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Brian talks about his fun experience with Michael Garnier from Out’n’About Treehouse Treesort!

check them out at – treehouses.com

Transcription

How to get good publicity from adversity.

Hi, I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

What do I mean by that?

Well, I’ve got a good story for you today. Because I was interviewing for my local show Grants Pass VIP, was interviewing a local legend. And he’s not just a legend locally, he is a legend worldwide. And he’s a legend in the world of treehouses of all things.

I got to visit the world’s largest conglomeration of tree houses. All out here in Southern Oregon is out in Josephine County, a little place called Takilma, and got to go out to the out and about tree house treeresort.

It was started and it’s run by a guy named Michael Garnier.

And his last name was Garnier. But the pronunciation is different than what he grew up with. But he had decided to add a little bit of the original French flair to it for the show, for all for the showmanship what he was doing. And he is a brilliant marketer in terms of getting what he calls publicitree.

Getting good publicitree for his treehouses, and he used a lot of great controversy. Controversy, as he calls it for for getting good publicitree.

And what ended up happening is he he originally had a cabin out in the woods that he was renting out as kind of a b&b, a Bed and Breakfast. This was back in the late 80s. And in then, around 1990, he said, What would really be good…he says, I get a little bit of attention with this, but not getting a whole lot.

What if I built a tree, if you will, he added had already built a treehouse for his kids. He said, What if I turn that into a place where people can stay and pay to stay the night in a treehouse just make it where it’s livable, in a sense and so he went about doing that.

Well, he got in trouble with the local authorities because they said, you can’t get a permit for a housing structure if it doesn’t have proper foundation, in-terms of having a concrete or treated timber foundation. And so he wasn’t able to get a permit.

So he just built built one up in a tree and figured out how to do it well. And started getting attention with that and they said you can’t do that, so they took him to court.

And he went back and forth, and has been fighting it for 30 plus years. Back and forth with both the county and the state. He’s finally at a point to where it looks better.

But during that whole time, he used it as publicity for his treehouse resort, which grew and grew to the point to where he is one of the leading figures on the world stage when it comes to treehouse is building solid treehouses, he developed the Garnier Limb, which is a metal, in a sense of limb that you can connect the tree to the tree house.

You may have seen him on TV, he’s been on numerous shows all these shows about tree houses, a lot of this is all because of him. He was one of the pioneers in this entire industry.

In early 90s, he bought treehouses.com and still owns it. So you go check out his stuff. But amazing individual, it’s going to be a great interview.

I mean, it was a great interview, it’s going to be great when we finally get it released. So I’ll let you know when that’s available over at Grants Pass VIP.

But go check out that podcast and you can listen to everything else I have there and wait for it to make sure you subscribe, so you wait for that to come out. But the magic thing is he was able to take extreme adversity, the type of thing that would normally shut down a company and use it to his benefit.

He got attention from that first he got attention from being on the cover of Pete Nelson who have I’m not sure if you’re aware he’s of a famous author and promoter of treehouses.

He had written a book, I believe it was in 94, where his tree house was on the cover. And he got interviewed for this book. And so that made him famous. He got on to Good Morning America and all these national stage.

Then he got back on the national stage for his local controversy just about building codes, which is a little bit difficult. I mean, how could they have building codes for tree houses before people were building tree houses for adults.

It just wasn’t a common thing.

But they weren’t very helpful with him. And so he used that fight to get more and more attention. And he’s done that over and over and over again.

To this day, still doing things which are controversial. And you’ll find out about that, when you go into check out that podcast episode when it comes out, I had a great time.

It’s so cool to go out there and meet business owners that are just killing it, and showing everyone else how it needs to be done. You need to become a student of how other people are overcoming their adversity.

One great way to overcome adversity is really get ahead of the game and have a good game plan. That’s what my book is all about, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business.

You go check that out, get up, get your own free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

We’re going to be back here tomorrow night.

It’s all about going out and meeting people, right. That’s what life is all about. One way or the other, you’ve got people out there that can help you.

Get out there and just let the magic happen. We’ll see you tomorrow.