How I Went From Broke to $7 Million With An Airbnb Business

1. 0:00 – 9:53

   Buying an investment property with $2K

   1. SPSam Parr0:00

      All right. So Shaan, 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 in- 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, uh, 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."

   2. SPShaan Puri0:42

      [laughs]

   3. SPSam Parr0:42

      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. [upbeat music] 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."

   4. SPShaan Puri1:07

      When you say you met him in a business context, what context did you meet him in?

   5. IFIsaac French1:10

      So Sam, can I tell a tiny story here about that?

   6. SPSam Parr1:13

      Yeah, yeah.

   7. IFIsaac French1:14

      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-

   8. SPSam Parr1:31

      [laughs]

   9. IFIsaac French1:31

      ... 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's 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. I- 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 [laughs] 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.

   10. SPSam Parr2:11

       [laughs] And his numbers, Shaan, they'll blow you away.

   11. SPShaan Puri2:16

       I'm ready to be blown away. Go ahead.

   12. SPSam Parr2:18

       Yeah.

   13. SPShaan Puri2:18

       What is it? [laughs]

   14. SPSam Parr2:18

       Can you, can you... Well-

   15. IFIsaac French2:19

       Yeah

   16. SPSam Parr2:19

       ... can you say the numbers?

   17. IFIsaac French2:20

       Yeah, yeah. So let me just tell you a quick story of Live Oak Lake if, if that's all right 'cause 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, it's really hard to articulate 'cause I just had this vision for what it would feel like, and I put an emphasis on feel 'cause 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 three months. One morning I wake up, open up Zillow, and there's this five 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 [laughs] by any standards. Um, had experience in construction, so my dad was a plumber, general contractor. I grew up with that experience. I've always been an artist and I've always loved design.

   18. SPShaan Puri3:30

       So, so how'd, how'd you get it under contract? What'd you... If you didn't have any money, what, what'd you pay to put it under contract?

   19. IFIsaac French3:35

       I paid like $2,000 of earnest money, but to close with cash in 30 days, 'cause 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, and I knew it would've been gone by the end of that day. So I was like, "I'm gonna get under contract with a due diligence period, and then I'll figure this out."

   20. SPShaan Puri3:54

       How, how much would you need at the end of that period to, to have come up with?

   21. IFIsaac French3:58

       $133,000 was the price of the property, which was a really good deal, too, for five acres. Uh-

   22. SPShaan Puri4:03

       And so you... Just to make this clear, you have $19,000. You put $2,000 down [laughs] to, to lock this up. You now have... I forgot how many you said days. You said 30, 60, 90 days-

   23. IFIsaac French4:12

       30 days

   24. SPShaan Puri4:12

       ... 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?"

   25. IFIsaac French4:23

       Well, you gotta have conviction. You gotta believe in yourself if you expect anybody else to believe in you, and I did have a list of people-

   26. SPShaan Puri4:28

       [laughs]

   27. IFIsaac French4:28

       ... that were like, "Yeah, these people are..." I'm gonna find somebody to make this dream work. So I started calling people. Well, my brothers and my dad, who have this small g- general contracting company, which is what I'd 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-

   28. SPShaan Puri5:02

       Okay

   29. IFIsaac French5:03

       ... I called them up and they're like, "No, we don't wanna give you a hard money loan. We want equity in that, uh, 'cause 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 gonna help me with the difference of whatever. But then of course I was gonna have to find a loan and, you know, go through all the rigamarole of that. So we get under contract, and literally I hit the ground running. So, uh, the next day... Well, the first three 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-

   30. SPShaan Puri5:44

       [laughs]
2. 9:53 – 16:41

   $7M exit in 2 years

   1. IFIsaac French9:53

      was just-

   2. SPShaan Puri9:54

      And-

   3. IFIsaac French9:54

      Wow

   4. SPShaan Puri9:55

      ... you, you sold this, uh, what, four years in for how much?

   5. IFIsaac French9:59

      Two, two and a half years in, we sold for $7 million, so last October.

   6. SPShaan Puri10:04

      Two and a half years in?

   7. IFIsaac French10:05

      Yeah.

   8. SPShaan Puri10:05

      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's 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 re-recap here. You go buy land. Land is, you said what, 130K, or that was just the down payment?

   9. IFIsaac French10:48

      That was the land.

