Joe:   Hey, imagine buying five acres of land for $138,000 and selling it 18 months later for $7 million. That's exactly what Isaac French did. And it all started when he got banned from the world's biggest rental platform, Airbnb. This is a great story. Isaac is a former bookkeeper. He had no fancy connections, not a ton of money. He only had $19,000 to his name when he got started. So this is one of the wildest success stories I've heard in a long, long time. This is fantastic. I believe it's going to inspire you like nothing else. See, Isaac story has proven that anyone can win big with vacant land because it's such an overlooked opportunity in the market today. So this is part one of a two part interview. The next part will be updated very, very soon. I can't wait for you to hear Isaac's story. Now let's get into the interview. All right, Isaac, how are you, man?

Isaac:   Good, Joe. How are you doing?

Joe:   Excellent. Talk a little bit about how did you get started in real estate?

Isaac:   Yeah, so four years ago, Covid was obviously upending our world. And I was working as a bookkeeper at the time, and I had grown up working summers in my dad's construction business. He was a small general contractor, eventually ran projects, so I had a good understanding of the trades and construction, but have also always been artistic, creative and then of course had that bookkeeping. So a weird but kind of interesting mixture of skills and everybody found themselves locked up at home. And I had actually recently moved from Idaho down to Texas. I was born and raised in Texas, but our family moved to Idaho when I was 12, and then I got married and moved down to Texas. And so I was really thinking about new horizons and new projects. And I had this dream I had really never done. I'd never done any real estate project, but I had all that construction experience. I had this dream to create these cabins that I could rent as short term rentals, but there would be different than just short term rentals. There would be more like a resort, but not like a resort, like a retreat in nature. That was beautiful, low touch as far as hospitality, but really well-designed and thoughtful. And so I started looking for land and I had I had conversations with a friend of mine, a neighbor of mine here in Texas. And I was planning to buy ten acres of raw land from him that was on a small cliff overlooking a creek. There was beautiful land, but he was dragging his feet and things weren't really moving forward there. And I was, as time went on, really getting more and more like bought into this idea of creating this and wanted to get started immediately because I was already starting to think like, okay, this this pandemic isn't going to last forever. And when people get unrestricted to, you know, to travel, they're going to want to go stay at places like this. So I had a little bit.

Joe:   You already had in your mind what this was going to look like, at least kind of. Right?

Isaac:   Like kind of I mean, it didn't seem like I knew it couldn't last forever. And I knew just even already living in the country, like, how much better I had it than everybody else. But, you know, that was in a city. I have we have five acres. We have a farm. You know, I could get out. Most people couldn't even get out of their houses for a period of time there. So I was like, if we create this setting, and especially if it will allow us to even host a few families at a time, friends are going to you know, they're going to get together with other friends, they're going to want to come travel to this. So I was already thinking, I don't want to claim too much of the credit, but it definitely was in my mind.

Joe:   So I'm sorry. Let me just backtrack a little bit, too. So this was four years ago and was a hip camp thing or glamping? Was that a thing even back then where there was this concept or this idea of destination Airbnbs or, you know, like that kind of thing? Was that a thing back then? I'm trying to remember.

Isaac:   I don't know. I never even heard of Hip Camp til a year ago. I know that glamping was a definitely a term that was starting to be thrown around and people were doing it, but it wasn't nearly what it is today and certainly not that kind of more elevated outdoor hospitality experience, which is what we created with live Oak Lake.

Joe:   But well, tiny houses were a thing back then.

Isaac:   Tiny houses were a thing. Exactly. And it made a lot of sense to have an efficient floor plan that you could build, you know, fewer units or build fewer square feet, but put more into them, more effort, more just design, more intentionality, more cost. So that was definitely kind of one of the big philosophies there. And long story short, one morning I woke up this was February of 21 and I opened Zillow. I've been religiously checking that every day and four hours previous, and a listing had appeared like five minutes down the road and it was just overgrown jungle that I had driven by literally hundreds of times and never thought anything of. But it was.

Joe:   What were you looking for in Zillow? What kind of properties?

