How I Went From Broke to $7 Million With An Airbnb Business
All right. So Sean, I wanted to have Isaac on because we talk a lot about making money on this podcast, but I've been with Isaac at his home a bunch and I've gotten to know him and he's inspired me that to believe that like money isn't the only reason for business. It's about like kind of craftsmanship. It's about like creating like your little like corner of the universe and into your vision. And I wanted to have him on the pod because I think he's different than a lot of the guests that we've had on here. But let me explain how I met Isaac. I saw that he had this amazing website for his Airbnb. And it said Isaac French owns this place. He's a former accountant turned real estate mogul, but he's really most passionate about painting and being an artist. And I was like, this kid's the most interesting person I've ever read about. Uh, what, what the hell? And so I just called him and we became friends on the phone and then eventually met up in real life. And he's kind of blown my mind as I've gotten to know him. So when I met Isaac, I met him in a business context. He had this vibe where he was like, oh, like, no, the right way to do this business is doing this, this, and this.
When you say you met him in a business context, what context did you meet him in?
So Sam, can I tell a tiny story here about that?
Yeah. Yeah.
So shout out Zach. He's cool. He introduced us. Um, he introduced me to Sam. At least I had no idea who Sam was, but basically I started texting this guy named Sam and I was like, I couldn't really give a rip. I had just built Live Oak Lake, which I'll get to in just a second. And like, here's this guy Sam, who's some business mogul is what Zach told me. And so I started texting him and he's like, oh, this is super cool. You know, whatever. I told him all my numbers. And then he was like, the next morning he was like, hey, I'm about to make a post on Twitter. You should join. So I'll shout you out. I was like, I don't have Twitter. That's a total waste of time. Good luck, basically. And he's like, no, you should really make a post. You should make an account. And I was like, no, whatever. So he made this post that kind of blew up. It got like millions of views. So halfway through that process, I was like, oh, maybe I should go ahead and join this. And the rest is history because like I actually, and I'd love to talk about that, but I absolutely love the ability to connect with other people online and share what I'm all about. But that was my introduction to Sam. It was not as a fanboy. It was just like this random dude on the internet who started texting me about business and his numbers, Sean, they'll blow you away.
I'm ready to be blown away.
Go ahead.
What is it?
Can you, can you, what would, can you say the numbers?
Yeah. Yeah. So let me just tell you a quick story of Live Oak Lake. If that's all right, because it's, it's pretty cool. So I was a bookkeeper and I had this dream. I was 24 years old, just gotten married. I had this dream to create this like immersive, cohesively designed village of tiny homes in Texas. I didn't really have terminology for it. I just had, it's really hard to articulate because I just had this vision for what it would feel like. And I put an emphasis on feel because that's, it was like a vibe I wanted to create. And people started laughing at me like, you're crazy. And I started looking for land for like 3 months. One morning I wake up, open up Zillow, and there's this 5-acre, like, jungle down the road from me that I'd driven past probably 100 times, but never thought anything of, but it had this little cow pond in the middle. So I was like, hmm, I should check that out. Drove over. And when I walked on the property, I literally got goosebumps. I was like, this is the place to create, to realize this dream. Met the realtor, got it under contract. I had $19,000 of savings to my name. Again, 24, was not bankable by any standards. Had experience in construction. So my dad was a plumber, general contractor. I grew up with that experience. I've always been an artist. I've always loved design.
So, so how'd you get it under contract? Would you, if you didn't have any money, what'd you pay to put it under contract?
I paid like $2,000 of earnest money, but to close with cash in 30 days, because it was a super competitive market. This was 2021 in Texas. People were flocking here. And I knew this property. I mean, I was there within hours of when it was listed. I knew it would've been gone by the end of that day. So I was like, I'm going to get under contract with the due diligence period and then I'll figure this out.
How much would you need at the end of that period to have come up with?
$133,000 was the price of the property, which was a really good deal too for 5 acres.
And so you just make this clear. You have $19,000. You put $2,000 down to lock this up. You now have I forgot how many days you said, 30, 60, 90 days, something like that. 30 days where you're like, I am, I have faith that I will come up with another $130,000 that I've never seen before in the next 30 days. Of course, why would I not?
Well, you got to have conviction. You got to believe in yourself if you expect anybody else to believe in you. And I did have a list of people that were like, yeah, these people are, I'm going to find somebody to make this dream work. So I started calling people. Well, my brothers and my dad who have this small general contracting company, which is what I, grown up working. They didn't have the cash either, but they had access to a line of credit. So my hope was that I could get a hard money loan from them to buy the land, to get the 20% of whatever the bank wouldn't loan me, and then pay it back once I could refinance the property. So I was already, you know, really banking, a little overconfident, really banking on my abilities to deliver this just crazy property that would appraise at really high values. So I called them up and they're like, no, we don't want to give you a hard money loan. We want equity in that because we like the idea and we'll loan you the money through our line of credit. So great. I gave them just handshake deal that day, 40% equity. And they were going to help me with the difference of whatever, but then of course I was going to have to find a loan and, you know, go through all the rigmarole of that. So we get under contract and literally I hit the ground running. So, uh, the next day, well, the first 3 days, um, I spent on the, on the phone with banks, like hitting up every local bank I possibly could. And then also walking the property all by myself with no phones or anything. Just sort of like letting the land speak to me about how to build this, this little micro resort and figuring out like how each cabin would be positioned and like being a little maniacal about the details of that because I'm a little, little bit OCD as a perfectionist. So, finally I got a bank that's like, they were like, no, no. I mean, literally you could imagine 24-year-old kid rolling their eyes, but I found a local bank who said, we'll give you a loan because you know, you have your dad and brothers on board. We want them to co-guarantee it. But they were like, 80% of the appraised value is what we'll loan you. So great. You know, boxes checked. Then they send an appraiser out and the appraiser, and I got to give it to them. I didn't know what I was doing. I drafted up this really primitive pro forma. I didn't even know what a pro forma was. Just like this Apple Numbers spreadsheet thing that was like my guesstimate