The Randal Osché Podcast: Season 1 | Episode 20
Join me on The Randall Osché Podcast as I sit down with Alex Terry, a former investment banker turned boutique hotel owner in Mallorca, Spain. Alex shares his incredible journey from the high-pressure corporate world to creating a fulfilling life as an entrepreneur. Learn how he and his wife, Susan, boldly decided to leave London and move to Mallorca to build a business and new life from scratch.
What You'll Learn:
Taking the Leap: Overcoming fear and making a life-changing career move.
Building a Dream: How Alex and his wife planned and executed their vision.
Lessons in Resilience: Tackling challenges in a new country and industry.
Finding Fulfillment: Why progress and purpose bring true happiness.
Redefining Success: The balance between professional achievement and family life.
Don’t miss this inspiring episode about taking risks, redefining success, and following your dreams.
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
Own Your Career Path: You’re responsible for finding fulfillment in your work; don’t expect a company or boss to do it for you.
Face Fears to Move Forward: Alex emphasizes that taking risks, even when scared, is key to pursuing your dreams.
Tackle Goals Step-by-Step: He broke down the process of transitioning careers into small, manageable steps, like market research.
Focus on What’s in Your Control: Alex advises focusing energy on things you can influence, making challenges easier to handle.
Define Success Personally: For Alex, success isn’t just a thriving business but a balanced life that includes family time.
SHOW NOTES
Questions this conversation has Randall Pondering
"How can we shift from fear-based decisions to action-based ones?"
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.
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. Randall Osché podcast on your favorite podcast platform, and never ever miss another episode.
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The Randall Osché Podcast - Alexander Terry (Episode 21)
Alex: [00:00:00] I would just say go for it there is never a perfect day to start a business or to change your life or your career, whatever it might be, just go for it.
AI: All the problems that you think there are, almost all of them will get sold one way or another just go for it That's what I would say to anybody who thinks they can't do it or it's impossible Just go for it. And you know what if it doesn't work out if you fail you've learned something. 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.
So that you can, as Randall says, learn their lessons without their scars. So, whether you're tuning in on your daily commute, or [00:01:00] 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.
You made it
Randall: Alex Terry, welcome to the show. For our listeners who don't know you yet, why don't you go ahead and take a moment and introduce yourself.
Alex: Thanks, Randall. Yeah, I'm Alex Terry from London, but for the last 11 years uh, we've been living in Mallorca and running and owning a boutique hotel in the middle of the island. And in a past life, I was an investment banker in the UK and yeah, that's kind of me in a nutshell, I suppose.
Randall: So how did we get here? Checked out your LinkedIn investment banker to [00:02:00] boutique hotel owner. How did we get here?
Alex: Yeah. Obviously, you know, you don't make the leap from country and different career path, on a whim. My wife and I were working in London together and we had long hours, we both had client facing roles. We were out all the time. Every weekend we were just recovering to do the same thing again the following week. And you know, after, I think I was in the city for eight or nine years. And Susan and I were living in London together for five of those years.
And after a while, we just thought to ourselves, there's got to be more to life than this. We can't do this for the next 40 years. We were earning a lot of money in London, but we were spending a lot of money as well. London's a very expensive place. And I remember on the train home one night together on a Friday night, we sort of said like, yeah, there's got to be more to life.
than this. And that was the seed that was planted. 18 months later we were living in Mallorca. So yeah, you know, the stresses and strains of what we call the rat
[00:03:00] race in the city. Like I say, you earn a lot of money, but they take a lot from you. And I just, I didn't want to sit behind a desk for 40 years.
Randall: Yeah I feel that. What's the name of your hotel?
Alex: It's called Hotel Sono now. It's a little boutique hotel right in the middle of Mallorca.
Randall: Okay, and so one of the things I always think about, I tell myself and I say it all the time that people probably mention it on every episode of the podcast so far, is that As humans, I think that we do a great job of overestimating what we can accomplish in a short period of time while underestimating what we can accomplish over a longer period of time.And that's different for different people from different perspectives, but from my perspective, to do what you did, but to do it in 18 months seems like a short period of time to be like, I am pulling up stakes in London.
I am going to be a boutique hotel owner. And to make that transition, we know what the catalyst was. Yeah. But maybe what were some of the steps between that train ride and, you know, opening day at the hotel?
Alex: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I've never thought of the
[00:04:00] time period as long or short, but what I do remember very clearly is once that seed was planted, that was it.
But the train had left the station. We were a hundred percent dedicated to this new dream. Every single night for 18 months when we got back from work, we'd open up the laptop, we'd be doing research, looking at places that we could, you know, buy or take over, analysis of the competitors, trying to price stuff.
It was every single night for 18 months, couple of hours every evening and on the weekends more. So I felt like we were quite well prepared when we got here naively or, or not. When those 18 months were really, really focused and highly energetic on making this dream happen.
And as well, because there was two of us, i. e. my wife and I, it felt like, you know, we could bounce ideas off each other and we could throw things into the mix that wouldn't get ridiculed. And over time, our dream kind of, came into focus and we got to a point where we knew what we wanted to
[00:05:00] do.
