The Nathan Barry Show

[00:00:00] Isaac French: I obviously want to make as much money as I can with whatever I'm doing, but I'm not doing any project that I don't absolutely feel 100 percent fired up about. What are we optimizing for? I think it's ultimately like a quality of life.

[00:00:12] Nathan Barry: My guest today is Isaac French, who has built over 5 million of enterprise value, and now he has so many opportunities, but not a lot of clarity on which one is best.

[00:00:21] Nathan Barry: You have four great options. The content agency. Launching software, building the next property, and then really scaling content.

[00:00:28] Isaac French: I've had so many offers for capital investments from other people, it's a little overwhelming.

[00:00:32] Nathan Barry: There's this quote from Warren Buffett. This is the difference between successful people and really successful people, is that really successful people say no to almost everything.

[00:00:41] Isaac French: Let me ask you a question. Everybody says SaaS is like the best business model in the history of the world. Yep. Is it a pipe dream to think this kind of needs to be

[00:00:49] Nathan Barry: There are two aspects of money. One is short term cash flow, and the other is long term enterprise value. If you came to me and said, Hey, the thing that I'm optimizing for is enterprise value, it could be a path to a hundred million dollars.

[00:01:04] Nathan Barry: One mistake that I see a lot of creators make is they don't

[00:01:08] Isaac French: I'm pretty excited because I feel like, okay, I can take the next step with confidence. This is the right way.

[00:01:16] Nathan Barry: Isaac, you've done something that I think is absolutely insane. You built basically 5 million of enterprise value from an in person project, told the whole story online, exited in two years. Yeah. Give people the quick version of. What you did and then how you leveraged the online business.

[00:01:35] Isaac French: Yeah, so found a piece of, property in Waco, Texas, where I live, designed and built seven modern cabins, spent 2.

[00:01:44] Isaac French: 3 million. Launched 10 months later, we built 140, 000 Instagram followers in about 15 months, which drove 95 percent overall occupancy, 80 percent of all that direct bookings, which is kind of insane for the industry. And then just, yeah, less than two years after starting day one, exited to private equity for a million dollars a key.

[00:02:10] Isaac French: And then started sharing the story on Twitter, actually, and started building up a small audience there, converted that to a newsletter, and was doing a ton of one on one coaching. And then I was like, well, what if I just took like, all of the information in this concise format. So it created this, you know, all in one, eight and a half hours of, of, video content, this masterclass for experiential hospitality.

[00:02:37] Isaac French: And so now I have a subscription based membership for like the best operators. What's the recurring revenue on that right now? We're at about, we're at about 200, 000 recurring revenue. So Daryl Vesterfelt has sort of been my coach, I know he was just on the show. So what we developed is a seven day email course.

[00:02:57] Isaac French: This is basically the entire masterclass boiled into seven emails. But people are more. A lot of people are like wanting something cheaper, something more bite sized. Anyway, what we settled on is this membership, the community really, really nicely like dovetails with the course and references a lot of the information given there.

[00:03:18] Isaac French: And we built this all out in kit, automated it. So it's completely hands off for me.

[00:03:22] Nathan Barry: Okay. I should write this down. This is, this is good on the masterclass. You are, you said the, the funnel is going from, the seven day course. And then

[00:03:33] Isaac French: we're

[00:03:35] Nathan Barry: going.

[00:03:36] Isaac French: If they click a link, they get automatically enrolled in the seven day FOMO sales sequence.

[00:03:41] Isaac French: Okay. If they don't, they get a bridge email to my newsletter. Basically they're qualifying themselves by clicking on the masterclass link. Yep. And that goes into. The, the pitch. The pitch. And what we did there is set up an automated timer coupon code. So if they book, if they sign up directly in the 7 day pitch, they can save 1500.

[00:04:05] Isaac French: If they, but it's on a timer, so depending on when they start that sequence. It'll end in seven days. If they don't buy that, then they get a one day delay and they go into a, just a 24 hour payment plan. But what we also have been doing recently is we have three links now in the last four days of the seven day where we're suggesting they book a call with me or my team because a lot of people want to talk.

[00:04:28] Isaac French: So now we have a sales motion. And he, the sales guy is getting 17%, but he's also hopefully selling it at the higher price point of 6, 500.

[00:04:41] Nathan Barry: Okay. I love this. So, There's so many things that I want to get into here. In this episode, what we're going to talk about a lot is where to go, where the business is today, and then where we're going with it long term.

[00:04:53] Nathan Barry: Yeah. All the opportunities, what to pursue, all of that. But let's take a minute and, and map this out. So the masterclass, this is the funnel for it. Yep. What, what are you able to acquire leads for on Facebook right now?

[00:05:05] Isaac French: Around 3 call. Yeah. And we've been testing a variety of static, some video, you know, multiple different angles, so much fun to test creative and see what's working.

[00:05:17] Nathan Barry: That sounds good. So Facebook ads coming into the seven day course. And then if someone's interested and they, you know, they click on a link that talks about the masterclass in some way, then they go into a sales sequence for that. If they don't, they're just going to find themselves in the newsletter.

[00:05:30] Nathan Barry: Right. And then if they're really interested, you'll get them under sales.

[00:05:32] Isaac French: Got to layer on one more piece here that Daryl's now telling me we have to do. Yeah. So regular promotions. So he's built up, like, as you know, some massive course businesses. Right. And the way they acquire leads. is through these webinars where they're basically teaching and they're basically doing what I'm doing in an email.

[00:05:51] Isaac French: They're doing live and then they're letting the, you know, they're not selling in that. They're just giving value for an hour and then they're letting the emails do the selling for seven days after that. So I love teaching and I have never done a webinar, so I'm looking forward to this. So, but once they're in here.

[00:06:08] Isaac French: And then go through that seven day course, then we like to tell them, Hey, we got a webinar that's going to solve X, Y, and Z, right? And this will also be an opportunity where you can interact with me live, ask a question, get an answer. And then from there, we just think that that's going to. Qualify, because right now we just started this in the last sixty days, this funnel right here, and we're converting about 3 percent of these leads, which is paying.

[00:06:35] Isaac French: All the way to a sale. Yes. To a sale.

[00:06:38] Nathan Barry: So let's, put a pin in this side of the business for now. Yep. So this is the digital products, that side of things. What we, so we have the split into two right here, where we've got the masterclass and then the community, the community. So on the masterclass, what's the total revenue that you've made on it?

[00:06:58] Nathan Barry: 600, 000. Let me just say I love this business. Because it's such high margin. There's so much. I love it. It's a great niche too. Like nobody else is doing this. Yep. And then on the community,

[00:07:13] Isaac French: do you want to like, Yeah. So real quickly, basically it's a 250 a month, 2000 a year. So what's the,

[00:07:22] Nathan Barry: what's the total

[00:07:23] Nathan Barry: either?

[00:07:23] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Let's go total revenue on the community.

[00:07:26] Isaac French: So, annual. Or, annual. Or, like, 200, 000 an hour.

[00:07:29] Isaac French: So, okay. So, we've built a digital business. Yeah. I say we. I have nothing to do with it. You've built a digital business to 800, 000. Roughly. and then, I think it's important to talk about the physical side, because when we're saying what you could do next, like, you could go do another project like Live hmm.

[00:07:46] Isaac French: And, let's get into that. So, over here. We'll just say, let's get some numbers for Live Oak. Okay. So this was 2. 1 million in. 2. 3 million in. 2. 3. 7 million out. Okay. Like when we're thinking about what to do next, I love just mapping out, like, what have you done? What, what skill sets, what resources do you have?

[00:08:07] Isaac French: So this other aspect is, like, is the, like the content and storytelling. And so you've done it obviously in so many different ways, but the one that I think stands out the most is. The threads on X and so let's get some stats. Yeah from

[00:08:24] Isaac French: so Just call it the last four months because I took a big break before that I was just figuring out my way before that the last four months.

