Veteran's Voyage From Service To Real Estate Success With The Marine Investor, Hutch Hutchinson

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Hello. Jenny Bowling here with Pivot to Prosperity, the podcast brought to you by Pivotal Real Estate Investments, where we help our investors build wealth and income through commercial real estate that improves communities. And today we have Hutch Hutchinson here as a guest. Thank you for coming, Hutch.

Thank you so much for having me join you today.

Oh, you're welcome. I want to read your bio. You have an impressive background. Hutch, the Marine investor, as he's known, is a master gunnery sergeant, an E9 in the United States Marine Corps. Throughout his 25 year career, he's served in many leadership roles in the Marine Corps Aviation Group. He has been awarded several personal awards for his performance. He's created and led teams of various sizes that performed effectively in training and combat operations. Hutch has successfully executed over 2.4 million in single family real estate transactions, including over $870,000 as a real estate agent, currently inactive and co sponsored over $131 million in multifamily property acquisitions, totaling 1018 units in the Southeast and Texas while still serving in the military. That's a feat that is. That's impressive. Hutch is a member of the Race Masters Mastermind. He's earned a Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and been the husband of Athena for 22 years and the father of three beautiful children. Very good. Nice background there, Hutch.

Thank you.

Do me a favor and tell the audience a little more about what is not in those words.

Oh, man. So I appreciate, first of all, really appreciate you taking my, my request to join this, this show and, and sharing with your audience. Look, we all have a life journey, and there's so much that involves in that, and a lot of times we, we don't really know the value of the things that we're going through until we actually look back and we try to measure backwards. Right. You know, so my journey start on in a small community on the mountainside of Juan de Bolas Mountain in Jamaica. In that area used to be a coffee slave plantation. Right. So the beautiful thing about that is that we grew up in an environment that was rich in, in family roots. We also grew up in an environment where we, we had access to very healthy products, meaning all the, all the cows and goats and pigs, everything we raised were fed naturally, organically. And also everything we ate, we grew on the farm as well. Right. You know, so we grew up what I like to call wealthy, but maybe broke. Right. You know, so, but it was a good environment to grow up in, you know, so my journey started on what used to be a coffee stain plantation in Jamaica. So in the third grade, I was reading what, what was called the Children's Own, which was mandatory reading for school age children. And in the third grade I saw this picture, so hometown news of this young man, Jamaican. He was on a boat working on an aircraft. And at that point I made a decision that if I ever go to America, I want to join the military and I want to work on aircraft. And when you make a decision, that's what you want to do. I came to America and my dad introduced me to the recruiter and the recruiter asked me what you want to do. I said, look, sir, if I don't have something in aviation, I'm not leaving my house. And came back to me a week later like, hutch, I'm finding a job. What is it? It's working on aircraft. All right, bet. Let's go. You know, so got stationed in Hawaii. That's where I met my beautiful wife. I was stationed there for, for 10 years and three months when did some, did some, some tour in Southeast Asia and also in combat. And then I went to Florida, California, Florida, California, and then back to Hawaii, you know, so to finish up my 25 years. Yes, ma'.

Am. Now, and where were you when you were in combat? Where were you stationed?

So I was originally in Hawaii and we were operating some, some older time model series aircraft, 53 Deltas. Right. So we, we need to move the heavy lift into the area. And that was a cool weapon system because it was an old aircraft. So most of the kinks was already worked out of it, you know, so we had a proficient team managing, I mean, maintaining that aircraft. And, but even that, when we took him to combat, we noticed that we needed to increase their power. So when it moved from Iraq to Afghanistan, one of the things we're now going to deal with is higher elevation. So we had to replace all those engines to be able to operate better in the hills of Afghanistan, you know, so station Hawaii to Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, so very successful tours. You know, put in putting troops in zone and extracting troops out of zone.

So when you're in the Marines and you're still active duty, you said now, right. How many hours do you work a day?

