The Community, Connections & Commerce Podcast, presented by OUE & St. Clairsville Chamber - Community, Connections, & Commerce Episode 6 with Dan Milleson

Episode Date: September 13, 2024

Welcome back to Community Connections and Commerce. I'm Drake Watson, along as always with Wendy Anderson and our special guest today, Dan Millison, the founder and owner of Waterfront Hall and president of Milestone Insurance. Dan, we really appreciate your time and thank you for coming on this afternoon. Hi, Dan. Hi there. Happy to be here, guys. Thank you. So we've got a ton of things to talk about. I think it's just really interesting to kind of pick your brain with a lot of the things that you see and especially a lot of the things that you do throughout the community. And I'd like to start off by just kind of getting the backstory. And

first of all, I know Milestone came before the waterfront and just would be interested in knowing how that got started. Yeah. So I graduated from Ohio University in 2011 and I graduated from there with a business administration degree because I at that time saw myself as a generalist I guess I didn't know what exactly I wanted to do but my dad my grandpa and my great grandpa had all been in the insurance business and so I took the path of least resistance right out of college. And I, I had been working for them through college, but, uh, after, right after I was finished, uh, the following Monday, after the Saturday that I graduated from OU, I was, uh, at a class

learning more about the insurance industry to eventually work there. And there was a period of time in my early days where I did not want to be there. I just graduated from one of the best party schools in the entire country, moved back home and got into a business, which was about as far from fun as you could possibly get. So I started coaching basketball and got involved in the community as much as possible to try to like quell my thirst for something else. Yeah. And it helped, but it didn't totally solve the problem until, you know, one day when, I mean, I was pretty forlorn about the whole thing. I'm just going to get right into it and personal with you guys, if you don't mind. Go right ahead. Fine. I went ahead and, you know, I was going out and having fun in my, you know, this was, I'm 23 at this point.

And I went out and I never came back and didn't report into work the next day. I woke up on a friend's couch at 11 o'clock in the morning. And so like, okay, I wasn't going into work. And I went downstairs. I lived in my parents' basement at the time. Okay. And so I just kind of like slept it off. But I knew I was going to get my rear end shootout when my dad got home.

He was my boss at the time and um he came downstairs and man i remember the thud thud down the stairs and like heel first like a strong sound you know and my stomach's like you know he he sat on the couch and he was like, I fully expected to get ripped. And he was like, he's like, you know, Dan, if you're not happy and you don't want to do this, I'm not asking you to. He said, you can you can do anything you want to do and I'm going to be proud of you. And ultimately, what I care about is whether or not you live a fulfilling, happy life. He said, I can see how unhappy you are right now, and we can make a plan for you to do something else if you want to. Wow.

So it went from the bottom pit of despair, disappointing your dad, you know, to getting an olive branch, essentially. It's hard not for me to get emotional about that. But what that led to was not an instant like pivot and then me going and like having the best time of my life. What actually, well, yeah, what actually happened was I committed myself to making my dad, honoring my dad with my work ethic. And so I busted my rear end for two solid years. And one is respect and respect to the people I was working with. And then he came to me one day and he was like, I want out of here too.

No, he didn't. He said, but what you have to do is you have to go, we have to go back to Nationwide Insurance, who was basically the owner of everything we had. We never really owned anything except the servicing rights, which is nothing. It's a contract. So he said, we have to go

to nationwide and prove to them at 24 years old that you're going to be able to take this over do you think you want to do that and i said okay so i i got my series six license which is basically um i could sell mutual funds and things like that that was one of the requirements i sat for interviews i took more tests. And then the sales manager approved what I was doing. And then it went to the vice president of the company and they signed off on it. I became the youngest principal agent out of 4,000 agents across the country. And then that's actually, that's somewhat of an assumption, but I can't imagine that there was anybody else in that position at that time. And I never met in all the many, many, many meetings and conferences I went to,

anybody that was my age. But that was such a cheat code because I was always around people smarter than me, which was a great first lesson. You don't want to be the smartest person in any room. If you are, you're in the wrong room. And ultimately, what that led to was me going on a program to prove myself from a sales perspective.

