#310 - Isaac French- Founder of Live Oak Lake - Developing World-Class Experiential Hospitality Properties

Chris Powers: Thank you so much, Isaac. It's good to have you here today with me and to tell your story, and let's dive right into it.

Isaac French: I'm honored to be here, Chris. So, my story starts in terms of real estate two years ago when I built Live Oak Lake.

Let me back up and give more context of who I am and what led to that. So I'm 26 currently, and I grew up in a family with nine siblings, home-schooled, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. My dad had a plumbing business, then he started a general contracting company and grew up in Central Texas.

We moved to Idaho when I was 12 and lived there for ten years. I started a businesses when I was six years old and on. I bought old typewriters on eBay, would restore them, and sell them. Of course, the lemonade stand had a soda business made like handcrafted root beer, which did many things.

When I was 14 and 15, I took an interest in bookkeeping. I would work in my off time learning how to do Accounts payable accounts, receivable, and basic categorization payroll for our family construction company. And then that led to wanting to do tax preparation. So, I studied and became an enrolled agent when I was 19, similar to a CPA credential, but it focused on tax. I worked for a CPA for three months during tax season.

I have done 20 or 30 returns every spring since I decided not to be a CPA. I could never be constrained to an office full-time and just crunching numbers. However, I have a good balance of analytical and creative skill sets. I would love to have that foundation if I start businesses in the future with a robust accounting understanding.

However, the primary outlet for my time and career while I was an employed individual was in construction. So I started as a general laborer at the same time, at 14 and 15, and then worked through all construction phases, working with my older brothers and dad and becoming a project manager.

We did; it's a small boutique commercial construction GC, and we did a lot of educational stuff. So, the University of Idaho Washington State University did a medical school building. That was the last big project, about a 6 million dollar project, when I was 23, and then I retired quote unquote, moved to Texas, not didn't really retire, but retired from that job, moved back to Texas, met my wife, got married.

And so this was 2020, and I had this idea brewing for a long time. So, back through my childhood, I'm also an artist. I'll mention that now. I love design, wanted to be an architect when I was younger, studied design, and architecture influenced me. I discovered many Nordic, minimalist, and glass Olsen Kundig in the Pacific Northwest.

Suppose you're familiar with that style of architecture and want to bring it to Texas. So I saw this opportunity where Texas is this great state, this big, beautiful market. The Texas Triangle has 17 million people and is growing. And yet, there are only so many. And I'm a Texan, so forgive me, but I can say this.

It could be a more beautiful state naturally. And there are only so many incredible places to go as far as to get away for a short destination. So, this is the perfect opportunity. I can bring that aesthetic and create an experience for people that is more localized to them. So they can take a staycation an hour and a half from DFW, Austin, Houston, or wherever.

So, I started looking for a property right in the middle of, and one morning, I was scrolling through Zillow and stumbled across this little five-acre piece of property five minutes from where I lived. I've driven past it a lot of times, but I never noticed anything special about it.

It just looked like a bunch of trees. It was a drone photo, and I noticed this little cow pond. And then, I also saw these giant live oaks that are just the flagship tree in Texas. So, I immediately drove out there and was just totally blown away by what I saw; it was one of those experiences where I had Goosebumps the moment I stepped foot on the property.

I knew this was the place. And I made an offer that day, and somebody accepted. Long story short, nine months later, I opened Live Oak Lake. So that was my venture, my first venture into real estate was doing this project. 

Chris Powers: That is incredible; there are many things to unpack there. The one I want to cue in on is design when. You think about design because when I meet people like you, it's like everything through that angle. But when you walked out onto that property. Did you already start immediately envisioning how this thing would lay out, and like, where did your love for design come from? Is that family that was somebody in your family into it?

How did you take onto this idea of looking at life through design? 

Isaac French: Yeah, I think. People are born with gifts and strengths and weaknesses; I cultivated design. Indeed, my grandmother taught me and my siblings art. And like I mentioned, I do painting and drawing.

I love that. So I know that was A significant influence, but I've always led to great design, and I've come to realize now there are a few people that there are a few people who have your skill set. A few people can see and appreciate the little details of a great design.

However, there are tons of people, or if not, everyone can appreciate it without articulating what makes it great. And so it's a combination of nature and nurture. When I walked onto that property, though, and I tell people this, it sounds a bit wacky, but the land was speaking to me.

Chris Powers: And what does it tell you?

Isaac French: Build here.

There were a lot of other factors that happened to stack on top of each other that made that the right place. We can get into that later. But yes, to answer your question, that's what I did. I immediately envisioned the experience that I wanted to have. I wanted my guests to have. I even generally had the number of cabins, the density, and everything, and we had 30 days of due diligence until we closed.

And that whole time, I just spent like I was also talking to banks, trying to get lending, drawing up plans, and doing a proforma. However, I spent as much time on-site as possible, walking the property quietly without distractions and trying to understand how we could work with the land.

How can we be gentle to what's already here? We had to do a lot of work, but it was like a marble sculpture where you're just chipping away pieces to get down to what's beautiful that was already innately in that piece of property. 

Chris Powers: We're going to have a fun conversation. We will start unpacking this, but it's essential to know this.

So you knew design, but there had to have also been something in you that along the way that was like, and you wanted a cool place in Texas. Have you taken on to the experiential hospitality model, seeing this as emerging? What part of your story is a way to make money? It is what the world needs. 

Isaac French: I think it was the dream of. I'm very entrepreneurial and love the flexibility of doing my own thing and creating something I can be proud of and show off to others. I learned that just doing artwork and then executing more significant construction projects.

But to give the GC example, I was always working for a client, and I was always working with an architect and with engineers. Now, I've come to appreciate the team coming full circle. Still, there was a time after that I broke up with being a GC and project manager. I was so tired of being constrained by someone else's vision that I thought could have been improved upon, budget constraints, or doing Boring stuff.

And my heart was in the idea. Yes, of creating these just unique iconic kind of properties. I couldn't articulate it then; I just knew I often quote Yvon Chouinard, who founded Patagonia and Steve Jobs. Both said you can't wait to have all the answers to launch something.

You've got to do two things. Number one, have faith that your product is good. Good enough. And number two, know your audience. And I was able to combine that. I was like, and it was much more of an art than a science when I realized this dream. I have been merging for a few years, creating this village of really cool, well-designed experiential retreats that will resonate with people.

And I don't think there are still a lot of lenders and even investors that don't get it. There's plenty that do, but especially lenders that still need to understand that. Now that I've done Live Oak Lake have some complex numbers to show, and have told my story, I'm part of one of the pioneers advancing this among many others like Richard Fertig and doing an exceptional job.

It is a bit pioneering, and others have not created it. Yes, the idea has been there for a long time. There have always been exceptional hotels, and there are always lovely hotels. There's always beautiful architecture, but something special about bringing together and creating this emotional connection with your guests.

And that's really to the core of what hospitality even is. Hospitality is So much more about emotional intelligence and delighting your guests than excellence in executing in some roadway. That needs a more concise, direct answer to your question. I did have a heart for hospitality.

I did grow up in a family. We were always hosting folks. My dad and my parents had a few fantastic Airbnbs that we helped build and design, and all that influenced my decision to launch out and go big on this idea as my full-time thing. 

Chris Powers: I have this weird feeling if we were sitting here in 50 years, I'm looking at somebody who will probably design some of the most iconic places in the country. I can hear it in the way you're talking.

