It pays to show up to the office every day, because that’s where the best opportunities are for mentorship and career advancement.
It was just one piece of advice on how to get ahead, dished out to the next generation of business professionals and entrepreneurs by award-winning real estate executive Mike McGahan at a breakfast hosted Thursday by the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.
“That may be the differentiator,” McGahan told the younger members of his audience during a fireside chat co-moderated by the business school’s dean, Stéphane Brutus, and Claire Leroux, principal at executive search and recruitment firm Boyden.
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“Really, at the end of the day, if you want to be seen and you want to move up, you got to be around the leaders; that’s really what it is. You get to a certain point in your career, everybody wants to help, everybody likes to have somebody they can mentor.”
The event featuring McGahan, Ottawa’s 2023 CEO of the Year, was also held in partnership with the Ottawa Board of Trade and Ottawa Business Journal.
Back when McGahan was roaming the university campus in the mid 1980s, he’d already begun investing in property with money he’d saved working multiple jobs.
McGahan talked briefly about finding his career path. “One of the hardest things when you’re a kid — and we all know it — is trying to figure out what you are going to do with your life. It just kind of hits you at some point. Some of us, if just kind of keeps hitting you as you keep going forward. You always wonder, should I change? Should I do this, do that?”
He first learned about the property investment sector by watching the dad of one of his minor hockey buddies. “I ended up buying two or three properties while I was in university,” said McGahan, who still chuckles over getting his pals to help him with the renovation work, such as drywalling and painting, in exchange for a case of beer.
McGahan founded Commvesco Realty in 1992, merging with Levinson Viner in 1998 to form CLV Group. It evolved over the years from a property management company to a fully integrated real estate innovator.
McGahan is CEO of CLV Group and executive chairman of InterRent REIT, which currently oversees a nearly $4-billion multi-residential portfolio with more than 13,000 suites across Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.
He mentioned several mentors, now deceased. They included real estate leader Jacie Levinson, former city councillor Ron Kolbus and Mike McCann, original organizer of the CLV Group/InterRent REIT charity golf tournament that now bears McCann’s name. It raised more than $1.6 million last year and could conceivably hit the cumulative $10 million mark this year. It will at least get close.
McGahan has also won awards for his philanthropy — a responsibility that’s “really, really important to us,” he said. “You try and give what you can, and you care about people.”
While McGahan is quick to attribute much of his success to luck (he mentioned the word a dozen times on stage), his entrepreneurial journey reveals a willingness to seize opportunities, put in the required hard work, and demonstrate grit. “We all get challenged, and there’s always these complex problems, but you have to just keep riding it through.”
He also values team players. “You don’t get ahead by trying to do it on your own.”
Last November, McGahan was honoured with the CEO of the Year Award at The Best Ottawa Business Awards, better known as The BOBs. Listening closely to his acceptance speech that night was the dean of the Telfer School of Management.
Yesterday, Brutus described McGahan as a man who values his family and workplace community, a man who strives to be a good citizen and caring leader. McGahan is a business leader who leads by example. “Role models are important, role models are impactful,” said Brutus. “It’s so easy for an 18 year old today to think the way to success is the Zuckerberg way, the Jobs way, or the Musk way.”
Said Brutus to McGahan: “In my book, the leader that you represent is exactly what we need to promote and showcase for business students and future business leaders.”
McGahan was also praised by Oz Drewniak, president of CLV Developments, and Anthony Scaletta, VP of private equity at CLV Group. They described the CEO as “an exceptional leader” who demonstrates integrity, honesty and loyalty. He’s also generous, kind, humble and consistently positive, they said of the married father of four grown children — three of whom work in the business.
Among the graduates in the audience from uOttawa’s business school were InterRent REIT CFO Curt Millar and Drewniak, the latter of whom started working at CLV more than 20 years ago. McGahan had contacted the school and asked it to send its three best marketing students. “Oz was one of the three, and the best – obviously,” said McGahan. On the subject of recruitment, CLV’s chief talent officer, Amanda Gordon, let it be known that they’re hiring.
CLV Group, under Drewniak’s leadership, has started transforming vacant downtown office towers into rental properties, with The Slayte on Albert Street as a shining example. While office-to-residential conversions have their challenges and can be costly, they are regarded as a solution to the ongoing housing shortage, a way of revitalizing downtown spaces in today’s hybrid work environment, and supportive of sustainability.
“I’m kind of blown away that we have all these office buildings sitting here, and nobody’s in them, and there’s no plan [in place],” said McGahan while expressing a sense of urgency over the situation and a frustration over the regulatory process. “I look and see what’s going on right now in our downtown. There’s a lot of homeless, there’s a lot of people that need housing. It’s crazy that we didn’t see this coming … People need housing. It’s a serious issue, and it’s something we’ve got to be super concerned about in Ottawa.”
During the Q&A, one audience member, Julie Potvin, wanted to know what keeps McGahan up at night. “The Ottawa Senators right now,” McGahan, who’s part of the new ownership group, replied with a laugh.
