How to Pick a Business You ACTUALLY Enjoy (In 64 Mins) | 065

Summary

The Nathan Barry Show, Episode 065
How to Pick a Business You ACTUALLY Enjoy (In 64 Mins)
Date: February 20, 2025
Guest: Isaac French

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Nathan Barry sits down with Isaac French, a creator and entrepreneur who has rapidly built over $5 million in enterprise value within two years, primarily through his innovative approach to experiential hospitality and creator business flywheels. The discussion centers on how to choose your next business move when faced with multiple enticing options, balancing personal fulfillment, financial ambition, and lifestyle design. The session doubles as live coaching, diving into strategy, audience-building, digital products, content flywheels, and optimizing for quality of life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Isaac's Journey & Current Business Structure ([01:16]–[10:09])

• Origin Story & Success Stats:

  • Found property in Waco, TX, designed & built Live Oak Lake: seven modern cabins, $2.3M invested.
  • Achieved 95% occupancy, 80% direct bookings, built 140k Instagram followers in 15 months.
  • Sold for $7M in less than two years, then began sharing the journey online.
  • Grew audience on Twitter (now X), transitioned to a newsletter and launched a subscription-based masterclass & membership for hospitality operators.

• Digital Product Funnel:

  • Free 7-day email course leading to paid masterclass.
  • Automated FOMO sales sequence with early-bird discounts.
  • Recently added calls with a sales team to close higher-priced deals.
  • Community membership at $250/month or $2,000/year.

• Key Numbers:

  • Masterclass revenue: $600,000 ([06:58])
  • Community recurring revenue: $200,000 ARR ([07:26])
  • Combined digital revenue: ~$800,000
  • Facebook lead acquisition: ~$3/lead ([05:05])

• Flywheel Effect:

  • Automated onboarding, community feeds course, Isaac tells community members' stories as X threads, which drive more leads and create a virtuous loop.

  “The members in my community, the recurring revenue community, which are super high value - I get to coach them, learn from them... pick the best stories, share those as threads which generate a ton because I'm the expert now” – Isaac French ([09:03])

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Mapping Future Paths: Four Business Options ([10:09]–[19:18])

Nathan and Isaac brainstorm and dissect four main opportunities:

1. Content Agency:

   • Replicating the social/content results Isaac achieved for Live Oak Lake for other property owners, potentially with a 50/50 split with agency partners.
   • Direct application of flywheels: teach owners, consult, then offer a done-for-you service as they realize the workload.

2. SaaS Product:

   • Creating a “Shopify for experiential hospitality” (direct booking engine software).
   • High long-term enterprise value route, but requires focus, domain mastery, and willingness to play the long game (5–10 years).

   “If you came to me and said, hey, the thing that I am optimizing for most is enterprise value...it's for me it would be the next property or it'd be software.” — Nathan Barry ([23:46])

3. New Property Development:

   • Building another Live Oak Lake (but perhaps smaller, in the 1–3 unit range for manageability and story appeal).
   • Access to capital is strong, but Isaac prioritizes intentional scaling and maintaining quality.

4. Scaling Content:

   • Going all-in on YouTube, potentially starting a podcast, and focusing on storytelling to expand the audience and amplify personal brand equity.

   “That’s kind of my dream, is to grow a really nice YouTube audience...” – Isaac French ([19:18])

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Decision-Making Criteria & Optimizing for Quality of Life ([19:50]–[26:21])

• What To Optimize For?

  • Not just money: “I want both [cashflow and equity]. I really want, like, I want 50/50. I want a nice lifestyle… and I want a nice nest egg that I can pass on.” — Isaac French ([22:01])
  • Core values: quality of life, small team, engaging work, travel, faith, family.
  • Avoiding overexpansion and burnout; preferring a hands-on, high-integrity approach.

• Two Buckets: Cashflow vs. Enterprise Value

  • Nathan emphasizes distinguishing between short-term profits and long-term value.

    “One mistake that I see a lot of creators make is they don’t think about the difference. They don’t think of those two buckets.” — Nathan Barry ([21:01])

• Small Team Preference:

  • Isaac resists the idea of building a large staff, preferring either solo or a tiny, high-performance team.

  “Do not want a big team...the thought of managing a team or dealing with HR...I'm allergic to that.” – Isaac French ([30:10])

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Analyzing Each Option in Depth ([26:21]–[43:16])

• SaaS Off the Table (For Now):

  • Software only makes sense if you go “all-in” and have a world-class operator as a partner; not a half-hearted or side project.

  • Nathan’s advice: Be realistic about the learning curve and commitment.

