How This Host Achieved a $7 Million Business Exit: Unveiling the Mystery

I was thinking about the title for this episode of the Boostly podcast. It could be bought a book for 99 cents and ended up selling the business for $7 million. But there'd be so much story to tell around that. So instead what I wanted to do is I wanted to introduce you to Mr. Isaac French. For those of you that don't know who Isaac is, you are going to after this. He founded a company called Live Oak Lake that he has just exited for $7 million all off seven properties. He's now moving into another ventures he's excited to launch experimental hospitality that he's going to tell you all about. But before that we have to dig into the background. Isaac is one of those chaps that you may not have heard about his Twitter follower. No his ex following sorry is over 21,000. He has met the likes of Cody Sanchez, Sam Price, Shelby Church and so many more people in this space that are fascinated about this chap's journey. I was very lucky to get a message from him, a Twitter DM or an X DM saying that he read the book and he's put a few things in place and that was cool. And then I digged into his story more and the more that I learned about him, the more I was impressed. I was very lucky to tie him down for 20 minutes for a zoom call and we talked about a few things. We we delved into influencer marketing, the growth of his business and what he's doing next. And he's so excited and he's so passionate about what he's talking about and I'm excited for you to find out more about him. So without further ado, let's flip over, have a chat with Isaac and thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. This is one you're going to want to like and comment and share.

I grew up here in Central Texas on a farm with nine siblings actually very industrious family. We had lots of home biz, home based businesses and my dad had a construction company so I actually started working there in high school. I also learned accounting, was always interested in art and architecture, studying, studied some of that. And yeah, a couple years ago, 2021 I got this idea to build this property of really just a collection of cabins that was unique to something unique in Texas. And I had lived in Idaho for about 10 years and had seen some really cool modern designs like Scandinavian style A frames and cabins up there and realized there wasn't any of that here in Texas. So when I got to Texas, moved back down in 2020 and then started looking for land, Stumbled across the little five acre parcel. It was really just a jungle with like a cow pond on it and. But when I walked on the property, I realized there was something special about this piece of land. And it was just waiting to be. Waiting to be discovered and sort of excavated away. Almost like a sculpture that, you know, you just have to chip the marble away to see the true figure of what it really could be. There are these gorgeous, huge live oak trees. And so we bought it. And nine and a half months later, after a whole ton of work, planning, designing, building, furnishing, we opened Live Oak Lake up. It's seven modern cabins nestled around the lake. There are, you know, hiking trails and kayaking and fire pits and hammocks. It's just a beautiful nature, immersive micro resort. And then fast forward another year. We had an incredible launch. Grossed a million dollars in one year, net over $500,000. Built a social following on Instagram to 100,000 followers the first 12 months. Now we're over 150,000. And then a quick little story in there about two or three, well, two stories. About two weeks after we launched, we got kicked off of Airbnb. And so I just now spent $2.3 million to build this property. And, you know, had just gone all out with all of the details. And then it's just this awful, awful feeling when you realize I am completely beholden to this mega billion dollar corporation that I can't even get through to their customer service. There was no warning, there was no reason, there was nothing I could do. Thankfully, about seven days later, we were restored. But in the meantime, and it had just been some glitch with their algorithm thinking that we had false reviews in the meantime. I was like, we have got to figure out some way. I didn't even know, you know, direct bookings was really a term. I was just like, we got to find some way to market this apart from Airbnb. Got in touch with this travel blogger. I didn't even really know anything about Instagram. And we ran a giveaway in seven days and $950 is what I paid the account. We got 5,000 followers from scratch and four, $40,000 of direct bookings in seven days. And so from that moment on, I was like, this is what we're going all in on as a marketing strategy. We pivoted hard. We invested heavily, probably 30 different partnerships over that first six month period or so. About $20,000 put poured into that, you know, we gave away somewhere north of 40 or 50 free nights, which was perfect because we were launching from, from zero and we hadn't pre booked anything. So we had a lot of vacancy. And yeah, it just supercharged this incredible brand and audience and ended up being a massive blessing in disguise. So then fast forward another six months to last year and we actually successfully exited the property. So it was never really our number one plan to do that, but we had an institutional kind of buyer come along and just make us an offer that was too hard to pass up. They, they ended up paying US $7 million for so a million dollars a key for this place. We built it for $2.3 million a year and a half previous to that. And a big part of that value creation was the audience and the brand that we had created. So that was the first story. The second story was like two months into my journey trying to, you know, learn direct bookings, somebody mentioned this guy named Mark Simpson and said, hey, you should read this book. Book the book Direct Playbook. And so I got it and actually listened to it on Audible and took away a ton of great lessons from it, which all kinds of things which played into our marketing strategy from our website. Just basically, I would say the biggest theme that I learned from that book was there's a reason that Airbnb and the other OTAs spend tens of millions of dollars in R and D costs to make this the most, you know, streamlined, simple, user friendly experience ever. And so you've got to look at your, don't reinvent the wheel, but you've got to look at your current process of booking and your funnel and just realize, like, where are people getting hung up? Where are these friction points? And whether that's, you know, an annoying bug about your website where you have to zoom in, it's not mobile friendly, maybe I mean, something as simple as that or too many extra steps to click through and there's, there's all kinds of little glitches that can come up. So, yeah, took a ton away from that book and was also some great one liners that I repeat frequently, like, don't build your house on somebody else's land. I experienced that firsthand and it was actually best that I discovered your book after this experience happened with Airbnb, because then it really clicked and I treated it like the bible, literally, of direct bookings, because I was like, we've got to figure this out. So, yeah, it's been quite the journey and I'm actually really thankful. That whole interaction with Airbnb happened so early on because it ended up being one of the biggest blessings in disguise.