We knew how to do it and then we just had to go and do it. So for me, 18 months didn't feel like a short amount of time, but I do remember those 18 months being very focused.
Randall: That's excellent. When you made the decision on the train was it always owning a hotel or owning a property to escape the rat race or did you have to first start by like.
Weeding out, bad ideas for good ideas.
Alex: Well, yes, very good question. It was originally gonna be a hotel, a little hotel in Cornwall in England, in the southwest of England. And that was in 2012 we started thinking about that. And then that summer, people may or may not remember, there was like, something like four weeks of nonstop rain in July.
And the railways were closed, and people couldn't get down to Cornwall, and the weather was terrible. We sort of looked at each other and went, maybe Cornwall's not the best idea. That kind of put a pin in Cornwall. And then my wife Susan already had family in Mallorca.
And we used to come here a lot on holiday. And so it kind of was the natural [00:06:00] second choice. And as soon as we thought about Mallorca, that was it. That was definitely going to be our number one choice at that point. And again, it's just, it's having this idea.
We want to do something different, and then just getting more and more focused into, you know, where you want that dream to go. And once we've made the decision of Mallorca, there was no ing and ah ing after that. It was that decision had been made, next decision, you know.
Randall: Yeah, I like that.
I think a lot of people they waffle on things, they might not like their day job, they might feel like they're trapped, but I think where a lot of people live, they live in this space of like, I don't like what I, where I am, but I don't know where I want to go, but I'm also not going to put in the work to take that deliberate action to figure things out.
I don't quite know. how or why that happens. I'm also not a psychologist, but I just find it interesting. I think that there's a lot of people that are, like, where you were, and they know they want to be somewhere else, but they don't have the deliberate focus for
[00:07:00] 18 months to figure things out.
Alex: I would completely agree with that. And also, people are scared. People are like, there's a natural sense of being scared with change.Every year at the hotel, we have numerous people that say to us during their visit, Oh, I would love to do what you do. And I say to them, why don't you? And the different types of excuses I hear, are, yeah, maybe next year, or I can't this year because of X, Y, or Z, it doesn't really matter why.
Most people that I meet are just too scared to make that leap into the unknown. And I always liken it to You know, we get a lot of people at the hotel that, beyond the first step of saying they want to change their life. And I always come up with the analogy that you guys are looking over the edge of the cliff, but you're not prepared to jump.
And at some point, you have to jump off that cliff. It's the only way. To change whatever it might be, in my case it was my career, it could be anything. At some point you have to jump into the unknown, and that's scary. And a lot of people say,
[00:08:00] maybe tomorrow.
Randall: How did you handle that fear?
I guess one, did you have it, and then two, how did you overcome it?
Alex: Number one, I had that fear terribly. Ever since I was 16, I have been working all the way through university. I worked for big companies, you know, and so at the end of every month, I always have my paid packet. So this was the first time where I literally was not earning any money, I was only spending money.
And so how did I deal with that? Well, number one, I didn't burn any bridges when I left the city, had a very open chat with my head of department. And I said, look, this is what I want to do. I feel like it's something I want to do. I have to do now. But, you know, if it doesn't work out, can I give you a call?
And he was really nice. He said, yeah, if it doesn't work out, give me a call in a year. We can, potentially discuss. So that helped me sleep at night. And that was really important because the stress is, stress is really there. Honestly, if you're not used to being an entrepreneur, the first time you do it, it can be, well, certainly for me, it was very daunting.
And then the way I got over it is I
[00:09:00] worked really hard and I just took every one problem at a time to just try and overcome the hurdles that were in front of me. But, but I was amazed at how much help we got from the local community, from family, from friends, all wanting to help. And it made me realize that the vast majority of people, they really want small businesses to succeed.
And that was a really nice learning for me.
Randall: Yeah. I don't know a better way to put this, but I think there's therapy in the work. I was working with an executive coach who happens to be on one of the episodes of the podcast Don Asher. And I was, talking to him about you know, a challenge at work or something like that at the time.
And he said, just do the work. Sometimes it's just as simple as that, you might not, like it, you might not know what's gonna come next, but the only way to, get through it is by doing the work, and I find, relief in that.
Alex: I would 100 percent agree, just, when you're faced with a challenge, whatever the challenge might be, you just have to attack the problem that's in front of you.
Don't worry about all the other problems that might come or might
[00:10:00] not come, or even the problems that you know are there. Just got to tackle one problem at a time and it gives you a nice sense of achievement as well once you've, you know, completed the first task and the second task and it builds momentum.
Randall: Yeah, I think that a lot of, I mean, I'm guilty of it as well, but I think you got to talk yourself back is going from where you were at on the train to opening day at the hotel, that's 18 months of work. And if you think of it as like 18 months of work or all like one project you have to accomplish can be overwhelming, but you didn't accomplish it all at once.
