#291 - T. Dupree Scovell - CIO @ Woodbine Development Corp. - World Class Hotel & Hospitality Properties

Dupree Scovell: Even though from a top-line perspective, hotels are performing probably as well, if not a little bit better than they did in 19. That's just top-line That's just saying the occupancy is better than it was, and generally, the average daily rate that you're paying per night for a room is probably a little bit higher than it was in 19.

But nobody talks about, if you will, under the sheets, right? You get down to the bottom of that balance sheet and you're looking at the NOI line and you've got rising labor by a significant factor. You got interest rates that have, nearly tripled. That's a major noi margin reduction.

That compression is those things where I describe, it looks, you're just outrunning the alligator that's closest to you. That's it. You're just outrunning it. Yep. And right now, frankly, in the hotel business, you take that win and you go let's beat inflation. And let's keep going because a lot of other assets aren't doing that because you're in a fixed lease for 10 years.

Our lease has happened to be a day and a half usually.

Chris Powers: All right. I sent you some of the notes. Let's just start with kind of your story growing up and how you got to where you are at Woodbine today. 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah, sure. Short version. Grew up in Dallas, born and raised there. Kind of followed in the footsteps of my dad and my dad before him. Ok. So hit my grandfather.

We went to my three brothers and my dad. We went to the same elementary school, the same middle school, the same high school, the same college. We were in the same fraternity we all played football tech. It was a pretty preordained track. Wasn't necessarily pressure to do that, it was just kind of the way that, that it unfolded.

But then we grew up in an interesting environment. We grew up in Preston Hollow. As I said, we were public school kids the whole way through. And then my grandfather was he was a big presence in Dallas. He was a neat guy. But he was, I. When you think about Golden Gloves, when you think about the Cowboys, when you think about Cotton Bowl when you think about even some part of the Texas Rangers in some shape, way, or form was involved with getting those bringing those to Dallas.

And he was a guy, always loved this quote. He would say, people always talk about, that they'll thank me or, that this is what he would say, but he would say, look, then there's no way I could ever repay Dallas for what Dallas has done for him. And so we grew up Dallas people.

Yeah. Although I will say this, being at Fort Worth, I was in a meeting here one time and I was probably wearing this hat and I was hanging out with some guys and they're like, Hey, this is Dupree from Woodman. He's from Dallas, but he's not a Dallas guy. I think that's a compliment, but, so anyway that's our story.

We ended, and I ended up going Texas tag. After that, went to go work for Trammell Crow, worked for Trammell Crow for about five years, then went to grad school on the West Coast and assumed I would come right back to Dallas. We ended up going staying in LA because I had a mentor, a guy named Lou Wolf.

A remarkable guy. Lou Wolf is like a legend in the hotel business among many other things, including owning the Oakland A's and all this other fun stuff. But Luke convinced me to come down to an office with him and he was kind of one of those guys who said, look, just office with me. Show me the deals you're working on.

Let's compare notes on the things you're doing. You'll office right next to me. And it was like having an office next to Trammell Crow. It was like that kind of experience where you got that old-school apprenticeship type of mentorship. And two years turned to five years, which turned into 10 years on the West Coast until finally my brother and I were going through a process to buy.

Wood mine from my dad. Yeah, there's a series of milestones, the last of which was me coming back to Dallas before we closed the purchase. And so that's effectively what led us back to Dallas in thousand 19, right before the pandemic. And then we were here fortunately to get in the trenches when the hotel business was going through its worst period ever.

Chris Powers: Hello world. I want to dissect this a little bit just real quick, who did you play under at Tech? Mike Leach. Okay. I was hoping you were going to say that. Oh, we got a dozen stories there. What? Or, our condolences to Mike. But what an amazing guy that transformed football. And you were at the beg, you were at the beginning of this like Mike Leach’s story.

What very front, what do you have in you from Mike Leach that will be with you forever? There's a lot 

Dupree Scovell: Look, I think a sense of humor is important. That's what I mean, and he always had that. But you would not describe Mike Leach and this is not being critical, but there are very few players that would describe Mike Leach as a player's coach that would say, that's a, that wasn't necessarily how he endeared himself Yeah.

To his players. And that's not right or wrong, it's just coaches that have different styles and he was not the caring, compassionate, loving, father figure coach necessarily. His was a different level of professionalism that I don't think college football had seen.

Our job was playing football. You show up ready. We didn't stretch before the games. It was like you come ready to play. That's not my job. Yeah. We didn't have pregame speeches. It was like the stuff that you, everything you think about in Texas football, like that, like regimen, that ritual that like, we didn't do that stuff.

Yeah. It was like, you come ready to play. And it was, and I and the offense itself is like way off the track. Just amazing the way that he works. But when we would go to practice, there were a few fundamental things there were four sayings, two of which have always stuck with me.

One was getting better every day. That was just his phrase, just like you're chopping wood don't come out here and waste time. And the other one was, don't confuse activity with improvement. A famous saying that's been around for a long time, but those were two that, that That.

I think when you're in the grind of anything, football especially, you're showing up every day, you're doing the same drills, the same routine, the same amount of time. You can't, you just can get in the routine. His sermon to many was always, don't confuse activity with improvement.

But I've got Mike Leach’s story after Mike Leach's story but a couple that I remember well, he didn't embrace the pirate thing like that. He was not a great speech giver early on. Most of the time I think Texas Tech was doing anything he could to try and hide him from the podium.

Chris Powers: And what he would do is he would, what's the right way to think about this, to say this for the camera? He would do stuff where he would loosen up. There would be certain things that would help him loosen up maybe that was a liquid substance before he would give speeches.

And of course, we're around him every day, so we know w we would know what was going on. And so he would, there was one of his early speeches at one of the Early Bowl games, he had a hand, he had a little more help than he probably needed. And so the speech was much longer. 

Chris Powers: It was the early days of what became the pirate rants.

And so we're all sitting there like going, just as a team, like kind of looking around going, I can't believe this is going on. But yeah, he could go on. Every, the look, the fat little girlfriend's comment that. That was like an early one that was, yeah. We must have gotten that speech a hundred times.

That's funny. There were a lot of those types of things that he, his motivation, style was different. But, you think about this a lot in leadership, the number of coaches that have come out of that system, right? When you think about art brows, obviously you think about Dana Holon, you think about Sonny Dykes, you think about Dave Miranda.

You go down the list. 20 coaches have come out of the system that coaches directly under Leach, and so for all the ways he might be critiqued, you look at that and you go. It's a different style of leadership but that produced an amazing cast of coaches that are influencing the game today.

Chris Powers: It's similar to, I know you worked at Trammell Crow, but you look at the number of leaders now that flow out from these greats. You mentioned Lou Wolfe. I had a gentleman on here the other day that works for John Goff here who worked under Rainwater. And that story of Hey, I got to sit next to the guy.

And this apprenticeship model, I don't know if we've gotten away from that in today's modern society, and maybe that happened in the eighties because there was no internet. You had to be close. But what did being close to Lou mean to you? And then do you think there's a place for that in the world today where I.

People bring in young guys and just literally physically sit them close to them as a way to help them grow them.

Dupree Scovell: Man, I love that. With when, so Lou would do that and that's what I loved about being with Lou. And it was also one of those things where it's safe. All your, all the things you're trying to project to the world about how good you are and how great you've got, how you got it figured out.

None of that existed in those four walls with him. Yeah. We go to lunch at this little Italian restaurant, you know that you walk through this weird alley to get to his little two-story office in the middle of West la, that completely non-descript, barbed wire fence. Very strange. But we go to this little Italian restaurant, we'd order the same thing every time, and I just start going, okay, I'm thinking about this.

What about this idea? What about that idea? These are things that. Most often it was like, that is a terrible idea. That's the dumbest, maybe the dumbest thing you've said in all of our lunches. But he would, and that was okay. It was okay to just be there and explore those things with him and go, now I like that idea.

Have you thought about this? Or what about, of course, this is when co-working has blown up? So, we'd talk about that, all these different ideas that he would kind of look at, and then he'd say, and as we'd get through certain deals that Woodbine would be working on, he's no, that one's interesting.

And he'd kind of start to unpack it. And more than anything, what I loved about Lou is, The ability to unpack structure was always fascinating to me. And that's where I think a, I always talk about the assets you need to be in our business. And one of the, I think the most underrated, rarely talked about is just creativity.

The ability to be able to think of a deal differently and go how can I structure that where the seller wins, where we win, where this capital structure might make sense? We, again, we're, that's the creative side of our business. I think o often gets lost in just the typical way of doing things.

But that's probably what I learned most from him, was just thinking about deals, learning how to think about deals differently and f, f and finding solutions, that my competitor may not necessarily come up with. 

Chris Powers: I would characterize even in the short 10 minutes, we've already been talking, you've been the beneficiary of a lot of great men in your life.

