Member Highlight - Hakar Torres and Air Market Group

Hakar Torres could have been a watermelon or a rattlesnake, but by great good fortune, he analyzes publicly traded aviation companies and provides excellent service in the private aviation industry.

Visit our Blog for the full transcript!

Visit AirMarketGroup.com or find Hakar Torres on LinkedIn.

Paula Williams:

One of the coolest things about working in the aviation industry is actually the people who are sometimes even cooler than the planes. So we get to work with a lot of different folks, and I like to highlight some of the folks that are in some of our programs. Hakar Torres is in our aviation sales training program and is just crushing the assignments and doing a really good job of interacting with our other students, and really making the most of that opportunity as he does with every opportunity while he’s working on his other degrees and other projects and things like that. So, anyway, today I had the pleasure of interviewing Hakar. I’m just going to read a real quick bio, and then we’ll jump right into the interview.

Hakar Torres is a visionary strategist who positions individuals and organizations to be recognized by those who desire their services or products most. Hakar is passionate about empowering solution creators through systems and tools that are practical from working the basic levels of customer service in the industry to creating relationships with high-end clients so that there is not a gap in their understanding of the aviation industry. Having had incredible success and being able to take a brand from having zero social media presence to a highly-engaged social community in less than a year with zero spending, on ad budgets, Hakar has shown that he’s capable of creating incredible value organically. Hakar currently holds a bachelor’s in science and aviation management from Everglades University. During his senior year of university, he founded Air Market Group, LLC, which published weekly articles that discussed financial news on the publicly traded companies in the aerospace industry. Creating weekly reports and studying the aviation market intensely brought Hakar to see an opportunity to aid other struggling aviation companies, offering aid to those looking to sell their current aircraft or those looking to purchase new aircraft. Being a man of humble background and ethical upbringing, Hakar invites clients to do business the same way that one would invite family into your own home.

So let’s jump into the interview with Hakar and you get to know him a little bit better. So I’m just really happy to finally meet you more or less in person, Hakar.

Hakar Torres:

I agree. Yeah, I joined the class a while ago, and because of schedule conflict, we’ve never had a chance to actually connect face-to-face.

Paula Williams:

Right, exactly. As close as it comes to real-life in this day and age, it sounds like. So tell me a little bit more about Air Market Group. I know that’s your project.

Hakar Torres:

Yeah, definitely. Air Market Group, I started about two years ago, not officially. It was more as just a blog that I had started, and it originally started from me creating content around publicly traded aviation companies. The reason I did this was that I was trading these companies myself, and as I was trying to do all this research and trying to put together all the information so that I could make an educated decision on my own, I was realizing that there wasn’t a spot that somebody can just go look up American Airlines and be able to find all that information in one nice location. They were having to go to multiple locations to find aviation-specific research. So as I was doing my own research, I just figured, okay, well, what if I put together all this work that I’m doing already for myself and provide it to other people that are also potentially looking for that same kind of information. So that’s where Air Market Group started from. Just this year I officially created the entity for Air Market Group, and I am working on making it a more sustainable system on its own so that we can continue to provide people with resources that they need for trading aviation stocks.

Paula Williams:

Just to follow on that, how did you get into trading aviation-related stocks? Were you doing trading before and then got into aviation? Or were you into aviation before and then got into trading? How did that evolve?

Hakar Torres:

It actually started off … sorry, my dogs have a neighbor walking by.

Paula Williams:

Oh, that’s okay. You might have to introduce them.

Hakar Torres:

They’re right by the window. So that every time that we have a neighbor walk by, they always have to say hello.

Paula Williams:

Oh, they’re doing their job then.

Hakar Torres:

Yes, they’re protecting me, which is, that’s all that matters.

But yeah, it came to me because I, growing up, was trying to determine, all right, what am I going to do with my life? So I started looking at that commercial pilot route because I really liked aviation. But I didn’t start going down that path, because the job lifestyle didn’t really fit with my values. So I was trying to create myself a life that I would align with. So I started asking myself some questions like, not who’s flying the plane, but who’s sitting in the plane? Who’s sitting in the back of the plane? I started realizing that that individual is normally a business owner, somebody who’s investing in other companies, and has to go visit them. I started figuring out, okay, how can I put myself in that seat?