So for two years, I had to meet these goals or else the contract left my family, went back out into the open market, and Millilison Insurance, which never really existed, was out there for someone else to get. So obviously it became very, very important to me and to my pops, who didn't sell anything, but just supported me through doing the accounting functions in the business and other things. It became very important to us to hit these goals. We did it in a very short time frame, got the respect of the sales manager who found out another agent in Dillonvale was going to retire. And they

said, hey, do you want to buy this other agency? And that was in 2014, which I, and then I did it. And then we went really well. Then I did another one, another one, another one, another one. And that led to basically an agency that was of a pretty good size. And, you know, in this process, I hired my best friend, Adam Perzanowski from St. Clairsville, who you, Wendy, might know. And I know you, Drake, you know him. And without Adam, you know, none of this stuff is even possible because the whole time that I'm growing this insurance agency, really utilizing it as the funding mechanism to buy some commercial real estate and that kind of thing, and we got this beautiful team that we created.

All the while, I was doing community-based stuff, which you remember, like the school levy at Harrison Hills. And I was the president of the harrison county chamber of commerce and i did it i did a poor job at that but but ultimately what it what it allowed me to do was invent adam what adam allowed me to do and diane and a number of the other members of the team there i got into the community in a big way and that led yes course, to more sales opportunity and insurance stuff. But I wasn't thinking about it like that. I was thinking, I'm going to be here. I better make this thing as good as I can. Yeah. So there's a bunch of different paths to go off of that. I know that's probably not the answer you were looking for. But ultimately, the most fundamentally important day in my life,

aside from when my dad handed me that olive branch, was when we passed the Harrison Hill City School District school levy, which I became involved in through really coaching. Yeah, okay. And that's one way we can go, but I don't know where you want to take it next. Great coaches up there. Yeah.

That's all I'll say. A few of them. That's a great story. And I like the one thing that you said is when you got into it in the beginning and you weren't really feeling it, but then what you did is you took it to the community and you weren't really feeling it but then what you did is you took it to the community and you became a coach see some people just give up and that's it and they walk

out then like that's it shut the door i'm done but you did not you continued to stay in your community and this is our local community which i think think is amazing. Yeah, I want it out there. You know, I didn't want to be in that darn insurance office, man. It's sunshine, 80 degrees. Right, yeah. And I feel bad still for our staff who has to be in there, you know, if they want to keep them. Nobody is chained to the desk, right? But, you know, I still feel some guilt over the fact that our office is not entirely outside

and it's not a more flowery business where, you know, we all get to have a fantastic time. But that's kind of what Waterfront Hall is. Yeah, there you go. Great segue. But yeah, I love Harrison County. And I've got at times had different moments with it. And I've got, at times, had different moments with it. And I've got a relationship with it. And I've had different, we've been in different phases, I guess, together.

But, yeah. Yeah, likewise. It's a great place, great people. But you mentioned the water. And also, I'm sure the desks in the office were appreciated when it was snowing outside. That's true, yeah. You know, there's two sides to every coin. Yeah, right. I could have been laying block. Yeah. the desks in the in the office were appreciated when it was snowing outside but uh yeah you know there's two sides to every coin yeah right i could i could have been laying block yeah so let me take that back i guess yeah but but you did mention the waterfront and that was a great segue to

to our next kind of uh discussion here is how how recently did that open up and then kind of the the process of first of all you know why you chose to do what you did and and how it all evolved i uh we we opened august august 4th excuse me of last year okay um and uh man that that's a long and windy road too so i'll try not to make this answer 20 minutes but uh i ran for political office in 2017 and 2018 i ran for the state representative in the 95th district which is carroll county harrison county half of belmont county the western half yeah noble county and part of washington county which is marietta and um i liked the insurance business dumped my entire life into that and built a really great campaign staff and i still owe all of them a debt of gratitude but we lost you know i was a d in our district but i had delusions of grandeur after i'd helped pass the school levy yeah it wasn't just me on the school levy it was your DJ Watson and Allison Anderson and Brandon Ludwig and many

