The Randal Osché Podcast: Season 1 | Episode 17
In this episode of The Randall Osché Podcast, I talk with Thomas Tingstrup, an entrepreneur who turned his corporate career into a global adventure. Thomas shares his experience leaving Denmark to create Tings Hotels with his wife Annette, where they focus on helping young people in developing countries through business.
What You'll Learn:
Escaping Corporate Life: How Thomas and his wife decided to leave their jobs and travel the world for a year.
Starting a Purpose-Driven Business: The creation of Tings Hotels and how it provides opportunities for young talent in local communities.
Adapting to Change: The challenges and rewards of pursuing a nontraditional career path.
Strategic Thinking: The importance of planning in business and life.
Building Incrementally: How small, consistent actions lead to significant changes.
This episode offers practical insights for anyone looking to align their work with their personal values. Whether you're considering a major life shift or looking for new ways to contribute to your community, Thomas's journey provides valuable lessons.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, Podcast Index, Podcasts Addict, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Highlights
Ask the Right Questions: Success lies in asking the right questions, not just finding answers.
Bold Decisions: Leaving corporate jobs to travel led Thomas to create a hotel that supports youth.
Purposeful Business: "Tings" blends business with social impact by reinvesting profits into education.
Strategic Planning: Success in Lisbon required careful planning, from location to a unique menu.
Embrace Mistakes: Learning from mistakes and networking opens up new opportunities.
SHOW NOTES
Questions this conversation has Randall Pondering
"Am I planning effectively for the future, or am I staying within my comfort zone?"
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let me know in the comments!
And that's it for today's conversation here on the Randall Osché podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and we hope that you've enjoyed listening as much as we've enjoyed recording it.
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The Randall Osché Podcast - Thomas Tingstrup (Episode 17)
[00:00:00] Thomas: The problem is not to get the answer. You could get answered everything. The problem is to find the right questions. You understand? You know, there's so many opportunities, so many possibilities out there. So what should I ask now?
[00:00:12] AI: Hello, and welcome to the Randall Osché podcast, where we create a safe space for meaningful and thought provoking conversations. We have long form interviews with entrepreneurs, thought leaders, artists, and change makers in order to deconstruct their journeys and to pass out valuable life lessons and life changing perspectives for listeners like yourself.
[00:00:35] AI: So that you can, as Randall says, learn their lessons without their scars. So, whether you're tuning in on your daily commute, or during a workout, or cooking dinner, we are happy to have you join us. So, take a seat, relax, grab a cup of tea, and join the conversation. Now, let's dive into this week's episode.
[00:01:00] Song: We made it.
[00:01:16] Randall: Thomas Tinkstrup, welcome to the show. For those of the listeners who don't know you, why don't you go ahead and take a moment and introduce yourself.
[00:01:23] Thomas: Yeah, my name is Thomas Tinkstrup, as you pronounce it, and I'm from Denmark, but I've lived outside Denmark since 2009, when my wife and I just started a project called Tinkz, which is a hotel from where we get a chance to live out all our dreams, or some of our dreams.
[00:01:41] Thomas: I'm 62 and I have a background from finance and education in financial world and went to marketing business strategy and did working in finance industry on consumer goods entertainment and web. Excellent.
[00:01:56] Randall: Yeah. So it sounds like you have a bunch of things you like to get your hands into, right?
[00:02:01] Randall: Yeah. I guess so. Yeah. So my understanding from previous conversation is that and I think this is a good place to start is, and correct me if I'm wrong on the background here, but you and your wife were living in Denmark, had corporate careers, and then made the decision to, give that up for a year and then travel around the world.
[00:02:22] Randall: Is that correct? Let's start there. How did that decision come about? Right? How did you decide the corporate career life has served us well to this point, but we want these other experiences and opportunities. So let's pause for a year and travel. How did that decision happen?
[00:02:38] Thomas: Sometimes we ask ourselves, is it the same question?
[00:02:43] Thomas: I don't know where to start or where to begin. I was an apprentice in a local bank in Kootenay, not because I was interested in financial work, but because the bank back then would finance your further education. So I knew I applied for an apprenticeship, internship, apprenticeship, I think it's called.
[00:02:58] Thomas: And the day I started, I also signed up for university, whereby studied business strategy. After three, four years, I was promoted in the bank and started as a product manager, label manager, whatever you call it, in the marketing. So that was my first marketing experience I got there. After three weeks in the small advertising agency, I was hit on by Tupac Brewery, because I have a past history in the brewery business.
[00:03:22] Thomas: I was the head of the board of the small unit where we had an interest in beer labels, beer cultureand because of my interest in beer and my marketing skills from the bank, he got me Nesburg manager, which is the largest beer in Denmark and was then the biggest marketing account.
[00:03:37] Thomas: It's a brief short story. I went on from that to the music industry career at a young executive program run by the CEO of Carlsbergerg. And he was together with the CEOs from pharmacy industry, Nestle, the big banks head of a program where they would promote and hire young future executives.
[00:03:57] Thomas: And I was picked up I think, 27 years old. I think it's a coincidence that another of my interest is music and back then it was in 1995
[00:04:05] Thomas: that was where big money came into the music industry and Mickey Records, the biggest record company, back then was bought off by Yamai Records and all the big money came into the industry. So they were looking for somebody who could run the big budgets, take television, advertising the you have this key account managers was introduced to the music business as well.
[00:04:28] Thomas: So they head hunted me. I was back then in Nestle in Brussels. Headhunter called me again and again and again, and he didn't want to sell what a job it was, but eventually he said he knew that I would love the job. And I went to Denmark, he told me that the legends in the Danish music industry that wanted me because I had seen their concerts as music sponsors to ball, but the sponsor of the the biggest music event since Scandinavia, Roskilde Festival.
[00:04:51] Thomas: So they knew me. And of course I said yes. Many of my friends said it was the worst career I could do. But I always followed my interests. I worked there for five, six years and all the jobs I've had, I worked 80 hours, 100 hours per week. The problem with music industry is that you're not in control of the product, you can't tell some yorker radio to make a hit or Pink Floyd to come with a new album.
[00:05:11] Thomas: So there are some limitations on what you can gain intellectually or business wise. So after five years. I said, sorry, I've been there, done that. And we really didn't know what we wanted to do. Then a friend of mine who is now the head of the leading advertising agency in Denmark, we have been playing around doing some of the most stupid advertising communication campaigns in Danish consumer good market.
[00:05:33] Thomas: And I was on his back all the time because back then they didn't get any money for the creative ideas they got money from television advertising. And they got money from printing papers and I already then I was an absolute generation. I was very, very focused on all of the PR things, what the main tool at the music industry, that's public relation, because you have all the artists.
[00:05:52] Thomas: So we were playing with the concept of doing a different setup in the advertising world where you somehow got creative rights, like you have the musical rights to your music and kind of use the different creative ideas on various platforms, such as books, movies uh, films. There was merchandise, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:06:09] Thomas: And his partner or his boss suggested we start up a business concept, made a business plan for starting up that kind of an agency that covered all these fields in communication. And once we were ready to kick off my wife and I was discussing our life. She was then vice president for Carlsberg worldwide in marketing.