Warren Buffett once said, “Invest in companies you love.” So if you love going to Chipotle and you love wearing a lot of makeup, then invest in Ulta and Chipotle. I really enjoyed publicly traded. I really enjoyed the defense companies. I really thought that the airlines, back in 2019, they were going up, and they were looking great, and all this stuff. So I started telling myself, “Hey, I might not be able to enjoy the lifestyle of becoming a pilot commercially as a job, but I can enjoy the lifestyle of learning how to invest using that investment income to pay for my pilot’s license, and then if I invest in businesses, then that will give me “an excuse” to then invest in an airplane.” So I kind of reverse-engineered it, if that makes sense. I saw it from the opposite standpoint of let me not go from this route, but let me try to attack it from the other side.

Paula Williams:

Smart. That is amazing. I know you’re also working on your degree and other things. If we were to look maybe five years into the future, what are we going to see you doing? How is this going to play out? How’s this going to evolve?

Hakar Torres:

Five years into the future I would hope that you start to see my face a lot more and hear my voice a lot more. Part of the reason being is that because I’m extremely young, and I’m extremely new into this industry, and my potential clients may not be individuals that are currently in business aviation, and I am open to that idea because I understand that the whole wealth dynamic is changing very largely. Now we’re having a lot more people making money online that did in person. I’m very attracted by that, and I want to position myself so then the people that do get into business aviation five years from now know who I am five years from now, because I’ve been able to build up that reputation over all this time. So I plan on becoming somebody that people can trust when it comes time to purchasing a new aircraft, or maybe looking into a lease, or a fractional deal, or maybe a jet card, whatever that may be. I want to be that source or resource that somebody can rely on, call the phone, say, “Hakar, I have this question. Can you help me out with this real quick?” I want somebody to be able to know that they can trust in what I say, that I’m not just trying to provide them something that’s going to be beneficial for me, almost like a fiduciary aircraft broker, let’s call it that.

Paula Williams:

Okay. Oh, that’s smart. Since you have that background exploring those companies and doing all that research, you know a lot of the backstory behind the companies and what they’re doing and why, and all of that, because you’ve been compiling that information for so long.

Hakar Torres:

Right, right. I’ll be able to actually know these guys aren’t actually making money. They’re just making it look like they are by their books and stuff. These guys are actually extremely revenue-based. So yeah, I may actually have a better understanding of the actual fundamentals of the organizations.

Paula Williams:

Smart. Smart. Okay. What advice do you have for people who are maybe doing investing or who are maybe considering getting into aviation that maybe haven’t? So people new to the industry? I know there’s a lot of first-time flyers, first-time investors. Any advice for either or both of those types of folks?

Hakar Torres:

Yes. My best “advice” would be to trust in yourself, because even myself, I have sometimes had this feeling of, after I spend the hour of doing research, after I have it all put together and I’m looking at it, and I myself am ready to enter the trade, I will second guess it. Sometimes I’ll be like, well, wait a minute. What if this news article that I just now saw on CNN, what if they’re right? I know I just finished doing an hour of research for an hour, but that might be right also. So you start to have that conflict when you start listening to a million different opinions. I always make a big point of when I do provide information on my website, I tell them, look, this is just my research. Take it how you want. This is just me compiling the information from different sources, from the investor’s relations page. I’m providing it to you, but it’s important that whatever decision you make you believe in it, and that you trust it.

To get to that trust you have to do your own work because if you rely on of my work and then, let’s say, that the trade doesn’t go in our favor, you can’t point your finger at me, because you’re the one who took that trade. I’m just simply the one who put together that research. I messed up the trade as well, but I’m not pointing my finger at you, Paula, and saying, “Oh man, she messed it up for me.” No, that was my decision. So it’s really important that you own that, and that if you are going to become an investor in any type of industry that you trust in your own bias and your own decision, and you also respect that my own bias and decision may be wrong. That’s also okay. It’s important to understand when that happens and not hold on to that wishful thinking that I am right. I am right. But look at the research and take it for what it is.

Paula Williams:

Okay. I think that serves you well in both instances, because finance is about risk management, and aviation is also about risk management. It’s more of a physical thing than a financial thing in the aviation world. But every decision that you make is balancing risk versus reward. How is the weather for this flight? Do we really need to take this flight? Is the reward great enough to justify the risk? Or are we taking vaccines to sick children? Or are we just going for a joy ride? That might change your opinion about whether that is. So it is about balancing risk and reward in both cases. I think you have a unique opportunity to really apply that to both.

Hakar Torres:

I think so too. That’s part of the reason that I’ve been trying to build this for myself, is because it’s about that foundation and making sure that people understand that I’m not just creating this to do like a six-month little project and then sell it off. No, this is something that I’m building for a long-term goal, long-term vision.

