SHOW TRANSCRIPT

John [00:00:05] Hey, I’m John Jorgenson, and welcome to the very first episode of the Go with John Show. I’m really excited to be doing this. I’ve been a business owner for back since the mid 1980s. And when I started out, I literally knew absolutely nothing about business. And my first business that I started, I was a home painter. I didn’t know a whole heck of a lot about home painting either. I’ve met a lot of great people along the way. I’ve learned a lot of great lessons about business. And every day I’m out there now as a real estate professional, selling homes, working with Stanley Martin Custom Homes, helping people with property management. And I meet a lot of really interesting people and I have to help people solve a lot of really interesting problems. And I think the one thing that I want to kick this show off by saying is the why why am I doing this show? And I think I meet so many interesting people along the way and I learn so many lessons from them, I literally learn something new every day from somebody that I meet along the way.

John [00:01:12] There’s a jingle in there for my team that’s listening. If they want to get on that, I don’t know. Anyway, so.

John [00:01:18] So I want to share the stories with the folks out there. And a lot of the lessons I’ve learned about building homes, building relationships and building businesses. So I want to leave these stories for my kids. I want my kids to get a taste of the world that I run into every day. And living and working in Northern Virginia there’s no better place to meet people from all over the world. It’s crazy. All the different nationalities that are here, all the different types of folks that are here, all the different stories, all the different lifestyles. When you’re helping people build a home, you learn a lot about how they live. And it’s really interesting that having done this now for since 2006, that I’ve really got a good handle on how people want to age in place. I’ve really got a good handle on how people want to live if they have seven kids. I really have a good handle on how people live, if they have one kid, you know. So, you know, there’s a lot of similarities that folks come to you with when they when they build a home, depending on their circumstances and people with pets and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, long story short, I meet a lot of folks. I hear a lot of great stories. I want to share the people with you and I want to share the stories with you. And today, I’m going to start out by giving you a little bit of my history and what I’ve done and how I got here.

John [00:02:51] John Jorgenson here. And if you’re considering building a new home in Northern Virginia or Montgomery County, Maryland, reach out to us through our website WeBuildOnYourLot.com. that’s WeBuildOnYourLot.com.  We have pricing and floor plans online, lots of great process information and contact us through the website so we can get you started on the path to your very own Stanley Martin Custom Home.

John [00:03:24] So let me just tell you a little bit about my history and and how I got here and what I’ve done. So when I was a young man, I realized early on that school was not my forte. And it’s really interesting. One of my very first business idols, Tom Mitchell, who will be on the show with us and I’m so grateful to have known him literally. I met Tom Mitchell in the summer between eighth grade and ninth grade. So I met him between right before high school. And I’m going to talk a lot about Tom here as we go on. And I eventually got to be a business partner with him. But part of this show is building relationships. I met Tom Mitchell in the 80s, 79, and I’m still friends with him today. We were business partners. And, you know, one of the cornerstones of this show is building relationships. So you’re going to hear from Tom. You’re going to you’re going to hear about how we’ve been able to maintain our relationship over the course of all these years. But when I was a young guy, I think Tom was kind of in the same boat. He wasn’t big on school. He started working really hard early on and I didn’t.

John [00:04:35] And I kind of watched Tom really work hard and build an amazing business. When he was 17, 18, 19 years old. I started painting houses and I really loved painting, which is why I did it. I still love painting today as much as I can whenever I get the opportunity to paint, especially interiors. Not a big fan of the ladders. You know, something about being 30, 40 feet up on a ladder and all of a sudden you run into a hornet’s nest. It’s not a lot of fun. And I’ve been there, so I know firsthand. What that’s like. But really enjoy painting to this day. And I painted a lot of houses and it was a lot of fun doorknocking when I was young. I didn’t have any money. Getting the customers, selling the jobs, doing the work and then seeing their satisfaction and their happiness at the end of the job, when I was done. And really one of my most memorable moments, there was a family that needed to get their house painted because they wanted to put it on the market and sell it. And their real estate agent said, boy, you got to paint this house. So we painted the whole house from top to bottom, and by the time we finished painting it, they no longer wanted to sell it. And they didn’t realize at the time that they were just unhappy with the way the house felt when they walked into it. And after we got the walls cleaned up and the drywall repaired and fresh paint on the walls, they were so happy they decided not to move. So started out as a house painter, got a lot of stories about starting that business and bootstrapping.