[00:06:30] Thomas: So she had 200 travel days per year that we were exhausted. So we said, sorry.If I'm going to do this, I would spend another five, six years of 100 hours per week. And we'd sit. I don't mind doing that, but I need a break. So we decided to just skip our jobs and, before signing the contract I said I would love to sign this contract for the new company, but I'd just take a year off and take my backpack and go traveling.
[00:06:52] Thomas: Which, I think, pissed off some of the people that was involved in the process, but at the same time they understood it and said, okay, come by when you come back and let's take it from there. So that was when we wanted to just do something else. Cause we had been working, working, working, in like small countries.
[00:07:07] Thomas: So whether you work in UC go American fast food, consumer good, you meet the same people, same media, it's the same. So we need inspiration. So we just left. Yeah, it took us a year to make the planning. You just don't leave for a year without doing some planning. It took us six months and then we put on our backpacks.
[00:07:23] Thomas: We wanted to go to India from the beginning but it ended up in the pond and from there we just
[00:07:27] Randall: went on and on.
[00:07:28] Randall: Excellent, thank you for sharing that. So, six months to plan, how old were you when you made the decision to take the year off?
[00:07:35] Thomas: I was thirty eight.
[00:07:36] Randall: So it took six months to plan and then the initial plan. Cause
[00:07:40] Thomas: you have your, apartment, you have your financial obligation, a son, I have to, you know get you involved with projects as well, so he could join us around the world.
[00:07:47] Thomas:
[00:07:47] Randall: So how old was your son at the time?
[00:07:49] Thomas: He was 14.
[00:07:50] Randall: Did you and Annetta take your son with you?
[00:07:52] Thomas: He stayed with his mom. and at the end of all the business points, homes points. So she flew out. Oh, nice. Yeah. I met her in Indonesia. I met her in different parts of the world.
[00:08:01] Thomas: Yeah. Followed us up cause I was, you know, I was blogging back then. So we could follow our travels.
[00:08:06] Randall: Yeah. So what were some of the highlights of that year when you were traveling? Freedom. The freedom. Yeah.
[00:08:12] Thomas: To say, I don't know, to look at a map in Quixo in Ecuador, look at a map in the post office in Sydney.
[00:08:18] Thomas: Shopping back to Scandinavia, looking around, take down troops with the Indian boats down to Rio Amazonas and go to Iquitas just do whatever you feel like doing. I have read somewhere in National Geographic that you follow the oil riggers who was digging oil in the Amazon jungle and go to their oil riggers and from there continue with Indian boats to another village and eventually reach Iquitas, which back then was the largest city only accessible
[00:08:44] Thomas: by Riverside, the largest city in the world, one million people. And I have read about the iron house I want to sit in the regal bar there. So we did it, and got flown out by the military because of political instability. So, it's just two things you dream of. Which we were not able to capable of doing.
[00:08:59] Thomas: The first ones our travel, but because you get one more experience and know out your way around, which is, yeah, that must have the freedom.
[00:09:07] Randall: And then that, as far as the traveling, you got more and more comfortable doing more and more adventurous things.
[00:09:12] Thomas: You get more and more curious.
[00:09:13] Thomas: Because the more you know, the less you really know, because it opens up other insights and other questions. You see, the freedom to choose, the freedom to get involved. It's hard to explain to people that doesn't know. You find out there's a layer around the world of a traveling community that somehow, no matter where they are, they meet eventually.
[00:09:32] Thomas: We met online, there was already then communities where you could communicate or you could ask questions about, is it possible to cross this border? What about the Berlin situation? Because you can't rely on the newspapers, they have only one issue, that's to sell newspapers. So you have to find other ways.
[00:09:48] Thomas: So yeah, it gets in your blood. Yeah. Meet other people. You see things you didn't know existed. Sometimes you just met people and said, Oh, I wish we could stay here and do something and get involved or exploit this. And then it's just into design. You know, fabrics and precious stones and you know, all these possibilities you could do.
[00:10:06] Thomas: And then at what point, I don't know, after four, five, six months, you're going through three phases, I think it's seven days, seven weeks, and seven months where you get stressed because you forget to have holidays. It's hard work to travel. Suddenly you haven't been traveling for three months without a break.
[00:10:21] Thomas: And then you somehow get mental. Yeah. So you get a lot of learning about yourself and what you're capable of doing and how big the world is, how nice people are, all spheres you read about different communities of religions or countries. And you mean, that's two different kinds of worlds.
[00:10:37] Thomas: The worlds you see in the media and the worlds you see when you go on. So basically that was the biggest gift by traveling, meeting people and freedom.
[00:10:45] Randall: Yeah. I would agree with you a thousand percent.I don't think a lot of people recognize this, but the media isn't
[00:10:52] Randall: there to inform you, there are for profit organizations. So like you said, the only thing they're interested in is selling the story. And as long as they're getting revenue from selling the story,they're going tell you what sells, not what is meant to best inform you.
[00:11:07] Randall: So if anybody's listening to this, truth to power that the media doesn't have your best interest in mind. They just want to make money. And you should recognize that.
[00:11:15] Thomas: True. I'll get people to click on that.
[00:11:18] Thomas: Yeah.
[00:11:18] Randall: Clicks, watch time. That's all they care about.
[00:11:20] Randall: It's not meant to inform the population, whatever country you're in, they're meant to get revenue dollars. Exactly. Yeah. So what happened after that year of travel? Did you go back to Denmark, back to your corporate jobs?
[00:11:32] Thomas: The plan was, my plan was to go back to the project I started out. Okay. And there, she had no plans at all. She quit her job. She was in a different situation because she was vice president. She had to leave it was very frightening. Instead of returning direct to Denmark, we had to stop over some days in Berlin where we were just taking, found ourselves in a local bar sitting there, take a deep breath and look each other's eyes and say, what now?
[00:11:55] Thomas: Because it was a frightening experience getting back. But we went back, during those days in Berlin, we promised each other to never get caught in the hamster wheel again. We promised each other to make some kind of a setup that made it possible for us to live.
[00:12:08] Thomas: I don't know how to say it, to live outside Denmark, doing something where we could both get involved in our own interests, my interest and Anette's interest, and at the same time, she would get some of the young boys and girls involved. In a project so we could support them in their education.
[00:12:27] Thomas: We have missed so many young boys and girls on the road in the various countries. And they had so much time that is wasted only because they're smart. The smartest kids they go to the road and self cook drinks to tourists or guide them around while their more stupid brothers and sisters they go to school.
[00:12:41] Thomas: The smart kids has to make money for the family. We want to see if we can get them involved in some kind of business which turned out to be a hotel. And then let them run the business. We could teach them. We are very good at teaching. We have very good discovery talent and get them started off and give them responsibility.
[00:12:55] Thomas: And once the business up and running, go to another place, start up the same business and then have a list of a number of small businesses where there'll be money, the profit. Goes back to the education. You understand? So that I call some self-sustainable charity. I hate the word charity. Yeah.
[00:13:12] Thomas: Starting off business on co commercial terms. That's what we are good at. You know, we are business people. Both of our business strategies, we could look at Excels and the whole idea was to be 100% focused on profit. The money we make, we use on their educations or their kids' educations or whatever they need to get a decent life.
[00:13:28] Thomas: And that became a hotel. The first hotel we decided to, we made a business plan. We promised to realize that business plan before I was 50 years old, which was in. That would be in 2012. Back then it was 2002, it was just after 9 11 we had returned. So that business plan or that business idea we got in Berlin, and that was the one we wanted to work on and execute.