others but I thought after we passed the school levy by 306 votes on November 3rd 2015 that I could do anything right so that's a big day I remember I was in fifth grade I remembered they pulled it that same day they pulled us into the classroom and told us all the news they let me speak at graduation after that yeah i got to be the keynote speaker that was another phenomenal moment in my life and i got to yeah i got to talk to everybody which was about the experience which was great but it was because i lost that election in 2018, and then I pointed my focus. After I felt sorry for myself for a couple months, which you do,

and I feel sorry for anybody who loses an election when you really, really care about it and you really want to do something good. But I had to put my energy, my focus somewhere, and I had a lot of leftover energy even after the insurance thing was going on. And I wanted to do something that was community-based again. Great. And got a hold of this amazing piece of real estate down on the waterfront here in Wheeling. And just sat on it and thought about it.

And I spent probably a year and a half trying to figure out what I even had because it was three stories 15,000 square feet it was built in 1877 with a 1966 edition I had just done like two couple two-story office buildings before this like just like kind of halfway like repaired them and got them into a place where they were functional this was uh i quickly not quickly it took me a year and a half to realize oh crap what have i done that was a lot of work i got myself into a position where uh i come from a middle-class family this is this is too much in every conceivable way, financially, emotionally,

you know, there was really no way for me to see through it all the way yet. You know, and sometimes you just have to pull on the rope and just keep, see what comes. But, and that's essentially what I did. But I, I spent the first year and a half or two years going like, all right, what do people want? What do people actually want around here? What do I want to see around here? What have I seen in Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and elsewhere that I really, really think is cool and that Wheeling could benefit from? And I just kind of ran that exercise in my mind. I built a business plan. And the plan was to utilize every square inch of the building

with complementary uses that ultimately worked to create the longest selling day or open day possible so that you could come to the building and effectively spend your entire day there. So that's kind of the genesis of the whole thing. And then the other question was, and I got to give some credit to Betsy Sweeney on this one too, because she helped me with a lot of the preservation stuff. And she kind of helped me find the question, which was, well, what's my perfect day look like?

And that's kind of how I thought about it so I built the business plan and then I started to realize how much it was gonna cost yeah and then had to have that same kind of moment on account on the couch with my dad with myself yeah like okay if you really want to do this, you're putting your entire financial future at risk. You are burning the bridge behind you, basically. Or what do they say, burning the boats or whatever. But ultimately, it was a scary moment for me.

And again, this is not life or death. This is a financial thing. But still, I mean, there's a lot of fear that comes up. So I did this thing that I found. I did a fear setting exercise, which I heard from Tim Ferriss, who is a very popular podcaster and author. And effectively, what he says to do is to write down the absolute and utter worst case scenario and then write it, make it worse, worse make it worse make it worse and then see at the end of that you know put it away come back read it can you live with that can you make it back wow so i i did that rewrote it rewrote it put it away read it did that again until i got

myself in a position when i was where i was like I would rather try this see see if see if I'm capable of what I hope I'm capable of then live in a situation where um I'm unsatisfied with myself so so eventually you know I got kind of shoved to the edge of the diving board and walking into the loan or walking into Main Street Bank and signing the loan paperwork was the finger on my back that pushed me off the edge into the water. I was shocked that anybody would let me borrow that much money, you know? So, but what saved my rear end was educating myself essentially on what historic tax credits were, what was available to me from a financing mechanism perspective out in the world that could reduce the cost of this project. And I'm not going to get you into the weeds too much on that, but I am going to say that

