We are here with the legend, John McDonough, now having joined the Kingdom & Co. team.

And just so you guys know, John McDonough is one of these guys where his customers and his clients, they actually like him.

So we wanted to start this conversation by introducing you to the audience and allowing people to get to know you better, John.

So tell us about how you got into custom home building.

So basically, I graduated from UNLV with a finance degree.

How that turned into building custom homes is a wild one.

But when I was a stockbroker, I built my first house that we wanted to live in, hired a guy, loved the process.

Was like, we moved into the house.

And I said, Kim, my wife is Kim.

I said, we need to buy another lot and do this again and possibly build or sell or move into that house.

So we did that.

We bought another lot in the same development, drew the plans up.

I love design.

I like to like draw things.

I like to look at houses.

I like to be a little different than everybody else.

So in this development that we had, our houses, the first one we built kind of stuck out a little bit.

Then we built another one, hired the same guy, moved into it for a year, sold it and continued to do that.

Over about a five-year, six-year period, we built like five homes, the spec homes, moved into them, sold them, moved into another one, sold it.

And at the time, I was a stockbroker, like I said, and this was with a big brokerage firm in the valley and they kind of got word of it.

You’re not allowed to really have outside interest.

So they said, John, you’ve got to either build homes or sell stocks.

Yeah, I was about five, six years into it.

And I said, you know what?

I loved doing the custom home thing.

So I said, you know what?

I think I really want to do this.

Me and my wife sat down and we’re like, okay, this is going to be a big career change, but I really want to do it.

The crazy part was, was when I decided to do that, it was September of 2000.

And no, it was July of 2001.

One month later, I guess it would be, 9-11 hits.

And I’m sitting here, just quit my job going, what have I done?

Anyways, it worked out.

I ended up getting my contractor’s license.

I was super pumped to do it.

I still am pumped to this day.

I love building houses for people.

I love the design side more than anything is helping them design houses that are unique and different.

And that’s kind of how it started.

And going back to that, it’s really interesting.

A lot of people, that was 24 years ago and people don’t realize, yeah, it was a single day event.

You didn’t know what the new normal was.

And there was a shock in the market, a huge shock.

Nobody knew in the real estate market and in the stock market.

So yeah, definitely a scary time to have made a big transition in your life.

You were sweating bullets.

Yeah, big time.

Two kids, house payment, you know?

And I was just going, wow, I just made the biggest mistake of my life.

But it turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made.

You got really involved in the Southern Highlands development.

What kind of got you in there and what started really making a name for you?

Why did people keep coming back to you?

We were building a lot of homes out in the Northwest part of the Valley.

And I always wanted to get into the big developments.

And I had a good friend of mine, Mitch McClellan, who was selling lots out in Southern Highlands.

He liked my work.

He’d seen some of my houses and he just said, hey, John, let’s see if we can get you in out here.

I sell the lots to the people.

See if we can get your referral.

Well, it ended up happening.

First, before that, I should say though, we bought a lot out there and we did a spec house.

And that turned out good.

We were able to sell it, did another one.

And in the meantime, he was referring clients to me.

So between the two specs and a couple of clients, we started to build a little bit of a name for ourselves because we were building houses that looked different than the ones in the community, slightly different.

I think the biggest thing that your reputation is, is quality.

You don’t cut corners.

You care about the details.

You care about the transitions.

It’s not just about blowing and going for you.

It’s you really care about your finished product.

Yeah, that’s what we’ve taken a lot of pride in.

Like I said, I take pride in the design.

I just love to go to parade of homes around the Western United States.

Look at houses, look at architecture.

Vegas back when I started, didn’t have a lot of architectural character.

Everything was pretty much the same.

And so going to Scottsdale, going to Utah, looking at different styles and bringing that into this Vegas market, we did develop that name for ourselves.

And in so doing, I’m a bit of a perfectionist.

So it would drive me crazy if I would see like a transition from a flooring to another flooring or sheetrock not done right.

So yeah, we really pay attention to the details.

And I think that’s how we built our name up over the years is being very attention detail-driven.

So fast forwarding to, we come into the financial crisis, 2008, nine, 10, 11.

That’s when Lincoln and I crossed paths with you because Lincoln and I were doing the flips.

Friends of friends, we started buying some flips for you.

And I recall Lincoln and I having the hardest time getting it through your head, not to be a perfectionist on your fixing flips.

That’s a good, good point because we were doing, those flip houses were what, 100 grand?

We were selling them for?

Two, 300, yeah, max, yeah. 200 max.

So I’m used to being in this million, two million dollar market.

And all of a sudden I jump into this and think that it has to be perfect and it doesn’t.

So you guys were always telling me, John, you’re overdoing it.

You gotta slow down.

You’re just flipping these things.

It was hard to get that into my mentality, but I eventually did.

Yeah, it was a total, and we had a lot of fun.

We did.

We enjoyed doing that.

And then after that, you know, the market has doubled and tripled and quadrupled.

And now you’re building stuff that’s, you’ve built some stuff north of 10 million.

I mean, some really big trophy product out there and your clients love you.

So we’re so, we feel so fortunate to have you on the team, to have your expertise.

