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

The wonders of reinvention and reimagining continue, made possible due to the strong and consistent nature of our team.  1 person does not a team make (other than me) and that is more clear now than ever and the voids and duties of our departed one are quietly, quickly and competently filled by others.

Interesting, I’ve yet really to fill that position, and it turns out the delay, the time, has added a lot of perspective of what the person should be, and should not be.  I’ve had a few people lined up to hire, but they didn’t work out, which turns out that’s fine, since we are motoring right along, and are being forced to create skill set redundancy in the organization since if we don’t do it no one else will.  The duties and soft skills are endless, and are not top-level, but certainly important if not critical - printing from the blueprint plotter and fixing ink and paper issues, network issues and resolution, managing and tracking our endless stream of deliveries, ordering tens of thousands of dollars of product across dozens of vendors each week, personnel issues, operations issues, etc…

Last week was a great example of just how varied my weeks can be, and how the wins and losses come in daily.  I had this apparent thief of a landscaper down in the Valley Forge PA area where I own 4 new single family homes that I rent out.  I’m 3 hours away so he’s supposed to be my eyes and ears down there for the property landscapes and he just did a terrible job - inattentive, lying, lack of supervision - each week I was getting calls from my renters about this problem and that.  And there was a drought, so most of ‘his services’ weren’t actually needed, but he billed me anyway, provided no responses to my questions, and more or less just added a lot of stress 3 hours from home which is the last thing I needed.  So I withheld payment until I got answers, and instead of communicating like a normal human being, he gets a lawyer friend of his dad to take me to district court 3 hours from my home, where I should have had a lawyer but represented myself, and because he just lied through his teeth, and I lacked a proper preparation, pretty sure I’m going to lose that one, which is super frustrating since he did a lousy job.  

He actually had been doing a lousy job for years but I was just too busy to replace him.  

On the other side of the ledger, we had a well go dry on a new home we are building which is never a good thing.  Frustratingly, we had drilled this months ago, so the end of the job juggling act we normally encounter where we drill the well late in the process wasn’t encountered but we did expect to turn on the faucets and get water, which we did not.  Now if you know anything about well-drilling, it’s a big industrial process - big machines, hammering hundreds of feet into the earth, in hopes of striking clean water at a reasonable depth.  You get charged by the foot, so each foot adds $25, so each 100’ adds $2500, and a well can easily go 500’.  If you don’t hit enough water within that, you stop drilling, curse, kick dirt around, wonder why the gods are conspiring against you, because from there the process gets stressful.  What you do then is Frack- and not the scary oil/sand/chemical mixture they use to hunt for natural gas - but shoving thousands of gallons of water down a 6” well at really high pressure, hoping to crack up some veins in the earth that will let the water run free.   Usually works, but then you have a deep well, you typically have filthy water at first, and it’s a process, and not an inexpensive one, and you usually have to install a bigger well pump since the well is deeper.  So kiss off $10k minimum when you go down this path - but the alternative, that the initial well doesn’t produce water after you’ve spent $15k is a situation you do not wish for at all, and has only happened twice in the my career.  Both times it sucked for me and my client who had the misfortune of traveling that path with me.

My point of telling the above narrative description is this - I called the well driller, who is 2hrs away, at 3 pm Friday to relay the news.  They weren’t just sitting around waiting for my call, but they mobilized a frack crew for first thing Monday.  They fracked, and then came back Tuesday morning to check to see if the frack produced more water, which is did.  So Friday emergency call, Monday they respond by sending a crew, pulling the pump that was set 500’ down, engaging in the complex frack process of water and pressure, returning the next day, checking yield, reinstalling the pump and began running the dirty water clean, which will take thousands of gallons.

So I had landscaping company jerking me around and treating like a jerk, and I had Titan Well drilling literally performing miracles for me.  It balances out, actually more than balances out since the good work far outweighs the bad work, the reasonable contractors far outweigh the shitty ones, it’s just a matter of keeping it in perspective, or at least giving the wins as much energy as the losses.

