[00:01:38] Patrick Donley: I’m really excited to talk with you today. I just want to jump right in and get right into the wedding venue niche business that you’re in.

[00:01:45] Patrick Donley: I just wanted to hear like how you got into it, how you got inspired by it. Just want to hear like the background story of like how you found your way into that niche. 

[00:01:53] Alex Nelson: Sure. Yeah. Obviously a question we get asked a lot, but short version is my wife and I, we got married four years ago. We lived in Iowa.

[00:02:01] Alex Nelson: We went and toured all these venues. Looking at these venues, even if we back up a little farther, we’re actually, we were high school sweethearts, so we’ve been together for a long time. It was no surprise that we were going to get married, and we actually started looking at venues before we were even engaged, and this was like pre COVID, pre all the craziness, and my wife was a teacher, so she had to get married during the summer, so she’s looking at these dates, and it was either like, we decide soon, or they’re booking out so far that we’re going to have to push it.

[00:02:25] Alex Nelson: Like a whole nother year. And to that was like the end of the world. Or push our, put a life on hold for a whole nother year. So we ended up looking at venues and booking a venue before we were even engaged, and we’re just in Iowa. And it’s these friends are booking out a year two years in advance and that was like insane.

[00:02:40] Alex Nelson: So I feel like I’ve always been a real estate guy at heart. I always thought maybe I’d get in a multi single family and I was going down that rabbit hole and studying and all, but I really had that Moment when we’re looking of wow, like this is a big, beautiful property. I felt like it was like the ultimate like real estate play kind of thing as a young guy.

[00:02:57] Alex Nelson: And yeah, that’s when we we knew we wanted to my wife’s liked weddings. She planned our wedding and of packed Friends and family’s weddings. That was the initial idea. Fast forward a couple years and it was mid COVID. She was teaching teachers were struggling at that time and the school system was a mess and not to get like too far into that, but she basically was just like, I don’t want to do this for the next 30 years kind of thing.

[00:03:18] Alex Nelson: So she started looking at other things to do and went back to being like a wedding planner. At that time we were hustling and saving up and I wanted to make some sort of real estate investment. So I was just like, let’s think a little bit bigger here. Maybe let’s go back down that venue path and see what we can do.

[00:03:33] Alex Nelson: We just started reading and researching everything we possibly can. And honestly, there’s not very much information out there. It’s a rather new industry of these like standalone venues where you can get married on site have the ceremony. have the cocktail hour all in one place.

[00:03:48] Alex Nelson: Like it used to always be just like these hotels or these ballrooms or event centers where you get married in church and then just have the reception there. So things are still shifting and have shifted over like the last 10 years, I would say. So again, not a ton of info out there, but we went down that rabbit hole and it was a long journey, but we figured it out and got it built.

[00:04:07] Patrick Donley: Awesome. Yeah. So I wanted to backtrack a little bit and I wanted to hear just a little bit about college, what you studied in college. You had mentioned prior to the interview here, just listening to some real estate podcasts. So I just wanted to hear a little bit about your background, whether your family was involved in real estate, just wanted to hear a little bit about your background story.

[00:04:24] Alex Nelson: Sure. No, family was not in real estate or anything. I’d say definitely just like middle of the road, middle class. My dad worked for a convenience store chain for 30 years. My brother went on to start a couple of tech companies when he dropped out of college. And we can maybe talk about that later.

[00:04:39] Alex Nelson: But for me, I finished college. I went to the University of Iowa. I studied business management. which funny enough, I ended up working more in kind of finance world, but yeah, in mid college same kind of thing. I think I had that light bulb moment when I was, we had five roommates and we’re all paying six, 700 bucks a month in rent, adding up the math and like looking at past prices.

[00:04:58] Alex Nelson: I was like, Oh, this guy’s cashflow good. So that got me into real estate and then I realized student rentals were maybe not the right path after we destroyed that place. But that got me into bigger pockets and all those real estate podcasts and things. So I always felt like I wanted to be in the real estate game.

[00:05:15] Alex Nelson: And ultimately I’m really glad where we ended up. It’s we have the venue in the real estate, the asset, but it’s also a business too, which I feel like I’m even more passionate about. 

[00:05:25] Patrick Donley: Had you done any kind of real estate projects or deals prior to doing the wedding venue? 

[00:05:30] Alex Nelson: So we bought our own house in 2018.

[00:05:34] Alex Nelson: We pretty much tried to remodel the whole thing. Honestly, like we, we ripped out the doors and trim and slot some new paint on. We refinished cabinets, things like that. We thought we’re like doing like a, an easy flip, so we weren’t like necessarily like tearing it out of the studs or anything like that.

[00:05:48] Alex Nelson: And we made a little bit of money, but not like a ton. So that was like a learning experience. We definitely like. I love like the design aspect of it and that. So we did that and then two years later we went to go sell it and then we started building our own house actually. So we built our own house.

[00:06:04] Alex Nelson: We designed all that kind of from scratch and we did that. And then like you know a year later we’re looking for a new project and it was all looking at the same time and we’re like let’s take it up a notch. Let’s build a venue, so no like big commercial projects or anything like that. I had worked for a real estate brokerage.

[00:06:20] Alex Nelson: I was doing online. Sales are then helping out with their like online leads and on that end of it, but no other like real big real estate projects. 

[00:06:30] Patrick Donley: So that second house that you did, you bought a lot and then came up with the plans functioned as your general contractor, you handled the entire thing.

[00:06:38] Alex Nelson: No, I didn’t GC. Yeah, we hired a builder. So they had some standard plans and stuff that we could pick from and then we tweaked it and customized it from there. But we more like designed it ourselves, but yeah, we didn’t GC the venue ourselves either. 

[00:06:52] Patrick Donley: Got it. So did you consider any other real estate asset classes or did you dial in and you like into wedding venues?

[00:07:01] Alex Nelson: I definitely did. I was always looking at residential real estate maybe considering doing a slip We tried our own like little mini slip. Like I said, we also I was looking at like other multifamily I wanted a house hack at one point. We didn’t find any like real contender duplex wise or triplex wise.

[00:07:18] Alex Nelson: So ended up scratching that, but yeah, so I was like looking at it all the time other than those two either, either like a small multi or residential, not really. I thought that I would pick one of those and snowball, but then I got hooked on this like venue, a track. And I thought it was like a bigger, better play.

[00:07:36] Patrick Donley: What was the light bulb moment? 

[00:07:38] Alex Nelson: Yeah, it was like going back to like when we were getting married and looking at these venues There’s only a couple like standalone venues and then the more we looked into It was like dang these venues are booking like 50 60 80 weddings like during construction before they’re even open And we just like really knew like we got married at a venue in our area There’s one other newer built and that we looked at and then maybe one or two other like remodeled spaces But there was like definitely like a need for something different in our market.

[00:08:05] Alex Nelson: We’re in Iowa, right? So these barn venues are popular. That’s a trend across the nation is people with land and a barn, they remodel these barns and all of a sudden they’re charging 5, 6, K a night. And that’s great, but we wanted to bring something different to the market. So we built more of a modern industrial building, but yeah, we just, we knew there was like a gap in the market that we could sell.

