From Basketball To Buildings: John Pugh’s Journey In Real Estate And Development

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

From the hardwood floors of basketball courts to the concrete jungles of real estate and development, John Pugh’s journey is a testament to the versatility of talent and the power of perseverance. Join Ava Benesocky and August Biniaz as they delve into the inspiring story of John who transformed his passion for the game into a thriving career in real estate. John offers insights into the evolving Tampa market, shares his strategies for navigating the current real estate climate, and discusses his vision for the future of development and investment. Discover how John’s unique blend of skills and experiences continues to shape his success and drive innovation in the industry.

Get in touch with John Pugh:

If you are interested in learning more about passively investing in multifamily and build-to-rent properties, click here to schedule a call with the CPI Capital Team or contact us at info@cpicapital.ca. If you like to co-syndicate and close on larger deal as a general partner, click here. You can read more about CPI Capital at   https://www.cpicapital.ca/.

#avabenesocky #augustbiniaz #cpicapital

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About John T. Pugh

John T. Pugh is a seasoned real estate development and investment professional with over 20 years of experience. Throughout his career, John has been instrumental in the design, development, and construction of commercial real estate projects valued at more than $2 billion, spanning local, national, and international markets. As the founder and leader of Pugh Management, John focuses on multifamily and industrial projects. His expertise extends across various asset classes, including multifamily, commercial, and industrial real estate. John is particularly skilled in structuring complex deals, assembling high-performing teams, and driving projects to successful completion. Before establishing Pugh Management, he played a key role at Samuels & Associates in the $2 billion+ 401 Park mixed-use redevelopment project in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood. Currently, John and his team at Pugh Management are transforming a suburban, transit-oriented shopping center into a vibrant mixed-use live-work-play destination. Additionally, they are progressing on two industrial projects in the suburbs of Boston, MA, and are developing a co-working and events venue in Central Florida. Beyond his professional achievements, John is a licensed architect, holds a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has an impressive background as a former professional basketball player in Australia.

 

From Basketball To Buildings: John Pugh’s Journey In Real Estate And Development

Basketball Journey & Academic Background

We’re going to switch things up a little bit here. Let’s talk basketball.

That was great. You got into it really fast. Every time you’re like, “Welcome back,” I feel like our audience literally can’t wait until the next episode comes out. We’re some HBO episode where people can’t wait for it to come with us.

I want to talk a little basketball 101. Our guest here was a professional basketball player, but the memories I have back in high school, being a basketball player myself, I’m not to toot my own horn or anything here, but I was so good at basketball that in grade ten, I was the only grade tener to make the senior team, which was a pretty big accomplishment. Not only that, I played basketball outside of school as well, on a double-A team. These girls were all 6 or 6’2. They were incredible basketball players. I couldn’t believe that I made that team I was playing and I was a shooting guard. We’re best known for three-pointers. We were very good at doing three-pointers. John and I will one day have a three-pointer shoot-off.

In that small town in Rural Alberta, what were the demographics like? Were there a lot of black girls on their team?

There wasn’t one, but it was still okay. Right into the show. I want to introduce our guest. We’re joined by John Pugh. John is a real estate expert with many years of experience, leading projects worth over $2 billion. As a Founder of Pugh Management, he focuses on multifamily and industrial developments. John’s background includes architecture, a Master’s degree from MIT, and a past career as a professional basketball player in Australia. Welcome to the show. We’re excited to get into things with you.

 

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

 

Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Before we dive into real estate, talk to us about your journey in basketball. You got into the NBA Players Association Camp. You were the top 50 players in the country in your senior year.

It was quite an experience. I was 6’10 at the age of 15. I got into playing when I was 10 or 11 years old and took it seriously. One day my name showed up on the top 100 list and then a few years later I started getting letters from Duke and North Carolina and all types of teams. The next thing you know, I got invited to the top 50 players, in the country camp, the NBA Players Association Camp. If they were to have a draft straight out of high school, this is the group that would’ve gotten drafted. Kobe Bryant was there. A lot of big-name NBA guys were there. It was a great experience and a lot of fun. One thing that I learned from that experience was that I play up to my competition that’s always how I’ve been. I’ve always tried to surround myself with A players. I feel like you’re so much better by doing that, whether you’re talking about business or basketball.