Every evening you took, you worked on it every weekend, I'm sure you worked on it. It's like swinging an axe to chop down a tree. It doesn't happen with one swing of the axe. You have to keep chopping and chopping, and eventually the tree is going to fall.
And that's how you accomplish, you know, big or small goals.
Alex: Completely. And it's not, it's not revolutionary. If you've got a big problem in front of you, you've got to take that first step. And it might be a journey of a thousand miles, but, you've got to start it.
And, there'll be joys and hurdles along the way, but it's all
[00:11:00] part of the fun. That that has to be part of the fun. Otherwise you'll never succeed in it. That journey, those 18 months was so much fun because we were making decisions. You know, when I was an investment banker, I was involved in multi billion dollar deals and none of it felt that satisfying to me, but then when Susan and I were making the breakfast menu in the hotel, I got so much joy from that because we were, it was our decision, it was our input and therefore our outcome and it had a real impact on me.
Even though it was in the grand scheme of things, not that important. But for me, it felt important and certainly much more important than multi billion dollar deals in the city.
Randall: What's on the breakfast menu?
Alex: We have an a la carte breakfast menu here. We hate buffets. So we only do we make everything fresh here.
I'm very happy to send you the menu. We've got about 15 items on the menu for eggs. You know, we make our own granola, pancakes a few, Spanish options. Like local breakfasts and probably the favorite one is eggs benedicts that we make the sauce fresh every day. So that's a favorite.
Randall: [00:12:00] What's your favorite?
Alex: I probably like we have a breakfast called Bambali, which is bread, oil. tomato, bit of salt and some ham and cheese. And it's a bit, it's a very my Yorkie kind of breakfast. That's probably my favorite.
Randall: I like that. Getting back to what you were saying, got sidetracked by food.
Tony Robbins, I think it's maybe part of a bigger, like quote, but basically he says, progress equals happiness. And, In doing the work, I've also found, progress does equal happiness. I think, if you live in that space between, I don't like where I'm at, but I don't know where I want to go, but I don't want to put in the work to, like, get there. I think that that's, the, no man's land of how do people exist there.
But I think if you start, you know, swinging that axe to chop down the tree that progress leads to happiness.
Alex: And I think a lot of people live in that space. So many people tell me they don't like the job that they do. It's honestly, it's unbelievable. Owning a hotel is quite an interesting psychological experiment because you meet all sorts of different people from different backgrounds.
And in a boutique hotel like
[00:13:00] ours, with only eight bedrooms, you get to know them really well because we work every day here. So we get to know our guests really well, and so many people don't like their jobs. And it always amazes me how, how few people do anything about it. And the only person that's ever gonna change your career is you.
Doesn't matter how nice you think your boss is, or how nice you think your company is. They're looking out for themselves. I'm sorry, but they are. You're the only person that can change your career path, or whatever path, to bring you happiness.
Randall: I think, working for large corporations, you're just a round in there.
Maybe unless you're the CEO, you can have an impact on the business or one of the top executives. But most people, even like higher level managers are just rounding errors. I've worked in wealth management as well. And you know, clients get upset and, or they used to when I did it.
I'm going to take all my money out of here. I was like, Do it. Like, I would hate to see you go, but like, it's not going to make a difference to us because you're a rounding error. We're also rounding errors. We're cogs in the wheel. We're not that
[00:14:00] important. But when you build something, when you create something and when you're doing that for yourself and following a passion, that matters,those conversations that you have impact people and they leave your hotel one step closer to taking the leap of faith and changing their lives because of the interaction that they've had with you.
Alex: Yeah. And I totally agree that, you know, to your first point, when I left HSBC, which was my last bank that they employed 300, 000 people globally.
Right. So if I turned up to work or didn't turn up to work, it made no difference at all to HSBC. I was a tiniest cog in a huge system. But now when I'm in the hotel and I make decisions about, you know what we're going to do for dinner tomorrow night in the restaurant, that, that, that feels, feels really important to me.
And it's so much more satisfying than
Randall: anything I ever did before. So yeah.
Uh, Oh I've been waiting. I put this in my notes. Because I didn't want to forget it. But have you ever watched the movie A Good Year?
Alex: I haven't. I do like movies. I watch
[00:15:00] movies, but I've never even heard of it. Sorry. Okay.
Randall: No worries.
That's going to be your homework. Okay. I know you weren't expecting your homework. There's an author. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Peter Maylee, maybe M A Y L E, something like that. He wrote a couple of different books, but I'm not going to give you much detail cause I don't want to spoil anything for you.
He was from the UK. He and his wife moved to the South of France and one of his books was like a year in Provence, I suppose. Yeah. And each chapter was a month. Each chapter he wrote about like what their experience was to finding a place to renovating it to being done with the renovations and his journey throughout 12 months.
He also wrote a book. It was called a good year. They made a good year into a movie. I forget the director, but Russell Crowe's in it, but it's like a Russell Crowe movie that nobody knows about besides, besides me. ButI think that that movie would resonate with you if you get around to watching
[00:16:00] it.
Alex: I will watch it and come back to you with my feedback.
