#310 - Isaac French- Founder of Live Oak Lake - Developing World-Class Experiential Hospitality Properties

Isaac French designed and built Live Oak Lake, a breathtaking 7-unit nature-immersive retreat located just outside Waco, Texas. In its first year, the property grossed $1 million, with a net profit of $550,000. Thanks to his cultivation of the brand’s social media following of 150K, over 80% of all bookings are direct. Isaac thrives on continuously expanding his repertoire of skills and sharing candidly from his experiences. On this episode, Chris and Isaac discuss: The process of designing and building Live Oak Lake Experiential hospitality Automated cost savings & touchpoint details Building out a social media engine & course We'd appreciate you filling out our audience survey, so we can continuously work on providing relevant content to our listeners.  https://www.thefortpod.com/survey Links: Isaac on Twitter Isaac's LinkTree to course, newsletter & consulting Live Oak Lake DallasSites101 Topics: (00:02:21) Isaac’s background & career (00:07:24) The love of design (00:09:55) The experiential hospitality model (00:13:32) The process of building Live Oak Lake (00:27:44) What does experiential hospitality mean? (00:32:17) Automated cost savings & touchpoint details that matter (00:41:56) What has changed about the property since you opened? (00:46:11) Can you fake an end-to-end experiential property? (00:48:12) How do you make sure labor is in check in a rural area? (00:53:28) Is there a number of units where you lose out on the magic? (01:00:25) Building a social media engine & course Support our Sponsors Better Pitch: https://bit.ly/42d9L0I Fort Capital: https://bit.ly/FortCapital Follow Fort Capital on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/fort-capital/ Chris on Social Media: Twitter: https://bit.ly/3BYIjcH LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/45gIkFd   Watch The Fort on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3oynxNX Visit our website: https://bit.ly/43SOvys Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0 Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO  The FORT is produced by Johnny Podcasts