Health, High-Stakes Decisions, and Purpose | w/ Hunter Hall

Every day, Hunter helps make thoughtful, high-pressure investment decisions in his role on the investment team at the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company. In this episode, we discuss what it's like making decisions where the stakes are high, how he approaches evaluating risk, and a few lessons from the world of finance that apply far beyond investing.

We also dive into Hunter's story, why staying physically active makes him better at his job and strengthens his relationships, and how each of us has unique skills we can use to serve others. Along the way, we talk about the importance of finding balance through hobbies like skiing, boating, and dancing with Vita, and why investing in your health allows you to show up for the people and moments that matter most.

Whether you're navigating a demanding career, trying to stay consistent with your health, or looking for ways to use your strengths to make a difference, I think you'll take something away from this conversation.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Today's guest is Hunter Hall, an investment professional based in Austin, Texas, who works as an institutional allocator across the private equity and real assets ecosystems. Hunter currently works in the world of private markets, where he helps evaluate investment opportunities and through his role, partners with some of the leading firms across the financial industry. Throughout his career, he's developed a passion for understanding how successful people think, make decisions, and perform under pressure. Today we'll discuss performance, discipline, decision making, career development, fitness, and lessons he's learned along the way. This one, like all of my talks, was fun, but this one was different for sure. And I really enjoyed talking to Hunter. He has great insight, perspective, and a really, really cool story. I hope you guys enjoy and thank you for listening to Life in Motion. I have Hunter Hall with me. Hunter, you are dating Vita Maida, who I just did a podcast with. I am. This is a fitness podcast. It's relatively new. And so when I preface with you are an institutional allocator, people are going to have zero clue or idea why do I have this man on. But y'all have been good friends for some time. And you have a really cool story, perspective, and some knowledge I want to share with people. So thanks for being here. Yeah, I'm happy to be here and happy to share at least a little bit of my story in the in the time that we have. And today we're going to talk specifically about performance, discipline, decision making, some career development, and a lot of lessons you've learned along the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Plenty of them. And happy to have learned them and hopefully share them with the listeners. You learn lessons through failures, correct? Learned experiences, failures, and successes. I don't think you have to fail every time to learn a lesson. Sometimes you can get it right on the first time and uh just continue to refine that process over and over and over again. And I think that's kind of a lot of what I do on a daily basis. If I was failing consistently, I don't think I would be employed. Very true. But uh learning through failures, learning through life, and uh learning through friends for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

And again, that's why I wanted to have you on. You work a very demanding job. The perspectives that you bring to the table, I see parallels too in health and wellness. So I wanted to kind of touch or pick your brain on how you go about your job, your health and wellness, your life, and how you manage all of that, working a very demanding job. And for the listeners out there, what is your story and how did you end up here?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Maybe I'll start with kind of some background information. I was born into a military family, lived on the East Coast for a while, and bounced around almost on a yearly basis to a new location. We moved from, gosh, let's see, born in Maryland, lived in Virginia, moved back to Maryland, from Maryland, moved to Evanston, Illinois. From Illinois, moved to Texas for the first time. From Texas, left and moved to Colorado. From Colorado, moved to North Carolina, from North Carolina, moved back to Texas, and now have found myself here, hopefully, for the foreseeable future. I think I've moved and moved around more than I could ever imagine wanting to, and more than most people can ever say that they have in my life. Fun fact, up until I was 27 years old, I had technically lived in more houses than I was years old. My gosh. Um, it is an unbelievable journey that has gotten me here. But I would say, as far as kind of story goes, I've spent kind of the past two years as an institutional allocator. And effectively, the group that I work for makes decisions on how capital should be allocated. That capital is funded and provided by a group of people or institutions or organizations. And for me, it happens to be the state of Texas. I work for a company called the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company. It's a bit of a mouthful. And we manage roughly $165 billion on behalf of the state of Texas, its agencies, and some political subdivisions. That capital is allocated to external investment managers. Think the likes of Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, some of the big private equity names, hedge funds, hedge funds like Elliott, Millennium, some of the most well-recognized financial institutions, or we partner with some of the most well-recognized financial institutions across the United States. And effectively, what my job is, is to evaluate managers, understand industries, assess risk, and attempt to identify people and organizations that can generate attractive returns over long periods of time. We try to answer questions through our job similar to can this team execute? Does this team have a right to win? How do they behave when things go wrong? It's probably the most important one. And do they learn from those situations and adapt going forward? And can we trust them to be a steward of our capital for the next 10, 15, 20 years? We invest out of a perpetual pool of money, effectively assuming that this will be around forever and attempt to grow that on behalf of our constituents.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Hunter, I have so many questions. This is going to be fun. This is cool. And where do I start?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