It's, it's, it fluctuates. Sleep really fast, you know, so, you know, a lot of like you, man, I know most people have, have we call checklists and to do lists. Right. All important, right. So when you have a full time career and you're Trying to build something else, that your family's future depends on it. Then you now more, you're more likely to create a priority list, you know, so I have a lot of priority lists that I need to work on. So when that list is done, then I go to sleep and I sleep really fast and then go be committed to the Marine Corps.

Okay, well, so do they have you work a set number of hours, though? Like, I, I, I'm kind of trying to help people think, you know, in terms of how many hours are you available? I'm thinking you don't work an eight hour a day for the Marine Corps, do you?

I do.

Oh, do you? Oh, okay.

And more. Some, some, some time. 07 to, to, to 7:00pm sometimes, you know, so 12 hours roughly.

Okay, okay. So you're, it's kind of similar to.

Okay, a regular W. So It's a regular W2. And the Marine Corps requires your 100 commitment and effort. Right. So it's important that that is priority number one. Now everything else, everything outside of that. Right. Is on our time, you know, so one of the things that I've learned is that clarity trumps accessibility. Right. So when I come home, I have a responsibility to be a husband and a father, but my family understands some of the things that I'm, that I'm working on, and I ensure that they understand what my priorities are. Right. And, you know, spend time with family, spend time with Athena, and then go to the office and knock out some real estate. Also, wake up very early in the morning for this conversation. I was talking about postal recording. I was talking about Heath and I waking up at 04 in the morning and we spend time in real estate and then we go off to do our job. Yes.

Yeah, that, that's what it takes, I guess. You know, when you're, you're in your situation, you have to just do what you can. Now, Keith, you said is your partner, Right. And where is he located?

So he's located in the Southeast. And when we started our partnership, him and I was accountability partners, so we were in the same time zone. He lived in Enterprise, Alabama. I lived in Pensacola, Florida at the time. You know, so we're in the same time zone, and we wake up at four in the morning and we would mastermind, you know, creating podcast content, newsletters, you know, and also just building the business. And then him and I would also drive two hours to his house, and they would drive four hours to Huntsville, Alabama, which was our preferred market, even though we didn't acquire anything in the market, but, you know, gave us an opportunity to. To learn each other on a deeper level, you know, I mean, trapped in a car for four hours listening to podcasts, listen to audiobook, you know, that's talking about our principles or values, you know, the things we care about in our family, you know, so we got to learn each other better. While we were accountability partners before we actually formalized becoming business partners.

All right, and the name of the company you ended up using, the name it was instead of the 4am capital. What's your name?

H Squared Capital, which is just very simple Hutch and he. Very simple.

Hutch and Heath. Right, okay. And so tell us a little about your journey there, where you came from and then more importantly, where you're at. Share any experiences that you'd like to share with the audience.

Yeah, look, so a lot of the things that we accomplish in life is. Is taught to us by our parents. That's what taught to us by a small community. Our churches, our schools, right. Our aunties and uncles, right, that come and visit and teach us things. For me, when I came to America in 1998, my dad was. He was a real estate investor, but he was also a real estate agent. So his thesis was surrounding fixing and. And fix. Fixing and flipping properties. Right. But he was using a. A older strategy. Well, it was used. It's not used older. He was using a strategy that was publicized by Carlton Sheets, right, Called the Sheets. Teach people to walk, you know, to drive around a neighborhood or walk around a neighborhood, find distressed properties. But by, by seeing if the yard is overgrown, if the mailbox box is full up, is filled, which, which are. Are strategies or tactics that people are still using to today, right. Just a little more sophisticated, right. They call it driv. Driving for dollars. So my dad was teaching me about that, about how to find those properties, you know, so it teach me more about multifamily, I mean about single family properties, about how I can own some of America. So when I got married, I wanted to buy a house. House. Keep in mind, I was in Hawaii on a sergeant salary. There's no way I'm always going to be able to afford a house in, in Hawaii. But I could have afford a condo. But my paradigm based on what my dad taught me was to buy a house. You know, I didn't know what these little condos or apartment things were. You know, me and I know what a house was and that's what I wanted to buy. You know, so I try to get approved for a house.