Catskills - Sullivan County - Ulster County Real Estate -- Catskill Farms Journal

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.

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.

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)

I got a lot of sympathetic emails from my clients and friends regarding my last post about Hennings Local.  And don't expect a lot of blog posts for awhile cause I'm just going to leave that one up there for awhile so it sinks in.

Like I often say, we have a lot of savvy clients so it was interesting to hear their feedback - most of it resolved around 'these guys are obviously clueless, amateurs and don't have the experience to really think this one through and see how it's going to play out'.   I agree totally, which doesn't less my frustration, it increases it, since not only have they harmed the thing I have going, it's another example of the pointless and dramatic errors business people make when they open a business up here.

So, let me dissect it, the way I would have, or would be, thinking about it.

Ok, let's just say Henning Nordanger of Henning's Local actually thought out how this might play out - this would have had to been considered.

1.) When I, Henning Nordanger of Henning's Local in Eldred entice Chuck's main guy to come and work for me at the height of the building season with 5 houses set to close in 2 months (and after labor day when my business will dry up) and without ensuring that this kid who is coming to work for me actually handles the exit situation well and after Chuck employed me in his business for more than a year and introduced me to everyone pivotal in this venture of mine, Chuck will just take it in stride and just move on with his life and business and continue to use his various and extensive methods of outreach to help my business grow.

2.)When I, Henning Nordanger of Hennings Restaurant entice Chuck's main guy to come and work for me at the height of the building season with 5 houses set to close in 2 months (and after labor day when my business will dry up) and without ensuring that this kid who is coming to work for me actually handles the exit situation well, and after Chuck employed me in his business for more than a year and introduced me to everyone pivotal in this venture of mine, Chuck will be pissed, probably won't eat at my restaurant, but will in time accept this.

3.)When I, Henning Nordanger of Hennings Restaurant entice Chuck's main guy to come and work for me at the height of the building season with 5 houses set to close in 2 months (and after labor day when my business will dry up) and without ensuring that this kid who is coming to work for me actually handles the exit situation well, and after Chuck employed me in his business for more than a year and introduced me to everyone pivotal in this venture of mine, Chuck will actually be very pissed off and use his many skills, relationships and business acumen to negatively impact my fledging business, just as I negatively impacted his.

So, as a business person evaluating the cost/benefits of enticing a person out of Chuck's employment and into mine, what may that cost me, considering his companies are responsible for more diverse local spending than most all other local businesses combined?

Let's review quickly -

1.  Catskill Farm's Annual Christmas Party - $4500
2.  Chuck and his family's weekly business - conservatively $300/month ($3600/year)
3.  Catskill Farm's gift certificates that he sends to vendors, clients, and other assorted relationships - $5600 per year.
4.  General referrals from the the 200 people who come up and visit our homes and are looking for a bite to eat before blowing town - $4800 per year.
5.  Home concierge and catering businesses who understand exactly where I'm coming from and now won't utilize Henning's Local to prepare the food, instead using Early Bird Cookery and other great alternatives - $10,000 per year.
6.  The bad word of mouth coming from our position in the community and people deciding not to eat there, or not to eat there as much - $2000 per year (but I bet this is much higher).

So Henning made a business decision that cost him conservatively $30,000 in direct business, in year 1, without calculating the damage to his brand and reputation.

From what I know of how businesses struggle up here- to me - his relationship that he built over the 18 months of working for us was a competitive advantage, since he had a relationship with me that he could leverage into real, solid, consistent business at his restaurant.

Instead, what the general consensus seems to think, he didn't think it was important and instead played a high-handed amateur, shortsighted card.

Now the only question is - with brains like that, I'd like change the wager on my mailbox (btw Gary, you lost the bet, pay up) - will my gaudy red barn mailbox or Henning's Local last longer?

So instead of getting rave reviews from a blog that gets widely read, he gets panned - he gets less than 1 Star.  That may mean a lot in reality, or maybe it doesn't.  In my experience, with how hard it is to keep a business rolling up here, it's not the type of thing you want to leave to chance.

And the fact that my Steak Diane was literally swimming in some over-spiced sauce and people are already complaining about the service and the time it takes to get served - well, you gotta do better than that, regardless of how this whole Henning's Local Original Sin thing plays out.