How Networking Transformed Jon Bell into a Top Realtor

Dylan Silver (00:01.29)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. I’m your host Dylan Silver and today on the show we have Jon Bell, a top selling realtor in the deep creek lake area with Rayleigh Realty. Jon, welcome to the show.

Jon Bell (00:16.746)
Hey, thanks for having me on and you introduced me correctly. Thank you. Our company is Rayleigh Realty, which I don’t think is hard to pronounce, but a lot of people mess that up. So good job. Thank you.

Dylan Silver (00:29.344)
Yeah, I think people might go with with the Riley sometimes but I lived in Boston for for six years so I can kind of sense the difference between the names that might have a potential Irish twang to him if you will but I always start the podcast off by asking my guests how they got into the real estate space

Jon Bell (00:52.078)
Probably like a lot of people. didn’t plan on being a realtor. It just happened and it was one of the luckier things I’ve ever done. So went to college. I went to college in Baltimore at Towson University. Graduated with a business management marketing degree. It was in year 2000. Kinda really didn’t know what I wanted to do. So started bartending right after college.

and met some guys who owned Rayleigh Realty and Realtors and I was like, hmm, that seems like an interesting job. And one of the first things I did for real estate companies was helping them network and as far as their IT goes, like computer networking and stuff like that in the offices, which is kind of funny because that was all Microsoft back then, but nowadays we’ve pretty much moved on to Apple and just randomly, randomly met the right people, thought it seemed like a cool job. We live in a vacation town.

I’m in Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, which is in very Western Maryland and it’s predominantly real estate, vacation rentals, tourism industry. It’s a tourism town. it wasn’t like they were, I wanted to live here because it’s a fun area live. There’s the lake, ski slopes, stuff like that. But then figuring out a way to earn money and being able to live here was a different thing to do. And real estate turned out to be the answer.

Dylan Silver (02:09.78)
beast.

Dylan Silver (02:13.704)
Okay, so backing up a bit here, you’re getting out of school, realizing this is a cool area. How did you meet your people who said, hey, let’s you should go look into becoming a realtor?

Jon Bell (02:25.39)
As random as life is, I met him at a bar. yeah, so that’s exactly right. I’m into snowboarding, we’re into water skiing, all that kind of stuff. So I wanted to live here. And at the time I was just renting a little space above a garage and bartending. And I was meeting the people at the bar and I was trying to figure out what they did, how did they support it and how did the locals earn a living here. And luckily I met some realtors.

and sort of talking to realtors. And I don’t remember which one it was, but one of them said that a lot of times bartenders, waiters, stuff like that, waitresses become really good salespeople because we’re good at talking to people. We know the area. And then I’m still a proponent of probably so thousands of houses at this point, but in our area, we’re really not selling the houses. The houses are gonna sell them house. You’re gonna sell themselves. You’re gonna like the house. You’re gonna like the kitchen. You’re gonna like the location.

or not, I’m not gonna force that on you, it’s gonna sell itself. What I have to do is sell the area. And I can sell the area because I love the area. know, people wanna be here for the same reasons I wanted.

Dylan Silver (03:33.28)
You know, when I hear these stories, Jon, I think about the strengths of real estate entrepreneurs in general. And to me, there’s one big strength and then there’s another strength which is equally important. The one big strength is problem solving, because things are going to change, right? And so what I’ve found is my guests on my show don’t always do the same thing. They don’t have the same avatar. I’ve had people who build hospitals, and then I’ve had people who just manage the Airbnb communications, right?

That’s their niche, right? And so you don’t just start building hospitals. You start with hanging steel and before you start hanging steel, you might be a tradesman, but you got to be able to adapt and scale. And similarly, people have to have that ability. And so in addition to having that skill, you also have to have that incredible networking ability. If you really want to succeed.