[00:08:31] Isaac French: I've gotten 40 million impressions on about 12 threads total So that's very concentrated I don't tweet a lot But when I tweet I try to make it count and I I sort of figured out the formula for what's working now Here's a beautiful flywheel The members in my community, the recurring revenue community, which are super high value, I get to coach them, learn from them, see their stories, pick the best ones, share those as threads, which generate a ton, because I'm the expert now.

[00:09:04] Isaac French: And it positions you as the guy. I'm the magnet for the best stories in this space, and I just tell those stories, and educate through that. And something I learned with threads is like, People don't like facts nearly as much as they like stories. So find a way to educate in the, in the guise of storytelling.

[00:09:20] Isaac French: And then so that immediately qualifies. If you're interested in that story, you're, you're going to be a candidate for this or this.

[00:09:26] Nathan Barry: Right. And then you can go from there to the seven day course.

[00:09:29] Isaac French: And they just cycle virtuously.

[00:09:30] Nathan Barry: Okay. So let's actually draw that flywheel. Well, we're basically going from a thread that you're telling.

[00:09:37] Nathan Barry: So that's the, that's the beginning of the flywheel. So as we map this out. We're like from the thread. We're going to an email capture of some kind, right? And then from the email, we get a, we're eventually going to sales,

[00:09:52] Isaac French: whether that's community or masterclass. So then. We get a story, which goes into a beautiful thread.

[00:09:59] Isaac French: And then which comes back into the thread. I love that. And so, really the question that I have is like, how do I allocate the hours in my day to balancing all this, when I also have all these other opportunities, like A, content creation for other brands. SaaS products, because I'm very, you know, invested in the space, and this is a particular niche.

[00:10:21] Isaac French: So do I do the agency? Do I? There's

[00:10:24] Nathan Barry: so many opportunities. It's a good problem to have. And like, the crazy thing here is that you've built a phenomenal business in itself, right? You've demonstrated that you can do projects that you can build and then either keep and run. Like the beautiful thing about Live Oak Lake is you didn't have to sell it at all, right?

[00:10:39] Nathan Barry: You could have held onto it, but that's an amazing offer and, and you know, that, that turn on and return on investment. And the story of completing the whole thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. All of that is, is phenomenal, but it's like, you now have the problem of too much opportunity. Yes. And there's this quote that I recently love, from Warren Buffett.

[00:10:59] Nathan Barry: This is the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything. So actually let me switch these and we'll pull it over here. I'll let you hold that. I'll put it up. So that's now Let's talk about next. This is so cool. I've never actually thought about this like this, but this is awesome.

[00:11:18] Nathan Barry: All right. I love how you applied

[00:11:21] Isaac French: it here.

[00:11:22] Nathan Barry: It's such a good thing. Once you understand flywheels, you see them everywhere. Yeah. Okay. So what are the options that we're considering? Talk through like a content agency.

[00:11:31] Isaac French: Yeah. So content agency, I've had several folks that already run successful agencies, reach out and say, Hey, we'll do a 50 50 split, which would probably be the easiest.

[00:11:41] Isaac French: The problem with that is that I am so picky. That I would want to have my hand in what they're doing. Right. And so they, they see me as valuable because I have an audience in the space, but I'm extremely protective about the value of that. Okay,

[00:11:54] Nathan Barry: so the content agency, this is basically taking what you did for Live Oak Lake to build an Instagram account to over a hundred thousand followers, drive all of this stuff and say, Hey, we will do it for a fee for this property.

[00:12:08] Isaac French: Yeah. So the, the way the workflow works is, you know, I would fly out with a team or I'd have a team of two cameramen and a director and they just, you know, let's say I had 10 properties and I'm a friend of mine who's doing this exact playbook right now and he's crushing it. He flies out to the 10 Live Oak Lakes, shoots for two days.

[00:12:27] Isaac French: He's there every, you know, three to four months. Now he's actually doing 30 properties, charging 3, 000 a month. He goes home, cuts it up. He knows what works, follows the algorithm posts on behalf of that brand account every other day. So it's consistent, it's good quality content. And it's just a numbers game.

[00:12:44] Isaac French: Like over time you get virality and then the virality leads to followers and the followers leads to bookings.

[00:12:50] Nathan Barry: That's a win win

[00:12:51] Isaac French: 3000. So that's, it's like 30 to 40, 000 a year per client.

[00:12:55] Nathan Barry: Right. So the, the lifetime value is very, very good. And there's a very natural sales progression, right? If someone comes in, they take your masterclass and they learn how to do it and they develop the property and then.

[00:13:07] Nathan Barry: They in that storytelling process they realize like oh shoot this is hard. Yeah, like we're building the property I'm learning how to build in public and Man, I could really use some help from someone who's great. Yeah at doing this So let me hire that out right and so you have this product ladder that that goes up What we're

[00:13:24] Isaac French: teaching them like a key framework in this whole master class and I think this can be applied broadly in life This is like The way I try to approach learning things.

[00:13:32] Isaac French: Number one, if you can, hire a consultant. Someone who knows something about what you're doing. Pay them absolutely whatever they want, because they're worth it most of the time. and then number two, do that thing yourself. No matter how much you don't want to do it. So if that's video create, like short form content, I've been avoiding that for years, honestly.

[00:13:51] Isaac French: And then recently I was like, no, I'm just going to do it. And so I spent 20 hours editing one reel. But it got, Yeah. 150, 000 views. And then number three, once you've got your identity figured out, hire someone else to do that. But you as the owner need to understand that. So we're teaching them, you know, we're the, we're the consultant and we're holding their hand through the community and through the whole program where they're actually doing some of these things like creating content.

[00:14:15] Isaac French: And then most of them, you know, won't actually want to follow through and make content every day of their life. Right. So we could also have an agency where it's like, okay, you understand it. We'll kind of help each other as far as the voice because it's also very important that they maintain some function of like You know again taste and like curation.

[00:14:32] Isaac French: Yeah, but we're doing the heavy lifting for them But you can't just assume that like okay I'm gonna sub it out to so and so I don't know anything about it and there's a lot of people want that

[00:14:40] Nathan Barry: like a quick Yes, so in this basically what you have is a model where you're saying hey, we'll teach you what to do And if we pursue this agency, we'll do it for you.

[00:14:48] Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly. So option number one is the agency. what's option number two that you could pursue right now? A SaaS product.

[00:14:55] Isaac French: Okay. So what I would choose, there's a lot of opportunities here, but I would say a direct, a beautiful direct booking engines, AKA a Shopify for experiential hospitality.

[00:15:06] Nathan Barry: Okay.

[00:15:06] Nathan Barry: There's a lot of pros and cons here. I know a thing or two about software. I have a love hate relationship with software, as. What's the third option? What are you considering? I

[00:15:16] Isaac French: mean, alongside all of this could be another Live Oak Lake. Right. Or 20 other Live Oak Lakes. So I've had so many offers to, you know, for capital investments from other people.

[00:15:27] Isaac French: It's a little overwhelming. But I've been, again, like extremely, so far, intentional about like, no, no, no, no, no, without burning those bridges because I don't want to scale so fast that I can't do any of these other things. Or I can't do hospitality well.

[00:15:41] Nathan Barry: So we're going to the next property, the next property, which could be any number of sizes or scopes.

[00:15:46] Nathan Barry: Yeah. You could do a seven unit like Live Oak Lake. I'm pretty sure that you could even beat these numbers because of where you're coming from, you know, of, I mean, generating 4. 8 million in enterprise value in two years. Like that's insane. also the content that you create from that, right? Like on one hand you could do another property.

[00:16:08] Nathan Barry: and say it makes, let's be really conservative and say it makes 5 million of enterprise value in five years, right? A million dollars a year. The content. It's probably worth at least 500, 000 a year. Like maybe more.

[00:16:25] Isaac French: I would argue, I mean, based off these numbers and what I've seen and then the ability to raise money, because that's the other thing, like there is so much, I mean, I've literally had probably 15 million verbally committed to do another project.

