Welcome to the Focus Capital Podcast with Stephen Simpson - this is an intro to the podcast, a bit about Stephen, and a preview of what to expect in the coming episodes.
About Stephen:
Stephen Simpson is the Founder and Principal of Focus Developments – a Real Estate company investing in quality industrial properties throughout Ontario. Focus provides Accredited Investors an opportunity to invest passively in industrial assets for long term growth and diversification. Stephen has over 20 years of experience in real estate, financial analysis, construction, and engineering. He has led teams delivering Commercial Real Estate and Infrastructure projects worth over $100M during his career. Stephen is a licensed Professional Engineer, an experienced Project Manager, and has a Diploma in Urban Land Economics from the Sauder School of Business at UBC. As Principal of Focus Developments, Stephen executes strategy, investment analysis, and oversees acquisitions and asset management.
Welcome to the Focus Capital Podcast with Stephen Simpson - this is an intro to the podcast, a bit about Stephen, and a preview of what to expect in the coming episodes.
About Stephen:
Stephen Simpson is the Founder and Principal of Focus Developments – a Real Estate company investing in quality industrial properties throughout Ontario. Focus provides Accredited Investors an opportunity to invest passively in industrial assets for long term growth and diversification. Stephen has over 20 years of experience in real estate, financial analysis, construction, and engineering. He has led teams delivering Commercial Real Estate and Infrastructure projects worth over $100M during his career. Stephen is a licensed Professional Engineer, an experienced Project Manager, and has a Diploma in Urban Land Economics from the Sauder School of Business at UBC. As Principal of Focus Developments, Stephen executes strategy, investment analysis, and oversees acquisitions and asset management.
for joining us, and we'll see you next time. Hi guys, Stephen Simpson here. Welcome to the Focus Capital Podcast episode number one. So this is designed to be just an intro episode. We're going to talk a little bit about the sort of background and the kind of rationale behind the podcast, talk a little bit about me and the company, and really just give you guys a bit of an overview of what to expect going forward with with the podcast. So, first of all, a little bit about me. I'm an engineer by trade. I spent about 20 years in the corporate world. I have been investing in real estate for almost 20 years now. And a couple years ago, I started a company called Focus Developments and Focus Capital. And I own and manage that company and run it full time now. And our strategy is to invest and acquire and redevelop industrial real estate here in Ontario. And stemming from that I've met a lot of great people. We've worked on a lot of great projects. And it occurred to me that it would be good to put together a podcast that I would have wanted to have access to 10 years ago. So if I think back in terms of, you know, my journey and my investing career, my professional career, there was a lot of things that You know, that I could have benefited from and in speaking to other investors, to other people in the market, other people in the industry, I know that there's you know, there's just so much knowledge and wealth and expertise out there. And so part of the rationale with the podcast is for it to be really just an ongoing conversation about those things that I'm passionate about, real estate entrepreneurship, business, and personal development as well. And you know, I think personal development, it may, Be a little bit different than those first two topics, but it's really the kind of underpinning for the success in all areas, I think in life. So I think it's important for us as professionals, as entrepreneurs to really get a sense of that. And so part of the podcast, we're going to be you know, delving into some personal development topics as well. So what can you expect with this podcast? As I said, this is designed to be an ongoing conversation. It's going to be a combination of solo episodes where I'm going to be providing some market updates you know, some basically information that I think is relevant in the market for those people that are out there who are either investing in real estate or entrepreneurs and just want to get a better handle on, on what's happening with the economy and the market. So we'll do some solo episodes, just talking about those things. And we'll also have guests on, on the podcast. So I'm going to be interviewing again, people in the industry that I think are interesting, that can provide some value who are maybe doing some of the things that you know, that we talk about in, in other episodes. And you know, really the goal here is to talk to people and bring information forward that I think is going to help us to, help us get better ultimately. And so if we can learn one thing through a podcast episode, maybe we can get a couple tidbits some lessons learned, you know, that's really going to benefit us in terms of speeding up time. It's going to benefit us from learning from other people's mistakes. Maybe it's quite frankly, we've all had those lessons learned that you know, we're happy to share with other people and, and let them kind of benefit from our experience and, and, and trials and things like that. So that's part of it as well. And again, having some conversations again about personal development, because I think, you know, again, if, if we just started looking at business for the sake of business or real estate for the sake of making money or investing and all these other things You know, we really got to bring it home at the end of the day and think about, well, why are we doing all these things? And I think personal development and understanding a little bit more about our psyche and our motives and our mental state is really going to help us understand you know, the end game here because let's face it. I think having success in any endeavor in life is, is great. But at the end of the day, it's, it's really coming back down to the quality of life that you're going to have the relationships you have with people in your family and, and, you know, your, your circle of friends and things like that, and your community. So part of what I want to talk about in the podcast is, is how all those things fit together, because really what we're trying to do here is, is put together a you know, quality of life and a lifestyle that I think can benefit everybody. And that's why we do the things we do. So in terms of what you can expect for the podcast format again, talked about solo episodes, guest episodes. The plan is to release episodes every two weeks. We're going to be releasing them. In a couple different formats. Obviously, it's a video format as well as audio. So we're going to have the podcast release on, you know, all the major platforms. So Spotify, iTunes, where you would typically get your podcast downloads. And then we're also going to be uploading the video portion to to YouTube. So you can have access to it there. In terms of what to expect for upcoming episodes. So we've got a couple in the hopper already. Again, this is just the first episode, more of an intro, but you know, we've, we've already recorded some episodes with some personal development experts, we've recorded some episodes with some real estate experts here in Ontario and also in other parts of of Canada. We're looking to bring on. Experts in different fields. So what the goal is here is to not only be singularly focused on, let's say, real estate here in Ontario, even though that's primarily what I, you know, focus on with, with focus developments and, and focus capital. But I know we've got listeners and, and people that have signed up for a newsletter in, in different parts of Canada. And we want to be able to, you know, make this a little bit more broad in the sense that I think there's principles and there's topics and there's, there's different issues that are going on, which I think are relevant to all of us as investors and as entrepreneurs and as professionals who you know, who, who really want to get better in, in, in many different areas of life. So, so we'll have conversations about the economy in general. We may talk about interest rates. We may talk about inflation and things like that and how all of those things really have an impact on what you're doing with your investments, what you're doing with your business because all of those things are related right at the end of the day. And so we'll be talking about those things. We'll be talking about personal development and giving some market updates as, as well as we go. So, um, the first or sorry, the second episodes that we have coming up right after this one I'll be doing a little bit more of a deep dive into Focus Developments and Focus Capital and, and really kind of our investment thesis and, and why we do the things we do and, and our strategy and that sort of thing. And I think that'll just sort of set the tone for. You know, for what I wanted to get out there in terms of our business model. And I get these questions a lot from people that I meet through networking events or who just connect with me through our contact forms. And they really just want to understand, you know, why. We have the strategy that that we do for, for investing and for setting up our business and investing in the real estate that we do. So we'll, we'll do a bit more of a deep dive into that, into episode number two and get into, to some of those things and some of those topics. So that's it for this first episode. Thanks everyone for tuning in. If you could like, subscribe, leave a review, leave a comment to be really appreciated. And all those things that help us to grow the the podcast as we go. And for any other information, please, I invite you to check out our, website at focuscapital. ca focuscapital. ca on there, there's a ton of great information. There's other podcast episodes that I've recorded. There's a newsletter you can sign up for. So I encourage you to please check it out and I look forward to sharing this podcast with you going forward. Bye for now