MI326: Experiential Hospitality with Heart w/ Isaac French

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25:35And for a limited time, you can use code stocks15 for a 15 % discount at checkout. All right, back to the show. Thank you so much for sharing all that. It's really some great stuff. Yeah, it sounds like you're very thoughtful about it, obviously. And like the example of the personal brand, I think that can be very tricky. people have a tendency to go either way too much or way too little. And you're hiding your light. You mentioned gifts and skills and inherent abilities that we've all been gifted with, and we have different ones. I have started this program called Prime Movers with a guy named Chip Ingram, who is actually a pastor, was in Texas.

26:14He's now out in California. But the idea is to find what he calls your holy ambition. So it's like using your gifts, talents, and abilities for God's kingdom, right? And so it's something I just started a couple months ago. So I'm very excited about this and fun to talk to you about it, about you're definitely using your gifts in a great way. And I think it's awesome that you're able to come on a show like this and talk about it. I'll look that up. That sounds interesting. Yeah. It's geared towards business people. You work with a small cohort of people. There's four of us in this small group led by a facilitator, and it's a pretty intensive work.

26:48A lot of reading, a lot of deep thought and study and writing. But thanks for sharing all that. I didn't know that we were going to go down that rabbit hole, but I appreciate you sharing. Yeah, I will just say, and I'm sure we can transition into some of the other stuff, but this could be a segue to that. But I see the vision that we have with the Christian communities that are supposed to be a living testimony, so to speak, to others, as far as to unity. I mean, we look to Jesus is saying that in John 17 there, By your love for one another, the world is going to know that you're my disciples.

27:23And so, therefore, our testimony of unity, again, that should transcend even our words, is going to be the greatest form of evangelism. But with that whole vision of community and an entire lifestyle and entire society and everything encompassing a community, encompassing all that, I see the hospitality as such a wonderful way to preach the gospel, actually, to show love for others and not judge them to serve other people selflessly. And that's part of the reason I feel so passionate about what we even the small amount of success and resonance that we found with Live Oak Lake that is very financially profitable to give people what not something that is somehow just a sideshow or somewhat removed from what I actually believe, but what I actually believe life is all about, which is serving other people and meeting their needs.

28:17And that's why I'm so excited about this vision of hospitality, which we'll talk about later, but how we can even incorporate that into the model that we already have, which we're very hospitality oriented. That's another thing I should mention. I mean, we grew up hosting people at our home all the time from other places, which again, is another huge benefit of the community. Not only are these other community members from around the world that have different cultures and different perspectives that we can learn from and very impactful as a child, but also just strangers, friends, relatives that don't see the world the same way that we do.

28:47And again, being so open and hospitality minded was incredibly beneficial, I think. So I'm very excited for how all of these things can work together. And again, bring that harmony and cohesion to your own personal existence and your purpose in life instead of feeling so fragmented, which is much more common today, it seems. Yeah, I would agree with that. 100 % agree with that. So for our listeners that don't know about what you're up to, we're kind of deeper into the podcast here, but tell us about Live Oak Lake, what it is, the inspiration behind it, and just kind of go into the details of what Live Oak Lake is.

29:24Yeah. So Live Oak Lake is seven modern Scandinavian styled cabins nestled around a small lake, giant live oak trees, walking trails, kayaking, hammocks, fire pits, just beautiful, serene environment. Five acre property here, five minutes down the road from where I live. And the short story is I had been in Idaho and moved back to Texas, got married, was also doing accounting. I didn't mention that earlier, but I had a small cloud-based accounting firm and had the construction experience, had always been interested in design. I'm an artist, was looking to somehow bring all of these things together, naturally was curious about real estate to bring all these different skill sets together and had this idea of why not create this little property that basically a village of really cool cabins.

30:10And didn't articulate most of that at the time, but knew that it just felt intuitively like this would work. And started looking for property. One morning while scrolling Zillow, found this five-acre parcel for$130 ,000, made an offer that day, went out, looked at the property, was just blown away. I had driven by this particular spot tons of times, but it never stopped to actually examine what was there. It just looked like a bramble of trees. It was incredible. It needed a ton of work, but these massive live oak trees were just awesome. Long story short, bought the property nine and a half months later of intense season of designing, building, furnishing, outfitting the property, all myself, obviously with the help of subcontractors, other friends that helped with different aspects.

