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Okay, so we get this question almost everyday, people seem intrigued on how 2 young brothers who worked at gas stations can build a resort from scratch. There is no secret, here is how we did it. One cold December night back in 2008 in Kelowna, BC, Canada, after working 8 hour shifts at a local gas station, we (Luke and Travis), decided to pick up a 24 case and chill in our hottub at our parents house. This hottub is a place for our minds to wonder, we have a book full of different ideas and weird inventions that were thought up by us from drinking in this hottub.
Then that night, the main topic was buying an island. Many ideas got passed around on what we would have on that island...I won't go into details, but as funny as it was, we were kind of serious. You know that feeling when you are on to something and nothing can stop you?, that is what was flowing through us that night. We brought out the computer and looked up islands for sale. As the search went on, islands were too much, (we didn't have any money anyways), so we decided to type in "cheap land for sale". Phillipines and Nicaragua came up. We had about $1500 each in our bank accounts and decided to book 2 return tickets to Nicaragua that week....as it was closer than the Phillipines.
So off to Nicaragua we went. We found ourselves doing the same thing that every backpacker does when they travel...explore. We spent the 2 week trip, exploring, partying and having fun. The 2 weeks went faster than we thought. It was the day before we had to go home that we realized we didn't really look at much land. We were walking down the street, and met a local contractor from California that overheard us and said...."are you guys Canadian"? He was renovating an old building. That night we went to go check out a 2 acre plot of land his friend had for sale for cheap.
We loved it. We put a $1000 deposit on it. And made an agreement where we would pay the rest over the course of a year. We came back 4 months later, rented a truck and toured the country, hired a lawyer, and did some work on the land. Over the year we worked like crazy at some jobs that were better than the gas station job. Also during that year, we built a website and came up with a business plan on what we wanted to do with the land...to build the world's 1st action sports resort.
To be honest with you, we had our doubts. Until we posted an ad on our local towns website...looking for investors for our project. Over the course of 1 month, we met up with 6 potential investors at a local starbucks, they were stoked. We only picked 2 investors from the bunch, and off we went. We sold our vehicles, everything we owned, had to end our 5 year relationships with our girlfriends, and off we went into the unknown. The story is still creating itself.
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