Yeah. We just celebrated Father's Day. You just bought your business from your father. We just got done talking about your father. Let's just talk about, and you just celebrated 50 years at Woodbine, so let's maybe do an ode to your father. How did the business begin? How has he influenced you through that?

What's it like buying a business from a dad? Let's just talk 

Dupree Scovell: about dads. I'll answer the one that I think is most pertinent right now, and then I'll flip the question to you. But the thing that I've had to unpack lately is what's the, what are the ways that he has impacted me? And I think there's a book I'm reading by a guy named John Tyson called The Intentional Father, which is required reading for anyone with a 10, 11, 12 year old.

Okay. Entering into that kind of teen years girl or boy. But I think that girl or boy, I would say, I think it's relevant, but. One of the questions that I've had to think about as I have a 12-year-old, is I think about how to kind of usher him into this season of life where it's now you're going from a boy into a man.

And I don't, by the way, just to add a disclaimer, not necessarily like the typical masculinity thing or toxic ma masculinity, even just saying, Hey, how do you be a, how do you be a man today? That's what I'm wa walking through with him. But to do that, you got to do a lot of reflection.

You got to say what did my dad do? What did my dad not do well? And so I've thought about that and I just kind of said, okay, what are the two or three things, the most important lessons that I've learned from my dad? And I've put that in pretty simple, three words, which would make a lot of sense if you know my dad.

Number one would be humility. Number two would be generosity. Number three would be a hustle. And if you think about those three things, none of them require words, which is what my dad was not great at. He was present. He was there for every single game. Never missed a game. He was there for all the big things but if what you were looking for is, I love you, I'm proud of you, those types of things, that were not readily on his tongue.

I don't hold that against him. I think everybody has to go through some moment in time when they forgive their mom or dad for being kids. Raising kids. Yeah. And that's what I think, for my dad, it just wasn't necessarily something he grew up knowing. And so when I think about those three things, humility, generosity, and hustle.

, each of those has kind of key stories to them and moments that have kind of shaped how I live. But those were the most important lessons that I think have influenced everything that we do at Woodbine, because naturally as the founder of Woodbine, you're, that company takes on the personality of the founder.

And that's what we've tried to do I think in those three areas. So I'm going to flip it on you. So what are the two or three? 

Chris Powers: And I'm not, it sounds like our dads were very similar. I wrote an I was telling you, I wrote something on Medium a few years ago on Father's Day and the humility, generosity, and hustle you mentioned.

I think the things that had come to mind that day. My dad passed away actually 11 years ago today. Yeah, sorry. At his funeral. There's that's a long day. It's very blurry. I may or may not have taken something to calm the emotions like Leech Yeah. Version. And the one thing that stood out to me that day, which characterized my dad, I think perfectly was I was, you.

You stand at the end of the, at the end of the ceremony, everybody's walking by giving you their good wishes. And an old gentleman who came up to me, never seen him. He, I said, he said, my condolences. And I said, thanks. And he said, can I tell you a quick story? I said, yeah, I would love to.

And he just said I'm the janitor at the hospital that your dad's a doctor at. And I said, great to meet you. And he just said nobody has ever paid attention to me the way your dad did. And God yeah. I think the lesson learned there, especially in today's world, which is a very me-centered world is we said, we're going to do this. Yeah. You start talking about dads, it's going to happen. It just, 

Chris Powers: He just made sure that everybody felt comfortable. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody the janitor is equal to the CEO. We're all God's children. Humans tend to categorize. But all right, I'm going to get through this. So that was one. And then humility. He just, I think that speaks off the backs of that. He was a lawyer, partnered with a law firm decided at 37 he wanted to go to medical school, become a doctor and serve. You wouldn't do that if you wanted to take the popular road.

That's right. You wouldn't do that if you wanted to make more money, you wouldn't do that. If you wanted to hang out in the top crowds, you would just stay a lawyer and just do that for the rest of your life. You're not moving to Lubbock, Texas. You are not moving your family to Lubbock, Texas, and making no money for eight years if you want to do the popular thing.

It's, it is the, probably the worst decision you could do to be popular. And he would tell you he never thought once about it. He wanted to serve, he wanted to, he was very keen that you only live one life and you might as well make the best of it. And so those are probably two things I could say that we might all be able to relate to.

I put a tweet out two years ago and I was, had just got done talking to my talking about my dad at breakfast. And so I just went on there and wrote my dad was like a partner at a law firm and he, one day he decided to quit and become a doctor and he was following his dreams, something to that degree.

It ended up getting liked over 280,000 times. It went around the world, like multiple times we were getting this, but it struck this chord, I think, in society, which is we do only live once. And there are so many people, whether it's your career or just something that you're doing in this vein of, I have multiple lives, so if this one doesn't work, I'll just do it again and.

I think about that a lot. At what you just said, never miss a game. You're not going to get your kids' game back again. Don't miss, a kid's dance. There are just so many things like once you miss it, it's over. Yeah. So anyway, those are probably two of the things I think on the other side.

It's so funny you asked that. I've never really gone through the exercise of what are some of the things my dad did. I think the thing that he would say he regretted in the story I just told, although it was for, a noble cause from when I was seven to 15, is when you're going through medical school and residency, you're not calling your schedule. You're on call three or four nights a week being a med student or a resident. If you're listening to this God bless you, it is a worst, brutal life. Most of my brothers go through it, it is the worst. So he was not very present for a certain he missed things that I wish he had been at.

Now I don't know if I can hold him against that. I don't think he wanted to. But that's something that I remember vividly. And, there was a period when I was a kid, I talked about it in a letter I wrote where he wasn't interested in being my best friend. He was interested in being a father. And there were times when I didn't like him because he, again, wasn't interested in being popular. He was interested in the right thing. And when you're a 15-year-old idiot that wants to, sneak beer out of your kid's house and everything, watch rated R movies, and hook up with girls and you have a dad that's not supporting any of that, there can be years of your life where you're like, why do I want to hang out with this guy?

And then you come out the other side and you're like as every day goes by now, I get on my knees. I thank God. I'm like, thank you, God. Because I now am connecting all those dots and going. I hope I can do this for my kids because it is easy to just want to be cool, Dad. Yeah, I think that's 

Dupree Scovell: that's pretty sweet. First of all, your dad sounds like an incredible guy, but the virtue of humility, I think is the one that's, I feel like lost in today's world of self-promotion, of hype, of putting forward this image of, because of social media and all it's like this is all the things we're doing well and this is how good I am, this is how those types of things.

And I think what I've always loved about my grandfather, what I love about my dad, but I feel like I see this in my brother too, that I work with, is that never, they think they're a big deal. They never think they're that important. They never feel like they deserve to be somewhere. They always, I see humility in them that I've always admired. I've always said, that's a special thing to be able to, for other people to see. I think for other people to go, oh, it, it's okay not to put forward the image that, hey, you're perfect or you've got all these things figured out. Especially in kind of the, I feel like the business, the successful business culture, we've got to project this thing that we, we're undefeated, we're always in forever.

It's not always like that. There, there are failure failures and challenges and things like that that you've got to weather and you got to be able to say, okay what's the opportunity to learn from that? 

Chris Powers: Yeah, I know we're both believers in Jesus, and I think that's basically what you just said is the thing that is of many things most attractive, born in a manger.

He was everything that was not what you would think would be a king at that time yet. Changed the whole world. Yeah. 

Dupree Scovell: On that note, I talk to, I try to, if there's a theme that I try to talk to my kids about as much as possible, saying, look like you, you've got to be comfortable. You got to be comfortable not fitting in.

You got to be comfortable knowing that you're going to be on the outside looking in a lot of situations, particularly if you believe with conviction, the things that we believe where the world is taking and trying to convince you of any number of different items that are contrary to what we know and believe to be true in scripture.

The more that I can convince them that, Hey, that's the place you want to be. Yep. Place you want to be where you're going, Hey, I don't feel like I fit in here. And you don't then have, you don't have to be sad about that. You can look at that and go, Hey, I'll stand right here. Yep.

Stand right here. Even if it's, even if I'm a little bit lonely, even I'm a little bit unsure. I'm a little bit uns insecure about it. I'm going to stand right here because I know this is right. I know this is true. And so that, that's the thing where, you know, as a dad, that's a hard one too, to communicate.

Most of that's through where I can say to them, here's how I've done it wrong here's where I haven't done that. Yep. And of course, you're trying to course-correct it and hope they don't go into those same things. But yeah, I agree with you. That's where that is a central virtue that you look at and you go, man, Talk about a guy that stood alone.

Yep. And wasn't afraid to be a truth-teller. That’s the kind of man I want to be.

Chris Powers: My, kids will benefit greatly because I will have many stories for them on what not to do. 