    “Software is going to have this very, very slow ramp up...but you should go in with it being that difficult, long game.” — Nathan Barry ([31:39])

• Agency Option:

  • Valid, but must find the ideal partner/operator; explore the space, take calls, don’t commit hastily.

  • Passive strategy: collect ideas, interview prospects, prepare, but don’t rush.

    “You can say, hey, over the next year I'm going to meet 10 to 20 people who might be this operator and...I'll start to know what it takes to build a world class agency.” – Nathan Barry ([35:34])

• Next Property:

  • Doing a small, high-quality, story-driven project (1–3 units) maximizes audience and community impact while controlling risk.

  • Encourages inspiring newcomers and creating approachable, replicable models.

    “Three units is like micro resort...some exponential difference where you create, like, a communal setting...a lot more approachable in terms of finances and just overall work than seven.” — Isaac French ([40:26])

• Content Scaling:

  • Primary goal: Mastering storytelling via YouTube and possibly podcasting.

  • Audience as the real form of “equity.”

  • Success means greater impact, invitations, cashflow potential, and audience leverage.

    “I want to create films that move people.” — Isaac French ([49:09])

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Isaac's Personal Philosophy and Guardrails ([51:18]–[62:06])

• Money as a Means, Not the End:

  • Financial security is desirable, but the main focus is impact, joy, and enrichment.

    "I've found so much value in...connecting with an audience, telling stories, living a life that I'm privileged to live. And I just don't want to mess that up." — Isaac French ([51:19])

• Personal Brand as Long-Term Asset:

  • Audience value can be “locked” but has compounding utility: launches, investments, influence.

    “The most valuable thing you have is your reputation...your ability to raise millions of capital if you want it...to sell a digital product, to create any of these things in the future.” — Isaac French ([41:37])

• Being Recognizable, But Not Celebrity:

  • Sweet spot: Respected and recognized by the community that matters, but not mainstream “celebrity”.

  • Draws inspiration from his grandfather—master craftsman, private integrity.

    “I want to be famous enough where I can talk to anyone I want, but people don't really know me.” — Isaac French ([58:14])

    “He never spent a dime on marketing, but just basically put his all into it. Cared for each project, each customer like they were his own family...” — Isaac French ([61:12])

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Actionable Plan & Roadmap ([53:59]–[64:06])

What Nathan Recommends:

• Agency: Put on passive mode; start collecting data, have exploratory conversations, but don't commit yet.

• SaaS: Off the table for 3–5 years; table until there’s time, capital, and ideal cofounder.

• Next Property: Go all-in on a small (1–3 unit) project, with a focus on storytelling; quality > scale.

• Scaling Content: Invest significant time & money into mastering visual storytelling for YouTube (and possibly podcasting), focusing on skill development over audience size or immediate ROI.

• Newsletter: Continue building the email list as a central asset.

• Maintain optionality and low overhead: All choices maintain flexibility for larger moves down the line.

  “If I were in your position...the next property, you go all in on a small three unit. The storytelling is perfect, and you're really optimizing for the story and the equity value through the audience...And then I would set aside a certain amount of money from the masterclass...and invest 100, $200,000 a year into...mastering storytelling and growing the YouTube audience.” — Nathan Barry ([53:59])

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On making business choices:

  “The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” — Nathan Barry quoting Warren Buffett ([00:32], [10:54])

• On the value of community:

  “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.” — Isaac French ([20:16])

• On long-term planning and personal happiness:

  "I love connecting with people. That's why I love this community so much. Like minded people that care about design. And I love traveling and seeing new places, meeting new people..." — Isaac French ([19:50])

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Key Timestamps

• [01:16] Isaac’s journey from real estate to digital business
• [03:21] Masterclass sales funnel & automation
• [06:58] Digital product revenue numbers
• [09:03–10:09] Community-content flywheel effect
• [11:21] Exploring business options: Content agency, SaaS, more properties, content scaling
• [19:50] Isaac’s core decision criteria: optimizing for quality of life, community, and fulfillment
• [23:46] Nathan breaks down value: cashflow vs. equity
• [31:39] SaaS as a path—how hard is it really?
• [36:05] Agency partnerships and choosing the right operator
• [41:14–41:37] Micro-resort idea: impact and approachability over sheer scale
• [49:09] Mastering storytelling as self-realization and business multiplier
• [58:14] Finding the right level of visibility and fame
• [61:12] Isaac’s grandfather: legacy and values

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Final Takeaways

• Choose business opportunities that align with your values, desired lifestyle, and skills you’re eager to master—not just with financial upside.
• Maximize leverage with flywheels: community, content, and personal brand feed each other for compounding results.
• Be intentional with scaling: Small teams can create outsized results when backed by the right frameworks and clear decision filters.
• Prioritize learning, storytelling, and community-building, as these build lasting enterprise value and preserve optionality.
• Actively say “no” to maintain focus, bandwidth, and quality in both work and life.

