Real Estate syndicators must have a proper balance of personal and professional life. Vish Muni , Multifamily Apartment Investor, joins Sam Wilson to open up his approach towards a fulfilling life as a real estate syndicator who does not neglect to nurture his family and friends. He shares his usual daily routine, how he says no, and his most valuable productivity hacks. Vish also talks about his time management secrets, detailing how he sets his every day goals and prepares for success.
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Dealing With Lifestyle Management As A Syndicator With Vish Muni
Vish Muni is an active real estate investor in single-family and multifamily apartments. He holds a single-family portfolio, a GP and LP in over $30 million in assets under management. His claim to fame is that he is a true lifestyle investor in motion. He lives by these principles every day of having a balanced lifestyle, focusing on fitness, family, education, traveling and his relationships. Vish, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Sam, for having me on your show. I’m excited.
This will be a fun topic because these are things that all of us aspire to but don’t spend as much time focusing on that perhaps we could or should. Before we get to that, I’d love to hear quickly where you started professionally, where you are now and then how you got there?
Fast forward, I started as an IT professional. In 2009, me and my wife started a real estate company called Duplexaholics with the intention of buying one duplex for ten years. After five years, we hit the wall. The banks refused to give us any money. We maxed out credit cards, the business line of credit and we were able to pull together for the next five years.
After ten years, I decided there should be a better way out. I did some research and came across something called syndication in 2019. I did educate myself and I didn’t want to spend another ten years learning things and doing it by myself. I decided to join a mentoring group. Now, I’ve invested in three different syndications as an LP and four different indications as a general partner. That is where I am now in terms of investing.
I would assume that moving forward, your main objective is to be a GP or is it to be on the LP side?
Given my lifestyle, I would like to have a balance of both. If I’m investing in somebody’s deal as a limited partner, that’s only because I liked them or I liked the deal first and foremost for me because what I’ve realized is life and business is all about relationships. I would invest in your deal if I like you and the deal comes next. I like to have a mix of both as a limited partner and a general partner because of the variety it brings to the deal. That is what I love as how the deal comes together. I don’t want to miss that excitement.
Now that we have an understanding of where you are now, let’s talk may be not so much in the LP side, but maybe on the GP side on how you selected your partners that you work with, what your roles and responsibilities are. I want to hear how you framed that around your lifestyle investor in motion thesis there.
Life and business is all about relationships
Every day, I’m so excited about being in multifamily investing. I don’t feel like I’m working at all because I love what I do. Anything that I do has to be in sync with my lifestyle or else I won’t do it because I don’t want to spend any time doing things which I don’t enjoy. To answer your question how did I find all the right people to work with?
I’m a people person. I love to meet people in person. As long as you can drive 2 to 3 hours, I would tell them, “I’ll buy you lunch. I’ll buy you coffee. I’ll buy you dinner.” I love to meet people before I do business with them, I need to know something or I need to have a common friend. Otherwise, I would never do business with them. That is number one.
Number two is all about relationships. I need to know their track record. I need to know whether I can trust them or not trust them. I need to know how long they’ve been in business, what are their credibility and do they stand by what they speak? It’s because I’m investing in people, not in the deal. If I don’t trust that person and if the deal is going south, then they go and abandon ship. That is how I pick people. I tell people I’m in it for a long time, not 1 or 2 deals.
That is the next thing and how I bring it all together. I like networking. I’m always meeting new people to learn something new because everybody’s journey is not easy. Everybody has challenges and how did everyone overcome that for what they are and what is their mindset? That is number one, networking. Number two is relationships.
Number three is the quality of time I spend with them because it is not the quantity. I could be sitting in front of you, but I might be looking at my phone all the time. That is not giving you 100% time. I put my phone on do not disturb mode most of the time when I’m meeting with my family or friends. That’s what I do. That’s what I like about this business. That is how I identify people, identify deals and work with them.
I was speaking with someone about this. This is a very relationship-heavy business. Without those, it’s going to be tough to move forward. When you found your operating partners that you’re working alongside on the GP side, I’m assuming you established those credentials upfront and figured out that you liked them, knew them and trusted them. What were your roles inside of that once you say, “Let’s partner up and start doing things on the general partnership side?”
Since the general partnerships itself has all everything new for the first time I was doing. I’m always operating in an uncomfortable zone. I’m not very comfortable being in a comfortable situation. I’m not one of those guys you’ll find sitting and watching TV or browsing on the internet all day long. I like to take on new challenges because coming from the background where I’ve been in fitness all my life, so I realized the importance of being in a team environment. That is why I give a lot of importance to relationships and teams.