[00:08:26] Alex Nelson: And going back to the light bulb moment, I was like, it’s like a real estate play and they’re charging all these money and they’re booking out a year or two years in advance. And we just went through the process, right? Like we were like customers. The little info that we did read and find is I think it was like a geared towards people that were maybe 30, 40, 50, and they’re like, always saying just cause what you did when you got married, it’s different now.

[00:08:47] Alex Nelson: You’re not necessarily like your target customer. And it’s we were, so we felt like we had an edge, like all of our friends are starting to get married or just got married, all of our family and people our age. So I think that was a big factor too. I mentioned that I got married last year last, it’s been almost a year, we in September, but yeah, same thing, my wheels got turning when I started looking at this place that we rented, that’s booked out it’s booked out all of next year already, and I was like, holy cow that kind of demand what are the possibilities super intriguing to me.

[00:09:21] Patrick Donley: Did you have any kind of I don’t know, somebody that you were modeling the place on, or anybody that was walking you through this process, or were you just learning as you were going along, making it up as you went? 

[00:09:32] Alex Nelson: Yeah, honestly just making it up as we went we probably tried to look for and found as many venues on Instagram and online as we could across the nation.

[00:09:42] Alex Nelson: And we just took little things that we liked in this venue or that venue, and. Thinking through our experiences of what we liked and what we didn’t like, we ultimately didn’t hire like a consultant. They were more like focused on like the build side. Like they had built a venue in Texas and they were managing like some, a couple of bars for like other venues and they helped us with a rough business plan and some rough numbers.

[00:10:02] Alex Nelson: And it was all pretty generic to be honest, but it forced us to spend money early on and really commit ourselves. And then that kind of was the trend we had to front a lot of money. To be honest, before we even got funding. So yeah, for the most part, we just figured it out as we went. 

[00:10:17] Patrick Donley: So I wanted to go into that.

[00:10:18] Patrick Donley: What were some of those early costs that you had to do to decide whether this was like a no go situation for you? 

[00:10:25] Alex Nelson: The consulting was one that was like five grand upfront. That was like where we started. And then they could like also have been like our builders. They’re saying they could build nationwide and things like that.

[00:10:35] Alex Nelson: But we wanted someone more local to help us and be a little more hands on involved instead of meeting via zoom and stuff like that. So then we found a local builder. And then I was like a couple of these builders had We went with a builder at first that had done another venue in our area.

[00:10:49] Alex Nelson: So they a designed build package, and I think we spent another 2, 500. And then we made some renderings, and I think that was maybe another 7k to there’s 9k plus 5k. 14k grand that we were in before we even had any idea this was real. definitely not super wealthy by any means. We were still like decently fresh out of college.

[00:11:09] Alex Nelson: Like we had decent, good paying job. I was essentially working like two remote jobs online and things like that, but like definitely didn’t just have like hundreds of thousands sitting around or anything like that. We knew we had enough saved up to maybe to be dangerous. But yeah, it was definitely a big risk, but if it forced us to get really serious about it, and always figuring out the next step and the next step and the next step. So I would highly recommend it for anyone thinking about doing anything. It’s like It’s okay to spend some money to learn and figure it out. Don’t obviously bankrupt yourself or spend everything that you have it’s a risk you have to take risks.

[00:11:42] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I see a lot of people just get stuck in information acquisition mode and it’s really easy to do. There’s so much content out there that it’s I just need more information. You just jumping right in, like you had to learn on the fly and in many ways, that’s the best way to do it.

[00:11:58] Alex Nelson: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I would be lying if our parents and friends and family were like, are you guys sure like you want to do this? It’s like mid COVID too, like it’s crazy. Are you sure you guys aren’t just cooped up and getting crazy here. And it was just like, we got to take a chance for serious.

[00:12:11] Alex Nelson: We see a need in the market and COVID actually helped it. We actually launched at a pretty good time, but yeah, you just got to go for it. 

[00:12:19] Patrick Donley: So I wanted to hear about how you found the land. I wanted to hear about like the importance of location for these kind of projects. Talk to me a little bit about that.

[00:12:27] Patrick Donley: Like how you guys went about finding the location for the venue. 

[00:12:30] Alex Nelson: Yeah, so pretty much every step we were looking at like the other venues in our area and asking ourselves, like, how can we be different? So all these venues a lot of them are on like big chunks of land they’re big, beautiful, but they’re decent way out of town they’re not that close to hotels and they’re far away from the airport so like people are always going to have like guests and family traveling in, right?

[00:12:51] Alex Nelson: Do you want an hour drive from the airport, those kinds of things. And we live decently close to the airport, like 20 minutes away. So like we wanted to be close to our house. We wanted to be close to the airport. We wanted to be off like a paved major road. And then we wanted to be near hotels.

[00:13:06] Alex Nelson: So honestly, like quite the list and trying to find this perfect location. But location, just like in real estate in general, it’s like usually all location. So we knew that was important from the get go. And we prioritized that and we were willing to wait a little bit if we had to, luckily enough, we found one decently soon.

[00:13:23] Alex Nelson: Yeah, that’s what we were looking for. And then we stumbled across this land that was for sale. Essentially a developer was taking like a 48 acre parcel that was like farmland. He was subdividing it up into two, three, five acre chunks. He did like a 20 acre chunk in the back.

[00:13:39] Alex Nelson: So we’re actually in a little mini like development, but it was like all zoned like light industrial from the beginning. And that’s a big aspect of these venues is making sure you obviously have the right zoning. If you just buy farmland, you likely can’t just turn it into a venue. You’re gonna have to rezone it.

[00:13:56] Alex Nelson: From ag to the commercial or whatever it is, every county has like these different codes and zoning rules and venues are in this like weird niche of they can fall under like multiple sometimes or they could be in just one weird zoning because the county doesn’t really think about that or it’s not really.

[00:14:14] Alex Nelson: top priority, so luckily enough, we found the land and it was like already going to be rezoned to what we needed it to be. So that was part of the search too. It was like, can the land be rezoned to what we need it to be and is it already thing. 

[00:14:28] Patrick Donley: Did you have the renderings at that point or which came first?

[00:14:31] Patrick Donley: Did you get the, acquire the land and then you went into the renderings or how did you talk to me about that? 

[00:14:37] Alex Nelson: I think we had the renderings first, but to be honest, I think that happened. pretty close to each other. Or at least we like had our eye on this land. I think it’s like July of 2020 when we came up with the idea and by December we had made an offer and had this land under contract of 2020 and then we didn’t end up actually building until April of 2022.

[00:14:57] Alex Nelson: So long process. Yeah. 

[00:15:00] Patrick Donley: So let’s get into that. What were some of the hurdles and challenges that happened that kind of delayed it a little? 

[00:15:06] Alex Nelson: Basically, like I said, so that’s developers buying it. He’s putting in the roads, the sewers, we got connected to city water and stuff, which is great utilities. But since it was COVID and they had this like water lift station that they were putting in like the back of this development for these since there was like light industrial, like some Industrial big companies could come in.

[00:15:23] Alex Nelson: So this like wireless station, honestly, I don’t know the details around what that actually even does, but there was like this one missing part, so this missing part because of COVID, they couldn’t get it in. So they had spent a ton of money on all the roads. Everything was all done. We had the land under contract but like we couldn’t close on the land and get our building permits and start building until the final plat of this development was approved.

