There was a simpler time. Jed was 12 years old when he began his career as an entrepreneur mowing lawns, cleaning local business offices, and other small chores to learn business. He found the business world fascinating. His childhood hero was Alex P. Keaton from the Eighties TV sitcom, Family Ties. He saw an exciting world where your success was related to how much effort you put in. You can be in control and be part of a process where you can impact others by helping them get what they want. In high school, Jed was popular. He was class President and played on the football team and loved socializing with his friends. He joined DECA and competed in national competitions. He would follow realtors around, listen to their interactions and took it all in. By the time he returned from his mission in South America, he had decided he wanted to work in real estate.

Jed studied business at Weber State, earned his real estate license, and began selling homes part-time. He studied everything having to do with real estate. He was very successful and at 25, he became a sales manager. He attributes his early success to understanding the local real estate market and focusing on what his clients needed. He read every business book he could get his hands on, attended special speaker lectures, spent time with seasoned real estate professionals and eventually went to work for his father. He was motivated by wanting to create the best customer experience for his clients. This mantra would later have huge implications for his company, but at this point it was just a mantra that he threw himself into.

As a young sales manager, Jed had ambitions of building the best team of realtors in the industry. He was excited and committed to changing the culture to one of excellence and making employees lives better. He believed that if your employees are happy, they would in turn make your customers happy. After years spent throwing himself into training his teams, building sales processes, supplier relationships, and partnerships in his industry, he realized there were some fundamental challenges in the semi-custom home builder business model. Customers wanted a quality home, built to high construction standards, fixed low prices, and all available to move in ASAP. He also saw how customers would agonize over their choices. What fixtures should I get? Should I get this particular finish or that one? What color would be best for the hall bath? Often customers would spend weeks agonizing over dozens of decisions to only second-guess themselves and then be unhappy with the results of their choices. Was there a better way to do this where customers could make use of experts to help them make decisions, they will ultimately be very satisfied with?

Jed approached his father with a proposition. He wanted to take over the family business but only if he could manage it his way. He believed he had a better idea of how to build homes that will result in more satisfied customers. He was convinced that a shift to a production builder model would give him the control he needed to help create the best customer experience for buying a home. In a production model, builders build the home in advance, using professional designers and architects to design homes with the features and amenities home buyers value. All the decisions are made for the client using a best of breed approach of the most popular designs and color pallets. Jed often says, “When I buy a car, I don’t want to think about what kind of transmission, type of tires I need, or where is the best place to put the battery. I just want something I can drive, is reliable and looks great”.