Throwing yourself in with A players always helps you get better, whether in business or basketball. Share on X

Talking about your academic background, Ava mentioned MIT. Talk to us about that. MIT is one of the best schools in the world. You hear about it, Massachusetts in Institute of Technology from high school basketball, obviously mi tell us about that journey, and how you got there.

How does that flow you towards development and everything else?

To the point of playing with the best, I learned from my time on Wall Street, that there was a very high preference put towards going to certain schools for certain types of jobs. I recognized that if I wanted to be at the top of the game in finance, development, or anything else that I did, I was going to have to find a way to get into a school like that. That to me was my path. I’ve always had a real interest in buildings and the design of buildings. I had always had an interest in drawing and was pretty darn good at it. A friend of mine did this program and helped them bridge the gap from a non-traditional architecture background to be able to go to MIT School of Architecture, which at the time is still is one of the top five programs in the country.

That was a three-and-a-half-year program. I did that. I got out. I worked as an architect for about three years, got my registration, and then fairly quickly recognized that I belonged in real estate development given my finance and business background, combined with my architecture background. It was amazing being surrounded by people who were super inspired and excited about and passionate about what they were doing. That to me gets me excited about working and speaking with people like you, working with people like you guys, and the people that I find challenging and fun to work with. I think that what I learned is that you go and look for the best people who are striving, ambitious, and looking to do new and exciting things and things will work out pretty well for you.

Talking a little bit about myself personally, and my journey. I started out as a general contractor doing small fixes and flips, eventually starting my own development company, building single-family homes, more on the luxury side. I was always fascinated by developers, people who were building skyscrapers or high rises. I remember in Vancouver there was a big development at the Pan Pacific Hotel. It was being built, which was a combination of hotels and condos. I found out that there was this, five different companies were involved, these big developers.

Transition To Real Estate

At that time I didn’t know, or understand anything about syndicated deals or how joint ventures were put together. It was fascinating to me. I started realizing how these deals are put together. In one of your first jobs within the world whether it’s either development or architecture or a combination of the two, did you realize that at some point that how are these golias in this business able to have hundreds of millions of dollars through a portion of it being equity, a portion of it being debt to be able to do these large projects? Were you ever curious about capital stack and how the funding came about?

To that point, as an inspirational piece that I learned, I had a girlfriend when I was 21 and 22 years old and her father was a developer. I had never met a developer before. I remember thinking I got to know her when I met her father he was a nice guy and he had a great life and it was a beautiful home. It was a great family. I remember thinking like, “He’s just a normal human being. He’s figured something out that’s allowed him to have a great life.” That was the seed that it was planted to some extent. For me, understanding that there is a path to this ultimate destination in terms of the capital stack, is like understanding that piece that I didn’t know anything about that until I worked at Samuel’s and Associates. It was a $1.5 billion project that ended up selling for $2.2 billion.

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

Real Estate: I remember thinking, he’s just a normal human being who figured something out. It’s allowed him to have a great life.

 

That project was extremely complicated, capital stack as you could imagine. I was tangentially involved in that, but it was also helping them look at other acquisitions. It was a matter of constantly thinking about who are the particular investors for these types of investments and where’s that capital coming from and how can we layer the capital in such a way that we can optimize the returns? That wasn’t my primary thing. I was developing. I was the acquisition and finance person. I was involved in creating some of those proformas and thinking about them with the team.

That was my first exposure to it, then not long thereafter, I went out on my own then it’s a matter of saying to yourself, “We got to figure out how to put this deal together. It’s a good deal.” We know it’s a good deal. If we’re going to be able to attract investors then how do we use debt to maximize the return but minimize the risk? We’re not taking too much risk, but at the same time maximize the return on equities.

I learned a lot about that, working for that larger shop, Samuels, and then doing it. I think so much of it’s learned by doing it, but in terms of interest, I definitely have always had an interest in understanding value. That to me has always been something that as a kid, the first video game I ever got was it Atari type of thing. It was called Wall Street, and it was buying and selling stocks. I sat there. I was 8 or 9 years old and like, “There’s an earthquake in Singapore. Your stock goes up or down.” Understanding the value of things has always been fascinating to me.

