#320: The Art of Hospitality: An Interview With Entrepreneur and Hotelier Liz Lambert

Liz Lambert (@thelizlambert https://twitter.com/thelizlambert/) first purchased a seedy motel on South Congress Avenue 23 years ago, and she transformed it into Hotel San José https://www.sanjosehotel.com, which has become known today as the quintessential "Austin" hotel. The success of Hotel San José, which sparked a revitalization in the city's now thriving South Congress district, led her to launch Bunkhouse Group https://www.bunkhousegroup.com/, a hospitality company founded on the pillars of design, music, and community-driven experiences. In the course of chronicling her experiences with the residents of Hotel San José on video camera, she ended up making the Last Days of the San José https://sanjosehotelstore.com/products/last-days-dvd, a documentary that casts a fascinating light on human relationships in gentrification and urban renewal. You can check out the trailer here https://youtu.be/cwXn7YyGAPc, click here https://confirmsubscription.com/h/t/3935BAE9C7D0E458 to be notified when streaming becomes available, or get a copy of the DVD here https://sanjosehotelstore.com/products/last-days-dvd. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Soothe.com https://www.soothe.com/, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week, and I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either. After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe https://www.soothe.com/ delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty cities worldwide. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Tim Ferriss?

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now would be an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:03Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out, go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink A G one, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is always my job to deconstruct world-class performers of various types and across many disciplines. And today we have Liz Lambert on the show. Liz, thanks so much for taking the time. So happy to be here. I'm thrilled to have you finally in front of me, and I'm going to give people a little bit of context. So who is Liz Lambert? Liz Lambert, at the Liz Lambert at Instagram and Twitter. First purchased a C D motel on South Congress Avenue 23 years ago and transformed it into Hotel San Jose, which has become known today as the quintessential Austin Hotel. The success of Hotel San Jose, which sparked a revitalization in the city's now

• 2:05Tim Ferriss?

  thriving South Congress District, which we'll definitely talk about, led her to launch Bunkhouse Group, a hospitality company founded on the pillars of design, music, and community-driven experiences. Since then, she's expanded Bunkhouse's unique hotel portfolio to include El Cosmico, which has been recommended to me about 1,000 times. The community lodging concept in Marfa, also a place worth talking about. The iconic Austin Motel, a renovated motor court hotel, and Hotel Saint Cecilia, where I was just two nights ago, in fact, a 14-room secluded estate in Austin. Hotel Havana, Havana, depending on where you are. The historic property on San Antonio's River Walk, and most recently has added Bunkhouse's first international hotel, Hotel San Cristobal Baja in Totos Santos, Mexico, and the first

• 2:50Tim Ferriss?

  non-Texas property domestically, the Phoenix Hotel, to their hotel portfolio. Lambert and Bunkhouse also operate Joe's Coffee, the popular Austin coffee shop, which I frequent myself, and that currently includes three locations and an eastside event space, Fair Market, also located in Austin.

• 3:07Speaker 02

  They've really gave you a full.

• 3:09Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, we're covering all the bases. Lambert's fourth Austin hotel, the Magdalena, is currently in development and is slated to open on South Congress in 2020.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Maybe 2019, we'll see.

• 3:21Tim Ferriss?

  Maybe 2019, wow, ahead of schedule, that's unusual, I would imagine.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  It's a moving target.

• 3:28Tim Ferriss?

  And there's so many places that we could start with this, and we have some mutual friends, which makes me always a bit more comfortable and excited to jump into things. But I thought we would begin with The Last Days of San Jose. Now, this is a documentary, and I hold you fully accountable for keeping me up way past my bedtime.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Awesome, you're signed.

• 3:51Tim Ferriss?

  I've watched most of it, I haven't seen all of it, I'll be honest, because I had to go to bed last night at some point.

• 3:58Speaker 02

  There's a surprise ending, not really.

• 4:00Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's a documentary on Hotel San Jose's origins, and I thought I would share a note from my assistant. So my assistant doesn't add notes to much of my prep documentation at all, and this is her note. Quote, "I've watched most of the documentary on and off throughout the day. Just listen to her talk to the humanity of people at San Jose, it tells you everything important you need to know about her." And. I wasn't sure quite what that meant. It seemed a bit cryptic. And I have to say, A, very impressed with the doc. B, you must have captured so much footage and you did a really nice job of editing for emotional impact.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  That wasn't me, by the way.

• 4:46Tim Ferriss?

  Okay.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  I didn't edit and I never could have edited that and I never would have been in the doc had it been my edit.

• 4:52Tim Ferriss?

  Your choice. Could you tell people who don't know, and I imagine that's

• 4:57Speaker 02

  A lot of people.

• 4:58Tim Ferriss?

  A lot of people.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I never released it.

• 4:59Tim Ferriss?

  About the doc and why didn't you release it? I was trying to find it online so I could push it out to people.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  You know, it's terrible. It is every year, this is one of those things, every year it's on my list to do. I could never quite, so this is a documentary and I'll tell you why, I talked about why I never did. This is a documentary that I did when I first bought the San Jose, which I used to be a lawyer. It was sort of a change of career inadvertently. And I bought an old motel down on South Congress. I have terrible Austin allergies today, so sorry about that.

• 5:34Tim Ferriss?

  That's okay. We were chatting, this is audio verite.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, truthfully. I bought in the mid 90s, I bought an old motel down on South Congress. I was a lawyer at the time and I basically just walked up to the door, knocked on the door and there was a Taiwanese couple there that owned the motel. And at the time, there was nothing on South Congress, which is, as you know, a very popular area in Austin.

• 5:58Tim Ferriss?

  Super hot spot, cool area, very hip.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  There wasn't a car on the street back then. I mean, honestly. And they were about to put the motel on the market and I sort of, you know, I told them, "Don't do that yet. Let me see if I can do something about it." I ended up buying the San Jose, not knowing anything about what I was doing. For $500,000, my mother cosigned a note and suddenly they handed me the keys and I was on my way. And I knew nothing about running. Hotel or motel or anything, knew nothing about business, really.

• 6:34Tim Ferriss?

  Now, paint a picture for people as to the clientele and what was the kind of the state of affairs? Because people think South Congress now and they're like, "Oh, cool, I can have fancy Japanese food and I can go have some mezcal."

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, it was dicey. I mean, people didn't go down there at night. There were no businesses on the street. This Continental Club was there and had been there since 1957 and it remained. But really, there was no place to eat. The first Schlotzsky's was actually on South Congress, really tiny place, but there was nothing down there. And I had moved back into the neighborhood, but I would go to the Continental Club a lot. So, I'd sit on a bar stool there and I've watched the San Jose across the street, which was an old motor court built in the 30s, Spanish colonial revival style, painted seafoam green at the time, and it looked like it was empty. But it was really because there were people, it was full all the time.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  But it was 30 bucks, 25 to 30 bucks a night, and nobody really had luggage or cars and nobody really came out during the day. So, it looked very quiet. But at night, it was teeming with life and it was, you know, it was junkies and prostitutes but a lot of good people too, that were just down on their luck for one reason or another, couldn't pay a deposit, first and last month's deposit, or somehow, something in life had happened that dislodged them. But, you know, they could get a hotel room for either a couple of nights. Or some people lived there, there were residents that lived there permanently, but they just paid by the day or by the week.

• 8:13Tim Ferriss?

  I have so many questions. I could do an hour just on this dock and it's not, obviously, because I have anything to gain financially from pushing the dock because it's not even available.

• 8:21Speaker 02

  So, I was gonna tell you why it's not available.

• 8:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Okay. I shot the doc, which was following, as an undergraduate, I was a creative writing major with a concentration in poetry.

• 8:32Tim Ferriss?

  So just for background for folks, and this is my nonlinear style, I apologize. Where did you grow up and where did you do your undergrad?

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I grew up in West Texas. And I did my undergrad, I started at TCU in Fort Worth. I'd had a brief stint at Stanford and then I finished at UT. It's a way of seeing the world there.

• 8:52Tim Ferriss?

  And creative writing.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  And humanities and creative writing, yeah. So I had a lot with a concentration in poetry. So I had a lot of friends who were writers or who, you know, I wrote a lot at the time, even back then, just whether it was journaling or poetry or whatever it was. Friends would encourage me to write down. When I stopped my law job at some point, when I knew I knew I was in over my head or in a good way over my head at the San Jose, but I needed to do something with the motel. I couldn't continue on at thirty dollars a night with people stealing sheets and bleeding on sheets and burning sheets, you know, like you name it. But I, people kept encouraging me to write down things that happened during the day

• 9:36Speaker 02

  because I would tell stories at dinner, I'd go to dinner with friends and it would be absolutely absurd or crazy.

• 9:43Tim Ferriss?

  Within the first five or 10 minutes, you see quite a few examples.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I didn't have time to write it down because I was literally like, you know, the place had been redone in the seventies, I think was the last time. So it had shag carpet still. So you can imagine as you tried to vacuum that shag carpet what it was like. I mean, there were definitely people, it was definitely a place where you did drugs. It was definitely a place where you had whatever homeless pet you might have. I mean, it was just like, there was that housekeeper that had been at the motel before I bought it. There was a husband and wife, the Sues, who were awesome people, but they were the only employees besides Mr. Wu, who I swear to God was like two years older than God and almost blind, and he was the housekeeper.

• 10:31Speaker 02

  So like the state of the rooms when we got there were just, I mean, a thing to behold. And I cleaned rooms for quite a while, so. I was so busy that I wasn't writing things down. There was no journaling, there was no that kind of thing. But I did find a camera. It was right when those little pocket cameras came out. There was a little Sony PC7. And I got one of those, so I just started talking to people. People knew the camera was there. I put it up. The front desk had a little glass thing that you slid money through, and I just duct taped it to the front for a while. And then when I would go out to knock on doors, or kick people out, or collect money, because it wasn't like you came and paid on a daily basis. You really, I had to chase

• 11:16Speaker 02

  down money. And so I would just take it with me. And when I was done, I was really lucky at the time that I had a friend who was at AFI in cinematography.

• 11:27Tim Ferriss?

  What is AFI?

• 11:28Speaker 02

  American Film Institute.

• 11:30Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Her name is Jen Lane, and she just now is the producer of the new Queer Eye.

• 11:35Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 11:36Speaker 02

  That's been really super popular, yeah. And she was one of my good friends, and then she had a friend named Uta Brzezwick, who is a producer now as well, but a very well-known cinematographer before she became a producer. She shot the first three seasons of The Wire, and that's why The Wire looks like it does.

• 11:54Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  So they were both in film school. And they came down, and I said, "You guys come help me shoot," because they were both directors of photography, what we're studying. And they were awesome, because not only did they shoot some B-roll, and then when I was ready to shut the motel down, they shot the last three weeks. But Uta also encouraged me, you said, "Audio verite," that's exactly what she told me. I was really worried about a big microphone and stuff, but nobody would have talked to me.

• 12:24Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  You know, like, she was like, "And don't worry about your film style. Just talk to people. And the story is compelling enough." And that was, those were words of wisdom, and as long as you could hear it.

• 12:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  You know, it was gonna be okay. You didn't need a huge microphone to stick in somebody's face. Just make sure it was audible enough.