[00:16:37] Isaac French: Yeah. Even if I was, here's the stalemate, I could take that money and I could be a developer.

[00:16:44] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:16:44] Isaac French: But for one, I'd be missing out on some of the intimacy of like the content creation storytelling of like doing a whole bunch of ones. Right. And then for two is like, again, as a perfectionist and someone who cares so much about the product, I could hardly see myself doing that.

[00:16:58] Isaac French: The great thing

[00:16:58] Nathan Barry: is you could raise money on your own terms. You could say, like, instead of, for that 2. 3, you're like, bank loan, your savings, And I gained 45 percent

[00:17:08] Isaac French: equity to get, to get it over the line.

[00:17:10] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And so you could do that and like, maybe you risk far less money and 10 percent equity in this next one.

[00:17:17] Nathan Barry: Is there another, like a fourth option of double down, like, purely on content creation? Yeah. Yeah, I

[00:17:23] Isaac French: guess there would be. So the fourth option is, you know, how many channels can you do at once? Right now, all I'm doing is X and a newsletter and it's taking up a lot of time, but that's because I'm like really, you know, again, the results speak for themselves.

[00:17:38] Isaac French: If I go out with YouTube, which is what I really want to do, actually, like that's kind of my dream is to grow a really nice YouTube audience. And then of course the short form on Instagram to compliment that and on YouTube shorts. Then I could be like, okay, I'm going to put this on pause. I'm going to put actually all of this stuff on just on ice.

[00:17:58] Isaac French: And I'm just going to focus on taking this mainstream. Like, right. It's, it's all about beauty, architecture, whatever my story is, you know, redemption.

[00:18:09] Nathan Barry: Think about, you know, on one hand, someone like, Hans Laurie, who has scaled his Instagram really well, but even a level beyond that would be like a Cody Sanchez or a Dan Martell who has said, like, You know, they're bringing in a film crew that they like have a whole team and all this.

[00:18:25] Nathan Barry: You could scale the content side significantly.

[00:18:28] Isaac French: And I would want to do that in some kind of a, I mean, just a super personal uncommercialized way, if that's possible, where this is really hard, but like. YouTube would be the main thing for me. And it would be, you know, 15 to 30 minute episodes weekly. And it would almost be like a show, but it would be as much about my life.

[00:18:48] Isaac French: Cause I mean, again, I love all these things. I could show these properties, but I just built like this really cool studio, which is tangentially related. It's like incredible architecture. It's nature immersive. I could rent it out as an Airbnb. People, everyone has this dream. I mean, that thread got 5 million, 6 million views.

[00:19:04] Isaac French: Everybody has this dream of like creating a workspace in the woods.

[00:19:07] Nathan Barry: Right.

[00:19:07] Isaac French: And so, that's how you kind of take it mainstream. It's not just experiential hospitality. I mean, that's That's a part of it. But it's like, I'm creating beautiful places and for people to, to be in.

[00:19:18] Nathan Barry: Okay. So you, you have an amazing launching pad and you have four great options, the content agency, launching software, building the next property, and then scaling content.

[00:19:31] Nathan Barry: And these are mutually exclusive. Yeah, I was gonna say, if I can have them all. You can have them all. If you go back to the Warren Buffett quote, how well will you do it? And how big of a team. How big of a team. So the question that I have in all of this is what criteria are we using to make this decision?

[00:19:48] Nathan Barry: What are we optimizing for? It's such a great

[00:19:51] Isaac French: question. I think it's ultimately like a quality of life and happiness and fulfillment and what I'm doing. It is not money at this point. I mean, I obviously want to make as much money as I can with whatever I'm doing, but I love connecting with people. That's why I love this community so much.

[00:20:12] Isaac French: Like minded people that care about design and I love traveling and seeing new places, meeting new people. And I love shining a spotlight on them. Like it's the best feeling in the world that I have a small but valuable audience that can make a meaningful difference in these people's lives. Yep.

[00:20:29] Nathan Barry: Okay. So quality of life, people, you said

[00:20:30] Isaac French: travel.

[00:20:31] Isaac French: Travel. And then of course, you know, before all of this, my family and my faith and being able to be grounded and even just show the lifestyle I have, like say at the nook, I could make so many videos around that that would blow up, I think. Oh yeah. And without even like having to run out and do any of this stuff.

[00:20:46] Isaac French: So

[00:20:47] Nathan Barry: yeah, there's so much in that. Now, one thing. A lot of people talk about like money not being the focus in some way. But they're actually like kind of lying. Yeah, like I really, really like making money. Me too. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not ashamed about that in any way. But there are two aspects of money that you're thinking about and people often conflate these.

[00:21:12] Nathan Barry: And so one is like short term cash flow. Like what profit are we actually bringing home? And the other is long term enterprise value. And we've got some really interesting elements that touch on both of these. But one mistake that I see a lot of creators make is they don't think about the difference.

[00:21:30] Nathan Barry: They don't think of those two buckets. And so I guess I write this out. You

[00:21:35] Isaac French: have to feed your family and keep the lights on while you're building an insane amount of enterprise value, whether that's another property or a SAS product.

[00:21:43] Nathan Barry: So we had the, I don't know if you imagine, like these two buckets.

[00:21:48] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Are you more interested in creating Cash, cash flow right now or creating equity value. Man, I, that's, I want both.

[00:21:58] Isaac French: And again, you know, I want like, I want 50 50. Right. I want a nice lifestyle. We don't have to worry about whatever we can be generous and I want like a nice nest egg that I can pass on, that I can leverage, that I can do whatever I want.

[00:22:13] Nathan Barry: So that's a good, that's a helpful lens. Right. So I think that. What we're optimizing for, right? Quality of life, people, travel. There's a version of this where you could say this all was fun But I'm gonna like go do a giant hotel deal Yeah And like leave the internet and honestly I have enough connections I don't need more, right?

[00:22:30] Nathan Barry: And it's pretty obvious that that is not the right path for you, right? And you can't go in and make something That's gonna require like a stressful 80 hours a week. Yeah Yeah. Or like nonstop travel. Nope. You did the stressful 88 hours a week. Exactly, yeah.

[00:22:46] Isaac French: That's why I'm like, even if I did another one, it'd need to be scaled down cause I can't spend that much time.

[00:22:50] Nathan Barry: Right. And you would use, like, you would deploy money and, you know,

[00:22:54] Isaac French: I wouldn't manage every detail. Yeah. you'd be one, one level above. Let me ask you a question. So, you run a pretty sizable SaaS company. The grass is always greener. Yeah. But everybody says SaaS is like the best business model in the history of the world.

[00:23:10] Isaac French: Yep. I agree with them. You build so much enterprise value. Yeah. Once you make the initial investment, there's also quite a bit of cash flow. I mean, there can be. Yeah. Of course, you can reinvest. Is it a pipe dream to think that I could fit, cause something is telling me that like, this kind of needs to be front and center, or it doesn't need to happen at all.

[00:23:28] Isaac French: Cause if I try to do that halfway, it's going to drain my money. It's not going to, is that, is that a correct intuition or do you think there's some way where I can kind of balance this, especially this with all these other things? So if

[00:23:38] Nathan Barry: you came to me and said, Hey, the thing that I'm optimizing for most is enterprise value.

[00:23:44] Nathan Barry: Like, that long term equity, I've got cash flow covered really well, right? Like, we're set. But enterprise value, long term equity is what we're after, is I look through these four options. It's, for me, it would be the next property, or it would be software. Right? Because if you build Real estate's

[00:24:01] Isaac French: a great, yeah.

[00:24:02] Nathan Barry: Yeah, like We've already demonstrated it. And then if you like hold these properties and compound it and you know, I mean, eventually stepped in step up

[00:24:09] Isaac French: basis when I hand them down to my kids, there's zero tax. It's a beautiful model.

[00:24:13] Nathan Barry: Yes. One quick aside. There's a bunch of people. I think a lot of content creators, sort of like, I don't understand tax.