Paula Williams:

Right. You’re also in the process of building a network of people who are involved with aviation, and people who are going to be involved in aviation as well.

Hakar Torres:

Yes. Yes, and that all comes as interacting now socially online. We had MBAA that was going to happen right in my backyard right here in Orlando. I would have not had to rent a hotel or anything. I’d be able to just drive there, drive home. So those kinds of things aren’t available right now for this year. So we really do have to adapt and connect in whatever way we can.

Paula Williams:

Right. That’s right down to the next question, and that is, as you’re putting your sales and marketing together is there a tactic or a strategy that’s really stood out to you as a good one, or as one that you’re going to lean on?

Hakar Torres:

I’m a very like practitioning tester, I guess, when it comes to my marketing strategies. Because I’m right now just sampling and different things to see what’s really going to work out best for me. Since I haven’t developed a clientele, I don’t really have a book of business built yet. I really do have a wide range that I can start with, and then I can start to narrow it down with what I find works best for me. So for all this time, I’ve been just mainly doing written articles. I’ve been doing a lot of just straight copy-based posts. Now I’m actually looking more into doing more visual and more audio-based marketing, because I’m realizing that with things like Alexa and Siri, having my voice and having my name digitally put out there, it makes it easier for somebody to say, “Hey, Google, can you get me in touch with Hakar? I really need to ask him a question.”

So, I see to be like the next step. Obviously we already have all of our social media platforms. We already all know about things like MailChimp. We already have all those systems that we’re trying to develop, but I’m really, really fascinated about that concept of that voice, because I think Hakar is a really unique name already. So that makes me have, I want to say like a benefit kind of thing because I’m sure if you ask Google, “Hey, can I talk to Hakar Torres?” I want Google to know who to get to. There’s not really like a hundred thousand Hakar Torres’s out there. So that makes it easier for somebody to be able to find me specifically. So I like the voice aspect of marketing going to the future.

Paula Williams:

My husband’s name is John Williams. So it’s like the most common name in America, and looking for John Williams, their chances of finding the right one are slim and none. But that is an advantage for you. So that’s great.

Hakar Torres:

Yes. Yes.

Paula Williams:

You can be the first Hakar Torres on Google. There’s no way he could be the first John Williams on Google.

Hakar Torres:

If he was, he’d have to pay a fortune.

Paula Williams:

Yeah, there’s that guy that wrote the Star Wars music. There’s all those other people that …

Hakar Torres:

A lot of competition, a lot of competition for that name.

Paula Williams:

Right. No, I think that’s a great advantage. I also like the fact that you’re using the scientific method to say let’s test this and see how it works, and let’s test something else and see how it works, and maybe have four or five going on at any given time, and you’re always replacing your worst performer with something else. So then you’re just evolving that system over time. I think it’s a great method, so kudos to you.

Hakar Torres:

Yeah, and it keeps your audience, I think, more engaged as well, because then they’re not seeing the same, it doesn’t feel like they’re just getting a cookie cutter marketing strategy. So it makes them feel like they’re actually being catered to a little bit better.

Paula Williams:

Right, exactly. Some of the marketing textbooks say that people have to see you in three different medium before they consider you to be a credible entity. So if you’re online all the time, that’s great, but you only exist as a two-dimensional character. Then they see you somewhere else. They see you at a live event, or they see you as a physical postcard or something like that, and suddenly you’re three-dimensional.

Hakar Torres:

Right, okay. Okay. I like that, definitely.

Paula Williams:

Right. So I think that’s a very smart way of going about it, is to be trying everything, and just measuring your results as you go and things. Great. What book or movie inspired you most as a kid?

Hakar Torres:

Thinking back as a kid.

Paula Williams:

Or now. We’re also kids.

Hakar Torres:

Or now. Fair enough, yeah. I’m always growing. We’re always growing. There was a book that I read that I have it over my bookshelf right now. I’m blanking on the author, I do apologize. But it was Living A Life of Limitless Possibilities. I really enjoyed the perspective that it brought to me about showing me that although you may perceive your current events to be a negative one, it could just be one that is transitioning to a different one that you maybe you didn’t anticipate. It kind of just puts you into this realm of knowing that, I think the possibility of you have becoming born is like one to 300 trillion, some insane number. Every day there’s a limitless amount of possibilities that could occur. You could choose to take that job you’re waiting for, and then as you’re on the plane, something happens and you get sick. Or you choose to stay where you are, and then you’re completely happy, and then you live to be 89-years old. There’s not really any way you can determine whether or not your decision that you’re making is the best decision, because there’s a limitless amount of possibilities of things that can happen that you can’t determine.