It's. It's so crazy because literally today, about 12 o' clock my time, I jumped on a call with a host who had booked a call with us and he was panicking because he, his listing, his Airbnb account has just been suspended. Today, it's literally happened. 56 listings, 90 plus reservations. I'm looking at the message you sent me now, and this is where you were 18, 20 months ago, right? When. When you were. When you were properly launching. This happened to you. So I guess the first question is, what piece of advice would you give to this host right now, the one who's going for exact same thing as you were at time ago?

Well, the number one thing is. Well, two things. Number one, you have to have a functional direct bookings website. I mean, if you don't have that, then no matter how many eyeballs you get, you're not going to be able to convert them. So you've got to figure out how to create what I was just talking about something that's extremely user friendly, something that works, that's proven, that's tested just in terms of the basic booking function and mechanism. Assuming you have that in place, though, I would say you absolutely have to lean into social media, Instagram primarily, but the other channels, the whole space has blown up. Actually, the story of Live Oak Lake has gotten so much attention. I think that's been a big catalyst for the whole part, you know, partnering. We certainly weren't the first to do it, but there's. It's like a whole industry now partnering with influencers and all that. But I would say invest in that like it's everything, because it really is. In 18 months, we created almost $5 million of value from nothing. And I would attribute 80% of that to simply the audience and the brand. 80% plus of all of our bookings, and we were 95% occupied overall. 80% plus of all the bookings came directly from Instagram. So Instagram is like the best booking platform ever. So go all in with that influencer partnerships, creating quality content and posting that consistently, and then just approaching all of that with a very experimental mindset. These things are changing. The algorithms are changing, the trends are changing. You're going to have some duds along the way with some of these influencer partnerships, and you're going to have content that you put a lot into but doesn't get a lot of traction. But you got to have that fire in your Belly and that experimental attitude that we're going to keep trying to stuff, but a situation like the one you're describing, you're right. It's what I found myself in. And it's the best kind of situation because you literally are backed into a corner now, thankfully for me, that happened two weeks into the entire journey. So it's not like we had to make some hard pivot. But in other ways, it was even more scary because at that point, I didn't even know if it was a proven model. I didn't know anybody else who was doing what we tried to do. I didn't know about you. Thankfully, it worked out. But the fields are ripe for harvest.

Yeah.

Lean into Instagram.

So I want to just go down that sort of little avenue. So you. You. You were very fortunate. You. You were approached or you approached one of these travel bloggers, Instagrams. And what I love is that you call them a partnership. And I feel that one of the biggest mistakes that hosts make, property management companies make, is that they look at it as a spend or they look at it as, oh, I have to give a free stay away. But you're talking about this as a partnership. So how do you bridge these partnerships? How do you approach them? Have you got any sor tactics and tips you could pass on to another host who's thinking, hey, I want to get in front of the Instagram crowd, I want to get in front of the Tik Tok crowd, influencer crowd. How do I actually have these conversations with said influencers? Yeah.