How big is your team? Surprisingly smaller than you would think. We split it into what we define as external investments, which is where I sit. That is a group of 11 people and then internal investments, and that's a group of six. Our internal investment group covers our internally managed capital. They effectively act as traders and execute our investment strategy of publicly tradable stocks, bonds, credits, anything that is publicly tradable. The external team looks at and develops partnerships with external investment managers to execute specific strategies. We break that up again into kind of public and private markets. I focus primarily on private markets. So I underwrite private equity strategies, I underwrite real estate strategies, I underwrite infrastructure strategies, and I underwrite natural resources strategies. There is a much broader and wider definition of what we do, but for the intents and purposes of this conversation, I think kind of trying to tailor it to what I focus on is most relevant.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

Sorry to backtrack. I also want to preface with I have a very basic knowledge of finance investments. And so like I said, I have so many questions for you. Yeah. That's nuts. And you guys manage, you said $165 billion. We do.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Um that's nuts. There's a good comparison that I've heard used by some of my peers. We're not the athletes on the field necessarily. We're like the general managers of a sports franchise. We kind of make sure that the environment is there. We go out and we source the talent, we build a balanced team, we manage risk, and we create an environment where success is more likely than failure. Our job is to effectively underwrite the people that we are investing with. We want to make sure that we create a portfolio of talented managers and investable strategies that can perform across market cycles. You're right, it is an incredibly small team. Yeah, that's wild. Which leads to a pretty demanding job. Yeah. It can be hard to shut your brain off because you're kind of constantly thinking about what is happening in your portfolio at any given time. Interestingly, it is a small team, but I would argue that we are adequately staffed. We've done an incredible job of creating repeatable processes that allow us to be incredibly efficient in the way that we work. So it works. It's efficient. Y'all are efficient.

SPEAKER_02 9:03

We are certainly efficient. That is, I wish there was another word for incredible. Um way above my head and mind-blowing to me. Well, what did you think you'd be doing at 18? And and how different is your life now?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

That is a great question. I think it is rare that any 18-year-old knows or believes exactly what they are going to be doing in you know, five, 10, 15, 20 years. And I was certainly one of those 18-year-olds who had an idea of what he thought he was going to be doing and completely flipped the script. I went into my undergraduate studies and told myself that I wanted to major in aeronautical engineering and then I wanted to build airplanes. Yeah, that's very similar to what you do now. Completely. Yeah. Not at all. It was a blessing and a curse having the intro to engineering professor that I had, an incredibly talented man, an incredibly monotone man who effectively told us that if we wanted to work on the same project with the same people for decades at a time, then this was a great career for us. But if we wanted something that was a little bit more dynamic to get out while we still had the chance. Full time. Maybe this is a good time to touch on the fact that education and I did not get along through middle school, high school, college, all of it. I found that I excelled in things that I cared about and completely procrastinated on those that I didn't, like a lot of people do.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

