Unlocking Airbnb Success: 7 Essential Tips from a Global Property Expert

Dylan Silver (00:00.984)
Hey folks, welcome to another episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast brought to you by Investor Fuel, the nation’s premier real estate mastermind. I’m your host, Dylan Silver, and today we have JD Alexander. JD is an international property manager with deals ranging from the United States, Dominican Republic, Ghana, and Belize, specializing in Airbnb. JD, welcome to the show.

JD Alexander (00:29.033)
Dylan, I’ve been a big fan for years, man. Been following you. I appreciate you having me on.

Dylan Silver (00:34.506)
Absolutely, man. Thank you for saying that. At the top of the show, I always like to talk about people’s background and how they got into real estate. So how did you get in?

JD Alexander (00:46.239)
How did I get in? I got in because I lived in Chicago and girl I dated at the time, I stayed with her pretty much every night of the week. She said, why don’t you just Airbnb your apartment since you’re never there? I Airbnb’d it, made some money. I realized that this is a much bigger industry and can be a whole business. then that, know, forced me, not forced me, but.

motivated me to buy a house, which I did. bought a house in East Nashville and then turned it into what we do now.

Dylan Silver (01:18.135)
Did you know at the time that this is what you were going to be doing for foreseeable future?

JD Alexander (01:23.101)
Not at all, man. I got into like everybody did for short term rentals, how passive it was. It’s so passive. You make money while you sleep, which is true, but there’s a lot of work that goes before and after, which doesn’t make it passive. So I thought I just wanted, I actually made a video about this not too long ago. I just wanted to make an extra 20, an extra. I had a goal of making 20 grand a month with just the Airbnbs, which I did that, but then I soon learned that there was a lot more potential.

Dylan Silver (01:35.382)
Yeah.

JD Alexander (01:50.448)
And also to manage all the ones that I started, I needed more help, which is, you know, took away some of my profit and then turned into what we do now, which is primarily manage.

Dylan Silver (02:00.843)
And so right now you’re in Florida, you’re in Miami, which before we hopped on here, I said, this is the dream where I want to be. I’m there returning from the Dominican Republic a couple of times per year and I fly out of there. When did you move to Florida?

JD Alexander (02:17.215)
Well, right after college, I lived in Tampa for about five years. So lived in Tampa. I moved to Chicago for a couple of years. I moved back to Nashville. I lived in New York city and I’ve been in Miami for the past year, just over a year actually. think I moved the week before my birthday in 2024 and I just had my birthday on the 15th. So just over a year I’ve been in Miami.

Dylan Silver (02:20.639)
Okay.

Dylan Silver (02:40.332)
As an aside, I love I just love that area. I love that area speak a little Spanish. So I feel like it brings it out in me. I’m in Texas. So that’s over here too. But there’s just something about that Caribbean flair, if you will over in Miami. But but being that you’re a property manager, and we talked about this for hopping on, I haven’t spoken with someone who’s doing international

property management. You’ve got deals in the Dominican Republic, in Ghana, in Belize. How? How?

JD Alexander (03:13.535)
Well, so when you say property management, I guess that’s a loose term. So we are more or less a marketing company for short-term rentals. A traditional property manager is going to do maintenance, going to do cleanings, going to do profit and loss statements. And in order to do that, you have to have boots on the ground wherever you’re at. So what we do is what most people don’t have is access to multiple different booking sites in a property management software system.

that is an all-in-one deal. So if somebody messages us from Expedia or Hopper or Booking.com or Airbnb, it just goes right into our software. So we have the software, we spend a lot of money on it, and it gives us direct connections to all these booking sites, which most people just list on Airbnb or Verbo or Booking.com, one of the three. They hardly ever do three out of three or more than three booking sites. So we get to owners, they’re only booking on one site, and we say, we’ll advertise you on all these channels.

