‘Betting on Beloit’ Konya Hendricks Schuh Talks Family & Season 2’s Big Projects

Work has just begun for Konya Hendricks Schuh in her efforts to bring the luster back to one Wisconsin community as captured in Betting on Beloit . The real estate broker and home design expert looks to forge her own legacy with Season 2 of the A&E Home Made Nation series, taking even bigger swings than before in terms of renovation projects. 

The businesswoman is the daughter of entrepreneur Diane Hendricks, a self-made billionaire who built an empire from ABC Supply Co. founded in Beloit, Wisconsin. Konya hopes to revitalize homes in an effort to bring people back to the area after a past exodus when manufacturers moved jobs overseas. She has already seen the impact of the work with some renovated homes from the first season selling while others still remain on the market. The latter certainly adds additional pressure to succeed knowing her mom financed the restoration effort. 

It'll take a team effort to see the vision realized. Helping the cause is Konya's husband  Matt (a plumbing contractor and former home builder), project manager Pete, realtor nephew Connor, and her designer friends Kristin and Mitch. It's also a family affair this season with Konya's son Aidan and daughter Addison pitching in with additional sweat equity and support. Ahead of the September 12 Season 2 premiere, Konya opens up about the big projects tackled this time around. 

What's going when we see you for Season 2? 

Konya Hendricks Schuh:Season 2 kind of starts where we're in the midst of everything, because obviously it's an ongoing story. When Season 2 starts, we still have some houses on the market that we're trying to sell and kind of trying to figure out how we proceed forward to keep the momentum going. We decided to keep building and just keep moving forward with the mission. How Season 2's a little bit different, we stay true to the mission, building houses in this historic neighborhood, working to revitalize Beloit, but in that process we take on our biggest renovation that we've done to date. 

Just a giant Dutch colonial house. We redid what had been used for a long time for college housing. We took on our biggest, and then we also took on our smallest. We did a house that was for a first-time homebuyer program, so we were just trying to open it up to different categories of housing because a lot of these homes that we're renovating in the show are very specific to bit more executive type housing when we're done with them. We dove into this first-time homebuyer project, a much more affordable house. We worked on a much tighter budget with that one. So that felt good. 

Betting on Beloil (A&E)

How is it working with mom? Is she more hands-off or hands-on? What does she think of what you've done so far? 

Her thought on what we're doing is she loves seeing this progress in the neighborhood because it's very visual now when you drive through the College Park District. I would say she is encouraging me just to keep going, not be afraid that every house doesn't sell immediately. She's very encouraging of the work that we're doing. She's pretty hands-off. I will bring her through, I don't know if I'd say to get her blessing per se, but just to keep her in the loop as these other projects that we're working on just to keep her engaged. She's pretty hands-off. We get along well together, and my mom and I work together in all kinds of capacities. We sit on all kinds of boards together. We talk about the more commercial projects that are also happening simultaneously, but with these residential flips. I would just say she's very supportive. She's there if I need her for insight.

You work with a lot of family in this endeavor. What do you do so that the business is separate from at home so one doesn't affect the other? 

This is something to navigate since I was born because I'm the youngest of seven kids. Six of the seven of us have all in some capacity, worked for at least one of the family businesses. So, we're all very comfortable working together, and I think, honestly, that we do a really good job when we have family dinners and holidays where we compartmentalize work from our family life. I think that we've been really successful with that, but in this season my mom has been the cheerleader for this. mission and the work that we're doing. No issues there. I continue to work with my husband on these projects. I bring my kids in. They live out of state right now, but I engage them in this work. whenever they're home visiting. My son in particular. We usually put him to work on these projects, just because he's a young, fit guy,, so we usually have him help with, demo and some of the manual labor  when he's around, which I'm sure he really appreciates. 

You mentioned your biggest renovation earlier. What can you say about what went into that particular property? 

Yeah, it's listed for $9.75. We have over a million dollars into it, but it's currently on the market at $975. It's my personal favorite, just the finished product. Not just because it's the biggest, I just like the design direction where it's classic meets modern. It has some really cool details. The kitchen is probably my favorite kitchen that we've done. It has a fabulous butler's pantry. It was a journey just because of its scale, and it didn't have a garage at all. It was a giant house where we ended up finishing the attic, and to gain more square footage, and then actually built a three-car garage to it. The transformation is big. The before and after, I feel like for a viewer, it is really fun to see. 

You also engage in a bidding war on a particular property this season. What can you tell us about that one and why it was so in demand? 

It's this historic home in Beloit. It just has a ton of history, and people are familiar with this house. It has a separate carriage house, and just all kinds of cool historic details everywhere you turn, but it's not in the neighborhood we traditionally do this work in, which is called Beloit College Park. It's actually on the other side of the river in Beloit's other historic neighborhood. Even though it wasn't in our neighborhood, we just felt like it fit the mission. It was going up for auction. Being such a special house in Beloit, we were hoping to get our hands on it. We also had to be somewhat practical as to what we were willing to pay. 

'Betting on Beloit' (A&E)

What is the market like? Did the show help at all in drawing visibility for these listings?

Locally, yes, but maybe half of our sales so far have been people moving into Beloit. Quite a few of them are actually not familiar with the show when they set up their initial showing. So far so good when we share  in their walkthroughs that the house has been on the Beloit [show], and they can check it out online and everything. They usually really like that. It's exciting and fun, so I feel like it's been more of an attribute as far as marketing locally. Beloit only has 36,000 people, so it's a pretty small community. I do believe most people in Beloit know which houses on the market that were a part of the show. Now we currently only have one house left on the market that was a Season 1 house still for sale. We're still very hopeful. We actually have a good showing tomorrow that sounds very promising, so my fingers are crossed. Then our Season 2 houses,  we had a lot of success, but we've got a couple that are still on the market as well. I don't lose sleep over the big one because it's so unique. It's obviously going to take the right, I'm going to say executive-type buyer for it. I think it's special enough that at some point here someone's going to just fall in love with it. I think when we finished that house, we anticipated that it might be a longer hold because of the price point in Beloit, that's, that's quite high. 

 Related 

Every New HGTV Show Premiering in 2026

What have you taken from this experience of having the show? 

I really had no experience with TV. I went to college for marketing, I've been in real estate my whole life, so I've never had cameras follow me around. I've definitely made lifelong friends with this process. I feel  really supported by the team, so I think I just lucked out there. But as far as the community support, it has been awesome…In general, I feel like the community, especially the small business community in Beloit, has been just exceptionally supportive. It feels really good because they know we're on the same path. We all want Beloit to be a great place to live, and also a destination for people. Just to have Beloit's reputation be something really positive as opposed to where it was, you know, 10 years ago. I just feel like we're on the same team. It feels good to kind of lead the charge. 

Betting on Beloit Season 2 premiere, September 12, 12/11c, A&E

Read the latest entertainment news on TV Insider .