Building the World’s Top Walleye Destination: Gary Moeller’s 35 Years at Ballard’s Resort

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. As you listen today, let one idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Gary Moeller. Super recently retired, former managing partner at Ballard’s Resort in Minnesota and Ballard’s Black Island in Ontario on Lake of the Woods. The resort ba-

began in 1961 with the Ballard family and to this day remains family-owned. It offers guided walleye trips, cozy cabins, and all-inclusive packages for both summer fishing and winter ice fishing. The team also plans remote multi-species fishing adventures at their Boat-in-Island property on the Canadian side of the lake. USA Today recently named Ballard’s Resorts as one of the top 10 fishing lodges in the U.S.

praise its motto, large enough to serve you, small enough to know you, and many returned year after year. Gary joined the resort back in 1990 after studying at Central College. He spent his early days in the office working the reservation desk and learning as much as possible about the lodging accommodations, guided fishing services, restaurant, and beverage portions of the all-inclusive resort.

In the year 2000, he became a business partner with members of the Ballard family and remained so until his recent retirement at the end of 2025. Today, he’s still living on Lake of the Woods, taking a gap year perhaps, catching his breath and talking to us about his incredible 35 year adventure that was Ballard’s Resort. Before we get into all that good stuff though, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency.

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our program puts more money into your company’s bank account. As an example, we recently helped a client increase net profits by $900 per employee per year. Results vary, but the consultation is free. See if you qualify today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, managing partner of Ballard’s Resort, former, recently retired, Gary Moeller. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Gary Moeller (02:43)
Absolutely, Anthony. Looking forward to having a little chat with you.

Anthony Codispoti (02:46)
Let’s do it. So how did you first get started in the fishing resort industry? Was Ballard your first stop?

Gary Moeller (02:51)
That’s a great question. know, I went to Central College, as you mentioned, and of course, graduating back in 1990, the tourism industry wasn’t really something that people were talking a lot about at that time. And it wasn’t really specifically the fishing per se that I was interested in. Obviously, you know, I did have a background growing up doing a lot of fishing, a lot of hunting, a lot of camping, those sorts of things where I came from.

But ⁓ it could have been anything. I just wanted to get into the tourism industry and I happened to know somebody that knew somebody that thought they knew somebody. And, you know, that’s kind of how I came to meet the Ballard family.

Anthony Codispoti (03:35)
So was an introduction from a friend of a friend of a friend.

Gary Moeller (03:38)
Yeah,

absolutely. You back in those days, a lot of these resorts, especially the smaller ones and even the larger ones ⁓ were family owned and operated. And when you talk about families, I mean, ⁓ there could be husbands, wives, kids, relatives. mean, so it was really hard to get your foot in the door. I didn’t want to, you know, show up and ⁓

you know, play the role of bartender or dockhand or kitchen staff, or I was really looking for more of a assistant manager or management type role at a resort. And ⁓ obviously, ⁓ fresh out of school, very little experience in the industry. It was very hard to find someplace. And I got lucky with the Ballard family. There is no doubt about that. It was a right place at the right time.

Anthony Codispoti (04:29)
Wow, so this was your first job right out of college. Wow.

Gary Moeller (04:31)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

It’s ⁓ it was kind of a Cinderella story for me, so to speak. just happened to work out that they were looking for somebody and ⁓ I happened to come along and, and ⁓ yeah, so things got rolling that way.

Anthony Codispoti (04:48)
So tell us what did Ballard’s Resort look like when you first came on board back in 1990, as you put it.

Gary Moeller (04:56)
Yeah, 1990.

Well, they’d been at it since 61. know, it’s a family. The family started it back then. It was just obvious. You know, it was a smaller resort back then. I’m going to say we had probably half the cabins, you know, the accommodations, the beds that we do now. For sure, the fishing was on a much smaller scale, specifically the charter fishing in the summertime, the guide boats.

That we were running. I think we had four boats at the time when I started the winter fishing industry the ice fishing was really just kind of getting going on Lake of the woods and ⁓ We were probably fishing, you know, maybe I’m gonna say 30 40 people a day in the wintertime Back then whereas now we’re fishing, you know a hundred a hundred and twenty a hundred and forty so it yeah

The fishing industry itself has grown exponentially on Lake of the Woods over the years.

Anthony Codispoti (05:58)
Why is this? Is it because just the industry in general has exploded or were you guys pulling some particular growth levers that helped you?

Gary Moeller (06:01)
Well.

You know that that’s a great question. One of the things that I was awestruck by when I first moved to Lake of the woods is that it literally was the best kept secret, meaning everyone in the area was keeping Lake of the woods a secret. It’s like what I could not get over how just tremendous the entire the region was, especially the fishing. know, you’re talking about a million acres, 14,000 islands, a lake that’s 90 miles long, 60 miles wide.

and just unbelievable fishing. Yet the numbers of people in the area, ⁓ it was quiet and it was very seasonal. And ⁓ I think that struck me as a challenge to, you know, get the word out about Lake of the Woods and let people know like, hey, this place exists. You need to be here. If you’re an avid outdoors person and

and you love to fish and ⁓ you want to catch trophy walleyes, you know, this is the place to go. And we just, feel like together with myself and the Ballards, ⁓ we slowly started building in the right direction.