And I can’t understate either of these enough. They’re so critical. They’re so critical. When I think about fanatical networking and putting yourself out there and getting in front of people, really as a bartender, that’s what you’re doing no matter what. You’re meeting someone new every single night. Or if it’s not somebody new, it’s a regular that you see every day. But you to continue to build that relationship. And so in a sense,

It makes perfect sense that a lot of bartenders would be great in real estate.

Jon Bell (05:03.63)
It’s same thing and it’s not about all about what you know. It’s about what you know but also who you know. I believe in any type of sales, whatever you’re selling, whether it’s real estate or hats, you need to know your product. one of things I got into is networking. I got to know the right people. I got to understand buyers. I got to know what buyers want. I got to understand what sellers wanted. And I also understand that it’s constantly changing and I’m constantly networking.

more, define more people and get better. But what I also did was I became an expert in the product I sold. So I really don’t go outside of my area. I have a couple of times on just little joint ventures with people and stuff like that. for the 20 years I’ve been working in the real estate business, I’ve pretty much worked in the deep creek lake area. And the reason why is I am an expert on that area. I understand the zoning rules. I know the houses.

There’s at this point in my career, several houses I’ve sold two or three times, the same house. So I do know them really well. So I guess my point on that is no matter it is about what you know, meaning you need to be an expert in the product you’re selling, but it’s also about who you know and networking and stuff like that. It gets back to any old sports analogy, anything about it, you’re not gonna win every time. And when you’re first starting off, I lost a lot when I was first starting off.

But the thing is when you lose, you pick yourself up, you figure it out why you didn’t make that deal, you figure it out what you did wrong. There was one guy, used to drive me crazy. I would sit there and say the exact same thing. I’d say it perfectly and I would nail it and I’d the best sales presentation ever and the people would walk over to this other guy and he would say exactly what I said and they would buy it from him. And it just, it would drive me nuts. So what I did was I didn’t get frustrated and quit. Of course I got frustrated, but instead of getting frustrated and quit,

I got frustrated and got better. And I think that’s again, in any type of sales, that’s what you want to do. And I’d love to tell you, it’s you can figure out one thing. Anytime I think I’ve got to figure it out, something changes. Like real estate, like in all industries. I made a joke when we were just first getting on here. When we first started out, we used all Microsoft products. were Microsoft through and through, and that’s where the road was.

Jon Bell (07:25.798)
I’m all Apple these days. So just as a point, in 20 years, everything we used to use doesn’t exist anymore. The sales strategies I used to work, used 20 years ago, they don’t exist anymore. Like everything’s constantly changing and you’ve just got to be prepared for change. And more importantly, I’ve got some younger daughters that I’m trying to help them with some sports stuff on, but I think it’s very important to lose. Yeah, it feels good to win.

But you’ve got to lose in order to figure out what you did wrong to get better and just constantly keep changing.

Dylan Silver (07:57.364)
man, there’s so many points that you hit on Jon that are interesting to me. I’ll start off with, as an aside here, you go from Microsoft to Apple products, and I think a lot of people are very loyal to one. I’m an Apple loyalist now. I don’t care. I’ll do the phone, iPad. I’m not touching an Android, right? And so I’m curious, just kind of on a comedic note here, what you think of people who are…

very loyal to one versus the other and maybe like myself would never even consider going over.

Jon Bell (08:30.382)
You’ve got it so it depends. I’ve got a friend of mine who’s not in this business Totally not in sales related at all and he’s totally against Apple He loves a Samsung or whatever and it works just fine for him, right? But if I’m trying to set up a zoom meeting or something with him, it’s a royal pain his devices never connect He’s dropping he can’t when you see group text messages He’s left out of the group because he doesn’t see it and for his lifestyle and all that stuff. That’s great

Dylan Silver (08:48.202)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:55.924)
the green box.

Jon Bell (08:59.234)
But getting back to sales, I’m gonna use the product that makes my clients’ lives easier, and that’s right now where Apple is. I don’t know this is testics, but it’s very easy when you say the majority of my clients have Apple, so it’s easier for me to FaceTime them and all that stuff, which is why I wouldn’t be able to go out get a Samsung.

