How Sam DeMaio Built a $4M Remodel Empire & Landed NFL Clients

Kristen Knapp (01:31)
welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m KristEn Knapp and I’m here with Sam DEMaio, the CEO of Showcase Remodels in South Jersey and expanding. So I’m excited to get into everything remodels and thank you so much for being here, Sam. Yes, so let’s go back to the beginning when you first started Showcase Remodels. What was the impetus of that?

Sam DeMaio (01:44)
Sure, thank you for having me.

Okay, so way back when I joined the military when I was 17. So my junior year of high school went to boot camp, came out, finished my senior year of high school. And then from there, I bought my first house at 19. And then from there I went into Camden County Jail. I was in Camden County Jail for five years. Not an inmate, I was a correctional officer. oh yeah.

Kristen Knapp (02:12)
A clarification, yes. ⁓

Sam DeMaio (02:15)
So I was paying my dad rent, $100 a week when I turned 18. That was like his thing. It’s big Italian thing. You have to give me $100. I think I’m getting a birthday present for my 18th birthday. telling me I owe him $100. I’m like, I owe you $100 for what? For rent every week. I said, OK, no problem. So when I bought the duplex, I’m thinking, all right, cool. I’ll set my $100 a week and stay home. No, my dad said, I want half the profit. So whatever you make, I get half. I said, I don’t know. I’m out of here. So my mortgage payment was $850. And my rent.

Kristen Knapp (02:37)
Thanks ⁓

Sam DeMaio (02:41)
for the top floor was $750. So I basically lived for $100 a month. And then what happened there was I did a little bit about plumbing because my dad was a plumber. He had his own business, but it was just him and an employee. I started picking up things only because of lack of money. I learned how to do the painting and all that easy stuff, which I was a horrible painter, but I thought I was like Picasso. But I literally painted my whole entire, it was two two bedrooms.

Kristen Knapp (03:03)
in.

Sam DeMaio (03:07)
I painted the whole place in literally 17 hours. I was nonstop painting, didn’t eat, just kept work right through. From there, ⁓ I started learning how to do little by little. It was before YouTube and the internet wasn’t a big thing then. So, I mean, you can learn anything on YouTube. So what I did is I went to Home Depot, bought the Home Depot 123 book, which I still have in my office. Just trying show the young guys when they come in, hey man, if you want to do something, you just got to put your mind to it and you can definitely do it, especially with.

all the access to YouTube and all these things out there. Very easy to be able to do whatever you want to do. And then going forward from there, I kind of started a construction business, which it was like my passion because once I started liking doing designs, kitchen designs, I learned the flooring, learned how to install tile, and then kind of my business around just being genuine, giving a fair price, and then building the relationships.

And those relationships, you know, they carry through all the way 22, 23 years later. And, ⁓ you know, from there, ⁓ I went on to be a police officer. Once I had my tenure in, I decided to opt out and go full time into construction. So from there, I bought my first flip property. By that time, I had four properties or five properties, rental properties, and bought my first flip. I bought it for 30,000. Took me about six months to fix it up because I did it myself.

Kristen Knapp (04:05)
you

Sam DeMaio (04:22)
on the weekends because I had my regular jobs going, my regular construction jobs going. And that time I had one person with me, my helper. My helper ended up becoming my main guy. I kept on adding a crew, adding a crew. Fast forward now, I’d flip two properties and I’d have enough profit to buy house cash. So I did that all the way up until I had 25, 30 properties and kept that going. My wife was wanting to kill me. She said, no more after 20, but…

We had to hire a property manager, now I own 48 properties. I pretty much lived off my property. So I wouldn’t buy a car or a house or anything like that unless I had enough rental income coming in to cover that. Because my thing is, if I can live for free, that’s how I live everything. That’s how I do everything. We have no credit out. I’m able to buy my cars. I just bought the new Lamborghini STO. I ordered the new one for next year, the new Lamborghini Temeraireo that’s coming in. But we pretty much have a lot of fun. ⁓

You learning the business has been a journey, it’s been struggle. I’ve made pretty much every mistake you possibly can think of, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Kristen Knapp (06:12)
That’s amazing, you have an amazing story. So going from the military to correctional officer to police officer to doing what you’re doing now, of course there’s a lot of work you do with your hands, but it is very creative. How has it been kind of stepping into a creative role?

