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In this episode of The Hive With Us Podcast, host Daniel Martinez, alongside co-host Kyle Thompson, welcomes special guest Chris Powers, a prominent commercial real estate investor from Dallas Fort Worth. Chris shares insights into his extensive experience in the real estate industry, discussing his company's focus on industrial real estate, effective investor relations, and the importance of operational excellence. He highlights the significance of maintaining work-life balance, the value of long-term investment strategies, and the role of land in real estate. Chris also touches on his company's innovative approach to acquisitions and talent management, emphasizing the importance of building strong relationships and a robust team.
Chapter 1: Introduction and Guest Overview (0:00 - 3:03)
Daniel introduces co-host Kyle Thompson and special guest Chris Powers, who provides a brief overview of his background and expertise in commercial real estate, including the structure and focus of Fort Capital.
Chapter 2: Business Operations and Strategy (3:04 - 11:05)
Chris discusses Fort Capital's focus on industrial real estate, their vertically integrated approach, and the importance of being an exceptional operator beyond just making deals. He also explains their acquisition strategies and the role of local brokers.
Chapter 3: Talent Acquisition and Management (11:06 - 18:15)
Chris explains his strategies for sourcing and retaining talent, including the significance of internships, always being on the lookout for potential hires, and using personality and traits tests. He highlights the importance of building a strong team to maintain operational excellence.
Chapter 4: Investor Relations and Fundraising (18:16 - 25:35)
The conversation delves into Fort Capital's investor relations, the process of raising funds, and maintaining strong relationships with over 900 investors. Chris shares insights into how they have streamlined their investor relations department to raise capital quickly and effectively.
Chapter 5: Work-Life Balance and Long-term Vision (25:36 - 38:54)
Chris shares his approach to managing work-life balance, setting priorities, and his long-term vision for his business and personal life. He emphasizes the importance of time management, the foundational role of land in real estate investments, and provides a favorite quote about the value of patience in achieving greatness. Chris concludes with information about his podcast, "The Fort with Chris Powers," and where listeners can find him online.
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Transcript
hello welcome to the high with us podcast I'm your host dannyel Martinez today I have special co-host Kyle Thompson and we have special guests Mr
Chris Powers out of Dallas Fort
Worth how you doing today I'm good thanks for having me on guys I'm excited to do this you're you're one of the few
people that we booked like earlier this year and you're like five months
out yeah it's been a crazy year are you always that that far far out in your
scheduling this this year in our business has been a bigger workload and
I'm just super tight with my time and how I'm getting through the days I got three
young kids and all that good stuff so trying to be more ruthless sorry it took five months but I don't know any other
better way to do it it is what it is how old are your kids I have a seven-year-old daughter a four about to
be fivey old daughter and a two-year-old son okay so I my minor 643 so I'm right
I know exactly what stages you're it's a lot man it's a lot what's funny right
now is that I have my wife's at a doctor's appointment so I have all my kids in the other room watching a movie
and at any moment I could step away because I have all three kids you will Adit you will have AC
accomplished a ton if those kids stay watching that movie for an hour I don't know if mine would do that
well I've I've been training them since birth that's awesome training them since
birth it's definitely a challenge for sure it's it's been funny so you are commercial uh investor can you give
somebody like 30 second Pitch if they've never heard of you before kind of give everybody just such an idea who you are
yeah Chris Powers live in fortart Texas I'm the founder and chairman of a company called Fort Capital Fort capital
is a vertically integrated real estate investment business with a focus on buying industrial real
estate primarily through Texas but also throughout the Southeastern southeastern United States Sun Belt I started the
company in college buying rental houses and that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years today we have a team of a
little over 50 folks here in the states and we have some overseas Talent as well
we manage about a billion two of assets under management all primarily
industrial and we've done that through oneoff syndication so we don't have a committed fund we raise money on a deal
by deal basis and um when I say fully vertically integrated we uh do our own
management we also do some of our own leasing we also do our own Asset Management financing Acquisitions and so
we touch a lot of the business and our mission and the way we've kind of decided to run our company is to be the
best real estate operator in the world and so you know that in short just means
a lot of people in our industry are into doing deals which obviously you have to do to to build the company but there's
Chapter 2: Business Operations and Strategy.)