[00:24:21] Nathan Barry: It's complicated accounting and all that. I would just say for anyone listening, like you, Sean Sweeney, Nick Huber, so many people are like. Who are insanely smart entrepreneurs like took the time to learn tax. Yes, and it is a hundred percent worth it Put yourself through the rigor. Yeah, we'll pay dividends.

[00:24:38] Nathan Barry: Even if you were like, hey, I'm gonna spend 20 hours to learn and go interview 10 entrepreneurs. Like, Hey, what are the most important tax things you've learned? I agree. Like I learned about QSBS and all these other things, like way later in my journey. And just don't, when your accountant's talking, like, just don't gloss over like, hold on, stop there for a second.

[00:24:54] Nathan Barry: What was that term? What does that mean? Like, ask those questions. Yeah,

[00:24:57] Isaac French: basically take that same framework, you need to understand it, you need to do it, and then you can sub it out. Yeah. But you've got the A hundred percent. Okay, that's the aside on tax. Creators,

[00:25:05] Nathan Barry: learn tax.

[00:25:06] Isaac French: Yeah. okay. So if I was going to optimize for enterprise, that's what I would do?

[00:25:09] Nathan Barry: Yeah, that's where I would go. You're exactly right in software that you can't half ass it. Like, you have to go all in if that's what you're going to do. And you can get a great multiple evaluation. But if you think about the amount of work it took for you to get great at experiential hospitality, like what is, how do you build a foundation of a building?

[00:25:33] Nathan Barry: How do you, like, what's the, the whole, like the crazy number of skills for that, expect that same amount of effort to get for software. Yeah. Right. Where you, there's all kinds of things. If, if I had a building and I'm like, Hey, will you look at these plans? You would immediately be like, Oh, not that. Hold on.

[00:25:53] Nathan Barry: What are you thinking here? And you'd notice like ten things right away. That's me with software because I've spent ten minutes. like the same amount of time or more that you've been doing for software. So I can tell you like, Oh, in onboarding, Oh, you got to have gradual engagement, right? Like what's great.

[00:26:08] Nathan Barry: You know, like all of these things, if you want it, if that journey excites you and you could go all in on it and you're optimizing for equity value, then I would say software is it, but I would assume that this is a five to 10 year path. Okay. Now it could be a five to 10 year path to a hundred million dollars.

[00:26:28] Nathan Barry: Right? But it sounds like it's a different skill set. So personally in your shoes, that's not the path that I would choose, even though that's the path that has made me all of my money.

[00:26:36] Isaac French: I think so. A lot of sense. And I think it's very clarifying. Like there's so much peace and confidence in doing what we're doing and just learning to isolate thoughtfully and be like, okay, I'm You know, you find what it is by what it isn't and not tricking yourself, first of all, because I'm exactly like you.

[00:26:53] Isaac French: Like I am way too ambitious and I'm a generalist, so I love to do everything at once and it's, it's worked really well so far, but it was, it took a lot of like discipline and sacrifice, but I'm at a juncture where because of like, now I'm married, I was barely married when I did this. Now I have a kid. Now we have another kid on the way.

[00:27:11] Isaac French: It's like. I have to rethink the entire balance. I'm not going after, if a hundred million comes to me in 10 years, I'll be like, I won't complain, trust me. And I'll work for it too. But I am not going to sacrifice all that other stuff that's, that's much more valuable to me than that. Yeah. And so like, yeah, I think that has been like the allure.

[00:27:29] Isaac French: It's like, oh, I could build up this product. It would be worth X. Look at these multiples that other people are selling their, right. Their things for.

[00:27:35] Nathan Barry: And I, I think you would be in a great position to do it because you know you. as a customer, you'd be building the tool that you wanted. It's exactly what I did with kit, where I'm like, I have an audience too.

[00:27:44] Nathan Barry: I want that tool. But so many people miss when they see like what I built for myself in kit, they're like, Oh, I could do that too, for my niche or industry. But they miss the fact that software was my industry, right? Like, so here's the other question

[00:27:59] Isaac French: that applies to both of these. I've had multiple developers reach out and I've had multiple content, existing agencies reach out to me and offer similar deals, 50 percent across the board, cashflow, equity, everything, all you have to do is promote us.

[00:28:16] Isaac French: Now, I, if I was even going to be able to make that work, would have, no, I would, I'm such a micromanager and care so much about the product and the details. I would have to be involved in that. Is that, is that a pipe dream? Like, it sounds really good that I could just literally keep doing what I'm doing and have like, you know, one hour a week dealing with

[00:28:34] Nathan Barry: these.

[00:28:34] Nathan Barry: I think it's absolutely possible. I would not do both simultaneously, right? Cause they're both new skill sets for you. like a lot of people have done really well with agency partnerships. You have to have the right person and you would need a way to really vet that individual. Like if you think about.

[00:28:53] Nathan Barry: If you were to pick a random family and say like, okay, you now, you guys are like scrappy enterprise people, like go restore this old barn. I would say 90 percent of those, 98 percent of those, if you picked a random family would end in complete disaster. Right? They hate each other. The project wouldn't work.

[00:29:15] Nathan Barry: Everything else. Right? And so you think like, okay. If. Nine times out of ten, you throw this together. It won't work. Like, how can you be confident that you actually have the right person? And so you'd need to do a small project with them. You need to see, is this the kind of person that will like, go through the craziest amounts of adversity, you know, or are they the ones who are

[00:29:40] Isaac French: like,

[00:29:40] Nathan Barry: yeah,

[00:29:40] Isaac French: are they a good person?

[00:29:41] Isaac French: Are they aligned on values? Yeah. And I think just, I mean this is so helpful, it's like therapeutic to talk through this. A big fear that I have is, you know, and this sort of demonstrates that I have Daryl as a coach. I had people I could reach out to for help, but I was doing every bit of this. Right.

[00:29:56] Isaac French: To this day I have zero employees. I do everything. I have a coach who I talk to every three weeks for an hour or whatever it is. And I really like that model. I mean, it's actually working right now. And so like the thought of me wanting to stay

[00:30:09] Nathan Barry: with the small team. Yes.

[00:30:10] Isaac French: Okay. Do not want a big team.

[00:30:11] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:30:12] Isaac French: And so like the thought of managing a team or dealing with, you know, HR and just constantly dealing with people issues. Like,

[00:30:22] Nathan Barry: okay. I'm allergic to that. So that's a really important thing. And what are we optimizing for? you know, we added small team. Yeah. Right. I really wanted a small team initially.

[00:30:33] Nathan Barry: And then, you know, as I was building kit, but then my ambitions kept growing. I'm like, Oh, I want to build an ad platform. I want to like, you know, build an e commerce platform, all of this. And so I've scaled the team more and more. And I realized in this trade off, I care more about bringing my vision to life than I care about keeping a small team.

[00:30:52] Nathan Barry: I still care about both, but you know, in that trade off. And so it was really important. And so now we've got another good thing of what we're optimizing for is. keeping that team small. So software, small team, that's really hard.

[00:31:07] Isaac French: Well, even with the model of like me being a distribution and having some say in the product.

[00:31:11] Isaac French: You could do that, but you

[00:31:13] Nathan Barry: would need someone who is world class, who came to you and said, I would like to be 50 50 partners on this business.

[00:31:19] Isaac French: And I was really confident that they were a good operator.

[00:31:21] Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly. Probably on both of these. Now, agencies are hard. They're not as hard as If you made the software for Live Oak Lake.

[00:31:33] Nathan Barry: What would Live Oak Lake pay per month? it would probably be like 300 a month. 300 a month. Okay. So you need ten times as many clients to get to, you know, the revenue of a content agency. So software is going to have this very, very slow ramp up where for the first year, three years, five years, it makes no money.

[00:31:53] Nathan Barry: Kit took two years to pass 2, 000 a month in revenue. And then that 30 year route from 2000 to 100, 000, you stuck with that. I mean, that's, I mean, I almost didn't. Yeah. Right. So it's just, it's like, and you have an audience, there's a bunch, like you could accelerate it some, but you should go in with it being that difficult long game.

