Q1)Please give our readers an introduction to your business. Please include what your business is all about, in which city you are located and if you have offices in multiple locations/ cities.
Ans: Catalyst Equity Partners is a Texas-based privately held real estate investment firm focused on the acquisition and management of Class C and B multifamily properties in high growth markets. Catalyst specializes in investing in and repositioning well located assets with significant value-add potential through the successful execution of a detailed investment strategy and business plan. We bring an institutional approach to acquisitions and asset management to ensures that our deals achieve compelling risk-adjusted returns for our investors. We are located in Texas with offices in Dallas and Houston.
Q2: Please give us a brief description about yourself (it should include your brief educational or entrepreneurial background and list some of your major achievements).
Ans: Shane is a Canadian-born seasoned real estate entrepreneur and co-founder of Catalyst Equity Partners. Shane has 10+ years of experience working at PwC, a Big-4 Consulting Firm, where he led large teams in strategically advising large Fortune 500 companies on ways to improve operations, increase revenues and reduce costs by implementing streamlined processes and technology. Shane started his real estate career with single family rentals in 2010 and transitioned to multifamily investing in 2015.
Shane is involved in all aspects of Catalyst Equity Partners business with a focus on acquisitions, asset management and investor relations. Shane leverages his expertise in large scale project management, analytics and process improvement to ensure Catalyst Equity Partners processes are best-in-class.
Shane is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA, Illinois) and Chartered Accountant (CA, Canada). Shane has a Bachelor of Mathematics degree and a Master of Accounting degree from the University of Waterloo located in Ontario, Canada.
Shane resides in Houston, Texas with his wife and three young daughters ages 4, 3 and 2.
Q3: What inspired you to (start a new business venture) or (to make significant changes in an existing business)? How did the idea for your business come about?
Ans: I have always had dreams of building a business even though I went to school to get a good job. Real estate resonated with me as it was real and tangible and the basic premise of everyone needing a roof hit a chord with me. That said, I got a good job out of college and went up the ranks quickly over a short number of years. However, I was traveling every week for work and it was getting tiring as I was also growing a family with my wife (and now 3 kids). I had been investing in single family since 2010 on a passive long-term strategy. However, I was at the point in life where something had to change and we decided to pivot and get off the road and pursue real estate investing full time. Fast forward, we honed in on multifamily real estate as it was familiar to us, was scalable and we believed we could build a business around it.
Q4: What three pieces of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
Ans: Entrepreneurship is more widely accepted now than it was 10-20 years ago when I was beginning my career. I think the first piece of advice I would give to a budding entrepreneur is that you need to define your WHY. You must have a compelling reason to go down the path as it’s very challenging and only if you have a strong enough WHY, will you be able to push through the obstacles. The second piece of advice is that you need to have build and train your mindset of an entrepreneur. The last piece of advice would be to surround yourself with like minded people that can propel you into taking action, which sometimes means that you have to remove yourself from some circles.
Q5: What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
Ans: I personally believe that entrepreneurship is 90% mental and 10% skill. The top three traits of successful entrepreneur are commitment, confidence and decisiveness.
Q6: How many hours do you work a day on average?
Ans: This is an interesting question that I get asked often. Honestly, when you’re an entrepreneur, work doesn’t feel like work rather it’s part of who are you. So in the regard, I’d say I am always “working” on the business. But in reality, I am working 10-12 hours per day on business related activities.
Q7: To what do you most attribute your success?
Ans: Persistence. I have always had a long-term view and real estate is a very slow business. There were many times where we could have thrown in the towel after encountering countless issues, but I always were committed to success and persisted until we were able to create results.
Q8: How do you go about marketing your business? What has been your most successful form of marketing?
Ans: In the early days, we did not market very well at all. My partner and I are more private in nature and we just focused on building the core elements of the business. Over the last 18 months we have started market on social media: LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Our most successful form has been LinkedIn and LinkedIn Live videos, which has been big hit!
Q9: Where did your organizations funding/capital come from and how did you go about getting it? How did you obtain investors for your venture?
Ans: Our business model is based on pooling investor capital together to purchase large apartments. We have built several relationships through networking with like-minded individuals at industry events. Investors invest in people that they know, like and trust and over the years we have continued to do what we say and say what we do and we’ve fortunately been able to build a strong following of investors. Our biggest compliment is when our investors have had a positive experience with us and refer their friends and family to us.
Q10: What is the best way to achieve long-term success?
Ans: Focus on the long-term value you can bring and do not focus on short-term monetary wins. I am a firm believer that if you have the conviction on what you are doing and you don’t do it for the money, the money will eventually come. Always do the right thing for your stakeholders, investors, etc. as things don’t go perfectly but if you uphold your integrity, it will pay off in the long run.
Q11: Where you see yourself and your business in 5 – 10 years?
Ans: We are enjoying what we do very much and we believe we will have scaled our business significantly with a strong focus on multifamily real estate but we will also have other synergistic businesses in other segments of real estate. We also have a vision to build out some technology that can help real estate entrepreneurs scale their businesses.
Q12: Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?
Ans: There are so many large and small businesses that are very inspiring especially as entrepreneurship has taken off the last 5+ years. I think TESLA is one company that I truly admire. Elon Musk is the truest definition of an entrepreneur with his vision, commitment and confidence and the ability to make very big bets even when everyone doubts him is very admirable.
Company Detail:
Company : Catalyst Equity Partners
Address : 2450 Lakeside Pkwy #150
City : Flower Mound
State : TX
Country: United States
Zip : 75028
Phone : 972-399-9466
Email : info@catequity.com