[00:00:00] John: Good morning Mateo, how are you?

[00:00:02] Mateo: I’m fantastic. How are you? Happy Tuesday, brother.

[00:00:06] John: Happy Tuesday. Yes, it’s another Tuesday and we’re recording again. Let’s dive right into it. We got a great guest episode 110 this is our Alternative Accommodation Series.

[00:00:19] Mateo: My favorite topic in the world.

[00:00:21] John: I know, I stumbled across this on LinkedIn and I reached out, we needed to have her on. I want to go ahead and introduce Amanda Jensen, the co founder of Sanctuary Treehouse Resort.

[00:00:33] John: Thanks for joining us, Amanda.

[00:00:34] Amanda: Hey, thanks for having me.

[00:00:36] Mateo: Welcome to the show

[00:00:37] John: two and a half years now we’ve been doing this podcast and there’s lots of, you see a lot of places that have, hey, we have tree houses and they have two. Or, Hey, we do these treehouses and it’s not really a treehouse.

[00:00:51] John: You guys actually have like really nailed this treehouse thing. And so we definitely want to get into that and we definitely want to dive into what you’re doing now. But how the hell do you get from. What were you doing before this? Let’s start there. What were you doing and how did you transition to having the most tree houses in one of the drive to vacation destinations of America?

[00:01:16] Amanda: I’ll tell you this, we were doing a lot less, and life was a little easier, that’s for sure. Part of our story is years ago, I’m going to say maybe even like 2013, 2014, we built our kids, we have four children, a treehouse here on our property. And it had all the bells and whistles and features that a treehouse could have that my husband could think of instead of going on spring break, we did a family thing and we all built it together.

[00:01:40] Amanda: Had a few years of enjoyment out of that. The kids finally got bored of it, so it was sitting down there rotting. And that’s when we started hearing about people wanting different accommodations or experiences. Like domes and tree houses. And actually domes weren’t even a thing back then. Really.

[00:01:54] Amanda: It was like the tree house. So we laugh about it. We were like, we should rent that out, people, Airbnb. And so we didn’t obviously it’s, we tore it down, but that just sparked something in Brian more so than me at the time. And he really liked the idea of building some on some of our property nearby our home here.

[00:02:11] Amanda: And I took him to stay at a tree house in a state close by. And I shouldn’t have fed the beast, but I did. So it just got him thinking even more and he just expanded on the idea. I’d see him over there with his little credit card and his graph paper and doing things at night in his spare time.

[00:02:27] Amanda: And he was like, what about just building like six to 10 on this property by us. And I was like, okay, that’d be fun. Cause at the time we were semi retired from our other business in Gatlinburg or traveling with the kids and things. And I was like, yeah, that we could do that. That’d be fun. But then this 40 acres became available and it’s right by our home.

[00:02:46] Amanda: And we drive by it every day, have for 20 years, had no idea what the views were, what the property was like, because it was all wooded. But we did hear that some developers were looking at it to scalp it and put big apartment buildings or large cabins on it. And we knew we didn’t want to look at that.

[00:03:03] Amanda: So we went and drove that property. Absolutely took our breath away. And so we bought it and I’m like, what are we going to do with 40 acres? Oh, he knew exactly what we were going to

[00:03:14] Amanda: do

[00:03:14] John: was already planned. Wait, so I want to put it, put a little pin in this real quick. First of all, four children. I’m in that camp as well. We have four kids as well. Never dull. Feel you. And then second you mentioned your other business, what were you doing previous to this?

[00:03:30] John: What was your other Sevierville business or Sevier County business?

[00:03:34] Amanda: It’s been in Brian’s family for over 60 years. The Gatlinburg Skylift Park at the top. It’s Gatlinburg’s oldest attraction. His father started with a cooler full of water and an umbrella up there over 60 years ago selling to tourists. And then from there it turned into a gift shop. And we were devastated by the fires.

[00:03:53] Amanda: Brian purchased it from his family, 26 years ago.

[00:03:57] John: Okay.

[00:03:58] Amanda: So the fires hit us, burned our shop down and so we’re the ones that sell the souvenirs, the photos, the, the gift shop, the cafe, and there’s a bar up there. So we rebuilt. We’ve got a wonderful staff in place up there. So we just go and visit when we want to now.

[00:04:14] Amanda: It’s,

[00:04:14] John: So are you still running that today? You still own it, but you’re like semi retired from it and just

[00:04:19] Amanda: yeah, we still have I think 20 something years left in our lease up there. Brian’s best friend, who’s also Brian, runs that very efficiently for us. We’ve got great management staff up there. So Brian and I don’t go up there unless we want to go visit or just see how things are going or taking those views.

[00:04:35] Amanda: So

[00:04:36] John: We’ve mentioned before on the podcast , Mateo and I met seven and a half, years ago now, right after the fires. In Gatlinburg, there was a VRM Intel event that happened at the convention center down there. And we were down there probably, it was probably just a few months after the fires.