[00:13:51] Thomas: So my 50 years birthday would be celebrated outside Denmark. We didn't know where, we didn't know, how and what, the only thing we knew about was hotels, where we knew we could get kids involved because everyone basically is about treating people nicely and you have these big cultures especially in developing countries, their social network are the family.
[00:14:10] Thomas: And they used to treat people nicely. They used to be company and they look after each other. They used to have 20 people staying together. So use their skills they have developed through this social life, use them for hotel with, international guests, that was the idea we had, which we didn't develop the following year.
[00:14:27] Thomas: After returning from our year round around the world trip.We arrived and I had nothing to do and Anette had nothing to do. So first we had to make ourselves a living so we could, get a life, get some money in and beside our jobs, work on our business. So I don't know. I was sitting the first.
[00:14:42] Thomas: Six months when we returned depressed, looking at my face in the mirror and said, what now? And then just she was more focused. She got involved in her own things and did her yoga thing and did whatever she felt like and got involved in strategic planning. But with the communication,
[00:14:57] Randall: Yeah, I have a lot of follow up questions there. First I did some research. I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, your birthday, September 14th. So is mine. Seriously? Yeah. September 14th.
[00:15:09] Randall: Yeah.
[00:15:09] Randall: A bunch of questions from there, but I guess I want to back up a moment.
[00:15:13] Randall: So like when you were traveling, I'm assuming that the places you stayed in influenced the type of hotels that you operated and continue to operate today. But what kind of accommodations did you like to stay in? Or did you seek out when youwere traveling?
[00:15:28] Thomas: The way we traveled was we could not be picky, but most of the places we had to stay where we could stay, I mean, so we stayed in all kinds of dorms, private hotels, business hotels.
[00:15:40] Thomas: Hostels, you know, wherever you could get a bed, you know, when you travel for a year, you have a budget. We are not, we are not rich. We had get some money out of our property to finance our travels. So we had a very limited budget, but we stayed in all kinds of accommodation.
[00:15:54] Thomas: But the hostel we have, I can't say we did not have the accommodation we stayed in during our year travel. As not that kind of hotel we wanted to make. It's more inspired by our life as business travelers. Because in our previous careers in the music business or in the brewery business or other business, we have traveled a lot on business travels.
[00:16:17] Thomas: And every time we got a chance to combine business travel with our private travel, if for instance, a native, she went to Vietnam, I went out, I was in Asia, so I went up and joined her. And I stayed at her five star corporate hotel. And as soon as she was finished, we went to a more modest place.
[00:16:33] Thomas: And the reason why I mentioned Vietnam was that we got the real idea in this modest place in Hanoi. And that was 97, first time, it was 97, 98, 99. That was the first time we got an idea about starting a hotel because we were chilling on the terrace. Do you know Hanoi? Yeah. It has a big, big lake.
[00:16:53] Thomas: It was before it really opened for travelers and we were staying on this rooftop after reading a book and chilling we said, Oh, I would love that my friend was a DJ in here. And then it has some idea about decorating it because it has so much potential and we actually tried to buy it with the help of the Danish embassy.
[00:17:10] Thomas: But it was too early back then. It was only TWA that had a business in Western upside Vietnam. That was the only Western connoisseur company that has business going on there. So it was too early. So when we dropped that idea, we just said, okay, that was when we really said, let's do something.
[00:17:25] Thomas: Let's go away. So those hotels we found out that. We are not the only corporate people who wanted more modest places. If you look at corporate hotels I can give you an example. When we traveled between Kathmandu and Europe, we always stopped over in Istanbul.
[00:17:39] Thomas: And one day we were sitting in, didn't want to go to downtown Istanbul. We had this five star hotel. Big, big, super luxury hotel, just outside Istanbul airport. And we went there for the night and I took a picture walking. We bought the suites because we were exhausted. I took a picture walking down the corridor and it looked like a surrealistic movie by Beatles from the seventies.
[00:17:58] Thomas: You have all these doors to the same side. And then we came down for breakfast, look at people here. They are Hindus, they're Christians, they're gay, they're lesbians. They are, you know, everybody's different. And still all the rooms are the same. It's only the amenities that varies and the prices, that's the only industry where you don't do something.
[00:18:15] Thomas: Like, can you imagine the same in fashion? Yeah. So that was when we knew that we have to make something where it doesn't really matter how the rooms are, it's the vibes that actually has to appeal to a certain group of people. And that's what we call the three individual independent travelers, which are both business people, but it can be musicians and it can bevagabonds.
[00:18:34] Thomas: They share the same feel, the same vibe. So that was the one, that was the idea. And then we had to define the vibe and define the the brand platform and stuff like that. But that was where we got the idea of what kind of hotel we would make. It had nothing to do with the hotel's estate as during our travels.
[00:18:51] Randall: Well, there was one, of course, you stay in a lot of hotels. So of course, there are one or two hotels that inspires you. But that was also a hotel from our previous travels and my own travels or our own travels independently. Yeah, so we're gonna circle back to this, but I don't want to get too much further before I bring this up.So I guess just a short recap you were caught up in the hamster wheel decided to take a year off go backpacking with your wife and then during that year, you enjoyed it, you had freedom, and then after that year's wrapping up, you had made a determination, we needed to do something else by the time you turn 50, so we can continue to live out our dreams, right?
[00:19:30] Randall: Live our best lives, right? And then part of sort of that thought process was you landed on a hotel because you had experienced traveling and you knew that there was a traveling community that appreciated a different style of accommodations than maybe a corporation would pay for, were like large corporate hotels.
[00:19:50] Randall: But the other aspect of this, that's part of your business model was, that you and Annetta are building the business plan, executing on the business plan, coming up with the inspiration and creative ideas. But you wanted to give an occupation to the intelligent, you know, young women and men that you met along the way that were out hustling, selling Coca Cola, selling water that you knew that they had talent more than what they were doing to support their families.
[00:20:23] Randall: So I just wanted to circle back and spend some time on that a little bit. My first question is I think like I have like an entrepreneurial spirit and when I see young people out with a lemonade stand or I used to have a long commute and part of my commute one time and it was like bumper to bumper traffic, like driving through a part of the city.
[00:20:45] Randall: So it was, you know you'd be stopped at a red light and then you'd, go 20 feet, stop at a red light. And occasionally this little girl that was selling lemonade or whatever. So every time I saw her, as long as I stopped at the right place, I would always try to give her cash for whatever she was selling, cause I didn't necessarily want the lemonade, but I wanted to support her and her, Entrepreneurial endeavors.
[00:21:07] Randall: And I think it's really important to help young people along the way when they're showing those sorts of characteristics. What about you and your journeys and coming up with this business plan and recognizing that these intelligent young women and men were out there, hustling to make a living for themselves and their family, how do you connect the dots there?
[00:21:28] Thomas: Yeah, it's a good question. Because first, we had to identify where to start. We had a list of 10 countries where we said, okay, nice to do something here or there. And on that list, we had Cambodia, we had Vietnam, we had Laos, we had Indonesia we hadSouth American country. So we asked around in the Danish charity organizations, and presented our ideas to ask people's opinion about if we have this vision or if we have this project, where would they suggest us to go and start off? We got three, I think it was two or three countries and we went on a research trip back to these countries.
