William Edwards is a North Carolina native with 33 years of business ownership and management experience. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from Appalachian State University with double majors in Marketing and Information Systems.
Here’s some of the topics we covered:
- Planning For Retirement
- Preparing Your Family
- Taking Massive Action Quickly
- Asset Management
- Cap Rate Reserves
- Overcoming Analysis Paralysis
To find out more about partnering or investing in a multifamily deal: Text Partner to 72345 or email Partner@RodKhleif.com
Please Review and Subscribe
Full Transcript Below
Intro
Hi. My name is Rod Khleif, and I’m the host of “The Lifetime Cash Flow Through Real Estate Investing” podcast. And every week I interview Multifamily Rock Stars and we talk about how they built incredible wealth for themselves and their families through multifamily properties. So hit the “Like” and “Subscribe” buttons to get notified every Monday when a new episode comes out. Let’s get to it.
Rod
Welcome back to Multifamily Rock Stars. So this is where we interview people that are crushing it in on the business that we love, multifamily real estate. And it’s a show where we show you guys the inside scoop into how multifamily investors are creating incredible success in their businesses and, of course, in their lives as well. And as always, I’ve got my co-host, who’s the director of our massive action team for our warrior group, Mark Nagy on the call. Mark, what’s happening, brother?
Mark
Doing really well. Excited for this one because it’s another cool story of just seeing a successful guy in our Facebook group here for the warriors, shot him a message and here he is to tell a story, but I’ll let you and him take over for that.
Rod
Yes. No, I love it. So we’ve got William Edwards on the show. William is a friend and a warrior and he’s from Carolina. He’s been around business for 33 years. I’m going to let him tell you his story, but, you know, he’s a GP in several deals. He’s an LP in thousands of units. And I’ll just leave it at that. Welcome to the show, brother.
William
Hey, man, glad you have me. I’m glad to be here. Thank you.
Rod
Absolutely. So why don’t we start as we always do, which is having us tell a little bit about your background? You know, I was really enjoyed reading your bio, and you’ve done a lot. Let’s start there, buddy.
William
Yeah, absolutely. The story kind of really starts around 2015 with regard to multifamily. So I had a business with a business partner for 24 years. We sold ERP and CRM software systems. And before that, I came through the banking– I was in bank operations. I worked for a software development company that wrote software for banks. And then my business partner and I ended up forming this business. We sold ERP and CRM software. We sold that in 2015. And my only prior real estate experience prior to that was we had built our own office building and then triple-net leased it back to ourselves, which worked out well. And then we sold the business. We actually continued to lease that building for a couple more years to a new tenant. And that worked out well and eventually sold it. And it was a great investment, great tax benefits. And then I had a single-family residence. At one point, I was bought another single-family, my personal primary residence. I did a cash-out, refinance, and leased, rented out the single-family, and used the proceeds to invest in my next property, my next primary residence. But anyway, long story short, leading up to that time frame, I had the business, we sold it, and started thinking about what I was going to do next. It wasn’t enough to retire on by any means, but I knew, you know, I’m long enough in the tooth, you can probably tell no hair. And if I had hair, it’d be gray. You know, my headlights are bright enough that I can see the runway for my retirement. Right. And what is that going to look like and how far out is that going to be? What kind of lifestyle is that going to be? Although I’m not ready for it yet, I need to prepare. And it made an impression on me, I had some more– I won’t call them senior, but more mature friends back in the 2008 era, during that financial crisis that was retired and had investments and equities. And more than one told me that they had lost half of their life savings during that period of time and they didn’t know how long it was going to take for it to come back or if it would come back. You know, I remembered that and I started thinking about, well, it seems like about every ten years or something. Right. So I’m also old enough to remember Black Monday and, you know, ’87. You know, Y2K was about ten years later and 2008 happened and then, you know, nobody could have predicted, of course, Covid19 in 2020, you know 2019 and 2020.
Rod
Or the fact that Russia just got attacked by Ukraine today. Either. Right.
William
Touche. Exactly.
Rod
Please continue. Please continue.
William
Have downstream impact from that too, right?
Rod
Right.
