How I Went From Broke to $7 Million With An Airbnb Business

23:09And that's what Live Oak Lake had. Maybe it has some topography. People love water. Perhaps you can create a water feature. So I've got this other crazy story. And I'm about to make a Twitter thread on this. But some friends named Kimball and Christine had a dream. They're in rural Ohio. They buy this piece of property with zero money. The guy was a pastor. He had no money. He bought this piece of property. And then he noticed it had this old dilapidated lodge on it. But he noticed down below the lodge, there's this little cliff and there's a seasonal stream that only flows like a few weeks out of the year.

23:42And they had this idea. So they actually dug out and dammed up this little pool and then they put in a pump, recirculated the water so that it's flowing year round. And there's essentially a waterfall swimming pool. Look it up. It's called the cliffs at Hocking Hills. It's absolutely wild. This place has gone mega viral. They've got 600 ,000 followers on Instagram. They're booking out every single night, two years in advance. And that water feature probably cost them $20 ,000 to$30 ,000 and has literally created millions of dollars of value, both in the brand and in the property that they have.

24:17So find a property that's mediocre, but that has the potential with your vision to create something totally one of a kind. And then architecturally make a beautiful, infuse unreasonable hospitality into it. So you don't need an on-site concierge. You don't need people holding your hand at every five-star luxury would be. What you need is touch points that people care about. So when I opened Live Oak Lake, I quickly just had this idea. People love to see their name handwritten. So I perfected this process where we would handwrite a card to each guest. And then I partnered with a local bakery that was like five minutes down the road to fresh bake our own recipe of chocolate chip cookies every single morning.

25:01And then on the back end with my software, because I pretty much automated the whole property. So it was running with like two part-time employees, the whole thing on its own. I gave access to those bakers and they could see every morning, like how many reservations were that day. They would make the cookies. The cleaners who also had access to the property management software would pick them up, would deliver them. They would write the card. So I didn't have to do any work for less than$10, some fresh baked cookies, a handwritten card and a couple of Topo Chico's in the fridge made a massive impact and an emotional connection with the guests.

25:33Not only was it a beautiful architectural and natural experience, but they felt like me as the owner, as Isaac, like my story, which we could go, we could go down so many rabbit holes, but like I wrote out our story in this booklet that we gave them. Like we turned what would have been a boring house manual into like this fun to read coffee table book. But then on top of that, there's this handwritten note and they all felt like, oh, Isaac just now left this for me this morning. And then in the messaging, we did all these automated messages, but we wrote them in such a way that was extremely careful and extremely intentional.

26:05So it felt very fresh and spontaneous. So little ways like this. I love this. Sam has this phrase, and I've taken his copywriting course, copy that two times now. It's absolutely gold in my opinion. But he has this little thing about these forgotten areas of copy. So whether that's like the 404 landing page on a website or like the terms and conditions, whatever, you find these little places that are overlooked and then you just spice them up and you make them feel cared for. And that's what we did with Live Oak Lake and the guests absolutely loved it. So there's a bunch there. I could go on and on about this, but basically here's the play.

26:41Anyone can do this. Anyone can go out and spend$100 ,000 if you find the people, buy this piece of land. And yeah, you're going to have to get a bank loan. I know tons of people doing this. I've got a community of about 50 people building these properties right now around the country. And the value creation in such a short amount of time, if you execute this well, is just off the chart. Dude, you're like one of these toys that we just wound up. We just let go and just like, holy shit. Sorry. I love it. No, don't apologize. I love it. Whenever I get done hanging out with you, I feel more energy.

27:19I think there's two types of people. There's people who you feel worn out when you get done hanging out with them, and then you feel like there's people where you feel inspired. What are some ways that a smart person could get this wrong? So not every, any blueprint. If I say, hey, I've had all the success in e-commerce. Well, I know a bunch of people who have failed in e-commerce, and I can tell you where they go wrong. Some of the common traps that a smart person could fall into. I mean, I failed at it, or at least I didn't. Sam's like, I'll take this one. Yeah. I mean, I bought a property and wanted to turn into this.

