like this because, you know, you, what are people going to do? They can't go anywhere else. And it's a, you know, it's a condominium scheme of ownership a lot of times on these, you know, townhomes and different things that get built. Not to mention, And anytime new stuff is coming out of the ground, they mention they have a master developer agreement with the county. They're able to fee off of so many different types of things that, you know, it can be pretty

powerful. It can be kind of accretive, not to mention all the other just little ancillary services that go along with, you know, being there. But it is incredibly capital intensive, right? Like your comment on the ski lift, they were looking at the picture of now, I have no idea what the cost would be to replace the ski lift. But I feel like if you're asking, you know, how much it costs, then, you know, you're starting off on the wrong foot. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that, you know, if you look at, if you look at ski resorts and coming from the fireworks world,

ski resorts have some very similar things, right? Highly dependent upon weather, right? Like, if you look at what's going on this year in skiing, you have kind of three things have happened in ski resorts. You're either in the East Coast and you've got nothing. And so people haven't, in some mountains, haven't even been. able to ski more than just kind of where they're like making snow. You have the middle of the country, which has been getting great snow and just the right amount. It's been a good year to be skiing in Colorado and then also in Utah. But then you have some situations like where they've actually gotten too much snow. Like California, I don't know if you've seen this, but California has had to close some of their ski resorts

because they got too much snow at them. Just like this crazy thing. So you're highly dependent upon the weather. Like your season can make or break based on that. You have this huge. huge KAPX problem, right? Which is, like, we looked at the picture of this ski lift here. Like, it's this rusted old thing that the cable has to be changed every few years. And you need to do that because you know what happens if that cable breaks. People die. Like, it becomes a real problem.

And then you have all the equipment. The other thing that's going on in this picture mills is they're grooming all of this. They run snowcats over it every night to make it so it's pleasant to ski down. And so you have all that stuff. staff and maintenance and all this kind of stuff, and you're just hoping that the weather cooperates enough that when you open up and the snow shows up, then people show up and give you money.

And so you have this huge fixed asset cost and this huge fixed base of maintenance that you've got to overcome that just to become profitable. And man, you better really hope that everything cooperates so the demand shows up and some resort that's slightly closer than you doesn't run specials and bring all your customers away because you've got to bring in, let's say,

10,000 skiers a year just to break even. But the good news is once you have 10,000 in, that next 2,000 of customers, like, they're all profit. Like, that's really high margin stuff. But, man, you really got to have a feast or famine kind of mindset when you go to a business like this one. What you see in a lot of these mom-and-pop kind of operations is they've been able to extract usually, you know, higher than average profits because they're not spending on CAPEX, like maintenance CAPEX the same way professional buyers and owners would. And so a lot of times you look at a business like this and you peek behind the curtain and you realize, oh, that 50-bed hotel, it needs a lot of work. You know, they've deferred and foregone all the big Cappex items because they are hoping

somebody else is going to pick it up. Same with, you know, like you said, the snow cats, the ski lifts, you know, their rental equipment, like all the things. They're not thinking 10, 15 years ahead about building, you know, quality and kind of brand and reputation. they're just more than likely on the downward descent of their ownership and their lifestyle around it. Another troubling thing about this Twitter discussion is this comes up is like, do you want to own a ski resort?

And then literally in the replies, like five other people are like, oh yeah, there's one for sale by my house here in the Poconos and here's one for sale here in Maine, and here's one for sale in British Columbia. And it's just like, it's just a bad sign. It's just a bad sign that everybody's like, Oh, here, but then I looked at some of those listings mills. And the thing that's really fascinating about this is they all kind of have the same thing, like non-prime location, decent skiing, but not world-class.

And then you have a situation where you're like, you know, kind of out of the network, right? You're not with Epic Pass or Icon or one of these kind of networks to where you're a non-premier thing. And they're all kind of dying this family owned out in the middle of nowhere thing, which I guess is also what happened to the one we talked about before, Powder Mountain. Utah. Like, it just, it just kind of leads to the thing that the years of these mini resorts that were family owned, not in prime locations, like, they're just getting hurt just for various numbers of reasons. And it's just not a good business anymore. And, you know, we've talked about some of them in the past, but it's not a bad thing. It's not an inherently, like, evil thing to buy

things that are asset intensive and collect cash flow off of them for a long time. Like, I think we've talked about in the past, like sell towers and the way those have been consolidated. billboards, right? Those are ramp, you know, been, you basically can't get into the billboard business now if you tried because of the big ones like, you know, Lamar and others. And then also marinas we've talked about where they're incredibly asset intensive. They're very hard. Like, if you own a plot of land that, you know, is a licensed marina or, you know, has a cell phone tower on it, you know, you kind of have a corner on the market. We're not like carving out little random triangles in people's backyards and putting cell towers on them, it can be a really

good business, but this, I would say, is in a category that's much harder because it is an asset intensive piece of land, but it's also not just one operating business, but multiple, multiple operating businesses that, like you said, you layer on seasonality, sell towers get paid, billboards get paid, whether it's raining or snowing or, you know, the sun is shining. This goes into that category of much harder, very, very small window, you know, where you have to, you have to make hay while the sun is shining or, you know, in this case, make hay while the, snow is falling. Let's talk about how to make this deal work.