[00:15:47] Alex Nelson: Like they do like preliminary plats and like all this free stuff leading up so like they knew it was going to like the work just all had to be done and then not to get too much into it but like it was clear like the county didn’t like this one developer he’s known for pushing approval processes long and using his power and his strength to stronger.

[00:16:04] Alex Nelson: Them a little bit. So it was apparent that they were gonna slow him down, and they definitely did, which also slowed us down. Yeah, and it was stressful because we made this mistake of starting to book weddings and then we gave ourselves a big cushion of our construction timeline and like every month went by That cushion was getting depleted every single month and we were sitting there sweating bullets and basically just had our hands tied.

[00:16:26] Alex Nelson: So a lot of ups and downs and stressful to say the least. But like I said, we got under contract in December of 2020. We thought we were going to start building in July of 2021. I didn’t actually start building until March or April of 2022. And then we turned a nine month build into a five month build.

[00:16:41] Alex Nelson: So we finished in October of 2022. 

[00:16:45] Patrick Donley: So you had taken a bunch of what you took, what, 50 percent deposits for. People that wanted to schedule for a wedding. 

[00:16:52] Alex Nelson: Yeah, we did. Yeah. 50 percent down. Is that kind of a common practice? 

[00:16:56] Patrick Donley: Like before a project is finished? I just wanted to hear about that. Like how you went about getting people to deposit 50 percent of a wedding expense on a building that wasn’t there.

[00:17:05] Patrick Donley: That’s a kind of a big ask. 

[00:17:07] Alex Nelson: Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. And obviously it takes a lot of trust and you’ve got to build rapport with these couples, but we had seen other venues like start to do it. Like I said, like the whole industry is newer of these new like standalone venues. As they’re getting built and just looking at it from like a cost perspective, right?

[00:17:22] Alex Nelson: Like it’s hard to build this 3 million building. And then you book weddings, book out a year or two years in advance. And if you wait until you’re completely done with construction to even start taking deposits or start touring people, like they’re not going to book until the next year or the year after even, so like you’re going to sit empty for a full year and you’ll not have all those carrying costs.

[00:17:40] Alex Nelson: So we knew we needed to get people in there like right away. And we were maybe young and too gung ho a little bit there and made some mistakes along the way. But yeah, we were taking 50 percent of deposits there. We would meet with couples on zoom instead of giving them a tour. Like we had our renderings, we had a running walkthrough we’d have like floor plans, we’d show them.

[00:17:57] Alex Nelson: And we really try to think through every aspect to show that we were like prepared and we were serious. And we were like thinking through all these things about their day cause it is to them, it’s the biggest day of their life up until that point. So it was important to us and we had just went through the experience too, right?

[00:18:11] Alex Nelson: So I feel like we could connect with them. We made a lot of good friends, honestly, with these early couples. 

[00:18:17] Patrick Donley: So how did you go about actually marketing it? How did people find out about it? Did you guys throw up a website? How did you go about just spreading the word for the venue? 

[00:18:25] Alex Nelson: Yeah. And that’s something that’s crazy too, is you don’t need a ton of marketing, right?

[00:18:29] Alex Nelson: A word of mouth travels pretty fast. Instagram, Facebook, we threw up a website we blasted these renderings online and we ran a couple of Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and people started to catch on and tagging other people that are getting engaged or married and things like that.

[00:18:44] Alex Nelson: And then the big like company is like the knot in the wedding wire where a lot of the vendors are and a lot of the venues and things like that. So we’re on there. Yeah. from early on, and that kind of leads them either to our page on there or to our website. So yeah, not a ton of marketing spend.

[00:18:59] Alex Nelson: Didn’t do any like huge marketing events or anything either. Really, honestly, mostly just word of mouth and then those a few channels. 

[00:19:08] Patrick Donley: So you had mentioned, I think I’ve heard a 3 million cost for the project. I wanted to get into the financing of it. Talk to me about how you guys acquired the funding.

[00:19:16] Patrick Donley: Just wanted to hear a bit about that. Was it your own funds, family loans? I just wanted to go into how you actually paid for the project. 

[00:19:25] Alex Nelson: Yeah, definitely. And I hit on it a little bit earlier. Like we didn’t have a ton of like money or hundreds of thousands I think I was projecting that we would have a hundred K at the end of the year.

[00:19:34] Alex Nelson: And I knew that would make us dangerous because I found you could do an S E a loan you could do this for 10% down. They would fund like the real estate and the business aspect of it. And very early on I thought we could do it for 1.5. I was like, oh, that, that should be good, right?

[00:19:47] Alex Nelson: And then once we got serious about it and got real plans going and then we got real bids. I think the first one came back at 2.1, which was like, okay, like we could do this. And we had saved up maybe a little bit more along that timeframe. And then we ended up. We raised 80k from a family that only happened because like we had already put the work in.

[00:20:07] Alex Nelson: We already spent a ton of money. Like we already had this and we like felt like it was like a slam dunk at this point I don’t want like people like listening and be like, Oh, of course, like family pitched in, but not like wealthy at all. Like my in laws gave pretty much everything they had honestly, like in savings to go towards this because they believed in us and we’d already done the work up front.

[00:20:23] Alex Nelson: So yeah, that, that was by like 2. 1 we were at, but. Due to those delays and since it was COVID lumber prices are going crazy. All these subs are like bidding like crazy. So every time we went to go get like new bids, like three months later, cause we can lock it in before we could lock the land in and start building.

[00:20:40] Alex Nelson: Everything would go up like hundreds of thousands, like each sub went up 20, 30, 40 K. So it was crazy. So when by the time it was all said and done, I think we landed at two seven for the building. And then by the time you throw in. furniture and fixtures and equipment another 180.

[00:20:56] Alex Nelson: And then during the build, we kept adding stuff and we add it like a waterfall and like all these things like make it better. And at that time we had money coming in, so it was nice, but yeah, we just kept adding. So pretty close to three mil all in is where we ended up. 

[00:21:11] Patrick Donley: And then did you do the SBA loan for the remainder of it?

[00:21:13] Patrick Donley: Is that how it worked out? 

[00:21:15] Alex Nelson: No, actually crazy enough. Like we went down that road, we got approved. We had to kept going back to them like three times for like increases on the loan. And we got approved, and then we got declined. And then we’re like we’re not like wealthy. Like we don’t have a big balance sheet, like personal balance sheet.

[00:21:30] Alex Nelson: Like they’re going to pull this right from under us pretty much. So we got nervous we scaled it back a little bit. as much as we could without taking away what we want to. And then we got approved on that, but like we knew it was going to be like super tight. And then like with the SBA you have, they’ll take like your building costs and everything.

[00:21:46] Alex Nelson: And then they were adding like a 10 percent contingency. So we had like almost 300 K and like contingency that they were like adding on top of this. But we were like hoping in the back of our minds we hope we can spend this money because we’re going to need it probably. But they didn’t want to know that.

[00:22:00] Alex Nelson: So it was messy for sure. It was definitely super stressful. We had went from one builder and then they. Their like main guy had left and they were like trying to farm it out to a different GC. So they are like bringing in a GC to manage. So they’re both taking GC cuts, like two of them. So then we’re like, we left them, we went to another builder and then the main guy we’re working with there, he left and started his own company.