27:53And I actually didn't. I broke even. I mean, I probably made a little bit of money, but it wasn't like a screaming success. So here's a list. The first thing is, there is no such thing as set it and forget it. Passive income when it comes to real estate, if you own the thing, that ain't true. It's still a business that you have to run. There is no set it and forget it. Would you agree with that, Isaac? 99 % of the time, unless you are just an extreme exception. But yes, the illusion of total automation is absolutely just that, an illusion. I think another thing is you really actually have to give a shit and care about it.

28:25Like in order to like make outsized returns, you do really, it needs to be really, really different and special as opposed to just like in my case, I was like, oh, there's not a lot in this part of the country. Like this picture looks good. I'll stand out. Done. And that's why my returns were only okay. That was not an exceptional plan. Yeah, I think that design is the number one lever that you can pull as my friend Hans, who's awesome, by the way, Hans Lorre, absolutely blown up on Instagram recently. He's got like 550 ,000 followers and he's like breaking down interior design in these little short form videos.

28:59But design is the biggest lever you can pull in controlling how people feel. And going back to that vibe and that feeling that you're creating, hospitality is all about emotional connections with people, with your guests. And you're in a business that's notoriously difficult to operate. So you live or die based off of every single guest interaction. And going back to raising all the money, this is what I feel like a lot of startups inevitably fail at. They try to scale too fast. They invest all that money. They see the opportunity. They see the Live Oakley case study. They invest all that money in hiring these designers and hiring, spending a ton on ads and doing all these things that are like the priorities are wrong, you need a story.

29:40So like, if you want to do this, you probably chances are like, you shouldn't just dump a bunch of money into somebody else's. Well, you can do that if it's the right person, but ideally you need to be, or you need to be partnered neck and neck with someone who is extremely passionate and wants to tell that story. But hospitality is all about like, how do you serve these people? And so this is where, even though I did automate most of the property, like I'm telling you, it was awesome. We had Zapier. We had like six softwares. We had smart home technology. The place was just running like a machine.

30:12But I was still reading every single review. I was still at least seeing every single message from every single guest. And that's a 24-7 thing. I mean, that's intense any way you cut it. And when you don't have somebody who cares about that, or you don't have the right employees that have, even once you've built it, who can operate it with that owner's mentality, you're just, you're going to suffer. And there's this great quote by Tim Ferriss. You've probably heard it, but he says, there's a glut of mediocrity in the world. Please don't contribute to it. And I would say that applies to the design aspect that applies to the operations and like hospitality aspect that applies across the board.

30:53So if you come with the right mindset Instead of I'm here to serve, I'm here to, again, build out this incredible vision, tell that story authentically, chances are you're absolutely going to succeed because people gravitate towards that naturally. You know, Sean, you and I make money on the internet. And when you make money on the internet, that means the barrier to entry is really low. So it's really easy to have an idea and turn it into something very quickly. because of that i think i've gotten into a habit of creating things that were to use a funny pun subpar uh like there was very little passion involved in them or there's very little excellence have you ever like felt like that when you're making stuff online sean like where you're like looking back and you're like this is just not a very high quality thing even though it's making money honestly i disagree like i think the barrier to entry is low yes it's easy to play, but it's not easy to win.

31:50And so anytime I've tried to do something that works online, I don't know, I threw my all into it. I wasn't necessarily very good, so even if I got a mediocre result, it wasn't due to lack of effort. It was due to lack of skill or I'd make something really good that nobody cared about, nobody wanted. It was just the wrong problem to solve. So I think that yes, it's easy to try something online. I don't think it's easy to win at something online. I don't think you can get away with something How do you define winning? Whatever, hitting my goals for it. So having something that actually grows, that is sticky, that is very profitable.

32:26The things I look for when I do a project online is I'm trying to have it be successful. I don't think any of these are easy. They're definitely easier than going out into a plot of land and being like, I'm going to build a luxury stay here and I'm going to serve customers essentially by hand. It's definitely easier than that. But I wouldn't say it's like, I don't think you can get away with sucking online and be successful because the barriers entry so low, because the barrier entry so low, there's so many people playing because there's so many people playing to actually do something that's that works and captures people's finite attention is still hard.