so much more that happens after buying something you got to own it and operate it really well and we just have found
that the best companies in the world are exceptional operators deals is just part of it and so that's been the main focus
of our company for a long time we've built software proprietary software that runs our business that's unique to us
but yeah it's been an amazing journey industrial real estate's been fun to be and Texas is a great market and so super
fortunate and just have an incredible team 50 employees what is your business
model are you are you buy and hold do you buy cash do you leverage because a lot of people that do different types of
syndication fund models and $1.2 billion in assets that's a it's a lot of cheddar
so yeah so that's definitely not all my money absolutely we we do it on a deal
by deal basis so a deal will come in and we will secure the bank financing which
is usually 60 to 65% of the purchase price we will then go to our investors
and we have uh I think we have over 900 active investors now and we'll what they
call Syndicate will raise the money for that deal that deal will have its own structure its own set of investors and
people are just investing in that deal and then as far as hold period the way that these are structured we underwrite
everything to a five or seven-year hold but we really have the discretion to
hold longer if we want hold shorter if we want if we want to refinance it and and hold it long term we're not beholden
to any one time period so I tell people there's deals we've owned for two years and there's deals we've owned for nine
or t years and really the deciding factor in there is have we accomplished
our business plan are we being offered something that we felt like is is reasonable or do we just feel like
there's still a lot of to grow and and holding it isn't a heavy lift and we can continue to kind of ride the wave so we
take it we we monitor each thing deal by deal but I would say our average hold period is probably somewhere within five
to seven years that is a lot of
Corporations because if you're Sy deal if you're syndicating each deal you have to raise a lot of that's a lot of
Corporation management check accounting management is that all inous as well
that's all inous so I think I don't know the exact number it's in the 30s we manage 30 different entities
so Fort Capital the way we're structured is Fort Capital LP is where all of the
people are employed by so Fort Capital LP owns you know a bunch of desks and computers and and and hires people and
then each deal sits it sits in its own entity and forms a contract with Fort
Capital to manage it to do all the things that we need to do to add value so each piece a real estate sits in its
own entity and yes it's a lot to manage but again we've in our effort to be a great
operator I think we've built great Solutions so it doesn't feel like as heavy as a lift as it might sound I love
that you touch on um the operations part of things because a lot of businesses and a lot of people in the real estate
business they always talk about the deal it's like oh the deal the deal's so sexy right but it's then it's like what
happens the behind the scenes it's almost like if you don't have those operations in place it's chaos so yeah
talk I mean you nailed it you'll see a lot of people get in this industry that are deal people and what they'll do is
they'll start a company they'll they'll buy three or four Deals they might be great deals but they quickly look up and
they realize okay we own four deals that need a lot of work and management and decision making and accounting and and
all the things that go into owning a deal and so at some point you have to start focusing on how are we gonna
operate you know once we've bought and you you don't really when you see headlines in the news it's all about
deals getting done a big closing or a big number and those are you know shiny fancy numbers but what you don't really
hear headlines about is what happens for the next five to seven years after they buy it and for anybody that you know is
active in real estate especially as an owner it is not passive at all it is very uh it's very intensive if you're
going to do it right so if you want to be passive you could be a limited partner where you're just writing a check and getting a distri contribution
but for those actually owning the real estate and working it's a very intensive job if you want to do it well absolutely
absolutely I love that is there a a strategy used to find talent because you
have to find a organization like that you have to you have to organize and kind of Source Talent pretty
aggressively not even aggressively but you have to keep an eye out for it but is there like a a best practice for you
to find good talent in your organization yeah yeah so what I would say is like early in the company
when you don't really have a track record or much credibility unless you're coming out of some huge company that you
have a track record with it's harder to find talent because you know people are taking more of a risk one of the
benefits of a growing company that has a a long track record is it's seen as not
only a safer place to work but you know a lot of opportunity so one benefit we have going for us today is we always
have people submitting applications or getting in touch with us whether we have roles or not not we call that building
the bench we always have jobs positions open but some of those don't mean we need the job next week it's just like if
we could find the right person for this job we would just make the job happen and and hire them sometimes finding the
right person can take a while I think some of the the worst hires are when you have to do it under the gun and really
quick the other part is we tell our team abh which is always be hiring like while
you're out on your day-to-day life whether it's friends family you're at lunch with somebody always always be