[00:04:55] John: It was pretty crazy. And what an amazing story. We’ve talked about this plenty of times, just like how you all rebuild and how you came together and just the networking and the power of positive energy. It was it’s almost a case study of what a community can do when it comes together for the betterment of just, it was, it’s fantastic.

[00:05:17] John: But that’s where we met and we’ve, we actually have some pretty crazy stories. Some, saw some pretty amazing things.

[00:05:23] Amanda: you guys ride the Skylift, the best

[00:05:25] John: And we didn’t I haven’t. That’s a must do on the next trip.

[00:05:30] Amanda: Absolutely. Now, but North America’s longest suspension bridge is up there and it’s got glass in the middle. You can lay on.

[00:05:36] John: I’ve seen, it looks crazy and we need to do it. Maybe we could go on the chairlift together and

[00:05:41] Mateo: I’m going to have to hold my hand on that skylift, I’m definitely down to do it. Like heights are not my favorite thing in the world. Like they are, but

[00:05:49] Amanda: Now you can come up here and get over it.

[00:05:50] Mateo: I’ll get over it. I’ll definitely get over it. And then I’ll definitely do it. But I love that.

[00:05:55] Amanda: It’s neat.

[00:05:55] Mateo: so actually, one of the things that I think is interesting too, what we do here is, Gatlinburg and Sevierville, like that’s a resilient story, right?

[00:06:06] Mateo: Like being able to build. And rebuild, it seems like you’ve been a part of this space and a part of this community for a while. I love where your business is now. I love that you’ve taken, a new, genre and are building it into an older and older kind of cottage industry, but talk about rebirth.

[00:06:25] Mateo: I know those fires that we just talked about it flippantly, but those were devastating to that community. I remember those conversations and talking with the Chamber of Commerce and all of the business leaders in the way that they just coalesced together and really came back as a community and really were driven and were determined to rebuild.

[00:06:44] Mateo: We’re looking at what’s happening in Maui now. We look at what happens in Florida and the other vacation rental communities that we see being devastated by natural disasters. Talk to us a bit about what that was like because, it sounds like you guys had a really good thing going and then had to start all over again, rebuild and have done it successfully.

[00:07:02] Mateo: So tell us a little bit about that journey. What was that like for you guys?

[00:07:05] Amanda: I am still to this day very proud of our community. While we have millions of visitors that come here, we are still very tight. We all really pull for each other. And it was almost like natural instinct for everyone here just to make it work. But, I remember sitting here and seeing on the news Our whole mountainside on fire and our business in flames and I couldn’t believe it was happening.

[00:07:28] Amanda: They wouldn’t let business owners up there for, several days after. So we were, constantly fishing online for any information, pictures, anything of what looks like at your business and what you’re going to be coming home to when you get there. And we did see the most amazing photo of some soldiers that were doing recovery up there and they had found a flag.

[00:07:48] Amanda: That withstood the fires. And when we saw the picture, we knew that was our flag from our flagpole because we recognized the view. And so we reached out to them and, it was really neat. We have it hanging in our shop now. We said, Hey, we love that you found that. I was at the Gatlinburg SkyLift Park and they said, Yes.

[00:08:04] Amanda: And they said, They would return it to us after. So when we did our grand opening, we had those soldiers come and we have it displayed in our shop now, but everything was completely gone. Even the money in our safe was melted. It was just devastating to walk up there. My husband still tears up to this day when he thinks about it.

[00:08:23] Amanda: And we just revisit that story and just hear about the lives lost in the businesses. And it was just the way that fire just spread here and there and everywhere, but it, we have done amazing recovery. I thought it was in record time, honestly. A lot of people who really pulled together, I was proud of them.

[00:08:40] John: It was an insane statistic, the amount of cabins that were gone in this, and I and. We’re talking it like it’s a business standpoint, right? These are homes too. These aren’t just cabins. This isn’t just a business. Like these are people’s homes. Yes, it’s their business livelihood, but it’s where you live.

[00:08:59] John: Like you build families there and it’s generational and the interesting thing about, Sevier County in general is these are like. Generations of families own businesses. It’s, it’s just more recently coming in and corporations are coming in and putting up their McMansion, built for, STR and that kind of stuff.

[00:09:19] John: I’m glad we’re on the other side of it, knock on some serious wood that, necessary precautions are in place and how the fire, like your emergency response team, handled everything was pretty phenomenal as well.

[00:09:30] Amanda: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I’m sure we learned a lot of lessons from that. A lot of things were implemented after that to head off, anything like that, that could happen again. Just their response time was amazing though. A lot of people were able to get out. And so while we did have some legitimately devastating stories, we had a lot of wonderful stories of people that did get out, but losing your home and your personal belongings.

[00:09:51] Amanda: I know a lot of those folks, they lost their pets and things you can’t replace. That insurance can’t give you money to replace That was painful anyway, but you come out better for it.

[00:10:00] Amanda: Really do.

