I was in law before I became a hotelier. For three years I worked at the Manhattan district attorney’s office before I returned home to Texas in the mid-’90s to work for the attorney general in Austin. I began to frequent my local neighborhood bar, the legendary Continental Club, which sat directly across the street from a run-down 1930s seafoam-green motor court on South Congress: the San José Motel. I would look at it from the window at the end of the bar and dream about what it could be. One day, I walked across the street and asked if they’d ever consider selling. As it turns out, the owner was planning to list it for sale in the local Asian weekly newspaper.

I knew nothing about renovating or running a hotel, but everything about it was compelling to me. I convinced my mother to cosign a bank loan to buy the San José, thinking I could upgrade it room by room—boy, was I wrong. If I knew then what I know now, I’m not sure I would have embarked on such an ambitious project that I knew nothing about, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It changed my life, and I found my calling.

I’ve always thought of hotels as community centers; I wanted to create places where people came together. I grew up in West Texas, where my grandfather was a cattle rancher. He would read the newspaper and take meetings in the lobby of the Lincoln Hotel in downtown Odessa, or get his hair cut and boots shined in the shops off the lobby. I loved to go with him, to sit on the big leather sofas in the center of this hive of human activity, where business deals were done and people were coming and going with purpose or at leisure. My mother loved hotels, too—the Waldorf in New York City, La Fonda on the Plaza in Santa Fe, the Adolphus in Dallas, Hotel Texas in Fort Worth where, as she waited for her room to be ready, she heard JFK speak in the parking lot and shook his hand before he traveled to Dallas the day he was shot.

The best decision I ever made was to have a kid with my wife, Erin. Lyndon, who is about to turn six, has upended my world completely, in the very best way. On the other hand, if I could redo any moment in my life, it would be selling a majority of the hotel company I founded and trusting in the leadership of the bigger company.¹ It ended very badly for me and separated me from so much of what I had spent years building. I hate that I decided to trust in that situation—it still brings me deep sadness. But then, I wouldn’t be where I am, doing the things I love with these people I love—so how could I ever really redo a thing? I’m a big believer that every bit of what happens leads us to where we are now, and I’m really happy about where I am now. Buy the ticket, take the ride.