How HGTV's Property Brothers 'built' their empire
After seven seasons as HGTV’s rating superstars, Drew and Jonathan Scott, co-hosts of “Property Brothers,” say they have to stop and pinch themselves sometimes due to their success on-screen and in other business ventures.
“It does blow my mind. I mean I wake up somewhere like I can’t believe it,” Drew told FOX Business, adding that “it goes to show hard work really does pay off.”
The twins credit their worldwide success to their early ambition. Their home improvement show is now available in more than 160 countries.
“We’ve been working our butts off since we started our first job at seven years old,” Drew added.
The brothers said they started dabbling in the real estate market at the age of 18, when they bought their first home and flipped it for a $50,000 profit.
“We have always been dreamers and we are admittedly overachievers and coming out of high school, we didn’t want to be struggling artists. We were [both] actors. Drew was a director and I’m a magician. And, so we thought let’s fund our creative efforts with real estate so we read every book we possibly could,” Jonathan Scott said, adding that they even bought into “infomercials for making millions with no money down” at one point.
But they stress that there is no such thing that can get someone rich quick.
“I think the one thing that would've saved us a lot of time and would save you a lot of time – it does not happen quick. There's always people trying to do something to make a quick buck. But, if you plan on the long game, you can essentially guarantee success, if you're willing to put in the work and if you surround yourself with the right team,” Jonathan said.
The Canadian duo is also in the midst of drastically expanding their real estate brand after launching Scott Real Estate more than 15 years ago. Earlier this week, the brothers invested more than $2.5 million of their own money to launch a new e-commerce design platform called Casaza.
“I would like to take the credit, but we cannot because it was actually our audience that came up with the concept. They told us want they needed and we engineered it,” Drew said.
The Scotts brought in an engineer from Amazon and other executives from HomeAway and Farfetch to launch the site. The goal is for fans to get the curated looks from the show at their fingertips.
“It’s all free too,” the brothers said.