on how much the property was going to cost, how much it was going to bring in sensitivity analysis for like occupancy. And they probably laughed their heads off, but anyway, they gave that along with like some napkin sketches of what these cabins were going to look like. My drone photos, like marked up, um, of the site plan and the appraiser came back at like, okay, this is going to cost $1.8 million. So the bank was like, we'll loan you 80% of that. So bank was like, we'll give you a million and a half, uh, loan if your dad and brothers will co-guarantee this. And my estimate was that the project was going to cost like $2 million. So we had like a $500,000 shortfall, which wasn't great. Long story short, it actually cost us $2.3 million. So here's the deal. I, the spec home market was booming in Texas at that time. And so I was like, okay, we're going all in. I got to make this work. I bought another 5 acres down the road, built a $750,000 spec home in 4 months and sold it and profited $200,000 from that home. Was able to roll all of those profits directly into this project. Of course, maxed out every credit card, put in my $19,000. My dad and brothers brought their line of credit. We got the project done 9 and a half months start to finish, which was absolutely wild. As you can imagine too, I mean, this is post-COVID, supply chain issues are crazy. I was designing it as we went. It was the wildest year of my life. On top of that, I broke my pelvis like 7 months into the project. So we open in January of 2022. 2 weeks later, my whole business as I knew it ended. I woke up one morning, opened the Airbnb app, everything's grayed out. We're suspended on Airbnb. Worst feeling, probably. I've— top 10 worst feelings I've ever had in my life. And I called their customer support, couldn't get ahold of anybody. There was no warning. There was no explanation. So I felt like I was totally kicked in the gut and was like, oh, like, all right, we've got to figure out direct bookings. And so long story short, found this travel influencer who lived like an hour away. And I didn't even know what this was, but just by digging, I stumbled upon them. They said, pay us $950. We'll make a post, a giveaway post about your property. So I sent them photos. 2 days later, they made the post. 7 days later, we had $40,000 of direct bookings through our website. So I whipped up a website overnight. And 40,000 of direct bookings and 5,000 followers on Instagram from scratch. So as you can imagine, that was my sort of eureka moment on direct bookings and Instagram. 6 days later, we got restored on Airbnb. So the timing was like perfect. It was a glitch in their system, but the direct bookings game was on fire. So then that first year was a whirlwind, 95% occupancy overall with these 7 cabins. Which is just crazy starting from zero, 80% of all the bookings were direct. So here's the deal about direct bookings. The OTA, which is like an online travel agency. So Airbnb, their fees are like roughly 15%. So if you can capture the customer direct, you make 15% of margin. You get the customer's email so you can retarget them. You can't ever be deplatformed and you're reaching a more aspirational guest because they're booking from Instagram, not Airbnb. So they're not price shopping. They see these immersive videos and like, oh, we got to come stay stay here. We had guests come back 3 or 4 times in 1 year because we were able to retarget them and because the experience was just—
and wow, you, you sold this, uh, what, 4 years in for how much?
So last October, 2 and a half years in. Yep. All right guys, so listen up, we're doing something a little bit different here. So we had this guy named Mr. Ballen. Mr. Ballen is one of my favorite people on earth. If you have been on YouTube or TikTok, you probably know who Mr. Ballen is. So he has tens of millions of followers and he's built this massive business on it. He's probably the best storyteller I've ever heard in my life, to be honest. And he did this amazing podcast with us that we're gonna release soon. We're not releasing the episode right away, but we are gonna give it to our true fans. And if you are one of those true fans and you do want this interview, we have a link below. So check it out, click the link in the description below and you can listen to it right away. Now back to the show.
So you, uh, let's just recap here. You go buy land. Land is, you said what, $130K, or that was just the down payment?
That was the land.
That was the whole land. Okay. The land. You never did, uh, you never had built things like this. You had done some construction, some plumbing projects, but I assume you had never, like, had you ever built a cabin before? No. And you built these yourself or you subcontracted out to a company?
I subcontracted, but like I said, I mean, I was in there on ladders doing stuff myself. That's how I broke my All this.
Okay, so you, you build 7 cabins on top and the whole project build out you thought was going to cost you $2 million, ended up costing you $2.3 million. But did you say you were selling— you were— the spec market was booming. You just sold a separate property just to help fund it. You didn't sell, you didn't pre-sell anything on this property, correct? Okay, so you, you do this, it took you 9 months to get live with the 7, with all 7 cabins, is that right? Or one at a time?
All at the same time. 9 and a half months.
9 and a half months. Okay, that's amazing. And this is like, you know, post-COVID, and you start renting these out. How much does a cabin rent for? What was the average kind of nightly rate?
Like $600 a night.
So you do a million a year, a million a year in revenue, $500K of profit, and you sold this thing for $7 million.
Yep. So a million dollars a key 2 and a half years after starting construction on the whole thing.
And you sold it to who?
A small private equity group.
And how did that come about? They approach you, you approach them, what happens?
So we actually listed it. My philosophy is that every material thing should have a price tag. This was super controversial. A lot of people that saw the success were like, you should never sell this, this is lightning in a bottle. But I was like, no, I've learned so much from this process that I could theoretically redo everything way better. And plus, if I ever want to raise money, I want to be able to show like the full life cycle of a deal. So we went ahead and listed it with a broker and we got approached by multiple private equity groups. They see the writing on the wall for commoditized short-term rentals and they want these one-of-a-kind properties. And, um, but most of them need to operate like at a much bigger scale. This group was small enough that they were willing to take a one-off property. So here's the crazy thing in the hotel industry. You typically have 3 parties. You've got the real estate, you've got the managing company, and you've got the brand. Sometimes the operator and the brand are the same. Well, with this property, we built 150,000 followers on Instagram, plus like 30 or 40,000 people on the email list. So we essentially were selling the brand and the real estate together, which is part of the reason we got such a crazy high price, you know, for 7 cabins in the woods in Texas. But basically they came along, offered $7 million. We negotiated some of the terms because they wanted to seller finance some of it. And the deal fell through like 3 times as could be expected. They ended up having to get a bunch more debt than they thought, but they came through eventually and we closed last October.