 Alright, so you get, and you buy this property. You walked on the land, said, build on me. What happened the day you closed? Did you know that now, describe Live Oak Lake as it is today? And then we'll go backward and talk about how we got there.

But it's seven describe as it is today. 

Isaac French: Yeah, seven modern. Minimalist cabins, big glass fronts, all about bringing the outdoors inside, so lots of natural light, minimalist Scandinavian design, very cohesive throughout the entire property, so trails, these cabins are nestled around a little lake, live oak trees. No kayaks or walking trails.

And regarding success by the numbers, I'll give you a quick picture here. If that's okay, we opened in January of 2022 and put the finishing touches on the property. It was the middle of the winter. A lot of the trees had lost their leaves. The grass had yet to grow into all the landscaping and all that.

It immediately took off, and we can get more into all the details of how that happened. But fast forward 12 months, our first year, we grossed over a million dollars on seven keys and netted over 550 000; we had over 100,000 social media followers, and 80 percent of all bookings, 80 percent plus, are directly through our website.

So we're not dependent on Airbnb and the other OTAs because we've created this movement. We've created a platform around what we've done. So that's Live Oak Lake in a nutshell. 

Chris Powers: So freaking impressive, man. You saw the land I want to like; think about this through how an artist feels about it.

Because you own five acres, you could have done eight of these. You could have done nine, but you chose seven. How did you go through the design process for This is the masterpiece? It is what's going to work. What kind of? Just tell me how your mind works through that.

Isaac French: It's a great question. And I don't know that I have the most logical or scientific answer to it because, as I said earlier, it was so much intuition to spend time on the property. Still, we did we went between; I went between five units up to nine teams and just tested them out in different configurations on the property.

And it's a dance. There's topography, you're working around, there's the lake, there's trees, and I didn't want to compromise anything. So, to me, maybe I went too far in the stitch, and I had a lot of friends that are in short-term rentals and that I've learned a lot from, but that raised their eyebrows at me in the whole process, just the method, the expense that I took, the pains I went to, to create that.

But I wanted more than What's the biggest bang for our buck here, not just from that simplistic, selfish perspective, maybe, but what's the smartest thing we can do? Yes, I was thinking about the most brilliant thing. But the most intelligent thing was how we create the most impactful transport of experience.

So, regarding the actual designs, I wanted to do something Scandinavian. That was a hole in the market here. It's become ubiquitous everywhere. Texas was suitable for that. And I found this company called Dan Outdoors. They draft plans and sell them for a couple of thousand bucks a pop online, and many of their designs inspired me.

I had some of my stuff I wanted to incorporate, purchased some of their stuff, reworked a lot of it, and combined some different elements. I hired a drafter on Fiverr for 300 bucks, dropped my plans, did all my red lines, went back and forth over about three days, got everything done, drew up the site plan from a drone photo, and figured everything out.

I didn't have any engineers, any architects, anything. And then we have this basic set of drawings. They needed to be complete, and they needed to have every detail drawn out. But then I was able to take that. And then throughout the project, because I was my own GCWith that experience, I was able to bring.

I was the superintendent. I was everybody. I could make all these decisions on the fly that would iterate on my general thesis of where we're trying to go. And so we had some basic blueprints, but This would only be possible in some different markets, just in terms of the simple permitting requirements.

Thankfully, because that's another significant factor in choosing this property, we were in an unincorporated part of the county. The permitting process is super easy. And you can do almost whatever you want to do. You have to have a few different inspections, but they're third-party.

And, we were building this too, to keep for ourselves to operate forever. So we weren't cutting corners with the construction process either, but long story short, I designed, as I went, it was very much by the seat of my pants. And it all worked out, thankfully, 

Chris Powers: You answered the question I already had.

So you didn't need entitlements. We can get past that part.

Isaac French: Essentially, no, and I did do that and do the due diligence. There was the pond. There's a creek. So I was worried floodplains were going to be an issue. Thankfully, we were just outside the floodplain. But yeah, McLennan County's process was you file an application saying this is what I want to do, and they can't do it.

They can only tell you no if you'd have some more issues if you're building a skyscraper. The one point that was the biggest hurdle was the septic system. That's one system for the entire property. We had city water and power from the power company right there.

But the septic was a big hurdle, and we had to I did have to hire an engineer. So I take that back. I did have an engineer for that. And we designed an aerobic system, which is fantastic. That's a single system for the whole place, one plant. But beyond that, We worked efficiently, especially combining all those different aspects, wearing the architect and contractor hats.

And there were a lot of supply chain issues in 2021. There still are that would have delayed us constantly being able to see ahead and know, when those were 20 weeks, and appliances were six months in one case for some of the stuff, just being aware of that and having that experience and wearing that hat and not waiting for other people to make decisions was so important. Everybody wants to know, how did you do that in nine months? And that's the answer. Now, I can't do that again. It was a crazy year. I was working 80 hours a week. I also built the 750,000 spec home five minutes away in four months.

I broke my pelvis halfway through the project. I fell off a ladder in one of the cabins, which was a big wake-up call. I didn't realize. I could hurt myself that bad, falling from six feet. I was in a hospital, laying flat on my back for seven days with two surgeries. I've got tons of stainless steel.

It was unbelievable. You drive down the road at 80 miles an hour daily, and nothing terrible happens. And then you're working by yourself in a cabin. I was helping somebody. I jumped in. I wasn't doing a lot of the work myself. I was managing it, but I jumped in, and somebody was working alone and needed help.

So I jumped up on the ladder, and the ladder slipped. 

Chris Powers: Dude, I'm glad you're alright. Based on what you said about construction, it could be more scalable. And you probably know this, but the amount of time wasted in construction because you have the developer up in their office, the contractor here, nobody's fully attached.

The number of wasted days that happen, you're probably there where decisions made in seconds or minutes or hours, as opposed to, let the day go by, contractor calls the developer, hey, you want to make this change, the developer has to get with the team, maybe call some consultants, that's like a week-long process to get back, and then you scale that out over the cost of a project, is that's how projects take two or three years versus nine months.

Isaac French: You're exactly right, and in the future, so yes, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be able to fill the same role and wear those same shoes on every project I do, but I'm going to be highly selective on what projects I do, where I do them, and always maintain that. If you have the correct skill set, there is a way to apply that super-lean mentality.

If you can bring, it takes a village to build a town. It was a group effort. I give lots of credit to subcontractors and other people, but it takes one or two people working together who have the vision and can execute it. I watched YouTube videos at night, figuring out how to do this and do that and calling my brother in Idaho to get his construction advice on this little detail and that thing where there's a will, there's a way.

And if you push yourself, you can eliminate a lot of unnecessary reliance. Now, granted, I'm not Chris, who is operating a massive enterprise now that's scaling in an imposing way, and I admire that. So that's an entirely different skill set, one that I would like to learn, but I've grown accustomed to everything I've done to working a certain way.

And I am learning to delegate more and more. Even things like using Fiverr and other platforms for stuff that I can, I would spend my time drafting all these up, but I can outsource super cheaply to overseas talent and have a couple of assistants on the ground.

All of that was helpful. But there is a way to build a super lean mean team and get a lot done. 

Chris Powers: And my, you're not asking for advice, so take it for what it's worth. But just hearing, even knowing you a little before today, but just hearing these first 10 minutes, you will build an organization.