Randall: Yeah, the book, diverges from the movie a little bit. So they're both good in their own, own right. Okay.
Alex: I've always got a book on the go, so I'll probably start with the book.
Randall: Yeah. Let's back up a moment.
How did you get into investment banking?
Alex: Well, the short answer is my dad was an investment banker. And he used to tell me some of the most amazing stories about what he got up to. So from about 16 onwards, that was kind of all I wanted to do. It's not easy to get into investment banking.
So it's a little bit easier then than it is now. So, how did I get into it? I just, you know, I studied hard at university, managed to get a very good result, then I did a master's. One of the best universities in the UK in sort of management sciences. From there, I I started life off as a trader.
I was a German government bond trader and I did that for 6 months. And it really wasn't for me. I wasn't a very good trader. But of course I'd spent all of my education kind of heading towards finance. And so
[00:17:00] from there, I phoned up a friend from university who would become a banker.
And I literally just phoned him and I said, listen not really enjoying my job now as a trader. I'm not very good at it, but if there's anything going in your team, let me know and, he phoned me back saying, I think we might have something for you. So I suppose that's another example of me not really enjoying what I was doing and being proactive about how to change it.
Randall: Yeah, I think the, you know, just knowing you in the 25 minutes we've been talking but it seems like you've always had this knack for, taking deliberate action, understanding where you want to get to, and then doing the work that you need to do to get you from point A to point B As well as like, you know, I have a also from Don Asher, but you get jobs by talking to people, you talk to people and you have the opportunity to become an investment banker.
But was that something that you took from your dad about taking deliberate action? Because it seemed very like from when you made the decision, maybe I think you said from like 16 on, you'd always wanted to do it. Like at 16, I want to be a professional football player.
But I don't know
[00:18:00] what the chances are, but like, hey, that's what I wanted to do because I was 16. But you were like, I want to be an investment banker. I'm gonna go to university. I'm gonna study hard. I'm gonna get a master's. How did that manifest in you how did you know that that's what you needed to do?
You
Alex: Well, both my parents are kind of highly educated. And again, from an early age, they were always very, proactive towards me to be independent. I'm one of four children. So we had a sort of big family, we were a loud family as well. So you always had to be loud to get your point across and you always had to be kind of forthright if you want it to be heard and my parents were very keen on me being independent and if you want something go for it.
You know, at 18, my mom and dad said, you're on your own now. There's always a bed here for you, but you know, good luck. There's a lot of world out there to enjoy and explore. So I kind of always felt quite independent because my parents pushed me that way. But then the investor, the reason of investment banking was because it was, my dad had been an investment banker in the eighties and the nineties.
And the
[00:19:00] stories were just unbelievable. You'd go to Singapore to sign a document, you know, first class all the way, five star hotels, champagne at every turn. It sounded really interesting to me.
Randall: Is that what your experience was?
Alex: Well, no, it was the exact opposite.
So I had all these stories about what my dad had done in the 80s and 90s and then I got into investment banking in 2006. I had a couple of good years and then the big financial crash of 08, 09 happened. And that was you know, that was it. It was morale started going down. Job security started going down.
Pay started going down. All the sexy deals started disappearing. It just became a well paid desk job in the end. So I could probably include the financial crash of 08, 09 as having a big impact on my career path as well.
Randall: Getting back to the hotel, but you not only had to switch your career, but you also switched countries, right?
from where you're living to where you're living now. Was that part of
[00:20:00] the, the calculus at the time that you're not only going to own a hotel, own a property and you're going to run it, but you're also, you know, it was either the Cornwall or my Orca. So you were comfortable with that decision 'cause your wife had family there or,
Alex: yeah.
Yes, but I was 32 when we moved out here. Susan was 26. You know, I wouldn't say we were naive, but we just, we were so driven to do it. There's always gonna be problems or challenges that you have to overcome. So yeah, moving countries is a challenge. Moving careers is a challenge.
But so what? It's fun, it's exciting and yes, I had to learn Spanish, you know, oh, I came here with no Spanish that would be so easily a reason to put somebody off doing it, but so what? I can learn it. If I try and find reasons not to do something, I'll never do anything.
So yes, it was scary. And there were days that, the stress levels were really high. But you know, you just gotta go back to the same thing and just take
[00:21:00] every problem as it comes. And eventually you solve it, and that is the case in most things in life.
Randall: Do you tend to look at challenges as a painful, difficult thing, or do you tend to look at challenges as an opportunity?
Alex: It kind of depends on the challenge, but most of the time I would err towards an opportunity.
I wouldn't say I've had, like, huge challenges in my life. But the challenges that I have faced, I don't shy away from them. I, I like to take on challenges. I like achieving things. It's just a part of my personality.
I do like to achieve things.
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.
And you can catch the show notes and other resources at randallosche.com and now back to the episode
Randall: What are some unexpected,
[00:22:00] surprises. Like, what surprises have you had running the hotel? What's one good surprise that you've had that you didn't anticipate, and what's one bad surprise that you didn't anticipate before you started running the hotel?