So yeah, the look that you have, Sean, that's how I had when I first met him. So when I first met him, I was just on the phone with him.. And I go, hey, like, I've gotta go to this conference in Idaho. I think you said your parents or something, like you have connections there. Do you want to meet me up there? And like, do you want to become friends? Because when I met this kid, I was like, you're, you're amazing. And I said, when I share you on Twitter, you're going to get popular. And just promise me that you're going to let me always invest in anything you ever do from now on, because I think you're going to be a very popular person. Because his passion and the way that he's principled and like, he like outlines what he's going to do, I found to be intoxicating. Do you get that vibe, Sean? You know what I mean? Yeah.
Well, I think the hustle that you showed there is great. I mean, that's like what successful entrepreneurship looks like, right? You start with a vision, then you don't count yourself out. I think that was the next most important step. You didn't count yourself out. You could have said, I don't have the money. I don't have the experience. I don't have the time. I don't have anybody who believes in me. I don't have the network, whatever. You didn't say any of those things. You said, how do I get the time? How do I get the money? How do I get the network? How do I get the cash? What do I need to do to get this right? And you did it. And I think you had a unique insight, which is that, um, A, that people would want to stay in kind of a more unique experience. And B, once you realized, once you turned your disadvantage into advantage, you turned your Airbnb disaster into, oh wait, I got to find another way to promote this. And you found a better way to promote it, right? Because let's say you had never done, let's say Airbnb had never knocked you off the platform and you had never realized that I should be using Instagram. Content through influencers or through my own to do direct bookings. What do you think this property would have been worth had that not happened?
Maybe $3 or $4 million is my guess, right?
Maybe. And that's— and maybe not even be a sellable asset, right? Maybe not, uh, like definitely not a private equity sellable asset, but maybe just to another real estate owner who's looking for rental properties.
Yeah, totally. I think the brand, that moment with Instagram, which felt like a with Airbnb originally, which felt like a complete defeat. Like literally you can't imagine. I mean, I was 24, recently married, had just spent over $2 million of other people's money, had been a little bit laughed at by even some of my friends. Like, why are you spending? Because that was even a lot of money when we built it. A lot of my friends in Waco in the short-term rental market said, you're crazy. We already have this glut of short-term rentals here. But my whole thing was we're building a new lane of traffic. We're creating a destination, build it and they'll come. But when that Airbnb debacle hit, it ended up being the biggest blessing in disguise I could have ever engineered. I got extremely lucky and just overall was obviously extremely blessed with the project, but it's become my conviction that if you have an inspiring vision, you have the ability to communicate it, and you have the conviction to bring that vision to life, you become a magnet for everything you need. And that applies to capital, to guests. On and on. The universe conspires for those with a mission.
There's a bunch of stories of people winning massively by having the idea of build it, they will come, but there's a whole lot more stories of people having that attitude who lose big. And I like— it doesn't matter what, what business you're in, this idea of build it when they come, build it and they'll come, that kind of separates, I think, a visionary from someone who's tapping in and building a great business. I like people who point and say, this is where we're gonna go. And a lot of times those people, a lot of times those people fail. More often than not they fail. But I think it's dope when they do, when they, when they, when they succeed. Do you know what I mean? And I find that to be different than how I look at life and I find it to be inspirational.
Well, I was just going to say, you know, people now come to me asking all the time, like, how do we recreate that same success? And what I really do believe, I just said this, but is that you have to have a vision and then you have to storytell. I think storytelling is the most valuable skill, not just in marketing, but in building something, including building something like construction. And here's why. I've got a friend, Devin. So Devin is also 24 years old, or Now I'm 27, but I was 24 when I built Live Oak Lake. And he was, he was an engineer. So he's a smart kid. And he had this dream to create this shipping container home that was just super wild. It was like 5 containers stacked on top of each other. And he has an incredible amount of resilience and passion. He went out and built the whole thing with his 2 hands, like 95% of it he built with his 2 hands and he documented the whole process. With an iPhone and a $20 tripod on Instagram and TikTok. And he grew 1.5 million followers from scratch. Look it up. It's called The Pacific Ben. That's B-I-N. It took him a year to build this thing. And when he launched, he had so many emails that when he opened up the calendar, he, he pre-sold the first year in like 2 weeks. And now again, he's become this magnet where people are like, hey, come build, you know, get— they're trying to give him money. And I understand a little bit about what that feels because people have done the same thing to me, but again, like he understood storytelling. He did it very authentically and he had a vision and you just have to believe in it. Now it's a little bit more art than science in terms of like, is the vision a good one? I think some people have that and some people don't. I credit my childhood, some of the stuff I already described and the character that my parents put in me as like fully responsible for the success that I've had. And let me just tell you, like, if you're a, super confident person, like I tend to be, you're going to have some hard knocks. I have fallen flat on my face more times than you want to hear, including during and even after the sale of Live Oak Lake. So you have to learn humility and you got to learn it the hard way, but that doesn't, that's not mutually exclusive from having that kind of just intuition and sense that, like, I think it's a sense of taste too. It's like, this is going to work. And here's why. And even if I can't convince you, I still believe in it and it's a conviction. And then people rally around that. And then of course your track record is a lot. And when you're starting from zero, you don't have that. But as you go, you gotta be very careful with the projects you take on, cuz obviously you don't want to compromise that record.
So I think this idea of creating these unique spaces and places and having people fall in love with them online, and then that turns into a business that makes you millions of dollars. I think that is an awesome romantic vision. I know several people in my life that would like have the urge when they hear about these to be like, could I do that? Could we do that where we live in this area?
Whatever.
What are the opportunities you see? So what do you think somebody out there could go do and break that down like a blueprint? Like, okay, you're now talking not to me and Sam, you're talking to this person who's listening, who is inspired by this and says, could I do that? How would I do that? What would you tell them? What's the 2-minute blueprint you would give them?
