
Loading summary
Indeed Sponsor
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job posts the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. That's Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored jobs.
Ad Host
You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free
Travis
30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool on
Ad Host
the planet, just go to gohighlevel.com travis.
Travis
What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Travis Makes Money podcast where it's a mission to help you make more money. Today on the show, I'm talking to a new friend, Owen Barrett. Owen is the founder of a solar company that he has taken to over $50 million in revenue in just the past three years alone. And this is not first thing that he's done in this space. And now they're helping young people with becoming skilled tradesmen to make sure that they can have great income for themselves. So there's plenty of things to talk about on this episode. Owen, thanks so much for taking the time, man. Welcome.
Owen Barrett
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Travis
So, first things first, let's talk about your story a little bit more. Then we'll talk a little bit more practical stuff. Tell me the first time you ever made a dollar where you were shocked or excited. Like the first time someone paid you money and you're like, I can't believe that just worked.
Owen Barrett
You know, I had a paper route I think, while I was in middle school and I was making an unbelievable amount of money. So not just $1. Yeah, I was making like 300 bucks a week as a, you know, a 12 year old.
Travis
Yeah.
Owen Barrett
So that to me was like, it was eye opening to just, if you like, that's really what started this sort of grind mentality of like, if you work hard, you probably will make a lot of money.
Travis
Did you, were you also doing the. Because I know like different paper routes are different for different people. Were you also doing like the, the money collection on the route or were you just delivering the paper?
Owen Barrett
No, I was delivering papers for, for paper called the Hartford Courant in Connecticut. And you know, I would, I can't remember if I was probably at 1099, I can't remember, but I Would get a paycheck from them. And if I missed a, like delivery, I forgot somebody's house or they were on vacation, they weren't supposed to get a paper, I would get dinged for that.
Travis
I see.
Owen Barrett
But it was more like, like a paycheck style job.
Travis
Was it your parents that encouraged you to get a job at 12? Was that you wanting to make money? Where did that come from?
Owen Barrett
It was me. And my parents had worked for the Hartford Current as reporters. So they like got me in the door as a, as a paper boy. But it was, it all came for me. Like, I've always, I've just always wanted to do my own thing in all aspects of life. And how I spend my money and how I get my money has been like, at the top of that list.
Travis
What did you end up doing for like, after high school? What were like, you, you say you were always trying to do your own thing. Did you, did you immediately just go like, I'm gonna start a business, or did you go the college route? What, what. How did you end up?
Owen Barrett
Yeah, no, I did go to college. You know, I was always interested in like entrepreneurship, but I went to college. It was a little business school in Boston. And I thought I was gonna be an investment banker again, like, work hard, make a lot of money. But I was also teaching at a rock climbing camp during the summer. And that really had this like, profound impact on my life where I started to recognize that you don't have to hate work. Like, you can like what you do. And that's sort of when I started to change my perspective of maybe there's a way to work hard and make good money, but be passionate about what it is that you're doing. And so that kind of shifted gears out, like, away from the investment banker route.
Travis
Yeah. And obviously that ended up working out
Owen Barrett
pretty well for you.
Travis
What did you.
Owen Barrett
Worked out? Great.
Travis
Yeah. What did you do first?
Owen Barrett
So I had, you know, I, I went to college for finance. I played soccer on the collegiate team. I worked 20 hours a week. And like, we ran the. My buddy and I ran the intramural program for the school. And then I got a job in the finance industry. And then I moved to California. I worked in the finance industry there. Really understood that I liked numbers, but I didn't like the finance industry. Again, that, like.
Travis
Can you clarify a little bit? Like, so you say you worked in the finance industry. What exactly does that, does that mean?