[00:22:22] Alex Nelson: And then we became good friends with him. He partnered with a local guy that had a big insurance company and he ultimately ended up helping us fund it through construction. And then we bought it back from them after. So we locked in like a conventional loan that way. But so insane. We always only planned on doing the SBA route.

[00:22:39] Alex Nelson: And none of this would have happened if we didn’t spend the money, do everything and go down this like crazy path. But we ended up like looking we locked it in at 3. 25, I think, versus like the SBA was going to be like five and a half at that point. But if that’s like a floating rate, right?

[00:22:54] Alex Nelson: So that would be like 10, 11 percent now, which is insane. 

[00:22:57] Patrick Donley: Yeah. So I want to make sure I understand you. It was like the construction guy teamed up with this insurance character in town who had the money to fund you almost like a bridge loan. The construction took place and then you like found a bank and got a conventional loan.

[00:23:14] Alex Nelson: Yeah, he essentially went and got a loan, just, yeah, he just got a conventional loan basically based off his like, personal financial statement didn’t even care like what was going on in this building because he’s a well known name around here and a big insurance company and then he’s known to invest in like young entrepreneurs and all this stuff so he basically just wanted to help us out and then we set up like a lease to like purchase kind of agreement there after the fact to get us through like the construction and like the early year.

[00:23:42] Alex Nelson: Got it. A lot going on. You’ve got married. I think you had a kid. You’ve got two remote jobs that you’re doing. Your wife is a teacher. You’re managing this project. Talk to me about that. Just like how you like, and look at in retrospect, how did you manage 

[00:23:55] Alex Nelson: all that? Yeah. Insane, stressful. Yeah. A lot of sleepless nights to be honest.

[00:24:01] Alex Nelson: But yeah, I think COVID hit. My wife was teaching. We started this process. Once we knew it was locked in and it was going decently well, we’re taking deposits in, she ended up leaving teaching and then everything got delayed and then she got pregnant. So we had our first kid in the meantime of all this going on and that and then we finally got it built and then now we just had our second kid.

[00:24:22] Alex Nelson: So yeah, I was doing two remote jobs at the time and managing this and then I dropped one of them. and kept the other one for a while. And the goal was like always to not have to take a ton of money out of the business and to live off that. Like we wanted to build up a nice cash vision and not really touch these deposits until later.

[00:24:38] Alex Nelson: So honestly, I just left my other W2 and now focusing on going down like the consulting route. I’m running with other venues and trying to create this like cold coat eventually of venues underneath us and creating a model there. So I’ve always seemed to have like multiple things going on and I don’t really see it changing anytime soon.

[00:24:57] Alex Nelson: I in partnering with operators and doing all that 

[00:25:03] Patrick Donley: Definitely get into the holding company. I want to dive further into that later on here, but I just wanted to just stick with when you guys were you at really hands on with the design and day to day, were you there checking things out as the construction was going on?

[00:25:15] Patrick Donley: Like how hands on were you during the process, or did you just leave it up to the GC to say I trust you. Good luck. 

[00:25:22] Alex Nelson: Yeah, no, definitely super hands on. We had a good idea and path of what we wanted to do design wise. And like we had some time since things kept getting delayed, but ultimately like things didn’t end up changing like during the build, but yeah, we live probably 15 minutes from the venue.

[00:25:37] Alex Nelson: So we were there daily looking at things, changing things and so many changes and change orders and. Unbelievable amount of stuff I learned during construction in that development process, our GC was great. He definitely had an eye for design as well, which was super helpful and then he could help us with that.

[00:25:52] Alex Nelson: And then we focused on like the wedding end of it and like the flow and how things were gonna work and all of this. And I would say during the time we thought we built this like perfect venue. Like we thought through every single aspect and every little thing we thought we’d give ourselves probably like an a plus on the build.

[00:26:06] Alex Nelson: Now that we’ve been open for a year, I’d say maybe more a B plus. There’s things just like after the wedding, like after you like see weddings happening and like things going on, it’s Oh man, like it seems so obvious now. But and you just don’t know until like actual events and people you’re getting 300 people in there on a Friday and then getting them out and getting another 300 people in there for the Saturday and maybe another 300 for the Sunday.

[00:26:26] Alex Nelson: A lot of slips and processes and systems in place now, but yeah, we were very hands on and try to think through everything. And now hitting on, like we’re focused on helping others do the same thing and kind of realizing those things that we didn’t realize early on. 

[00:26:40] Patrick Donley: So when you did the design, I wanted to hear about some of the things that you’ve got some cool aspects to it.

[00:26:46] Patrick Donley: I looked at the photos that you’ve got on Twitter. It’s really cool. Can you talk to us about just some of the features of it you think make it stand out? 

[00:26:54] Alex Nelson: Yeah, definitely. So if you’re looking at our building from the road it’s, we have the main structure in the middle, which is like the grand hall.

[00:27:00] Alex Nelson: And then we have two big wings and those wings house, like the getting ready suites, right? So one side is geared towards the guys. It’s like the groom suite, the other side is the girls. So we knew we wanted like the suites on opposite ends of the building. When we got married, the place didn’t even have a groom suite.

[00:27:14] Alex Nelson: I got ready at a buddy’s house. I live close by. And then we. I showed up to the venue and of course the girls are late getting ready, so like we had to sit in the parking lot and wait for the girls, because my wife and I were doing like our first look. So it’s like we knew we wanted a groomed suite, and then we knew we didn’t want them like anywhere near each other.

[00:27:29] Alex Nelson: We’d been to other venues where the suites are like back to back, and that makes no sense because you’re like trying not to see each other kind of thing. So they’re like opposite ends of the building. Which made the building have this cool winged look from the street, so we felt like that was, like, something that we had never seen before, and no other venue had done that, most of them are just big rectangle boxes, basically.

[00:27:48] Alex Nelson: So that was cool, and then off the back end of the building, and off the back of the Grand Hall, we have big sliders. They’re like bifold doors that open all the way up. So the whole back half of the building opens way up, and then that goes like straight to the covered patio area. Another thing was when we got married, it was mid summer, it was July, and everyone was sweating bullets, right?

[00:28:06] Alex Nelson: So we knew we wanted the ceremony spot to be covered. So we have a big, like almost 3, 000 square foot covered patio off the back. And then. off to the side of the building we have a cool like courtyard area where you can have like a cocktail hour spot where we have fire pits and we put like bags and a big connect floor and then we have a putting green and like a waterfall feature and then the guys the groom suite is like right off this like area as well so like the guys get ready in the morning they’re hanging out in the group suite and then go out hang out by the fire pits you know you use the putting green and all that while the girls are selling the opposite side of the building you can’t see them or anything and we made a cool like outdoor area for the bridal suite side too.

[00:28:43] Patrick Donley: Yeah, I think I saw the poker table too in the groom’s room. 

[00:28:47] Alex Nelson: Yeah. That’s always a big kid. I think we’ve got the poker table. We’ve got like a shuffleboard in there now, a TV a bar car with like whiskey decanter and fridge and everything. So yeah, we really tried to focus in on the suite and appeal to the couple, that’s who’s booking it. The parents might be paying for it, but it’s ultimately the couple. So yeah, we tried to add some cool elements. 

