HIP E88 Jake Snow - Influencer Turned Hotel Developer

Most hotel developers build the property first, then go looking for a guest. Today's guest did it backwards. He spent years as a travel influencer getting paid by five star properties to document his stay. And in the process, he figured out exactly what makes people fall in love with a hotel. He took that knowledge and he built his own hotel from the ground up and leveraged his million plus Instagram followers to fill every room. Now, that same playbook is helping him raise capital and build hotels from Bali to South Africa. The Hotel Investor Playbook, your guide to building wealth and freedom through hotel and hospitality ownership. Welcome back to the hotel investor playbook. I am Michael Russell, founder of Malama Capital and your host. On this podcast, we talk story about everything you need to know to make money investing in hotels and in hospitality assets. Today's guest has turned a personal audience of over two million into a sold out hotel portfolio across multiple continents. Jake Snow, welcome to the show. Thanks Michael. I'm excited to be here and it's a pleasure to connect and looking forward to sharing lots of value with the audience. Absolutely. So listen, you've got a huge audience, a huge following on social media. But for anybody who by chance hasn't heard of your story yet, what's the 60 second version of your story? Bring it all together in 60 seconds is a challenge because it's long, but I'll give it my best shot. I met my wife Marie. She's German in Thailand in 2016 and one way or another, we fell into Instagram. I love taking photos, making videos. My wife did as well. We started traveling together and started sharing our journey and our travels online and our account started to blow up. We got tens of thousands of followers. We started at that point reaching out to hotels to do collaborations and at this point, I've got no experience in the hotel industry, hospitality in general, just love traveling, love creating. We started to partner with hotels and we found a great niche for my wife and I on Instagram to get into which was becoming travel influences and it started quite small. We would create content packages for these hotels and they would give us free stays. The content that we were able to create at the hotels helped us grow a lot and obviously it got a lot of reach for the hotels and improved their bookings and their occupancy. We did that for five years straight, hotel to hotel to hotel. We stayed at hundreds of hotels starting off with small boutique and then working our way up, working with Ritz Carlton, Belmond, Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons. We've worked with all of the biggest hotels and after staying at these hotels, hundreds of times and going there thinking about where can we create the most viral attractive content, you're looking at everything through a different lens. You're starting to look at all of the features, you're starting to see where the light comes in, what angle is going to be best to take a photo, where do we need to make a video that's going to potentially go viral. We started to collect a lot of data in when we post something, what do people online really like? What's going to be really attractive? It might be a hotel in the Maldives that has a slip and slide for example that goes into the ocean, it goes completely viral and then it might be another hotel that's just dark and moody and we're not able to create content that can really reflect the reality of the experience. That data collection that we had got us to a point where we truly understood what people would want to go to, what where would they want to travel to and what kind of features would they want to see, what kind of colors, what kind of textures, what kind of places would they want to take photos. At the beginning of COVID, we then couldn't travel anymore. So we've been working with all of these hotels, all of a sudden we can't do that anymore, we can't move around. We had an e-commerce business on the side that was actually making really good money and so we decided at that point, hey instead of working with all of these hotels and building up their businesses, working with their marketing teams to grow their occupancy and increase their exposure online, why don't we just build our own. And so we're in Bali at that time and as we kicked off, we invested our own capital 100% bought a lease hold in Bali, 25-year lease hold block of land and then started building our first boutique hotel which was five suites, communal pool, communal living, communal cinema, rooftop terraces, we can get into it all but we took everything that we'd learned from staying at all of these properties around the world on what was working on social media as well as learning about the service and how operations worked, just understanding what good hotels did. We built this boutique hotel, blood, sweat and tears, a lot of things went wrong, we lost a lot of money, our contractor walked out on us, there's a lot of stories there to tell but with persistence we pushed through it and then after like a two and a half year construction period, we opened just as COVID was kind of receding and the borders opened, our property was ready and because of our social media background, we basically documented the journey of this build. We already had a huge following on the Instagram account of the property, the property is called Maja Chengu and it's located in Rodin Chengu there. When we opened for bookings, we didn't have any OTAs, we only had direct booking straight through our website, we were basically 80% occupancy from month one and then it stayed that way for the first two and a half years. So we made our money back in 18 months on that property and that was just like for us, okay, wow, we've stumbled on like gold here. So then we did another one in Bali, funded by ourselves, then we built a spa that was attached to the first property where we do Pilates, yoga, it's a cafe, facials, massages and that is like a perfect addition to the hotel and that was the beginning of everything and now we now have a company where we build hotels, we have a portfolio of hotels and we're bringing investors on those projects. So yeah, a lot to get started. You've connected a lot of data. I think that a lot of times in these discussions in hindsight, it seems like a street path, but at the time, what you've just described, I presume you didn't have it all mapped out that you would be a travel influencer and convert those skill sets into marketing hotels and then ultimately develop your own in hindsight, it all seems logical, but I imagine that was not the game plan from day one, am I correct? Absolutely correct. We had no idea what we were doing. Yeah, I've spoken about this with many people because they want to have all the answers going in. It's human nature, I suppose, to be fearing the unknown and it all does make sense when you connect the dots in hindsight, but even when we started the Instagram, at that point no one was making money on Instagram. We loved travel, we loved creating content and sharing with people and it was that love that just kept us going when we had no idea where it would lead to. We just enjoyed it and then when we're building the hotels, at that point we also just genuinely loved hospitality, we loved hotel design, hotel architecture, interior styling, etc. It was just following our natural interests into these businesses. I would say that was the only thing we did. People will look at it and go, "Of course, it made sense, but it didn't. It was scary, but we were naturally interested in these things and we kind of just leaned into that and of course it played off." Yeah, what caught my attention with your journey is that it's a bit unique. The standard real estate playbook is go out, build the product, then go find your market and then spend a bunch of money on marketing and hope it converts. But as you're describing this, I mean you did the exact opposite, right? You spent years building a personal audience before you ever even considered building resort. And then I guess I'm curious like in your experience, you've had tremendous success, but why do you feel building the audience first? How has that helped you to then become a hotel developer? It's hard to describe how valuable it's been. It's really incredible what having that audience has done for us. And it's of course having a big audience is what it looks like on the outside, but what it really is is you've built trust with a lot of people. And so when you're launching anything could be an app, it could obviously be a boutique hotel, it could be any kind of product. The people that you share it with obviously you have access and reach to this group of people and they trust that you're going to share something with them that they will like. And so when we launched the boutique hotel, before we opened we did a big giveaway with a friend of ours. And so we basically said we created a video which was like a beautiful drone shot of the property. And we said like this video, share this video and follow this page for your chance to go in to the draw to win one week at this property with flights included. And because of our audience and the audience of