Ever Onward Podcast

From Creating Viral Ads to Developing Outpost X: The Vision of Travis Chambers | Ever Onward - Ep. 52

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 52

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Discover the remarkable journey of Travis Chambers, a visionary who has transformed his expertise in viral marketing into groundbreaking real estate ventures. Travis, the founder of Chamber Media, takes us through his creative transition from crafting unforgettable social media ads to boldly entering the world of unique short-term rentals in Southern Utah. Learn how he leveraged insights from Airbnb's OMG category to create Outpost X, a Star Wars-themed escape that promises guests an otherworldly experience. Travis's story is a testament to the art of spotting trends and turning them into high-reward opportunities.

In this episode we also dive into the intricate history of Boise's infamous "Boise Hole," a site riddled with failed development attempts. From its origins as the Overland Hotel to its transformation into the Zions Bank Tower, this location serves as a fascinating case study in urban development challenges and victories. Through humorous anecdotes and historical insights, we explore how each iteration of this project reflected broader themes in city growth and planning. Plus, we share a captivating untold story about the last tenant of the iconic site.

Finally, we delve into the complex world of real estate development, sharing Travis's hard-earned lessons in planning, zoning, and strategic navigation. With engaging narratives from both Travis and other notable figures like Chris Riley, who revitalizes old motels in Reno, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge on managing high-risk projects and the importance of adaptability. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or a seasoned developer, the tales of overcoming early business challenges and the power of persistence will inspire and inform your own journey to success.

Travis Chambers Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/travis_chambers/?hl=en
Outpost X Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/outpost.x/?hl=en

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Speaker 1:

Today on the Ever Onward podcast, we have Travis Chambers, founder of Chambers Media, outpost X, which we'll talk a lot about, and Go Level Up In 2018,. Travis was featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30. He founded Chamber Media in 2014, a company that makes scalable social videos. He is also an entrepreneur serial entrepreneur, and his latest creation is Outpost X that we'll talk a lot about. Fascinating guy. Can't wait to have him on today. Travis Chambers. Travis, I was just telling you I feel like I've been stalking you.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for coming on today. Okay, stalking. I was checking out all the Maddie Rabe sent over all the social media sites. I'm like what doesn't this guy do? I don't know.

Speaker 2:

We're going to have to pull something. We got a lot of stuff going on.

Speaker 1:

Let's see when do we start.

Speaker 2:

Let's see.

Speaker 1:

Like the Star Wars experience or yeah, that's always a good like.

Speaker 2:

Who does that?

Speaker 1:

some crazy person, I guess so, uh, we did a kind of we'll do a formal intro before you come on. But, um, man, you got some great stuff going on and and and talk to me about, because let's start there and then we'll back up into how you got there. But, um, but you're, uh, what do you call your experience? It's outpost x, outpost x in utah, southern utah, and you can basically go stay in this place. It feels like you're on a different planet. Star wars theme, I mean. Tell me how, who, who has this idea and how does this come up?

Speaker 2:

So my last company was a video production company for social media ads. Okay, we made tens of thousands of commercials over seven years.

Speaker 1:

It was like a I looked up, a lot of them are hilarious. Oh, thank you. Very good Was that?

Speaker 2:

all your creativity and your mind and uh, for the most part, yeah, for the most part. That's cool. A lot of nineties comedy. Yeah, because you know people that have money are usually in their forties, fifties, sixties. That's who we sold most of our stuff to, so but, uh, anyways, so that was.

Speaker 1:

Chambers Media yes. And that was the first company you started and you've sold that since right yeah, three years ago.

Speaker 2:

Okay, yeah. So it's always been a dream of mine to build right, but I don't have the normal skills that a builder, a developer, is supposed to have, because I'm a right-brained creative person Okay, you usually don't want a right-brained creative person building developments or doing your performance, no. So it was something I always wanted to do, but I, you know, I focused on this. This ad agency creative model, really focused on my strengths, sold it one day, had the capital, but really the idea was we'd build these six figure film sets for these shoots and I often thought how much of a shame it was to throw these away. And then we traveled a lot as a family as well, and so I thought, okay, I'm exiting this thing, I've done this, climbed this mountain. What mountain do we climb next? And Outpost X is kind of what it all just culminated into.