Owen Barrett
So in Connecticut, I was working at ing, which is like a big insurance company, doing like risk mitigation for them. But I was also working there in 2008, like, in the great financial crisis, working in one of the industries, I was hit the hardest. So ING stock when I started, I think, was $102, and when I finished, it was trading under a dollar. So it, like, crashed and burned. Yeah. And then in. In San Francisco, I was working at a proxy research company who Elon Musk has recently come out and called, like, domestic terrorists, because they basically persuade, like, institutional owners of stocks how to vote. And he thinks that, like, you can get more into that if you want, but I mean, anyway, it was. It was doing, like, very quantitative research for publicly traded companies and the institutional owners in terms of, like, how they should vote on, you know, executive compensation or boards of directors or things like that.
Travis
Wild. Wild. What did you take away from your time in the finance space?
Owen Barrett
I hate the finance industry. That's why that was my biggest. Like, I was like, these, you know, working in Excel is interesting. Like, really interesting how you can use a very simple, like, financial model to persuade decisions. But I was like, this whole industry is not for me. It's just.
Travis
Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't the practice of finance that was upsetting to you. It was just the way that that corporate structure of the. Of the industry tended to.
Owen Barrett
I just had no, like, personal connection to what I was doing. I was like, I'm helping, you know, I don't know, bank of America decide on whether the CEO of some public company should make $20 million a year or $25 million a year. I was like, what. What am I doing with my life? Like, this just has no impact on anything.
Travis
Yeah, that's not the. That's not the impact that you were hoping to have. Yeah. Okay, so. So tell me. Tell me the first. The first time that you stepped out and started your own thing.
Owen Barrett
Well, so I went to. In college, I tried to start a recycling company, you know, specifically reverse vending machines. So, you know, every Saturday and Sunday morning, you'd wake up to just mountains of beer cans in the garbage, like, in the dumpsters. And I was like, man, there's, like, this is worth money, right? In New England, there's a bottle bill. It's all worth 5 cents. With 5 cents alone, it's not that much, but it could add up. So tried to, like, just came up with a rough sketch and then really just hit a bunch of roadblocks, mainly that I didn't have any money. Like, reverse vending machines are expensive. You know, where you Put the can in and you get the five cents back. So learned early on that it's hard to start capital like intensive businesses if you don't have any capital.
Travis
No kidding. Yeah. And if you don't have a track record, it's hard to go get other people to give you money.
Owen Barrett
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that was one. Then I started another one while I was. So then I went to grad school after working in finance, I went to grad school to kind of like redirect my career and my first job out of grad and I had a nonprofit in grad school. So again, like my sort of trajectory is I noticed problems and then I've always tried to like think of businesses to solve them. The problem that I noticed in college was we were using like $200 soccer balls, right? Every I played soccer, every year our team would get 25 brand new top end soccer balls. Then the next season we would get another 25 balls. The prior season would go in the storage shed and the balls from two years ago would just go in the garbage.
Ad Host
This episode of the show is brought to you by Fanview. Fanview is a creator monetization platform that enables individuals to build, grow, and monetize their own digital content businesses. You guys know we talk about this all the time here on the show and so I was excited to do this partnership with Fanview because it's a great platform. They have the ability to share exclusive content with your subscribers over there. You can build direct relationships with your audience through their platform, generate recurring income through fan support. So if you are somebody who has has a creator channel or you are thinking about starting a creator channel, you're not sure exactly how to monetize it. Well, Fanview is a great platform to do that through. It's super accessible for beginners. You can make it feel extremely personal to you and to your audience. The connection that you can gain, no matter what niche you're in. You can use Fanview as your platform so you can monetize your content. You can earn as much as you possibly can. It's super low barrier to entry to entry. So it's really easy to get started and there is no experience or audience needed in order to be able to get started making money on the platform. Not to mention it's crazy, crazy scalable. So you guys know we talked about side hustles on the show all the time. The couple of the parameters that I look for is, is it really easy to start, low barrier to entry to start, and if it starts going well, is it something that's potentially scalable beyond what your full time job is capable of earning you? And Fanview definitely has those potential things there. So if you're already creator or you're thinking about becoming creator, you're not exactly sure how to monetize the platform that you're building. Then go check out FanView, visit www.FanView.com today at and launch your creator career. That's Fanview. F A n v u e.com fanview.com
Travis
Chime is changing the way that people bank. They offer the most rewarding fee free banking that's built just for you, not the 1%. Chime members can benefit from up to 1150 in annual rewards fee free.