Why is Microsoft stock at $200 a share? Where does that number come from? That to me was always fascinating. Getting into buildings and development, it’s the same thing as, “Why is a building worth $32 million instead of $35 million?” That drove my interest in digging into proformas. I’ve played a lot of different roles on different development teams in terms of a general partner position, but a big part of what I’ve done is putting together the forma and managing, managing the investor conversations, and communications, and making sure that what we’re doing is ultimately where it’s going to end up. It’s a super fascinating thing. To that point, the question about I went to MIT because I remember I was looking at schools and somebody asked me like, “Aren’t you going to put like a safety school on there?”

My list was Harvard, MIT, University of Pennsylvania, it was all the best schools. I was like, “No, if I don’t get in, then maybe at some point I’ll do a safety, but I don’t want to do it unless I can go to the best school because I know that I’m not going to have the capital available to me if I don’t.” It opened doors. That was me having experience on Wall Street, seeing the types of jobs I could get given my college experience versus going to grad school. It doesn’t mean you have to do that, it makes it easier. It greases the skids, it makes it a little easier to connect with those people. Now I have an MIT alumni network and that’s somebody with a $3 billion investment fund. I might not have known that person otherwise.

We’re talking about those big numbers, billions here, billions there. That’s the world of real estate. A lot of times people don’t realize how much goes into putting these deals together when it comes to partners’ joint ventures as we’ve been discussing. Talk to us about your Pugh Management, which is your investment firm focused on development. What we’ve learned co-founding CPI Capital together is the equity side of the business is such an important part of the business. As some groups go down like I was speaking earlier, they’re multi-generational, they’re equity heavy.

 

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

 

They have a lot of investments. They’ve built that through Pugh generations, but then are also groups that go to the market to raise capital for their deals. They’re not using their own capital at times. They go to institutions that have larger family offices type of investors. They can have 1 or 2 investors to fund their deals or in other cases for retail, like the majority of our investors, I’d say it’s a good mix, but the majority are retail. What’s the vision for Pugh Management? What is your thesis when it comes to the equity for the deals you’re trying to put together? Is it a case-by-case situation?

To some extent, it is a case-by-case situation. If it’s of a certain size, for example, we’ve worked on projects from $20 million to $70 million that we’ve raised capital for, which were friends and family. $20 million projects are in the friends and family range, we were with the $70 million project we’re currently in that’s a partnership with a family office that has institutional relationships for equity. we’re a small piece of that particular larger equity stack. In terms of the larger vision of what Pugh Management wants to do. What I’d ultimately like to be able to do is build a fairly traditional real estate platform, which allows us to develop, manage properties, and play the role where we’re going to be building these assets and holding them for the longer term, but continue to manage those assets as well for that longer term and have a piece of that.

Putting in anywhere from 2% to 10% of the equity stack, bringing in a limited partner for the larger piece of it, and then helping them basically by managing that professionally and making sure that their returns are what is expected. That’s the larger vision, but I work with family offices and they want to hold things long term or they do have holdings long term that they want to think about, “How do we maximize the value here? Is there a development play here? Should we hold and wait for a better opportunity or a better time to develop a particular site? those decision-making pieces.

I advise investors and families on those as well. It’s multiple conversations, and those can turn into deals eventually as well. It’s a matter of finding the alignment and then understanding the priorities of all parties that are involved in a deal and then allowing for creating the right environment that works for everybody’s benefit. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve learned. There are always multiple ways to solve for a mutually beneficial outcome for people in a deal. There are definitely people out there walking around looking to win every negotiation is, “How do I win this negotiation?” as opposed to, “How can we both find a common ground where we’re everyone’s going to win?” I try to stay away from those people.

Let’s talk about the journey of a deal. Before we started, we were chatting about this. I was making a comparison with a lot of multi-generational goliaths of the business developers here in Vancouver particularly. I’m sure it’s the same case around the world, but these are families or institutions that have owned real estate for a long time, either if it’s a legacy type of strategy like you spoke about, or that build and sell type of strategy. A lot of times a lot of the net worth of that institution or that family or that multi-generational family is in the properties that they own at times it’s land sitting there, or potential for that, a land sitting there that currently may be producing some cash flow but eventually want to build it.