Speaker 1:

It all just culminated in two why the location? And then talk about like you just jumped some spaces right. There's a lot of people that exit companies what's next? But you built a set for people to go stay in in Utah. I got to hear the backstory.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I actually did this study. So there's a category of Airbnbs called the OMG category and Airbnb, the last four or five years, has been facing some regulatory pushback in certain counties and cities and so they've tried to kind of push into unique stays because that's not really competing with hotels, it's a different type of thing, and so they have this OMG category and they even did this competition where they're giving people $100,000 to go build these OMG unique stays. So what I did is I thought, well, if this multi-billion dollar short-term rental company is putting so much time and effort in Super Bowl commercials into this asset, maybe that's a good place to go. So I pulled in all of the data from all those listings and had a virtual assistant map out about 30 different parameters of these things. It was the same thing I did with Chamber Media, with ads, and that's why it grew.

Speaker 2:

So I did the similar study. So we looked at things like proximity to an airport, square footage, floor-to-ceiling glass, how strange and unique is it, what type of person is staying there, and there were some interesting results. I found that small footprint rural couples getaways was the highest ROI asset in this short-term rental market. And then I also found out that the uniqueness and the strangeness of it was a 10 out of 10 indicator of success as well. Probably because of the virality and because it's a one of a kind thing, you can't compare it so. So Outpost X is just pulling the levers on all of the findings of that study. And, um, I was limited on budget so we bought a hundred. We bought 240 acres for a hundred thousand dollars An hour and a half from Zion.

Speaker 1:

Can you pull this up? It's an hour and a half from Zion To the west. Yes, west of Zion, yes, okay, so before you hit, what exit do you take to get to it?

Speaker 2:

I don't remember the number, but it's the Cedar City exit. Okay, so you take the Cedar City exit, so it's 45 minutes west of Cedar City and an hour north of St George.

Speaker 1:

Okay, great.

Speaker 2:

So you buy this acreage, we buy this acreage, and then we start figuring it out. We got one engineer who doesn't want to build on a dry lake bed Go figure. Then we have a second engineer who doesn't want to build on a dry lake bed go figure. Then we have a second engineer who doesn't want to build on a lake. Then a year goes by, finally you find this guy crazy enough, who builds highways, uh, and uses uh foam uh to build. So the caves are actually floating on foam with this thing called zero net loading. So a foot below soil there's no load because it's garbage soil. I mean it's, you know it's a lake bed.

Speaker 2:

So, anyways, I feel like we took the very most ambitious idea you could possibly do and then did everything twice with a bunch of idiots. You know, first time builder, first time developer, and but you know we're a million dollars over budget. But I figure that's the cost of education, sure, but it was really. I mean, this was 20, this is 21, 2022, so we're in the construction boom and you know, the exit from chamber media was way higher than it normally would have been because valuations were so high, but at the same token, everything was expensive. I mean we couldn't get any builders out there, so we ended up just getting a bunch of handyman guys like Craigslist type guys out there, building everything twice, doing everything the wrong way, and yep, that's where we're at. And now it's. It's sold out, continually sold out at about 430 a night. Did 75000 in revenue last month off of seven units. Still trying to get our costs down out there in the middle of nowhere. Propane costs were off grid and everything. But it has been the adventure of a lifetime.

Speaker 1:

Wow, so you're. I was just going to ask you just like utility wise, you are off grit. You're like propane generators.

Speaker 2:

So we're I think we're about 70% solar, 30% generators 70% solar.

Speaker 1:

So there's your power, there's your, and then septics. You had to put a whole water treatment septic system in Yep.

Speaker 2:

Water tanks, pumps.

Speaker 1:

Well, well, fascinating. And then put a whole water treatment septic system in yep water tanks, pumps well, well, fascinating. And then you've designed it. I mean look at that there, that's incredible. So different, different housing options once you get out there, and then you book it right through airbnb, right yeah, you know, we're actually not.

Speaker 2:

We tried airbnb, but we've had so much virality from influencers it's all been direct bookings, wow. So we don't have to pay the fees and stuff.

Speaker 1:

So can you talk about who the famous people stayed out there, or is that like confidential?

Speaker 2:

You know, I don't think we've had any like celebrity A-lister people out there. We've had a lot of influencers out there. Okay, they're influencer, famous, right. Yeah, one guy in particular, peter Owens, went out there. He's an influencer. He got 19 million views on his video. So, pretty wild fed 30 million views. In the last two months.