[00:32:12] Nathan Barry: Whereas the agency. Because your average revenue per user is so much higher, you know, or average revenue per customer, you know, there's a pretty clear path to getting to 5, 10, 20, 000 a month, right? And then you're like, okay, now I've got, I can hire people. that was something with, Paperboy, which is my agency for newsletter growth.

[00:32:31] Nathan Barry: Sahil and I were talking about founding that agency, but we didn't do it until we found the right CEO for it. When we found Shane, who'd already built an agency to more than a million a year in revenue, it's like, okay, you know what you're doing. You are a truly world class operator. Now we can provide distribution for that.

[00:32:50] Nathan Barry: Now I only did that, even though I love everything about it, I only did that because it furthers kids goals. Because now Well, let me give you an example. We launched, Lil Jon launched a newsletter on kit, like this last week. Now they needed a ton of help to get that live. Great design, all this stuff, right?

[00:33:11] Nathan Barry: He came in with his vision. He's like, okay, it's called wellness Wednesdays. It's about meditation. We're like, okay, that's not what I was expecting, but like, this is awesome. And so we needed an agency that could deliver on that vision. So when Sahil first came to me and said, Hey, let's build an agency. I'm like, no.

[00:33:27] Nathan Barry: I do software. And then I lost a deal because I didn't have, I lost a customer, a potential customer for kit because I didn't have world class done for you, like just over the top value. That's amazing. And so when I realized that, so I was kind of like, Hey, if we had made an, like the agency could have done this.

[00:33:45] Nathan Barry: And so then I, now I'm able to bring in someone like Lil Jon as a customer of Paperboy, Paperboy will go over the top, make it absolutely perfect. And. and make them, you know, the best customer for kit. So it's this flywheel that feeds itself. Now you have that with the agency where there's a flywheel that feeds itself because now you can tell even better stories about the properties.

[00:34:08] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Right. And so that's, yeah, that's really good alignment.

[00:34:12] Isaac French: So these are really completely dependent on the right partner because I'm not, it's not negotiable for me to have a small team. And so I have to find the right operator who's world class, who I'm comfortable with. And that's, that's a huge X factor

[00:34:27] Nathan Barry: is what really matters there.

[00:34:28] Nathan Barry: And I think we can say that at least for now, nice thing is this, all of this is for now. software is off the table. Okay. That sound right? Yeah. I agree.

[00:34:38] Isaac French: Okay.

[00:34:40] Nathan Barry: We're going to eliminate software there. Okay. So now the content agency is interesting. What, what you could do is if you kept this open, you could say, Hey, I'm looking, I'm the most patient person in the world.

[00:34:55] Nathan Barry: But I'm looking for the perfect operator. And let me just put that out in the universe. And by universe, I mean, community and social and that sort of thing. And just say, Hey, if that's you, let's talk. And maybe you take 10 calls. Related to that and you start to understand it's not the first person who comes along and pitches you But you say hey over the next year I'm gonna meet 10 to 20 people who might be this operator And let me learn and let me take all kinds of notes how they would build it all of that And then I will start to know what it takes to build a world class agency, and I'll know Okay, who's just making stuff up versus who really knows what they're doing?

[00:35:30] Nathan Barry: Yeah And so then I think you can put a pin in that.

[00:35:34] Isaac French: Yeah, and I'm not pressured to make that decision. That's just a little open ended, which will help me make the best decision if I find the right person. Yeah,

[00:35:42] Nathan Barry: and you can very passively learn about it. Yeah. Which, you're a student, like everything you do, you're like a student of it and diving in.

[00:35:51] Nathan Barry: That would make a lot of

[00:35:51] Isaac French: sense. Yeah, that's a great way. And again, like it just speaks to the power of having this audience because they're coming to me. I'm not trying to find them and I already have them coming to me, but I can be a little bit more intentional and be like, Hey, this is an idea. If you're the person.

[00:36:05] Nathan Barry: The other thing that it does is if you're getting like referrals to other agencies, someone's like, Hey, like Isaac, will you refer to our agency? You're like, you know, I'm thinking of starting my own. So I don't know, maybe. What like, yeah, what makes sense there? And then instead of getting a 10 percent referral commission or I don't know, say a thousand dollars, you might be like, Hey, the lead value is actually a lot and I'm teeing up amazing leads from the community.

[00:36:32] Nathan Barry: So I want to be getting 3000 or 25 percent or like it puts you in a very good negotiating position because you're like, look, this is, it's not no money or some money. It's like all of the revenue or, and me running my own agency or, you know, a portion of yours.

[00:36:51] Isaac French: And there's maybe even the potential that one of those folks that are currently paying me.

[00:36:56] Nathan Barry: Is the right person.

[00:36:56] Isaac French: Is the right person.

[00:36:57] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So a great example would be, Marshall Haas and the Cuber with Shepard, which is now called Somewhere. It started as an affiliate relationship and then bought, like, Nick bought in and they went up from there. cause Nick understood the value of the leads he was driving.

[00:37:14] Nathan Barry: Okay, so let's think about the next property. As we're pursuing that,

[00:37:21] Isaac French: I want to have some inspiration on that. So what if I did a smaller version? Sounds counterintuitive. You could do one unit or three units. What is cool about this is it's a little less overall headache and work, and it's also more approachable because I'm trying to inspire.

[00:37:39] Isaac French: I love connecting with people. I love seeing people light up like I have by this and, you know, not even realize they have the potential to create this and then going on and create it. And one or three units is a lot more approachable in terms of finances and just overall work than seven. Yep. So I could do another one, document the entire thing, have a high level of, you know, input into all the design, which would also make great content, preserve the quality like 10 out of 10 and inspire a lot more people, document the whole thing and potentially even, you know, go all out with YouTube on that.

[00:38:16] Nathan Barry: I love that. Okay. So I wrote down three things as you're talking. I wrote down story, equity value and risk. Okay. So when. Okay. I'm talking about the next property. One, I saw you light up about that in a huge way. Like, there could be a version where you're like, I did Live Oak Lake, man. I never want to do something like that again.

[00:38:33] Nathan Barry: Like, it was just, left everything on the table. You lit up about this. Like, you were excited about it. You could do it, all of that. But then you get into this conversation about the size of property. Right? Is one unit worth it? You know, is three units worth it? If you're like, Oh, I'm going to put this time in, it's not actually that much harder, maybe to do a 10 unit or 20 unit.

[00:38:55] Nathan Barry: Cause you're having to do all this. You have access to the capital, but we got to think about what are we getting out of this? And the first is story. And that's really what you clued in on where you're like, look, I can tell the story. I can create a huge amount of content about this. And the content is basically the same, whether it's one unit or 10 units.

[00:39:16] Nathan Barry: Equity value and risk are actually the two that change the most. Where like, if you're going to spend a year of your life bringing the next property to life, and maybe it's 10 hours a week that you spend on it instead of 80 because you're hiring a general contractor, some of these things. But is it, is it worth it?

[00:39:36] Nathan Barry: Like, let's say we're netting a million dollars in enterprise value after these several years instead of five million. And so that's a factor in there. And then the last one is risk, right? Content has de risked so much of this. Like you're, I'm not even going to ask you the question of how confident are you that you could sell this out or all these other things.

[00:39:56] Nathan Barry: Because I know with this audience, like this is not a risky endeavor for you. But if we were to say like, you know what, 50 units is where we should go and each one should be absolutely perfect. And they're going to cost 800, 000 a piece to build on. Well, all of a sudden we've created some risk. A lot of risk.

[00:40:12] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And so we know like how this is bracketed. But I think it's really interesting if we're optimizing for story, story, small team, quality of life, one, one to three units. Three units

[00:40:27] Isaac French: is like micro resort. So it's again, it's like in the genre of I could do the unique stay one off, but I kind of like the three because it's like there's some exponential difference where you create like a communal setting and you can be like very secluded geeking out about the hospitality experience for a second.