[00:29:08] Patrick Donley: So when a couple comes to you, they’re doing the ceremony, the dinner, like a dance afterwards, all right there, correct? 

[00:29:16] Alex Nelson: Yeah, I would say 95 percent of our couples are doing everything on site or on location.

[00:29:21] Alex Nelson: So ceremony usually into some sort of like cocktail hour, maybe they live in a party bus, maybe they don’t. And then into the actual reception, dinner, all that. It used to be everyone get married at church and then you just need like a space for reception. But I think that’s why, like the, why the industry is like changing is like everyone wants these in all in one place, right?

[00:29:38] Alex Nelson: Like you don’t want your guests having to travel like 15, 20 minutes from the hotel to the church and then back in between. It’s just like wasting a lot of time and the day already goes fast enough that everything being in one place is just better and more efficient. 

[00:29:50] Patrick Donley: Let’s get into like the food and alcohol part of it, food and beverage.

[00:29:53] Patrick Donley: Are you guys handling that too or do you guys farm that out? Talk to me about how you handle that process. 

[00:30:00] Alex Nelson: Yeah, so we don’t do the food. We never wanted to do the food. We had no experience there. So we have what you call like a prep kitchen. So no ovens, no microwaves. So the caterers will cook the food like offsite, bring it to our place, like prep and serve kind of thing.

[00:30:11] Alex Nelson: Couples are free to bring in whatever caterer they want. And then we do all the alcohol. So alcohol has to be bought through us. Like we have a liquor license and All the insurance behind that. So we allow them to buy it through us and we have like different packages and they can customize it from there.

[00:30:25] Alex Nelson: But I would say for anyone that’s thinking about building a venue and talked about the industry as a whole, I’d say when the eight days standalone venues first started popping up, they were mostly just doing like the rental, like maybe like BYOB, bringing in your own alcohol. And as things have changed, the construction price has gone up.

[00:30:41] Alex Nelson: Interest rates are high. I would highly recommend like At least bringing alcohol in house just because that’s another 40 potentially 50 percent of your revenue. Go on my Twitter, look at my share of our numbers and all of our revenue numbers. Like you can see the big impact alcohol has.

[00:30:56] Alex Nelson: And I think that’s the way things are going to trend. Yes, people like bringing in their own alcohol on that BYOB option, but I think they’re going to get phased out just. Just from a cost perspective, it’s a big building. They’re expensive. A lot of expenses more than people think. So yeah, I would highly recommend.

[00:31:12] Patrick Donley: So what is a liquor license cost in Iowa? 

[00:31:15] Alex Nelson: Not bad. I think ours was like 900 bucks for the year. So we get asked that question a lot. Was it hard to get? Is it like expensive? And it’s the answer is no, it was pretty easy. Since we’re like in the right zoning, we obviously built new.

[00:31:28] Alex Nelson: So we followed all the codes and everything as far as that and. you have to have the right syncs and follow the health code structure and stuff, but they help guide you through that process. So it was pretty straightforward applying for that and getting approved. And that’s definitely something you can scope out ahead of time, go to the county who’s going to approve you.

[00:31:45] Alex Nelson: Hey, we want to do this. Can we get a liquor license? They should tell you you have to do X, Y and Z. So yeah, definitely something people are scared of and nervous about, but it’s really not that big of a deal. A lot of times I know different states like California and stuff, they only have like certain number of liquor license.

[00:32:00] Alex Nelson: and you have to buy the existing liquor license from someone and then they like getting a bidding wars and they’re like 250k or something crazy like that. So yeah, that’s a different ball game I would say, but I would assume there’s some way to navigate it hopefully. 

[00:32:14] Patrick Donley: Yeah. 900 bucks sounds pretty reasonable.

[00:32:16] Patrick Donley: And honestly, like alcohol sales, it seems like a no brainer to do to make it be part of it. I know there’s probably management stuff and there’s headaches from it. 

[00:32:26] Alex Nelson: Yeah, there’s work behind it and whatnot. But, and ultimately I think the couple of lakes maybe it costs them a little bit more, but there’s a service behind it, right?

[00:32:33] Alex Nelson: Like they don’t have to bring in these tons and tons of cases of beer, wine and stuff like that. They just get a show up and it’s there and we serve it for them and they can buy whatever they want or different kinds of things. 

[00:32:44] Patrick Donley: So it’s, you said it’s what, 40 or 50 percent of revenue in a night.

[00:32:49] Patrick Donley: The alcohol sales? 

[00:32:51] Alex Nelson: Yeah. Our rental prices right now for 2023, like a Saturday is like 6, 500 bucks a Friday is like 5, 500. And then we’ll see the bar do anywhere from three to, I think we did one that was like eight grand last week. So yeah, they can definitely surpass like the rental fee. And obviously we have to buy the alcohol and there’s a cost there and associated with that you’re looking at 65 to 70 percent margin on those.

[00:33:13] Alex Nelson: So it’s crazy. 

[00:33:15] Patrick Donley: Yeah, that’s huge margins. So talk to me about the bar. I thought the bar was pretty cool layout. Was that part of your design or who came up with that? 

[00:33:23] Alex Nelson: Yeah, it was the grand hall is obviously for sitting people and everything and you have to keep it pretty neutral so it Can fit anyone’s colors and stuff, but the only like real things that like stick out are like the chandeliers So we went all out on those We have eight huge six foot diameter chandeliers and then the bar was like the staple or like the focal point kind of thing So yeah, we designed that on its own the slide that got pushed off until pretty much last.

[00:33:45] Alex Nelson: It was like something that you could frame out and build at a later time. And like I said, our construction timeline got squeezed down. So it got pushed, like it was always there in the plans at the plumbing stuff down and stuff, but it probably didn’t get built out until the last three weeks, four weeks, kind of thing, like, all right, kinda.

[00:34:01] Alex Nelson: pops are showing up soon, so we better frame this out and get it built and then yeah, figure out how to design it well, and, we did a pretty cool, arched mirror kind of thing. But yeah, that was a last minute sign too and got it custom made. So it turned out great. It’s cool. I want to say it’s 18 foot long waterfall edge kind of thing.

[00:34:21] Alex Nelson: So

[00:34:21] Patrick Donley: you’re running it Friday, Saturday. Are you doing Sunday events too? 

[00:34:25] Alex Nelson: We do. They’re not like super duper popular. This weekend’s like a holiday weekend. So Sunday is booked out Labor Day, Memorial Day those Sundays usually go. And then like popular months for us, like June and September. So we’ll see some more Sundays then usually a bit more like chill.

[00:34:39] Alex Nelson: crowd and maybe smaller wedding kind of thing. So I want to say we have seven or eight this year. Hopefully, maybe we’ll get some more next year. We also have a church that rents out our space on Sundays. They came and approached us and asked and they’re willing to like work around like our weddings.

[00:34:53] Alex Nelson: They were renting out a different space. They’ve never really had a home base. So now they feel like this is their home. And we don’t have anyone work this event. So we have. Good relationship with them now. So like they just have key, they come in, set up, tear down, do everything themselves because they’re not paying like a huge rental fee every week.

[00:35:07] Alex Nelson: But it adds up to 20 grand over the year I think. So definitely Nice to fill in the gaps there, just ’cause obviously like otherwise Sundays would be sitting empty. 

