Dallin Tait
I think you gotta learn how to not take no as an answer from people. I think we went to about 14 different banks before we were able to find someone that believed in our vision and we’d learn different things from each bank that we went to.
Sebastien Leitner
Welcome to the turndown. Today, I sit down with Dallin Tait. Dallin Tait is founder, owner, operator of Bluff Dwellings. Bluff Dwellings is a beautiful property in the middle of, you could say nowhere, but also in the middle of a fantastic mountainous region in the US. Dallin opened his property in the middle of a pandemic and learned the hard way on how to scale his business, how to sort of overcome challenges. So I invite you to discover his journey as a newly minted hotelier, COO, with a background in touring and excursions. And I can’t wait to discover his properties. I wanna go definitely after my conversation with him, his destination, his place became part of my bucket list. And I look forward to going on a ski tour with him.
Dallin, welcome to the Turndown. It’s great to welcome you to this episode of the podcast. Simply excited to talk to you about your experience as an owner-operator of a beautiful destination property and excursion company. Dallin, welcome to the program.
Dallin Tait
Thanks Sebastian. Thanks for having me.
Sebastien Leitner
Perfect. I wanna talk about how you got started before we go into sort of what’s keeping you up at night. I wanna talk about how you got started in the industry. It’s my understanding that you started with excursions before you became a hotelier. Is that true?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. Yeah. I can give you some history. So I moved here about two thousand eleven. I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for about thirteen years. Started out with guiding, worked at ski resorts, ski instructing, climbing. I moved to the region, well, I actually met my wife at Southern Utah University. I was teaching climbing courses over there. Moved over to Blanding, turned out her family, her dad was starting a guiding company called Four Corners Adventures. And was able to join and partner with him and start off, we did everything from canyoneering, climbing, hiking. Did a little bit of biking. That didn’t work so well. We quit doing that.
And then we bought a rafting company called Wild Rivers Expeditions in twenty thirteen on the San Juan River, which is a beautiful river. It flows down into Lake Powell. We offer trips from three days, four days, up to seven days, and it’s just a beautiful place. So, really, it’s the wilderness. That’s what brought us here. There’s hundreds of miles of canyons, just a beautiful, beautiful area, wilderness. Not sure if you’re familiar with Moab, but we’re about two hours south of Moab in a place called Bluff. And if you’re into the outdoors, there’s no better place to be.
Sebastien Leitner
Sounds amazing. And you’re surrounded by multiple national parks if I’m not mistaken. Correct?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. So we’re right on what they call the Grand Circle. Lots of people will fly into Las Vegas or Salt Lake, and then you can do like a week long road trip. You hit Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Arches, Canyonlands, Bryce, and Zion. We see lots of visitors that are doing that, lots of people that are passing through.
I think one of the reasons we wanted to start a hotel is, as we were doing our river trips, Bluff is a small community. There’s now four or five other hotels, lots of Airbnbs. But at that time, our guests were staying up to an hour away because all the rooms were full. My in-laws, their names are Jared and Spring, they owned a small bed and breakfast up in Monticello, Utah, about ten to twelve rooms. One of the things we’d realized with kind of a smaller property and the seasonality of the region is with that many rooms, you can’t really hire help. You’re kind of tied to the project. If you hire anybody to help you, then there’s not much profit at the end of the year, so you’re more tied to it.
So with Bluff Dwellings, and you can go look at our website, you can see the property, it’s beautiful. It’s built right up against two hundred and fifty foot cliffs. And we tried really, really hard to honor the cultures that have been here in the past and just the beautiful canyons. But we decided we had to have at least fifty rooms. We wanted to have 50 rooms so that we could hire the help that we needed and be able to create jobs for people. And really, that was kind of the number. As we looked at all the projections, that was kind of the number we came up with, that we could hire the help.
Sebastien Leitner
So is it fair to say that you created the hotel business to enable travelers that experienced the tours to have a place to stay that is more convenient and that would actually help drive greater demand in the excursion and the rafting business?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. In some ways, you could say we built the hotel to fuel our hobby of the outdoors. And really, we wanted to create a destination resort where people could come, stay for a week. And once you get here, I mean, for like corporate groups, we do all the catering, we’ve got food, we’ve got conference rooms, but then we can get you out into slot canyons. Like, we did a bachelor party a year ago that they found us on Instagram. They flew out. They rented one of our two road suites. They stayed for four days, and they did a day on the river, they did a day of canyoneering, and they did a day of side by sides or razors 4×4 tours.
