welcome back, Alchemist.
This is the Abundance Thursdays Podcast with myself, Gualter Amarelo
and the great Vinny Smile Chopra.
So good to see you back on the treadmill.
Thank you, brother.
Thank you.
I'm so excited to be back home after some little time.
Family reunion.
We try to do it every year at a good resort, all inclusive so that we can
have fun on the beach and everything.
Now, Vinny, when you say family reunion, you've had.
A bunch of trips with your family.
Sometimes your sister in-law comes along.
Sometimes your son, your daughter come with you.
Your wife is always there, conscience, always on vacation with you.
Yes.
This is a little different.
This is something you do annually with other family members.
How many.
Of your, how many of the Chopra family were there?
And I assume outside of the Chopra family, 'cause your wife's side as well, right?
Correct.
This actually was the wife's side, her sisters brother-in-law
and also his, her brothers.
We usually get together once a year, seven days or something.
In Cancun or Puerto of Lar or Cabo San Lucas.
That's what we've been doing.
So it was a lot of fun, a lot of relationship building, enjoyment,
time, humor, all those things, and walking on the beaches twice usually
twice morning and evening and so forth.
So it was fun and spa and treatment and massages, all that stuff.
Vinny, I gotta ask you, 'cause we.
We talk a lot about surrounding yourself with the right people.
And today's principle is learn to solve problems for people and making profit,
doing it, getting rich, doing it.
There's gotta be problems that come up over the family dinners, right?
So your family has problems, right?
They're not the normal problems
every family does.
Do you still help them solve problems that are not money related?
Do you find that as a way to practice solving problems or do you find that
with family it's just listen and agree And how do you navigate that?
My personality is very much kinda just listen.
Because I feel that, family relationships.
Are better because it's very hard to change anybody actually,
especially their thinking.
And I love Mel Robbins new book.
Let Them Be something like let them have or let them Be Theory, which is you are
not responsible for anybody's happiness.
You are not.
You're not.
If you're thinking that I can change their mind within 20
minutes, 15 minutes, you are wrong.
Actually.
People hate when you correct them.
To be very truthful, they do not like that.
Nobody likes criticism.
Think about us.
When people cut us down, we don't like it.
So the key thing is to let them speak their mind, and hopefully in the
discussion within the family, somebody else will interact also, and then.
They will be, that will be solved.
Usually our families are very nice, we don't do any big, having
grudges or things like that.
So that's a good thing.
That's a
Good family reunions have something, but in order for the family to keep
coming back, it's gotta be fun.
People keep yeah.
Otherwise people come up with excuses why they're not gonna be there this year.
So we know that solving problems is necessary in business, but
in the family unit it's not.
Sometimes not solving problems is positive.
How do you know?
'cause this principle is solve problems.
Learn to love solving problems and getting rich doing it.
I think a lot of us, especially men, we're very good at problem solving.
We like to solve problems.
Yeah.
How do you do it in business in such a way that a person actually says,
thank you for solving this problem.
Because I know I've been on calls that said, oh, you know what you should do?
You should do this.
Yeah.
And people are like oh, no.
Thank you.
But then I've been on other calls where I'm listening and
saying have you considered this?
Have you considered?
Would that be helpful?
And at the end of that call, I'm being told, wow, thank you so much.
You really solved my problem here.
So how do you balance that out?
You love to solve, but how do you slow down?
When you really wanna do it.
Love that.
Again, I just go back to, like when a doctor is sitting down with us or an
attorney or a CPA or anything financial advisor, they want you to speak and
talk and share the whole spectrum so that they don't wanna misdiagnose.
That's the other thing.
And then give prescription, which can is not the right one.
So it's very important to listen and try to ask probing questions so that
they can even open up more as to why the situation has developed and so
forth, and what are they seeking.
So it's very good to ask them.
By the way, you just shared with me this.
What do you think?
What are you seeking?