William
So I started thinking, you know, am I going to end up hitting retirement about the time where there’s a down cycle and I’m going to have to live during the down cycle? Where am I going to get into retirement and need a down cycle? Regardless, I was trying to find something and plan to be able to protect what I had and to be able to go forward. Right. In my requirements, and everybody has different needs, right, in different stages of life. I can tell you that during you know, my 30s and 40s, I had multiple investment accounts and financial advisors and of course, they all want to know what’s your risk tolerance and at that age, I’m not risk-averse. Let’s go, man. And if there’s something that looks like it can pay off, let’s go for it. I’m in a different frame of mind today. I’m at a different stage of life now than I was. So I’m looking to protect what I have right and make sure it’s a cost advantage. So I wanted something that was real. Cash flow is important. Right. I want something that’s going to cash flow. Of course, tax advantage, appreciation would be great and, you know, inflation hedge if I could get it, right. And so I started looking and reading and watching. Reading books and watching podcasts and watching YouTube. And I really didn’t have a community of people that I could work with and talk to about this. I have a pretty good friend now that’s a commercial broker. But we didn’t have conversations like this during that period of time. This is all really self-study. And, you know, what do I need to do to prepare myself and my family? So anyway, it was a really self-education period of time. And my wife jokes that she lost me for about six months. I mean, I was buying books and reading and after the kids were down or we were through a dinner, I’m turning to another room and I’m reading or I’m watching videos and podcasts. So I’m really trying to get boned up on what’s going on. So I considered a number of different– I decided that real estate was going to check my boxes and in what manner. I thought about single-family. I thought about office, I thought about retail. Doing a triple net lease, you know, from Walgreens or something like that. The office scared me because I don’t care if you got leases for businesses or not. Most businesses don’t survive that long. And when there’s turnover, the new tenant, you’re going to need to lease it. And then a new tenant is going to need you to reconfigure the space. And that was just a headache. I wasn’t prepared for it. Single-family, I got really close to starting to buy off on some single-family. And I did not do it. Before I bought them, I was starting to have buyers remorse. I was starting to think about what the lifestyle was going to be. And I felt like I was going to buy a job and I backed away from that.
Rod
It took me 2000 houses to get that memo, William. Please continue.
William
You know, at a very high level, looked at self-storage, not very deep, looked at multifamily. And, you know, all of those checked some of the boxes, the boxes that I had. Right. And everybody has different boxes for where they are and where they want to go. But for me, all those checked some of the boxes. The only one that checks all the boxes for me was multifamily. So that’s really where I started to focus. And it was hard. Right. I made a decision that you know, you talk about massive action in your program.
Rod
Right.
William
It was kind of gut-wrenching at a time. But, you know, luckily my wife and I were on the same page. We felt the same way. We want to prepare the same way. So we started looking at where can we pull funds from, right. We’ve got savings accounts, we’ve got brokerage accounts. We’ve got, you know, some cash value sitting in a life policy that we didn’t need anymore. What can we do? So we pulled what we could together and figured out what we could do. And another thing that we did around that same time frame was we started consolidating what I call my stock drawer of qualified retirement accounts. Right. So as we all do, we’ll start a Roth and you contribute to it for a while. You start an IRA or you’ll have an abandoned IRA from a previous employer. So she had several. I had several. You know, we consolidated those into solo 401K’s, right. Which are ideal for investing as a Limited Partner. There are some restrictions on what you can do with a solo 401K. You can’t self-deal, you can’t invest in your own deals, you can’t control the asset. But it’s perfect for investing as a Limited Partner. When I say LP, this industry is like all industries. We throw around a lot of acronyms and I’ll try to stop and catch myself. But if we talk LP, we’re talking about a limited partner. So I started investing as a Limited Partner in 2018, and today I’m a little over 5000 units as a Limited Partner. I’m in nine different syndications in one fund across six different syndicators. So as you can tell, I’m in multiple deals with some syndicators. And a lot of that depends on just when timing hits, when the timing is right, have the investments thrown off enough cash, either through distributions or through a cash event, cash-out refinance or a full cycle like the property sells. There are periods of time where I’m not liquid at all and I can’t do anything. And there are some syndicators I’d love to do a deal with. But when I’m liquid, they don’t have a deal or when they have a deal, I’m not liquid, it just hasn’t worked out. But I continue to stay in touch and monitor and follow and sitting on their deals just to stay, you know, informed of what’s going on. But that’s from a Limited Partner perspective. I’m still working. I went to work as a W2 project manager in the same space that I was in for a couple of companies. And so I’m still doing that. I’ve still got the salary. Still in the salary W2 position.
Rod
I thought you retired in September.
William
I did. In September 2021.
Rod
Oh, 2021. At this time, I’m sorry. You’re doing a chronological timeline. Sorry. Please continue.
William
No problem.
Rod
I’m sorry.
William
I’m walking into, you know, I’ve got the W2 jobs and, you know, how long am I going to work W2? And I still need something in a personal portfolio. So I ended up buying in February of 2019, a 37-unit. And it was my first investment. My first property. Is kind of big for a first. I didn’t come up through, like the traditional, you know, a roadmap that a lot of us do in this space, you know, through singles or small multis and all that. And, you know, that was a big bite. In fact, it was bigger than what I intended to do, to be quite honest. I was really looking for something in that 15 to 20, thinking that’s all I could handle. This opportunity came around and it was a stretch. It was a stretch goal.
Mark
37 units, right?
William
Correct. Yeah.
Rod
Where was it?
William
That one is actually in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Rod
Nice.
