The ROAMies Podcast
This travel and inspiration podcast will motivate you to explore the world, make a positive impact, and live your best life. Award-winning musical duo The ROAMies—Rory and Alexa—share insights, resources, and products to make travel and life on-the-go easier and more enjoyable.
Whether you're a frequent traveler, super busy and always on-the-go, or simply dreaming of more adventure, you'll find practical tips, helpful info, Rory’s infamous "dad jokes," and plenty of laughs. The ROAMies dive into where to travel, why to travel, and how to travel, sharing personal stories, favorite brands, and tools that support a busy, travel-filled lifestyle. Along the way, they welcome insightful guests who bring fresh perspectives and expert advice.
It’s the perfect mix of practical guidance, motivation, and inspiration—designed to spark your own adventures, fuel your creativity, and seamlessly integrate travel into your lifestyle.
The ROAMies Podcast
A Cancer Diagnosis Changed Everything: The Story Behind Sirenian Bay
What happens when a life-threatening cancer diagnosis transforms into a mission to create paradise? The ROAMies welcome Brian Montgomery, founder of SIrenian Bay Resort in Placencia, Belize, who shares his extraordinary journey from facing terminal cancer to building an award-winning luxury destination.
Brian's story begins with humble roots in Mississippi and a devastating diagnosis at 38 years old that gave him just six months to live. After nine months of treatment and a life-saving bone marrow transplant, Brian and his wife Brenda emerged with a completely different perspective on life. They sold their Texas company in 2012 and set out to build a simple beach house somewhere beautiful. Upon visiting Belize, they immediately fell in love with the country and its people, purchasing a property centered around two palm trees that would become the foundation of their first villa.
What makes Sirenian Bay truly special isn't just its modern luxury amenities or stunning beachfront location. The heart of the resort lies in Brian's revolutionary approach to leadership and staff development. His "Above the Line" philosophy focuses on positivity, purpose, and believing in people who had never been believed in before. This approach recently earned Sirenian Bay recognition from Expedia as offering the best customer experience in all of Belize.
The resort wasn't built according to a master plan or with profit as the primary motive. Rather, it evolved organically from Brian and Brenda's genuine love for Belize and desire to share their slice of paradise with others. What began as a retirement home to visit 4-6 weeks annually has blossomed into a destination where guests become friends and staff feel like family.
This inspiring conversation reveals how the most meaningful creations often come from the heart, not the balance sheet. Join us as we explore how one man's second chance at life became an opportunity to transform not just his own future, but an entire community's as well.
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Hi, I'm Alexa and I'm Rory, and together we are the Romies.
Speaker 2:We are made to each other. Right, we are a touring musical duo. And our music has taken us to all kinds of places all around the world and keeps us always on the go.
Speaker 1:So we hope you enjoy our stories and adventures while running around working to keep all your plates spinning.
Speaker 2:And we hope, to facilitate your busy lifestyle and feed your inner travel bug.
Speaker 3:Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode. We are so excited to continue our episode series on Placentia, belize and Cyrenian Bay. So when Rory and I went to placentia, we got to stay at syrenian bay resorts and villas and it was so cool because we had the privilege of having this behind the scenes tour from the owner and founder, along with his wife. But brian montgomery gave us such a neat, heartwarming experience behind the whole resort and and we wanted to kind of give you an insight into this whole resort it's not just a place to stay right. There is so much more to it, so much more heart behind the whole, even the mission of what it's about, and so we thought that was important enough to spend a whole episode on. So today, and then we're going to give you kind of like a virtual tour around the premises. So today, y'all, we have an awesome guest with us, brian Montgomery, with Serenian Bay. Welcome, brian, thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Doing the tour is what I live for. Showing people around Serenian Bay and giving them the background that's my highlight of my day when I get to do that and give them the background.
Speaker 1:That's my highlight of my day. When I get to do that man. That's awesome. It's like if Oz had been like an amazing person.