John [00:06:11] My second business I had was a water damage restoration company and thankfully I was able to work with Tom Mitchell. So, you know, the stars aligned and I was kind of burning out on my situation where I was. And Tom wanted a change in pace. So we we teamed up and we started a water damage restoration company. And I’m going to let Tom talk about that when he comes to sit down with us. So if you want to hear about what we did and how we did it, I’m going to let that role in that episode. But it was really amazing.

John [00:06:42] And I give Tom a lot of the credit for the creativity on some of the marketing programs we had. But it was a lot of fun doing something new, innovativing and coming up with a totally new concept for a business. And we really rocked it for a long time. But that, I’ll tell you, was a really tough business, you know, answering emergency calls on Christmas, New Year’s Eve. I don’t think in the seven or eight years that we had that company that there wasn’t at least a Christmas or a New Year’s Eve where I didn’t have to go out and physically work because when the call comes in, you got to go. So that was that was the downside on that business.

John [00:07:21] So the next thing I did after that was I started a company called Marketing Mania, did it all on my own. I started that company in 1997 and I really enjoyed that company as well.

John [00:07:36] And this was a time in my life where I wanted to get into more business to business sales and get a little further away from the consumer. And the business to business sales was a whole new place for me to explore and learn. And I started the marketing company exactly like I started my painting company. I didn’t have a lot of money and I needed to get customers. So I literally put on my shoes every day when I had time, and I went out door knocking on businesses. And back then, in the late 90s, it was pretty easy to just walk into a business and say, Hey, I’m John Jorgenson. I’m with a company called Marketing Mania. What are you guys doing for your marketing programs, and if you knocked on enough doors, you would get some customers and if you took good care of them, they would come back and continue to work with you. And I’ve got some some great lessons and stories with that company as well.

John [00:08:37] I sold that company in 2004 and I partnered with Stanley Martin Custom Homes in 2006.

John [00:08:48] And that’s a whole story that I’m going to tell kind of in the next segment of this episode.

John [00:08:56] But the gist of my life today is that since 2006, I have been selling real estate. I have been helping buyers buy real estate. I’ve been, you know, through the Stanley Martin program, helping people build homes. I’ve been helping people buy lots, do feasibility studies. I’ve been walking, talking, eating, sleeping, dreaming Stanley Martin Custom Homes and real estate, literally seven days a week since 2006. Had a couple of kids in 2008. And because my business is all-consuming and seven days a week, you know, the kids in the family are really involved in what I do. Almost every evening they hear the stories, they hear the phone calls, they hear the challenges with real estate sales and they hear the stress that folks go through when they when they go through a real estate transaction. So they’ve been there and they ask a lot of questions. And I have enjoyed trying to educate them. I have found that I have to answer sometimes the same question 150 times. I’m not sure that’s unique to just my kids, to the whole recording thing here, I’m excited about that, too, because they can go back and listen and hear some of the stories that they enjoy and like to hear as well. So the the Stanley Martin piece of my future is alive and well. And they’re going to be a lot of topics that surround Stanley Martin and home homebuilding and real estate and buying a home and real estate and property management and things like that. But I will bring a lot of interesting perspectives to this conversation. I’m not only going to bring my perspective, I’m actually more interested in bringing other people’s perspective to the conversation and bringing other sides of the personalities in the Stanley Martin organization to the folks that are out there that may be thinking about building a new home. And bringing maybe some of the emotional side of the real estate transaction to the conversation and the emotional side of being a real estate agent, meaning, you know, selling homes is not just getting in the car with folks and driving around and looking at homes. There are a lot of ups and downs in that transaction. And I want to share some of the stories with you.

John [00:11:19] So that’s the kind of the why I’m doing the show. And what is the show going to be about and who am I and where did I come from? I hope I laid a little bit of a foundation for you as to what this is going to look like. But at the very highest level, I’m having a lot of fun.

John [00:11:36] I’ve already interviewed I don’t even want to use the word interview. I’ve already sat down and had some incredible conversations with people like Lilian Jorgenson, who’s my mom, one of the top agents in the Virginia area. For over twenty years, I’ve sat down with Boomer Foster, President of Long and Foster Real Estate, and he shared some of his story.

