IAM1281 – CEO Bridges the Gap in Real State, Investment and Travel Industry

Regarded as a complete Real Estate, Investment, and Travel Industry Powerhouse, Richard Bexon has carved out a true niche business that bridges the gap between all things Travel, Investment, and Real Estate related. Currently the Owner and Chief Investment Officer for Namu Travel Group (ranked Central America’s largest luxury Travel Company) he's been in the industry since 2005.

Richard’s professional experience spans everything from building, developing, and selling properties to land/vacation rentals and luxury retreats. Known as the Owner’s Manual across both industry channels, he has stretched his influence over major platforms and has been featured by numerous respected organizations and news outlets including Yahoo Finance, Forbes, and Morningstar, and hosts his own weekly podcast interviewing the leading professionals in the Travel, Investment, and Real Estate sector. Always the guy in the room you want to network with, Richard has been recognized and awarded for his hard work with various #1 Properties on TripAdvisor and highly performing yields.

• CEO Story: Started as a Sales in a travel company in Costa Rica. Got his franchise and made it big in Europe and eventually was bought by the mother company. Moved up from Sales to development and Investment. Richard is dedicated to shaping the future of tourism in Costa Rica.
• Business Service: Travel and tours, consultation to hotels. Investments in vacation rentals. Project management and financing.
• Secret Sauce: Using a lot of data from clients. Human Interaction, more caring. Making mistakes and learning from them. Having networks becomes your net worth.
• CEO Hack: Interacting with your clients. Einstein hours – most productive hours. Focusing on the most difficult task to do.
• CEO Nugget: Network is your net worth. Just grow your network. In sales, manage the effort, not the final number.
• CEO Defined: Great service, helping people. Have a charity. Putting people in the right positions. And making sure they are having fun.

Website: www.investingcostarica.com

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Transcription

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00:09 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

00:36 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Richard Bexon of Costa Rica Real Estate and Investments. Richard, super excited to have you on the show.

00:48 – Richard Bexon

It's an absolute pleasure to be here, sir.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, excited to have you on and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. And before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Richard so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's working on. And regarded as a complete real estate investment and travel industry powerhouse, Richard has carved out a truly niche business that bridges the gap between all things travel, investment, and real estate related.

Currently the owner and chief investment officer for Namu Travel Group currently ranked Central America's largest luxury travel company. He's been in the industry since 2005 and Richard's professional experience spans everything from building, developing, and selling properties to land and vacation rentals and luxury retreats. He is widely recognized as the go-to expert in various industry channels.

His influence extends across major publications and platforms, and he has been featured by numerous respected organizations and news outlets, including Yahoo Finance and Forbes Morningstar. Additionally, he hosts his own weekly podcast where he interviews leading professionals in the travel, investment, and real estate sectors. Always the guy in the room you want to network with, Richard has been recognized and awarded for his hard work in various No.1 properties on Travel Advisor and highly performing yields. Richard, super excited to have you on the show, and hear about all the awesome things that you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:06 – Richard Bexon

Yeah, I'm very ready. I'm just coming off that introduction you just gave me. It was Jennifer who worked with me, who wrote that. It's kind of, I'm a little bit more humble than that. That was very glitzy and shiny.

02:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well, glitzy and shiny because you're doing glitzy and shiny things. So it's good that you pulled it from all the work that you've been doing. I truly appreciate you for bringing that to light.

02:26 – Richard Bexon

No worries. I mean, I'm sure you know what it's like. I mean, writing your own stuff is absolutely terrible. I mean, you kind of just play it down. So when somebody else writes it, it sounds a lot better.

02:33 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's why we have to have a good team in place and make sure that they do write all the awesome things because sometimes we're a little too humble when we are doing phenomenal things like you are.

02:41 – Richard Bexon

Exactly.

02:43 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. So I know we touched on all the accolades and accomplishments that you had. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:55 – Richard Bexon

Sure. You know, so, I mean, this is gonna go a little bit all over the place, but I'll try and keep it as quick as possible. I'm originally from London, UK. Even now Brits are asking me, even though they're asking me if I'm from South Africa and Australia, but this is what happens when a Brit spends the majority of their life outside of the UK. I was in Minnesota working for a hotel group back then, and I met my now wife. This was back in 2002. She was from Costa Rica, hence how I got here because I had no idea where Costa Rica was.

And I ended up in Minnesota in the US, but that's a completely different ball game, different story. But I came to Costa Rica for the first time in 2002, loved it, and moved here full-time in 2005. After I sold a business that I had in the UK, I was age 22. I got married. I basically started as a sales job for a travel company, which back then was Costa Rica and Vacations. It was a very small business, maybe like 7, or 8 people. I took a franchise of that company and took it to Europe. It became very big within 2 years. And in 2007, the owners of Costa Rican Vacations, which is now Namo Travel Group, basically bought my company.

And then for that, again, I got cash and also shares in the business. My focus has always been kind of more on the sales and marketing side, and it's kind of transitioned more to the development investment side, which we'll probably get to a little bit later. But Basically, that's it. And since then, I've headed up the revenue as Chief Investment Officer. I was the CEO, head of sales, head of marketing, and CEO for a while. We've done it all. As they say here in Costa Rica, Soyla is the person who does everything. So it's not a job in the business I haven't done.