What does my role being a GP is all the four deals I’ve been in involved as a capital raiser. I do asset management and investor relations. That has been my primary role because I feel that raising capital is a fantastic job to do because that connects everybody in the deal. Everyone wants to know what’s happening inside the deal because I’m not just talking to the lender. If I’m with the investor, I’m updating the investor about what is going on in the deal while I’m in touch with the operating team, the management team.
A lot of times in this business, especially if you’re the new guy into the deal or the new team member in the general partnership, the current sponsors may have a deal flow that maybe you can’t participate in every deal, especially as a new capital raiser. How did you select which opportunities to jump in?
Number one is most of my four GP deals or out of the 4, 3 of them are in Texas. Since I’m getting started with working as a general partner, I would like to be part of the due diligence, so that way I get a feel of the property. If I’m asking you to invest in my deal, your first question is going to be how much I know about the property because that is how I look at it. I don’t want to pay too much attention to anyone who could prepare a fancy presentation, get some videos and aerial shots.
I like to have boots on the ground. That is number one. I tell people whether I’m involved in a deal or not, “Can I participate being a part of your due diligence?” In that way, I get to meet the people and know more about the property. I take a step back, then I tell them, “If there is room, I would love to be involved in this deal.” There have been deals where people say, “We have too many people. We have too many cooks in the kitchen.” I told him, “That’s fine. I’ll step away. I have nothing against you.”
It’s that I don’t want to be another cook. You already have ten people there. It gets too crowded. Sometimes, it is worth because relationships are the key. I’ve known the operators well ahead of time and all the other general partners also before they got on the deal. That way, there is already an existing relationship. It is a matter of that deal as an excuse for everyone meeting in the deal.
Thanks for pulling back the curtains on a little bit of how you think about that. That’s fun. Let’s move over to your lifestyle in motion. That’s what you have as a claim to fame is you like a lifestyle in motion. How do you, amidst discomfort because I know you said and I want to hear more about that too where you said, “I don’t like being comfortable. I’m uncomfortable being comfortable.” How do you balance being uncomfortable and then focusing on all the other parts of your life that you want to call your lifestyle? How do you balance?
I’ll tell you my typical day, so that way you would know how my lifestyle fits into my day. I start my day at [4:30]. I do one hour of either group exercise or I go for a run before [6:30] in the morning. Getting up at [4:30] is putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation, out of your comfort zone straight away. I take cold showers. I’ve been taking cold showers for a couple of years. That is number two.
Let’s talk about that. Is that cold shower, no hot water, all cold shower?
Yes.
If you don’t know how to say no, other people will hijack their agenda into yours.
That’s courageous, man. I know you’re based in Texas, but still, I don’t care if it’s 100 degrees. An ice-cold shower is tough. How did you train yourself to do that and why?
I’ve been an athlete all my life. Every time I go for a run, I like to wash my feet and my face, at least before getting in. Since I’m already sweaty and having hot water doesn’t make me any uncomfortable. That is how I slowly got into that. Now, it’s become a habit then that’s what wakes me up. It energizes me in the morning.
To be honest, people laugh at me when I tell them with hot water, I’m sweating when I come out of the shower. I don’t like that feeling. After that, I need to get my daughter to school. At that time, I am not looking at my cell phone until about [8:00] AM. I’m beginning to learn how to say no to a lot of things because it’s very easy for people to steal your time. If I don’t say no, that means my time is hijacked and I get into their calendar, which I like to have my calendar and follow my rules.
You got too much here that I want to unpack before we move on to the next step. How do you say no, and how do you prioritize the things that you want to fit into your calendar versus following somebody else’s agenda for you?
I got a call at [9:15] AM and that call is a very important call and I had to tell them, “I know this is very important. I’m happy to hear from you, but is it okay if I call you back by [2:00] PM because I have something else going on?” I acknowledge their call. That is number one. I thank them for calling. I told them I was busy, “Is it okay if I call you back by [2:00] PM?” I closed the entire loop. In some cases, they say, “No, [2:00] PM I’m busy, but how about [2:30] PM?” Either way, I got a confirmation from them without being rude to them. Over a period of time, I realized if I keep taking every call and replying to every email, I won’t get anything done by the end of the day.
This is a sore spot for me personally and I’m trying to do a lot better job of not checking email until [2:00] PM or [3:00] PM. I’ve got my things to do and I’m with you. I’m managing an agenda and managing what I call the Eisenhower Matrix urgent important. I want to put it as urgent and important. I’m going to tackle those things first and email typically isn’t it because you can go down 1,000 rabbit holes with email. Is there any productivity hack or tool that you use that helps you manage that email inbox to where you’re only filtering through the most important items?