[00:22:04] Thomas: One of them is Cambodia and we found out that it was already too late back then. And the other one was Nepal. And during that research, it's a little bit strange becauseback then we got a wrong name for the kids we wanted to involve. We call them street kids. The street kids in Nepal are completely different.
[00:22:20] Thomas: They're, those are the ones that sniffing glue in Tamil and end up baking. You can't do anything with them because they are lost already. So we had to find other ways to get in touch with these young boys. And you can't just go and take families, young boys and girls, you can't do that.
[00:22:34] Thomas: So we went there and we got some relations to the Buddhist Circles refugee camps, we had some contacts through people that are running orphanages. And and slowly, slowly we got contacts to different communities.You apply for people like you, I mean, you have to get some of the boys and girls that has some talent within the disciplines you need to get covered. So that was basically what we did. And then we interviewed them, like you would do, we used all the same tools you would do in a corporate business in Europe.
[00:23:04] Thomas: And once we got them in, if it was a manager we of course start to train them as managers. And we had to get through I think that two girls before we finally got the manager. We do the same programs that you would do with staff. So we do staff interviews.
[00:23:18] Thomas: We do career talking. We give bonuses and eventually the manager, she became partner. And if it wasn't because of COVID, she would actually run the place and we only was left behind with 20 percent just to get involved. All these tools you use from the world we know we use just in different ways.
[00:23:34] Thomas: I mean, you cannot talk about careers for kids that never had anything. So we talked about the dreams. Yeah, and even that was complicated. But some of the boys and girls we got involved were so miserable. They didn't even know the concept of dreams, but after they have stayed with us for a while, some of them came back. I would like to do this and that and then we help them doing this and that it's not about sending them to school somebody may have other interests or talents that doesn't go to the academic direction, but, you know,we did the same, did the research where to find the kids in Denmark or in Europe, you have this online platform where you can go to talent.
[00:24:08] Thomas: You don't have that here, but you have this group of people in different circles, like orphanages, organizations, camps, and then you just go and find them there.
[00:24:16] Randall: Yeah. I think that's beautiful. I find this like perspective matters.
[00:24:20] Randall: Right. And I think if you haven't traveled the world and you're from a developed country, I don't think that you quite can grasp how the rest of the world works or how it works in developed countries, right. Or undeveloped countries. Or even in developed countries, like how different socioeconomic status of people, live, not everybody has the same opportunity to education and these benefits that are out there.
[00:24:43] Randall: So like
[00:24:44] Randall: I imagine for a lot of those kids, like you said, they didn't know of career, they didn't know of dreams. So you had to develop dreams and some of them and tell them that I imagine some of those conversations were about you can do more with this life than just selling Coca Cola or just doing what maybe your parents do, like, how did you cultivate that in them to think bigger, there's more for you out there than this and we can help you get there.
[00:25:10] Randall: And we're more than willing to help you get there.
[00:25:12] Thomas: I
[00:25:12] Thomas: don't know what to say because how should I put it, we are there, so after we have an idea about what he and she wants to do or dream of doing or what their talents are. We just start up. We are involved. A lot of people that are working with, these world, they are not there.
[00:25:29] Thomas: They come with a two year contract, takes them six monthsto get some idea of where they are and you know, the one year into finally get involved. And then they have six months left before they go to another contract. And none of them wants to make mistakes because they are always on the hunt for a higher position in a better country, but we are there all the time.
[00:25:47] Thomas: So we show by doing, we tell them that's how we want it and try to explain it. If we can't explain, then we just have to say him. That's because the guests we want to stay with us. I think this is amazing to have original art or, you cannot, I have a situation. I like walking bare feet in some cultures, like Nepal, you only walk bare feet inside the house.
[00:26:06] Thomas: But we had a beautiful garden and I walked bare feet and our back then head chef, which was the young boy that followed the house we leased. He was a boy who turned on the water and turned on the electricity so his rich family could get their flushing toilet and showers and electrical light turned on.
[00:26:20] Thomas: He came after me and said, sorry, you cannot walk bare feet. I had to explain him. Sorry, this is my home, that is how we do, so please respect that. He understood. Then only one day, we had an emergency, I had to do something for the kitchen and there was a small, small vegetable shop around the corner and I had to run, so I ran out in the street.
[00:26:40] Thomas: Then he got angry because it's only Dalit which are, you know, the caste system. These are below the caste system, the girls are born to prostitutions and the boys they inherit the whole family's debts. Then he got angry and I had to respect that. So it's like a mutual understanding of where one's limits are. Sometimes you can explain it just by doing or telling, sometimes you have to spend a little more time and go back to, let's say, Adam and Eve and explain why it's like that.
[00:27:06] Thomas: You know, there was the other way. Sometimes we had workers, they disappeared and then, why didn't you come yesterday or the day before? They had ghosts in the house, which means that they have to be in the house together with the priest so they could clean the house.
[00:27:17] Thomas: And I said, sorry, they didn't teach me that in high school. So it's not like we have a human resource manual. Yeah. We have to improvise along the way. And it's quite easy. At least the only thing I say, don't complicate things because you cannot plan because there's so many layers than these cultures we have been involved with.
[00:27:34] Thomas: You don't know about, and when you know it, you don't necessarily understand it.
[00:27:37] Randall: People have responsibility, and encourage people to make mistakes. That's the only way you learn.
[00:27:42] Randall: A lot of people, say,encourage people to make mistakes, but I also think it's about creating a culture where making mistakes is acceptable, right?
[00:27:50] Randall: I don't want to say something cliche like celebrating mistakes, but it's one thing to say it, but there's another to have a culture where people are actually allowed to make mistakes.
[00:27:59] Thomas: We have a cost in our budgets.
[00:28:01] Thomas: It's called education money. Yeah. Don't make the mistakes twice. Then it's stupid. Yeah. You understand me? If you make it the same, you make something in the kitchen in a poor country like Nepal, say, make a pancake wrong or pasta is not al dente, the only way you can teach them how to make al dente pasta is to take it, try not to eat them and throw it away, that's the worst thing you can do in a poor country, but you have to make sure that they don't send it again.
[00:28:24] Thomas: So once they have been throwing it away, once they never repeat the same mistake.
[00:28:29] Randall: Yeah, I always say that there's always a cost of education and sometimes that's monetary, sometimes it's throwing food away, but there's always a cost of education. I like it that you have that as a part of your budget.
[00:28:40] Randall: So let's fast forward. You currently. Own and operate Ting's hotel in Lisbon and just reopened your restaurant in the hotel. So congratulations on that. But tell me a little bit about how the Lisbon hotel came to be.
[00:28:56] Thomas: Part of our business model is that we spent one year starting up the hotel.
[00:29:00] Thomas: If we cannot get away and leave it to the kids within 12 months, we close it. So after 10 months, we went to Bangkok and we're just sitting in a hotel room waiting. For things, Cadmans would call us with problems and they managed to handle the hotel without our presence. And then we went to Myanmar to try starting up there actually had contracts, two contracts.
[00:29:20] Thomas: We lease a house. We had two contracts. We lost. That was when they opened, Myanmar opened for Western countries to come and do business. So the real estate market exploded, which meant it was impossible to do the business we wanted with a number of room and make a profit. So we gave up.