Anthony Codispoti (07:20)
So what was your first role when you started there?

Gary Moeller (07:23)
⁓ you know, I work closely with, ⁓ Joanne Ballard. ⁓ she and her husband, Steve, ⁓ were the owners at that time and, and they still are involved with the business. And, you know, she taught me everything from A to Z as far as working in the office, taking reservations, ⁓ you know, helping me dip my toe in the proverbial, ⁓ marketing advertising waters and, ⁓

you know, it kind of just grew from there. I got more and more responsibility. ⁓ I feel like put upon me as, as, you know, I kind of worked my way into the resort and ⁓ I really just was, became very passionate about Lake of the woods and I still am.

Anthony Codispoti (08:09)
How did you get the word out there initially?

Gary Moeller (08:13)
⁓ It’s you know there again you’re talking ⁓ You know back in the 90s. I think that we relied very heavily on repeat business and So, you know you would do some advertising in magazines you would do some advertising in newspapers you would ⁓ you know do a lot of mailings to your repeat customers, but ⁓ We really didn’t

I feel like start growing our business until the inception of the Walleye Connection program, which happened in the, I would say it was either 96 or 97. And ⁓ what the Walleye Connection is, and it’s a program that actually Joanne kind of tinkered with a little bit, ⁓ but it was more so in the winter business where

She had come up with the idea of trying to bring people to the resort ⁓ on motor coaches from the Minneapolis Metro region in the wintertime and ⁓ it didn’t quite play out as anticipated and I kind of took the lead ⁓ One winter we had an early ice out which was very unfortunate because we write rely heavily on the winter fishing industry and it was about mid February when we called it

quits on the fishing and we’re sitting here looking at each other like now what are we going to do? We don’t start, we don’t open again until the middle of May. And it was that time that I basically got in my truck and I drove down to the state of Iowa and I started knocking on every door that I could think of and going from business to business and trying to come up with an idea, a plan of how we could put motor coach tours together and get people to Lake of the woods.

in the summertime and build our summer business and not rely so heavily on the winter industry.

Anthony Codispoti (10:17)
So, let me see if I understand what happened here. You guys rely, or used to anyways, very heavily on the winter ice fishing season. And typically that goes until when?

Gary Moeller (10:30)
Well, the winter fishing runs from about mid December until mid March. That’s pretty typical season. ⁓ it used to be a little bit longer than that. It seems like the seasons have changed a little bit for us. ⁓ now we’ll start fishing, you know, as soon as we can in December. And, and we used to go all the way till the end of March, but anymore it seems like by about the middle of March, most people have had their, their fill of the ice fishing.

And then, you know, it used to be in the summers when I first started, it was really a June, July, August, you know, gig and, maybe a little September and that was it. And now it’s, you know, at least for Ballard’s resort, we start fishing the middle of May and we’re going to keep running hard right until the middle of October. And that’s really when we wrap up the season. So we grew the summer business exponentially and ⁓ those walleye connection tours.

were a huge part of enabling us to do that where, ⁓ you know, we started small and a few groups here, a few groups there, ⁓ a lot of, ⁓ just, you know, just a lot of effort went into making contacts and working with, you know, corporate business, bank club groups were really big at one time. ⁓

figuring out like how we going to promote these trips, where we’re going to run them from. So, you know, we started with a handful of trips and now we work with the folks at Windstar Lines who are based out of Carroll, Iowa. They do all the hauling for us with the motor coaches. And, you know, we’re starting in the middle of May and we’re running until the middle of October. And every Sunday we’ve got a motor coach leaving from somewhere in the Midwest that’s bringing a busload of people to Ballard’s Resort to go fishing.

And it’s one tour a week. They come up on a Sunday, they fish Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, they go home on a Thursday. It’s super all inclusive. The lodging, guided fishing, meals, beverages, the works, all they do is show up. we really, what we did Anthony is we set up our own travel agency, more or less inside the business of Ballard’s where we handle all the sales, the marketing, the reservations, the travel arrangements. We do everything from A to Z.

and it’s been very successful for us.

Anthony Codispoti (12:53)
Was there anybody else doing something like this in the fishing space at the time?

Gary Moeller (12:58)
No, was, actually I shouldn’t say there wasn’t. There was, I believe it was called Temple Bay Lodge up on Eagle Lake. They were doing something similar kind of along those lines, but they were a Canadian based camp ⁓ on Eagle Lake and they were targeting more in the ⁓ Chicago, Milwaukee areas. So it was very, very much different from

you know, from what we were doing, we were focusing heavily, heavily on Iowa to begin with, because that’s where I was from. And I felt like I had a good rapport with a lot of people in the area down there. And then after that, it just kept branching out to where now it’s North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois. I mean, we’ve got tours coming from all over the place.

Anthony Codispoti (13:54)
And from the furthest point that people are coming, how long is that co-trade?