And that’s really kind of what we wanted, a destination where people could disconnect, get out, enjoy the solitude. We’re also a dark sky town. So all the lights in town, Bluff is really small, there’s only about two hundred and fifty people that live here. But if you look at our resort, you come here, you won’t see any open light bulbs. Everything’s pointed out of the ground so that you can see the Milky Way. So you can sit out in the hot tub and really just see the entire night sky, which is just, people love it.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s awesome. I love the fact that you’re not pointing light to the sky and that you’re creating almost like a sustainable experience. There’s no pollution of light there. It’s what you should see.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. And we’re trying really hard to keep it that way.
Sebastien Leitner
That makes sense. I’m curious, like, I’m a skier myself, so I was curious, what was your home mountain? And do you miss skiing, or is there a mountain close by?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. So we’re right in the four corners. We’re right near Colorado. So there are ski resorts about an hour and a half away. But just twenty minutes from where I live, you can get up into the backcountry. I do a lot of touring, though, so you skin up and ski down, or we’ll snowmobile in, skin up and ski down. So we do a lot of that.
Sebastien Leitner
So that’s awesome. You can combine your passion with your work and you allow people to discover their passion alongside it. That’s awesome.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. Yeah. Some things we keep for ourselves. I don’t guide skiing. I like to do that myself now.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay. Okay. But there’s some trails and some mountain areas where you’re not taking tourists that you wanna keep to yourself.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. But if they’ve got the gear, I mean, I’d still love to point them in the right direction. And it is a beautiful spot because you can be, you can go skiing one day and you can go hiking the next day in fifty five degree weather. So we’ve got a wide range of things to do here.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fantastic. Alright. Well, let’s go to our typical opening question, which is, as a general manager of a beautiful property, what is keeping you up at night these days?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. That question always makes me laugh because I’ve got two year old twins at home. So that is the quick answer. Right? I’ve been sleep deprived for a really long time.
But as far as business goes, I think, like, right now, some of the things that keep us up at night is just overall cash flow. This time of year, Bluff’s very seasonal. So from about Thanksgiving time until March, everyone disappears. So we’ve been working on different ways to get people here in the winter. The hiking is actually beautiful. You just got shorter days. But yeah, just trying to work our way through the financing and figuring out how to keep the doors open through winter. In the past, we used to shut down for a month or two. But we found it’s much better to just stay open and keep our staff on board and not have to start over every spring.
Sebastien Leitner
Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about the property and how you built it.
Dallin Tait
So we built Bluff Dwellings, a little bit more history, we’re on a 16-acre piece of land. About 8 acres of that we were able to build on. But we actually built it from the ground up. We had to be really creative with the way we built it. Bluff, in San Juan County, it’s the largest county in Utah. It might be in the United States, but it’s very small. It’s about two people per square mile is the population. So we had to be creative with the way we built. And it’s also the poorest county in Utah. So we were really creative with the way we did it.
My father-in-law’s named Jared and he’s also a general contractor. So we were able to build the property ourselves. When we say we built it, I mean, we actually were out there digging the footers and framing everything. But we opened in phases. We had our grand opening right during COVID. So we opened up our first thirty three rooms on March sixth of twenty twenty, and seven days later, it was a travel ban, and it really put a delay on things. We thought we’d probably lose the whole thing, but we were able to work our way through all that. In short, we just finished construction in fall of twenty twenty three. So we just finished off our fifty six rooms about three months ago.
Sebastien Leitner
So you could call yourself an excursion guide, a developer, and hotelier by chance, ultimately. Right?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. And it’s not just me. I mean, it’s a combination of our different skill sets, but I kinda focus on the tour company and the hotel and Jared focuses on the development. And actually, we’ve had such a good time that we’re actually, we just broke ground on an RV park. We’re gonna keep building and expanding. And we’re playing with the idea of expanding Bluff Dwellings in the future. Adding on a full restaurant. Right now, we’ve got a cafe, which is great food, but lots of people want a restaurant where they can sit down and get a drink. So that’s in the plans, and then we’ve also got, we’re considering doing another hotel in a neighboring town.