   10. SPShaan Puri10:50

       That was the whole land. Okay, the land. You never did con-- 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?

   11. IFIsaac French11:00

       No.

   12. SPShaan Puri11:01

       And you built these yourself, or you subcontracted out to a company?

   13. IFIsaac French11:04

       I subcontracted, but like I said, I mean, I was in there on ladders doing stuff myself. That's how I broke my pelvis. [chuckles]

   14. SPShaan Puri11:10

       Okay, so you, you build seven cabins on top, and the whole project build-out you thought was gonna cost you two million bucks ended up costing you 2.3, but did you say you were selling... You were... Y-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.

   15. IFIsaac French11:27

       Correct.

   16. SPShaan Puri11:28

       Okay. So you, you do this. It took you nine months to get live with the seven, with all seven cabins. Is that right, or one at a time?

   17. IFIsaac French11:34

       All at the same time, nine and a half months.

   18. SPShaan Puri11:37

       Nine and a half months. Okay, that's amazing, and this is like, you know, post the c- uh, post-COVID, and you start renting these out. How much does a cabin rent for? What was the average kinda nightly rate?

   19. IFIsaac French11:46

       Like 600 bucks a night.

   20. SPShaan Puri11:48

       Yeah, he said he was doing 1.1 million a year in revenue. So you do a million a year, [chuckles] a million a year in revenue, 500K of profit, and you sold this thing for 7 million bucks?

   21. IFIsaac French11:58

       Yep. So a million dollars a key two and a half years after starting construction on the whole thing.

   22. SPShaan Puri12:03

       And you sold it to who?

   23. IFIsaac French12:05

       A small private equity group.

   24. SPShaan Puri12:07

       And how did that come about? They approach you? You approach them? What happens?

   25. IFIsaac French12:10

       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 wanna raise money, I wanna 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, one-of-a-kind properties. And, uh, 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 three parties. You've got the real estate, you've got the managing company, and you've got the brand. Sometimes the, the operator and the brand are the same. Well, with this property, we built 150,000 followers on Instagram, plus like 30,000 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 seven cabins in the woods in Texas. But basically they came along, offered seven, 7 million. We negotiated some of the terms 'cause they wanted to sell or finance some of it. And, uh, the deal fell through like three 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.

   26. SPSam Parr13:39

       So yeah, sh- the look that you have, Shaan, 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 like connections there. Do you wanna meet me up there and like do you wanna 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 gonna get popular, and just promise me that you're gonna let me always invest in anything you ever do from now on, because I think you're gonna be a very popular person." Because his passion and the way that he's principled and like he like outlines what he's gonna do, I found to be intoxicating. Do you get that vibe, Shaan? You know what I mean?

   27. SPShaan Puri14:20

       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. [chuckles] I think that was the, the, 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, the, the time. I don't have anybody who believes in me. I don't have the network." What- 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, what do I need to do to get this right?" And you did it, and I think you had a unique insight, which was that, um, A, that people would wanna 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 gotta find another way to promote this," and you found a better way to promote it, right? 'Cause 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, or through my own to do direct bookings. What do you think this property would've been worth had that not happened?

   28. IFIsaac French15:22

       Maybe 3 or 4 million is my guess.

   29. SPShaan Puri15:26

       Right.

   30. IFIsaac French15:27

       Maybe.
3. 16:41 – 20:35

   Repeating the formula

   1. SPSam Parr16:41

      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.

   2. SPShaan Puri16:53

      [chuckles]

   3. SPSam Parr16:54

      And I, like, it doesn't matter what, what business you're in, this idea of build it when they co- build it and they'll come, that kinda 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-

   4. SPShaan Puri17:14

      And pull it off [laughs]

   5. SPSam Parr17:14

      ... 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 it, when they, when they, when they succeed. Do you know what I mean? I find that to be different than how I look at life, and I find it to be, uh, inspirational.

   6. SPShaan Puri17:28

      Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Uh, Isaac, what were you... You, you were gonna say something on that.