[00:10:01] John: talk to us about back to more, more current, you were, driving past, you didn’t want to go into some condos or some high rises you drove the property, you purchased the 40 acres. What was the next steps? What was going through, you said your husband knew what you guys are doing.

[00:10:18] John: He already had a plan. He’s been writing on graph paper and figuring this all out. first of all, when was that? When did you purchase?

[00:10:25] Amanda: Oh, goodness. It’s 2023, maybe 2020 or 2021 is when we

[00:10:30] John: so right in the middle of, an economic interesting times

[00:10:35] Amanda: right? Why not?

[00:10:36] John: it. Okay, so you purchased. What was next? What was going through your head? What was going through your mind?

[00:10:42] Amanda: From there, Brian was like, what’s the world’s largest? Who has the most right now? And so I did a quick search and I was like, the most I can find is 17 over in North Carolina somewhere. And he was like, so when we get to 18, we’d be the world’s largest. And I’m like, what are you doing? And, of course he goes back to it because I think he knew at the time he was going to have to do some selling to me on like diving back in. Again, we thought this was a cool idea, all the ideas that we had, but we just didn’t know how they were going to be received. So it was very humbling to this day.

[00:11:11] Amanda: It’s still humbling. So he was like let’s just, I want to build these. I want to build them myself. I I have it all on paper here, but I have to be the one there doing these first seven. And, we’ll build it slow, enjoy the process. We’ll pop ’em on Airbnb or V R B O and we’ll just see how it goes, see how people receive them.

[00:11:29] Amanda: So I started strung up a little marketing, and from there I, and I credit this to it being such a unique idea, not because I’m just mar marvelous marketing person. The media took hold of us and it was hold on for the ride. Everyone was very interested. So I said, Brian, can I go ahead and take reservations on these first seven, and can you give me a date?

[00:11:49] Amanda: And he did, and begrudgingly, so that pushed him to have a deadline. So I took reservations almost a year before they were even built. March 31st is when we opened these first seven. So we’ve been open on a little over four or five months here. And it’s just been so cool. Our next seven are already under construction.

[00:12:08] Amanda: They’re set to come out in fall or winter. He will not give me a date this time. But we’re going to 130. And as soon as we hit 18, we’ll be the world’s largest, but we are the world’s first interactive tree house resort. Where you can actually work the features. Kids, adults can all play on the features.

[00:12:23] John: So yeah, so but dive into that a little bit. What do you mean by interactive?

[00:12:28] Amanda: Interactive. You can play on it. Anybody can. They’ve got 20 foot slides. They’ve got bucket pulleys. They’ve got drink chutes where you can drop any size can or bottle from the kitchenette inside down a chute to the lower deck. Secret ladders swings, rope climbs. What am I missing? Outdoor daybeds, soaking tubs.

[00:12:47] Amanda: And I’ll tell you, here’s the funny thing. The number one thing that our guests rave about, whether it be a TripAdvisor review Google Business Ad, in my notebooks in the treehouse, is they love the heated toilet seats. And I don’t know how to market that, but it’s like a nice surprise. The heated toilet seats and our luxury one has a full bidet system.

[00:13:06] Amanda: Some people come here and they’re messaging and they’re like, do you have air conditioning? Do you have wifi? I’m like, we’ve got heated toilet seats. You’re good for some surprises. So it’s like modern amenities meets nostalgia. We have found a way to give you that nostalgia of being in a treehouse, but you actually have some really cool modern day amenities in there.

[00:13:26] Amanda: And they’re all uniquely themed. They all have some kind of quirky fun name and that is the theme inside for decorating. I do all the theming and decorating. A lot of times we, it’s a family business. We are family owned. We do not have any partners. We try to decorate around my daughter.

[00:13:42] Amanda: She’s 17 now. She’s an artist here in the area. And so I use a lot of her art pieces if they’re available. And try to theme them around that so we can keep that in the family as well.

[00:13:52] John: I love it.

[00:13:53] Amanda: there’s a lot.

[00:13:53] John: it. What you need and I remember from my childhood is the the can with the string. And then down below, and you can go ahead and have that, and talk between two tin cans and a string. Do you have that? Is

[00:14:08] Amanda: We talked about doing those, but we figured out that you can actually talk through the drink chute.

[00:14:13] John: There you go.

[00:14:14] Amanda: You can talk back and forth through it and hear just fine. Throw me down a water and it’s there you go. It’s insane. You can, people get there. And here’s what we didn’t anticipate is.

[00:14:24] Amanda: They are overwhelmed and they say that I don’t do a good job, a good enough job with marketing. And I love that. Because there’s things that are surprises for them when they get here. And what is a surprise to us and to them is that they get here and they’re like, we don’t want to leave.

[00:14:37] Amanda: We bought tickets to go do this, that, and the other, and we don’t want to leave. And I’m like we want you to get out. And they’re like, but the kids are happy, and we’re chilling by the outdoor wood burning fireplace, and we don’t want to leave, where can we order out, and stuff, so it’s becoming a destination in itself, we didn’t anticipate that but they sit there, they’ve got the views some of them have wooded views, and some of them overlook two championship golf courses, the Little Pigeon River, and, of course, the great Smoky Mountains, they have panoramic views of that, the downtown lights in Sevierville are stunning at night as well.

