As Mike McVean was leaving a job interview within Trammell Crow Center in 1989, an older gentleman stepped onto his elevator and began making small talk.
The future Stream Realty Partners co-founder was asked about his meeting at the Solomon Brothers’ offices and whether he would be interested in interviewing with the gentleman’s company instead.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t introduce myself,” the 27-year-old MBA student said, extending a hand as the two parted ways. “I’m Mike McVean.”
The older man took his hand and replied, “I’m Trammell Crow.”
McVean, who went on to work for Trammell Crow Company (TCC) for seven years before leaving to form Stream with Lee Belland in 1997, described his chance encounter during a wide-ranging career conversation on April 17 with the 2024 Associate Leadership Council (ALC) class.
It was a classic case of being in the right place at the right time, but McVean credited Crow for his vigilance in recruiting talent wherever it may appear.
“People ask me what my elevator pitch [to Crow] was. I swear it was the opposite,” McVean said. “He was pitching me.”
Identifying Talent Is A Talent
When McVean met Crow, he wasn’t the hottest candidate out of business school. In fact, he was rejected from Trammell Crow Company several times, he said, because he hadn’t attended the four business schools from which TCC recruited at that time.
It only took a few minutes on an elevator for Trammell Crow himself to look past his own company’s criteria.
“He was a 72-year-old billionaire. He didn’t need to work at all, and he still recognized that talent was what drove his success,” McVean said.
It’s a sentiment McVean took to heart throughout his career, especially as Stream established its early footing in buying buildings – an ambition he said his supervisors at Crow did not share.
“Everybody thinks of Stream as a real estate company. We are not a real estate company,” McVean said. “We are a talent company.”
He added: “If I’ve learned anything in business that I could pass along to you, it is that identifying talent is a talent.”
How does McVean identify talent?
“It’s a total gut thing. It’s like Scottie Scheffler’s golf swing or Dak [Prescott]’s throw, you just have it,” he said. “Only a minority of people have it.”
Talent Must Be Cultivated
McVean and Belland grew Stream from personal savings from their time at TCC. As the business grew with the 1990s real estate boom, they continued investing their own money into projects.
Early success, McVean said, “was like shooting fish in a barrel,” and provided a sense of professional freedom that only comes from entrepreneurial ventures.
Still, the cofounders had to quickly scale their real estate skills, and Stream began hiring to develop the strengths they lacked as TCC employees focused on leasing and building management.
“The key to Stream is we are particularly gifted at identifying talent, but it does you no good without developing and optimizing talent,” McVean said. “I think Stream is particularly good at training talent and developing talent and then empowering talent and setting it free.”
To incentivize freedom, McVean said he and Belland empower Stream employees to take on the more challenging or unfamiliar aspects of a project that might normally be handled by superiors.
“We do not get in your way. We let you go, and if you fall, we’ll ask if you want us to pick you up before you fall,” he said.
“It’s the same way you raise children, pretty much.”
Managing ‘Derailed’ Talent
What happens when Stream employees do fall? Good talent doesn’t necessarily become bad talent, McVean said, but he has “seen talent get slightly derailed and sometimes fully derailed.”
“My kids say I’m the worst therapist in the world,” McVean said. “I just sit down with people and I’m like, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ and I talk them through it. I am brutally honest and I say, ‘Here’s what I’m seeing. You are coming in late, leaving early, sloppy in your work.’”
It happened with one of the very first hires McVean made at Stream. The employee was “doing all the wrong things or doing the right things wrong,” he said, and the fledgling co-founder was not yet savvy enough to resolve the issue.
McVean then had an epiphany. “It dawned on me that he may not know what we’re expecting,” he said, so they had a lengthy conversation to help reset expectations.
Not only did the employee correct his mistakes, but he is still employed at Stream today.
“It was very instructive for me, that conversation,” McVean said.
The Associate Leadership Council is TREC’s premier leadership program. Each year, 30 TREC members are selected through an application process to participate in this 10-month leadership development program. More than 750 individuals have graduated from ALC in its 28-year history. For more information, visit www.recouncil.com/alc.
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