So first things first, you actually have to find them. In my case, somebody found me and they sent me a dm, but then that was sort of like, that was just the window into this whole world. One thing led to another. I then got connected with a fellow host who was just sort of starting the same journey herself. And then we started sharing tips. So find other hosts in your region or in your just general locale that have done this before, and then give value to them, exchange value with them. And that was the most effective way of vetting these folks because they know if they're legit or not. Now, in addition to that, if you're going to be super aggressive, don't skimp when it comes to investing in the partnership. So I would rather, you know, give away 30 free nights and 50, and let's just say 20 of those or 25 of those not yield any results, but the remaining 5 completely blow it out of the water, and you never know. So treat everyone with respect, treat Them, not as a transaction, treat them as a long term relationship. Because when you do find the gold in these part in these creators, you want to establish a long term relationship. So then you want them to come back every six months and they'll be happy to do it and you may pay them. It's, it's an ongoing service to you, but this is a long term relationship with them and their audience is going to continue to grow, most likely if they're a good creator to begin with. And you know, one of the creators that we partnered with early on they were at like, I don't know, 150,000 followers. And then 12 to 18 months later they're, they're at over 500,000 followers. So you're always building the, you're building the, the funnel, you're, they're building their funnel and then you're just skimming the cream off the top, so to speak, and leveraging that over time. But that only happens when you trust each other and have that long term relationship. And I've certainly made mistakes and learned this lesson the hard way and it's sort of like, you know, how much do I need to pay you? And then inevitably there's some expectation that's, that's missed either direction. And that's another point I would, I would raise here, which is unless it's someone who is extremely dialed in and this is all they do. And they have abundant fruit and a track record to prove that. I would handhold quite a bit and set clear expectations for the travel influencer. Say, hey, we want four reels created. We want in this style. Show them, show them an example of what you're talking about. We want a giveaway. That's going to be two nights. This is how we're going to run it. This is how you're going to promote it. Maybe we're going to do a collab post, whatever it might be, but set the expectation expectations because a lot of these folks just, they're the creator type anyways and they work better. You're going to be happier with the results too. If you have a part to play now, they're going to have very valuable input because in some cases maybe you're starting from scratch like I was and you don't know anything about it to begin with. Maybe they have worked with these other brands and they know what works and doesn't work. So definitely listen to them. But treat it as a long term relationship and it will pay huge dividends.

If you're struggling on how to get Direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O-O-S-Tly.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team. I think you've just hit a nail on the head. Clear communication, clear guidelines, clear. This is what you get, this is what we want in in return. It's like a contract. So again, you've got to make sure that you do it properly and we've obviously just skimmed the surface there. If you go back to the book, the book that I play book, there's a lot more on it in there and more. So. So thank you for that. That's very good. So let's move on then to what's coming. Now. You're very passionate. One of the things I love about you, and this is something I don't see in this space, is that you've got a very good following on X, formerly known as Twitter. Can you just sort of walk us through your relationship with that platform over everything else? Why do you like that one? How. How have you grown on there?