Speaker 2:

About 30 influencers have gone out there, um, and I think it's just this new. I think it's a new kind of. There's just a new era maybe of this tourism market. There's this modern traveler and they like discovering unusual places and when you know, we think of these big developments. They're usually built for baby boomers because they have the money. So you have the golf course and you have, so there's. It's just interesting. I think there's this kind of emerging asset class. That's kind of these. It's a unique stays asset class and just a month ago, um, a guy who owns a few of these developments 30, 40 unit developments put on a unique stays summit. So we got to meet all the other builders in this space that are doing this kind of. What are some of those?

Speaker 1:

ideas, just because it's not an industry I even knew existed.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's one called the bolt family tree house there. They're over on the East coast and I think they're over 40, 50 units. Now there's one called um. Is it the Sunflower and Zion Nick Entz's project? They've got all sorts of things like Like ends of the home builder Entz's family.

Speaker 1:

Nick Entz, yeah, Entz.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think he comes from a pretty big builder family down there. Yeah, yeah, Yep, so they've got that project. They've got covered wagons and all sorts of different things. Another friend of mine, actually from Boise, Bart Griffin, owns the Dominican Treehouse Village, which he's been doing for eight, nine years now. A bunch of treehouses down there. There's tons of these projects. There's one guy in particular who's pretty well known right now in this niche. His name's Isaac French. He built a seven-un unit place in Texas called Live Oak Lake. He built it for 2.8 million and he sold it for seven something million two years later and they valued the property at 5 million and then they've valued his email list and his social media at 2 million. So that's kind of like one of the bigger cause. Not a lot of these people have exited yet. They're mostly friends and family, money one, one location things. So it'll be interesting to see where this little, you know, this little niche of of real estate assets goes. It's incredible.

Speaker 1:

Um, so what's what's next for for this business line for you? Are you building more onto it to create more units? Are you looking at your next unique development opportunity? I'm just fascinated by this.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, it's a lot more like a startup than a real estate play. Yeah, in a lot of ways it's an operating company, right? Yeah, there's so many new things to figure out. So we did just get expansion permits for Outpost, okay, which was great. So we're going to add five, six more units there. They're allowing us five more units without any big improvements like public water system or widening the road.

Speaker 2:

And, uh, then we've got a project in Puerto Rico that's underway it's about halfway done and that's a. That's a jungle movie kind of influenced down there. And then I think the third project is going to be a Viking village. So I've got like 50 concepts that I've written down and you know, whenever I meet people, I kind of test the ideas, and a couple of weeks ago I just posted on Instagram. I said, hey, I'm thinking about doing this Viking village and I showed some video of a Viking movie set that they're filming on in Russia. I got 2 million views and I thought, okay, that's pretty good validation. And, selfishly, I'd really like to do it somewhere on Boise. It'd be really nice to be close to the project, but then again, I don't know if Boise is the best tourism market for something like that. It would take a lot of marketing to get people to come to Boise versus maybe Colorado or Salt Lake or something like that.

Speaker 1:

Where are you from?

Speaker 2:

I grew up in Vancouver, Washington.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Vancouver Washington.

Speaker 2:

Wife's from Boise.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's the connection.

Speaker 2:

You know, if you know any Featherstones? Yeah, vaughn Featherstone. Yeah, that's my wife's grandpa. Okay, great, so we're plugged into the Boise big family. The Boise, big family, boise.

Speaker 1:

Featherstone family Yep, that's all. That's a great family to be plugged into. It is. It is I'm lucky, all right. And kids, three kids. How old are they? I've got 11, nine and four Are they?

Speaker 2:

do they share your entrepreneurial spirit? Yeah, they do. Yep, the 11 year old is already. She's. She's running all these uh, running all these things at school, making bets with kids, things that she knows that she can do. Like, hey, I bet, if I can climb these monkey bars, I'll bet you five bucks. She's already running this thing. Yeah, she's like that.

Speaker 1:

How often do you spend time at Outpost X?

Speaker 2:

I'm there about probably every five or six weeks for like two or three days. Do your family go down and check it out and hang out. Yeah yeah, it's been fun getting all the nephews and nieces there. It's been a blast.

Speaker 1:

Wow and wow, so you have someone run it for you. How big is your staff?

Speaker 2:

We've got a property manager, we've got two cleaners and we've got a maintenance guy, and they all live there. The maintenance guy lives there and the others don't.

Speaker 1:

They drive in from, say, georgia, cedar City.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Fascinating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's been a wild ride figuring this thing out, I'll tell you, but it's been fun, though, like it's been hard but it's also been so much fun at the same time. But I don't know, do you have any development projects that you've you look back on thinking you know, oh, that one was really special, or Well, I think you know we're, uh, I think our development's probably a little different.