Sam DeMaio (06:14)
Yeah, it’s fun. It was a lot of fun.

So I think naturally, as much as I was the wrestling captain and the football captain in high school, I also had that creative side to me. even growing up, sixth grade, seventh grade, I was the altar boy from like second grade on. I always had that hustle. I always had that grind. I went to Catholic school. So ⁓ it was really cool to be able to do the funerals because you got paid was like 10 bucks to do a funeral as an altar boy. So I go through that.

And then, know, seventh grade, I used to sell cry babies and I had credit and like, hey, listen, I buy for 10 cents, sell for 25. You know, at 13, I had a little landscape business. was, I was a salesman. I knock on the door, you know, my brother and my neighbor, they were a little younger, maybe about four years younger. I’d have them guys, they would be doing the work. So I’d be selling and they’d be doing the work. I’d come back and collect the money, make sure the job’s good, customer’s happy, and, kind of take that and fast forward. And I look back and I go, okay, well, how did I do what I did? Because I never worked for anybody.

I only work for myself. you know, learning how to charge, learning how to hire, learning how to do all these things. You know, I think my background at military and also police, know, a lot of that’s to do with SOPs, you know, standard operating procedures. Everything we did in the military, we had a TM, which is like a technical manual where you go through step by step and checklist on everything that you do. You take a hummer out, you take the truck out, you go through before you do it, PCI, pre-combat inspection.

You take it, you inspect it, you make sure it’s good, you sign off, next thing. It’s the same exact thing in business, in construction, but a lot of people don’t do that, all they learn how to is do the job, and they don’t know how to do it, they just know it because they learned from Billy Bob, who had been doing it for years, and his dad learned from that. And if they were doing it wrong, guess what, you got years and years and years of people doing it wrong. Even when I started doing roofing, I started doing Eagle View. This way don’t have to get on the roof, don’t have measure, I really did know how to measure, I know how to do it now.

Kristen Knapp (08:04)
Yeah.

Sam DeMaio (08:12)
I figured they do the measurements for you, it costs $18. I can’t even drive out to the job and then talk to the customer and get a ladder for $18. But I was selling roofs, only cost me 18 bucks. You know what mean? So when I went to the conference and they’re like, who in here is using Eagle View? I’m like, me. And then the old school roofer was like, you don’t need that, it doesn’t work, you gotta do that. Well, listen, it works for me. I sell a lot more jobs than you and I just got started. So, you know, trying to do trial and error. So it’s a matter of, if you don’t give it a shot.

You’ll never know if you’ll make it. once you start making it, the things that aren’t working well, push them to the side. The things that are working well, just keep pushing forward through that. That’s kind of how I got my whole life going on.

Kristen Knapp (08:48)
Yeah, I mean it seems like you’ve had such a good mindset building what you have today. How many employees do you have now?

Sam DeMaio (08:54)
We’re 65 employees with my main showcase business and we’re 10 employees with my one day bathroom division of the business.

Kristen Knapp (09:01)
That’s incredible. It really seems like you just have one of those attitudes where you’re like, I can do this, so I’m going to build it.

Sam DeMaio (09:07)
yeah, yeah, as much as you say you can, you definitely can, and if you say you can’t, you definitely can’t. And I live by that.

Kristen Knapp (09:12)
Absolutely.

Totally. then so remodels can be really messy and unpredictable. Can you think of a time where things didn’t really go as planned and you kind of recovered from that?

Sam DeMaio (09:58)
That’s like an everyday occurrence. yeah, mean, listen, you’re going to have ups, you’re going to have downs. You just got to do the sum of the wins and hopefully that outlasts the losses and just never give up. like perfect example is, you know, Sunday night. Actually, I’ll give you the story this way. Monday during the day, I get a text from one of the some lady I know and she says, Hey, is this your company? So I look, it’s on Facebook, somebody one o’clock in the morning.

Kristen Knapp (09:59)
Yeah.