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Where to Find Isaac French

• Instagram & Twitter: @isaacfrench_
• Newsletter: isaacjfrench.com

Transcript

[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% fired up about.

[Nathan Berry]

What are we optimizing for?

[Isaac French]

I think it's ultimately like a quality of life.

[Nathan Berry]

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. You have four great options. The content agency, launching software, building the next property, and then really scaling content.

[Isaac French]

I've had so many offers for capital investments from other people, it's a little overwhelming.

[Nathan Berry]

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.

[Isaac French]

Let me ask you a question. Everybody says SaaS is like the best business model in the history of the world. Is it a pipe dream to think this kind of needs to be front and center?

[Nathan Berry]

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 $100 million. One mistake that I see a lot of creators make is they don't.

[Isaac French]

I'm pretty excited because I feel like, okay, I can take the next step with confidence. This is the right way.

[Nathan Berry]

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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Give people the quick version of what you did and then how you leverage the online business.

[Isaac French]

Yeah. So found a piece of property in Waco, Texas, where I live, designed and built seven modern cabins, spent $2.3 million, launched 10 months later. We built 140,000 Instagram followers in about 15 months, which drove 95% overall occupancy, 80% 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 7 million. 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 created this, you know, all in one, eight and a half hours of, of video content. This masterclass for experiential hospitality. And so now I have a subscription based membership for like the best operators.

[Nathan Berry]

What's the recurring revenue on that?

[Isaac French]

Right now we're at about, we're about 200,000 recurring revenue. So Darrell Vesterfeld has sort of been my.

[Nathan Berry]

Oh yeah.

[Isaac French]

Coach. I know, he was just on the show. So what we developed is a seven email course. 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. We built this all out in kit, automated it, so it's completely hands off for me.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, I should write this down. This is, this is good. On the masterclass you are, you said the funnel is going from the seven day course and then we're going.

[Isaac French]

If they click a link, they get automatically enrolled in a seven day FOMO sales sequence. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

And that goes into the pitch.

[Isaac French]

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 seven day pitch, they can save fifteen hundred dollars. 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 just a 24 hour payment plan.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

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. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

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. 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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

What, what are you able to acquire leads for on Facebook right now?

[Isaac French]

Around $3. Call it. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

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. Right. And then if they're really interested, you'll get them under.

[Isaac French]

Okay, got to layer on one more piece here that Darrell's now telling me we have to do.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah.

[Isaac French]

So regular promotions. So he's built up like, as you know, some massive course businesses. 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. 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. But once they're in here and they go through that seven day course, then we like tell them, hey, we got a webinar that's going to solve X, Y and Z. 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 60 days, this funnel right here and we're converting about 0.3% of these leads, which is paying easily. Paying for sale. Yes, to a sale.

[Nathan Berry]

So let's put a pin in this side of the business for now. Yeah, so this is the digital products, that side of things. What? 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?

[Isaac French]

600,000.

[Nathan Berry]

Let me just say I love this

[Isaac French]

business

[Nathan Berry]

because it's such high margin. There's so much. I love it.

[Isaac French]

It's a great niche too. Like nobody else is doing this.

[Nathan Berry]

Yep. On the community. Do you want to like.

[Isaac French]

Yeah. So real quickly, basically it's 250amonth, 2,000 a year.

[Nathan Berry]

So what's the, what's the total either? Yeah, let's go total revenue on the community.

[Isaac French]

So annual we're like 200,000. ARR.

[Nathan Berry]

So, okay, so we've built a digital business Yeah, I say we had 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 go do another project like Live Oak Lake, and, uh, let's get into that. So over here we'll just say let's get some numbers for Live Oak. Yeah. Okay, so this was 2.1 million in,

[Isaac French]

2.3 million in, 2.37 million out.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, look, 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? So this other aspect is, 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 from.

[Isaac French]

So just call it the last four months because I took a big break before that and I was just figuring out my way before that. The last four months 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 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

[Nathan Berry]

and it positions you as the guy.

[Isaac French]

I'm the magnet for the best stories in this space and I just tell those stories.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

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. 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, right?

[Nathan Berry]

And then you go from there to

[Isaac French]

the seven day course and they just cycle virtuously.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, so let's actually draw that flywheel. We're basically going from a thread that you're telling. Uh, so that, 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 do an email capture of some kind, right?