Ad Host
It's rated five stars by USA Today
Travis
for customer service because you get real humans 24 7. You're not just switching banks, you're upgrading to America's number one one choice for banking with a Chime checking account. Plus you can get up to 5% cash back on a Chime card in your category of choice like gas or groceries.
Ad Host
You get savings that grow even faster
Travis
with 3.75% APY, which is nine times higher than the national average. Plus you get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and 24. 7 travel concierge included with your Chime card. You can even get up to $500 of your pay. When you save with my pay, they also have Spotme which lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. I know my younger self would have benefited from this. Chime is not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. So join the millions who are already banking fee free today. Head to chime.com travis that's chime.com travis only takes a few minutes to sign up right now.
Indeed Sponsor
Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services from MyPay and ChimeCard provided by Chime's bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. Stated annual percentage yield on cash back for Chime prime only. No minimum balance required. Checking account ranking Based on a JD Power survey published 10-20-20 Information on APY rates My pay spot me and travel perks go to chime.com disclosures I was
Owen Barrett
like this is crazy. Like these balls are. This is great. And so then I called all the teams in our conference and I was like what do you guys do with your soccer balls when they're 2 years old? Same thing, throw them out. So I was like, man, if I could just get these soccer balls to all of these nonprofits around the world using soccer as like a driver for change. I could just be like the, the equipment guy for these non profits. Yeah. And my, my inventory would be free. But again, like, that's kind great. Yeah. I was like, great, great idea. I still think it's a great idea, but just had no idea how to raise money or like, how do you ask people for money to do this thing that they probably don't care about? So I did a couple trips. We went to Kenya, we went to Haiti. I did like little front fundraisers with friends and family, but it just wasn't. Wasn't sustainable. So that one kind of crashed and burned too.
Travis
Yeah. So what you're telling me is that entrepreneurship's really easy and there's no failure
Owen Barrett
and you should expect success and only success. Just expect your first company to work out really well, because it probably will.
Ad Host
What?
Travis
Tell me, tell me, like, along the way, what was the first time that you felt like, this one's gonna work? Like, I'm like, I'm in a position where, like, I have figured something out here. I don't know exactly how it's going to come together. There's probably a bunch of other obstacles in the path here, but I feel like I'm onto something.
Owen Barrett
I mean, honestly, I feel like that every time I have an idea, I'm like, this one. And that's like, to me, that's like a really important characteristic of an entrepreneur. Like, you have to be optimistic. But the first time that I, that I like, re. The first time that I went all in, right. I quit my job. I was like, I'm doing this full time. It at the. It started as a lighting company. So this is. Was like in 2000, 2015 maybe right around the time that LEDs got super popular. And I was like, it's basically free money. You swap out your lights to led. If you're a big company or a city with a bunch of street lights, you make your investment back in a year. Like, it's like the easiest energy project to pitch. So I was like, this one, this is gonna work. You know, didn't. It didn't work. Again, same thing. Like when 18 months trying to sell. Sell lights and ran. You know, I saved up money in my 401k. I spent all that I was on food stamps. And then like, right as I was about to move back to Connecticut, I was like, man, like, it's about to hit the fan. I was going to have to move back home. Like, that's when things started clicking finally. And then the rest is kind of like, kind of history from that one, one first sale.
Travis
Wait, wait, so. So the lighting company specifically.
