The French Experience

Jon Sanders always knew he wanted to do real estate in a mountain town. In the past 20 years he's battled the odds to become one of the largest property owners in the Colorado ski town of Steamboat Springs.

Isaac French grew up in a family of builders. As a child, he dreamed of creating his own little worlds. Yet he never expected that he'd become the face of a new trend in hospitality: The micro-resort movement.

You're 23. You realize corporate life isn't what you thought it'd be. If you want to be happy, you need to make a change. What do you do? If you're Donovan Adesoro, you build a duplex out of nothing. Then you do it 40 more times.

After almost 20 years of tech world success, serial entrepreneur Val Katayev pivoted into real estate. How - and why - did this data and digital marketing expert end up building condos?

Grant Reaves had a plan: Stop selling hotels as a broker. Start buying them instead. Rapidly build a hospitality portfolio in the southeast. Instead, he landed in the hidden world of "flex industrial" - and grew to $170M assets in a few years.

Bobby Fijan's American Housing Corporation is using prefabrication to build the urban homes young families need. The technology has attracted a lot of buzz. But Fijan just hopes to save American cities by filling them with kids.

Austin Tunnell built a career in real estate around a sense of purpose and idealistic passion. Then life knocked him into pure survival mode where he had to figure out what he - and his company - were really all about.

Fire, flood, and battles with tenants. Real estate has thrown a lot at Rachael Jones. That's one of the reasons she loves it.