We’ll send all the guest communications, we’ll answer problems that they have, we’ll do check-ins, check-outs for you, and the only thing that you have to handle are your cleanings. And most people love that because they don’t want to deal with the customer support of it, which I don’t mind it because I have people in place that do that. And it’s beneficial for everybody. Now, another thing that we do is that some people don’t want to use us and give us a, you know, they think we’re too expensive.

for the percentage that we take off every booking. So they said, look, I don’t want to pay you a percentage off every booking that comes in. So what we offer them is what we call paper booking. So they’re only listed on Airbnb. They let us list their property on all these other channels that they’re not on. We send them the booking request. They don’t have to accept them, but we send it to them and say, hey, somebody from booking.com. They want to check in this day, check out this day. This is how much money you would make. Do you want to accept it?

Dylan Silver (04:49.562)
Right.

JD Alexander (05:11.647)
Of course, that’s a win-win because who’s going to turn down a reservation that they don’t have booked already from a site that they’re not on? Nobody, right? So we do a mixture. We either take over and do all of their messaging, all of their guest communication, or we just do it on a per reservation basis. Send everything to them, let them pick and choose ones they want, and then they pay us for the reservation that we give them.

Dylan Silver (05:18.301)
Hmm

Dylan Silver (05:37.579)
How many properties would someone need to have as an Airbnb in order to utilize you JD?

JD Alexander (05:45.69)
One. They just have one.

Dylan Silver (05:47.989)
So if I’m a mom and pop here in Dallas and you know, I have a day job and I have a cleaner, but you know, I don’t have time to be communicating with my guests, it would still make sense for me to use someone like yourself who’s offering the services that you provide.

JD Alexander (06:05.311)
Yeah, it just depends on how much you hate it, right? So how much do you dislike doing the things that you don’t want to do? You know, and also if you’re looking at it from a profitability standpoint, your profits are going to go up by using us. That’s just plain and simple. If you’re getting more exposure, yes, you are having to pay out a commission per booking, but working with somebody that is a professional with this that is actively looking

Dylan Silver (06:08.51)
Hahaha!

JD Alexander (06:34.611)
to see how they can increase the visibility, the profitability, the bookings, all that. Somebody that’s doing that all day every day is gonna outperform somebody that’s doing it part-time. yeah.

Dylan Silver (06:46.805)
Have you found that using the strategy that people could potentially increase their prices or no?

JD Alexander (06:55.359)
Say that one more time, say it in a different way. I don’t understand the question.

Dylan Silver (06:57.704)
No, no problem. for folks who are setting their price of the Airbnb per night, might potentially they be able to increase the price of the booking nightly because they’re listed in multiple places.

JD Alexander (07:12.275)
Yeah, for sure. mean, the pricing, a lot of people are either overpriced or well underpriced. So if you talk to somebody that says, I’m a 90 % occupancy, they’re underpriced and they’re booked out three or four months. So right there, there’s room for growth, right there, just helping your prices and being more competitive. But yes, for sure. mean, there are certain markets where booking.com outperforms Airbnb. There are certain markets where VRBO

If you’re not on VRBO, you’re not going to get any reservations because they just dominate those markets. So yes, by being on more channels, you are going to be able to ask a higher price because you get more people that are booking.

Dylan Silver (07:46.762)
Thank

Dylan Silver (07:54.027)
How did you pivoting a little bit here? How did you come across the Airbnb owners who own those Airbnb’s overseas? Did they come across you on social media? Did you know these people? How do they come into contact with you? How are you coming?

JD Alexander (08:09.993)
Paid ads, all paid ads. So everything that we do as a company, we don’t do any cold calling. Everything comes into us from ads that we run all day, every day. And these people live in the States. So it’s not like we’re targeting Ghana. We’re not targeting Belize. These are people that own properties all over the world but have a presence in the US. See the ad, reach out, hey, I have a property here. Can you help me with it?

Dylan Silver (08:21.993)
Mm.

Dylan Silver (08:34.068)
On a personal note, is something that really deeply interests me because I get mixed feedback from real estate investors. Is it possible to do this remotely? Do I have to be where my properties are? A lot of people will say no. And a lot of people will say yes. The feedback that I get for you can do it. It is possible to do it remotely. If you have people and processes in place, it is feasible.