You can set up filters for keywords. That is number one. Your priority is to look at emails from me, Muni. I want to see only emails from Muni. I stayed away and go to that folder and saw if there were any emails from Muni. If there’s no email, I don’t even want to think about any other emails. That is now number one.
You can set up alerts, you say, “Only if emails coming from this person, alert me.” It is so easy for you to lose track of time and the minute you realize, “It’s lunchtime. I haven’t even had my breakfast.” I don’t want to be caught up in this because I spent a lot of time chasing too many rabbits. It took me ten years to realize that. I’m not going to cover too much distance if I keep doing that. I need to pick one race, one rabbit and do that.
I’ve got another question on that front. A lot of what we hear, especially on the capital raise side is the production of content, reaching out to investors and having a presence online. How do you manage that aspect of your business without LinkedIn and Facebook? Those places are black holes for time. How do you manage that?
I have a select group of people I follow and my priority on any given day is to see if they have anything out there either on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. If they don’t have anything, then I’m out of that place. I spend ten minutes on Instagram, ten minutes on Facebook and I need to be spending more time on LinkedIn. It’s very easy to lose track of time and one link takes to another, and by the time you realize it’s two hours have gone by and you would forget why you went there in the first place.
That is why I said time management. Like you, I have a chart matrix, urgent and important, not important, not urgent and important but urgent. That way, you figure out where they need to fit in. That is why I set time limits on it. Facebook and Instagram, it’s okay to spend time on it, but I don’t think it is for me. Personally, I don’t think I should be spending all day on that. Getting back to the lifestyle, I’ve focused on these two things or anything for that matter. It has to fit into the two aspects, either their income-generating activities. That is number one.
If I’m going to mow my yard, is that an income-generating activity? No, absolutely not. It can wait. The next is minimum wage activities like washing my car. Unless it is my passion, I shouldn’t be wasting my time washing my car. I’d rather go pay somebody $10 and get it washed. While they’re washing the car, I can sit back and take that important phone call because my time and your time are more valuable. I focused on anything. If anyone asked me for an appointment, I see it.
Income-generating activity or a minimum wage activity and then prioritize. That’s what I do and what’s my lifestyle on any given day? Relationships, time management, the quality of time and my health. Basically, health, relationships, your family and education. These are the four important things I focus on any given day. I need to touch upon these.
Certainly, there are things that will throw these out of whack temporarily and there’s no way to get around some of that. You weren’t able to get your exercise in right away because there’s something that came up where you had to take your daughter to school or something at [6:00] AM. That happens, but how often do you audit and rebalance, as opposed to rebalancing a portfolio, rebalancing your lifestyle?
Let me start with my exercise. There are multiple ways of doing my exercise. However busy you are, you can fit in 10 or 15 minutes. Most of us work from home. You could go for a walk around your neighborhood for ten minutes or you could get a jump rope and go do jump rope for ten minutes. My favorite exercise is burpees. You could crank out the probably 100 burpees in 30 minutes. There’s no excuse for anyone telling you that if it is important to you, you will get it done. If it is raining, so what? Get a rain jacket and go for a walk. Don’t do that excuse. You could exercise at home.
I know people have different excuses. They’re extremely creative in giving excuses also and that is their lifestyle, but I make it a point not to give excuses because I’m the one who’s going to be hurt, not you. From the lifestyle, that is from the exercise and from the relationships, be present, not just being present, be 100% present where you are.
Never do something that you do not and cannot enjoy.
When I’m at home, I always make it a point to have breakfast and dinner with my family and give them full attention, not just being by the table but my cell phone or my laptop, I keep them away. It’s okay for one hour we can wait, but give them time. Let them know that, “My time is important, but your family is more important.”
I could have all the money, but what if I don’t have my health and family, what am I going to do? That’s from the family. Number three is education. I make it a point to read every day. That’s on health, family, relationships and education. You could do it. You don’t even feel stressed out. It makes it a lifestyle. You don’t need to have a calendar, a motivational guru or anything. Make it a discipline.
It was something like you have to choose your hard. If you don’t exercise, you’re going to get out of shape, potentially become overweight and then have health complications. That’s hard. Exercise, proper nutrition and paying attention to what you eat, that’s also hard, but not as hard, it’s a discipline. You’re going to have to deal with it hard one way or the other. Pick one. The results will speak for themselves.