With my experience, limited experience, I always say that, I may be able to help.
I may not be, but I'll just give you my perspective.
That's how I say.
Then you, I've got a question.
Any pressure on them?
Yeah.
I got a question because you said.
Probing questions, and I've heard this before and I have probing
questions that I ask when I want specific results for a person.
What are some of the probing questions you are asking people right now in
this market, in your conversations?
I know you're sitting down with investors every week.
Yeah.
So what are some of the probing questions you are actively asking, and what is
the temperature you're feeling for?
What are the pain points you're looking for?
Exactly.
The biggest thing is I'm asking them, have you invested in commercial real estate?
Because I'm in commercial, I'm in, multifamily of
course, very little right now.
But then hotels, hospitality, senior livings and some other things.
The key thing is to find out where their mind is at.
Have they lost money?
To be very truthful, lot of investors are very uneasy because the distributions
have stopped, they don't see, and some cash calls are happening left and right
for many months now, and the read in the newspaper there is 770 billion is
gonna be coming due end of December.
So all those things are mixtures.
I talked to one investor, he says, Vinny, I've lost 500,000.
In the last few months, because of whatever investment I did yesterday,
I had a lunch with the business, men our friends, and somebody was saying,
I'm just gear to get my money back.
Not the returns but just the money back.
And so those are very salient questions and risks that people are facing.
So we got to let them speak up because if we have a product like my hotel investment
or whatever, I cannot throw it them.
If their mind is not ready,
if, because it sounds the same, right?
Yeah, it sounds the same.
Oh, another commercial deal.
No commercial deal.
Got hurt.
Commercial is bad.
Yeah.
So you're going in to ask their assessment of commercial.
Yeah.
And then if they've lost money, where did you lose money?
And so you can start positioning yourself as something, as a different
investment, as a different asset class.
Totally, and find out if you could even help them or give them some perspective.
You know what's fixing to happen with the interest is nobody knows.
You know where the economy is right now.
Stock market is going through the roof and situations are bad.
Government is shut down right now.
Oh my gosh.
Air controllers are leaving at four 15, I heard in Burbank, and
they said if the flight comes after that, it's, they have to manage San
Diego, manage them or something.
So it's
pretty, you are clearly ahead of me.
I haven't opened Facebook today, so I didn't realize
the government was shut down.
So there's things happening right now.
We know the stock market's through the roof, and I made a
post the other day about Bitcoin.
I sold a Bitcoin and people were like, oh my God, you're gonna regret that.
And it's I'm making a lot of money over here in this real estate
side that's doing really well.
And yeah, Bitcoin is unpredictable.
It's just something I can't control.
I can't predict it.
So I got a little bit of a backlash, but there the stock market's doing well.
Bitcoin's doing well, right?
Crypto is doing well.
Yeah.
And yet we have interest rates.
We don't, we can't predict the future.
We have insurance costs that have gone up.
We have notes that are coming due, $70 billion in notes coming due in December.
And how do we.
Now that we know, okay, person's lost money.
I have, I can think of a number of examples with a friend of mine
Monday, and he told me, yeah, I've lost about four or 500,000 in lending.
That doesn't sound good to me.
I'm like, oh my God.
Like I work heavily in debt and in lending.
So you're not gonna be interested in my thing.
I, so what?
But I asked him, just like you were saying, probing questions, what type
of loans were these, you know what kind of asset class and of course
it was flips of single family homes.
So I said, whoa.
We're different.
They have a fundamental problem.
There's no cash flow, there's no way for them to re, they're not thinking
refinance, they're not filling units.
So that is a problem.
I could see why they would stop paying.
I'd see how they, they have those problems.
Yes.
We know probing questions are valuable.
You handed us two probing questions.
Can we get another one?
What's another probing question?
Let's say their experience in real estate commercial.
They've they've lost some money.
What is the next question that you would ask somebody?