Dupree Scovell: That's true. And yeah. 

Chris Powers: that's for sure. I think the other thing on dad's, and I don't know if your dad was this way when my dad died, I was 25.

And look, we didn't have, there wasn't a ton of secrets in the family or assets that I needed to know about it. Just, we, it was pretty simple, but regardless, he was super transparent with me. And one of the strengths, even since I was a kid now it was all age-appropriate, like when I needed to know stuff.

But when he passed, I didn't have to like, learn about all this. I was pretty under, I pretty much understood where all the major things and major priorities in his life were. Whether it was assets, whether it was my mom, whether it was the breakfast that he had every Friday morning with our pastor and where they stood in that conversation of four years, I just, I knew where all the important things were.

You go through your dad's laptop and phone to make sure nothing is going on, in business or just stuff that could come up that could, I think people think today when they pass, it used to be you pass and maybe people could go through your diary. Now you leave a digital footprint.

One of the things I'm like most proud to say, which might not seem like a big deal, I had to go through everything and I remember going through it thinking this could change how I think about my dad. I did not find one thing that I could ever hang my hat on this was a different guy than I knew as a son. That's a man of integrity. That's cool. And so I think about that a lot. Like just the simple rule of if I died tomorrow and my wife and kids had to go through my phone, would they still look at me the same way that they think they see me? 

Dupree Scovell: That's so good. We talk, there's a one time I wrote 35 things, character traits, that I would say if I could pass anything on Yep.

I would give almost a biblical definition, to these 35 words. And originally I was writing that thinking about my son, and then I was thinking, okay, what are the 35 words I would translate to my daughter as well? And I came to this realization the same, like a hundred percent the same.

So I started kind of going through these things. If you think about what I mean you can take any word integrity. Integrity. I always tell my kids it's like it's doing the right thing. Even when no one is looking, and so there are 35 of those types of definitions that then I'll try to periodically take them through to go, okay, here's what humility is.

Here's what character is, here's what humor is like, here's what care is, here's what compassion is. These are the types of things that I want them to be able to hear. And hopefully that at the same time, I'm kind of preaching to myself, am I living by those things? But that footprint, as you mentioned, doing the right thing when no one's looking to then unpack what your dad had and be able to look at that and go, man, I talk about doing the right thing when no one's looking.

Yeah, 

Chris Powers: that's pretty awesome. Yeah the digital, there's a digital footprint out there. So anyway it was really interesting. And I think just tying that up, and I don't know if your dad was this way with you. You grew up knowing him and Woodbine and knowing him, but. Did he include you in on things even at a younger age, or were you kept at bay for a while?

The way it was always by proximity, right? It was always by being in the room in certain places. And some of that stuff, I don't feel like I knew my dad I felt like he was pretty careful to try and protect us from thinking that we owned anything. Yep. I remember going to Hyatt Regency Dallas and which was this, which is an icon in Dallas, and he and the Hunt family developed that together and put Woodbine on the map in many ways.

And I remember one time asking him, I can vividly remember the conversation where I'd be like so tell me like how we own that, right? He was like, no, we don't own that. And I remember we don't own any of it. He was like, no, we don't own any of it. I was like what about even a small, like part of a carpet square?

He was like, no, we don't own any of it. And now meanwhile we're pulling up to the valet. He's tossing the keys to, his buddy and we're parking in the front. And so I'm like, I'm going when I 

Chris Powers: put these two together. 

Dupree Scovell: And I think part of that was of course he was honest in that statement because if you think about how it was structured, we didn't know anything. Then, if you get down to a legal entity, it's like we don't own any of it. He wasn't telling a lie, he wasn't telling a lie. But that was almost to protect me, which is the same reason why, you know, instead of getting a new car, I got an 86 Suburban when I started driving, that had a chalkboard paint job.

But tho those were the types of things, that I appreciated about him and shielding me from some of that entitlement. Yep. That he was afraid. I might assume. And so the real work became when I was in grad school and then, thinking about how I might join the business.

My brother had joined the business about a year before. Then it became, okay, what is, what are the parts and pieces of this organization? And what was unique about that is, Coming out of grad school, you think you're the smartest kid in the world. Anyway, I get in there and I do have an organizational mindset anyway.

I enjoy that stuff. To be able to come in and go, gosh, we need to do this differently. We need to do that differently. We got to change this. And it wasn't like coming in and dropping bombs, but it was a very methodical, dismembering and reassembling that. My dad, he had a great comment.

He was just like, as I would approach these, I think sometimes probably gingerly and sometimes probably not so well. And his comment to me was interesting. He was like just because it's the way we've always done it. That doesn’t mean it's the way we have to do it going forward. To have that freedom, to have that license, to be able to then come in and make some of those changes and not do it in a way that was just totally bombastic was I think, a wonderful license to be able to start to shepherd that business in the way that we wanted it to go.

And so that, that was probably a more gradual entry. Having the history, understanding the people, and knowing as much about the culture of the organization. That was important for me to be able to then come into the business and kind of start to shift it the way we wanted it to 

Chris Powers: go. Is buying a business from your father with your brother an easy thing or a difficult thing?

I think you're the first guest in 300 that has partnered with their brother to buy from their dad. 

Dupree Scovell: anyone in the family business world would say the same thing. Like they're, it is riddled with potholes. You. There are a million statistics and it goes back to this ancient Chinese proverb.

It's like from, lily pad to lily pad or something. I don't, yeah, something like that. The, and lesson for all these, which goes back literally hundreds of years, is most oftentimes, the ability to go from G one to G2 generation one to generation two, exceptionally rare to go from G2 to G three, even more so and but once you make that first hurdle, the odds of being able to go to that next generation are much more likely.

Now, I don't think I have grand admissions to say, I want my kids to take this business over. I felt a very clear calling to say this is what I feel like I'm partly called to do in my life, is to carry on the legacy that my dad has and be able to say, I want to see wood by go another 50 years. And so a lot of our mentality in our vision, For Woodbine, which as you mentioned our 50th anniversary this year, is to say, how do we allow this company, to endure for another 50 years?

And we're thinking about it in a 50-year timeframe versus a two or three or four or five-year deal horizon. It changes the way you think about a lot of things. It changes the decisions on how you hire, it changes how you talk about culture. It changes the way you, even the credit that you might want to take.

So there are a lot of things about that I think have pushed us to think long term because of that.

Chris Powers: I think you just said it, thinking long-term provides an opportunity to let humility flourish throughout the organization. 

Dupree Scovell: It's funny. Say, I think that, I think it's a hundred percent true.

I think what I often talk about and I have to be careful with the terminology here because I don't want to be misinterpreted but what I've seen. And really understanding the history of Woodbine. I can look at points in time and say, I can see where God's hand has been on this company.

Or at least the people leading it. I and I wouldn't be bold enough to say there's some special favor that Woodbine has, but I think when you have men and women leading the company who are saying, this is more like, this is not about me. I think there's a different point of view, and I've now seen that my brother and I are 10 in leading the company over the last 10 years time and again, most recently, even a partner we brought on yesterday I can look at that and say, look, there's no other way.

That was not because of our brute force, our effort, our pushing this rock up a hill. That was the favor of the Lord. Taking a relationship that I had for several years and saying, let's foster that in a way where then it puts it in a point in time where they can say, that happens to be the right fit for us right now.

And those are the types of things where you would normally say, Hey we did that, I did that instead. It's going, I had nothing to do with that. Yep. That was a relationship that I didn't deserve, that I didn't earn, that I didn't knock down that door and get, that was something that was, again, by the grace of God that over many years through trust, finally came to fruition in a major and material way.

Yep. And those are the types of things where I think, as you said, if you got a longer-term view, you can look at that and go, Ooh, I, there's not much I can take responsibility for.  

Chris Powers: Yep. Or like a huge deal that closes if you're thinking of the context of 50 years, that deal's a blip. Yeah. If you're thinking of the context of we got to get out of this in three years, that's everything.

Yep. There's a guy in YPO, Mike Boyd and I was actually on his podcast and he runs a podcast called the Business of Family. And he interview, all the interviews are like these families that have kept businesses going for four or five generations. That's right. And then he finds out. And the truth is nothing happens by, you don't get the business to the fifth generation by accident.

It's very intentional. Oh gosh. Yeah. The families are run like a business in some regards. And speaking of interesting relationships, I think just to start talking maybe more about what y'all do from a business perspective, I think it would be important to set the foundation.

Something I've always been curious about, and I think you explained it well on Jake's podcast, but. This relationship with the Hunt family. For a long, when I first heard of Woodby, I thought, oh, that's the Hunt's develop hotel arm or something. Yeah. Explain how it all works. Yeah. Because it's such a unique and special partnership.