30:55But I didn't hire engineers or architects or interior designers or any of that. I was really doing that myself, dealing with the bank and all the complexities of actually financing it when it went way over budget. But pulled off this project, opened the doors in January of 2022, and right out the gate was just blown away by the response. So didn't have any following on social media, hadn't done any press or any marketing. But through a series of events, started posting on Instagram, got picked up by a couple other influencer accounts in Texas, got a ton of attentions, went all in with influencer partnerships where we would run these giveaways, which just pour jet fuel on the fire.

31:32And yeah, grew a social media following to... It's now 150 ,000 in about 18 months on Instagram, about 95 % occupancy overall, 80 % plus of all bookings coming direct through our own website, 40 ,000 plus people on the email list, and financially a huge success as well. So really surprised me and blew my mind that people would resonate so strongly. But I think one of the key things that made it such a success is I did accurately realize there was no experience like this in Texas. There was no architecture like this. There was nothing that was really thoughtfully planned, at least on that level, in terms of an all-encompassing experience that was immersive for people to come to.

32:13So a common anecdote, when people come visit Live Oak Lake, they say, when we drive in the gate, it's fenced and gated 24-7. And so again, it kind of is this all-encompassing feel. They say it feels like we're coming to a different world. And there's a saying, the way you do one thing is the way that you do everything. And we certainly try to apply that with Live Oak Lake from every aspect of design and construction to the programming and the thoughtfulness of the welcome gift and the messaging and the housekeeping staff and the maintenance staff. Another key little comment I'll make here, a lot of people ask about hiring.

32:48How do you find... Because at the end of the day, no matter how much you automate and systematize, which we've done a lot of, hospitality is all about the heart and soul behind the experience. And there are key human touch points that we do have with the guests. Maybe it's just a chance encounter with the cleaners when they're leaving the unit and the guest pulls up. And cleaning is... All of these different staff roles are so important. A lot of people ask, how do you find these people? I have to just show my cards here. The community was our main source for all of this. So having these built-in relationships of trust and character and work ethic that I knew I could trust these people to do a good job.

33:24I knew I could train them and trust them to interact with the guests in the best way possible to treat them like family was so immensely valuable. And again, inspires me for the potential of how we can leverage that with future projects in the future. But so again, it's this immersive experience that is a part a blend of amazing architecture and design with incredibly hospitable experiences with the hosting staff, experiences on the property that are mostly self-guided, like I said, the kayaking trails, but then also proximity to Homestead, which is where we have this whole working craft village farm.

34:00There's other things in Waco. There's Magnolia, which is awesome, Chip and Joanna's little empire there. But for the most part, Waco, though, is growing a tourist component. Well, I should just say, Waco definitely has a tourism component, but the main demographic of guests at Live Oak Lake have just come from the Instagram following. So creating this new lane of traffic, actually, where we're contributing to that, it's just blown me away too, the power of social media, getting the message out there, telling your story, but then also other people telling your story, which we've had several YouTubers come out.

34:31And like I mentioned, Instagram creators themselves that have done these giveaways. But yeah, it's been an eventful and adventurous ride. But that's Live Oak Lake. That's a high level view of it. I want to dive, kind of drill down a little bit. When you drove by this property, did you have the idea for it already in mind and you were actively looking for the land or it just kind of, you came across the land, happenstance, you're looking at Zillow, saw the listing, went to go look at it and decided at that point to do the project or like, you know what I'm saying? Like, did you have this idea in your mind?

35:04Like, I need to go find land to go do this? Or did it just come about naturally and organically? Some of both. So I had this idea in my mind for a while, but I was actually looking at a property, it's a funny story, that was like a quarter mile down the same road that a friend of mine owned. And it was on a 50-foot bluff with a white rock dry creek in the bottom, which is really unique and have this cool view component. It also had some... Liability issues. We had the liability issues. But I was pretty set on this is the place to do it just because it's unique. And I knew we wanted something that had some natural land potential just in terms of the beauty of the land.