kind of thinking like is this somebody that we could work with and kind of building a mental bench of people in
your head that if you did need uh a job to be filled you know they would be there and so it's kind of this always
hiring mentality um and then once we have engaged in a process and we're working with people we use something
called culture index we use a lot of ways that we hire and and make sure it's the right fit but a lot of our companies
been predicated on this I don't want to call it a personality test it's a traits test but it tells a lot about who a
person is and so we're not just looking for the right skill set we're looking for the right temperament and the right
personality to fit that role as well so hiring is a big thing your people are your are your best assets and you know
that's how you build your culture is with great people and so it's something that's very important and again with
scale I wouldn't say it gets easier I just think there's more of a selection of people to choose from absolutely I
love how you touch on that too that you're almost building like you know because you want to have good talent and
you hope they stay around forever and some people might leave them do their own things or some people might just fall off the fall off the wagon you know
and all of a sudden they're they're only good until they're good right and then you're kind of building like that pipeline by keeping those those options
open and having those listings for the jobs even though you might not be quite ready to fill that position but it's
like you're building that pipeline for sure and you know one thing we've done really well that we take we
we it's a big staple of our company we're in Fort Worth which TCU Texas west in UTA UT Dallas there's a lot of
universities here we've built an incredible internship program so a lot of people that we've hired have prior
have been prior interns with us we run that program like they're full-time employees so it's not just a place to
come sit for the summer and make copies we give them real things to do and really test them and that's also a great
way to build kind of a bench I mean not for every role if if it's a brand new role in the company that they've never
had before you know we might do a little more searching but for most of our staple roles it would be a shame if we
didn't already have an idea of who the next hire might be that we wouldn't have been doing our job absolutely absolutely
Chapter 3: Talent Acquisition and Management.)
I kind of want to touch on go ahead Daniel I was gonna say are you sourcing them from the college
themselves so we'll go to the career fair but if you go to our website right now we have an internship uh application
available year round so we're getting people applying year round and we usually have two kind of goes with the
College schedule but you usually have like a a fall and the spring summer kind of cohort some people will stay through
it all if they want to work throughout the year summer is kind of our biggest I don't know how many we have across the
company today but I bet we have eight or 10 interns this year and like I said these especially this generation they're
so talented in ways that our generation from the tech side and just the way they see the world I'm I'm amazed constantly
by the unique perspective and things they know about the world that they bring in and so we're always excited to
have them and like I said a lot of them end up converting to full-time people down the road which is which is a dream
that's really cool I've never I I've always heard the strategy of of picking picking them off from college but I think it's I'm have to make active
active effort to pick them off from college because there's some young Talent out there there is and if you
treat it seriously and and people feel like they're showing up to a real job where they're going to get a lot of
experience yeah you'll get the best candidates and you know like I said this
generation of kids is super talented they have their own unique ways of looking at the world just like every generation does but we really want to
tap into that talent and I think it's important for every company to stay young and fresh and um so it's a benefit
to being in DFW there's a lot of colleges already here but we take in people from Notre Dame we have people
from Virginia we have they're not all coming from Texas they come from all over the country that's amazing I I want
to touch on what you said earlier where you have a pool of investors around you said around 900 are you always actively
trying to add to that pool or do you almost add like a fomo to where you're you're kind of like hey no we're kind of
capped off right now for who we're adding into our our list for the opportunity to get a deal yeah it's a
great question when we started the the goal was never to have 900 investors we started when we were young and we would
what you call pass the Hat we would do a deal we'd raise some money we'd get new investors we would do well they would
kind of introduce us to some of their friends and family it just kind kind of kept growing I have a podcast too and
and just the track that that attracts people the company's track record is probably the biggest attractor of new
folks but the way it stands today you know no matter how much money somebody's
giving you once they give you money it's it's a it's a it's a different kind of relationship when you're handling
somebody's money whether it's a $110,000 check or a 10 million dollar check and so we do a really good job our investor
relations team does an incredible job of vetting them so there's a whole process
investors do to get on our list to see our deals and to invest with us we want to make sure where is good of a fit for
them as they are for us because if there's misalignment and personality or expectations it can just put a lot of
entropy and and drain on the business to deal with investors that are are tough to deal with so the answer is
