What have we learned so far? | AMA Session with Guest Host John Njoku #26

Podcast
Written by Nick Halaris

Hi Everyone!

This week on 🎧The Nick Halaris Show we are welcoming back our guest host John Njoku for another tables turned ask me anything episode.  As you all know, we’ve had some rather interesting guests on the show over the past few months and with everything going-on in the world right now, I figured it would be a great time to reflect on some of the big themes and issues we’ve uncovered. 

Ready to dive in? Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and Youtube or on your favorite podcast platform.

John came prepared, as usual, with a bunch of interesting questions and perspectives.  In this wide-ranging conversation, we discuss:

  • The terrorist attacks in Israel and their potential global implications

  • The different manifestations of the global financial literacy crisis

  • Why building a border wall is a terrible idea

  • How to use systems thinking to solve the homelessness crisis

  • The four different layers of freedom

    &

  • My belief in America’s unique historical moral obligation to be the defender of freedom in the world

We also cover familiar ground for regular Profit+ readers and discuss market conditions in the real estate industry, the prospect for and potential consequences of sticky inflation, and the relationship between labor market dynamics and the leadership crisis in America.  Of course, John couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask me about Crossfit so we got into that again as well.  Finally, stay tuned until the end for a discussion of what I’ve been reading lately and a preview of some future Profit+ articles.  

As always, thanks or tuning-in!

Love this episode? Please rate, subscribe, and review on your favorite podcast platform to help more users find our show.

🙏 Thank you

Nick Halaris

I’ve been fascinated by investing for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I would read the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Barron’s, pouring over the data tables, stories and interviews with a passion and an insatiable kind of curiosity. As I grew into adulthood, I struggled to find the right outlet and channel for this passion and spent much of my twenties wandering and trying out different things. I had a very brief career as an attorney, spent some time as a strategy and leadership consultant for big multinational companies, failed in an attempt to start a hedge fund, and even ended up helping run a scrap metal recycling operation for a while.

At the age of 30 though, I took my stand. I made up my mind that no matter what I was going to be an entrepreneurial investor. As crazy as it sounds, I owe everything in my life to this one foundational decision—even my amazing wife and my beautiful kids. I don’t think I would ever have met Alicia had I not made this one choice. At that moment in time, the financial world had just been devastated by the crash in the housing market and the near systemic failure of the global banking system that followed. I’ve always had a contrarian bent to my investment thinking; so, to me the carnage in real estate looked like an opportunity.

It all started with one house in Compton California. The business plan was simple: buy a distressed foreclosed home from a bank, bring it back to life with a big renovation and sell it to a first-time homebuyer. Things progressed slowly as they tend to do with real estate. In the first years of this, I think I did 6-7 homes. But then after plugging away day-by-day, suddenly it seemed, things just came together. I found the right investors and the right loans and the right deals and in just a few short years I ended up investing in over 100 such transactions, building a portfolio of almost 2,500 multifamily units and creating a fully vertically integrated real estate company with almost 100 employees.

Fast forward to today and I’m running the second evolution of my entrepreneurial investing career and having so much fun that I have to stop and remind myself that this is all real.

http://www.nickhalaris.com
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