TGCI 42: First generation Indian Immigrant TO $2.5B Assets under management in 6 years!

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Episode 42 – First Generation Indian Immigrant to $2.5 Billion Assets Under Management in 6 Years!

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Summary

Summary

Our guest today is Swapnil Agarwal, Chief Executive Officer, Nitya Capital and Karya Capital Management. As of today, Swapnil’s companies manage assets of more than $2 billion, employ 1000+ people, and provide housing to more than 20,000 families. He has been awarded Houston Business Journal 2019 most admired CEO award and he was named as 2017 NY Entrepreneur of the year.

Swapnil’s incredible success story has humble beginnings. He is a first-generation immigrant from India. Worked in corporate America for over a decade and left the business class travel and high offices to start his own company.

You will learn about various topics like entrepreneur’s mindset, managing deep value add properties, impact of COVID-19 on the real estate market, tips for scaling up a real estate business and much, much more.

For more details visit: http://www.TheGoldCollarInvestor.com/show42

PanchamHeadshotTGCI
Pancham Gupta
TGCI 42 - Swapnil Agarwal
Swapnil Agarwal
Show #42 - Thursday - quote art

Timestamped Shownotes:

  • 01:24 – Swapnil shares his background information
  • 03:26 – How did Swapnil get into real estate investing?
  • 05:45 – Swapnil shares his business philosophy
  • 08:18 – Have you set yourself up for success?
  • 09:10 – Was it really difficult for Swapnil to manage a D – property?
  • 11:25 – How hands-on property management helped Swapnil learn the ropes of the business?
  • 12:50 – Why do 99.99% of people fail to start a business?
  • 13:36 – How did Swapnil deal with skepticism when he was just starting out?
  • 16:04 – How has Swapnil managed to scale up his business so quickly? He shares his success mantra
  • 20:12 – What steps has Swapnil taken to deal with the aftermath of COVID-19?
  • 22:52 – Learn how Karya KARES is enriching the lives of the less privileged across the world
  • 26:28 – Taking the Leap Round
  • 26:38 – When was the first time Swapnil invested outside Wall Street?
  • 27:00 – What fears did Swapnil have to overcome when he first invested outside Wall Street?
  • 28:00 – What was one investment that did not go as expected?
  • 29:44 – What is one piece of advice you would give to people who are thinking of investing in the Main Street?
  • 30:51 – Swapnil shares his contact information

3 Key Points

  1. Impact of COVID-19 on real estate investing
  2. Expert tips for scaling up a real estate business
  3. The challenges of managing deep value add properties

Resources

Read Full Transcript

 

Welcome to the Gold Collar Investor podcast with your host Pancham Gupta. This podcast is dedicated to helping the high paid professionals to break out of the wall street investments and create multiple income streams.

 

Here’s your host Pancham Gupta.

 

Hey, this is Dave Zook and I listen to Pancham at the Gold Collar Investor podcast.

 

Pancham: My son is nine years old. I asked him recently that we are thinking of moving and discuss the idea of changing schools. He said that he would miss his friends, his teachers his school, and was not keen on changing schools at all. I get it. It’s not easy to make changes. Human behavior wants certainty. And the very idea of change makes things uncertain. Now imagine being a first-generation Indian immigrant to this country. You have so many challenges that you have to overcome. You have to adjust to the new culture, new language, new people, and new ways of doing things. And at the same time you have these dreams of achieving success and the pursuit of happiness. us is the land of opportunities and has great stories of people achieving their dreams with their hard work and perseverance. Today, my guest Swapnil Agarwal has one such inspirational story. He came to the US when he was 15 years old. Now Swapnil is the CEO and managing partner of Nitya capital and Karya property management is six-year-old company has $2.5 billion worth of assets under management employs over 1000 people, and most importantly provides home to 20,000 middle class families. He has been awarded Houston Business Journal 2019 most admired CEO award and he was named as 2017 NY Entrepreneur of the year. Swapnil, welcome to the show.

 

Swapnil: My pleasure and honor to be on the show.

 

Pancham: No, thank you for your time. It’s an absolute honor to have you Are you ready to fire up my listeners break out of Wall Street investments?