So that feeling of, okay, I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing and place myself in situations that are going to benefit me the most, and I understand that there’s that little bit of uncertainty that’s always going to play in, and then I have to be willing to adapt to that. I can’t let that shut me down, and I can’t say, “Oh man, I missed the bus. I’m going to be late. Now my whole day is ruined.” Maybe you missed the bus and then you sit next to somebody who you start talking to, and they become a really good business partner with you. You really can’t tell if a bad event is going to affect the rest of your life because that’s not how life works.

Paula Williams:

Right. Yeah, I remember reading, I think it was Deepak Chopra. He was talking about a little speck of DNA that became Hakar Torres. Just one tiny flip of a switch and it could have been a rattlesnake or a watermelon. So it’s just the fact that you exist is a miracle. Then all of the other things that happen in the world are just an extension of that. So I like that thought, limitless possibilities.

Hakar Torres:

Yeah, and it makes you a little bit more comfortable, I think, in a day-to-day, knowing that something’s going to happen, and it’s going to be my job to adapt to that.

Paula Williams:

Right. If you know exactly what’s going to happen, that would be so boring. Right.

Hakar Torres:

It wouldn’t give you time to invent a solution.

Paula Williams:

There you go. Exactly. Okay. So what is your favorite airplane?

Hakar Torres:

Recently I’ve been obsessed with the Phenom 300E.

Paula Williams:

Okay.

Hakar Torres:

Getting really specific, I’ve written like three articles on their plane in the last year or so. I guess maybe just because I’ve been exposed to a little bit more I respect its elegance, and I can respect the performance that it does have. I think that although Embraer’s stock may not be performing very well, I think that they have some pretty good products, and I think that they really do have a good spot to compete with a lot of these other light jets. They’re their new Bossa Nova interior that they just delivered their first one to, oh man, I was drooling over how gorgeous that looked.

Paula Williams:

Right. You can see pictures of this on Hakar’s blog. It is a beautiful, beautiful interior. It is a little bit unusual. A lot of people are into the Citation’s and Gulfstream’s and things like that. So it is a little bit unusual for people to pick that out as their favorite. So this is cool, but I can see why now that you mention it.

Hakar Torres:

Yeah, well, and part of the reason that I want to say that one’s like my favorite right now is, for example, that interior, I really enjoyed the story that they were telling with their intention, their design, the reason that they placed things in certain locations. When they explained the reason we put these seats here is that when you’re walking in Brazil, these are the tiles that are on our beach. So it kind of like, it makes you feel more comfortable, I think. I come from a Cuban background. So that connection, I guess, to that Hispanic, that Spanish kind of style, maybe attracted me a little bit more, and maybe that’s how they got me. But I enjoyed the way that in their video they show a band playing and they transitioned from the instruments directly to the airplane. So I really enjoyed their presentation of the aircraft and the story that it tells along with it.

Paula Williams:

Right. The art, and the music, and the poetry, and the design all come together in that interior, which is really, really cool. That’s the way great design works, you know?

Hakar Torres:

Yes. Yes, exactly. Exactly. I think it makes the customer, whoever’s going to be riding that plane, especially if that is their style, it’s going to really call out to them. I think that’s important.

Paula Williams:

Right. Well, that’s one of the things that I love is when people get super specific on who they serve, because nobody can please everybody all of the time. So if you can get really specific on, this is going to make somebody incredibly happy, that is so much better than a vanilla style that’s just as good resale value or whatever.

Hakar Torres:

Right, right, right right. I know that they’re selling the aircraft incredibly well. So it’s working for them and it shows.

Paula Williams:

Absolutely, this plane was designed for a specific personality type, and it really does call out to them. Okay. So let’s wrap up. How do people get in touch with you? How do they find your blog? What’s your best social media to connect with Hakar at?

Hakar Torres:

Definitely. LinkedIn is going to be the bread and butter, because I feel like that’s going to be the best place where you’re going to be able to directly get in contact with me. I have the notifications set up on my cell phone, so I will see it. Airmarketgroup.com is going to be the main page. If you go to airmarketnews.com, it’ll take you directly to the blog feed. That way, you can be able to see all the recent articles. Then of course, Air Market Group has an Instagram and Twitter. We have a Facebook page where you can like and follow all of us. We’re very open to having a conversation. You can talk to us about planes. You can talk to us about stocks, or you can just drop us a like and go about your merry way. Either way, I really appreciate any of the support, and I appreciate your time for hearing my story.