everybody's will is is happy to apply to be an investor with us um and I would say probably onethird of the folks that
do maybe more than that we actually end up working with and as time has gone by we've learned who our best investor
prototype is kind of their financial situation where they are in life what they do as a career the size of checks
they write and so we're getting smarter and smarter about who to accept over time would you say your biggest your
biggest channel of getting new investors that fit that model is from
referrals yeah I think the the greatest referral the best compliment we could receive at Fort is one investor telling
another friend of theirs that they obviously trust that they should put their money with us also again money's
money can complicate things it makes the relationship a whole different level and so yes I would tell you a referral from
somebody that's already been an existing investor not saying it's always the best next investor but they usually are very
strong there's a lot lot of trust embedded day one and it takes a lot for one of our investors to go out on a limb
and tell their friends to invest with us they're kind of taking a risk too if we weren't to do well or lose their friends
money that would look poorly on them as well exactly absolutely I want to talk about your investor relations so when
did you create your investor relations department and how big is it currently uh right now it's uh there's
two full-time people and then there's people that support those folks and I think we decided to to build out a
formal investor relations team probably three or four years ago I mean before
that we were still managing a lot of investors we use a software called Juniper Square which is an incredible
piece of software to help uh manage lots of investors and lots of reporting and and all that which made it easy but it
got to a point where we had one a lot of money under management you're always
doing deals so there's investors always calling with questions even once they're in a deal you know we might have owned a
deal for four years you might have somebody call in wanting some more information on something or you know
investors have things happen in their lives and maybe you know they're just calling us to say you know get a a check
on what's going on so it required a full-time team to interface with lots of investors ask lots of questions and then
when you're actually doing the fundraising it's a full-time job to Syndicate all the money make sure all
the documents are signed make sure the presentation's been out make sure all the money comes in make sure the
investors are notified we closed and make them feel very comfortable we we want to make the investor experience the
best in the business you don't have to be the biggest company with the most resources to do that you just have to
make it a priority and so a lot of investing obviously you give money and you want it back you want more back than
you came but there's a lot more to it it's how you're treated along the way how quickly you receive quarterly reporting distributions k1s how quickly
you can answer questions and again you can imagine with 900 people we don't have 900 people
calling all the time but if even 1% of those are calling there's always you know 10 to 20 people that we're talking
to right is there something that you've implemented in your in your investor
relations that like heightened your able to raise money quicker or that just
heighten that ability in in that department can you ask the question again is there something that you did
early on that you noticed that was something that was missing that increased your output from investor
relations from Raising capital yeah so one like again when you're doing a deal really educating the investor
relations team on the deal so that if somebody calls and has questions they can answer those without having to pull
the whole team in obviously they will if there's something they can't answer that's where they can lean on finance or
accounting or yeah the asset management team um I think The Upfront process to
Chapter 4: Investor Relations and Fundraising.)
become an investor people submit they fill out a really detailed form that form's gotten longer over time we've
realized if it if it's the only time we have to burden them with 30 minutes of paperwork to fill out it's important but
it really gets a good idea of who they are we really try and build rapport with them before they've ever given us a
dollar and kind of build that trust but again I think it's just having somebody
that's always thinking about the investor how to make their life better and not burdening other people on the
team if requests come in or questions come in because you know a finance guy might be working on getting a loan or
raising Equity they don't all day necessarily to drop everything they're doing just to answer one question so it
created a nice buffer absolutely uh that's really good like this is good uh
good answers I I'm curious about it so that's yeah now and you're raising a lot I've
seen people on Twitter where they're like I'm raising $10 million and then like in 48 hours it's filled have you
hit like a record where you've raised a certain amount of money in a certain amount of time frame just by your your
cultivation of your investor relationss like is there like a deal in mind like we raise $20 million in in three
days we have done that multiple times I would
say that's awesome that we can do it our you know obviously the quicker you can raise it the better but I just think
what it's really indicative of is to raise that much money that quick you have a lot of people that already trust
you they're already comfortable with you and they believe you to be the expert to
where you know you send a deal and they're going to go spend two weeks trying to prove you wrong they've kind
of already trusted that you probably already know what you're doing again a lot of these people are repeat they've
