All posts by Keith Thompson

Walking my little fat dog

Life

I have a 3 years Sheltie that was supposed to be 15 lbs. fully grown but is now 30 lbs. I am certain that this has nothing do with the treats, cheese and table food he receives. I don’t mean table scraps as in what is left over. I am talking about cooking a little extra so he can eat with us. If they made a dog seat for the table I might be tempted to buy one.

Anyhoo, his fat little neck is the same diameter as his head so when he doesn’t want to walk on the leash, he just backs up and pops the leash off. When he is on the leash he thinks he is the alfa male in control of our walk. I have to tell him, not so fast chubs. I am the leader of our little walk and I will decide how fast we walk.

I try to train him on what the word heel means. I say it 50 times when we are out. When I say heel, I think he thinks I am saying meal. What is really funny is that he is the fat dog version of Secretariat the winning race horse. When he running, he has to be the lead dog. (It’s a metaphor, he is the only dog.) So when we come around the last bend in the road before we get to our house we start to run. The faster I run, the faster he moves those short little fat legs. Ha. The other night I was running flat out and was still a nose ahead of me. When we got through running my little fat buddy was tuckered out and he scrapped his tongue on the curb. Ha.

So I guess the point is that if you want a beautifully well trained obedient show dog, don’t get one like mine. If you want a fat dog that lays on the couch and wants to rub his wet nose all over you, get one like mine. KT

Dying perfect

Life

Wouldn’t it be a shame to die perfect having never accomplishing anything for someone else? I heard a pastor speak on this the other day and it struck a chord in my heart so I thought I would add a couple my thoughts to the subject.

What if your whole life was about you? The perfect house, the perfect friends, the perfect car, weighing the perfect weight at death, wearing your perfect cloths, your perfect education, your perfect church, your perfect job, trying to make your children perfect? The point is to do all of this and having spent your life only focusing on you. What a shame and a waste of a life. There is nothing wrong with houses, cloths, jobs, friends etc. but when that or they become the center focus of your life, it is at that point that we should all wake up and start the process of changing our focus.

I have a friend of mine in Dallas who is the same age as I am and his wife unexpectedly passed away recently. It broke his heart. The main word in is “unexpectedly.” I would guess that many people pass away unexpectedly. Many people think they have time and years to change and put off doing and being the kind of person they really want to be. Once the unexpected happens, there is no going back, no fixing it and there are no extensions.

Live life on purpose and find a purpose that moves you to look beyond yourself and beyond physical things and do something with your life that will outlast you. Shannon Alder said “carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.” KT

Cruise ship windows

Family

My youngest daughter and her husband are going on a cruise next week. I asked them if they had a balcony or a wall window.

It reminded of a cruise our family and 4 other families took back in 2002. It was our first cruise and as first time cruisers, there are always a few questions you didn’t know to ask about until after you are on the boat. One such question should have been does our room have a balcony with a sliding glass door? Had we asked that question the answer would have been, no, you get a wall with a little window in it.

We walked into that room and there two twin beds and two fold down twin beds hanging on the walls. All four of us in that itty bitty room. I could stand still in the bathroom and touch all four walls. When you did have to use the bathroom the toilet was so high your feet would swing. It made you feel like a little kid in a porta potty at the playground.

The main thing that concerned me as a dad was how I get my family out of here if there is a problem. We were one floor down from the entrance door of the ship and halfway down a long hallway. I thought ok, what if the ship loses power and it is dark, what do I do? Well, within 30 minutes I had counted the steps from our door to the staircase, counted the steps on the staircase and knew how far it was to the outside decks where the lifeboats were.

Some might say I am a little too persnickety about certain things but when it comes to my family’s safety, there is not such a thing as being too prepared. After I had that all that worked out in my mind, I went up to the buffet area and ate for the 1st of 14 times that day. KT

Predicting Hotel Market Trends

Career

I have been a hotel broker for 26 years and have been through many market cycles. I can state with absolute certainly that I do not know how to time market trends. When I think about this, I remember the movie Rudy, starring Sean Astin, when he was in the church praying he would get into Notre Dame. The priest comes and sits down with him and after being asked for his intervention said the following, “Son, in 35 years of religious study, I have only come up with two hard incontrovertible facts – there is a God, and I am not him.”

When someone in the hotel real estate business tells you they know the market trends, they don’t. There are many examples of late that we can point to this truth, but I will focus on one – the Shale oil markets. 18 months ago in June of 2014, the per-barrel price of Crude oil was $105. Today, oil is hovering at $30 per barrel. Oil has lost 70% of its value and many of the lodging markets that supported the demand have collapsed.

In early 2014, I was asked to value some mid-market hotels located in these areas. My value was based on a 20 cap and the price per room was still $270k per room. I called the owner and told him his hotels were simply unsaleable using standard financial methodology. The owner had every argument why they should sell at an 8 cap on trailing numbers and I told him he needed to hire a smarter broker than me. In early 2014, people were buying used camping trailers in Georgia and shipping them to the Dakotas and West Texas, and selling them for 3x the price just to house the oil workers.

No one in our business saw this significant shift happening. At the time there were estimates that certain Shale oil productions limits would last 25 to 30 years. Many lenders, hotel investors, and operators were building hotels as fast they could get the permits approved. Even today, there are hotels still under construction that were started last year and are yet to come on line.

If you look at this example of oil, CMBS maturities that are barreling (no pun intended) down the tunnel, 100+ bps increase in long term debt, the current pricing on lodging stocks, and we all should come away with one hard incontrovertible fact: we cannot read and predict the hotel real estate future with any meaningful level of certainty. KT

Sometimes, do the thing you fear most

Life

The advice to do the thing that you fear most is good advice some of the time. Let’s say you have an unusual fear of being a bank robber. I would not advise you to go rob a bank. Let’s say you have a fear of being a drug addict. Good advice would not be to go get some drugs and prove you are not afraid.

Outside of obvious examples such as the two above, fear is usually much more personal. Mark Twain said “do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.” I think this is generally true but not always. What I am talking about in this blog is a paralyzing fear of the common. Let’s say you are salesman and you have a fear of sales calls. Let say you want to publicly speak but you have a fear of speaking in front of people. Let’s say you are afraid to engage in conversations because you might say something wrong. Let’s say you are afraid to try or do something new at work because you are afraid you might get laughed at. Let’s say you are afraid to get too close to someone because they may find out who you really are. This list could go on and on to cover the quite fears many us have but never reveal.

I was at a hotel conference one time in Richmond and saw Bill Marriott walk in across the room. The first thought was that he would not even shake my hand much less talk to me. The easy thing to do was look busy with my phone or start looking at something I had in my briefcase like it was important. No sir. When that slight fear inside said don’t do it, I did the exact opposite. I went up to Bill Marriott and had a conversation with him. Just a guess, but I bet he put his pants on the same way I do. I enjoyed the brief meeting so much we had our picture taken together.

I have never been afraid to ask someone his or her role in their company. One time I was sitting at a table next to the chairman of the largest hotel company in the world. I am telling you the truth, I didn’t know who he was,,,,, so I ask him what he did for the company. Ha. He got so indignant with my little bitty question that he almost embarrassed himself. I had to turn my head to keep from snickering out loud.

What are you afraid of? I bet if you really broke it down as to why you are afraid of it, you would see how meaningless and controlling the fear it. So if your fear is about what you say, where you go, how you look, how you talk, how you respond, it is my guess that if you did the very thing you are most fearful of, you would not be afraid of it anymore. KT