Sebastien Leitner
Fantastic. Sounds like something is going right for you.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. I think things are going really well. It’s still stressful. I mean, I never thought we’d be developing multi million dollar projects coming from a background of being a river rat. But we love it. Yeah. It’s a challenge and we see a lot of opportunity in a place where it’s kind of overlooked because it’s away from everything.
Sebastien Leitner
You must have had crazy stories, like, in this time from March twenty twenty to now when you finished building the property. Talk to me about a crazy day where nothing went the right way. There must have been stories like that.
Dallin Tait
Oh, well, for one, we’re the kind of people that pick a date, and then we stick with it. So we were gonna do our grand opening on March sixth. We had a fifteen room building, so our buildings are split up into, there’s fifteen in our main buildings. We’ve got three of those. That’s forty five rooms. And then the additional rooms are kind of standalone condos. They got full kitchens in them.
But I remember when we decided we were gonna open that date, the night before we were supposed to open, we had guests booked in the rooms and we were still in there hooking up water heaters and hadn’t tested any of the plumbing and still painting a couple rooms. And I remember we worked out probably two or three in the morning. We were back there at six or seven o’clock in the morning, and we finished like at one o’clock in the afternoon. We were still sweeping out a couple other rooms as guests were checking in to the building.
Sebastien Leitner
You had your own definition of a soft opening, right? Like, you were running a business alongside construction.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. We were running a business alongside things. And this is like, as we’re running a tour company and a rafting company, and it’s a small operation. I mean, we put about three thousand people on the river per year. So it’s not a huge operation, but it’s got lots of room to grow. And you go check out our reviews. People love what we’re doing here.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s awesome. What is sort of like something that surprises your guests when they arrive? Is it the nature? Is it the surroundings? Like, help us understand because it’s hard, and pictures probably don’t do it justice. Right? You arrive. You experience the property and the location. What’s the sort of visceral reaction?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. I mean, I think as you come in, I mentioned to you San Juan County, one of the poorest counties in the state. So you’re driving through, and we’re also right on the border of the Navajo reservation. About seventy to 80% of our staff live on the reservation. So as you’re driving through the region, you’re driving through, I think it’s beautiful. But a lot of the desert, you just look out and there’s nothing for as far as you can see.
And then as you drop into our canyon, you drop into this beautiful canyon, and there’s two hundred foot sandstone walls, and then our resort’s built right into the cliffs. So we get lots of people that just pull into our parking lot, and we’ll see them taking pictures and they get back to their car and head on down the road. And then a lot of our guests also find us by word-of-mouth. We got lots of repeat guests, and I think they’re surprised to find a resort of our quality in such a remote location.
Sebastien Leitner
Nice. That’s fantastic. You must have had learnings, like, think of our audience. A lot of them are about to open a new property or are thinking about opening their own businesses, etcetera. What were some of the more painful learnings as you’re developing a completely new hotel business that you say, I wish I had known. I wish somebody would have told me that.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. That’s a good question. I think you gotta learn, for one, I think you gotta learn how to not take no as an answer from people. I think we went to about fourteen different banks before we were able to find someone that believed in our vision and we’d learn different things from each bank that we went to of what they’re looking for. And a lot of that wasn’t me, a lot of that was Jared, but I think that was one thing we learned.
All the different technologies that come with hotels, as far as key locks go and different things. Learning some of that was a challenge. All the IT stuff, like networking. We’re in such a remote location that that just turns out to be something that I’ve had to learn how to do myself, probably. Learning how to run all of the keys for the doors and all the networking for the different wifi locations and different things. That was really difficult to learn. All the telephone stuff. But I still, like, just in the last few years, I feel like technology has come to a spot where boutique hotels can compete with brands and different things. And before, I think, that would have been really difficult.
Sebastien Leitner
So who do you feel you compete with the most? Is it the big brands? Is it a similar boutique property?
Dallin Tait
There’s not a lot. In fact, I don’t think there’s a single franchised hotel in San Juan County where we live. There is another beautiful resort here in town called the Desert Rose. They’ve got a beautiful property that was family owned. They’ve also got about fifty rooms. That’s probably one of our big competitors. And then Monument Valley, there’s a place called Goulding’s. I think they just had their hundred year anniversary. They’ve got an amazing property. So those are some of our main competitors. Moab, we’re trying to get people to come out of Moab. Have you ever been to Moab before?