Gary Moeller (13:58)
⁓ we do that, ⁓ what are doing it to peak a run that is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of like 13, 13 and a half hours. That’s our longest one. ⁓ you know, I think 12 and under those are usually, you know, people are pretty good with those and, ⁓ not a lot of Minnesota, Minnesota people have a tendency to just drive up on their own because it’s, closer and, and we do have a,

⁓ You know just a great business overall with people that do come up and visit on their own The wallet connections are really just kind of a feeder program that keep people coming through the door non-stop You know summer after summer and it’s great business for the middle of the week

Anthony Codispoti (14:44)
And how are you guys recruiting these people from each of these different states, these different cities?

Gary Moeller (14:49)
⁓ you know, that part of it, I feel like, ⁓ it used to be that we tried to use a lot of word of mouth, advertising. ⁓ we would try to capture certain mail lists for different types of businesses. ⁓ but now that we’ve established ourselves, ⁓ I would say radio is our number one voice.

And ⁓ yeah, we love the radio, Anthony. know ⁓ it’s probably unusual to hear that, but… ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (15:19)
interesting.

that’s worked well for attracting your client base. And what’s it like on the bus? Is there like this party atmosphere? Are people just like taking a nap, like just watching out the window?

Gary Moeller (15:33)
Yeah.

No.

It’s.

Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty you get a really mixed crowd it it mostly in the summertime with coach tours. It’s it’s a little bit older crowd retired. ⁓ You know, just a ⁓ group of guys that you know they don’t want to drive up. They don’t want to do anything. They just want to show up and go pretty relaxed atmosphere. We get a lot of families like ⁓ grandpa, son, grandson. We also get a lot of individual people where I would say.

⁓ most of our tours, there might be anywhere from 10 to 15 people that sign up as singles just because, know, well, Joe doesn’t have a fishing partner anymore, but Joe really wants to go and catch walleye. So he signs up for the walleye connection with Ballards and you know, we give them a private room to stay in and we fish with up to six people on our charter boats. So you share a boat space and you meet people with like interests and you know, you come up and you have a good time.

Anthony Codispoti (16:40)
And so are you traditionally fishing from the boats? you park on a shore somewhere and cast off from there?

Gary Moeller (16:43)
Yeah.

No, it’s all for the most part. It’s all hands on jig fishing. six guys, six people on a boat with a guide and you know, we’re putting a minnow on their jig and they’re dropping their, you know, they’re putting their bait over the side and they’re sitting there, just sitting there and jigging the bottom with their rod. ⁓ no, no, yeah, this is very, very simple. It’s it’s walleye fishing 101.

Anthony Codispoti (16:51)
What is that?

so it’s not like a big cast away. It’s just sort of right off the edge of the boat there.

Gary Moeller (17:15)
and ⁓ Lake of the Woods, AKA walleye cap of the world, we do very well at it. the lake sells itself and it’s an amazing fishery. So we’re very fortunate to be located where we are.

Anthony Codispoti (17:30)
So where do you rank in terms of other walleye fishing camps?

Gary Moeller (17:35)
⁓ you know, there’s other great places to go. While I fishing as far as, ⁓ numbers of fish size of fish, I think it’s very, very hard to compete with Lake of the woods, on a year round basis. And, ⁓ you know, as far as Ballard’s resort goes, ⁓ to my knowledge, I don’t know of anyone, especially in the summertime.

the season from May through October that’s doing more guided fishing than we do. And we’ve taken it to a whole nother level, been very successful.

Anthony Codispoti (18:12)
And it sounds like this Walleye connection program was a big part of that, but I don’t want to gloss over like what kicked this off because this came out of a moment of crisis.

Gary Moeller (18:22)
Absolutely. ⁓ you know, I think that everyone in the area kind of stepped back at that moment in time and thought, wow, what are we doing here? we maybe need to rethink this winter fishing industry and, and, at least we certainly did at Ballard’s resort and myself. ⁓ I just, I looked at the, you know, the available space that we had to bring people in.

during the summer, during a guaranteed time when you can put heads in beds, put people on the boats, catch fish. It doesn’t matter whether you’re here in May or September or August. mean, we catch fish every day. ⁓ so there was a real opportunity there to grow the business. And ⁓ I had some ⁓ tremendous people, some peers that were helping me and guiding me and giving me great ideas.

And, ⁓ you know, I did a ton of reading, ⁓ back in the day, ⁓ just trying to get more and more ideas about again, how to, you know, bring Lake of the woods to the forefront of the fishing industry.

Anthony Codispoti (19:37)
And so you had the Ballard family as mentors for you. And I think you were saying Joanne had tried something along these lines years ago, not quite to the extent. Who else was kind of giving you some advice and ideas and coaching?

Gary Moeller (19:51)
Well, ⁓

I became heavily involved in radio. And at the time, a lot of the stations in the Midwest were owned by the Clear Channel, which is now iHeartRadio. And I just developed ⁓

a close friendship with some of these ⁓ market managers or general managers of these stations. you know, radio, if you know radio people, they’re always promoting something. mean, I, they could sell ice to the Eskimos as they say. And, you know, they gave me a window of opportunity and showed me

what it takes to be successful in radio. And at the present time, ⁓ they also shared a video with me. And again, I’m going to date myself because if you know anything about the Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, at one time they produced a video called The Fish Philosophy. Are you familiar with that at all? No. Well, it was something that I got kind of ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (21:08)
out.