35:43Well, long story short is he was moving way too slowly. And though he agreed that if he sold it, I'd have the first right to buy it. He just was not in a hurry to get that done, to survey the piece off that I wanted. And so I was looking more broadly. Hence, one morning, I opened up Zillow while I was still in bed, literally. And this place had just been listed in the previous 12 hours. It had just gone online. And so I literally called the agent up immediately and got dressed and drove over there in the hour and met them because I knew it would probably go quickly. I was shocked because it was a drone photo that caught my eye that I saw this little cow pond in the middle.

36:21And though I'd driven by this place a million times, I'd never known there was any kind of water there. I think it's actually a spring-fed lake, which is really cool. We ended up digging it out. So was it kind of overgrown and in bad shape when you bought it? It was pure briars brush. And though it had these massive hidden gems, these live oak trees, and the water in the middle, to even see that was almost impossible just because it was so much stuff. There was this old dilapidated barn in the front. So yeah, it was definitely a process of envisioning. And I spent like two or three days on site, just walking around by myself, trying to figure out what is the highest and best use for this?

37:02How could we lay out structures that would best showcase the natural land potential that we do have? And how can we accentuate what we do? So we ended up taking out probably 60 % of the trees, trimmed up almost all the trees that we left, dug out the pond, built out the dry creek on the bottom side or seasonal creek. We drilled a small well to feed the pond in the summer in case it went down because we knew that was going to be a really important aspect if all of the cabins were situated around it. So yeah, there was quite a bit of land site work, which literally my friends and I and family went out there with chainsaws and just did ourselves for the most part.

37:38And again, we didn't have any engineers or site planners to lay it all out. It was very intuitive, just a boots on the ground approach of trying to put yourself in the shoes and envision what this place could be. And if you were a guest, how far apart would you want the cabins to be and all of that? Did you have the design of the cabin already in mind? Or did that come about after you purchased the land? Thoreau's got this quote about when you are on a piece of land, every man takes a look at it and is trying to figure out where, like you said, the highest and best use, where can I put my house or my cabin or whatever?

38:12When you were walking the property, did you have the cabins in mind already that you wanted to build? I was looking and I did not know. No, I did not know exactly what it was going to be. I found this company called DEN, D-E-N Outdoors. And they had really compelling designs at the time. I think there were a couple different cabins in process, but they didn't even have any completed structures, I don't think. So it was just renderings that I was looking at, but they had done a really good job of selling those. And so I fell in love with some of those designs. I purchased several of them actually, and then combined elements from a few different ones, like the floor plan of one with the exterior of another that I liked, and then tweaked it to taste, added spiral stairs, added a closet, added a washing machine and dryer, did a few things that fit the use that I thought was best for this property and hired a freelancer on Fiverr for a few hundred bucks to make those modifications.

39:07So all in all, spent a few thousand dollars out of pocket to have designs that we used. They weren't granted very detailed, which left a lot of room to improvise as we built, which was very helpful, actually, because I didn't have any of the finishes picked out, really. I didn't have a lot of the smaller details picked out. But since I was managing construction and over there every single day, I could make all those decisions on the fly, which helped us, again, value engineer to keep our costs somewhat reasonable, but also get things done quickly. Because that was 2021. Supply chain was a huge issue.

39:39Just getting doors and windows was like four months. Getting appliances was like six or seven months. Some of those things have become more normal now. But at the time, that was really, really difficult to plan around. So wearing all those hats was very helpful, actually. Yeah. It's huge to be able to be your own GC and do this on the cheap, cheaper than what most people can do it. And it also sounded like a big part of it was that you were in an unincorporated part of town that you were able to do a lot of this without... Typically, you'd have to go through a lot of hoops that it doesn't sound like you had to jump through.

40:12Absolutely. So I actually tell people this when they're thinking about the market that they should choose or the property that they should choose to create a property like Live Oak Lake. There's a few different factors. And my framework is this. Number one, you need to be in proximity to a big population base. So whether that's two hours or three hours driving distance, ideally, you could be further if you're cool enough, like say Amangiri, which is multiple hours from a large population base. But it's such an incredible out of this world experience that they have billionaires flying in to go there.