And I have some ideas, but usually I always lead with the ideas on how to make a deal work. So this is your chance. Bring out, let's stroke the beard, Mills, like bringing me your creative site. Like, how could somebody approach this and make it work? What are our constraints and what's the big idea to bring it home? Or just say no and I'll give you mine. Yeah.

First thing's first, right? You're signing the NDA with Colliers. and you're getting the rent rolls and you're finding out, like, what is actually here? What am I working with? Because if this thing, like if we reverse engineer it, right? Typical real estate deal, if this thing's generating maybe $800,000 in that operating income, like it's a decent real estate deal compared to other real estate deals. I don't know that they're making that much money.

But first things first, you got to get more info. And, oh, I don't know, you're much more creative on this kind of thing than I. my mind goes to like the town, the city should probably buy it, you know, or somebody who owns two or three in British Columbia already and they need another. I think you're going to tell me that like, you know, you pull like a, you know, a massive Twitter audience thing and you, you know, you crowd fund this and everybody gets to come for, you know, five days a year and that's the cost, you know, that's the tradeoff for the value of their investment. Look, I think, oh, by the way, thank you for giving a compliment to my Twitter audience.

We need it. We've got some low self-esteem issues this week. According to my whoop, I'm way behind on sleep. But anyway, you know, I think the big problem with stuff like this is people are getting busier and busier. And these mom and pop, middle of nowhere, ski resorts, like, they're just dying. Like, you look at the other ones that are for sale and they're like random ones out. in the middle of the Poconos or whatever.

Like, the days of that are over, right? Like, the fixed costs have gotten so high, the labor market's gotten so tight. You just can't do that anymore. So I think when I look at this, I'm like, the first thing I would go in with the hypothesis is, like, if these guys who owned it for 30 or 40 years or whatever as a family, couldn't run it as a ski resort and make it work,

like what sort of magic am I going to change, given it's 11 hours away from Vancouver and out in the middle of nowhere? Now, I think you have a situation here where you have to- But maybe they have, right? I mean, don't you think they would mention it was profitable, if it was profitable? That's my thesis. I don't know. I mean, it's a real estate.

It's a real estate listing. Yes, typically they'll like tout some, you know, hey, we have seven years left on our triple net lease and this is the cap rate we're selling at. So maybe not. But, I mean, if they've been doing it for 30 years, like, they're not, you know, they haven't been bankrupt, you know, for, 30 years. They've strung it together and held it together arguably, right? Because they've had some staying power. But I'm with you. I'm tracking. Or they've been slowly dying. Anyway, if anybody gets

the NDA on this, tweet at me because I'm about to wager mills, a $100 Chili's gift certificate that they are not making money. That's just the way. That's just the way that it, or the path to make money requires like 15 million Canadian investment. So, but anyway, I think I, I, I, I, I, I think this requires somebody to put some capital into it and reposition it, and there's a potential here where you make it a place that's a destination for people who don't want to go to Aspen anymore because it's too crowded or are looking for a place to get away and can afford it, right? Building a private jet strip, like, the thing that this thing has going on for it is ridiculous nature. Like, you can make it a premier version of that and move this thing just way up

market. And I think the other tailwind you have with this is like the planet's getting warmer. Like we're not getting as much snow as we used to. Like there is just a number of days. There's, there's a limited time frame in which some of the marginal ski areas can still function. Right. And you're already seeing the ones that were in Connecticut and in other places like I guess there were some in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Like they can't get enough snow. And you're already seeing it on the East Coast. Like stow and all those places barely survive as you're. So like that's a big tailwind here. Eventually like some of these places are just not going to be economical anymore

because you can't snow make in order to keep up with the warmth. So I think that's what I would look at doing with this. It needs to be a real estate play where somebody's taking and repositioning the whole thing. But I mean, when you do that, your cost basis is not going to be $8.25 million. And you can't go in with $9 million and expect it to work, right? This needs to be something where you go in with another $50 million on top of the $8.25 million in land cost, transform the thing, build a private runway,

do all the hype, get it in Vogue magazine, whatever, give a free plot to Brad Pitt and get it hip and cool and go kind of create that situation. But yeah, that's my brand idea. My grand idea for this one is move it up market as a place to see and be seen, but otherwise, like, I don't know. Here's another one.

This is the coolest idea. If I was super rich, Mills, I would just do this. Are you ready? Give it to me. All right. This would be the coolest thing to just buy it yourself and just run your own ski resort. Like, how cool it be? So I don't know if you've looked at what houses cost in places like Park City or Aspen,

but like a four-bedroom house is like $5 million. If you heard my voice crack there, it's because it's really that expensive. So for that plus another thing, you and a buddy could go in, You each put in five million bucks, instead of buying a house, suddenly you own your own ski resort. You build yourself some houses. You call it a day. There you go. Boom.