It is doable. The people would be the cleaner. And with Airbnb, from what I can tell, unless you have a terrible guest, maintenance is fairly minimal, you know, as opposed to, and this is just from feedback from guests, actually, on the show, as opposed to a long term rental, you tend to see more distress from a long term rental than you see with an Airbnb. So

I’m hopeful based off hearing this that, you if I have a cleaner in place, I could potentially go to someone like JD and off board a lot of the kind of decision, potentially decision making, right? That goes into day to day operations of an, of an Airbnb. Am I wrong in saying that?

JD Alexander (09:49.276)
Yes, you definitely can. So your properties will produce better. It will be in better shape whenever you’re local and you get to go by and see those on a regular basis because you’re going to. You’re naturally going to. It’s a Sunday. You have somebody that just checked out. I got 20 minutes after lunch. I’ll go by and take a look at it real quick. And then you’re going to see things in there that your cleaner didn’t report to you. They’re very minor. Could be very minor things, but you’re going to see it because you care. It’s your business, all that. Now, that being said,

it’s a lot smarter to have them spread out just from diversification because we all know short-term rentals are everywhere you go, they’re getting crackdowns. They’re putting restrictions in place. There are some cities that are completely outlawing it like Dallas, Fort Worth. They completely outlawed short-term rentals. I think it was two years ago. I don’t know if they ever changed it back or if they grandfathered in, but they just said no more short-term rentals and homes anywhere in the city. So if you had a hundred Airbnb’s, you’re

Dylan Silver (10:29.767)
Yep.

JD Alexander (10:48.775)
your business is shut down overnight.

Dylan Silver (10:51.666)
I was there in Addison when that happened. think I was there the week that that happened. I remember this because I went to a real estate meetup where Vanilla Ice was there, funny enough, and he was a real estate investor. And so I got to sing Ice Ice Baby with Vanilla Ice. But they were talking about how Airbnbs were no longer allowed in Addison and like, what are people going to do? So you have to be agile and be able to pivot on a personal note. You know, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. You know, for our new investors, Airbnbs great.

Airbnb is great, but also have some some other strategies out there in case you know, in case you can’t do that any longer.

JD Alexander (11:28.777)
Well, and also, I if you’re an investor, let’s say you’re in Phoenix or Houston or Dallas, there are a lot of short-term rentals and you’re dead set on, want to do a short-term rental. Well, if you’re starting there, you’re going to, in order to make money and to be safe, you’re going to have to go where you’re going to have to be the creme de la creme. You’re going to have to have a massive unit and the barrier to entry is going to be very high. You got to buy a really nice house or really big house.

You have to put a lot of money into it. I mean, you’re going to have to do a lot in order to stand out because people in those markets, they invested a lot and it just may not be feasible. Right. So then you start looking where else can I go? San Antonio is a good market. Well, they’re saturated market, there’s there’s, you know, there’s I used to own a couple of houses in San Antonio, so I’m very familiar. But then you could start looking at Nebraska, Omaha. You can start looking at Oklahoma. And again, that’s a couple of hours from where you’re at.

Dylan Silver (12:09.801)
Yep.

JD Alexander (12:25.747)
But if you’re looking again from an investment standpoint, it’s a better idea to travel a little bit further, have it outside. Instead of saying I live here in the city, I want to work here because I want to be local. Like that’s that doesn’t make sense. You’re going to be potentially losing money. So you want to go where it gives you the best possible chance to succeed with I don’t want to say the least amount of money possible, but with not having to invest so much and put so much on the line of risk.

Dylan Silver (12:41.083)
Ryan.