• 12:47Tim Ferriss?

  So you have this, you have some incredible footage, and I mean, you really do capture...

• 12:55Tim Ferriss?

  I'm searching for a word besides humanity because it seems too high concept, maybe for what I'm trying to convey, but you captured the vulnerability and the sincerity of so many different types of people, of all different colors, of all different types, who are completely marginalized, discarded, these sort of invisible people. And I watched this and I was having just a bitch of a day yesterday. And I was feeling sorry for myself. And I was talking to friends and we were commiserating about various things. And I've had what I would consider, in my life, a bit of a hailstorm of a week. And then I watched this and I

• 13:38Tim Ferriss?

  was just like, "You asshole. God, you should get down on your knees every day and just thank God that you have the bed that you have to sleep in, that you have the food that you have to eat." It was really humbling. And you're holding this footage, you have these stars-to-be helping you. Why not put it out?

• 14:03Speaker 02

  I got busy. I mean, here's the thing.

• 14:05Tim Ferriss?

  I will help you put this thing out.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  Let's do that. I would love that. The last three years, it's been at the top of my list. And I keep having people that say they'll help. And then, you know, everybody's busy. And so it becomes this...

• 14:18Tim Ferriss?

  I will commit right now publicly that I will help you put it out.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  I'm so happy about that. Okay?

• 14:24Tim Ferriss?

  It's very, as long as you're not expecting like a full-blown red carpet theatrical release. If you just want it to be available to people.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I just want it to be available. So what happened was, right when it was done, you'll see, the doc ends as I close the door, when we close the San Jose. During the footage, well, during the documentary, we follow five or six people that are permanent residents at the San Jose. Again, I was just shooting on the fly, kind of keeping a video diary. And so I would turn the camera on myself every once in a while. I never, even when I began editing and realized I couldn't edit it, I had 90 hours of footage. I mean, there's so much good stuff in there. But there was no way I was going to be able to tell a story. So another friend, of my friend Jen's from AFI, Tina Gazaro, who's... Works in the business still today.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  I hired her to edit, but I didn't have her edit until about four or five years into the San Jose being open.

• 15:25Tim Ferriss?

  Ah.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  And so it was hilarious because she would see people that might have passed through the footage or the documentary and they would have no idea who she was, but she spent hours and hours with, watching them and, you know, she would be, "Hey." And they'd be like, "You know way too much about me," kind of thing. But she did an amazing job and she gave compelling reasons that I should also be a character in the movie. Because it wasn't just about, it was also about my story and about me living there as part of a community and the struggle I was having. Everybody had a struggle, different struggles, but, you know, one of the remarkable things

• 16:06Speaker 02

  is that they're all behind me, the folks that live there generally.

• 16:11Tim Ferriss?

  So can I, can I pause for a second?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:13Tim Ferriss?

  So there are a few, like, lily pad hops that I want to know more about. So first is, you went to three places for undergrad, focused on creative writing with an emphasis on poetry.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:27Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you go to three places and how on earth do you go from there to law? Let's start with that.

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Um, I went to three places because my family were, I'm from West Texas, my, my parents met at TCU, my grandfather played football for TCU, my dad played football for TCU, my oldest brother played football for TCU. Everybody in the, in the kind of cousin group, everybody went, started at TCU. And I got there and Fort Worth is a lovely place, I'm crazy about Fort Worth these days, but I always knew it wasn't really going to be a fit for me. And once I kind of got interested in creative writing, the program there wasn't that strong.

• 17:12Speaker 02

  So, my tour of colleges.

• 17:15Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, see, so Stanford, you were saying was aspirational, and you went there for summer school?

• 17:20Speaker 02

  I went there for summer school and then I was accepted into, as a regular student at Stanford, and I deferred.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  There were things going on with my family that I needed to come back to Texas. And, um, once I came back, I-

• 17:37Tim Ferriss?

  Just in terms, if you're comfortable saying, I mean, just in terms of sickness, or?

• 17:40Speaker 02

  Divorce, my parents, yeah. And, um, I was really close to my mom, and so it was, I felt like I needed to be closer, and I, you know, deferred a semester, and then I ended up just going to UT. I always loved Austin. And, you know, in the long run, I'm really happy I did. I mean, when I arrived in Austin in, God, the early eighties, it felt like the place was made for me. You know, it just felt like home.

• 18:06Tim Ferriss?

  What about it?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  You know, I'm a Texan through and through, and, but there were a lot of reasons that I didn't really fit comfortably into other parts of Texas.

• 18:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  I was gay, at the time I wasn't even out. And I was a little more creative, maybe. I do, I hadn't found my place in Texas, except for West Texas. And, um, you know, Austin, it was the state capital, the university was huge. It was, you know, this liberal place in a more conservative state, and-

• 18:39Tim Ferriss?

  The blueberry and the-

• 18:40Speaker 02

  The blueberry and the tomato soup.

• 18:41Tim Ferriss?

  And the tomato soup.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  And then, and the music was amazing, and there were rivers and lakes, and, you know, it's, it was, I felt, it felt like home.

• 18:50Tim Ferriss?

  For those people who have never been to Texas, and there are certainly lots of international folks listening, and they have, they may have the image, certainly of the cowboy hat and the boots, but that's about it. Uh, when you say Texan through and through in other respects, for you, what does that mean?

• 19:07Speaker 02

  I'm from West Texas, and, you know, that's, there are a lot of people that grew up in Texas and never even make it to West Texas. It's a big state for the, you guys who don't know, I mean-

• 19:16Tim Ferriss?

  Although Jeff Bezos may be unbeknownst to many people-

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Is very-

• 19:19Tim Ferriss?

  Would be one of those people.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Right in the middle of West Texas, is a good place to launch a rocket ship from.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  And so, you know, it's, I'm, I think, sixth or seventh generation in the ranching business. My family still ranches, cow and calf operation. And so, there was a certain way, Texas, Texas is like another country for some people. It really is.

• 19:46Tim Ferriss?

  The Republic of Texas.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  That's right. And that comes with a good and bad, but for me, mostly, it's a, it's a good thing. Is there, a friend of mine asked me when I was young, and traveling, he said, when people, if people were to ask you, if you were in Europe, where are you from? I would say, West Texas. He's like, that's early on, most people wouldn't say that. They would say, not only you say Texas, you give the region of Texas you're from. I'm like, well, West Texas is so different than East Texas, you know?

• 20:15Tim Ferriss?

  It is a enormous, enormous state.

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:19Tim Ferriss?

  So, you end up in Austin, how does the law come into the picture? And why?

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Well, so, as I said, I was humanities major, which I'm forever thankful for. And then I doubled down with a concentration in poetry, which is, you don't, you know, they're not looking for poets out there, I don't think, so much. And so, I, I applied to go to, I could go get my MFA, was really the path I was on.

• 20:47Tim Ferriss?

  Your graduate degree in, in writing.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Right. And I applied to one program at Sarah Lawrence, and didn't get in, and I was like, okay, what now? I knew that I was gonna need a little further education, or some other direction. So, actually, the first thing I did is I got an internship at Texas Monthly, and worked there for, I then went on to work as a, as a paid, I don't even know what it was, paid employee, I guess, at Texas Monthly for about a year, and applied to law school during that time. My father always argued that law school education was something I'd never be sorry about, and it was actually the best liberal education you could get.

• 21:30Tim Ferriss?

  Do you agree with that now?

• 21:31Speaker 02

  I do, actually. You know, I was afraid at the time that it would kill every bit of creativity in me. You know, that would, somehow, learning to think logically would dampen my ability to be creative. And I don't think that's true at all.

• 21:47Tim Ferriss?

  So you finished law school.

• 21:49Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 21:50Tim Ferriss?

  Do you work in the law profession before Hotel San Jose?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  I did, indeed. So I went straight from law school to the DA's office in Manhattan and worked there for three and a half years or so and then moved back to Austin and worked at the Attorney General's office. So I was a trial lawyer. And again, something I'll never be sorry about. I made amazing friends that I'm still in touch with on a regular basis, from a text thread to occasional reunions. But it also taught me how to think in a way that has served me really well in business and just in the world. It teaches you a form

• 22:39Speaker 02

  of rigor, I think, to be a trial lawyer, to understand all the facts of any situation. And again, to put it together.

• 22:49Tim Ferriss?

  So, understanding the facts then of your situation at the time, if I contrast, contrast isn't the right word, it sounds too judgy. If I look at your path, side by side with the paths of other former lawyers I know, which are many.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  A lot, right?

• 23:05Tim Ferriss?

  So maybe they say, "I don't want to do law, but I'm going to do management consulting." Or, "I don't want to do law, I'm going to start a company with my friend," or "go to business school." There aren't many who say, "I don't want to do law, I'm going to buy a hotel that's full of drug addicts and prostitutes," and so on. So why that particular choice? How did that come to pass?

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think partially it was serendipity. I was in the right place at the right time, on the right street.

• 23:37Tim Ferriss?

  What appealed about it to you? Because, I mean, for a lot of people, that would be, it would have a repellent effect. But for you, it had a track down effect.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Well, if you think about it, I had come from the DA's office and a lot of the work I did was with a lot of the same, I don't know exactly where that concentric circle is, but you know, a lot of the people I dealt with in New York and in the criminal justice system, whether it was from a police ride along or just looking at the stories of people every day. Down and out, or in trouble, or, you know, when things get cross in one way or the other in their lives, was not something new for me in that way. And I wasn't scared of the, you know, junkies and hookers and, you know, like I said again, there were a

• 24:32Speaker 02

  lot of really good people there, but were at a moment in their lives-

• 24:36Tim Ferriss?

  Which is really clear in the doc. It's part of the reason why, yeah, it's gonna get released.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  But there were a lot of, that's right. But there were a lot of people hustling, and whether that be a good hustle or a bad hustle. And I'm a big believer in hustling, but there was some, I got, there were some pretty good grifters in there as well. But, so it wasn't unfamiliar milieu for me. But I always was interested in design. It's something that I had always enjoyed. And my brother, one of my brothers was, worked for ICF, International Contract Furnishings, kind of like Knoll, and was-

• 25:17Tim Ferriss?

  I wish I knew Knoll.

• 25:18Speaker 02

  No, no, like, Knoll is a business that makes, that probably started in mid-century, that was known for Florence Knoll, and issued a lot of classic furniture that you would see, and, you know, like, Mies van der Rohe did stuff for Knoll, or-

• 25:36Tim Ferriss?

  Got it.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  Okay. Design. He was in design, I should say. And so, it's a world that I was always fascinated by. And there was really not this clear path. It was, I, and I've also always been, I've always loved hotels.

• 25:54Tim Ferriss?

  Did you dislike law?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I, I actually really liked the DA's office. I liked criminal law a lot. There's a line in a Carolyn Forché poem where she says, "There's nothing no man won't do to another." And that's fascinating to me. Like, why we do what we do? And why does our criminal justice system do what it does, and respond to the human condition the way it does? And, you know, what are our rules and laws? I found that fascinating. And I also liked trial work. I liked talking to a jury. I liked the-

• 26:29Speaker 02

  I liked the whole, not just pageant of it, but the actual truth finding mission. I like, also like, I liked being a lawyer where it wasn't, a lot of people think that the DA's office, their, their whole purpose is to get a conviction, or, you know, be an arm of the police in one way or the other. And it's not, it's really to do justice, or to do the right thing. And that's an amazingly powerful thing. You know, a lot of people with my politics would have probably gone to the public defender's office. Can you explain why that's the case? Well, because, why is that the case? Why do people with more liberal politics go to the public defender's office?