our friend, our account got 60,000 followers in three or four days. And so that's how many people were interested in winning this one week trip. But you can imagine how many people obviously even if they don't win the trip, they still want to stay. And so we opened up the booking website one week later and it was just ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, the calendar was full in a couple of weeks. And so that audience just meant that the success of the property was almost guaranteed if the product was sound. If you built something high quality with nice taste, There was no way people weren't going to go to. it. And what I've seen a lot of people doing now, which I would recommend anybody out there, is if you're, if you want to start investing into boutique hotels or even start, you know, an Airbnb project or getting into property at all, you should just be documenting that journey and sharing it online anyway. Because the lessons that you will learn along the way of becoming a better content creator, a better storyteller will be invaluable. But also those lessons that you're learning from basically making mistakes and going into this project that you're sharing with other people will start to build up a trust in community, which then just delivers so much value in the future. So I would recommend anyone these days with the way social media is going, the way people share online to be doing these things in tandem. Like if you're going to, if you're going to build a boutique hotel, you need to be building your socials alongside it. Like it's kind of a muster, I would suggest. Yeah, I want to point something out that genuinely surprised me. Okay, so you and Marie, you guys have what 1.6 million followers for your personal page. And I get that. I mean, look, you guys are a, you're a young, attractive couple. You're traveling the world. You're falling in love. I mean, I understand why this works. Like it's basically like the real life kind of rom-com version, right? But in addition to your personal followers, the Ma-ja-chengu, it's a hotel you've got to handful of sweets. I mean, you have 194,000 followers for this relatively tiny boutique hotel. The Bel-ajar, I might not be pronouncing these correctly, but that's got 208,000. 208,000 followers for another hotel. You're spa. It's just a spa business. 139,000 followers. You're your investment group, your development group. That, that is another 45,000 plus. I mean, yeah, those out that's, that's over half a million people that are following individual properties and a development company. And then that's not a love story. I mean, how do you get that many followers? I mean, is this just simply spillover from your personal audience or are people finding and following these properties in your company on their own separate from you and Marie? So it certainly helps having the main account, because that's what we use to kickstart everything. So we're not starting from zero, which is difficult, but this is how the game works. We get that kickstart and then our knowledge of how the algorithm works on Instagram, right? Like, how is your content being shown to people? It's changing all the time. And this is something that we know deeply. We've been in the game for 10 years. The algorithm and how it works has changed. We used to just post photos and then stories came along and then reels and videos came along and we've constantly had to iterate over the years on how to keep growing and how to stay relevant. And so we implement a very strict social media strategy for every single business page that we start. And we have to train our teams to know what to look for, what to create. If you look at our development page, for example, we're posting 10 to 20 reels a day in trial reels. I'm not sure if you've heard of that, Michael, like there's a feature called trial reels, you know, so you can post as many posts as you want there. It doesn't get shown to your main audience, but it gets pushed out to people who don't follow you. And so, you know, we are posting 10 to 20 reels in there a week. And that's what's going to out into the world to people who don't follow us. Some of them go viral. Most of them don't. And we're just iterating on every single video. When one works, we go, what worked with that? You know, was it the hook? Was it the text that we wrote? Was it the music that we used? Was it that first clip that dragged people in? You got to get people in the first three seconds. And so, it's a game. Instagram is a game. You learn, you learn the rules of the game, you can beat it and you can win. And so that, I would say, Michael, is it's our USP? That's our strength. Like we know that we're launching four hotels in the next year and four hotels, and including a resort. We know that in a very short period of time, we will have all of those accounts up to 50,100, and 150,000 followers, just with the experience that we have. And obviously, what that does to the business model is crazy, right? Because you have so much organic traffic going through a direct booking website. You don't rely on booking.com. You don't lose the commissions to the OTAs. You get 50% of your bookings direct. And you're just reaching such a big market of people. And it works in tandem, though, with the properties themselves. Like the properties have to also have Instagram ability. It's a stupid word. And I don't like it. But when you're building a property now, you really have to think about where will the guests be creating the content that they want to share with their audience, their friends and family from back home. Because everyone who's going on a trip wants to share their trip. You want to kind of be showing your friends and family, look where I am, look how great this is. It's kind of human psychology that we all want to do that. It's a bit of a status symbol to share your holiday and everyone does it. So if you can create the locations for people to do that, they will. And then every guest becomes free marketing essentially. And that's how we kind of create this flywheel at our properties. So we kick it off. We get the social media's firing. We create all the content. People start to see it. They go, I really want to, I really want to stay there. And then they stay, they start creating the content themselves. They take the videos, take the photos, share it on their social media pages. They're their friends and family see it. And then they book market for their next holiday to Bali. Then they come and do the same thing. And then you just get a customer after customer through this free organic marketing playbook essentially. But the property itself has to be Instagramable, it has to be beautiful. You have to really be thinking about that in the design process so that it has the ability to go viral and get followers online. Yeah. From an outsider's perspective, I look at the imagery and two things popped out to me that were pretty pronounced. One, the idea of romance and two sex appeal, right? Bali people in skimpy bikinis enjoying a beautiful pool setting. That's attractive. What do you think? If in one or two things, I mean, what would you say the essence of what you're trying to create for your viewers? What are the emotional heartstrings that you're trying to tap into? It's a really good question. Because this is the exact question everyone has to ask themselves when they're posting the content. Because if you don't know what that is, neither does the audience. And so when we're creating content, we're essentially thinking about creating emotional response in some way. And it can even be negative. Like it could just be causing some kind of emotional response. That's why negative news travels so far because it's so intense for people that emotion that they feel. So they share it. But we obviously want all the positive emotions. And so when we're creating content, we always have most of the time a character in the video, right? Because if you're creating videos with no human in it, the viewer cannot relate to them potentially being there. So if you have a character that can even be there back, it could be a girl's back, it could be a male back. It doesn't have to even show the face. But then the person viewing it goes, that could be me. You know, I could be in that pool. That could be me sipping that cocktail. So having like a human character in the videos is always important so that the the viewer can place themselves in that scenery in their mind. And of course everything that we do is it's beauty, it's aesthetic. It's like trying to create that feeling. And to be fair, Michael, I think we're mainly going after females. It's just the truth. What we have found is that even in couples, a lot of the time it's the female partner that is booking the trip, not maybe not necessarily booking, but choosing where they're going to the family will be staying because the females are the ones who are more active on social media. They're the ones who are kind of seeing what's going on out there and are generally the planners for the family. So we do consciously go after more female audience. And with that in mind, like you said, we want things to be romantic. We want them to feel like a cozy, beautiful, loving moment that the couple can be in or the family can be in. And