Dylan Silver (12:54.979)
I’ll actually I’ll say it, you know, because my my first couple deals were in Texas, but then I had a couple that were in Oklahoma. I’m forgetting the names of the towns. And when I saw the market in Oklahoma, I’m like, this is United States. I could be slightly slightly off. But I want to say and I hope I’m not too far off. But I want to say you could get new builds for like one hundred forty thousand a year and a half ago. I could be wrong. But I want to say that

that was possible. thinking about, you know, where I’m from originally in New Jersey, I was born in New Jersey, it’s just like, what, what’s going on here? And so, specifically right now, I’m living in Denton, which is North Dallas, we’re actually fairly close to Oklahoma, we’re about 30 minutes south of Oklahoma. And we’re seeing right now, like this whole corridor, they call it the 35 corridor, get filled up from Dallas straight to Oklahoma is becoming like,

one one, one big road, you know, and that the towns that are being built along it, these are all growth opportunities. And so for folks who are getting in, it might not seem like you know, well, what’s going on out there, it’s the expansion of everything. So you have Dallas, it’s literally expanding into Oklahoma’s as, as difficult that as that is for some to believe that’s that’s what’s going on.

JD Alexander (14:19.743)
There’s more people in the world. mean, it’s just, we’re multiplying. There’s more and more people. Not everybody can afford the big cities, the expensive cities. So yeah, I mean, I think you’re going to start seeing a lot of people venture out in the Midwest and these flyover states just because like you just said, you can buy a brand new house, have a yard, fence, know, what everybody wants and space for reasonable pricing, you know.

Dylan Silver (14:45.296)
Yeah, yeah. And talking about the future a little bit here, Airbnb maintenance is a topic that my guests will talk about. We talked about this a little bit before hopping on the show here, but people are doing everything from robots that will cut the grass to apps that manage everything in one space. If you’ve got multiple Airbnbs, you can set the temperature, the lights, lock the doors, know, see vacancy.

I’m talk a little bit about that because I would imagine this is really your area of expertise and how you see that changing potentially going forward and what what new things are on the horizon.

JD Alexander (15:28.201)
Well, I can’t speak on the automation of landscaping yet. That is kind of cool to see. I have seen the bots or machines, wherever you want to call them, that are cleaning hotel rooms. I don’t know how applicable that’s going to be to a 1500 square foot house and how great of a job it is. I still think we’re obviously a ways away. Well, I shouldn’t say that. mean, technology moves very quickly these days.

Dylan Silver (15:53.241)
Yeah, who knows? Yeah.

JD Alexander (15:57.908)
But yes, the automation of everything. mean, that’s how you’re able to scale and do more and have less expenses. So as more more technology comes out, you have to dive into it. You have to see what it is. Even if it’s not the greatest, you got to be knowing what’s out there and the changes that they’re making. So whenever it is up to par, you can jump in and be ahead of the masses. Because when the masses start saying how great it is, your leverage is already gone, right?

Dylan Silver (16:26.596)
Yeah.

JD Alexander (16:27.591)
Yeah, you’re just with everybody else. So if everybody else is going left, you want to go right. And if nobody’s looking into AI or technology or doing all these things, it’s probably a good thing for you to start looking into it.

Dylan Silver (16:39.792)
JD, do you get a lot of this people saying, well, why would I hire you or use your services when I have an AI that does it already for me? Is that out there?

JD Alexander (16:53.343)
No, well, let’s see, so what we do, what do we do? We list you on more channels. So can somebody do what we do? Can they learn the software that we have, go purchase it and list on more channels? Yes. Why would they not do that? Because it’s gonna cost them a lot of money and they just don’t wanna learn to do it. So I tell everybody that I talk to, like, look, everything we do, like you can go do it. I can show you the company.

Dylan Silver (17:11.961)
Yeah.

Ryan.

JD Alexander (17:21.215)
You can reach out to them, you can pay the money. It’s gonna be probably a one to three month learning window. I don’t know if that’s something that you wanna do because you’re doing X, Y, and Z. This is a side hustle. This is your, a little bit of extra money that you’re trying to make. So I don’t think you’re going to do that. So I don’t know what the original question was. Why wouldn’t they just go do that? I mean, they can, they should. But I guess most people get frustrated and or lazy with learning, especially technology, how it all operates.

Dylan Silver (17:43.528)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (17:51.129)
Yeah, I’m curious to see as this evolves, and I think we’re seeing it happen in real time. I feel like people with your skill set have the ability to help people in so many spaces. Talking about like removing yourself from your business, getting out of the business, getting out of the day to day and really, you know, being in that last wealth quadrant, so to speak, you know.