Alex: Okay. A good surprise was the amount of, sort of, support we got locally for wanting to start a business here. It's just a small village that we're in a couple of thousand people. The fact that we wanted to come here and start a business, I think the locals are really open towards that and they could have been very close, you know, you get stories of foreigners going into small villages in the Mediterranean and, almost becoming outcasts, but here in Selva, which is where the hotel is, we had a great welcome, so that was a really nice surprise.
A bad surprise. I didn't have any idea how much work it takes to keep a big building looking good.
Randall: Who does the work?
Alex: Well, my wife will be listening to this. So this is another thing that we discovered during the first year of doing our business. When we first started. We both
[00:23:00] wanted to do bits of everything and it ended up being quite chaotic. The first five, six months were extra stressful because we both wanted to be involved in everything.
And so we kind of took a step back. We closed the hotel for two days in that first year in May. And we said, look, come on, we need to think about how we delegate. Authority here andhow we achieve our tasks. We decided to compartmentalize things. So when you say who does the work we both cookand then I do the accounts.
My background is a good reason that I do that. And I, help with the garden, I do the swimming pool, maintain the garden and stuff like that. And Susan's much more on the marketing side. She deals with the cleaners and and probably loads more stuff that I've forgotten off my head.
Randall: Susan probably does the most work but you know, happy wife, happy life.Yeah. Good way to recover that. No, I think I can see it being chaos. I mean, it's the same thing in any business or any office, right? People have to have roles and responsibilities. Just because you can do everything doesn't mean you
[00:24:00] should be doing everything.
Yeah. I think that's important to understand.
Alex: It was amazing how quickly chaos turned into order. Once I knew my defined role, I don't know, I just relaxed a bit and I knew what I had to do. I didn't have to get involved in telling the cleaners what to do.
I didn't have to get involved in, you know, where we gonna advertise, where we gonna market. That was, that was not my job. I could, leave that to someone else in my case, Susan, and I can concentrate on things that I think I'm good at or at least I could have an influence in positively.
Randall: One of the things that we discussed before we hit record here is that. Making the decision to leave your corporate life and start running the hotel was the best decision you've ever made.
And you're so grateful that you made it at 32 earlier in life rather than later in life. So talk to me a little bit about that, if you don't mind sharing.
Alex: Yeah, so, I mean, how do I describe this? Yeah, I mean, a lot of people, again, that we see in the hotel say, Oh, I'd love to do what you do when we
[00:25:00] retire.
And I say to them, if I'm still doing this, it's 65, 70 years old. It's impossible. You've got to do these things when you're young. I was probably about a year away from getting a promotion that would have put me on so much money that I wouldn't have been able to get out. This is how the big corporates do it.
You know, they suck you in with money. And I knew that I wasn't very far away from me never being able to get out, and that scared me. Because a lot of what happens in the corporate world is just keeping up with the Joneses. As your salary goes up, your spending goes up. And I knew plenty of people that were in their forties and fifties that were still looking forward to pay day, even though they were on, quarter of a million pounds a year and more because, they had big mortgage kids in private school, second homes.
And so I was so lucky that I realized quite early on that life is more tha n just your bank account. Life has to be more than just your bank account. Again, Susan and I we bounce off each other so well. And we just realized that we could give it a go. And if it
[00:26:00] didn't work out, that's okay as well.
We were still young enough to be able to take these type of risks. Where, you know, we didn't have any children at the time. There was nothing really that apart from our careers that meant we had to live in London. So, that's kind of the reason that we just thought, let's do it.
Randall: If you don't mind me asking, how did you finance the hotel?
Alex: Yeah, so I got made redundant from my first bank. I've been working there just over five years, so I got a really good redundancy package and I managed to get a job in another bank straight away. So I didn't miss it.
I didn't miss any any earnings from that particular year. And from that redundancy pay and savings, of course, we would save that money. But from that, we were able to get married and start this business. So that's basically where it came from. And actually it's funny because it, The bank that I got my redundant from, I remember it so clearly, it was, of course, just post financial crash.
It was the worst day of my career, which turned into the best day of my career. Had I not got made redundant there on that day, I'm absolutely
[00:27:00] convinced I'd still be in London working for a bank.
Randall: Getting back to like challenges or opportunities. I think that in moments of, I will say pain, I think those are opportunities, exactly what you said.
Like I've been in the position similar in my career and it was a miserable day. Then I look at what happened next, and I'm grateful that it happened because the things that came next wouldn't have happened otherwise, and those other things made my life more fulfilling and more beautiful.
Alex: Yeah, I would completely agree. I remember the day really clearly and that moment when you're told yeah, you're going to get made redundant. I mean, I couldn't even focus. I didn't know what to do next. I was panicking about, you know, how am I going to pay for anything from now on?
And it is very scary time, but once the dust had settled. You have to turn these moments into an opportunity. If you don't, then you just, you wallow in the mire, you have to turn them into an opportunity. And what do you do when you get married done?