[00:40:46] Isaac French: But you can also feel like, Hey, I could bring my mom and dad. Right. And my siblings have a little mini family the whole place. Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, like how many other people would light up by that same idea?

[00:40:57] Nathan Barry: Right. Which brings, it comes into this flywheel of the content, the storytelling, all of that.

[00:41:02] Nathan Barry: Because there's a risk, right? If you were to say, and the next Live Oak Lake is going to be 50 units, all these people are like, I'm not, that's not what I followed you for, you know, that's not my dream.

[00:41:13] Isaac French: And I latched on, you know, there's a lot of problems with that. You oversaturate, your occupancy goes down.

[00:41:18] Nathan Barry: Yeah. We don't want to pursue that. Okay. So that's really interesting. Now we know quality of life, small team story. Yeah. That's what we're optimizing for. And so now this starts to seem really interesting. Yeah. Not because of the enterprise value. Now we've got it. Like in this case, you're like, Oh, it's all being accruing a million

[00:41:37] Isaac French: dollars.

[00:41:37] Isaac French: Like, am I crazy? The enterprise value we haven't even assigned a value to the audience that we're gonna build right like again You leave your options open to not that you would want to sell that audience But your personal brands like in my opinion like the most valuable thing How did your reputation your ability to raise millions of capital if you want it?

[00:41:56] Isaac French: tens of millions if you wanted to to sell a digital product to create any of these things in the future and so in a sense like Yeah. So, would it be fair to say I'm actually creating some enterprise value, it's locked into here. There's two buckets.

[00:42:08] Nathan Barry: Okay, so let's talk about this. So, let's say audience is one, and then, well, I'm just going to say real estate.

[00:42:15] Nathan Barry: Yeah. but just for the, for the buckets, when we're talking enterprise value, we have to now look at it in these terms of like, well, which is actually more valuable? To traditional, like if you want to take out a loan from the bank, they'll land on real estate and business all day long. Come on, realize.

[00:42:31] Nathan Barry: Right? Right. Okay. But you're like, actually the audience is worth more. We know the future. We believe in creating the future belongs to creators. Yep. And so in this, it's an interesting balance, right? If we said, Hey, equity and enterprise value is the most important thing. Then we're like, okay, cool. Yeah.

[00:42:48] Nathan Barry: Which, which bucket of those. Little bit of both and they help each other. Little bit of both. Again, we don't have to choose, but what you can do here is you can say, Hey, if I'm looking at the next property, if audience is where I believe that enterprise value comes from. then a small property makes a lot of sense.

[00:43:05] Nathan Barry: Cause it's de risked, quality of life, all that. But if real estate is where we're getting the enterprise value, then go to a bigger property. And it sounds like we're both pretty aligned that for this next phase, it's about audience. I would say it's about 70, 30 right now. Okay.

[00:43:19] Isaac French: If I had to put all my eggs in

[00:43:20] Nathan Barry: baskets, that's.

[00:43:22] Nathan Barry: That's how you split. That's how I split it. Which is really good. Cause one thing that I love about, you know, someone will notice that I've had a lot of, like real estate conversations on the show. right with Sean Sweeney, Brett from new story, all of that. And it's because I love the creators who are thinking about like the long term enterprise value.

[00:43:41] Nathan Barry: Cause I've seen way too many creators be like, look, I made a million dollars a year, 5 million a year. And then I built a whole team and I'm taking home less money than before. And this is stressful. And then if it goes away, like, what did I actually have? Hopefully a whole bunch of index funds and like millions of dollars in Vanguard, you know, but like too many of them focus on other things.

[00:43:59] Nathan Barry: And so. What I love about what you're doing is you get to have this balance between cash flow and equity.

[00:44:06] Isaac French: Yes. And

[00:44:07] Nathan Barry: now everyone can have it because take your cash flow and dump it into, into Vanguard, but you've got

[00:44:13] Isaac French: it.

[00:44:13] Nathan Barry: And these

[00:44:13] Isaac French: are not at all mutually exclusive because you need the real estate to create the story to build the audience.

[00:44:18] Isaac French: Yes. And it's actually interesting because like the Live Oak story demonstrates there's actually Crossover so the real estate which we already acknowledge is a lot more. It's the business. It's the brand A lot of the value you're building there is actually some component of the audience So you actually have two audience buckets.

[00:44:34] Isaac French: You've got you know, potentially millions of dollars Potentially 20 to 50 percent of this because you're already audience. You're a creator your audience oriented You're building a brand especially just given the whole story here of direct bookings experiential hospitality and so I What I'm finding so much energy in, in terms of telling stories and building, creating content.

[00:44:54] Isaac French: I'm actually, you know, I'm getting to do it both places, but I have a hard asset at the end of the day here. I have a personal brand here that I could do whatever I wanted because I'm, I may just, you know, in two years from now, decide to do something entirely different. And, you know, I don't know. You know, maybe, if you were to optimize as a creator, like, what should you do?

[00:45:14] Isaac French: Maybe that's not the smartest thing, but again, I'm not going to be making it off of that criteria, that decision. I'm going to do whatever, you know, Feels like the right decision and I think the people that I've built up because I'm doing it in a personal way and people trust people They're going to follow me whatever that is Yeah, and I can go and create the next thing and that really is like a huge asset.

[00:45:33] Nathan Barry: Yeah, so it's incredible Okay, so we're really excited about the next property and especially doing something small. Yes Emphasis story and enterprising. Yeah, or focusing on the audience. Let's talk about scaling content. Yes, particularly on YouTube Yes, this can be done at so many different levels You could launch a YouTube channel.

[00:45:51] Nathan Barry: You could do it all yourself. You could scale it up to where you have a team of eight, 10 people. I think Cody Sanchez has 20 full time people, right? Like there's all kinds of levels to this. What excites you about going all in on content, particularly

[00:46:09] Isaac French: YouTube? Mastering. It's the pursuit of like storytelling, but in this medium that I love so much, which is like YouTube videos, you know, 20 to 30 minute.

[00:46:17] Isaac French: Basically, I believe the future of film is YouTube. And it makes so much sense to, when I care so much about design and brand and taste and nature and all these things, video, and especially Y format, slightly longer form, is the ideal format to tell those stories. So like, I want to learn how to tell those stories.

[00:46:40] Isaac French: one tiny caveat, caveat is that I also enjoy like podcasts as a format. And so I'm considering, do I. when I'm already trying to balance all these other things take on a podcast, but perhaps there's a way where I actually could do a podcast as part of, or maybe to start the YouTube. That's a whole nother discussion.

[00:46:57] Isaac French: Like, do you do a separate channel? I've talked to different creators who see that differently. Okay.

[00:47:01] Nathan Barry: So I'm thinking about if you went online on scaling content, how would you know you were successful a year, two years, five years? So like, how are we measuring success and like, or on what timeline? And let's get into how.

[00:47:11] Isaac French: So really it comes down ultimately to my newsletter. When I'm looking at the funnel Okay. I know like I'm acquiring followers on Twitter by writing these threads. It's awesome. But ultimately, like I think I mentioned earlier, it all, I care about getting someone on my list where there will be zero dilution because I've experienced growing from 10, 000 followers with Live Oak Lake to 150, dilution you see.

[00:47:37] Isaac French: So I know YouTube is a much more valuable channel. But I still don't trust it. I don't own it. And I love writing. So we haven't even talked about that. But I really love writing because it helps me clarify my thinking, which leads to more ideas, which leads to better storytelling. So at the end of the day, I want a massive newsletter, perhaps I'll write a book.

[00:47:59] Isaac French: I want to, I'll create more like legacy assets and the YouTube will, you know, or slash podcast could potentially like rival the newsletter as far as value. But to me, like I'm talking to the email guy, that is like my most valuable channel and then I can do whatever I want with that. You know? That's cool.

[00:48:15] Isaac French: I want to be able to travel places and then meet more people and of course I can use all my social channels for that, but there's something very special about me writing to that audience every week.

