Drew & Jonathan Scott Talk Tough Love for New HGTV Series

The Big Picture

• Drew and Jonathan Scott set out to mentor investors in their new series, Backed by the Bros .
• As experienced real estate investors, the Scott Brothers tell Collider in an exclusive interview how they aim to prevent others from repeating their early career mistakes.
• Their new HGTV series emphasizes the need for a more calculated approach to real estate investments as a way to avoid financial pitfalls.

The comfortable and cozy world of real estate and home renovation is about to get a major makeover thanks to HGTV superstars, Drew Scott and Jonathan Scott’s new high-stakes series, Backed by the Bros. The Emmy-nominated stars are hanging up their tool belts for the new project and putting their reputations on the line to help struggling investors hit it big. While the twins have usually been at the forefront of home renovations, the 10-episode series finds Drew and Jonathan focusing on mentoring property investors rather than directly managing renovations. Proving that they’re more than just renovation wizards, the humble pair of Canadians know a good investment when they see it. In an exclusive with Collider, the two reveal it’s time they leverage their extensive experience to offer tough love and practical advice to prevent investors from repeating the same mistakes they made early in their careers.

“We learned through a lot of these mistakes. I remember one house that we had, it was the first massive full renovation that we took on, and at the time, we didn’t realize that the homeowner that sold it to us, he said, ‘I built this whole place by hand.’ That should have been a red flag,” Drew tells Collider. But it isn’t just red flags the two will be sharing with potential investors in their series, which premieres June 5 on HGTV at 9 pm EST and streams the same day on Max. Jonathan admits though it’s a matter of understanding how everyone’s situation is different, they’ve made the same mistakes and want to genuinely help those avoid such financial pitfalls even if some of them make it difficult for the twins. “I don’t want to give all of this energy and all of this experience to someone who’s gonna turn around and dump it in the trash and do their own thing. We want people who will learn.”

As the Scotts emphasize the importance of understanding the risks and costs involved in real estate investments while contrasting emotional decisions typically made by homeowners with a more calculated approach, they also share some personal news with their respective partners, including an update on two of the biggest events the twins have in store: the birth of Drew’s second child with wife, Linda Phan and Jonathan’s upcoming wedding to actress and singer/songwriter, Zooey Deschanel.

Backed by the Bros (2024)

Aspiring entrepreneurs vie for the chance to gain investment from the "Bros," three prominent and successful businessmen. Contestants present their business ideas and strategies, aiming to convince the Bros to support their ventures. Throughout the series, the participants undergo rigorous evaluations and face various challenges designed to test their entrepreneurial skills and resilience, all in hopes of securing funding and guidance from the Bros.

Drew Scott Offers an Update on Baby No. 2 With Linda Phan

COLLIDER: Before we talk about Backed by the Bros, which I’m very excited about, I’d love to ask how you two are doing, and I want to start with you, Drew. I know baby number two is coming next month and it’s very exciting. While parenthood often brings surprises, what lessons have you learned from your experience as a first-time dad that you’ll now be applying in raising your second child with Linda?

DREW SCOTT: I think the one big thing for me was any parent friends that we had, a lot of them were giving advice and whatnot, but the one thing that I thought is that I could plan things and I realized that you can plan, you can read all you want, and it’s not gonna really matter as much as you think it will. Life rolls in a different way, and Parker’s gonna do what he wants to do. I just realized that if you just surround him with love in that safe environment, he’s gonna grow and flourish on his own path. That was the big thing for me.

JONATHAN SCOTT: I have realized that your first child is always super precious, and you wanna make sure you’re helicoptering, but by your second child, you realize they’re gonna be just fine.

DREW: Yeah, exactly. [Laughs] They’re gonna be basically two years apart, and I think it’s funny how it was only two years ago, but I’ve already forgotten. I had so many little tricks of the trade when I was changing diapers and doing, like, late-night feeding and stuff like that. I’m already forgetting how I did my little techniques and stuff. So, you go through the whole thing for the first time.

Jonathan Scott Talks Wedding Plans With Zooey Deschanel

It’s gonna be very exciting. I’m so happy for you two! And Jonathan, I’m so happy for you — you’ve got your upcoming wedding. I did hear that you and Zooey are taking it at your own pace, making it an intimate affair, and I’m assuming that means not a party-type destination wedding sort-of-thing. Are there any unique or personalized touches you’ll be incorporating into the wedding that reflect your personality and relationship?

JONATHAN: For us, the most important thing is we wanna have a kick-ass party with the people we care about. We are gonna keep it very intimate so it’s not gonna be a huge wedding. The food is important, the music and the party afterward are important. Because of our obsession with escape rooms, we’re thinking, “What if we do an escape room wedding where we lock everybody into the venue and they can only escape if they solve riddles?” That’s the sort of stuff that we’re gonna do with that.