Yeah. Love it. Huge opportunity. Again, Airbnbs have been commoditized. They're just unrecognizable from each other. There's no differentiation. So whether this is an old summer camp that could be totally transformed into like this micro resort, or say it's a roadside motel, a lot of people are doing these, or it's 7 cabins around the lake. I got a friend named Brian who had this idea to rethink what houseboats meant. And so he built for $200,000, built this houseboat. You can look it up. It's Flohom. That's F-L-O-H-O-M. I mean, it's like totally different than what you think of. It's like a mini yacht almost. And then he started renting it out. Absolutely went berserk. Now he's raised a bunch of money. He's buying marinas. So the cool thing about houseboats is you don't fall typically into the same regulations as STR, as short-term rentals, because you're on the water. So he gets to be in like these prime locations in like, you know, Baltimore Harbor or Annapolis or Washington, wherever. And you get 360-degree harbor views. You're sometimes in hotels, sometimes not even in any zoning at all. And there's zero competition. So again, that's completely unique. There's such a spectrum of what these could be. I've got another friend who's doing treehouses. So he bought a piece of property and here's, Here's the blueprint that I go after. Number one, choose red states over blue, generally speaking, because speed to market is everything and you want to be in a place that's super easy to build. So rural Texas, which is where I am, there's essentially like no zoning and I didn't have to go through some long permitting process like I would if I was on the Big Sur coast, or that's a radical example. So find, go off the beaten path. It's okay to get away from places, but you want to be within 2 hours from a major metro area of like, let's say a million plus people, because that's your drive-to distance. It's like a staycation distance. So you're going to get a lot of 2, 3-night staycations. You need to be within 2 hours from a major metro area. You need to be within 15 to 20 minutes of like a town that has a coffee shop, maybe a good restaurant. Maybe there's ways around that. Like you could do a meal kit where you could partner with a local chef or local farmers and like, make that part of the experience that you're offering the guests. But it's okay to get off the beaten path. You want to find that 2-hour Goldilocks zone, then find land that's super cheap, that has some natural potential. Let's say trees are kind of a must because you can't grow a tree overnight. And that's what Live Oak Lake had. Maybe it has some topography. People love water. Perhaps you can create a water feature. So I've got this other crazy story and I'm about to make a Twitter thread on this, but some friends named Campbell and Christine, had a dream. They're in rural Ohio. They buy this piece of property with zero money. The guy was a pastor. He had no money. He bought this piece of property and then he noticed it had like this old dilapidated lodge on it, but he noticed like down below the lodge, there's this little cliff and there's a seasonal stream that only flows like a few weeks out of the year. And they had this idea. So they actually dug out and dammed up this little pool and then they put in a pump. Recirculated the water so that it's flowing year round. And there's essentially a waterfall swimming pool. Look it up. It's called The Cliffs at Hocking Hills. It's absolutely wild. This place has gone mega viral. They've got 600,000 followers on Instagram. They're booking out every single night, 2 years in advance. And that water feature probably costs them $20,000 to $30,000 and has literally created millions of dollars of value, both in the brand and in the property that they have. So like find a property that's mediocre, but that has the potential with your vision to create something totally one of a kind and then architecturally make it beautiful, infuse unreasonable hospitality into it. So you don't need an onsite concierge. You don't need people holding your hand, you know, at every like 5-star luxury would be. What you need is touchpoints that people care about. So when I opened Live Oak Lake, I, I quickly just had this idea. People love to see their name handwritten. So I perfected this process where we would handwrite a card to each guest. And then I partnered with a local bakery that was like 5 minutes down the road to fresh bake our own recipe of chocolate chip cookies every single morning. And then on the backend with my software, because I pretty much automated the whole property. So it was running with like 2 part-time employees, the whole thing on its own. I gave access to those bakers. And they could see every morning, like how many reservations were that day. They would make the cookies. The cleaners who also had access to the property management software would pick them up, would deliver them. They would write the card. So I didn't have to do any work. For less than $10, some fresh-baked cookies, a handwritten card, and a couple topochicos in the fridge made a massive impact and an emotional connection with the guests. Not only was it a beautiful architectural and natural experience, but they felt like me as the owner, as Isaac, Like my story, which we could go, we could go down so many rabbit holes, but like I wrote out our story in this booklet that we gave them. Like we turned what would have been a boring house manual into like this fun to read coffee table book. But then on top of that, there's this handwritten note and they all felt like, oh, Isaac just now left this for me this morning. And so, and then like in the messaging, we did all these automated messages, but we wrote them in such a way that was extremely careful and extremely intentional. So it felt very fresh and spontaneous. So little ways like this. I love this. Sam has this phrase and I've taken his copywriting course, Copy That, 2 times now. It's absolutely gold in my opinion. But he has this little thing about these forgotten areas of copy. So whether that's like the 404 landing page on a, on a website or like the terms and conditions, whatever, you find these little places that are overlooked and then you just spice them up and you make them feel cared for. And that's what we did with Live Oak Lake and the guests absolutely loved it. So. There's a bunch there. I could go on and on about this, but basically here's the play. Anyone can do this. Anyone can go out and spend $100,000. If you find the people, buy this piece of land. Yeah. You're going to have to get a bank loan. I know tons of people doing this. I've got a community of about 50 people building these properties right now around the country. And the value creation in such a short amount of time, if you execute this well, is just off the charts.
Charts. Dude, you're like one of these toys that we just wound up, we just kind of let go and just like, holy shit. Sorry, but I love it. No, don't apologize. I love it. I, whenever I get done hanging out with you, I feel more energy. You, I, you know, I think there's like two types of people. There's people who you feel like worn out when you get done hanging out with them. And then you feel like there's people where you, you'll feel inspired.
What are some ways that a smart person could get this wrong? So not, not every, you know, any blueprint, if I say, hey, I've had all this success in e-commerce. Well, I know a bunch of people who have failed in e-commerce and I could tell you where they go wrong. You know, some of the common traps that a smart person could fall into.