already been in deals with us before and so yes we've done that several times I
would anticipate it'll get quicker and quicker just because we have a lot of investors and we've built a lot of trust
and so when even when we're not raising for a deal and maybe something else our investor relations team does is they
keep people informed of what's going on at the company they send them updates on stuff so it's not like the only time
you're hearing from us is when we have a deal we want to keep building that trust with you over time and you know I still
have people in my deals great friends of mine that have been in them for 15 years they've
probably done you know I've got a couple that have probably done every deal I've ever done and so when we send them a deal now they're like we're in you know
somebody that's brand new maybe it's their first deal they'll take a little more time but again that's why we try and frontload building the relationship
so that by the time you start seeing deals from us there's been a rapport made in a relationship built it's not just some cold email from some Fort
Capital that you've never really heard of and you just got on some distribution list yeah they're probably excited once
that that email comes in they're like here we go um Chris how on the investor
standpoint how many of your investors came from when you were in single family if you had any of the same investors
from when you were in single family as opposed to now oh
man at that time we just weren't doing a whole lot so we didn't need a whole lot of investors so I think at the time we
probably had a Max of 10 or 12 I mean it was small and I would tell you those 10 or 12 probably if it's 10 I bet you I
don't know the exact number I bet you eight or nine of them are still with us you know they were betting on me when I was 21 years old 20 years old like at
that time they were just taking a flyer on a young kid with a dream I didn't really have a track record but they knew
I'd work hard and you know in this business a lot of times you can build a incredible track
record but you can have a few bad years and and kill it and so I'm not saying
you're only as good as your last deal because I think the longer you've lasted and the more great deals you've done
investors will you know give you some Grace if one doesn't make as much money as you thought it would but you know
it's the next deal is we always have our reputation on the line and we want our investors to always know
that absolutely that's awesome I wanted to ask how how do you and this
is this is kind of double ended question because I asked you early on but how do you manage your work life balance because you kind of set your schedule on
what you're actually doing on the podcast and with the business you're managing a billion dollars in assets how do you kind of control what you do and
what you make time for and how do you manage the company to make sure because you as an operator make sure you have to
make make sure you don't leave the you don't you don't have somebody else controlling the wheel because you are
the operator main GP I think a few things so one on the
business side I I I kind of said I'm the founder executive chairman so my partner he's the CEO and runs the business
day-to-day which means the day-to-day demands at Fort for me are less but it doesn't mean I'm not always thinking
about it or doing things outside but very few things I'm ever working on at Fort have like critical deadlines for
tomorrow those are I'm thinking more longterm but I think the bigger answer is really
you know if you ask most people like what's important to them they'll they'll tell you like you know God family
friends and then they they mention work like last that's like the nice answer
but if you really go back to them and you're like well then show me your calendar like show me how you allocate all that time you can quickly see like
okay it's work by like a mile and then everything else and I think it's just
look there's different seasons of life when you're single and you're not married you don't have kids yeah like go for it Balls to the W wall spend all
your time on it but as you have a family and as you have kids and as you have other things outside of work that you
want to do you just have to come to grips with how important are those things and be really strict with your
time I mean time is all we have it's the most valuable asset we have doesn't matter if you're rich or poor we all get
the same amount of it it goes by in 24 hours and so you know one thing I used
to do that you know we were talking earlier about it taking a bit to book this is set my priorities up for the
year my assistant knows them and even if there's an hour free on the calendar if
it's not lining up to what we said we do we leave that hour free and you just have to be ruthless and you know for
someone that likes to please people and you know I I I I never want to disappoint anybody that can be something
hard to do but at the end of the day you can only spend time on so many things and it's just prioritizing and and as
you move through life those priorities will change but I think the biggest thing is just kind of being aware and I
have you know I've had seasons in my life where some things were going great and other things were really
failing uh relationships or friendships or family or whatever and a lot of that
could be equated to no time spent nurturing those relationships or building them everything takes some
amount of time and so I've by no means perfected it but it is something I think a lot about I think
that also comes as you just get older you realize the days go by quick we only get one life there's only so many things
we can work on and so we got to put all of our attention into the things that are most
important what does the future look like now that you're getting older and things change because I've I'm I'm 32 and I've
Chapter 5: Work-Life Balance and Long-term Vision.)