Dylan Silver (09:06.206)
Right.

Dylan Silver (09:18.632)
I know, I feel the same way. That was actually the perfect way that I feel, because sometimes I’m grasping at straws, why do I love this so much? And it’s just the ease of use, everybody’s doing it. I had the green bubble for a while, but I digress here, Jon, I digress. Talking about, you know, know, talking about, you know, proceeding through failure and the sports analogy. I grew up, interestingly, I was not a team sport guy. I played tennis, I ran track, and I did Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Kind of unrelated, but…

Jon Bell (09:33.438)
It’s a light media.

Dylan Silver (09:48.48)
all on this, it’s all on you. So when you would lose, it’s, you lost. Like it’s not, no one else to blame, you’re the problem. So, so when I would lose, I would take it, it was so bad. I remember thinking just, oh man, I can’t take this any longer. It was devastating. I took it so personally. And then eventually through time, I guess I just decided not to quit. And I hated losing so badly that I just poured everything that I had into it.

and I went from literally losing every match in the first round to then winning tournaments, increasing my ranking and so on and so forth. For people with kids, but also just people who are maybe young athletes themselves, what advice and what guidance have you given maybe in your own family and that you could change yourself?

Jon Bell (10:35.854)
I think it’s common, you said, nobody likes to lose. It’s always uncomfortable. It’s no fun. But the key is picking yourself up, brushing yourself off and getting better and practicing just timing the saddle. I think I’ve read online that it takes about 10,000 hours to be an expert. You need to work at some of your 10,000 hours to be an expert. So of course you’re not an expert on day one. But if you don’t step up to the plate and swing at the bob, you’re not going to hit it.

So I don’t know if this would be appropriate in 2025, but I remember a college professor I really liked, gosh, wonder who he was, Dr. King, he was a great college professor and he was teaching a sales classes and stuff. And one of the analogies he put to us was he goes, generally men are better salespeople than women. And we were all sitting there like, why is that? And he goes, cause okay guys, what happens tonight if you go out to a bar?

and you walk up to a pretty girl and she says, He goes, what are you gonna do? He goes, you’re gonna turn around and go talk to the next pretty girl you see. You know, that kind of stuck in my head. And that’s with sales too. So we see this pretty sale and we go after it. And if it doesn’t work, okay, regroup, figure it out and then go after the next one. It’s just a constant moving target, Dom. But I don’t know, I do think that, I think losing’s important because it helps you grow. It’s not a fun thing to do, but it’s a very important.

Dylan Silver (11:41.311)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (12:03.328)
Yeah, you gotta somehow turn that energy into a victory. And it can be brutal. Brutal, but you gotta somehow turn it into a victory.

Jon Bell (12:10.862)
That’s exactly right. take that energy instead of instead of getting depressed about it, you take that energy and make it into a good thing. And the worst thing about it is nobody remembers the wins that you’re you’re going to remember your win for a little bit and you’re going to ride that high for a little bit. It’s the losses that always stick in your head like, man, I could have done that better. Oh, I should have called them sooner. Oh, I should have done this. And that’s that nagging loss that honestly probably makes you better for the next go around. I don’t think a lot of people have that.

Dylan Silver (12:27.274)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (12:37.76)
100 % Jon.

Jon Bell (12:40.954)
I’ve met tens of thousands of people over the years. think salespeople were different. Some people don’t think about things like that. I don’t have the ability to just brush it off. Sometimes I wish I did. Sometimes I wish I could be like, whatever, but I’m constantly re-examining things in my head and figuring out what I did wrong and trying to get better. And this is kind of a neat statement. There’s 40 some thousand realtors in the state of Maryland.

Dylan Silver (12:53.834)
Me neither.