Speaker 1:

We, you know, we uh, we have a theory of great land and great places that are end users and that's what drives everything. So probably pretty pro forma driven on. Okay, can we do this based on what we already know? We have signed up? We risk mitigate pretty deeply. So, especially now, we've always had kind of the same formula of okay, here's the pro forma, here's the land cost, here's our building cost, here's the return on cost, here's your ROI. And so I probably would have a harder time doing some creative stuff, to be honest with you, because we're just so numbers driven. But our stuff's all been pretty traditional.

Speaker 1:

8th and Main was probably the craziest thing we did with the Boise Hole. You probably don't even remember that back, it's before your time. But downtown it was a failed development for years and we were able to come in and build that and that was hard. It was during the Great Recession, but a great experience. I'm very, very proud of that project. It's interesting Just recently we had some folks come in from Reno. We're doing some work in downtown Reno and they love downtown Boise and just getting nostalgic and talking about what was there and how it all went, and the whole story behind the hole was fun to reminisce about. That. That's probably the that's the closest thing I've come. That's no Outpost X bud Like. That's pretty, pretty mean potato as far as development goes.

Speaker 2:

It's scalable, though Right Right, it's a. It's a really good, solid, scalable business Outpost. So far as a good business is scalable. Business Outpost so far is a good business. Is it scalable? I don't know, we'll find out. So that development was called the Hole, you said.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's downtown Boise, it's the Zions Bank Tower, but it was so. It sat there for years. It was a. I'll tell you the story if you've never heard the story. So when Boise became a city, the old Oregon Trail would come through here and the first commercial building in the area was the Overland Hotel at the corner of 8th and Main and it was the gathering place for the entire territory because it was the only hotel and people coming out to prospect mining or trappers or everything else that was going on then would stop in Boise, and that was you know, that was the place was this Overland Hotel. It was the place to stay for years. And then the Eidenhaw Hotel, which is still downtown.

Speaker 1:

It's downtown Boise, beautiful old building. It was built and the owners of the Overland Hotel were jealous because the Eidenhah Hotel was bigger and better. So they thought, oh, we're going to tear down the hotel and we're going to build a bigger hotel. So they did. They tore it down and it's an interesting story because they tried to get financing for the new hotel and couldn't. So it sat vacant for a while and then they built the Eastman Building and the Eastman building was a really cool old seven story building. It had lions heads around the outside and it was a professional building where if you talk to kind of some of the old, old, old timers here, they remember their grandparents working there, had professional offices lawyers and doctors and whatever offices lawyers and doctors and whatever. And uh, back when um capital city city development corporation was trying to put the mall in downtown Boise, they were on kind of a race with the mall at its current location and so they were buying up buildings and tearing them down.

Speaker 1:

And are you pulling up any of this? Pull up a? Pull up a picture. This is like a. This is a good pull up a picture of the Eastman building in downtown Boise. So they, um, they were kicking people out of downtown Boise, evicting them, and they were going to tear all the buildings down and put a whole. There's the Eastman building. So it was right on the corner of 8th and main. There's the lions at the top of it. I mean it's a famous, famous building and then there's the fire picture. Look at the fire picture. This is an interesting story. It's funny how worlds collide.

Speaker 1:

So we do the 8th and Main Building in the place of where the Eastman burned down. And then one time I'm talking to one of my buddies and he's like oh, the night it burned down. It was two of my young men at my church that burned it down, and so they were in there doing something and caught the curtains on fire and burned it to the ground. So then there was a. You know, right at 8th and Main there's a. So what year was that, maddie? If you look it up, I can't remember. It was like 19, early 80s, I think. Well then it was several felled.

Speaker 1:

Developers tried to put up a building there. It was several different things. To put up a building there. It was several different things and it had its own Twitter account. It was the Boise Hole and it would tweet at people. We still don't know who ran the Twitter account. And it was just a Feld. It had old boards around it and when we bought it to put our building there, it was known as the Boise Hole, famously. So we went in and started talking to people and said, hey, we're going to put a new building on the Boise hole, and everyone laughed at us and said, ah, you can't do it, it's never going to work. So, uh, yeah, that's the. That's the story. It was cursed One other.

Speaker 1:

One other layer of the story which I've never told on this podcast is the last tenant in the building that they kicked out owned a Chinese restaurant there. His last name was Fu and legend has it that when he was kicked out he spit on the ground and cursed it and said nothing will ever be built here and left. So when we bought it and it was time to do the groundbreaking, I thought we got to find his family or a descendant of his family to come lift the curse, find his family or a descendant of his family to come lift the curse. So we tried, we tried forever to find anyone from his family and could not find anyone.