John [00:11:57] He’s got some great stories. I’ll tell you his time playing football for the Gamecocks. He’s got some stories that everybody’s going to enjoy. I’ve already sat down and had a conversation with Michael Sschnitzer, who’s the president of Stanley Martin Custom Homes. We’ve we’ve sat down with Mike Zell already. He’s one of our lenders and he’s got some great stories about how he got started and the lessons he learned. And  I think folks are going to find that interesting. So there’s lots of conversations that are already in the can and there’s lots of conversations that are already lined up. And I can tell you, I’m really excited about continuing to go down this road. I can honestly tell you I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea. I’ve never done this before. I’m having a lot of fun. I can also tell you that as I progress with this, like everything else I’ve done, I’m going to learn, I’m going to grow. I’m sure I’m going to skin my knee along the way more than once. But we’re looking forward to finding a community of folks that want to come back. We’re going to have some regular repeat visitors, and we’re always looking for new folks that want to sit down and share stories of, you know, how they overcame challenges or how they realized their success or what kind of struggles did they have. It’s amazing, everybody has a story, everybody, it doesn’t matter who you can talk to, the guy at 7-Eleven, in fact I do. And I have become I don’t want to call him a friend, but, you know, I’m really interested in one of the 7-Eleven. So I stop at it on a regular basis. Sayed is often there, and I’ve learned a lot about him and his culture and the food that he loves. And I almost feel like he is a friend, even though I think we probably wouldn’t call each other friends. But it’s just amazing when you stop and chat with folks what you can learn. So that’s a little bit to get us started. And I’m going to come back in the next segment and I’m going to tell you the story of the very first lesson that I’m going to try to leave folks with in this first episode is how in the world did I end up teaming up with Michael Schnitzer over at Stanley Martin Custom Homes?

John [00:14:25] Are you ready to buy a new home or sell your existing home? Contact us through, GoWithJohn.com and we can get you started in the process with our network of highly qualified real estate agents, including Lilian Jorgenson, who works exclusively in the Northern Virginia market.  Again, contact us through GoWithJohn.com.

John [00:14:56] All right, so here is the story about how I ended up partnering with Stanley Martin Custom Homes, so I had just sold my marketing company and wanted to take a break.

John [00:15:13] So I think anybody out there who’s an entrepreneur, you know, when you own a business, you are working seven days a week. The work never ends. There’s always more work in a day, in a week, in a year than you can possibly get done.

John [00:15:27] It’s impossible. You can’t do it all. So having been an entrepreneur or having a painting company, having partnered with Tom Mitchell in our water damage restoration company, having bootstrapped the painting company, bootstrapped the water damage restoration company and bootstrapped the marketing company, I was exhausted and I wanted to take a year off and just kind of catch my breath.

John [00:15:53] I had gotten my real estate license, but I hadn’t really started practicing real estate and wanted to take some time off. So along comes Lilian Jorgenson, who’s my mother, and she is a very successful real estate agent, and Michael Schnitzer, who’s the president of Stanley Martin Custom Homes, who calls Lilian in, I think, November of 2005 ish and makes an appointment to come in and meet with her in February of 2006, I believe it was on Presidents Day. And so Lilian calls me up and says, hey, John, I’ve got this meeting with the President over at Stanley Martin Custom Homes, and you need to come in and be at that meeting. So I told Lilian I said, Mom, you know, I’m not going to be at the meeting. I’m taking a year off. I need a break. And I know that once I get working again and once I get my teeth into this, I’m going to be back 24/7 and I got to catch my breath. She goes, well, you really need to be at that meeting. So that was the end of that. And I thought that was the end of that. But no, not with Lilian.

