Update on hotel, what's been going on, and plan moving forward. Cliffs at bottom, even though I think it's an interesting read.
Hotel:
Since posting this thread, the hotel has now been finished and functional/operational for a good bit now. It's turned out pretty good and has been a pretty cool experience seeing the hotel (on my first visit) when it was still being constructed and bare block, to seeing it now finished and operational. I have not personally been back to the hotel to see it now that it's finished, but my mother and her sisters took a trip to Tanzania as a vacation and they all stayed at the hotel. I was told it was very nice. From the pictures I have seen it looks pretty good to me. Here's a couple:
We have been hosting a lot of different events such as weddings and government related events, which has been keeping us pretty booked up. Here's a picture from one:
Now that the hotel is basically done and functional, the current plan, as I mentioned in earlier stages of the thread I believe, is that we are going to be transitioning into trying to tap into the housing market there. Not sure if I went into details, but essentially there's a pretty huge shortage of adequate housing all throughout the country, which has created a market with lots of demand for a growing class population.
What's gone on in the mean time:
I continued grinding poker while waiting for the hotel to be completed. I believe I mentioned it in other parts of this thread or another one that I created, that my plan at the onset was not to just invest passively on the sidelines, but to actively learn what's going on so that I could learn the ropes and position myself with the knowledge/experience to try to invest money on my own at some point. So what ended up happening was my uncle and I decided, the best way for me to get started in learning and being involved was to come down to where he was in the US and work first hand on some housing construction we were doing here in the states.
The general plan was that we were doing some experimental construction here to test out some different things we want to implement in the houses we plan to build in Tanzania, but felt doing it here in the states in a more controlled environment first, with less money at risk, was the best idea. So I came down here right as the project was beginning and have spent the past 4 months or so essentially acting as the project manager for the houses we're building. My uncle really wanted me to get experience managing a project and learning on a micro level how construction works, so that I can help be the eyes/ears for us when we begin building in Tanzania.
I wouldn't consider myself a newbie at this point anymore (guess I could just post from my normal name now too) since in the past 4 months I've basically learned how to build an entire house on my own from start to finish, while focusing on keeping costs down, staying on schedule, and staying within budget. I was the sole full time worker on the houses we built here in the states and it was a HUGE learning experience. I had various employees working for me, had to manage a payroll, negotiating terms, coordinating various phases of the job with diff teams I had (for example, my foundation people can't get in until I get my guys who bring in the dirt and clear the trees have finished, then my plumbers can't do X until I've made sure my carpenters did Y).
My uncles approach to helping people learn things is basically throw in the pool head first and let them sink or swim. So as a result, when I first got here I didn't even know what a "rebar" was, to now knowing all sorts of specifics and details that are relevant to a project. I feel like I learned a lot incredibly fast and think a poker players skills overlap quite nicely with that of a project superintendent, since it requires mostly a lot of attention to detail, planning, organization, tilt control, analytical thinking, multitasking, comparing EV of diff options, etc (
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-does-a-...tendent-do.htm). I think the other big thing I gained from this experience though was that it gave me a lot more confidence in actually taking action in doing something. I, like many people, tend to sort of feel a bit in the dark about actually taking the first step even if we have the capital and intelligence to do something. This experience here really made me feel a lot more confident about learning how to get things done. It also made me realize that a lot of successful people in the business world really aren't all that sophisticated. I had different business meetings with CEO's of some construction companies we were working with where I didn't think the guys were too smart, to put it politely.
Plan going forward:
We are at the point now where we are about ready to start building the houses and the plan is for me to move out there full time and work in conjunction with our project manager and team we have in TZ, to show them how to build the houses using some of the things we are bringing from what we learned here in the states. I'll be helping to keep an eye on our investment, keep things moving along, watching over how things are going, and making sure it's done right.
I'm pretty excited about it as well since I'm supposed to be living at our hotel, which has air condition, internet, and a nice atmosphere. When I first made the thread I thought it was going to be a bigger sacrifice moving there, since I wasn't sure where I'd be staying, if there'd be internet/air condition, how the food would be, etc. Most that's been resolved though. I'm planning on hiring one of the cook's from our restaurant or someone else to cook my meals each day and having a lot of foods just shipped over in bulk each month. Only reason that's necessary though is since my diet is pretty specific, otherwise they have plenty of good food there. But they won't have stuff like whole grain noodles, specific protein powders, truvia/splenda, etc. The timing of all this is pretty perfect considering black Friday and all. I had coincidentally already came here and put poker on hold shortly before black friday happened.
Anyway, if there ends up being enough interest, I may start another thread where I post more information and updates on how things are going.
Cliffs:
- Finished hotel, has been operational for a while and has had great occupancy rates thus far, we are hosting events and such at the hotel to build interest and business, mother/sisters visited it and said it was nice, pictures included above.
- Since we are planning to now build houses, I ended up moving near my uncle and becoming project manager for the houses we were building and learned an enormous amount about how to build a house from start to finish, as well as managing a projects budget/schedule/team.
- Am planning to move to TZ and live in our hotel, for the purpose of assisting our engineers/project manager/team that worked with us on the hotel, in managing the construction of houses we plan to do there.
Last edited by NewbieInvestor; 08-13-2011 at 02:25 PM.