[00:29:33] Thomas: And back then we have lost two years. We had a setback in Kathmandu because of the earthquake that kept us getting Kathmandu back in shape and we had to sit and rethink everything. And I heard the radio about the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008, 2009 how the impact was on the youth generation, the young generation in Southern Europe.
[00:29:53] Thomas: I think the unemployment rate, so like 50, above 50 percent increase in Italy and Lisbon, Portugal. So I said why don't we go and see if we can do something, these young boys and girls, I mean, here you don't have any charity organization or NGOs to get involved. So that was basically the idea we got to go and we went to check it out.
[00:30:11] Thomas: And then we started up here, you know, when we come to a new country, we have a very important part of our platform, business platform is to find the right location and it's a walking distance from downtown in a local neighborhood. So we have our business plan. So first we go and see if we can find kind of place in the cities.
[00:30:27] Thomas: We want to start off. We did that in Yangon, we did that in Lisbon and in Lisbon it turned out that it was quite easy. There was some interesting neighborhoods. Where we could do something and we managed to get a house and then it was just started up again.
[00:30:39] Thomas: I don't know what else we did some mistakes we have a history in Lisbon because we have traveled here for 30 years. The first time we had been here together was 30 years ago. So we thought we knew Lisbon. And that's a big, big problem. Because once you think, you know, things.
[00:30:53] Thomas: You get weak in your research, because if we have done some research here, we would have known that the young boys and girls we want to get involved, they are not in the country. percent of the people born here live outside Portugal, as all the young boys and girls, those who want to get involved.
[00:31:07] Thomas: Those left behind, they are either too stoned or they sit disappointed, try to make it outside Portugal and are disappointed, or they never got the energy to leave. So we spent one year here trying to get people involved, which turned out to be impossible. And in order not to lose money we had to widen our scope and just get talented.
[00:31:25] Thomas: There was a lot of movement. We're from the old Eastern European countries. We caught an oldest manager and you know, I mean, we're not stupid, we're not in a situation where we can lose money, so we just tried to get it started. That's how we started this, but in the background was because of the unemployment rates amongst the young generations.
[00:31:42] AI: Let's take a quick break from today's episode. If you're enjoying the conversation, please take a moment to look us up. You can find Randall on Instagram at Randall Osché, that's spelled at R A N D A L L O S C H E.
[00:32:00] AI: And you can catch the show notes and other resources at randallosche.com and now back to the episode.
[00:32:07] Randall: There's one thing that we haven't talked about.
[00:32:09] Thomas: One of the dreams you wanted to do was to create this platform where we could both get our own interests out in the world and Edith does that, Kashmir, she does all these things. I have been involved in a lot of startup projects. I started up Padmin to Startup Weekend.
[00:32:24] Thomas: We do art exhibitions. Part of our involvement are non commercial. So when we get involved with artists and art projects or culture projects, we use our connections from entertainment to do web talk like seminars uh, script writing workshops. If we have an exhibition, we pay for the marketing.
[00:32:43] Thomas: We pay for the opening and we don't charge commission from the sales and stuff like that. It's very, very important because you can actually contribute to the local culture in other ways, by, giving money or by your time and your network.
[00:32:56] Thomas: Sothe, art exhibitions, you'll host them, put them on, pay for the expense to exhibit local artists.Maybe not local, but like artists.
[00:33:04] Thomas: We tried to get them. We have had a few Nepali artists doing exhibitions in Europe. Through our contacts and our network because there's so much talent out there that never get a chance to go out. Because the NGOs.
[00:33:16] Thomas: I don't want to sound negative about this, but because you're working at NGO does not necessarily qualify you to deal with art and culture. You understand? We happen to be involved in music. We happen to have a lot of artist's friends. We have to have a lot of chefs in our network.
[00:33:32] Thomas: So besides giving salary we can send T which ended up being our head chef, we had sent him to workin a Michel restaurant in Denmark, usually if you come to Depot, you get a chance to do the dish washing, but actually get involved in the service or catering or whatever.
[00:33:47] Thomas: That is another way you can actually contribute to the education or develop their skills. It's just a very important part of the platform. We have created that's to, you know, getting involved where you can get involved.
[00:33:58] Randall: I think the part that resonates with me about that is that, you're taking what you're good at and what interests you and figuring out how you can contribute to the greater good of people in society by leveraging your skillset and your interests, right?
[00:34:12] Randall: You're doing it your way.And I think if, you know, anybody who's listening to this, you don't have to be an NGO. You don't have to go to school to have a special education to contribute to others, you just, you know, find something you're good at, find something you're interested in and reach out and try to help people as best you can.
[00:34:31] Thomas: And one more thing, you have to have something on stake, I mean, before we even got a chance to do the first, strategic thoughts on paper with our plan, we tried to see if we can apply for a CEO job in one of the big international organizations, NGOs. We wanted to contribute for free.
[00:34:49] Thomas: They didn't want to interview us. I mean, we have pretty good CV working internationally. But my worry is none of the people who works in NGOs have anything on stake. They get a good salary. They get to drive in, you know, and it's very, very important that you have to have something on stake as the only way you get an insight, because if you lose money, then you lose your project.
[00:35:09] Randall: Yep.
[00:35:10] Randall: Yeah. So that is actually, that's how you use it. You experience without sharing it with somebody. It's just a basic foundation has to work. There's something wrong about being commercial. You know, it depends on how you use your money. Yeah, absolutely.
[00:35:22] Randall: Thank you for bringing that up. I have a bunch of questions I want to ask you about the hotel, if that's okay. So I was looking at the hotel in Lisbon and a couple of things I found really intriguing. One I hope to stay there someday cause it is the type of place that I would enjoy staying at, but you don't have any televisions in your room.
[00:35:40] Randall: Because that's not what you appreciate about hotels. Right. And this is your vision for how you would like to travel. For your group of people. But you also have a common kitchen and I love to cook and one of the things I love about traveling is the ability to go to a local market, find ingredients and then cook those ingredients.
[00:36:01] Randall: But a lot of places that you stay at don't have the opportunity to cook. Right. Unless you get maybe an Airbnb or something like that. But most hotels don't offer, you know, kitchen for you to cook in. So tell me a little bit about the common kitchen idea and maybe where that came from.
[00:36:16] Thomas: Then we have to go one step back because if you look at our business plan, I think our business plan is actually on LinkedIn.
[00:36:21] Thomas: So you can see there's a definition of our target group. Which we have defined as a free, independent, and individual traveler. They are usually travel for a longer period of time, or they are on some kind of a project or change through the business, or they could be script writers, you know, they are on the road.
[00:36:38] Thomas: And if you have been on the road for a long period, you're sick of looking at menus, you get it? And I should say, yes, if you are too desperate, especially if you like cooking. You go to the market, there's nothing as frustrating as seeing tomato and you can't do anything with it because you don't have a sharp knife in you.
[00:36:54] Thomas: That's why we have a common kitchen. If we have stayed in Airbnb when we started off, we've stayed in Airbnb. Most Airbnbs, you have to make some decision before you make your meal because either you boil the pasta or you make your miso's. Because there's only one pot, so it's absolutely useless.