Speaker 4:Do pay attention to the man behind the curtain in this case, yes. Well, serenity Bay, as you know, coming here, was not built from, like, an investor point of view or you know all that. It was built from the love Brennan and I had once. We retired to the love of police. We fell in love with the country and bought the property. And what we have now today was never a planned event. It was never a master plan behind it. It kind of happened over time and we built this, tore that down, built it again, tore it down to make sure it was exactly what we wanted. So that's how it became what it is today.
Speaker 3:I love it. Well, I want to dive deeper into that story and what's really fun is that my parents grew up in Mississippi and, from what you and I have talked about, they're really not terribly far from where you grew up. So, you have Mississippi roots, yeah.
Speaker 4:I do Deep Mississippi, Columbia, Mississippi, outside of. Hattiesburg yeah, born in New Orleans. Brent and I were both born in New Orleans, raised in Mississippi, live in Texas now and, of course, reside in Belize quite a bit of time as well. So, yeah, we're very proud of our being from Mississippi. I think it taught us a lot. It taught us a lot of values growing up pretty poor, making you appreciate what we have in life and it keeps us grounded. It helped us a lot through our life.
Speaker 1:That's great. It's amazing how many touch points we have in common. I'm from South Louisiana, born and reared in Lake Charles.
Speaker 3:Now we live in Texas.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we live in Texas and her parents are from Mississippi and we have a farmhouse there with them. Man, our lives have been following each other around.
Speaker 4:It's a small world when you really get down to it. I've met guests that live five miles down the road from us that didn't even know we owned the resort. It's an amazingly small world.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love. When you started, you were talking about it being a love for Belize and the Belizean people and the way that your resort came about and the way that you guys have built things out. It made me think, because you said that. It made me think of a relationship like a marriage. It's constantly changing and growing, constantly changing and growing, and if something's not working, you stop doing it and you do something else. Because of the love for each other and the relationship that you want to work and you want it to prosper and be the best it can be, and the whole thing you've done there at serenity and bay just strikes me that it comes from that relational love that pours out of you guys and I.
Speaker 4:That's just so the company I built in texas really wasn't part of that company. Initially she had her own career going and then, of course, I got my cancer, which we can talk about that.
Speaker 3:That in itself, the cancer, is what drove us to belize yeah, and we do want to dive into that story and like why belize and not other places where I traveled?
Speaker 4:so yeah, tell us more about that sure I'll try to do that and not get emotional because I get it yeah, our employees never required to read my book. I wrote a book, the nice entrepreneur, and all employees are required to read that.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 4:And I have them coming to me. Mr Brian, you made me cry. You know, which is kind of one of my goals in the books.
Speaker 3:We'll put a link to that book in our show notes.
Speaker 4:Yeah Cool. I was never like the resort. I had never intended to write a book. That was never in my million years. Because growing up in South Mississippi, you know, I wasn't the most educated person, I wasn't the smartest person. I grew up severe dyslexic, so I'm severe dyslexic, so reading and writing has been a challenge for me, but that's made me work hard, right.
Speaker 3:Right right.
Speaker 4:So my background was in medical equipment service. That was my industry. I did for many, many years, but eventually, in 2003, I got diagnosed with late stage 4 cancer and I had an incurable cancer of the bone marrow and I was given six months to live. Again, that's 38 years old and I'm the ultimate positive guy. Okay, well, what does that mean? Well, doctor, we're going to send you home and put you on medication? I go no, he goes well. There's that mean Well, doctor, we're going to send you home and put you on medication? I go no, he goes well, there's nothing we can do about it. I said there's got to be something we can do about it. There's always something new about it. And at the end of the day, I spent a little over nine months in the hospital doing chemo and I ended up having a bone marrow transplant, and I like to take every opportunity I can to talk about that, because one guy saved my life by him just being willing to donate his marrow, to save my entire life. And I feel like now that's my purpose is to save people everywhere I can and help them.