John [00:17:09] December, Christmas time. She’s talking about it again. Don’t forget, we got this meeting in February with Stanley Martin. You’re going to want to be at that meeting. It’s going to be an important one. I said, OK, I don’t think I’m going to be there, but thanks for reminding me. January rolls around. Lilian calls. Don’t forget, John, we got this meeting here in two weeks with Stanley Martin. It’s important you want to be there. You want to be at that meeting. And I said again, I said, you know, I don’t think I’m going to be there. But thanks for the reminder. So couple of days before the meeting, I get another reminder. I wake up on the day of the meeting and I decide, OK, I’m going to go I’m going to go ahead and go. So I put on a suit. I go into Long and Foster. We sit down in this small conference room in the McLean office and Lilian is sitting on one side of the conference table. It’s a conference table for maybe five or six people. So it’s oval. Not huge. Lilian, sitting on the left side of the table, Michael Schnitzer comes in and he’s sitting on the right side of the table. And I’m sitting down at the end of the table, not really with the best attitude for a business meeting, but I didn’t want to be there. And Lilian is talking about what a great real estate agent she is and all the homes that she has sold. And Michael’s talking about what a great builder he is and all the homes that he sold. And they’re both very excited about their respective crafts. And, you know, toward the end of the meeting, I asked, you know, so what is the goal of this meeting? And Michael said, well, I’m looking for real estate professionals to sell my my homes. And I say, great. I said, would you give us an exclusive? And Michael said, Yeah, you know, I will give you guys an exclusive. And he put his card down and got up, grabbed his things and left. And I said to Lilian Well, there you go, mom, I got you another client. And she says, I don’t have time for him. He’s your problem. And she left the room. And, you know, I picked up his card and I walked out into the lobby and I said, well, I guess I go, where do I go from here?  She goes, well, they’ve got some communities out in Loudoun County. Why don’t you go out and look at their homes? So I said, OK, so I get in my car, I drive out to Loudoun County and I walk in to one of their communities. I think it was Green Mill Preserve. If I’m not incorrect, I can’t quite remember. It was a long time ago. And I walked in to the model home and I dropped Michael business card on the desk of the sales manager who was there at that community and I said I just had a meeting with Michael and I want to take a walk around the home and see what you guys have, so I’m walking around the home, taking my time, looking at all the closets and the flooring and the tile, and I’m just kind of take it in the home. And before I finish walking the home, somebody shows up from corporate and she says, hey, I’m here from the corporate office. Michael Schnitzer asked me to come over and meet you, and he’s asked me to take you around and show you some of our other homes. And I said, great. So I spent the rest of the day with Jen was her name, and we looked at several homes. And then that evening, Michael Schnitzer called me and he said, Hey, what did you think? Blah, blah, blah. And he says, You want to get together tomorrow and continue the conversation. And I said, sure. So we met the next day at California Pizza Kitchen at Fairfax Corner and sat down, had a great conversation, and I still wasn’t really dialed into what exactly was going on.

John [00:20:55] But the long and short of it is, is that Stanley Martin Custom Homes was founded in the 90s when the market overheated and got so hot and they were developing all these homes in Loudon County. Michael went back to the corporate side and was the Chief Operating Officer of Stanley Martin companies, which they’re building now. I think they’re going to build three or four or five thousand homes this year. So they stopped taking orders in the custom home company. So this is, you know, 2001. I think they stopped taking orders. Well, the Internet was really kind of a new thing in the 90s, and they had never developed a website. And there were a lot of things that evolved from 2001 to 2000 and six. And when the market started to slow down and Michael went back to start taking orders again and the custom home company, the whole entire program needed to be reinvented. And when I learned this at that meeting at California Pizza Kitchen, now all of a sudden I became extremely excited because there’s nothing I enjoy more than starting something from nothing. And the most exciting aspect about the Stanley Marten program for me at that time was that Michael and I could sit down and make this be whatever it is we wanted it to be and got very excited. I think Michael and I probably don’t want to try not to exaggerate, but it’s really hard sometimes. But I think we probably work together seven days a week for at least six months before we took a day off, starting on that day that we met at California Pizza Kitchen.

John [00:22:45] So, you know, I was excited about my role. I think Michael was extremely excited. He was really excited about designing homes, building homes, the customer service.

John [00:22:55] Michael and I have 100 percent alignment on our customer service philosophy, you know, and I think that is so important. We approach things completely differently. But at the end of the day, we both want every one of our home buyers and customers and even people who experience our program and don’t buy a home from us, we want them to have a great experience. Right. There’s no reason for anybody to go through a sales process with any company and have a bad experience. If you don’t want to buy anything that I’ve ever sold in my life, I don’t want you to go away going, oh, boy, I really felt pushed or I really felt this or I really felt that. And, you know, I think when you’re a young salesperson, you learn a lot of unfortunate lessons the hard way. And as you age and you understand and you get it, you want people to enjoy their experience with you. So that’s what Michael and I are both really focused on from day one. And because of that, it has led to the success that we have today. So that’s how I got started in the Stanley Martin Custom Home program. The lesson, because I always like to ask people, OK, well, what’s the lesson in your story?