Isaac:   Any kind of raw land. I understood my market well as far as what was even buildable and like it's pretty lax, which is great for actually getting projects done. But anything that was outside city limits that ideally had some really nice trees on it because trees are something you can't just add overnight, especially big ones. And water would be like, you know, a really, really nice. Kind of cherry on top. So this place, what was interesting is there was a drone shot. And so I'd never seen that angle on this piece of property. And sure enough, in the middle, there was a little cow pond. So I drove over there and met the realtor an hour later and just immediately fell in love with the place that had these, probably for only 4 or 5. But that's all you need of these four foot diameter Texas live oaks that are just awesome. And then this little cow pond. And I could see, like, we could dig this thing out. We could shape, shape the ground a little differently. There was already some nice topography. Central Texas, you know, you don't get a lot of it's a lot of just pancake. So the property it was it was a hidden gem for sure. They're asking 138,005.1 acres. I made an offer that day was accepted cash offer for 127,000 and to close in 30 days. I had $19,000 to my name. But I knew this was the place. And I was like, I'm going to figure this out and I'm not going to let this place go because this was yeah, so this is now early 21 and things are just starting to open up. So that was already happening. People are getting out and real estate was right on the cusp and just kind of entering into an unprecedented boom in this area. I mean, it was just insane and it happened everywhere. But this was one of the most dramatic examples of that. So I was like and, you know, properties were lasting hours on the market. So I got it under contract and then got on the phone with friends and family and arranged to get the about 100,000 and I needed to close in 30 days from family members in exchange for some equity. Then we started kind of hammering out the details. I obviously already had this idea in mind and I'd already floated out to a few folks creating this little village. And then I, of course, started talking to banks because I knew we were going to need some major construction lending to actually realize the whole project. Initially, I was estimating 1.8 million to build these seven cabins. They're about 500ft², a commons area, landscaping, utilities, all that 1.8 million know I got told no by several banks and then finally found a local community bank that would give me a construction loan if some family members would co guarantee it using their, you know, they had a small construction company that provided some liquidity and some stability there. So we got all that sorted out. The construction loan, though, didn't come through for probably four months, so we closed on the property and the next day I was on site with a chainsaw clearing that 30 days before foreclose. I had been, you know, really I mean, spending every waking hour thinking this place through, drawing up plans on site, kind of walking it, trying to understand how to position all the units, how to make the most out of every square inch of this piece of property. It was really fun, actually. And then, yeah, we actually spent about $400,000 through a line of credit just going for it before we even got the firm approval and any of the first money from the bank, which was a big risk. But we were I was like, look, we are going to make this happen. And again, the opportunity cost was a big thing in my mind of every day. We're not open, we're losing a lot of potential. So then fast forward, we've got the entire project done. It ended up costing us 2.3 million. So the bank only loaned 80% of that 1.8. So we had a big shortfall. We had to bring in some a line of credit through another business and a lot of creative structuring. I gave away 45% equity overall in the project and but we got it done. I broke my pelvis during the process. It was it was a crazy year and we opened in January of 22. By January 15th and we launched on Airbnb. We got some listing photos, descriptions written up, everything. We had a really successful two weeks after that launch. Lots of good people, you know, our prices were admittedly, admittedly a lot lower then than they are now, but we were at like 200, 250 bucks a night. And we had a lot of folks just in the Waco community, in the central Texas community coming out. And so that was awesome. And then one morning I woke up and open the Airbnb app because that was, you know, my my morning routine wasn't Zillow any more. Now it was their be checking our reservations. Everything was grayed out with no. And there was this little red triangle that says suspended on every single one of our seven listings.

Joe:   How long had they been open?

Isaac:   Two weeks, maybe 14, 15 days and no warning and no explanation. So I got on the phone with Airbnb and they had, you know, Yeah. Not to throw too much shade. I actually am a big fan of Airbnb and I think they've totally obviously revolutionized that travel space and challenged hotels and the status quo and all that. But like as a company, they have shifted very much from being host centric to being guest centric. And I know they kind of have to balance a lot there. And it's the beauty and the curse of being a platform like that is extremely valuable, the position they hold. But anyway, it was very evident within a few hours of, you know, being on the phone with their customer service that I was not a priority for them and there wasn't really any clear answer of what had happened or what the solution was. So that was pretty scary too.

Joe:   But you had seven units there. Seven units there and you're renting them each for about 200 bucks a night?

