The Private Island Resort Built With Sweat, Not Millions | Odis Martin E59

Turning an international hospitality dream into reality sounds exciting, until you’re standing on a swampy patch of land in Belize, wondering how many years it will take to shape it into something guests will love.

That’s where today’s guest, Odis Martin, began. He and his wife spent nearly a decade transforming a remote island into Sindiri on the Reef, a private eco lodge built without outside investors and rebuilt multiple times after hurricanes. 

Odis and his wife went from small US multifamily to hand digging a swampy island, navigating Belize regulations, rebuilding after hurricanes, and creating a one of a kind off grid destination.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• How a school project turned into a 10-year international hospitality roadmap
• The real cost and complexity of off-grid development on an island
• What actually makes buying in Belize approachable for US investors

This episode gives you a realistic look at what it really takes to turn an overseas hospitality dream into a real, functioning business.

Follow and share the Hotel Investor Playbook so more people can learn how to invest in hospitality assets the right way. 

About Odis

Odis Martin is the owner and captain of Cindiri On The Reef, a Garifuna family-owned private island resort located off the coast of Dangriga, Belize. Alongside his wife, Odis transformed their graduate school thesis into a real-world venture, hand-building the resort from raw land with local Maya and Garifuna craftsmanship and a deep commitment to sustainability. Before launching Cindiri, the couple built a 20-door real estate portfolio in California, which helped self-fund the project without outside investors. Today, Cindiri On The Reef stands as a model for off-grid, eco-luxury hospitality offering reef-to-table dining, immersive ocean experiences, and a masterclass in independent, purpose-driven resort development.

Connect with Odis

Website: https://cindiri.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/54356667

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cindirionthereef/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cindirionthereef

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cindirionthereef

Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Email Us at info@hotelinvestorplaybook.com

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Transcript

Michael Russell 0:03

The Hotel Investor Playbook, your guide to building wealth and freedom through hotel and hospitality ownership. Welcome back to the Hotel Investor Playbook. I am Michael Russell, co-founder of Malama Capital, and your host. On this show, we talk story about everything you need to know to make money investing in hotels and in hospitality assets. Now, today's episode is inspirational. We're going to dive into the incredible journey of how a couple turned a graduate thesis into a self-funded private island nature lodge overlooking the Belize Barrier Reef. We're going to unpack what it really takes to develop and operate an off-grid project in another country, the wins, the setbacks, and the moments that nearly broke them. So Otis Martin, co-founder of Sinderi on the Reef, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you. I'm glad to be on the show. I'm excited to unpack this. Take us back to grad school. How did a master's thesis turn into an actual resort?

Odis Martin 1:16

I'll take you back to when my wife and I first became inspired. We came to Belize on vacation. I'm originally from Belize, so it was like a return home, but my wife had never been. And Belize has the second largest barrier reef. My wife grew up on the ocean. Both of us are avid fishermen. We went straight to the to the islands. Well, we got trapped there for a couple of days because of bad weather. We were in a literally in a cottage that we've later built and got inspired, just had had a great time as a couple. There's so much reef, there's so much life. There's it's it's like a spectacular place. Anyway, so my wife had worked in a boutique hotel, and we are staying in this boutique hotel resort on the one of the islands in Belize. And we just started vibing on it and thought, yeah, we could do this. We were going through our graduate school at the time, and we did our master's thesis on building a resort in Belize. It was years later that we got the land and the island.

Michael Russell 2:10

What inspired you to study developing a resort? Let's start there.

Odis Martin 2:15

Well, you know, we were not studying developing a resort. We it was just before the dot-com, and we were, it was like a master's in finance, and that was kind of the hot thing. But at the back of our minds was the this hotel, but it's the entry level seemed very high in the moment, and we just didn't know how to get in. Where where were you going to school? Sonoma State University here in north in in Northern California. Yeah.

Michael Russell 2:40

And so that's where you are now, is uh are you in?

Odis Martin 2:43

Yeah, we're we're in the Bay Area in the San Francisco Bay Area. Yeah.

Michael Russell 2:47

And so you're operating this resort currently remotely. Yes. Okay, that's very interesting to me.

Odis Martin 2:53

I go back and forth. I was just I've been here about about three weeks. We we're gonna go back in December and spend another three weeks, and then we come back and spend three weeks. So we go three weeks on, three weeks off.

Michael Russell 3:02

Okay, I want to earmark that. So you're studying, you're in grad school, and you're going to Sonoma, and your degree, what is what is your specific degree then?

