The 411 On Passive Investments With Hunter Thompson

2008 always plays a role for me. I was insulated from the trauma that was taking place in the marketplace because I was still in college. When I saw 2008 happened, I was not a victim. I saw, “This is going to be an incredible opportunity. I should dedicate a lot of resources also known as the time to learn as much as I can about financial assets.” The driving factor here was investment blood in the streets. I can tell from having a general understanding of what was going on, this is going to be an incredible opportunity. I took a lot of time to learn and study people like Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger and I start investing in stocks.I had some success as most people would starting in 2008. In 2010, something happened that people don’t talk a lot about but for me, it was this massive moment which is the European debt crisis. Basically, it’s very similar to the lack of liquidity that took place in 2008 in the United States. The Central Bank froze up massive government intervention and bailouts. All of a sudden, everyone on CNBC was talking about the Greece Bond Yields. You watch every day to see if the Greece Bond Yields would go above 7% or below it. If it was above 7%, the S&P 500 is going to collapse. If it stayed below, you’re going to be fine. I was thinking, “What are we doing?” If I had a team full of people, we could never predict what was going to happen and also the Greece Bond Yields would play any role. I started focusing my attention on trying to find other ways to invest that were noncorrelated that provided more significant cashflow and therefore more predictable. That’s what led me to real estate. It’s a favorable timing because of the market dynamics, but something that I don’t think gets talked about enough is the market acted as a filter. I’m aware of the fact that not only did I enter the sector, from a timing perspective at a favorable time, but when I started to learn from people, the people that I was learning from, they were the ones that we're able to weather that storm. Especially in California, that was something that was hard to do. The rest is history. I started the company with my own personal investment portfolio and my family’s investment portfolio as well. It’s going from 5 to 10 investors now we have about 300 and acquired about $90 million in real estate over the last couple of years - Hunter

When people were running the other way, you’re taking massive action to not only invest to get educated and to find out how the rich and the wealthy make this work and what are they doing? You were able to have the vision and the courage to make a shift in 2010 from the stock market to invest in real estate. I’ve got to applaud you, you could have done in a better time because, at that point in my journey, I’m at Marcus and Millichap sitting in the office and seeing all the blood in the street in Sacramento. It’s one of the hardest-hit cities in America and this is where people were buying foreclosed properties and discounted properties from sellers who had to sell because they couldn’t get the liquidity that the banks weren’t lending and people were hurting. To be able to take advantage of that and make wealth for you, your family and investors are amazing. Before we dive in too much into the technical, I’m curious, who was Hunter before this success, the podcast, the big company, and all the commercial real estate success? In other words, we’re all given certain gifts in life. Some might call it superhero powers. They were given these God-given gifts to do certain things in life. As a child, a lot of those can be seen in these gifts or developed by our parents, coaches, mentors, and such. What were the gifts you were given? In particular, how do those gifts helped you help people?

I’ll be honest about that. One gift that I thought has been helpful but at that time was scary was that I didn’t make for a good employee. I felt that it didn’t work for me. That’s not necessarily a strength. It’s something that – was concerning. In school, for example, I did okay. I’m working in the quasi-corporate world. I didn’t excel and I was concerned. I was like, “This is a good template for the future of my life. I will be okay, but nothing spectacular is going to come of it.” The reality was, I had something else to offer and that my skills weren’t being used. Most importantly, things weren’t moving quickly enough.I love being an entrepreneur because I have the ability to direct and change quickly in terms of where I want to allocate my time, which is my most important resource. To answer your question, in college, I didn’t want to get a summer job and there was an incredible opportunity back then. I was also favorably timed in this as well, which was the poker boom. I’m from Memphis, Tennessee and about three hours away, there was a poker player by the name of Chris Moneymaker, who invested or purchased into a tournament for about $17. He won that tournament, which got him into another tournament with 200 people as a $200 tournament. He won that tournament which got him into the main event, and he won the main event of poker and won a $1 million from the $17 entry. This story was remarkable that it created what’s known as the Poker boom. If you look it up on Wikipedia, multibillion-dollar shuffle into the Poker business which made it lucrative if you dedicated the time and got a coach. This is when internet educational content was readily available behind a paywall. I dedicated the time to do that and it was a good way to make $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 on a regular basis on a monthly basis as a college student and that’s what inspired me to come out to California. I have a background as a poker player. Interestingly, the United States government made it illegal to play online Poker. What happened was, right before that happened, I fell out of love with Poker, took my money out of the Poker world, the United States made it illegal. I felt that I’m not going to do that anymore but that’s when the real estate collapse happened and that’s how this all ties in together.

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