Today we have over 120 people in that business with $50 million in sales. Just before COVID, I started to pivot more into tourism development, and real estate due to the need there, working with hoteliers, developers, just individual investors buying vacation rentals here as well. Wanting advice, we have all this data because we get about 150, 000 people a year, sorry, 150, 000 people a month just visit our website. We spend over $2 million a year with Google. So we have a clear picture of what people are looking for, what's the product, and kind of really shaping that.

You know, I have a passion for that part of the business, as you can probably tell. I love helping people. I say it's my greatest strength and my greatest weakness is helping people because I get sucked in sometimes the stuff like helping people that really is not, you know, it's not helping me but it's helping other people. But now I dedicate myself 100% to more kinds of development of tourism products here in Costa Rica with a small team and really just trying to shape the future of tourism here.

05:26 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I know that's a lot of what you've been able to do to have that experience and the insight and be able to kind of help set people up for success. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more on your organization, how you're making its impact, how you're helping out so many people.

05:40 – Richard Bexon

Sure. So, I mean, our travel company, you know, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, we design custom vacations here to Central America. We have experts in the country. It's very difficult if you're in North America or somewhere else to get a real idea of what's going on in Central America. It's such a disconnected environment down here, but we have basically a lot of expats that live down here, the custom design vacations. And on the tourism and vacation rental front, basically, we provide a lot of consulting there because we do a lot of vacation rentals.

We do work with a lot of hotels here. I deal with everything from big, larger investing groups down to small individual investors that are just looking sometimes for just they want vacation rental here and want to invest. So I'm just here to help them make the right decisions for them. Also, we provide some project management and also financing sometimes to some of these investments because it's in our interest in our travel agency's interest to have that because then we have more great products that we're able to help and define and really, we focus more on a luxury end client here. So helping to kind of really develop that, which there's a bit of an opportunity there in the higher-end market here in Costa Rica because it's really underserved here.

06:50 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love how you kind of created it seems like for lack of a better term, a moat, and that opportunity where you're able to kind of serve people in so many different ways.

06:57 – Richard Bexon

Yeah. I mean, look, I mean, you know, the world is moving towards more of a process tech, not speaking with human beings. I want to go completely opposite and we've always done that in business. Which is I want the human to human interaction. I want to be able to speak with these people and understand really what they're trying to do.

07:13 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And so would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? It could be for the organization yourself personally or a combination of both, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

07:25 – Richard Bexon

I think that there's kind of like No.1 is data. We use a lot of data that we get from clients. We base it kind of based on what clients are looking at, what are they booking, what product they're booking, and what are they looking for. And also, another thing is just human interaction. I always say we care more. We always care more than our competition. We care more, we'll do stuff that sometimes doesn't make us money. The other day I had a client who was, they just bought a beautiful home and they looking to rent it.

And they're like, hey, Rich, where do we get plates and knives and forks from? And I'm like, well, this is where you get it from. You're in the States here in Costa Rica. I'd have one of my guys basically go out and get you plates and forks. I mean, that's just something small, but like we didn't have to do, we could have just thrown it off and be like, that's where you get it. But we're like, you know, we care more and understand that, like, look, we're here to kind of make their lives easier a little bit.

So we'll do that for them or put them in contact with the people that they need. And I think also one of the things is as well, Gresham, is we've made the mistakes. We've built, we've developed, we've lost money, we've lost millions of dollars doing certain things of like, and especially with the bureaucracy here in Central America, and especially in Costa Rica, the red tape, the hoops that you need to jump through, it's very much here is, you know, and I'll probably mention it later is your network is your worth here, especially here in Costa Rica.

And I think it is everywhere, but really here in Costa Rica, where, you know, you need to know people to get stuff done. So that's one of our secret sources really is we have a very strong network of everything from, I suppose people in local municipalities, the politicians all the way down to the guy that digs you well on your property.

09:00 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:12 – Richard Bexon

So I have 2 things. One of them I just covered, is work for your past clients. I think that that's absolutely huge. I mean, if you're a CEO and you're not interacting with your clients and working past clients as well, you need to be doing that just because I think it really gives you a, you can look at financial reports and strategies and stuff but like your clients are gonna give you the real, you need to be having interactions with them. They're gonna give you the real story. And that's why sometimes I love to hit the road and actually be with clients when they're actually looking to invest because they usually take a vacation with us as well.

And it's kind of part of that investment consulting that I do as well. I actually get to see how their vacation goes and the mistakes that are made or things that we can improve from that. And that kind of, you know, refeeds back into the business. The other thing which I'm really, which I guard, Gresham, is what I call my Einstein hours. You know, so these are my hours during the day when I'm the most productive, you know, which is usually between the hours of about 8 and 10 in the morning. I guard this time.