Gary Moeller (21:15)
Accommodate from one of my contacts with clear channel and it basically talked about you know, how you work with your employees ⁓ How you create a culture? ⁓ You know things like choosing your attitude ⁓ You know being there being present with your with your customers learning how to work in more of a ⁓ playful type ⁓ atmosphere and Really learning how to make people’s day. So

⁓ I took you know, I took heed to these things that were being shared with me ⁓ Another thing that I did is I started doing a lot of writing ⁓ Are you? familiar at all with with Roy Williams Roy H Williams ⁓ Okay, he wrote the He wrote the wizard the wizard of ads

Anthony Codispoti (22:02)
I don’t think I am. Who is that?

Gary Moeller (22:11)
It’s a trilogy. It’s three books that I would highly, highly, highly recommend to any small business owner that wants to be hands-on engaged in their marketing efforts. ⁓ The ⁓ Wizard of Ads, as Roy refers to himself, also has an ⁓ email that he sends out. It’s called the Monday Morning Memo, which has a great

great amount of information that he shares for small businesses, how to advertise, when to advertise, where to advertise, how to get your money’s worth. But, you know, I took the writing very seriously after I read those books because I felt like in advertising, no one can explain your business or your experience better than what you can. You are there 24-7. You eat it, sleep it, drink it.

You’re trying to grow this business. No one can write ad copy better than you. No one can tell the story better than you, but you have to develop that art. You know, you have to work at it and you have to say something different to people to get them to pay attention. And, ⁓ so I give a ⁓ lot of my credit to my friends, which back in that time were with clear channel and, ⁓ now I heart and, ⁓ also

you know, doing the reading, putting the time in the Wizard of ads was big for me. Um, another guy, um, John Spolstra. don’t know if you’ve ever heard of John, his son coaches, a little NBA basketball. Anyway, John wrote a couple of books back in the day. Um, one of them was called, uh, um, marketing outrageously. And the other one was called ice to Eskimos. And, uh, again, I was devouring a lot of books at one time, just trying to get one or two.

good ideas out of each read. John has a tremendous amount of great ideas about his was a little bit more geared towards sports marketing, but definitely usable in, you know, in our industry.

Anthony Codispoti (24:25)
What’s one idea that you pulled from Roy?

Gary Moeller (24:29)
Roy Williams, the wizard of advertising, say something different. writing your ads with the blah, blah, blah, blah. Say something outrageous. I just wrote an ad copy yesterday ⁓ for the gang at Ballard’s. ⁓ They’re going to do a 30 second spot, I think, on WHO or somewhere in Des Moines. ⁓

You know, I talk about, come to Ballard’s Resort, lodging, guided fishing, meals, beverages. All you have to do is show up. Please bring one clean pair of underwear. ⁓ We accept novice to somewhat decent fishermen at times. You so you just try to say, you know, little things that are just a little bit different that set you apart. ⁓ Exactly. Put a little bit of a little bit of humor into it, but also, you know, remind people that, hey,

Anthony Codispoti (25:16)
Little funny, yeah.

Gary Moeller (25:23)
From A to Z, we take care of everything. And for Ballard’s Resort, that definitely resonates with our guests because when they show up, they know they’re going to be taken care of. They know everything is going to be all inclusive, no add-ons. And in this day and age, when you travel, at least for me, when I get somewhere, I don’t want to have to worry about anything. I just want to go and have fun.

Anthony Codispoti (25:49)
What’s one idea you pulled from John Spolstra, the father of that little NBA coach?

Gary Moeller (25:52)
You know,

John ⁓ was a tremendous marketer in that he was always exploring ideas about how to get more people to show up at the hoop dreams at the basketball games. And he, I felt like if I remember correctly, looked at it from like an inventory standpoint. And that kind of resonated with me.

When I looked at the amount of inventory that we had available to sell, know, comparatively speaking, like when he had seats to fill in a stadium, he had a lot of available inventory. So what are you going to do with that inventory, Anthony? Are you going to sit on that inventory and, you know, make nothing, or are you going to formulate a game plan that you start here?

And you make something out of that unsold inventory and eventually you continue to grow it and you create demand for that inventory. And, ⁓ he’s got some wacky ideas, but I took advantage of them and some.

Anthony Codispoti (27:06)
What’s

one wacky idea you put into place?

Gary Moeller (27:08)
Well, we would send out, ⁓ you know, we would send out direct mail pieces we had. Again, I’m kind of dating myself, but and you can still do it in this day and age. But at one time, I was purchasing mail lists for people who are avid in the outdoors industry, specifically fishing. And my wife is a school teacher has access to

a lot of kids that are looking to raise money. And I was bringing in classrooms of people to the resort working. It was a fundraiser for them. I was literally paying them to hand address envelopes, ⁓ right. You know, like, hello, Anthony, this is such and such from Ballard’s resort. I mean, it would be, then we’d have typed up information, but I was doing everything I can to get people to just

open up a piece of mail and it worked at least at that time. And you know, the the senior classes at Lake of the Woods High School made some money because we paid, you know, we paid them per envelope, I think, to ⁓ hand address, you know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them. But that was one idea that I can remember. And then making ⁓ just an outrageous offer and explaining why you’re doing it. Tell people the truth.