I think the next question will be, by the way, have you looked
into some asset classes, which are cash flowing and they have a great
potential with the demographic shifts.
10,000 baby boomers turning 65.
We go back to that right silver tsunami.
There is a shortage of, assisted living and memory care in this country, and
it's gonna get bigger and bigger.
Hospitality has come back after COD.
Even though with tariffs, some of the buy carts and everything in good locations,
hospitality is good, with the corporate travels domestically and so forth
like that, and tourism and so forth.
So the key thing is to find out if they're even.
Thinking in those terms.
And then the next probing question will be, are you sitting
on some, dry cash retirement?
That's the other thing.
Three investors, I shared with them that they could, change
from Wall Street to Main Street by self-directed IRAs and 401k.
They didn't know that.
They said, Vinny, really?
Oh, I could take that money, have a checkbook control and invest in
syndication and fund like yours.
I said, yeah, you can.
Then I put them in touch with three people, right?
Three custodians, because we don't get paid any referral fee, but I like them.
They're low cost, so I shared with them, and they appreciate if you find solutions
for them and then they say, you know what?
What do you have?
At this time.
Speaking of hospitality, I, you got me thinking, 'cause I travel quite
a bit more than I would like to, and I don't stay at Airbnbs, but one of
the things I've been seeing is that.
The hospitality space has had the problem with Airbnbs recently, but I'm seeing
that hospitality space actually pushing back and getting the cities involved,
and the cities are now shutting down Airbnbs they're wiping some of that out.
And I was just thinking I haven't stayed in Airbnb.
I spent one.
At the beginning of this year, but for the most part, I've been staying
in hotels and I'm just thinking like, why do I stay in hotels over Airbnbs?
One, it's easier.
It's just so much more convenient for me.
Two, they're predictable.
It's, I know exactly what I'm gonna get.
There's no questions.
And three, I don't have to talk to the staff.
I at the door, I talk to them and I'm done and it's.
Predictable.
We're not gonna talk anymore.
Yeah.
With the Airbnb space I'm more often than not confused on
where the key is, how to get in.
I'm talking to them to try to figure stuff out and it's been a. I think that the
hotels have a really strong niche in the sense that it's hands off for the user.
It's very much, it's easy for us to use.
So I do think that the hotel space is gonna be interesting.
It solves a problem.
It solves a problem for me as somebody who's constantly traveling.
And then also Vinny, my staff that travels from New Jersey to
Cleveland, from New Jersey to Jackson, they all stay in hotels as well.
Sure.
Because it's.
Easier for us.
And the, it's just a simpler process.
Good mid-tier, not the rich luxury.
Luxury rates, cartons.
But yeah we're always like holiday express or like holiday like Yeah, either.
Yeah.
In the middle, there is a extended stay are doing very well in this
market, low maintenance and so forth.
And also the good thing is the product is good.
If the product is good, people are busy in their lives, working during the
day, they just come nice, clean place to come back to, so service is the big
aspect and ai, artificial intelligence is helping a lot in hospitality.
It was helping before, but even more so now.
Yeah,
I think a lot of the bookings too, a lot of that is done via an algorithm.
The prices go up as needed.
They drop down as needed.
Airbnb's doing some of that as well, but it is a, it is an interesting time to
see these asset classes into the future.
I do see multi-family and senior assisted living really
being insulated in the future.
The bay boom generation is retiring, the silver tsunami is here.
Single family homes are getting beat up regardless, like it's just.
Do they solve the problem anymore?
They're becoming the problem.
And people don't quite want that anymore.
They wanna go to something that's more easy for them and takes
care of their greater demands.
Building solutions.
So part of the notes here are building solutions that save time, reduce stress,
and generate better results in your senior assisted livings and in your hotels,
what are you doing to step away from the competition and provide a better service?
It all depends who are in the front line.
I always say that, I'm sitting in my office in San Francisco
area, but who are the people I'm hiring or my team is hiring?