Odis Martin 3:12

It was it was a master's in business administration, and then we wrote this up as our master as our final thesis that okay, what do you want to do as a business? And it was entrepreneurial based, and so we said this is what we wanted to do.

Michael Russell 3:24

Okay, so that set the foundation and that gave you the goal. Walk us through briefly. Then you were starting to to talk talk through how you decided to go back and you got into what would be more of conventional real estate investing.

Odis Martin 3:38

Yeah, so we immediately got into conventional real estate investing. Needed to buy a house, then immediately within a year, we were like, we need to be in multiple property, and then all of a sudden we started to really build up our real estate portfolio. So that's fourplexes, triplexes, duplexes, and we just kept adding on to it, which seasoned us in real estate, which I thought it was a very critical step before we got to the private island because one of our businesses we have real estate here, we we rent properties.

Michael Russell 4:11

Okay, so you gained some experience in real estate, but you you had this idea of developing the property in Belize. I'd like to know, man, this is an ambitious project. I mean, this is it's on an island, it's off-grid, and it's undeveloped. So, I mean, what gave you the confidence to take on a project of this scale?

Odis Martin 4:34

People thought we were crazy, and you know what? We probably were crazy. Uh, the the main reason is that we didn't have the capital to go buy a night. Well, we finally stumbled on a on a property, and we looked at other island property, and it was like just mind-blowing expensive and not worth the risk. The confidence came from the fact that we it was the only thing that we could afford, and that we knew we thought, oh, and I was fishing, and I felt, well, this is where we could fight from. In hindsight, I could say we did not fully appreciate the fight that was on ahead because there's regulations, there was a swamp, it was a mud hole, it wasn't a beautiful island that we transformed it into. So we basically had to full it in. But the the confidence came from, I guess, building our real estate business here, right? We'd scrapped through our real estate business here, and we'd gone through the ups and downs. At that point, we were pretty scrappy and savvy. I'll take some credit for that. So it was not our first development, so to speak. We'd done some nothing at that scale, but some minor developments here. We developed like a forplex here in Northern California, which we brought from the ground up. So those things do give you confidence that, hey, I could do this.

Michael Russell 5:43

Well, it sounds like you took a calculated risk, you had some experience, and you leveraged that experience to pivot into hospitality. But I guess my question and listening to this is okay, you're having success with the real estate. You you've purchased multiple properties. I think at one point you had a successful 20-door portfolio in California. And California real estate's not cheap. So you had a decent portfolio of real estate. Why trade the stable cash flow of traditional real estate for the uncertainty of developing raw international property?

Odis Martin 6:19

We didn't see it as a trade. We see it, we saw it as an addition. And my wife grew up in a small coastal town, and she was instrumental in putting together a small boutique hotel. And so she had all that experience, and we had this experience with real estate combined. And so we stepped forward with that knowledge and that passion and what we had done in in graduate school. And like I said, I'm a fisherman, and they always say, go with what you love. And I said, I love to fish, except for developing an island, even though you're right in the middle, fishing is like number 10 in your list of priorities. It ended up working out that way that entrepreneuring becomes number one through nine. So fishing is like a distant 10.

Michael Russell 6:59

I think that's a dream that we all have, right? If we can marry our personal pursuits with our business ambition, then that that's like that's the perfect combination. Someone who's never purchased property abroad, how complicated was it to close a deal in Belize?

Odis Martin 7:15

It was not very complicated. Belize, I listened to one of your other podcasts about Costa Rica and very similar experience. If you Belize is stable, you can't say it for all the Latin American countries, but Belize has a long history of stability, and a lot of Americans purchase property. You do the proper research, you get the proper legal advice, and you can hold title.

Michael Russell 7:35

Okay. Are there any uh, I don't know, surprises or red tape that would catch a first-timer off guard?

Odis Martin 7:40

Yeah. Similarly, because there is no MLS and there's no real national valuation of property. I mean, there's say, not to the degree that there is in the United States, however, there is enough to because they people do take home loans and homes. So I'd say it's about 70% of what we have here. There's some key things that are missing, but not enough to be off-putting if you're astute and you've a seasoned real estate person, you could navigate those minor hurdles. Because the law is good and the enforcement is good. And so you could work within that context if you're astute.

Michael Russell 8:15

Well, forgive my my ignorance here, but in Belize, what are the languages spoken?