[Isaac French]

And then from the email we get a.

[Nathan Berry]

We're eventually going to Sales.

[Isaac French]

Yep. Whether that's community or masterclass. So then we get a story which goes into a beautiful thread and then

[Nathan Berry]

which comes back into the thread.

[Isaac French]

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?

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

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. So do I do the agency? Do I.

[Nathan Berry]

There's so many opportunities.

[Isaac French]

It's a good problem to have.

[Nathan Berry]

Like, the crazy thing here is that you've built a phenomenal business in itself.

[Isaac French]

Right.

[Nathan Berry]

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. You could have held onto it. But that's an amazing offer. And you know that. That turn on and return on investment

[Isaac French]

and the story of completing the whole thing.

[Nathan Berry]

Right? Yeah. All of that is. Is phenomenal. But it's like you now have the problem of too much opportunity.

[Isaac French]

Yes.

[Nathan Berry]

And there's this quote that I recently love from Warren Buffett 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 one and put it up. So that's. Now let's talk about next.

[Isaac French]

This is so cool. I've never actually thought about this like this, but this is awesome.

[Nathan Berry]

All right.

[Isaac French]

I love flywheels, and I like how you applied it here.

[Nathan Berry]

It's such a great thing. Once you understand flywheels, you see them everywhere.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, so what are the options that we're considering? Talk through. Like a content agency.

[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. The problem with that is that I am so picky that I would want to have my hand in what they're doing.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

And so they see me as valuable because I have an audience in the space, but I'm extremely protective about the value of that.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, so the content agency, this is basically taking what you did for Live Oak Lake to build an Instagram account, over a hundred thousand ton of work, drive all of this stuff and say, hey, we will do it for a fee for this property.

[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'd 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. And he flies out to the 10 live Oak Lakes, shoots for two days. 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. Like over time you get virality and then the virality leads to followers and the followers leads to bookings. Okay, so it's a win, win 3,000. So that's, it's like 30 to $40,000 a year per client.

[Nathan Berry]

Right. So 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 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 at doing this. So let me hire that out, right? And so you have this product ladder that goes up.

[Isaac French]

What we're teaching them like a key framework in this whole masterclass and I think this can be applied broadly in life. This is like the way I try to approach learning things. 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. 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 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. 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. Yeah. But we're doing the heavy lifting for them. But you can't just assume that like, okay, I'm going to sub it out to so and so I don't know anything about it. And a lot of people want that, like a quick fix. Yes.

[Nathan Berry]

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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah, exactly.

[Nathan Berry]

So option number one is the agency. What's option number two that you could pursue right now?

[Isaac French]

A SaaS product. Okay, so what I would choose, there's a lot of opportunities here, but I would say a beautiful direct booking engines, AKA a Shopify for experiential hospitality. Okay.

[Nathan Berry]

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 all this. What's the third option? What are you considering?

[Isaac French]

I mean, alongside all this could be another Live Oak lake.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

Or 20 other live oak Lakes. So I've had so many offers to, you know, for capital investments from other people, 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, great.

[Nathan Berry]

So we're going to the next property.

[Isaac French]

The next property, which could be any number of sizes or scopes. Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

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 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 is probably worth at least 500,000 a year.

[Isaac French]

Like 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. Now, even if I was, here's the stalemate. I could take that money and I could be a developer.

[Nathan Berry]

Yep.

[Isaac French]

But for one, I'd be missing out on some of the intimacy of, like, the content creation storytelling of like. Right. And then for two is like, again, as a perfectionist and someone who cares so much about the product, I could hardly.

[Nathan Berry]

The great thing 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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah. And I gave 45% equity to get. To get it over the line.

[Nathan Berry]

And so you could do that. And, like, maybe you risk far less money and 10% equity in this next one. Is there another, like, a fourth option of double down, like, purely on content creation?

[Isaac French]

Yeah, yeah, I guess there would be. Okay, 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. 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. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

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. They, like, have a whole team and all this. You could scale the content side significantly.

[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 because, 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. Everybody has this dream of like, creating a workspace in the woods.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[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 be in.

[Nathan Berry]

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 really scaling content. And these aren't mutually exclusive.

[Isaac French]

Yeah, I was going to say I can have them all.

[Nathan Berry]

You can have them all. If you go back to the Warren Buffett quote, how well will you do it?

[Isaac French]

And how big of a team?

[Nathan Berry]

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? What are we optimizing for?