Dupree Scovell: Yeah, it is. And I think that's rare that you have a partnership that lasts 50 years. And we often point to that when we're recruiting capital partners to come to invest alongside us because, at the end of the day, we're looking for families like the Hunt family who, see it in a long-term manner.

And who can invest in the long term and trust and believe in us? And I think that's the word I would always point to when I think about the Hunt family. Is Hunt that was built on a foundation of trust, like bar none, full stop. That's it. The way that relationship started and some of this is a legend, but the short versions when they were building Hyatt, Dallas, and Reunion Tower, there's a bunch of construction agreements and contracts and lender agreements in.

Mr. Hunt, my dad is meeting and my dad says, Hey, I need you to, I need you to read these docs. And Mr. Hunt says that's what I hired you for. And I'm telling you that strand of trust has endured the entire time. There was a time I was meeting with Chris Kleinert, his son-in-law who is the co-CEO O along with Hunter Hunt, then both parts of the business, real estate investments and oil and gas, and kind of all other energy things as well together.

And Chris, when I was meeting with Chris one time, I was like, Hey, this is, I was kind of explaining a little bit about what we were doing, and kind of going back to what I felt like our mission was, which was deeply ingrained by my dad, was, Hey, our mission is to build wealth for future generations of the hunt family.

Not wealth for wealth's sake, but as a steward. And Chris stopped me. He's Hey, You don't have to worry about us like you need to start thinking about the Scoville family. And it was kind of those moments I was like, oh I guess I do, I guess that's probably something that becomes important, but I love that wisdom that perspective that he had.

And by the way, there's a hundred other conversations like that with Chris Klein or with Mr. Hunt that have been, I think important in our growth and development. But it all comes down to one thing and it is trust because they say they're not going to decide between their self-interest.

They are going to think about their investors first. They are going to put our priorities first. And whenever there are hard times, I think they've seen us enough in the trenches to go, man, this guy's like fight and claw to the last inch. To be able to figure out how to resolve those problems and make sure that we, the investor are protected.

And so I think that's, that is a key tenet of ours. And why we've said, look, We just, we need to focus on those types of family offices who have that type of mindset and who value that type of character. Because there, there are many that, that don't, and they just have a different investment philosophy.

Again, not necessarily right or wrong, just a different way of looking at things. And if there's no alignment there. And most oftentimes then when you do get into the deal and things do start to get hard or it is time to sell or if the right decision is actually to keep it if there's no alignment there, then there's going to be misalignment on the decision at that point.

And that's the thing that we try to say. We need to focus on finding what we always say, and like-minded investors who say, That's the kind of group that I would invest with. 

Chris Powers: And to take that a step further, because if, I think the joke is if you've met one family office, you've met one family office.

Sure. Yeah. But y'all have seen institutional partners, you guys have seen over 50 years of the gambit. And maybe it's not just about the Hunt family, but there are families like them, like from an investment lens, what matters to them. Because they're not thinking in five-year terms. They're probably, again, thinking in 50-year horizons, building wealth for generations.

How does that change, like how they think about deals or investments, or they want returns? Sure. But once we get past that, what other things matter at that level of thinking? 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah. Look, I think at the end of the day I have found it's rarely about the project. I think what we've seen is the same way that Mr.

Hunt chose my dad as he would say he was jockey betting, right? He's not betting on the horse, he's betting on the jockey. And I think most oftentimes as the relationship I was alluding to earlier. So a little more context, we have an asset in San Antonio called Hyatt Hill Country. It's a 500-room resort that's on 300 acres.

A really special place that we developed 30 years ago, and now we're my brother and I get to take it into its next chapter, which is just a neat, fun, awesome opportunity to again, like further the legacy that I feel like Woodbine and my dad, which are so linked together, have done.

And in that, we have, we, that was the partner I was mentioning earlier that we brought into that deal that was a very sizable investor. Ends up being about 50% of the capital there. But when that was coming together, as much of that as I mentioned to you was really about this kind of currency of trust that we were dealing in.

And I don't know. Look, I think the deal was important to them. I think it hit a lot of the right buckets, but at the end of the day, I think they were saying that's a group wood. Mine is the type of group that we can trust. They value relationships. They've kind of got this blue-collar mentality.

They're rigorous and accountable in the way that they manage their projects. They've got a set of values that they are uncompromising on, and they're humble. And I think that's what they would say at the end of the day. Those were the first five boxes deal was number six.

Yeah. Most of the families I think we're talking to, I think they're looking at that vetting first. And then they're saying, oh, they happen to be in hospitality. Okay, let's see if that makes sense for us. 

Chris Powers: Yeah. It's funny you say, when you talk about folks that have been in business with people a long time or done lots of deals with people and you ask them how that is going, very rarely is their first answer.

Oh, they make 25% returns on command. It's always about the people. And then it's and we do good deals and that kind of carries it on, is the Hyatt Hill country have the winding lazy river. Yeah, that's right. So when my dad's dad passed away in 2000 and Oh I'll, it's like year 2000 I think.

And they're all from the northeast. I didn't think I was going to tell this story today. My dad had six brothers and sisters. They all, I have lots of cousins. About a few months after my grandfather passed away, I. My grandmother said I want to do a trip for the entire family from New Hampshire where she lived.

She picked the Hyatt Hill Country in San Antonio and our entire family, this was year 2000, spent time, and I just remember all I remember is the Lazy River, but that is where we spent the celebration of my grandfather's life was the Hyatt Hill Country. 

Dupree Scovell: That's so good. An interesting story about that Lazy River, actually, so then, I think it was a guy named Doug Gga, who was the CEO of Hyatt at the time.

Okay. There had never been a lazy river developed in us This has been done in Mexico, probably at Six Flags, but never at a hotel. And so he says, John, you need to come down and see this. So they go to Mexico and they see it. My dad comes back and says, we're doing one, a similar story. There's a, there's kind of a massive kind of pool feature that we're actually.

Building at Hyatt Country, hill Country now, as a part of this recap, and just in a unique kind of ironic twist, there's never been one done at a hotel in the US, and my brother and I are going, that's it. And it's this kind of two or three-acre lake that's that you can do everything in.

But it's really, but it's a pool. So it'll be really fun to see how that kind of transforms the resort once again. But it is a neat part of that. And then that project, that's all family offices. We went down the institutional route. We knew that if we went down that route, we were going to have to give up control because of the performance of the resort over the period of Covid, which blew all of our, expectations.

We end up saying, Hey, we're going to say no to the institutional guys on this one. We're going to walk away from that. For my brother and I was a really tough decision because it meant that our family would have to go all chips to the middle to maintain the development.

The timeline we were on. So we say no to two or three groups that were ready to write one 90 million check. And we said we're going to go raise it from family offices. And so when I mentioned that big investor coming in, not too long ago, plus the series of other family offices that we haven't invested in it, that does become a kind of redemptive moment where it's like, Hey, we made the right call there.

Yeah. And now we've got, we, what's interesting about that is we've been able to kind of expand the scope of that. We'll end up bringing in probably five or 10 other family offices to it. So it's really fun for us to now be able to say, we can pick our partners. Yeah. And if there's one thing that I've seen and learned from my dad is, man, if you can pick your partners, if you have the luxury and liberty to do that you're in rarefied air.

Because most oftentimes you don't have that liberty, you're going, I'm just taking what I can get. And that's where you can get into some muddy water.

Chris Powers: A dollar is a dollar until it's attached to somebody and then it comes with their personality. And yeah, we were talking before this, the fort's embarking on a large, something different of how we might raise money.

Yeah. And it's easy to get the glitz and glamour by the big dollars from maybe somebody that you wouldn't align with personally. And I think we'll end up choosing to do a lesser amount, but pick our partners and do thoughtfully through families. Maybe my one question on that, just through your experience from my experience, but what I hear, and we haven't raised a ton from family offices, They kind of hunt in packs once you get one or two families in.

They all talk to each other during the year, but they start coming in once they've heard that family’s in. Does that kind of the experience you saw or was it different? Yeah, for sure. 

Dupree Scovell: I'll tell you, I'll tell you a funny story. So we bought the Driscoll and Austin 

Chris Powers: which we have to shout out.

Oh yeah. Phil Lauder is back if you're listening to this. We love you, buddy. There's nobody better than Philip Lauder 

Dupree Scovell: back pnl. His initials are pn l 

Chris Powers: he's the perfect guy to underwrite and understand something like that. There is nobody better than Phil Lauder back, 

Dupree Scovell: El Paso, right? Yeah, I haven't found many people I don't like from El Paso, 

Chris Powers: but we're a good group.

Yeah, it is a good group.

Dupree Scovell: We do our best. And then you had your formative years in Lubbock, so you got this like whole thing going I'm Texas Baby Valley to 

Chris Powers: The Rio Grande. You got the whole thing going. Oh yeah. 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah, we were working with Philip on this, and so we had kind of parachute into Austin.