I think that’s what, you know, John impressed on me is why are you providing this discount to somebody? Why are you selling this special package to them? Well, it’s because here’s the deal. We have a lot of inventory. We have a great product. We think you’re going to enjoy it. And we’re fairly confident that you’re going to come back once you experience this. And that’s kind of the mindset that we went into it with.

Anthony Codispoti (29:02)
So Gary, how did the opportunity for you to become a partner at Ballard’s come?

Gary Moeller (29:06)
⁓ Stephen Joanne, who were the second gen, ⁓ owners, ⁓ owner operators at that time, ⁓ we’re ready for a change. ⁓ prior to that, most of the family members that had been working there had kind of, ⁓ you know, phased out and gone on. And it seemed like I was kind of the only guy left in the building as they say.

And we just had a tremendous working relationship. They put so much trust in me, Anthony. was unbelievable. they just, were, you know, there were such hard workers and so dedicated and they really, ⁓ again, just impressed upon me what it, what it took to, you know, run a successful small business and, ⁓ you know, being 10 years vested as an employee at that point.

When the opportunity arose when they said, you know, we’re not ready to get out of this It’s obviously it’s a family business We want to keep it going but we want somebody to you know step in and help us out more than even more than what you are and they gave me an opportunity at that time to buy in and which I wholeheartedly jumped at the opportunity and Just couldn’t have asked for a better scenario and then you know after that

continued on for a few more years and then their oldest daughter, Jessie, and her husband, Nick, ⁓ came back and joined the business and eventually, you know, they bought in as partners, which again, just best case scenario to have even, you know, more help and, you know, and Nick and Jessie now have fully taken the reins.

and are continuing as third generation ⁓ owner-operator. ⁓ it’s a great success story for Ballard Resort.

Anthony Codispoti (31:09)
mean, you just kind of hit the lottery here. First job out of college, right? You love it. You got great bosses to start with and great business partners. You guys got along so well, they invited you in, and then you get to help hand the reins off to the third generation. mean, things just lined up.

Gary Moeller (31:14)
I don’t know.

Yeah, well, there’s,

yeah, there’s definitely some nightmare stories to be told, but a good friend of mine always used to say pain has no memory. You always forget about the, you always forget about the bad things and the hurdles and everything that you had to overcome. And, and it’s always the good things that come to the forefront. But, you know, the thing that my partners allowed me to do in 2011, I felt like

you know, my role as being the, you know, quote unquote 24 seven office guy, seven days a week, 365. Um, after doing that for 20 years, um, I kind of felt like, Hey, it’s time to start doing some lake living. And I, uh, I, I talked the, uh, the four of them into purchasing a Canadian camp at that time, um, which we named Ballard’s black Island.

Located on the Ontario side of Lake of the woods and we really took that ⁓ property from ⁓ You know a very What would I say Again ⁓ You talk about inventory. I there was a lot of availability when we bought the place and we took it and we grew the business and ⁓

We made a connection for people between the Minnesota and Ontario sides of Lake of the woods, gave them an opportunity to do something different, stay on a remote Canadian Island, do some multi-species fishing for muskies, bass, northern pike, perch, crappies, totally different. you look on a map on Lake of the woods, you’d see that like, what is it? Probably 33 % of it is in Minnesota.

And then the rest of it is basically Ontario waters. And that’s where you find the 14,000 islands and the multi-species fishing and same lake. But yet when you go from one border to the next across totally different fisheries and it’s become a unique experience for our anglers because now we can offer them the best of both worlds. You want to catch trophy walleyes? Absolutely. Let’s go to Ballard’s Resort. Let’s do the charter fishing.

You want to go catch, you know, a 50 inch musky and have a legit shot at catching, you know, bass, pike, walleyes all on the same day. All right. We’re going to send you up to Ballard’s Black Island and you can do it there. ⁓ the combo trip has become quite popular for us now as well, where we’re spending two days fishing at Ballard’s on the Minnesota side, stay for a couple of nights. Then we go to the Canadian camp on the Ontario side, stay and fish there for a couple of days. So.

⁓ yeah, just keep growing the business. Keep thinking of new ideas.

Anthony Codispoti (34:18)
So what’s the border crossing like then?

Gary Moeller (34:21)
⁓ very simple here for Lake of the woods. So we’re located right on the Minnesota Ontario border. The nearest town is called but at Minnesota. And if people, I’m sure you’ve heard of international falls, Minnesota were the town of that is about 65 miles west of international falls. And that’s where the south end of Lake of the woods is the Minnesota side of the lake. So when you drive to bed at

That’s where you go to Ballard’s Resort on the Minnesota side. If you cross the International Bridge at Minnesota, then you travel up the east side of the lake into the Ontario portion and you go to a small area, small town called Morrison, Ontario. And that’s where we have a private dock that we keep our passenger boat. And then our camp is about six miles offshore. ⁓

from the main landing there at Morrison, Ontario.

Anthony Codispoti (35:22)
Is there immigration control or people showing their passport at some point?