[Isaac French]

It's such a great question. I think it's ultimately like a quality of life and happiness and fulfillment in 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. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, so quality of life people. You said travel, travels.

[Isaac French]

And then of course, 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. Without even, like having to run out and do any of this stuff. So.

[Nathan Berry]

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,

[Isaac French]

like, kind of lying. Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Like, I really, really like making money.

[Isaac French]

Me too.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah. 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. 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. They don't think of those two buckets. And so I guess as I write this out, you have to feed your

[Isaac French]

family and keep the lights on while you're building an insane amount of enterprise value, whether that's another property or a SaaS product.

[Nathan Berry]

So we had the. I don't know if you imagine like these two buckets.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Are you more interested in creating cash flow right now or creating equity value?

[Isaac French]

Man, that's. I want both. I really want, like, I want 50. 50.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

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 with.

[Nathan Berry]

So that's a good. That's a helpful lens. Right. So I think that what we're optimizing for, quality of life, people, travel. There's a version of this where you could say this always fun. But I'm gonna like go do a giant hotel deal and like leave the Internet. And honestly, I have enough connections, I don't need more. Right. 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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Or like non stop travel.

[Isaac French]

Nope.

[Nathan Berry]

You did the stressful 88 hours a week when you.

[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.

[Nathan Berry]

Right. And you would use like you would deploy money.

[Isaac French]

Exactly. You know, I would manage every detail.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah, you'd be one level above.

[Isaac French]

Let me ask you a question. So you run a pretty sizable SaaS company. The grass is always greener. But everybody says SaaS is like the best business model in the history of the world.

[Nathan Berry]

I agree with them.

[Isaac French]

You build so much enterprise value once you make the initial investment, there's also quite a bit of cash flow. I mean, there can be. Of course you can reinvest. Is it a pipe dream to think that I could. Because something is telling me that, like, this kind of needs to be front and center or it doesn't need to happen at all. Because 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?

[Nathan Berry]

So if you came to me and said, hey, the thing that I am optimizing for most is enterprise value, like that long term equity.

[Isaac French]

Yes.

[Nathan Berry]

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'd be software.

[Isaac French]

Right. Because if you build, say it's a great. Yeah, yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Like we've already demonstrated. And then if you like hold these properties and compound it and you know,

[Isaac French]

I mean eventually stepped in step up basis, when I hand them down to my kids, there's zero tax. It's a beautiful model.

[Nathan Berry]

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. 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 and it is 100% worth it.

[Isaac French]

Put yourself through the rigor and we'll pay dividends.

[Nathan Berry]

Even if you were like, hey, I'm going to spend 20 hours to learn and go interview 10 entrepreneurs like, hey, what are the most important tax things?

[Isaac French]

You completely agree.

[Nathan Berry]

Like I learned about qsbs and all these other things like way later in my journey. And yeah, just don't. When your account stocking, like just don't gloss over. Like hold on, stop there for a second. What was that term? What does that mean? Like ask those questions. Yeah.

[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 100%.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay. That's the aside on tax creators learn tax. Okay.

[Isaac French]

So if I was going to optimize for enterprise, that's what I would do.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah, that's where I would go. You're exactly right in software that you can't half asset. Like you have to go all in if that's what you're going to do and you can get a great multiple and valuation. 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? 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 where you. There's all kinds of things. If I had a building and I'm like, hey, will you look at these plans? You would immediately be like, ooh, not that. Hold on, what are you thinking here? And you notice like 10 things right away. That's me with software, because I've spent 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, what's great, 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 ten year path.

[Isaac French]

Okay.

[Nathan Berry]

Now it could be a five to ten year path to $100 million. 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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah, that makes 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, 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. Like, I am way too ambitious and I'm a generalist. So I love to do everything at once. And it's worked really well so far, but 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. It's like I have to rethink the entire balance. I'm not going after. If 100 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.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah.

[Isaac French]

And so, like, yeah, I think that has been like the allure. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

And I think you would be in a great position to do it because you'd know as a customer you'd be building the tool that you wanted. Exactly. What I did with Kit, where I'm

[Isaac French]

like, I have an audience too.

[Nathan Berry]

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.

[Isaac French]

Like, so here's the other question 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% across the board, cash flow, equity, everything. All you have to do is promote us. 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 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 these.

[Nathan Berry]

I think it's absolutely possible I would not do both simultaneously. Right. Because 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, 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% of those, 98% of those, if you picked a random family, would end in complete disaster.

[Isaac French]

Right.

[Nathan Berry]

They hate each other, the project wouldn't work. 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 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?

[Isaac French]

Yeah. Or are they the one person, too?