40:44But ideally, you should be within two hours driving distance of major metro area. Number two, which is tied maybe even for number one is this question of zoning and regulation. So in general, you need to just look at the state level. Is this a state that is generally friendly to new development of this kind or not? And there are some places, I'm not saying it can't be done in California, but entitlement can take so long, can take years. It's just not for me. Others may have the appetite for that. But some places like generally Texas is a high growth. There's a ton of people moving here. It's fairly laissez-faire.

41:19There's generally a business-friendly and capitalistic environment of creating development like this. I think the number one tip is get out of city limits, get into an unincorporated part of the county. At least many of the counties here in Texas, you essentially have zero requirements for building. Now, septics are another question, and that's where they get their foot in the door. In our case, that was actually the one aspect where I really needed to hire a good engineer to help us design a system because it's one system commercial for the entire property. And that's tricky. Sometimes you have to have separate systems for each unit.

41:54But as far as the actual buildability of it, all you have to do is file a simple application that you can tell them that you are building. And then you get three third-party inspections throughout the process, which literally can be a real estate inspector or an independent plumbing inspector. So it's not even city staff that's doing this. and then submit those. And technically, you don't even have to pass those inspections. They just want you to have them on and then they have that on file so that future property owners can look that up. So yeah, super, super low bar there. I know that there's two sides to everything.

42:26And the flip side of that, the argument to make, there's certainly an argument to make in the opposite direction, which is go to high barrier to entry markets because you know that supply is going to be very limited. Yes, that's certainly a viable model. It's just it's not necessary for a property like this, where you're creating something that's hopefully head and shoulders above anything else that's out there. And if you're really doing it right, which is certainly going to narrow down the pool of those that feel like they either have the gifts or the time to devote to a project like this, because it's very multidisciplinary, then nobody else is going to be able to imitate you at least for a while.

42:58And if they do, you're going to have the first mover advantage because you will have built up a following and all of that. So yeah, find a... number one, get approximated people. Number two, find a very easy place to build, i.e. unincorporated parts of the county. And then there are other factors. You obviously want to have some built-in natural land potential. I think that's important. I think trees are very important. Water is very important. Some of these things you could add in later. Having some diversity of demand is also important, whether that's other leisure travel or a nearby university, government business.

43:30We're in a really great spot because we're 15 minutes from downtown Waco. Waco has prominent university. It has, like I said, some localized tourism, other things as well. We've got great restaurants. So we didn't have to have any onsite F &B offerings. But we're within like two hours, two and a half hours of really the entire Texas Triangle, which is over 20 million people. So you have both of those aspects at play. And we're in perfect proximity to both. If you are going to be further, let's say two hours from a major metro area, I would say anything beyond 30 minutes actually, and you don't have a smaller town nearby that has great cuisine available, then you will need to consider F &B, which will probably mean that you need to push up your unit size to like 35 to 40 minimum to make that, maybe 30 to make that viable because that's just a whole nother ball of wax.

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47:36That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. I've got a real estate background, so I wanted to touch on the construction of the cabins. Were you pounding them out? Did you finish one at a time and move on to the next one? Or you did it in nine months. So how were you so efficient and finish these off so quickly? Having that experience in all aspects of construction and then project management was invaluable to that. And I also made plenty of phone calls to my older brothers who still... That's their primary occupation as general contractors with questions. But having the network of subcontractors within the local community was also very, very helpful in finding people to get stuff done.

48:26But yeah, I mean, we did everything all at once. I'm very much an all-in kind of person. And though it financially... Again, going back to some of my imbalances, I would much rather just forget, leave caution to the wind and go all in on an idea if I believe it's going to work. And it worked very well in this case. We did think about phasing it into two phases with proof of concept with two or three units and then expanding. But I was just like, look, opportunity cost of this is so big. And that turned out to be a very, very good assumption that we can't afford to spend three years dragging this out and then have just a new sense of ongoing construction, which is definitely affecting the experience of those that are staying here once the first ones are done.