Yeah, so I just assumed, as I tell people, that Twitter was a place where you argue about politics and sports and therefore I had no interest in it because I'm not particularly passionate about either of those two topics. So I paid no attention to it until last year, maybe June or July. I got connected with a guy named Sam Parr who's got a big following on X, and he hosts a big podcast and called My First Million. He took an interest in Live Oak Lake because though he. He's kind of in the media space, he was also interested. He had just bought a little ranch out in the Texas Hill country, actually kind of near me, and wanted to Airbnb. So he was obviously like really impressed with the numbers from Live Oak and we became friends. He shouted me out and I just started telling the story. I didn't really even know how the platform worked. Eventually started using threads to sort of just peel back the curtain on. Look here, just as authentically as possible, here is the step by step process of how I created this. Here's how I used influencers to grow this social media following. Here's the benefit of the social media following and the direct bookings. Here's how we built the container pool and how much value this adds per night. Just all these really actionable, tangible tidbits of what makes the property great and how others can do it. And I just learned early on that if you give, you're going to get as much as you genuinely give and put the time and the effort into communicating that you're going to get 10x in return from others. So doors began flying open left and right. And what has shocked me all along is the quality of the following on X. It literally blows away every other platform. So, you know, we have 150 over 150, 000 followers for the live Oak Lake brand on Instagram and yet I would say My following of 21000 people on X is immensely more valuable than that Instagram following. Now, they are for different purposes primarily that Live Oak Lake is for guests and it's very visual format and all that X Twitter is for mainly people that now are purchased. My masterclass join the community or just maybe they don't and they're just networking and they're just learning for free, but those people are. There's some incredibly valuable players out there and just high quality, rich relationships of, you know, folks. I'm constantly being pitched from landowners that have beautiful land that they don't have the operational chops to come in and create a Live Oak Lake, but they want to partner with me. Now, unfortunately, I can't take on a lot of these part. I can't take on any of them because I just don't have the bandwidth. But what shocks me is how many people are out there that are so, especially from a networking and investing perspective, networking with fellow hosts, entrepreneurs and creators in the space and then also getting investments from, you know, limited partners. If you're going to syndicate a real estate fund or a project, X is a gold mine. So I highly recommend it. Of course I say that's the most valuable marketing channel in terms of social platforms. More recently I have leaned into the power of email. And so I've been diligently writing a new weekly newsletter which we also used for Live Oak Lake. And the beauty with that, of course, as you've laid out beautifully, is you can never ever be deplatformed or demonetized or anything with with an email list. It's the only platform where you only Channel, so to speak, where you truly own the customer. So I would highly recommend funneling, whether it's Instagram or X or anything else, the social platforms into a weekly newsletter. And what we did with Live Oak Lake, more from like the guest bookings perspective is create some automated sequences. So we have a welcome sequence, we have a nurture to booking sequence where we're showcasing different elements of the property and we, we really put time and thought into beautifully designing these emails and then creating these beautiful automations that are totally hands free and passive for us. So once they're in place, they just work 247 and people are signing up. One more little trick here and I got the big inspiration for this from you. We have a website, we have a pop up on our website for Live Oak Lake that performs super well and just little split testings and nuances in, you know, the photograph that we used and how many seconds it took to load it and all of those kind of things yielded massive results. So definitely test and play with it. But this pop up generates about 50 new emails per day. So we just have this constant stream because we've got, we get a lot of web traffic because I'm also, you know, priming the pump with other PR. I'm having YouTubers come out, I'm having local news channels come out, especially that first six to 12 months. But now we get, you know, 30,000 to 50,000 monthly visitors to the Live Oak Lake website for which is pretty crazy for a seven cabin property every single month. And then that pop up is just, it's beautiful, it's totally automated. We're growing our email list. We had about 40,000 people on it. And then they're just getting into these sequences and then it's just a matter of time before they're going to book with us. You're just like the social platforms, you're creating trust with them visually. You're, you know, getting in front of them on a weekly basis with an email and then when they want to take a vacation, they're in your area and you're, you, you're top of mind for them because you've done the work, which actually isn't a lot of work. It's just the one time setup.

Yeah.

And I do recommend some kind of like a quarterly newsletter for the brand as well, where you can showcase some of the developments and just kind of tell the story about the seasons for the property itself.

What I love about this podcast and talking to you is somebody who has read the book, you know, maybe never Heard of Boostly before, Just read the book or listened to the book and has just taken one or two little things and put it into your own world. And it's had amazing effect with, with email or influencers or just a little terminologies to use. It's literally amazing to hear it such a large scale as well. So yeah, thank you for that. So let's talk about 2024, the next steps in your journey, your entrepreneurial journey. Obviously very passionate about hospitality, but passionate about experimental experiences basically. And so talk to me about the idea of the community. Talk to me about the platform. I'm very, very grateful to be able to have a little sneak peek behind the scenes over, over the Christmas break. So just walk everybody through that and most importantly, if anybody wants to find out more about it, the domain and all that good stuff.