Sam DeMaio (10:24)
crashed one of my vans into back of a car and pushed it 50 feet. So I’m like, now listen, that could end somebody’s career, right? Well, it did end his, but it could end, it could be really bad. So thankfully, God bless that no one was injured and here he just made the wrong decision. And he’s been with me for a long time, 12 years, and it was hard for me, but I had to let him go. And I just move on. You just try to get better from that.

Kristen Knapp (10:27)
no.

Sam DeMaio (10:51)
As far as the jobs, like the flip houses that I do, we’re in and out usually four to six weeks, unless it’s something that we’re doing an addition or something like that. I have a 42 point checklist that I made up for every job this way, because we do about 17 to 22 jobs a day. So being able to have those organized into our CRM is very important. So I feel like over the years I polish it and we’re still polishing it like today, right now, 10 o’clock to 1130.

I have my senior leadership, have their L10 meeting upstairs, so we have an L10 meeting. I have a training center now. We pretty much have a podcast room too, and ⁓ we do a lot of stuff with the employees and try to build the culture up.

Kristen Knapp (11:27)
All set.

Yeah, I mean, I hiring is such a difficult part of the job and you have so many people working for you. How have you been able to navigate that?

Sam DeMaio (11:37)
Okay,

so every contractor asks me, how do you hire? How do you find good qualified help? And the answer for me is I really don’t know. Other than my experience. So in the beginning, if it’s just you and you’re trying to get a helper or trying to get a carpenter, it’s really hard. You’re not proven, there’s no guarantee of work, there might not be medical insurance, there might not be a 401k. There probably ain’t, because you’re just getting started.

Kristen Knapp (11:45)
Hahaha

Sam DeMaio (12:01)
and you’re trying to find, know, A players, it’s almost impossible. you know, work with a minimum budget too, you kind of build yourself up little by little. And then, you know, once you start gaining traction and gaining a following, gaining customers and becoming known in the industry, I feel like, you know, that’s when all of a sudden, know, something at a certain point starts clicking where the employees, you that you built the culture, they tell their friends who might also be working in the same field. That’s just normally what happens.

Generally, carpenters are friends with carpenters, doctors are friends with doctors, lawyers are friends with lawyers. So they start telling everyone how they’re treated. And if you treat everyone like you want to be treated, I feel like that automatically brings in a handful of more than qualified people that want to work with you. So from there, I feel like that’s where I people calling me, reaching out on Instagram and Facebook every single day. maybe they’re just asking for advice. Maybe they’re.

you know, looking for job, maybe they’re looking to do their first flip, or listen, maybe they have a deal. So I did speaking events, I did for like a wholesale hour, it was about 400 people in the room, you know, after it was over, I was hungry. But there was like a line of people waiting to talk to me. So as I’m sitting there talking, know, this is what I know, opportunity, we’ll go back to opportunity, you know, one of the ladies in there was talking to my wife, which my wife doesn’t like to talk to anybody, she’s very much an introvert, like she does all the books and stuff.

I’m not that smart so I just do the talking. So she started saying, hey I got this house, it’s in Marguerite, it needs to be sold by Monday, and it was Wednesday. So I went out there the next day, went out there Thursday, I said yeah I’ll take it, I bought it for 500, I just sold it 1.1 million. So put about 200 into it. So those things happen to me all the time so I feel like I’m blessed that way. But again, you gotta work through the hard times to make the easy times and easy, even when it gets easy, it’s not easy, it’s just you’ve been doing it for so long.

Kristen Knapp (13:21)
I’m

Sam DeMaio (13:46)
that it’s not easier, it’s just you get better at dealing with it. So I feel like that’s something you just gotta deal with.

Kristen Knapp (13:51)
Totally, and going back to your hiring processes, I do feel like it’s a trickle down from the top. And you seem like you have such a great attitude about things, and you seem like a great guy to work with. So I think that’s probably why you’ve had a lot of success, without really trying.

Sam DeMaio (14:04)
Yeah,

Kristen Knapp (14:47)
Yeah.

Sam DeMaio (14:46)
absolutely. I’m definitely crazy. I tell everyone, I’m nonstop working.

I am nonstop working. Even when we go down the shore from Thursday night after work and then I come back Monday morning. But even when I’m over there, I literally build a network down the shore now. So from October till May, I already have two of my crews already fully booked. So we got banter, we got kitchens. I built a new construction house down North Wildwood. We bought a showboat, it’s motel. I bought it two or three years ago.