That’s interesting how you talked about also the discipline of being present. In this day and age, you’ve got everything screaming for your attention all at once and very little of it deserves it. Like you said, you got LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, your cell phone dinging at you, emails coming, text messages and people calling you and to be able to disconnect and spend time with your family, that’s admirable. It’s a great example you’re setting to your kids and to the rest of us saying, “Disconnection is okay.” That’s fantastic. Was there a breaking point or that light bulb moment somewhere in your career when you said, “I’ve got to change something,” and this is how the focus became?
This happened a couple of years back after me being an IT professional for fifteen years, self-employed, and being a real estate investor since 2009. I do have a single-family portfolio. A breaking point came in in 2018 when I filed my taxes and I had to audit what has been going on. I’ve been in real estate investment, people talk about lifestyle and be able to retire in 2 or 3 years. What am I doing wrong? That was my breaking point. Am I a loser?
It is where I realized I was doing everything right, but the key is there’s a different industry altogether, it can be the economics of scale or in some different real estate class, not in single-family homes. I needed a team. That was my breaking point to do something. What was I doing? I used to work for fifteen hours a day. I thought it was extremely productive because I was working so hard, but then I had to take a step back. At this rate, I’m not covering any distance. I’m not making more money and not getting any better with my health. Debt and taxes are not going to stop for anybody.
I had to decide at that point in time what is it I had to say no to everything what I was doing. I had to say, “I’m going to stop spending time at single-family homes. I’m going to stop doing so many businesses. I need to pick what is my passion and how I’m going to build my lifestyle around it.” That happened in 2018. After that, I’ve not looked back and I’m glad it happened. Now, I chase one rabbit and I go in one direction. All others are all noise and shiny objects.
Has there been any temptation along the way as new deals, different asset classes or opportunities came along and it was tough for you to say no to?
With different asset classes, yes. That temptation is always there because being in real estate where someone or the other is coming in and telling me, “Would you consider the storage house? Would you consider mobile homes? Would you consider land development?” There are these shiny objects and temptations every day. I need to tell them no, but it took me a lot of time to get to this point where I am. I don’t want to deviate at this point in time.
Definitely yes, I love multiple streams of income. I need a different asset class, but how about I focus on one class for the next 6 months to 1 year? That is how I’ve been without telling no to that opportunity, but it’s a matter of time. I have no plans of doing anything now, but 6 months or 1 year from now, yes, I would want to do that.
I love that deferral without saying no. That’s brilliant. Vish, I’ve enjoyed this. I love your approach and your streamlined thinking like you say, chasing one rabbit because certainly we can all get caught chasing way too many at once. I love that you broke it down for us, how you deal with time management, lifestyle management and your overall approach to business life. This is refreshing and it’s something that we could all use a reminder on more often. Let’s jump here into the final few questions. The first one is this. If you could help our readers avoid one mistake in real estate, what would it be, and how would you avoid it?
Tell them to get a mentor. Tell them not to do everything on their own. After getting a mentor, they need to pick one asset class and go after that.
That’s sage advice. I love that. When it comes to investing in the world, what is one thing you’re doing now to make the world a better place?
I like to be conscious of single-use plastics. I don’t use any single-use plastics at all. I stopped buying. I carry my own shopping bags and my own water bottles. I know different people have different approaches, but I can’t speak for everybody. I can only clean keep my place clean. I can only clean my car. I can’t clean everybody’s car. My piece of advice is to be conscious of your environment. You save time and money if you carry your own things. Forget the environment for the time being, by carrying your own water bottle, you could save $10 a week.
That’s brilliant. I love that. Single-use plastics, it’s a modern-day convenience, but it’s also not the brightest thing we’ve ever done. Vish, if our readers want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do that?
They can reach me on LinkedIn. Otherwise, my phone number would be (254) 444-7300. They can text or call me on that number anytime.
Vish, thanks so much for your time. I do appreciate it.
Thank you, Sam. It’s a pleasure.
Important Links:
- Vish Muni
- LinkedIn – Vish Muni
- https://www.Instagram.com/munivish/
- https://www.Facebook.com/vishe.muni/
About Vish Muni
Vish Muni is an Active Real Estate investor in Single-family and Multifamily Apartments. He currently holds a Single Family Portfolio, is a general partner and limited partner, and over $30M AUM.He is a true Lifestyle investor in motion.
Passionate on having a balanced lifestyle – 1. Personal development – Toastmasters 2. Fitness Enthusiast – CrossFit, Running, Cycling, Swimming, and Soccer. 3. Community – Member of Temple Breakfast Lions Club and part of Red Carpet Ambassador @ Temple Chamber of Commerce. 4. Spend quality time with family by being 100% physical and emotional present. 5. Networking and Investing.
