In this episode, I chat with Mark Smoot (Owner of Epic Recreation, Bear Lake Lodge, Sunrise Resort & Event Center and more!). Mark and I talk about what brought him to Bear Lake as a second career and what keeps him there (he’s become a serial entrepreneur). Mark highlights the importance of community, collaboration, and relationships with employees, customers, business owners, and elected officials and how he uses the Bear Lake Chamber of Commerce (he’s currently the Executive Director) to start conversations and build relationships. We talk about the tension that exists in moving from a primarily ranching and farming economy to a tourism economy and how growth in general (parking, housing, short-term vacation rentals, etc.) is both a challenge and an opportunity (for example, transient room tax has grown by 34% year-over-year since 2014; there are over 1,000 vacation home rentals and less than 400 people servicing all those visits). We talk about the healing power of being in the great outdoors and we end, as always, with the Road Trip Music Question.

If you want to find out more about me or the Rural Towns Project, please go to https://www.ruraltownsproject.com/

Podcast music: “A Happy Day” by codemusic, http://www.jamendo.com, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/