I’m not alone in sticking with contractors you know aren’t good enough, but you just can’t fire like you see on TV.  Hiring is hard, and lots of time the enemy you know is much safer and a whole lot less time consuming than hiring someone new.  But the the lesson remains the same - if you are going to nurse a relationship you know has a limited future, don’t be surprised when it blows up and comes to an end, forcing you to do in a hurry (replace them) what you could have been doing methodically.

This bring me to a thought I had and wrote about last week - that I’m not the only company who allows a highly capable individual to steer the corporate ship on a course not necessary aligned with the best long term interests of the company.  It literally takes me a minute to see 3 or 4 highly successful organizations that are bottle-necked and hamstrung by one individual that is deeply entrenched and hard to picture the organization without - the old success rut I’ve been ruminating on.  What I’ve been seeing and discovering is that its typically the client who pays to the price for this lack of improvement within the service organization, typically in delay and frustration that while the main mission has been accomplished, a lot of the ancillary tasks have not been.

There are consequences to adding 3 full time jobs to my position within the company already laden with responsibilities: HR guy as we solicit and interview and then hire, doing most of the client-facing stuff that Amanda did, and then coordinating our vendors and subs.  One of the consequences is my brain is full, so losing my phone and other mishaps should come as little surprise.

But losing your phone on the Killington Mountain over President’s Day comes with a lot of insight into phone usage.  Yeah, for a couple of days it will be inconvenient for sure, as we wait for the new one to arrive- but with all my passwords in a password app and my data and pics and videos correctly backed up the cloud, the real problem I’m running into is the 2nd layer of security recommended, the double authentication, where they send a code to your phone. Try to log into my iCloud account, nope.  Try to log into my verizon account, nope.  Try to ‘find my phone’ on someone else’s phone, nope.  I did find some workarounds, but that took a lot of time to figure out.  Thought for sure someone would turn it in, but nothing yet.  I used to be a big loser of stuff, or at least misplacer a lot of stuff - hasn’t happened in years, and only happened this time because my new fancy ski bibs were unfamiliar and I missed the pocket when I redeposited my phone after a glorious top of mountain photo.

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I’m up in Killington for a 3 day boys weekend, a tradition going on or maybe exceeding 10 years by now.  We went go Stowe for 7 or so, which was a lot of fun because we would stay in Burlington, and gather at the hotel bar as families trickled in, eat at some fun restaurants and had a good rhythm.   50 minutes to the slopes the next day was a pain, though we would always stop for fresh bagels on the west side of town from an independent baker, at 6:30am.

I like Killington because it’s a bigger mountain, and a lot more ‘blues’ of varying technical difficulty.  Most of Stowe’s slopes were somewhat steep, even in the ‘blues’.  Used to be 10 plus of us, but now just Lucas my son, a good friend John and me.  In a 3 bedroom rental in Rutland, 10 minutes from the slopes.  Seems to be a late start crowd - we get there at 8, hit the slopes, and pretty thin crowd until 10 or so, and then fades again after 2.

I don’t think many people ski like we do.  First on the slopes, last off.  Makes for some tired bodies for sure but you get a ton of skiing in.

Feels good to be out and about after the harrowing 4-5 weeks I’ve just been through.  Proves my point of a few posts ago, that you always have to have gas in the tank cause you never know when you are going to need it.  You always have to be able to be able to dig deeper and find the energy to tackle whatever is needed.  A few friends of mine said, ‘of course, we knew you’d step up and knock it out of park’ type of sentiment, and it’s nice to know that’s how I’m perceived, but when it’s just me myself and I, I can’t say I harbored the same confidence. Kicking the foot starter on the old engine, in my mind anyway, was no sure thing of an engine starting and running well.

This was a gigantic effort - to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  No means assured, no assurance that it wouldn’t come without true costs in time, mistakes, errors, and team-stress.

But we are on the other side now, and while by no means glued back together wholly, it made it easier when I realized I didn’t want to glue it back together,  I wanted to reinvent and reimagine, so that made it more fun, more strategic, helpful, as I envision what this company maybe should have been awhile back, but you don’t mess around with the gears when everything is going great, or appears to be.