You're next-level talented. My one word of advice, and we can talk about it more offline: stay in your genius zone as long as possible and partner with somebody or hire someone to build the business behind you the day that all your talents start leaving the site and the vision and the details.

I'm not saying you can't build a business, but that's not, I think, why God put you on this earth. You have to stay in that genius zone as long as possible. And so we can talk about what that might look like. But you can build a big organization if that's what you want.

What have the Scandinavians figured out that Americans don't know? 

Isaac French: There's nothing special about Scandinavia. 

Chris Powers: There is. 

Isaac French: It's the cohesion between all of these details working together, and I alluded to it earlier, but Live Oak Lake is what I feel passionate about. I say experiential hospitality.

That's the big label I'm leaning hard into, but if I narrow that down to what I'm passionate about. We can talk about what experiential hospitality means. The macro thesis is this. Busy people crave meaningful experiences. As the world gets faster and crazier and more dynamic, people want something unique, something that, as I said, is Tran sportive, that's immersive.

And I'm, I do like minimalist design. It makes a lot of sense. I like Apple products. I like Scandinavian architecture that's clean and modern. But it's more about the cohesion between all the details. So the landscaping, the signage, the front gate, the cabins where the windows are oriented, the trees you're looking through, and really.

Yes, the design speaks the landscape around it as is as much or more important. Like I said, it's about bringing the outdoors inside. So we, that's how we situated every single cabin. Every single view that we framed on this property is about showcasing. I said Texas wasn't the most naturally beautiful state, but it still is lovely.

And that property is stunning. It was an overgrown jungle when we first got there. But that's what I love. I love seeing the potential in something. Jungle vines, like ten bucks to, growing in the trees and just a cow pond, but when we were able to create. This hidden gem, which is what a lot of people describe it as.

What's not fulfilling about that? And so the architecture is fundamental, and I love that element. But the nature is super important as well. And when those two things come together, you've just got this magical experience for people. 

Chris Powers: How long had that property been on the market? You remember?

Isaac French: 12 hours; I was checking Zillow every day.

Chris Powers: I would like to know if you would tell me it had sat there for two years, and nobody had seen, and nobody, everybody had overlooked it.

Isaac French: I guarantee you no one knew what it was. 

Chris Powers: Had you looked at other properties before you looked at that one?

Isaac French: I had my heart set on another property two minutes down the road. That was a different property. It had a 50-foot bluff with a dry creek at the bottom. And I knew that was cool just because of that bluff, but it wouldn't have lent itself well to the whole vision of short-term rentals because you would have had some liability reasons and factors that don't pair well with small Children. And also, what I love about Live Oak Lake is we nestled these cabins around the pond. So at night, primarily, all these beautiful lights reflect into the water. It feels like you're in this charming, Quiet European little village.

Chris Powers: One of the things I'm looking forward to in January is spending three days down there. I'm spending there by myself; you're talking this up, so I'll be down there in January. I'm leaving alone for a few days to clear my head and get excited. 

All right, what does experiential hospitality mean? 

Isaac French: So I said busy people crave meaningful experiences. 

Chris Powers: And do lazy people crave meaningful experience?

Isaac French: Yes, everyone does, especially busy people. We all need an escape. And, if anyone believes that their work should be what they love doing, it's me; I love what I do. Yes, I had to discipline myself through some of those earlier phases in my life and being a GC. But I love what I do—still going to other people's properties. I just posted about this on Twitter the other day. We're talking about it. It's a beautiful place, but I do that as often as possible because that's how I get inspired.

That's how I expand my perspective of what's possible. So experiential hospitality is, like I said, all about lighting guests and making them feel special. Disney has mastered this. I've never even been to a Disney property, but I know this. I am in experiential hospitality. I am trying to create through what I built at Live Oak Lake and my future endeavors.

I will create, as I said, these connections that people form that transcend just the sheer beauty or luxury, even have a place, but that create lifelong memories. It isn't just me theorizing; guests have returned four times in one year.

Just hit live Oak Lake. These are the kind of fans that we've created. And then those become these incredible brand ambassadors who love it, and it's just compounding. Still, experiential hospitality is about making these environments full of this wow factor.

There's another element to this that is important. We're solving for status on a certain level. So, my generation cares more about experiences than material possessions and luxury. That's a macro trend that we will continue to see. And yet, there's still an element where everybody has an ego, but it's not just about ego.

Everybody wants to show their friends and family where and what they do. So I have this phrase: we're creating these Instagram-able properties. So everything about this place is just excellent. We have a shipping container pool with a big window in the side that is very cohesive and blends in with everything else we have going on.

And just the way each cabin is situated, it's tough for me to articulate without you going there and experiencing it. And I'm thrilled you will be. But I'm ultimately trying to create these emotional connections that people form with your property, and that's why it's as much about.

Even the way that you're hosting them, and we can talk about this too, I've created a lean and mean operation and automation that we have in place. And yet there are key areas where you can delight your guests even before they get there, just in your messaging and in the welcome gift that you leave them in their maybe their tiny interaction with your housekeeper or your facilities person on site.

That is, if they have that true heart if you've hired the right people with the true spirit and soul for hospitality, they will delight your guests, and all these little details will entertain your guests. Instead of just throwing more things at people regarding amenities, it is a logical approach to hiring 80 hours.

So let's add this and add that and the other thing, and yes, there's merit to that. Take a step back and be more thoughtful about it. What is different about my place than another excellent hotel or Airbnb somewhere else? And so it's all these little details I keep returning to in the design, construction, and property, and the interaction with the guests that make it unique.

Chris Powers: Let's talk about the operations and the hospitality. My good friend Ash Marsh says hospitality to her means I thought of you before you arrived. So let's talk about how you've automated it, which I know is a big part, but then let's talk about those little experiences that you're not running a holiday in where it's check-in, go to your room, eat a continental breakfast, get the hell out of there.

You're running something where every little touchpoint matters to you. How did you automate things to save money and improve the experience? But then, what are some of the little wow moments that are unique to your property that you've thought of that matter?

Isaac French: So with automation, first and foremost, we have a ton of smart home hardware technology in these units, so door locks, thermostats, noise monitors, lighting the front gate, every central system in the property is automated is smart. And then we have a software called a pair toe that ties many of those pieces together and then talks to our leading software, host away.

It's the property management software host away, like the hub in the wheel. And then you've got a pricing software. So, we do dynamic pricing to optimize occupancy and revenue. That's called wheelhouse. We got a pair of toes, which ties the smart home pieces together. We got the email marketing with the convert kit and all these other spokes in the wheel.

But then what's beautiful about it is Host Away, which is also the booking engine for our website. So it's a multi-calendar, it knows, pushing the listings out through Airbnb through VRBO, which serves a purpose. Even though we have 80 percent direct bookings, those other channels are great because, especially for last-minute openings and orphan nights, you'll capture more through those.

The primary juice we're squeezing is coming through our website, which is excellent. A quick note: direct bookings are exceptional because we make 15 percent more straight bottom-line profit by cutting out those OTA commissions. 

Chris Powers: Is that what they take? 15? 

Isaac French: They take 17.3 percent. We give a slight discount to the guest to book with us directly.

So they're still incentivized. And there's no data wall, so we have their email. We can retarget them. That's part of how we foster those long-term relationships. I was talking about earlier, among other benefits. You can't get kicked off somebody else's platform. So, host away, the central hub, has the booking engine.