All you've got to do, what's the next challenge? Start looking for a job, you know, don't worry about
[00:28:00] all the other things that, what you might have to pay for in six months. First problem, find a job. And then from there you start going through the process. And again, it's all about getting over challenges and making that first step
to progress.
Randall: What's some advice that you would give your younger self?
Alex: I would probably say, don't worry, don't waste one ounce of energy on problems that you cannot solve. And I learned that here and from starting a business, I never really thought about it before when I was in the corporate world, but when we first came here, I spent a lot of time and energy worrying about problems that were completely out of my control and they would stress me out and I would lose sleep over it, but then after a while.
I realize there's nothing I can do about problem X or problem Y. So don't even worry about it. Just try and focus on stuff that you can have an influence over, is what I would probably say to my younger self. And the other thing I would say to my younger self is, any problem you have now, you probably won't even remember the problem in two
[00:29:00] years.
So try not to stress about stuff too much. Most of the time stuff works itself out. You know, don't worry too much about the long term future.
Randall: If you had to like bundle up the advice that you would give to say your guests that come to the hotel that like when I retire I want to do this or you have the greatest job in the world I wish I could do what you're doing. What advice would you give them?
Alex: If some well and people do say to me to ask quite a lot I would just say go for it there is never a perfect day to start a business or to change your life or your career, whatever it might be, just go for it.
All the problems that you think there are, almost all of them will get sold one way or another just go for it That's what I would say to anybody who thinks they can't do it or it's impossible Just go for it. And you know what if it doesn't work out if you fail you've learned something, you know.
Randall: Yeah, you've learned something.
You've made some good relationships.
Alex: It's not wasted. It's not
[00:30:00] waste of time. It's not wasted energy. It might cost you some money, but that's part of your education.
Randall: Yeah. I think another thing I always like to say is that there's always a price of education.
That price can manifest as money for tuition. It can manifest as like time invested into something that maybe didn't work out. I'm sure when you started running the hotel, you did things the way you thought they should be done. That didn't turn out well. You had to pivot, course correct, et cetera, but that's the price that you had to pay to learn how to run a hotel, right?
Alex: Completely. And that still happens now. The worst thing to do is not to make a decision, right? So we make decisions all the time that, you know. we think are good and then, problem three or problem seven later, we can't solve them. We say, okay, well, we can't do that. Or we have to change tact and like you say pivot.
But at least I know now that it's not an option. If I don't do anything, I'll always wonder. And that was another real big motivator for starting a business and changing my career. Cause I thought to myself, if it
[00:31:00] fails, then I've given it a go. If I don't give it a go. I know that I'm gonna get to 60 or 50 or whatever and regret not trying,
Randall: I'm just looking up a quote. 'cause I want to include it, but I also don't want to misquote it.
Alex: Okay.
I've got a great quote as well that I that gives me a little smile. Every time I think about it, I think it was Gandhi that said it. And it was, I'll be misquoting, but it was something like, you Westerners, you are so stupid. You sacrifice your body in your twenties and thirties to earn money.
And then in your fifties and sixties, you spend that money to regain your health. And that sums up the corporate world, in my opinion. You sacrifice everything to earn money. And then what do you do with that money later in life? You just spend it to regain your health.
Randall: The idea of retirement always seemed backwards to me.
I'm gonna retire to do these things when I got back pain, when my knees are hurt, like, when I'm old and grumpy. I get that you have to earn money to, maybe go on trip to go hiking, but, if I do that when I'm 65 or 70, who knows if I'm
[00:32:00] gonna be around that long, or if I'm gonna be physically capable of doing the thing, so, I just always, Always found the idea to be backward from like being a kid, make this make sense to me Yeah, but now that I'm an adult supposedly like still doesn't make sense to me
Alex: Yeah, and I would say the same thing, you're never gonna be as fit as you are today. You're never gonna be
as knowledgeable as you are now. Now is the time to do things. Don't plan for 40 years in the future. Because you never know what's going to happen in life.
Randall: Yeah. Getting back to the conversation about decision making, there's this quote by Theodore Roosevelt that I always think about.
It goes, In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. Next best thing you can do is the wrong thing. And the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Alex: Yep, yep. Again, it was always, you know, driven home to me that the worst decision you can make is no decision.
And again, that's in all walks of life, I would suggest. Because this is what we said five minutes ago. Even a wrong decision has value because you've learned something.
Randall: Yeah, agreed.
[00:33:00] The other thing I think for the people, if there's anybody listening
that are struggling to make the decision or they don't know what to do, but they're just living in this place of, I don't like where I'm at, but I also don't know where I want to go, and I'm not taking the steps to get out of where I'm at, because perhaps they're scared. One of the things that helped me it still helps me to this day, but if you're fearful, identify what you're fearful of.
And typically, if you take time to identify what you're fearful of, that helps lessen that fear. It's easy to be fearful of the unknown, but if you work through what you're actually afraid of, typically that lessens the fear and lessens the anxiety, and I've been doing this for so long, thinking through this, I jump to, what the worst case scenario possibly could be and if it's no one will die I don't care like no one will die like As bad as you think it's going to be, is anybody going to die?