I bought that for a million dollars cash and we put about 700 into it and I sold it for 3.2 million. So, you know, just being around, you down the shore and you could actually have fun and make money and then once you find friends that do the same thing, all of a sudden it’s nothing but that. it’s, you know, we definitely have a lot of fun but I definitely work hard every single day.

Kristen Knapp (15:29)
Wow, that’s amazing. And how do you build trust with clients who are maybe nervous about the process of renovation?

Sam DeMaio (15:35)
So I think what we did is a couple things. Number one, since we’re more referral based than anything else, I think I’m able to capture almost like a built in cheerleader by making these clients, just by talking to them, making them aware of what we do, how we do it, and our process. So I think when we go to the sale, it’s not like we’re really competing against anybody, we’re really not. There’s zero competition. There’s only one person I compete with.

every single day and that’s myself. So I try and be better than yesterday. And you know when I go into a job like the other day, I went to another construction company’s house. He called me up, he said, hey I hear you’re the man. He got referred by a guy who owns a real estate company. Separately he got referred by a guy who sold his roofing company to a PE company recently. So and I did that customer’s kitchen.

It’s not like anything else that you’ve seen before it’s really knocked out like everything glows that the countertops light up It’s like something out of it’s like it’s like a Vegas vibe, but it but in Hamilton, New Jersey, so So when I went over there, I saw his house and it’s it’s beautiful I mean get fountains going on outside and you know, it’s 7,000 square feet the kitchen’s 2,000 square feet and He happens to own a construction company something in the back of my head. Why is he?

Kristen Knapp (16:36)
cool.

Sam DeMaio (16:54)
going to hire me to do his construction. But I went in there anyway and he said listen listen, you know have a hundred trucks on the road right now and I do do construction but I can’t do what you do and I want someone like you that could do a design build and I need your head. He goes I already know what you do and what you’re capable of and I looked you up and then when I saw you at that wedding a couple weeks ago I already knew who you were so I already knew I was hiring you so just let me know. It wasn’t even like price it was he’ll know I’ll be fair. It was hey

Let me know what you can do to my master bathroom to make it the best. No problem, I can do that. And I think in starting to do things that other people aren’t doing or can’t do or just haven’t done and being able to take that on and give it that best shot, hey listen, do I hit it every time? No. If I did, God, the only person that did that, they hung him to the cross and that was Jesus, right? So he’s the only guy that never made a mistake.

Kristen Knapp (17:33)
Thank

Sam DeMaio (17:42)
But for me, I feel like going into different people’s houses and using my mind and using my passion to create spaces that no one else has, I think that’s been pretty much my gift. So that’s kind of where I’m at with that. And I got in and I do every Eagles player. So all the Philadelphia Eagles, I do all their houses. I do all the coaches’ houses. do all those people. from one guy I met after an Eagles game, and we’ll talk about that another time, because that was a… I met him after the game and…

you we became pretty much best friends and I talked to him almost every day he calls me for advice I mean these guys you know again they’re not really you know business-wise they don’t know sports they’re superstars they you know they pretty much get catered to their whole life until like they’re done and then once they’re done with you it’s like a business once the business doesn’t need anymore they kick it to the side so you know from there hey you need to create opportunity and for me I say hey you got a lot of money don’t buy that

fancy Rolls Royce or that Lamborghini. Don’t do any of that. Go buy properties and start running them out. And they do that and make a lot of money.

Kristen Knapp (18:45)
Absolutely, I mean, that’s such good advice. mean, yeah, how did you get linked up with those people? Just through referrals?

Sam DeMaio (18:52)
So here I’ll tell you a quick story. So my realtor, so I like playing football, I don’t like watching football. I got ADHD, I don’t even watch TV. I do have a million TVs in my house, I don’t use not one of right? So my realtor says, hey listen, you gotta come to the Eagles game with me, we’ll get season tickets. I said, I’m not really interested. My wife’s like, yeah, yeah. She likes it more than me, she likes watching it. So I guess her dad’s big into it, I never got big into it. So I said, yeah, yeah, how much are they?