I feel like there’s so many ways that we can automate these processes and utilize other people to not just distance yourself from your business in a sense, but literally increase your profits like you’re doing for others. Have you thought at all about other spaces that are ripe for this type of disruption?

JD Alexander (18:39.773)
with what, using technology that people are not using technology in?

Dylan Silver (18:44.273)
And people like yourself who can quite literally put them in more places, manage the, I don’t want to say the day to day, but the communication aspect of it and allow people who are maybe too busy to dive in there. I can think of a couple ways, a couple industries in particular.

JD Alexander (19:05.853)
Yeah, I mean, what I see that’s behind with the times are usually going to be the trades companies. know, the guy that has owned his electric company, you know, it’s a mom and pop shop with five guys that he’s owned it since the 80s or 90s or inherited from his dad. And they just, this is how we do it. This is how the clients we’ve always had and we’ve survived and they still using paper or, know, whatever. those, yeah, yeah. mean, so that’s like,

Dylan Silver (19:11.886)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (19:30.294)
Analog.

JD Alexander (19:34.122)
That’s the first thing that pops into mind are the trades. Trades, auto stores, auto parts, not auto parts, but repair stores, dealers. Well, car dealers, yes. I also own a car dealership in Nashville, Tennessee. And that’s one thing that we see that everybody else is really lacking is most small car dealerships don’t even have a CRM. Like the most basic used cars.

Dylan Silver (19:56.993)
Is it new or used cars? You own new or cars? Okay.

JD Alexander (20:01.255)
Yeah, anything from $10,000 to about $30,000.

Dylan Silver (20:04.836)
Okay, what do you think about Turo? A little aside here, what do think about Turo?

JD Alexander (20:09.151)
I think it’s great if you’re close to an airport and you own a car dealership. should have all your cars on there. Yeah.

Dylan Silver (20:12.171)
Yeah. I think it’s great, too. I was thinking about putting my 2018 Dodge Challenger on there, but I’m like, I don’t know. It’s my it’s my car. I’m going to be driving it out there. I don’t know. But I have a buddy in San Antonio who who works for a Nissan dealership, and that’s what he’s doing to make money on the side. And I think that’s great. But I think for for most folks who may be, like you said, in the trades or

may have some type of business outside of what they’re doing to make a primary income. It can seem a little bit daunting. Like how do I scale this? But the reality is that if you do nothing, nothing is going to change. Right. And so if you have someone like yourself coming in from the outside saying, hey, not only can I get you more bookings, but I can actually do this while increasing your profits. It’s a it’s a no brainer. You know, so

dealers, right, like you’re saying, like very, sometimes very limited communication, even when they have systems in place. I’m thinking like the restaurant industry where it can be hard to like book tables. And sometimes they get double booked and you show up and you’re there waiting an hour. There’s just so many ways that these industries can be disrupted. And frankly, I feel like they’re lagging behind. When I was being a little long winded here. But when I was in San Antonio,

there was some restaurants who went out of business and they said it was construction. They said it was the end of COVID. But in my mind, it was just like they just got out compete. They just got out compete.

JD Alexander (21:46.784)
Yeah, no, mean, it’s the truest thing. you know, what worked 10 years ago is not working today. You know, it’s just, it’s like, you see an NFL football game from 2024 and you see an NFL football game from 1994. two different games. It’s faster, bigger, stronger. Their schemes are better. I mean, it’s, it’s, you have to adapt with the times, with the technology, with the resources to go to battle. You have to, if you don’t, you’re going to, you know, it’s, I just made another post about this. It’s, uh,

I forgot what I said, but anyways, you have to adapt. have to adapt, you have to learn, you have to stay up with the times for sure.

Dylan Silver (22:23.874)
I didn’t realize that you were in the auto space as well. Talk a little bit about how you manage that and this and how you avoid being overwhelmed.

JD Alexander (22:35.197)
Yeah, so I don’t run that. I’m just the owner. I help get it going and I have nothing to do with the day to day. There’s no way I could run a car dealership and do what I’m doing now. Well, at least what I’m trying to do with this scalability where I’m trying to go. There’s no way to do both of them effectively. I’m not Elon Musk. I don’t know how he’s able to do that. But yeah, I don’t. I’m just at this point, I’m just the financial support is what it is.