That's probably the better use for this whole thing. That brings up a good point because there's been a lot of talk recently. I think, you know, Ryan Reynolds did that deal where he sold, you know, the mobile company. And, you know, there have been celebrities that have done this kind of repeatedly with alcohol. And there's almost to me a play where, like, if somebody had a big enough audience and had enough draw and pull, They could buy this and immediately make it a destination. And I agree, you'd have to spend a lot more than, you know, they $8 million because people aren't going to, you know, go through all this effort

and, you know, expect a premium brand experience just to like, you know, do the equivalent of like sleeping in like a shanty or, you know, a tent or something. But if the right person with the right audience did this, they could get people there. People would show up. So you're saying instead of fixing people's eyes, Mr. Beast should buy a ski resort to British Columbia. I mean, or like, I'm thinking Ryan Reynolds, right? If Ryan Reynolds bought this, like, you know, 20% of the stay-at-home moms in the United

States would be like, honey, I know where we're going because I might bump into Ryan Reynolds, you know, on our ski trip. He's so handsome. That's my second idea for this. Like, if you are stupid rich and you have $15 million, you don't know what to do with it, this seems like the great way to just own your own ski resort and like the most beautiful lake I've ever seen. Like, why the hell not? All right.

I'm going to sign the NDA because I'm going to take your bet. But I will see your $100 Chili's gift card and I'll raise you $100 Ruby Tuesday gift card. This is a classy podcast, Mel. We're not doing Ruby Tuesday. Applebee's, Buffalo Wildlings. What? What? You take your pick.

but I'm not buying a Chili's gift card. I'll buy Applebee's, Ruby Tuesday, or Buffalo Wild Wings gift card. $100, I'll buy it, send it to you if this thing is negative net operating income. Is there totally losing money? Okay, fine. So yes, wager $100.

And $100, you buy me a Chili's gift card because I'm classy. And then where'd you say you want your... No, no, I'm telling you, I'm not giving Chili's $100. I will give Applebee Tuesdays or Buffalo Wild Wings I feel like you need to expand your horizons. You go there and you can, you know, you can live tweet it.

You can shit talk about, you know, how their, you know, I don't know, their, their, their, their cassidia is not as good as, as the one at Chili's. This is a terrible idea. No. I can't wait. I can't wait. At the end of the day, I'm getting the gift card, so I'm not worried. Well, I appreciate you acknowledging that you're definitely losing this wage. There's no way these people are making money.

Oh, man. What a cool. Some rich guys should buy. Okay, if any rich people take me up on my idea to do this, Mills, the content is free here, people, but the inviting Gurdly to come ski at your private ski resort that only you're allowed to ski at is part of the deal. So if you do this and you're super rich and your listener, please call me because I will guess, I mean, I just doing the math is how long it would take me to get there from San Antonio.

I'm pretty sure I would have to fly to Vancouver, which is a 10-hour flight. It's hard to get to Vancouver from San Antonio because the connections are weird. Then I would have to get into a car and I'd have to drive for 11 hours, try to not hit any moose on the way, and then end up at this place. It'd be like a 30-hour journey for me to reach this place at any sort of reasonable cost. So anyway, if you do a closer airport, though, right? How do you think you actually get there? I think there's probably a closer airport than making it. I'll Google it.

Google flights let me down when I was trying to search how to get there, but there's got to be a way. Airport near Powder King Mountain Resort. Google just said that's too hard to do. Let's see. The nearest one is Prince George International Airport. And then there's a bunch of little random airstrips. It's two and a half hours from Prince George, which looks pretty neat. And then Dawson Creek is two and a half hours.

Prince George looks like the bigger airport. Compare if you just kind of look at reviews. They have 300 reviews. But still, so that tells you, right, two and a half hour drive, like you need to be there for a week if you're going. This is not like a two or three day destination. If you've got a two and a half hour drive after, you know, you've flown from British Columbia, which, you know, or from Vancouver. The nearest private air strip is 50. minutes away in McKenzie at the McKinsey airport, according to this. So yeah. I mean, look,

if you're this rich, though, like you just fly your private into the McKinsey airport and then they hella drop you off at Powder King and go from there. So that's what I know about that. All right. I love this episode. I love it. I want to go. I think we should do a due diligence trip and we'll, you know, we'll do YouTube videos from the mountain. Well, I think it'd be good because you and I become BFFs and we've still never met in person. So I still don't know if you're actually a chat GP3 construct. I was in Austin all last week. We recorded an episode from Austin, but apparently that's not close enough.

It doesn't count. All right. Cool. Can we put a pin in this one? I love it. All right. Hey, the content is free. We published this stuff twice a week.

the ask of you is take this episode or any episode you found good, send it to one friend and say, hey, you want to learn about business? This is the stuff they don't put in textbooks. It's people talking about companies this way and how to think about strategy and positioning and how to make deals work and how to make businesses perform and how to transform assets like this that are way underutilized into something that could be interesting. And then how to hate deals because that's the way real life works. If you find somebody that needs to understand business or starting out or whatever,

send them this episode or one that you like and do us a solid. So we'll see you guys next time.