New Workshop: How to Build and Fund Micro-Resorts

Next Tuesday, June 9 at 12pm ET, Thesis Driven is hosting a live 2-hour workshop on building and funding micro-resorts, led by Isaac French, founder of Live Oak Lake.

At 24, Isaac bought five acres of raw Texas land and built a seven-cabin resort for $2.3 million. A year and a half after opening, it sold for $7 million, driven by 150,000 Instagram followers, 80-plus percent direct booking rates, and 94 percent first-year occupancy. He now teaches the Experiential Hospitality masterclass and advises operators building in the category he helped define.

Micro-resorts are purpose-built experiential lodging properties, founder-led, story-driven, and located within drive distance of a major metro. The category is new and moving fast. Institutional buyers are paying real multiples for assets that corporate hospitality can’t replicate, and demand for experiential lodging has proven resilient through inflation and higher interest rates.

This session is built around the full arc of a micro-resort project, drawing on Isaac’s experience at every stage from raw land to profitable exit.  

Here's what the workshop covers:

• Vision, capital, and brand: How to evaluate sites and markets, identify the right concept for a given site, and build an audience before breaking ground.

• Design and construction: How to read a site and let it inform the design, work effectively with contractors, manage budgets, and deliver a property that justifies the trip.

• Launch and operations: How to build a direct booking engine independent of OTAs, create lean operations that hold up under the demands of a hospitality business, and use early guest relationships to build long-term momentum.

• The capital stack: How micro-resorts actually get funded, from rewards-based crowdfunding and SBA lending through the emerging GP fund structures that let operators scale without giving up what makes their properties worth investing in.

• An honest look at challenges: Founder dependency, the demands of bespoke construction, operational intensity, and the realities of building something that requires genuine personal commitment to work.

Who this is for:

Aspiring micro-resort developers, short-term rental owners looking to build something more differentiated, landowners exploring hospitality as a business, and investors interested in experiential real estate. For anyone who has looked at a piece of land and wondered whether something worth traveling to could be built there, this workshop is the most direct path to understanding what that actually takes.

All participants will receive recordings of the session, financial models, and deal examples via Thesis Driven’s private Circle community.

This workshop is delivered over one live 2-hour session: 
Tuesday, June 9 from 12:00-2:00 pm ET.
Price: $299

Reserve a spot now.

–Brad & Paul