Find. Build. Sell.. Stephen J. Hunt

       Snoop, on the left, the best hunting dog you can find.

      In short, I am a Hunter. I track down good pubs that have the potential to be great. I round up the team who can help me restore them to their former glory. I sniff out the best deals to maximise efficiencies. I then deliver them to my investors, and do it all again. I'll stop with the dog analogy … you get the drift.

Hunt by name, hunt by nature

      If you believe in the science of epigenetics, I am aptly named. Now epigenetics may sound like a depilatory tool you'd see for sale on The Shopping Channel, but it's the study of how behaviours and environment affect the way our genes work. Interestingly, a study discovered that 30 per cent of white men were more likely to match their career to their surname. (This is why we see Mr McBurney become a fire chief, Mr Brain become a neurosurgeon or Mr Soo Yoo a lawyer — all of whom are real people, by the way, according to the website ‘boredpanda'.)

      Is that luck, destiny, nature, nurture?

      I don't know, and it doesn't matter. Whatever it is, I consider myself lucky to be The Pub Hunter. I've found myself here, at 48 years old, walking side by side with my wife and partner in life, Fidelma, our five children and a $100 million pub portfolio that continues to grow daily, delivering outstanding returns for my investors and life-changing opportunities for my employees and franchisees. I couldn't be happier with the way life turned out, but it wasn't all beer and skittles when I started out.

How I got started

I was a ginger-haired, fat-fingered, freckled-faced kid from suburban Sydney. I was also left-handed and had one kidney. What I did have going for me was that I was good with numbers and good with people. Those qualities have served me well. I now run Hunt Hospitality, a conglomerate that owns seven pubs up and down the east coast of Australia. We employ 350 staff and have won some of the most prestigious awards in the industry.

      I started out washing dishes in pubs, and graduated to running them and, eventually, buying them. My modus operandi was simple: I'd choose poorly performing pubs, renovate, revalue and resell them for a higher price, repay the investors with an outstanding rate of return, and then do it all again. I got so good at buying pubs that friends, and then friends of friends, would say, ‘Steve, can we be a part of this? Can I get in on the deal?', and I'd say, ‘Sure', so I started to take on sophisticated, high-net-worth investors. I made them so much money, I became a private equity fund manager and started an investment fund, called The SJH Pub Fund. Top marks for creativity there, but it is what it is: a fund that owns, operates and manages a portfolio of successful pubs. I launched it in 2015 and it's been growing at a rate of 15.42 per cent with a cash return of 12.18 per cent per year since it started.

      I'm not a trained accountant, but to manage such a complex investment portfolio, I had to become very, very good at reading numbers. And I did. I have my family to thank for that. My dad is an accountant, as are three of my four siblings, so I've been surrounded by numbers all my life. It wasn't unusual to talk about financial statements over breakfast, lines of credit over lunch and debt funding over dinner. My parents were ultra-conservative people, and they would have loved for me to become an accountant, but I had different plans. I took my passion for people and pubs and leveraged those talents to make a profit. I have found my strengths and made them work for me. When you find what you love and can make a buck from it, you'll never ‘work' another day in your life.

The scent of a deal

I got my first ‘scent' of a deal when I was four years old and was given a bucket of Lego for my birthday. I was playing with Luke, my next-door neighbour, and he said, ‘Can I buy that bucket of Lego off you?' ‘How much for?' I asked. ‘Three dollars?' he said. This was a fortune for a little kid like me, and I fantasised about all the lollies I could buy with this unexpected windfall. I was about to say ‘Sold!', when my mum pulled me aside and whispered, ‘Stephen, think about it. You could sell the bucket to him for three dollars, or you could sell him the individual bricks for 50 cents a brick, and make 20 dollars. What would you prefer?' ‘Can I charge him 70 cents a brick?' My entrepreneurial chops were on display, even then. ‘That would be greedy, Stephen,' she said. ‘And don't forget, Luke could go to the shops and buy them for less than that.'

      In that moment, I discovered the principles of pricing structures and market forces. I owe my mother a great debt for teaching me, at such a young age, the essentials of entrepreneurship. I sealed the deal with Luke, headed down to the shops and filled my pockets with cobblers and chocolate bullets.

      My father taught me my second lesson. When I was 10, we took a family trip to Hong Kong. We lined up at the money exchange counter to buy some Hong Kong currency. I watched my dad hand over the money to buy the notes, and a moment before the money changed hands, the exchange rate went up, and in the blink of an eye, we were given $200 more than if we had bought it a few seconds earlier. In that moment, I learned that timing is everything: a critical element when buying and selling a business.

The $100 backyard bar

      I have to be honest. I didn't set out to become a publican. Growing up in a middle-class suburban home with two rugby-loving brothers (and two equally sporty sisters), I was a sports-mad jock with a grand goal to play rugby for Australia. I did make several representative rugby union and league teams, represented my school in 11 different sports and was captain of the swimming team. Unfortunately, however, my talent did not quite match my ambitions. As a result, I had to find another career. But as a 17 year old, fresh out of school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was too busy mucking around with my mates, playing footy, drinking beer and having fun. Which is kind of how my business began. As they say, from little things big things grow. My pub empire started as a very small operation: it started in my backyard.

When I was 17 years old, my dad bought a massive BBQ and installed it down the back of the yard. It was a concrete monstrosity with a built-in chimney, removeable grills, cast-iron hotplates and more. He decked out the area with second-hand armchairs, eskies, a tarpaulin tent to keep out the rain, a tape deck and speakers so we could listen to music, and a string of party lights dripping off the trees so we didn't trip over in the dark.

      He must have wanted us out of the house. It worked.

      I spent most of my weekends down there, hanging out with my high-school buddies. I'd invite them all over after the footy, we'd get a few girls from school to come along and before you knew it, every teenager in the street would be popping over to see what the noise was all about. Everyone was welcome — even the teachers. It wasn't unusual on some weekends to have 100+ people down the back of the yard, partying away, with me at the helm. My parties got so popular, I rallied my mates to help me manage the logistics. One took care of the food, the other bought the grog, another manned the gate to deter any undesirables from dropping in. We were a well-oiled team.

      One night we ran short of beers so my mate said, ‘Just charge them $2 for the beer you've got left in the esky' — so I did. I took that money, went down to the pub, bought more beers, came back, sold those and made $100! I was stoked. Not only had I made a few bucks, I had enabled the party to carry on late into the night. I looked around at the faces of my friends laughing, joking, dancing, drinking: I could see the joy they were experiencing, feel the happiness they were exuding, and it was exhilarating. I had brought together this disparate group of people from many walks of life, and they were all having a great time because of me. I was having a ball too, but what I really