[00:48:23] Nathan Barry: Something, something that you said that stood out to me is about mastering storytelling. I think that when we go into what, what are you optimizing for?

[00:48:31] Nathan Barry: Something that's really important is to think about what skill do you want to learn most? So we write this down. People like you and I obsess over what new skill that we're acquiring and that's how we become generalists. that are pretty damn good at a lot of those things. yeah. You know, a lot of people are like, Ah, I'm a generalist.

[00:48:49] Nathan Barry: and you're like, What are you actually good at in that? And, but instead it's like, No, when I picked up computer programming, when I came, like all these things, I went pretty deep in

[00:48:57] Nathan Barry: it.

[00:48:57] Nathan Barry: So that set out to me of like, a lens to decide the next project being the skill that I'm trying to acquire. And you said master, like, I felt something there when you said that.

[00:49:09] Nathan Barry: I, I,

[00:49:09] Isaac French: I think that you're exactly right. Like when it comes down to it, I want to create films that move people.

[00:49:13] Nathan Barry: Right.

[00:49:14] Isaac French: Yeah.

[00:49:14] Nathan Barry: And so I do think that the YouTube channel in itself is really, really valuable. I look at people like Mark Manson who built a big email list, very successful business. And then he said, you know what, I'm going to master YouTube.

[00:49:29] Nathan Barry: You know, I think he's two, 3 million huge followers on YouTube now. It's done really well, and he, like, he's all in on that. So there's a,

[00:49:38] Isaac French: I think Quick question. Yeah. Is there a flywheel between his newsletter and his YouTube? Does, does the content Is there overlap? Does it spawn?

[00:49:46] Nathan Barry: There's some overlap because his newsletter is about, like transformations.

[00:49:49] Nathan Barry: huh. And so he has this like storytelling flywheel of what transformations were created. it's not as direct as something like this flywheel we were talking about earlier. Yeah. But if you want to master storytelling, then I think doing it in a new medium will be really helpful because it's going to put you in Different position and then you'll be like you're written versus video storytelling skills will play off of each other really So lessons and so I love that angle if you were to double revenue Like double your cash flow.

[00:50:21] Nathan Barry: Does that do much for you? Is that really exciting from here? Just existing from the whole business. Oh, let's say you're You're pulling in 800, 000 years? No,

[00:50:31] Isaac French: that does not move a needle, really, for me. Okay.

[00:50:33] Nathan Barry: And is that because of If it came

[00:50:34] Isaac French: at the expense of any of these things

[00:50:37] Nathan Barry: Then it's And is that because you were able to clear a few million from Live Oak Lake and, and you just don't spend that much money to begin with?

[00:50:44] Nathan Barry: I have a, you know, I,

[00:50:45] Isaac French: I, we live within our means. Right. And. You live in a community where you do everything, like, it's crafts, you know. I, I want to be able to travel, but like, not, you know, I don't necessarily need to fly. Okay. I say that I've never flown private. Maybe that would change if I

[00:51:01] Nathan Barry: tasted that.

[00:51:03] Nathan Barry: Well, it'd be one thing like your family's into aviation, right? If you were like, Oh, here's the, I want to get my pilot's license and buy a million dollar plane. True. But like, I haven't heard

[00:51:12] Isaac French: that from you. What I'm like, okay. Since day one, like I've always felt like I didn't have quite enough when I was a little kid, like always trying to relate to that.

[00:51:19] Isaac French: And it's good. Like it helps you acquire skills. Okay. But now, like, having tasted just a little bit of, like, financial success with these things, money is, I mean, this is so obvious, but money is a means to an end. And I have found so much value in, like, communicating, connecting with an audience, telling stories, living the life that I'm privileged to live, and I just don't want to mess that up.

[00:51:43] Isaac French: And so, I mean, if I could get a little, a few extra hundred thousand dollars a year, fantastic. Fantastic. But

[00:51:50] Nathan Barry: like, but that's not the main driver, not the goal. So it seems like, I'm just going to say success, I'm sure I put audience here because that's, that's what we're trying to scale because like that's the form of equity value that's really going to serve you.

[00:52:07] Nathan Barry: It's going to tie into everything you're doing right now. So I'm going to suggest something and you tell me how, how it resonates. If I were in your position, I would do. When it comes to the content agency, I would put it on ice, but I would put it out there. Hey, I'm interested in this. And I would have a portion of Notion or wherever you keep track of your notes that every time an idea comes up for that, you would stick it there.

[00:52:32] Isaac French: And

[00:52:33] Nathan Barry: you would say, Hey, I'm going to do 10 calls. And I would log that. But it's just this idea bank that we're logging for something a few years down the road. It's a category that we're learning. So this is like, Hey, we're going to spend 20 hours of the next six months on this. That's it. Software is off the table, at least for the next three to five years.

[00:52:52] Nathan Barry: Then the next property, you go all in on a small three unit, you know, the storytelling is perfect, and you're really optimizing for the story and the equity value through the audience. And then when it comes to scaling content, it's not about building the biggest team or scaling the fastest. it's about mastering storytelling.

[00:53:20] Nathan Barry: And so when you're out there looking, you're not like, okay, who's a cheap videographer that I could hire that I could keep with me all the time. It's who's someone that's going to push me to be better at storytelling. Who's someone that I admire. Maybe I'm going to take some more cashflow that I have and I'm going to put it into getting the right person who I can learn from about visual storytelling.

[00:53:41] Nathan Barry: And then you're not going to get to a huge amount of overhead. You know, like, oh, five employees, eight employees because a small team really matters. And then in that, we're going to keep driving back to growing the audience and growing the newsletter because then that's just a bigger platform to launch whatever else you want.

[00:53:59] Nathan Barry: And then I would set aside a certain amount of money from the masterclass, everything else that you're doing. We're like, look, I'm totally willing to spend, to invest a hundred, 200, 000 a year into Learning story mastering storytelling and growing the YouTube audience and it doesn't have to pay for itself Like I have that stream of income and the audience growth and the storytelling is what we're after

[00:54:23] Isaac French: huge asset there And then you know, all this is such a valuable thought experiment But at any time I may change my mind because I oh, yeah I'm not like permanently fixed on any of this stuff These are, you know, fairly, especially some of these are fairly fixated, fixed for me, but I may say, Okay, you know, in a year from now, I've, I've spent a lot of energy and time on this.

[00:54:46] Isaac French: I've kind of exhausted my people connecting, you know, like, this is awesome. But like, I want to like go all out with another project, right? And I'm like, okay, I need to raise 10 million to do that. All I've done is put myself in a much better position with more leverage because I have a bigger, more valuable audience.

[00:55:05] Isaac French: And I've proven already that I can execute. Hopefully Yeah. On that scale. Or bigger than that, even. So, like, I'm still leaving all these other options open. Oh, yeah. If I really want to go all out with this or this. But to be honest, like, this, scaling this, having five, twenty five unit properties or five twenty unit properties, but probably the former over the latter.

[00:55:26] Isaac French: is much more appealing to me than this. Than going after software. And I think there'd probably be like a similar, at some point, like a similar parity there as far as enterprise value created and cash flow generated.

[00:55:36] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And then I also think your chance of success is really high in this path that we just outlined.

[00:55:42] Nathan Barry: Yeah, exactly.

[00:55:43] Isaac French: Yeah. There's very little downside here. I'm not really missing out on opportunities. At any point I can leverage this audience, which I'm being so careful with, to raise money. I already know that. Like they're, you know, wanting to give me money for several of these projects, but I'm like, okay, I'm not doing anything.

[00:55:59] Isaac French: I'm not forcing anything. I'm not doing any project that I don't absolutely feel a hundred percent fired up about.

[00:56:04] Nathan Barry: Yeah,

[00:56:04] Isaac French: exactly.

[00:56:05] Nathan Barry: Well, and then you think about the skills that you'll have coming out of this, like written storytelling has gotten you an insane amount. If you think back to like when COVID started, right in 2020, like your life is night and day different.