Gary Moeller (35:25)
⁓ yeah, you’re crossing a border. It’s not like driving in Wisconsin. You’re going…

Anthony Codispoti (35:31)
And

it’s not like they’re getting in a boat on the Minnesota side and then going up to the Canadian side. You’re crossing on the bridge there. Okay.

Gary Moeller (35:35)
No, no, no, you’re

actually going through Canadian customs and immigration office to get into Ontario and then doing the reverse on the way back out. ⁓ US customs is there.

Anthony Codispoti (35:54)
And you know, talked, we were just joking about like how lucky you’ve been sort of hit the lottery kind of a thing. And you’re like, yeah, there’s some nightmare stories. And we heard about one of them, you know, when ⁓ the ice disappeared in the middle of February, you know, a month and a half early, I wonder how did COVID affect you guys?

Gary Moeller (36:13)
⁓ you know, I’ve, I had a rule after we reopened the Canadian camp, after being closed for two years and not being allowed to cross the border. had a rule with every guest that showed up. Anthony, said, guys, we can talk about anything except we’re not going to talk about the pandemic. But, ⁓ yeah, it was not good. ⁓ we, the, the Minnesota based, you know, company, the Ballard’s resort.

You know, it was, was the whole thing everybody went through in Minnesota. It’s like, are we open? Are we not open today? We’re open yesterday. We thought we were going to be open now we’re not, but now we, you know, it was all over the place. ⁓ and then eventually it worked to our favor in that in Minnesota, at least other than fishing and golfing and doing a few outdoor things, there wasn’t a lot for people to do. And we saw, ⁓

the state of Minnesota come to life like we had never had before. So in the summertime, I’m talking, normally we run about 50 % residents for visitors, 50 % non-residents. And during the COVID years, those two summers, there was a huge boost of Minnesota people, all the families, the husbands, the wives, the kids. It’s like, hey, everyone still likes to fish, you know, except they, just haven’t had time. Now we have time to go.

Timmy doesn’t have soccer and Sally isn’t, you know, in dance today and we’re not chasing all the things, let’s go fishing. so business was good for a couple of summers during the pandemic at Ballard’s resort. Now, opposite of that was Ballard’s Black Island on the Ontario portion where we were in 1000 % shutdown mode. They would not allow anyone across the border, including owners,

couldn’t even go see the property, couldn’t do anything there. And ⁓ it was tough. You know, I will tell you that to this day, ⁓ we lost about 35 % of our clientele. And I think I could honestly report that the border crossing numbers are still down from where they were back in 2000 and

19, not as bad as it was, but when we hit the reset button in those two years post pandemic, we had maybe 40 % occupancy that first season that we reopened. And that was coming off prior to that where we were running at 100 % sold out, you know, really hitting on all cylinders. And it took us five years.

Anthony Codispoti (39:03)
Nah.

Gary Moeller (39:10)
to get back to where we were. ⁓ so yeah, was, you know, like everybody, mean, it was heartbreaking, you know, you look at what you build and then you just lose it. But, ⁓ you know, I worked very closely ⁓ with a gal in the office at Ballard Resort, her name’s Danielle, and ⁓ she’s also ⁓ just a ⁓ tremendous asset when it comes to sales and marketing, super hard worker.

⁓ We’ve been side by side in the office for many years and you know, we just started resetting our goals and we realized again that, hey, we’ve lost 30, 35 % of our customers. They are not coming back to Canada, period. And now we have to figure out a way to recruit new people. And that’s what we did. We went out and we got aggressive and made the phones ring again.

Anthony Codispoti (40:06)
And so most of those customers that are coming to the Canadian side, are they Americans or are Canadian?

Gary Moeller (40:11)
Yeah,

100%. We don’t get any Canadian customers at all. ⁓ If you look at all of Northwest Ontario, ⁓ you know, there’s hundreds of, of camps and outfitters, you know, places that you can go, but the population of Northwest Ontario where we’re located is so small that there’s really not a population there that you can draw to for tourism. So, you know, they’re bringing in

you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of people across the border ⁓ annually ⁓ to fish these waters in our area.

Anthony Codispoti (40:51)
Why do you think it took so long to get numbers back to a sustainable level on the Canadian side? People just weren’t comfortable crossing the border?

Gary Moeller (40:56)
Well, think people, I

think that’s part of it, but I think people got frustrated and they just, they went and they found something else to do. And they realized that, you know what Lake of the woods is great or Canada is great, but not going to deal with this. I’m really, I’m frustrated and you know, just not knowing from one year to the next, what the rules may or might not be. They went and found something else to do and ⁓

you know, they just kind of moved on and I had a feeling that that that was going to happen with a certain percentage of them and it did. And at that point, ⁓ you know, Danielle and I just saddled up and we looked at, we looked at a map of different areas in the Midwest and we grabbed our dart and we threw it on the board and we said, all right, let’s get some new people from here.

Anthony Codispoti (41:49)
Where was here? Where’d you start with?

Gary Moeller (41:52)
Well, I would have to say ⁓ probably that ⁓ probably that Chicagoland area. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s really another thing that we haven’t talked a lot about. You know, I mean, I could talk about the marketing for hours just because it it’s always the unsolvable equation. And to me, that was always the challenge that I loved is always looking for the next thing. But with anything with marketing with a small business,

my advice to people would be, you know, don’t go with the shotgun approach. You really have to look at each area specifically, find the audience that is looking for your service or your product and expend as much energy as you can in that area until you get a result or find out that, you know, we just, right audience is not here. But to me,

It seems like there’s always an audience. It’s just a matter of how do you find them? How do you turn that rock over and find those people?