I mean, I, I failed at it. Or at least I didn't.
Sam's like, I'll take this one.
Yeah. I mean, like I bought one of the, I bought a property that wanted to turn into this and I actually didn't, I broke even. I mean, I probably made a little bit of money, but I didn't, it wasn't like a screaming success. So here's like a list. The first thing is there is no such thing as set it and forget it passive income when it comes to real estate. If you own the thing, that ain't true. It's still like a business that you have to run. There is no set it and forget it. Would you agree with that, Isaac?
99% of the time, unless you are just an extreme exception. But yes, the illusion of total automation is absolutely just that, an illusion.
I think another thing is you really actually have to give a shit and care about it. In order to like make outsized returns, you do really, it needs to be really, really different and special as opposed to just like, in my case, I was like, oh, well, there's not a lot in this part of the country. Like this picture looks good. I'll stand out. Done. That's why my returns were only okay. That was not an exceptional plan.
Yeah. I think that design is the number one lever that you can pull as my friend Hans, who's awesome, by the way, Hans Lorite. Absolutely blown up on Instagram recently. He's got like 550,000 followers and he's like breaking down interior design in these little short-form videos. But design is the biggest lever you can pull in controlling how people feel. And going back to that vibe and that feeling that you're creating, hospitality is all about emotional connections with people, with your guests. And you're in a business that's notoriously difficult to operate. So you live or die based off of every single guest interaction. And going back to raising all the money, This is what I feel like a lot of startups inevitably fail at. They try to scale too fast. They invest all that money. They see the opportunity, they see the Live Oak Lake case study. They invest all that money in like hiring these designers and hiring, you know, spending a ton on ads and doing all these things that are like, their priorities are wrong. You need a story. So like, if you want to do this, you probably, chances are like you shouldn't just dump a bunch of money into somebody else's Well, you can do that if it's the right person, but ideally you need to be, or you need to be partnered neck and neck with someone who is extremely passionate and wants to tell that story. But hospitality is all about like, how do you serve these people? And so this is where, even though I, I did automate most of the property, like I'm telling you, it was awesome. We had Zapier, we had like 6 softwares, we had smart home technology. The place was just running like a machine. But I was still reading every single review. I was still at least seeing every single message from every single guest. And that's a 24/7 thing. I mean, that is, that's intense any way you cut it. And when you don't have somebody who cares about that, or you don't have the right employees that have, even once you've built it, who can operate it with that owner's mentality, you're just, you're going to suffer. And there's this great quote by Tim Ferriss. You've probably heard it, but he says, there's a glut of mediocrity in the world. Please don't contribute to it. And I would say that applies to the design aspect that applies to the operations and like hospitality aspect that applies across the board. So if you come with the right mindset of I'm here to serve, I'm here to like, again, build out this incredible vision, tell that story authentically, chances are you're absolutely going to succeed because people gravitate towards that naturally.
Do you know, Shawn, you and I make money on the internet, and when you make money on the internet, that means the barrier to entry is really low. So it's really easy to have an idea and turn it into something very quickly. Because of that, I think I've gotten into a habit of creating things that were, to use a funny pun, subpar. Like there was very little passion involved in them, or there's very little excellence. Have you ever like felt like that when you're making stuff online, Sean? Like where you're like looking back and you're like, this is just not a very high quality thing even though it's making money.
Honestly, I disagree. Like I think the barrier to entry is low. Yes, it's easy to play, but it's not easy to win. Um, and so anytime I've tried to do something that works online, I don't know, I threw my all into it. Uh, I wasn't necessarily very good, so even if I got a mediocre result, it wasn't due to lack of effort. It was. Due to lack of skill, or I'd make something really good that nobody cared about, nobody wanted. It was just the wrong problem to solve. So I think that yes, it's easy to try something online. I don't think it's easy to win at something online. I don't think you can get away with something.
How do you define winning?
You know, whatever, hitting my goals for it, right? So having something that actually grows, that is sticky, that is, you know, very profitable. You know, the things I look for when I do a project online is, I'm trying to have it be successful. I don't think any of these are easy. They're definitely easier than going out into a plot of land and being like, I'm going to build a luxury, you know, a luxury stay here and I'm going to serve customers essentially by hand. It's definitely easier than that. But I wouldn't say it's like, I don't think you can get away with sucking online and be successful because the barrier to entry is so low. Because the barrier to entry is so low, there's so many people playing. Because there's so many people playing, to actually do something that's that works and captures people's finite attention is still hard.
Well, you, we have so many friends that are popular on the internet and they make crappy stuff.
Like, well, that's crappy by our standard. This is not crappy by the customer standards, right? Like I was thinking about this the other day. So, uh, Jimmy, MrBeast, who you know, is, is friendly with us and, and is obviously super successful with YouTube. He just released, uh, a guy, I guess it got leaked, his, uh, production document. Did you guys see this?
I read the whole thing.
So I actually want to do like a whole bigger thing on it, so I don't want to go too much into it. But one amazing thing is, you know, you get to see inside of his mind and his mind works in a really unique way. And I think you could see from that document why he's so successful. But if you read the document or you hear the stories about him, you would think that he is making the greatest videos the world has ever seen, that he is the whatever. I don't know who the famous directors and artists of our time are, But you would think he's doing that when in actuality it's sort of like saying, who makes the best burgers? Is it McDonald's who has the most popular burgers? They sell the most volume of burgers. Is it someone in the middle? Is it Five Guys? Because they're pretty popular, but maybe their taste is a bit better. Or is it the chef in New York who makes this one unbelievable burger that's $36? And if you ever put a McDonald's burger next to that, you could, you would laugh at the McDonald's burger, right? Which one is the best burger? And MrBeast has made his success because he has decided to be McDonald's on the internet, right? He is creating the videos that are mass market that are going to get the most number of views, even if they're not the most life-changing, introspective, emotional, or beautifully told stories. There are other people who do those. And so I think there's just like, it's hard to say what is, what is the best, right? Like the people, the friends of ours who we think make this like pretty crap content that works. It's because they're doing the McDonald's thing, right? They're giving people fast food content. And then there's other people that are giving them artisanal content. And, you know, who's to say what's better, what's better than the other? It depends on your goals.