[00:56:20] Nathan Barry: In like the business side of things, in many other of what you're optimizing for, it's probably not that different because like, you've had this like integrity and vision through everything, but like, I'm just imagining like what storytelling got you and, you know, got you 40 million impressions on 12 threads and, and all of this.

[00:56:37] Nathan Barry: And so now if you go, if you like master visual storytelling, I would expect a fairly similar step function in the opportunities that come to you. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix is like, Hey, We want you to do a TV show, you know, or something like that. And you'll decide it. Okay. What am I optimizing for?

[00:56:53] Nathan Barry: You'll map it out and go, no, thanks. Or actually the next skill that I want to master is down that path.

[00:57:01] Isaac French: This is so helpful. So final, final question.

[00:57:04] Nathan Barry: Yeah.

[00:57:04] Isaac French: So like we kind of landed on, I want an audience, which like a lot of people are like, surprise. Okay. We see the value in that. You and I really like, I think understand that.

[00:57:15] Isaac French: But. I actually just like randomly with my small audience, but like I'm a very, very small fish in a big pond. In some ways I'm a big fish in a small pond in like terms of experience, hospitality, but in a world of like audience building and personal risk because it's unique enough. And I think, you know, hopefully I have something valuable to share.

[00:57:32] Isaac French: Like I've been able to connect with some pretty, pretty big people. This YouTuber the other day who has like, 10 million subscribers just reached out to me randomly and was wanting to, wanted to chat. And I don't follow this guy. He's actually like younger than me, but he's like built this massive channel.

[00:57:48] Isaac French: And he just told me, we're just deeming on Instagram. Like, man, this is not at all what it's cracked up to be. I have no privacy. People are, you know, constantly here. And so like, whatever you do. Basically, like be careful because you kind of like take you take a you can't come back You can't come back And so i've heard this phrase before like I want to be famous enough where I can talk to anyone I want But people don't really know me.

[00:58:13] Isaac French: I mean enough people recognize me, but I am not Any thoughts on that?

[00:58:17] Nathan Barry: Yeah, I think it's a fascinating conversation I think i've told the story before on the podcast, but hosting craft and commerce has been really interesting, right? You've Bring in hundreds of creators and you get to see different levels of celebrity and how people interact with them.

[00:58:32] Nathan Barry: So when Casey Neistat came to Keynote to Craft and Commerce, he was getting people like trying to talk to him in the Boise airport, like as he's trying to get in the car as like Haley and her team is picking him up. Right. And he's like, Hey, thanks. I got to go. As people are like, Casey, you know? And so that's one experience.

[00:58:50] Nathan Barry: Right. And he was a, he gave his talk. He was great with all the attendees, but anytime he went somewhere, he was mobbed. Now, the other side of it, Mark Manson, when he came and spoke, he attended the entire conference. He was at like almost every session, taking notes, enjoying the content, all of that. He comes on stage, closing session, and someone sitting in front of me goes, that's Mark Manson?

[00:59:14] Nathan Barry: Like I had, I talked to him earlier, like, because he'd written a book that had sold 10 million copies. But how many people like open that back cover and be like, okay, Mark Manson, when I, let me study this face, you know, like, so there's something in the, in the medium of storytelling. A lot of these 10 million subscribers, you're having to go very, very broad.

[00:59:34] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And you might get recognized. You asked me, you know, how often do I get recognized in Boise? Usually I can walk through the Boise airport and recognize it like at least one person or something, but that's like in my hometown. though I did get recognized at Pickleball the other day, which is random, but, it doesn't happen a lot.

[00:59:50] Nathan Barry: And that's pretty cool. Yeah. It's, it's fun in that environment, but not when you're, you know, being approached all the time. If you're out with your family, I don't worry. that this path is going to take you down that to such an extreme extent. And I think that you could pull back at any time. Yeah. It's niche enough just in and of itself.

[01:00:08] Nathan Barry: Correct. And it's here you're going to be recognized by the kind of people that you'd want to talk to, right? Because they're like, I love you. I love your stuff. I actually use this to, you know, I've just done one unit, but I took my Airbnb and I dialed up the experience of it. Let me tell you three things that I did.

[01:00:23] Nathan Barry: And you'd be like, I love this. Here's another story. Right. And so for you, there's, there's not really a lot of downside there. And ultimately, when

[01:00:33] Isaac French: you really peel back all of these layers, I think that I want to have some impact on people's lives in a very meaningful way. Like I want people to be changed for the better.

[01:00:44] Isaac French: And this sounds like probably really high and lofty and stupid, but because of something they saw me do as imperfect and flawed of a person as I am, and trust me, I'm extremely, but like, be like, okay, the way you cared and did such and such, or the integrity you showed here, the excellence that you pursued in that or whatever, like I always go back to my grandpa who was a fine home builder and he was like a total anchor and rock in my life and very involved in our lives.

[01:01:14] Isaac French: And he was the most unpretentious, like understated gentleman. And he, he said, I mean, this will just tell you a little bit. He saved up for 20 years living in an RV. To build a house but because he wanted to build it just and he didn't want to take any debt And he wanted to build like this beautiful home, but every detail of that home was like Absolutely marvelous and his farm every square inch of it was spectacular and like my brothers and I grew up Going and helping him and he had a list of probably a waiting list of about 10 years Of the richest people in the entire state wanting him to build their house He never spent a dime on marketing but just basically put his all into it You Cared for each project, each customer like they were his own, you know, family and like they were his own project and And that, you know, that is a, that is a life well lived.

[01:02:03] Isaac French: He, he kind of took a different path here. He did zero audience building, but he had a certain standard and like that just, you know, spoke volumes about him. So I may be taking a different path, but like, that's the standard of integrity, of reputation, of excellence that I want to follow. And in part to my own kids, my own grandkids someday.

[01:02:22] Isaac French: And so. Like, to me, like, that is my guiding light. One of my guiding lights.

[01:02:27] Nathan Barry: Well, so imagine this. If we think about being recognized in public, right? What you put out there is you're going to attract people like that. And so you're going to, like, your audience is going to be people who have big dreams, work really, really hard, and are trying to learn and to tell great stories.

[01:02:45] Nathan Barry: And I would be thrilled to be stopped in public by one of those people. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that's, that's just a really, really great position. I love it. Okay. Let's, sit down and let's just recap for a second. All right. So when we came in here, you were talking about like the amazing platform that you've built.

[01:03:02] Nathan Barry: Well, I was calling it amazing. You were too humble to say that. and where to go next. I'd love just a little contrast. Like what were you thinking? What was top of mind versus how you're feeling right now?

[01:03:13] Isaac French: Yeah, that was like a therapy session that I've never even knew I needed, but I came in feeling quite a bit of like subconscious anxiety because the expectations have felt so high on the heels of Live Oak Lake.

[01:03:27] Isaac French: And I'm glad I've exercised some self restraint and not forcing the next project. And I feel like we really came up with like a, a pathway forward for at least like the next two years. Yep. That. is a beautiful runway that I can go all in on the things that matter to me and sort of check in at any point during that time and make a pivot, but also be in a very good position, hopefully at the end of that time.

[01:03:52] Isaac French: So I'm pretty, pretty excited because I feel like, okay, I can take the next step with confidence. I don't have to worry about a million things at once and just one step at a time, but with a general sense of this is the right way. That's amazing. Okay. If people want to follow what you're doing next, where should they go?

[01:04:10] Isaac French: I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Isaac French underscore, and my newsletter, which I write every Monday is IsaacJFrench. com.

[01:04:19] Nathan Barry: That sounds good. I'm so excited to see the projects that come. And just thank you for taking the time to like share all the numbers behind the scenes of your business, the real life flywheels, all of that.

[01:04:28] Nathan Barry: I appreciate it so much. Thank you so much for your time. That was extremely valuable. If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry show, then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else you think we should have on the show.

[01:04:46] Nathan Barry: Thank you so much for

listening.