49:08So we went all out, did everything at once, which was also nice because there are some economies of scale built in there with especially the subcontractors. It was very appealing to them to have essentially copy and paste times seven. And each cabin was the same or did you have, were they basically the same plan? There's two main plans. We have five two bedrooms and then two one bedroom units. The aesthetic is very similar throughout. And those two unit types are actually extremely similar. It's just an extra bedroom. And so a few extra feet wide and long, and a few extra appliances, things like that.

49:43And then we flipped some of them. So there's mirrored plans in other places. So there's technically four distinct unit types, but it's really just two with mirrors. And then the way in which we laid them out with the trees that they're situated around and the topography and the views that we framed through all the windows and the glass openings was our main way of providing some differentiation between them. And as well as the names of the units themselves, which have to do with their location on the property. And I think that that's actually a really valid point there too. You want to have enough built-in diversification that when guests are coming to stay at Shadow Bend, which is our flagship unit under this one massive oak tree, they look across the pond and they see Lakeside South, which is also extremely cool and just beautifully framed in the opening of the trees that it's in.

50:28And they're like, I want to go stay there. That's a hard balance because you got to maintain the cohesion between all of them and providing that overall brand aesthetic that people are going to, though they won't detect all of the similarities between the decking that we used in the floating dock and the decking on the front porch and the color of the chair on the dock and the color of the door on the cabin, whatever. All those little pieces that are communicating with each other and that are signifying this overall brand, they won't necessarily pick up on all those, but they will pick up on the general feeling that all of that communicates.

51:01And so every aspect, the container pool, all the onsite amenities, the hot tubs, the walking trails, the kayaking, the cabins themselves, the interior design, the front gate, the landscaping, all of these different components are all tied together in a very intentional way. And that's, I would argue, one of the most important pieces of creating that ambiance and environment. The lights, the way that when the lights turn on the time of day, when they turn off, which is all automated, so many different aspects of it that you don't think of at least immediately. But when you go to build it and you operate it, you realize the importance of all these things.

51:36And yeah, so those potentially create a massive workload to keep on top of all of these, you know, just maintenance alone. And yet, as I already said, that's a very important role, a maintenance person. But there's a lot of things you can automate. So with smart home technology, we've taken away so much of more of the menial mundane things, and yet been very intentional about what those key touch points are with the guests, like the welcome gift, like the messaging, like the chance encounters with the onsite staff that will mean a lot to the guests when they do have those. It just sounds like you said, how you do anything is how you do everything.

52:10And it just seems like you guys have been so oriented to attention to detail that everything has been very thoughtfully constructed, thought about. It's just an amazing place. I think I started following you. It must have been right around the time you had finished the project. And I immediately... I think most people's experience of seeing it, it's like, oh my gosh. And it's hard to describe it if you have not seen the photos of it. It looks like this little European village at night. It's just such a cool place. So congratulations, first of all, for just pulling off something like this. The other thing that I found out recently that I didn't know about is while you were doing this, you also were building a spec home and it broke your pelvis.

52:53I'm just astounded that you were able to pull all of this off. Yeah. So after I bought this property, actually may have been like a month before, I bought another five-acre piece just down the road and the spec home market in Waco was just through the roof. So I decided to try my hand at that, which was also helpful because there were more economies of scale and lessons learned with subcontractors and just building processes. But yeah, I built a$750 ,000 spec house in four and a half months, listed it before it was even complete and sold it and did very well on that, which was essential because we were just completely strapped for cash to get the Live Oak Lake project across the line.

53:34So it was very nice having that infusion towards the end, especially when we were in that stage, which is so important of furnishing and landscaping where you don't want to make compromises, but you have to, to maintain that overall aesthetic and experience. So yeah, built a spec house. And then a few months before we were done in the punch list phase of... It was like two months actually before we were done with Live Oak Lake. Yeah, one day popped into one of the cabins to check on progress. And one of the subs was putting in a spiral staircase, was working by himself, didn't have his helper that day, and needed help holding something.