Kristen Knapp (18:54)
Yeah. ⁓

Sam DeMaio (19:17)
Well the tickets are $34,000 for the seat. said $34,000? Absolutely not. He said, yeah, that’s for four of them, two and two. I said, nah, I have zero interest in that. My wife said, let’s do it, let’s do it. And I said, what do you get out of it? He said, well, you’re with the players and the families after the game. You get special seating, you get special invites to different things. You’ll meet the players, you’ll get work. I’m like, well, John, you’ve been doing it for three years and you haven’t got anything yet. So I don’t know how I am. So fast forward, first year.

Kristen Knapp (19:20)
you

Sam DeMaio (19:44)
I go to all the games, you my wife goes all the games. She’s like I said, she’s a bigger fan than me. A Monday night game, we have school on Tuesday, we got the kids. So I bring my friend. After the game, I’m a little tipsy, maybe a lot tipsy. And I’m outside, I see one of the players. I have no idea who they are. I only knew like the quarterback’s name, that’s about it. My wife knows every single name and so does everybody else.

Kristen Knapp (19:57)
You

Sam DeMaio (20:07)
⁓ I started joking around with him, I I could take him out, I told him I should be playing, taking his spot. And he’s talking about having the bathroom done and he knows because the guy standing next to him, I did his friend’s basement and it was killer. I did it like eight years ago. So long story short with that, I ended up getting his phone number. After that we went to a club and I got home around three in the morning and my wife’s like, whose number is this? So I must have told her, I forget. So in the morning she texts me again, who’s this number in your phone?

Kristen Knapp (20:19)
Nah.

Sam DeMaio (20:33)
that you’re texting back and forth. said, I don’t even remember, I’ll be honest with you. She’s like, call it, call it. said, I’m not calling, I’m not calling. So I’m thinking, oh my God, I went to a strip club last night. I’m like, I hope to God. I called, like, you know let me just do it. I don’t remember. I call in and the guy’s like, hey, Sam, what’s going on? When are you coming over for my bathroom? I’m like, oh thank God. Thank God, thank God. So long story short, I ended up, you know, linking up with him. I did his first bathroom as we’re doing his first bathroom.

Kristen Knapp (20:50)
Yeah.

Sam DeMaio (20:58)
He had my guys ripping out a second bathroom. I never gave him a price for that. So I said, Vin, I said, got more customers, you know. He said, no, no, I need to do all the bathrooms. I said, we will, but I got to space it out. Like got this schedule, I had a bye bye. So I did finish the second bathroom because we started it. And then I came back and I did his whole entire house over the next year. And it is crazy. I’m going to, I’m not going say I’m good at drawing, but I like to draw. So literally I drew out like different ceiling ideas and he goes, just do them all, do them all. So we did his whole house and crazy ceilings.

that I came up with different ideas that I thought fit his style and personality. And from there, he literally gave me referrals to every single one of those guys. And we became friends over the years.

Kristen Knapp (21:36)
I mean, that’s a much better story than I thought I was going to get. That’s amazing.

Sam DeMaio (21:39)
I don’t know if I wanted to tell you, it’s a little embarrassing,

but that’s what it was. That’s what you get.

Kristen Knapp (21:45)
That’s amazing. you’re, I mean, it sounds like you just do the most creative, unique renovations. Can you talk about something that you’re really proud of?

Sam DeMaio (21:52)
yeah, yeah like doing it, it’s fun to do. going to work, doesn’t even feel like work. It feels like, hey, what do get to do today? It’s cool, either helping somebody else out or trying to build somebody else up or bringing some new talent. It’s really fun to watch it unfold right out your eyes and watch it grow.

Kristen Knapp (22:08)
That’s amazing. So what’s next for your business?

Sam DeMaio (22:11)
So business-wise, I feel like for Showcase, I’m at a level where I don’t think I want to get much larger than I am. I’m actually very, very happy where I am. I’ll let it organically move. But for my one-day bathroom division, I’m all in. I’m spending $17,000 to $23,000 a month on advertising. I’m bringing in pretty much a proven system because

When I started Showcase, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t learn anything. you ⁓ know, I learned so much just from one book, Traction from Geno Wickman. I tell everyone, I don’t care what you’re doing in life. You need to read that book because that book changed my life. Definitely. And on top of that, I ended up hiring the coach, which again, I thought I didn’t need a coach ever. So I hired the coach from Traction, brought it to my team. We started doing the meetings. At first I got massive pushback, massive, but no one to do it. They’re totally against it.