 

Swapnil: I would say yes. I mean, not just your listeners. But as you described me or you’re introduced to me, where I’m a young immigrant, first generation immigrant came to America and it changed so difficult for, you know, pretty much everyone. That’s how humans are wired. But even if you really think about it, America is a country of immigrants, right? It is founded and inhabited by people who are, you know, from other countries predominantly, and as an immigrant, you know, it has been in our veins or in our blood for very beginning because that’s the only thing you know, change. And we came to this country, you can have a bigger change in your lifetime and you’re leaving a country where you grew up with friends and family. There you come in to a country that’s unknown, very different culture, a different way of doing things. So, it’s imbibed in our all behaviors, to make that to take that risk for that change. And all I did was just one step further and started a real estate platform after working in corporate America for 11 years. Now to your question about, am I ready to fire up your listeners for get outside of Wall Street? investment? I would say yes. Because, look, diversification, in essence, is mandatory for everybody. You know how they allocate capital, because when we grew up, I mean, the only places we could invest the stock market right? Now, during the day and age, they’re having a real estate as part of a portfolio is the mandatory thing, because as you can see, in the last three months, because of the circumstances you’re in, it is always very, very beneficial and mandatory that everyone allocates, so if somebody has $100. They should really think about, okay, how much was their risk tolerance, and how long do they want to know what’s the liquidity situation It’s always important to have some portion of stocks, bonds, real estate treasuries or gold. Because end of the day, you’re trying to protect your future, you’re trying to make sure that you have enough income stream and you retire. And this could be done by multiple ways. So yes, my answer is 110%. Everyone should be allocating and diversifying their portfolio by investing in real estate assets.

 

Pancham:  Wow, that’s a great answer. And you know, probably one of the best answers I’ve had in a while. So that’s great. So, it’s funny, like, you know, as I mentioned, you’re a first generation Indian immigrant. You started with humble beginnings, right? modest background in Houston, Texas, and you have this amazing inspirational story that people can only dream of. So can you tell our listeners your background and how actually you got started in this business?

 

Swapnil: Sir, so you know, I came to America in 1996. I was a 15-year-old teenager and a lot of dreams and visions in my eyes, but not a lot of needs to make that possible. So, I did what, what any immigrant or anybody who gets Good education. So, pay my way through college, get a finance degree. I’ve always interested in economics and finance that investment banking job out of college, I was lucky enough to secure a good job. And then I, you know, I went to Hong Kong for seven years where I was investing in real estate assets and companies all over Asia Pacific. But you know, being an immigrant always have this entrepreneurial urge. So, I wanted to come back and start my business. I came back in 2013. And, you know, when I came to this country, I grew up in very humble apartment complexes, right, where the security was always a problem where cleanliness was a problem. So I said, well, majority of the people when they’re looking to start a business, they’re looking for their own ideas, looking for the next Facebook, how can I make this idea nobody’s ever thought about, but in my mind, I say I’ll take something that’s there. Not complicated, but I’ll just do it better. And as part of my experience working in a private equity fund, the biggest challenge that we had was always finding the right partners for us. You know, we have the capital you’re in a financial institution or not. We have to allocate the capital to a company that has great people. So not only they’re financially sophisticated, we’re making the right decisions to make good investments. But at the same time, very hands on, you don’t know exactly what’s going on at the property level. So, I decided to combine those two things, as I’m we invest in apartment complexes that have been ignored for many, many years. And people have given up on it. So, I came up with a strategy called value add, which is I bought an asset which has been mismanaged, or it needs some capital expenditures to renovate and make it look nicer to make it a nice place. So, I said, Look, what I’m going to do is I’m going to create an integrated vertically integrated platform, where not only raise capital resources, but also manage it. Now, it’s easier said than done, because my experience has always been in the financial side of things where I’m the one allocating capital to different operators. Now I am trying to become an operator without actual real experience. So, what I did, I decided to set up the properties myself. And to be very honest, the first few months I thought is a biggest mistake of my life. Because here I was sitting in a high rise building in traveling business class and Asia and America. And here I’m sitting in a class d minus apartment complex, by the way. Wow. I mean, that’s the best way to party status, probably z, I could say that. So, I decided to I’m going to run the property myself. So, I set up the property is very difficult. But the first three months when you actually see this, some sort of turnaround gave me a lot of confidence. And I took that confidence I built upon it. The biggest thing I will say the wise thing, the prudent thing I did was kept growing my team, because we have goals and dreams. Everybody has goals and dreams, I could easily take an approach where I said, Okay, I’m going to do everything myself, and I’m happy if I had five apartment complexes and 10 properties. I said, No, I want to make it a big enterprise. I want to make it an empire or conglomerate where I need to have good people executing these ideas, executing the operations while I go out and try to raise capital find deals, and that was the beginning of it. You know, to be honest, it seems like a dream to your listeners and yourself but it seems like a dream to myself, sure I agree mind division, then I’m going to make it bigger. I’m going to try and make it big someday. But for it to happen so quickly, it feels a surreal feeling. By the end of the day, you know, if you think about it, everyone in life, there’s destiny, there’s hard work, there’s karma and your culture. What you need to do to be successful is make sure you put yourself in a position to be successful, and then leave the rest to God. So, a lot of people, they make that mistake where they say, I believe in destiny. So, if it’s written in my destiny, I’m going to make it big then I’m going to make it big. The problem is you got to put yourself in the position first. You gotta take that step, you gotta hustle a lot and put yourself in a position, and then most likely the luck will play in your favor. Like they say that luck favors the brave. Nothing can be truer than that.