[00:37:09] Thomas: So, I mean, at least we could provide some facilities where people like ourselves and the target people, we want to stay with us, they have an opportunity. And it's not everybody that uses it, but those who do use it, they love it. And they love that we say, okay, come down and have some oil or come and have some salted pepper or some garlic, because it doesn't cost us anything.
[00:37:30] Randall: Yeah.
[00:37:30] Thomas: And it provides a great experience, too. Right. How much does a little salt or spices or olive oil cost? It's pennies. Yeah.
[00:37:37] Thomas: No think about how much money you use on advertising. This is part of our wedding time. Right. Same goes with the we have a guitar, people can, can play a guitar if they want to, because some of the musicians, they sit and compose on the computer.
[00:37:48] Thomas: They need to have some sound. So we have music sessions every January or February, and suddenly somebody wanted a guitar to give some acoustic, give some real sound for Sam. And then we bought one and it's been part of the, you know, the tools or elements you have, like you have a kitchen.
[00:38:02] Thomas: Yeah. And the reason why I don't have a television, how often do you turn on television when you're in a hotel room? I do because I want to get a confirmation that I'm right here in Portugal, it's only football, football and football, and then some Catholic church things, and then a selection of youth station or something.
[00:38:18] Thomas: And you travel with your laptop or you are referred to Netflix or whatever you have as a constant provider on your entertainment channels.
[00:38:25] Randall: Same. I haven't traveled a ton, but.
[00:38:27] Randall: The places I have traveled to, like I have turned on the tv, but it's all in the other country's language and I only speak English. I know a little bit of Portuguese now, but like, that's not helping me out 'cause it's all in the other language. I also read that at the hotel there's a homemade bread for breakfast.
[00:38:45] Randall: So who does the homemade bread?
[00:38:47] Thomas: We do.. I've made my own bread since I was 14. Yeah. And no matter why you're on this planet, you have flour. And I have to say, what about India? What do you mean? They use flour for the pasta. It's flour for their momos or their roaches, so you can get flour and then you can have yeast and then it's just make dough and in Nepal, we made the dough early morning because they are up doing the pujas at 5 AM, which means we don't make the bread from scratch.
[00:39:08] Thomas: In Portugal, it's impossible to get people up at five in the morning. So we make, I made a, where you have a very wet dough. You prepare the 24 hours before and bake the following morning. And now we do bagels and now we do rye bread as well. And because in our bath form, we have two very, very important elements.
[00:39:25] Thomas: One is the smell. Nobody works with the fragrance in the outside. Nobody thinks about you think about what you believe or not. I think there's some people do some thing about they put on the wall. They think about all the visual part, but waking up to the smell of whole baked bread.
[00:39:38] Thomas: It gives something you can't buy, it cost nothing. I make a break for 25 cents, Euro cents.
[00:39:45] Randall: Yeah. And people love the smell. It's like the smell of fresh coffee and bread in the morning. True. Right.
[00:39:50] Thomas: And we don't have this huge summation of items because if you go to And you look around, a lot of hotels here, they have 12, 15 rooms because of the regulations here.
[00:39:59] Thomas: You can open a hotel with less than 10 rooms overnight, where it takes forever to get licensed to run a place with 70 rooms. But as one old says, you still have a selection of favourites, You have 10 different kinds of cheese's. And you have, I mean, it doesn't like, can't eat it.
[00:40:13] Thomas: And you know what happened? I did pack it down in serve that the following days we have one could slice ham, one good slice of sausages. And we change it every day and that's what you get. And then you get a homemade egg. How often do you get up? Homemade egg. Choice or coffee in a choice or its juice.
[00:40:26] Randall: I mean, there's a limit of how much food people can eat. Yeah. I've mentioned this on a lot of other podcasts and like different But one of my favorite quotes is too many options makes tyrants out of us all. And I think that's too many menu options, too many options in life.
[00:40:40] Randall: I mean, who doesn't love looking at a large selection of different, you know, pastries and breads and cheeses, but like, you don't need it, right? You don't need all of that. And it just makes everything more cumbersome.
[00:40:51] Thomas: You have to look at the guest that stays with you and say, okay, they have different traditions.
[00:40:56] Thomas: Like I told you before, when you go to these five star and look down the corridor and yougo down and see who the guests are, it's the same thing. If you come from Spain, one of their preferred breakfast that's a toast, would grape tomato and a good olive oil. Yeah. they want a sweet thing.
[00:41:09] Thomas: Somebody wants eggs. Somebody doesn't want anything at all. So it takes so little to make a lot of people happy.
[00:41:15] Randall: I think there's somewhere on maybe you're a LinkedIn that you said something like you can't please everybody and you're not interested in pleasing everybody.
[00:41:22] Thomas: No, we're not. We can't and we won't. We have had situations where we have people entering the door, where we say to each other, the good thing about me and Anetta, we don't have to communicate we know exactly the basic decisions we agree on without even communicating. And we had a situation where we had somebody entering the gate in Kathmandu.
[00:41:39] Thomas: And we looked and we saw, sorry, this is wrong. You could see for the person he didn't belong here. So we told him that why don't we pay you the first night in this hotel further down the road? Because when you only have 17 rooms, one very negative guest can spoil the whole ambience you try to create.
[00:41:56] Thomas: So we don't care about the negative reviews. Of course we care. Yeah, but it's not like we compromise on our beliefs because we are afraid of having it. We don't care at all. Yeah. It's better to take the problems off front than it is to take them inside and let them grow to a disaster.
[00:42:13] Randall: The thing that I read that you had written is you say that you can't and you don't want to please all travelers.
[00:42:18] Randall: And that's just what we talked about. And from a business perspective, you know, I used to manage, financial advisors. One of the things I always told the financial advisors was that, One bad client precludes you from having another good client, right? So one bad traveler, one bad guest prevents you from giving somebody else a great experience because it takes up that spot, right?
[00:42:38] Randall: It's a veryone for one exchange.
[00:42:41] Randall: So you just reopened the restaurant at the hotel. As a restaurant person, myself, tell me a little bit about what the menu is, what your inspiration.
[00:42:50] Randall: We have a definition where we do dishes from all over the world, non local dishes from all over the world made from local ingredients.
[00:42:56] Thomas: That's our claim. And then today you have to have a menu that respects vegetarians, vegan, stuff like that. We don't make any specific, like I said, we have a vegetarian restaurants. We do need items we know from our travel and items we can make from available ingredients.
[00:43:17] Thomas: And within a price range, we know our guests will afford. So right now we have an Asian installation where we make our own satay, Indonesian satay with peanut butter sauce and our own igloos vegetables. We have a small Asian omelettes with mushrooms with soy or oyster sauce.
[00:43:36] Thomas: We have you know, momos, Nepali, Indian momos. When you're traveling Nepal, you have momos to strike more dumplings. And one of the, our favorite momos are called kotte, basically momos you fry so they get crispy with tofu and herbs inside. That's something we make because you have it everywhere.
[00:43:51] Thomas: It costs us nothing to make and you can prepare them and everybody likes it. So we have the Asian taste and then we make it traditional classics. We miss ourselves Caesar salad. You can't get a decent Caesar salad. Yeah. And actually in a lot of other countries, they destroy it with a lot of other items that has nothing to do with Caesar salad.