And then after while, you know people just start falling into place because again I had a great a great people group people that we worked together forever But everyone did everything so no one was accountable for anything and the problem with that is you know when an issue happens Hey, I thought you did I thought you did it. It’s a bunch of pointing figures and nothing gets done Versus now you have accountability you have you know, everyone has a box

I think the biggest thing, what I did wrong was, and I don’t it’s wrong, it’s just, know, just loyal. You know, some of the people that worked for me, they don’t fit in that box. That should be. I make adjustments. So the coach is like, hey, you know, you you ain’t doing it right. You know, I said, yeah, I get it. But I got here because of them and I can’t, I don’t think I’m ready to move to that next step and just shut those people out just because those boxes didn’t fit. However, on the other side of the one day bathroom,

My boxes are very definitive. They’re super defined to the point where if you don’t fit in that box, you don’t have the job. So I don’t know you. I don’t know what you can do. And this is what it is. And if you fit in here, great. If you don’t, you’re gone. So doom building that second business was a cake. It was cake. I studied it for a year because I really didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand marketing. That’s why I bought that company, too. I wanted to learn. It was an expensive lesson. But I’m picking up from there.

And the one day bathroom division, we now have three salesmen there. We have three installation crews. We’re doing about 30 to 40 bathrooms a month. Our revenue for our first full year in effect, is the following, last February I started. Not this past year before, but this is my first year starting from scratch. We’ll do $4 million in our first year. And now I know how to actually scale. I know how much money to put in.

Kristen Knapp (24:28)
Bye.

Wow, that is so impressive.

Sam DeMaio (24:45)
to get the money out in the market. Once you understand that, and I don’t have it perfect, but I have it enough where I know to make money.

Kristen Knapp (24:46)
Right.

Absolutely, and is that also in the Jersey area, the bathroom division?

Sam DeMaio (24:54)
That’s

Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and then we’re gonna be moving out to Florida soon. Cocoa Beach with one of my friends that’s been a custom builder out there. He’s about to retire. I’m about to bring him out of retirement so we can have a lot of fun doing that. Because he flew up there, he saw me, he saw the pass, he goes, Sam, I’m bored. I said, good, I got a good job for you. I’m do that together with him. So I’ve been looking at properties to buy down there for myself as Airbnbs. I could use it where I’m not there. And then commercial properties I’m looking for as well.

for my space.

Kristen Knapp (25:20)
That’s incredible. So where can people find you? I know you’re very active on social media.

Sam DeMaio (25:25)
Yeah,

under Sam Demayo, S-A-M-D-E-M-A-I-O on Instagram, ⁓ TikTok, and ⁓ Facebook, and then ⁓ also Showcase for Models. Showcase for Models is the main company, so you kind of find us there. And then you Google my name, and you’ll see all the good stuff that we’ve done. We give away a bathroom to a veteran every year. This year we made it on Fox News, which is pretty cool. I’m also a part of Wigs and Wishes, which is a nonprofit for ⁓ women with cancer.

We were able to do over 27,000 wigs last year. So we’re doing that. with my marketing company, what I did was we do small business, big heart. So all the businesses that I picked, so they’re all good people. Every quarter we try to do something back for the community.

Kristen Knapp (26:04)
That’s amazing. I mean, it sounds like you’ve built, I mean, not only one, but two incredible businesses and it seems like you’re giving back as well. So that’s awesome.

Sam DeMaio (26:11)
Yeah, yeah, that’s

what it’s all about. You really can’t buy that. You really can’t buy no money. Some of the faces on some of these kids and some of these women, it’s priceless.

Kristen Knapp (26:20)
Yeah. well, this was, this has been so great. It’s gone by so quick. ⁓ thank you so much for all of your great insight and stories and all of that. And everyone, please check out Sam’s social media, check out, ⁓ the business website as well. And yeah, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you. All right. Well, I’ll see you guys next time. Subscribe if you love this podcast. Thank you.

Sam DeMaio (26:35)
Thank you for having me.

See ya.