Jon Bell (13:07.468)
And I’m the top 50, like top five zeroes. So I mean, I outsell 39,000 and some people, but I’m constantly trying to make myself better. I don’t think that’s normal. that’s just, some of us have it, some of us don’t.

Dylan Silver (13:21.716)
Yeah, I think people I think people who are highly critical of themselves if they can work beyond that, if they can cope, right? Because it can be hard. You’re sometimes over things that other people might just brush off. But if you’re highly critical of yourself, you also have like an internal mechanism for self betterment, which other people do not have. So it can seem like a crushing anxiety or stress, if you will. But then when you get to the other or if you can see through that see past that you’re like

No, I have to be better. this is not, literally not an option. Because if I continue down this path, I’m gonna be an emotional wreck. can’t keep losing. I have to win. Speaking of which, Jon, I’m pivoting a bit here. So you go college, bartender, get your real estate license. You have your real estate license. At this point in time, when you got your license, are you full time with it when you’re just starting out, just to paint the backstory here, or are you still bartending?

Jon Bell (14:13.102)
No, I was flat broke. mean, I remember I couldn’t afford cable TV. Right out of college, bartending, getting by, no money whatsoever. So yeah, was, just like a lot of startup businesses, was, you have to work a job to pay for your other job. Like a lot of people think that’s crazy too, but I would work all day as a realtor basically and not make any money and then go to work at night to bartend to actually pay my bills to get by.

Dylan Silver (14:31.722)
Yeah.

Jon Bell (14:42.766)
Yeah, in the beginning I was, and that was a very scary decision for me. I don’t remember the exact day, but I remember the time range when I decided to quit bartending and focus solely on real estate. And now that was scary because there were bills that had to be paid. I was getting comfortable enough in it, but it was a conscious decision and it was a big decision. But yeah, it’s, answer to your question is sure, in the very beginning I worked other jobs. At one point in time, I even remember we’d owned a pizza restaurant.

And I remember making pizzas and I was in there doing this and this guy wanted to look at a house and we were kind of short staffed and this is very beginning of career. And I was like, man, I can go sell this house and make the amount of money I would make selling pizza all year long. So I flipped the clothes sign on and went and sold the house. But it wasn’t long after that that I decided, okay, I need to really commit. And I think that’s probably on anything. Getting back to being successful is you do need to commit.

Dylan Silver (15:27.616)
Ha

Jon Bell (15:39.618)
You know, and then there’s the other thing too is of course I take days off when we do things, but I think when you’re in this mindset and you’re in this life, you truly never have a day off. Like, we’ll have a total day off. I’ll be driving down the road, whatever. I’m still thinking about it in my mind. You’re constantly improving. You’re constantly thinking about things. And I just think that’s a, that’s a different person.

Dylan Silver (15:59.53)
Yeah, some people say it’s a gift and a curse. You I don’t look at it that way. I’m energized by what I’m doing. I’m blessed to be in this position, right? Licensed real estate agent, living in one of the best real estate markets in the country in Dallas, Texas, North Dallas, and hosting a real estate podcast, talking to people like yourself. Like, this is super cool. Like, yeah, my phone’s ringing all the time. Got a bunch of people calling me, but that’s better than the opposite. So I might not really get a real vacation for a while, but hey, I’m here for it. And I think you can…

relate to that. But, Jon, so walk us through here.

Jon Bell (16:30.304)
It’s the same thing. Some days I think, my God, if my phone rings one more time, what am I going to do? And of course part of it is being disciplined. You always answer the phone. Well, sometimes it’s important to know when to not answer the phone. But anyway, so the phone rings all the time. You’re just tired. And then the next day your phone doesn’t ring for half an hour and you think, my gosh, what’s going on? Why is nobody calling me? So yeah, it’s it.

Dylan Silver (16:39.136)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (16:52.028)
Exactly. Where are the leads? Where are the leads?

Jon Bell (16:55.018)
You said you’ve been doing this podcast for a while, but you just got your real estate license last week.