No. Move forward. Proceed. No one's going to die.
[00:34:00] Alex: Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I agree. Theory of the unknown. We're all scared of the unknown to a certain extent, but there's so much help out there now online. You know, there's so many tools that we, that you can draw on now, which you know, a lot of them weren't there 11 years ago or 13 years ago when we first started our journey.
But there were tools around it and, whatever that might be there's so much help that of people that have already done it. When I wanted to leave the city, there was a website and it was called escape the city. com and it was like, a forum and you just write whatever you want on the forum.
And I said, I'm thinking about leaving the banking world and I want to go and open a hotel in, Majorca, any advice. The positive reaction gave me such a morale boost. Again, you can use that to your advantage. I'd never heard of the forum before.
I think somebody mentioned it. And I think I did a short interview for them. Once I'd kind of moved to Mallorca, but that initial, just writing down my ideas for people to listen to and what was their reaction going to be, you know, were people going to tell me I was being stupid, but no,
[00:35:00] everything came back positive.
And it just gave me that morale boost to continue. And those little things are so helpful and there's so much more of that stuff out there now.
Randall: Yeah. One of the things I've realized from doing the podcast and interviewing folks like yourself is nobody typically gets to where they're at without support.
And you've mentioned it a couple of times earlier about support from your friends and family support from the local community support online from the people that were responding to your inquire, your blog posts. It's hard for me to ask for support.
it's hard for me to accept it. I think humans, or maybe this is like an American thing, I'm not sure, is like, we try to do everything on our own. And that's a recipe for disaster.
Alex: Yeah, I've never had a problem asking for help, personally. Because I always think that if someone helps me, I will make a mental note to do whatever I can to help them back when they need it.
And I always think, you're giving forward. Right. So if someone helps me, okay. Make sure I help someone else, you know, in the
[00:36:00] future in some way or another. Like I said, I've personally never had a problem with asking for help. I like to be able to do things all on my own, but as you quite rightly said, it's impossible.
The burden is too much. You have to ask for help sometimes. If it's done in the right way at the right moment, I don't think you should have any guilt at all for asking for help.
Randall: I think people want you to. I don't understand the disconnect there because I would want people to ask me for assistance.
There's like no greater joy that brings me yeah, you can learn from my lessons and maybe my pain and the investment that I put into learning that lesson now has a higher ROI. Cause I'm sharing that with you.
Alex: It's really interesting the way you look at it. Now you look at it from the other perspective and you say, what is it like when you receive a request for help and you like it?
So again, if you're scared to ask for help, think about it from the opposite way. The person you're asking for help will probably be very happy to help because they feel wanted, they feel needed and they can, impart knowledge and
[00:37:00] wisdom on that person. And that's a nice feeling to have.
Randall: Yeah, exactly. What's the most influential book you've ever read?
Alex: These days I read to relax and to kind of, wind down at the end of the day. But when I was youngerI would probably say one of Richard Branson's early autobiographies. I think it was called Screw It, Let's Do It or Losing My Virginity.
I can't remember which one it was, but I remember apart from the title, I remember a lot of it to this day, which was kind of Richard Branson's idea of, Say yes to any opportunity and then work out later how to do it. And that's you know, I still try and live that philosophy now.
We get all sorts of funny requests at this hotel. I always say yes, because almost invariably there's a way to accommodate that request or to solve that problem. And it's just a more positive way of looking at life, I think, by saying yes. Yes to this, yes to that, you know, there's solutions to everything.
So Richard Branson would probably be, that would probably be an influence I took from an earlier, which I probably read it 20 years ago.
[00:38:00] Yeah,
Randall: I have a couple of his books on audible that I've listened to, but it probably is screw it. Let's do it. I think that's one of the titles.
Alex: What,
Randall: Speaking of strange requests or funny requests, what's the strangest request that you've gotten from any guests at the hotel?
Alex: Well, just today we had somebody ask where the nearest good canoeing sites were. And in 11 years, we've never had a canoeing request but again, it's not difficult to find out where the nearest canoeing stuff is, but if so, the strangest request we've ever had,
Randall: We got asked to do a
Alex: burlesque retreat here which would have been very interesting. That was not a weird request, but it was a unique one. It was just before COVID, so it kind of, it kind of died away, but that was a kind of an unusual request. It's not that interesting.
We get all sorts of requests for, different types of pillows and, you know, different types of milks. There's so many milks that I didn't know existed in the hotel. And yeah, food requests. There's a lot of weird food requests. Again, you just have to say yes to [00:39:00] and I'll tell you one that we did get.
So we had a Canadian cycling group here a couple of years ago, and they requested that on Friday, they could completely take over our kitchen. Hotel kitchen It was a Jewish group and they wanted to prepare a really Jewish meal on their Sabbath, I think, which is Friday, correct?
Randall: I think so. Yeah.
Alex: And they were making breads and all these special foods for their religious day. It was kind of weird seeing all these people just cooking in my kitchen and the result was fantastic. It was lovely. I was eating at the table.