How Drew & Jonathan’s Past Informed ‘Backed by the Bros’

I love that. I think that’d be really fun. I’m so happy for both of you, and I would love to talk now about Backed by the Bros. It’s another chapter in the entire Property Brothers franchise. It’s very exciting. What inspired both of you to create the series and offer your expertise to struggling property investors?

JONATHAN: We just know so many people who want to be involved in real estate. They wanna invest in real estate. They say, “I just wish I could make an extra income on the side,” and they jump in, not realizing how much work is involved and how risky it can actually be if you don’t know what you’re doing. So we created a show that is unlike anything we’ve ever done. You’ll see the tone of it is different. We are tough when we need to be tough. We’re still supportive. We bring all our resources and experience to the table, and even with that, some of these investors don’t take our advice and it just goes south for them.

DREW: I think the thing Jonathan and I found was a lot of people will say it’s very different dealing with investors versus dealing with homeowners, with their primary residents where they live, because a lot of homeowners make emotional decisions. The problem here is most of our clients are everyday homeowners who are trying to get into a new type of investment. They’re trying to do something more, make more money with real estate, so they’re actually bringing that same emotion into something that should be non-emotional decisions. And so there’s a lot of stress that we’re seeing there that’s over and above what we would typically deal with investors when we’re dealing with them.

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Something that I loved about the show was how you both said you wanted to help investors make the best possible choice and educate them along the way with what you’ve learned. I think it is so humbling of you guys to be those helpers because a lot of people come into this industry, but they don’t share that sort of wealth of knowledge and resources. Can you share a bit about your own experiences with making mistakes in renovation and real estate that influenced your decision to mentor those who need help?

DREW: Jonathan and I have been doing this since the mid-’90s. We’ve been doing this a very, very long time, and I wish we had a mentor like what we’re doing for these investors back then. We didn’t. We learned through a lot of these mistakes. I remember one house that we had, it was the first massive full renovation that we took on, and at the time, we didn’t realize that the homeowner that sold it to us, he said, ‘I built this whole place by hand.’ That should have been a red flag. And when we went into it, everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong. Our costs skyrocketed, and we ended up selling and getting out with barely a dollar in our pocket. I mean, it was tough. And there have been times when we’ve taken a loss. So, I just think there are a lot of these little things. These homeowners we’re working with, this one couple actually put their full…

JONATHAN: They basically put in their entire retirement savings. They have four children — all of their children’s college funds, they put into this investment. They wanted to tear down the house they bought, rezone it, and make it an apartment building. It turns out that the property would never be allowed to be an apartment building, and this is something we would have known immediately before buying the property. But they, for a year, spent over 150 grand trying to do this and it didn’t work. So, we’ll get those people back on track. For some of them, it’s a matter of rescuing them; for some of them, it’s a matter of finding these incredible investments and getting them so that they are actually generating that income. Every single story is different, but it’s very exciting.

DREW: The one thing to me that is crazy is — we’ve talked so many times over the years. You’ve heard us talk a lot about our experience — if you had us working with you on your own personal investment and we are giving you all these resources to help you stretch a budget, you know, designers, contractors, we have materials, everything, and we’re giving you advice, would you say, ‘Okay,’ and turn around and do the opposite of what we’re advising you? Because that’s literally what some of these homeowners are doing, these investors are doing. They’re not listening, and we said, ‘We’ve been where you are. We’ve made the mistakes you’re about to make. We can see it coming.’ And they still make them.

Drew and Jonathan Scott Are the Gordon Ramsay of Real Estate

Yeah, when I go into Michael’s or if I go into Lowe’s and I see you guys there on products, I’m always thinking, “What would the Property Brothers do?” [Laughs] I have to. You guys are always really helpful, so I have that in my head all the time.And luckily, you do get in there with the struggling property investors. But I’m wondering, without giving any spoilers, because I want people to watch this show, is there a memorable success story from the series where your guidance made a significant difference to something that you were so proud to see come to fruition?

JONATHAN: Yeah, but like I said, every story is so different. There was one kid who reminded me so much of us when we were younger. He’s just in his 20s, this is his first big investment. He saved up and saved up. He made some money in the stock market and a bunch of small businesses, and he put everything into buying this house in Venice and then he just started making all the classic mistakes. It really would have put him on a path. He probably would have bankrupted himself, and we managed to turn it around. So for me, it was exciting because this kid now hopefully is on a path of extreme success in real estate, and it’s really about just learning some of those lessons. He kind of is learning it the hard way, but without having to actually feel it because of Drew and I. In fact, myself, I did go through bankruptcy when I was really young. I made some mistakes and that really made it so much harder; it extended the period of time for me to turn it around. But this kid now is gonna be a huge success.

DREW: You know what I actually was laughing at? This guy, his name is John, and literally every other thing that came out of his mouth was like Jonathan when he was 19, 20. He’s 21, but we just kept calling him Little John because Big John made all those same mistakes back in the day when we were young, first getting into this. This young guy has a bit of ego; and he keeps saying, ‘Well, from my experience, blah, blah, blah.’ I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? You have no experience. We’re the ones who’ve been doing this for 25 years. Listen to our experience.’ But it’s tough. Again, we see a little bit of ourselves in young investors like him.