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah. Are they a good person? Are they aligned on values?

[Isaac French]

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. 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

[Nathan Berry]

wanting to stay with a small team.

[Isaac French]

Yes.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay.

[Isaac French]

Do not want a big team. Yeah. And so like the thought of managing a team or dealing with, you know, HR and just constantly dealing with people issues like, okay, I'm allergic to that.

[Nathan Berry]

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. 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 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. I still care about both, but you know, in that trade off, and so that's 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.

[Isaac French]

Well, even with the model of like me being a distribution and having some say in the product, you could do that.

[Nathan Berry]

But you would need someone who is world class, who came to you and said, I would like to be 50, 50 partners on this business.

[Isaac French]

And I was really confident that they were a good operator.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah, exactly. Probably on both of these. Now agencies are hard. They're not as hard as software. If you made the software for Live Oak, like what would Live Oak Lake pay per month?

[Isaac French]

It would probably be like 300amonth.

[Nathan Berry]

300amonth.

[Isaac French]

Okay.

[Nathan Berry]

So you need 10 times as many clients to get to 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. Kit took two years to pass $2,000 a month in rev. Wow. Right. And then that 30 year move from 2,000 to 100,000 that you stuck with that. I mean, that's, I mean I almost didn't. 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. Whereas the agency, because your average revenue per user is so much higher, you know, average revenue per customer, you know, there's a pretty clear path to getting to 5, 10, 20,000amonth. 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. 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. Now I only did that even though I love everything about it. I only did that because it furthers Kit's goals. Because now let me give you an example. We launched, Little John 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. He came in with this 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, I do software.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

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, just waiting. And so when I realized that Sahil was kind of like, hey, if we had made an, like the agency could have done this. And so then I, now I'm able to bring in someone like Little John 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 could tell even better stories about the properties. Yeah, right. And so that's, yeah, that's really good alignment.

[Isaac French]

So these are really completely dependent on the right partner because I'm not, it's, it's non 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 a huge X factor is

[Nathan Berry]

what really matters there. And I think we can say that at least for now. Nice thing is all of this is for now, software is off the table. Does that sound right?

[Isaac French]

Yeah, I agree.

[Nathan Berry]

We're going to eliminate software there. Okay, so now the content Agency is interesting. 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, 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 going to 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. And so then I think you can put a pin in that.

[Isaac French]

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.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah, and you can very passively learn about it, which you're a student, like everything you do, you're like a student of it and diving in. And so that would make a lot of sense.

[Isaac French]

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.

[Nathan Berry]

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 what makes sense there? And then instead of getting a 10% 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. So I want to be getting 3,000 or 25% 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 a portion of yours.

[Isaac French]

And there's maybe even the potential that one of those Folks that are currently paying me is the right person. Is the right person. Yeah. Yep.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah. So a great example would be Marshall Haas and Nick Huber with Shepherd, which is now called Somewhere. It started as an affiliate relationship and then buy. Like, Nick bought in and they went up from there because Nick understood the value of the leads he was driving. Okay, so let's think about the next property as we're pursuing that.

[Isaac French]

I already 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. 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 go 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, of input into all the design, which will 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.

[Nathan Berry]

I love that. Okay, so I wrote down three things that you're talking. I wrote down story, equity, value, and risk. So when we're 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. Okay, man, I never want to do something like that again. Like, it was just, you know, left everything on the table. You lit up about this like you're 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 because 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 1 unit or 10 units. 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 worth it? Like, let's say we're netting a million dollars in enterprise value after these several years instead of 5 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 your. 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, 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 gonna cost $800,000 a piece to build and all that. Well, all of a sudden we've created some risk. A lot of risk.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

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 to three units.

[Isaac French]

Three units is like micro resort. So it's again, 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. But you can also feel like, hey, I could bring my mom and dad and my siblings, have a little mini family reunion. The whole place. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, like, how many other people would light up by that same idea, right?

[Nathan Berry]

Which brings. It comes into this flywheel of the content, the storytelling, all that, 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. And I latched on.

[Isaac French]

You know, there's a lot of problems with that. You oversaturate, your occupancy goes down.

[Nathan Berry]

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. Not because of the enterprise value. Now we've got it. Like, in this case, you're like, oh, it's also accruing a million dollars.

[Isaac French]

Like, am I crazy? The enterprise value, we haven't even assigned a value to the audience that we're going to 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 you have is your reputation. It's your ability to raise millions of capital if you want it. 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, would it be fair to say I'm actually creating some enterprise value? It's locked.