[00:35:17] Patrick Donley: So let’s, I wanted to get into the management of it. How are you and your wife handling that? How are you guys, are you behind the bar?

[00:35:23] Patrick Donley: Are you, talk to me about just how you guys are managing the. The project. 

[00:35:28] Alex Nelson: Yeah, we were super hands-on at the beginning. It’s like we always figured like, how can we hire and train people like when we haven’t even done it ourselves? So we opened in October, so it was nice that we opened in October.

[00:35:38] Alex Nelson: We had every Friday, Saturday booked in October and every Friday, Saturday booked into November up until Thanksgiving. And then we had New Year’s Eve wedding. So we had 15 weddings or so when we’re. All right, like we’re going to be super hands on. We’ll figure out everything during this timeframe and then come next year, we can start outsourcing and hiring out things.

[00:35:53] Alex Nelson: And I think we had two other employees. Otherwise my wife and I pretty much worked every wedding. We’d work Friday, Saturday, back to back days, like 16, 17 hour days. That first stretch. And it was a lot, it was tiring, but we learned a lot and that allowed us to build out some systems and hire and knew what we want to hire for and who we want to hire and.

[00:36:12] Alex Nelson: One of our first employees that we hired and she ended up, she actually just reached out to us. She ended up being, turning into like our venue manager now. And now we have 10 part time girls on rotation that work weddings. And then we actually outsource our bartenders to another company. That does all the bartending for us.

[00:36:28] Alex Nelson: Like we do all the alcohol ordering and tee it up for them and they just show up on the day off and do bartending, but yeah pretty hands off now. So that’s allowed me some time to focus on the bigger picture and see what’s next and start getting into that.

[00:36:41] Patrick Donley: So let’s get into that. I want to get into what’s next. I know you’re doing some advising of other people that are interested in wedding venues. We’ll get into Twitter and the outreach that are people that are reaching out to you. Talk to me a little bit about like the advising aspect of what you’re doing and maybe some projects that you’re involved in right now.

[00:37:00] Alex Nelson: I thought long and hard about this and what I wanted like our next steps to be. And we get asked all the time are you going to build another one? Are you going to do this or that? And for a short while, we wanted to build like a hotel next door to our venue and maybe put it like a second event space in there and have it like a restaurant right now.

[00:37:15] Alex Nelson: space from us. And we went down that path, but then like interest rates skyrocketed, right? And we’re like, do we really want to go take on five, 7 million worth of debt there too? So we got spooked and put it on hold. And really, we’re trying to focus on getting the venue operating efficiently and what we want to do next.

[00:37:30] Alex Nelson: And we learned it’s a lot to manage these venues. It is a real business. A lot of people think Oh, you’re so lucky you built this building and get it. Charge six, seven grand for and make all these alcohol sales. But we have a lot of people working for us now. A lot of processes, things going on.

[00:37:44] Alex Nelson: So our plan was never really to go build like 10 of these and manage it ourselves. We always wanted to find like operators to partner with. We feel like we are obviously pretty hands-on. We live nearby, like finding someone like us that wants to be hands-on at. and you can build out a team, build out a manager and stuff like you live near the area.

[00:38:02] Alex Nelson: You’re going to know your market and area better than we probably ever could figure out or learn or do. So that’s been like our strategy. And the way we’re doing that is like I got on Twitter and within five months I blew up, I’ve probably had. I’d have to go back and look, but I’m talking like 150, 200 people reach out to me saying Hey, I’ve thought about building a venue and not everyone’s serious, of course, but I’ve had tons of serious people so I’ve created this model of Hey, we’ll charge you like an upfront fee, like consulting wise.

[00:38:29] Alex Nelson: We’ll talk through like everything from A to Z. We’ll talk about your business plan we’ll work on projections, look at your location, look at your building plans, think through the flow of the building. All this stuff that I get, get you up until construction or like through construction is what that fee will get you.

[00:38:43] Alex Nelson: And then if you want like more help on the backend, we’ll partner with you and maybe come up with an equity split or a rev share agreement, and we’ll continue to help you like on the operations. We’ll put systems and. Processes in place for you and teach you what we learned about and maybe take on some like back office tasks for you as far as lead generation and things like that.

[00:39:01] Alex Nelson: And we’re slowly building out a team that can support that on that end. We have probably close to 10 projects going right now. They’re all pre development for the most part. One, we’re trying to help someone like acquire a venue. Most of them are going to be new builds. So a lot of moving pieces already.

[00:39:15] Alex Nelson: So try to build out the team and help, and we probably have. Proposals out to another 15, 20 people that I hope another half of those sign on to the commitment in the big thing. But lots of things going. 

[00:39:27] Patrick Donley: So when you say build out the team for that part of it, w what do you mean by that? What kind of people are you hiring?

[00:39:33] Patrick Donley: What do you need help with? 

[00:39:35] Alex Nelson: Yeah, definitely. I just can’t do it all myself now anymore, which is crazy. So building out ideally while someone helping jump on these like sales calls with me, essentially in locking these venues down and getting the, to book with us on the consulting side.

[00:39:49] Alex Nelson: And then we need someone more like on the back end, on the op side, that’s going to help them with like lead flow. We’ll help them with like marketing, help them with all this and like their processes and systems. And so honestly, like a small team at the top of hopefully like this whole co that has like equity into some of these and we’re also looking at adding an additional partner that’ll bring some capital.

[00:40:09] Alex Nelson: So like we were potentially going to co invest with some of these. Venues. So if we co-invest, have equity, and then we’re also gonna be partnered with them to help them on the backend and get this like revenue share agreement going. So then we’ll have reoccurring revenue from these venues also hold equity.

[00:40:23] Alex Nelson: And then we’ll have like more like the active income of just like the consulting and the fees on that front end of it. So like a three added monster there of income coming in. And then we also, we are, we’re looking to actively acquire other venues or unique properties. It’s just tough right now.

[00:40:39] Alex Nelson: It’s hard to get anything to pencil. And honestly, a lot of these venue owners are just pretty unrealistic, right? They’re usually mom and pop kind of people. Like they built it from scratch. They’re very connected to these properties and it’s hard because they’re valuing it. They’re thinking like the real estate’s worth X and then they’re thinking like the business is worth X.

[00:40:55] Alex Nelson: But it’s like the whole thing’s only really worth like what it makes. Like you can’t value both of them, so they’re putting like three, 5 million bucks on these things and they don’t even have an NOI of three, 400 K, so it’s like, how are you going to go take a 4 million loan and pay two, 300 K a year right now for it?

[00:41:12] Patrick Donley: So you’ve got a ton going on. What’s your average day look like? You don’t have a full time gig anymore. I take it. 

[00:41:19] Alex Nelson: No, don’t have that anymore. So drop the kid off at daycare, come home. The wife has a newborn she’s home with so work from home ideally but sometimes running back and forth to the venue, doing small things, dropping things off, hopping on a lot of calls and then trying to do market research and help people with their business plans and numbers right now on the consulting side.

[00:41:40] Alex Nelson: So yeah, crazy. I’d be lying to say if I wasn’t running around with my head cut off, but it’s What we’ve proven to be good at is just figuring it out as we go kind of thing. And I’d imagine like this model that we have in our head, it might end up changing a little bit, but it’s a general direction that we’re trying to do.