Speaker 4:But that's kind of what changed our mindset. We started looking at life differently, fred and I started being working together. Uh, we decided life was more more important than just work. Uh, so we worked in order to end up selling our company, and we ended up selling the company in 2012, and so we want to build a beach house somewhere. We want to go build a beach house and we looked several countries. We had it down to Panama, costa Rica and Belize.
Speaker 4:We made our first trip to Belize and we never went anywhere else. Well, you know what it's like, brenda, and I'll use a personal story. You know, brenda and I, when we dated childhood sweethearts, it was like we really never dated many other people and we dated all through high school. We got married and we married as of today, 38 years. Congrats, yeah, you find what you want. You go after it, right, right, and that's kind of what I discovered in Belize. From the moment we landed at the airport to the drive to Placencia, the people were absolutely amazing. Everybody we met was here to help us. Everybody was here to you. Know what can I do for you? Help us with tours. I mean, it was just amazing. And one of the first people we met actually was a guy named Lucky Ivy, which owned Captain Jack's, and we became very close friends, which, in today, is how we got Captain Jack's, which we can delve into a bit later.
Speaker 3:In our previous episode, we talked about Captain Jack's, so this is that same. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:He was a neighbor in Texas. Okay, and he came all the way to Blee's to meet me.
Speaker 4:What yeah, he was a neighbor in Texas and he came all the way to Blee's to meet me. So that's the end of having Captain Jack's, wow. So we came here, we visited the country, we had a couple of tours, we settled on a piece of property, which is where now Manatee Villa, which is our largest villa, sits, and it was nothing there Blank piece of land, a clean slate, and we saw two palm trees. And I sat there and looked between those trees and I told Brenda my voice you know what? We can build a beach on between those two palm trees, with an infinity pool between those two trees, out to the Caribbean Sea. Of course, brenda, not being a dreamer as I am, goes, quit your freaking dreaming. So that set the stage.
Speaker 4:Manatee Villa, which is our largest villa, center point of that house is those two palm trees, the center point of that entire house, and that's became one of our should have been our retirement home but, it's now since turned into our number one rented home Because it allows three families to come share together and have an experience of a private pool, private hot tub, beautiful on the beach, and we've been glad to share that house.
Speaker 4:We no longer get to stay in the house but we got a lot of people staying in and at the end of the day, that's kind of what it's all about. But that led to purchasing another piece of property, led to another piece of property, led to another piece of property, led to another piece of property. And brenda blames me, I'll blame her. End of the day, we did it together. We purchased all our property on the resort side. Our intent was to well, we didn't know what our intent was. Honestly, we didn't know. We just saw this opportunity to invest in a country that we fell in love with and we didn't know what that investment looked like. So, so that became Serenity Bay. We ended up building additional villas, additional bungalows, a resort pool, a little restaurant, and then that spanned across the street.
Speaker 4:When me, I've always been a, I guess, opportunist you have to be set in your life. People say luck. We know I don't really believe in luck, so to speak, but luck is putting yourself in a place to take advantage of an opportunity. That's what we did. We purchased a property across the street which grew. We ended up building the mini golf course, which was the first thing we built, along with the gift shop and what is now ET's restaurant, et's 19th Hole.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we decided to go luxury, you know, with the resort, because when we started building the resort, I'm a guy that steps outside the box. I don't want to do everything else that everybody else does. Yeah, you know, do something unique, do something different. And what Belize at the time didn't have is really modern, the modern resorts. You know they have some fantastic jungle resorts. You know they have some fantastic, just beachfront, cabana type resorts, beautiful country, beautiful area, but they didn't have anything real modern. They didn't have the rooms that are all aced, the air condition every room. They didn't have the tvs in every room. They didn't have a lexus in the rooms.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we, I'm a very techie guy, I believe in technology, so I wanted to apply technology to Belize. So I wanted to offer the modern vacation in an adventurous country, because Belize is known as an adventure country, not a luxury travel country. It's more known as an adventure because there's so much to do here, an adventure because there's so much to do here. I mean, there's so much to do in Belize. That's true you guys experienced and talked about. I wanted an extra touch. So that's what we built Serena Bay from a high-end, luxury, modern point of view. Then, as we expanded, pickleball came along. We had the first Pickleball in the entire country of Belize. We built Pick pickleball in the entire country of Belize. You're a visionary man.