so the music has to fit, the scenery has to fit. And I think on top of this, what we try to do is at least in every property there has to be the one recognizable feature, at least one, where when anyone takes a photo or video there, anyone who sees it online can instantly go, I know that property. You would know these ones. It could be like the in America, you've got the amand there in the desert. Like as soon as you see one photo there, you know where it is. And you've got that cave Airbnb, like in the rock with the glass walls. If you can create one extremely recognizable feature, so if anyone creates content there, someone can instantly pinpoint what hotel it is, that's what you need. That way you're not going to get drowned out in all of the competition out there. And so yeah, just a few key points there that people can look at. Let's talk about that a little bit. Competition. I think you said that you started 10 years ago and you gradually built success. And now you're an expert in the science of what works. But I want to know on his answer here, if someone, I mean, you're at the top of your game, right? If someone's starting right now with zero social following and they were to try to replicate what you're doing. Maybe they don't have a huge audience and they just want to do what you did. Is this a playbook that they can copy? Or are you guys an anomaly because of the following that you built first and the circumstances and timing of when you built that audience? - No, I genuinely believe people can replicate it. If you are very good at being able to see what's working out there and distill that down to a few key principles, I genuinely believe people can do it, right? So what people would need to be looking at is what is it about that property specifically that makes it work? And the owner probably talks about it a lot. In the guests we'll definitely talk about it. It'll be in the reviews. It'll be written in there somewhere on the website. And so you can start to break down, okay, most people who stay at this property love that they had alpacas there. Like the alpacas, even though, you know, and there's the properties like this, for sure, that it's one experience, like having some animals on the property that make it for people. And you just see the reviews coming in, love the alpacas, you know, this, this, this. And that's just an example. You could take something like that and go, well, I've got a property here where we could potentially have an animal sanctuary. We know people love animals. And then you look at their socials, like what videos when you scroll down their feed, what videos really popped off? So most of the videos get 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 views. And then this one here has 100,000. What, why? What was the reason for it? And you just kind of analytically start breaking down all of these little cues and these little bits of information. That's how you kind of get to the point where we are of really understanding what works. So anyone can do it. You just have to be analytical. You have to go in there when you're seeing things with that kind of a mindset of trying to understand why it works. And then in boutique hospitality, if you can find a great location, let's say an undervalued or untapped opportunity really fire up the socials, start creating videos, document the journey. I think anyone can be successful. And Michael, you know, and all of your listeners know when you combine real estate with an operational business layered on top, you can have extremely good investment. That's quite rare out there in the world of course. It takes a lot to bring it together. But it's something that a lot of people really passionate about. I'm very passionate about. I love hospitality. I love hotels. I love the experience people can have in them. I love the styling, the design, the architecture. So it's such a fun rewarding experience to even go on that path. And I think anyone in the listeners here will be those kind of people. You'll learn a lot along the way, be really analytical, break things down and anyone can really do it. And it will take time for sure. But most people don't do this. You will be in the 1% and most boutique hotels out there, Airbnb's, et cetera. They just build something and they put it on the OTAs and they just hope and pray that the market will fill it. Most people are not really taking it on themselves to build out their own market. So I think if people really give it a go, they will get extremely good results from it. Hey guys, if you're getting value out of this conversation, do me a favor and take 30 seconds right now and leave me a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify. It literally takes half a minute, but it makes a huge difference in helping other hotel investors find the show. Okay, now back to the episode. I wanna take a hard turn here. I wanna talk about the economics of your business. In researching for this, I see that you had great success with occupancy, 90 plus percent occupancy at your first hotel and you followed Sue. And so you've kind of proven the model here. And I think occupancy is important and that's impressive. But what really caught my eye and the number that I really wanted to talk to you about is your profit margin. What I see here is that you've got a profit margin of 66% on at least on your first hotel. And in this industry, I mean, that's unheard of. I want you to walk me through like, what is actually driving a margin like that? Like, can you break down for me? Like, what is the structure? Is this additional revenue from the spa that is stacking on top of that? So that ancillary income is helping with that margin. Is it direct bookings? What are the levers that matter most for you to reach that 66% profit margin? - Yeah. So 66 would be a great month just to be fully transparent. But ranging between 40 and 60% profit margin is, it's in Bali is obviously for us what we've been doing ever since we opened. And there's a few key reasons. So the first would be the labor costs, right? We can have extremely professional, experienced hospitality staff who do a really great job for a really great price. And we went out into the market and we offered 20% higher wages than anyone else was hiring for the same position. And we just had basically the applications going off the hook. So and actually this was during COVID too. So there was a lot of really highly trained hospitality staff coming out of some of the big name hotels who just let go of staff. So the labor, let's say salaries are roughly 10 to 15% of the total revenue. So that already I think in places like America and Germany and Australia, you'd be looking more like 30%, 35% for just for salaries. So you've just knocked off roughly 20% there in the margin. The next thing is, we mentioned before, the OTA commission. So if all of your bookings are coming through booking.com and Airbnb, you're losing 21% of your revenue essentially or depends on which country you're in. But let's say 20% of your revenue goes to those OTAs. Even if 50% of your bookings are coming through direct, you're gonna save 10% there as well. So that's like two real drivers that make the profit margins really strong. But then I would say the other things that people really need to look for is like seasonality. There's a lot of places around the world that have really high or let's say really high occupancy during high season and then shoulder season, not so bad and then it really drops off. And they have to kind of maybe keep on their staff and keep things running during low season when they're not getting much occupancy and the ADR goes down. And so then your profit margins just absolutely tank. If you average them out across the year, places like barley are just packed year round now. These days there's really no down season. It's like maybe February and November are just kind of like the months, the in between months that generally don't perform that well. But having high occupancy the whole way through the year, it enables you to kind of really get your operations running efficiently because you don't have to worry about the swaying of occupancy from month to month. And so I think that helps a lot. Of course you've got in places like barley, the taxes are not very high. You're looking across a hospitality business hotel, max 21% tax. So if on that 66 month we're looking at 21% tax, 10% salaries, so you're at 31, and then you know four or five percent in OPEX, which is crazy. But that's like that's what the numbers represent. And then I think it's just the ADRs as well. So the average daily rates in places like barley have now reached like European American pricing. The gap between kind of what you're paying, your staff and your OPEX and everything. And the ADRs is getting higher and higher because you've got international tourists coming from places like Europe where they're used to paying 500 euros a night to stay in a 15 square meter hotel room that's copy-paste with a hundred others. The service isn't even that good. And then they come to barley and they get a 40 square meter suite on the pool with butler service. And so they start to compare, well that's 500 euros in barley. I get so much more value for it. I think people are less and less