Investment Structures with Michael Episcope
Michael is a principal of Origin, co-chairs the Investment Committee, and oversees investor relations, marketing, and company operations. Michael brings 25 years of investment and risk management experience to the company and believes that calculated risk-taking in inefficient markets is the key to building wealth. He has closed over $2.3 billion of transactions and has raised or invested principal funds of over 56 million and averaging a gross IRR of 30%.
He’s been featured on Forbes ValueWalk and HuffPost. He was a Commodities Trader on one of the exchanges. Now, he’s focused on helping others transform the way they invest in commercial real estate.
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Brett:
It’s not too often that you have a Co-founder of a company that has closed over $2.3 billion of transactions, and has raised or invested principal funds of over 56 million and averaging a gross IRR of 30%. Our next guest is the co-founder of Origin Investments. It’s an investment committee and oversees Investor Relations. He brings 25 years of investment and risk management experience to the company believes that calculated risk-taking in inefficient markets is the key to building wealth. He’s been featured on Forbes, ValueWalk, and HuffPost, and he was a trader on one of the exchanges and now he’s focused on helping others transform the way they invest in commercial real estate. Please welcome to the show with me, Michael Episcope.
Michael:
Thank you, Brett. Appreciate it. I like what you said there to not having a tax strategy is the enemy of or not having a plan as the enemy of tax strategy or something like that, that’s the first time.
Brett:
Not having a clear plan is the enemy. That could be for anything, especially for investment, real estate or tax, or whatever that you’re trying to accomplish. So, we’re going to dive into that here in a minute with what you do for your clients, what you’ve done in your past to mitigate risk. But before we go there, would you give our listeners a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Michael:
Yeah, sure. I’ll take you back kind of you mentioned my first career, I was actually a Commodities Trader, and take it back to the beginning. But in 1988, I ended up coming up to Chicago, I lived in Florida at that time and went to DePaul University. And after my freshman year, I got a summer job at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. I was 19 years old. I didn’t realize it at that time. But I was starting my first career if you will. And I ended up pushing all my classes tonight. I loved it down there, I wanted to work full time, I always worked my whole life, whether it was shoveling sidewalks, mowing lawns, delivering papers, what have you. So I’m always been kind of somebody who loved to work and the idea of having financial freedom, I guess, at a very young age or having that ability to make money. So when I was down at the exchange, I spent kind of seven or eight years rising through the ranks, I was a runner then I was a clerk than a broker. And then ultimately, I got a shot to trade. And that was in 1996. I started trading and 97 had a great career for about the next 9 or 10 years and decided to retire from that business in really right around 2006. There were a couple of reasons why. Number one I kind of achieved much more than I had ever set out to do and stacked up a lot of chips in my life and build some wealth. I was also in the beginning, I was single by the time I was done, I was married, I had other people who counted on me. I just decided that it wasn’t worth it anymore. And I wanted to retool, and so I decided to go back, retool myself, through education and get a master’s in real estate at DePaul. I then connected with my now partner David Shear, we’d known each other for about four or five years. Just we’re really kindred spirits from the beginning, worked in many different facets, but a lot of it was in sort of the wealth management area or managing our own wealth because we’re both high net worth individuals coming out of previous careers, who wanted to be in real estate to take advantage of all the things that real estate had to offer the tax advantages, the passive income, the ability to grow, and protect capital. And at that time, we just thought that we can do it better than others who were in the industry. And you know, whether you’re talking about the multibillion-dollar players or some of the reeds out there, or some of the small players and we pulled our capital together and it was kind of the best thing we ever did.
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