Odis Martin 8:21

Belize, former British colony. The national language is English. However, it's 50% English, 50% Spanish. But everyone speaks English. The language of the government is English. So that makes it a lot easier.

Michael Russell 8:35

Of course, yeah. Because I mean, I I imagine some of the concerns I would have in a Latin American country would be reading legal documents in a foreign language, not fully trusting Google Translate to be able to give me the accurate interpretation. So that eliminates a significant hurdle.

unknown 8:51

Yes.

Odis Martin 8:51

And Belize has is based on laws based on English common law. So it's it's very transferable between here and the United States and it makes it it's it's a lot more simpler. But you still need a good team of a good legal team to ensure that you're protected.

Michael Russell 9:06

To me, what stands out is the biggest hurdle of building something anywhere is building something off-grid. You know, I live on an island and it's hard enough living in Maui where we have very few resources when it comes to labor and skilled trade professionals. Things can become expensive, they can take a long time, shipping is difficult. But you combine all of that. I I've still have got access to utilities. Like if I need water, we have proper plumbing and we have electricity tied in. I can't even imagine what that's like. The mountain you must have climbed thinking about this learning curve. It's not just that you were building a ground up resort, but you were doing so off-grid. Can you share maybe a story that captures how tough this process really is?

Odis Martin 9:59

Wow. Well, we've had two hurricanes since, and two hurricanes have wiped out both of our docks, right? You need the dock to land all that material. And we have a couple of videos of how we survived it. But and then in the in the context of that, we we kept hearing, oh, hurricanes are going to increase and go to a massive level. And we're like, oh my god, this is potentially could be even more problematic. But we we settled our nerves and fought through it. But in terms of getting material onto the island, I I've said this to you before. One of the biggest issues is that the the island is 12 miles off the coast of Belize, and then there's the reef, and then the next stop is Jamaica, Cuba. So you're literally out in the wilderness. And this there, it's not every day that you could move a house across the sea, because literally we've moved big materials across the sea, and there's not a lot of infrastructure in Belize to really support it. But we we fought through it with persistence and a great team, great guys that are committed to it. Our team feels like, well, we believe that we are the best in the world of what we have to offer. Right. And what we have to offer is snorkeling and diving right on the best reef in Belize. And we are right on the reef. So we are within a half a mile here on the reef. There are lots of resorts in Belize, but not many that are right on the reef. And not many that are on the reef, with which in a secluded spot like where we are, where you get to be in the wilderness, but still within an hour from the airport. So our great proposition is you get off the airport and you could be in the wildernesses in an hour. And what you're gonna what are you gonna see there when you get there? Well, you're gonna get the best food. You're gonna be half hour to 45 minutes from the the blue hole, which is like a world heritage site. You can be whale shark diving or nurse shark diving, but high risk stuff, but enough for you to get like a jolt in your heart to say, whoa, that that that that's kind of fun, right? The best seafood in the world, just 100%. Belize is known for the its culture, and we bring we have cultural activities, we bring it to the folks on to the island so that they could feel that they could enjoy all of what Belize has to offer right on the island. But in addition to that, we'll take you off the island and give you a tour of the greater culture within the country of Belize and all of this within because of the equipment that we have. And I said we're 12 minutes from the mainland, we're there within half hour to 45 minutes, and we could give you a tour, and you're right in the we could take you right into the Mayan whirl within 30 minutes of getting because Belize is so small. Belize is only about 30 miles wide, so everything is really, really close.

Michael Russell 12:49

Okay, so you've done a nice job of setting the stage of where you're located. Can we dive into this a little bit more as far as your actual resort? Walk us through, maybe for a listener that is unfamiliar with your property, give us a rough idea of what you offer in terms of amenities, how many accommodations you have, what someone can expect when they're staying on property.

Odis Martin 13:12

Absolutely. We have 20 rooms. Let me start with that. Beautiful rooms. All of them are right on the sea. So you with great balconies, king-size beds. Some of our units are AC'd. So really, we we build our furniture on site by real good craftsmen. We have a restaurant that serves the best food. Our restaurant has six different unique areas. So if you come with a a party of 10 and you guys want to have, like, okay, this is your area to eat, or multiple parties. There's multiple private areas for you to. We have a gym, we have a library, we have pool table. So those are some of the amenities that we have. In addition, the best thing is that we're right on the reef. And so you could go island hopping, you could go see all the other islands that are available right there in Belize. And within a half hour, we could take you on jungle hikes, we could take you to waterfalls, cave cubing. So, andor resort, world-class food. Our guests really rave about the food because the lobster is right. Did I mention that you could jump off the dock and get lobster in abundance? So many of our guests they they love that catch and cook because it is right there in complete abundance.

