In November 2023, I burned the boats.

I quit my job, sold my house, and drove 3,000 miles across the country to Idyllwild, California.

No job. Rising interest rates. STR competition heating up. Market skepticism everywhere.
But we saw an opportunity to build something people crave most today: connection, wellbeing, and extraordinary experiences.

After buying, renovating, operating, and selling 20+ vacation rentals, my partner Isaac J. Silverman and I saw some clear truths:

People love to travel in groups but hate sharing bathrooms.

People want experiences over things.

People want to leave a vacation recharged, not drained.

And yes, design matters.

So we doubled down.

We bought The Fern Valley Inn for $1.5M from an older couple who had been running it as a retirement hobby. With the support of 13 trusted friends and family investors, we reimagined it as The PineTree Hotel.

Here’s what happened in our first year:
• 3X property value: $1.5M → $4.5M+ in under two years
• $666K+ revenue (up from $108K in 2022)
• $257K in weddings, retreats, and full buyouts
• 25K social followers + 4.3K guest emails
• 1,406 reservations | 4.9⭐ on Google
• 21%+ cash-on-cash returns | Over 2X investor equity

Sometimes opportunity doesn’t show up in a spreadsheet. Sometimes it takes vision, belief, and relentless execution to see what others miss.

For a while, I thought I needed to “own more hotels” before sharing my story. But the truth is: The PineTree Hotel is proof of concept. People are hungry for experiences that recharge them, not just places to sleep.

And we’re just getting started.

We are already under contract on three more boutique hotels set to close in the next 90 days.

We’ve done it. We’re doing it. And now, we’re scaling it.

Ways we can work together:

👉 Invest in boutique hotels that you’d want to stay in
👉 Partner with us to acquire and grow properties
👉 Sell us a property with untapped potential

Drop me a follow or let’s connect, because what we’re building is only getting more fun.

Tim Ensmann

There are officially more pickleball players than founders in America.
Not sure if that’s a good or bad stat..

Maybe it says something, people are craving connection just as much as competition.

Founders League has done a great job with this. Every Monday they bring local founders together to connect, compete, and grow.

The shared vulnerability of being an entrepreneur turns into genuine community, and the pickleball just keeps it light and fun.

Bringing people together will solve most of our problems.

As we head deeper into the world of AI, communities like this and genuine meetups become even more valuable.

#FoundersLeague #Community #Founders #Leadership #AI #Pickleball

Sales Guy → Boutique Hotel Guy | Helping you build an intentional life through boutique hotel investing

ADR is dead. 
The operators who win from here will master VPG, Value Per Guest 👇

Most hotel owners are playing the wrong game.
They focus on ADR and occupancy. The best operators build value across the entire guest journey.

The top hospitality brands didn’t tweak the model. They rewrote it.

• Soho House sold belonging
• Airbnb sold trust
• 1 Hotels and Amangiri sold a feeling
• Autocamp and Getaway sold disconnection

Here is what the best operators understand.

Traditional metrics stop at what a room earns.
VPG asks a different question:
How much value can you create for each guest before, during, and after the stay?

This starts long before check in.

From the moment a guest sees the brand online, we are already learning what they care about. Wellness content. Group travel. Nature. Pickleball. Yoga. Celebrations. Creativity. Restoration.
Every signal a guest gives us becomes the foundation for a personalized experience.

Once they book, we gather context.
Why are they coming. What they want to do. Who they are coming with. What matters most to them. Activities. Amenities. Goals. Special occasions. Moments they're craving to create.

For full property reservations, the data multiplies. When the bride signs up for lakeside yoga, the entire group sees it. That moment alone triggers FOMO, drives participation, and increases ancillary revenue inside a single stay.

Every touchpoint becomes value.

• Discovery
• Booking
• Pre arrival planning
• On site experiences
• Upsells and add ons
• Content creation
• Group dynamics
• Post stay retargeting
• Personalized re engagement

We collect it.
We curate it.
We turn it into higher revenue, stronger loyalty, more rebookings, and a brand that grows through community, not discounts.

This data directly improves our social strategy, our group sales motion, our pricing power, and our experience design. It helps us attract more of the right guests and book more of the right groups.

Most operators never see any of this because they only look at the room.
When your entire business is built around Average Daily Rate (ADR) and occupancy, you are literally chasing "average" performance.

VPG is the opposite.
VPG is how you create a hospitality business that compounds.
It is how you build brands that outperform spreadsheets.

The ones who master Value Per Guest will own the next decade of hospitality.
Everyone else will keep discounting to survive.

Follow Tim Ensmann to see how we are rewriting the rules of how experiential hospitality brands operate.

Bolt Farm Treehouse bought their land for $237K.
Today it's valued around $32M...
The wildest part 👇 

100% of their bookings come directly through social media.

Imagine walking into a bank with a pro forma showing "treehouses" pushing 90% occupancy, a $750+ ADR, and 100% direct bookings.
You’d get laughed out of the room 😂

But this is exactly why there's such a massive opportunity right now in boutique hospitality.

You have brand-driven, design-led properties with the ability to reach the exact audience they’re built for.
Yet most are still treating them like “traditional hotels” or “average short-term rentals.”

It’s like underwriting a hotel as a multifamily building...
or treating a short term rental like a long-term rental.

Sure, they're all "real estate" and the numbers sit on the same spreadsheet.
But it is not the same business.