They were cooking for me that day, which was, it was a nice change.
Randall: I like that. Very accommodating, right? Like, why not? Why not?
Alex: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Why not? You know, and the other guests liked it as well. So it was, it was quite strange. I'm sure there's more. If anything, if anything jumps to mind in the next few minutes or however long left we've got I'll shout them out.
Randall: I just remembered that I was looking at some of the reviews
Alex: for Hotel Saun Arnau. I don't know if you're aware of this, but one, for the listeners that are [00:40:00] just listening and not watching it on YouTube, Place is gorgeous, like gorgeous.
Randall: We'll have to include some, some pictures and maybe some B roll video of it if we can get it in the YouTube version of the podcast, because it's gorgeous. It's a gem and it should be shared more with the world. But TripAdvisor five out of five, you know, stars or diamonds or whatever they do there.
And then booking. com, which is what I prefer. 9. Six out of 10 and you had 152 reviews and just do you, do you look at those?
Alex: Yeah. Yeah, we do. You know, it's always nice to get positive feedback. , and yeah, we try to reply to all of them. there's loads of different forums where people leave reviews.
It's impossible to answer all of them, But yeah, we read all of them. Yeah. Yeah. So some of them are quite funny. And, and I find it difficult to be original in all of my replies because yeah, a lot of them are very nice. And so, you know, there's only so many ways you can say, thank you.
Randall: The one just at the top of the list here is I'm getting nervous now. I'm getting nervous. No, it's, I mean, they're all beautiful. Like they're all [00:41:00] there seemed to be a theme. What people really appreciated about your hotel. The one says,
I don't normally write reviews, though I live to read them, but everything was so wonderful I felt compelled to write this. Selva is a cute town and lovely location, and it's easy to get to many places. The hotel was gorgeous, exceptionally clean. Alex and Susan, absolutely lovely.
We had an amazing time. The atmosphere was beautiful and relaxing. Small touches everywhere that make staying with them a dream. And a huge bonus, the bed and pillows were extremely comfortable and rooms very spacious. Would love to return.
How does that make you feel, and then if you put yourself back on that train when you made the decision to do this, how do you think that version of yourself would feel about that?
Alex: It makes me feel wonderful, is the honest answer. And yeah, if I put myself back to that person on the train, I could never have dreamed of a review or a response [00:42:00] like that. And the thing that still gives me so much joy is that we have created something where people now come on holidayand I think they genuinely really enjoy their time here.
And that that's such a wonderful feeling to have inside that we've created something that people enjoy so much. It comes from a lot of hard work, but it's so satisfying and it will never get boring. Those sort of comments that you just read out, they are wonderful. the people that write that, we know their names and, we know them.
And it really, it's not just, you know, if you had a big hotel of, I don't know, a thousand rooms or something like that, you can never be personal. But whenever I receive a notification saying you've, Received a review. I always know who they are and I remember back, what their experiences was, at least what I thought their experiences were.
And it's nice to put a name to the review and a face to the review. And
Randall: yeah,
Alex: It's very, very satisfying. And, we've been doing this 11 years and it still makes me feel so happy. When someone takes the time to say, thank you, basically,
Randall: Excellent, very, [00:43:00] very proud of the journey you and Susan took to get to this point.
Thank you.
One of the last couple of questions here, but what does success look like to you?
Alex: Success for me is being able to achieve all of my tasks in a timely matter. So I can spend as much time with my family as possible. We've got two kids now and I justlove spending time with them.
I remember when we were in London, I was talking to a few people, friends and family and saying, I'm going to leave the city and start a hotel with my wife. Quite a few people said. You want to work with your wife, not because of Susan, but just a lot of people don't want to work with their spouses.
And for me, you know, when we were in London together, Susan worked in London as well, that train journey home was the best part of my day when we were together on the train home.
Randall: So successful for me is to have the balance between a successful career and hopefully a successful family life. For me, that's really important. When I was in London, it was before kids, but I would have just been a [00:44:00] weekend dad had we stayed in London and I didn't want to be that person.
Alex: So yeah, success for me is having in the future, growing up kids that hopefully want to spend time with me because I've invested in them growing up.
Randall: That's beautiful. And where can the listeners follow you at or check out the hotel?
Alex: We've got a website www hotel sauna now.com.
Like you said, we're on TripAdvisor and booking. com, Expedia, all the online travel agencies. Susan does our Instagram I'm an old dinosaur. So I do the Facebook posts divide and conquer. Yeah, exactly. Divide and conquer. Exactly. Leave the older stuff to me, you know but yeah, so, yeah, just anyway, you can Google us and you'll find, the old old interviews and review the old stuff that I've done online.
Randall: We'll include all the links in the show notes of the episodes, but Alex Terry owner of Sonar Now Hotel in Mallorca, Spain. I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me, be on the podcast, share your story and your [00:45:00] journey. Many thanks to you.
Alex: It's an absolute pleasure, Randall.
Thank you so much.
AI: And that's it for today's conversation here on the Randall Osché podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.
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