JONATHAN: I almost feel like we’re the Gordon Ramsay of the home space because this is Hell’s Kitchen because we are brutal because that’s sometimes what these investors need. They need you to be blunt, they need you to be direct, otherwise, this is their biggest investment and they’re gonna screw it all up. And when it comes to a real estate investment, the numbers do not lie. You have to follow the numbers, otherwise, with overspending, what’s the point? You put all this money into it, you’re not going to make that money back, and so what was the point of even going through this whole charade?

Drew Can Tell When Jonathan Is About to Lose His Temper

It’s funny you bring up Gordon Ramsay because I was thinking about his shows — and Robert Irvine for Restaurant Makeover — where there’s a lot of tough love given to people who need help. One of the things that I was wondering was, how do you handle it, in a very specific moment, when these investors push back against your advice? The scene that I saw, Jonathan, was that you were very frustrated, which I can understand because you’re giving so much of your heart and time to these individuals, and they’re not taking it to heart.

JONATHAN: And it’s also our reputation because we’re trying to help these people, and if it is a total failure, that’s our reputation on the line, as well, because we’re supposed to be able to help, and we’re supposed to be able to use our expertise. But yeah, Drew always laughs because he knows the vein — there’s a vein in my forehead that just starts throbbing. [Drew laughs.] It means that I am about to lose my mind on this person. I’m a very patient person, but sometimes it just erupts over. We’re very honest because the people we’re backing, we’re not just backing them because we think that there’s potential in the property to turn around, we’re also backing the person because we think not only do they have the most they can benefit from with our help. But they’re also willing to learn. I don’t want to give all of this energy and all of this experience to someone who’s gonna turn around and dump it in the trash and do their own thing. We want people who will learn.

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DREW: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s no point. We don’t have infinite resources. We have our contractors and designers that we’ll assign to these projects, but we have them on other projects. So, we’re finding windows of time, or we’re pushing some things in our schedule where if this ends up snowballing into something worse than it says it was in the beginning, that could cost us a lot of time and money and affect our other projects. So, we are picky. We don’t take on every project that was brought our way. And really, like Jonathan said, we want people who are humble and willing to listen. It’s not to say they have to do everything that we say, but at least if they’re willing to take some advice and direction to help get them out of these holes that they dug themselves into, then it’s a good partnership.

‘Backed by the Bros’ Is More Than Just an Educational Series

I do feel like the popularity of HGTV and you guys up here, particularly in Canada, has kick-started the property investment stuff over the last decade. I read a report in the CBC that stated house flipping is a major driver for real estate and that Calgary is now leading the surge in these things. When people are watching your shows, they’re taking all your advice — they follow you religiously. What do you hope viewers take away from the show, especially when it comes to the advice on creating their investment property?

DREW: The big thing for us is that real estate is a great way to bring in more income. It can be a supplemental income, as well, for a lot of people. There are cities, like whether you’re in New York or Toronto, LA, that are so expensive that I don’t understand how the average family can survive, or they have to move, like, two hours outside of where they live to be able to afford a place. That’s not fun being in traffic for three or four hours a day, but there are a lot of incentives now. The government in a lot of different regions has some tax incentives. They also have timeline incentives. So, for example, here in California, converting your garage into an ADU, an additional dwelling for income, they have a mandate where they have to turn it around, I think it’s 90 days or 60 days, which is great because sometimes some of these projects can be delayed a year or two. I had a project in Pasadena where they told me that I’m not gonna get any responses for two years. Who wants to think about improving their financial situation now and not be able to do anything about it for two years?

JONATHAN: And it’s the same in some states. I think New York is one of them, where they’re actually paying homeowners cash to convert their garages into rental units to try and tackle the housing crisis. But there is a lot of potential to make money, and there is also a lot of potential to lose your shirt. If everybody could do this — if everybody could be successful as a realty investor, then everybody would be doing it. So that’s why, our goal with this show was, we are brutally honest, it’s a lot of tough love but even the audience at home, every single episode, they’re gonna learn something that will be critical if they ever decide to do this on their own.

Do you guys see any common pitfalls or trends that you’re expecting people not to repeat?

DREW: Yeah, I think the one big thing that we do notice is people are still far underestimating the cost. It is so expensive to do a renovation nowadays, to convert a garage, to build out any sort of space. On the show, we have a commercial space for one of the episodes, it’s not all just residential or garages. But yeah, that’s the thing we see. If you don’t do this day in and day out like we do, or if you have done a renovation in a different part of the country, what you pay in Charlotte is nowhere near what you pay in LA. I mean, it can be very different. So, people are not realistic with their budgets and time.

Backed by the Bros. premieres June 5 on HGTV at 9 p.m. EST and streams the same day on Max.

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