[00:15:07] Amanda: A little bit of everything.

[00:15:09] Mateo: It’s beautiful though. And you built a resort. That’s one of the things that’s striking to me. You said you started with seven. Your plan is to go to 130. This wasn’t just Oh, we’re going to pop a couple here and there. And you’re actually building an immersive experience. And like we talked about, prior to jumping on this podcast, like I want to go

[00:15:28] Amanda: Huh.

[00:15:28] Mateo: the big kid in me is I can’t wait to go down these slides, like all these amenities are cool, but.

[00:15:34] Mateo: You built a community in a space that, is for community, right? And is very traditional and very homogenous and like it’s decor and it’s design. And, renting these cabins typically have the same things, same, similar game rooms, similar hot, like amenities, maybe this, the heated toilet thing.

[00:15:53] Mateo: I think that’s such a big thing. Cause I wouldn’t have expected that in a cabin when you’re out like rubbing it and trying to be in the wilderness. Like I’m. Like, I’m prepared for rough toilet paper and a horrible toilet seat that probably shakes, right? And I’m going to be hiding from a bear at some point.

[00:16:08] Mateo: But no what you seem to do is something different. And I want to bring this up because you brought up Airbnb. That’s a bad word in that space, and in our experience, a lot of people don’t typically like Airbnb and other booking engines and marketing engines within that space, but you’ve been able to actually use that to your advantage to bring in a new dynamic and a new, into a new space.

[00:16:32] Mateo: Talk to me about that. Was that, has that been a challenge for you? Is that, how does the local community feel about that?

[00:16:38] Amanda: Our local community has been so supportive. They’re just so excited that it’s something different. It’s not some, another mountain coast or another cabin development. So we’ve had nothing but amazing community support. As for the OTAs, like Airbnb and VRBO, our original plan was to Just pop these on there and see how they go, see how they’re received, but we pretty much did all of our bookings organically.

[00:17:01] Amanda: I just signed up for those OTAs in the last month or two so I can’t even really give any feedback. I’ve heard things so I’m waiting for things, but we’re deciding whether we need that or not. But we are on there, so I don’t know that we could continue doing organic. It has worked thus far, but yeah.

[00:17:18] Amanda: And there’s ones that don’t even have a treehouse category. We’re like we need a treehouse category. We’re not a cabin. We’re not a condo. We’re not a beach home. And so I can’t remember which one it was that had the treehouse category because I guess they hadn’t been asked that, or maybe they hadn’t gotten to that yet, but, yeah, no, this this community it’s great the patios are set up so that it is like a neighborhood on these first seven, this is what we call our first phase, they have a temporary entrance, but in our next phase, when we build our check in building, it’s gonna have a supply store, it’s gonna have a pizzeria, a butcher shop where people can come and get prepared fillets and s’mores kits and take them back to

[00:17:55] John: What?

[00:17:56] Amanda: Yes, and then not only when we have our check in building, our resort is planned to be golf car access only, so you will check in, park your car down there and get a complimentary golf cart, and you can go throughout the resort that way, so there’ll be no motorized vehicles. And then we’re building a little over four and a half miles of walking trails.

[00:18:15] Amanda: We already have a scavenger hunt for the kids. We’re leaving things along the way. Got a map, they check in, they get compasses just to get them out and walk in the property. So there’s a lot of really cool planned things ahead in store. An enchanted forest. We’ve got some different floor plans and designs of wagon wheels.

[00:18:31] Amanda: And another thing, our double has a working drawbridge. Our double sleeps up to 12. And the working drawbridge goes between them and connects them and guests can raise and lower them which they love. And they also have the dual slides they can race down. So that’s another really cool thing. Yeah. We’ve, we’re ready to get onto the amenities because we’ve just got some really cool in ground hot springs.

[00:18:52] Amanda: And while you were talking about what other people have, we get asked that. Do you have tennis courts? Do you want to do what everybody else is doing. If you want to get wet, Soakie Mountain is less than a mile from us. They’re our partners. They give all our guests half off. Go on down a lot of our guests love, we have this partner perk program that I put together because I had businesses that were asking how to market to our guests some of our business owners that are local or friends of ours.

[00:19:14] Amanda: And then I had my guests asking, where do we go? What do we do? Where to shop? So I just threw this card together. They all get it. It’s complimentary when they check in. It’s got our logo on one side, QR code on the other. And the stick is the business has to be something that Brian and I would recommend.

[00:19:29] Amanda: And also that they give a unique offer to our guests. So they love that. So they get that ahead of time. They book while they’re in their planning process and Hey, we get half off on scenic helicopter tours. Hey, we can go to Tennessee silencer and shoot high powered rifles off of Humvee. These are, a lot of these are like bucket list items in the area.