I’ve seen that many times with a lot of these different groups. When it comes to a firm like yours that might not be multi-generational, and you try to compete with these giants, what does your journey look like? Do you buy a piece of land? You talked about performance as well. Do you buy a piece of land and then plan to build something on it, whatever it may be if it’s a residential commercial, and then the plan is to sell it? Could the plan be at times buying something that going through a rezoning process, possibly an entitlement process, or maybe buying and sitting on it for a while? Is it all deal-dependent? Do you have a certain strategy? Talk to us about that because a lot of times people think about development, they think about buying a piece of land, building it, or selling it, but it could be more.

Our developers are purely opportunistic investors.

The answer to your question is there’s a variety of ways to look at the deals. For the most part, to date, I’ve been using the merchant builder strategy, which is you get a piece of property under agreement, you make the closing contingent upon approvals, and you get your approvals for the project that you plan to do there. You take it all the way through the approvals process then you close on the deal with the equity, start the construction, build the project, lease the project, and sell the project. That’s referred to as merchant building. That’s primarily what I’ve done in the past. I’m looking now for what you’re referring to. there’s like land banking and there’s covered land place. Land banking is family, or an institution has money, they need to park somewhere and they believe in the long-term growth story narrative around a particular place or city or neighborhood within a city.

They start to accumulate assets over time. One example is that is Samuel’s where I worked. They were the second largest owner of real estate in the Fenway. Upon the sale of a large portfolio by that family, they then redeployed that capital into that neighborhood, bought up a good chunk of the neighborhood and then they proceeded to put together a long-term plan for redevelopment and rezoning of that neighborhood ultimately creating a ton of value with JP Morgan was their primary equity partner in a lot of those developments. they went on to build multi-hundred million dollar mixed-use developments across that neighborhood. That was them buying it. Some of that was covered land, they’re getting rent from tenants that are in an existing building, or maybe there’s a McDonald’s and they had ten years left on their lease or whatever.

The covered land play piece is something that I’m definitely interested in looking for now because we’re in an interesting time where land prices haven’t come down quite as much as I think they should, given some of the challenges around supply and demand for both multifamily, industrial or commercial in general. As a result, I think we’re in a time period where if you can find a good asset that’s cash flowing, that ultimately could be redeveloped in the future. I think that’s the thing that’s a good idea to buy. There are not a lot of landowners who are willing to give you the time required in an agreement today to go and develop the land. Maybe it takes two years to entitle the land. Maybe it takes two years for the market to come back. There are a lot of nuances in terms of those agreements that can be negotiated, but there are some challenges and opportunities ultimately that you have to deal with.

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

Real Estate: If you can find a good asset that’s cash-flowing and could be redeveloped in the future, that’s a good idea to buy.

 

In terms of the family thing, there are definitely families that buy a property and they’re cashing as a cover land play a long-term investment. I have not been necessarily, other than with that group Samuels that I worked with before at some point I’ve not been involved with that, but I’ve been involved with family offices who are investing mostly in merchant-building opportunities that relate to relationships that I have. I know that they are buying other properties, but I’m not necessarily involved in that. That’s coming from business opportunities, relationships they have with their own existing businesses, and things like that mostly.

Move To Tampa

You have a connection to the East Coast and then made the move to Tampa recently. Then you were talking about vision. Some of these institutions look farther ahead. They believe in a certain city and they invest in that city. It seems like you’ve made more than an investment in Tampa. Talk to us about that move. Was it for great weather? Was there something that you saw as far as the city’s growth that you could come in and help build the landscape? Talk to us about your move to Tampa.

I grew up in Washington, DC. I went to college in New York City. After playing basketball in Australia, I ended up in Boston for grad school and I was there for seventeen years. Boston is a great place. I enjoyed being there, but a combination of factors. In terms of the economy, Tampa is growing. It’s a great city. I think it’s been somewhat underinvested in a hidden gem, until the last few years. The pandemic hit in 2020, people started getting on people’s radars. I think there’s a lot of opportunity here because of the growth, but because there are neighborhoods in the middle of the city that have homes on them that are $300,000 and you’re literally in the middle.

