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Show Summary
In this episode of the Investor Fuel Podcast, host Michelle Kesil speaks with Evans Gedeon, a fractional CFO and real estate development advisor. They discuss Evans’ dual business model, focusing on fractional CFO services for contractors and real estate development advisory. Evans shares insights on how he helps clients increase profitability, the importance of technology in his business, and his future goals for scaling. He emphasizes the value of building relationships and serving the community, particularly in the real estate sector.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Evans Gedeon (00:00)
So right now what’s really been keeping me busy ⁓ and it’s because of our marketing initiative is the fractional CFO services. ⁓ It’s primarily focusing on helping the subcontractors and contractors. ⁓identify areas where they can increase their profitability.
Michelle Kesil (01:53)
Hey everybody, welcome to the Investor Fuel Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil. Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Evans Gedeon, who’s been making serious moves as a fractional CFO service company, as well as helping people with real estate advisory, development and design. So yeah, I think the listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching.helping people with their finances, development, designing real estate. Yeah, so many topics to dive into. So, glad to have you here with us today.
Evans Gedeon (02:34)
Thank you, Michelle. Thanks for having me. I’m very happy to be on the podcast today and share with the audience my experience and how I can add value to those that are seeking my services.Michelle Kesil (02:47)
Awesome. So yeah, first off for people who are not yet familiar with you and your world, can you give the short version of what your main focus is?Evans Gedeon (02:57)
Yes, absolutely. So Gedeon Financial LLC has two verticals. ⁓ The first service that we offer is the fractional CFO services. And what that is is essentially having a part time chief financial officer within a small business organization. And there’s a need for it currently in the marketplace. There’s a need for someone to dive deep into the financials and explainhow a firm can grow their profitability and that’s what the first facet of my business focuses on. We work with a lot of contractors and subcontractors. Those are the niche that we’re primarily focused on, but we also work with family offices that are in the commercial real estate space as well. For the second side of my business, we have the real estate development advisory firm.
And that particular facet of our business focuses on the development. So everything from design coordination, working with architects, figuring out the highest and best use for an asset, and ultimately selling that asset. That is primarily what the second vertical of our business, the Real Estate Development Advisory firm focuses on.
Michelle Kesil (04:26)
Awesome. And where are you operating these businesses in?Evans Gedeon (04:33)
So.That is a great question. ⁓ For the Fractional COFO services, we can actually work remotely with a lot of our clients. We have people that have reached out to me that are based out of Texas and Pennsylvania, and we’re still evaluating how we can work together. But the updates that we have bi-weekly, and if necessary, more than bi-weekly, can all be conducted remotely.
and for the real estate development services arm our primary focus is in Florida. So right now we have a 300 unit deal that I’m working on. ⁓ It’s in Riviera Beach, which is ⁓ just 45 to an hour minutes ⁓ to an hour north of Miami and that’s projected to be 300 multifamily units. So I’m actually helping the family office underwrite work.
with the local politicians and ultimately ⁓ get the project off the ground. So our real estate development arm is primarily ⁓ Florida driven. As we all know, real estate tends to be local in some capacities when you’re doing development and it’s just easier to focus our development arm in Florida.
Michelle Kesil (06:46)
Can you expand a bit on this real estate development business? What are kind of the services that you offer? Who do you work with? Would love to hear more.Evans Gedeon (06:58)
Yes, so for the second vertical of our business, are actually working with a lot of family offices and one of them is based out of Washington DC and he has been very successful in executing in that mid-Atlantic area. He wants to expand on his geography and I’ve known them for over 10 years now. And so, you know, we ultimately said, you know, we’re going to start looking at somethat makes sense, identify an opportunity and he loves it and so we’re working in tandem to execute on it. ⁓ I also have clients that are actually based out of Florida and I’ve worked with them in ⁓ numerous capacities from structuring their financing to do the development as well as the design coordination to ensure that what they’re building is the highest and best
used for the project. So they’re pretty through all walks of life, but the common theme between all of my clients and the development services arm is they want to do deals in Florida. And so for a lot of family offices, they want to diversify and actually do real estate development services. And they’re looking for someone to execute on it. Someone that can execute for
identifying the site and doing the design coordination and doing the financial modeling and ultimately getting to the closing table and closing and then engaging the general contractors which we have a sister relationship with and ultimately building the project and selling it. So the development services, specific services that we offer is essentially being your in-house developer.