Owen Barrett
Yeah. So found like identified this weird grant in California was a five year grant where they're giving money to school districts, public school districts, public charter schools to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy. The California Energy Commission would publish every week how much money every single school district had and how much it had spent, which was like a gold mine. Right. But the big energy companies were going after the big districts like the LA Unifieds, the San Diego Unifieds, because those districts had like $20 million allocated to them. But I noticed nobody was going after the smaller school districts or the charter schools where they still had like 500k, a million dollars, two million dollars. And so we just set out on this campaign to get in touch with as many small school districts and charter schools as humanly possible and basically spent the next three years traveling all over California talking with school leaders and convincing them to do lighting upgrades.
Travis
Wow, that's crazy. So what ended up, what ended up happening with that business?
Owen Barrett
I ended up selling that at the end of three years. Like the grant ran out, but we had, you know, I think we had like 42 projects all over the state. And so I sold it on the like, recurring service re a contractor.
Travis
Oh, great, great, awesome. And then rolled it into the next business pretty immediately. Did you already have an idea of what you wanted to do after that? Was there something on the horizon? Did you take some time off?
Owen Barrett
I thought I was done. I thought I was retired. Look, I made a killing in those three years and I was like, that's it. Like, I bought a house financially free. I don't need to work. Paid off my debt. But you know, that's a. When you're, whatever, 27 and like, curious, it's hard to hang up your, your boots at that point. So I started investing in.
Travis
It's impossible to hang up your boots.
Owen Barrett
Yeah, it's probably impossible. I think. Yeah, I, I think, you know, regardless of the amount of money that you make, if you have a certain personality type, you're probably never gonna stop.
Travis
Yeah. And, and, and honestly, like, you shouldn't. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, I, I've talked about that a little bit on the show, gotten some flack for it online. Is that my, it's my personal belief, like, even if you can retire early, that you shouldn't retire early. Like, I, I just think that the, the concept of retirement is, is relatively New in human history and doesn't make any sense to me. Like, the. The concept of retirement sort of. Sort of necessitates the idea that you don't like doing what you do for work. You know what I'm saying? Like, so.
Owen Barrett
Yeah, so, yeah, exactly.
Travis
Of course you want to retire, because why would you want to continue doing this? And it's like. Well, I'm not necessarily even saying that you have to work in order to collect a paycheck or you have to work in order to build an insane amount of wealth if that's not what you want to do. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you. That we as human beings, and especially as men, I believe, derive purpose and meaning from the work that we do in the world and the contribution that we give to society and our family and the people around us and things like that. And we. Even if you're set financially and the work that you're doing has nothing to do, like, you could go buy a farm and just work the farm and like, not making like. But doing something. You know what I'm saying? Like, you got to have some sense of, like, I'm a competent something.
Owen Barrett
Oh, yeah, I agree. I think. I think a lot of people. Yeah, a lot of people retire and then they. They have. No, they're not doing. They're not, like, I don't want to say improving, but they're not working on anything, whether it's like an activity, a hobby, you know, like what we call work.
Travis
Yeah.
Owen Barrett
And they get depressed. And so I agree with you. I think. And I also have this, like, you know, pessimistic view on the world where it's like 99% of everyone on the planet does not do anything meaningful. And if you're in that 1% where you feel like you're a change agent and, like, you can get shit done, it's kind of selfish to not do anything.
Travis
Yeah, I like that mentality a lot, man. So. So tell me. So tell me. Tell me the timeline then. What was it? You know, from. From the real. Is the realization that, like, I'm not going to be able to stop. I got to do something else. Was your. Was your. Did you already have, like, a list of ideas? Like, here's what I wanted. Here's a list of ideas. What should I do next? Or was it sort of like, I'm. There was another problem I experienced and now.
Owen Barrett
Yeah.
Travis
Solve this problem. What was it?