You can get to all the best places in the city. That’s a small example, but the reality is, is with smart long-term planning, which the city’s done a nice job of revising and updating their zoning and trying to make it easier for developers to build here, it’s only getting better. There’s a nice long-term trajectory here. There have been some pretty great relocations of large companies. The day before Footlocker announced that they were going to move their headquarters to St. Petersburg, which is the sister city here of Tampa. That’s exciting. The more high-paying jobs that move to a city like this the better. The quality of life is high here for people. The cost of living, even though it’s gone up a lot, it’s still relative to other places like the Northeast. It’s still a lot better.

Work-life balance, being away from some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. A lot of sports teams that redevelopment that’s happening with the big tropical and fields and big raise. That was a multi-billion dollar project, I think is a public-private partnership. We’re very bullish. We got a dog in the race when it comes We wanted to get talk to you effectively. In preparation for this show, I was watching one of the podcasts you had done. There is a development in the center of Tampa where I think your office is might be there, or maybe, maybe I’m mistaken, but people can live there, they can go out, everything is there that that city was involved in. I don’t particularly remember the name of that neighborhood.

It’s Water Street. Water Street was developed by Jeff Finnick and Cascade. It was a partnership between Jeff Finn, a billionaire, who was a Fidelity-fed hedge fund investor for many years. He started his own investment firm. The name is Strategic Property Partners. He’s since sold his portion, his ownership. Cascade now completely controls it. I don’t know the exact details, but they were the ones who developed it. It’s a multi-billion dollar development in downtown Tampa, and it’s got an office, multifamily, retail, great restaurants and bars.

It’s revitalized the downtown area. It’s adjacent to the downtown area, but it’s it’s a great development and exciting as a catalyst for more investment development. There are a ton of new projects going on related. It’s another company that’s been very active here, and they’re building hundreds of apartments at the moment, both mixed-income and I believe some luxury as well. There’s condo development going on. It’s an interesting mix of types of development.

A lot of it is centered around the Hillsborough River, which is adjacent is next to downtown. There’s a lot of interesting things happening. Somebody said this, and I don’t know if it’s necessarily true, but I believe in the concept that ultimately it’ll turn into something like Miami, because it’s Miami always to be the big brother probably, but Tampa will grow and grow in such a way that it already is a great city in itself, but it’s only going to get better and more interesting as more and more people will come here and I think, there’s more investment. I’m excited about it like you were saying, there’s this beautiful like long-term trajectory that you can easily see as somebody in investment development. It’s very clear that people are going to keep coming here and it’s only going to go up in value.

When it comes to oversupply or hyper-supply, we’ve noticed that development goes in cycles. For example, in Tampa, there was a lot of development in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

 

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

 

Particularly multifamily and acquisition department, we’re noticing a lot of ‘60s and ‘70s.

It fell off in the ‘80s and ‘90s. As we were discussing earlier, are they more pure opportunistic investors where there’s probably going to be a lot of opportunity in Tampa where they buy a piece of land or an older property that is cashflowing and then they wait for that opportunistic time when it’s the right environment to develop. As Tampa is growing, there’s probably going to be a lot of opportunity for that, which is different from the model that we utilize here, which is a multifamily value add, where as long as there’s an arbitrage between interest rates and our untreated yield on cost, which is cash on cash day one which allows you to achieve the LP economics you’re looking for. The deal becomes feasible. Talk to us a little bit about that and the excitement you have around Tampa, and the vision you have For expanding Pugh Management.

I want to add to this the idea of hypersupply. Oversupply is the Achilles heel of a developer. It goes in these cycles and we can see that as well. That must be the back of your mind.

That’s an important point you’re both making. My understanding is there are 11,000 units in the pipeline, either under construction being delivered in the near term, etc., and there are 45,000 units total in Tampa. That’s a massive amount of units being dumped into this location. I do think over the short to near term, there are going to be some impacts.

Clearly there are going to be impacts on rents. My understanding there have been some impacts already on rents, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not a great long-term story. It’s like you were saying before, it’s a cyclical business and you have to roll with things and be as nimble and strategic as you can to make sure that the investors are getting the returns that they are looking for and that you are in a position to capitalize on it when things start moving in the right direction. It’s only a matter of time. That’s the great part about the business cycle.

Make sure you position yourself to capitalize when things start moving in the right direction again. It’s only a matter of time. That's the great part about the business cycle. Share on X

In Tampa, the demand is growing. Lots of people are moving there. I’ve read in a couple of articles that supply is going to average out the end of 2025-ish.