 

Pancham: No, absolutely as so many questions on the things that you just said. And you know, for the last thing that you said, I completely agree. My mentor also says that you have to be in the position to take the shot. 

 

Swapnil: Right. If you’re not even in the position, when the opportunity comes…because you won’t even be ready to say I wish I hit the lottery but you got to go out and buy a lottery ticket.

 

Pancham: Exactly. Exactly. So okay, things that you mentioned here like you mentioned, it was the minors and that was also probably a little, you know, better just putting in better words. So, were you scared of your life? To put it in better words all the time?

 

Swapnil: I was actually looking to buy a bulletproof jacket.

 

Pancham:  Yeah, no, I would, you know, knowing you know, I’ve not managed as many units would have been part of this for the last three years, and the minus property and when you’re yourself there, it’s so hard. Mindset fights, you have to be so strong when you’re sitting there so I truly care. Absolutely.

 

Swapnil: I mean, look, collecting rent itself was the challenge, right? Go out and try to collect rent exactly the basis from a clientele that is not used to paying rent on time or not paying at all and then you got to put on this face mask. This attitude where even though you could be scared, you’re dead from inside, but on the exterior, you got to act tough, you got to be firm. And that’s the challenge. And that taught me a lot, a lot of things in life. You know, if you treat people with respect, you try to give them a nice, clean, safe place to live. Most of the people will pay for pay because ultimately that’s their home, people can do anything to pay. I mean, this is the most essential need that anybody has a roof over their head. 

 

Pancham: Exactly. No, I hundred percent agree with you over there. But still, it’s still you have to have that mindset. Kudos to you that you did that. So, you know, like you said, sitting in the high floors, fine business and then coming to this d minus property. You know, worrying about your life everyday wedding, thinking about bulletproof jacket. So, what made you decide to leave this high paying job and start this company? Like what was the mindset that you had or what changed in your mind, I know you mentioned that you want to be a good operator, because you had the capital, they were looking for good partners, but you have to have certain kind of mindset, right to shift and jump into entrepreneurship. What was that like? What really triggered? And what was your thought at the time?