Owen Barrett
I wish I was that creative where I could, like, come up with A list of ideas, but that's, that's not my skill set. I've always created business around problems that I, that I experience firsthand. And so I, I started investing in multifamily real estate through what's called a syndication. So like small group of guys usually buy an apartment building and it's funded by limited partners. And so I was a limited partner and right out of the gate I recognized how behind the times the general partners were about seeing energy as an opportunity. So everyone had sort of, they've come to the same conclusion, which is like energy is just a cost and we pay it and it's going to go up 3% a year and there's nothing we can do about it. And I came into this investment with like 10 years of experience eliminating energy from budgets because it's so easy and accretive to like the, you know, the, the OPEX or the operating budget that I was like, what do you guys mean? You're not doing anything with energy? Like you would rather try to renovate all 300 units in 3 years than just install solar and like instantly slash 100k from the operating budget? Yeah. And so I tried to talk to a bunch of these multifamily operators about sort of combining like the traditional, what's called a value add approach to multifamily investing with a solar value add strategy. And nobody was into it, like nobody. And everyone was like, now we don't need to do that. I don't get it, it's too risky, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you just hear that enough times and you're like, fine, I'll just go do it.
Travis
Yeah, let me prove it to you.
Owen Barrett
Yeah, exactly. So that was like the next, you know, call it three years of my life was like proving this model to, to the industry.
Travis
And were you. So at that point did you start acquiring your own buildings and, and installing solar or were you trying to sell solar projects to syndicators?
Owen Barrett
At first I was trying to sell solar and it didn't work. So then I teamed up with a real estate company and we bought 650 units worth about 75 million throughout the Midwest and self performed the solar on those properties. Got it.
Travis
And when you bought the were most of these value add apartments, they were all. Yeah, all of them. So C class.
Owen Barrett
Yeah, C class, B class. We had a couple like even A class, what I'd call value add, where it was like a loss to lease play. But yeah, I mean there was all some, some level of like traditional value add. Coupled with this solar value add.
Travis
And so the solar, from your perspective, you would, you would purchase the solar, which would basically like solar for an apartment building. I assume we're talking, you know, pretty large systems here, but that intention was how do we, how do we use our capex to lower our opex without having to like shift around renters and renovate units kind of.
Owen Barrett
So basically for every dollar you increase net operating income, which is like net profit for an apartment building, you basically increase the value of the property $20. So if you increase rent a hundred dollars, you just increase the value of the property $20,000. If you decrease operating expenses by a hundred thousand dollars, you just increase the value of the property by $2 million. And so my whole perspective was like, you guys are pulling out your hair, renovating units, you know, then like rifling through these renovations, 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. And so we just partnered and said, you guys deal with the, you know, the traditional value add, you manage all the subcontractors, you do the renovations, you do all that. We're just going to do solar, we're going to lift NOI 100 grand, we're going to increase property value 2 million and then we'll just rinse and repeat.
Travis
So did you just raise more money for the syndication in order to cover the cost of both of those things?
Owen Barrett
Yeah, we were raising money from private equity groups, family offices, did a couple like crowdfunding platforms. Yeah, so we raised a lot of money.
Travis
So your partners were still doing the other traditional value add pieces like renovating some of the apartments and things like that. And then you were just like, hey, I'm going to do my part here, make sure that we raise enough to be able to install this multi six figure solar project for this, this apartment building so that we can decrease noi and increase the valuation of the property.
Owen Barrett
Exactly.
Travis
And then your goal was to sell the property as soon as the valuation was increased or did you hold onto that?
Owen Barrett
We always had sort of a, like a flexible exit mentality. I, I'm more of the perspective of like refinance and hold indefinitely because I think that's how like real, real wealth is created. But you know, that's like you have optionality with multifamily just depending on different things.
Travis
So now it's turned into a solar company and you have, you had proof in the pudding, so to speak, at that point where you're like this is what we did. We saw these results. Now let me sell solar to you. Or what did the solar company?