Speaker 1:

So, you know, it was time for the groundbreaking and we held the groundbreaking in the hole and, um, I thought, you know what it would be good to end the curse. So I I thought, well, what, what wouldn't be hokey or what would be appropriate. So I called Boise State, their Native American Studies Department, and I said do you have anyone from your Native American Studies Department that could come and bless the curse and remove the curse? And they said oh, yeah, absolutely. So they hooked me up with a Native American Indian who was one of the chiefs of the local tribe, and he said, yeah, I'll come do it. It's very serious, we're going to have to have all the cameras off and it's a serious blessing that we give on it. And then I said well, can we do a donation or something on behalf of us for you coming in your time? And he's like, no, but we need to do a tobacco exchange.

Speaker 2:

Which is tough. That's a tough one, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I, which is tough, that's a tough one. Yeah, I'm like, okay, what kind of tobacco? And he tells me so I had a guy in my office go down to the local smoke shop and ask for that tobacco. And I go take it to him and he just laughs at me. He's like that's not the right tobacco. So we had to get the right tobacco. We did an exchange but then he came to the groundbreaking and we turned off all the cameras. It was awesome. He burnt, sage, went around, did the whole thing and I didn't know how people would react because I thought maybe you know, when you come to a groundbreaking you don't expect you know some someone to to remove a curse. But it was very reverent during the whole thing and then it was over and anyway it was very well received by everyone in the community and building was built. I guess the curse was lifted. It's still there, 8th and Main, downtown Boise.

Speaker 2:

That is a cool story.

Speaker 1:

Pretty good story. Huh yeah, historic story, historic story. It's cool. Two others If you ever go down. So it's where Ruth's Chris is, downtown, on that second floor of the building. Moon's Cafe is there now.

Speaker 2:

Oh it was just there Saturday so.

Speaker 1:

I did two things. We found so this building had all these lion heads around it and when we started going down and digging through the weeds and rebar, in the bottom of the hole there was one of those old lion's heads. So I took it home and we cleaned it up and it's in the lobby of 8th and Main now you can see it sitting by the fireplace. And then I took a bunch of the old rebar and I went uh, there's a, there's a lady. She's shutting her business now, but she was an artist down on uh in garden city. Her name was the, her business name was the woman of steel, and she took, I remember, all of the old rebar and made that piece of art that's right outside of moon's cafe, wow, and on the wall you can see the whole historic thing. Anyway, I'm I'm like a history nerd.

Speaker 2:

I love that stuff. I am too, yeah, obsessed with small, weird towns.

Speaker 1:

Like paying tribute to the past and trying to make sure that you say, hey, let's remember what used to be here, but it's fun, I'm getting so old now. No one, even like you, didn't even know who the hole was.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, yeah Might have helped if I was from here. I think I remember my wife talking about that. She might know.

Speaker 1:

She's probably too young. How old?

Speaker 2:

are you 36.? Yeah, before then.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, a long time ago. Anyway, tell me about your other business ventures, because I know you've got a few.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it yeah. It's just building these unique stays right now. Yeah, pretty much it. It's full focus. Social media is a big part of what you do. Yes, it is. Yes, I think the marketing side is why Outpost is working.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, talk about that.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, it has to be its own destination because it's not next to anything. It has to be its own destination because it's not next to anything and, to be honest, partially it was because I built the whole thing with cash. I ended up with a small loan at the end because we went over budget, but I was building it with cash. So I got something like $2.6 million $2.7 million of my cash in there from selling the other company. So we had to do it, lean we. You could really easily spend 2.6 million on land in zion. So did you have to put a road in? We did we. We built a mile long road. Yeah, it was. It was supposed to be. The county tried to make us improve five miles of road, so I had to fight that. But basically, outpost X is an experiment of can we make something its own destination in the middle of nowhere, and so you know I've done.

Speaker 2:

We've managed about $300 million in ad spend in my career and drove over a billion dollars in revenue for e-commerce companies, and so I made tens of thousands of commercials social media commercials and so I took all of that, took that Airbnb study and just put the virality into the DNA of the project and I got my start by doing viral video stuff. Like me and my wife had this funny video we did and we were on Good Morning America Tosh.0 in college that got us into the top creative agency in LA. One day, turkish Airlines comes in and they say we want to make the most viral ad of all time. And here's Kobe Bryant, lionel Messi and I'm like, okay, let's go. And it's still, to this day, most viral out of all time, so you did an ad with Kobe and Messi.