It has automated message sequences, which we've spent a ton of time crafting. I did all these different things myself, not just in the design and construction phase, but now the operation and marketing. I did everything myself. Now I've delegated all of that stuff. So, it truly is automated, even in terms of the personnel.

But it's super important that you understand everything as the creator. I had my hands in the dirt in all these different aspects. And so we have these beautiful message sequences. And I'm very picky about this. It's straightforward to go in either of the two ditches of too many messages, being bombarded and overwhelmed, never hearing anything, and wondering what's up.

And that's not hospitality. It's about finding that perfect balance is different for everybody. But we've seen a good middle road. And then to give you a little perspective on how the smart home hardware can work with the software.

So, the Host knows when all the reservations are, when the guests are coming, who they are, their names, and all that. It will adjust the temperatures automatically into my preselected range when the guest comes an hour before check-in through an hour after checkout. So we're also saving a lot with energy costs in the off time, which we don't have much of, but at least during the turnover time, the lighting will turn on, depending on when Sunset is at the preselected times the door locks.

So, the guest will get a unique code that is only activated during their stay through the message sequence because you're plugging all these different pieces together. What I just described there, including the revenue management side and wheelhouse of all those three leading software, they eliminate probably three full-time employees on this property.

And I've tweeted about this before, but we're spending roughly 25,000 a year just with software. And then we spend an additional 70,000 on two part-time employees. Let's call it a hundred thousand total property management costs on this place, including marketing and everything.

And like I said, we're on track to gross 1.2 million this year. A traditional property manager for STR would be 20 to 25 percent easy, so you can do the math for saving hundreds of thousands just on property management because of the automation, and it's much more. It's a much better run and this ties in the segues into the next part of the question regarding what are those essential little touch points in the hospitality experience.

As I said, messaging is where it starts. It could go back to first impressions and marketing, but when they book a stay. We've carefully crafted these message sequences, and I have a welcome manual that we send them before that they can read a little bit about our story and get to know me personally if they don't already know about who we, my wife, Helen and I are and get a little, taste of what there is to do in the local area and all of that.

And then, they get a couple of messages before check-in, including questions about them. We're trying to learn as much as we can about the guest. Here is a quick phrase. Traditional hospitality is oversimplified. It could be a monologue.

We're doing things for the guests. We're giving you a place to stay. We're giving you a continental breakfast, whatever it is, experiential or enlightened hospitality, as Danny Meyer calls it, is about a dialogue. You are listening as much or more to the guest, much more than you're talking, and then you're throwing stuff at them.

Like I said, so we want to learn about them. We offered this different experience package, a romance stay. We get a lot of couples that come on romantic getaways. We have a lot of families that come, and we have some units that are pet-friendly. So, we want to learn what's happening here and how we can best serve them.

And then when they come based off of those different answers that we've given them, some of those are up cells, which we can Monetize as well. We leave a handwritten note for every single one. So our welcome gift isn't that special. It's, but I figured out early on people love to see their name handwritten.

So we handwrite this card, and I've trained my team to do this. We leave for all guests, just a little note for me, some stickers, and some Tope Chico's. And then, we have freshly baked cookies that we get from a local bakery. As part of the automation, the cleaners can see the reservations daily from their login on that Host Away software.

They pick it up from a local bakery. These are fresh, hot off the hot out of the oven that they leave on a little plate for the guests. So when the guest walks in, the lights are just right. There's just the right smell. There, the temperature is just right.

There's a little card with their name on it. There's a guest manual again in paper format that has our story. They're encouraged to reach out as often as they want. We reach out to them. Check up on them occasionally, and it's just the right balance. People love it. They feel cared for. They feel appreciated.

And so that's one example. And then just the amenities themselves. It is essential to know your customer avatar, who these people are, and what they want to do. We have a diverse spectrum of people that we host. We have a lot of couples. We have a lot of families as well.

And then we were having a lot more group events. So we have seven units on the property plus a commons area. I didn't design it for this, but the commons area is right by the water's edge because the property is so beautiful. There's a dock going out into the water. It's just beautiful. There's a little pergola.

But we've had multiple weddings there, and it's exciting because there's hardly space for it. These are small weddings, and they have to cram my next property. I will put more emphasis on that commons area because this is a huge thing. But that's another macro trend post-COVID in real-life events.

People want to get together. People want to experience these beautiful places together with other people. So, we have a lot of group events, and we've tailored the amenities around these different avatars. So, each cabin has its hot tub year-round hammock in the tree. There is a little fire smokeless fire pit and chairs placed by the water, and there's also this commons area with the container pool with yard games and another patio at the dock where people can sit on kayaks and paddle boards.

So there's just the right balance and then a network of trails throughout where people can spend time by themselves at their unit, or they can come together, and I've gone over there a lot of times where there's just strangers coming together to grill in the commons or whatever that become friends.

It's not just cliché. I participate in these conversations, and it's enjoyable. And that's another part of that experience that people are coming for, and especially when it's going to become a tradition of theirs, they're going to come back, and we see a lot of a family will come or a couple will come and they'll fall in love.

And then they'll bring back their other kids or another family. And then they'll create these traditions around that. So those are some of the little vignettes of personal touches and amenities that make a difference. 

Chris Powers: Okay, you said you've listened. My next question is, you opened in January 2022.

All right, so we're now in September 2023. Man, I can't believe this year is almost over. What has changed about the property since you opened it? Because you opened it and then you started listening. So I imagine everything that's there today. It was not there when it started; you were green and built a beautiful property, but I would imagine week one.

You're like, man, I hope this works; what did you think going into it? And then, 18 months later, what has changed about the property? 

Isaac French: For one, what I just mentioned about group events, I did not expect that. So we have a dedicated listing now on our website where people can do the group buyout and rent the whole place, which we're doing a lot more of.

And so we built a little infrastructure to accommodate that, but the container pool wasn't there. The hot tubs weren't there at the units. I had questions about privacy and wanted to make sure that I put a lot of thought into it. Because you're balancing the sense of community, that village feels that I'm talking about, with seclusion and privacy.

You've got to find that perfect balance. Initially, we didn't have the hot tubs, and we didn't have the pool, but we had some constructive recommendations. It would be awesome if a collection existed because we don't allow swimming in the pond. So, we've added a few of these amenities.

Like our whole process, I just described the hosting experience and the welcome gift in detail, and we wanted to find that sweet spot where we're getting the best feedback. Now we're about as optimized as possible; we've also implemented many operational efficiencies alongside all of that with the automation I described.

I didn't have. I had a lot of smart home components, but even with pricing and revenue management, that was a significant skill. I still am a massive student of it, but I also had to learn and figure out our maintenance routines. An experiential hospitality property will have a lot of maintenance when design and details are so important.

We are hiring the right people, as I mentioned earlier. We have two part-time employees. We have a maintenance guy and then a gal who does all of the messaging and coordinates with the cleaning team, who are all independent contractors. Then they're also the gal, and her husband are also filling a general management role, which I've trained them in.

So, my time is free except for Instagram, which we can discuss. Marketing was a huge piece. I am so marketing success. The overall sensation will build on how it is fantastic, and the product is because you could. A lot of people come to me now that I've been preaching all about the success we've had and are looking for a band-aid kind of fix.

