More homes and more progress
I'm still at my pad in Miami but I thought I would check in with a brief blog post.
A portion of my typewriter collection, some of those suckers weigh 60 pounds and take both hands to lift.
Our growth of this business shows itself in little and big ways. Here's our staging area for the assorted stuffs that go into our homes - toilets, lights, cable rail, door knobs, vanities, farm sinks, radiators - you name, we got it.
And our collection of trucks and trailers.
Sunset on the Biscayne Bay from the 15th floor.
A house we renovated and sold in 2004. Great new paint job.
Cottage 39 is a really great house that gets some amazing sunlight.
And Farm 20 and the Farm 20 garage is coming right along.
Stone going on the chimney.
Great looking Barn/garage.
And the green house area off the Barn.
Farm 19 is rounding that last bend and the painting starts in the inside this week.
The interior clean and the focus is on the staircase this week.
That's it. Later.
Catskill Farms, by the numbers
Founded - 2002
First Home Sold - 2004
Homes Sold 2002-2006 - 12
Homes sold since 2006 - 90
Average size of current home sold - 1500 sq ft
Number of homes sold in Sullivan County - 93
Number of homes sold in Ulster County - 7 (only started selling this year)
Dollars invested in Sullivan County - $34,000,000
Highest priced home built - $2,000,000
Lowest priced home sold - $165,000
Average price - $355k
Average lot size - 6 acres
Average time to build a house - 5 months, end to end
Amount spent on Google Pay per click since campaign inception - $251,000
Number of Google Impressions, all-time - 55,000,000
Number of Google click-thrus, all-time - 174,000
Amount spent in New York Magazine since campaign inception - $195,000
Amount spent in real estate commissions since 2007 - $85,000
Website visits per month - 13,000
Website page views per month - 50,000
Average time on site - 3 minutes
Blog readers - 3600 per month
Facebook Likes - 535
Employees - 7
Amount spent locally per month in labor, materials, good and services - $550,000
Number of typewriters in my collection - 36
And Lucas' new beach towel.
Shopping Therapy (in Miami)
So a friend of mind wrote me a text and said it's time to move on, that I've made my point (and do I want a kitten?) so I guess it's time to move on and continue doing what we do best - no, it's not being a loudmouth jerk, it's building great homes for folks and families to retreat to in order re-energize and recoup and refill that cup of ambition that keeps them on the top of their game in NYC.
I was supposed to be in Yosemite and Pacific coast but instead I'm on the east coast, down in Miami Beach for the start of the good weather season down here. And just to kill some time and whittle away the time (and recover from the 24/7 general aggravation of running a business in retardo-land) I'm doing a lot of shopping. Furniture shopping, linen shopping, home entertainment shopping. And you know, it works - except when you get home and try to get your Mac to work off of your TV and your sound bar to actually produce sound and your sub-woofer to actually sub-woof something other than sounds only dogs can hear. I did buy these two running shirts (the fancy 'keep dry' type, but they are a little tighter than I wanted, and I can't say I'm the fine physical specimen of a man I aspire to be, so I'm trying to decide if they cross the "I look ridiculous' line or not -I'm in Miami, so it's not like I'm alone looking ridiculous if I go that route).
I'm down here for a few days, and now that I've broken the seal on blogging again, I can get some great pictures up of Farm 19, Farm 20, Cottage 39 that I took last week. All those homes are moving right along.
100 homes, 10 years and still dealing with the same bullshit on a daily basis. But the bullshit is actually the key to the whole gig - it's a tough row to hoe, the labor supply is super shallow, the weather is tough, the ground is rocky, the politics self-serving - if it was easier, there would definitely be more competition - but the hardest challenge of any well-run, good idea business up here is 'growth' - as soon as you try and grow, you run into a lack of help, and a lack of help means you can't grow because a lack of good help means unhappy customers which means no need to grow.
We have put our team together - I run 3 businesses and employ 14 persons directly, and another 40 or more indirectly - we put our team together person by person, block by block, test by test. And of all the things I am, my most innate characteristic is the inability to be satisfied with today's quality, today's process, today's achievement. We can always get better, faster, more responsive, more accountable. You keep your eye on the ball like that for 10 years you can really grow something - though it's super annoying for people who work around me. As soon as you master one thing that seemed beyond your skill set 3 months ago, onto the next. I've never seen a busier office than ours, anywhere.
I've been thinking on my rambling rant moments I could call this blog or the specific post "The Housewives of Sullivan County", with all the drama, and personalities and the like, (while no one admits they actually watching it). And you know what's super interesting, they always tend to be the most widely read and circulated posts.
But no one admits they read them.
But whatever - we were way too busy this year and I think I pushed well past fatigue to keep it all rolling and growing and what have you. So a little R & R and I should be back on the horse. Although I did come away with a lesson I've learned many times but never had the luxury of paying attention to - I just need to care less. It's always been a competitive advantage to have an owner of a business lay it on the line for the clients and employees like I do, but I think, at this point in our business maturity, we will do just as well, and maybe even better, by toughening up, and expecting a little less from people, as well as myself. And it's even possible by caring less you end up having more energy to do a better job.
(yes, they are Burberry sunglasses)