 

Swapnil: Well, I think just self-fulfillment, you know, when you’re working in a solution or in corporate America, you’re working for somebody else. And a lot of times you might not agree with that, sir. And in my case, I was working in a private equity institution. So I really thought to myself internally, like what’s my value add? My value add is finding a good operator right off investment opportunity. But once we had allocated the capital to a particular asset or company, our rule was pretty much done. I mean, it’s limited to Asset Management every quarter, what not, but he had no idea how actually things happen on the ground. Right. We are collecting reports from these operators at our budget was this but they didn’t meet the budget. So, your question then, ground realities are so much different than the PowerPoint, Excel presentation. You see? Trying to make that investment. Right. So I said, I need to be something where I’m involved throughout, like I’m creating value from day one to day 100 when we exit, and plus, I’ve always had entrepreneurs that I want to, I want to work for myself, I want to be my own business. And I want to employ people. And then combine that with an industry which is very close to me, because I came to him from India to the US, I paid my way to college by passing our pizza flyers a lot his apartment complex. That’s the way I could afford to make money. So I said, having an opportunity to buy those apartment complexes and making real change in people’s daily lives, I think was too much to give up. And then at the end of the day, you have to have that risk-taking approach in your mind, right? A lot of people 99.9% of the population in the world want to do their own business, but only 0.01 percent end up doing it because 99.9% of the people can never get rid of the paycheck security. Right? They’re always thinking on the worst case. What if my business fails? What if I don’t do well? Well, the answer is that you can always go back and get a job, right? At least you can stay I gave it a shot. And if it doesn’t work…that was my mindset and approach.

 

Pancham: Yeah, no, absolutely agree. And I can resonate with some of the thoughts that you had so much. I recently quit my job last year to do this full time. So, my next question on this at the time, and for me, this is very fresh. We’re you surrounded by the negativity or some of the negativity when you were in the middle of this shift. Were there people who were doubting you? I know sometimes you have self-doubt, too. But were there people who were like you were around and they were doubting you, like, did you have to overcome that all the time, even to today? That’s a part of the business, right? So

 

Swapnil: Otherwise, they wouldn’t be an entrepreneur themselves. Right. So, every time you know whether it’s raising capital or and operations, people are just full of my tape to split it into much paralysis by analysis, right? For me, I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a risk taker. I’m going to go do it, that you have to have that passion and self-belief for you to fight through the negativity, a lot of people Don’t listen to other people like to listen to other people. I mean, just take stock market, for example, your financial advisor will ask that person like, should I invest in a particular stock? Most of the time? They’ll say no, or they say maybe, but if you’re so passionate, you know, like, believe in your, even your analysis, just go for it. So, to your question, yes, negativity is always around. There are always people who are doubting you. But in my case, I’m the person my built up is such that I take that negativity to fuel myself more. Like for me, the mindset is, I’m going to prove that person wrong. It’s that extra ultra-competitive edge. And the mindset is very competitive for me, almost like you know, if you’ve seen that last dance, I’m not comparing myself to Michael Jordan, but competitiveness, you know, just making up things to fire you up. That’s really how I’m built and that’s what has done me well so far.

 

Pancham: No, that’s awesome. Actually, this is so refreshing to hear, you know, I tell you and you would relate to this, you know, Ratan Tata, right, the founder of the Tata company. So once a journalist asked him actually You know, you’ve made so many right decisions, how do you make a right decision? It’s like, I don’t make a right decision and make a decision, then I make it right.

 

Swapnil: You gotta have that hustle mentality and never give up, whether the odds are stacked against you. And like you said, if you’ve taken a decision and things are not going according to your plan, you make it work to make that plan work, regardless of the situation.

 

Pancham: Right, right now, that’s great. So I want to switch gears, I see that, you know, your company’s fully integrated, you have your property management arm, you have your capital, you know, where you raise capital, your capital company, and then you have also your single family fund where you’re doing certain things and your technology part of that is like fully vertically integrated, like, Did you find it like, I have this question like, you know, burning question like, Did you find it difficult to scale so quickly, without using third party property management and the reverse question to this is if that was not the case like how did you scale all these pots so quickly?