Not be redundant at important positions is an ‘owners’ mistake.  Allowing information silos to be built, is an owner’s mistake.  Allowing non-cooperative, lack of sharing of responsibilities is an owner’s mistake.  But I don’t mind the mistakes- mistakes are what defines a company,  - every company makes them, and the more you do and press forward and press your competitive advantage and try new things, the more mistakes you are going to make - mistakes are your friends - they guide you as effectively as success.

In fact, out there in the wider entrepreneurial world, I wouldn’t be surprised if mistakes are valued more at times, because mistakes add a layer of caution to your plans that success doesn’t.  Success can build over-confidence, and ‘do no wrong’ attitude, and enough of that type of thinking can really lead into danger zones, too much speed heading into the bends in the road.

Mistakes and errors are like a good wingman. What I’ve learned most in the last 4 weeks, and I’m sure there are a lot more lessons and clarity to come, is that the best tool and resource that my company has - me - has been totally under-utilized as of late.  Like your star player sitting it out.  However this company looks in after I reimagine it, the number one thing it will be is more collaborative - and that will be more fun, more redundant and better for all involved.  So maybe the re-inventing isn’t even that hard - removing the impediment to that sharing made not only the need, but the desire, to work together more among my team a really neat thing to witness.

And as I’ve said more than anything, other than wealth, other than self-determination, - one thing you get as a self-employed person is situations that demand all your energy focus creativity resourcefulness, and the outcome is largely dependent on successfully deploying ‘your all’ - not many other lifestyle choices leave you completely at the mercy of your own abilities in good times and bad, in good luck and bad.

Off to ski the Beast (Killington nickname).

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At the Crest in North Branch NY, I own a few hundred acres of really pretty land with big views.  Like my project in Saugerties NY where I reluctantly acquired 16 building lots in March 2020 right when Covid hit, I bought this land just about the same time, maybe a few months later.  Both share similar attributes - really scary at first, then one of the best decisions I ever made - being flush with land during the Covid gold rush.

I would be in an entirely different place if those reluctant land purchases didn’t happen - because by June-August 2020, it was clear that the Pandemic was going to impact the Catskills real estate market in very positive ways as an outward migration from NYC began, and then increased speed for the next 2 years.  Even though it has slowed, there are still many more buyers in the market than there ever was pre-pandemic, at prices that were hard to achieve prior.

I use the word reluctant for a few reasons - 1, these deal were actually made prior, say beginning of 2020, when the real estate market looked shaky at best.  I think we hav 4 mini-ranches going up, as I hedged my bets on a tightening real estate market.  2, When the pandemic hit, it was very unclear who the winners and losers were going to be - if there were going to be any winners at all.

But owning 16 lots in Saugerties, and another 3 in Olivebridge, and a couple in Kerhonkson turned out to be fortuitous, and allowed me to sell as many houses as I could, since I had the land.  And sell I did.  I think we had 25 houses going up at one time in early 2021.  No wonder Amanda quit, the workload was insane.  It was exhausting.  I definitely worked from pre-dawn, to nightfall for a year plus, making my rounds to the houses on a Saturday or Sunday - hitting 15 at a stretch. Walking through them, making lists, getting aggravated, moving onto the next one.

We bought the Crest from a money manager and NYC apartment building owner, who had built some nice projects in Sullivan County (by built I mean the infrastructure - roads, utilities, subdivision process) and then literally didn’t sell a lick for 14 years.  Seriously nothing.  And that is a testament to how tough the business climate was in SuCo - just downright hard.  Tough, narrow lanes of success.  And more than that, the distraction of a team from NYC trying to get some of these lots sold was real, and diluted their efforts at their main NYC business.  But walking away from $5,000,000 isn’t easy, and acknowledging the mistake is hard.

That is, until the pandemic hit.  One of my personal theories about why the economy grew so robust during and after the pandemic was because a lot of businesses and investors were able to get rid of non-performing assets - and they could do it without losing face.  “It was the pandemic” was a cry you heard all around, when really the Pandemic didn’t have anything to do with EXCEPT force people to get really serious and focused, turn on survival mode, shed bad assets and focus on their core business.  Equipment, software, employees, divisions, land, etc… it all had to go if it was a loser because there was no room for distraction - either capital distraction or personal distraction - as the pandemic impacts roiled through the economy.  It’s true a lot of companies prospered, but it wasn’t easy by any stretch, and it took all your attention.

