5 strategies from the Property Brothers’ business playbook

You might think you know the Property Brothers—actors, home improvement icons, and stars of the Emmy Award-winning HGTV empire—but do you know their business strategy?

Before “Property Brothers,” Drew and Jonathan Scott were typical real estate agents, flipping houses and selling them—but they never settled for average. The brothers said their early success came from going above and beyond with creative marketing materials, designed with customers’ needs in mind.

“Everything in life comes down to marketing,” Jonathan said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s your dating life or your business. Nobody is going to make you a success. You have to work on that yourself.”

Drew and Jonathan’s marketing is now on a global scale, but their audience still guides their every move. From creating their own line of retail products to investing in eco-friendly home technology, the brothers have always played the long game to build a trusted brand. Read on to learn how they do it.

Shows: “Property Brothers” and “Don’t Hate Your House with the Property Brothers”

Mission: “Everything Jonathan and I do focuses on family: What can help families live in a safe, happy, healthy, and most importantly, affordable home?” —Drew

Best advice for small business owners: “Value your time. Even for [solopreneurs], it will get to a point where it’s more valuable for you to [delegate certain tasks]… Figure out what’s important for you, where your time is best spent, and bring on resources to help you.” —Jonathan

“Every business needs to look at what they do in their day-to-day and carve out [time] dedicated to social media or writing an article. Because if all you’re doing is keeping up with the day-to-day grind, you’re never going to be forward thinking.” —Drew

Below, the Property Brothers share five strategic steps they take to market themselves and grow a forward-thinking brand focused on feedback and integrity.

1. They don’t pretend to know all the answers

Drew: “Here’s my hint to any entrepreneurs out there that are trying to grow their brand: Clients can tell when you’re lying. I see this with real estate agents all the time—I’ll ask a question and I can tell they’re lying through their teeth.

“It’s much better to just say: ‘Honestly, you know what? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m going to do everything I can to find you the answer.’ Clients will respect you a lot more for that. That’s going to help your business grow because you’re building it based on integrity.”

2. They know their worth (and put it in writing)

Jonathan: “In the second year of ‘Property Brothers,’ our show went to number one. People really related to this new style that we were bringing to this type of programming. And so Drew and I decided we should get into the product business. We proposed it at the time to the producer of ‘Property Brothers,’ and they said to us—and I quote: ‘We’re in the TV production business, not the products business. We’re not interested.’ So Drew was like, ‘May I get that in writing?’

Drew: “After that, [we pursued retail on our own] and we grew it to $100 million. When we hit our $100 million retail, they came back to us and said, ‘We want half of that.’ And we’re like, ‘No, you didn’t want to do this.’ We put all the effort in. Then we ended up acquiring [the Property Brothers brand from the producers] and grew it to where it is. We’ve never been closed off to an opportunity.”

3. They follow customer demand for their products—even if it means stepping back

Jonathan: “We now have over [12,500 unique products] in every category you can imagine, from furniture to wall coverings. But as you continue to grow, you have to evolve with what the consumer is demanding. Anyone who doesn’t inevitably is going to die out.

When we looked at our total offerings pre-COVID, we had probably about 30% of our products that were actually losing money when we would calculate how much time it would take to develop the product. We decided to focus on the stuff that was actually going to be profitable.

Drew: “There are certain categories [that] use up 80% of your team’s time, but only bring in 20% or less of the revenue. Is it really worth it? Instead, lean in on those areas that have better margins or are less stressful for the team.”

4. They go all out on their marketing materials

Jonathan: “With our real estate company, we came at it from a very different perspective [from other agents at the time]. They would just print out a sheet with information. We said, you really have to market your business, not only to stand out from the competition, but also to gain the trust of the consumer. So we created really beautiful marketing materials—we had this three-tier stand where we would put on our listings, and it had cards on it that showed the distance to local schools, amenities, and shopping.”

Drew: “Staging too—we want to make sure [our listings] were looking their best. If there were little things that had to be fixed, we would make sure they’re fixed. It’s like a first date. If someone walks in, and you have this house that’s super dated, you’re not making the best first impression.”

5. They’ve taken feedback seriously since their real estate days

Jonathan: “Feedback has been important from the beginning for us. We actually dove into social media very, very early on because we felt that was a great way to have direct contact with the consumer, with our audience. In fact, we even used to write articles so we could be a local area expert when we had our real estate brokerage. And then people would find the articles and ask questions about buying in the area.”

“We get half a million messages a week on social media from fans of the show or someone who tried a product. Some of the innovations of our product have actually come from that feedback. We have a team who combes through [all our messages] to make sure we get the valuable stuff. We will literally implement it the next day.”

These lessons come from two episodes of Behind the Review, Yelp & Entrepreneur Media’s weekly podcast. Listen below to hear from Drew and Jonathan, or visit the show homepage to learn about the show and find more episodes.