 

Swapnil: I think it’s a fortune favors the brave, like I’d like to say. So, we did start out with third party management company for the first three, four properties he had, just because he you know, I wanted to learn, I didn’t know how things happen when I realized pretty quickly is that what is my value? Right? That’s my earlier comment, right? Like if I’m just raising capital buying deals, but I’m not managing it myself. I’m not creating value and what is my value by investors giving me the capital? Right? So, yes, it was difficult initially, because obviously how to scale you have to hire people. And I was very fortunate in the sense that people whoever surrounded my surrounding myself with like my analysts, my first GP, my colleagues, my partners, they all took that leap of faith, and they all left their high paying jobs to become part of this. So, I was lucky in that sense, but my thought process was that I have to continue growing the team if that means I don’t make any money for the first three years which is fine. Any fees or anything Capital used to raise or make money, I used to put it back into companies to hire more. Because my setup was not to just, you know, own five or 1015 properties. My mindset was always to grow it as a big platform. So, and as part of that, yes, we’ve been lucky because we started with operations, property management. And then I said, Okay, this business is constantly changing technology is playing a key role in in our lives, He lives. So, I say I have to make the property management company that is taking on this help, or this is using the latest technologies, right. So, when I started buying properties, when 13 the biggest source of marketing was passing out flyers on the bus stop supplies, office supplies for the apartment buyers. I think that’s pretty old technology. Everybody has cellular phones, everybody’s using social media. So that’s the way you market your apartments, right? You have a good social media presence. So that’s one of the approach to technology plays a key role. A hands-on approach the construction side, you know, we’re renovating these apartments, the biggest challenges get these units ready. Make ready to get into thousand times so people can move in on time. If you’re using a third-party contractor, you’re always relying on somebody else to make sure that it’s done on time and the quality, because I’m going to do it myself. Right? So, these are the things I thought about, the only way that will prosper and do well is to try to control as many aspects or factors by myself, rather than relying on somebody else guide so then when you had made that decision, and you actually started all these things, I’m sure just like you started the buying these properties, every single part of the business, there must be challenges, individual challenges for each one of them for to scale. You just hired right people and put the right people in place and guide them to do well basically and support them.

 

Pancham: Yeah, absolutely. 

 

Swapnil: And not just hiring but you know, taking the calculated risk or decisions of buying this and then trying to refinance him any value add or standard by and you have to always put investors interests first, right if investors are happy Grant, you’re working with high integrity, investors will come back and give you know, it becomes easier to raise capital the end of the day. raising capital is the hardest part of the job when you start a business. And we’re lucky enough that raising capital becomes the easiest part of my business. I was like, Okay, what, which assets to buy or the opportunities because our track record is still good that people are just saying, Okay, please start buying something as a note, and then that’s when your fiduciary duty comes in. Because opportunities are limited. They’re not as good as it used to be five years ago. And so, to keep yourself disciplined, making sure your investors interest always on top will always serve you in good light in the long term. And always, never taking shortcuts or doing things the right way. You know, having the right books doing things the right never taking shortcuts, building that trust that integrity with your investor base stakeholders, is ultimately the most important thing you can do as an owner.

 

Pancham: Yep. Great. Thank you for answering that. So now, you know with the situation that we are in COVID-19 situation, you know, like half of the world is in the lockdown, and how is it impacting your business? And what are you doing differently today that you were not doing, let’s say four months ago? Or has the strategy changed because of this?

 

Swapnil: Yeah, I think this is a great buying opportunity. To be honest, my personal opinion, I think that just three, four months break and which is allowing a lot of opportunities to come in, we’re going to take advantage of it, you’ll be very aggressive in terms of existing assets, but performing extremely well, we collected almost 100% of our rents last few months compared to march rents. Some of the steps we took was, you know, day one, I sent an email company via email to all my 800 plus employees, and that really helps a lot if your employees are on board. They know they’re getting paid. They will work extra hard, you know, they will get so many emails I got a thank you so much for letting us know that because people are worried people were worried in this environment of concern. And then the second thing we did through carrier carriers, we announced a $4 million Rental Assistance Fund for people who are genuinely need help and lost jobs gave 300,000 of the first responders in Houston because for there will be protective gear that they need to do their jobs. And then at the property level, just being hands on constant communication with all the regionals or all the property managers see what they’re seeing, how can we help them visiting the properties myself to encourage them? I mean, that plays a key role because you have motivated employees, trust me the properties, you’ll see a big difference. Another thing we did is we hired a culture coach, we hired a culture coach whose only job is to go to properties and just talk to the staff about work, not about business, just listen to them. There are so many things that they want to rent out or share with them. And you will see a drastic improvement in these people’s performance just because they have somebody to talk to about business, right. So these are some of the little things we do technology, we make sure that you’re always supporting them in anything you need. 100% of payments are online, you know, people can pay to a grocery store. We don’t accept any payments at the property level, and constant approval, sending constant geeky newsletters of what you’re seeing how and then if There’s jobs available in certain sub market the property is letting them know hey, there’s a job available where you can apply sending them all the charities that are also city vary. There’s a regular system, one that’s been created to how to apply for that. These are the little things that you have to stay on. It makes a big difference in the village.