Speaker 2:

I designed the media, so can we see it? Uh, I don't know. I think I think they took it down, um, because the usage we might be able to find a copy of it, the Kobe's licensing, has ended on it. It's not this one. If you look up the selfie shootout, you'll find it. This is kind of what launched my career. This is what laid the groundwork for Chamber Media. Yeah, this is it. What year is this? This is about 2014,.

Speaker 1:

I think so did you get to work with him.

Speaker 2:

No, nope, I wasn't involved in the film shoot. I was just the media distribution, okay and so, and I did build the concept for this, okay, so I was tasked with. What concept is going to work, look?

Speaker 1:

how young Messi looks in that video Right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so yeah, it was the biggest influencer activation of all time. We had 650 influencers post about the commercial. We reached out to 2,000 publications in dozens of languages. We did all sorts of press seating stuff. We did all the all the witchcraft you could do back in those viral video days and and then in about I started my agency doing viral video influencer stuff and then virality started to slow down because the algorithms wanted brands to spend money on ads. So then we kind of pivoted into direct response and that was the last like four years, and that's where things really Talk about that.

Speaker 1:

For those who don't, I mean-. Yeah, direct response is Still new to a lot of people.

Speaker 2:

Direct response is the type of marketing where you want to put a dollar in, get $3 out $4. You're trying to get an ROI based, and so a lot of traditional marketing is very branding based, and so they'll measure it based off of impressions or reach, or brand lift. They'll do brand lift studies. But Facebook and social media kind of made things. It made it so you could run video ads and have a lot more tracking with it than you could television tracking with it than you could television. And so I kind of saw that coming in 2009, 2010, back when digital spending was only 3% of nationwide spending. Twitter had just come out and I thought, you know, I think this is going to be big. I wanted to go into TV, but I knew that that was going to be a really hard ladder to climb, and so I thought, you know, maybe if I focus on the social media thing, maybe this will be a new wave and I can kind of. And so it was true, Like you know, 2014, I do this campaign. I think I'm like 25. And 20th Century Fox calls and they hire me to be the social media director.

Speaker 2:

So I'm working on Planet of the Apes and X-Men and all these movies and then I got fired because I wasn't very good. I couldn't figure out how to navigate Hollywood. It was crazy. My first daughter was born. It was just chaos. And so I started Chamber Media and then it just doubled every year for seven years and then I kind of just felt like Groundhog Day so I listed it with a broker to sell and we got some offers and we got $17 million valuation on it and we exited so I sold on 20% of it, put 3 million back in and then this has been the new venture. So really full circle here is is it's like a decade of making viral videos and thinking how can I incorporate that into a hospitality experience?

Speaker 1:

Sure, so. So it's in the DNA. You're planning this to be able to then market it through your knowledge, and that's how you're getting people to come and you're going around everything else. Is that like the layman's way of saying?

Speaker 2:

that Pretty much. Yeah, we're 90% occupancy now, and so so now phase two is now I have to um, I'm now entering your world, which is fundraising and and figuring out how to really be a developer, and that's that it's. It's pretty. I'm pretty overwhelmed by it, pretty intimidated by it because that's not my skill set and so, but you know, you probably got a bunch of old guys like me saying show me a pro forma yeah, yeah, I do, we've got one.

Speaker 2:

We, we've been, we've got all that stuff built. Now an old guy or a pro forma, you hired an old guy. I've been calling all sorts of old guys saying I actually the last two months I've spent a majority of my time just calling people. Guys call old guys saying, hey, how do I do this? What do I do here? What do I do here? I've gotten a majority of my time just calling people, old guys, saying hey, how do I do this? What do I do here? What do I do here? I've gotten a lot of great advice on how to do it, but you know, until you do it, you just don't know what you're doing. So I've got I've got a little bit of the experience now on the developing and building side and especially the planning and zoning side. Yeah, I didn't realize that's 80% of the battle. Right, it's planning and zoning.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, navigating that early and often and trying to make sure you're not making a mistake.

Speaker 2:

I'm realizing that is. It's a big deal. That's probably the most valuable skill set that developers have. Yeah, because there's a lot of people who can build, but how many people can really figure out planning and zoning?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and politically navigating and creating a project that you can sell and it's a sales job right to get it through, and so you can get the development agreement the way it needs to be to make it work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a very important thing. So I'm figuring that all out. I'm just a sponge now because I'm getting all the financial docs ready, the P&L, you know, the balance sheet, cash statement, all that stuff ready and then getting all the legal structure set up. And it's from what I've heard I've interviewed tons of people about this the number one recommendation I get is to raise, project by project right now, about 20 unit projects, small enough where they're easy to keep full. You know, lower risk. Um, cause it's really unique.