[00:41:55] Alex Nelson: And luckily there’s not a ton of people in the space. It’s pretty niche and I think we can. Get ahead of the curve. And there’s not like a ton of these like big T firms buying up a ton of venues and doing all this, right? It’s mostly like people starting them themselves. So I think I just listened to the podcast where Nick Heber came on.

[00:42:13] Alex Nelson: And he said for his advice or like someone starting out early, like focus on businesses that are even more niche and they’re like real estate, but like heavy on the operations. And I feel like this is exactly that. 

[00:42:23] Patrick Donley: Yeah, it was a good point he made. And yeah, it seems like you guys have found a great niche and running with it.

[00:42:28] Patrick Donley: I wanted to hear a little bit you, I saw you tweet a little bit about the, this golf course that you’re looking to maybe acquire as a project. Talk to me about that, how it’s going, what intrigued you about looking into it further. Just any other investments that you’re trying to make? 

[00:42:43] Alex Nelson: Sure. Yeah. And just zooming out we built ours, it’s just the venue.

[00:42:47] Alex Nelson: But I would say a lot of the projects that we’re working on now they want to add like short term rentals, they want to add glamping, they want to add other things that are going to drive in more income too. And I think that’s great. You’re almost building like these mini resort type properties, right?

[00:42:59] Alex Nelson: They’re super cool and unique, and I think that’ll continue to drive people in. So then you look back, it’s like, all right, what else can be in that like niche and then it’s like golf courses they have like their own revenue, but like they also have event spaces. They could make like super pretty backdrops.

[00:43:13] Alex Nelson: So like they should and could be doing a ton of weddings. Wineries, they could be, I think they’re more pivoting to doing most of their income is coming from like weddings and events because it’s just hard to make money on the wine. So looking at those kind of things, and I had always wanna.

[00:43:27] Alex Nelson: I’ve been fascinated with these like unique properties. So yeah, we came across a golf course in our area and that’s for sale. So we could have some of our existing team, manage it, bringing on some buddies in the area that love golf. And of course they went on the golf course. So we’re going down that rabbit hole and it’s a long process.

[00:43:42] Alex Nelson: So we’re going back and forth a lot. And the numbers don’t entirely pencil out. So like we’re doing a seller financing deal. So they just Counter back to us recently, and I’ve been sharing all the numbers and we’ll continue to on Twitter, but, so we need to get back to them and we’ll see how it works.

[00:43:56] Alex Nelson: But the idea is that Covid hit and they basically stopped doing events like they were doing like, a little bit, and like they’ll just stop. So we’re hoping like come in revamp the event space a little bit and think through the wedding packages that they have and hopefully bring some, like additional income maybe it’s smaller weddings, maybe it’s just like other events, but it’s in our area of expertise.

[00:44:16] Alex Nelson: And then hopefully the. golf’s hot right now. And that’s maybe like biggest like hesitancy is it going to stay hot kind of thing? So yeah, but we’re going to keep like all the staff and the maintenance guys and those guys on board if we do acquire it on the golf side and then really just focus on even if we can add just like 100 or 200 K of revenue on the event side, like it’s going to make a huge difference.

[00:44:39] Alex Nelson: Yeah, 

[00:44:39] Patrick Donley: the place where my wife and I got married, it’s a golf club and like an event wedding event space. And I think it’s the wedding event space that like really kills it. Like I said, they’re booked out for the the next year at least, more so if not. And then the golf club I think does well, but it’s I don’t know if it’s as good as the wedding venue.

[00:44:57] Patrick Donley: but I think two of them together do pretty well. 

[00:45:00] Alex Nelson: Yeah. I think traditionally golf courses didn’t do very well until like maybe COVID hit in the last few years. And you can really see on this golf course too, like the number is really ramped up so that’s maybe like the scary thing is it going to dip again?

[00:45:11] Alex Nelson: But yeah, I think there’s a big. a big need, a big hole. A lot of these golf courses are doing events and they have the land, they have the property, they’re beautiful, spending tons of money on landscaping and things like that. So I think it’s a no brainer there. And there’s a big need there. 

[00:45:25] Patrick Donley: And is that in Iowa, the golf course? 

[00:45:28] Alex Nelson: Yeah, that is 20, 25 minutes away from us. So I wouldn’t be far. So that’s what’s appealing. If it was super far away, I don’t know if I would swing for the fences on a golf course quite yet. I would say I like these unique properties and these like mini resort type properties almost, but.

[00:45:42] Alex Nelson: It’s close to home. So it makes it a little easier. 

[00:45:45] Patrick Donley: I just did a episode with a guy named Ben Wolf and he, I think his Twitter handle is unique stays or unique stays guy or something, but I’ve got to be careful about, I fall prey to shiny object syndrome, like talking to him. I was like, he’s got these super high end tree houses and really awesome unique stays that he’s got.

[00:46:04] Patrick Donley: And I talk to you, I’ve got I’m like, Oh, wedding events. Do you ever like being on Twitter? Do you ever fall prey to any of that? Like just looking at other asset classes or anything? 

[00:46:15] Alex Nelson: Yeah, a hundred percent Twitter’s amazing and I love it, but it’s yeah, definitely shiny object syndrome.

[00:46:21] Alex Nelson: And and it’s maybe you should be in something more conservative. Self storage guys are like the industrial guys or these contractor garages there’s all these different classes. I think you just got to pick one and go for it and really learn as much as you can about it.

[00:46:33] Alex Nelson: I think they all have positives and negatives and ups and downs and some are more just straight real estate plays and some are more like actual operation heavy businesses. So I think we’re operating under the, this is like mostly a business with the real estate on the back end. And then eventually if we make a ton of money and make a ton of cash, like we’ll go put it in some safer, you can see all the assets and asset classes, and not to get out of town of debt on that side or something, but yeah, kinda risk it early on and go for it. 

[00:47:01] Patrick Donley: That’s great, that’s great. You’re up to some good stuff. I wanted to hear about any, maybe a, like nightmare stories. Anything that has happened at any of the weddings that you’ve come into that was just like, Oh my God, I can’t believe that happened.

[00:47:12] Patrick Donley: Anything that you can talk about? 

[00:47:15] Alex Nelson: I’m trying to think. Yeah, you get you get a lot of people in there, they’re drinking, they’re getting drunk people passing out in the yard and you got people throwing up in the toilets and clogging them. And yeah, it can get pretty grody and pretty nasty.

[00:47:28] Alex Nelson: We created this like beautiful space that we felt was like our home or like our second home. And then just watching like the first few weddings. Just beat it up. Honestly, like the walls are getting beat up drywall. It’s all brick or steel or something on the walls probably.

[00:47:42] Alex Nelson: But I don’t know, no, like super duper crazy stories. Yeah. But obviously you’re getting in there and that most of them are there to party. 

[00:47:50] Patrick Donley: So it’s tough sometimes. Yeah. I wanted to hear a little more about Twitter and go into that. You’ve only been on there five, six months. Talk to me about just your Twitter strategy, how you think about it.

[00:48:00] Patrick Donley: It sounds like it’s been a huge boon for you, like just in terms of people reaching out. leading to new clients. Talk to me a little bit about your experience on Twitter. 