Michael Russell 14:23

I'm looking right now at the setup online. There's a lot of scenery here. I'm curious, well, what does it cost to stay here per night?

Odis Martin 14:29

About $250 a night.

Michael Russell 14:32

And so, from a labor perspective, are there competitive advantages of operating in Belize? Like, are your labor costs lower? I would assume that I mean, it's taken a huge amount of effort to, I mean, hand carving, hand building furniture, getting pool tables there, all of the logistics. Like, I want to know about the financial upside because I understand and I can imagine the massive hurdles. But what I would hope for is that from a financial perspective, the upside is you can operate at a lower cost compared to, let's say, the US, but you can still charge US market-based prices and make a nice premium on the spread between the two. Can you maybe touch upon that thesis? Like, am I accurate in that assumption?

Odis Martin 15:18

Yeah, you are accurate to some degree. Belize, there is some savings in terms of labor costs, but but not as much as you'd think, because Belize only has a population of 400,000 people. So there isn't a huge labor market. It's a small country with a Belize is like an island within the Latin America. But what I think is good for us is that because we self-funded it and bootstrapped, that is what gives us the ability to offer good prices and a great value to our customers. It's literally how we funded it and how we built it, is what is result in the opportunity for us to lower our price. Because it's very expensive to build on an island. And there's a lot of building on an island that it's it's hard to transfer on to the customers.

Michael Russell 16:01

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit. Here in the US, buying a hotel, there's a whole process to it. One of the biggest obstacles is getting funding. It's difficult in the US. What is it like to try to get financing in Belize? And how did you overcome that obstacle?

Odis Martin 16:17

Having funded our real estate operation here, we knew a lot about getting funding. And then we went through the 2007 crash and all that. So we we know it it taught us a lot. We listened to a lot of Shark Tank and Mark Cuban always say, if you're gonna start a business, bootstrap it as much as you can. And I and I kind of bought into that, though we leverage a lot here in terms of real estate here, but because of the risk profile of a private island in Belize, we we bootstrapped it literally every part of it we paid. It was it started off as a passion project, knowing that it was gonna be a business, but we knew that, oh man, this there are a lot of pain points when you're bootstrapping something like this because a lot of it feels like you're just literally throwing money into the sea.

Michael Russell 16:58

What I'm putting together here is okay, so presumably financing Belize is not as available. There's more risk associated. Yes. So you've got all these properties in the US that you've developed over a series of years. Did you leverage equity from your US-based investments to be able to take out capital to pay for the development of the resort?

Odis Martin 17:22

No. Though I even though at times I wanted to, but we stuck to a pretty rigid that we are just going to bootstrap and self-fund.

Michael Russell 17:32

Okay, so I got to dig into this because this is the crux of the issue, right? It's like a little bit of the chicken and the egg issue. It's like, okay, great, you want to build this real estate portfolio and you think about raising capital from investors? Sometimes the return profile could be so high that it becomes difficult to find a deal that's priced low enough to where you can raise capital effectively. So you're like, all right, I'll go and self-fund. What does that actually mean in real life when you're self-funding and you're not tapping into your existing real estate for lines of credit or refinancing, you're just self-funding. Did you does that mean you're keeping your regular day job and you're carefully parceling out funds to pay for the development in Belize?

Odis Martin 18:12

That's an excellent question. The perception is that to develop a private island, you got to be rich. And we we thought that. And then we're like, okay, we got the island. But then in the meantime, we figured out that literally you really have to get rich to get to manage it. So you really have to develop a certain amount of. So we built big enough business, real estate business here, so that we could fund it. So we built the furnace that we, the number of units here that we could so we have enough rental units that we use that money that we gain from our rental property and we just nail it within the budget. And we just build based on what our capabilities are. And we stretch. I mean, it's not that we always buy it off more than we could chew, and then we figure out how to chew it. Right. But within reason.

Michael Russell 18:58

Yeah. And so what I'm trying to extract is a tactical approach that if let's say our audience is thinking, gosh, I'm working right now, maybe they don't have a huge real estate portfolio that they can use at spinning off cash, but they've got a they've got a high-paying job where they've got enough money that they can start diverting funds for investing. I guess the question is how likely is it that someone could self-fund a project in a place like Belize just by keeping their regular employment and using those funds to develop that a property?