• 27:13Speaker 02

  I think that, that the DA's office is often seen to be in alignment- Like the pit bull? Yeah, and in, in alignment with police, the police. And, you know, you've got to, to do, you know, to fight the good fight, you've got to be the person that, that is on the side of, on the side of justice in the way of making sure that the constitutional principles are upheld. And you're down in the trenches with folks that often are sometimes wrongly accused. And so it tends to separate out that way. But at the time, I really thought, when I was in law school and thinking about going

• 27:52Speaker 02

  to a DA's office, that it made sense to go to the place that had the power. And the prosecutor's office is the place where you can choose to bring a case or not, right? I was also the first openly gay person hired at Manhattan DA's office- No kidding. -in 1991, yeah. Wow. Crazy. Ninety-one. Plenty of queers there. Yeah. First openly. Yeah, openly. And so, the first year that I was there, we actually marched in the Manhattan Gay Pride Parade, like, right behind the, the police department and in front of the fire department. And my girlfriend at the time was, she worked at the Minority Task Force on AIDS, so of

• 28:36Speaker 02

  course she was like marching with the House of Africa. And they were like, having a blast. And I was there with the DA's office, and the police, and the fire department. She'd be, I'd be like, "Come, march with us." And she's like, "No." Hell no. I'm not having too much fun over here. Yeah. But yeah, so that was, you know, and there was a lot of things that I, you know, you could talk for hours about that and, you know, what I learned and, yeah.

• 29:03Tim Ferriss?

  I guess I'm just curious, why, why stop? I mean, a lot of people stay in law for a very, very long time. So you did have this moment, you're at the Continental Club, you see Hotel San Jose across the street, you have this deep interest in design, you have empathy for the people who are mostly not seen, right? Indoors during the day there.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:25Tim Ferriss?

  You have all of that, but you also have this potentially safe career in the legal profession.

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 29:34Tim Ferriss?

  So why stop?

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Well, there were a couple of jumps between there, but, so I stopped at the days I was, you had a three-year commitment, and so I stopped about three and a half years in, right before you go on the homicide chart, I think, in year four. I came back to Texas, and I think if you stay in New York too long, you become a New Yorker.

• 29:50Tim Ferriss?

  Yes. Speaking of someone raised on Long Island, you have to be careful about that. You have to be very, very careful.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, don't want that to happen to you. So I came back here and worked at the Attorney General's Office, and that was a little bit different. I was traveling all over Texas, trying cases, and, and it wasn't as fascinating to me. But I still liked being a lawyer, and, but a couple of things happened. A friend of mine died of AIDS-related causes, and that was a real jolt to the system. It was one of those moments where it was, I felt, you better do what you want to do and not what you're supposed to do, or, you know, this is your one life and your one chance. And so I think, I think that probably happens for a lot of people.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  You face mortality up close for the first time, and that's, either you just kind of push it away, or if you really invite it in and, and grapple with it, I think it's a life-changing thing. It's so, it was for me. It, it made me, I always wondered about the San Jose down on South Congress, and I would look at it and kind of dream about it a little bit, but that was the thing that got me out of the chair and across the street and knocking on the door to find out if they'd ever sell it.

• 31:15Tim Ferriss?

  And we could, we could spend the entire conversation just on the first few months of, easily, the first month, the first day of your experience at San Jose. And I'm struggling with where to go to next, because I kind of want to stay there. But, but maybe what, what I can do since it's sitting right here, is talk about Christopher Alexander and certainly the other authors. But I'm curious how you found your footing and your approach to doing what you now do. And so you kind of land there.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 31:54Tim Ferriss?

  Oh my God, you're doing every possible job. I mean, you're using a toothbrush to take some god awful stuff out of a sink. I couldn't even identify what the sludge was.

• 32:03Speaker 02

  You don't want to know.

• 32:05Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you don't want to know. I mean, syringes and, I mean, you're doing every job imaginable. How do you figure out your playbook? And when does, when does, when does Christopher Alexander, not to overweight the importance of, of these books, but for those people who are watching, you can see, this is a book called A Pattern Language, Towns, Buildings, Construction, which has come up a surprising number of times on this podcast.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Has it?

• 32:31Tim Ferriss?

  It has.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, interesting. Well, so at the time, I, I thought that I was going to take the San Jose, which was a 24-room motor court built in the 30s down in South Congress, an area of town that was, it was still pretty abandoned. It was one of those places that, and not unusual at the time, that there were urban cores, that when highways had come in, it had redirected traffic, and the small kind of mom and pop stores and urban downtowns were bypassed. But there, you know, obviously, there was a lot of interesting architecture still. Or buildings that that were because they were older or and built at a time where

• 33:16Speaker 02

  they were on a really important avenue. So Congress, for those of you guys who don't know, is a main thoroughfare in Austin that leads directly to the state Capitol. And at one time, it was the main avenue that went all the way to San Antonio, probably sixty miles to the south. And so it was a major thoroughfare. So there were a lot of old buildings and businesses, historic and otherwise, along the way. So I thought that I would just redo this twenty-four-room hotel motel. What I didn't realize was that it was thirty bucks a night, that if I were, my idea was maybe it could be seventy-five dollars and we could just redo it room by room and then

• 34:00Speaker 02

  it would be this amazing place, close to downtown. I had lots of friends that would, you know, from musicians to creative people to people that were going to visit their friends in the neighborhood that would stay there. Once I started trying to crack that plan a little bit, I realized it was a marketing nightmare. That most people that were going to pay sixty, seventy-five bucks were on the highway and they wanted something that they can rely on, like a Motel Six. And I'm was, you know, if I did lure somebody downtown onto South Congress where there were no other hotels, they weren't going to want to stay next to the crackhead. Next door.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Mom and pop in their van didn't want to rent next to somebody with an arrest for murder. A warrant out for murder. So, I mean, it was true. You saw a little bit of the documentary. I did, yeah. The police were around. I remember when the police first came, they would drive around the San Jose because there was a big courtyard that was just a parking lot. And when I first got there, I was like, no, no, don't do that. That looks bad for business. And by, you know, it was there a week and I was like, can you guys come more often? But, um, so I started to realize and I would go and get new things and kind of try to redo the rooms one by one and I'd get something new and it would be stolen, or I would get, you know, like,

• 35:24Speaker 02

  it just wasn't gonna work room by room, I finally realized.

• 35:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, there was some footage also, where I'm like, "What happened to the TV?" Like, "The TV's destroyed," and like, "Oh yeah, the last person who's in here left a gift for the new person." "Every one of these is a fucking mess, but they're saying it's a fucking mess, let's see what's in here."

• 35:40Speaker 02

  But, you know, and it is one of those things, it's, it is, if you clean something up, people are much more like, if you respect people, people are much more likely to respect a place, or a thing, or a person. And the people that were living there, I mean, it was, you know, the bed, the mattress was, had bed springs that were, you know, cutting you at night sometimes. So it wasn't like, of course you were gonna like, throw a TV out the window, you know?

• 36:04Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  It was a cycle, that was, that I'd really, now I had this place, now I was trying to keep it afloat, I had to have a plan, and my plan at twenty-four rooms with not much money, wasn't gonna work, and then I started going to banks, to see if I could, you know, I had gotten through school without even taking a math class, you know, and so now suddenly, I needed to understand the basics of business, or writing a business plan, and I couldn't read a spreadsheet, I didn't, I couldn't read the financial statement, I didn't know what, you know, all of those small numbers meant, and suddenly, it was, became really important that I learn that skill. And so I, I went and audited some classes at the business school at University of Texas,

• 36:50Speaker 02

  has a great business school, and I took some management and the service industry classes, and I tried to finally work my way through how to do a business plan. And it was so hard, you know, I do, we do them all the time now, and we, you know, do studies, and we do market studies, and, you know, it's, it's a skill that I rely on as we look at different hotels in different markets now, we do it all, all the time, and it was such a foreign language to me. So then, I finally got through a business plan, and I was, had to go try to convince some banks that they should loan me a bunch of money to redo this motel on South Congress,

• 37:30Speaker 02

  which, at the time, you couldn't convince a lot of locals to even set foot on South Congress, at night, much less spend the night down there.

• 37:39Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  So it was a process.

• 37:42Tim Ferriss?

  So what, so what happened? This is a cliffhanger.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  I finally got, I finally took on some partners that believed a bit in, in, in the idea. And so they gave me some, they had some track records, so they, they gave me some legitimacy.

• 38:01Tim Ferriss?

  How, how on earth did you convince the, the first person? Because banks, so banks are saying, thanks, but no thanks.

• 38:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, people were intrigued though, so I could get, you know, remember, I was a lawyer. And so I was, I was really selling it. And there was a change afoot in Austin. You could feel it in the air. People were starting to return to that neighborhood. There, there was, it was a time that, it was in the mid nineties and there was starting to be some urban infill downtown. And so I was right on the edge of, of that being not completely implausible. But it didn't help that I had absolutely zero experience running a business. I mean, that's what really got the banks. They're like, what? I'm like, no, I can do it, I promise.

• 38:45Tim Ferriss?

  If you look at my poetry resume.

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. So it took a local bank at the end of the day, a guy named Eddie Safady, who was at, it's now Prosperity Bank, it was Liberty at the time, basically to underwrite it. But it also was remarkably inexpensive, the work we did in the, in the bigger picture. It's something that we would never get away with now, but I was there all day, every day. I was really lucky to have Lake Flato, the architecture firm out of San Antonio, now also out of Austin, to be my partners and believe in the project as well.

• 39:27Tim Ferriss?

  So I hate to bother you with just halting the story and jumping into the nitty gritty, but these are such important inflection points. If you don't get the money, ostensibly, not good things proceed from there. So we're talking about Liberty and then Prosperity, both good words. How do you convince that person? How did you convince them? What was the conversation where they're like, okay?

• 39:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I also applied for an SBA loan and it finally got, it was partially funded by the SBA. So that was great. I have a business partner now that I'm still in business with who is a great guy and had a lot of experience in business. His wife had brought him the pro forma for the San Jose.

• 40:15Tim Ferriss?

  How did she get it?

• 40:16Speaker 02

  From a friend of a friend, basically. It got passed around somehow.

• 40:20Tim Ferriss?

  So you were just...

• 40:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally.

• 40:22Tim Ferriss?

  Just in case. Let me get these into circulation.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Exactly. Again, I didn't know what I was doing, right? I didn't know, so it was just who knew who. And she brought it home and wanted to invest and he still has the copy of it because when it showed that we would get a hundred and ten dollars a night in year three or so, he wrote in the margin of the pro forma, "No way." He totally didn't believe. But I don't know, you know, I'm tenacious and I don't know how I finally convinced the bank. Again, they did take a leap. I'm sure there was some kind of personal guarantee that I didn't even know what a personal guarantee was at the time.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  I'm like, sure, take it, take my blood. I mean, at that point, I thought about selling the San Jose. It probably took two years to really close, about in 95, we closed in 97, December of 97 to start renovations. So it had taken all that time. I quit my law job just to go try to find money to do some kind of renovation. And in the meantime, we decided to...