And we’re just really excited for, you know, what we’re looking forward towards the horizon, being able to bring the resources we have with Kingdom & Co, with your expertise in the custom home building.

And we’ve got some specs on the horizon as well.

Yeah, I couldn’t be more happy, more excited about this whole process.

You know, I’ve done this myself pretty much with just two superintendents and one office girl part-time.

And to have this team behind me and this beautiful office and the clientele that you guys work with is phenomenal.

So I couldn’t be more excited.

I think that we’re going to be able to really get a name build up for Kingdom & Co on the custom home side.

You kind of brought up going elsewhere to look for architectural inspiration.

Scottsdale, I don’t know if you mentioned SoCal at all, parts of Utah.

What is it about Vegas, or what do you feel like Vegas is lacking, architecturally speaking?

Vegas, I feel like in the last really 15 years, 10 to probably 10 years, has really come alive with architecture.

I feel like we have come a long ways from where we were 20 years ago.

You’d go to other towns, like I said, Scottsdale, SoCal especially, and just beautifully designed homes.

And we were kind of, I always felt like the cookie cutter, more generic Vegas style home without any character, spice, flair.

And so I do feel like it’s come a long way with some great architects that have moved into the valley, and great architecture.

Right now I feel like we’re at a phase where it’s very much contemporary, and everything is kind of the same.

They’re going out on a limb on a few things, but a lot of the homes look so much the same.

And so I feel like we’re at that point again, the Tuscan run had 10 year, 12 year run, where everything was Tuscan, and now we’re in that contemporary 10, 12, 15 years at this point.

And I feel like e-tracked homes, custom homes, a lot of these are just starting to look a lot alike.

So I like to separate ourselves when we’re doing a spec especially, to make people look at that spec and go, wow, that’s different.

That’s great architecture.

That’s what we want to see.

We want something different that doesn’t look like the other 10 homes on the street.

To do that, you have to be careful though, because you don’t want to be so different that you can’t sell this house, and then it’s very unique and a one-off, and nobody wants it.

So you still have to appeal to the market, the general market, but I just feel like you’ve got to do some different elements to make yourself stand out.

I can recall sitting in a couple design meetings with you, and in your experience, looking at stuff and pulling out, yeah, that looks cool, but you don’t want to own that because it’s a pain in the butt to repair or maintain.

Like there’s quite a bit of design elements and ideas that really are totally aesthetically awesome, and at the same time that are totally functionally broken.

And in your experience, I’ve watched you do this a few times where you’ll point to something and like, yeah, you don’t want that because of this.

And I’m like, oh, I hadn’t even thought about that.

Yeah, that’s correct.

I think from doing this for 28 years now, you learn what things do work and what things don’t work and what things will cause you problems.

Now, it’s not everything, but especially now with the new contemporary, more complicated homes, everybody’s on Pinterest, everybody’s on Houzz, everybody’s on different websites.

I want this, I want that, not realizing how hard it is or how functional that’ll be or the difficulties you have.

So I like to try and bring in that kind of new concept, but you got to make sure it’s going to work and you’re not going to have a problem with the home or the design three, six months, a year, two years from now.

Yeah, you want something that’s going to last, that’s not always going to be a pain in your side to calling in for a warranty to get something fixed.

Right, right.

I think we saw that in Vegas with a lot of water features in the homes that people were putting in.

And we put a few fountains inside and outside of homes and had a lot of problems with them.

So it’s just like that.

You try and avoid as many problems as you can, but still have the house look very unique.

And that’s the things that only really experience can afford you.

Yeah, exactly.

And we continue to learn, you know?

I mean, as long as I’ve been doing this, I still, we’re still learning.

Every house we do, I tell my superintendents, hey, if we have a problem, we want to know about it.

We want to be able to fix that problem.

And we want to try and avoid that problem in the future.

And we’ve taken, you know, mistakes, if you want to call it, or problems of homes over the years, and tried to just better that process so we avoid those mistakes.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

One of the things that Zion, I think, attracted me or inspired me or gave me the motivation to come over here was when I first met with you two guys, you pulled up on the screen and showed me a house plans that you’d done that had all the interior design done with elevations, with everything called out, with heights, with tile, countertops, all color coded differently on a complete set of plans.

And in 25 years of doing that, we honestly have not had that.

Yeah, we’ve never had a set of plans that shows every detail from flooring to thickness of countertops to grout lines and showers.

So I was so impressed by that to see that you guys go that extra effort and extra mile to make sure that these plans are ready to build.

And it’s huge on our end because first off, it makes the process go faster.

Second off, the client gets to see everything before it gets installed.

We’ve done a lot of homes over the years where we will work with an interior designer, the house shower gets done, and all of a sudden the client walks in and goes, I don’t like it.

And this avoids that.

With you guys having the VR and the 3D models, this literally lets the client see what that room, what the house is gonna look like from room to room.

And to me, it’s huge.

Here’s what’s happened too in the 3D models we’ve noticed over the years is we catch problems.

A lot of them.

A lot of problems.

Our framing will catch soffits that weren’t right, will catch a lot of details.

So to have that ability and to have that, with you guys having that here is awesome for me.