Michelle Kesil (08:59)
Awesome! Love that! What has been your key to keeping this business running smoothly?Evans Gedeon (09:07)
⁓ I have been fortunate enough to have a great ⁓ marketing and IT guy that has really organized my business from an IT standpoint. So a lot of the files that I need to access, a lot of the documents that I need to review, I can do from my phone. ⁓ I can do it remotely. ⁓ So that has been really helpful. Incentive files and receiving files.and download the files ⁓ that’s been really helpful. And then I have also had the luxury as I ⁓ spoke with you previously in working with some really big firms in South Florida that has exposed me to many structures
and many asset classes. And so when I evaluate a deal, I’m able to size it up pretty
quickly by just using a calculator even before I get to sitting down and running the financial models ⁓ because I’m fully aware of how to look at a deal in sizing and know very quickly if it’s gonna fall within the return profile of my client. So ⁓ it’s just a combination of technology and some experience and being exposed to different structure that may
makes
⁓ life seamless. ⁓ But you know, it’s not always rainbows. There are times where I have to sit there and process and you know, it takes some times. the other thing I will say is the invention of artificial intelligence. That’s also been extremely helpful when I run into a jam and I just need a ⁓ second opinion.
and really to help me figure out a solution I’ll run some scenarios through chat GPT and that’s been helpful as well in terms of structuring and scenarios but I was obviously spot-check it but the fact that it can help me think through some of the things that I
would perceive as a bottleneck is huge and so it’s really good to have that tool which kind of helps me get through the bottleneck and start the process again the best strategy moving forward.
Michelle Kesil (12:20)
Yeah, that’s important to know those people and systems that can support you as you hold this large business. yeah. So let me ask you this, what are you most focused on solving or scaling next?Evans Gedeon (12:41)
⁓ so I love what I do currently. I have always found pride in helping. ⁓contractors and subcontractors as well as developers solve problems and while I was working my full-time jobs I’ve had my consulting company for over 10 years and it’s really you know when you’re working in the business you’re not working less than 40 hours it’s not happening so I’m 50 60 hours a week in my full-time role and then finding another 20 30 hours ⁓ in between breaks to do my
consulting business because I found the joy in it and technology made it easy to help a lot of my clients execute on their business plan and so that’s been great ⁓ but it’s it’s a wonderful feeling ⁓
having the ability to help people execute on their business plan. Moving forward, the ultimate goal is to scale my two verticals on the Gedeon Financial LLC and ultimately focus on acquisition and development. I actually have the luxury of having a few financial institutions that are backing me on to more opportunities.
with interest rate being high some of it is difficult to find because they’re existing product but I’m still searching nevertheless and ultimately I want to be able to grow my portfolio not only on the development side but also on the acquisition side so I’m actively working on it and I’ve identified some the right partners but it’s just a process
Michelle Kesil (14:35)
Okay, amazing. Yeah, that is a awesome goal. Love that. Yeah, so which kind of side of the business do you kind of see that you have like the most passion towards and which like, where are you kind of like focusing more? I would ask.Evans Gedeon (14:41)
Thank you. Thank you.So right now what’s really been keeping me busy ⁓ and it’s because of our marketing initiative is the fractional CFO services. ⁓ It’s primarily focusing on helping the subcontractors and contractors. ⁓
identify areas where they can increase their profitability.
So really diving in the numbers for them because they want to focus on building. So I have the luxury of getting into the numbers because I know it very well and saying, hey, this is where you can. ⁓
reduce your expenses and your costs and increase your profitability. The cool thing is a lot of these contractors, once I am continuing to work with them, also have an interest in doing development. So it creates an opportunity where I take them from the fractional CFO services, which is most crucial to their business today. But they see the opportunity to roll into the real estate development.
advisory arm ⁓ which is helpful for me. So it’s definitely ⁓ a great position to be in ⁓ and I find joy in helping people solve problems ⁓ but ultimately it’s also great ⁓ when you can ⁓ also push to structure deals and get investments yourself.
