Q: All right, so I’m officially getting started now, so give us just a little introduction to build on your land. What are you guys about? Where are you located? Just tell me the high level of what you do build on your land. Let’s see.
A: Build on your land is a residential home building company based with a headquarters in Irma, South Carolina. We’re all about helping people experience building their dream home out on their property. So many people think that idea, just that dream is unreachable for them, and we’re here to make those dreams come true. Building on your property is something in everybody’s reach.
Q: So then tell us about yourself.
A: Well, I am Jared Oswald. I was born and raised in Batesburg, South Carolina. From a very young age, had been into woodworking. Anything I could build, I was building it, cutting it, swinging a hammer. I just love seeing things come together from a building perspective. As a young kid, through high school, got into construction, doing trim work. Cabinets, flooring, tile is really what kind of got me into the residential side of things. Loved it from there. Moved into some commercial construction, which just furthered my knowledge in another field of construction, which really landed me back to the residential side, because I just had that. That desire to build. Build for people.
There’s a difference between building a neighborhood house, not knowing who would live there. Just. It was just a house. But now actually being a part of walking through building a home for somebody, you know, I understand we, the people that are moving in, are the ones really creating that home, but it’s still, like, I get to be a part of it on the front end. It’s just got more meaning behind it, because I know the family that’s moving up there. That’s great. What would you say gave you the idea for build on your land? What was the inspiration? for me, really, the inspiration was just knowing. Knowing I wanted to own my own business from a very young age. Always had the desire and the heart to run the whole business, to really know that we could run a business that people really love to work for, to create that culture, the sense of family, something greater than just an office people come to work at every day. And now that we’re here, I’m actually getting to witness it and hear the employees talk about it.
Q: So there’s a lot of entrepreneurs in the world, people, you know, like yourself, who learn a skill and then go and create a business around that skill. What would be if you could give anybody looking to start their own business or become an entrepreneur?
A: There’s a lot of stress behind it, and it’s understanding a lot of the stresses. You think you’ll have are different from what you have. And I guess to get into that deeper, always stressed about owning a business, finding the work, having work to do, to where I find myself now, stressing about it because of what that does to the rest of the families that work. For me, I think that’s tougher than the actual stress of finding the work to do. Knowing that any decision you make affects everybody that works for you. They got to keep that in mind if they’re going to grow a business into a lot of employees, a lot of people. That’s a lot of responsibility you’re taking on. Like I said, any decision you make doesn’t affect you or your company.
Other advice, don’t be scared to surround yourself with people that’s just better and smarter than you. That’s the only way to grow is to surround yourself with people. See the screens doing something. Never be scared of loving. Learn and grow. Always seek to improve and better yourself. Anything you can do to do that, jump on it.
Q: How long do you work every week?
A: That’s the tough one, because, you know, I can say I’m here in the office 40 hours a week, but if I talk about the hours I’m working at night. Yeah. You know, 40 to 50 hours a week.
Q: And what would you say you would attribute your success to?
A: I have to say it contributed to just my drive, my work ethic. I was just, I was raised to be a good hitter. If a task was thrown at me, I was going to do it and I was going to find the best way possible to do it. Never shied away from anything, never scared of anything thrown at me, and just always having the mindset to grow. I love it. How would you say you go about marketing your business and what would you say has been sort of the most successful thing that you’ve done from a marketing standpoint, you think. See, now you’re just trying to get me to say hiring harbinger, that’s.
Q: How do you go about marketing your business? And what would you say has been the most successful thing that you’ve done?
A: Let’s see. Marketing. Marketing, I would say, has been several things. We’ve had a lot of success through referrals, just word of mouth. You know, for a long time, it was every house we built. We made sure to have signage out front of who’s building this house to, you know, we’ve done the social media stuff, shows, road signs, just anything we could get our name out. That’s what we did. And really, I truly think a lot of the success started from that Starburst showing our square foot price, because that one thing is what led to a lot of conversations, and the conversations always started the same.
Could you really build a house? You know, from the start it was $69 a square foot. Yeah. Can you really build a house for that? Yes, we can. So that’s. That’s all we needed to get the dialogue started. Because, you know, the $69 square foot house may not be the one they wanted, but now they’re. We’re back to that. Wow. We can get this house, which would fit our family well and we can afford it. I really think that’s been a big deal, and I think that’s why we’ve putting so much pressure on getting that back out there with a number in it, not just best price, for sure.
We just did a show over the weekend and people are steady stopping in or you’re really building for $89 a foot. Every builder we talk to is 180 to 250 a foot. Yeah, we can. That’s been, I think, a huge success for us.