It was a dream for me to always buy that hotel. I felt like that needed to be owned by Texans. I feel like that needed to be like really shepherded in, in the right way. Not to, not trying to be overly righteous or biased but that felt like the right way to steward that asset.

And so we parachute in and we start meeting with a bunch of family offices in Austin and we get some early commitments that were big kind of. Five, 10, pretty decent-sized checks that were coming in and believe that vision. And meanwhile, I'd been having this conversation with Eddie Marga, whom Eddie's a remarkable partner born and raised in Mexico, and moved to Austin, and I've said there's nobody in 10 years that has had more of an impact on the city of Austin than him, and he is not from there at all.

But the things that he's done, including FC Austin, or is it Austin fc, they're pretty amazing. But as we're going through this capital raise process, then Eddie and I are talking, he's okay, I'm in. So now I start mentioning the people that Eddie’s in and they're like, or I, maybe I was, it was interim, I was saying, Eddie, I think Eddie's going to come in with us.

We're working through that right now. Then the conversation changed. It was like, okay, great. If Eddie's in, I'm in. Yep. So everything hinged on 

Chris Powers: Eddie then coming in. So I was like, I think I may have just made a mistake here by 

Dupree Scovell: mentioning that but he did come in and I'm like that lockstep.

Some so many people came right behind him. That, but that's because he had an incredible reputation. He was trustworthy. It was all those things that people were saying if Eddie's in it like I'm in it. And so it was a windfall after that, that we were able to do it. And by the way, Philip Lauterbach was the man organizing all that kind of creating that infrastructure, the investing the investor communication that we then went on to do through Pix U.

That’s an appropriate shout-out because he was a big part of that. 

Chris Powers: It's, we come up with these, obviously y'all's track record and everything you've done is why Eddie did it. But when it comes to all the other families, you can make the fanciest deck, do all the same tours, put all the energy, and as long as Eddie's in some of that right.

It's just yeah, that's right. So y'all do hotels? All kinds of hotels, but full service. But it does say on your website that may be one core competency is competency is large-scale development resorts. 

Dupree Scovell: It is. So I would say this, so I, and not to be too cliche. Yeah. I think our core competency though, I mean it at least internally.

Because when I saw that I was like, oh, I wonder if that's the language that we should use. Cause it's identical to the website. Yes. The language we use about our core competency is teamwork, track, record, and trust. Okay. Those are the three things that we found. The three Ts.

Yeah. Those are, that's our core competencies. Okay. The now historically resorts have been where we have made our name. Okay. So Hyatt Hill Country, lost Pines, Weston, Carolyn Lock those are resorts that we have been involved with. And that's where we've, where I think we've made a name for ourselves.

I think as my brother and I have gotten involved in the business and as we've tried to shift the direction, it has been a little more balanced approach where we're doing urban full service, we're doing select service. We're doing now, we're doing what we call long stay or extended stay properties, which is a brand launch that Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott are doing at the same time.

So we've tried to take what was our core competency, may, maybe I should say our, where our reputation was built. We've tried to leverage that to be able to say, let's diversify in these other categories of hospitality and grow our business that way. Most oftentimes in the hotel business, you're a resort guy, you're a full-service guy, you're a select service guy.

We've tried to break that down a little bit and be more of a hospitality expert across all spectrums so that when somebody is looking at Woodbine, an investor, They're saying, Hey, that group is the category expert. In addition to what I think of them as a family office, that group is who, if we're doing hospitality, there's one group we need to talk to.

Then I think you have this compounding effect where Fort’s doing a, they buy 50 acres where part of it's going to be industrial and part of it's going to be mixed-use. They're going there's a hotel component. There's one group we need to call in Texas. Yep. That's who we should talk to. That's where I want that to propagate to begin to build on itself.

Those are the things that I think, I hope most folks would say as we develop that bandwidth, people are going, that's the group we should talk to. 

Chris Powers: Which one of those different types is it? I wouldn't say better. Which one's fastest growing in America? Yes. Are they all growing quickly? Is there one that you'll see more of or less of?

How should your average guy like me think about the hotel industry from all the different types of products? 

Dupree Scovell: It's the brands are masters of creating swim lanes. Ok. At the end of the day, they're a brand company, right? They're not a real estate company at all.

When you think about Hyatt, Hilton, Marriott, and others and 

Chris Powers: explain how that works real quick. 

Dupree Scovell: Generally, if you are, most often folks are going to see Marriott on the top of the building and they're going to say Marriott must own that asset. That's rarely the case. A group like Woodbine owns that asset.

We hire a Marriott to brand it, and sometimes we hire them to manage it as well. Okay. Or Hilton or a Marriott. And so each of those segments has its day in the Sun Resorts for a while were important, and there were very few people that could do it in and around the Southwest. And so you saw a handful of those being developed.

But those are hard, those are 10-year projects. Those are several hundred million dollars. Those are thousands of acres. Those are massive, complex deals. So those are there are very few people that play in that space, which is part of why we like it. Cause you're the tallest short guy sometimes, right?

So in, in the case of select service that's an untapped swim lane. And so you saw Courtyard, you saw Hilton Garden in, you saw Hyatt Place, you saw home too. Ac, you see all these other brands that are launching because, at the end of the day, there was a competitive advantage to building a certain type of hotel property that people would stay at.

Right now what is probably the wide-open kind of frontier? And if you think about Amer Suites or Extended Stay America or some of these types of hotels, which I'm sure you and probably most of your listeners have not spent a lot of time in, there are no branded options in that category.

But now you have Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott saying, we're going to launch at the same time. And so it's almost mean it's like a gold rush. It's saying, Hey, who's going to get there first? And now you're leaning on the relationships that we or our peers have with those brands to be able to say, okay, we're going to do 20, we're going to do 30, we're going to do 40.

Those are the types of developments where you're building those all around the country. Mostly next to hospital systems, major demand drivers like airports, primary and secondary markets anywhere. But it's a major development undertaking. And those are generally inexpensive to develop. You may be done.

At the end of the day, they're. 20 million, maybe to develop. Whereas, a resort is a mission like 200 million. So you got to do a lot of those little ones to make it feel like one of those big ones. And so that's what we're getting into is saying, okay let's leverage those relationships, our position with land holdings across the state and the region to be able to say let's develop a lot of those for those three flags.

So that's the frontier right now that is open and that is, I think, got a chance to kind of capture 

Chris Powers: a lot of market share. And do you go to Hyatt and say, we want to build 30 of these for you, tell us where to build them. Or do you at least get the agre the green light from them that we're going to go do the work, but we have your back in that as we find these, we're your partner?

How does that 

Dupree Scovell: work in one way or the other? It's different with each of the brands. Some brands say, Hey, we can't promise you any kind of territory. Other brands say You got the entirety of Texas and the surrounding states. And then other times, right? We're saying, Hey, we've already got 20 sites and we're going to them going, does this work for that?

And they're going, great. Thumbs up to nine out of those 15 sites. Works for this brand. Let's go. So it is a, there's no kind of certain formula for that. At the end of the day, they're not necessarily helping you source sites. Sometimes they are, but most oftentimes we're bird-dogging it. We're going out there to find all these different sites and then we're going to them and we're saying, does this site work for your brand?

They say, yes, now we're off. 

Chris Powers: And the way that works, they, they have a site. Do you use their plans to develop the building or do you get to come up with your own or do they have guidelines? 

Dupree Scovell: It's a select service? Yeah. Like you all you almost want to try and buy a site that's two acres square, seeing Surface Park L-shaped building 125 keys off the shelf.

You're moving Okay. Still have to have your CDs and all those other things, but in many parts, you're taking the system. Yep. And this kind of, this kit of parts and you're saying, okay, plug it together, we'll make it move there. That's what makes it that much more efficient to build a full-service urban asset where you got restaurants and spas and bars and suites and all those other types of things.

It's a much more complex design and so there's, it's rare that you can just take something off the shelf. Most often. What is off the shelf if you're partnering with a brand is what the room looks like, right? Okay, it's this many feet by that many feet. And the bathroom's here and the bed's there. 

I walked into so many of them, they're all the same. They do double queen-sized bed TV in the middle, the little awkward desk in the corner with a TV phone on it, with a little tweak here and there we're like, okay, the bathroom got moved to the inside or the outside or, but it’s all the same. Yeah. The day, and by the way, I'm pretty sure that was the case when Mary and Joseph were looking for a place.

So yeah it's pretty much the same. It's pretty much the same. 

Chris Powers: But then you would build that building, you, the Hyatt would say, this is layout looks good, and then the building's built, you have a contract signed with them and they're managing it for a fee sometimes. Yep. Explain just how, okay?