54:05So I jumped up on an extension ladder that was leaned up and was holding this piece of steel up there as he bolted it in and the ladder slipped out from underneath me. And the ladder was leaned against like a balcony. So as soon as it got past that second floor, it just freaked out. And I just went straight down and belly flopped onto the concrete, which was quite painful. But yeah, I broke my pelvis. Didn't even realize what had happened. I just couldn't hardly move. And some of it was shock initially. I was like, no, we're not calling an ambulance. I'm just going home. I need to rest. And I couldn't even get in the car.

54:36And something was wrong. And so ended up going to quick care. They took me to a hospital and then yeah, I had multiple surgeries and was... I mean, overall, recovered extremely well. It was three months with crutches. But yeah, I was leaning on my friends and family a lot more even in that last stage, which again, couldn't have done it. I had my brother and brother-in-law come down from Idaho and they helped with the whole setup and furnishing phase. So I was just hobbling around on crutches and they were doing all the heavy lifting literally. And that was definitely a little bit of a wrench in the works.

55:06But even in that, I feel like I learned a valuable lesson. I mean, I was going 80 miles an hour in every aspect of my life through that summer, building both those projects. And I think there are seasons of life where you just have to push. I certainly think that people need to lean into those when they're in one of those. We didn't have any kids, which was also... We'd just been married a few months previous to that. We didn't have any kids. And so So I was just spending 60 hours a week plus over there at these two projects, in addition to all these other aspects of my life. And that's just really hard.

55:40But yeah, I mean, going from that to literally laying on my back on a hospital bed, unable to move for seven days was actually extremely healthy because it just made me slow down, zoom out a little bit and reevaluate what my priorities were. And I think I was, though I believe that you need to push in certain seasons, I think I was overdoing it a little bit. And again, that was another example of when my priorities can get out of whack sometimes. Though a lot of other relationships weren't suffering yet. If unhindered and unbridled, I think a person like me can just fly out of orbit like that.

56:17So it was actually really helpful. I just personally realized that there was a silver lining in all of that. And then just also realizing how valuable, truly good friends are and family like I have that stepped in in so many ways to help our family out and help me out even finishing that project. So it made me appreciate them a whole lot more. And also, I think, enabled me to empathize with others that are suffering in other ways that I'm, again, just because I can be so tunnel vision and so focused on whatever I'm doing, I just ignore other realities around me. And so I'm thankful for it for that.

56:49Yeah, it's an amazing story. I wanted to touch on a little bit about what, in retrospect, you would have done differently. Any mistakes that you made that you looking back on things, you would have done things a little bit differently? I think the number one mistake I made was I was in such a hurry that I didn't document or film any of the process of building. If you're going to go to the hassle of creating a project like this, which is like, what do they say about entrepreneurship that it's like eating glass and staring into the abyss or something like that? Building a project like this is similar and thinking about all the aspects that go into it.

57:22So I was so consumed that I didn't create anything. And I just wish I had documented the process a little bit better. Even if I hadn't used it at the time, I would have that. I have plenty of photos, but even some videos. There are simple things too. You don't need a whole film crew. Just some time lapses and before and afters can be so powerful visually to storytell when you're thinking about marketing that experience to guests. Because the story is such a big aspect too of the experience. Our family, my wife and I, we've since sold it. But our family was... I spent as much time as I could over there just interacting with guests and our stories in the Welcome Manual, which we very carefully crafted.

58:00And it's again, baked into all the details of it, how we created it, what we do, why we enjoy it. And so even the construction phase is just pure gold from a content perspective to capitalize on. So that's one. Another one is I didn't originally have any of the units that were ADA accessible. and it's a little bit of a gray area even legally. But if I had to do it again, I would certainly do one of them accessible. It's never impacted our occupancy. I mean, we've been so busy, but it's just a bad feeling to have to turn people away. And it's not even that we don't have bedrooms downstairs. Stairs aren't really the problem.

58:35It's just basic things like doorway openings and turn radiuses. So that's another thing I would certainly look... I guess also that's maybe a negative side effect of the lack of regulation and professional input from architects and engineers. But yeah, those are the two main things. Overall, I mean, there were lots of little tiny things like I forgot to wire in under cabinet lighting. So I had to use battery power. There's just lots of little things. I think most of those actually could be attributed to the lack of professional input. But they were all great learning experiences too, because I've got a long list of nitty gritty details that I can't wait to incorporate into my next project.