Odis Martin 19:30

You know, that is one of the good things about us that we feel so lucky. We feel like we are always like we saw the future and we moved because we saw the future. And one of one of the things it's very hard to do to duplicate what we've done. And I'm not I'm saying that just because times have changed from the time we started until now. Can you do it? Abs absolutely. Were we lucky? Let me go back and tell us this story. We were open before the pandemic. We had two units, and my wife, we were booked out. Always, we couldn't, but we Felt like I said to my wife, we're booked out, but we're working for the folks, and we're not making any profit, we're just spinning our wheels because two units you cannot support yourself on two units. It's a very different time. And we were in an Airbnb business at the time, and it was a very different time. So this is prior to the pandemic, and it was just a very different business model. So we were booked out. So that gave that get got us excited because we're like, huh, if we could be booked out with two, and my wife felt at the time we could be booked out with 10. In the future, we will, if we build the 10, we could be booked out, and then it would by scaling, we would get to profitability. But getting getting back to your question, how can someone self-fund this? It takes a lot of cash. There's no doubt about it. Would I advise someone to self-fund it? I always say it's nice to have a uh a private island, but you need a private island like you need a hole in the head. You know what I mean? It's it's nice to have because the amount of cash flow that it takes to maintain it, unless you are committed and passionate about it, it cannot be a vanity project because it could look like a vanity. If it's a vanity project for you, you're gonna run out because you're gonna have to be able to withstand all of those, the hurricanes, the projects that seem to go nowhere, the projects that seem to just outright fail, and you spend tens of thousands of dollars and it just completely collapsed. We have buildings collapse under the hurricane or a restaurant collapsed, right? And then we had like our beautiful thatched buildings just get wiped away, and then we had to build again from scratch without even thinking, literally, without breathing a word. We just keep going.

Michael Russell 21:30

The picture you're painting right now is one that I think is important. It's realistic, but it is painting a picture that this is not easy. No, like resort or hotel development of any kind of any sort is you can choose easier professions. I can tell you that right now. But obviously, we started with the unique aspect of hospitality is combining passion with profits. That is what draws us into this field. If someone were strictly motivated simply by cash, I would tell them there's probably easier methods. You could probably just be a passive investor. I mean, that's the most obvious choice if you don't want to go through all the headache to just give your money to a seasoned expert operator and let them handle all the headache and the hardship. But for for you and for me, like I think that this is more than just about money. It is about putting our mark on the planet, about curating something. There is nothing more fulfilling than looking at the the faces of people that are experiencing joy from what you've curated. The the pleasure that others gain is it's contagious. And it feels so great to know that you're responsible. Like the thing that's most important for people in their lives is it's not always the material items. Obviously, people say that they would grab photos if there was a you know a fire from their home. The photos represent memories. Those memories are generated oftentimes in places that are special when on vacation. And so that to me is the heart of why we do what we do. But holy heck, Otis, what you're describing sounds scary and hard and burdensome. And it's like, why in the world? Again, you know, this it's like uh the competing thoughts. Why in the heck would anyone be crazy enough to take this on?

Odis Martin 23:23

You know, and on the back end, it's great, but I'll say this, right? We when we first got there, it was a swamp to fill the island. We started it was gonna cost almost a half a million dollars to fill in the island with all of the equipment that needed. And we said, Well, all I have is a shovel, a boat, and we're gonna shovel it into the boat, then off the boat, onto the land. And I'm I'm I'm a finance guy, I'm doing it in my office. I did all my spreadsheets and everything. And I'm like, oh my God, this will take 12 years of consistent moving of digging. And I'm like, Well, uh, why don't we just get on with the business of digging? If we start digging and someone finds us digging, then perhaps out of the if you get on the journey, you might get picked up and moved along. But if you don't get on the journey, then it'll never happen. So we started the dig. And we dug and dug and dug and years and years later, and I started, I sent down various equipment, various different dredges, and all of them sputtered to some degree and failed. So, but we in in the meantime we kept on digging, and then we eventually took 10 years and then dug it all out. Oh my gosh. So that's what it took just to get the land, and it's just literally digging from the bottom of the of the ocean, putting in a boat. And since then I've had a shoulder replacement surgery because of all that digging. Because a lot of it, you you I wouldn't advise you to go digging, but it's hard to send a man to the into the sea to go digging. He's gonna say, Well, why don't we get some equipment? And you're gonna be like, Well, I tried that, and the equipment that it takes takes a half a million, so we could sit here and wait until we get a half a million, or we could get on with the business of digging. And I really at the time I just wanted to get a dig a dry spot so we could have some place to enjoy. And um, so in order to do that, I jumped in and started to dig, and then everybody got inspired, and then we then we just kept on digging, not realizing none of us thought that we would be digging for so long. But we just kept on digging, not that we like to dig, but because over time, that's what it took. But in the end, it worked out great. I'll tell you why, because most of the folks who get a big dredge, we're we have such a sensitive environment that if we had gotten a dredge, we would have ruined the best part of what we have, which is this beautiful ecosystem that everyone gets to come and enjoy. And now we have manatees swimming, we have just beautiful wildlife that we were able to maintain because we didn't go with that huge mechanization that we've seen other folks do, which completely destroy the wildlife and the environment. And it was just because we couldn't afford to, but which goes back to your point. Like if you're willing to be committed to dig for that period of time, then and which in hindsight were we committed to dig all the way, we were just committed to to get the job done and that we took what it took. But I can't when I did the math, the math was relentless.

