Brendan O’Sullivan lives just outside of Philadelphia, but he was raised in Fairfield, Connecticut, not far from New York City. His father was did home remodels for a living, so Brendan grew up being on job sites, experiencing the contracting work that his father did first hand. He liked building things, specifically carpentry, when he was young, but one day Brendan realized that his father’s career path was not necessarily what he wanted for himself. He graduated from Eastern University in Pennsylvania with a focus on business management and administration. After graduation, he pursued some internships in the area, which officially rooted him in Pennsylvania. Brendan says that he has always had an interest in commercial real estate, so his internships allowed him to learn more about that industry. For some time, he worked for a property management company, and Brendan himself managed a group of workers to maintain the company’s buildings. This experience taught him invaluable lessons about the difficulties of management, but he eventually realized that this was not what he had envisioned for his life, and wanted to break out into a new career.
His first job as a contractor was a remodel for a kitchen, which he had found through a client who had hired Brendan for small, odd jobs in the past. When he was tasked with pricing the job, he went to his father for advice. His father told him to ask himself questions such as “How long is the job going to take?” or, “What is the size of the project?” He started at about thirty dollars an hour, which is much lower than what he charges now. After that initial job, Brendan relied on a good referral from that client as well as work from family and friends in order to grow his brand new business. This, as well as word of mouth, simple advertising through craigslist and his own website, helped get Brendan’s name out to potential clients. After each job, Brendan made sure to take pictures to post to his Facebook, hoping that these would bring him leads. With these first jobs, Brendan adopted a “take what I can get” mentality when it came to job offers, but he has always been more interested in interior remodeling. When Brendan accepted projects in which he had less knowledge, he was forced to hire subcontractors, and to this day he still hires subcontractors for some jobs. He says that when hiring subcontractors, their work has to be compatible with his own standards. It’s tough to find subcontractors who are truly on the same page as him, Brendan admits. “At this point in my career, I would rather hire subs,” Brendan continues. He wants to one day hire employees, but having worked by himself for some time, Brendan is not sure what employing others would look like for his business.He is currently flipping homes, and started to do this full time not long ago. He likes the freedom that flipping gives him, and the fact that he can have the last word on decisions that would otherwise belong to a client.
Brendan’s Instagram content primarily consists of his flips. His posts include both finished and unfinished work, and this is how Brendan attempts to be as transparent as possible with his followers through his individual posts and stories. His favorite aspect of Instagram is the ability to connect with people not only in the industry but people in his area as well. Brendan uses Instagram almost exclusively, and says that he’s still learning about how to grow his online presence. Keeping up with social platforms is almost like a second job, Brendan says, and in order to market his business, he claims that he has not quite discovered all of the secrets of good social media posts. Apps that Brendan uses include Timetracker, whose GPS technology allows him to know how much time he actually spends on any given job.
Apps Brendan Loves