• 41:33Tim Ferriss?

  So just so I'm clear, you were doing your law job simultaneous with running the San Jose up to that point?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  In the beginning. And then at some point, I realized I had to go work behind the front desk and I quit my law job. Which was crazy too. You know, I have to give it, you know, my, my mother's been gone for about five years now, but I can't believe that they didn't think that was the craziest

• 41:58Tim Ferriss?

  I was gonna ask you.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  Fucking thing I'd ever done. I mean, like, making no money. My father would have pointed out that it was just at the point I became a really good trial lawyer, that I just jumped ship, you know? Which I, I guess, you know, I don't know. Even in hindsight, I don't know, but I, I felt compelled in some way. Again, I'm really dogged and really, you know, I'm gonna follow it down once I decided that it's what I wanted to do. But I gotta say, there were nights, I don't know, why is it always nights, that I laid awake and really thought about selling the San Jose. Probably two or three times, I got really serious

• 42:38Speaker 02

  about it. I thought, there's no way I'm ever gonna be able to do this. It's too hard. And I just somehow powered through.

• 42:48Tim Ferriss?

  Why didn't you sell?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Who would've bought it, right?

• 42:52Tim Ferriss?

  Good answer. That is, that is a fair answer. So you, so you finally get the money, you close for renovations. What do you do? Is there anything that you did that you no longer do? Were there things that you did?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  Oh my god.

• 43:06Tim Ferriss?

  Where you're like, oh, that actually became part of my palette as an artist, so to speak?

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Yes and, yes and no, to both. I mean, there, there are ways that, it was extremely inefficient. Nobody would ever let me do what I did then, now. But, you know, it was, I was learning on the job. It was also really low risk. I mean, when you think about it, we look at, in, in the hotel business, you look at the price you pay per key. When you talk about selling or buying a hotel.

• 43:37Tim Ferriss?

  Per key.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, per key.

• 43:38Tim Ferriss?

  Meaning, per key.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Per key, per room.

• 43:40Tim Ferriss?

  Per room.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  So the, the general notion is, when you're talking about what a hotel is selling for, what you're into it for, what you can develop it for, whether it's a good deal, you take the total price of the project. From the land, all the soft costs, all the hard costs, all the working capital, everything you have in it to get the doors open, all the furnitures, fixtures, equipment, put that in a bucket and then divide it by the number of rooms. And that gives you the price per key of what the hotel costs, if that makes sense. It does. So, yeah. So, I, we were into the San Jose at the day we opened the doors for a hundred thousand

• 44:22Speaker 02

  dollars per key, which is super inexpensive. Inexpensive? Inexpensive. Okay, got it. At the, at the end of the day. So it was low risk. I mean, and I was on the front lines. I'm sure, again, I had a personal guarantee and I was there every day working like crazy. And Lake Flato, the, the architecture firm that I've worked with repeatedly since, um, they were also there every day. And so, again, okay, the question was, are there things that I did then that I would never do again? And then are there things that I did then that became part of my palette?

• 45:04Speaker 02

  Yes, and in looking back on it, I think what I did intuitively there is something that we do as an organization on a regular basis now, whenever we're looking at a hotel. And that is to say that I was interested in what the neighborhood wanted and needed in something, the, the place had been there since the thirties in, in the South Austin neighborhood. And so I wanted to look around and look at, the, the hotels that are most interesting to me are part of a neighborhood or part of a community. There's the places, when I was growing up, my granddad, who was a rancher...

• 45:44Speaker 02

  Didn't have an office, so he would go to the local hotel and sit in the lobby and do business deals and, you know, get his shoes, boots shined, get his haircut. You could do that in the lobby of a hotel. It was a place where people met and whether you were from out of town or you were a local. Oftentimes, you know, like a real cornerstone of the community or real important place to meet for the community. So, those were the kinds of things that interested me the most. So, one of the first things I asked is how do we serve this neighborhood and South Austin? And, you know, one of, obviously, the first things, well, we were directly across the street from the Continental Club. So, what

• 46:28Speaker 02

  do musicians need? And, because at the time, musicians were some of our most frequent guests when we were thirty bucks a night. Because, you know, they were coming through town in a van and they were looking for a cheap hotel. And a lot of times, they might be wasted enough that they didn't notice how bad the bed was or carpet or anything else. And we also had people that were spilling out of the Continental Club sometimes late at night. But, um, and the neighborhood was starting to change and people were starting to buy homes downtown again or in Travis Heights. We also started a coffee shop that

• 47:08Speaker 02

  opened, my brother and I did, months before the San Jose opened. And that, again, was a need of the community.

• 47:16Tim Ferriss?

  So, you were looking to fill the need. That's what drove it. It wasn't, we want to make a coffee shop. It is, what do people need? People need a coffee shop. Let's do a coffee shop.

• 47:24Speaker 02

  More than that, we needed a coffee shop.

• 47:26Tim Ferriss?

  Ah. This is a really, I want to underscore this because it comes up so frequently in people who ultimately succeed in some capacity in entrepreneurship, is it so often starts with scratching their own itch. And at least that way, you know you have a market of one. It's not complete, maybe, it's not complete speculation. So, not to interrupt, but.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  No, so, when you think of a pattern language and you think of Christopher Alexander, what I was doing intuitively?

• 47:58Tim Ferriss?

  This gigantic book that those on audio, can't see it. It's, it's big. You bludgeon a badger with it, but.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  What I was doing intuitively was a lot of what, for those of you who don't know, Christopher Alexander is a writer and a thinker about architecture and about how we build. And more than that, but for me, he wrote a book called The Timeless Way of Building.

• 48:31Tim Ferriss?

  Which I have not read.

• 48:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he wrote A Pattern Language, which was, basically, his idea was looking at all the old villages and towns and communities that were, you know, throughout the world that have been there for centuries. And his point was that people figure out how to build intuitively, more so than current, at the time, and probably today, current architects today, who are responding to how a thing looks, rather than how it functions. And he's, his argument is, or his thesis is, that we know intuitively, you know, where

• 49:11Speaker 02

  to put a fireplace, or a hallway, or, you know, a hub and spoke model in a small community. Because it's those ways of building that make a place feel more whole, and more complete, and makes you, as a person, feel more whole and complete. It's sort of, he calls it, I think he calls it the quality without a name.

• 49:35Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, I was, the quality without a name, what does that mean? Or is it referred to?

• 49:42Speaker 02

  Well, you know those places that you've been to, the buildings you've been in, or places you've been in, where it just feels right. And it feels calming, rather than agitating. It feels like you are part of something in a bigger sense. And I think, you know, part of that would be, you know, today, we, people design things today, this happens all the time, that they've never even been to the place where the Tuscan village in the suburbs is going to be put. You know, like, his argument is that you look around you, and you see how things are built in the place you are. And you look at, you don't bring...

• 50:26Speaker 02

  Building materials that would never exist in a place. You look at the ways of doing things that have been done for a long time. And that way you become the fabric of the place itself.

• 50:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, this book is so simultaneously intimidating.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  It is.

• 50:44Tim Ferriss?

  And fascinating. I mean, I just turned to a random page, 599. Activity pockets. And there's a diagram with the average number of people, area of 150 people to 300. Oh, wait, no. P must mean something else. 300 something square feet. And it's looking at the placement of umbrellas in what looks like an Italian pavilion. And there's another section. You got a pocket of activity which bulges into the square with a picture from Italy. And then there's a separate section. I was actually looking at this. Because I had a cabin construction project not too long ago. And there's a section on the integration of outside and inside.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Right. Well, okay, so I don't think that the book actually is. I think you're reading it in the right way. Meaning, you should not sit down and read that book from cover to cover.

• 51:33Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, my god.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  I mean, it really is something that is, you know, he became, and he's still around today, but he became a software, what would you say it is, designer of software. His ideas about patterns. And so, patterns are a thing that happens over and over again. You see in the natural order of things. So, if you're talking about an Italian plaza where the umbrellas are, think in your head how many times you've seen that. There's a reason, there's a reason. People on the ground designed that themselves because that's where human activity went to. When we were doing El Cosmico, which is...

• 52:11Tim Ferriss?

  You describe that because El Cosmico has probably been recommended to me by Texans more than any other hotel. And then there are Austinites who do staycations at some of your places. But let's describe El Cosmico. Because when I did the introduction, how did I describe it? But I think the community lodging concept.

• 52:33Tim Ferriss?

  So when you were designing El Cosmico, I don't mean to interrupt, but...

• 52:37Speaker 02

  No, that's quite right. El Cosmico is now 21 acres in far west Texas, which in the city of Marfa, town of Marfa.

• 52:48Tim Ferriss?

  Considered one of the darkest places in the United States.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  It is. Marfa is one of the darkest places. It is also about a mile high, about as high as Denver, and it is more clear nights and clear days than your average place. So you, and it's one of the, there's no real, there's very little light because it's such a sparse area of the country.

• 53:17Tim Ferriss?

  In terms of light pollution, yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, so if you think about it, there's two main counties out in far west Texas, Brewster and Presidio, and there's something like you can fit like 17 road islands into one of those counties, and the, I forget what the number is, but the per capita, the acreage per capita, per person, that's redundant, but is enormous. Like you have, every person has something like four square miles. You know, it's just like sparsely populated, not a lot of cloud cover, and not a lot of light pollution.

• 53:54Tim Ferriss?

  So for that reason, my understanding is that astronomers, or amateur astronomers, but with nearly professional-grade equipment or professional equipment, travel from all over the country to go specifically to Marfa.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 54:07Tim Ferriss?

  For the new moon and things like that.

• 54:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, I mean, it's incredible. You can see the Milky Way, which, when I was growing up, you could regularly see the Milky Way, and how often do you see it now in places that aren't like Marfa, or like Baja California, or you just, there's too much light pollution, we just don't see that anymore. And you forget what an amazing feeling that is in the order of things, to see another galaxy.

• 54:36Tim Ferriss?

  So you have 21 acres.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Okay, so, I digress.

• 54:41Speaker 02

  There's 21 acres, we're right on the edge of Marfa, it's a town of about 2,400 people. And I had done a small motel in Marfa and it called the Thunderbird and walked away from it, it was a bad partnership, it wasn't going anywhere. But I did know that it was interested in Marfa as a community. Marfa as a community, again, my family ranch is in the region. I'd moved back from New York, I really wanted to spend more time in far west Texas. And Marfa was a little bit on fire, if you can say that, for a community of 2,400 people.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  Because Donald Judd, who is, you know, one of the 20th century's most renowned sculptors, had made a home in Marfa and it had become an art mecca for a lot of folks. So you have this crazy mix of artists and creative people and ranchers and people that work on the land. In this beautiful place that, for those of you guys who are from overseas, might think of it as the myth of the American West, when you've seen Giant or you've seen movies, westerns, the landscape we're talking about looks a lot like that, just stretching on forever and distant clouds.