So I relate to you. I say unfortunately, I think we both ended up where we wanted to be, which is awesome. But I also was not a great student. It was hard to apply myself to things I didn't see as applicable. And that led to minimal effort put in. We graduated, we got to where we needed to be. I had to find something I was one good at and then too interested in to care enough to apply myself. And so you sound eerily similar to me, and that's very interesting.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, absolutely. Uh I think I was one of those kids that if you told me an essay needed to be 500 words, it would be 500. 500 exact to the T, it would be 500 words. I would get exactly what I needed to get across. You know, it was the definition of putting in kind of a baseline amount of work. English classes were never my favorite thing on the face of the planet. If you put me in a math class or you put me in a physics class or speech, even I certainly enjoyed those and would put a lot of time and effort into succeeding in those classes. But I have a mentor in my life who uh preaches something, it's very simple and it's just find your personal genius. It's effectively finding the intersection of your natural talent, passion, and contribution and pursuing it relentlessly. Love that. When I was able to find that, I certainly found that I excelled in life, in education, and in my career for sure. And I will say having the ability to find that in a career is certainly unique and incredibly rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

I will choose to believe that we all I'm sure everybody has a niche, a thing, a set of skills that they can excel or use absolutely to grow their career, to be successful financially, socially. But you do have to find that. And for some people, hey, it takes years down the line.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

You know, I had an interesting conversation with my dad, who I admire and look up to with all my heart, about midway through my college career. And he had a very short and succinct way of telling me I needed to find that pastor. He told me I had three options. One was to leave college and find a career that would satisfy what I wanted to do in my life without a college education. Two was to join the military. Okay. And three was to finish my education. I realized very quickly that finding a job that would satisfy me without a college degree and that had enough stability and growth was damn near impossible. The military was not for me, although I'm sure some of that discipline wouldn't have hurt. I was reinvigorated in pursuing and finishing my education, and it has continued to pay its dividends. It also helped me to kind of hone in on what I love doing. I think many people believe that investing is a science. I would argue that it is as much of an art as it is a science, especially where I sit. It's the art of understanding people and the science of understanding numbers that come together to create a durable and lasting portfolio.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

And having heard all of that, your story, there's still more to the story. Well, I really want to tie this to the gym. Like I see the parallels, and I'm gonna hold off on that. But I do want to talk more about how you got to where you are now. So was there one decision, pivotal decision, that changed the course of everything?

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Arguably finishing my degree. There was a moment there where I didn't think I wanted to finish school. I had left college and I was living in Aspen, Colorado, as a ski bum. I had promised myself as a very young man that that was something that I was going to do at least once in my life. And I had the opportunity to do it. So I did. But I will say the most impactful decision that I've ever made is finishing my education. And I have told that to many, many people and close friends of mine who might be going through a similar situation, or coworkers that have a son or a daughter that's in the same situation. I think an education is the best investment that any person can ever make into themselves. And without that, I would have never had the opportunity to have the career that I do today. It was through college that I kind of found the opportunity. During my junior year, I did an internship at a global investment consultant called NEPC, based out of Boston. And at the time and to this date, they advise on I think it's north of one and a half trillion dollars of capital. And very conveniently, they happened to have discretionary investment rights over the university endowment where I went to school. I was introduced to them through that, and it was through this internship that I kind of found the love of creating and crafting institutional investment strategies or portfolios. And it's how I found my way to the seat that I'm currently in.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Wow. And to think you almost didn't finish school or thought about it.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

I think there was a pretty good chance that I didn't finish school had I not had one very defining conversation with my dad and one very supportive girlfriend who pushed me to do it. She's uh I'm assuming her episode is gonna come out before mine. So most of you will have had the opportunity to hear from Vita.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

Oh, yeah. Um, but she's lovely and supportive and will push you for sure. She will push you. She's also, it's no secret, sitting right next to you.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

She is currently sitting right next to me. I promise you, there's no pressure and no gun to my head to be saying to your head.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