 

Pancham: Great. No, thank you for answering that. And I completely agree with you like we are also in bind mode obviously with different assumptions a little bit but definitely agree with you there. So, you know you’re involved with you know, your other side. Have you mentioned a few things you have done because of this pandemic Aria cares amazing things like $4 million rental assistance and also this Karya Cares that you established as a philanthropic branch of your company. Tell us about that. Like what is the goal of Karya Cares and the mission?

 

Swapnil: Yeah, you know, I always believe in giving back you know, because I do it selfishly. If I give hundred back, I get thousand back right. So Yeah, I’ve always been, you know, coming from where I am, you know, but very humble beginnings and growing up in a small town. So it was always about making it but then after you make it, what do you do with it? Right? You have to improve people’s lives change people’s lives, so Karya Cares and other charitable organizations, we have two schools that we run in India, almost 1000 Kids provide education and we have a free healthcare clinic, which pioneers just started that these patients have no insurance on daily basis, then this rental assistance content, there’s plenty of other initiatives that characteristic, it’s always about giving back. That’s the attitude you need to have that, okay, if I’m going to make certain amount of money, what is the use of the money, how to use that money for the betterment of the society and the people. That’s the reason why I’m involved in so many charities that are born Foundation, interfaith ministries, which provides free meals to all the seniors in the city of Houston, we’ll place a lot of refugees who doesn’t have homes in our apartment complex. So being on the board of that, so life is such that you know, once you do well once you’ve done well, you continue to do Time is always you know, people say I’m going to retire and I’m going to do charity. Charity, social work doesn’t end. It’s always a part of my life since day one, always trying to be helpful or whatever my means were back then I still was as helpful. I am more needs to be more which I am doing now.

 

Pancham: And that’s great. So if people actually we’ll put this in the show notes if people want to donate two characters, like where can they go? And they can go to Korea cares.org and it’s very simple. Okay, great. No, thank you. Thank you so much for this. We’ll be back after this message to go to the next round. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the thought that you have no time after work and family time to learn about investing? Do you feel left behind that you are not putting your money to work for you? Do you want to create passive income but you do not know where to start? If so, I have good news for you. I have created an investment Club which I call the gold collar investor club for accredited investors, I will be putting together investing opportunities exclusively for this group. These are the opportunities where I have done my part of the due diligence for you and will be investing my own money alongside you. If you are interested, please sign up on thegoldcollarinvestor.com/club. I repeat thegoldcollarinvestor.com/club. I will reach out to schedule a 30-minute phone conversation to discuss your investing goals. Once you sign up, this can be a good opportunity to diversify and take some chips off the hands of Wall Street to produce some cash flow. And in case you are wondering what is an accredited investor? accredited investor is someone who has earned more than 200,000 as filing single or more than 300,000. filing jointly for the law. Two years. Another way to qualify as an accredited investor is if your total net worth is more than $1 million is including your personal home. It includes your stocks, 401, K’s, IRAs, cars, etc. Just not the equity in your personal home. If this is you, I would highly encourage you to sign up. Let’s move on to the next section of the show, which I call taking the leap round. And I asked these questions to every guest on my show. My first question for you Swapnil is when was the first time you invested outside of Wall Street?