Also, the stimulus money sort of compensation for these losses - yeah, you might have walked away from $1,000,000 mistake, but the government gave you $800k and your core business is booming.

So a lot of people getting serious about their business survival, and being forced to cut the fat to the bone - made a lot more businesses lean and mean, and focused on the core businesses.  And focus produces results.

I mention all the above because we have 2 more homes going under contract at the Crest.  2 Ranches. Finished homes.  That makes 11 built and sold up there, on a plot of land the previous owner hadn’t sold a thing in over a decade.

But the bottomline for me, for us, is without those pre-pandemic decisions to stockpile some land because of being in the right place, not necessarily at the right time - meaning, embracing an opportunity even though the timing wasn't right - and I've said many times, you don't get to time opportunities, you get to act on them - I stock piled land and then was in a position of strength as the market went crazy.  Little luck, little being in the game, a little willingness to take a risk all added up to not joining the fate of what a lot of businesses suffered - a lot of business prospects, but not able to act on them due to some deficiency - could be land, could be employees, could be money, could be marketing. But in the end for a lot of those companies, it was like being in a life raft in the ocean surrounded by water you can't drink. Frustrating and maddening indeed.

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One of the positive consequences of losing my primary aide de camp is I’m having a lot more interactions with my clients - yes, my clients.  Turns out, I let myself be distanced during the design process, after the deal is done, land cleared, driveway in, foundation in and house framed.  Then, the way it has been structured for a few years is that my project manager/designer took over.  And when I mean ‘took over’, I mean, I never heard from my clients again.

Which was weird - because I never found any emails saying ‘don’t contact Chuck’, but the radio silence was complete, which is weird since someone would at least inadvertent copy me on at least some early emails, but nope, didn’t happen.

So, regardless of why it happened, it happened.  Maybe after 15 years of 24/7 I was happy to work in the background if possible.  Maybe the designer knew I didn’t add anything of value at times (true).  Maybe our unspoken delegation of duties and respective silos worked fine.  Maybe I needed a break.

All true to one degree or another.  But, now that I’m back in a client-facing saddle, I see all the good-will, relation building and general camaraderie that comes with contact.  For the last few years, other than working diligently each day in the background, the times I moved to the front was when there was a problem to be solved, and solving a problem with an arm’s length relationship is not as easy as solving one with a solid, growing, ongoing relationship.

I mean, what we do for our clients is pretty fantastic, so there is definitely something to be said about being more present in the process, and not just the man behind the curtain pulling all the strings.  We hurdle so many problems without even alerting our clients, I’ve said many times we make it too easy, so we lose some of the credit we have earned.  I’ve seen other contractors, pool builders, landscapers just include the clients in every little hiccup that the flabbergasted and frightened client feels so grateful to have this person by their side.  We just take care of and move on, and skip the whole Stockholm syndrome charade of rescuing clients from the precipice of disaster.

So, in the last 3 weeks, I’ve had more phone calls and meetings with clients during their construction project than I’ve had in the last few years cumulatively.   And it’s been great.  I have a lot in common with most of them (definitely more than my ex-29 year old designer), people like my story, and what I’ve built, and I know my stuff.  We talk about kids, and life, and travel and the house.  We build relationships.

A valued client of ours in Stone Ridge and me shoot the shit on occasion - his house will be finished in a few weeks, just 8 months or so after we started it.  It was part of the successful ‘our homes your land’ campaign we launched last year after we ran out of land in County Ulster and couldn’t find anymore to buy.  And he summed it best when he said our home building process is really suited for ‘reasonable logical people’ who know how to collaborate effectively.  And I agreed - and I would add ‘nice’ to that description, because we definitely deliver better results for ‘nice, reasonable, logical people’ than we do for ‘nasty, mean-spirited, entitled, pompous people’ who we avoid at all costs if we can if we can spot it.