I have a meeting every single day with myself from 8 to 10. Nobody can have a meeting with me from that time because I do my most difficult and important tasks. I needed to work on some financial modeling this morning, which is really difficult for me. I'll procrastinate on it, you know, but once I'm into it, I'm into it. You know, so I use that time between 8 and 10 is what I call my Einstein hours to really focus on the most difficult stuff that I have, you know, in my to-do list.

10:25 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I love that. And especially like, you know, a lot of times what you make in create space for is what actually happens, what actually comes to fruition. So creating those Einstein hours, I actually might borrow that from you as well too, because I think that's such a great opportunity to be able to make sure that you are taking care of the things that are essentially moving the needle forward. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So there's a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your younger business self if you were to hop into a time machine.

10:54 – Richard Bexon

I think it's, I mentioned it earlier, which is like your network is your network. The reason is when I was younger, you know, I'd kind of lock myself in a room and I'd kind of work away. But then, you know, I started to kind of have lunches, you know, have coffees, have dinners with people, and meet as many people as I could. The reason being is, you know, just having those contacts whenever anything is needed, whether that's, you know, a good tax lawyer, whether that's a good tax accountant, whether that's just a good lawyer or a real estate lawyer.

So that's kind of my CEO nugget, especially for any young people out there or if I were to go back and tell myself, would just be, just grow your network and just meet people, have coffee, sit down, talk, see how you can help people. You just never know what's gonna come from it. And I always say to people is, as sales leaders, any sales leaders listening to this is to manage the effort, not the final number. And this is where people sometimes get a little bit confused. If you've seen the movie Moneyball, remember the part when the statistician came back with all the stats they needed to make a great team? You need to manage sales like that.

You need to be managing it basically on how many calls, how many follow-ups, how many quotes, how quickly they responded as well, et cetera, et cetera, you know, so because that's where you can have an impact. If you change those numbers, you'll change the app, the final outcome, but you can't change the final outcome just by looking at it or shouting, you know because it's a sum of its metrics. So you need to change those metrics to basically change the sum. You can't measure it, you can't improve it, right?

12:21 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Richard, what does being a CEO mean to you?

12:32 – Richard Bexon

I think in general, it's basically doing the most good in the world while making money. So it's just finding a way to deliver, I mean, basically, great service, helping people while also doing the most good. We have quite a few charities as well. I think every business should have a charitable arm in one way or the other. And also make money as well. I mean, you've got to make money because you've got to live and the business has to grow basically to kind of recycling that.

And also putting people in the right positions. What are their strengths and how do we allow, how do we put them in the position and given the tools and the training, you know, to be basically the best self? But also, you know, I like to have fun, you know, and if I'm not having fun, you know, I don't want to do it. So I always say to my people, if you're not having fun, let me know, because often that means you are in the wrong role in the business. So yeah.

13:15 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. We have to kind of understand that, you know, life is a process, business a process, our positions are sometimes a process and a journey. So, you know, you have that opportunity to kind of maybe develop other skills and opportunities. But I love what you said, doing the most good because the most good can of course be, you know, our clients and customers that we're working with, but it's also internal, the team that we have, how we serve and the people that are on our teams as well too.

Are we making sure they're in the right place so that they can have fun, they can succeed and they can excel? So I truly appreciate that definition. I, of course, appreciate your time even more. What I want to do now, is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can subscribe to your podcast, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on as well.

13:59 – Richard Bexon

You know, I think just in general, I'd say to people, just stay strong when the tough gets, when it feels tough, it means that you're basically you're near the peak, just keep pushing through because when it gets tough is when most people give up. So if you want to separate yourself from the flock, basically don't give up when it gets tough, ignore the naysayers, take risks, And especially if you're young, take risks. I mean, even if you're older, take risks. I mean, it's basically the rewards that come from the risks. And as I think I mentioned there, life's too short. Live your own dream, not someone else's. Worst case scenario, you can always go and find a job.

Jobs are easy to find, but you only get one life and it goes pretty quickly. So this is a 40-year-old guy. Life goes pretty quickly, but the majority of I'd say older people in their 70s and 80s just couldn't believe how quickly it went. And I wish I would have done this and I wish I would have done that. And a lot of the time, they wish they would have stood up on their own 2 feet and lived their own life, rather than basically living somebody else's. So anyway, I think the best way to get in contact with me, is to can go to LinkedIn, the 2 Richard Bexson, B-E-X-O-N.

Also, I have a podcast as well, which is called Costa Rica Real Estate and Investments, where we interview everyone from interior designers, to architects and developers. We had Vakasa's sales director on the other day to people that have made investments here in Costa Rica and, you know, to realtors, what they would invest in, etc. So you can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, and Google, it's everywhere. Or you can email me info at investing costa Rica.com that info at investing Costa Rica.com.

15:31 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. To make it even easier, Richard, we'll have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can subscribe and reach out to you and see how many phenomenal things come from just having that conversation. And I love that last part because I think so many times we can get caught in risk being something that we should run away from, but it's something you can kind of lean more into because a lot of times when you don't do anything, you're actually taking a far bigger risk than you are by sometimes taking those steps. So thank you so much for doing that and reminding us how important that is. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:01 – Richard Bexon

Fantastic, I appreciate your time.

16:03 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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