32:59We have so many friends that are popular on the Internet and they make crappy stuff like that's crappy by our standards. is not crappy by the customer standards, right? Like I was thinking about this the other day. So Jimmy, Mr. Beast, who, you know, is friendly with us and is obviously super successful with YouTube. He just released, I guess I got leaked his production document. Did you guys see this? I read the whole thing. So I actually want to do like a whole bigger thing on it. So I don't want to go too much into it. But one amazing thing is, you know, you get to see inside his mind and his mind works in a really unique way.

33:32And I think you could see from that document why he's so successful. But if you read the document or you hear the stories about him, you would think that he is making the greatest videos the world has ever seen, that he is the whatever. I don't know who the famous directors and artists of our time are, but you would think he's doing that when in actuality, it's sort of like saying, who makes the best burgers? Is it McDonald's who has the most popular burgers? They sell the most volume of burgers. is it someone in the middle is it five guys because they they're pretty popular but maybe their taste is a bit better or is it the chef in um you know new york who makes this one unbelievable burger that's 36 and if you ever put a mcdonald's burger next to that you could you would laugh at the mcdonald's burger right which one is the best burger and mr beast has made his success because he's decided to be mcdonald's on the internet right he is creating the videos that are mass market that are going to get the most number of views even if they're not the most life-changing, introspective, emotional, or beautifully told stories, there are other people who do those.

34:36And so I think there's just like, it's hard to say what is the best, right? Like the people, the friends of ours who we think make this like pretty crap content that works, it's because they're doing the McDonald's thing, right? They're giving people fast food content. And then there's other people that are giving them artisanal content. And who's to say what's better than the others? Depends on your goals. Can I tell you a crazy story about Twitter and going viral. Yeah, what do you got? So actually, Sean, I need to publicly thank you because your episode on how I write with David about how storytelling was, I mean, golden.

35:13You don't know how many people I referred to that episode. But like, I don't know, four or five months ago, Alex Lieberman made a post about, he was like, I just watched this interview with Aaron Sorkin about stories and I'm entranced by it. I want to go down that rabbit hole. and so anyway when I saw that it resonated with something I was already feeling I wouldn't consider myself naturally a great storyteller actually but I was like I feel like I can learn this skill and I'm gonna figure it out so I went down the rabbit hole and I listened to podcasts and I read books and I took courses and and copywriting and writing in general and then I was like okay I'm gonna figure this out and I'm gonna I'm gonna try it and so well first of all I'd taken an eight-month break from Twitter.

35:55So last fall, I stopped posting it all. And I took an eight-month break. But I would sort of describe it for various reasons. But one was, I was just recharging as a creator. You can't just constantly go. You're like a battery. You've got to recharge. But I came back kind of guns a-blazing in June with all of this knowledge that I had been accumulating from all of these different sources. And right out the gate, I had a 6 million view new thread. And people were like, threads are dead. And Twitter's dead. The algorithm's trash, whatever, whatever. And literally one after another. And I'm knocking on wood.

36:28But at the end of the day, I've never had so much sustained success. The last 10 threads I've written in a row without exception have gone an average of a million views apiece. And then one of them went totally crazy. So I wrote this thread about this train car that my dad... It's penned to the top of my profile if you want to look at it. But yeah, I've seen that one. So I wrote this thread. I stayed up like all night. I spent eight hours writing it. I had just finished copy that the second time. And so it was fresh on my mind. And I wrote this thread. And I didn't know, you know, I put 60 % going off of your advice, going off of a lot of people's advice, like 60 % of my effort of those eight hours were spent writing that hook, like both writing it and also curating those images.

37:12So it's got this great visual hook where you see side-by-side train car before, after, and then hours writing four or five sentences. I know that sounds crazy, but writing and rewriting it, just trying to make it a science. But I had this sentence in there. Let me read it. So I said, my dad bought this 120-year-old train car for$2 ,000. It was a rotting cat-infested wreck. So I knew that I was probably being a little controversial when I said that. I had no idea just how controversial this would be. I said, but after investing 147K in five months of work, we redeemed it. Today, it's one of the most profitable and exclusive stays in the country.