You said sometimes how might, what are the different ways you could work with Hyatt on one of those buildings? 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah really mainly those two, you're saying. Okay. I'm just going to have you brand it, Uhhuh in which case, just like. McDonald's is probably not the right example but some, whatever the fast food chain equivalent would be.

Because they own the real estate where you're They're a real estate company. Yeah, exactly. Where you're just saying, I'm just paying for the brand. And that's a percentage of the top line that you're paying to them. Now if you also have them manage it.

Chris Powers: wait, real quick. If you're paying for a percentage of the brand, obviously the name is on the hotel.

Yeah. But what else are they giving you branded pamphlets and all the marketing channels? 

Dupree Scovell: Okay. Online. That's right. All the sales channels, if they're booking group business, they have a centralized sales type thing. All of those commercials that you'll see, the ad, the p loyalty of the customer, who's a card-carrying Hyatt member, Hilton member, Marriott member.

Those are the types of things that you're paying for in the brand. Beyond that, you're saying, okay, who's going to manage the hotel? Could be a third-party manager. Ours include Abridge, include benchmark, includes practice, Davidson, they include Marriott, Hilton, and Mar Hyatt it's a pretty big stable of investors.

Ergo these are the types of groups that will manage your asset for a third party fee. Just like an office building has a manager. Yeah. It's the same type of deal. And now you're paying them a percentage of the top line as well. So each of these groups has almost no risk. Not almost, they have no risk.

The real estate owner is taking 100% of the risk of that deal, whether we make any money at the bottom line, they're still getting paid for every single dollar that gets brought in that deal. And so it's a very calculated decision on which brand, why, where all those types of things. And then if they're going to manage it, you got to be thinking there as well, because a brand may not be best equipped to manage a select service hotel in Fort Worth, but a third party might be more equipped in that scenario, a third party may not have the infrastructure to run a thousand room hotel that we have.

So, there are different strengths, obviously, to each of those. So do y'all manage Hyatt Hill? Is there anything you guys manage or is it always a third party? 

Dupree Scovell: We don't manage our assets. My dad has always had a philosophy that said, look, you need to be able to fire your manager if they're not performing.

You need to be able to hold them accountable. And if you are an owner-operator, there's an argument that you can make that says there's a conflict there. You're never going to fire yourself. Yep. Although I can, the more and more we get into it, we've looked at it and said, gosh, there, there is a scenario where you get, where you just wish you could control your destiny.

And if you think about things that you could do differently, it's easy for an outsider to look in the business and go, man, that's strange. Why is that done that way? Cause it's always been that way. Yeah. And so some of those types things I've thought about, gosh what if you just, what if you created a, an operator that had no intention of being.

Profitable. Yeah. Whereas just a break-even enterprise so that then you could say, Hey, let's do healthcare, let's do living wage. Let's have long-term employees. Let's flip the model on its head. And again, maybe that's like just more of a romantic, like idealistic notion probably.

I just don't know enough. Yeah. Yeah. But if there is one thing that I've thought about, one of many that's one that I'd go, gosh, it'd be interesting to tweak that model a little bit and go, let's just run it differently. 

Chris Powers: One more on what I'm drawing a blank. What are we calling the two-acre 125 key?

Dupree Scovell: Those are select services. Those are select services. Select service. Meaning you got to select the group of services you're offering. So a full-service hotel, you're going to have valet, you're going to have a bell, you're going to have room service, you're going to have all those types s things. Select service is a nice way of saying you don't get all that stuff right.

Chris Powers: Yeah's just, but you're not paying, you're not paying for it. That's right. That's right. The booking engine online is like a big deal. Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. They're the gatekeepers in many ways. 

Chris Powers: Who's setting pricing, because that changes quickly? Yeah. And I don't know if the words monopoly, but anybody you talk to in the hotel industry, it's like this constant friction with these people owns the booking engine.

Which is like the thing. Yeah. What do you think about that?

Dupree Scovell: So there are two categories, OTAs or things like Priceline and Expedia. Yep. And booking.com. Those are called OTAs. They'll lead to somewhere between maybe 25 to 35% of any hotel's bookings. Ok. It's a significant amount. Yeah. It's also very expensive for the hotel because now you're paying twice what you would normally pay to be able to get that booking in the window.

The brand itself, Marriott, Hilton Hyatt, IHG Choice, whatever else they're usually going to generate. Somewhere between 35 and 45% of Europe bookings are going to come online through their channels. The rest are going to be direct that your wife says, I know we're going to San Antonio, we want to be there with the kids.

We want a lazy river. We're booking direct there. The, so the brand doesn't necessarily matter in that scenario. In all those cases, generally, you're going to see the strength of a brand. That's why a developer can say, I'm willing to pay as much as I'm paying on the top line because I need that strength of that booking engine.

Yep. Not to mention the group side of that where a group business, with two or 300 people says, look, I'm going to go to Chicago this year, LA next year, Dallas, the year after that. And so I need somebody where I'm negotiating one contract, but now I can go to these three hotels and rotate.

That's where a brand can be very strong. But Hotel Emma in San Antonio is a very different scenario. That's where you had a visionary in Kit Goldsberry. We were fortunate to be a part of it where he said, I don't care. I don't want to brand. I'm going to do something so special. So magnificent. So incredible that people are just, Lo and behold, that's exactly what he did.

He creates something so special there that, we were able to develop something that people go, you got to see Emma, word of mouth just carries itself. And so there's, there even are hybrids in between fully branded and fully independent, which are called soft brands. That's an autograph.

That Serio or Canopy for Hilton or Hyatt, it's called Unbound. And there are varying even levels in between that, where you can still brand it independently. It can still be the, it can still be, but it can be, it can have a booking engine behind it that is Marriott, or that is Hyatt.

You just wouldn't necessarily know it. Like the Driscoll happens to be an Unbound Connect collection. Okay. It's a Hyatt hotel. So it's got that booking engine, but it allows it to maintain its independence. 

Chris Powers: Got it. So you don't ever see the word Hyatt that's associated with it. 

Dupree Scovell: That's right. So then, there are different fee models now.

They're, at the end of the day, their sales organization. They're going to figure out a way. To be involved one way or the other. 

Chris Powers: I haven't been to Hotel Emma yet, but our team did a retreat there last year, and the feedback I had was unbelief. I guess not the lobby, but I like the bar area Sure.

Is huge with couches everywhere. 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah. They just couldn't stop talking about it. Yeah, it's pretty special. Te, that, that's also the, again, there's a guy named Billon Silver Ventures whom he had the right mentality. At the end of the day, it's like, how do you, it was all about the customer experience and it was thinking about every step they took, what they smell when they walk in the door, what the guy is wearing, the words they u that are used when they're greeted, the found objects that you see everywhere.

The way they recycled all of the Bre brewery equipment, those types of things that we were able to do as a part of that were just became. Just built on, and it just caught fire. And there are going to be a lot of people who are going to look at them, look at San Antonio, and go, Hey, Emma's already done it.

Let's go figure out how to draft off that. I don't think that works. I don't. I just, that's one of one, 

Chris Powers: I just, I'm in the middle of the book, unreasonable Hospitality. And as you Oh yeah. And as you've been just describing that it made me just think the world is not, it's not just in hotels, but hospitality, no matter where you go, matters now.

Yeah. In retail. The office is going to have to become hospitality experts. What are things that come to mind? What are ideas that you have or passions you want to pursue within hospitality that you think are going to matter over the next 10 years? And then we'll talk a little bit about f and b and stuff, but what ideas do you have?

Like what's not working? What's working, what should be happening? 

Dupree Scovell: I'd probably actually pivot. Then, I could talk through the hospitality side, some of which I talked about. If we were thinking about how you manage an asset, is there a different way to do that? If you had somebody who is a long-term employee at a hotel and who's invested in building a relationship with every person that walks in that door because you know they're going to be there for 10 or 15 years?

Yep. That's a different type of hospitality that can be extended. That's hard when it's an hourly employee who's moving to the next job or moving up the ladder or going somewhere else. And If I was, again, if I was just thinking outside the box, how do you create a model like that? Where it can, through every person that's in that hotel, whether it's the janitor that your dad would see, or whether it's the steward or the housekeeper, but they are invested in saying, how do I make sure you have an unbelievable experience while you're here?

Or at least if nothing else, just feel cared for. Which is kind of at the end of the day, that's what hospitality is. But I'd almost translate it to investing if I were thinking about investing differently, because, at the end of the day, that's what we do.

We're not necessarily hotel operators. We happen to invest in hotels but the investing side is the one where I would think about it differently. I and I've thought about this a lot, just to go, could you create some type of entity where it's just got a radical giving philosophy where it's saying, look, we're going to, we're going to invest, we're going to invest in a hotel, but.

The lion's share of the profits for that entity is to support this mission. And I think that could be at the fund level, that could be at the asset level. That could be a lot of different ways. But when I think of transformative things though, that's what I think about is how could you create an infrastructure that would almost say, look, the business is running just to power these missions.