• 56:05Speaker 02

  So, Cosmico, I bought this pasture, basically, that was on the edge of town. And I wanted to build a hotel or a lodging experience of some sort there. And I realized that it needed to be indoors and outdoors, because that's one of the reasons you go out there. And I didn't know exactly what I was going to do, again, at the time, but realized that old trailers, vintage trailers, were a great way to get started putting hotels' rooms up quickly. And so I'd bought a few trailers and we redid them. And I started falling in love with trailers of that, of the like 50s, 60s time period,

• 56:49Speaker 02

  because those old Spartans and vagabonds and things like that are made with this beautiful birch interior. It was before they were making airstreams with... You know, I don't even know what the walls of Interior and Airstream are. But they, trailers of that vintage had these beautiful wooden interiors. I mean, you felt like you were in the belly of a ship, or in a ship's cabin. And they, we finished them with yacht varnish at the time. And so it was this, it was like these, we put the first few trailers out there and it was like ships on the desert, you know? And, and I just fell in love with the whole notion of these, um, kind of nomadic ways

• 57:34Speaker 02

  of living. And so we got some yachts eventually, we got teepees, we have safari tents. And it became this grand experiment to see how we would use the land. So, all of these, all of the rooms were movable. And so we kind of lived our way into it. That comes back to Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language. It was really starting to have music festivals and parties there and people living out there to determine what did the place need and how would people use it.

• 58:08Tim Ferriss?

  So we've been talking about the outside-inside integration. Uh, and Christopher Alexander gives some great contrasting photographs for illustrative purposes. It seems, based on the homework that I've done at least, that you also think a lot about, well, I'll quote here. And the internet misquotes a lot, so you can correct me if, if I'm wrong. But it's, here's, here's the quote. And this is part of a, a longer conversation, of course, but, "I hate it when I visit a hotel that hasn't put thought into the products they place in their room. It's all part of the language of the place and the details that affect the guest experience there." So, if we, if we look at El Cosmico, or you could choose a different example.

• 58:52Tim Ferriss?

  What are the things that people might notice in inside?

• 58:56Speaker 02

  Inside and outside.

• 58:58Tim Ferriss?

  And outside, yeah, sure.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  You know, for, I think for us at Bunkhouse, part of, it is a whole experience. Like, being at a hotel should be, and you think of some of your favorite hotels, it's not that you liked the bedspread, or it was close to the highway. You might have liked both those things. But I think probably the places you like the most are the most immersive, and you, I think of it as storytelling in a way. So every hotel that we do has everything from a soundtrack, to oftentimes a color, or a color scheme that repeats throughout, a smell, an incense usually.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Like at the St. Cecilia, we put nogchampa, big sticks of nogchampa in the garden, so as you're walking through the courtyard, it's really subtle, but it's something that strikes your senses, and it will remind you of the St. Cecilia.

• 59:53Tim Ferriss?

  Of all the smells that you could possibly choose, why did you choose that?

• 59:56Speaker 02

  The St. Cecilia is a small hotel we have, off, further back in the neighborhood, off of South Congress.

• 1:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  Very good selection of tequila, also.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  I bet. It's only 14 rooms, but it was a, the main part of the St. Cecilia is an old Victorian that was built in the 1890s, and then it has some bungalows that are scattered around about an acre, an acre and a half of land. And in order for us to do a hotel, for me, there has to be a skeleton, a story, that everything is hung upon or proceeds from. And so, my business partners at the time, we were looking, the St. Cecilia came up for sale, it wasn't the St. Cecilia, it was just an old Victorian on an acre of land, near downtown Austin, and he's like, "What's the story here?"

• 1:00:51Speaker 02

  You know, it's like you had to describe this to somebody. And for me, I mean, it was, I always loved that whole period of rock and roll that was about going to really nice hotels, and the super decadence, not the throwing the TV out the window, but the, you know, great silver, slightly tarnished in the white tablecloth from room service, and the contrast of, you know, Dylan taking...

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  Tea somewhere, or, you know, drinking a bottle of whiskey, the Stones at Nell Cott. Just that, there's something so awesome about where elegance kind of meets rock and roll. And so there was this Victorian, and I felt like that I'd seen a photograph of like, maybe it was the Stones, somewhere in like, full-on 1970s, awesome, you know, clothing, and there was a chauffeur, you know, washing a Bentley in the background, kind of thing. And so this place where those things met immediately became the Saint Cecilia to me. And Saint Cecilia was a patron saint of music and poetry.

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  And so, if you ask where Nochchampa comes from, it's like, that, that smell of Nochchampa is the, is the hippie smell of that time. And, and putting it in a place as elegant as the Saint Cecilia makes perfect sense to me.

• 1:02:17Tim Ferriss?

  Some any questions? I, I would think of myself, in general, as at least an aspiring minimalist when it comes to certain aspects of design, and certainly have very, very limited experience compared to someone like yourself, but have, have had projects, one in San Francisco before I moved to Austin, where this place was stripped down to the studs and just became an art project. And I've spent a lot of time in Japan, so it was sort of a combination of like a green and green, Esalen-type feel, plus Japanese. And it's very simple in some respects, and I have a particular dislike of clutter, I guess, even though it's an ongoing battle in my own house.

• 1:03:01Tim Ferriss?

  So, I think it was your brother who said the following, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but "Let people be the color in the room."

• 1:03:11Tim Ferriss?

  Could you expand on that or explain what that means?

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  That was my brother Lyndon. Some of the best advice ever. I think that, you know, you look in hotels at any point, I mean particularly, you know, last twenty, thirty years, I look at someplace and I'm not giving a bad shout out, but, you know, the loft or something or the indigo. And they think design is fun and whimsical, and it is, but, oh my god, how do you sleep in a pla- how do you walk through the hallway? You're just assaulted by so many different patterns and so many different, like, what people think is like, cool or hip or, you know, now. And it's just like, a constant onslaught.

• 1:03:53Speaker 02

  And to me, the best hotels or the best places are places that are more calming. And so, doing things through massing or through a pattern where you, you know, take the language of a place and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. It may be so subtle that no- that people don't really notice. But I think if you give people a pla- all of our own lives are so cluttered in so many ways. But if you strip away everything, to a certain degree, and let the people be the color in the room, it's infinitely more interesting. I think people feel better about everything that way as well.

• 1:04:37Speaker 02

  You know, when the San Jose is- was the first hotel I did, and we- I kind of think of it as Mexico meets Japan. It's for you guys who don't know, it's, um, we did a real sort of minimalist job on the place. At the time, we just, we developed a furniture system that would work in, um, in the rooms, because all the rooms were very different. Over the years, they've been cut up in different ways. So we needed something where we could use something repeatedly throughout. And we ended up using some pine, La Bala Pine, which is a local-ish material from East Texas.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  And in sort of a Judd-like way, Judd being the Marfa minimalist, although I know he would hate the word minimalist. But, um, which I think Judd is very informed by Schindler. And I don't know if you know Schindler. Schindler is an architect from the twenties that was working in the LA area, but- Very influential and with a very simplicity. And so the San Jose has concrete floors. Where we took out walls, we put in an aggregate so you could see where the walls used to be.

• 1:05:53Tim Ferriss?

  Could you explain what that means?

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so when you have an old cement or concrete floor, a lot of times when you remove a wall, you'll have a hole in the floor. So what we would do is we'd take a concrete mixed with rock and fill it in and then sand it. So there was, instead of trying to fit in with the existing floor, you could actually see the remains of the...

• 1:06:21Tim Ferriss?

  The footprint of the dinosaur.

• 1:06:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And so the San Jose, though, although it's very simple with just wood and concrete and some people would think of as cold, there's a ton of plantings, a ton of gardens. It feels really lush and feels sort of like living indoors and outdoors. But we have comic cards and early on, I really paid a lot of attention to comic cards and I'm sure the staff does now. But one of my favorite ones that I had up on the wall for a while was, somebody had written, "This is the most expensive fucking garage I've ever stayed in."

• 1:06:56Tim Ferriss?

  So what do you do in response to something like that? Or do you not, are you like, you know, not everyone's gonna get it and that's okay?

• 1:07:04Speaker 02

  It was really hard at first because not everyone was gonna get it and you have to decide if you want to please everybody or if you just keep doing what you're doing and know that intuitively there is something that you will find your audience. And again, I was very lucky in life to be in the right place at the right time because Austin was changing. And when we first opened the San Jose...

• 1:07:28Tim Ferriss?

  Now, just to not discount your skill set completely, I mean, you're in the right place at the right time, but you've also now... How many, how many properties do you have?

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  I don't know, um, eight, maybe eight, I think.

• 1:07:41Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, so I mean, once you're lucky, twice you're good, eight times? Okay, but continue.

• 1:07:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, so, but, you know, but at that time, with the first project, you don't know what you don't know, and you don't know, I have a lot more confidence now.

• 1:07:55Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  I mean, I had confidence then, but not necessarily as a designer. But I remember when we first opened, we opened, we opened in March, which is, um, a spring break, but it's also South by Southwest, which is a huge conference. It used to be more music centric, but now it's tech and film, and a lot of people descend on Austin.

• 1:08:19Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, it's gotta be, I don't know the exact size now, but it's gotta be fifty to a hundred thousand.

• 1:08:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there's not a hotel room in town. Well, we sort of did a soft opening, which is crazy, but, uh...

• 1:08:30Tim Ferriss?

  What does that mean?

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Soft opening is where you invite people to, that might be friendly towards you, or at a very discounted price, to a property or a restaurant, and let, let the staff practice on you, knowing there's gonna be some mistakes. So...

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  So you did your south opening during South by?

• 1:08:48Speaker 02

  Well, right before. It was like February fourteenth, and I remember, February fourteenth was the first day that we had, so it was Valentine's Day, had anybody that actually spent the night in the hotel. And I put a banner outside that, um, we sold rooms for sixty-nine dollars for Valentine's Day. And so that was a special, and I mean, like, trying to just get people in the doors was, uh, was the whole point. We opened during South by Southwest, totally sold out, crazy, because of course we had something in the, something was in the, uh, waste pipe that was going to the street, like an electrical fixture falling down into it, so entire wing of the hotel flooded with sewage.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  You know, people were running out of the hotel with their stand-up bass, or you know, whatever. There was no place to put them, but...

• 1:09:40Tim Ferriss?

  All right, so it's in the middle of South by, complete chaos.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Tim Ferriss?

  Everything is stretched to max capacity.

• 1:09:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:48Tim Ferriss?

  I'm sure that stress is running high for a lot of people who have flown in to perform or whatever, so you have sewage flooding half the hotel. How do you handle that?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, you know, you have to be on the front lines of it, and with rubber boots and the whole thing, and again, really...

• 1:10:05Speaker 02

  You know, I don't know. It's hospitality.

• 1:10:08Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, usually, people don't know this, but behind the scenes, we, you, a lot of places overbook, knowing, because they're counting on cancellations.

• 1:10:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, just like airlines.

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. And so hotels, you know, hospitality business is really interesting because hotels really are behind the scenes. Usually, most likely, want to be friends with each other. You know, you can say it's competition, but you're sharing information all the time. Your management and what's going on in town and, um, it just so, you know, rising tide raises all boats to a certain degree. But you're also gonna have to walk somebody sooner or later to another hotel, which means that you're gonna, you're gonna pay for their room somewhere else because you've either overbooked or.