now going, well it's barley, it should be cheaper. They're actually now just going, well I got that in Europe and I get that here. So it's actually valuable. That's what we've been seeing. So yeah, I think then the main drive is. Let's talk about build cost, right? Take me back to your first hotel. I believe it's the Maja Resort. Is that correct? In Chenggu? Yeah. You know, real quick sidebar memory lane here. When I was 18 years old. I went to Chenggu. As a kid, I graduated high school. My buddies hopped on an airplane. We flew out there to Bali and there was nothing there. There was nothing on the beach, no infrastructure. And we went and spent a month living on the beach. And there were no hotels or resorts or $500 a night type of accommodations with swimming pools overlooking the ocean. We slept in an open air hut and paid only for the cost of food in exchange for accommodations. And so times have changed and a little nostalgic about what you're describing. But it's pretty incredible how Bali has transformed itself into the type of environment that you're describing where people are willing to pay for this luxury. It makes me wonder if that type of opportunity that you encountered is sustainable. Because anytime you have a location where there's low barrier to entry and it seems like too good to be true. Like what you're describing seems like a home run. And it seems like you've timed this really well with social media and now building your hotel with COVID. but building costs naturally follow. the supply and demand of any economic situation. I'd like to know when you built this, what was the dollar cost? What did it cost to build your first resort? And actually, where did that money come from? Where did the capital come from? Yeah, so things have changed a lot, even since we built and actually bought land because the land price has five X in that time since we started, which was in a six and a half years ago when we bought the land. So the land appreciation has just gone absolutely crazy and the whole economics of the project, even just with the land price now, would be completely different. So that's something to kind of highlight. The timing of that land purchase was spot on. And so the pricing of this small boutique property, so we have five suites. We paid 350,000 altogether. And so the land itself was roughly a hundred and then it was 250 for the construction. So we're at 50k per suite per key. So that's very good prices. I was at the time on site most days. I mentioned in the beginning that our contractor walked out on us toward the end of the build, but me being there and keeping an eye on the workers was critical at the time. What really moved the needle in the end, and this is what led to the business that we're running now is I realized that I needed to have a team that were working full time for me because the contractor is taking care of himself in the end and his team and everything they're taking care of themselves. They obviously want to do a good job for you, but in Bali, there's really no repercussions for leaving or doing a bad job. You can't go to court. You'd be very hard to press to get your money back or do anything. So there's this. It's very easy for a contractor to just kind of get out of a deal or something like that. So I realized that I needed to hire my own QS. So I started with my own QS and then I hired a project manager and then these two guys because they were full time employed by me, they had my back from the beginning and because they could speak the language, that once they started going on site, they started recognizing all of the things that I'd been missing and that I had no idea about. And it was those two guys that really saved me in the end. They were and they still worked for me now and that we're very, very close. It was their experience in the industry and the fact that they worked full time for me. They had my back. They were able to kind of guide then the rest of the project and get it through to delivery and hand over. So yeah, that was basically you bought this land 100 grand then you built these five units and I imagined in Bali or Indonesia in general that there's no financing, especially for a foreigner. Correct? Yeah, yeah. So whatever the total ended up being, let's just call it half a million. Where did that money come from? If it wasn't from a bank, did you raise capital from private investors, friends and family or did you just have this capital yourself and you took the risk on to invest on your own? Exactly that. So my wife and I had an e-commerce business that we were selling digital products like photography filters and video luts at the time and because we had such a big audience, we had a huge reach and we were one of the first, we were one of the first entrepreneurs as opposed to release these photography filters that could work on a knife phone. And so we actually in a very short period of time we made a really good amount of money. It was 0.5 million US dollars or something. And so for a young couple traveling around staying at these hotels, it for us it was crazy. And so we funded the whole thing ourselves. So we were all skin in the game. You can't raise capital, you can't take loans or do anything like that in a foreign country, especially in Indonesia. So it was just all cash, all us. And when we were building through COVID, it was it was scary because we actually during the process started building Belajar, the next project, which ended up being that that was around 700,000 US dollars all in. So Mujja was cheap or so it was 350 and that's a 500 square meter plot. Belajar was a 900 square meter plot, eight sweets with a really big communal area. That out being 700. So with those two properties, we were all in over a million. And before we were finished, we were just COVID. And it just COVID just kept going. And like my thesis was, hey, the borders have to open at some point. People are going to be coming back and traveling like this. It has to bounce back. And if it doesn't, what's money anyway? We're living on the island. We'll be living off fish and coconuts and rice, doing a bit of surfing and driving around on a scooter. So it was kind of like, hey, if the world doesn't come back, it is what it is. But we just kept putting in and gratefully the borders opened up and everyone was chomping at the bit to travel again and to go and experience cool things. And so just basically as the borders opened, Mujja was ready and then Belajar opened about six months later. And so one whole thing funded by us. Yeah. Look, you just walked through something that you said it very nonchalantly, but I think it's huge. You took a tremendous amount of risk. Now granted, your timing was impeccable. You got great value. Ultimately, you timed it to where there was a massive surge and you had this huge personal audience to leverage so that when the doors finally opened, there was a flood of interest and you knocked it out of the park. But that instinct that you have to take that risk, that's something I think that is understated in this endeavor. It's easy now on hindsight to reflect back and be like, yeah, well, we just did these things and all of a sudden, boom, I want to flash forward now and just give the audience some perspective of where you were then to where you are now. My research tells me that as of last year, 2025, you were expected to produce $25 million in annual revenue. Is that accurate? For the development company, yes, we've raised 25 million in investor capital. So you could consider that revenue for the development company. Of course, that's capex for all of the projects that we're building. So yeah, it's obviously not profit and it's just the total amount that we've raised and we're in the process now of building out four hotels with a total of between those four hotels we're looking at roughly 80 keys. My research also tells me that you're running now with these properties. Is it a 250-person company? Is that accurate? Yeah, across all of our team, including our construction teams because we do that all in house now. It's the only way to ensure quality and success. So yeah, including all of our construction guys, we're at about 250. Wow, that is a huge journey to go from travel influencers, content creators to now running a global company with 250 people working amongst four different hotels currently with how many more slated in the pipeline. We've got one more in the pipeline that's we're going through due diligence at the moment and then we will we'll cross that bridge when we get to it because at this point in time, we really got a we got a deliver now these handovers of the current hotel. So we've built up a big pipeline, the team are working on delivering those properties and then we obviously have to build out all the operations of each one. So we're kind of pulling in the the reins a little bit, pulling up the brakes in terms of like raising more capital, doing more projects so that we can really nail the quality and the the investment that the investors have put in before we then launch again and we do another big round. Well, the vision and the marketing is incredible. And there's no doubt in my mind that there's tremendous demand. You've described the margins for someone who is interested in what