Dylan Silver (17:00.074)
So the podcast is still new. I’ve been doing podcasts for two and a half weeks, so brand new to the podcast and brand new to real estate license. Now, I’ve been wholesaling, doing assignable contracts in Texas for about a year and a half. It’ll be two years in July. Done about 20 deals, some nominal fees, some substantial, but still working to get my first couple of deeds in my name or an LLC that I own. So that’ll be exciting when that happens.

break it down for us. So you go at this point you’re full time and scaling to today you mentioned you’re a broker, you’ve owned restaurants, know, lots of different avenues that you’ve explored. What was the growth like? Was it front loaded? you you did you rip the cover off the ball as soon as you started going with it full time or was it more of a slower burn with time?

Jon Bell (17:53.398)
No, wasn’t, overall it was a short period of time. Say when I was bartending and selling real estate at the same time was probably about a year. And about a year into it I realized, hey, I can make a go at this. I thought I would do it. that’s probably when I ripped the bandaid off and just started going at it full time. Kind of limped along for a little while. And then I remember I bought my first investment house. And if I’m right, this would have been early 2000s and I paid like 125,000 for it.

Man, it was all the money I could find. There was no more money. The bank was insane to even lend it to me. But anyway, it worked out and I remember and I sold it. And I did really well when we flipped it and sold it. And then all of a sudden I had some money. And then all of sudden people started calling me back. And then I was able to buy something else. And then I was able to more relate with people like you because I can say, oh, I’ve done this before. You know, it’s just a…

There was not one big thing, it’s just a million little things. But buying that first house, the first big thing was committing. know, rip the bandaid off and say, okay, this is what I’m gonna do. It’s very risky. Luckily I didn’t have kids at the time, so if I failed, hey, I failed. You know, and that was, I think that was a conscious decision I made. I’m very glad I made it at that point in my life versus now, but.

I remembered I thought I could do it. I wanted to do it. I wanted to own my own business. This was something I was good at and I decided to hit it full speed ahead. And I also knew that I failed. Hey, I was still in my early 20s. I can move home with my parents, know, whatever. Wasn’t the plan, but I knew I was that backup option. And that was a big step. buying the house and flipping that house was a big step because that gave me some cash. That was…

Dylan Silver (19:24.991)
Hmm.

Dylan Silver (19:30.112)
Yeah.

Jon Bell (19:41.87)
mid-20s, and was probably the first time I can say I didn’t live paycheck to paycheck. I think actually I went out and bought a Toyota 4Runner, it was great. then from there, things kept changing. same thing, there’s always, we were talking about winning and losing sales, there’s always winning and losing investments too. I would love to tell you every investment I’ve ever made, made money. No, they don’t. But more make money than more lose. And I think that’s the average.

Of course now I’m 48 years old and I’ve done, like I said, 10,000 deals and I think I’m a lot smarter. I’m definitely more cautious these days than I used to be. anyway, it’s a cumulative of everything. don’t think there was one big aha moment other than the fact that I said, I’m going for this. And from there, I just didn’t turn back.

Dylan Silver (20:31.42)
In addition, Jon, to hearing about people’s different stories, I’ve used this term before. People in the real estate space who are high level operators like yourself tend to have a fair degree of neuroplasticity. Like they can just adapt. And they go from one thing to realizing, here’s an opportunity, let me dive into this. And I’ve seen this. And when I was going to real estate school here in Fort Worth, Texas, there was some degree of this.

people get kind of caught into one track. I’m gonna do this, especially when you’re starting out. I wanna go into this area of real estate, which is great, right? But being able to do multiple things. So at this point, when you’re growing, you’re doing well in your real estate sales career, but you’re also investing. You’re flipping houses. So here’s a couple skillsets, right? Were you on these jobs, the general contractor yourself, and how are you balancing?

these projects with also being a full-time realtor.