Isaac:   Yes. Yeah. And we had multiple successful, you know, reviews and reservations in that 14 day period.

Joe:   Did anybody complain or what was the problem?

Isaac:   No complaining. So here's the here's the irony. Well, I'll get to it in one second. So this ended up being the thing that changed everything for me that really changed my life, that incident, because it forced me to think about building a brand and getting direct bookings. So I never even really thought about Instagram or social media or any of these things. I was like, You know, Airbnb is a fantastic OTA platform. And when we were suspended and all of our reservations essentially canceled, no new reservations coming in. The existing ones weren't canceled that, you know, the ones that were already booked were fulfilled, but there were none new coming in. I got in touch with this travel influencer here in Texas, and I didn't know anything about this whole scene, but and now it's become ubiquitous. It's almost overused now, I think. But getaways, are you familiar with these travel getaways? Now what happens? The concept is pretty simple. The influencer leverages their following. In this case, she had 200,000 followers in central Texas, and it was, you know, people looking for a date activity or a place to stay or a restaurant, whatever, in this whole Texas region. And so it's a perfect demographic for us. And she essentially, you know, we paid her $950 and she advertised our property with a post. And people could enter the giveaway by following my account and by tagging a couple of friends and, you know, extra friends or extra entries. So you kind of get a snowball effect. And then of course they see that their friends do and they tag other friends and it's an exponential effect and it runs for seven days. The reward is a is a two night stay that's randomly chosen. So the winner is randomly picked seven days later. So she ran this giveaway like days after this whole thing went down with Airbnb. She never even came out. I just sent her photos of the property and in a seven day period of following that post, we got $40,000 of direct bookings and 5000 followers on her new Instagram channel.

Joe:   You still had a website where people could do the booking.

Isaac:   Well, I had thrown that up overnight pretty much. We had a website, but I added the booking engine with the calendar and you know, that payment processing and all of that before we ran that. So of course we could drive. We could drive bookings through there because there was otherwise virtually no. I think we did have verbose turned on that. Verbose is a very small sector. At least it was. So that was the eureka moment of we're going all in on these influencer collaborations and on social media in general. Now here's the irony. Then like the next day or maybe two days later, our Airbnb account was fully restored and the explanation they gave me, this is going to sound crazy, but essentially like it was very muddy. But what I took out of it was you got too many good reviews and too short of a period of time, and it looked fishy to our algorithm, essentially. So is that funny? Like, who would have thought that ended up being such a lemming? You couldn't have timed it more perfectly in terms of like, me pivoting my strategy. Of course, Airbnb, these still played a part and still does to this day. But within six months we were at 80%, give or take, 80% of all bookings coming direct. Those direct bookings you're saving 15% roughly. That's pure profit margin. You can't ever be deplatformed. There is no data wall. So you now have this guest email, you can retarget them. You're reaching a more aspirational buyer guess because they're booking through Instagram or it's an immersive video versus a commodity that's priced shots next to 20 other listings. I could go on and on. So I mean, direct bookings are absolutely the best thing.

Joe:   I love that because there's this concept of own the race course, and I don't know where it came from. I'm sure it's pretty good. But the concept of never be beholden to one company or provider like, you know, I mean, if your business is entirely based on Airbnb, they could shut you down Facebook ads, they could kick you out, right? YouTube channel. Like if you don't own the race course where you own the audience, the list, the IP, the what You know, whatever. You've got to always be prepared, whatever your business is, to have other options. If one of the social media channels kicks you out. Right. Which is awesome that you learned it in this way.

Isaac:   They say don't build your house on someone else's land. And I felt that viscerally when all that went down.

Joe:   Okay. So Airbnb, when it came back, what percentage of your business before you sold and we'll talk about that in a minute here came from Airbnb. What percent came from your own marketing?

Isaac:   Essentially was 80% direct, about 15%, 15 to 17% through Airbnb and 3 to 5% through VRBO. So it was, you know, 15% on we grossed one just under 1.1 million in the trailing 12 months before we sold. So I mean, 15% on that. That's, that's an extra $170,000 in your pocket. And you have thousands and thousands of guest emails that you can now that are also an asset that you can now. So in retarget we had guests coming back 3 or 4 times in one year. Just anecdotally I talked to folks, so like the experience was one of a kind. We were building a relationship with them and being able to book direct for the guest enabled that relationship in such a beautiful way for us to continue that because then we could contact them.