Speaker 4:Yeah, what I wanted and my goal had come to be was if you're going to do something, do it right. My dad taught me that Growing up, my dad said if you're going to do it, do it right or don't do it at all. I know people say that a lot, but we believe that, brittany and I believe that If you're going to do it, do it right, don't cut corners, don't do it halfway. And so we've invested to make sure this place is nothing but the best right. But again, as we know, you can go building, building, building and be the best in the world, but that doesn't make you a great resort. What makes for a great resort is your staff right, and I do want to touch on that. We can kind of circle back to the minute because our staff I I can't say enough about our staff.
Speaker 1:Our staff is is top notch, and you're going to more reasons why, why they're down away you're part of that whole heartbeat of why your staff is so yeah, look, I can I have a great leader and I want to insert here real quick, I think, because I think this ties into it there are all these shows on television about you know, fixing up houses and building your dream house and your forever house. What really strikes me, when you were talking about the home you guys built, how everything came out of it when you built your dream house. It was your dream house, because your dream wasn't all about you guys. Your dream was loving people and doing something there for them, and that is just so cool it is. It puts the paradigm of a dream house on its head, but it's the whole loving your neighbors, you love yourself and I and I think that is a lot of the, a lot of the whine behind your resort.
Speaker 1:Your staff's amazing and it was just. I don't know if everybody in Belize is like your staff, but if they are, the people are like incredible. You touched on that earlier. But I think that all this comes out of your dream and your dream not just being all about me. You know that kind of a thing. That's really, really awesome.
Speaker 4:Well, we built a house even to back up just one staff. Our goal of the house we were going to be here, probably four weeks, maybe six weeks a year was our plan, but we wanted our friends and family to come down and enjoy the house and enjoy Belize. Yep, right, that was our intent to share the house with our friends and family and to share what we weren't able to do growing up. We weren't able to travel, we weren't able to do any of that. Yeah, we up, we weren't able to travel, we weren't able to do any of that. We wanted to be able to have a place where they could come and stay. So that did start the house, which is why we went on VRBO and Expedia and stuff to begin with. What's really funny, we said we would not be here more than six weeks an entire year. The first set of friends we started having, we spent six straight weeks here with six different families straight through when we first opened the house.
Speaker 4:Man Because you know this sounds kind of funny, but all of a sudden, when you have a beach home in Belize, you have more friends than you thought you'd have. Yeah, man, come on boy. And some of those friends still come today, right, that's great. But you know the opportunity to grow the resort and expand it. Just all I did was bring that to more. More friends, more family can come down and people can come now who become friends later, you know, later in life. Become friends, they come here yeah. But the staff.
Speaker 4:I do want to touch on staff, because that is the reason we are where we are today. You know, when Brenda and I came here, we had our first staff was just absolutely amazing. The people, the ones we hired to help us with caretaking just amazing people. As we started growing and building, we added more staff on board. Almost all the staff are still with us today, but what I learned is no one believed in them. And as I started bringing in more staff, what I was hearing that Mr Bryan, you spend time with us. We've never had an owner come down and believe in us. And then it started kind of kicking in that we were not normal owners.
Speaker 4:A lot of people come to Belize and nothing wrong with this. They come to invest and make money. You know, come down, invest in the country, build a resort and make money. And that was not Brendan L's focus. Brendan L's focus was not to make money. Brendan L's focus was to have something for us to do and others to do.
