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Trevor Ewen has a passion for helping people automate in the industry they're in particularly in commercial real estate. He is an experienced Software Engineer and Project Manager. He has overseen full-stack teams in clean energy insurance, finance, and media. Notable engagements include Morgan Stanley, HBO, Bloomberg, Honest Buildings and so much more. He has an MBA from London Business School and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
He is currently the Chief Executive Officer of Southport Technology Group and sourcing with Southport Ventures to buy and grow niche software businesses.
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Brett:
I'm excited about our next guest. He has a passion for helping people automate in the industry they're in particularly in commercial real estate as we're talking about today, automating your commercial real estate syndications. He's an experienced Software Engineer and Project Manager. He has overseen full-stack teams in clean energy insurance, finance, and media. Notable engagements include Morgan Stanley, HBO, Bloomberg, Honest Buildings and so much more. He has an MBA from London Business School and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He's head of the great state of New Jersey. Please welcome to the show with me, Trevor Ewen. How are you doing, sir?
Trevor:
Thanks for having me, Brett. I'm doing super well.
Brett:
Excellent. For our listeners to get to know you for the first time, would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Trevor:
So a lot of what I do put together some of the different topics you talk about. I'll try and weave it together in a message that sounds kind of simple and relatable. So I've been a software engineer pretty much since I got out of undergraduate and have worked in the tech industry as a day job. And also in all my entrepreneurial endeavors, my wife and I started investing in real estate passively. In 2014, a lot of folks started with single-family homes. Eventually, we moved up for scale to commercial partnerships, and also do a fair amount of private lending with that, a lot of the goal of that at the time was to the part aspect of trying to deal with the fact that we lived in the highest cost area to buy housing, and it just didn't make a lot of sense for us to spend money on it when we wanted flexibility. And yet, we could go to other parts of the country and get great deals on single-family homes, and even commercial real estate. I think the markets tightened up quite a bit. So some of that thesis has changed. But we're still pretty bullish on some of those other, more affordable markets. And then beyond that, it was a nice way to diversify away from our occupations. You know, she's in finance, but adjacent to tech, and I'm in tech too. So we want to have something physical, something sustainable in that.
Brett:
Awesome. I love the passion for real estate and the passion for business. So I want to take one step back, though, Trevor, I want to go maybe back to the college days or the high school days. I believe we've all been given certain gifts in this life. And these gifts were given to us to be a blessing and help to others. Some people call them strength, some people call them superpowers. So I'm curious, what does maybe one or two of those gifts or strengths that you believe you were given? And how does that help how you help bless people today?
Trevor:
Sure. I'll probably have a different answer for you in 10 years, but as far as I can tell, right now, a couple of things I've got and just naturally had a lot of people told me about them for years, and especially when you're younger, you kind of ignore that advice, particularly when it comes from older folks who've been telling you what to do like your parents or your uncles. But a big one with me was relationships and going deep on relationships, something that I struggled with for a long time to really understand was a huge superpower. And the factor just builds trust, and that obviously came with customers. It came with people I was investing with or bringing more people in on the fundraising side as well. It also factored in with my classmates, especially when I did my master's degree, but also in undergrad. Another big one is I'm pretty good with boredom. Or maybe boredom is not a good way to put up boring topics. So I can really get into the nitty-gritty of something that most other people find just pretty dry. And a lot of that led me to some great opportunities, especially in technology, where there are so many needs in business software, and sometimes in the drier parts of the operation. And then even in investment, trying to look past the flashy stuff and look forward. There are just really good pockets of value. But you've got to get past the photos and take a look at the numbers.
Brett:
Excellent. So relationships, building trust, building deep relationships, and then second, good with some stuff that could be a little bit drier or more boring. Perhaps finding the gold in places other people can't find it. Is that a fair summary, Trevor?
Trevor:
Yeah, I would say so.
Brett:
Awesome. Let's dive right into automating your commercial estate syndication. So what's the number one secret, Trevor, to automating your commercial real estate syndication business?
Trevor:
Well, I think the first thing that I would tell people to think about is don't assume you can do it in one shot. So it's a process of continuous improvement. And so you need to take all your cards, so to speak, which are all your operational problems, and lay them out on the table. So figure out what is not going particularly well. And there is a problem in technology sometimes where people, overvalue technological improvement for its own sake. So a classic example in real estate is people do mailing campaigns. And if you're getting a great response rate on the mailing campaigns, just keep doing them, no need to overthink it and figure out how you can put that into a more digital format the mailing campaigns tend to be pretty good with a lot of the absentee owners of properties anyway. So that's one thing, say, Is this a real problem that I'm having, and is technology actually a solution to this problem, or will create a new problem for me to develop, right. And then once we get to that point of just understanding, okay, these are the three, four, or five things that our business is really struggling with right now. Now, we're going to go through a process of looking for one of the off the shelf solutions that we've got for that, in part because in the build versus by trade-off, by is usually better, when it comes to the software, a particular SAS side, a lot of that is because there's great, great software companies out there trying to innovate around these exact needs, right. So say you're scheduling for property management or maintenance, I'd really encourage people to look at buying existing platforms for that because they're full teams of people just bending over backward. Sometimes with venture funding to try and build a good product for you to use. Some of them might not be that great, but there's no harm in trying. And then the very last piece, and this is what Southport Technology Group will help a lot of people with is okay, now we have the remaining, I call it the last mile, which is a problem or concept they use in postage and shipping, which is the idea of the hardest part of the shipment is the very last mile getting it to the front door. And in the case of the software, the last mile would be the automatable part of the business that is truly bespoke, truly unique to that syndicator or the person who's running that business. And if they're willing to invest a reasonable amount of money that it will take to automate that process, they will have a huge advantage over the competition. But it's all about building those blocks up, right? If you don't even have a domain name, then you got to get that you got to get the basics right first. And this goes for a lot of aspects of investment. I mean, people say, don't go buy the 200 unit building before you actually know how to run a property management team, run your expenses, run your accounting, right, figure that stuff out first. But once you get up to that point, the ability to scale is big. And where I would tell people to look at is key things you want to think about is how can I improve investor outreach? Similarly, how can I improve sourcing on buildings or the other one that we see a lot of is vendor relations as well. And the last thing I'll say is, we see some syndicators, some of the people I've talked to moving into new products. So what they want to do is not only develop products that help their real estate but also move into a new sphere that's actually a technology product.
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