John [00:24:12] The lesson for me is don’t ever pass an opportunity to have a meeting with anybody. Because I tell you, I told Michael Schnitzer all the time. I said, oh, my gosh, I go. I cannot believe I told him. I said I didn’t want to be at that meeting. I wasn’t going to go to that meeting. I fought tooth and nail not to go to that meeting. I had a terrible attitude during the meeting and I said, I just can’t believe how lucky I am that I was at that meeting and everything worked out the way it did because there were about ten or fifteen opportunities where that whole thing could have gone a different way.

John [00:24:45] You know, and Michael always says luck is where preparation meets opportunity. And, you know, I think about that. I was really prepared for that moment in my life when it crossed my desk. I was in a position where I could seize on the opportunity. I was prepared, I was available. It was a great opportunity. And I’ve enjoyed literally every day of it. Now, it wasn’t long after Michael and I teamed up and I’m this is another story for another day. But it wasn’t long after we got started on our program and we were doing really well that the financial markets crashed. And I’m going to talk about how we got through that and some of the things we did and lessons learned on that at another time. But there’s my story, a little bit of why I’m doing the show, a little bit of who I am, my history, how I ended up in Stanley Martin and why it is I’m so excited to share so much of this with you.

John [00:25:43] You know, one of the things you learn when you own a marketing company and you are cold calling companies and then fulfilling orders is you begin to get a really good handle on how a customer is going to interact with your company based on the first meeting that you have with them. So let me say it this way. When I’m out doorknocking, when I owned my marketing company and I would walk into, you know, let’s just say company A, I could walk in, the receptionist would maybe have a really great experience. Sometimes on a hot day, somebody would say, hey, do you want a glass of water, blah, blah, blah? And you end up bringing that person in as a customer and you end up having this really terrific, you know, business client relationship with the company and all the people there. It’s the culture of the organization. You feel it. And when you do this year after year after year after year, you learn that when you walk into a company and you have a bad experience, more likely than not, if you are going to become in a if you’re going to get into a client business relationship with that client or that customer, you your relationship is probably going to be not as good as it is with the experiences that you’ve had with the great experiences. Right. So I got to the point where I could tell within ten minutes what kind of a business relationship I would have with a company. From the time I walk through the door, I would know if it would be great, medium or not so great. And there were some where I walked in where I just said, boy, you know what? I don’t think I want to work with these folks at all.

John [00:27:24] So the reason I’m saying this is I’m really excited that in my life right now, the two companies that I spend ninety nine point nine point nine nine nine percent of my time with our Stanley Martin Custom Homes and Long and Foster.

John [00:27:41] Now, I ended up at Long and Foster because that’s where my mom, Lilian, was hanging her shingle at the time I came into the industry.

John [00:27:49] But I’ll tell you right away from day one, I had a great experience with that organization. And, you know, since 2004 on forward, it’s followed through to be a great relationship. I love the people. I love the company. And, you know, there’s folks there that are part of my life and I consider them friends. You know, when you’re a business owner and you’re an entrepreneur, your friends are who you spend your time with and that’s usually who you’re working with.

John [00:28:17] Stanley Martin, from the very first moment I walked into that office, they were over on Sunset Hills Road in Reston at the time.

John [00:28:26] And I walked in and I was immediately greeted and offered something to drink. And, you know, all the years that I’ve worked with them, whenever I happened to be in the lobby, you know that you can feel the culture of the company when the folks walk in and they are greeted by the receptionist. So the title director of First Impressions is really an appropriate title for somebody who’s sitting at the front desk of a company. And I think it follows through. So the lesson there, you know, is that, you know, pay attention to your feelings when you walk into a business. If you get a good feeling, it means something and your experience with that company is probably going to be delivered greatly. So funny thing about life. You know, when I started thinking about how I was going to share my stories with folks and lessons from the road, I was thinking about this all the way back in the 2000s. I’m like, so many interesting things happen when you own a business. Interesting things happen both good and bad with employees, with customers, with, you know, just  regular situations that come along in life.

