Read an extract from Find. Build. Sell. by Stephen J. Hunt!

Stephen J. Hunt is the founder of Hunt Hospitality. He is the winner of numerous awards, including NSW Business’ ‘Outstanding Business Leader’, was a finalist in the AFR’s ‘Most Innovative Businesses’, is a private fund manager with over $100 million under management and has over 300 staff. He lives with his wife and five children (and two dogs) in Newcastle, NSW.

Today, we’re featuring an extract from Stephen J. Hunt’s new book, Find. Build. Sell. — the story of how he turned a $100 backyard bar into a $100 million pub empire. Read on!

Stephen J. Hunt

CHAPTER 1

Find your passion

I’ve got seven pubs worth over $100 million. Saying it like that makes it sound like it was easy to achieve. It wasn’t. It’s taken me 30 years to learn the formula for how to find, build and scale a bricks and mortar business. In the early days, I made many mistakes. In fact, I made so many I nearly went bankrupt before I had even begun.

I started out making $100 at my backyard bar and gradually worked my way up, managing bars all over Sydney, London and Europe, working for some of the biggest and best names in the business. I was a sponge, absorbing everything around me, just waiting for that day when I could do it for myself and be my own boss.

My opportunity came, funnily enough, when I was sitting in a bar. What I’m about to tell you sounds like a plot from a Hollywood movie, but I can assure you that everything that happened was very real. I’m revealing the story here so that (hopefully) you can avoid repeating the rookie errors I made.

How not to buy a pub

It was 2015. I was 42. I was living in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales with my wife and children. By sheer good luck (and some good timing), I found myself with $400 000 from the lucrative sale of a Sydney residence. I had already had a few good wins under my belt from residential property (I once owned a property for six weeks and made 18 per cent on the sale), so I was feeling on top of the world and, to put it quite bluntly, thought my shit didn’t stink.

As it happens, my local bar — The Rutherford, two hours north of Sydney — was up for sale. I’d spent many a night in this bar and thought, ‘Maybe this is the business opportunity I’ve been looking for?’ It had a good vibe, a terrific location, minimal competition and great community support. After a few more days of mulling it over (and, it must be said, a few more drinks in that bar), I thought, ‘Yep! This is a winner. I’m going to buy this bar!’

I’d been managing pubs for 20 years as a CEO and general manager, but I’d never sought investors to assist with the funding of them. This would be an entirely different endeavour. But my time was here. This was a wonderful opportunity and I knew I could make it a success.

The next day, I contacted the hotel broker who was selling the pub.

‘How much are you asking for The Rutherford on the New England Highway?’ I asked.

‘$4.2 million,’ he said.

‘Sounds reasonable,’ I said, privately thinking I had no hope in hell of finding that much money, but I wanted to give it a red- hot crack so I went to my accountant, told her about the deal and to my surprise and delight, she said, ‘Count me in. I’ll invest $400 000 right now’. Well, that was a good start, I thought.

With the help of a few other friends, I found another $200 000, so with my $400 000 from the property sale and my accountant’s $400 000 contribution, I now had $1 million dollars to kick start my venture.

I went to the bank and told them what I needed to buy this bar. The first one said ‘no’, and so did the second and third. The fourth one, however, said ‘yes’ to my request, so now I had a total of $3.73 million. Brilliant. It was a struggle to get that bank to have faith in me, but having run many pubs in the past, they could see I knew what I was doing.

Now I just needed to raise $1 million to complete the purchase. ‘Piece of cake’, I thought.

—Find. Build. Sell. How I Turned a $100 Backyard Bar into a $100 Million Pub Empire by Stephen J. Hunt (Wiley) is out now.

Find. Build. Sell.

How I Turned a $100 Backyard Bar into a $100 Million Pub Empire

by Stephen J. Hunt

Discover how one of Australia’s most successful hotel publicans turned his $100 backyard beer garden into a $100 million pub empire.

In his straightforward and down-to-earth Australian style, Stephen J. Hunt outlines the blueprint and frameworks he uses to turn failing and under-performing business into multi-million-dollar successes. Hunt draws on his own dishwasher-to-pub-mogul story to provide readers with an actionable roadmap to formulating an idea, raising money...

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