Speaker 4:But I quickly realized that the people here, with just a little bit of attention and a little bit of love, they not only did a great job, they did an exceptional job. So I started. Which I love most. Leadership training is my love. I love teaching people about leadership, because leadership, to me, is a foundation of everything we do. Right, it's a foundation. What you do with your kids, you lead your kids through their lifetime. Right, you lead your friends. So. So I started leadership classes and that became part of what my, my heart and soul was. In fact, we have a full-blown conference room here now that trains people. I train our staff, I train some other staff and I train outside the resort, which is going to give me chill bumps. I think you'll know a little bit about the, the children here. We, we, yeah, train but trainer people. And then every orientation starts out, and and this is how I lay the foundation, when new people come in, we do orientations and I spend about four hours with them.
Speaker 4:Right, first thing I say is when you got up this morning, you got out of bed, you went to the bathroom, you brushed your teeth, you took a shower, you put on clothes, you know what? So did I. And guess what? We're exactly the same. I said now, but I've been very fortunate in my life because I grew up in a city that's smaller than the same body. Right, I grew up in a city that had less money than the same body. And when I look at that and see that I'm like Mr Brunner, how are you here today? I said that is a fantastic question. Let me tell you who I'm here today.
Speaker 4:Right, can I give them my story? You know I can't go the whole story, we don't have that much time. But you know, basically growing up with good values, and my dad, when my dad taught me, when mom taught me, and you know, cutting yards, earning money because I have no degree I have a two-year electronic degree. I have no business education at all why but what I do have is I learned through my career, through my mentors, what it means to treat people right and what happens when you do treat people right Customers, coworkers and all that and so I started sharing that with them. This is how I do it, you know, and this is how I want you to do it, so I can teach you how to do this and that's what I do. You know. I teach them about leadership, teach them about you know how they can be a better person and give them purpose in life. And that relates back to what you saw when you were here the exceptional customer service. We do, and the above the line mentality, you remember the above?
Speaker 3:the line mentality yeah, above the line absolutely. Yes.
Speaker 4:I'm above the line. The above the line is smiling, happy, loving your job, it's all that combined and they live it. They truly do live the above the line mentality and we have guests now coming in adopting that philosophy about above the line. I heard you guys, when you were here, even say it, right yeah. I heard you guys talking about. We're above the line today, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 4:So it's a contagious statement, right? Because smiles are contagious, happiness is contagious and our staff does an amazing, amazing job. And we just got recognized I'm proud to say uh, last week by expedia group as the best customer experience in the whole country of.
Speaker 1:Belize.
Speaker 4:Wow. Belize Hotel Association presented us that last week at their annual meeting and we're grateful to have received that because that comes from guest reviews and guest comments and that's that was we're very happy with that to be considered the best experience in Belize.
Speaker 1:Well-deserved, man Well-deserved, that's great.
Speaker 4:Well, I think you got to sometimes keep me under control, because I can talk all day long about my people.
Speaker 5:All right, I am going to interrupt right here and we do talk more about his people and we get a virtual tour of the campus and the behind the scenes with all of the cool things that you don't want to miss, but we're going to save those for next episode. So we had so much fun with Brian that our conversation just kept going, so we are going to continue that in the next episode. We hope you've enjoyed this one. Please subscribe to our podcast on the platforms where you listen so that you can catch the next one and you don't miss it. And we will see you in the next one. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2:We hope we've inspired you this episode, so join us next time. Please subscribe to rate and share our podcast with your friends or you know whomever? And please like and follow us on Instagram, youtube and Facebook.
Speaker 1:We are also on X and on all social platforms. We are at TheRomies that's T-H-E-R-O-A-M-I-E-S, and our main hub is our website.
Speaker 2:At wwwtheromiescom, that's right, that's. T-h-e-r-o-a-m-i-e-scom. We'll be there until next time. Yeah, thanks for listening. Bye, thank you, thank you, thank you.