Nobody’s building it. When they started going up, they weren’t building completely.

It stopped construction.

There’s a lot of supply being built right now, but there’s still a lot of people coming in. The demand is still good. It’s a matter of what August said, which is, people like me, I’m not building anything right now in downtown Tampa. I know multi-100 unit projects that are sitting right now and they’re not under construction. In a typical lifespan for a development is around two years in terms of construction time, not including permitting. If that permitting pipeline and the construction pipeline have come to a stop, which it has, that’s going to be great for the fundamentals in two years because there’s not going to be enough apartments for everybody.

I believe in that story. It’s a matter of when’s the right time to begin initiating these new projects and being strategic about that and finding ways to leverage my local network, relationships and be able to communicate that story to our investors and partners in the right way. That’s what we’re working on. We’re looking at finding those great locations that we can capitalize on, we can control and then bring in the right partners who understand that longer-term vision forward here.

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

Real Estate: It’s just a matter of timing to strategically initiate new projects, leverage the local network, and effectively communicate the story to investors and partners.

 

Economic Outlook

What are your thoughts on the current economic environment? Do you see the Fed decreasing interest rates as the market predicts? If the Fed does decrease rates, does it create a better environment for developers?

They’re definitely going to decrease rates. Over time, it will take a while. As interest rate hikes, there’s always a lag with interest rate cuts and their effects. It depends on who you ask, but I want to say it’s 12 to 18 months lags in terms of the impacts. You start seeing those impacts. If you think back to the rate hiking cycle, there wasn’t a noticeable slowdown until the end of 2023 or early 1024, there were some noticeable things. The whole world didn’t blow up as some people thought it might happen, but there were noticeable impacts in terms of economics and business expansion. absolutely. My expectation is they’re going to need to cut more than 100 basis points in the next few months.

My only concern with that is that could then be inflationary again. There could be a potential for a vicious suspicious cycle if that does play out, my hope is that they’re able to thread the needle, which is not something that the Fed is necessarily great at doing in the last few years. It seems like they’ve done a pretty good job of keeping the economy on track thus far. I’m interested to see how it plays out. I’m hopeful that later in ‘25 there’s going to be good, good investment opportunities in the next few months because there’s going to be some pain and some stress that’s already starting to emerge. I had a friend who sent me this spreadsheet with 40 properties that are potentially distressed that we’re going to start looking at and in the area.

That to me is finding deals where you can step in with the right investment partners and restructure those deals in a way that makes sense for people. That to me is going to be exciting and interesting for at least the next few years. While you’re also doing that, we’re also doing that. We’re going to be looking for opportunities to invest. In late ‘25 and early ‘26, I think the economy will start to be talking about the macro economy will start to be on a larger upward trajectory. I’m hopeful. You have to be an optimist to be a developer though.

You have to be an optimist to be a developer. Share on X

We’re on the same page sheet there.

That was great. Thank you so much for sharing all that knowledge. We look forward to watching your journey and as you grow and keeping you on top of our minds. Let’s move to the next segment of the show.

The ten championship rounds to financial freedom.

I’m nervous.

Whatever comes top of mind. First question. Are you ready?

Sure thing. Let’s go.

Let’s do it. Who’s been the most influential person in your life?

That would be my coach in college, Bob. He was an MBA coach. He coached me in my senior year in college. He showed me what was possible in life, which I truly appreciate.

I love that. I had a coach back in the day, not for basketball, but for Ringette who was influential, like that. I love to know that. Next question. What is the number one book you’d recommend?

I’m reading a great book, and I have to recommend that. I think you both would enjoy it as well. It’s called What It Takes by Steven Schwartzman, the Founder of Blackstone. You probably already read it because you’re both very well-read, but it’s a great book. I put a social media post up about it. I love the fact that he’s very vulnerable and open to the fact that he wasn’t sure. He didn’t have everything figured out as he was building Blackstone.

Coming from somebody who had a Harvard MBA and all this great experience, he still had doubts before he went into his first fundraising meeting. I think that’s great to see somebody who’s held up as this supreme being in some way as he’s a real person who struggles with everything everybody else struggles with. It’s pretty cool and a great story about building the biggest private equity firm in the world.