Sebastien Leitner
I haven’t, but it’s on that bucket list.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. I mean, it’s got the National Parks and it’s just a beautiful area. They got multiple restaurants. That’s one of the challenges with Bluff is, I think we’ve got like four restaurants. But who knows which one’s gonna be open on any night of the week. In fact, when we started Bluff Dwellings, we weren’t gonna do any kind of food. We didn’t wanna do food. But our first fall of being open, we had guests staying here with nowhere to eat within thirty miles. So that fall, we looked at the property and said, okay, we can fit a little cafe right here, talked to the engineers, and we broke ground on a little cafe that we opened up next spring.
Sebastien Leitner
Was it difficult to get a license for liquor or for alcohol? What’s your setup?
Dallin Tait
It has been tricky. We were able to get a beer license pretty easily. So we sell beer in our gift shop, and that’s been good. We’re currently working on a catering and a banquet license, which in Utah is a little tricky to get. There’s just a lot of hoops you gotta jump through, but we should have that in spring so that we’ll be able to have wine for room service and events. So we’ll be able to do that next year, which we’re looking forward to because we get a lot of European travelers. And if you can’t get a glass of wine within thirty or forty miles, could be some upset folks.
Sebastien Leitner
Let’s talk a little bit about guests, and I’m curious, are the European travelers different from the domestic traveler in their expectations and how they behave, or is it pretty much the same?
Dallin Tait
No. I’d say there’s definitely differences. We can tell. So we get most of our international travelers between July and early September, especially August, which is great because all the domestic travelers know it’s too hot and they don’t wanna come here. But all the international folks, they’re all off. The whole country shuts down in August and they all come to Utah because we’re full.
But international travelers here, most of them will only stay one night. That’s a difference. I think our domestic travelers come for two or three nights. International travelers are trying to get in as many national parks as possible, so they’ll only stay for one night.
Sebastien Leitner
So they may do two weeks in the US, and every day they go to a different state or different destination.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. So like our housekeeping in the month of August, they’re turning over the entire resort almost every day. And we were, often during the month of August, we were sold out pretty much every night, but mostly one night stays. While the rest of the year we’re averaging two and a half nights per guest. So that’s a different behavior.
Sebastien Leitner
You mentioned that you’re in a town with two hundred and fifty people. You must have challenges with recruitment and staff. How do you manage this effectively?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. And I see lots of folks that have struggled with that. Lots of businesses. It’s something we were worried about. But like I had mentioned, we’re also right on the edge of the Navajo reservation, and the San Juan River is actually the dividing line that we do river trips on. So everything on the left side of the river is the Navajo reservation. So we haven’t had too hard of a time. I mean, we still face some turnover, but I think that’s one of the things we’ve done really well in twenty twenty three was creating teams and some managers and a leadership team, just from the locals that do live in the area, off the reservation and from Blanding. Most of our, in fact, I don’t think any of our staff actually lives in Bluff. Most of them probably drive fifteen to thirty minutes to get to work.
Sebastien Leitner
So you’re able to source from outside as well. And it doesn’t sound like you have a hard time finding great people.
Dallin Tait
I think we’ve done, we’ve put a lot of time and effort into training our managers and our leaders. That’s one of the things that I’m proud of that we’ve done is instead of bringing outside talent to run the hotel, we’ve been able to train people from nearby and keep that revenue within the community versus bringing in outside help.
Sebastien Leitner
Interesting. I’m curious, especially the international travel, but also the domestic travel. How do you drive demand? How do you create awareness? Right? You’re an independent hotel, an independent business. So you don’t necessarily have the marketing power that maybe a Marriott or Hilton has, the brand awareness. How do people discover your business?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. We use a great marketing company. We outsourced that a couple years ago, but they’ve helped us with the tour company for a long time. We do a lot of email marketing, SEO. I think one of the most important things is just having a great website that people can look at and it’s easy to book. We’re driving right now about sixty five percent direct bookings.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fantastic. Congratulations.
Dallin Tait
So we’ve worked really hard at just having beautiful images and a smooth booking process. We still rely on the OTAs quite a bit, but the more that we can book direct, I think the better. And I think over time, word of mouth, and I think really just having a beautiful website is the main thing. We do a lot of AdWords and SEO and stuff like that.
Sebastien Leitner
Cool. Do people call before they book with you? Like, do they come with questions ahead of their reservations? Or what’s the typical behavior?