Speaker 2:

You don't want to go build a hundred unit, one of these things. That's a bad idea, you know you. You want to go build it. If you're gonna do a hundred units, you want to build a Hampton Inn or something that's in a major area. But so that's what I'm doing now is I'm getting that structure together and I think the recommendation has been accredited investors only around $100,000 size checks where it's worthwhile, but it's not like a huge part of somebody's portfolio where there's a ton of pressure there because it's high risk. This is a very high risk asset class, you know.

Speaker 1:

So you know, I was just thinking about young guys that do stuff that you just don't think about when you're an old guy. There's a guy in Reno who's become a good friend, who he worked for Tesla for years and he's buying old motels and rehabbing them in the coolest way. But he's kind of got this. You know, it's a 15 to 20 room but when they're done like super high end, he's putting saunas in them and it's just you go there and you're like I wanna stay here, but he's keeping some of the old signage, keeping some of the old nostalgic kind of charm of these old motels, and he's done two of them. Now what's his name? Chris Gosh. Let me look up his name. I'm going to have Matthew pull up the—give me two seconds because I'm going to pull this up Look up motel remodel in Reno, but I'm going to pull him up here.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm leaning towards the acquiring existing property.

Speaker 1:

Chris Riley.

Speaker 2:

Chris Riley.

Speaker 1:

Chris Riley, and if you look up Chris Riley Motel in Reno I'll bet it comes right up Belfour Property Restaurant. He's done a couple of them, so we may need to. Let me just send one text here. Anyway, I just toured it with him.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And I'm like this is incredible. And he's like, yeah, you got these assets that are sitting here. They got some charm to them. And when you said that size, that's kind of his whole thesis on it it's manageable, the lease up, the risk. But then the other side of it is just the revenue. He's occupied, he's full, because you look at it you're like, yeah, why wouldn't you stay somewhere? Like this.

Speaker 2:

Just the uniqueness of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm going to pull this up for you because I think you're going to find it pretty cool, cool yeah, I think the insight there that I'm arriving to is on the future projects I really prefer to.

Speaker 2:

I really prefer to to acquire existing projects that already have all the entitlements and planning zoning. Doing it from scratch was really hard and it just takes forever.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, building from ground up and so, yeah, I mean that's that, that is the, that is the. The hard part of this right is infrastructure and, just yeah, all those cost per square foot that then you have to add into your project to make it work, did you find it? I'm getting, I'm getting it right now. Uh, there it is oh cool.

Speaker 1:

Oh, so he fully leaned into the Go back, matty, it's the go down. One more picture down. One more over where the red motel sign is right there. That's not it either. I'm going to get it, I just text him. Well, this is awesome.

Speaker 2:

You love Boise. I love Boise, man. It's not the most ideal place for what I do for a living or what I have done. I built the last company, started in LA, moved it to American Fork, utah, so that's where it was. That's where it still is, but I've actually had a hard time finding people in Boise for this stuff to work with In Utah.

Speaker 1:

I just feel like I'm so hyper connected down there and there's I feel like there's so many entrepreneurs and creatives don't you think the Utah, that whole mark, that whole, that whole American Fork, utah County, kind of it, is ripe with people, ideas and everyone's so talented. Do you know, travis Hawks up here, travis Hawks, up here, travis Hawks, I don't think I do, I'll get you in touch with Travis. He's like all over this kind of stuff and new businesses and venture capital and he's brilliant.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've been looking for a long time for that partner that I need because my last company I had this intern. I ended up giving him equity and we were just. You know, I haven't found that guy yet. I've been trying Because I got a. That developing side is I know it's going to get me if I don't have the right person.

Speaker 1:

Reno, so it's bestbetmotorlodgecom. Bestbetmotorlodgecom. Wait until you see this is going to blow your mind. This thing is so cool, so cool, so best. Yeah, click on that thing and then see if there's like a gallery. It is so cool. So those are his rooms, that's his lobby. And then he built in this sauna club that you don't have to stay at the hotel if you want to be, and he put in like cold shower and sauna in the thing. It is just, and it's this old motel.

Speaker 2:

That's cool.

