BOOK BROTHERS
Real estate, reno twins tell their story so far
There’s really no avoiding the fact Vancouver-born Jonathan and Drew Scott are a packaged deal.
They do everything together and they do it successfully. The dynamic duo are best known for their successful TV shows Property Brothers, Brother vs. Brother and Property Brothers at Home. They have topped best-seller lists with their design book Dream Homes, they have had YouTube success with their singing, and most recently Drew has been shaking his groove thing on the American TV show Dancing With the Stars.
The show is just past the halfway mark and Drew is still dancing — albeit on the most recent show he had the second-lowest score.
But here’s the funny thing — even though it’s just Drew kicking up his heels in shiny outfits every week, Jonathan still managed to get in on the action and remind the viewers that, yes, the 39-year-old twins are a team.
A couple of weeks back, Jonathan was a surprise addition to Drew and partner Emma Slater’s jive number.
“I would like to point out that I am also casting for the new show Dancing with the Contractor,” said Jonathan during a recent conference call from Los Angeles. “I do dance on all our construction sites anyway.”
Jonathan went on to praise, well, sort of, his little brother (Jonathan is four minutes older).
“Seeing Drew week-to-week get better is great,” Jonathan said. “He’s never, ever moved like this before.”
Jonathan’s Dancing With the Stars jump into the spotlight was a big secret. He said the judges had no idea and the fans were certainly left in the dark.
“Our fans absolutely died," Jonathan said.
While learning a new dance number every week may seem to us mere mortals like a taxing fulltime job, it is just one of the many cogs the Scott brothers’ machine has moving at any given time.
The pair, who have been flipping homes since they were 18, just wrapped the new show Drew and Linda’s Home. The HGTV series chronicles Drew and his fiancée Linda Phan’s renovation of an old stately house in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. The show goes to air in November.
Meanwhile, Jonathan (who was asked to do Dancing With the Stars as well) has been back and forth to Toronto where he’s been managing a series of properties the brothers have invested in and are renovating. He also lives in the brothers’ Las Vegas compound. Remember, there was a TV series about building that place.
“We always have something on the go,” Drew said.
“We are, admittedly, overachievers,” added Jonathan.
“Drew and I naturally conquer everything we do. We are efficiency freaks. Everything we have done in life is all about being the most efficient.”
No kidding. You would have to be efficient when you consider the brothers do almost 50 hours of original programming a year for HGTV, produce other TV and online projects and have Scott Living, a line of home decor items.
They’re also successful authors. Their design book Dream Home: The Property Brothers’ Ultimate Guide to Finding & Fixing Your Perfect House, topped bestseller lists and now they are taking another run at publishing with their memoir It Takes Two: Our Story. So far the book, which came out earlier in the fall, has been well received and has landed on a handful of newspaper bestselling lists.
“What all our fans were saying is they really wanted to know our story and really wanted to know what made us tick,” Drew said. “What we were like when we were kids and who inspired us. So that’s why we decided to write this memoir.”
The next thing they had to decide was how to go about putting their personal stories on the page.
“The first challenge was how to figure out how to write a memoir with two voices,” Drew said.
Finally they settled on the idea of swapping back and forth with chapters. Each brother then piped in on the other’s story via handwritten notes on the page. The effect goes a long way to replicate the back and forth ribbing fans know from the TV version of the Scott brothers.
“The other big thing we said from the get-go was this memoir is not going to hold anything back,” Drew said.
For instance, Jonathan opens up about his failed marriage.
"I went through a tough time, my divorce. Those are things I have never talked about before,” said Jonathan, whose marriage lasted only two years. “We wanted it to be authentic and our fans would see through anything that wasn’t and we are proud of that.”
While the brothers could have easily given their lives a fresh coat of paint for this book, they decided perhaps the downs in their story were just as important as the ups.
“We have had some struggles over the years. We’ve had some hard times and some good times and I think that is what makes it relatable to our fans, and a better read,” Drew said. “They really get to see who we are.”
And who they are is a pair of laser-focused, ambitious men, men who have bold dreams and big plans.
“Really, Jonathan and I find the overarching theme is if there is something you are passionate about, if there is something you really want no matter what, that if you work hard and find that drive within yourself you can achieve that,” Drew said. “We didn’t come from a wealthy family. We have had to work hard for every dollar we have. Through the ups and downs we kept pushing and supporting each other and anything we have achieved in our lives is because of that drive.”
Putting together a memoir is a tricky task. How do you remember things? Did it really happen that way?
The Scott brothers knowingly laugh at the idea of people tending to tell the tale of the same event differently.
“We discovered I was putting myself into all these stories and I wasn’t even there,” Jonathan said. “It turns out we have been telling them for so many years that I remembered myself being there.”
So some fact-checking with family and friends was a must for the pair. Lucky for these guys they are tight with their tribe.
“It was genuinely a fun adventure because it was reminiscing with friends and family,” Jonathan said about research for the book. “It was great.”
If all this time spent together working has led to tension, you would never know it. The brothers laugh at each other and totally get, more accurately live, the “two heads are better than one” concept.
“I think in all our years since we were kids I think we’ve maybe only had three fights and mainly when we were kids or teenagers,” Drew said.
“At the end of the day we call it a no BS policy. We have a lot on the go. We have a lot that we deal with. If something is bugging us we get it out and deal with it and move on.
“Together we always make a better decision than apart,” Drew added. “So it always works out.”
Yes, seems like it does.