Michael Russell 26:17

Yeah. I think that you're describing what could be like an analogy for so many different circumstances in life and in business. It's like, how do you run a marathon? Well, one step at a time. Or what sometimes people do is they don't worry about running the whole marathon, they worry about running the next mile and just focus on that. Can I do one more mile? And then you finish it and you're like, you know what? I can do one more mile. This is a hard business. And if you've developed something that is beautiful and incredible and fulfilling, and through all that hardship, I mean, that story you just told about the positive surprise that came out of those hard moments was you were able to maintain the reef and environment to be pristine while others might have taken shortcuts and might have been more convenient and easier. Ultimately, it would have impacted the ecology there. Yeah. And so there's a bright spot behind all that hard work. Yeah.

Odis Martin 27:11

And just to add, later, finally a dredge did show up. Right? Someone was doing some dredging in the area, and we're like, finally, whoa, the opportunity did happen. And then he came and he said, Well, if I come and I dredge this all, it will kill everything that you've worked so hard for. So it's not appropriate for us to do it. And we were like, oh man, after all these years of waiting for this to happen, it was not going to be that great a thing, anyways, because that particular spot it's not well suited for, which we didn't fully realize. We just wanted the easy, the easy it's like any money one else. We're like, you know, the easy way out.

Michael Russell 27:50

Well, I don't think that's a fair way to describe it because it certainly wasn't easy. I think what it was is you guys had to get scrappy, yeah, right? You had to improvise, you had to be creative, you had to be outside the box thinkers. And instead of just doing nothing and saying, Oh, this is the reason why we can't do something, you you took the harder path, in my opinion, but ultimately it was more beneficial. And I think that in so many instances, like I said, in life and in business, sometimes you just got to get started one shovel at a time. Yes, yes. It's inspiring to see now where you're at. You went from a two-unit resort, you survived COVID, you took that time during COVID to develop your model and invest it in building out your resort to now. I think it's a is it a 20 or a 22 unit?

Odis Martin 28:37

Well, yeah, we're gonna ultimately have 24, but we have 20 units already. And then we have more, we have more island to expand and more area to go to go into. So this is just a start.

Michael Russell 28:48

I want to know, based on everything we just talked about so far, can you share for our listeners any tactical advice for balancing idealism with practicality on a big vision project like this?

Odis Martin 29:01

You really have to assess your team. Our team makes all of the difference. We almost feel like we are just along for the ride with our team sometimes because our team is so good. But with our team, we feel that we could take on the world. And my team says that to me, and I'm like, Really? You you really want to take on that fight? I'm like, Yeah, whatever. I'm like, okay. If you if you feel that way, then I feel that way. So it bounces back and forth, right? So the the team, and it makes us feel like our fabric is so strong that we could withstand anything, and we if we we feed back and forth with each other, and whatever you how you feel about something, literally, you can make it happen based on how you feel. So good rounding back to your question, can someone do it? Absolutely, but it's it's uh it's gonna be it's more it's passion and team and commitment to get through whatever because anyway get through whatever. One of the things that one of the guys who said, Oh, does you know the only thing we can't fix is death. Anything else we could fix. Anything else we could get through. So to him, he's like, as long as nobody the first thing is like if there's any excitement, who's dead? Oh, nobody's dead? Okay, good. Then we don't have a problem.

