Owen Barrett is the founder of a solar company that has generated over $50 million in revenue in just three years. Before building his solar empire, Owen spent a decade in the energy efficiency space, eventually discovering a massive gap in the multifamily real estate market: operators were ignoring solar as a value-add strategy. After trying and failing to convince syndicators to adopt solar, Owen bought his own apartment buildings, proved the model worked, built proprietary software to eliminate complexity, and then sold the solution back to the industry.

On this episode we talk about:

Owen's journey from failed businesses (recycling, nonprofit soccer equipment) to building a multi-million dollar lighting company

How he identified a major blind spot in multifamily real estate investing: solar as an untapped value-add strategy

Why decreasing operating expenses by $100K can increase property value by $2 million in multifamily

The technical challenge of installing and monitoring 300 individual solar systems on a single apartment building

Building proprietary software to automate billing, monitoring, and maintenance for tenant-meter solar installations

Top 3 Takeaways

Find problems you've experienced firsthand and solve them. Owen's most successful businesses came from identifying inefficiencies he encountered personally—whether it was wasted soccer equipment in college, unused grant money in California schools, or ignored energy costs in multifamily real estate.

For every dollar you increase net operating income (NOI) in multifamily, you increase property value by roughly $20. Solar installations can slash operating expenses by $100K+, creating $2M+ in instant equity without the headache of traditional unit renovations.

If you can't convince people, prove it yourself first. When multifamily operators wouldn't listen to Owen's solar pitch, he partnered with a real estate company, bought 650 units worth $75M, installed solar himself, and showed the industry it worked—then built software to scale the solution.

Notable Quotes

"I noticed nobody was going after the smaller school districts or charter schools where they still had like $500K, a million dollars, $2 million... so we just set out on this campaign to get in touch with as many small school districts and charter schools as humanly possible."

"If you're in that 1% where you feel like you're a change agent and you can get shit done, it's kind of selfish to not do anything."

"You guys are pulling out your hair renovating units, dealing with subcontractors, like all this stuff that just annoys everyone. And meanwhile, you're leaving probably the easiest value-add strategy on the table."

Connect with Owen Barrett:

LinkedIn: Owen Barrett

Shine: https://www.getshine.com/about

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