[00:19:45] Amanda: If you really want to do, I know guys, I’m going to put a package together for you. You’re going to come visit. Yeah, so there’s just a lot of things in the works, but who doesn’t love saving money? They’ve spent the money to get there, they’ve spent the money to stay there so we tell them what to do, and not only that, here’s an excellent discount half off for all of you, kind of thing.

[00:20:03] John: I love it. It’s, the whole mentality of Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, Sevierville, and Sevier County in general, is it’s almost like an oddities thing everything is there, it’s like when you go to either Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg specifically, you’re down there and it’s like a boardwalk in the middle of the most beautiful mountains and just It’s crazy to me.

[00:20:27] John: It’s different. If you’ve never been, I highly recommend you go. It’s not for everyone, but it has something for everybody. What is interesting to me, and I realize that I use the word interesting way too many times listening to myself, so I need to find some new words other than interesting.

[00:20:44] John: Just put that out there.

[00:20:45] Mateo: You’re getting a thesaurus for Christmas,

[00:20:47] John: Yeah I have one, I’m like, hey, I need to go ahead and figure that out But what you’re building when Brian is your husband Correct? When Brian’s like what’s the largest? 17, okay that’s so Sevier County to me. It’s alright, we’re going to get 40 acres, we’re going to put over a hundred on here.

[00:21:06] John: In no other place would be like, what’s, how do we crush that? It’s like Guinness Book of World Records. It’s here we go. We got Ripley’s Believe It or Not. We’re going to get the most tree houses ever in one place. You’re going to, and then you’re also going to go ahead you’re going to drink moonshine and you’re going to, do day drinking.

[00:21:23] Amanda: Fun? How can we make this area better? We all think alike. We all think what is cool and different is going to keep them coming back because we have so many people that come here annually for their vacations or honeymoons or anniversaries. Let’s just make it better. Let’s just make it better.

[00:21:38] Amanda: And we are growing. We grew through COVID. We all continued and we did it quietly because, it was not worth boasting. But we were still, working and doing the things over here. I love our community. I don’t really know why we strive to be so unique. I guess because we love our guests.

[00:21:53] Amanda: It is our industry, these folks that come here. And someone could take the title of world’s largest before we hit it. Who knows that, that’s fine. There’s going to be more tree houses. There’s going to be people that are going to try to do what we’re doing.

[00:22:05] Amanda: And that’s fine. And that is one thing I want to, we’re not the big developers that are coming and like wiping out the trees and littering the mountains with tree houses. That’s always a concern. Brian and I are protecting this land. We do not remove any trees. We build within the topography of the land.

[00:22:20] Amanda: We love. It the way it is. We don’t really want the tree houses to be seen. We want them nestled in there. So the only thing we really remove is like underbrush. We actually find the trees and build to the left of it, to the right of it, wherever it’s going to sit and be best to preserve that property.

[00:22:37] Amanda: And so far it’s worked out really good.

[00:22:40] John: I’m super excited to see your growth and to see the community that you’re building in the resort, like the Treehouse Resort I give a lot of it to your brand. Like I love the Sanctuary brand. That is for someone that who claims that they did not really good at marketing.

[00:22:56] John: The tree and the brand it it’s solid. It’s, and I’m sure that’s a big part of your initial growth is the branding alone.

[00:23:04] Amanda: yeah, I’ve had fun with that. In a lot of respects, I don’t have a marketing degree. I feel like I’m doing one though by now. But when you see your money being spent and you see it’s happening, you go figure the things out. So I figured out how to do a little marketing, how to do a little PR. You know how to do those things.

[00:23:20] Amanda: I do want the professionals in place, eventually, that will take this from me finding those folks, but yeah it’s been neat to create the storyboard. I had in mind, Brian and I, a look that we wanted. We wanted it to be a little bit more of an elevated experience, not unaffordable for anybody per se, but just, a certain kind of guest that would come here and really take care of the property.

[00:23:41] Amanda: So it wasn’t like, let’s fill them. We really wanted the right guests. And so far, I’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people since March 31st, and I can only think of one or two guests that were not easy to please, and I think that’s just because they weren’t having the best vacation for terms on their own terms.

[00:24:01] Amanda: Nothing I could do, right? So it’s really hard to complain when they get here, and I’ve had at least seven families already come back a second time. And that’s just in four months. So that speaks to their booking while they’re still here to come right back. I want to bring my friends. I want a girl’s trip.

[00:24:17] Amanda: I want to bring the grandkids and, so that’s pretty nice too. It’s very rewarding and you’re doing something right.

[00:24:23] Mateo: I love the fact, and I don’t think we talk about this enough, I think the Sanctuary brand, I love that you’re a steward of the land and that you’re actually preserving, talking about what’s happening with the environment, John and I are big on that. I love the story you’re building, but one of the things that…

[00:24:40] Mateo: John and I both come from humble beginnings. My family didn’t go on a lot of vacations growing up, but the ones that we did, were to, I grew up in Oregon, so we went to the Oregon coast and did things like that. Your market is one of the most accessible vacation destinations to people in this country, right?