Here’s the counterintuitive part:
• We own the real estate.
• We own the strategy.
• Why wouldn’t we also own the channel?

We still underwrite conservatively with the traditional metrics.
But we are playing a different game, the same way Bolt Farm does.

We look for assets in markets with real demand, then lean into our unique advantages, target the right audience, and operate in a niche that sits far outside of “average.”

Follow +Tim Ensmann if you’re interested in how hospitality is changing and learning about opportunities like this one.

Commercial real estate + social media = new rules

We saw a 13X return on total marketing spend from buyouts alone.
This doesn’t even include the 92% direct bookings we hit this quarter.

The new rules are simple.
Treat your property like a brand, not a building, and you get to play a different game.

Attention builds a following.
Story builds trust.
Trust fills the calendar.

This is where hospitality is headed, and what can be possible on commercial real estate.
Operators who master social media will be playing a new game.

BCP Financing

https://www.bcpfinancing.com/ - BCP Financing is a mortgage company focused on 1-20 unit residential (1-10 units for long term debt) business-purpose mortgages. The lending process is handled mostly by software; borrowers can fill out a loan application in 5 minutes, get a quote within 24 hours, and close in as little as 5 days.

Managing Partner

Bozeman Capital Partners

https://www.bozemanpartners.com/ - Bozeman Capital Partners is a RE Credit Fund focusing on buying B piece participations in residential business-purpose loans to generate outsized returns. We mostly focus on fix-and-flip loans on 1-10 unit residential properties.

Principal

Rehabit Homes

General Partner

RaiseMasters

Member

Best Ever Conference

Economics Debate Panelist

Software Engineer

Lofty AI

Software Engineer Interrn

• Interned on the Core Single Review Tool (SRT) team under Community Integrity.
• Created an internal tool to help other teams debug why their SRT API calls are getting throttled.
• Built data pipeline using SQL and Python to aggregate throttling events, identify spikes in usage, collect and rank the top stack
traces associated with the throttling errors, and write them to a database.
• Used PHP/Hack and React to build a visual tool to display these events, along with other diagnostic information. Used the
tool to map out a solution to a recurring bug that causes between 3 and 6 million throttling errors per day.

Software Engineer Intern

Amazon

• Worked on the Network Load Balancing team under AWS EC2.
• Created a resource auditor; the program runs periodically and makes sure all databases, processes, and other resources remain in sync during deployment.

SDE Intern

Unchained Capital

•	Worked as a full stack developer to update, maintain, and add features to their web app.
•	Used React to build an interface for customers to see how updates to their principal and interest payments affected their loan-to-collateral ratio.

•	Built a backend framework using wkhtmltopdf to extract customer information from the database and automatically generate relevant legal documents.
•	Currently working on connecting the backend with Twilio in order to increase application security; numerous browser attacks are capable of manipulating bitcoin addresses when served on a webpage. By sending users confirmations of the relevant bitcoin addresses, they can be certain that they’re sending money to the correct address. Can also be used with 2FA and other security improvements.

Currently working on scaling my debt fund to $100M, building out my mortgage business, and managing my $3M single family rental portfolio in the Greater Seattle area. 

Interested in getting double-digit returns by investing in single family debt? Visit https://www.bozemanpartners.com/ or DM me.

Interested in getting a fix-and-flip, DSCR, new construction, or bank statement loan quote? Visit https://www.bcpfinancing.com/ or DM me.

I also do deep dives on macroeconomics and real estate every month, with shorter posts every week. If you want to get regular quantitative analyses of the macro environment, real estate investing, and finance in general, follow me!

Kunaal Kumar

The government is about to pump up house prices by almost 10% seemingly overnight. Here's how:

A few days ago, I saw a tweet from William Pulte—the current director of the FHFA—that made me stop scrolling.

For those of you who don't intuitively understand why prices will more or less immediately go up once the 50 year mortgage comes to market, here's the logic:

Homeowners buy based on monthly payment. A 6% $100k mortgage has a monthly payment of $599.55 amortized over 30 years, but that monthly payment drops down to $526.40 if you amortize the loan over 50 years. 

If you're using a 50 year mortgage, you can have a mortgage balance of $113.5k and your monthly payment will be $597.47. 

Even though you pay 13% more for the house, your monthly payment is still slightly lower!

Of course, it's not that clear-cut. The 50 year mortgage will have a higher interest rate, and it's a bit hard to predict what the spread will be like between the 30 year and 50 year. 

Currently, the spread between the 15 year and 30 year is about 50 bps. If we assume a similar spread between the 30 and 50 year, you're able to pay roughly 7% more and get a similar monthly payment.

The bottom line: if we do get a 50 year mortgage, affordability might improve in the very short term, but homeowners are going to bid up prices in the long run. Subsidizing demand always leads to higher prices in the long run.

If you want to preempt the increase in prices, now might be a great time to invest in some small residential rentals—and if you need a DSCR loan while you're waiting for the 50 year mortgage to hit, visit our website to see if we can help!

Principal of a $66M Debt Fund Distributing ~20% Annualized | Investor Loans on 1-20 unit Residential Properties | Ex SWE @ Meta

taplio

The Battle

Tim Ensmann

Kunaal Kumar

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreTim Ensmann's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreKunaal Kumar's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Tim Ensmann

Kunaal Kumar

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Tim Ensmann's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreKunaal Kumar's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreTim Ensmann's LinkedIn Performance