37:49Here's what happened. So here is what happened. There is like 30 % of the population I've come to believe are these cat loving, I mean, Karens. And I loved, guess what? Spoiler alert, I love cats too. I was not meaning disrespect to the cats when I said this. But these people read that whole thread and then just absolutely murdered me in the comments. What happened to the cats? The cats were the landlords. They should have kicked you out. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like machine gun fire. I mean, it was crazy. And so on top of what was a pretty good hook and a good story, we had just jet fuel poured on the fire by these cat lovers and me haters.

38:32So that was kind of crazy. And I've learned. didn't like brian chesky comment on that or brian chesky reposted it twice in one day joe gabia reposted it paul graham repost quote tweeted it and then like you know 20 million views total in the first day but here's another crazy thing so there's all these journalists that lurk on x you don't know about them because they probably have like 300 followers so within like two days i got invitations for coverage so in in the two or three weeks since i wrote that post we've been And now the story has been featured in the New York Post, Vice, Business Insider, Fast Company, The Daily Mail, Cody Sanchez is coming to do a YouTube video, like tens and tens of millions of views.

39:15So you're just really creating like this surface area for luck when you post on Twitter, because it's basically proof of concept. They're like, oh, this story is resonating. We should go ahead and post it too. So it's crazy. Hey, quick message here, because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works? No friction? Well, I've used Mercury for years now and let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices, I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch.

39:47None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client. And the first thing I did, I sent them a clean branded invoice. Boom, deal closed, cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want. And that's why I use Mercury. So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to mercury.com and get started in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bankless services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column N-A, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC. I love that story. And yeah, I checked out this thread.

40:17It's great. But I think that the real lesson here, what's the right takeaway? I think there's a few. One is, yeah, there were some nice copywriting techniques in here. And yes, it's cool that you decided like, hey, this is all a skill I can learn. I can learn storytelling. I can learn writing. I can learn how to be better at content creation. And you just decided to like obsess and devour that stuff. But the real thing is the story went viral because of what you guys did. You did something amazing. You took this, you know, basically like beaten up rotten train car and you turned it into something cool.

40:50And it's like, without that, you could obsess over all the sentences you want. That story is going nowhere. And so the best content creation is go do amazing things in your life and then learn some best practices about how to talk about them is a much better approach than learn the amazing skill of writing hooks and never do something amazing in your life. And I hope that more people do the amazing thing in life instead of the opposite. But dude, why are you on Twitter? Because you need to be doing this on TikTok. You're on the wrong platform, my friend. Man, I want to start doing short form video, but I love writing.

41:24and Twitter helps me think better. Like number one, I get to connect with much smarter people than those other platforms. And it's not just about some vanity metric of having a big audience for me. I genuinely enjoy the process of having to write concisely. And again, it's like a skill I just wanted to attack in copywriting and writing in general. And so that process of like clarifying your thoughts by writing tweets and like every single word counts and building a slippery slope that Sam talks about that people will fall down. I just absolutely love that process. and not just for production value of the story, but for what it does in my own thinking.

41:57But yeah, the iteration will probably be, I prove these story concepts and sort of write a script in my Twitter thread. And I've had like 10 of these that have, like I said, gone like pretty viral. And then I basically have all my heavy lifting done for me. And I just like throw together a nice green screen, maybe video of me talking about it and telling that story like really snappy on Instagram and TikTok. and then eventually I want to do YouTube because of course, as you guys know, there's an insane loyalty and of course you can monetize and whatnot through that as well. But I'm also a perfectionist and like the short form thing, like people, what really is working right now is really raw and authentic and that's cool.