[00:48:08] Alex Nelson: Yeah, definitely. So I was going down this path of how can I help others? There’s got to be other people just like my wife and I that are like thinking the same thing.

[00:48:15] Alex Nelson: Like they just got married. They want to build a venue, that kind of thing. So I was like, I made a website I was going to try to start and run some like Google ads and things like that. And then I started getting into Twitter and I had been on there forever, but it was mostly just like sports and news and things like that.

[00:48:29] Alex Nelson: And I hadn’t been using it that much. And for whatever reason, I got more. I’m back on it again and I just kept getting sucked into the real estate Twitter and small business Twitter. And I came across a Nick’s sweaty startups and I really liked that, like a model and what these guys were saying and getting into and like real deals were being done and people were like actually connecting then I saw like strip mall guy.

[00:48:49] Alex Nelson: And then I saw a car wash guy and a couple of these guy accounts. And I was like, I bet there’s not a wedding venue, guys. So I looked that up and I was like, I like that. It’s like anonymous and like I don’t have to show my face. I can. I love like the people sharing like real numbers like Nick, I feel is.

[00:49:03] Alex Nelson: is leading that charge and it’s like something different and growing up and looking at all these businesses and like you walk into a space and I’m just like I wonder what this place does like revenue wise and what do they make you know it’s like everyone holds it so close to their chest and it’s just not like something they share and rightfully so I feel but like When are you trying to learn and figure out what you want to do and where you want to go?

[00:49:22] Alex Nelson: It’s like, how are you ever supposed to know? I’ve always been curious, like how much cash do these businesses actually have? Like, how do they operate? Those kinds of things. So I liked that I could get on there. I could share it and maybe be anonymous for a while. And to be fair, I didn’t know there were so many guy accounts.

[00:49:36] Alex Nelson: I definitely caught some flack from being another guy account. Maybe it was a little late on the train, but people know exactly what I’m. on there for and what I’m doing by my name. So it’s worked out well. And I instantly got people reaching out. And even just after a hundred, 200 followers, it was crazy.

[00:49:51] Alex Nelson: And I was like, tell my wife Hey, I got like 240 followers now. Like I thought it was so cool. And that was like two weeks in. And now I think I have almost 6, 000. And it’s you don’t have to have 20, 50, 100, 000 followers to like, for, to like really make an impact. Like I said, I’m getting like probably two to five to ten people sometimes, depending on how big a tree goes, like reaching out, talking about wanting to build on their property or build this thing and need help with it.

[00:50:15] Alex Nelson: Yeah, Twitter has been wild and I didn’t really have a strategy. I’m trying to create more of a strategy now, but before it was just like, Hey, I’m going to hop on. I’m going to share our numbers. I’m going to talk about the good, the bad, the ugly kind of thing. So yeah, that’s kind of it. And without go maybe slowing down a little bit or changing a little bit, I may have to pivot a little bit.

[00:50:32] Alex Nelson: And I think the newsletters are great. I don’t have one. Maybe I’ll create one just to keep that. That funnel going now that we are like actively looking for people to work with. 

[00:50:42] Patrick Donley: Yeah. Yeah. It seems like there’s a lot of newsletters out there and I know Nick views his newsletter as a way to really find like the handful of people, whether he is who are going to do business with him.

[00:50:52] Patrick Donley: That’s really what the newsletter’s all about. He’s got an interesting philosophy about how he uses Twitter. That’s really worth studying. He is obviously figured it out. 

[00:51:00] Alex Nelson: Yeah, definitely has a down pat. I think he starts at the top, baits people, which I find hilarious. And and then he works down to he’s click baity stuff to like actual real stuff.

[00:51:11] Alex Nelson: And then even farther down to targeting specific people that are actually going to do business with them. So I think that’s a great model. I almost maybe went the other way. I started like super niche and I got like Real people like reaching out and now I’m just going backwards and like how can I do a couple quick videos get some more followers.

[00:51:26] Alex Nelson: And it’s not about.. I don’t care about the followers, but like unfortunately it’s just the more followers you have, the bigger reach you have, the more people that are going to find me. So you gotta play the game. So I don’t really care if you’re trying to build on there, you definitely looking for followers.

[00:51:37] Alex Nelson: It’s just part of it. 

[00:51:39] Patrick Donley: Yeah, although, not to push back, but one of Nick’s partner Mitchell Baldridge, he does the RE Cost Sig company with him, he mentioned, and this is actually a great article, I’ll put links in it, it’s called A Thousand True Fans, and it’s written by Kevin Kelly, a guy named Kevin Kelly who wrote you really just need a thousand fans who just love what you’re up to on today’s age To really make a nice living like with a thousand people following you that are into what you’re up to, like you can do really well.

[00:52:05] Patrick Donley: But obviously 300, 000 is better than I think Nick’s got 300 or something, but 

[00:52:11] Alex Nelson: yeah, exactly. But no, I do agree with that statement and it’s proven to be true. Like I can charge five to 15 K for these consulting cause they’re like serious and that zoned in on this like actual niche that I’m talking about.

[00:52:23] Alex Nelson: And I they get to see in my head space a little bit and that’s all you really need. Yeah, it’s insane. It’s great. And I don’t really want to be on any other platforms. Maybe at some point I’m going to be pushed to, but I really don’t. So I really hope the Twitter trend is here to stay.

[00:52:38] Patrick Donley: Yeah, no, it’s an incredible platform. It adds tremendous value. Guys like Nick just sharing their playbook and sharing your playbook, was that a hard decision to make? Just you. are very open about your numbers every week, basically, like what you’re doing. 

[00:52:52] Alex Nelson: Yeah, it made it easier.

[00:52:53] Alex Nelson: I did go with anonymous at first because that’s what like all the guy accounts were going to do. But a couple of probably a month or so ago, I switched it to just my normal stuff and having my picture and stuff on there and my location and whatnot. So that kind of got me in and got me out of the [ inaudible]

[00:53:25] Patrick Donley: Alex, this has been a lot of fun. Is there anything else you wanted to touch on today that we didn’t cover? 

[00:53:30] Alex Nelson: I don’t think so. I think we went down our crazy story of getting started and a little bit where we’re going. But yeah, I’ll keep sharing on Twitter for the good or the bad. Maybe, I don’t know, but we’ll see where it goes.

[00:53:42] Patrick Donley: Yeah, no, I’ve definitely enjoyed reading your stuff and learning about it. So just for people that do want to learn more about you, tell us again where to find you on Twitter or any other places that you want them to know about. 

[00:53:53] Alex Nelson: Yep. Yep. So Twitter is @WeddingVenueGuy on Twitter. That’s like my main handle.

[00:53:56] Alex Nelson: That’s where I’m sharing all my stuff. If you want to look at our venue, it’s the midnightvenues.com and then we spun up like our other company, which has midnight venues. And that’s where we’re doing the consulting and then partnering and hopefully buying and investing in more venues as well.

[00:54:11] Patrick Donley: Cool. This has been fun, Alex. I really appreciate your time. 

[00:54:14] Alex Nelson: Yeah. Thank you so much, Patrick. This is great.

[00:54:17] Patrick Donley: Okay, folks. That’s all I had for today’s episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I’ll see you back here real soon.

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