[00:24:54] Mateo: You’re not just building luxury, but you’re building fun, interactive things that other people would build and say, Oh, we’re going to build these luxury tree houses and luxury this and luxury that. I

[00:25:05] John: And there’s a market

[00:25:06] Mateo: of money, but

[00:25:06] Amanda: Yeah.

[00:25:07] Mateo: don’t but to be honest, most of the people that we talk to, John, and they’re talking about luxury, we don’t hear a lot of people come on here and talk about what they’re building for common families.

[00:25:15] Mateo: And I say common for most of this country, right? Most of the people who travel, who’s hard earned money that they work on, maybe one, maybe two, maybe their first vacation. with their kids that they don’t get to go to often. We don’t talk about that a lot. It doesn’t, and so it’s good to hear that.

[00:25:33] Mateo: I get excited about that. I love that’s a part of your brand and a part of your story. And that you’re conscious about that, that it doesn’t have to be, it can be a great experience without bankrupting you, or without, really, giving people the ability to come back and want to come back and knowing that.

[00:25:48] Mateo: Kids and families will have the ability to come back, build stories, build time with their families. That’s huge. And I hope that continues with the brand. Definitely kudos for that.

[00:25:59] Amanda: Yeah. I tear up when I talk to our guests, there’s, they’re just, my favorite part of it is just to talk to them. I’ll go over there. I literally could walk to the resort from my home. I’ll go over there and just sneak in and some, a lot of them, you get relationship with them or you’re helping them plan before they get your stuff.

[00:26:14] Amanda: They just become like your, And I’ve got friends from all over now. I didn’t anticipate that part of it. We were, pretty booked for these first seven those, that first little bit. And I kept waiting, when can I offer discounts? And then of course, people around me were like, you don’t want a discount.

[00:26:30] Amanda: I’m like I do, because there are a lot of people that have been following us and. They might think our prices are too high for their budget. And so I do want to offer that. I do want to throw different things out there. And they’re like it cheapens your brand. I’m like, it gives opportunity to people, that, that have been watching, but want to stay.

[00:26:46] Amanda: And maybe it’s not in their price range. And so another thing I did lately, I saw a couple of weeks open on our calendar. And that was just something that was happening to all resorts in our whole area. Everybody’s numbers were down. We were getting a lot of last minute bookings and I was like, I’m going to offer half off to locals.

[00:27:01] Amanda: If you live or work within a hundred mile radius, half off. And as soon as I posted that everywhere, I went, Oh, I don’t know what I just did. But it was like, it’s good. It was good. Cause there were a lot of locals that were like, yeah, I can justify paying the half price rate, to go stay somewhere here in town that I’ve been wanting to check out anyway and stuff, so I threw that out there.

[00:27:20] Amanda: They thought I was crazy, they got to come see it. A lot of them are, that’s marketing. And in my eyes, cause they’re going to talk about it to others. They’re going to tell their friends and family coming to town. Oh, you got to stay, you got to check these out. So cool. So gave them the opportunity to see it, not just in marketing, but actually come stay in them.

[00:27:37] Amanda: So I love that.

[00:27:38] John: Talk to us a little bit about the your timeline. You’re, you’re looking to have another seven by the end of the year. And Brian, absolutely not putting a dead nuts end date. So that’s fine. But you’ve also mentioned to us some pretty grand visionary type things, numbers of, over a hundred, all these different things that you’ve got going on.

[00:28:00] John: What is your timeline looking at? I know you’re not promising and that’s not what we’re doing here, but when do you envision these different stages you mentioned, taking place?

[00:28:10] Amanda: There’s the projected dates. And if you go to our website, treehouseresort.Com, we have a resort map on there and it does show the projected dates for each phase. We are hoping that the whole resort. Upon completion with amenities and all of the tree houses should be 2025 2026 is our projected date.

[00:28:34] Amanda: The first seven tree houses did take a while, but that’s because Brian wanted to be there. It was all in his head. He’s I got to see if this even works. So he built them out and then these seven have been training the guys that have been helping him how to do it themselves. And we also, hired the larger construction team.

[00:28:51] Amanda: They’ll be able to go out and build these for other people if they want one. So those are going to start popping up on their own pretty quick from here on out so that we can focus on those amenities. So that should make things roll a little faster. So phase two starts next year.

[00:29:04] Amanda: First phase is 20 tree houses. And about 20 to 30 each year minimum is

[00:29:12] John: Are these all going to be owned by you or are you going to let other ownership in to the

[00:29:18] Amanda: where we’re at. No partners, no, no loans, no. Here’s the thing in other businesses, we have had partners and things like that. Our experience is fastest sinking ship is a partnership but more importantly, Brian and I couldn’t be as creative as we wanted to be and you don’t get to decide how things are done all the time.