Anthony Codispoti (42:58)
And so the messaging in Chicagoland is different than the messaging in Topeka?

Gary Moeller (43:04)
Yeah, definitely. With the separate businesses and with them being so much different, we definitely target ⁓ more multi-species fishermen. When we talk about Ballard’s Black Island, we’re looking for people that are a little more adventurous, that are willing to go and stay on a remote island, even though it’s very nice as far as the amenities. mean, it’s fully modern, but ⁓ it’s just a little bit more advanced fishing, whereas

say Topeka, Kansas, when we put the word out that hey, Ballard’s Resort has a motor coach trip coming up such and such a date, all you have to do is show up and guess what? You don’t have to know anything about walleye fishing. We’re gonna put a pole in your hand, we’re gonna put a minnow on your hook for ya, you’re gonna drop it over to the side to the bottom, you’re gonna sit there and you’re gonna jig and you’re gonna catch fish and you’re gonna smile and you’re gonna eat some fresh wild walleyes and you’re gonna go home and tell your friends.

Wow, that was easy.

Anthony Codispoti (44:05)
So yeah, with the fishing, sounds like you’re catching like good sized fish. So this isn’t a catch and release kind of a thing. It’s like, let’s catch, let’s eat. Do people like pack them on ice and take them home?

Gary Moeller (44:15)
Yeah, we do. mean, uh, we have, would say, uh, fairly restrictive protective limits on Lake of the woods. Um, the most that you can possibly take home with you is four fish. And we’re talking about, you know, walleyes that are 16, 17, um, 18 inches in size. So basically what we tell people is, Hey, we’re going to catch a lot of fish. Um, meaning like

you and I and a couple buddies get on a Ballard’s Charter Boat for a day, Anthony. We’re going to go out, hopefully, between the six of us that are on the boat, we’re going to catch somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 walleyes over the course of a day. Out of that, ⁓ we’re going to keep one or two fish to eat in the evening when we get back to the lodge, or maybe we’ll do a shore lunch during the day where the guide will pull into one of the islands and ⁓

clean and prepare the fish and we’ll have an old fashioned shore lunch. Or some people, depending on how far they travel, especially with the Canadian camp, I feel like we do a lot of shore lunches there where people are eating fresh fish every day. And when it comes down to, am I really gonna worry about taking a few fish home? Probably 50 % of them at the Canadian camp are just opting to eat fresh fish while you’re there, enjoy the experience.

and go home without.

Anthony Codispoti (45:44)
So Gary, what would you characterize as your superpower?

Gary Moeller (45:48)
⁓ BS I don’t know if you read the have you read the marketing BS books those were pretty good, too I just remembered about though. I just remembered those I read those also I can’t remember the guy’s name that wrote those books, but ⁓ I don’t know I feel like You know as a manager and an owner ⁓ you you have to be passionate about what you do and

That was certainly my case with Lake of the Woods and Ballard’s Resort. I’m still passionate about this area and, you know, just spreading the word and telling people, you know, like, look what we have here to showcase. And, you know, as far as a natural resource, you know, we can play a role in not only protecting it, but also still being able to, you know, respect it and enjoy it. And

you know, just do the things that that come with fishing. You know, our corporate business during certain times of the year at Ballard’s Resort is tremendous. You know, it could be a group of six guys, could be a group of a hundred that booked the entire resort, you know, for a weekend or a midweek trip. Just a ⁓ unique experience that if you’ve never done it before.

I guess you really have to be here to experience it. the immense amount of area of just nature that we are able to live in every day and share with people. It’s easy to fall in love with for sure.

Anthony Codispoti (47:34)
So you guys have expanded capacity. You’ve upgraded facilities and amenities. You’ve grown into the Canadian side. What’s next? Where’s the growth? What new projects? What new upgrades do you have planned?

Gary Moeller (47:47)
That’s a great question for me. I’m taking a gap year right now That’s what I told you before when I talked to you Anthony. I’m not sure what’s next for me ⁓ Gary Moller right now I’m hanging out with my buddy rusty flathers and his gal pal Sally squats and fishes. I mentioned that to you earlier I I a couple years ago I don’t know for whatever reason I enjoy writing for one, but I Decided to start an outdoor adventure series. ⁓ So I got this dude named ⁓

Rusty Flathers and I started a website for him. It’s called RustyFlathers.com. ⁓ Anyway, once a week I type up anywhere from 800 to a thousand words. I post an episode. ⁓ I’m in season four right now, like episode 19. ⁓ Rusty’s kind of a hapless fictional character that gets himself into a lot of sticky situations.