I love that. What you do specifically as a financial allocator. I'm not gonna lie. Before our talk, I did not know what the title meant, what you did. What does your day-to-day schedule look like at work? I'm sure there is a lot going on. Like you said, it's hard to turn off your brain because there are so many things happening, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, absolutely. One of the challenges of having a smaller team is that I have a pretty broad coverage mandate. When you think the private equity, real estate, infrastructure, and natural resources markets all very different than one another. Pros and cons, definitely to that, right? I get to have a decently informed opinion on a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

But it's unbelievably challenging to keep up with all of it. I would say a day in the life. I wake up sometime at around 6:30, 6.45-ish. First thing that I do is check my emails. It is an unfortunate fact of the industry that we work in that inevitably at some point the night before, I will have gotten an email that I need to respond to almost immediately. Second thing I do is read a quick morning market brief. JP Morgan's thoughts for the day, if you will. Yeah. I take my dog for a nice long walk, and I either listen to some music or a podcast, or occasionally, if I'm lucky enough to have Vita with me, we just kind of hang out and talk, talk about the day, talk about our lives, talk about what's going on. Your dog is also with us. Yeah, he's hanging out in the room right now. We got Bodhi with us, currently pretending to be a lap dog. Get home from the walk, get ready, and pretty much turn around and head straight into the office. I tend to get in at around 8:30. And then I would say a typical day for someone in my seat is conducting manager interviews, having discussions with our portfolio managers, and running some analytical models that we use, some kind of proprietary quantitative models that help us understand and dissect a manager's track record. My job is a lot of reading and a lot of conversations. And it's effectively just asking better questions than anyone else.

SPEAKER_02 19:53

So, when do you find, if you're able to time to keep active work out?

SPEAKER_00 20:00

I know you do take care of yourself. I'm unbelievably lucky and that I live two blocks away from my office, and that there is a gym in my office, and that there is a gym in the apartment building that I live in. Wow. Zero excuses to not at least get some steps in or some sort of workout in on a daily basis. Everybody's already listened to Vita's episode. So I also am dating a physical therapist and a personal trainer. So even if I did come up with any sort of excuse to try and get myself out of it, there's no way to get out of it. I will say one of the things that that helped me stay focused on a fitness goal, I like to set up kind of accountability challenges with my friends. So currently, and it sounds easy and it sounds simple, but it's 10,000 steps a day, two walks a day outside with Bodhi, our dog, 100 push-ups, 100 dips, and holding a plank for at least five minutes.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Wait, you do that every day? Every day. Have you missed a day recently? Also, how long is this challenge going for?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I don't know. We haven't really defined an end date to it, but it's it's kind of fun. And realistically, I think that all of those things as a young and healthy adult are pretty attainable. And I find that my performance at work is significantly better when I complete these things. My sleep is significantly better when I complete these things. My life is significantly better when I complete these things. You asked if there was a day that I had not achieved it recently. And yes, there are days where I do not hit one of the goals. Yes, sorry, not to call you out. No, no, no, no. It's very fair, right? It's an accountability challenge. So keeping me accountable, it's in the name. I want to say it was on Thursday. Unfortunately, I did not hit my step goal. The punishment isn't the right word, but if you break one of the rules, the goal is to double the push ups, double the dips, and double the plank the next day. Oh, geez. And this isn't like I'm not sitting and doing 200 push-ups in a row. That's for Iron Man and people that are in better shape than I am. But you know, it can be broken up over you do 50 in the morning, you do 50 in the evening, you complement them or supplement them around your walk. Heck, I've even done them in the office. Uh there you go. I'm lucky enough to have a team that just kind of smiles, laughs, and looks at me and understands. Uh I love that. But I I think the ability to have these challenges and to consistently work out leads to high performance in almost every aspect of your life. If you're able to be dedicated around your physical body, it translates very well into uh mental capacity, emotional capacity.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yeah, I agree with everything you said. The mind and body, it's like they're connected. They're definitely connected. Um yeah, I'm definitely the first to say that. Yeah. 100%. We'll give you credit for it. Yeah, the mind and body are connected. No one's ever said that, but it's true they are. And that's cool to hear how you make health and wellness still a part of your life when I know you said you have the gym in your office and it is convenient. You still work that demanding job. That'll drain you sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