Just to be able to give that money away to be able to do all the things you'd want to do in the community that you could dream of. Those are the types of things when I think about investing that I get pretty excited about and I go, okay, that's the model that I'd love to be able to have like-minded investors who go, yeah, let's do that.

Yep. Let's figure out how to do that. 

Chris Powers: I think that's becoming, we were talking to a family office not too long ago and they said something along those lines, which was, would you be interested in taking either a percentage, a couple of percentage points of the GP, or percentage points of the return and giving it to X?

Yeah. And for me it was okay. Why? What does that what for them? It needed to go to a certain, and once they told the whole story it made a lot of sense. And then, we don't have to talk about generosity tends to create cool moments for everybody involved. Cause again, there's nothing more contagious than a generous person.

And seeing that in action, you said employees are being around forever. I went to Maya Coba. Rosewood for Spring break. I haven't stayed at one of your hotels except I did on my that's right. I guess at Hyde Hill Country. But recently, the best experience I've had, my wife would tell you.

Bar none. And if you, and if we were digging and why have most of the employees there been there for 15 or 20 years? And what we, it was our first time. But you just listened to them. They knew all the guests. Because all the guests come back. It's like a big family. A ton of Dallas families there.

It's like we come, we've come for spring break 12 years in a row and we know Yeah. It was a, you couldn't replicate it because they were family. They knew everything. And they had been there for 15 or 20 years and loved the property. Like they probably loved, their family. 

Dupree Scovell: In a way, it's why certain steakhouses have career waiters because they do so well at making you feel connected.

You're like, why would we go to a different restaurant? Let's just go back. Yeah, let's go back to that place because we're known there. 

Chris Powers: The Cheers thing, I was talking to John Marsh and he was saying, America's done a pretty bad job of. Making the hospitality service work industry seem like a step toward something greater.

And he was explaining to me that in Italy, in some of these world-class hospitable countries, people grow up wanting to be a service member in hospitality as a career, a waiter, a waitress. And once you go to these restaurants, they're just, it's like a whole act. It's like a way of life. And they wouldn't do anything else.

And somehow in America, we made it to where being in service is maybe just a step to get to the next thing. And so I was just asking him, how do you solve this? And he just said, there are programs I can't remember what they're called, where you can bring in foreigners to work in. And they come from places where hospitality is sure, celebrated. But I never thought about that. In America. We've made some of these jobs that in other countries as such a staple seem a stepping stone. 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah. And honestly, there are two sides to that coin, like every coin.

But no matter how thin it is, I think part of that is if you think about, I think that's part of the beauty of the hotel industry actually, is that it's one of few where you can start as the bellman and in several years you can become the gm. Yeah. Happens over and over again.

And that, that is part of like how yeah. Our, country has built, is this idea that, hey, the American dream is possible, achievable for you. And so I think he's his point, completely valid. But on the other side of it, there is beauty in the ability of a guy who could say, look, Out of high school education, but I went and I was a, and I started as a dishwasher where I started and then can work their way up until the point where they're like, Hey, now I'm running the hotel.

Who would've ever thought that was even 

Chris Powers: possible? Where does y'all's line of influence end? So you said there’s a hotel investor, not an operator. Yeah. Where does y'all's line of defense 

Dupree Scovell: and Yeah, sure. I mean I think it's pretty broad, but it is, for us, it is developing and acquiring hospitality primarily.

Okay. And so in that scenario, it's every brand, it's up and down the chain scale. It's from a resort down to what we were talking about, a select-service hotel. Now that's category A behind that is office behind, that's industrial, behind that is multifamily in a much smaller way.

We've tried to diversify into those categories. Ok. And I think in some way every element, maybe except for industrial, we've tried to figure out how do you take the hospitality side and allow that to influence what we're doing in each of those other categories. 

Chris Powers: I have to mention the hot word office.

Yeah, sure. You guys own some. Yeah. What are your thoughts and how might hospitality play? What are you seeing? What, what are folks going to need to think about over the next decade? Yeah. To make a successful office building? 

Dupree Scovell: I'll just, my philosophy largely uninformed. Let's just start with that.

But I think I'd say a couple of things. If you think about a hotel, if you think about when you order a room service you're, the way it has always worked is you have a tray with a bad flower, with, some, a tin can on it, all the, yeah. Yeah. That works. And then it's left out in the hall. It's not a great experience all the way around. Doesn't make you go, that's what I want to do is order a room. Yeah. Now, if you go to, you name it a great restaurant here in, in Fort Worth, and you order something to go, it's going to be well-branded, it's going to have a great logo on it, it's going to be crisp, it's going to be nice, and you're going to have it in a brown paper bag, even if it's from Nick and Sam's right.

It's going to have that type of thing. And then you take it to your room and you'd enjoy it. And that's not a diminished experience. So I think from a room service standpoint, that can parallel connecting. That's there, you go into an office building and not to be critical of the workforce necessarily that's powering that.

But most often, in every office I go into the very same big grand lobby, a great big piece of modern art, two leather chairs with some silver arms on them that are like oddly in the middle of a bunch of light. Then This Cher Sherab-like thing where the security guard sits behind it, who by the way may or may not look up at all if you're walking through, odds are probably not unless they have to check your id and then they're like pissed that you're, that they have to check your id.

I'm like, I'm it’s not my rule. And their suit is ill-fitting with a patch and you know that, that says, the security guard that's not a good look. If you walk into a hotel, it doesn't matter what kind of hotel, it's, there's nothing like that whatsoever. It's open 24 hours a day, does not have a lock on the front door, and you do not have a security guard and a bad-looking suit saying, welcome to the Marriott.

Instead, you've got somebody with a badge behind the desk welcoming. As soon as you walk in that door, they're saying, but if they know your name, Mr. Powers right? Come on. Welcome in. We've got your room ready. Even if they don't, they’re gone, how can I help you? That's the type of experience that I would expect to translate.

That's just good old-fashioned Southern hospitality. Is there a reason why it doesn't Exactly? I don't think there is. Because it's not a cost thing exactly because you're paying that person one way or the other. I'd rather have, if I'm hiring and somebody shows up to an interview in, an ill-fitting suit, looking at their phone, and doesn't make eye contact with me, versus this charming personality who says, great, I'll do the same job, except I'll be right there in that door when they come in and I can say, Hey, last year for Valentine's Day you did you, you we did this for your wife.

Do we, do you want me to go grab you flowers? How hard is that, that's something that I feel should happen in the office game. So we did that with the office tower. We have downtown. And I'm telling you, that individual is the spark that kind of holds that place together because everybody knows him.

On the way in, he runs the elevator, he punches the door. A guy named Braden who's a veteran now actually it's a guy named Brodrick Simpson is Braden, went to Mississippi with his, to be with his wife's family. Makes sense. But Brodick, a guy that went to high school with my older brother, big personality.

Everybody loves Broderick down. He was like one of those things where that person holds that building together. Everybody knows him. That type of experience, again, there's nothing magical about that in a job description. What's magical about that is that you walk in the door and you feel known, you feel cared for, you feel understood, and now they're taking you up to your office space.

That's where the two can merge, in my opinion. Now, everything else, by the way, is about design. Yeah. Why would I want the design I described, I'd much rather have pictures and history and communal tables and coffee and all these other things, because that's what I want to walk into. Nobody wants to walk into an ice chamber where you're like, okay, I feel like I can't touch anything.

Chris Powers: I think you've answered like, what are the lessons to be learned some people want to be around people, and in a comfortable situation they want to be heard. They want to be seen. Yeah. And like the billions of dollars of fine marble and art, it's not actually why people are interested in your place.

And that probably is a bit of tension that you healthy bit of tension that you carry with you into every decision. Sure. It's what's the perfect balance? That's right. Because you can have a great community but just a godawful building and sometimes that doesn't work either.

Let's just talk about full-service urban, this kind of, it what to me seemed like you're seeing a lot more of them, these hospitable places with restaurants and bars and it seems like you could just travel there and stay in that building the whole time and have a great time.

More complex to operate, and probably has a lot more revenue streams. Like What do you think about those?

Dupree Scovell: Yeah, at the end of the day, that type of operation as much comes down to f and b as anything food and beverage. And so what we've seen just in general is kind of what I was talking about earlier, even alluding to the room service thing, is the guest is just too savvy, they know if I'm in a hotel restaurant versus if I'm in a restaurant operated by Fort Worth's own Tim Love, right? You're going to walk in there you go this place is different. Yeah. Service is different. The food is a different quality. Like something's going on here that just feels different.

Yep. And that's why it'll generate traffic from outside. But if you've seen kind of like the link that makes that hotel, those types of hotel specials, not necessarily how great the room design is, although usually, it's pretty decent, it doesn't have to be like four seasons. It's really about what people are enjoying in the common spaces.