seen like my I see my priorities change as my kids get older and I'm looking at
the future and how I handle things differently so like what does the future look like for you in business and in
personal life are you you have a succession plan do you want to hire a CEO and and eventually pass the re on or
is it something you want to do actively till you know you're ready to make that
decision so my partner's CEO of Fort Capital I'm only I'm 37 for anybody
listening so I you know God willing and health willing I have hopefully another
40 or 50 years I love working I love entrepreneurship I love business and so
I don't see myself ever I don't ever want to quit I think you know you see some people that loved it that sold
their business or they retired they're miserable a year later that's one thing at least as it is now I have no
plans my kids are so I will probably start other companies or own other
companies but I'll do it in a way where I know my time required in that business I I don't think you'll ever see me go
back to a startup where I'm starting from the ground up again and building that takes a lot of time at least not in
this season of life again I have three young kids I want to be there these years that they're young they only
happen one once you know everybody says they stay in your house till you're 18 but by the time they're 12 or 13 they're
kind of building a life of their own you know somebody told me the other day that once your kids leave the house at 18
you've already spent for most families you've already spent 90% of your time with them so that's important my faith
is important my friends are important and again I have none of this like perfectly figured out I think it's just
recognizing what's important but for me I want to keep doing business I love
seeing the people around me succeed so I enjoy watching the people that work for
us or work with us or partner with us succeed you know I love being home with my kids and my wife as much as I can and
so for this season of life that's that's what I'm GNA focus on that's awesome I love your values and
morals man it's incredible that's incredible I appreciate it so what's
your main for your for your business right now what's your main acquisition strategy for getting
deals yeah so again one is when you've been in a business for long enough you
build a reputation the market knows about you so that's one of the benefits of being around for a while people know
to call you I don't think there's anything more important in business than being the first person
someone thinks about in our case when they're selling an industrial deal so you want to be top of- mind and you have
to earn that uh but at a more granular level the software we built has an
incredible way to manage our pipeline we understand the deals we want to go after
and rather than hire Acquisitions people on staff like we used to we will
contract with brokers in a certain market and sign Brokers or really
anybody and we'll sign an agreement with them that they're the local boots on the ground they know the market really well
and we will give them all the information of all the deals they want to buy or we want to buy and for that we
signed an exclusive with them that if they can create a opportunity for us they'll bring it directly to us and we
in incentivize them we pay them more we give them pieces of the promote we do a big golf trip every year that they get
to go on if they bring us enough deals and in that situation it's good because a lot of times acquisition people are
there's a lot more turnover in that department acquisition people if you have them on staff tend to be very
entrepreneurial in the old days of Fort I think our top four people have all left to go start new companies which is
great they're all great people I'm rooting for them but you can't really build a business where every two or three years your shining star leaves to
go do his own thing or her own thing and so by creating those uh relationships
and markets one it gives us a way better market knowledge we're able to incentivize them really well but if they
can also work on other deals if they want to they don't just have to work on our deals so it gives them a little more
freedom and flexibility and we found they stay around longer and so we do a lot of cold calling we do a lot of
relationship building and then every now we have Brokers that'll bring us stuff and every now and again we'll
participate in I guess what you'd call an auction very few deals we've ever bought by auction but if we feel like we
have an edge there's sometimes where we're willing to pay up and buy something but often in auctions you're
just willing to pay the highest price and so that's not where we found most of our success awesome what does your current
um like underwriting look like for when you when stuff's in the pipeline or or
something new comes across your desk what does underwriting look look for look like right now for you
guys yeah I mean right now in we're trying to basically so we do value ad we don't do development we just buy
existing buildings so we're trying to solve for roughly a net 20 irr over five
years which is basically doubling your Equity over five years and the way we do that is underwriting a deal that will
stabilize yield on cost will be 200 to 250 basis points higher than the cap
rate we could sell at obviously in a raising uh interest rate environment numbers have changed pretty drastically
things have been pretty quiet haven't gotten a lot done the last couple years but once things kind of get back into a
normal routine that's kind of where we like to land and then and within the underwriting we really want to have a