It can be hard. A lot of it is just making time for it. I would say that I'm blessed and lucky. You're right, I have a demanding job, but I also have a very understanding team. That team knows and respects that if they want me at my best, this is kind of a non-negotiable, if you will. It's a big part of who I am. And they understand the benefits that it gives me, both physically and mentally, but it allows me to work the way I do. So cool.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Y'all know this. Vita knows this too. How you talk about your team is how I feel about my job and my team at work at Westwood. Rob has cultivated this culture of you gotta take care of you. We're not afraid to feel he makes us feel comfortable and we're better for it. It's the healthiest workplace I've ever been a part of.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

I'm lucky to say that this is the only workplace, at least from a full-time nature, that I have ever been a part of. And uh, that culture trickles down from the top. We absolutely have phenomenal leaders in place that uh empower and give the opportunity to the more junior employees on the team to pursue what they need to pursue in order to deal with the challenges that a job like this throw at you.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

And there are a lot of challenges.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

What is the best piece of advice you've ever received? Well, I shared one earlier. Find your personal genius. Funny enough, different quote, same gentleman. This one was impactful for me, especially because I wasn't a high achiever in school. But he told me once that if you're extremely smart but only partially engaged, you'll be outperformed by people who are sufficiently smart but fully engaged. And I think this translates well to a lot of things in life, but particularly performance, because that quote effectively just means consistency beats talent surprisingly often. If I am great once a week, that's phenomenal. But if I am good five days a week, seven days a week, that consistency will make you a much better human, a much better friend, a much better employee or employer than you would otherwise be.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

See, now we're we're finding those parallels. He's speaking for me. I'm learning. Now, what advice would you give someone trying to break into institutional investing? If someone wants to say, hey, I want to do what Hunter does, how would they go about starting that journey?

SPEAKER_00 26:08

I'd say that there's three things to do. One is reach out and have a conversation with somebody who's in the industry. It can be a terrifying step to do, especially to kind of cold call, if you will, someone, cold email someone and ask for what we call a coffee chat. Hey, I'd love to meet over coffee and have a discussion about what you do, why you think it's important, and how I can learn from you. Two, channel your natural curiosity. And three, be a voracious consumer of information. Whether it's reading books, reading white papers, studying underlying asset classes, find something that you're passionate about and go deep on it. That leads itself to being very successful in a career like this.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

I think we as a society, here I go in my old man rants. I do this a lot. We consume a lot of stuff. A lot of it is not productive. There's a time and a place. Hey, I love my brain rot. I stream, I Netflix, I will scroll on Instagram, sometimes for a very long time, but that shouldn't consume your whole life.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

You know what? I think one of the best things that I've done for myself on the social media front, I have a 30-minute time limit for all of my social media apps. Vita is laughing right now. She's not a fan. She's not a fan. Do you actually so you do this daily? Yeah. 30 minutes. It's on your iPhone. You can set this up. Anybody can set this up. There are time limits. You can have a friend set a password for you so you don't know how to get around it. That's smart. And look, I get it. You're right in the middle of a reel. You absolutely need to see. There is always an option. Not always, but I think you get like one or two a day where it says just one more minute. I see. So you can get your one more minute, you can get your fix, but then it effectively blocks you out from getting on the apps. And I'm with you. If I had the opportunity to sit and rot, it's addictive for a reason, right? Like it's fun to consume. Fun might not be the right word. It's easy to consume and it's easy to get drawn into it, and you can waste an exceptional amount of time. Vita is still laughing at Hunter. Uh, having having a thirst for knowledge across as many industries as you can possibly think of, I would call it a prerequisite for the work that I do.

SPEAKER_02 28:36

I love your perspective. I want to share more than just your knowledge. You can learn from successes, not just failures. You learn from both. But let's talk failures. What's one financial decision you've passed on that's turned out to be a very big success?