Joe:   Explain a little bit more about what was on the property, what made it so attractive and fun and exciting, different.

Isaac:   Yeah, it really was the culmination of thousands of little tricky, thoughtful details that were woven together cohesively. And that's kind of a messy answer, but that's the best thing I know because like, it was an experience truly. So when people a common comment that I heard when people went on site was, wow, it feels like you're in a different world. So everything from the front gate and the intentionality in like the way the gate and the fence and the plants work together to the lights, to the trails, to the way the trees were position. And then of course, so design like permeating every detail of property. So it's Nordic inspired, which is very uncommon, especially back then for Texas, but modern, sleek black cabins with these pure glass fronts jutting out over the water, string lights and reflections in the water and kayaking and trails. And the whole thing felt like you were just you really were in a different place. You weren't in central Texas anymore. It was like you were in Pacific Northwest or Europe or something.

Joe:   Well, how big was this lake?

Isaac:   The lake is only 1.5 acres. But the way that we shaped it is like a Y shape. So it had it felt a lot bigger than it actually even was because it kind of undulated back and forth. It wasn't just a, you know, a circle and the trees and the landscaping.

Joe:   It was there were there were seven cabins where they all like right next to each other. Could you see them? And by the way, we'llgive everybody, everybody a link to the website. You can go look at it. But how close were they would gather?

Isaac:   Yeah, they were probably about 150ft apart on average, so would have been a lot easier to just pack them in next to each other on one part of the property. But that initial experience of walking the property, spending probably three days with no distractions, just literally walking every square foot trying to understand the property and let it sort of speak to me as far as what the best use is and where to build. Everything was so valuable because it was the ideal density as far as the experience for the guests was concerned, We had to spend more money and running utilities and running roads and all that. But you kind of balance these two things. On the one hand, this seclusion in nature feeling where there's beautiful trees surrounding you and there's water and there's hills, and then on the other hand, like a communal vibe where at night, especially when there's like reflections on the water and all the cabins are kind of, you know, facing not directly looking at each other, but facing around the pond kind of cohering around that central feature. And a couple of them were spaced further away into the trees that are not on the pond because we knew some people would want an even more private experience. So there's a lot of thought that went into like how we laid that out and to this day site planning and like that initial, you know, concept in walking the property, understanding the property, laying out a vision is like my favorite part of it because you probably can relate to that.

Joe:   There's, you know, talk about the units themselves. What were they like? What was in them? How many people did they sleep, that kind of stuff.

Isaac:   There were five, two bedroom and two one bedroom. And I think like I didn't have any scientific way of figuring out at that point, like what the perfect configuration would be or how many of what it was just kind of like, what more of what felt right was more of an art than a science. I think we hit it pretty well because we ended up catering to a pretty wide spectrum of folks, but to primarily two distinct groups one romantic couples getaways, tons of those, and then also small families. There are a lot of families that wanted to just come get their kids in nature, unplug. There were no televisions and the TV in the units, which is something that a lot of other Airbnb hosts at the time were like, You're crazy. They thought I was crazy for a lot of reasons. Like I spent 300 plus thousand dollars on each of these cabins that are, you know, 500ft² or less, which is a lot of money, especially when you're not even factoring in design or fees, because I was kind of playing both those roles. But like the proof is in the pudding. Like there were all these whether it was the finishes or the windows or the landscaping around them, all those tough decisions you have to make and compromises. And I think a lot of people I have this whole philosophy. I think a lot of people spend 20%. But well, let me frame it like this. If you spend 20% more time cost and just overall headache in a property, if it's done tastefully, that 20% will can and will result in 80 to 90 or 100% more value creation in the experience in how much you could rent them for in the context of short term rentals, the content that you can create from that because social media is something we didn't really realize at the time because of course we hadn't been through this Airbnb, you know, cancellation experience was social media would play such a vital role in that success. And now it's something I talk about a lot, butdesigning units with all these instagrammable moments. So like there's a shoot through moment. Where you come into the cabin and there's this big glass gable and you're looking out and you open those doors and it's just this magical kind of wow moment. And then there's the way each window is framed and the little pathway down to the water. And then we added a shipping container pool with a window in the side and the kayaks and all these little moments that add up. And they need to be instagrammable because that's what people are going to do. So for our own content, that was very important. We also got a lot of like user generated content and then the kind of the FOMO that's created with that person's following in their circle and them coming back and all of that.