Owen Barrett
Well, like similar to me enjoying finance, but hitting the finance industry. I really like learned that solar, when done right, is accretive to real estate. But I hated asset management. Like we thought we were a solar company for like a solar organization within a real estate company. But you know, when things are going wrong with properties, it's all hands on deck. Everybody has to do everything. And so my partner and I were like, we don't want to do this. Like, we're not asset managers, we're not real estate people. We want to be solar people. We also recognize that the big thing holding back the, the real estate industry from adopting Solar is that 95% of electricity is used by tenants. So only 5% is used by like what's called common area meters or house meters. And if you want to install solar onto tenant meters, which is much bigger systems that generate a lot bigger noi so is more accretive to properties. You have to install one small solar system per apartment unit, which means a 300 unit apartment building. It's 300 small solar systems. That's hard. But the real hard part is how do you monitor 300 systems? How do you bill 300 tenants? How do you do maintenance on 300 systems? And so it took us like two years to really think through how to do that. And ultimately we built our own software platform to automate all of that. And then once we had the software, we knew like, okay, we just unlocked solar for multifamily. Let's pivot back to what we know best and just be a solar company.
Travis
Yeah, we eliminated the barrier.
Owen Barrett
Exactly.
Travis
In most operators minds and, and took away the complexity in this process. Yeah, because man, I feel like multifamily had like a big surge in the last decade or so and a lot of people moving away from single family investing to multifamily investing. And they have their sort of main talking points. But one of my biggest, not necessarily gripes, just it's, it's a con. It's definitely like that. You got pros and cons for all forms of asset management or real estate investing or business or whatever. But in the con column for multifamily is that you're not, you're no longer like being a property manager, quote unquote, does not necessarily encompass what it means to be like a multi family operator. It's, it's almost more like operating a hotel than it is like managing a piece of real estate. If that. If that makes sense.
Owen Barrett
Yeah. I mean, people like to talk about, like, how easy, how passive it is. Is not passive. It's not passive at all.
Travis
Yeah, yeah. The only version of being completely passive is just writing the check to a syndicator and then hoping that syndicator is a good enough operator to be able to write you a check back every month.
Owen Barrett
Yeah.
Travis
For some period of time.
Owen Barrett
Yeah. That's the only way. And then. Yeah, exactly.
Travis
Well, dude, I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of this stuff that the. I love. I love the creative aspect of what you did. I love that. It's like we experienced the problem, we couldn't convince anybody about it, so we just went ahead and did it. And then we proved that it could be done, and then we built a system to make it more simple for those people, and now we're selling it back to them. And obviously it's been working out really well for you. So I appreciate the example that you set in the world and. And the creativity that you employed against some of these strategies and ideas that you had along the way. Owen, where can people go to get more from you and what you're working on?
Owen Barrett
Pretty active on LinkedIn, Owen Barrett. And yes, that's the only social media platform that I'm on at the time.
Travis
Owen Barrett over on LinkedIn. That's B A R R E T T 2 RS, 2 Ts. Owen Barrett over on LinkedIn. Go check out some of the stuff that Owen's up to. I want to appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a busy guy. Don't take that for granted. Everybody else tuning in, remember, money only solves your money problems, but it's easier to solve the rest of your problems with money in the bank. So let's start there. Here on the Travis Makes Money podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Catch you guys next time. Peace.
Podcast Summary: Travis Makes Money – INTERVIEW | Make Money by Finding Problems No One Else Will Solve with Owen Barrett
Released: May 13, 2026 | Host: Travis Chappell | Guest: Owen Barrett
In this engaging episode, Travis Chappell dives deep with Owen Barrett, a driven entrepreneur who turned his knack for identifying overlooked problems into multiple successful businesses, culminating in a solar company generating over $50 million in revenue in three years. Owen shares his journey from a self-motivated paperboy to a creative serial entrepreneur, revealing lessons in perseverance, pivoting, and the real-world skills behind making more money by solving the problems others ignore.
Owen Barrett’s story exemplifies the podcast’s core message: you don’t save your way to a meaningful life, you solve valuable problems that others overlook, persist through setbacks, and build the skills and mindset to create more opportunities. This episode is packed with entrepreneurial insights, especially for those looking to leverage “non-mainstream” skills and observations into scalable, lucrative businesses.