SPEAKER_00 28:55

I think anybody in my seat will tell you that nobody bats a thousand, right? It's impossible to capture every good opportunity, but it is our job to avoid the bad ones. So is investing more about finding winners or avoiding mistakes? Avoiding mistakes. Like I said, anybody in my seat will tell you nobody bats a thousand. I don't have the capital, one, the time, two, or the risk budget to pursue every good opportunity that presents itself. And there are many, but I have to have the discipline and the intelligence to avoid the bad ones. And you won't avoid all of them. Nobody in their career will. I don't think there is a single investor that can sit here and tell you that they've never lost you money. And those that do, I would be incredibly cautious of. Yeah. Um, but absolutely understanding that from my position, we try to create thoughtful portfolios that will generate meaningful outperformance across a spectrum of investments. Our goal is not to hit home runs. Our goal is to statistically hit singles, doubles, yeah, triples, convert on some stolen bases every once in a while. There you go. And the occasional home run. But avoid mistakes. Avoid mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Now, is what you do for your team and for your work any different than what you do for your personal investments?

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Yes, massively. Okay. I would say that I take a much different risk perspective in my personal investments than I do for my team and work.

SPEAKER_02 30:30

Are you more or less risky in your personal investments? More risky. More risky. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

I have a fiduciary obligation to the pool of capital that I work with. And that obligation is to compound, grow, and not lose that money. I am okay with small drawdowns in a personal portfolio. Small drawdowns in our institutional portfolio would be highly scrutinized. Also, when we think about the scale of the institutional portfolio versus the scale of my personal portfolio, a 1% downturn in a $165 billion portfolio is $1.65 billion. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 31:11

I'm going to have to create new words to explain the amount of money you're working with. Let's repeat $165 billion. That's with a B. It is with a B. Billion dollars.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Yes. You can think of it effectively as like the state's savings account. There are seven large underlying pools that we invest out of. The state's treasury pool, which is largely a fixed income vehicle, cash, cash equivalents, and fixed income. The goal is to effectively beat the cash return by 20 to 30 basis points or 0.2%, give or take. I like to say that in that portfolio, nobody makes a killing, but nobody gets killed. It is designed to be a large, stable pool of capital that can fund anything the state needs. Yeah. On top of that, we have the Treasury pool prime or the Tex Pool and the Tex Pool Prime. Same general idea, slightly up the risk curve. And then we have four pools of capital that we invest externally, which are kind of the ones that I oversee or help oversee. We have our legacy endowment fund, which was started back in the late 90s when the state of Texas sued the big tobacco companies. The state of Texas received at the time about a billion-dollar settlement. And that settlement now goes to fund things like grants for veterans, scholarships for nursing students and healthcare students, the Texas Historical Preservation Fund. If you've ever gone walked around downtown Austin and seen one of those historical plaques on a building, we make sure that those buildings stay up.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

We make sure that the historical preservation fund has the opportunity to make sure that those buildings stay up. Second pool of capital would be the Texas Universities Fund. This is a newer pool of capital. This was granted to us by the state's legislation on January 1st of 2024. It is about, I should say, the endowment was $1 billion. It is now six and a half. The Texas Universities Fund was given to us on January 1st of 2024. It was $4 billion. It is now 6.2. We have a state water implementation fund that is used to grant financing to smaller municipalities for building out water infrastructure, pipelines, wells, to make sure that their population has clean, healthy drinking water. That's a $2 billion vehicle. And then our largest external vehicle is what we call the Rainy Day Fund. That is $27 billion and is invested and grown to preserve economic resiliency in the state of Texas. Think Hurricane Harvey hits Houston, and we need to make sure that all of the linemen that are coming in from other states are paid to get power back to the city. We need to make sure that there are generators running and diesel fueling those generators. Any sort of natural disaster or winter storm Uri that came in and shut off power to the residents of Austin for nine days. Yeah. We provided funding to the state's energy grid to make sure that it maintained solvency and could provide power. I will say I think the financial industry tends to get a pretty bad rap. People think private equity is the devil. I would like to counter that argument with saying what we do provides capital for very important institutions around the state of Texas, and it is our job to protect it and grow it. That is a very unique position to be in and an incredible opportunity to invest on behalf of. It's needed.

