There are idea people, and then there are people who finish things. Idea people generally go from thing to thing and complete very little over the course of their life. The people who start something and finish it–now that is something to take notice of.

I had this friend some years ago who lived in North Carolina, and they had a very nice home. He decided he would build a raised deck and covered barbecue area by hand. He was all lathered up and got the lumber, drew the plans exactly like he wanted it to look, had the vision of what it would look like, and set the day he would start construction. He stayed with it until the deck was about 75% finished; the roof was just framed out and the brick fire pit was about half-finished. He lost interest and didn’t complete the project. When they sold the house some years later, the partially finished barbecue area was still back there rotting in the weather looking like a big wart in the backyard.

As you know, I sell hotels and as you can imagine, I have seen a few. I have met many general managers and heads of maintenance. Without exception, I can walk into a maintenance man’s shop or a general manager’s office and tell you how well-maintained or well-managed the hotel is. It’s amazingly simple to look at the maintenance shop or the general manager’s office and tell you with a high degree of certainty how the hotel is running. Now, you show me a maintenance man that is organized and a general manager who is organized, and I will show you a well-maintained and well-managed hotel. I will also show you a hotel staff who enjoys where they work.

Elaine and I were riding through the country the other day and went past a home that looked like there were more possessions in the yard than in the house. It’s not a perfect science and nothing is ever always correct, but I would guess that the people that live in that house are financially overwhelmed, exhausted with life, argue a lot and probably live an unsatisfying life.

Why am I telling you this today? I find that my life gets a little easier to handle when I get my life and the areas around me in order. There is nothing as sweet as standing back looking at something you completed.

It is told that when Albert Einstein finished the paper on relativity and the details of the invention that he went to put a paper clip on the top and noticed that the paper clip was bent and not in the shape it was suppose to be. He took 45 minutes to straighten and bend the paper clip to the proper shape.

During the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, it is told that any citizen could come meet with him at the White House if they were prepared to wait in line. One such meeting took place and the person was led into Lincoln’s office. It is reported that Lincoln did not look up and did not acknowledge the person was even in the room until he had completed the task on his desk, signed the documents, rolled them up, and replaced the rubber band. Only then did he look at the person and say, “how can I help you?” Abraham Lincoln was a finisher of tasks

Do you think Nancy Reagan had to tell Ronnie to complete things? Did Laura Bush have to tell George to be a finisher, did Melinda Gates need to tell Bill not do things halfway, and was Eleanor Roosevelt in the habit telling FDR to get something finished? Again, very few things are exact, but in my humble opinion, every person that was and is a real game changer were finishers and completers of tasks and ideas. They didn’t hand it off to someone else and expect them to finish, no they were there until it was finished.

So, as I look at all the abilities of people, to me the most important is the ability to see it, stay with it and be a finisher. Ideas are great, but it’s really a beautiful thing to see a person who has ideas AND the ability to see it through. KT

We just returned from the NYU conference. This is the biggest conference each year for hotels and it is basically meetings one after the other for two days. It’s like speed dating where you sit for 20 minutes with each buyer, make your sales pitch, and then you move on to the next one.

I use these conferences as the bellwether on how long the market cycle will last, and I try to gauge where we are in the cycle. I have been selling hotels for 24 years and have been through enough cycles to know the signs when you see them.

If everyone is having financial trouble and the mood is low, you can expect that the next several years should be favorable to transactions and hotel selling. This year at the NYU conference, the mood was euphoric, money was flowing, and the vibe was basically off the charts. Everyone was upbeat, happy and feeling invincible.

Each of the financial downturns I have been through all started soon after this type of a conference. So we at Hotel AG are battening down the hatches and attempting to close all the transaction we can this year. I hope all the smart folks are right, and I am wrong because that would mean that the economic outlook is solid for several more years. I would gladly be wrong if it meant several more years of a good transaction environment.

I believe business cycles are a lot like life. When you are doing well, you need to be saving money for when times are not so well; when you are healthy, you need to be appreciative of that season in your life. So often, people take a season of joy in their lives for granted and miss the opportunity because they never stopped to really savor the time. Just like in business, when things are right, you need to be humble and very aware that it will not be like this forever.

History is full of people, even wealthy people, that thought life would stay good for many years, and we all know how that ended. The greatest examples of leaders are the ones that prepare for the changes in life and move through those periods with grace and humility. KT

As many of you know, Starbucks is my coffee of choice. I am not endorsing their political views, but just simply saying that I love their coffee.

Hanging on our office wall are probably the two most important pictures we have at Hotel AG. The picture on the left was taken at the original Starbucks store in Seattle in 1971, and the picture on the right was taken at the same store in 2012. The angle of the camera lens is the same in both pictures.

The point of this blog post is that everything is complicated and messy when you start regardless of how great it may become in the future. It is always messy and unorganized in the beginning. Every business, every new idea, every church, etc., is always more complicated and confusing and messy when you start.

The 1971 picture shows a Starbucks store that is very unorganized and very sloppy with trash, empty coffee cups everywhere, unhappy customers at the counter, and a staff that is frazzled and overwhelmed. I simply love the picture.

The 2012 picture shows a Starbucks store that is the opposite of everything in the 1971 picture. It shows a competent staff and happy customers in an environment that is organized, well managed,  clean, and exactly what you would expect from a global coffee company.

The difference between the pictures is time.

The time to figure it out, find your market, have training, quality control, etc, but mostly the time to get traction in whatever you are doing.

It always always always takes longer to get it right and takes much more money that you plan for to get it to a successful point. And this is for every new venture, new job, new company, and new idea.

Proverbs 14:4 says, “where no oxen are, the crib is clean.” It means that it’s easy to keep a barn stall clean and organized when it doesn’t have any animals in it. Just like a new business. If you don’t have anything going and no customers, it is easy to keep all the files straight and desk clean.

What am I saying here? Sometimes things being a mess and unorganized is a good thing if the reason is because you are working to get an idea off the ground and would rather have customers than a clean office.

Therefore, I love the Starbucks pictures because they remind me that at Hotel AG when things get busy and messy, it is a sign that we are doing something and not just talking about it. KT