Can I tell you a crazy story about, uh, Twitter and going viral?
Yeah. What do you got?
So actually, Sean, I need to publicly thank you because your episode on how I write with David about how storytelling. Was, I mean, golden. You don't know how many people I referred to that episode, but like, I don't know, 4 or 5 months ago, Alex Lieberman made a post about, he was like, I just watched this interview with Aaron Sorkin about stories and I'm entranced by it. I want to go down that rabbit hole. And so anyway, when I saw that, it resonated with something I was already feeling. I wouldn't consider myself naturally a great storyteller actually, but I was like, I feel like I can learn this skill and I'm going to figure it out. So I went down the rabbit hole and I listened to podcasts and I read books and I took courses and copywriting and writing in general. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to figure this out and I'm going to, I'm going to try it. And so, well, first of all, I'd taken an 8-month break from Twitter. So last fall I stopped posting at all and I took an 8-month break, but I would sort of describe it for various reasons. But one was I was just recharging as a creator. You can't just constantly go. You've got to, you're like a battery. You've got to recharge. And, but I came back kind of guns a-blazing in June with all of this like knowledge that I had been accumulating from all of these different sources. And right out the gate, I had like a 6 million view thread and people were like, threads are dead. And, you know, Twitter's dead. The algorithm is trash, whatever, whatever. And literally one after another. And I'm knocking on wood, but at the end of the day, like I've never had so much sustained success. Like the last 10 threads I've written in a row without exception have gotten an average of like a million views a piece.. And then one of them went totally crazy. So I wrote this thread about this train car that my dad— it's pinned to the top of my profile if you want to look at it.
But yeah, I've seen that one.
So I wrote this thread. I stayed up like all night. I spent 8 hours writing it. I just finished Copy That the second time. And so like it was fresh on my mind and I, I wrote this thread and, uh, I didn't know, you know, I put 60% going off of your advice, going off of a lot of people's advice. Like 60% of my effort of those 8 hours were spent writing that hook, like both writing it and also curating those images. So it's got this great visual hook where you see like side by side train car before, after, and then like hours writing 4 or 5 sentences. I know that sounds crazy, but writing and rewriting it, just trying to make it a science. But I had this sentence in there. Let me read it. So I said, my dad bought this 120-year-old train car for $2,000. It was a rotting cat-infested wreck. So I knew that I was probably being a little controversial when I said that. I had no idea just how controversial this would be. I said, but after investing $147K and 5 months of work, we redeemed it. Today, it's one of the most profitable and exclusive stays in the country. Here's what happened. So here's, here is what happened. There is like 30% of the population I've come to believe are these cat-loving, I mean, Karens, and I love, guess what? Spoiler alert. I love cats too. I was not meaning disrespect to the cats when I said this, but these people read that whole thread and then just absolutely murdered me in the comments. What happened to the cats? The cats were the landlords. They should have kicked you out. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like machine gunfire. I mean, it was crazy. And so on top of what was a pretty good hook and a good story, we had just jet fuel poured on the fire by these cat lovers and me haters. So that was kind of crazy. And I've learned— I didn't like Brian Chesky comment on that, or Brian Chesky reposted it twice in one day. Joe Gebbia reposted it. Paul Graham quote tweeted it. And then like, you know, 20 million views total in the first day. But here's another crazy thing. So there's all these journalists that lurk on X. You don't know about them because they probably have like 300 followers. So within like 2 days, I got invitations for coverage. So in, in the 2 or 3 weeks since I wrote that post, we've been now— the story has been featured in the New York Post, Vice, uh, Business Insider, Fast Company, the Daily Mail. Cody Sanchez is coming to do a YouTube video, like tens and tens of millions of views. So you're just really creating like this surface area of for luck when you post on Twitter, 'cause it's basically proof of concept. They're like, oh, this story is resonating. We should go ahead and post it too. So it's crazy.
I love that story. And yeah, I checked out this thread. It's great. But I think that the real lesson here, what's the right takeaway? I think there's a few. One is, yeah, there were some nice copywriting techniques in here. And yes, it's cool that you decided like, hey, this is all a skill I can learn. I can learn storytelling, I can learn writing, I can learn how to be better at content creation. And you just decided to like obsess and devour that stuff. But the real thing is the story went viral because of what you guys did. You did something amazing. You took this, you know, basically like beaten up rotten, rotten train car and you turned it into something cool. And it's like, without that, you could obsess over all the sentences you want. That car, that story is going nowhere. And so the best content creation is go do amazing things in your life and then learn some best practices about how to talk about them is a much better approach than learn the amazing skill of writing hooks and never do something amazing in your life. And I hope that more people do the amazing thing in life instead of, uh, of the opposite. But dude, why are you on Twitter? Cause you need to be doing this on TikTok. Uh, you, you're on the wrong platform, my friend, man.
It's, it, I want to start doing short-form video, but I love writing and Twitter helps me think better. Like number one, I get to connect with much smarter people than those other platforms. And it's not just about some vanity metric of having a big audience for me. I genuinely enjoy the process of having to write concisely. And again, it was like a skill I just wanted to attack in copywriting and writing in general. And so that process of like clarifying your thoughts by writing tweets and like every single word counts and building a slippery slope that Sam talks about that people will fall down. I just absolutely love that process and not just for production value of the story, but for what it does in my own thinking. But yeah. The iteration will probably be I prove these, these story concepts and, and sort of write a script in my Twitter thread. And I've had like 10 of these that have, like I said, gone like pretty viral. And then I basically have all my heavy lifting done for me. And I just like throw together a nice green screen, maybe video of me talking about it and telling that story, like really snappy on Instagram, on Instagram and TikTok. And then eventually I want to do YouTube because of course, as you guys know, there's an insane loyalty and of course you can monetize and whatnot through that as well. But I'm also a perfectionist and like the short form thing, like people, what really is working right now is really raw and authentic and that's cool. But again, I care so much about the production value that it's hard for me to sort of fit into that slot.