Speaker 1:

So much charm, so cool. And him and his wife run up.

Speaker 2:

People are just craving this uniqueness.

Speaker 1:

I think I have this there it is 21 rooms, are 21 rooms and they're all. You go in them and they just, they're clean, they're amazing, you're like I want to stay here next time I come to reno that's so cool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think. I think, um, my theory is that in in the us, um, you know, finance people make most of the decisions on what gets built and, generally speaking, finance people aren't super creative, so a lot of what gets built ends up making sense in a finance perspective, but sometimes it just it lacks this, you know, and they'll hire a designer and the designer's good. But I think a lot of times things get a little watered down, you know, and so we just got a lot of buildings. In general, I feel like in the United States that are just pretty standard two by four-four construction. But when you leave America it's more vibrant. Like you go to Mexico or Europe, it's just more vibrant. Europe's a little different.

Speaker 2:

I think a lot of that stuff was built with slave labor. I'm not sure there's some. I look at the stonework and I'm like there's something questionable about this building that we can't do anymore until it's. You can do it with robots or something, but but, yeah, I think people are craving this. I think too, you know, um, I think your, uh, your kind of market for hospitality is, uh, it's just a new generation.

Speaker 1:

Look up his other one, it's the Jesse Renocom J E S S E the Jesse Renocom. But it these are the two that I toured with him that he's done over there, but it's just, it's just. It's awesome. When you can take what I like about it, is he, he, you know, it's this, it's this glimpse back at history and and what's cool and I think that whole vibe of, of, of reusing and I don't know it's, it's, it's a, it's a young guy's game, but it's like, how do we take the past, reuse this stuff, make it cool again? And, um boy, he's done it. He's done it in a real way over there.

Speaker 2:

That was so cool.

Speaker 1:

Well, hey, this has been fantastic. Um, any advice you'd? Oh, one more question, cause I think this is just the world you live in. Um, I and Matthew and I talk about this all the time, but I think the world we live in is getting more used to. I mean, if you're not, you're behind right To the new way of advertising, the new way of reaching people, the new way of all this stuff. Any advice you'd give for entrepreneurs out there that are starting a new business or have an existing business, a legacy business, and are thinking of okay, how do I, you know, where do I take this to the next level, understanding the future of marketing, the future of how we interact with people? Any thoughts?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, my dad growing up used to say if you build it, they will come. If you don't suck at marketing, he loved to fill the dreams. I think too often entrepreneurs think that the product is going to make the thing work, but in my experience, working with hundreds of brands and products, it's usually the marketing that makes it work, and obviously the product has to be good. Just have to experiment with all of the different channels, whether it's social media, ads or influencers or email, or you got to test everything, and that's hard when you don't have a ton of capital, a ton of cash. But I'll tell you, once you find the one scalable channel, everything changes With Chamber Media one day. You know we're an ad agency, but why don't we run ads? You know no one was doing that at the time and it scaled, like you know, 3 million to 6 million to 14 million three years because of that, and so I think it's just these companies that are coming up. It's always one channel that scales and you just have to find it?

Speaker 1:

How do you navigate? I really like what you said, because sometimes you don't know going into it right. In fact, it's what you don't know that's probably going to make you successful. It's having patience while you figure that out right, because I think a lot of people, I think a couple of businesses I've started where we ended up with the value that we brought was not where we started. In fact. It was a lot of hard work and kind of you called it testing channels. But it was like what is our niche? How is it going to work? How are we going to reach people? And then all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's the thing that makes money. And then all of a sudden you scale it. But those early days sometimes are tough. Any advice for getting through those?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you just have to get, you have to pay for the education, do the experiments. Tony Robbins always says went to his thing. He says people always say, well, we've tried everything. It's like, well, you haven't tried everything, there's a thousand things to try, and so you got to experiment until you figure it out. And you got to have the capital to do that.

Speaker 2:

So that's why I tell people who, like me, I didn't have capital, I didn't know any wealthy people and I didn't have any good ideas, so I started a service company. So people that are in that situation, like I was, I recommend start a service business, sell your time first and then, once you sell your time, then you could sell other people's time, then you can build up the capital to experiment and everything goes services, tech, assets. So we scaled the services side, got some capital, then we did a little bit of tech and then we exited. So now I'm trying to do the asset game, which is obviously much harder. It takes forever, but I'm dedicated to getting to that next level because I already did the service thing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so great advice, great advice. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, yeah, it's been fun getting to know you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you Okay. Thanks, buddy, thanks everybody.