Michael Russell 30:10

Yeah. What I hear you saying in my mind is you're looking for folks that are committed because the resiliency that you've demonstrated through all of the hurdles and obstacles and national or natural disasters that have occurred for you to keep going. Let's talk about the team there for a second because I think this is so important. If you're evaluating whether or not someone is going to be a right fit for the team, what are some of the core attributes or qualities that you look for in a candidate to join your team?

Odis Martin 30:41

Smarts. One of the things that you really have to be a smart and a tough person in different ways, you have to be able to withstand the environment because it's an extreme environment. Um, but it's a beautiful environment, don't get me wrong, but you're in the middle of an island, and that's kind of an extreme. You have to be able to withstand that. And if you're smart, and then you could see the big picture. And because our team can see the big picture and see how once we build this, how much we could all shade under it, then usually everything else goes into place. Our team tend to have experts. We have young, young guys who are, I call them our young stallions who are not they're not experts, but they're stallions, and stallions do what stallions do. They just go on, and I I admire it because they just go on with the business of stallioning. And then we have the experts who are long time in their field, they know what they're doing, they've been doing it for north of 20 years, they take great pride in it in themselves and what they do. Some of them have been in tourism, guys have been diving, guys have been fishing, guys have been doing whatever trade that for a long period of time, and they're committed, guys, to their craft, independent of me. So whenever I see that, yeah, that's what I hear you saying, and I can I relate to my own situation.

Michael Russell 31:59

Here is so there's a lot of things that you're gonna look for, and a characteristic of someone that's gonna help you and be part of the team. Critical thinking and taking initiative, those are important attributes. Can can someone think through a situation without clear direction? Like, I can't be the person that gives you every single step that you need to do on your own in order for us to function. You've got to be able to think critically through a situation independently of getting absolute clear direction on every task scenario. That's important. And I also believe that there's been a little bit of the leveling of the playing field to a degree. Imagine 10 years ago, let's just say someone that had been in this business, let's say they're a leader, they're a manager, whatever their position is, they are expected to be the one that knows everything from experience. And there was a hierarchy based on experience in which uh younger or more recent team members would expect to get their information from the leader. It would go straight down. Right. And the leader would have to be responsible for coaching and teaching and everything, and that would be their true source of how things are done. These days, with AI, the playing field has been leveled because it is completely realistic that someone that is a more junior associate may actually have at their disposal, they may have access to information that a senior team member might not have. And I think it's really important as a leader of an organization to understand that applies across all levels. Right. That in this day and age, it is entirely feasible to put trust and confidence into younger team members to give them more responsibility and accountability because they can get their information from a wide variety of sources. They no longer have to do everything themselves and do it over a longer period to learn how it's done. The level of apprenticeship has, I guess, it has been reduced because of access to information through AI and other sources. I know I'm kind of speaking in like a broad scenario here, but man, imagine if you just go and you ask ChatGPT, hey, I have a scenario here that I've never encountered before. How do I go and resolve it? Well, it's gonna leverage the experience of everything out there in the world, the universe, and give people clear direction. And that is to me, what I'm spending a lot of time with my team is encouraging. I'm absolutely encouraging, like, literally show me your computer screen. I want to see that you've used AI today. If you haven't used AI today, we are losing competitive advantage. So I know I just went off on a tangent there, Otis, but no, it thinking through what you're going through helped me kind of be like, okay, well, what am I looking for? I'm looking for someone that can think critically, that's committed, and that can leverage technology to advance our cause.

Odis Martin 34:56

No, exactly. And that's that's that's because it's so fast moving, and someone who could think critically, they could lead in the moment because our leadership is based on your ability. If you have the ability to lead, none of us have an ego that take the ball, run with it. We're happy to be right there with you. And all of us to be successful in our team, we all are ready to pass the ball if someone's better. But you just gotta be, you just gotta, you just gotta know it. And most of the guys are up to it.

Michael Russell 35:26

That's a cultural aspect that you're getting into, is that you gotta have leaders that can be humbled. Nothing brings me more joy to know that junior associates came up with an idea instead of me. That is an important if everyone understands the cause of what they're working for, and and it's less about who did it and it's more about how, you know, just getting it accomplished together as a team, as a unit. I think that building that team culture is so important to the success. So, to your point, in response to my question, like, hey, any tactical advice, you talked about team. I think the concept of team in this day and age is rapidly evolving. And as leaders and owners and business owners, we need to embrace this and encourage it and inspire, nurture it.