[00:29:39] Amanda: So a large part of why, We don’t know if they’ll, if our business in Gatlinburg will renew the lease at the end of it. Who knows? We’d be fine. Our kids would be fine, but my husband was, this race sold me on the heartstrings. He was like, what legacy are we leaving? That was my family’s legacy.

[00:29:54] Amanda: If we don’t renew that, then what have we done? Get me there. So he was like, this is something we can do together. We can show the kids how you grow a business, how you grow an idea. We can make mistakes and suffer the consequences. We can make the decisions and hope that they’re good and reap the rewards.

[00:30:12] Amanda: Be as creative as we want, and we get to make those decisions, which is, that’s what we wanted, but some days it’s pretty scary, it’s oh, I hope that was the right move, but hey,

[00:30:22] John: But it’s on you at least, and it’s not, hey, Teo, by the way, the the fastest sinking ship or the quickest sinking ship is a partnership and let’s just remember that you and me.

[00:30:32] Mateo: No I, so I’m going to respectfully disagree as a partnership person because I think the right partnership will take you wherever you need to go. The wrong partnership will sink you faster than the Titanic. So we’ll leave you there, but I love this idea, and fair enough, but I’m a partnership guy, so that’s, and I, the right partnerships, and people throw a partnership around it’s gotta be beneficial, not, we can go down that road another day,

[00:30:58] Amanda: you just never know, it was let’s try this. We’ve been thinking on this, we’ve been planning on this, let’s try this, let’s not incorporate anyone. Although there’s been days where we’re working way harder than I anticipated and I’m like, okay.

[00:31:12] Amanda: Who’s been reaching out to us for, partnership? Let’s call them up. Will they do some of this work? Kind of thing, but, we stay to the course and and we, we see the light at the end of the tunnel and get our team in place and it’ll lighten our load.

[00:31:24] John: My, my question initially was more along the lines of would you ever be like selling the individual tree houses to an owner? This is your company, but here almost like a, your property management company that allows, so and so to go ahead and own that tree house where, and then you would manage that tree house for them.

[00:31:44] John: That was more of my initial question.

[00:31:46] Amanda: No we’ve

[00:31:47] John: yeah, and I get, I know the answer now, but like it was a roundabout way. And

[00:31:52] Amanda: been asked, and I think that’d be cool, but pardon me Brian does not want to get into all that. Maybe he’ll change his mind. I don’t know,

[00:31:59] John: I think you stay the course. I like your idea. Family legacy, it’s generational wealth and showing the fact that, and how to build a business. It’s and how to scale it from, seven to over a hundred is insane. And it’s smart.

[00:32:16] Amanda: If you allow other people to own them, then you’ve got to take their thoughts and ideas into consideration in some ways, or it’s just more, it’s more you got to deal with there. And maybe that’ll change, but for now, yeah, I think we’re just going to stick to,

[00:32:30] Mateo: One less HOA in the world, I think we’ll be okay. I think we’ll be,

[00:32:34] Amanda: We’re on two boards, I could do without, it’s

[00:32:36] Amanda: hard, hard,

[00:32:37] Mateo: I like the idea. So John, so we’re talking about scaling from 7 to 130. How do you do that without losing yourself? How do you do that without losing what makes you special? What is your plan to do that? Because we see so many companies in this industry that struggle with scale. They lose their identity.

[00:32:57] Mateo: They lose their brand. They lose touch. And that’s a big number from like where I sit from 7-130. I love the ambition, but how are you going to do that and still provide what you provide and still keep the guest experience the same?

[00:33:10] Amanda: And so that, that is another reason when we’ve talked about hiring a property management team and things like that, first thing they’ll tell us is all these personal touches, all these little extra things that you do that have the Jensen mark inside every tree house, those will go away because we can’t maintain that.

[00:33:29] Amanda: It blows my mind. I’m like, just stocking things all the little touches that we’ve provided our guests love. Those are the fun things. I think those are things that make it even more special for people. They know that you went an extra step and they see that everywhere. In their treehouse.

[00:33:44] Amanda: We put the right team in place. We show them what we’ve done. You always do it. And that, that’s just, it stays the course. Just the plan of where to put them, the themes. We love that they’re all uniquely themed and there’s something different about every one of them.

[00:33:57] Amanda: Gives them something to want to come back for. I stayed in the Honey Hole Luxe, but I want to come back and bring the whole group, and we’re going to rent the double Tarzan and Jane, and have a whole, family retreat here.

[00:34:09] John: The drawbridge.

[00:34:10] Amanda: yes, so the drawbridge, so you know, there’s three different types, the luxury one, the tree fort.

[00:34:15] Amanda: And then the tree fort double. We also have some plans of doing like a wagon wheel of them where they all have drawbridges that go down to a central location. So you could have a retreat and all gather together.

[00:34:26] John: I love that.

[00:34:27] Amanda: There’s ideas of doing a triplet where there’s drawbridges between. And I tell you what, the great, one of the perks about having the guests here is.