[Nathan Berry]

There's two buckets. Okay, so let's talk about this. So let's say audience is one and then. Or I'm just gonna say real estate.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

But just for the, for the buckets. When we're talking enterprise value.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

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 lend on real estate and business all day long. Right. But you're like, actually, the audience is worth more.

[Isaac French]

We know the future. We believe in the future belongs to creators.

[Nathan Berry]

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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

Which, which bucket of those? A little bit of both.

[Isaac French]

And they help each other.

[Nathan Berry]

A 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 because 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.

[Isaac French]

I would say it's about 7030. Right. Okay. If I had to put all my eggs in baskets, that's.

[Nathan Berry]

That's how you split. So I split it, which is really good because one thing that I love about, you know, someone will notice 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 because 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. And so what I love about what you're doing is you get to have this balance between cash flow and equity.

[Isaac French]

Yes.

[Nathan Berry]

And now everyone can have it, because take your cash flow and dump it into Vanguard. But you've got it.

[Isaac French]

And these are not at all mutually exclusive because you need the real estate to create the story, to build the audience. 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. You've got, you know, potentially millions of dollars, potentially 20 to 50% of this, because you're already audience. You're a creator, you're audience oriented, you're building a brand. Especially just given the whole story here of direct bookings, experiential hospitality. And so what I'm finding so much energy and in terms of telling stories and building and creating content, 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. 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, maybe if you were to optimize as a creator, like, what should you do? 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 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, and I can go and create the next thing. And that really is like a huge asset.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah.

[Isaac French]

So it's incredible.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, so we're really excited about the next property and especially doing something small.

[Isaac French]

Yes.

[Nathan Berry]

Emphasizing story and enterprising or focusing on the audience. Let's talk about scaling content, particularly on YouTube. This can be done at so many different levels. You could launch a YouTube channel, you could do it all yourself. You could scale it up to where you have a team of 8, 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 YouTube mastering.

[Isaac French]

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, 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. 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. Like, do you do a separate channel? I've talked to different creators who see that differently.

[Nathan Berry]

Okay, so I'm thinking about if you went all in on scaling content, how would you know you were successful? A year, two years, five years, like, how are we measuring success and like or on what timeline? And let's get into how.

[Isaac French]

So really it comes down ultimately to my newsletter when I'm looking at the funnel here. 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 150,000 and the kind of dilution you see. 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. 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, 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.

[Nathan Berry]

Something that you said that stood out to me is about mastering storytelling. I think that when we go into what are you optimizing for? Something that's really important is to think about what skill do you want to learn most. So let me 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.

[Isaac French]

You know, a lot of people like,

[Nathan Berry]

oh, I'm a generalist. And you look and you're like, what are you actually good at in that?

[Isaac French]

And.

[Nathan Berry]

But instead it's like, no. When I picked up computer programming, when I came, like, all these things, I went pretty deep in it. So that stood 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.

[Isaac French]

I'm like, I think you're exactly right. Like, when it comes down to it, I want to create films that move people.

[Nathan Berry]

Right? Yeah. 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. You know, I think he's 2, 3 million huge followers on YouTube now, and it's done really well. And he, like, he's all in on that.

[Isaac French]

So there's a question.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah.

[Isaac French]

Is there a flywheel between his newsletter and his YouTube? Does. Does the content. Is there overlap? Does it spawn?

[Nathan Berry]

There's some overlap because his newsletter is about, like, transformations, and so he has this, like, storytelling flywheel on what transformations were created. It's not as direct as something like this flywheel we were talking about earlier. 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 positions, and then you'll be like, you're written versus video. Storytelling skills will play off of each other really well. And so I love that angle. If you were to double revenue, like double your cash flow, does that do much for you?

[Isaac French]

Is that really exciting from here, just

[Nathan Berry]

existing from the whole business? Oh, let's say you're. You're pulling in 800,000.

[Isaac French]

That does not move a needle, really, for me. Okay.

[Nathan Berry]

It is that, because if it came

[Isaac French]

at the expense of any of these things.

[Nathan Berry]

Then it's, it is that because you're able to clear a few million from Live Oak Lake and, and you just don't spend that much money to begin with.

[Isaac French]

I have a, you know, I. We live within our means.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

And you live in a community where

[Nathan Berry]

you do, like, it's crafts, you know,

[Isaac French]

I want to be able to travel, but, like, not, you know, I don't necessarily need to fly. Okay. I've said that I've never flown private. Maybe that would change if I tasted that.

[Nathan Berry]

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.

[Isaac French]

True.

[Nathan Berry]

But like, I haven't heard that from you.