you're doing. You offer an opportunity for investors to participate and I believe that you have labeled this as the opportunity for fractional ownership. Can you describe what fractional ownership is versus traditional syndication? Is there a difference? Yeah, there is a bit of a difference. Our followers, so the people that had followed our journey from the beginning, they are the reason we are where we are. And the amount of people that were asking us, I really want to invest in Bali, I've been looking online and what do you think of this contractor? What about this person? And I would my response to them every single time was don't do it. Like if it's your last money and you're not on the island, you don't have a network, you don't have the resources, I can't with a good conscience give you any good advice because it was it was hard for us. And you know, we made so many mistakes. And then I just started to think like what if I could actually help these people and kind of hold their hand and guide them through. And in the beginning, what we did then is like we started selling villas to to the first group of investors. The villa market at that time in 2022, 2023 was actually starting to take off, but there was a lot of demand for villas and very little supply. Now that has kind of switched like in Bali for villas. Anyway, this boutique hotel is the market is completely different, but the villa market is getting very saturated. So we started with those investors and they would invest roughly $250,000 US dollars up to $350 for a two bed, three bed villa. And we built these villas for them. So we built 18 villas across two projects for investors and each investor would own one. We're guiding them through building them great investments, making sure that the quality is there, making sure they get delivered. And then we're kind of building out the operations and the the occupancy for our first, one of those projects where it 75% now and it's ticking along and it's a very hands-off investment for those people. But I realized that not everyone has 250,000 just sitting around. And I thought there's got to be a way to bring more people in at a lower price point. And that's when me and my co-founder started discussing the possibility of fractional ownership. And through Dubai and now Singapore with these special purpose vehicles, these companies where people can buy shares in those companies, that company then owns the real estate asset in the country that it is, as well as the business and the operation on top of it. You can legally and it's all regulated and it's all compliance checked, etc. You can hold 1% share of that SPV, which in turn owns 1% of that entire business, including the real estate. And that way we were able to create this fractional opportunity for people. And so we now launch these hotels and resorts. We design, we find an opportunity, we design the concept, we create the deck for it, we run all of the financial projections and then we essentially promote that opportunity out to our audience and then we allow people to have a call with our sales team, they go through all the project details and if they are interested they can buy a share in this business and then once it's operational they get paid a quarterly dividend based on the profit and their proportional to however much they own of the project. And it's completely hands off. The shares are very liquid, these SPVs in Singapore and Dubai for example don't have sales taxes when you want to exit your position. You can sell it off to somebody else in our community who's looking to enter into those projects. We are allowing people, especially people in my generation and below who got some money saved but they just have no idea where to put it. A deposit for a tiny apartment in any major city now is a ridiculous amount and then they locked into a mortgage for the next 25-30 years. So the investments that we're creating are you've got the appreciation of the asset especially in places like Cape Town where you actually hold the title of the asset forever in Bali, you've got lease holds and free holds so it's a little bit different, it's more of a cashflow play but you still get a bit of appreciation and then you get your dividends every quarter and then of course kind of the lifestyle investment where you can actually go and stay at the property. We have perks for investors and so yeah we're building up a community of people who love what we love, who are interested in hotels and resorts and are looking for a bit of a different exposure and diversification into something pretty unique. Yeah what type of returns are you targeting for your investors? It really depends on the project and where it's located. So for example in a country like South Africa let's say a little more regulated, a little bit more consistent, a little bit more secure, the returns are going to be a bit less than what you'd look at in Bali and you always kind of have to kind of combine the appreciation with the cash flowing return. So in Kent's Bay for example average appreciation can be 6% 8% a year at the moment and then we would be targeting like a 10% annual return cash dividend so then when you combine that together you're looking at 16, 18% a year and then in Bali the sky is the limit if we really nail the concept. In my properties we were 75% year on year returns and paid off in 18 months. Of course we did that all our cells like there was no management fees nothing like that but between 10 and 20% is where we try to land and I suppose the really cool thing is that 20% can be kind of a baseline in certain projects if we really nail the concept and the market really enjoys what we've created and we can get those ADRs up to where the competition is in certain places like our resort area that we're building. Our competitors just down the beach are charging a thousand a night for a 30 square meter unit on the beach. They don't know how to do social media their property is not that unique in terms of the design the interior styling we will have a horse experience on the black beach white horses on a black beach you can already kind of picture what that will look like and so if we can get up to their ADR our numbers are looking really good and above 20%. So yeah that mean we're always targeting above and beyond the S&P because if we were hitting the same numbers as the S&P 500 and you could just put your money into any of those funds then this kind of thing is if it returns roughly the same it's probably not worth the risk. Well speaking of risk I want to touch upon that. Let's say someone is really intrigued I mean look I go to your website it looks incredible and if there's auxiliary benefits of being able to stay as some of these properties as a quote fractional investor then hey that's that sounds good to me but I am the very risk averse. J.J. and so I want to talk about that and somebody like me who wants to invest in a market like Bolly or Cape Town without moving there without taking on all of this risk without all of the unknowns and uncertainties obviously partnering with you seems logical but from the perspective of someone who is investing in a fund like this what's the single biggest red flag they should watch for before they send their money over. I would say the biggest red flag would be if any developer or fund manager or portfolio manager or hotel developer whatever doesn't have existing properties that they have developed that are achieving the returns that they said they would be. I think that is kind of like the number one thing you should be looking for. So it's like have you done already what you say you're going to do with my money that I'm investing and in Bolly for example there are so many contractors who maybe they're from Australia or they're from the US they're coming over and they're giving us this a crack for the first time and then buying a plot of land subdividing it maybe keeping one villa selling for and then they have a beautiful pitch deck and a beautiful website and it's the first time they've ever been doing this. I think that would be something that I'd be looking for making sure that whoever you're partnering with has previous experience and delivered projects that are kind of reaching the returns that they say they will and then I would also say that another huge red flag is you want to know exactly who to go to if something was to go wrong with your investment a contact person where do I find that this person how do I get in contact with them do I have a connection that I can directly go to let's say if I need to pull out of my investment for some reason. A lot of the especially in Bolly that a lot of the developers are just kind of like anonymous or kind of ghost figures and they don't have a physical office they are just doing everything in the cloud. You want to be looking for the partners that will have to be accountable for whatever their promising and so when you have a big kind of public persona let's say and your company is kind of out there in the world and you're sharing what you're building and you're showing the process very hard to hide when something goes wrong and you've got a lot to lose so I think that's all of those things what you'd be looking for. I think another huge red flag is just kind