A day in the life of: Bruce Schonbraun

5 a.m. I generally get up at 5 every morning even though I set the alarm for 5:30. I’ve trained myself to do this over the years. The alarm clock never goes off.

6 a.m. If I eat at home — I live in Livingston, N.J. — I eat at about 6 a.m. and have the same thing every single day: a diet peach Snapple and a chunk of Laughing Cow cheese. It’s pretty strange, but it’s habit by now. If I eat out, I like the Peninsula Hotel, or Cafe Centro, because it’s close to my office at 750 Third Avenue. Or I go to Michael’s, where I went last week with Joel Marcus from Alexandria Real Estate Equities, a public REIT focused on the life science industry. Since most places don’t serve Laughing Cow cheese, I order scrambled egg whites, with nothing else on the plate, not even sprigs of parsley. I tell them to clear the plate.

7:30 a.m. I like to do some kind of sporting activity three or four times a week before work, usually tennis or nine holes of golf. Tennis has always been a huge part of my life. I was a competitive player from a very early age. My son Michael, 37, was captain of the varsity tennis team at Colgate [University], and my other son, David, 35, was a star tennis player at Princeton. Tennis is like boxing: mano a mano. It’s a fight. You win or you lose; it’s nobody else’s fault. There are a lot of life lessons in that. I also have one of the largest collections of tennis memorabilia in the country, though maybe that’s because not many people have tennis memorabilia collections! I have 1,000 tennis rackets, 1,000 cans of tennis balls, plus books and articles.

9 a.m. If I play tennis or golf, I’m in the office at about 9. I like it to be quiet time when I go over my to-do list. The items are highlighted in different colors, in terms of importance. I’m kind of old-fashioned that way.

9:30 a.m. I try to have two or three meetings a day. It’s all about one-on-one time. [Last month] I met with Jeff Kelter, the senior partner at KTR Capital, a private equity firm, who is a client. They are one of the fastest-growing industrial real estate funds, and they’re in meaningful acquisition mode.

Noon If I stay in the office, I have the same lunch every single day: a scoop of tuna fish over shredded lettuce, and diet peach Snapple. On Wednesday, I met Joe Sitt of Thor Equities, who’s a client and good friend. He likes the Four Seasons, so we went there. We pretty much spent the whole time talking about his growing international business. Joe has one speed: fast.

2 p.m. My afternoons are similar to my mornings, focused on client meetings. Today, I’m meeting with Jeff Goldberg, managing partner of the Milestone Group, which owns apartments across the country, though not in New York. I talk to my wife, Lynn, a few times a day. I also try to talk to my sons every single day. Michael is a senior principal for Square Mile Capital, an investment firm, and David is the co-chief investment officer of SL Green Realty. But I consciously try not to talk to them about real estate, because I want to have some balance in our relationships.

5 p.m. Around 5 o’clock, I start to think about the next day and make a new to-do list. There’s a saying from Henry Ford that sets the tone for me every day: “You can’t build a reputation based on what you are going to do.” That’s a big part of who I am. I’m about action and execution.

6:30 p.m. I spend two nights a week at charitable events, focused mostly on underprivileged children and medical research. I feel incredibly lucky to be where I am in life, certainly compared to where I started out, in Jersey City. I like to joke that we paid rent by the week in arrears. We also eat out a lot when there aren’t events. Two couples is the ideal number for conversation. Eight people is too many. We recently went out with [SL Green Realty CEO] Marc Holliday and his wife, Sheree, but I very rarely talk business.

10 p.m. I get home around 10 and like to watch those infomercials that feature rock bands from the ’60s. They show the Yardbirds for 12 seconds and then Janis Joplin for nine seconds. [In college] I had a job as a bouncer at the Fillmore East, the legendary rock club. I was going to school at Rutgers and then at Fairleigh Dickinson. I would work at the club on weekends. I got to meet the Yardbirds and Eric Clapton. I usually conk out around 11:30.