How can we apply your recipe for social media growth to our property? And I'm happy to share those principles and the nuts and bolts of what I did. But if it doesn't, start and end with a beautiful experience for these people with the right motivation, heart, and soul behind it, then your efforts will be.

You will see a lot of diminishing returns, and you're just going to spend and spend but see marginal results. Thankfully, we got that part right with the experience, but there was much to learn and grow in social media. Explosion, which has fueled a lot of the success in general, having those direct bookings, having an 80 percent natural booking rate, having been 95 percent occupied in general since we opened, was just on the back of having this huge Instagram following.

Chris Powers: We're going to talk about that. I have one question that's burning. I usually don't interrupt, but I have to ask this. Can you have a beautiful experience from end to end? But not have the heart in it, or is this part of having the end-to-end beautiful experience only happen because your heart's in it? Can you fake it?

Isaac French: No, people are going to detect that. That's why I am a beautiful architect; I'm incredibly passionate about beautiful design and architecture. Design is your most excellent amenity. Design is critical to all of this. But you do; you must have that heart and soul motivating the property.

That's where we built scaling this on a vast scale. And there are companies like Four Seasons, known for this, have done an excellent job. They have this high staff. It's a guest ratio and all that. But to me, we're in a great spot. I may continue growing and expanding with a few more properties, but I love having that connection.

And I can still pop in over there, mainly because it's seven minutes away from where I live, and interact with guests on a moment's notice. And they love that. And I love it, too. That's my favorite part of this entire journey. And that's why I got into it. I am a people person who is infinitely curious about others. And I love to show off something I've created. So, it's the perfect context to delight them and develop friendships and relationships. And that has been the most rewarding aspect of all of this. And that is the most crucial factor for anyone launching a project like this.

Chris Powers: Man, I've already said it. I'm sitting in front of somebody who will change hospitality. You, it is clear, this is deep, deep-rooted. I've done 300 of these episodes. It's not very often you see someone so deep in their craft; kudos to you. I can tell you right now there's no way you're faking a damn thing you've said up to this point.

It isn't possible to move quickly on operations when I think of rural property, which has been some of the things that have these incredible destination places, not flack or heat. And then I hear maintenance and house cleaning. How it's okay if you have a property in the middle of the city, there's tons of labor.

There are tons of them; how do you make sure? That labor's always ready to go, especially in a rural area. Because if I'm checking into your place and it hasn't been up to date, we have problems. How have you mastered that? It is one of the most critical pieces to your operation.

Isaac French: I agree, and I've alluded to it already, but hiring the right people. Isadore Sharp with Four Seasons, I read this, and I resonate with this quote. He said you want to hire people that are 51 percenters. 51% of them have some innate, intrinsic emotional intelligence ability or empathy, and then 49 percent need technical excellence or the aptitude to get there, and they always keep that. So I was lucky because, like I said, this is seven minutes from where I live.

It is where I grew up, And I have an extensive network of friends and contacts, which ended up being most of my employees there. In housekeeping, I have three different teams, but the leading team was not someone I previously knew of. And that is the hardest part, period. Cause you just said it, but the best illustration is if you walked into a 2 million unit, whatever it is, we spent two and a half million dollars on this property, and there's a dirty toilet.

I don't care how impressive it is. Your guest is going to be obviously and justifiably furious. We've had two or three tiny incidents since we opened that have been so awesome because they've been so educational to drive that point home to our whole team. However, I found a group on Facebook searching for cleaners in my area.

I interviewed two or three different cleaners. I brought cleaners out to the property—another crucial part. Many people skimp on it; we built our little facility, even for seven, only seven units on five acres. We made a little facility for the laundry for the storage. And I don't see that in many places because most people are just like, okay, that's a cost we can easily outsource to somebody else.

But that's a significant benefit to finding the right kind of cleaners because they can stay right there. They can turn over fast and all that. They do an excellent job because it's all about driving you to the laundry facility and walking inside. Yeah, there will be a lot of stuff going on, but you'll still sense.

I hope you'll still sense the care we put into the units and prepare them for the guests. So it was an interview process, knowing if these were the right people, and then just keeping the stakes low for the first few weeks, experimenting, testing out with them, and ensuring it's a good fit for them.

You want to avoid bringing the wrong person into a job no matter how much you like him or how great they are at one thing if they don't have that combination of empathy and you know the technical whatever that is. So, the cleaning teams are at the top of the food chain like they are on the front line.

Even though they hardly interact with the guests, they're turning everything over and preparing that magical experience. And then the facilities like the ongoing maintenance. Now we're what, 19, 20 months into this, we're seeing some wear and tear. And so we've begun to crack down and ensure we must turn over furniture, rugs, and dorm hats.

And the front door handle is delightful. There's just all these little details that are intensive to stay on top of. And it's one thing to do that yourself like I was for the first 6 to 12 months because I care about it. But then you must bring that ownership mentality to whoever is responsible.

So, I just hired this couple doing the guest communications to be the GM. And really, what I'm paying them to do. Yeah, they're communicating. Most of that's automated, anyway. So that's a small workload, two or three hours a week. But most of what they're doing is just being the eyes and ears on the ground.

So they go over there every single day. They interact with some guests here and there more than anything. They're just like looking at this from my perspective. Can we make this better? Is there anything that's slipping 5%? Is there anything that will drop 5 percent that we need to stay ahead of?

So, for all the different systems, there are just so many pieces—power washing units and maintaining the mini splits, the pond aerator, and the pond in general. Algae, you've got duckweed, you've got landscape, five acres to deal with. So yes, you can't underestimate their importance and how much work it is to stay on top of the guest experience.

Chris Powers: At what point, if I were to say, what if this property was ten times bigger, would it be the same magic if there were 70 of these on the property? Is there a number where you're no longer experiential and more commoditized, or does size not matter? 

Isaac French: No. It depends on the property's size in terms of density because density is the more important criterion of how far apart these are for my kind of property.

Okay. But there isn't a threshold that I would not be comfortable going over. And that's around 40 units. Okay, that's the number for me.

Chris Powers: What happens at 41 or 50?

Isaac French: Have you heard of Amangiri? So it's this incredible resort. Oh, we're going to talk about it. 

Chris Powers: I've only heard about it because of you.

And if you want to start talking about it now.

Isaac French: So I went and stayed there. It's in the desert in Utah in the middle of nowhere. And Amman, this global resort company, built this place for 150 million for 38 keys, so it's just unbelievable. That's almost 5 million a legend, on 1200 or so acres.

It's on a vast piece of property, and they've since expanded to another portion where they have a glamping destination, but the main resort is only 38 units so I wouldn't stay. There was over 6000 bucks a night—an insane experience. 

Chris Powers: Okay, why? 

Isaac French: Magical. It was Like going to a different world, the setting for one, you're just in this incredible Canyon.

Just these massive feels like you're in the middle of the most beautiful Martian National Park imaginable. So it's just in this incredible, stunning desert and the actual food and beverage. They have two fantastic restaurants where all the food is complimentary.

You would hope so for that price, but the units are incredible again. I could resonate with them so much, even though they're operating on a massive scale compared to me, and everything about it is so vast there that they frame these views.

Like I tried to do with my 5 acres, they frame these incredible views through all the windows and the courtyard. And there's a little orchard that you walk through to get to each unit. And Once again, it's impossible to describe until you've gone there. But the level of attention to detail is off the charts.