Dylan Silver (23:02.012)
I imagine it’s a trusted friend, someone close who, at least over the years, has been in a position where now that relationship is strong enough and he runs it for you or she or she runs it for you.

JD Alexander (23:14.429)
Yeah, it’s my brother-in-law and my sister. Yeah, yeah, they trust them wholeheartedly. I mean, again, we started together, we built it up and it took a good, don’t say took that long, but it was definitely a year and a half, two years of working together and making sure that we all feel comfortable with one another for sure. I mean, it goes both ways too. They got to make sure that they don’t think I’m going to do something erratic and just shut the thing down and stop funding, you know what mean? So it’s trust on both ends.

Dylan Silver (23:17.441)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (23:34.005)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (23:41.601)
We don’t want JD to have too much fun there in Miami, which can happen. But I think, you know, for me in my life, the strength of someone’s whole whole whole perspective, whole whole future is predicated upon their relationships. And I think a lot of newcomers, I did underestimate this, they think it’s knowledge, they think it’s

you know, getting some type of additional certification, which can help that don’t get me wrong. I’ve done it. I’m getting my real estate license. These things help. But this term I call it, you know, fanatical networking being a networking junkie, or in your case, you know, mining your close network. This is this is how you get things off the ground. This is how you you delegate. And without doing those things, you’re dead in the water. Like I tell people who are trying to get into real estate.

And they’re like, I’m going to one meeting a month. I go to this meetup. I’m like, one, you have a full time job and you go to one meetup a month. You have to find ways to be literally in people’s face. When they’re not there, they’re thinking about you. They see you on the feed. That’s the level. if you don’t got the assets, if you don’t have the nest egg, if you can’t go out and fix and flip a home yourself, you’ve got to be doing that. So when I hear

JD Alexander (24:56.959)
You

Dylan Silver (25:05.397)
that you have family that’s running this this dealership. I’m like, dude, that’s that’s the way to do it. It’s about the relationships.

JD Alexander (25:13.023)
Yeah, well, it’s funny you just said that about the exposure that you have to have to anything. was just are you familiar with Brad Lee? You know, Bradley. I was just on his podcast last week and we were before I talking about everything and he’s looking at my social media. He’s like, are you trying to grow this? I was like, yeah, I am. And he said, well, how many times are you posting? I was like one. He kind of scoffed at that. He said, did you get it four or five times a day? You got to flood yourself with this because that’s what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to grow it and you have to.

Dylan Silver (25:21.172)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Dylan Silver (25:36.681)
a day.

JD Alexander (25:42.024)
Engrain yourself in this just like anything else. You’re starting a business. You’re starting to flip houses You’re starting to wholesale whatever it is You got to be around nothing but deals be around nothing and think about it at all times and and that’s how you’re going to Get growth exponential growth

Dylan Silver (26:00.01)
I get a sense JD that you may, I don’t know if you feel this, so that you may be a natural when it comes to some of this, the networking component of it. Do you feel that that’s true or was this a skill that you had to work on? For me it was a skill.

JD Alexander (26:12.063)
Yeah, I’m not naturally a extrovert at all. I’m a recluse. I like to be by myself. I got my people and that’s it. I’ll go to events. I mean, I’ve been to lots of events and I have to force myself to go out and talk. I mean, I could talk when I want to. Don’t get a twist in it. I just don’t like it. You know what I mean? So it’s a learned skill for me for sure.

Dylan Silver (26:30.334)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (26:35.783)
I can say from my experience, it wasn’t like I’m afraid to meet people because I wasn’t, but I can say I’m still dealing with this, especially with posting three times a day. I feel like I’m bothering people. And what I have to I have to shift this in order for me to get to the next level is like, yeah, I’m I might be bothering some people, but they’re going to fall off. And do I do I really need those people versus the people who are at my level and

far above my level, they see what I’m doing and they’re like, he’s doing the thing that he needs to be doing. I’m seeing him all the time. Let me do a deal with him because I know that if I need to get in front of somebody, he’s going to help me get in front of that person or he’s he’s doing this, doing this versus like I’m worried about offending like my friend group because I’m posting too much. What’s your thoughts on that?