Q: How do you see, you know, where do you see yourself and where do you see this business in, say, five to ten years? We’re always trying to plan 510 years out. All right.
A: Five to ten years from now, I’d love to see build on your land, you know, with four sales centers open, you know, just right on that verge of being South Carolina’s biggest door lot builder, really just to be thriving and people loving to work here, beating our doors down to work here, and just being a household name for. If you want a house built around here, call these people. I say that’s solid for sure. Are there other companies that you would say you like, really admire or like, you look at this business, this company, this chain, whatever, and you say, man, this, that’s a company who’s got it together. Do you have any examples of those? I don’t. Everybody usually says chick fil a there and really more for the customer service and the consistency aspect of it.
Q: Are there any businesses that you admire?
A: Loveland coffee. I walk back there once a week, meet with other. Other business owners that we’re just in that same mindset of growing our businesses to be something more than just a business. So we meet back there every Monday morning, have coffee, and have conversations of whether it be where our business is headed, the employees, their families. Just stuff’s going on. We talk about it, we pray about it, and that’s kind of how we start our weeks. So if there is one spot, I’d say it’d be that coffee shop right there.
Q: How much of your success do you attribute to your employees?
A: Every bit of it. You know, the salesman, the sales team, they’re the ones that make it happen. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have the business to go out and build houses. And my construction team wasn’t as solid as they are and are able to manage our subcontractors and just pass out money every time there was an issue, we wouldn’t be financially successful. Down to my accounting department always having a cash flow plan of, you know, bills coming in, money going out. They stay on top of it. Every single one of them play a part in it.
Q: Where would you put culture on that list of priorities?
A: Culture is at the very high end of ours. You know, having that culture, to me, obviously, means there’s honest, clear, open communication. There is trust in your company. Everybody knows that we have their best interest in mind, and that’s. That’ll make or break you. And it only takes one person to do that. It only takes one person to ruin a culture. And that’s why everybody’s got to be the right fit. So I think it’s very high up the rankings in a company.
But that culture could also be damaging to the whole life like you’re talking about. They’re coming to a place that’s just a toxic environment. There’s no culture. It’s not fun to work at. So then you’re sending them home to families and they’re just. They’re in a bad mood, exhausted.
So if you could talk to one person from history, who would that be? From history? I have no idea. You want to think on it? We can come back to it. Yeah. What are your hobbies outside of work? My hobbies are my family, spending time with family, camping. If it’s outside, we’re doing it. Yeah, just the outdoors. Okay. Do you read much? So not a lot. Do you have a favorite book? The battle. It’s a good one. What would you say if you could talk to one person from history? Who would that be? Okay. Okay.
Q: I know you do camping, but do you go hiking? Do you go backpacking?
A: We go camping. We go hiking, fishing, hunting. I love firearms. I’m always target shooting.
Q: Do you travel for any of that, or do you say pretty local?
A: We travel for hunting, fish and all that stuff. I just do my property.
Q: Where are some of your favorite places to go camping and hiking?
A: Anywhere in the mountains. Now, the foothills in North Carolina. We love doing that. We. We’re also the family that loves to go just sit out on the beach and we’re. We’ve been blessed to be in a spot where. Two hour drive. We can be on a mountain or at the beach.
Q: So do you, watch sports?
A: The only sport that I got into was UFC. All time. Favorite, I would have to say, would be George St. Peter. And I think the thing I loved about him most was, I’m gonna say he had that drive go getter mentality, and any opponent he faced, he would find out what their biggest strength was and that’s how he beat him. If it was a boxer, he was going to stay in the box. If it was a ground person, he was going to get on the ground. I always admired him about that.
It’s harder to fight someone’s strengths rather than their weaknesses, I guess more everything. He never went after their weakness, he always fought their strengths.
Q: Do you have a favorite movie?
A: Seriously, me and my wife didn’t watch tv for like three years. Like, never turned it on. Really? I’ve never been. I’m normally a guy, like, I’ve never heard of that movie. Yeah. Just never been a tv guy. Never been a movie guy. I’m always outside. Yeah, yeah. We seriously went for like three years and never turned on our tv or we didn’t even have a tv.
Q: Do you have any pets?
A: Unfortunately, we’re in that season of just lost our family dog of 16 years. Oh, man. It’s been. It’s been like a year. And my wife actually made a comment the other day. She misses having a dog, so I feel like soon I’m gonna have another dog. Fun fact, I had a pet deer for about five years.
Q: We’re really grateful for you taking the time to do this. We learned about your business better, connect to your values. So we really appreciate it. Any closing words of wisdom for us?
A: Other things in life lessons, always do the right thing. Sleep better at night when you know you did the right thing.
For more information visit us at https://buildonyourlandllc.com