Odis Martin 36:08

Yes. So our team is is the strength of what we have. I sleep well at night and we uh I don't even worry about the hurricanes because our our team strap the building so well. They they put forth the steel and the stone where it needs to be to ensure. So over the years, because of the team, it it we all collectively hold the rope together and then we all feel better. And we understand that as a team. And so it's worked out great so far. And we've had most of our guys have been with us north of five years. It's it's hard to get in the team, but once you get in the team, it works great.

Michael Russell 36:40

Yeah. Sounds like you guys have kind of that like family island family. We call it Ohana here in Hawaii, right? So super important component is that everyone feels like they're they're working as part of the family instead of just a cog in the wheel or a piece of the labor puzzle. You all have a common cause. I I want to shift gears a little bit before we wrap this up. I want to know what's what's the next chapter for for Sinderi on the Reef?

Odis Martin 37:06

More units, better amenities, grow it. We want to be for what we do, we want to be the best in the world. And we are in many ways right now for what our offering is. Again, just because of our location and what we have to offer, we've we've surveyed, we have the opportunity to build later than most resorts in Belize. And we've I've traveled to over a hundred countries, and I used to spend a lot of time on the road at hotels. So I took out my measuring tape and whatever I like here and there. And so, and my wife have been so we have a distillation of a vast amount of experience with within our team that really put a great product out, and we've gotten five-star reviews on Airbnb.

Michael Russell 37:50

Yeah, I'm curious about that. That actually brings up another point. How do you guys how do you do marketing for this property? Because, you know, it's remote and it's presumably a lot. I would expect a lot of your visitors are from the US. How do you attract those visitors from the US? What marketing techniques do you employ?

Odis Martin 38:10

It's funny. We thought it would be most of our business would have come from the US. And it's about 50%. So, but we have had folks from Europe, New Zealand, Australia, South America, Guatemala. I mean, it's it's amazing how the world what we saw and what we expected. We expect it's 100%. Well, 50% is from the United States, but we would not have expected 50% from all else around the world. That's one thing that has been kind of pleasantly surprising. That ah, that that's interesting.

Michael Russell 38:41

Well, well, do you use uh you know your list on Airbnb? Do you have a direct booking engine?

Odis Martin 38:47

I have direct booking in the past. We did do Airbnb, and we're just like I said, we took a lot of time to build out the product, and now we are relaunching and getting ready to start this new season with a brand new marketing strategy. So, what we're doing is trade shows, we're going to conferences, we are going to we're meeting with rainmakers, folks that are at the head of the channel that they could ship business to you. Because we only have 20. Someone could, one person, if they are have access to many rooms, they could fill us up in no time, especially the the kind of product that we have. Because it's a unique product. If this is the service and the product you want, we deliver it in spades. If you're looking for a private island experience where you have access to the best seafood, the best reef, the best diving, the best cultural activities. You could have it on resort or off resort, then we could deliver that better than anyone else.

Michael Russell 39:44

Is that all included in your resort fee? It's all part of the package.

Odis Martin 39:48

Yes. Yes, it is.

Michael Russell 39:50

That seems like a pretty good value.

Odis Martin 39:51

Yeah.

Michael Russell 39:52

Cool. Yeah, I've heard good things about Belize. Obviously, it's famous for diving. I'm a surfer, so usually wherever the best diving is, there's Not typically where the best surf is, right? Though we don't go hand in hand.

Odis Martin 40:03

No, no.

Michael Russell 40:04

But I'd love to make it out there. If I get over to that side of the world, I'll definitely look you up. This has been a nice, interesting, inspiring deep dive into your project and building off grid and overseas. And look, I appreciate you being candid about both the grind and the payoff. If our listeners, let's say they want to follow your journey, maybe they want to even visit the resort. What's the best way for them to stay in touch?

Odis Martin 40:28

We have our website, cinderebeach.com. All of our contact information is on there. So it's easy to get in contact with us. And cool. You'll have a phenomenal journey going into our resort. Most folks come in and they feel transformed by the time they leave.

Michael Russell 40:43

Sweet. Well, thanks for being on the show, Otis. For our listeners, thanks so much for listening to the Hotel Investor Playbook. I do want to remind you if this episode gave you any great ideas for your own hospitality project, go ahead and rate, review us. Also, share this episode with anyone that you think could benefit from it. We appreciate you. I'll catch you again next week. Aloha.