   7. IFIsaac French17:31

      Well, I was just gonna say, you know, people now come to me asking all the time like, "How do we recreate that same success?" And w- what I really do believe, I just said this, but is that you have to have a vision, and then you have to story tell. 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 t- also 24 years old, or now I'm 27, but I was 24 when, 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 five 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 two hands, like ninety-five percent of it he built with his two hands, and he documented the whole process with an iPhone and a twenty-dollar tripod on Instagram and TikTok, and he grew one point five million followers from scratch. Look it up. It's called The Pacific Bin. 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 two weeks. And now, again, he's become this magnet where people are like, "Hey, come build..." You know, g- they're trying to give him money, and I understand a little bit about what that feels 'cause p-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, 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 as 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 gonna have some hard knocks. I have fallen flat on my face more times than you wanna hear, including during and even after the sale of Live Oak Lake. So you have to learn humility, and you gotta l-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 gonna 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 'cause obviously you don't want to compromise that record.

   8. SPShaan Puri19:56

      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 a 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, um, 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

4. 20:35 – 27:27

   Blueprint for flipping properties into Airbnbs

   1. SPShaan Puri20:35

      them? What's the, the two-minute blueprint you would give them?

   2. IFIsaac French20:38

      Yeah. Love it. Huge opportunity. Again, Airbnbs have been commoditized. They're just, m-you know, unrecognizable from each other. There's no differentiation. So whether this is a, 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 seven cabins around a lake. I got a friend named Brian who had this idea to rethink what houseboats meant. And so he built, uh, for two hundred thousand dollars 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, uh, Washington, wherever, and you get three hundred and sixty degree harbor views. You're, y-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 tree houses. 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 s-get-- speed to market is everything, and you wanna be in a, 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 [chuckles] that's a radical example. So find... Go off the beaten path. It's okay to get away from places, but you wanna be within two hours from a major metro area of like, let's say, a million-plus people because that's your drive-to distance. It, it's like a staycation distance, so you're gonna get a lot of two, three-night staycations. You need to be within two hours from a major metro area. You need to be within fifteen to twenty minutes of like a town that has a re-- 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 wanna find that two-hour Goldilocks zone. Then find land that's super cheap, that has some natural potential. Um, 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 Kimball and Christine had a dream. They're in Ohi-- rural Ohio. They buy this piece of property with zero money. The, the, he-- 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 six hundred thousand followers on Instagram. They're booking out every single night two years in advance. And that water feature probably cost them twenty to thirty thousand dollars 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, um, people holding your hand, you know, at every, like, five-star luxury would be. What you need is touch points 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 hand write a card to each guest, and then I partnered with a local bakery that was, like, five minutes down the road to fresh bake our own recipe of chocolate chip cookies every single morning. And then on the back end with my software, because I pretty much automated the whole property, so it was running with, like, two 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 Topo Chicos in the fridge made a massive impact and an emotional connection with the guest. 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've 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, two 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, and spend $100,000 if you find the people, buy this piece of land. Yeah, you're gonna 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.

   3. SPSam Parr27:01

      Dude, you're like, uh, one of these toys that we just wound up, and we just kinda let go and just, like...

   4. IFIsaac French27:06

      [laughs]

   5. SPSam Parr27:07

      Holy shit. [laughs]

   6. IFIsaac French27:11

      Sorry.

   7. SPSam Parr27:11

      But I love it. Uh, no, don't apologize. I love it. I, I... Whenever I get done hanging out with you, I, I feel more energy. You're... I, you know, I think there's, like, two types of people. There's people who are... You feel, like, worn out when you get done hanging out with them, and then you feel like there's people where, where you, you feel inspired.

5. 27:27 – 31:07

   Mistakes to avoid

   1. SPShaan Puri27:27

      Wha- what are some ways that a smart person could get this wrong? So, uh, not, not every, you know... A- 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 can tell you where they go wrong. You know, some of the common traps that a smart person could fall into.

   2. SPSam Parr27:43

      I mean, I, I, I failed at it. Uh, or at least I didn't-

   3. SPShaan Puri27:46

      [laughs] Sam's like, "I'll take this one." [laughs]

   4. SPSam Parr27:48

      Yeah. Uh, I mean, like, I, I bought one of the... I bought, uh, a property that wanted to turn into this, and I actually didn't... I broke even. I mean, I, 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. Uh, the first thing is, uh, the, 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, that, 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?

   5. IFIsaac French28:13

      Ni- ninety-nine percent of the time, unless you are just an extreme exception. But yes, the illusion of total automation is absolutely just that, an illusion.