of when people promote crazy returns and they're shooting for 30% or 40% or something along those lines it's just it's really unheard of and people get attracted to kind of those big numbers and they hear that they're going to make their money back in two or three years or something like that in Bolly that's very common. We aim for five or six which is still a lot of people say that's unrealistic but we've done it and we are continuing to do it so. But the main risk Michael I think in general when you're investing in some of these places like Bolly for example is it's political risk it's regulatory risk that that's what we're coming up against like things change all the time in politics zoning regulations change all the time they've just now changed what kind of permits you need to be able to build in Bolly and you've got immigration officers kind of running around and and doing checks now on all of these companies and so that that's the kind of stuff that it's sort of out of our control but when you're investing in a country like Indonesia or South Africa or you know Colombia I remember one of your chats recently with a gentleman from Colombia that's the kind of stuff that you're not really going to face in America or you're not going to face in Australia like it's pretty clear cut when there are things of certain way. Yeah on a personal note you reference Camps Bay where you're building another location is that how far along are you is that one going to be opening soon how far out are you so we're the plan to will be to open that one in January so yeah we've demolished now and the tenders have gone out and so that's going to be yeah it's going to be roughly seven eight month renovation because that's not a build from ground up that's we bought an existing property that had seven rooms we're going to take it from seven to nine rooms so already increasing the the amount of rooms by 20% and it was just one of those businesses that was was untapped potential. You know, ocean views, one street off the beach there. Older gentleman who owned it was basically retiring, had no succession plan, no idea of interior styling or Instagram or marketing or anything like that. And they were still profitable. So we got it at a really good price. And so we've raised five million for that project, including the purchase, all of the renovation, getting that up and running. And that will be, yeah, that'll be operational, January, that's the plan. - Are you still raising capital for that particular project? - We actually, yeah, I think we're 80% sold out there. So we've got 20 shares left in that project. And our social media is sharing content out there in the world. We're booking sales calls. We're connecting with friends of ours. So we are still open for investment in that property. - Well, let me share a little insight from my perspective about camps based. So my wife and I got to visit South Africa. We spent about a month there. And I can truly say it was one of the most remarkable locations that I've ever had in my entire life. Camp space South Africa is built up along a hillside. So most of the homes, most of the hotels, they have these panoramic ocean views. It's truly majestic. But what was so unique about the situation is throughout South Africa, much of the cost for food, for transportation, just typical costs that you would associate with a first world experience. I'm talking about farm to table dining experiences, fine wine. Just really decent roads and things that, I guess I'm sharing this because the discrepancy was the experience versus the cost for many of these things. The dollar was so strong that we could go and we could have these luxurious meals for, I'm talking about less than $25.30. It was mind-boggling. When I would go and get food for myself, just at a basic diner, it was less than $10 with tip included. So, and it's not like an experience if you're going, yeah, well, you can get that in Mexico. No, in Mexico, you're in a third world country. It's a very different experience. When we stayed in Camps Bay, it was luxury. We had a private driver. There was a Mercedes. The hotel came with a Mercedes-Benz driver who if he wanted to go anywhere, they would shuttle you around. So, I'm lending to this experience because I'm connecting the dots of what you describe with Bali with the parody and cost between what foreigners are willing to pay versus what the ordinary cost of living is in a culture or a location like that. So, much to your point about the cost of labor, I imagine that those operating costs can be, you can generate a much higher profit margin. I presume that the model that you've created in Bali is being replicated in South Africa. So, to me, that really resonates. And I think that if someone is listening to this on the one hand, they're probably going to be mesmerized by your website and your social media and your marketing. But the fear of South Africa probably sinks in. We're like, what the heck am I going to own in South Africa? Can you touch upon the value opportunity, the value proposition, the upside, put aside the risk for now? But what really is, where's the white space right now with that type of property? Where, regardless if someone were to invest in your fund, if someone wanted to go and explore on their own, I guess what I'm really trying to diagnose here is, what is the investment opportunity? Where is the upside? I tend to try to find things and uncover things where others are not looking. That's why I talk about our hostile operation. Because there was an area where there's less competition. People were not focused on hostels. You're doing something that not a lot of people are focused on, which is developing very luxurious experiences where you have low operating costs and the potential for high margin. Walk me through the South Africa piece and just a high level. I mean, you nailed this. South Africa as a country in a lot of the country is, it is third world and can be unsafe and maybe not a great place to invest. But in the Western Cape, where Cape Town, Kent Spea, Clifton, all Green Point, all of these areas, like you mentioned, are world class in terms of the experience that you can have. And in terms of, let's say, the safety are also now kind of European American standards. Like you would never really feel unsafe ever in campsites. It is a really beautiful, high quality, incredibly majestic experience. Like you said, with the beaches in front and the sun setting right there and then the table mountain and the 12 apostles right behind you, you've got mountain and beaches. It truly is one of the most beautiful locations in the world. And I've seen a lot. So where the opportunity is? Exactly what you said, like we started in Bali, the margins were much better there because of all of the reasons that we discussed. South Africa is like that next level up in terms of regulatory framework and it's more structured than Indonesia. So you can get financing in South Africa as a foreigner, you can legally own the land forever. So then you can now start factoring in appreciation. But like you said, the labor costs are lower. You can still have incredibly experienced great hospitality workers for a lot less. It's funny what you mentioned before because it's true. The food and the beverage and eating out at restaurants and the ubers and the taxis and all of those expenses are still extremely cheap, almost like one third, one fourth of what you pay in America or Germany or Australia. But the accommodation is at a point now where it's actually in line with some of the first world countries. So there is that discrepancy and once again, it's created this opportunity to have 10, 15, 20% extra profit margin. And then when you layer on top, you're getting direct bookings in Kent Space specifically, it is a very thin strip of properties and it's impossible to get permits to build outside of that. You've got the mountain behind the beach in front. So it's a very scarce strip of land where opportunities are very, very hard to come by and new hotels are not popping up all the time because there's just not enough space there. So the competition is also very, very weak. I know you had a great experience at the hotel you stayed, but there's probably a handful of good hotels in Kent Space and then the rest of villas. So low competition, you won't find many big name hotels in South Africa at the moment. Some of them are starting to be built, but yeah, we just see a great opportunity there. And when we're looking around globally at how economically things are shifting, politically things are shifting, I think where a lot of people would have considered South Africa unsafe five to 10 years ago, they were comparing an America or a Europe that was a lot safer than what it currently is now. And so there's cities in Europe where my wife and I spend time, I would not let my wife walk outside at night in those cities ever in Europe. And so that gap of like, South Africa not being safe, it's like, well, actually my home country's not really that safe anymore. But I think people are starting to kind of realize that that disparity is not really there anymore. And once you've visited like you did, you realize like what's everyone talking about? This is a paradise, especially in the Western