Joe:   So you had shipping container pools.

Isaac:   We added one after we actually like six months after we opened, we added a shipping container pool, which cost about $70,000, took two months for the company called Mud Pools in Houston to fabricate. But then I tested the rates, so I kept it. And that whole process, I was raising rates pretty regularly to keep up with demand. But I have pretty good data that says that pool essentially justified an extra 60 to $70 ADR across all units because it was accessible to everyone on the property, which means that the pool paid itself off in like eight months. But the way I looked at it is, you know, that extra, that extra $100,000 or whatever that was that we were generating, which was like 80% margin per year, added up to $1 million ish in enterprise value because we sold 18 months after all of that. So we, we added in all these experiences to like we realized people I mentioned romantic getaways, they wanted they kept asking for some of the same things. So, you know, roses and cake and candles and sometimes there would be birthday experiences. So we started like adding these packages that we would upsell even early check in. And those are very high margin businesses. So we did about an extra $75,000 a year in pure profit just from some of these add ons that, you know, someone's coming and they're spending $600 a night at this beautiful romantic getaway. What's an extra $100 or $200 to them to just enhance that experience? You could apply the 8020 rule there, another 20 for another 20% more cost to have like this, a magical experience. So all those pieces together like optimize that eventual financial which was 1.1 million gross $550,000 net. And this is seven cabins, 95% occupancy in our first 12 months of operation, 80% plus direct.

Joe:   That's amazing. All right. So then but I want to go back to these units again. Like each of these units had a bathroom, a kitchen, living room. Talk about those details or what was in them.

Isaac:   Yeah so open floor plan in the So there are two story. There's a bedroom downstairs in the two bedroom units, a full bathroom, a kitchenette. So it actually had like luxury appliances fridge freezer panel ready built in with the cabinetry, a speed oven. So a microwave and an oven, a cooktop. And so a lot of folks actually came and brought food and cooked out of their units. I think a lot of folks are scared to spend on kitchens and I don't think it's a good idea for everyone. But in our case, given various factors of who our guests were like, especially the families and even some of the romantic getaways were 15 minutes from a really good restaurant. The property is. So we do have pretty good proximity there. A lot of folks would just come and hang out for 4 or 5 days and never even leave the property because there were all these activities on site and they were at the end the day again, this is five acres. There's a commons area, there's the kayaking, there's the trails. It's not like there's that much, but it was so well done that like there wasn't a feeling that you needed to leave to go do something necessarily. But yeah, it's just kitchen, open living room. And then there was a loft bedroom as well. So that's the second bedroom.

Joe:   So you had this big window. Did you have to have a curtain to close it to get privacy at night or how did that work?

Isaac:   We have roller shades, manual roller shades on all the windows so people could block that out and then all the lights. And this another piece like I geeked out on the smart home automation throughout the entire property. So everything was automated. So lights, door locks, thermostats, noise monitors were all connected through our property management software. So a lot of it was like customized, tailored to each guest. But then we also had the ability to come in and modify stuff remotely, but like all the lights would shut off outside after 10 p.m. or whatever. And we had a few rules like that to just kind of preserve the overall property experience.

Joe:   All right. So then utilities, you were you were far so far out in the country you couldn't get natural gas or could you get water? Were you well, water? And did you have to use septic or were you able to tiein to sewer?

Isaac:   We gotreally lucky with the water. So we're actually we're outside city limits. But there had been a future waterline that was put in like ten years ago for some future development in our area. And it ran through the very corner of the property. So we were able to do a city tap, which was awesome because we didn't have to drill a big well. And in Texas especially, Wells can be a big deal because water is somewhat stairs for the septic. We permitted, we engineered and permitted a proprietary, you know, single system for all seven units. So there's a lot of lift stations and holding tanks and in zero big system. So part of the property, it was kind of removed from the rest of the cabins. We did all the sprinkler heads and then they were on a timer, so they only ran after dark and it worked quite well. But we literally used every single square inch of the property with one thing or another. And then power was pretty simple. We had a power line running close by, so we were able to pull off of that and we did separate meters for each of the cabins.