42:40But again, I care so much about the production value that it's hard for me to sort of fit into that slot. Originally, when I told Sean about you, he was like, oh, it sounds like an Amish guy who likes money. And I was like, yeah, I guess that's an interesting description. um but if that is yeah i was like i'm the next two words were i'm in yeah um and if that and let's just say uh to someone who's not like entrenched in this isaac your community is similar ish to amish uh what do they think about you like being this popular internet guy or do they even know do they even know like who you what you're doing are you sinning by being on this podcast right now like what's going on what's what's the reaction back at the farm all right we're gonna go way back but i'll try to be brief here so my wife's grandparents actually founded this community 51 years ago, and it started as an inner city mission in the slums of Manhattan.

43:28And they had actually been atheists, but had these radical life-changing experiences with God, became Christians, and then felt called to start this mission there. And it was super unlikely beginnings, but basically a motley crew of folks from all backgrounds, a lot of people that were sort of disaffected with life came together and a core group started coalescing and basically a church was founded. But then a few years into it, they were all young parents and they realized we need to have a culture where we can raise our kids that is going to sustain the values that we care about, like family and our faith and whatnot.

44:06So they started looking for land outside the city. Long story short, they all moved about 200 people to Colorado, Western Colorado, which was like the middle of nowhere for people that had spent their whole lives virtually in New York City. And that's where my parents recently graduated high school, Western Slope of Colorado, encountered this group of weird people being called a cult by all the locals, but again, had these transformational experiences, came to God and joined this group. And then in Colorado, they sort of learned all these skills, like how to live off the land, how to grow your own food, how to work with your hands and relearn all these traditional skills like woodworking and pottery and blacksmithing.

44:49And then fast forward, they picked up and moved to Texas in the early 90s. And so we have a piece of property around 450 acres just outside of Waco where first the group was in Austin, some was in Waco, it consolidated here. and basically what makes us different is we take our faith very seriously and we want to make that faith come alive in every aspect of life. So instead of just like church being a program that you attend a few times a week, we truly try to live out community. So we're working, playing, doing life together and there's about 1 ,200 people a part of this Texas branch. About a third of those actually live on that piece of property, that 400 acre piece of property.

45:32The rest live on their own places nearby. We're not common purse. We put a huge emphasis on individual responsibility, but basically we strive for simplicity. Just explain it like this. I live in a cookie cutter suburb of America. So just like general I'm in California. If I went and visited where you guys live, what would seem most different to me? What is it that you guys do that would be most different? Yeah. We don't have TVs in our homes. We don't really have internet in our homes. we, again, like 95 % of the community either is self-employed or works for each other. So we live this agrarian lifestyle.

46:12We grow gardens. We do use technology. And this is where we're, one of the ways we're different from Amish. We just, our whole philosophy is we want to control it versus being controlled by it. And so basically I grew up on a farm taking care of animals. I was homeschooled. So we homeschool our kids. I have nine siblings. There's a lot of big families. Not everybody has a big family, but I went by the way, Sean, and I stayed in the community and I would joke with Isaac I'm like Isaac I'm an atheist don't try to convert me to any of this stuff but I would love to explore and learn about your community and when I went there they believe I'm gonna kind of summarize Isaac they believe that in order to like show they're close to God and everything that they were they're craftsmen in like everything they do so they have this like restaurant and like they make all of their own food there or they have a church where they built it.

47:01And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful church. Dude, they had this Easter thing that I went to, and there was these women singing. I swear to God, I'm like, this sounds like a black choir in Harlem. This is the most stylish, best singers I've ever heard in my life because they studied it and they perfect these things. And so he had this vibe where he was like, oh, no, the right way to do this business is doing this, this, and this. So in order to learn Instagram, I'm going able to study it and I'm going to execute perfectly. No, like I said, we use technology. We use media too. We haven't really used social media and I'm kind of one of the first that's pioneering that.

47:37But we want to tell our story. We don't want to substitute for the substance of the community that we've created so intentionally over decades by using social media, which innately is just a virtual world. So we're trying to find ways to storytell. Because I feel like Sam got you hooked on sugar and you hadn't had sugar. You were like, yeah, no, I love vegetables and I just love all these earthy flavors. And then Sam was like, here, have some sugar. And now you've had sugar. You've had the viral sugar, the feeling of going viral and making millions of dollars and everybody loving your story and some people hating your story.