How are we giving the product to seniors?
See, seniors are very, you have to be 24 hour care.
The director has to be, the administrator, has to be top-notch.
20, 25 years of experience.
I always say.
Then the hr, the front office, the business manager, the exercise director,
the chef cooking the right meals, the product, and then prescription, the nurse,
has to be all those things gel together as a team to provide the kind of care.
We need to give, and the word travels.
In assisted living, it's the reviews count and the word travels and you
have to deliver the right product.
Same thing is with hospitality.
You cannot let lose a single tourist or traveler.
A tourist, a client should not feel.
That abandoned or not a big smile when they walk in and
quick check-in and everything.
And if they have a situation, solving the problem is so important in both of them.
Both of them In senior living, it's 24 hours, of course, with the guest.
Hospitality is also 24 hours.
Literally, they could call at night and, and anytime.
Yeah.
Hi friends, this is Vinny Chopra from here in Danville, California,
and you might be saying, Hey, Vinny, what are these over here?
You know, I wrote this book a few years back, Apartment Syndication
Made Easy, it became top seller.
I came from India with 7 in my pocket.
It says 500 million.
It's going to be 1 billion very soon, very soon.
I'm right at about 850, 900 million.
It's And then I'm ready for the next billion.
Actually, you will see that happening two billion in this book.
Also, the other book I wrote, which has been a very big
positivity has been my life.
Always, always.
I've been married 43 years with two children.
And the beauty is to be positive.
The mindset that can take you to all the places in the world.
And that's the book that also.
Became big, big seller.
My third book, Senior Assisted Living is coming.
So do yourself a favor, go ahead and click the link below to get free
copies, audio copies of these books, even printed copies of these books.
If you, I'm a print in means digital, if you can't afford it,
but I would highly recommend for you to get these or go to amazon.
com.
Just go to Amazon.
I got it in soft cover and hard cover.
In Kindle, in audio, also the Spanish version of this.
Oh, this book also.
So let's crush it, guys.
I know you can be successful.
I know you can do the kind of things that you want to do in life and have
the streams of income and know how to really, you know, educate yourself so
that you could become a strong, strong force in this world in real estate.
I know you can.
So take that step.
Don't just be on the sideline.
Take charge of your life.
Take charge of your education.
So it's funny, I did a boots on the ground in Jackson, Mississippi last year.
We had some mastermind members all fly in and we all stayed at different hotels.
And when we got to dinner we asked each other, what do you think?
Your hotel, what are the amenities?
How's this.
Yes.
And it was very interesting going around the room.
'cause we're actually seeing Hey, where am I gonna stay next time I'm in town?
And we all stayed in the same location.
All the hotels are side by side.
All right there.
Yep.
Location was the same.
So if all things were considered equal the question was, how did you,
your experience, how was the room?
What is it?
Like we actually went and popped by and saw each other's rooms.
Yes.
Because it was we're out there often enough where it's I'd like to get.
My bang for my buck.
People do talk and if you're not giving a good experience it does have an impact.
So this next one is align your offers with what people are willing to pay for.
Oh, yeah.
Oh yeah.
How do you price what you're doing?
Like when you have an offer or a product?
Actually even with your deals, right?
I know your deals.
You don't let somebody in under, I think it's a hundred thousand dollars or 50,000.
It's a hundred thousand.
Hundred thousand.
I started doing that 18 years back, and that has served me very
well because I did miss some, investors who only wanted to put 50.
They only wanted to try me out from many times I could tell because they
could afford hundred, but they wanted to only give 50, so I just decided.
I might as well just build my track record and let them come back with a hundred.
So that helped a lot.
Then I started doing tier investing, a hundred to 200 to 300 to 500.
So each level.
The investors LPs will get better returns, cash flow IRRs and things like that.
That helped a lot.
That opened up more wallets to go higher and so forth, and we are
very proud that a lot of our top investors have 3 million, 2 million,
5 million with us in different deals.