⁓ in the outdoors world whether it’s fishing or hunting or whatever whatever he’s doing at the time and then his gal pal sally squats and fishes ⁓ has a tendency to come and bail him out on more than one occasion but ⁓ the folks at ballards resort ⁓ you know they’re gonna continue on full steam ahead as i mentioned we get nick and jesse there now which are you know third-generation owner operators and ⁓ i’m just so

proud of them and so happy for them to be able to continue on, ⁓ you know, doing what we, you know, doing what we’re doing. And ⁓ I think just maintaining at this point, Anthony, when you are recognized as one of the top leading ⁓ fishing resorts in the United States, ⁓ you know, there’s certainly a lot of pride in that. And I feel like maintaining that status and ⁓

expanding our markets. mean, if there was one thing I would I would hope for them is that they continue to, you know, maybe not so much grow the business as far as, you know, numbers of people that visit or the numbers of people that we take fishing, but expand the business in that spreading out further than the Midwest. And we’ve started doing a little bit more of that with the Ballards Black Island crowd on the Canadian side. ⁓ Because

there are a lot of multi-species fishing people out there. ⁓ we get, have an, you know, we have an air airport in international falls, Minnesota, which is about 60 miles from our property. So it is possible for people to fly, ⁓ with Delta, ⁓ to international falls and then, you know, use a chauffeur service or we come and pick people up or whatever to bring them to one of the two resorts. And we’re seeing more of that. We’re slowly expanding.

to those further areas where all of a sudden now we’re seeing guys from Texas. We get a family from California. We get a group from the East Coast. But we haven’t done any specific marketing as far as television or print or web or radio outside of the Midwest. So maybe that’s something that they grow into in the future.

Anthony Codispoti (51:07)
Large enough to serve you, small enough to know you. What does this mean?

Gary Moeller (51:12)
You know, that’s something that Joanne Ballard came up with many years ago and preached it to everyone that worked for Ballard’s resort. And it’s really very simple. it’s, it’s, uh, it’s just knowing your people. And, uh, from the second they walk into the building, um, to the time they leave and it’s harder, much, much harder now.

that we’ve grown so large. talked about the early 90s when we’re running four or five charter boats a day and now we’ve got 17 charter boats and we’re fishing 80, 90, 100 people a day. But we still know them in that our guides know you. And we have just a tremendous team of guides that

⁓ are super professional, super personable. ⁓ They build their own business, you know, themselves based on repeat customers. And, ⁓ you know, so that’s part of how we know people or how when someone walks through the door and they’re recognized by a bartender or they’re recognized by someone who works behind the reservation desk at the front, or they’re recognized by someone who is ⁓

you know, waiting tables in the dining room. That’s how you’re, you know, large enough to serve you small enough to know you when you make that effort to actually, you know, get to know people. And I think when you have your name stamped on a business like Ballard’s do, ⁓ that’s always a priority for you.

Anthony Codispoti (52:55)
I like it. Gary, I’ve just got one more question for you today, but before I ask it, I want to do three quick things. First of all, anybody who wants to get in touch with Gary Moeller, we’ve got his email address right here. Moeller at Ballardresorts.com. And Moeller is spelled M-O-E-L-L-E-R. M-O-E-L-L-E-R at Ballardresorts.com. And we’ll have that in the show notes for folks if you missed it.

And if you’re enjoying the show today, a quick comment or review on your favorite podcast app goes a long way towards helping others discover our show. So thank you for taking a quick moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, if you want to get more hospitality employees access to therapists, doctors, and prescription meds that, as paradoxical as it seems, actually increases your company’s net profits, reach out to us at adbackbenefits.com.

So last question for you, Gary, a year from now, what is one very specific thing that you hope to be celebrating?

Gary Moeller (53:54)
⁓ that’s a great question. ⁓ you know, I very I’m so it’s so early. I mean, I’m not used to ⁓ not working 24 seven right now, which is the resort business. And ⁓ I want to find something new that ⁓ that I’m passionate about. I don’t know that that means, you know, working 24 seven like I used to.

⁓ maybe it’s something part time. maybe it’s a project, maybe it’s, ⁓ I don’t know. I I’m leaving it open. I it’s been so long since I’ve done nothing. Obviously spending time with family is huge on my list. ⁓ because, you know, sometimes in business that part can suffer unfortunately. And, ⁓ so yeah, spending a lot of time with family, but a year from now, I want to be able to say, you know what? This is exciting.

I’m gonna keep doing this or I’m going to start doing this. ⁓ I’m looking for the next challenge. I guess you would say

Anthony Codispoti (54:59)
Well, I’m sure that you’ll find it in time. Gary Moeller from Ballard’s Resort, want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate you being here.

Gary Moeller (55:09)
Yeah, this has been fun. I your your podcast is awesome. I love the ability to, ⁓ you know, scroll through the menu and pick out the different areas where you can listen to people whether it’s hospitality, you know, like myself, or whether it’s, you know, whatever, you’re covering a broad range of people in the business industry. And, and I think it’s fantastic to, you know, be able to

listen to other people’s stories and get their voice. And that’s a big part about, you know, how you can grow your own business, find somebody else that’s doing it, that, ⁓ you know, might be able to share some secrets with you. And they don’t have to be in the same industry. They can be, you know, like for me, it was people in radio that somehow it just kind of matched up with, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to grow the fishing business.

Anthony Codispoti (56:01)
I appreciate all those kind words, Gary. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, try putting it into action today.