Jon Bell (21:31.552)
No, that’s the thing, it’s time consuming. To tell you, 10 hour days, 7 days a week, sometimes it was 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and it was constantly putting on a different hat, and at 48 years old I’m still a workaholic.

I probably as far as taking days off, I don’t even remember the last time I took a day off because of that. Like some days if I’ve got buyers in town that will look at houses, I’m showing them houses. When I get done with doing that, I might be going out and meeting people that want to list houses or from there it might be a house I’m remodeling. short answer is yes, sometimes I’m the general contractor of my own project. Sometimes I hire them out. Sometimes I build houses, et cetera. And we haven’t even gotten into it too. I started getting into vacation rentals.

about 14 years ago. So we also do vacation rentals here at Deep Creek Lake also and manage about 650 vacation rental houses. it’s the whole, in addition to that, we have a cleaning and fire disaster restoration company, everything. But all the companies I’ve built all go around the same thing. It’s all based around Deep Creek Lake tourism and real estate. And so even though I’m switching hats, I’m switching gears,

I’m only switching gears. not getting out of the car and getting into a truck. I’m staying in the same lane. I’m staying on the same highway. I’m just changing lanes back and forth. And honestly, it helps. Again, go back to selling houses. It helps me sell the houses better because I understand what product the roof is made out of. I understand how it was insulated because I built houses before. just, it gives back to getting to know your product.

Dylan Silver (23:10.88)
John, how did you do those first flips? I ask this to people a lot. And they say, oh, well, my dad was a builder, so on and so forth. Did you have any background in general contracting?

Jon Bell (23:21.654)
YouTube. I was young and I did my best. No, I didn’t have… My dad was a contractor, a commercial contractor, but I never worked with him or anything like that. It’s kind of funny. I remember one of the first house flips I had, my dad and I were trying to wire in a ceiling fan and I have no idea what we did wrong, but he was a contractor and I still have a ceiling fan that was running backwards the wrong way.

Dylan Silver (23:22.974)
YouTube. That’s right.

Jon Bell (23:49.358)
That was kind of the end of me and him trying to do things together. from there, just found, think I’ve a credit to me is I try to find people to work with who are better than me. Okay, so to make a joke about myself, I’m not an electrician, okay, I’m not. But I don’t wanna be, don’t wanna electrocute myself. So I went out and found some really good electricians and they become loyal friends and partners and we work together all the time, know, same.

with accounting, if you wanna look at weaknesses I have, I’m not an accountant, I’m horrible at accounting, I mean I understand the basic processes of it behind it, but I hired an accountant. Now in the very beginning you’re doing it all yourself, don’t get me wrong, back in the very beginning I was hitting the whole thing myself, but nowadays I do that because my time is better spent at doing the things I’m good at where I can outsource the accounting or the electric and stuff like that, no, really didn’t have, a friend of mine asked me that not long ago is how I learned how to do this.

And I don’t think, like there isn’t a contractor school, there isn’t anything like that. It’s just experience, you know, and find people. Another thing too, people don’t rely on enough is, I am a sales agent, so I believe in salespeople. Find a good salesperson. Now you’re getting back to ceiling fans. If you want to buy a ceiling fan, somebody wants to sell it to you. And that person who wants to sell it to you is going to tell you how to install it. And people just forget that sometimes.

Dylan Silver (24:54.762)
Yeah. I just…

Jon Bell (25:14.798)
Don’t worry, we use Amazon all the time these days. We order products in from them all the time, but there’s also a very big need for salespeople because they’ll explain to you how to use their product. And welcome to 2025. There’s so many more resources out there nowadays than there used to be. I had to fix a ball hitch on a trailer not too long ago and I had no clue how to do it. And I don’t know why I do this kind of stuff, but I had taken it to a place, it was like $800 to fix.