   6. SPSam Parr28:22

      I think another thing is you really actually have to give a shit and care about it. Like, i- 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, there's not a lot in this part of the, the country. Like, this picture looks good. I'll stand out. Done." That's why my returns were only okay. That, that was not an exceptional plan.

   7. IFIsaac French28:44

      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, um, 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 wanna 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, six 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, um, 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, um, you're just, you're gonna 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.

6. 31:07 – 34:56

   Games that are easy to play, but hard to win

   1. SPSam Parr31:07

      Y- you know, Shaan, um, 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, uh, very quickly. Because of that, I think I've gotten into a habit of creating things that were, to use a funny pun, subpar. Uh, like, there was very little passion involved in them, or there was very little excellence. Have you ever, like, felt like that when you're making stuff online, Shaan? 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"?

   2. SPShaan Puri31:43

      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, or I'd make something really good that nobody cared about, nobody wanted. It was just the wrong problem to solve. Um, so I, I think that, yes, it's easy to try something online. I don't think it's easy to w- win at something online. I don't think you can get away with something-

   3. SPSam Parr32:18

      How do you define winning?

   4. SPShaan Puri32:19

      Uh, you know, whatever. Hitting my goals for it, right? So having something that actually grows, that is sticky, that is, you know, v- very profitable. You know, the th- 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 gonna build a luxury, you know, a luxury stay here, and I'm gonna serve customers essentially by hand." Uh, it's definitely easier than that. But I, 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.

   5. SPSam Parr32:59

      We, we have so many friends that are popular on the internet, and they make crappy stuff. Like it's-

   6. SPShaan Puri33:04

      Well, that's crappy by our standards. It's not crappy by the customer's standards, right? Like, I was thinking about this the other day. So, m- m- uh, Jimmy, MrBeast, who, you know, is, is friendly with us and, and is obviously super successful with YouTube. He just released a, a, a, a guy, I guess, got leaked his, uh, production document. Did you guys see this?

   7. SPSam Parr33:22

      I read the whole thing.

   8. SPShaan Puri33:23

      So I actually wanna do, like, a whole bigger thing on it, so I don't wanna go too much into it. But o- one amazing thing is, you know, you get to see inside of his mind, and his, 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 y- the world has ever seen, that he is the, whatever. I don't know who the famous directors and, and artists of our time are, but you would think he's doing that, when in actuality it's, 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? 'Cause they s- they're pretty popular, but maybe their taste is a bit better. Or is it the chef in, um, you know, New York who makes this one unbelievable burger that's $36, and if you ever put a McDonald's burger next to that, you c- 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 gonna 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 just, like, pretty crap content that works, it's 'cause 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.

7. 34:56 – 54:58

   How to write 20M view threads

   1. IFIsaac French34:56

      Can I tell you a crazy story about, uh, Twitter and going viral?

   2. SPSam Parr35:01

      Yeah. What do you got?

   3. IFIsaac French35:02

      So actually, Shaan, 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, four or five months ago, Alex Lieberman made a post about... He was like, "I just watched this interview with Aaron Sorkin about stories, and I, I'm en-tranced by it. I wanna go down that rabbit hole." A- 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, I'm gonna figure it out." So I went down the rabbit hole, and I listened to podcasts, and I read books, and I took courses, and, and copywriting and, and writing in general. And then I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna figure this out, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it." And so, well, first of all, I'd taken an eight-month break from Twitter. So last fall I stopped posting at all, and I, I took an eight-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 gotta... You're like a battery. You've gotta recharge. And but I came back kinda 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 six million view thread, and people were like, "Threads are dead," and, you know, "Twitter's dead. The algorithm's 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 gone an average of like a million views a piece, and then one of them went totally crazy. So I wrote this thread, um, about this train car that my dad-- It's pinned to the top of my profile if you wanna look at it, but-

   4. SPShaan Puri36:47

      Yeah, I've seen that one.

   5. IFIsaac French36:48

      So I wrote this thread. I stayed up like all night. I, I spent eight hours writing it. I had 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 eight 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 four or five 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.

   6. SPShaan Puri37:42

      [laughs]

   7. IFIsaac French37:43

      I said, "But after investing 147K and five 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, I love... Guess what? Spoiler alert, I love cats too. I was not meaning disrespect to the cats when I said this.

   8. SPShaan Puri38:06

      [laughs]

   9. IFIsaac French38:07

      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 landlord's. They should have kicked you out."