Michelle Kesil (17:15)
Totally. Yeah, a lot of the listeners to the show are investors. Whether they’re seasoned investors or in the early stages. How do you support this type of audience?Evans Gedeon (17:31)
Well, it’s really what they need to solve for. If they need the whole package, they just say, hey, I want to be able to control the deal, but I really want to deploy dollars and I need someone that can underwrite the deal and kind of find what I’m looking for. I can solve that issue for them. ⁓ And I know a lot of family offices are trending towards working less and less with financial institutions and finding morepeople that can grow a division because they have the capital to deploy. I, funny enough, never really marketed myself to do this service. ⁓ It was just through word of mouth and having worked with a family office that believes in what I do and I still have a good relationship with them today and that’s where these opportunities started to open up and the
the ⁓ idea of really doing this.
the idea of really helping people solve issues ⁓ I had the luxury and the experience of Executing on this and to help someone that says hey I need you to run point from soups to nuts I can be that guy but if they want me to focus on just the financial modeling piece or the design coordination piece There’s the ability to do that as well
Michelle Kesil (18:59)
Yeah, amazing. That’s so important to be able to have that like diversity of services that you can support people with. So when it comes to growing your business, whether that’s with building new relationships or just investing into growing your network, what are some things that have made the biggest difference for you there?Evans Gedeon (19:27)
and grow my relationships and build my network. think the biggest difference has been in serving. I have served onI continue to serve on the board for Nova Southeastern University’s Real Estate Advisory Program. And Nova Southeastern University has both an undergrad and master’s program for real estate. So all the students that ultimately want to get in this field have the ability to sign up for Nova and get educated in this space. so serving in that role on the advisory board
has given me the ability to brainstorm with ⁓ real estate practitioners in the field. I learned a lot, but also serving ⁓ the students in terms of coming in and sit in ⁓ as a panelist has opened my eyes to different ideas and to ultimately serving as a mentor to some of these students and voice in my own ideas as to how they can really grow
their careers or grow into entrepreneurship. Haven’t seen so many structures and you know being an entrepreneur myself over the years. ⁓ So this business in my opinion you get what you put in and if you’re only putting in and just doing deals ⁓ it can feel ⁓ very stressful at times because
because it’s just focused on the money aspect. But if you find an opportunity to serve in some capacity, I think there’s a lot of value in that in itself and along the way it creates ⁓ investment opportunities. ⁓ in the past I have sat on some committees and for Urban Land Institute and NAOP and just really wanted to solve where our next programming activity is gonna be for the
young leaders. ⁓ Also, most recently I sit as the vice chairman for the Black Real Estate Investment Council, which is a council that is under black professional networks and spearheaded by Karnasha Paul. And ⁓ we brought in this council because there’s a lot of African Americans in the space and funny enough, they all have really great, ⁓ there’s different spectrum.
So you have the entry level that wants to get in the business then you have the mid careers and then you actually have a lot of senior partners and entrepreneurs themselves But when I was going to a lot of these trade organizations, I wouldn’t really see them. And so with me serving as vice-chairman ⁓ I have ⁓ Really heard a lot of people say hey, I’m glad you’re serving Because I’ve been looking for a place where I can get educated in this and network
and the fact that you yourself and Kanasha, Kanasha really is spearheading this but ⁓ under the Black Professional Network umbrella with Kanasha leading the way for Black Real Estate Investment Council, it’s given me an opportunity to serve ⁓ the other founding member of Black Real Estate Investment Council, it’s Chad Musgrove. He’s very successful, the Senior Vice President. ⁓
at ⁓ MNT Bank and we too started this journey together and fast forward eight years later, it’s great to hear everybody talking about how much value it has been for them and how much they’re learning along the way ⁓ as we continue to expand on our programming. So I think the key to this business is not only in doing deals, but making the right relationships. And when you do have an opportunity
to also serve because there’s a lot of good in serving.
Michelle Kesil (23:42)
Yeah.Definitely, service is so important, so thank you for that. And yeah, before we wrap up here, if people want to reach out, connect, learn more from you, where is the best place for them to find you?
Evans Gedeon (23:59)
so the best place to find me is ⁓ through www.gedeonfinancial.com My ads on ⁓ Instagram and Facebook is at Gedeon Financial and I also have my business line which ⁓funny enough I don’t have it memorized so hard ⁓ but share that now shortly and you can find it on my website it’s 561 203 9724
Michelle Kesil (24:45)
Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate your time and your perspective.Evans Gedeon (24:53)
Thank you for having me. It definitely was a great ⁓ time sitting with you and explaining what it is that I do. I find joy in this and I appreciate you extending the time to talk with me today. ⁓Michelle Kesil (25:08)
Awesome,thank you. And for those of you tuning into the show, if you got value from this episode, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations with operators just like Evans who are building real businesses. And we’ll see you all on our next episode.