good idea of how much of our return is coming from cash flow while we're owning
it and how much of it is coming from the exit and so I think where a lot of people get sideways and where you know
beginners get sideways is they'll buy these deals that's all predicated on selling it at the end and making all
your money and it doesn't really make any cash flow or anything in the shortterm so at a very minimum we want
to make 15% of our return from cash flow while owning it but most of the deals we
do are more like 25 to 30% we get while owning it and then the rest comes at the
end but we really try never to do a deal that's all predicated on what's going to
happen at the end unless you're buying a piece of land or something that doesn't have cash flow obviously it's all going to come at the end or there's some
unique situation where maybe you're buying a deal that has a lease that's way under Market the lease isn't
renewing for five years so you just kind of hold on it for five years sign that new lease five years from now and then
you get all the value and sell out but for the majority we want to see 15 to
25% of our return coming from cash flow absolutely awesome now you mentioned
land do you do anything in the land space at all because me and we're both land
guys so it's funny I I love land and we we won't have time to go through it today but if you saw our company logo it
wouldn't immediately jump out to you but when I first designed it it had to do with the idea that everything starts and
ends with land and at the time really in my career there was a time when that's really all we were doing was land and we
were buying oil and gas minerals so it was a time where all we did was land as we sit today we don't really do any land
deals every now and again we'll come across an interesting deal that just makes sense to do but it's not our core
Focus so we're not out looking for land deals but I would tell you my partner and I come from a land background so we
still understand it probably as well as we did and personally I love land I'd
like to see our company at some point get back to where we're maybe have a land division that's awesome so I I I
think it's hilarious because I say that all the time is that everything start everything starts with land you you can buy a real estate real estate storage
but when comes down to it it's a land business because it's all about location location location I saw gas Biz Chris
hel helth he he said he bought a gas station and it turned into a Chick-fil-A
over time just because he had the right location it doesn't matter what it is it's still a land deal so I always try
and I I always preach that like when you said that like yes somebody gets it everything everything's a land deal when
you think I won't I won't I won't give a huge history lesson I'm going to botch it a little bit but essentially if you go back through the history of time
thousands of or hundreds of years ago go the world really changed when they started having land ownership because
once you could own a piece of land then you felt good investing in it you could mine it you could Farm it you could do
all these things but before anybody owned any land nobody wanted to take the risk to put any money into it because
they didn't know if it was theirs and then fast forward today Elon Musk did some like tweet thing the other day
where he was basically like you have to own the land to get the lithium out you have to own the land to build the factory to make the battery you have to
build own the land to build the Factory to make the car like at every business no matter what it is has some land
component to it and often as yall know a lot of these businesses that have been around for 40 or 50 years the piece of
land that they built their first building on 50 years ago is worth more than the businesses um so land's
incredible it's we're not making any more of it but it's also something as yall know you don't want to lever it up
and and make huge risky Bets with land it's something that you need to be a little more conservative with unless you
have a a plan absolutely absolutely I think about my my daughter goes to a
school in a really nice area and I I know the numbers of what the school number does but they own like 100 acres
in the best part of town in the city in California and I'm like the land they're sitting on is worth way more than the
business itself and it's crazy oh yeah yeah that's what it happens if you're in a great location you're you're really
down you're really a land business what is a quote that go ahead go ahead go ahead no I was just gonna say like
people like even if you go to like McDonald's the the joke about McDonald's is it's just a big real estate company
that owns the best locations and the way they pay the way they make their the covered land play is they just sell
hamburgers but a lot of these companies you see people private Equity buy businesses and they'll immediately you
know sell off the land or they'll split out the real estate because it's it's a critical piece people have gotten a lot
smarter about that but yeah I mean at the end of the day if you can hold a piece of land long enough it's a good
thing I think we saw that with a Red Lobster yeah R RP Red
Lobster the greatest cheese biscuits in the world yeah now parceled off into a land land
business no I think I think it's it's a great it's a great understanding of the land business and I'm glad somebody else
agrees with me because when I talk about land everybody's like yeah goes over people's heads and I'm like you're
investing in a land business no matter what whatever no matter what business you are in real estate investing that's