if it weren't for the amazing state and federal program, that is the historic tax credit program, the project never happens. Waterfront Hall never happens. Then the city of Wheeling steps up and builds, designs an upper floor development that that helps defray the cost of modern fire coat expenses like sprinkler systems and double drywall and okay but effectively what happened was i got like 42 of the project paid for through completely legitimate grants that are available out there in the world you know and then that so that you know like pulling on the rope essentially and learning everything as it came to me somehow you know we opened and then what I didn't expect was the great response what I hoped for but didn't totally expect was the great response from the community at large but everybody totally got what I was

trying to do right when they got there and Avenue Eats is a big part of that yeah they're doing well yeah as far as I can tell yeah yeah they look like they're doing well they seem to be I owe Laura Graves and Phil Kendall a big debt of gratitude for looking at what I was doing and being able to see it before anybody else they saw your vision and I love that now you have wood fired pizza oh yeah yeah with Tiffany love to advance yeah they're amazing people and they have an amazing product yeah they do all I really had to know is that that at Ogilby Fest last year, they told me they sold 750 pizzas in one day. Yeah, they are amazing.

So I was like, okay, they're wildly popular. I kind of knew that anyway. So you have the waterfront, and it's, like you said, three floors. So what are on the floors? The first floor is the aforementioned Woodfire Pizza and Avenue Eats, who serve food out of their 10 by 20 kitchens into a common space where we, Waterfront Hall and our staff, serve beverages. And so the bar is us. The restaurants are the restaurants. And the common space is kind of managed by us.

And then that's kind of the cafe. And then on the other side, where you can also take your food, there's the music venue portion of it, at which we also operate. And my girl, Rachel, Rachel Krems and I, and then Tim and Jan as production people, but Rachel and I, we manage the bookings and we talk to the bands

and we try to get as many shows up as possible we've had 60 over 60 shows since August and many many different genres we have we she and I just came back actually from New Orleans for a music venue conference where we met a lot of other venue owners and booking agents. And what's going to allow us to do is leap ahead a year without having to go a year. Oh, wonderful. Because we have this network of people now that we can ask all these questions of and a portal and documents and all kinds of stuff we can. So we really lucked out and going to that conference. It's only in its fourth year and neva is what it's called the national independent venue association and it was created

in 2000 or excuse me 2020 during covid because they formed themselves hurriedly and applied for well basically lobbied congress and got passed the Save Our Stages Act. And they got funded $15 billion to save independent music venues. So there's 1,400 members. It's still very young, only four years old. So Rachel and I were with some really cool people, way cooler than us. My bad, my bad.

Yeah, so we got to learn a lot. But ultimately, that's the first floor. And then the second floor is an Airbnb, which my dear fiance, Paige, outfitted and kind of put together from a design perspective. And that's available right now on Airbnb, VRBO, and then a direct booking site that we have off of our website. And we've had, I think, 10 nights booked there already.

So that's going pretty well so far. And then I'm in the final stages of signing a lease with the spa on the second floor. Nice. Which I hope will open this fall. And they're from Weirton, and this would be their second location. But still in negotiations and still trying to figure things out. You know, there's a lot of moving parts and wheeling right now, including a potential hotel that's in a block away.

So the value of that space continues to evolve. You know, so I've got to make sure that I'm on top of that. But so spa on the second floor, our offices are up there. There's a prep kitchen on the second floor. And then you go to the third floor, and that's where our event venue is. We've had two weddings the last two weekends. I think that makes a total of seven weddings.

And then we've had over 25 events so far. Wow. And that is really where the long-term viability of the project is. It's becoming more and more sophisticated within the private event space. And if we're able to do that, it'll carry the rest of our habits like music, which don't make any money.

We just simply need to have more capacity in order to make a music venue an actual profitable thing. So we take it as almost like a marketing tool. Now, I shouldn't say it like that because we're passionate about it and we're going to make it the best it can possibly be. I know Rachel and I are both committed to that

along with everybody else, but it's just hard to make money. Sure. You can't sell tickets for what you need to sell tickets for to pay a band and then to pay right your staff you know so it's just one of those things that you have to learn it by doing it make it as efficient as it can be and uh really say like this is part of our cultural thing that we're doing you know so i like the um so upstairs we had i think, Amanda and Matt's wedding. Was that your first?