[00:44:09] Thomas: We make our own mayonnaise. We make my own take on a Vitello Tornato where I use a wheel tongue instead of wheel and the Tornato sauce. We add a little bit of wasabi to give it a special flair. Things where we can make our own touch with available things. And a menu that can be on one page because you have to respect the routines in the kitchen and make sure that things work in the fridge and yeah, the logistics.
[00:44:31] Thomas: So that's, that's kind of menu we're working on now. And then we have make brownies and a bagel. Nobody makes a bagel sandwich here with salmon and Philadelphia cream cheese, stuff like that. Things are not complicated.
[00:44:42] Randall: Yeah, sure. I like that. We'll work on wrapping this up. I respect your time.
[00:44:46] Randall: Really appreciate the conversation so far, but I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. Then I want to talk about the hotel a little bit more, but what's the most influential book you've ever read?
[00:44:55] Thomas: Well I always say I like Shimon De Beauvoir's To the Mortals in Motel. All men are mortal.
[00:45:02] Thomas: I think it's English. Yeah. All the men are mortal. Yeah. I like that book a lot Right now, I'm reading the Norwegian Cardo Glasgow, his autobiography series, his six books soul Story. I like Soul Story. I read, I don't watch television. I read. Yeah. Read. I don't, I never had a television since I left home when I was 14.
[00:45:20] Thomas: So I know if we read Michael Porter, business Advantage is Five Forces. It's one of my bibles from my marketing. Studies and Mike Lee Porter's competitive advantage.
[00:45:30] Randall: I have a lot of books.
[00:45:31] Randall: The most influential book I've ever read is, because of this book is how I framed this question is how to win friends and influence people.
[00:45:39] Randall: One is super informative and it really teaches you how to be a good adult to me.
[00:45:44] Thomas: So, great read, super informative, but it also introduced a lot of other historical figures. One of them being Theodore Roosevelt former U S president. And it's just interesting reading about how, for me, the practices that these other people did to help them be successful in their lives.
[00:46:01] Randall: And reading that book really kickstarted,My personal development journey to be where I'm at today. I don't typically reread books, but I'm rereading. There's an author Peter Maley, I think he writes fiction books. He was an author that moved from the UK to the South of France.
[00:46:19] Randall: I read his books as well. Yeah. Have you read hotel Pastiche? Yeah, I have.
[00:46:24] Thomas: Yeah. I like the first one better I love both of them, but the first one I can identify myself.
[00:46:29] Randall: Yeah I like his a lot. And then there's there's another it's a, nonfiction. It's written by Craig Carlson and Craig Carlson moved from United States to Paris. And he opened up a restaurant in Paris called Breakfast in America, because the only thing he missed about America was an American breakfast.
[00:46:47] Randall: So he loved Paris, loved France but missed an American breakfast. So his book's called Pancakes in Paris, and it's about his journey to open up the restaurant. What one piece, of advice would you give your younger self?
[00:47:00] Thomas: I can't really give my younger self an advice. If I should give advice, it should be my grandchildren. Because I thinkI can't really sayI've done something I would regret, but I can't, I've done
[00:47:09] Randall: what I want.
[00:47:09] Randall: Yeah, let me reframe the question a little bit. When I ask that, I don't mean to be what do you regret? What would you have done better? But like, through your journey so far, what's maybe one piece of advice or a couple pieces of advice that you wish you would've known sooner?
[00:47:23] Randall: Or, and you can think of it like, you know, what advice would you give your grandchildren? What's the one piece of advice that you want to pass on from your life's journey to them.
[00:47:31] Thomas: I call them wise words. I correct.
[00:47:34] Thomas: It's not necessarily my own. There's one that says you find a dry on the thin ice, meaning that a lot of people are bored or tired of what they're doing. And you know, you have to get out. You have to have something on stake to get this feeling. It's not necessarily something where you put your life, but in your own small universe, you have that.
[00:47:51] Thomas: And another thing is I tell friends a lot, the easiest thing in this world is to come up with arguments for not doing what you dream about, excuses for not doing what you dream about. I mean, let's say already now I can see my son. Yeah, but what about my kids? What about your parents?
[00:48:06] Thomas: What about your son? Yeah. What about the toilet? What about the health insurance? What about your retirement program or whatever? But you have a list that you can make the list so long with excuses that you end up being desperate or afraid not to do so you end up doing nothing. And then there's another one which nobody thinks about.
[00:48:22] Thomas: I spent a lot of time on artificial intelligence because I'm curious. And the problem is not to get the answer. You could get answered everything. The problem is to find the right questions. You understand? You know, there's so many opportunities, so many possibilities out there. So what should I ask now?
[00:48:38] Thomas: I don't know about you, but I've been in finance, I've been in music, I've been in fast moving consumer goods. I've been in online.It's not about educating yourself anymore. It's about changing businesses, industries, because every time you break the circles, you get a new network, you get new contacts, you get new relations, you get a selection of people across industries you can call.
[00:49:00] Thomas: I would work with my network professionally, make sure you have a contact base where you can actually describe who your important network, I don't have that because I know, but find out how to ask the right questions or as many questions as possible.
[00:49:13] Randall: Yeah.
[00:49:13] Thomas: I love
[00:49:13] Randall: that. I love to use chat GPT for almost a full year, I've really found the benefit of it. But I think your point is about, it can give you any information you want, but you have to type in the right prompt and the right prompt is asking the right question.
[00:49:29] Randall: If you ask it the wrong question, you're not going to get the right information. It's just same thing in life.
[00:49:33] Thomas: Months ago. I use chat GPT or some of the other ones as well. I said, Oh, how are we performing compared to the market? In other words, how are occupancy rates through since after COVID for hotels in Brisbane and in all Portugal?
[00:49:45] Thomas: And then I had my Excel, I uploaded it and I got an Excel, I put it in a graph, just so I can see how it was. It took me less than a minute. Oh, I hadn't known about Excel, I hadn't known about all these things. I wouldn't be able to ask questions. Right.
[00:49:57] Randall: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:49:58] Thomas: So how do you feel about the platform? I want to talk a little bit about some of the information I saw on booking. com. How do you like booking. com?
[00:50:05] Thomas: Listen, if it has been on any other industry in the world, where you have an intruder coming from Holland, taking out 20 percent of the pharmacy industry or the entertainment industry or the other, it would be an issue. It has slowly, slowly the last 10 years, they have taken 15 20 percent of the hospitality industry all over the world.
[00:50:26] Thomas: A Dutch company and send probably the money to Bahamas or somewhere else. I think it's a problem with the money they take out. That's what I think. But saying that, we use them tactically because I have to admit when I go to a new place, I go to Booking. com. If you're not on Booking. com, it do not exist.
[00:50:40] Thomas: In Katmandu, which was not on Booking. com, it didn't exist in Katmandu. They were at corners like we did in the old days and book a room and they paid when they arrived. Yeah. So we continued doing that here. And then what we have one or two rooms on booking.Com. And then we found out that like we do when we go to another country and not destination, we scan the margin on booking.com and then we call it ourselves and book directly.
[00:51:02] Thomas: Still we have a lot of people that book, you know, who admits that is right way to do it, but they still, book through booking. Com and when we ask them why they say it's because it's so easy to type in million And in any other industries convenience is something you pay for so we add 25% to our prices in booking. com
[00:51:18] Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So, so that it doesn't destroy our economy and they are good at last minute bookings if we have in a small motel, when we have set it in room zone, we have one day, you have one room, one day in a week, it's really hard to sell online. So you can sell them through booking. com. You use them tactically and we can just buy our mobile phone.