59:09And it sounds like you and your wife, You spent the night in each cabin. You learned every aspect of the business so that you could properly teach somebody else how to do it. Really knew what was going on. You mentioned that you had sold the property. So I wanted to touch on that a little bit. A project like this becomes your baby, right? I mean, this is your pride and joy. And so I wanted to hear how that was for you selling it. Yeah. So we didn't intend to sell, but it was always in the back of my mind that if somebody gave us the right number, we'd sell. That number grew. Initially, that number was 3 million.

59:46Then that number was 5 million. And I'll just be very transparent because that's what I've done through the whole journey of sharing all the numbers. And it's a double-edged sword because just as a side note here, some people are just automatically angry when you are financially successful or assume that you must be a grifter because you're sharing all these numbers. So you have to be careful, obviously. But I've found overall that just being truly authentic and transparent, even with all of the numbers that go behind something, everything about the story. It's like social media, again, it's so tempting just to tell the positives or just to be hyperbolic and exaggerate your storytelling.

1:00:24I've tried to just share everything. Unfortunately, I guess I should say, we've had so many wins that it can appear like this is a little unbelievable. But yeah, so we built the project for$2.3 million all in, financed it through a line of credit I got through my family with their construction company, which was essential to supplement the main construction loan that I got from a local lender, some personal cash. Four months after we opened, we reappraised, refinanced, locked in a great rate long-term. This was July of 22 before the rate crisis that we're in, and was able to pull out all the equity, all of the short-term debt, pay off everything, and have$400 ,000 tax-free in addition to that.

1:01:06So that was a huge win. And then I was always thinking, if somebody wants to pay us the right amount, everything has gone so well from a media perspective, from a just high-level, just basic numbers perspective here with the business side of it, that we would be stupid not to consider it. So we ended up listing it for a few months last year. It was actually late 2022. Had several interested parties, had several private equity shops that were interested. Most of them lowballed the number I was wanting. And also, one of them gave us a very fair offer, but they wanted to buy 70 % and then basically retain me, go build them a portfolio.

1:01:45I wasn't particularly interested in that. And it just didn't feel like the time was right. So we took it off. And then beginning of last year, we relisted it with another broker and had a bunch more offers. We're under contract to sell for$6.5 million and got down to the day before closing. And then the buyers had to back out. Their hard money lender had backed out on them. They were pretty amateur investors and weren't prepared to handle this. And then like 5 days later, we get another LOI from another buyer for a half a million higher for seven. And initially, they wanted us to sell or carry a big portion of it for a time.

1:02:23We weren't interested in that. We ended up negotiating a deal for 7 million that didn't require us to sell or carry anything. And they actually passed their dates multiple times. We had to extend the contract. The due diligence was fine, but they had a key investor back out from a random unrelated circumstance and different things happened. It was such a masterclass in real estate transactions, which I'd never been involved in. What's the saying? Birds fly, fish swim, and deals fall through. And it definitely felt like that. Everything that went wrong, or could go wrong, went wrong. And then finally, multiple months after we had originally gotten under contract, they finally got it together and were able to close the final day of the final extension that we had agreed to.

1:03:04Because at that point, you've invested so much into the process. And though there's a lot of lessons that you can take away, like having enough earnest money and hiring the right attorney and all of these other things. It's just a little bit emotionally exhausting because it's like, are we selling? Are we not selling? To your point, it very much feels like my baby. It still feels like that in a certain sense. And I'm always going to be proud of it. But I've already made the break from it. And yet we're still in this no man's land. So it was actually a really great feeling when it finally came through last October.

1:03:35And it's been an interesting season since then too. I'm hoping to 1031 a good chunk of the gain there into the next property, which I'm still looking for. I did take a little bit of cash off the table and it's been nice to take a little bit of a break. In the meantime, I've been building this personal office slash art studio out here at my house, which is a dream project for me. I designed and built this new iteration of my tastes. So it's got a lot of similarities to Live Oak Lake as far as the aesthetic, but it's definitely incorporated some new elements as well. And then yeah, I've been also very focused on the masterclass in the community.