You just mentioned something that I made a post the other day about the single
family product itself, like the flips and the risks associated with them.
And one of the problems with those is if you have a million or
2 million you wanna move, yeah.
You're gonna have to diversify that across a whole lot of properties, or you're
gonna be in the luxury space, which is just gonna be the first to get a haircut.
The luxury space, typically in single family that condos new builds are
the worst ones for a time like this.
So if you're moving large amounts of money, having.
A bigger investment.
Threshold is much more useful.
Have you found that investors say okay, like I wanna be in, but
I know you use Avestor, right?
So you are able to diversify 'em across multiple different
asset classes all in one portal?
Yes.
Do you find that they put 500 here?
500 here?
500 here.
So they get set in senior.
I'm in hotels, I'm in multifamily.
I got this You.
Nice little diversification.
Diversification is the key actually, as indicators as fund managers, we need to
specify that and share with them that, don't put all the money in one basket.
I say that all the time.
Some people have called me, they say, Vinny, I wanna put 500,000 in this one.
I say, you know what?
Let's split it in two and put here and there.
When I was doing lots of syndications.
Of course, now with the fund that I have $50 million fund.
It's diversified already.
Automatically diversified ally.
Yeah.
And then with this Alistair thing, they can choose which particular asset or
product or property they can be part of.
So they could be filling out the paperwork on one time PPM, but then the deal
disclosure, and then they know who may, how many people are there in that deal.
When the deal, brings the cash flow and the returns, it's
divided amongst those LPs only.
That's right.
So each one is separate.
You are right.
That's a very good se segue, that's customer service.
So leads us to focus on the joy and satisfaction of solving profit problems.
Profits come as a result.
Yeah.
So not.
All problems are profitable.
So there's some problems in the world that you make no money for.
What would you say are the problems that you have solved for people
that have provided the greatest return for them and for yourself?
If I may say that it just dawned on me there was a property I'll be on
192 units, I think it was in Texas, and, we were able to give good
returns, but to make it stronger.
I just felt let me give my acquisition fee, which I had
gotten five, six years back.
I gave a portion half of it back added to the returns to give my investors
better deal, and they appreciated that.
See, because sometime we just lose touch with, the acquisition fee
guarantee fee that we make upfront.
It's up to us as syndicator fund managers.
How much you wanna give back.
I know I talked to my wife and I said, we have planned to give
250,000 back to the investors in their returns, equity gains and all.
And we agreed as a family, we are a boutique company.
I did that, another one for another deal also.
That was good thing to.
Because once you find investors feel you, they see, I remember there was
one time in Atlanta, I put my every dime into that loans and everything.
Got an $8.5 million loan to throw back at Fannie Mae and that.
When I shared that story in the investors meeting, some people sobbed
and cried, we need, you did so much for us to save our money, investment.
So those things, carry weight and people like that, they can feel that
you are not just to make profits.
Just like we are discussing this topic.
It's not profit, it's the human, it's the humanity.
It's the transparency.
It's making sure that you are taking care of your investors.
I like that.
So focus on the joy and satisfaction of solving the problems.
Yeah.
The profits come later on.
Obviously when you take care of investors, they roll again.
Yeah.
And that's a, I think it's being missed in this market.
I think people are not all operators, I think, but there are a handful that are.
Not putting in the final effort, that final push, that bleeding or sweating
a little bit more for the deal.
What would you say to somebody who is on the edge?
They think they can't pay their investors and they really need to
hear a message from you that says, stay in there, it's gonna get better.
It's not about this deal, it's about the next deal.
What kind of, advice would you give to the market right now for
those operators who are struggling?
Definitely please go back to the lending institution.
It's always boils down to the debt equities there of
the LPs, limited partners.
You want to protect that equity and maybe shave off a little bit, but you gotta be
talking and looking at every avenue how.