So that's 38 keys. And a lot of people, they built that in 2009. Imagine the risk that they were taking, just given that. Market condition and it's become one of the biggest hospitality successes. Dave hit 90 to 95 percent occupancy at a six, the highest ADR hotel in America.

If not the world, some of the units are 10,000 a night. It's unbelievable, and it has over 500,000 followers on social media. So that's 38 units; it was enjoyable going there and seeing that because it's a different style and aesthetic. But that's within that 40 mark for me, which I don't know.

It's just been there intuitively all along. I've been to several resorts. I've been to four seasons, typically a bit, which can be bigger, but I went to the smallest in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which was around 50.

That was pushing it. You lose the uniqueness of it. That's at a certain point, and intimacy and personalization are critical. So I am much more about spending a lot on a little, But getting the right quality and then just having like my big dream would be to build a portfolio of these properties in different areas that are localized and personalized to their rooms, but that are very boutique, ideally.

Some economies of scale kick in 10 to 20 minutes, making it attractive to scale the individual property and things like food and beverage. If you're building in a more remote location like Amangiri, hours away from any central metro area, they must have a world-class restaurant there.

They have to have a world-class spa there. They have to have these basic core amenities. And It makes a lot more sense, too. Twenty units is the threshold for where it makes sense to build a restaurant, or I don't; I call my brand experiential hospitality, in which hospitality is a broad term.

Restaurants scare me, but there are some creative food and beverage options where you can collaborate with a third party and schedule out. At Amangiri, this is another thing I booked, and they have a personal dedicated concierge helping you craft your experience a month before you get there.

So if you're going to do rock climbing, if you're going to, what, even what meals or, when you want to eat, make a reservation at the restaurant. You could do that on a smaller scale and then pre-plan and bring a chef in. So 20 units is a threshold for F and B; 40 units to me is the threshold of you losing the boutique aspect. You're losing a key pillar to the experience I'm creating.

Chris Powers: At your property, on that note, do most people come to bring their food and cook, or are they leaving campus often and doing things in town? 

Isaac French: Great question. We invested heavily in the kitchens at each cabin. We spent more there than anywhere else.

They have high-end Fisher Paykel appliances, custom white oak cabinetry, beautiful high-end countertops, and many little details. It's a micro chef's kitchen. So you can cook an entire meal there. However, I've learned that since we've been hosting for almost a year and a half now, only 30 to 40 percent of people use those kitchens.

Now they're still beautiful. So there's still some, at least, intangible value there. Some of the folks bring a chef in. A nice thing about where Live Oak Lake is situated is. We're within an hour and a half from 10, 15 million people, which is fantastic. But we're only 15 minutes to downtown Waco, which is 180,000 people and has become quite touristy because of Magnolia.

And so there's some excellent restaurant cuisine and stuff to do there. So we see a good mixture of those that just come and hunker down, chill out on site, and can cook full-blown meals if they want. And those that leave and go offsite. 

Chris Powers: All right. We've talked about this a lot.

You mentioned it with Amangiri. You've talked about it. Let's pivot to the social media engine's power and how that works. I'm not saying you can't be successful without it, but if you look at these niche properties, they all come with substantial social media followings, too. Let's talk about how you thought about building it.

The only other thing you might weave in there is that you've mentioned the word's messaging sequences many times. Which is also, I'm not saying that's your Instagram account, but that's part of marketing. I pulled your tweet; there are four pillars: consistency, influencer partnerships, media appearances, and organic deals.

Let's bring this home on how to build an incredible social media presence so these properties can thrive. 

Isaac French: I'll start with a quick story. Two weeks after we launched. When Airbnb suspended us, it was another substantial wake-up moment for me. We just spent 2. 5 million bucks on this property. I had taken a considerable risk.

I had gotten a construction loan. I had brought some partner equity in from my family to make it happen. Everybody needed clarification of how I was doing it as far as Drilling down so hard into the details and spending so much money. Our entire business shut down without explanation or warning. And Airbnb is awesome.

I can't say too much negative about them, and they've created a space significant as far as short-term rentals and allowed so many of us to thrive. But they've gotten so big, and they've shifted from being more host-centric to more death-centric. They're just, they've got to remember, like, where Airbnb started and how they're going to succeed, which is tight relationships with their hosts.

Their customer service could have been better. I could not get a hold of him for a week. And so, in the meantime, it ended up being a huge blessing because it launched social media. I started figuring that we've got to have distribution somewhere else. What are we going to do? And I knew social media would be necessary.

I have a direct bookings website. Yeah, I just wanted to take advantage. The first month you're on Airbnb, you get extra promotion in their algorithm because they're trying to get, you get you off the ground, get you established, get good reviews coming in. And I was trying to take advantage of that.

So, I wasn't even thinking about social media. I didn't know anything about it. I talked to a few friends and eventually landed on this idea of a giveaway, which I didn't know. There was this account in Dallas that has like 200,000 followers, and they do these giveaways.

So, they partner with restaurants, short-term rentals, and hotels. And for 900, they posted, and this was the first publicity we ever got, so that helped. They assigned me, and I just gave photos. They didn't even come out. If you entered by following my Live Oak Lake account, You would be an entrant in the giveaway and could tag people for more entries.

So, it incentivized this snowball effect. And the prize was a two-night stay. I paid 900 bucks. I gave away two nights. We were launching two. So we had a lot of open nights, and we got 40,000 direct bookings in one week and over 5,000 followers from scratch on our Instagram.

Chris Powers: Man, who, as you remember, is the name of that account?

Isaac French: Called Dallas Sites 101, it's wild. So that was the Eureka moment for me. I was like, Oh my goodness, we have struck gold. I doubled down like nobody's business and just pounded the pavement. So, from that time forward, I learned Instagram for the next six months. I spent two to three hours a day, just cold DMs, interacting with our new followers and cold DM new accounts that might be a good fit.

There were a lot of duds. I got fortunate on that first one. There were many fake or not fake accounts but accounts with fake and unengaged followings that we ended up giving away free nights, and we didn't get anything out of it. So I had to learn that you have to navigate a landmine there.

And I learned a lot of stuff along the way. Long story short, we partnered with 30 different influencers and accounts, and we spent like 40 grand on these giveaways, and we gave away 40 or 50 free nights, but it was great because, as I said, we were launching, so we had this open calendar for the most part.

It was mainly just the first month or two, but through the first six months, we got 50,000 followers, and every time we would do one of those giveaways, I would run a 10 percent discount code. So, it's just unique to that influencer. They could give a little perk to their following. And that's how we would generate these, that was good for one week.

That's how we generate these, all these direct booking sales. So not only would we get the followers, which are essential in the long-term, because then we're nurturing those, it's just a game, like eventually they'll book with us. It's just a funnel. We're converting them.

We're warming them, but we're also getting immediate, like fruit, and booked immediately. 10, 20, 30, 40 X returns on the money we spent. By some measures, it's hard to put a number on that value because of our social media following. I've had prospective buyers of Live Oak Lake tell us they would value just the social following at 2 million because we're generating.

We generate around 70 to 75 percent of our overall bookings from Instagram. So that following is, it's enormous. We're reaching 750,000 to 800,000 a year just in revenue from that. And we're in a very high-margin business, so between influencer partnerships.

Chris Powers: Real quick, what was in it for the influencers?

You gave them free nights to stay. They went out and took pictures while they were there. What's in it for the influencer? 