48:13And then you want to respond to them. You've now tasted that. How is that effed with your brain? Yeah. It's like, Hey, Isaac, just a little crack. You just want a little crack? Just a little. Well, you've had that social media crack. What's your honest feeling of where you are right now with that? Man, it's tough. That's one of the reasons I took the eight-month break because personally, I felt like it was becoming... I love attention. I'll just be honest about it. I felt like it was becoming a distraction for what really is a lived life. For one, I have a family. We have a little boy. We have another on the way.

48:46I have this amazing community life, which I'm starting to be more public about. I made a thread about the community a couple months ago. And people are really intrigued with that. But again, work-life, to use the term everybody's familiar with, work-life balance is a very, very real thing. I just feel like if there's a way, if there's an overarching guiding principle that work and life and family and play and everything can fit into, they don't need to constantly feel like they're in conflict with each other. But in order to make that happen, I need people in my life that hold me accountable and are going to be real with me.

49:19And I've had plenty of that, just to be honest. Some of my friends that know me very well have been very honest with me and at times critical. And I totally love them and respect them for that. What'd they say? Oh, the way you came across here was bragging or the way you said that was maybe not completely... Not telling me. It was more like asking questions because again, nobody tells you what to do here. We're very much like, we open ourselves up voluntarily, but they're like, is that consistent with the way that you would talk so-and-so? And basically, we want to be very careful that we, and I want to be very careful that I don't put, that the version of me that you see on the internet is exactly what you're going to get in person.

50:06And as you guys know, there's just like that inevitable conflict, but I feel like I've learned a ton through it. And it's a constant struggle for me where I probably need to delete the app from my phone and just use it on desktop. I have a lot of friends that do that. But Twitter is that thing for me. I mean, it's highly addicting. It's just such a great format to connect with interesting people. Sean, I think that every man, once he has children and becomes a family man, I think they have two urges. The first one is to be in some type of situation where they can exert force and use a little bit of violence to be a hero.

50:40You know what I mean? Like a man robs a bank and you suddenly stop it and you're the hero. that's one of them patrolling main street just in case something goes down and i might be needed yeah just like to be the tough guy that protects everyone once then the second thing is to like live in a farm with your family and your community and like everyone's like lives like a little socialist hippie life and i went to his uh i i hung out in his area and isaac was like hey check this out i just planted a hundred apple trees and a bunch of like fruit trees in about three years These are going to be ready to bloom.

51:12And I'm like, oh, nice. That's kind of a lot of fruit. Like you're going to eat all that fruit. He's like, no, it's for everyone. I'm like, well, you're going to have to take care of this. He's like, no, I just told everyone in the community that I planted these trees and we're probably going to make like a schedule. But we'll all chip in and like tend to the trees to make sure like it's going to bear the most fruit. And then we'll just like we'll just spread it out evenly. Just being there for that 24, 48 hours, that one particular time, I was like, I'm fulfilling that need of like seeing this like hippie lifestyle.

51:40You saw that David Beckham post, Sam? Oh, where he's growing fruit now or growing vegetables. You've got to be friends with him. Yeah, he went viral because he posted this video on his Instagram, and it's him in a flannel shirt and the old-timey hat. Yeah, like an Irish hat. And the caption is, my kale is doing well. And basically, it's him on his farm. He now lives a farm life. He's him on his farm. He's gardening. He's beekeeping. And this is what he's doing. And people just went nuts about this trend. And Isaac, I feel like you've influenced him or maybe you should influence him. I think he might slide into your DM soon to learn a little bit.

52:15Do you not feel this urge, Sean, every once in a while? We are like, I wish I would just on a farm with my family and friends and we all did this together. No, dude, it's way too much work. No, I don't have that urge. Sean, you got to come visit at least. I have my versions of these, but they're like, for example, I like writing and I'm like, cool. I just don't want to work. I just want to like, you know, I don't know how to paint. I'm not skilled enough to paint. I don't know how to build. I'm not skilled enough to build. I don't really want to go develop those, but I'm like, I want to write a movie or I want to spend my day, you know, playing soccer with my kids or whatever it is, things like that.