   10. SPShaan Puri38:17

       [laughs]

   11. IFIsaac French38:17

       "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," like machine gun fire. I mean, it was crazy. And so n- 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, um, kinda crazy, and I've learned other-

   12. SPSam Parr38:35

       Didn't like Brian Chesky comment on the... Or Joe, was it Joe?

   13. IFIsaac French38:37

       Brian Chesky reposted it twice in one day. Joe Gebbia reposted it. Paul Graham repo- quote tweeted it, and then like, you know, 20 million views total in the first day. But here, here's another crazy thing. So there's all these journalists that lurk on X. You don't know about them 'cause they probably have like 300 followers. So within like two days, I got invitations for coverage. So in, in the two or three weeks since I wrote that post, we've been now f- 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, uh, tens and tens of millions of views. So you're just really creating like this surface area of, for luck when, 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.

   14. SPShaan Puri39:26

       I love that story, and, uh, yeah, I checked out this, this thread. It's, it's great, but I think that the, the real lesson here, the, 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, 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-

   15. IFIsaac French40:04

       Yeah

   16. SPShaan Puri40:04

       ... all the sentences you want. That car, that story's 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. Y- uh, y- you're on the wrong platform, my friend.

   17. IFIsaac French40:32

       Man, it's, it-- I wanna start doing short-form video, but I love writing, and Twitter helps me think better. Like I, 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's 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 suppl- 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, 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-

   18. SPShaan Puri41:44

       Yeah

   19. IFIsaac French41:44

       ... 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.

   20. SPSam Parr41:58

       Originally, when I told Shaan about you, he was like, "Oh, sounds like an Amish guy who likes money." And I was like, "Yeah, I g- I guess that's a, that's an interesting description." Um, but if that is who you-

   21. SPShaan Puri42:07

       Yeah, I was like, I'm... The, the next two words were, "I'm in." [laughs]

   22. SPSam Parr42:10

       Yeah. Um, and if that... A- and let's just say, uh, to someone who's not like entrenched in this, Isaac, your community is similar-ish to Amish. Uh, what do they think about you like being this popular internet guy? Or do they even know? Do they even know like who you, what you're doing?

   23. SPShaan Puri42:24

       Yeah. Are, are you sinning by being on this podcast right now? Like, what's going on?

   24. SPSam Parr42:27

       [laughs]

   25. SPShaan Puri42:27

       What's, what's the reaction back at the farm?

   26. SPSam Parr42:29

       All right.

   27. IFIsaac French42:30

       We're gonna 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, uh, 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, like, disaffected with life sorta came together. And a core group started coalescing, and basically a church was founded. But then a few years into it, they, 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, uh, 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, we truly try to live out community. So we're, uh, working, playing, doing, 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-

   28. SPShaan Puri44:54

       Well, just explain it like this. If I li- I live in a, what a, you know, a cookie-cutter suburb, uh, 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, what is it that you guys do that would be most different?

   29. IFIsaac French45:12

       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 wanna control it versus being controlled by it. And so basically, I grew up on a farm taking care of animals. The, I was homeschooled, so we homeschool our kids. I, I have nine siblings. There's a lot of big families. Not everybody has a big family, but [chuckles] I, I-

   30. SPSam Parr45:43

       I went, by the way, Shaan, and I stayed in the community. And I would joke with Isaac. I'm like, "Isaac, I'm an atheist. 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 gonna kinda summarize Isaac. They believe that in order to, like, show they're close to God and everything, that they w- they, 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 have 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 gonna execute, uh, perfectly."
8. 54:58 – 55:58

   2 quotes to live by

   1. IFIsaac French54:58

      that. Can I close with two quotes that mean a lot to me?

   2. SPShaan Puri55:01

      Yeah.

   3. IFIsaac French55:01

      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 gonna do. Do it with hospitality. Do it with excellence. And number two, 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-

   4. SPShaan Puri55:23

      [laughs]

   5. IFIsaac French55:24

      ... my hope in life.

   6. SPShaan Puri55:25

      Wow.

   7. IFIsaac French55:25

      I want people to say, "Well, that's a life well-lived," and I wanna say that at the end of my own life.

   8. SPShaan Puri55:30

      That is an amazing quote. [laughs] I love that quote. Dude, thank you so much. You're the man. Um, I, we appreciate you, and we'll wrap up there. That's the pod. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 55:59