I got on YouTube and Amazon and fixed it for like seven bucks and I was kind of proud of myself. the point being is there’s, yeah, there’s just so many, if you apply yourself and work at it, there’s so many resources out there these days you can figure stuff out. And for younger people, there are a lot of people like me who want to see you succeed. And I don’t know, if you’re doing a deal sometime in Texas, I don’t know anything about Texas real estate, so.

Dylan Silver (25:47.792)
$793 savings.

Dylan Silver (25:57.812)
Jon.

Jon Bell (26:07.318)
Anyway, just as a point, call me. I’m happy to talk you through it, but I can’t offer you advice on Texas real estate. there are people that are, there are people who enjoy working together and it’s, anyway, I’m Ramell Norris.

Dylan Silver (26:19.402)
Yeah, mean, look, you never know how these this is how these things happen. I’ve had multiple people offer me all types of different opportunities and services on this podcast. Too many to count. But it’s funny that you mentioned kind of just diving in because the guest before you just right before you got on, I was talking to a skydiving instructor turned real estate entrepreneur raises capital in the Chicago area. I believe it might have been greater Illinois.

And that’s what he does. And I said, well, what’s the similarity there? And he’s like, taking risks, being comfortable with taking risks and jumping out of planes, raising capital, real estate investing. I see it. And so in that, think when my mentor here in Denton, Texas, right, does fix and flips. And I asked him, you know, how did you learn how to do this? And he’s like, well, I roofing, but I really just did the first one. Like I was a roofer when I was 19, but I really just did the first flip, you know,

doing a roof is not going to tell you how to fix plumbing issues or a level of foundation. You just go. And I’m like, wow, that’s really kind of a different mentality. But that’s how that is. Jon, we are coming up on time here. And I would have loved to, we could probably fill up a whole other two podcasts talking about the vacation rentals. We’ll have to have you back on. But where can folks go to get a hold of you, Jon?

Jon Bell (27:43.18)
No, any of our websites, my main website is DCL, like Deep Creek Lake, dclrealestate.com. We also have deepcreek.com and deepcreeklake.com. Or honestly, if you just Google Jon Bell and Deep Creek Lake, you’ll find me. That’s another thing I did just to kind of wrap this up is people help. When I started, I wanted people, if they thought about Deep Creek, I wanted them to think about me. You know, to say, okay, if I want to rent a house or we want to buy a house or whatever.

Jon’s the guy I wanna call. And over the years, I’ve got sales partners and sales agents and all kinds of stuff that help all that stuff. But yeah, make yourself easy to find. A lot of people also ask me, a lot of times they’re like, hey, how do you become so successful? And a lot of it is easy as answering, getting back to people. People want to buy stuff and they’re gonna buy from the people that help them buy it, the people who help them make their lives easier and the people that know what they’re talking about. So finding me, if you just Google Deep Creek Lake, you’re gonna find me. If you Google Deep Creek Lake, Jon Bell.

or DCLrealestate.com, any of our websites. If you want to rent a house here, we have lots of vacation rentals. If you’re interested in buying a house, let me know. If there’s anything Deep Creek related, feel free to reach out. I think you said we had 25 minutes, we may have one left. But another thing I was gonna tell you too, if you start working with people that have been in the business for a long time, you’re gonna catch them saying stuff that they didn’t like about what they used to do.

We didn’t tap on, when I first got started, was buying and managing long-term rentals. And in the beginning, it was great. And another guy now that I’m mentoring and working with a lot, he’s like, boy, it sounds like you really hated those. And I didn’t, I grew out of them. And I didn’t mean to discourage him from going out and getting a long-term rental because he absolutely should. And that’s the only thing he could afford at this point in his career. It’s just 20 years later, I’m happy now where I am.

So when you’re listening to advice of older people, take the, I’m gonna just call myself old, but when you’re listening to advice from people that been around for a while, take it with a grain of salt and follow your dream and make your path.

Dylan Silver (29:49.384)
Amen to that. Jon, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for coming on the show.

Jon Bell (29:53.41)
Yeah, man. Good luck with everything.