It spawned even BlackRock, which has over $10 trillion in assets under management. They do money management, that falls. Whereas Blackstone is in a way owned those over trillion dollars of assets. Another thing about Steven Schwarzman is also surrounding yourself with other great people. His first partner who’s no longer with Blackstone, he was his connection to the White House and all of that great stuff. Japanese were some of some of their biggest investors. On their first fund, they raised over $1 billion.

I couldn’t believe that. Next question. If you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?

“Always recognize that you’re capable of doing more than you ever imagined and always aim high.”

 

Real Estate Investing Demystified | John Pugh | Real Estate

 

What’s the best investment you’ve ever made?

It’d have to be a very recent investment that we put in. We have twenty times the equity return multiple. That was the best investment I ever made.

What’s the worst investment you’ve ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?

Everybody makes bad investments. I’m trying to think of the worst investment though. That’s an important one to know about.

It doesn’t have to be monetary. It doesn’t have to be monetary.

John is like, “I’ve never made a bad investment in my life.” He is too smart for that.

There was an investment of my time and maybe in my college days, it could have been a little bit more effective and efficient with my time there. I was a full-time Division One basketball player. When I wasn’t playing basketball, I was having a good time, but not necessarily as focused as I would like to have been at school. It all worked out pretty well in the end.

Next question. How much would you need in the bank to retire today? What’s your number?

I don’t want to retire. I don’t have a number. I love working. I love what I do. My expectation is I love to be like Buffett and Munger because they kept working and working. It is because when you do something you love, it’s not work. It’s your passion. I don’t care how much money I have in my bank account if in the end I’m doing what I enjoy and working with great people. I’ve luckily, been able to make enough money that I’m very comfortable and happy with what I have. I’m happy to keep going, which is fun. I enjoy the challenge. I enjoy working with good people.

If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?

George Washington. I read his biography, not that long ago and was impressed by his journey, from a young age and all the challenges he overcame to leading the army to the founding of the country, et cetera. He fought for what he believed in. I think that’s a fascinating journey that I’d love to hear more about. I could say Jesus Christ. I could see all types of interesting people and great meaningful people, but that’s an interesting life. Same with Benjamin Franklin. He’s a super fascinating guy that did some interesting things. I like the Founding Fathers.

If you weren’t doing what you’re doing today, what would you be doing now?

You coach basketball.

You stumped me. I coach my son’s youth basketball team. That’s been very enjoyable. I guess I would do something like that. I love athletics. I believe in the importance of sports in young people’s lives to figure out and learn about important life lessons. I think that would be fun to do.

My favorite question. Book smarts or street smarts?

Street smarts. I know a lot of book-smart people that are great people. They’re not very good at business and some of them maybe they don’t have any interest in business, but I love business. Business is the street smarts game. You might not know something, but you can go to a book, go online, look it up, you can learn the technical stuff. If you don’t know how to handle yourself in a conversation with certain types of people in a certain sit bad good or bad situation then you’re out of luck. Street smart’s 100%.

Last question, if you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment today, what would it be?

My money is in short-term treasuries waiting for opportunities. I guess I’d be buying short-term treasuries with that because there’s a lot of great opportunity ahead in the next few months.

10 Championship Rounds To Financial Freedom

That’s it for the ten championship round. Let everybody know how they can reach you if you don’t mind, please.

I’m at PughMgmt.com. I’m on LinkedIn at @JohnTPugh. That is the best way to reach me. We’ve always been interested in having conversations with people who want to learn more, either as an investor or someone we might want to partner with. I’m happy to chat.

He’s pretty active on LinkedIn as well. He is. Got some great newsletters and other content.

We have the lineup newsletter. It’s Substack newsletter as well and we launched the LinkedIn version. We’ve got over a thousand followers on Substack, which is awesome we launched the LinkedIn Newsletter. Now, we have 700 followers. We’re chugging away.

You launched a podcast.

I need to mention we have our podcast Breaking New Ground where we’re speaking with people who are like yourselves real estate entrepreneurs and building their businesses. I would love to have you guys on there. It’d be fantastic. You’re definitely a great example of some entrepreneurs who have done some interesting things and continue to do those things.

Thanks for all your wisdom and knowledge. Thank you.

Thank you.