 

Swapnil: 2011 when I bought a little piece of land in India, and little did I know that how, what I’m going to do with it, I still have the land and there’s nothing on it. But 2011 when I was still working on…

 

Pancham: Okay, so my second question for you is what fears did you have to overcome when you first invested outside of Wall Street

 

Swapnil: Yeah, I would say that fear I have is obviously the big fear is when you start own platform and start investing your own assets. That was when I had fear. And I, you know, when I invested in a little piece of property in India was a very small investment. But the biggest fear is always you know, anything you do in life, starting a business or job…change your city. He is overcoming the self-doubt, right? Once you have convinced yourself once you are in your own internal personal doubts, I think the rest of it comes easy, right? You got to have that much passion that you’re able to say, look, I understand the risk associated with it. But I feel the rewards far outweigh their risk, even though that means my business is sexy, but having to you know, reflect back 10 years later, at least I tried and gave it a shot will give you a lot of satisfaction and then you get growth, right? 

 

Pancham: No, I absolutely agree with that. So, my third question is, can you share with us one investment that did not go as expected? Did you have any?

 

Swapnil: There’s not one, there’s two There’s obviously you know, when you prepare a business plan or budget, you do that going in in the unknown. And that’s business plan in any industry, right? Whether it’s stock market or real estate or oil and gas, I mean, you pick industry, but then how do you maneuver? How do you change your business plan to make still make sure that it comes out as a successful event for your investors, for one example, is he bought a property in a unit apartment complex? On papers, 30% IRR three x capital, we took over the property, we realized that there’s a lot of competition, the units are not as you know, the demand for those units are there, but there’s a lot of competition. So, we revised our assumption and ultimately, we exited within two and a half years. And it was 11% or 10% IRR muster made by 1.25 x. So, if that’s my worst case, for investors still making their money back plus a little bit of return, I’m happy with it. Right? If you’re going to continue to say no, I am going to make a 30% IRR and keep stretching yourself. That’s when you make mistakes. To go wrong much higher. So, accepting the reality, once you’ve done something, and then coming out ahead, even in the case where it’s not as good as what I told investors are still invested, they get their money back plus a little bit of return. I think that’s a successful outcome and that investors are very loyal.

 

Pancham: Yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. And you know, you do and you learn. That’s the thing, right? And these things make you very seasoned and more knowledgeable investor as you grow in this business. That’s great. So, my final question for you is, what is one piece of advice would you give to people who are thinking of investing in main street that is outside of Wall Street?

 

Swapnil: I would say it’s very important to do so. Just like I said, when I started the call is diversifying your portfolio not putting all eggs in one basket in real estate is an asset class which is tangible you can touch and feel it. There’s always demand for housing. In Houston, your average rent is $850 across property. I mean, for $850 per month rent, there’s always going to be demand. How do you execute the business plan is where your success lies. Right? So, my advice to anybody that’s considering to invest in mainstream real estate or any other asset class, I would say it was very important for that. And real estate has additional benefits of appreciation, tax benefits. So, it’s not only the yield that you’re generating, or the returns from the investment itself, a lot of the tax benefits you get are also very, very high and equally as important as a cashier, the returns you get from the investment is great. 

 

Pancham: No, thank you. Thank you for that advice. Thank you for your knowledge. Swapnil, so how can listeners reach you if they want to connect with you? Or you know, invest with you? How can they reach you? 

 

Swapnil: Absolutely. So you have my email address, you can share my email address with them. I’m very active on LinkedIn. That’s the only social media platform I really have are used. They can reach out to me on LinkedIn has my information there. And yeah, I mean, there’s plenty of ways if people want to find me they’ll find great me. 

 

Pancham: No thank you. We will put both on in the show notes and so that people if they want to connect, they can connect with you. So, thank you so much for your time. It’s an honor to have you again, I know you’re a busy person. 

 

Swapnil: Thank you so much.

 

Pancham: Thank you. So, I hope that you are inspired. Thank you for listening. I appreciate you if you have questions email me at p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com. I repeat p@thegoldcollarinvestor.com. I appreciate you. Thanks for listening, signing off. Until next time, take care.

 

Thank you for listening to the Gold Collar Investor podcast. If you love what you’ve heard and you want more of Pancham Gupta, visit us at www.thegoldcollarinvestor.com and follow us on Facebook at The Gold Collar Investor. The information on this podcast are opinions as always, please consult your own financial team before Investing


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