SPEAKER_02 35:03

And wow, we're throwing out the B-word a lot today. Billion.

SPEAKER_00 35:09

It starts feeling like funny money after a little bit. Yeah, I'm now desensitized to it. And also her checking account after a long day of work, and you're like, oh man, a lot less commas than this one. A lot less commas.

SPEAKER_02 35:22

But yes, very needed. I'm glad you found what you wanted to do.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

It's it's a unique position to be in. I keep talking a lot about mentors, and I've had a lot of great ones and still do. And I'm unbelievably blessed to have the opportunity to work with them. Back in high school, one of them told me this, but they said, uh imagine that money weren't in the equation. And imagine you woke up every day and your salary was paid in happiness, effectively. What would you do and and and where would you see yourself? I did not have a great answer for that question at the time. I think I was maybe 16 or 17 years old. Still probably thought I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. You've come a long way. No kidding. I get to wake up every morning and be unbelievably happy and excited about what I get to do. It's absolutely challenging and it can absolutely be frustrating, but I know at the end of the day, what I have the opportunity to do and contribute, it's rewarding. On a personal level, it is absolutely and utterly rewarding.

SPEAKER_02 36:20

That is inspiring. And I hope everyone gets the chance to feel and say what you just said, because I think our ultimate purpose in life is to serve people, serve others, and form this community. Like life's not just about an individual or us. So cool to hear you living out your purpose.

SPEAKER_00 36:44

So our offices are in the George H.W. Bush office building. And on the wall, as I walk to our elevators, there's a quote by George H.W. Bush that says, Any definition of a successful life must include service to others. I am constantly reminded of it every day as I walk to work and every day as I walk home from work. And it is a beautiful way to start and end a day, understanding that the life that I currently live is contributing to and in service of a beautiful place like the state of Texas. Love that.

SPEAKER_02 37:17

I absolutely love that. What can you give to others? We all have talents and time. I think we have more time than we give ourselves credit to. You don't have to work or do exactly what you do to do that, but people can serve others in different ways.

SPEAKER_00 37:34

There's a million opportunities to serve others, whether it's just through genuine friendship, personal training, fitness. I can point back to Vita and say that without her, I wouldn't be as healthy or as dedicated or driven as I would be without her. She's taught me a lot of things in life about discipline, and I appreciate that service. What would you be doing if it weren't working in the world of private equity? Oh man, this is a fun one. Outside of what I do, I think my biggest passion is either skiing or boating. So I would have to say I would either be a ski instructor or something that I have tossed around in my head for a long time is going and getting my master yacht certification and being the captain of a ship. That's cool. Uh pretty differentiated. And I think it's a really unique and interesting career that allows you to see the world from a different perspective. I think that also comes a little bit from my upbringing. I was a naval brat. So I was around boats and on boats a lot when I was a kid, and I saw my dad on them all the time. I just think it would be absolutely fascinating to kind of get behind the wheel of one of these ships and be able to say, like, hey, I made it across the Atlantic Ocean. Could that be a potential retirement? I'll be honest with you, I haven't really looked into like what it all entails. I don't know if there's like an age capped, like if you're required to stop doing it. Like, oh, dude, you're 40 years too late. Yeah, I I know people can ski instruct effectively until they can't ski anymore. Did y'all go skiing this past year? We did. We were in Utah in February. I had the opportunity to do about nine days of skiing while we're up there. Also learned that one from the family. I was lucky enough to be strapped into a pair of ski boots for the first time when I was 18 months old and have been doing it ever since. One of my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite pastimes.

SPEAKER_02 39:34

Have you ever been hurt from skiing?