it what is a quote that is yours or somebody else's that you resonate with oh
man I'll just give you a re I'll give you a recent one there's probably a lot but one that comes to mind uh there's a
guy Mitch rails that owns uh a company called danaher which is one of the most
successful public companies of all time I think it's compounded like 18,000 per over 30 years but I was listening to a
podcast the other day and he just said it very simply he just said uh great or greatness takes
time and I think about that a lot like the the best things in the world just take time whether it's businesses
friendships marriage and we live in a kind of a short-term world today people want immediate
gratification but again you talk about that family that owned that 100 acres in California like it just took time for it
to be a great piece of land you talk about you know some of the businesses we all know and love those have been around
for 30 or 40 years if you had looked at them when they were five or 10 years old they just wouldn't have looked as great
and so I think it's just that mentality that to do something really great takes a lot of time and not to get wrapped up
in you know what's what's my result tomorrow but what's my result in 10 15 20 30 years um so I I'll go with that
one great takes time it's amazing I think we're gonna end it here where can people can you
tell us a little about your podcast and where people can find you online yeah I have a podcast called the fort with Chris Powers I've been doing it for five
years I interview entrepreneurs leaders folks in real estate and just people I admire
done 350 episodes so check that out also have a Twitter account Fort Worth Chris
or Fort Worth Chris or you can check out our company's website www.for Capital lp.com
there you go I think this has been a great episode I appreciate you coming on and thanks for sharing us some
information some good knowledge and I think we had a good time I think we got we threw some curl balls at you that
even a podcast he was stumped I I take that as a as a
compliment so it is a compliment for everybody here go like share subscribe go check out Chris on uh
Fort Worth Fort Worth Capital his the fort so I'm getting Tung tied see even
even the best Fort podcast or Fort Capital lp.com Fort podcast there you go
we'll see you next time go like share subscribe you know what to do we'll see you next time have a great day guys bye hey if you'd like to meet us in person
we do an annual event every year the hiis live.com / Summit we'll see you there have a great day
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Daniel Esteban Martinez
Host/ Ceo/ Speaker
I have been an entrepreneur since 2018. I come from a regular home just like most people. My dad worked on the roads in the Chicago area for over 30 years. He always taught me to work with my brain, instead of my body. Your body can only take so much abuse. I learned so much from my father. He always pushed me to work smarter and not harder.
I have owned and operated a trucking business for 2 years. I started learning real estate in 2019. Fell into the Data & Skiptracing business in 2020. My partner Anthony & I started Hivemind in 2021.
I have done a ton of different jobs coming up from painting, to door-to-door sales, telemarketing, truck driving, and loading trailers. What I learned most is that I want to stay in the digital business space. The leverage you can have delivering digital products to the marketplace can yield limitless possibilites.
I started The List Guys in 2020. It is a data and skiptracing service. We provide seller and buyers list nationwide. My clients have been getting great results and I am proud to help people killing it.
I started the Hive in 2021 with my partner Anthony Gaona. It is a real estate and business mastermind. It also comes with a all in one CRM, that can host unlimited websites and users.
Starting the Hivemind has been an amazing journey so far. Seeing one of our users make his 6 figure month in June 2021 leveraging our software, I know there will be plenty more to come!
Anthony Gaona
Host/ Ceo/ Speaker
Hi! I am Anthony Gaona.
I’ve been in digital marketing for almost 15 years.I grew up in construction working for my dad when I was only 12 years old. Normally we had a ton of work or no work at all so a lot of my free time was spent learning how to generate leads.
It didn’t take very long for me to master online marketing because I became absolutely obsessed with it. For the last 15 years I’ve been generating construction based leads. At first I was running the projects myself. This led to sub-contracting all of the excess projects and eventually wholesaling the leads off to other construction companies.
One day I was preparing to build a single family residence for myself. In mid December, 2018, a simple YouTube search led me to the term wholesaling and the rest is history. The plan was to use my construction background to start flipping houses. By January 1st of 2019 I launched several marketing campaigns both on and offline for real estate seller leads.
Within about 4-5 weeks I had my first real estate contract locked up. It didn’t take long for me get a land lead where I made almost a full year’s pay on a single transaction. This came from a land lead and that forever changed my life.
I ran low volume larger land deals for the first two years of my real estate career. Like anyone who has been in real estate investing for an extended period of time, I started thinking about scaling my business.
Instead of deciding to vertically integrated and start hiring I imagined a model where I would teach my real estate investing method… Read More