1:04:10I was doing a bunch of one-on-one coaching with folks when I started telling my story in 2022. And then after about 20 of these calls, just realized I'm getting the same questions over and over again. So took the time last year. It was a lot of hard work, but spent a few months and thought through, crafted the syllabus for the course, and then filmed everything on site at Live Oak Lake, brought in a whole panel of guest experts, and assembled this resource that is hopefully as comprehensive and top to bottom as any out there and as highly produced as any out there, if not more so. And then basically sold that to a first round of students last summer, got a ton of amazing success and feedback from that success stories from the students, which I was able to then iterate the process and then have since built out this community.

1:04:58So the idea there is, you know, bring together the collective wisdom of all these other operators that are out there, most of which I'm still learning about new ones on a daily basis. There's such a wave of experiential hospitality right now. And I've built a small following. So I feel really privileged to be in a position where I'm getting a lot of people coming to me. But I'm just realizing how many amazing people are out there already that we can learn from each other. So it's basically a sounding board for this collective wisdom. If you have questions, if you need feedback in the process of raising money, of constructing, of operating, of selling a property like this, this is the place to be.

1:05:33We have biweekly calls. We have the ongoing discussion groups in chat format. We have shared resources like our underwriting models, our message templates, pitch decks, all the things that we all are needing. We have a member map where people can see where other community members are. So it's very visual as well as other projects and properties that are inspirational, which is something I'm always selfishly interested in because I'm trying to figure out not what the competition is, but what the inspiration is out there that will help expand my own thinking of what's possible in the space. So yeah, the masterclass and community have been super fulfilling.

1:06:07If anyone wants to check that out, it's called Experiential Hospitality. The domain is experientialhospitality.com. And it pretty much gives the whole playbook of what you learned and how to replicate what you've done. Exactly. It is the top to bottom blueprint where I'm just candidly sharing everything and divided into all the major phases of a project from conception through design and construction through automation, the software stack, through marketing, social media, building an audience, and then now selling. So the whole life cycle. I may be taking it or I'm definitely interested in it.

1:06:45I think I shared with you, my wife and I are looking for our next project. And we've got six acres of land north of Columbus, Ohio, right on a river, huge mature trees in a flood zone though. So we're thinking along the lines of Ben Wolf doing a spyglass kind of thing. And she's super excited about it. We just finished a project here, which is totally separate. And I want to put the brakes on, but she loves ideas and loves this kind of stuff. So we'll see. Yeah, you totally should. It's an amazing opportunity right now, wherever you are. There's a lot of places. Ohio actually has one of the epicenters of what I would call this burgeoning experiential hospitality movement.

1:07:24I've never actually been to the region, but the Hocking Hills area is just loaded with these gems of a property. So I need to come check it out myself. Yeah, you should. You definitely should. Hocking Hills is gorgeous. They're Amish country. My wife and I stayed in a super high-end tree house for market research. And it was our anniversary. On the parts of the job. Yeah, it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. But this is a good place to stop. Isaac, I really appreciate your time. Really congratulate you on selling Live Oak Lake. Looking forward to seeing what you're up to next. I'm going to check out the master class for sure.

1:07:58But for people who want to learn more about you, what's the best way for them to do that? I am on Twitter and Instagram at Isaac French underscore. I've been taking a little bit of a much needed break from those platforms, but I should be resuming that shortly. And then I'm also... One of my New Year's resolutions, in addition to reading a lot, is writing a lot. So I'm writing a weekly newsletter at IsaacJFrench.com. You can sign up where I'm for free breaking down a lot of the lessons that I've learned through this whole journey and hopefully giving people a lot of value that they can actionably go and implement.

1:08:31So those are the two best places. Awesome. I'm going to sign up for the newsletter. Thanks so much for your time, Isaac. I appreciate it. Thanks for letting me talk your ear off, Patrick. Hopefully it wasn't too much, but I appreciate the opportunity. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial Investing on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on our episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only.

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