Isaac French: So there's a good mix. We use more significant accounts that charge 23,000 bucks. So that's the main benefit they get. They also, especially early on, were savoring the opportunity to feature this fantastic property, right?

Because we're the most incredible property, they can be among the first to push it to their audience. Some of them it's just straight-up business. Like I said, it's just transactional. You pay them money, and they post it. But then we also used a lot of micro-influencers, which are valuable because they will only give you a few followers.

5 to 10,000 following people, but some of them are talented content creators. So many of those would come out in exchange for a free night. So I don't pay him anything. I just gave him a free night, weeknight. They would make a giveaway or do whatever and create content for me to post.

Create reels, and that segues to the next: the big pillar here, the primary pillar of our growth. After we hit 50,000 followers, which we were supercharging with these collaborations, Instagram was pivoting its strategy to become just really focused. So that's how you get viral.

It's not photos. That's a lot of work to create. Content consistently and post it every other day or whatever your schedule is. So early on, it was enjoyable, and we could diversify and figure out our brand identity of what kind of stories we're telling with these reels by using these different creators.

They also would give us excellent photo content we could use for our listings for our website. That's how our marketing content, like I don't think we paid for anything, was like these amateur talented photographers coming out because it was such a cool place they wanted to film and trade a free stay with them.

But then, after 50,000 followers. I was creating great reels, but then I was like, this is a ton of my time, and I had been following this other agency. This guy Nate Vietz called Content House is his company, and he was launching, and he had been working with a couple of other cabins accounts around the country and doing an excellent job.

So Brought him down to Texas and ended up hiring him. So now he's primarily built a whole agency off of my referrals. I give him three different customers a month. And these are 3000 bucks a month, minimum retainer clients. I should do what Nick Huber is doing and own that agency or partner with him.

But he just they've got a super efficient workflow. They come out three times a year. When the seasons change, they bulk shoot. For three days, go back home to Ohio, chop it up, monitor the algorithm, monitor trending audios. They know my branding; they know my brand identity and our voice.

And then post consistently. And then it's just a numbers game. We'll get one that pops off every ten reels and goes viral. And then we'll get a ton of followers from that and bookings. Yeah, in the last, it's been just a year since I hired Nate, and we've added another hundred thousand followers, and then the other beautiful thing is we can use that same content that he's creating for Instagram on TikTok on YouTube shorts on Facebook.

Video is another macro trend, right? And so we're just posting, and like we have our promo videos, we chop everything up, and we use whatever we can to tell the story. It's also essential to use carousels because, like photo carousels, people also need to see what I am getting.

They're solving two different things. With the carousel, we're showing people where the plugs are by the bed and what the kitchen looks like. And, for some of these little details, they want to know their stay. And with the reels, we're just convincing them. We're like, we're creating that initial emotional connection.

I have to go there. I have to experience this. And then, I'll tie in your other question or point about message sequencing. It does tie in here. Interacting with your followers is essential and easy not to take the time for. I did a lot of this personally and still do it sometimes.

So I still have full access, and I'll go in there and check on things. But like responding to comments, responding to DM's is super important. Because, once again, 75 percent of all bookings come straight from this one Instagram platform. So, I am nurturing these people a book right there. And the other part of marketing here that I want to touch on is email.

So you could make an argument like, okay, great. So you cut the cord with Airbnb or, for the most part, but now you're dependent on Instagram. Yes and no. On the basic level, we're not paying the commission. So that's a huge advantage. You still see some dilution of your audience the more significant you get on Instagram with every platform.

Chris Powers: What do you mean by that? Just like it only reaches some.

Isaac French: Exactly. Your reach diminishes over time, not over time, but over the following size. And so we've 10 X to our audience size, but maybe only three or four X to our engagement. And so we've made a big push towards email, funneling people now to sign up to our lists.

And I'm. I've got plenty to learn here about email marketing. We've created some tremendous introductory welcome and nurture sequences that, once again, start warming people in the most personal way through their email. And we have 40,000 people on our email list now. So email is going to be like another of my end games as far as the best channel for marketing, but we very well take that back one step. The best marketing we have, and I already said this earlier, is the guests that have stayed with us because we'll have these super fans that go out and tell us we'll get ten different people booking because of them. They do it on social media, which is excellent.

They can tag their friends, and it's just this beautiful snowball that compounds over time and at this point. If we were not to grow another follower on Email or Instagram, if we didn't post another thing, we would be just fine off our existing relationships.

I want to leverage that into growth in the future with other places, which makes sense. I don't know, though, like to me, so much of it, and that has to be done in such a personal way, though, because I'll wait till you ask me about the acquisition thing. We've had all these private equity groups that want to come in and buy Live Oak Lake, or most of them want to take a majority.

So they want to buy 80 percent, and they want me to keep 20 because they want, and I've learned that they like me to go and build them a portfolio. Some of them have been tempting, but, once again, as I mentioned earlier, one of them told me, like Instagram, the audience you've built. Your ability to connect with those people is what we want, and to create the assets to that really like distribution makes me nervous because I don't want to be bought and then have to be growing unbearäble when it comes even to launching these properties. We can discuss that later, but I'm just returning to Instagram.

I built it very personally, like my story and face; my wife and I and our family have been central to that. And that's another core element that makes this such a great experience. People feel like they know me and participate in what we've created in our family and our story.

And you want to keep that. 

Chris Powers: If I were to sign up for your email, you talk about nurture and welcome sequence, but I never actually booked, but I was just on it. How many times am I going to hear from you a year? 

Isaac French: You're going to hear from us. Like 11 times for three or four months every week or so with a pre-scheduled automation of telling a different piece of the story or what we offer at Live Oak Lake and trying to nurture people.

And then we also do occasional newsletters. Newsletters are a small thing for us. It would be fun to dive into that and do a monthly update on what's happening at the property. If we had a more extensive property that even had more stuff, it'd be easier to come up with stuff there.

Chris Powers: And if you were to create another property, which is how I want to bring it home, which is like what's next, but you have this 158 000 followers, but that's for Live Oak Lake. You have 40,000 followers; technically, that's for Live Oak Lake. Let's say you find a nice quaint spot in Utah. Are you starting from zero again on a new Instagram account, or have you thought through how to take your current audience and help them begin transcending across all the properties you may own one day?

Isaac French: If I keep Live Oak Lake and have control of that audience, which is a question, then we've gotten some pretty tempting offers. 

Chris Powers: We talked about it with Joe T's that night. I was after my third margarita. I was like, sell that shit.

Isaac French: Mitchell Baldridge was pretty opinionated about it. He's like, don't you dare.

I built trust over time. And, like I said, I put my personality into it. I have to be super careful about using that Capital with the audience. Still, yeah, it makes tons of sense to use this targeted, highly engaged audience to expand to other properties now as far as how I might grow in terms of creating a portfolio or creating a brand that's more central or decentralizing it into soft brands or whatever with different accounts. That's a question. I don't know what I would do. Right now, I can answer that question before it's even asked. Regarding my expansion plans, I have been laser-focused on Live Oak Lake since the opening of understanding all these things about operations automation and marketing.

So I had my head down and said no politely, but people wanting to invest covered me, and if it's okay, I want to talk about that as far as, on the personal side of things, with my brand. So I didn't know like. Twitter was a place where people just argued about politics last year. 