Originally when I told Sean about you, he was like, oh, it sounds like an Amish guy who likes money. And I was like, yeah, I guess that's an interesting description. But if that is true—
Yeah, I was like, the next two words were, I'm in.
Yeah. And let's just say to someone who's not entrenched in this, Isaac, your community is similar-ish to Amish. What do they think about you being this popular internet guy? Or do they even know? Do they even know what you're doing?
Yeah. Are you sinning by being on this podcast right now? Like what's going on? What's the reaction back at All right.
We're going to go way back, but I'll try to be brief here. So my wife's grandparents actually founded this community 51 years ago, and it started as an inner city mission in the slums of Manhattan. And they had actually been atheists, but had these radical life-changing experiences with God, became Christians, and then felt called to start this mission there. And it was super unlikely beginnings, but basically a motley crew of folks from all backgrounds, a lot of people that were sort of disaffected with life sort of came together and a core group started coalescing and basically a church was founded. But then a few years into it, they were like, you know, they were all young parents and they realized we need to have a culture where we can raise our kids that is going to sustain the values that we care about, like family and our faith and whatnot. So they started looking for land outside the city. Long story short, they all moved about 200 people to Colorado, Western Colorado, which was like the middle of nowhere for people that had spent their whole lives virtually in New York City. And that's where my parents recently graduated high school, western slope of Colorado, encountered this group of like weird people being called a cult by all the locals, but again, had these transformational experiences, um, came to God and joined this group. And then in Colorado, they sort of learned all these skills, like how to live off the land, how to grow your own food, how to work with your hands and, you know, relearn all these traditional skills like woodworking and pottery and blacksmithing. And then fast forward, they picked up and moved to Texas in the early '90s. And so we have a piece of property around 450 acres just outside of Waco, where first the group was in Austin, some was in Waco. It consolidated here. And basically what makes us different is we take our faith very seriously and we want to make that faith come alive in every aspect of life. So instead of just like church being a program that you attend a few times a week, we truly try to live out community. So we are working, playing, doing life together. And there's about 1,200 people a part of this Texas branch. About a third of those actually live on that piece of property, that 400-acre piece of property. The rest live on their own places nearby. We're not common purse. We put a huge emphasis on like individual responsibility, but basically we strive for simplicity.
So, well, Just explain it like this. If I live in a, you know, a cookie cutter suburb of America, so just like general, I'm in California. If I went and visited where you guys live, what would seem most different to me? Well, what is it that you guys do that would be most different?
Yeah. Uh, we don't have TVs in our homes. We don't really have internet in our homes. We, again, like 95% of the community either is self-employed or works for each other. So we live this agrarian lifestyle. We grow gardens. We do use technology. And this is where we're one of the ways we're different from Amish. We just, our whole philosophy is we want to control it versus being controlled by it. And so basically I grew up on a farm taking care of animals. I was homeschooled. So we homeschool our kids. I have 9 siblings. There's a lot of big families.
Not everybody has a big family, but I went by the way, Sean, and I stayed in the community and I would joke with Isaac. I'm like, Isaac, I'm an atheist. I was like, don't try to convert me to any of this stuff, but I would love to explore and learn about your community. And when I went there, they believe— I'm going to kind of summarize, Isaac— they believe that in order to like show they're close to God and everything, that they were— they're craftsmen in like everything they do. So they have this like restaurant and like they make all of their own food there, or they have a church where they built it, you know, and it's like beautiful. It's a beautiful church, dude. They had this. Easter thing that I went to, and there was these women singing. I swear to God, I'm like, this sounds like a black choir in like in Harlem. Like, this is the most like stylish, like best singers I've ever heard in my life because they like studied it and they like perfect these things. And so he had this vibe where he was like, oh, like, no, the right way to do this business is doing this, this, and this. So in order to learn Instagram, I have to study it, and I'm going to execute, uh, perfectly.
No, like I said, we use technology. We use media too. Like we haven't really used social media and I'm kind of one of the first that's pioneering that, but we want to tell our story. We just, we don't want to substitute for the substance of the community that we've created so intentionally over decades by using like social media, which innately is just a virtual world. So we're trying to find ways to storytell.
Because I feel like we just like, I feel like Sam got you hooked on sugar. And you hadn't had sugar. You're like, yeah, no, I love vegetables and I just love all these earthy flavors. And then Sam was like, here, have some sugar. And now you've had sugar. You've had the viral sugar, the feeling of going viral and making millions of dollars and everybody loving your story and some people hating your story, and then you want to respond to them. You've now tasted that. How has that effed with your brain?
You've had that social media crack. What's your honest feeling of where you, where you are right now with that?
Man, it's, it's tough. That's one of the reasons I took the 8-month break because personally I felt like it was becoming— I love attention. I'll just be honest about it. And I felt like it was becoming a distraction for what really is like a lived life. And for one, I have a family. We have, we have a little boy. We have another on the way. I have this amazing community life, which I'm starting to be more public about. I made a thread about the community a couple months ago. And people are really intrigued with that. But again, like work-life, to use the term everybody's familiar with, work-life balance is, is a very, very real thing. I just feel like if there's a way, if there's an overarching guiding principle that work and life and family and play and everything can fit into, they don't need to constantly feel like they're in conflict with each other. But in order to make that happen, I need people in my life that hold me accountable and like, are going to be real with me. And I've had plenty of that, just to be honest. Like some of my friends that know me very well, um, have been like very honest with me and at times critical, and I totally love them and respect them for that.
What'd they say?