52:47But I'm not as, I don't have the same like Roman Empire urges that most guys have. Meaning like, I don't care about history as much as most of my friends do. I don't care about living off the grid and like providing, you know, like pumping my own water and like irrigating something. I don't want to irrigate nothing. Okay. So like, I don't have that urge. For me personally, I got, I guess, my own versions of them, but they're a lot more mild. Well, that sucks. I guess, okay, dork. Let me go play house in the woods without you. I still want to have Wi-Fi. Shoot me. This is like the man version of playing house and dress up.

53:28You know what I mean? Isaac, can we do rapid fire to end this? How old are you? 27. What's one thing I can learn from you about hospitality, even though I'm not going to have my own mini hotels and all that, but if I just have a guest coming over to my house, I got an old friend from college coming over. What's one hospitality thing I can learn from you? It's the single most valuable skill to have in life. And you have to be selfish. You have to want to serve other people. So I don't think it's something that you can affect. But I think everybody has that urge inside of them. I think were born to serve other people and read unreasonable hospitality if you haven't already.

54:08But basically look for those little ways, like I described with the handwritten note, that are surprising. They're small, but they delight people. And sometimes the smallest acts of kindness and generosity show the biggest parts. And so I don't think it needs to be some grandiose thing. I think you just have to want to serve them and people are going to feel it. Isaac, I think what you did with the Live Oak Lake and what you're showing other people doing with floating homes and shipping containers and stuff like that is amazing. It's an amazing trend. People should go follow you on Twitter to kind of like see more of these.

54:39I think it is amazing because it is so hard. And so for the few people who are capable of putting in the creativity, the passion, the care, the hospitality that it takes to make these successful, that's amazing. And send me your links so that I can go stay at your places. And for me, it's a reminder of like, if you want an unreasonable result, you sort of have to do an unreasonable thing in certain areas. And this is definitely one of those areas. And so for me, I would never be able to pull one of these off. So props to you because I hear your story and part of me is like, oh, I would love to do that.

55:14But the bigger part of me who knows me better is like, this is not for you. You have to be exceptional to make this work. You have to be exceptional on the real estate development side. You have to be exceptional on the content marketing to go viral so that you You can get booked for two years out. You have to be exceptional in the hospitality because you have to re-earn the business with every guest stay. And I think you are exceptional. You've done that. And I think also it's a good thing to know about yourself, whether that's for you or if it's not for you. And I think it's a very small subset of the population who it's for them.

55:45Well, I appreciate that. Can I close with two quotes that mean a lot to me? One, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So sweat the details, care, put your heart into whatever you're going to do. Do it with hospitality. Do it with excellence. And number two, there's this quote by this English pastor actually named John Wesley. He was like a few hundred years ago, but he said, light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn. And that's kind of my hope in life. I want people to say, well, that's a life well lived. And I want to say that at the end of my own life.

56:17That is an amazing quote. I love that quote. Dude, thank you so much. You're the man. we appreciate you and we'll wrap up there that's the pod

56:49alright this episode is brought to you by Mercury They are the finance platform of choice for over 200 ,000 companies. Shouldn't be surprised because I use it myself for not one, not two, but I have eight different Mercury accounts. I have seven for different companies that I'm a part of. And then I have my own personal account because now they have personal banking, which is a really cool feature. I highly, highly recommend it. Like I said, I use it myself. And the reason why is because the way that Mercury works is beautiful. It's very intuitive. And you could tell that it's actually made by a startup founder.

57:17It's an entrepreneur. You could tell it's made by somebody who used other banking products in the past. and didn't like all the different rough edges and annoyances and decided to, you know, actually fix it himself. And really any type of entrepreneur you are, let's say you're an agency. Well, one of the things every agency has to do is be able to send invoices, easily create them, send them to customers and stay current on your balances with all your customers. Well, you can do that inside Mercury. And so I think that Mercury is great. Highly recommend you check it out. And thank you for sponsoring the show.

57:42For more information, check out mercury.com. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Check show notes for details.