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Yes, many times. But it's fun. It is fun. And my job is to evaluate the risk and reward of investments. I will tell you all day long going skiing. Always, always worth it.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

Always worth it. You gotta live a little. Like don't do your favorite activities.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

You fell down and scraped your knee when you were a kid, too. You don't stop running because of that. Exactly. I've fallen down and broken my collarbone and shoulder and torn ligaments and busted up a knee and done plenty of things skiing, and I still will not stop until the day that I literally cannot make it down a hill anymore. The ski resort that I grew up skiing at has an over 80 ski club. And your season pass is free if you are still skiing and you are over 80 years old. So a long-term, very long-term goal for me is to one day be in the over 80 ski club. There you go. Tell your personal trainer that. Yeah, no kidding, Vita. It's great that you're a physical therapist, too. Really played the long game there.

SPEAKER_02 40:43

Really played the long game. Y'all are y'all are a fun couple. You guys are funny too. We try to keep it light. All right, Hunter. So we're finishing up here. Yeah. Few few last things. If every listener forgot everything else you said from this conversation, but they took one thing, what should they take away from this conversation?

SPEAKER_00 41:08

You know what's funny? I'm gonna point to the one thing that I can't even claim is mine. Find your personal genius. If you spend your life refining what you are talented at, pursuing what you are passionate about, and contributing as much as you can to society through that, you will have an unbelievably beautiful and successful life.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

And follow-up question, you specifically, what is your why? You might have already touched on it, but what keeps you going in and outside of work, in your health, in your social life, life in general, when you're having bad days, what keeps you going?

SPEAKER_00 41:51

But I think I would define myself as a bit of a people pleaser. I love being of service to other people, regardless if I am having a good day or a bad day. I think knowing that I can contribute meaningfully to others' lives is my why. I want to have a good legacy of being a friend, a family member, a dog owner. And I want people to look at that and see and witness a life well lived. And hopefully they can say I contributed to theirs in in some way, shape, or form.

SPEAKER_02 42:26

And I think you already are, again, in your job, in your relationships, in your friendships. It's cool to see you serving others. It's cool to see your mindset on serving others, on this decision making we talked about, you make high pressure decisions in your work, but then in life, like you gotta outweigh the pros and cons at the end of the day. You have people's best interest in mind, and I think that's really cool. And I think we can all take something from that. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

And not that anybody asked, but if you want a great way to make decisions, I call it the five F's it's faith, friends, family, fitness, and finances. I think at least all of those are applicable to almost every high-level decision that you will make in your life. Whether it's should I move apartment buildings or should I get married or should I buy that new car, I think you can apply those principles to almost every decision that you make in some way, shape, or form, and come away with a pretty fantastic answer or a pretty fantastic idea of what you should be doing or not. So whether it's mental, whether it's physical, whether it's emotional. Understanding the world through those lenses will help you make some informed decisions along the way.

SPEAKER_02 43:55

Another mic drop. Boom. I did not pay him to say any of that. Well said. Well said, Hunter. And before we leave, just why not? Let's give another shout out to his girlfriend, Vita. It's made a method. If you're in need of a physical therapist, this episode was not about physical therapy, but she's in the room, so why not? We'll shout her out here.

SPEAKER_01 44:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

I don't know. We're going on six years of being together. And as everybody heard, I'm not exactly very risk averse when it comes to skiing or biking or any of the other activities that I like to pursue, and she's certainly kept me moving. So if you want a top-tier physical therapist or personal trainer based in Austin, Texas, at Mata Method, she'll humble you.

SPEAKER_02 44:53

That was, I don't think he heard our last episode, but that was her saying, yeah, I I hear it every day. Do you really? Yes. Well, again, y'all are fun. Dude, thanks for being on here. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and perspective. I think it's applicable to everyone in big and little ways. You can take something from anyone. And thanks for sharing. I hope we can chat again soon. We should. I'd love to try this again.