Joe:   I love this because it was an experience that people would get and they would sell it for you on an average month. How much did you generate in revenue? What percentage of that was profit?

Isaac:   Well, honestly, in our in our market, there wasn't much cyclicality because it was it's fairly temperate here. I mean, it's pretty hot. August is pretty, pretty nasty sometimes. And February, January, February is a little slow. But I would just say on average it was $92,000 a month gross and $46,000 a month net. That's before the debt service. Sowe did pull out. That's another piece. I didn't tell you this was just beautiful for months after we were done with. And we had been we had been operational. You know, we had all this money out through a temporary line of credit. And all of us had just moved our piggy banks to even make this project work to get over the finish line. But four months after the same appraiser that had initially appraised the property at 1.8 with our plans came back out. And because our cash flow and our bookings were so insane and they could just walk through the property and get a sense of like what we'd actually built, it wasn't just plans on paper. They reappraised the property at 3.1 million, so like twice double what it initially appraised for. And then we were able to shop that second loan around to several banks and a credit union refinanced that at 80%. We locked in a great rate. This was June of 22, so rates were just starting to go up. So it was perfect timing there and we essentially pulled out $400,000 of cash tax free, you know, that was leveraged over the 80%. And because of bonus depreciation and the cost segregation study that we did, the first million dollars, it was like $995,000 qualified for bonus depreciation. So the first like two years of profit was totally tax free or tax deferred because of bonus depreciation. And so like we layered several things on there that just made it insane.

Joe:   Now before you sold it, I want to get to that again, but what were some of the challenges that you had operating it, not building it, but operating it that you weren't expecting?

Isaac:   I said, you know, it was going to be low touch hospitality. What does that mean? Well, we used all this smart tax, the software like the property management software, the messaging, all of that, and really cut out, you know, there was no lobby, there's no concierge. It's a luxury. People are paying Four Seasons rates. I mean, we had people pay 1200 and up a night to stay there and some nights is crazy was all dynamically priced depending on day of week, time of year, local events, whatnot. But all that being said, it is hospitality. And so I don't think this was unique to us, except maybe that because people were paid so much, I felt especially beholden to make sure every single guest had it absolutely insane experience. But the small thing happens and I hired you know, I hired two different folks. One was a kind of a part time guest communications manager, cleaning liaison. She was really a pseudo general manager. And then we had another like operations guy who was doing a lot of the maintenance and, you know, keeping up with the landscaping and whatnot. But at the end of the day, like the buck stops with you as the owner unless you go all out and hire like a high paid GM. And I wasn't really wanting to do that because for two reasons, I wanted to preserve as much of that bottom line as I could because I knew that selling might be an option and it was going to be a multiple a bottom line. But secondly, like I I'm kind of a micromanager and cares so much about those details and like each experience that I could not afford to have one bad review. So what that meant was, you know, a handful of times at midnight, you get a message and you have to drive over there because someone's door lock isn't working is probably really simple, but this is hospitality and you have to go above and beyond and show care. So all that stuff started to weigh on me a little bit. And one thing I realized just zooming way out about myself is I everybody has their strengths and weaknesses and I love creating and developing things and like being a visionary and all of that marketing. I think I'm decent at that, but I don't like operating. I think it was really healthy for me to be that operator for the 18 months that we owned it because I learned so much. I mean, even as far as what works and what doesn't work about like the experience and the, you know, the appliances and what types of finishes to use and not to use and furniture and layouts and all of that. But also, you know, it just becomes very taxing on you. And so there wasn't one specific instance or detail about it that I would point to. One mistake that I made that was just totally overlooked. And, you know, being that we didn't hire an engineer, an architect and all of that, it did enable me to do the project really fast and for a really tight budget. But I also overlooked a few things. For instance, none of the units are ADA accessible, so this is a little bit of a gray area, even in terms of the legality. There's not and maybe it differs state by state, but we weren't like grossly opening ourselves up to a lawsuit. But more than anything, it just felt really bad to have to turn some folks away that were wheelchair bound that we couldn't host. So that's one piece of advice. Like if you have one unit or if you have ten units, at least make one unit. It's not that much more work. But you got to get your doorways right and your turn radiuses and, you know, stairs and all that. So I couldn't really point to one. I think it was really just that overarching like operational headache that hospitality is actually known for, but I hadn't really fully underwritten in my planning.

