My Story

For the first three months I ran the whole business out of a two-door Honda Civic. Eight-foot posts fed through the middle of the car into the console, crosspiece across the trunk, and the tools wherever they could fit. In February I’d shovel the snow off, torch the ground until it gave, then pry a hole out of it a foot and a half down.

I put my life savings into this business, I put it all on the line.

How it started

The posts were cheap because nobody wanted them. I’d been looking at the ones already out on listings around town and almost all of them were leaning or faded or worn through. Strange thing, in an industry that lives on presentation. Nobody was thinking about the one object sitting on the front lawn.

So I bought the lot in June 2025 and went at that gap as the premium option. No business experience, no guarantee any of the money was coming back.

Then it worked

It caught. Some of the bigger realtor groups in town came on and it moved quickly after that.

I bought the truck. Hired guys to run installs so I wasn’t the one in the ground any more, put LED solar lighting on the posts, and built an app with a software engineer to run the operation properly. By the end there were over two hundred realtor clients with posts out on their listings.

Why I left

It was making money and I was still the bottleneck inside it, spending my days on twenty and thirty dollar problems.

My whole brand was signposts. Hardly anyone had heard of the business, which is exactly why people found it interesting. Walking away from the one thing I was known for was the hardest decision I’ve ever made. But it had to happen, posts in the ground for realtors wasn’t a big enough problem.

I sold in May 2026.

Now

I work with HVAC and refrigeration companies now.

Spending time around these owners is where The Owner’s Seat came from.