You could do, like we did one property in Houston, tax abatement
with the City of Houston, $895,000.
We shaving off.
We don't have to pay that for so many years or something.
Then we pay at the end, something like that.
So what that means is figuring out ways to adjust.
Maybe the interest rates can be deferred somewhat if it's principal and interest.
Maybe the lender lenders don't want the property.
They don't know how to manage and they have so much other stuff going on.
So you got to look at every single avenue to safeguard the investors' money.
I like him, Benny.
Yeah.
The more you serve effectively, the more your reputation and opportunities grow.
So as a reminder to anybody who's thinking, oh, I'm just gonna file a
chapter seven, or I'm gonna close my account, or I'm just not gonna take care
of these guys, all you need to do is win this one more time and as a good chance
that you'll keep the game going, right?
The people who I've seen fail in this business are the ones
who get out of the business.
But if you could survive this deal, if you can go get another deal ahead of it,
that's bigger, that pays for this one.
If you could stay in the game longer, there's a lot of success to be made
right now, even though it seems like, okay, you set things bad.
We're getting the best deals of our life, of our career because a
lot of other operators are failing.
So maybe you fail for the same reasons as them, but now you can get back
into the game under the premise of taking over some of these deals.
I see more opportunity right now in this market, Vinny, than
I've ever seen in my career.
And I said this back in 2008 when I was missing all the opportunities.
I said, man, like when it happens again, I will be there.
December, is it right?
December.
These notes are coming due right now is where investors are contacting us and
saying, Hey, can you take this over?
Can you take this over?
Can you refi out?
I can't refi, I don't want this property anymore.
Can you just take this off my plate?
It's an amazing time to solve problems for people and getting rich doing it.
This is Abundance Thursdays.
We do it every Thursday at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, 12:00 PM Eastern Standard.
We've got the summit coming up October 23rd to the 27th.
Vinny will be there on Thursday night and Friday all day.
Yep.
We've got a wonderful talk on positivity, staying in it, and then
we've got a panel for operators who have operated over 5,000 units and
Vinny will be there with Eric Bow.
We're gonna have a little conversation around what operations looks like today,
how you can stay ahead of the curve.
And if you haven't got your ticket already, go to summit
dot alchemist station.com.
Register.
It is in Orlando, Florida, so great excuse to get down to some warm weather.
Vinny, before we jump off, if somebody wants to find out more
about you and get in touch with you, what is the easiest way to get.
More information about Vinny Chopra, go to vin chopra.com.
Oh, thank you so much.
vinneychopra.com/invest
If you would like to be in our premier mailing list for the
opportunities current and future, and then vinneychopra.com/freebenefits.
So that's a good site.
Free benefits, which is on my books.
Also, you can get my all three books, digital copies.
You could.
Read them on your iPad phone, and actually, I just found out, you
can even listen to, oh no digital, as well as audio copies too.
You can download them.
And my fourth book is almost ready on hospitality.
I've been in hospitality for about seven years now and learned a lot, so I
just felt let's just put one together.
Hospitality investing made easy.
Should be launching pretty soon.
When you say Pretty soon, is this the 2025 deal?
Yes.
25. Take it.
20. 26.
25. 25, brother.
Within a month.
Excellent.
So next week is our final principle for the summit.
Cheers to your success.
When you have a choice, always work with the best.
Happy Abundance Thursday.
See you on the next one.
See you next
week.
Dear friends, this is Winnie Smile Chopra.
I am so glad you're listening to the episode.
Thanks so much.
Really appreciate that.
Please share it with others who can really benefit also.
Can I ask you a favor?
Just a small favor, less than a minute.
If you could give five star reviews on iTune or Stitcher, that'll go a long way.
We have one of the top podcasts in real estate now in the nation, but
it'll really help a lot if you gave five star reviews and we'll bring
lot more great content for you.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate that and see you in the next episode.
God bless you.
Bye-bye.
Hey there!
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