It was our first, and it was a great wedding, too. I loved it. It was a great wedding. And I loved it because you have the old and the new. So you have the old part, which is, would you say? 1877. And it's gorgeous with the brick, the exposed brick, the floors. And then you have the other side, which is newer.

And that's where like the band and the dance floor and all that. And but it is absolutely beautiful. Thank you. And you guys made it so easy for, I mean, your wedding coordinator. Carly. She did an amazing job. I mean, she was on it and i love that well like laura and phil i mentioned earlier they had to be able to have some faith in us you amanda matt the

families yeah being the first wedding there that's a bit of a taxing experience on the yeah so we we appreciate the grace afforded to us well there was nothing that went wrong. You know, you guys did an amazing job, but it's a beautiful venue. And that's what we're lacking here locally is affordable, affordable, nice venues. That's something that we don't have. And I just thank you for doing what you're doing. Thanks.

We have an open catering policy, which I think helps to alleviate some of the budgetary concerns. And no offense to anybody who lumps that in. I'm just saying that if people want to find some room and a budget, they can do it rather than just having to pay the full price of a room and the catering together. Yeah, I love it. I love that you chose downtown Wheeling to buy. Are you looking for other properties in downtown Wheeling or in St. Clairsville? I love what we're doing so much that I almost want to go inward instead of outward,

if you know what I mean. Like, I'm trying to figure out. first off, I feel incredibly lucky with the staff that showed up and that we interviewed and hired. I just never expected that we would hit a home run in the first few weeks of the thing's existence. But we have people that were in a foxhole together during a time when we were opening that. And any time that you're doing something very very difficult together it bonds you so so we have like this this team that uh had a shared experience and now we're kind of fused together and i know the thing life circumstances will change things eventually but i want to see how far we can take it you know because one of the really cool things i was also able to to do here is that every one of our bartenders has another job in the business rachel is a bartender but she does all the booking yeah uh rachel is a bartender but she manages the bar

and does a lot of the creative cocktail stuff that we do caden is a bartender, but she does the marketing. Maddie is a bartender and she helps do the marketing. And yeah, I could go on down the list, but it creates a vertical within the business that really helps them steer the whole ship. And I love that. A lot of what I learned in the insurance business, I applied to this as far as organizational stuff, meetings, how, how to, yeah, just how to, how to have everybody engaged in rowing in the same direction. Yeah. Well, you had to guess. I mean, I don't think it's, I think it's pretty obvious that almost everything you, what you've done previously has helped you out now with what you're doing in the future. Uh, and also what I'd like to mention about the waterfront is I think, you know, it really spells out the vision very clearly that there is something for everybody. And it's so versatile in what it can do and the types of things that you can have there.

And I think that's what really draws in so much of the community. I hear people talking about it all the time. I know tons of folks that go there and they just they don't say anything but great things about it. That's good to hear. I think that one of the things that was solved without me even realizing it early on was that I liked that building because it was down on the river and old and awesome and the bones are really good and I just loved it. But in buying that building, effectively what happened was I bought something at the cultural center of the Ohio Valley. All the festivals are down there.

And then the West Bank Arena is down there. And then the river itself, which is really what was the original reason that people stopped here to hang out, you know, back in the 1700s. And the whole Wheeling story is about the river. And, yeah, so I was lucky, and I didn't acknowledge it at the time, but know now that people just have a natural inclination to want to go down there because of the subconscious pull of the river, I think. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. And the festivals, too. Well, we're approaching our limit on time for this block, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. No doubt. And the festivals too. Well, we're, uh, we're, we're approaching our limit on time for this, for this block, I guess, so to speak. Um, but however,

we can do a part two if, if, if we've got more, I mean, there's a ton more that I'm thinking about and I'm sure you, as long as time allows for you. Um, so this has been episode one with, with Dan Millicent, who was so kind to come on this afternoon. Uh, thanks for listening. And we'll be back with part two.