Oh, like, you know, the way you're, the way you came across here was bragging, or the way you said that, um, was maybe not completely what, or not telling me, it was more like asking questions because again, like nobody tells you what to do here. We're very very much like we, we open ourselves up voluntarily, but they're like, you know, is that consistent with, you know, the way that you would talk so-and-so? And basically we want to be very careful that we, and I want to be very careful that I don't put that the version of me that you see on the internet is exactly what you're going to get in person. And as you guys know, there's just like that inevitable conflict, but I feel like I've learned a ton through it. And it's a constant struggle for me where I, I probably need to delete the app from my phone and just use it on desktop. I have a lot of friends that do that, but. Twitter is that thing for me. I mean, it's highly addicting. It's just such a great format to connect with interesting people.
Sean, I think that every man, once he has children and becomes a family man, I think they have two urges. The first one is to be in some type of situation where they can exert force and be like, use a little bit of violence to be a hero. You know what I mean? Like a man robs a bank and you like suddenly stop it and you're the hero. That's one of them.
Patrolling Main Street just in case something goes down and I might be needed.
Yeah. Just like to be the tough guy that protects everyone once. Then the second thing is to like live in a farm with your family and your community and like everyone like lives like a little socialist hippie life. And I've went to his, I hung out in his area and Isaac was like, hey, check this out. I just planted 100 apple trees and a bunch of like fruit trees in about 3 years. These are going to be ready to bloom. And I'm like, I was like, oh nice, that's kind of a lot of fruit. Like, you're going to eat all that fruit? He's like, no, it's for everyone. I'm like, well, you're going to have to take care of this. He's like, no, I just told everyone in the community that I planted these trees and we're probably going to make like a schedule, but we'll all chip in and like tend to the trees to make sure like it's going to bear the most fruit. And then we'll just like, we'll just spread it out evenly. Just being there for that 24 or 48 hours, that one particular time, I was like, I'm fulfilling that need of like seeing this like hippie lifestyle.
You saw that David Beckham post, Sam?
Oh, where he's growing, he's like growing fruit now or growing vegetables.
You gotta be friends with him. Yeah. He went viral because he posts this video on his Instagram and it's him in a flannel shirt and the old-timey, like an Irish hat. And the caption is, my kale is doing well. And it basically just, it's him on his farm. He now lives a farm life. He's him on his farm. He's gardening, he's beekeeping, and this is what he's doing. And people just went nuts about this. About this trend. Isaac, I feel like you, you've influenced him or maybe you should influence him. I think he, he might slide into your DMs soon to learn a little bit.
Do you not feel this urge, Sean? Every once in a while we are like, I wish I would just have a farm with my family and friends and we all like did this together.
No, dude, it's way too much work. No, I don't have that urge.
Sean, you got to come visit at least.
I have my versions of these, but they're like, you know, like for example, I like writing and I'm like, cool. I just don't want to work. I just want to like, you know, I don't, I don't know how to paint. I'm not skilled enough to paint. I don't know how to build. I'm not skilled enough to build. I don't really want to go develop those, but I'm like, I want to write a movie or I want to spend my day, you know, playing soccer with my kids or whatever it is, things like that. But I'm not as— I don't have the same like Roman Empire urges that most guys have, meaning like I don't care about history as much as most of my friends do. I don't care about living off the grid and like providing, you know, like pumping my own water and like irrigating something. I don't want to irrigate nothing. Okay. So like, I don't have that urge. Uh, for me personally, I got, I guess, my own versions of them, but they're a lot more mild.
Well, that sucks. I guess, uh, okay, dork, let me go play house in the woods without you.
I still want to have Wi-Fi, like, shoot me.
Um, this is like the man version of playing house and dress up, like, uh, you know what I mean?
Isaac, can we do rapid fire to end this? So, uh, how old are you? 27. What's one thing I can learn from you about hospitality, even though I'm not going to have my own, you know, mini hotels and all that, but if I just have a guest coming over to my house, I got an old friend from college coming over, what's one hospitality thing I can learn from you?
It's the single most valuable skill to have in life, and you have to be selfless. You have to want to serve other people. So I don't think it's something that you can affect, but if you I think everybody has that urge inside of them. I think we're born to serve other people and read Unreasonable Hospitality if you haven't already, but basically look for those little ways, like I described with the handwritten note, that are surprising. They're small, but they delight people. And sometimes the smallest acts of kindness and generosity show the biggest hearts. And so I don't think that, I don't think it needs to be some grandiose thing. I think you just have to want to serve them and people are going to feel it.
Isaac, I think what you did with the Live Oak Lake and what you're showing other people doing with floating homes and shipping containers and stuff like that is amazing. It's an amazing trend. People should go follow you on Twitter to kind of like see more of these. I think it is amazing because it is so hard. And so for the few people who are capable of putting in the, like, you know, the creativity, the passion, the care, the hospitality that it takes to make these successful, that's amazing. And send me your links so that I can go stay at your places. And for me, it's a reminder of like, if you want an unreasonable result, you sort of have to do an unreasonable thing in certain areas. And this is definitely one of those areas. And so for me, you know, I would never be able to pull one of these off. So props to you because I hear your story and part of me is like, oh, I would love to do that. But the bigger part of me who knows me better is like, this is not for you. You have to be exceptional to make this work. You have to be exceptional on the real estate development side. You have to be exceptional on the content marketing to go viral so that you can get booked, you know, for 2 years out. You have to be exceptional in the hospitality because you have to re-earn the business, you know, with every guest stay. And I think it's, I think you are exceptional. You've done that. And I think also it's a, it's a good thing to know about yourself, whether that's for you or if it's not for you. And I think it's a very small subset of the population who, who it's for them.
Well, I appreciate that. Can I close with 2 quotes that mean a lot to me? One. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. So sweat the details, care, put your heart into whatever you're going to do. Do it with hospitality, do it with excellence. And number 2, there's this quote by this English pastor actually named John Wesley. He was like a few hundred years ago, but he said, light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn. And that's kind of my, my hope in life. I want people to say, well, that's a life well lived. And I want to say that at the end of my own life.
That is an amazing quote. I love that quote, dude.
Thank you so much. You're the man. Um, we appreciate you, and we'll wrap up there.
That's the pod.