JD Alexander (27:28.553)
Well, the best known will be the best product any day of the week, right? So if somebody is looking for a partner on a deal, they tend to go with the first person that pops in their mind. Doesn’t mean that they’re the most educated on that one deal, but they also have to have trust that you know what you’re doing. So yeah, mean, the best known is gonna help you get known, get seen, and get more deals. As far as offending your…

Nah, mean, they’re getting mad about that. I mean, guess, you know, the only thing I struggled with, not that I offend them, it’s just like, these fools judging me? I feel scared to be judged. You know what mean? I know they’re laughing at me behind my back and it’s like, but it’s like, who cares? They might laugh at you for five or 10 minutes, but it’s not like they’re sitting all day at their desk and sharing your videos with your other friends and just making in front of you.

Dylan Silver (28:08.283)
That was a better term, yeah.

JD Alexander (28:26.673)
If they are, they’re actually probably really good friends because they’re really good friends. They’re the ones that make fun of you the most.

Dylan Silver (28:31.326)
If they’re sharing your content, they’re helping you. But yeah, in my head, that’s how I’m thinking, man. It’s like, I’m really, I’m concerned. I know our listeners can relate to this, especially the new people. You’re like trapped in your level, your level, your level. And your level is no one’s posting multiple times a day. They’re probably not talking about real estate. And so you’re like, is this gonna bother these people? know, a friend is probably the wrong, but it bother.

But if you got to get in a new room, if you got to get in a new room, what do you got to do to get into that room? How do you get your business in the Dominican Republic, in Ghana, in Belize? It’s through like guerrilla networking. It’s through being everywhere, you know?

JD Alexander (29:13.683)
You know, the thing that I really passed a couple of years and just had the aha moment, it’s like you’ll see these guys that are very well known in whatever industry. You’re like, they’re cool. I’m a cool guy. Why wouldn’t they want to hang out with me? And the fact of the matter is you got to pay to be around certain people. It’s just it is what it is. You have to pay for their mentorship, their coaching, whatever, because these are the people that you want to be friends with is because of the work that they put in.

to get the notoriety for you to want to be friends with them. And they’re not gonna just, yeah, let’s go grab a beer. They don’t have time for that. They don’t have time to have lunch with you on a Tuesday in the middle of the day because they’re doing other bigger things. And in order for you to get their time, their attention, be on their forefront, you have to pay them. And then once you get in front of them, you have to show your worth and not be a schlep at the end of the day.

Dylan Silver (29:51.422)
Thank

Dylan Silver (30:00.26)
Yep.

Dylan Silver (30:06.739)
I can talk about that ad nauseum. Truly, you know, the fact that your time, it may seem like, especially for folks who are in the W-2 and, you know, I feel like, how do I break out of this? That your time is valuable, but like, you know, how valuable is it? There’s people charging, you know, tens of thousands of dollars, you know, for a day of their time. That’s not an exaggeration. And JD can vouch for that, you know.

And so when you think about it like that, it changes your perspective. It’s like just to be in the room with this person, I’m having to fork up like half of my annual salary. Like that’s the time value. But we are coming up on time here, JD. So how can people get a hold of you?

JD Alexander (30:55.612)
You can go to our website, travelwithtraverse.com. There’s a submission button there. Shoot me an email, JD at travelwithtraverse or you can find me on Instagram, JDAlexander1.

Dylan Silver (31:08.764)
All right, folks, that wraps up another episode of the Real Estate Pros podcast by Investor Fuel. And hey, look, if you are an international real estate investor and you want to increase your profits, if you want to take your hands off the steering wheel a little bit and let someone else drive for you, maybe reach out to JD. So on that note, I’ll let you go. Thanks for hopping on here today. And until next time, we’ll see you.

JD Alexander (31:37.632)
See you Dylan.