John [00:29:38] And technology’s evolved.

John [00:29:40] And things changed while back in 2013, amazingly enough, I really got serious about starting to capture some of these stories and be able to deliver them to other folks out there that may be interested in. Hearing them and we did quite a bit of work to put this show together in 2013, and then the market just got so crazy and so busy, 2014, 15, you know, remember, I had twins in 2008. So now I’m I’m a dad and I don’t have quite as much time as I had in the evenings.

John [00:30:13] Maybe sometimes none. Right. Because the kids consume time, which is great. Love it.

John [00:30:20] And, you know, so the whole project just kind of sat on the shelf and we started really getting serious about putting the studio together last year for video production and podcasting. And I would say we spent the majority of twenty nineteen really building an amazing studio that with high ceilings, well, green screen backdrop, professional lighting. Thank you, Don Aros, for all the work that you did on that. And then we literally spent, I don’t know, maybe two months in the studio. We recorded a lot of videos, got a lot of good things recorded, and then covid comes along. So, you know, I think we were recording pretty heavily in January and February Covid hit us in March. And literally we had to turn the whole thing off and we very quickly decided to switch gears literally within 30 days. I think we said, let’s just back burner the video for right now until we get through this Covid thing. And let’s go to an audio format. And it’s worked out really well. And it’s just one of those things that, you know, all the preparation in the world, you know, I’ll talk here. You’ll hear the story about the preparation, meeting, opportunity, but all the preparation in the world cannot prepare you for the unpredictable.

John [00:31:45] And, you know, my team knows they work with me. I always say I don’t know what’s coming, but there’s something coming, you know, and when it comes, we have to be ready to deal with it. And that is true at all times. Right. Nobody saw the 2001, you know, market collapse coming, really. I mean, people saw it when it was starting to happen. The same thing with the financial crisis. Right? Because if we saw it years in advance, we would have stopped doing as a society what we were doing that led to those things. So there’s always going to be some sort of a surprise every five or 10 or 15 years.

John [00:32:17] So Covid, I never imagined that there would be some sort of a pandemic where we would not be able to have people come into our studio and record. But that’s what happened. So here we are. I hope you have a lot of fun with this. It’s not the format we started out with. But we’re not going to let the pandemic slow us down from bringing these great stories to you all.

John [00:32:48] I want to dedicate the first season of the Go With John Show to a very special person who we lost a short time ago. Cindy Dellinger was a fantastic real estate agent out in Shenandoah County. I met her in 2011 when I purchased my farm out in Woodstock, Virginia. And Cindy had told me at one point in our friendship that she one day wanted to become a syndicated radio host. And I had told her I had similar aspirations, but I was going to do something online, maybe a podcast. We hadn’t quite nailed down exactly what we were doing, but Cindy and I had multiple conversations about what we would do on our shows and they were not competing at all. So I was very fond of Cindy. But she also embodies what it is that I want this show to be about. She embodies the values that I want to teach my kids. And I’ll just tell you one quick story. A couple of years ago, Cindy called me to bounce a few things off me regarding real estate transaction to which she was involved. She was the listing agent on a property and she had two offers in hand. I can’t remember all the details, but as I recall, she was the buyer’s agent on one offer and there was now a second offer in from a different agent. Cindy had called me because she wanted to do everything by the book and she was going to counter one of the offers and she was going to try and get the second offer into backup position. She did not want the fact that she was the listing agent to cloud her judgment. She did not want the fact that she was the listing agent of the home. And the buyer’s agent on one of the two offers to cloud her thinking. That’s why she wanted to bounce her thoughts off another agent at the end of my call with her, I remember being impressed with how incredibly honest and fair she was striving to be, even though it probably resulted in her losing money, she did not care about herself, her ego or her money. She only cared about doing the right thing. And the fact that no one else was looking made it even more impressive to me. I will always remember Cindy and the values that she carried throughout her daily life. Cindy Dellinger.

John [00:35:32] Hey, I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of the Go with John Show, please subscribe on the podcast platform of your choice and keep up with our latest episodes and what’s going on with the show at GoWithJohn.com Dotcom that’s GoWithJohn.com.