Joe:   All right. So I don't know if you can get into the numbers, but you sold it. Who came who made you an offer to buy it and why did you decide to sell it?

Isaac:   We listed it for sale on LoopNet and were approached by several different parties, several that were seriously interested, and a number of private equity firms. So that was pretty telling in that they sort of could see where the puck was heading even within this kind of new genre of hospitality wanted in. And they saw that audience as kind of a really big asset as well because it's hard to grow one. And once they have that, they can leverage that to grow and expand. The problem with institutional money, namely private equity, is they don't operate it on a small scale. So we were like really flying under the radar. But because of our audience size, which, you know, we grew 140,000 followers in the first 12 months, and then all of that direct bookings that that drove that kind of qualified us into a tier where it was like, Wow, this is something we should take seriously. So we got multiple offers actually from different private equity shops. And then they were good offers, but they weren't like we didn't really feel motivated to sell it because it was doing so fantastic. But I was always under the mindset of like, if we got an offer that was just so crazy good and the timing felt right and the buyer felt right, I'd be a fool not to say yes to it because I learned so much that I could technically go and redo all this. And one thing I wasn't going to do is sign a non-compete. So, like, that was non-negotiable for me in any of the negotiations. We finally got an offer for 6.5 million and that felt really good to us. So we got under contract. We got down to like two days before closing and the buyer backed out there. Lender fell through. I learned a ton of lessons, namely that they hadn't put nearly enough earnest money down because it barely even covered my attorney's fees is like $15,000 of nonrefundable earnest money at that point for a $6.5 million contract. So then I was like, okay, look, if it's meant to be, it'll be Otherwise, I'm just tired of this emotional roller coaster of are we selling or are we not selling? And then like two days later, we get another offer for 7 million that the 6.5 was head and shoulders above anything we'd seen previous to that. So 7 million and we had to negotiate a few of the terms. They wanted to do a seller note, which we didn't end up doing. But yeah, so we ended up signing on that one. And then a lot of things fell through that look like they were going to cancel the deal. And then finally everything came through for the buyer and they closed last October. So basically $1 million, pretty simple math. And one of the first, if not the first of its kind, you know, exits to institutional buyer in the kind of new outdoor hospitality space. So it's been a wild ride and that was just 18 months after four is 20 months after opening the property.

Joe:   That's amazing. And Isaac, I know we have a hard stop. Let's do it. Part two. Would you be okay with that? Let's do it. Because I'd like to ask you, if you were to do this again, what would you do? And if you were to build another one, what would you do? And as somebody listening, this is like, I want to do that. What could they what could they what do they need to be aware of? What should they do? And do you help them do that? So real quick, can you give us a website of where this property is? Where can they get pictures and view this property? And then how do they get a hold of you?

Isaac:   Yeah, Live Oak Lake.com is the website and you can find the Instagram channel at Live Oak Lake and then get ahold of me across Instagram, LinkedIn or ever Twitter at Isaac French underscore. But here's the one thing that I would ask. If anybody is serious about this new opportunity with experience hospitality, I spend two hours plus a week writing handwriting, a newsletter that gives all these everything I learned and everything I'm seeing for free. Isaac J French.com. You can sign up there and we'd love to have you guys on.

Joe:   Isaac J. French.com. And then live oak lake.com. Is that what it was?

Isaac:   Yes sir that's right.

Joe:   Live Oak Lake. Okay so cool. We're going to do a part two and I'll send you a link Isaac to schedule that. But that be cool because I'd like to talk more about you teach and help people how to do this as well. And there's there are some people are listening to this are like, my gosh, that sounds way, way too much work. I could never do that. Some people are saying I could never get the money. How on earth would that work where some are saying I could never design something not as creative as Isaac, But you've been there, done that, and you've you have the bruises to show that it actually works and it works. Really well. So I'd like to talk to you more about that on a part two, if that's all right.

Isaac:   Would love to you, Joe. Appreciate it.

Joe:   All right. Thank you, Isaac. Everybody will see you on part two, so stay tuned. Bye bye.

Isaac:   Take care.