Yeah, well, thanks for the opportunity. I noticed early on when I was telling the story on Twitter that, I mean, along with the opportunities to, you know, co invest with other people, build projects on their land, a lot of people just wanted coaching. So I started doing a lot of one on one coaching and I did about 20 calls and loved it. Except I realized everybody's asking the same questions here and maybe there's a way I could synthesize all these questions and then really put the time and effort into refining my answers and put it all together into one resource. So that's exactly what I did. This last year I recorded 11 hours of highly, well, it was like 40 hours that trimmed down to 11 of highly produced content that we shot at Live Oak. So I'm literally showing and telling exactly what we did. Brought in a whole panel of guest experts and created this master class for experiential hospitality. So it's the top to bottom blueprint for how to envision, design, construct, build, furnish, automate, operate, and then now sell a property like, like Live Oak Lake and launched that in July. It's been a, a massive success. I mean we've seen amazing success stories with the students that have taken it already. Obviously this whole endeavor is a long, it takes a long amount of time. It's a long tail endeavor because it's, it's not the kind of thing that you just snap your finger and it happens overnight, but already incredible success stories from the students that are taking it. And then a few months into that I realized, hey, we need a community where we can actually bring people together, have weekly calls or bi weekly calls, have a discussion group. So I've just been working really hard for the latter End of the better part of the last six months in 2023 to create this community. So now the masterclass lives there and you can, you know, go through the modules on your own time. But then we have these structured calls and discussion boards so people are constantly posting, maybe sharing an opportunity. Hey, I found this piece of property. I did some due diligence on it. It's not going to work for me for X reason, but maybe somebody else wants it. And then it's just like the general discussions. I mean it's selfishly, it's like if nobody else was paying or honestly getting anything from it, I would love it just because I'm constantly learning and being pushed personally by these other high level entrepreneurs in the space. So really an incredible resource. It's got like a visual map so that you can see where all the community members are, but also their properties, their projects and then inspirational properties as well, which is something else I love because I'm always trying to, you know, collect these other places that I can learn from and then go and visit. So yeah, we got the community and we got the masterclass and you can go to experiential hospitality.com and you'll learn about all of that. So far it's been limited launches, but I'm considering throwing open the doors and making it an evergreen product because it's been so popular.

Nice. So we'll get all those links up as you normally do in the, in the show notes and all that good stuff on X. It's Isaac French underscore that one person that's got the Isaac French without the underscore.

You're listening. Call me up. I'll pay you big money.

There you go. But yeah, I think looking at the way that the industry is going and especially looking like how Airbnb is pivoting its market and they are looking for the OMG stays. They're looking for these stays that aren't just your. Your run of the mill, but looking for the ones which is experiences. And you have hit the nail on the head. Everybody go check out Live Oak Lake if you haven't done so already while listening to this, to go and see what we're talking about here. There's many YouTube videos, Shelby Church, Cody Sanchez, just main in ones, the ones that I saw and just found out more about yourself. And then there's so much more that you can go see about what Isaac and his family created there at that plot. It was amazing to see. And now that I discovered that the course is coming out and and not just, not just the course, it's the community and like I say, the people in there, there's some amazing ones. So I wish you all the best of it. I will push as many people towards it who are looking to get into this sort of world of hospitality because it is a, it is a, an absolute lay down, blueprint, bible, whatever you want to call it, playbook of getting started, doing the due diligence and all the things as well with marketing. So, yeah, well done. And the exit was phenomenal. And like I say, it's, it's, it's a, it's an eye opener and aha moment for so many hosts who are watching this, who are sort of looking at social media as a. I'll get to it one day. There are people in here who've got stunning properties, whether you are in the US or Canada or South America or further afield, that you've got properties that are stunning and you need that social media to showcase it for you. There's a talk that I'm working on this year which is turning a guest into an influencer, into a super fan. And you are one of the prime examples who has followed that route with your guests, with your email list, with your, with your clients. And you've turned them into super fans that has helped grow this massive brand. And you've, you've got the exit to show for it. So congratulations, my friend Mark.

That's all very kind of you. And for everybody listening who hasn't already, go and buy Mark's books because they will change your life if you're serious about this. I mean, talk about a return on an investment. Massively valuable. So thank you very much for everything that you've done and for teaching me so many things without even realizing it. I owe a lot of the success to you.

I appreciate my man. All right, with that, we will close this podcast to an end. Please do come and check out more podcasts where three times a week we've got these going live, so make sure you download it. And if you're on the YouTube, please go ahead and do all the things like share, comment, all that good stuff and we will see you on the next episode. Thank you very much.