Chris Powers: That's what next year will be in 2024. We're going to get back to that.

Isaac French: No kidding. Retweet is a nice little safe space. 

Chris Powers: Many people mute and block to retweet and be comfortable. 

Isaac French: But what happened is. So this guy named Sam Parr, I didn't know who he was, but all of a sudden, he found out about me.

It was last June. So, a few months after we opened, we just started texting one night, and he was asking me about the business and what I had done. And I had yet to tell any of our story from the backend. I hadn't opened the hood of what we were doing and how much I'd spent.

And he was like, if it's okay, I will tweet about this. I was like, okay, okay. You should create an account here because it will help you. I was like, no, I don't have time for that. I'm too busy. And he's like, okay, okay. And so he made this tweet, which got a lot of engagement. So, I humbled myself, created an account, and started interacting with people.

But that led to Sam having a vast audience. Sam's awesome. And then I went on my first million and. Oh, you did. Yeah. And I got just a ton of people inbound. And really, the stream has continued since last June. Every week, I get two or three emails and DMs from private equity, high net worth, or individuals wanting to tweet.

Tweet. Invest and first, I was taking many calls, and I was like, wow, it was very flattering. I've never been in that position, and now I've just learned to be focused on what I'm doing. But along the way, there were all these other small entrepreneurs and people like me trying to start and create these properties.

I needed to be more original in creating this kind of brand. It is like a little short-term rental village, basically a hospitality and lifestyle brand around it. I was fortunate to be one of the first to execute it well. And so this idea was resonating with so many people. I started sharing stuff and organically getting a lot of engagement on Twitter primarily.

That led to many requests to pick my brain, our favorite question. 

Chris Powers: Oh, my gosh. And I have no brain left if I let everybody that wanted to pick it.

Isaac French: It's such an awful term. That is so not wanting to be unwelcoming or disrespectful to anybody. I took many calls, realizing my time was valuable and could not.

I was spending hours a day just dealing with this. So, I started doing consulting on the side. At first, some people knew me in the local hosting community in Texas, like one or two that raised their eyebrows. Wow, you're charging money. I looked for you guys, and I'll never demand money.

I'll share. I learned from you. You can learn from me. So there was a bit of resistance, but people just started booking these calls. And my price went from 300 bucks an hour to 1300 bucks an hour. And people are just looking out my calendar. 

Chris Powers: Which site did you use to do that intro? 

Isaac French: Nope. ConvertKit.

So I just used ConvertKit commerce and had a Calendly link directly sent to them so they could schedule a time and then just blocked off specific segments, my schedule. But I hate selling hours of my day, especially when I answer the same questions repeatedly. I should create scalable resources for people, and I didn't want to do it for the longest time because I'm not too fond of the course guru persona. I was terrified of how people would start viewing me, that I would lose the offense authenticity, and how I built that—following on Twitter.

Chris Powers: It makes you feel any better.

I think it's freaking awesome. 

Isaac French: I appreciate that. I've gotten thicker-skinned and much more encouraged by others who have taken the course. So, I created this masterclass on experiential hospitality using live Oak Lake as the main case study. Its eight hours of content and 45 episodes brought in some awesome people to help present different experts on different topics.

And. I marketed this course, did a limited launch in July this year, built the whole thing in two months, and partnered with this incredible couple, Brady and Quinn Clayton, who created all the videos and then launched the course and sold 85 people purchased. It's a 4,000 course in eight days. And I was like, wow, this is awesome.

Cause this is the first time.

Chris Powers: How much did it cost you to build it? 

Isaac French: It cost 10,000 bucks, but then I did a profit share with Brady and Quinn. So they got 20%. They got a lot, but they did a great job. So, I grossed 340,000 in eight days on this course. Since then, I've been fixing to announce cohort two.

I will do a rolling cohort every other month, but I no longer have to worry about the group or the coaching calls, which were soul-destroying in one. I love connecting with people, but I hate spending that time. It's very fatiguing, for sure. And I also have some ideas around the community of how I can bring people together In the space and where we can both network, and I can share my experiences.

So I don't know how I got on that tangent, but I will say that whatever I do going forward, I don't want the consulting and coaching or community, whatever that personal brand side of things, ever to be more than 49 percent of what I do.

The main thing needs to be the main thing, which is me creating, envisioning, creating, designing, building, and marketing these Iconic properties.

Chris Powers: you figured out things at 26 that most people don't realize until their career ends.

Isaac French: I've just been fortunate to have some great mentors, so I want to do that, and then that will feed the machine on whatever that looks like it because when I can build these properties, my number one regret in making live Oak Lake, the biggest mistake was that I didn't film or like hardly photograph anything when I was doing.

 I was in such a hurry and so laser-focused on executing that I didn't build in public or capture the content that I could post later. A friend of mine, Devin Lowrop, has a container home, so it's five shipping containers built into this fantastic Airbnb.

He did it himself. He's in Washington. He built 900,000 followers on Instagram. It is the most significant count I know of like this. With 150 of these reels that he created, he's also a filmmaker and an engineer, so he brought some excellent skills together. Still, he just basically told the story that it's gold, the content that you have when you're creating one of these kinds of properties, and people want to vicariously follow along and live that life with you, so he just took these time lapses and would do before and afters and these great reels like 5 to 10 seconds, 150 of them. 

He built 850 000. He's up to over a million now when he launched that property. He was featured in the master class as well when he found that property last year.

At the end of last year, he booked a place out in a matter of days for a year in advance because he had such a massive distribution baked in immediately. So, that's what I'm passionate about creating. Number one, making the product, creating the experience, creating the property, envisioning it, coming up with something unique to the area that it's in while also incorporating that localized feel and personalization, building a brand around it with an audience, and then setting up these turnkey, super robust profit centers, and then just like legacy assets that I want to be able to pass on to my kids and grandkids.

It is the future of travel and hospitality in 15 to 20 years. The concept of hotels now will be drastically changed. I firmly believe. Yes, they'll still be economy, select service, whatever, comfort in. We're going to see such a vast swath because my generation, as I said, it all comes back to wanting those experiences is going to prioritize that is going to spend extra.

People spend three or four times what they would spend even at an excellent four-star hotel to stay at our place. Why? Because it's unique, and we've told the story well. So it's the best opportunity. It's the best asset class; I can think of it if you want to call it that.

Chris Powers: Isaac, you have created a raving fan in me. I am beyond impressed. I can't wait to stay there. I can't wait to get to know you better. You've been hiding in plain sight. And I leave today going, and this is something I need to get to see a lot better. 

Isaac French: I have a ton of admiration for you, Chris.

And I know there's a lot. I can still learn. That's been one of the most significant benefits of connecting with folks in the retweet community, precisely because I know. I'm getting this free doctorate in real estate, business, and marketing daily by clicking with folks like yourself.

That's a huge honor to hear that. 

Chris Powers: It's a pleasure. How can people find what you're all about? 

Isaac French: They can follow me on Twitter at Isaac French underscore. They can sign up for my newsletter or get more info on the masterclass at IsaacJFrench.com, liveOakLake.com, and live Oak Lake. Are the handles and domain for business?

Chris Powers: You're the man. Thank you very much. 

Isaac French: Thank you so much, Chris.

Chris Powers: I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Fort podcasts. Be sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform or hop over to YouTube to watch full video episodes if that's what you prefer. For more information, you can check out the fortpod.com.