• 1:10:53Tim Ferriss?

  Made a mistake or had sewage flood the rooms.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. But there was no hotels to walk anybody. I don't know how we manage it. I put it out of my mind now.

• 1:11:00Tim Ferriss?

  You've blocked it, but if you try to unblock it though, is there any, what do you say? Did you get them to stay? They're not sleeping on the street presumably.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  No, I think we did get them to stay. I think that we went in and cleaned like crazy and disinfected like crazy and remade the rooms, all hands on deck completely.

• 1:11:18Tim Ferriss?

  Do you comp the room, discount?

• 1:11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, totally. You know, they say in the service industry, a good recovery is gonna make a bigger, uh, more loyal guest than if you hadn't fucked up at all in the beginning.

• 1:11:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's true. That's very true.

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Because you'll tell ten people if somebody really makes something right.

• 1:11:37Tim Ferriss?

  Right. Well, I mean, that because everybody's all smiles and high fives when everything is going smoothly.

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:11:42Tim Ferriss?

  It's like, how, how do they handle things and do they own the problem when things go sideways on their watch?

• 1:11:48Speaker 02

  Kinda hard not to own that one, wasn't it?

• 1:11:50Tim Ferriss?

  That is hard not to own that one. How dare you flood your own room with sewage?

• 1:11:57Tim Ferriss?

  Chip Conley. Chip Conley is someone we both know. Chip, if you're listening or somebody passes this along, miss you, would love to see you. It's been a long time since I've spent time with Chip, but I've heard you describe him as a mentor. I don't know if you haven't heard you, I've read it, so who knows if it's accurate. But could you describe for folks who don't know the name, who is Chip? And what have you learned, or gleaned, or observed from Chip?

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  So much, over the years. Chip is a mentor, to this day. I saw him last week. For those of you guys who don't know, Chip started a hotel company called Joie de Vivre, that was based in San Francisco. And he started when he was fresh out of business school, probably early twenties. The Phoenix was his first hotel, which was a motor court, not unlike the San Jose or the Austin motel, and was a favorite of bands on tour, musicians, that kind of thing. Chip continued to grow a very successful hotel company, and decided at some point, in his around fifty or so, I don't know how old was Chip when he sold

• 1:13:13Speaker 02

  Joie de Vivre.

• 1:13:14Tim Ferriss?

  It might have been right afterwards. I remember I was at Chip's, we didn't talk about this, Burning Man camp.

• 1:13:19Speaker 02

  I was too.

• 1:13:20Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 1:13:21Speaker 02

  Yes, totally was, yeah.

• 1:13:22Tim Ferriss?

  Alright, so, what was it, Masletopia?

• 1:13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:24Tim Ferriss?

  So, that's crazy.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  So, only time I've ever been to Burning Man.

• 1:13:27Tim Ferriss?

  That's really funny.

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  I have one of the yurts that was, you know, the fold-up.

• 1:13:31Tim Ferriss?

  Air-conditioned.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Air-conditioned yurts, of course I did.

• 1:13:33Tim Ferriss?

  That's wild. Alright, so we were at the same camp at Burning Man, and just didn't bump into each other. Or maybe we did, at the

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Who knows?

• 1:13:41Tim Ferriss?

  The catered Chip food. Which, by the way, I mean, it was such a contrast. My first experience, not to digress too far, but my first experience at Burning Man was trying to build a geodesic dome with my friend, on the spot, that we had put together based on internet instructions, when I was in San Francisco. And then, realizing, none of it would fit together, we ran out of water. The RV we had broke down, so the air conditioning didn't work. It was just, it was absolute survival mode.

• 1:14:09Speaker 02

  Adversity.

• 1:14:10Tim Ferriss?

  And then I came to Chip's, and I was like, "Oh my god, this is like the Four Seasons of"

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  It was, so he really, he did the whole camp with some friends and basically you could get food at any point you wanted. There was a full-service bar. I had an air-conditioned yurt. You know, it was only like six feet across and it was made out of some kind of building. It was like fold up. The whole thing folded up into a very small package. But it wasn't a bad way. I kind of in and out.

• 1:14:40Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's so wild. The camp flew over there at the same time. So, so he sold the company around fifty-ish.

• 1:14:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, Joavive, he's still a very young man, by the way, if you're listening, Chip. And he, the guys from Airbnb tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Come help us a little bit." And what was helping, in an advisory role for a while, he became the head of global hospitality for Airbnb. And along the way, he's written a lot of great business books that we often have our managers read, like Peak and the Emotional Equation. What is that book called?

• 1:15:20Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you know, well, if people, I'm blanking on the title, but I will tell people that Chip's been on my blog a few times. And if you search "How to Become an Effective CEO, Chief Emotions Officer," and my name, or just search Tim Ferriss, Chip Conley, and that'll pop right up with that book.

• 1:15:40Speaker 02

  Right. Chip has written many books and he is often, has done a TED Talk and is often a lecturer on business and just on being a more complete person. And so Chip continued throughout. So, the way I met Chip is I cold-called him. I bought the San Jose, didn't know what I was doing, had no idea what I was gonna do, and I saw his name like in a trade magazine, and so I called him up. Unbelievably, he called me back in about thirty minutes.

• 1:16:09Tim Ferriss?

  What was your, did you leave a voicemail?

• 1:16:10Speaker 02

  I think I did. I don't remember exactly. Yeah, I think I did leave a voicemail. How I got his number?

• 1:16:16Tim Ferriss?

  What would you have said?

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  I have this motel in South Austin and I just wanted to talk to you about it. Click. Or something like that.

• 1:16:26Tim Ferriss?

  Sweet and simple, yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Of course, I think he thought I wanted to, see if he wanted to consider buying it. But the fact that he called me back was I have cursed him for from this from that day to this day because now people constantly you know now they email me or in some way ask if I could spend a few minutes and for advice and you know there just aren't the hours in the day but he just pops up in my brain every time like what would have happened had he not called back you know and I don't know but um over the years he was one of the first guests at San Jose he was passing through um he came to see it after giving advice I went and met him in San Francisco he looked at my numbers that I didn't really

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  understand and tried to make sense of them but I could have had that conversation I could have that conversation now much better um and then uh most recently we have a hotel in Baja California in a little town called Toto Santos or right outside a little town called Toto Santos that is about forty-five minutes from Cabo and he is the one that got me into that because um he had sold his hotel company and was not I I don't know if he had a non-compete or just not supposed to be in the business and he was very interested in the community and so he kind of pointed them in my direction and now we have a really great hotel there and Chip lives part of his life in Toto Santos now.

• 1:17:53Tim Ferriss?

  What what other best practices or principles or do nots or do's have you picked up from from Chip or or other people?

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  Well um actually I had our president now at Bunkhouse I worked for Chip for ten years god named Christian Strobel and um you know it's good here's the thing you can be as creative as you want to be and dream as big as you want and create an incredible experience and programming and everything.

• 1:18:27Speaker 02

  Along those lines, but if you can't keep the lights on, if you can't return money to investors, if you can't keep your employees happy, then you're never going to have a successful business. I mean, you've got to keep the lights on, you know, and you've got to do a little better than keeping the lights on. But I think a lot of people fail in business because they don't have operational rigor. And that can be a lot of different, that can manifest in a lot of different ways. But I think that Chip was influential from

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  early on about operations and how important not just your guest was, but your employee and your investor as well.

• 1:19:15Tim Ferriss?

  Chip is, and Peak, I mean, as it relates to Maslow, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and hence Maslow toopia, as the name of the Burning Man camp, is something that he would apply also to these various stakeholders. So another mutual acquaintance, Larry Maguire of Maguire Mormon Group here, many different restaurants. I texted Larry to ask him, you know, what topics or questions might I want to explore with Liz? And he said, oh, well, there are so many things we could explore, but one of the things he brought up was the

• 1:19:55Tim Ferriss?

  question, how do you balance, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's not that far off, how do you balance wanting, the desire to be an artist with the desire to be, say, a business tycoon?

• 1:20:08Speaker 02

  Right. It's a really interesting question. I mean, it's such a balance. I mean, it is, Larry's actually very good at what he does. Larry has several restaurants here in town, and I've known Larry since he was about 16 and started work for my brother. But Larry is one of those rare people that understands both, again, rigor in operations, which is going to be really important at the end of the day for somebody to have the right experience, and the artistry of creating an experience.

• 1:20:50Speaker 02

  To me, if you don't, like, people make hotels, people design hotels, and then they walk away. And so, that is always gonna get diluted over time. If you don't remain involved in the experience, or what your vision was in the first place, then what you created is not just an object, it's a living, breathing thing that has employees, people that work there, that spend their lives there. It has guests that come and go as part of an ever-evolving community. And it has people that have part of the ownership in the place.

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  So, I think your vision is not complete if you just create something and walk away. It is in other genres of art, but in a hotel, or in a restaurant, it begins anew every day, in a way. And so, to create a guest experience that is right for that hotel takes, you know, constant vigilance, in a way. And that is always gonna translate to the bottom line. I mean, we don't market most of our hotels in a certain way, but people market them for us. Instagram is obviously great, and so are a lot of other social media platforms, but

• 1:22:14Speaker 02

  we get a fair amount of print as well. And that comes a lot, not from us necessarily pitching stories, but for people becoming real believers in what we do. And so, I don't know if I'm really answering that question, except to say, it's a, you have to have both things, whether it's you doing it, or someone else that believes in your vision and you believe in theirs. You've gotta have both the artistry in the beginning, and the good practice to continue, and the good business practice, to continually tend the fire.

• 1:22:50Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have an idea of, if you're gonna be continuing to develop hotels, and put your craft...

• 1:23:01Tim Ferriss?

  Into the world in that way. Do you have an idea for, say, how many properties you'd like to have in five years? If you want to scale, if you don't want to scale three years, it doesn't really matter. I'm just wondering if you have something like that.

• 1:23:16Speaker 02

  It's such a crossroads right now, really, about this. You know, the pressure in business, and the bigger your business gets, is to grow, grow, grow, and then sell it.

• 1:23:26Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:23:27Speaker 02

  That seems to be, you know, I wonder if we'll be 30 years from now and that won't be the thing, or if it was, it wasn't, you know, 50 years ago. We live in a time where it's about growth and making your business worth as much as you possibly can and then selling it. And to me, that's, it makes no sense in the world to me because I'm a bit of a, the journey is a destination kind of person. And so if I'm, I think that I'm both doing, if I grow at an enormously rapid pace, if I push not only myself but my team to grow as fast as possible, we're not going to do the quality of work that we want to do.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  And while we might have a higher value in five years as a company, I don't think that the end game is to sell. And Larry Maguire, I think, believes the same thing I do, and a lot of people that I look around at, and I'm interested in their careers and their lives, also are people that are interested in what they do from, and from the people they work with, day to day. And creating an asset like a hotel that can just get better over time, rather than, you know, we live in a time where you have hotels that they're redone every seven years, or every five years, there's a big, you know, big repositioning or whatever.

• 1:24:54Speaker 02

  The most interesting places to me just get better as time goes on, and layer upon layer, and texture upon texture.

