Live Oak Lake: $19k to $7M

Isaac shares the story of how he built Live Oak Lake, a micro resort in Texas, at age 24 with limited resources.

"I had this dream to create an immersive, cohesively designed village of tiny homes in Texas. People started laughing at me, saying I was crazy. I started looking for land for about 3 months. One morning, I woke up, opened Zillow, and there's this 5-acre jungle down the road from me with a little cow pond in the middle.

I drove over, and when I walked on the property, I literally got goosebumps. I knew this was the place to realize my dream. I got it under contract with only $19,000 in savings to my name. I wasn't bankable by any standards.

To close on the $133,000 property in 30 days, I had to get creative. My brothers and dad, who have a small general contracting company, agreed to loan me money through their line of credit for 40% equity.

I hit the ground running, spending the first 3 days on the phone with banks and walking the property to plan each cabin's position. Finally, I found a local bank willing to give me a loan if my dad and brothers co-guaranteed it.

We got the project done in nine and a half months, which was wild considering the post-COVID supply chain issues. We opened in January 2022, but two weeks later, we were suspended on Airbnb without warning.

I pivoted to direct bookings, found a travel influencer to promote us, and within 7 days, we had $40,000 in direct bookings and 5,000 Instagram followers. That first year, we had 95% occupancy with these 7 cabins, starting from zero.

Two and a half years after starting construction, we sold the property for $7 million to a small private equity group."