Dallin Tait
For the tour company, yeah, we get a lot of people calling and they have lots of questions of what to expect on the river and different things like that. For the hotel, I think I’d have to go look it up, but more than, definitely more than half, probably eighty percent is booking through our website or through the OTAs. So not doing a lot of phone calls.
We do, anytime someone books a trip with us, so if they book a river trip, they get an email promoting the hotel. And if they book at the hotel, they’ll get a thing that says, oh, we also run river trips, here’s fifteen percent off with this promo code. So we cross market a lot between the two companies, which I think has helped us quite a bit.
Sebastien Leitner
What are you doing in social media? Everyone talks about, hey, you have to be on TikTok, you have to be on Instagram or whatever the young generation is calling these days. But are you heavily engaged? Is this a source of demand for you?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. It’s a tricky one because it’s hard to track. Like Google AdWords, I can see, oh, I spent this much and I got this much return. Facebook and Instagram, we use both of those. I think a lot of people do find us that way. And the property is beautiful. So a lot of our people find us through other people on social media sharing pictures. And they call it, I think, FOMO or fear of missing out. I think there’s a lot of that that comes through social media. And then also we’re just in such a beautiful location, it’s really hard to describe, but a lot of people once they discover it, they just keep coming back year after year.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. I’m curious, like, you’re a developer, you have a lot of ideas for projects. If you could take out a magic wand and say, I wanna change one thing about my property, what would it be?
Dallin Tait
Oh, right now, I think I wish I had a full restaurant. Because that’s the thing that people are requesting the most. We also don’t have any elevators in our buildings. Some of our buildings are three stories tall. I never realized how much of an issue that would be for people. But I mean, if I had unlimited money, elevators would have made sense, but for our project where it was, it didn’t quite make sense. But that’s something I’d probably change if I could.
Bluff is a small town, like I said. They don’t have a sewer system. So everything here is on septic systems. And we have a wastewater treatment plant right here on the property. So all of our wastewater that we use is recycled right here on the property, and we can use it to water all of our vegetation throughout the whole property. So that’s a great thing, but if we had a sewer, I could add a whole bunch more rooms.
Sebastien Leitner
I guess that’s an important piece. So let’s get the city to build a sewage system so that you can expand. Right?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. Otherwise investing into a new system can probably be quite expensive. Well, it just takes up space. So we’ve maxed out the space on our land.
Sebastien Leitner
That makes sense. I wanna talk a little bit about technology and especially from a hotel use perspective. You’re using, I believe, Cloudbeds, but you’re using other tools as well. So help me understand a little bit your tech setup and how you leverage it.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. I mean, that was kind of a big learning curve for us. But we’ve used Cloudbeds. And one of my concerns was that it wouldn’t, as we grew, serve all of our needs, but so far, it’s worked extremely well. I mentioned just people being able to book online. I think that’s such an important thing, and it’s just such an easy system. And it’s also just super easy to teach our staff. So our staff, if you can use an iPad or a phone, it’s just super easy to learn.
And we also use one called Whistle, which links up with Cloudbeds that allows us to text all of our guests. And I find a lot of guests don’t reply to emails or in fact they don’t like to answer phones, but they’ll text us. So every time you book a room, you get a text message that says, oh, we’re so excited to have you. If there’s anything we can do to make your stay better. And then that goes directly to our front desk. We have a twenty four hour front desk and they’re able to communicate with guests really effectively that way.
We’re also using Flexkeeping for all of our housekeeping and maintenance. That’s been super helpful. Just getting rid of paper, and I hate paper. Anytime I can get rid of paper, I’m getting rid of it. And then one new one that we tried this year, we’re also using some AI powered revenue management. So our prices change depending on demand and it’s all, we set the parameters, so it’s not hundred percent AI, but since we’ve started using that, we’ve seen a good increase.
Sebastien Leitner
So you’re happy with the results? It’s driving value for you?
Dallin Tait
Yeah. So far, we’ve been really happy with it.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. Do you see a need for further technology? Like, if there’s anything missing right now, whether that’s in Cloudbeds or any other tech, what are you shopping for right now?
Dallin Tait
One of the things I’ve been looking into, and I feel like it’s not quite there, but it will be soon, is just self-checking kiosks. I know it’s something that Cloudbeds is working on, and there’s several companies working on it, but I think guests are getting used to that. All of our locks are Bluetooth enabled. So when that tech comes in, people would be able to check-in with their phones and access their rooms with their phones.