• 1:25:00Tim Ferriss?

  And get better not by reinventing themselves every seven years.

• 1:25:03Speaker 02

  Right, exactly.

• 1:25:04Tim Ferriss?

  What was the second title? Not a Pattern Language.

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  Timeless Way of Building.

• 1:25:08Tim Ferriss?

  Timeless Way of Building.

• 1:25:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, you know, can you have a good life and make your, and have employees who are invested in that business and also keep an asset?

• 1:25:25Speaker 02

  And have it, you know, this, I'm gonna digress for a second, but the hotel business as we know it today is a result of a lot of things, but we've come to a time where most hotels are not owned by the management company. So you have a group of owners and you have a management company that is a brand. So from the Four Seasons to the Hilton to, you name, the Marriott, whatever it is, or even Ace, those guys over there, great friends of mine, every Ace you look at is owned by a different ownership group. And, you know, you can talk all day long about why that is. A lot of times a management company wants

• 1:26:09Speaker 02

  to say, stay asset light, because the hotel business is, you know, in waves. So you don't want to get caught in a downturn owning a property, etc., etc.

• 1:26:21Tim Ferriss?

  So you mitigate your risk by having-

• 1:26:23Speaker 02

  And you're growing a brand. And that is, that's easier, or much easier, when you are a Marriott and you're gonna be the same everywhere. And you have, and there was a time in hotel business, or a time in hotels, and those of us as consumers of hotels, wanted that. Because before that, you could, you know, take a trip across country and all these hotels were independent, and god knows what you might find, or it might be delightful or it might be horrible. And there was no way of judging the quality of a place. And then we got Hiltons and Holiday Inns, and what was great is that you could, you knew what to expect. You knew the level of service.

• 1:27:05Tim Ferriss?

  Well, the cup of Starbucks is the same everywhere you go.

• 1:27:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And we, and so you can depend on that. I'd read something from, I was, I was look, the other day, I was looking at some stuff about why musicians in hotels, you know, why that love story, and they're interdependent in one way or the other. And somebody was saying, I don't remember, it was probably Keith Moon, or somebody who was well-known for just totally trashing hotel rooms. It's like, yeah, it's the fifth, you know, this is like, this is the 20th fucking Holiday Inn, you know, we've woken up in, in just as many days, and they all look the same. Anybody would be mad at it.

• 1:27:41Speaker 02

  But that time began to change with what we think of as a boutique hotel or a lifestyle hotel, from Schrager to Chip Connolly. You know, I think you asked me about what do the next three, five years hold? What's my plan business-wise or hotel growth-wise? And I feel like I'm at such a crossroads there in trying to determine what's... It's not only what's best for me, it's also what's best for the company, but also the people I work with every day. And so you want to grow because you want to be able to give the people

• 1:28:22Speaker 02

  you work with more equity, more of a chance for, you know, higher fulfillment, moving into other jobs, just all those things. I think that we have a natural propensity toward growth. But then the question becomes how fast and how much? And what is the end game there? And in this business, I think, in this day and age, people just mindlessly want to grow and explode. The bigger you are, the better you are. The more people know about you, the better. But I think that a lot of the qualities that you appreciate in day-to-day living become lost.

• 1:29:06Speaker 02

  I think one of the reasons we're successful as a company, internally at least, is because we are like a family in some ways. And so how much can you maintain that as well? I guess the answer is I don't want to mindlessly grow. I want to thoughtfully grow. And that may not be at the pace that a lot of companies would want you to grow. And it's also about the end game. And I don't think my end game would be to grow really fast and to sell the business, which is you find a lot of brands want to do now.

• 1:29:40Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it sounds also to me, just based on what you've been saying, that your philosophical lens through which you view your life, which is the journey is the destination, is a fundamental juxtaposition with what a lot of external pressures would want to impose on the business.

• 1:30:00Speaker 02

  Absolutely. It's so true.

• 1:30:01Tim Ferriss?

  It's tricky.

• 1:30:02Speaker 02

  No, it's such a balance and it's a struggle in a way.

• 1:30:08Speaker 02

  It is, but you know, some of, there are outside pressures, there are inside pressures. But it's a really good question, because I'm in the middle of it right now. And I have lots of thoughts about it, but it could go on and on and on. But I do know that I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. You know, and we all could. And you're not going to care about that IPO, you know, five years from now. My wife is pregnant, and I'm older, and she's young enough to be pregnant, clearly. And that's a whole other life change.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  Also, again, when you see, you know, I do, I'm a big believer in the realization of mortality. I mean, all those things really point me in the direction of living a quality life with, in relationship to other people. And in those ways, I think it's, you find meaning much more, in a much more real manner than you find meaning in making a lot of money.

• 1:31:20Tim Ferriss?

  I agree. I mean, money's supposed to be fuel, in a sense, for transferring it, transmuting that into other things, like experiences and so on, ostensibly, right? I mean, it's a, money is a representation of value.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  I'm not against money, and it's very super important for a business. And it's super important for the people you work with and for, and all those things. It's just the means to the end, you know?

• 1:31:46Tim Ferriss?

  No, it is. I mean, if we look at, there's a, there's a really fascinating book called The Biography of a Dollar, or The Biography of a Dollar, which walks through the history of money in some respects, which becomes even more interesting when we start looking at more recent developments, developments like cryptocurrency and so on. But at the end of the day, at least traditionally speaking, it's a medium of exchange. And so then the question is, in exchange for what? Let me, let me ask just a handful more questions, because I think we could have... Many, many more conversations and hopefully this isn't the last. We've mentioned a few books. Are there any other books that you have gifted often to other people or reread a lot yourself?

• 1:32:29Speaker 02

  I love that you ask that question that way because it really puts it in a different perspective. It's like not what your favorite book is, it's what you've given as gift. Which I thought about a little bit this morning and I mean it's so clear, I mean like I have an immediate answer and then I had to think, why did I do that? But I think when I was younger and still to this day, I sometimes gift a book of poetry by Adrienne Rich called A Dream of a Common Language.

• 1:32:59Tim Ferriss?

  A Dream of...

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  A Common Language.

• 1:33:01Tim Ferriss?

  A Common Language.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Which was a book written, she wrote in the late 70s and she's a poet that...I was trying to think, why was that book so important to me? It's really funny, when I read Cheryl Strayed's Wild, that was one of the books that was most important to her that she had as she hiked the Pacific Rim.

• 1:33:22Tim Ferriss?

  That's right. I totally forgot about that.

• 1:33:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. I gift a lot Slouching Towards Bethlehem, a book by Joan Didion, which is a collection of essays. That, I love that book so much. It is a lot about how, what the kind of writing Joan Didion is doing. And those essays are both, you know, of the time. There's one about John Wayne, there's, you know, about California. But there's also this collection of personal essays she does. One's called On Keeping a Notebook, that I go back to again and again and I share a lot. There's one called...

• 1:34:00Tim Ferriss?

  On Keeping a Notebook.

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  On Keeping a Notebook. There's one called On Self-Respect. There's one on morality. But it's an awesome collection of essays.

• 1:34:11Speaker 02

  And there are other books by Joan Didion, but that's one I tend to gift the most. You know, the other one I'm sure people mentioned to you, I can't imagine they don't, is When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. Has anybody recommended that?

• 1:34:25Tim Ferriss?

  That has come up, I think, only once, and Seth, I apologize for misattributing, but he does recommend Pema Chodron, at least one of her audiobooks.

• 1:34:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:35Tim Ferriss?

  But no, this is not a book that has come up a lot. So if you could explain why...

• 1:34:39Speaker 02

  So Things Fall Apart, I think, has been important to me. I've given to people in my life because it had an impact on me. But it's, I don't know, I could be wrong, that it was Pema Chodron's first shot across the bow. I mean, it might have been the first book she did. I don't know if that's true or not. But it was really my introduction into... Pema Chodron, for those of you who don't know, is a Buddhist monk who became a Buddhist monk, I think, probably thirty years ago, when she had, when her husband, she found out her husband was having an affair and he left her, and she was left in this

• 1:35:19Speaker 02

  place of what to do about that. And she kind of accidentally found her way into Buddhism. But to me, it really revealed this struggle we have day to day of, in the face of anything, loss, adversity, all those kinds of things, you know, how much, how we tighten up and struggle, or we get angry, or we get bitter, or we just continue doing the same things over and over that don't necessarily work, watching TV, movies as an escape, drinking, even exercise sometimes. I mean, whatever it is we're doing, and how we always think if we would just get to that next perfect place, it would all be okay. Like, if we

• 1:36:02Speaker 02

  had the next job, or if we moved to this new city, or if we just had this relationship, it would all be okay. And then, as it turns out, when you get to that place, lo and behold, on the next horizon is, you feel uncomfortable because you need this next thing. And it's really the idea of, again, the journey is a destination. Being able to, on the way to that island, rowing across the ocean, you need to get, find comfort in... Being on that boat in the Roiling Sea. And the idea of impermanency and how, I think anybody who's lived their life with

• 1:36:42Speaker 02

  loss, or death, or anything of the sort, understands what a jolt it is to figure, to understand that things aren't permanent. And that when we do accept the impermanency of things, and learn how to live in the moment or on the Roiling Sea, and live with that discomfort, it's a life changer. And so, when things fall apart, I realize, just in saying all that, the Joan Dinnian book Slouching Towards Bethlehem is taken from the same poem, the Yeats poem, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, what's it called, is it Slouching Towards Bethlehem, right?

• 1:37:21Tim Ferriss?

  Oh God, you're far more literate than I am. I'm failing my exam here. We'll definitely put it-

• 1:37:27Speaker 02

  Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. Yeah, anyway.

• 1:37:30Tim Ferriss?

  We'll put all of these in the show notes, and we've talked about mortality a few times. I've had quite a bit of revisiting mortality in the last few years with very close friends, and even now, currently, some of the effectively family members. And I have a coin that sits on my kitchen counter, which says Memento Mori, Remember You're Going to Die, with iconography on it. Coincidentally enough, I should give him credit, made by a friend of mine here, Ryan Holiday, who's an author in the Austin area, who writes a lot about Stoic philosophy, which is highly compatible with a lot of Buddhist thought and contemplative practice, in my

• 1:38:12Tim Ferriss?

  experience, in any case. Do you have a favorite, favorite's a weird word to use here, but a favorite failure, or a failure that you feel like taught you a lot, or set you up for later success?

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  I failed so often, and I've been successful very often, too. I think if it were a formative favorite failure, and again, yeah, you know, sometimes don't we all feel like we're beating our head against the wall? You like, you know, "Why am I doing that same thing over again?" I mean, that's a whole, I think I was still doing that. That's a whole other subject. But, you know, when I was young, when I was in high school, I was, I was in, there was a thing called Youth in Government. And you're from all over Texas, they did it in other states as well, but you would learn about government by this kind of mock government thing.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  And it came through the YMCA, and there were like little social clubs and all of that. But Youth in Government was something I got involved in, probably when I was a sophomore, junior, high school. When I was a senior in high school, I ran for youth governor of the state of Texas, which was, it's a big state. But you had to, you had to run on a local level, and then you had to run at a regional level, and then you came to state. And my grandfather at the time is a rancher, and one of the men I admire most was at the time older, and I think, I think at that point he had broken his hip and he was in bed bound at home.