Cape. So yeah, I hope that summarizes it. But for anyone who's considering visiting South Africa to look for investments or just to go on a holiday, I would highly, highly recommend it. And then there's obviously a lot of opportunity. Some of these properties along the coastline are selling for ridiculous prices compared to what you'd be paying back in in any first world country. And then if you have some marketing power, if you're able to kind of attract guests, yeah, the margins will be great as well. - Yeah, I mean, back in 2017, we spent, if I recall correctly, around $500 a night. So the accommodations were not cheap. It was worth it. The value was there. Like you've said for all those reasons, but I imagine that the profit potential is significant due to all the things we've already discussed. Can I talk to you a little bit about how you run these operations? Well, particularly because taking on a project in South Africa, I mean, that's about as far away as one can go. It's extremely isolated. Isolated. So why don't we start here? Tell me about your co-founder in this. I thought I heard you reference that your partner is his name Niles. Can you walk me through who your partner is and how you two actually split up the company in terms of workload? - Good question. So Nils is my co-founder. Nils is heavily involved in corporate structuring due diligence. So Nils was the one going to South Africa, speaking with all the tax attorneys and the accountants and the zoning officers and lawyers, et cetera, to do all of the due diligence to figure out if this was going to be viable for us. And then of course, for me, I'm heavily into the sales and the marketing and the architecture departments to build out the products and obviously sell and market the product. For operations, I have a rule that I've worked with from the beginning and it's just worked so well every time. And I heard this in a podcast once and I had already done that and someone had a title for this and he called it 1 for 10. And this is where when you're hiring, you are spending 10 times more of your energy, more of your focus, more of your resources to find the one person who's going to be hiring. to execute the vision and the operations in your property. That person will be the GM or at the top of the chain essentially. You do everything you possibly can to find that one person. You might have to do a hundred interviews and then you might have to do it a second round of interviews with 10 more candidates and then a third round of interviews with the top three or four. This is what we did for our first project and then he was the GM at another property and we booked under a different name and then secretly visited the property to to see how the operations were and he just hit a home run. We had the best experience. His team was so professional and caring and just did a great job and so we ended up bringing this guy on and then we gave him the mandate to then bring his team and basically find the people that he wanted to work with. So instead of us going into the weeds of trying to find every layer of management and then house cleaning and and the engineering and bookkeeping all of this, we spend all of our time trying to find that one person who's just an absolute A plus player and then we give them the mandate to kind of build out their own team. And so we've done that with every property and it's it's worked very successfully. You really have to get it right with that one person up top and if they really know what they're doing and you've really incentivized them and motivated them in the right way, they will just go off and do an incredible job. And so we have that in South Africa and we're actually very lucky because this property in South Africa, the GM, Jody, he was already there. He was at the property when we bought it and we went in and we we met the whole team and we met Jody and we put Jody through all of the basic application process that we would usually have and he just passed it all with flying colors and he obviously knew the property personally himself and he was incredibly excited with the vision, the new vision that we had for it and so we just knew he would be a great partner to stick with and then yeah that obviously takes off a huge weight in terms of the operations. So I have a lot of work to do in the in the next coming months to to find that one person for each of our new properties and then we'll work together with them to to build out the operations and of course now after opening a few properties now we we have standard operating procedures and and a pre-occurning checklists and pre-occurning launches that we go through each time but the people is it's always the most important thing and obviously I'm not doing that myself that would be crazy. You talk about the team playing such an important role in your success and being able to trust in your team and delegate and have the confidence that they're going to execute at a high level for someone that wants to hire correctly what do you look for in the ideal candidate other than what you've described in that they're performing well at another location I'm talking about personality traits. Yeah so for me the way I like to look at it is that if I'm going to be working with someone really closely for a long period of time we need to get along we need to have values that are aligned a lot of people out there talk about splitting strengths and weaknesses so partnering someone who has the strengths that are your weaknesses and vice versa I think that can work but I think more importantly your values are aligning and you you believe in operating in with the same kind of morals and that you actually like this person like you get along with this person you'd want to be friends with this person because you're going to spend a lot of time together so I'm always looking for like a natural rapport in the beginning and then just trust worthiness is huge I'm trying to understand very quickly if I can trust this person and if they're an honest person because if if you can really believe and feel that then you can let them run with it and you don't have to watch over them and and micro manage and that my if there's a tough one because it's it comes from gut instinct it's very hard to know and I've made my fair share of bad hires in the past and so now I kind of have a bit of a gut instinct but I think everyone has that when you're meeting with people but the the most important thing on top of all of this is that you have a very strict probation period regardless right the people you hire need to be able to the talk but then walk the walk and if you have a strict probation period you know let's say a three month period where there you can come in you can evaluate their work and you see how you're working together and at the end of the three month basically come together and say is this working or is it not working and basically separate without any backlash or any contractual things getting in the way of you breaking up that relationship I think that's really important that's where a lot of people like they they miss that you know it's like no matter how good it feels in the beginning it you need to be honest then clear with each other this is a three month trial period if we are both happy at the end of it we move forward that's just critical we we always make sure that we have that in place yeah that makes sense it's like the expression are the saying high or slow fire fast yep exactly I want to pivot to something that I think hits home for a lot of people on a personal level and I want to ask you about freedom versus wealth you've spent the years chasing what appears to be total freedom just no schedule you're traveling wherever you are you're working from wherever now you've got this 250 person company you've got real structure you've got real nine to five boundaries and I want you to be honest with me is your life actually better now or did you just trade one kind of hard work for another that's such a good deep question my life is better now I 100% believe that my wife and I traveled the world for let's say five years non-stop with kind of complete and out of freedom you know I said I told you that I had the e-commerce business that was literally just the profit margins for that were crazy we had money kind of coming into our account every day we're traveling the world we we've been to every beautiful hotel every nice beach at some point you get tired of not having a purpose you know and we really we really felt that you know and so we have a kid now which it's the most amazing incredible you know experience and my I know you have kids it's it's given me this like newly sunlight and and a reason to be here but on top of that what we're doing at Ventore it genuinely is my passion I could and we'll be doing this until I'm into my 80s I think when it comes to boutique hotels and hospitality you can never get bored of it because it's an infinite game there's always ways to improve design of the properties can always be tweaked every new property is a new challenge with with new parameters and new things you need to think about so I think what I what I love about what I do now is that I've kind of constructed now a pipeline of interesting projects to work