Sebastien Leitner
And do you still give physical keys or do you use a pin? Which do you use?
Dallin Tait
We use RFID cards. And they were great. And I don’t see that going away anytime soon. A lot of our travelers are older, retired, and I think checking in with their phone, they’re not gonna be comfortable with that. But I think that’s a technology that is up and coming that we’ll see more and more in hotels.
Sebastien Leitner
Yeah. I like the physical key somehow. I mean, I’m a complete tech nerd, but my phone is always undercharged. And I kind of like that old feel in a way. But I agree with you, I don’t think it’s gonna go away anytime soon. Anything else that you think you’d love to see happen?
Dallin Tait
Not that I can really think of. One that I just started exploring is there’s a couple of different rewards programs, one called Stash, but there’s hotel rewards programs. That’s something I’ve been looking into as well.
Sebastien Leitner
Oh, nice. Oh, nice. That’s a very interesting area for us for sure. You should definitely check it out. Before we wrap up, I wanna leave on sort of two areas that I wanna focus on. One is I’d love you to share a best practice. Anything that you say, if I had to redo it again as a developer of a property, make sure you do this. Whatever it is. Because I think you’ve had your experience in the last three, four years. You’ve done an amazing job creating this beautiful destination resort. And I’m sure there’s others here on the program listening that are curious, what did you learn, Dallin, that you say everyone should do? So that’s one area. And the other area is, you talked about two children at home, two years old, how do you balance that? Right? This is for me too, my kids are a bit older, so I do and I don’t envy you right now. But I’m curious if you had any thoughts on how to balance the two. So maybe let’s start with the family and then the best practice.
Dallin Tait
Yeah. So I mentioned the two year old twins. I didn’t mention I’ve also got three other kids. So I’ve got a ten year old, a seven year old, a five year old, and two year old twins. So balancing that is really difficult, but my wife’s able to be a stay at home mom, which really makes it all work.
I think one of the things that’s helped us to balance it is everything that we do is cloud based. So we’ve tried really hard to stay that way so that I can still spend time at home. And if I need to jump on for just a minute, I can almost fix anything without being at the property, which is excellent. And then also just training our staff and our leaders. When we very first opened, it was hard to leave. I felt like I couldn’t be gone from the property or things were going wrong or if I went on vacation, I had to keep my phone near me all the time.
But we’ve spent really the last year and a half developing just a team of leaders, and I think that’s one of the things that I’m most proud of and that helps us to be able to manage family life and also still run a successful, I mean, two businesses. Tour company, hotel, cafe. We also run a spa. Don’t think I even mentioned the spa. But we’ve got a spa. And then Jared runs a construction company. So between the four different companies, we’ve got about a hundred employees, which is a big, I mean, where we live, that’s a big contributor to the economy.
Sebastien Leitner
Alright. One best practice that you say every developer, every entrepreneur should do.
Dallin Tait
I think one thing that just comes to mind again is just developing that team, finding the right people, and creating a culture where people want to be there. Maybe that’s not so much on the developer side, but on the hotelier side, for sure. We spent some time, there’s a book, it’s called I Love It Here. It’s about creating a business where people want to be there. And that’s something we really focused on. And just having that culture really makes it possible to find the right people and to not have to be on the property all the time. I mean, I’m still here forty plus hours a week, but I can disconnect, which is important.
On the development side, I’d say borrow more money than you think you need in the beginning because it’s gonna cost more. It’s gonna run out. And then you have to borrow more money. And at that point, it’s probably gonna be more expensive. And then just soundproofing. Make sure you’ve got everything soundproofed really, really well. We did everything the engineers told us to do. In fact, we doubled it. But we’ve got hardwood floors in some of the rooms. Well, all the rooms have hardwood floors. So we ended up ripping out sheetrock in some of the buildings and adding even more soundproofing, which was not cheap. But that’s something. I’d say if you got multiple room levels, make sure you nail that the first time.
Sebastien Leitner
Excellent. Well, on that bombshell, on this mic drop moment, I’d like to wrap it up. Dallin, thank you so much for joining the program, for sharing your insights, your story, and most importantly, what you’ve learned throughout the last three years running a fantastic business. Thank you so much for your time.
Dallin Tait
Yep. You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
Sebastien Leitner
Absolutely. Thank you for listening to the turn down. Don’t forget to subscribe and tune in next week as we discover new exciting guests.