[00:34:35] Amanda: They provide ideas now. They’re like, have you guys thought about this? And we’re like, Oh, this is fantastic. So it sends off our little creativity bell and we’re like, okay, we’re going to, we’re going to think on that. We’re going to put that into play. So I don’t think we’re going to have any problem with maintaining the growth.

[00:34:53] Amanda: I think that’s going to be the easy part to tell you the truth for us. That’s what we anticipate anyway. Also Brian’s biggest thing, and we’ve turned down two TV shows now cause they wanted to come in and that’d be a great way to market and elevate. But, two things. The world can be a little different right now.

[00:35:08] Amanda: We have children. We want to protect them. Also, they wanted to give us characters and drama that we don’t have in our lives. And so it’s but Brian loves the idea. He’s can somebody set me up a YouTube channel so I can show people how to build these? And I’m like, can’t do that. But, but he loves the idea of just showing people how to do this, do it in your backyard, make your own for the kids.

[00:35:26] Amanda: And we tell them where to buy some of the features and things that, that they love playing on. And some of them will send us pictures like, Hey, look. We installed this in our backyard for the kids and they got the idea from staying with us. I love it. I love it.

[00:35:40] John: You guys have, been approached by a couple TV shows, you were featured on Travel and Leisure. You’re Forbes. You’re featured in Southern Living. You’re featured in the Wall Street Journal. And let’s not forget you’re now also featured on the No BS podcast.

[00:35:54] Amanda: Heck yeah!

[00:35:55] John: Just keep going up. Sky is the limit!

[00:35:58] Mateo: Somebody out here with the YouTube channel we’ll be happy to help you guys do that. Yeah, making new friends will

[00:36:04] Amanda: You never know. I’m just going with it. I’m just going with it.

[00:36:07] Mateo: But I love that part. That’s the awesome part. Do not listen to these people don’t take their advice, don’t question them on how to scale. I love the fact that you’re going to And I think that is so important because if you look to what other people have and what they’ve done, you’re already limiting yourself, right?

[00:36:24] Mateo: Because you’re not trying to do what they’ve done. You’re doing something the complete opposite and something completely new. I love that. I think the worst thing you can do is ask somebody else how to scale at the end of the day. I’ll answer that question.

[00:36:38] John: And everyone’s definition of scale is different,

[00:36:41] Amanda: yeah, I’ve got a little cowgirl with my marketing, efforts and stuff and trying to diversify and see what works. I’ve had a lot of people that have asked me, like, how do I’m like, Oh, I am not the person to ask. I’m just feeling it out. And what you’re doing is very different than what I’m doing.

[00:36:56] Amanda: And don’t take advice from me because I don’t know what’s. Everything that works, or even how I got in some places that I got while you’re talking about the media that that was reaching out to us and writing articles and doing the things my favorite, one of my favorite little stories is we have a newscaster that has been in our area, East Tennessee Alan Williams.

[00:37:13] Amanda: forever. And for me, he’s like the voice of East Tennessee. I’m Alan Williams. I love his voice. I’ll never forget when he called me like, Hi Amanda, it’s Alan Williams. I’m like, I know exactly who you are.

[00:37:24] John: Is he out of Knoxville?

[00:37:25] Amanda: Yes. And he now does his own show called Going My Way. Plug for you, Alan. But he doesn’t do full time broadcasting.

[00:37:33] Amanda: He said, I want to tell your story. And I said, that’s great. And I go, I just, I don’t know what’s going on right now. I’ve got all this media. There’s really not a lot to show yet video wise. And I said, I think it’s, but I want to be the first. And I’m like, oh, okay. And he’s I know you got a lot of big media talking to you.

[00:37:47] Amanda: I’m like, okay. You know what? I will hold that promise and just keep touch and base with me. So for several months, once a month, I was hearing from Alan. Loved hearing his voice. So once we, had something to show, I called him up one day. I said, Hey, are you ready to come spend some time with Brian and I?

[00:38:01] Amanda: And he was like, how about tomorrow morning? So he, next day, big crew, camera crew came in and stuff. And I felt like tearing up. He was like, you kept your promise. I’m like that is what it’s all about. You reached out first. You asked and he was like, I know you have all these other media.

[00:38:15] Amanda: I’m like they’re there too. If they want to come, that’s fine, but I promised you and he did the best. It’s on YouTube. He did the best little story about us. It makes us tear up every time we watch it and it just feels like home.

[00:38:28] John: we’re going to go ahead and link that on our website, that we’ll link that. We’re also, if you want to find out more about Sanctuary Treehouse Resort, you go to treehouseresort. com and where you can go ahead and book their seven units now, and then also seven more units coming fall, and thanks so much for joining us.

[00:38:47] Amanda: thank you guys for having us. Thank you for having me.

[00:38:50] John: Absolutely. This is exciting. And we’ll we look forward to getting more updates and getting you on in the future when you hit your 130.

[00:38:59] Amanda: you. Stay tuned. It’s coming.

[00:39:02] John: Again, thanks so much for joining us. This has been great. And until next time.

[00:39:07] Amanda: Thank you. Bye guys.