[00:51:38] Randall: I was impressed by the ratings on booking. com for you. So I just wanted to go over those quickly. Yeah.
[00:51:45] Thomas: So booking has, I think they have 7 categories. I think that they ask for like you as a guest to rate on a scale of one to 10, your staff is 9. 6 your comfort level of the hotels, a nine free wifi. You must have really fast wifi. It's a 9. 2 facilities, 8. 7 value for money, 8. 8 cleanliness, 9. 2 and location, which is Grosso, which is a 9. 1. So exceptional.
[00:52:14] Thomas: I'll say something about booking.Com. Listen, when I go to the toilet at the airport, I have to say whether I like my piss or not, but if I go to any services, if I talk with my NWIC provider, I have to say if the consultant did a good job or not. I think people are fed up. Yes. Reviewing everything and booking. com. You can't get out of Booting Concord unless you review.
[00:52:34] Thomas: You understand? Yeah. Or motivation is negative for something. So yeah. This line impresses me.
[00:52:39] Randall: There's a 1, 178 reviews. So almost 1, 200 people have reviewed and you have exceptional reviews. So congratulations. And. There's a few like people wrote reviews and I wanted to try to read a few of those since you might not have seen them, but one of them was funny.
[00:52:56] Randall: Funny in a good way, funny in like a Lisbon way. So one of them is the courtyard was beautiful spot to unwind with a glass of wine. The common room was also very inviting and friendly. The breakfast was served fresh and was delicious. I wish I would have stayed for a few more days. And then we'll skip to this one.
[00:53:14] Randall: It's a wonderful staff, super friendly and helpful. Great breakfast, great vibe. Location is awesome. Since the best view of Lisbon is 50 feet away, it is all downhill to the good things in town, sadly, it is all uphill at the end of the day, but it's good for your health.
[00:53:30] Thomas: We try to tell people to come up with the.
[00:53:35] Thomas: They have the sun on the back and it's, it's virtually deadly.
[00:53:39] Randall: Yeah. If anybody listening to this hasn't been to Lisbon before, it's a very, very hilly city. So yeah, but Thomas, before we wrap up any last questions, comments for me or our listeners.
[00:53:51] Thomas: I just have one thing. Something like this.
[00:53:54] Thomas: We are very, very, very focused and strategic on nothing we do is done coincident. Everything has hours, hours of strategic work and we have done session with our colleagues in the strategic community in Denmark, everything from our business plan to our financial we have a board, each member represents some of our interests.
[00:54:16] Thomas: So everything, there's nothing left to coincidences, I would say. So we are very, very strategically focused in all we do, even the music. I mean, we play only albums, you know, because everything we can do with there's some strategic thinking behind, Yeah, I'm curious to hear about you.
[00:54:32] Thomas: Yeah. I mean, what you have any questions for me? What do you want to know?
[00:54:35] Thomas: I told you when you first time I saw this with with the belly dancer, what is your interest in these things?
[00:54:41] Thomas: I love it. Don't get me wrong.Usually I don't do this, but I just, this is so strange.
[00:54:45] Randall: So I worked with an executive coach, like when my corporate career, I hired an executive coach to help me accelerate my career. And one of the lessons I learned from him, which would be part of my advice to my younger self is that.
[00:54:58] Randall: You get opportunities by talking to people, right? And then in talking to people you expand your network, you expand your perspective and you learn things along the way. So one of the things that I've learned that I tell everybody is if you want to do a new thing, you know, go find the person that's doing that thing and have a conversation with them.
[00:55:17] Randall: And a lot of people are reluctant to have those conversations because they feel like it's a burdensome, which it's not burdensome for a lot of people to like share their journey and sort of go back in their memory bank and recall how they got from where they were at to where they're at now. And so I love to have conversations like this because one, I'm bad at small talk, butit helps inform me.
[00:55:41] Randall: And that I think everybody has a story to share and tell. Soif I didn't have a podcast, I would want to talk to you anyways. And then, so the thought sort of just struck me that if I'm going to try to broaden my own horizons by, you know, reaching out to Thomas who runs a hotel in Lisbon, I can help inform other people who might be reluctant to, you know, be assertive and reach out and try to talk to strangers.
[00:56:07] Randall: So that's how this sort of, came to be.
[00:56:09] Thomas: And people are surprised to know how willing people are when you reach out to them. It was the barrier to just ask for help. And every time you do that, you'd be surprised how open people are and friendly and now willing they are, if they can help, they do it.
[00:56:24] Randall: Yeah, from the book How to Win Friends and Influence People the author Dale Carnegie makes a point is that people love talking about themselves. I don't think it. It like in a bad way, like it's, it's not like people patting themselves on the back, but I think to have like a genuinely curious conversation this and share your story with me and me share a little bit with you, it's enjoyable for me and I hope it's enjoyable for you to like, this is what I've done in my life.
[00:56:50] Randall: And Randall, I hope that informs you. And maybe a listener or two picks up on this as well. And, you know,I just published a new episode last week and I published a short clip from that episode on Instagram earlier. And then one of my friends watched the clip and in the clip, the guest was saying what her most.
[00:57:08] Randall: Influential book was, and I forget the title of the book, but my buddy watched the clip. He was interested in the book. He's like, I just ordered the book, like that's success for me for the podcast. Hopefully now he reads that and then that helps him accomplish something that he wanted to accomplish.
[00:57:23] Randall: And if I played a small part in that, that's all I want.
[00:57:26] Randall: One of my old favorite bands from the 90s is a British band called Terror Vision, Britpop. My favorite album by them is How to Make Friends in Influence People I
[00:57:35] Randall: didn't know that was a, I have to check that out. That's amazing.
[00:57:39] Thomas: I'm going to send it to
[00:57:39] Randall: you. Yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. I'll have to check that out.
[00:57:43] Thomas: So,
[00:57:43] Randall: Thomas Tinks thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate you going to overtime and making this a longer of an episode to quench my curiosity, but I appreciate the journey you've shared with us today.
[00:57:55] Randall: I appreciate your, your motivation for doing what you're doing, and I wish you nothing but future success with your platform, the hotel and the restaurant. And hopefully you know, we'll be able to grab a drink someday. Together in Lisbon,
[00:58:10] Thomas: See you around!
[00:58:11] Randall: See you around.
[00:58:11] Thomas: Cheers.
[00:58:13] AI: Cheers. And that's it for today's conversation here on the Randall Osché podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.
[00:58:20] AI: And we hope that you've enjoyed listening as much as we've enjoyed recording it. Many, many thanks to our guests today for sharing their knowledge, their experience, and their life lessons. If you found today's conversation. Insightful, interesting, inspiring. Please join our growing community by subscribing to the Randall O'Shea podcast on your favorite podcast platform and never, ever miss another episode.
[00:58:45] AI: We'd love to hear your feedback. So keep the community alive by sharing your takeaways from today's episode and use the hashtag Randall O'Shea podcast. Your feedback and interaction fuels our continued efforts to build a safe space for meaningful, long form conversations. So thank you so much for the support until next time.
[00:59:07] AI: Stay curious, stay inspired and keep the conversation going.
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