• 1:40:00Speaker 02

  But as I ran for youth governor, I would read the paper with him on a pretty regular daily basis, if not every other day, and discuss current events and current issues. And it was an awesome period of time having those discussions with him. And we came here to Austin for the Youth in Government Week, and they do it, they do it at the Capitol, and they do it in the chambers, so in the senate and in the, in the House of Representatives. And it's right after the, the real thing has let out, and so... It's, you know, really awesome because you're in these great big hallways and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, I ran for youth governor and the night that they're already taking

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  the vote, we're staying in a hotel right over here, not far from here at all, the La Quinta over there. And I was staying in a room with three friends who were there for the party, for sure. I was very serious. They were there to be in Austin. And one of them had an older boyfriend who lived here in Austin. So they started drinking in the room. And I knew that we weren't supposed to be drinking in the room. And so I left the room and went and visited some other friends down the hall. They got caught. And we got, I got called to, you know, whoever our supervisor was, and she said, did you know they were drinking? And I was like, yeah, I knew. And I left. Well, it turns out that the whole thing was running on the honor system. I'm sure I knew that

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  at the time. And because I did not report them, I was kicked out and sent home with them. And by that point, they knew that I had won the election for youth governor of state of Texas, which meant that like in the next year, you were going to go to nationals and we do all this stuff. But instead, so the morning of the announcement, you know, went to the next person in line, and I was sent home on a bus with them, you know, sitting with them. And when my mom went to report to my grandfather what had happened, because he was following play by play, he said, tell Liz we're really proud

• 1:42:05Speaker 02

  of her. And to me, that was this formative moment of realizing that there were rules and there was authority. And, you know, the honor system was what this whole system was running on. And it was a system I was, you know, part cog and wheel in. And I realized that he was really proud of me, because I'd grown up with brothers and with, you know, a whole community that really believed that you didn't rat on somebody else. You didn't call somebody out. I was right to remove myself. But I think there was a whole system of belief. That I'd grown up with that it would have been wrong just to run and tell on somebody

• 1:42:47Speaker 02

  else. And I think it was the first time that I, you know, over the years and looking back at it, I think I learned more from this thing going wrong than I would have learned from it going right. And it was about questioning systems and questioning values. Just because somebody feeds, says, this is the, these are the rules and this is what it is, doesn't mean that that's really the rules you need to incorporate, you know?

• 1:43:13Tim Ferriss?

  That's a great story.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  [laughing]

• 1:43:17Tim Ferriss?

  What a lovely experience. Also, not that particular time in the Capitol, but with your, as your grandfather said, right?

• 1:43:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:25Tim Ferriss?

  That sounds so great. I never had that chance. My, my grandparents passed, all of them when I was very young.

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  Really?

• 1:43:30Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was lucky that way.

• 1:43:32Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, that's, and they, and we all lived in different states. So even, even when they were alive, we only got to see them very briefly. You know, just, just a few more questions. If you had gigantic billboard, metaphorically speaking, right, to, on which you-

• 1:43:50Speaker 02

  I think I do, actually.

• 1:43:51Tim Ferriss?

  So if you had an additional billboard, on which you could put a word, a quote, a question, anything non-commercial, just a message to get out to millions or billions of people, what might you put on that billboard?

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  Um, you know, we do, over down by the San Jose and the Austin Motel, there is a big billboard, but of course, we rented two advertisers. But on the side of, there are a couple of things on the side of Joe's. One is that iconic, I love you so much, that people take pictures of all the time. Some, it's a, it's a longer story, but on the back side of Joe's, there is a quote from Jack Kerouac that says, "Don't break your tenderness." And I love that quote. I think that's a good thing for everybody to remember.

• 1:44:40Tim Ferriss?

  Don't break your tenderness.

• 1:44:41Speaker 02

  Don't break your tenderness, yeah.

• 1:44:42Tim Ferriss?

  I love that. I've never actually heard that before.

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's something we all-

• 1:44:45Tim Ferriss?

  So this is right on the backside of Joe's on, on South Congress?

• 1:44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's in, when you're in, when you're sitting there, you can see it. It's kind of blue on the, on the corrugated, so it doesn't bounce out. Maybe we need to repaint it. But it's been there since we opened. It's from, I think, Mexico City Blues.

• 1:45:01Tim Ferriss?

  Well, in a very real way, I know you wouldn't take full credit for this, and there were macro forces at work and so on, but the fact that, the first thing I just thought to myself was, wow, I should go check that out next time I go for a nice walk down South Congress. I mean, if you had not looked out, or perhaps gazed across the street from the Continental and taken the San Jose upon yourself as a project, who knows what that neighborhood would look like? I mean, you had played a formative role in making it what it is. That's a big, that's a big deal.

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  It is a big deal. I mean, it's an interesting, we could talk for hours about that, too, you know? I think it's about to change yet again. I mean, it would have changed, and it would have grown, and everything is always changing, and neighborhoods are always changing, but, you know, I think we're about to see a whole next wave of South Congress happen.

• 1:45:53Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, I agree.

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:54Tim Ferriss?

  I'm excited to see it.

• 1:45:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:57Tim Ferriss?

  Well, Liz, this is so fun, and I'm really glad that we finally had a chance to sit down.

• 1:46:03Speaker 02

  Me, too.

• 1:46:03Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any requests of the audience, asks of the audience, suggestions of the audience, anything you'd like to say before we wrap up?

• 1:46:12Speaker 02

  No, but, no, but I'm very excited about getting Last Days of the San Jose out there.

• 1:46:18Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, yes. And we were just chatting in between a brief cut that we made about a handful of things that probably need to be done, just in terms of clearing rights and music and so on. So, for those people listening, it might not be immediate, but we did clink tea glasses, so Last Days-

• 1:46:38Speaker 02

  Sooner than never.

• 1:46:39Tim Ferriss?

  -of San Jose, sooner than never. Yes, that is something that I think we're both comfortable committing to. And people can find you at thelizlambert on Instagram and Twitter, at bunkhousehotels, Instagram and Twitter, and bunkhousegroup.com. Definitely, if you're in the Austin area, and if you have never been to Austin, for God's sake, take a visit. It's a very cool town. The self-proclaimed, but believable, live music capital of the world. And it's been really lovely spending time with you today.

• 1:47:14Speaker 02

  You too, as well. It really has been.

• 1:47:15Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. And for everybody listening and watching, potentially, links to everything we've discussed, maybe even the doc, we'll see how much progress we make, is available on the page with show notes for this episode and every other at tim.blog/podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening and watching.

• 1:47:38Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance.

• 1:48:19Tim Ferriss?

  And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. And I'd heard about Peloton over and over again, but I ended up getting a Peloton bike and the whole system after I saw my buddy Kevin Rose. I've known him forever. Some of you know. And he showed up at my gate at my house a while back, and he looked fantastic. And I asked him, I said, "Dude, you look great. What the hell have you been up to?" Because he's always doing a weird diet or another,

• 1:49:04Tim Ferriss?

  but it only lasts like a week or two. So he always regresses to the mean after like 75 beers. And he said, "I've been doing Peloton five days a week." Now, that caught my attention because Kevin does nothing five days a week. And you know I love you, Kevin. But it really... With my curiosity, ended up getting a system and it's become an integral part of my week. I love it and I really didn't expect to love it at all because I find cycling really boring usually. But Peloton is an indoor cycling bike that brings live studio classes right into your home. You don't have to worry about fitting classes into your schedule or making it to a studio with some type of commute, etc. New classes are added every day and this includes options led by elite New York City instructors in your own living room.

• 1:49:49Tim Ferriss?

  You can even livestream studio classes taught by the world's best instructors or find your own favorite class on demand. And in fact, Kevin and I rarely do live classes and you can compete with your friends, which is also fun. Kevin, I'm coming after you, but we usually just use classes on demand. I really like Matt Wilpers and his high-intensity training sessions that are shorter, like 20 minutes. And I think Kevin's favorite is Alex and everyone seems to have their favorite instructor or you can select by music, duration, and so on. Each Peloton bike includes a 22-inch HD touchscreen, performance-tracking metrics. I think that, along with the real-time leaderboard, are the main reasons that this caught my attention

• 1:50:33Tim Ferriss?

  when cycling never had caught my attention before. It's really pretty stunning what they've done with the user interface to keep your attention. The belt drive is quiet and it's smaller than you would expect, so it can fit in a living room or an office. I actually have it in a large closet, believe it or not, and it fits with no problem. So Peloton is offering all of you guys, listeners of the Tim Ferriss Show, a special offer. And it is actually special. Visit ONE Peloton, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N, onepeloton.com and enter the code TIM, all caps, T-I-M, at checkout to receive $100 off accessories with your Peloton bike purchase.

• 1:51:13Tim Ferriss?

  Now you might say, "Meh, accessories? Wait, I don't need fancy towels or whatever other supplemental bits and pieces." No, the shoes you need. You need the clip-in shoes and those are in the accessory category. So this $100 off is a very legit $100 off. So... If you want to get in your workouts, if you want a convenient and really entertaining way to do high-intensity interval training or anything else, or you just want to get a fantastic gift for someone, check out Peloton. OnePeloton.com and enter the code TIM. Again, that's O-N-E-P-E-L-O-T-O-N.com and enter the code TIM at checkout

• 1:51:53Tim Ferriss?

  to receive $100 off any accessories, including the shoes that you will want to get. Check it out. OnePeloton.com, code TIM.

• 1:52:04Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. I have been broken so many times over the years that I usually have bodywork done at least once a week. I have a very, very high bar for this type of thing, and I was very skeptical of Soothe until I tested them, not once, but I would say at least a dozen times around the country in different cities. I do not accept anything less than excellent for any type of soft tissue treatment, and I would not suggest that you accept anything less than excellent. So I can affirm personally that Soothe delivers a licensed, experienced, and above all, effective, in my book, massage therapist in the comfort of your own home,

• 1:52:49Tim Ferriss?

  hotel, or office in as little as an hour. So you can think of it as Uber for massages, available in 55 cities worldwide at this point, across the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. So you can relax just about anytime, anywhere. And I've tried many different types of massage that they offer, and the process is super, super simple. Download the Soothe app, that's S-O-O-T-H-E, or go to soothe.com. Choose the kind of massage you want. You can select Swedish, sports, deep tissue, or even couples massage. I usually do deep tissue myself. Or I'll do couples massage and then tell both of the therapists that I'm actually intending to get a four-handed massage instead of having two people get two-handed massages. That makes sense. Then you set the length of your massage,

• 1:53:33Tim Ferriss?

  whether 60, 90, or 120 minutes. If you're looking to get fixed, I usually do 90 or ideally 120. You select the gender of your therapist, and then boom, you're done. And you will see who picks up the call. The service is available from 8 a.m. to midnight, and Soothe brings everything that you need to create a Spox brains in your home. And the therapist handles all of this. The massage table, linens, oils, music, the whole nine yards. So try it out. Download Soothe. And as a listener of this show, you'll get $25 off of your first massage when you enter the code TIM25, all caps, T I M two five. Again, download the Soothe app and use the code TIM25 for your $25 discount.