What's the lobby like? What is the environment like there? What's the coffee like? What's the barista what's the restaurant like? What, how the craft cocktails that the bartender, who knows every whiskey you've ever heard of, right? Who can serve that with like authority? Those are the types of things that I think get pretty interesting.

Chris Powers: What's your maybe, okay, here's a question. What's your favorite hotel and why is it your favorite hotel and you can't own it? Okay. 

Dupree Scovell: I would say Chicago Athletic Association in Chicago. That, that is just, it is one of those hotels where they've got, the food and beverage is a third party.

Yep. It was designed by a group called Roman Williams. It's owned long-term and is a partnership with the Pritzker family. And it's just got all the intangible qualities. It's historic, it is, it's unique. All the stuff the branding, the rooms, everything kind of builds off of this idea that it was once an athletic club.

It's almost one of those things where there's just a sense of discovery for the guests around every corner, the bar, the speakeasy, the found furniture, the books on the wall, the big fireplace the exterior architecture, all those things compound on itself to just give you this experience where you're like, I don't need a resort at all in that scenario.

I can just be in Chicago, oftentimes not the best weather, and still feel like this place is just magical. 

Chris Powers: Anyway. So from your perspective and what y'all do at Woodbine, do y'all work with the designers that design the hotel? Do y'all work, do y'all sign the leases with the third party f and b, or is that what the manager's doing?

Dupree Scovell: hundred percent Woodbine. At the end of the day, we feel like we're a curator. Our job is okay too, so we're working with the design team to set the direction to say, this light switch, not that light switch, this color duvet, not that one. This headboard, not that, I mean it, it's working hand in hand with them to be able to say, here's the vision we want to accomplish.

Here's our North Star. Help us get there. Good example of that. At Hill Country, we were designing it, and Chip and Jojo are legit. In terms of there, this kind of modern farmhouse thing. Yeah. And our design team was going down that direction and I was like no. We're not there.

This is not a farmhouse, this is a ranch. So let me help you understand that design direction. And the only way you can do this is by pulling pictures from the King Ranch and four sixes and from all these other places you go, this is what a ranch feels like. It's not white shiplap wood, it's green, it's, it's not black iron, it's rusted metal. It's these, so it's a kind of similar vein, but a very different, trail, so those are the types of things where we'll try and set a north star and then let them run. 

Chris Powers: All right. We're getting, we're coming down the finish line. I think it would be important to get your take on this though. How does STS play into the whole picture?

Dupree Scovell: Yeah, look, the thing like Dallas just. Ax them, didn't they? They did. There is, there are some regulations that are going on with Airbnb and others. Here's the thing, broader. What industry has seen legitimate existential threats, in multiples over the ca past decade?

More than hospitality. I'd argue none. You, short-term rentals, one of them, Airbnb, VRBO, the pandemic. You just go down the list and there are, there's one thing after the other that you look at the hotel business and you go, man, those are like major headwinds. But yeah, look the reality is that when you look at how demand has been impacted by that, there was some kind of shadow economy that the hotel business did not understand existed because so many people are staying in friends' houses.

Because the hotel occupancy has not seen a major dip because of that. It's hard to, because of what we've gone through, it's hard to tie the two together, but at the end of the day, it feels like, there is room for that category in our business. And look if they're treated the same way we're treated and they've got to have the same ADA requirements, they have to file the same taxes, they have to have all the same types of restrictions that we do that are major barriers to developing an asset.

I'm all for it. Yeah. If they don't, I'm like, that's not a level playing field and that doesn't feel like that. That ought to be true. But I also think a business traveler is going to go, you know what? As nice as that was like having to find the key, not having this amenity, not having that place where I'm not sure of where I'm going, not, I think that's sorted itself out in those categories of travelers have probably started to separate.

Chris Powers: All right. Let's just bring it home on just what's going on in today's market. What you could talk about it from a capital markets perspective. You could talk about it just from how assets are performing. What's your view of how. Y'all's hotels are performing and just what's your broader view on how that, what that means for the economy and the market?

Dupree Scovell: The way I describe it is the hotel business is a, it's a hard business to compete in. And you have fewer lenders, you have fewer equity partners, you have all the reasons that I talked about. You have an operating business on top of a real estate business, which becomes even harder for people to understand or invest in.

And so there are a lot of headwinds in it, even though from a top-line perspective, hotels are performing probably as good, if not a little bit better than they did in 19. That's just the top line. That's just saying the occupancy is better than it was. And generally, the average daily rate that you're paying per night for a room is probably a little bit higher than it was in 19.

But nobody talks about, if you will, under the sheets, right? You get down to the bottom of that balance sheet and you're looking at the NOI line and you've got rising labor by a significant factor. You got interest rates that have, nearly tripled. That's a major oi margin reduction.

That compression is kind of those things where I describe, it looks like you're just outrunning the alligator that's closest to you. That's it. You're just outrunning it. Yep. And right now, frankly, in the hotel business, you kind of take that win and you go let's beat inflation, and let's keep going because a lot of other assets aren't doing that because you're going to fixed lease for 10 years.

Our lease has happened to be a day and a half usually. Yeah. And so you do have a legitimate hedge against inflation in that case. And so, I think that's a compelling case for why hospitality makes sense in a market like this. 

Chris Powers: Have y'all seen equilibrium balanced out at what you can charge for rooms?

I know, through. Most every asset class rent has been going up. Industrial's been nuts. The Multifamily went up. I remember seeing my first hotel bill in 2021 when we went on our first vacation. I was like, I thought these rooms used to be two 50 a night. They were 700. Have you guys seen a top or is it still mainly due to seasonality?

Or have you guys reached a talk? 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah. You're still able to push a little bit. Yeah. But that's going to that'll taper. I think I think you're seeing probably consumer pullback in, in general, that probably hasn't gotten to hotels yet, because there's still a lot of discretionary spending, and leisure travel in the summer is generally where people are going to, really kind start to.

But I think that's coming. I think as we see, Consumers begin to get a little more concerned. Hey, interest rates are a lot higher. Discretionary spending's a lot harder. Maybe we ought to, maybe we ought not to do four nights. We might do three. Maybe we shouldn't do the resort.

Maybe we should do the other one. The selector hotel or whatever else. Those are the types of things that I think we're going to start to see changes. So I, we're probably right at that point where you're going to see a serious slowdown in leisure travel. 

Chris Powers: I think this has been fascinating. Admire the hell out of you and we've talked a lot offline.

Let's maybe wrap it up with some of advice that's helped you along your career. Again, it's been characterized by many great men, people, and your faith in the Lord. So that’s kind of something that you think carries you through the day that you pass on to others? 

Dupree Scovell: I'm probably not as much one for advice in, in what we would think of that as in the traditional sense.

I'd probably go to the source if far. I think what was, what's the thing that's most inspired me, maybe. And that's from probably some early challenges that I faced. Even as a kid. But there was a verse that, that I stumbled on in high school. I got injured in a game.

And when you think you're like, that was, all of the world revolved around that. You probably would've been the starting quarterback at Monterey High School. You'd kept Loved it. 

Chris Powers: Coronado. Oh, 

Dupree Scovell: Coronado. Even better. Coronado. Yeah. I would, I'd probably go to Romans five, three through six, which is, says you'll rejoice in our trials.

Cause trials lead to perseverance. Perseverance leads to character, and character leads to hope. And I think from my perspective, there are. We face challenges every day in our business. We face challenges with deals that we shouldn't have done with partners that we shouldn't have partnered with things like that.

And I think there's and of course, when you're going through two years of a pandemic and then you're on the brink of a recession, you're looking at and kind of one of the central tenants that we've got to maintain is this idea of perseverance. You got to be willing to say, I'm going to go one foot in front of the other.

I'm not looking up, I'm looking down and I'm, eventually I'll get to the top of that hill. And from our perspective, that's really where I've said, look, we're going to rejoice in those trials because that's going to lead to perseverance. Perseverance is going to develop our character as a company, as an individual, and as a family.

And that's going to lead to hope, hope not in ourselves and our ability to do it, but hope in the one. True God who says, I got this. And the end of the day, like for my faith journey, trusting in Christ with that hope. That's been the thing that you kind of say the phrase that many people have heard.

That's where you, that's a peace that surpasses all understanding and that hope is the thing that we've kind of leaned on to be able to say, it's not us driving this business. It's a hundred percent in the Lord's hands as much as we want. And try with all our might to control the outcome. And I'm no different than anybody else in that regard, but if there were a, if there a piece of advice, if you will I'd go to this source on that one.

Chris Powers: Thank you for an amazing conversation. 

Dupree Scovell: Yeah, thanks a lot. This was great. Appreciate it.