[Isaac French]

What I'm like, okay, since day one, like, I've always felt like I didn't have quite enough. Yeah. When I was a little kid, like,

[Nathan Berry]

always trying to relate to that.

[Isaac French]

And it's good, like, it helps you acquire skills. 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, and I have found so much value in like communicating, connecting with an audience, telling stories, living a life that I'm privileged to live. And I just don't want to mess that up. And so, I mean, if I could get a few extra hundred thousand dollars a year, fantastic. But like, but that's not the main, that's not the goal.

[Nathan Berry]

So it seems like I'm just going to say success, I'm sure audience here.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

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. 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 and 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 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. Then the next property, you go all in on a small three unit. 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. 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, is 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 cash flow that I have, and I'm going to put it into getting the right person who I can learn from about visual storytelling. And then you're not going to get to a huge amount of overhead. You're not 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. 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 100, $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.

[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 fixed for me. But I may say, okay, you know, in a year from now, I've spent a lot of energy and time on this. 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. 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. And I've proven already that I can execute hopefully on that scale or bigger than that even. So, like, I'M still leaving all these other options open.

[Nathan Berry]

Oh, yeah.

[Isaac French]

If I really want to go all out with this or this. But to be honest, like this, scaling this, having 25 unit properties or five 20 unit properties, but probably the former over the latter is much more appealing to me than this. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

Yeah. And then I also think your chance of success is really high in this path that we just outlined.

[Isaac French]

Yeah, exactly. 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 wanting to give me money for several of these projects, but I'm like, okay, I'm not doing anything. I'm not forcing anything. I'm not doing any project that I don't absolutely feel 100% fired up about.

[Nathan Berry]

Yep, exactly. 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. 2020, like, your life is night and day, different in, like, the business side of things, in many other of what you're advertising for. It's probably not that different because you're 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. 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, okay, what am I optimizing for? You'll map it out and go, no, thanks. Or actually, the next skill that I want to master is down that path.

[Isaac French]

This is so helpful. So final, final question. So we kind of landed on I want an audience, which a lot of people want. Surprise. Okay. We see the value in that. You and I really, I think, understand that. 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 audience building and personal brands because it's unique enough. And I think you Know, hopefully I have something valuable to share. 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, and he just told me we're just DMing on Instagram. Like, man, this is not at all what it's cracked up to be. I have no privacy. This people are constantly here. And so, like, whatever you do, basically be careful because you kind of like, take. You take a.

[Nathan Berry]

You can't come back.

[Isaac French]

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. I mean, enough people recognize me, but I am not. Any thoughts on that?

[Nathan Berry]

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 bring in hundreds of creators, and you get to see different levels of celebrity and how people interact with them. So when Casey Neistat became 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 on our team is picking him up, right? And he's like, hey, thanks, I gotta go. His people are like, Casey, you know, and so that's one experience, right? And 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. Like, 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 the space, you know, like, yeah, so there's something in the medium of storytelling. A lot of these YouTubers, right? If you get to 10 million subscribers, you're having to go very, very broad.

[Isaac French]

Yeah.

[Nathan Berry]

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 Didn't get recognized at pickleball the other day, which is random, but it doesn't happen a lot, 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.

[Isaac French]

Yeah. It's niche enough just in and of itself.

[Nathan Berry]

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, like, dialed up the experience of it. Let me tell you three things that I did, and you'd be like, I love this. Here's another story. Another story, right? And so for you, there's. There's not really a lot of downside there.

[Isaac French]

And ultimately, when 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 change for the better. 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. 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, 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. Cared for each project, each customer like they were his own, you know, Family and like, they were his own project. And. And, you know, that is a. That is a life well lived. He. He kind of took a different path here. He did zero audience building.

[Nathan Berry]

Right.

[Isaac French]

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 impart to my own kids, my own grandkids someday. And so, like, to me, like, that is my guiding light. One of my guiding lights.

[Nathan Berry]

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 to tell great stories. And I would be thrilled to be stopped in public by one of those people. Like, that's. That's just a really, really great position.

[Isaac French]

I love it.

[Nathan Berry]

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

[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. 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 pathway forward for at least, like, the next two years. 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. 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.

[Nathan Berry]

That's amazing. Okay. If people want to follow what you're doing next, where should they go?

[Isaac French]

I'm on Instagram and Twitter @isaacfrench underscore. And my newsletter, which I write every Monday, is isaacjfrench.com that sounds good.

[Nathan Berry]

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 that. I appreciate it so much.

[Isaac French]

Thank you so much for your time. That was extremely valuable.

[Nathan Berry]

If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Berry 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. Thank you so much for listening.