on and if we nail it and we do a good job as a team we're helping other people become financially free through those investments and create passive income for themselves so what I mentioned before it's a bit woo woo but it's kind of like it's this win-win-win like I get to design these dream properties from nothing basically you know going through some Pinterest boards sitting with the architects you know they're the real talented people like I'm I'm just like a a bit on Instagram for too long so I know what works but the architects are the really talented ones I get to sit in with them and create dreams you know these these properties that that don't exist and then we get to take those allow other people to join in on that ride build out the operations the guests who stay there like you know that trip in 2017 you talked about you'll never forget it it's it's now etched into your memory and your wife's memory of something this lasting forever like I just think that that is so cool and so worthy of of what we're doing that we are creating spaces where people can can create lifetime memories for themselves and their families on their holidays and to be able to kind of be a part of that is incredible and then at the back side of it like I mentioned other investors who believe in us then get to make passive income and help them towards you know their financial goals as well so I just I just love that whole cycle and it's something that I could do forever it is stressful like don't get me wrong like I sometimes think about like whatever I got myself into but I also think there's good stress which is you know working towards you things you're passionate about and and stuff that you love and then there's bad stress which is just like just shit that you shouldn't be dealing with or like you like I don't even like this so why am I doing it I've got a lot of good stress but like I mentioned before like I we are kind of now pulling the brakes a little bit at this point in time we want to really execute a nail what we have already brought in and the project pipeline that we're currently working on and build up really strong foundation get all those properties operational get the the occupancy rates up to 80 hours. I've got those dividends pumping out and then from there kind of reboot and and look what else is out there I've also found that I've also found a new passion in restoring Properties and renovating properties because our our first four were all ground up and you know There's kind of a moral I feel a bit of guilt and I have a little bit of the kind of a moral clash with myself Especially in places like Bali where you know the nature is so beautiful what you that story you mentioned of when you went there like Hey, can't imagine how beautiful that experience must have been at that time and now there is overcrowding and there is infrastructure issues and it is over development in certain areas and so there's a lot of Properties out there that are unloved that have untapped potential. There's a lot of low hanging fruit and value ads that we could come in and just You know flip the business very quickly with some interior styling maybe switching some furniture getting in there taking over the marking in the socials I'm really now starting to align with some of those opportunities because there's a whole generation of people out there who are reaching Retime and age and they've got have a family owned hotel that they've been operating for 20 30 years and they've put their Whole lives into it and they're beautiful But they're just not keeping up with the times and they have no succession plan Their kids don't want to take it over. I see I see there being a lot of opportunity in a company like us kind of stepping in there and Partnering with these people and saying look we've got the market. We know what people want and we've got the team to build it out Let's kind of let's work on this together either they sell it to us and they retire or we step in as a partner To kind of turn the thing around and take it from X revenue triple the revenue and triple the profits from from what they're currently doing and that would be Show me enjoyable for me finding those opportunities working together with those people kind of scrubbing off the the diamond That's hidden under the mud. So it like long-winded answer, but I think true freedom what people think freedom is Mirage it's always gonna be over the next hill like it doesn't really exist because when you've got all of the money coming in and Everything you ever wanted you will start then wanting something more than that Something deeper some kind of purpose some kind of mission and I think you're probably the same Michael like I think once you've achieved a certain level of success You can go out and sip margaritas on the beach for a certain period of time But at some point you're just gonna start wondering what this whole life thing is about and at that point Hopefully you can find something that you love that you can you work on most days But the reality is now because I'm at the top of this company and I have a great team I can step away for a week and know that things won't fall apart and I could truly throw my phone into a Lock box and not respond to anything for a week and things things will be fine So that I think that's freedom just to be able to have the choice to work or not work I think choice is freedom the ability to choose what you want to do Well, I think also you you touched upon something that you are talking about you're working really hard But to encapsulate everything that you've said I think that it's fulfilling there is a sense of purpose There is a sense of you are doing something meaningful and This is articulated very well in this famous book Victor Franco man search for meaning he was a Holocaust survivor and in the worst of circumstances What kept people alive and wanting to live was holding on to the tiniest thread of Purpose finding meaning in what they had to do even though all of their dignity was stripped from them and in a very different extreme having all of the aspects of success being able to have the ability to go hang out on the beach and and have very little financial stress still can leave us feeling Empty it's sort of ironic, right? We strive for that and then when we get there We we still want to keep working and I think the root of that is the same DNA that causes us to be ambitious and to go and and do great things in life is also something that keeps us motivated that it without the sense of purpose we feel empty and so where you are in your chapter of life now You're still exercising the same ambition It's just channeled into different chapter You're more rooted with your family You're more rooted with building out your business and all the people that you employ and all of the people that Experience your hotels who gain those cherished memories That's now what's driving you as opposed to the stimulus of exploring and visiting new places around the world You're now learning and growing in a different manner, but it's still connected to a degree And that's what I read and listen to what you're describing. I love it. That was yeah very very well put last question for you Jake And it's one that I ask everybody how can the listeners stay in touch or keep following your journey? So the best way I would say is on Instagram if the listeners are on Instagram It's a Ventora group V EN T O R E group Everyone will see the kind of content that we post. It's very hooky. It's very captivating it brings people in But we also share quite a lot of educational information there and then from there you've got our website Where you can potentially book a call with our team if you would like www.ventora.com and you'll find a link to get more information if you like and yeah Anyone out there who's kind of interested in what we do the first step is just to kind of book a call and the head of sales Their Bruno and Pia so with two absolute incredible humans who I've been friends with for a very long time will be there to kind of Share any kind of insight or any information that any investor would want to know and kind of like I said to you In the beginning like like if people are interested great we've got open arms But if it's not someone's cup of tea that's also completely fine We're not we're really not desperate. We're not employing any any sales tactics or trying to convince anyone to get into these projects We genuinely only want people to invest if they really believe in the property in the asset in what we're creating Because we'll be partners in it. So there's no convincing. It's just hey if this is aligning Let's do it together if not also great But yeah, I really appreciate the time Michael and for you listening to me talk a lot and for the listeners tuning in really appreciate it Yeah, Jake this has been awesome man. Thank you for coming on and telling your story I gained a lot from this and so you know Of course anyone listening to this if you gain something from this drop a review or Send this episode to someone who maybe wants to learn more about investing in hospitality I am Michael Russell. He is Jake Snow. This has been another episode of the hotel investor playbook and we will catch you again next week Oh, loha