William
So it’s a military community. The community has grown a lot. But it’s the home base of Fort Bragg, which is the largest military base actually in the world, not just in the US. By size is the largest in the world. But you know what? During Covid, we did great. We had about 30% military occupancy, direct military occupancy, and there’s some sporting industries. But of course, it’s a diversified community, too. I mean, it’s a big community. So there’s a lot going on there. But anyway, so I bought that in February. I went to your program, and I was already familiar with you through your books and through the podcast, and through the YouTube videos. Join the Warrior program, at that event, I joined it on the spot in May of 2019 in Denver.
Rod
This was Denver, right?
William
That was Denver. Yeah.
Rod
That was an emotional event for me because my mom was there. My brothers brought her in a wheelchair. She was in the front row. Before I came out, I was literally behind the curtain crying like a freaking three-year-old because my mom’s the reason I got into real estate and I had to pull myself together to come out and really angry with my audiovisual guy because we lost that footage, and, you know, I can never get that back.
William
Oh, man.
Rod
Yeah. In fact, you know what? I should do it. I should ask some of the warriors that were there to see if they’ve got any footage with their phones because– now that I’m sitting here talking to you, I’m thinking I should do that. But anyway, that was a special event for me. Very special event.
William
Yes, I remember that. You’re kind of on the verge, man. You’re on the edge.
Rod
Yeah, my brothers were there. If you saw their faces, which were on the camera, they were all crying. It was a really cool event. But anyway, please continue.
Mark
And real quick while we’re on that before you jump to the next thing, William, obviously you had over 5,000 doors, passively. You just bought a 37-unit, you know, on your own. What was your mindset then of why joining the Warrior program, to begin with? You know, seemingly, it seemed like you were doing pretty well for yourself.
William
Well, to be honest, so I bought that on my own. And I was tapped. You know, I had all my kind of chips in at that point. I wasn’t able to do anything else. And I knew I was going to have to partner with other people to take down additional deals. I just couldn’t do it. And I knew what I knew and what I learned, but I didn’t know at all. And you never do. But I mean, it was apparent during the event that there’s still a lot to learn. And of course, Rod’s you know, repository in his library of information and the access to other individuals, the coaches, the other warriors that are in the program, and just people that come that aren’t in the Warrior program. Right. We all learn from each other. In fact, throughout my entire business career, I’ve gotten more value when I go to conferences and business events out of the networking aspect of it than I ever do from the guy standing with the microphone on stage. I just do.
Rod
Oh, thanks, man. Thanks. I’m kidding. Yeah, no, I completely agree. Which is why, you know, I will tell you what’s cool about my live events and my in-person events like that is I’ll go on the hallway and there’ll be as many people out there as there are in the room listening to me drone on and on. You know, so it’s a really cool thing to see. For me, I get goosebumps when I see all these little groups of people networking. We facilitate that in my events as well. But, all right, please continue. So you came in May of 2019, to Denver. You joined our program. Please bring us to current.
William
Yeah. So, Mark, to kind of re-answer your question for you. Right. It’s networking. And I knew I needed relationships to be able to do some additional deals. And I felt like the Warrior program was going to afford me that opportunity. And I had several people that I had talked to. There were warriors at that point in time. Just say, you know, you may never have to go outside of the Warrior group to find partners if this works out. And that’s, in fact, been the case. But anyway, I joined the program in May 2019, and so fast forward, operated the property, that property for 30 months, got to the point where I started getting some unsolicited offers. It was a buy-and-hold. We intended to hold it for a while. Right. And we all know what’s going on in the market space right now and started getting unsolicited offers that were just I had to listen. I had to consider them, you know. But now, to be fair, I admit that I’m the beneficiary of a lot of what’s going on in the market. We did some things right. Right. So we bought it in 2019. We appealed the property tax evaluation. We got a huge cut-off on that, about 40%, actually. It was significant.
Rod
That’s typically one of your largest expenses, guys. So that’s a big deal. Okay. Please continue.
William
Yeah. I refinanced the property in 2020, shaved two points off of the interest rate on that deal. We improved some operational efficiency. Now to frame it, I wasn’t self-managing it. And I’m about two and a half hours away from that property. I had third-party professional management running it now at 37. It’s not on site. It’s all site. But the group was a good group, and somebody could help me execute on the plan.
Rod
Yeah. Let me interject right there for one second. I want to just hammer something home. So, guys, you know, when you have a property that has 70 units or more, very often you can have onsite management on your payroll, a manager/leasing agent, a full-time maintenance person. But a property that’s 37 units typically, it’s going to be offsite. You know, they’ll have somebody there that gets a free unit or something, you know, for eyes on the property. But, you know, you’re going to rely on the management company for a lot of the work. Very often, you know, it can be leasing, it can be maintenance. And so it’s just a completely different animal than a larger property where you have your own payrolled people. So anyway, please continue.
William
Yeah. And the previous ownership group, you know, I don’t know if they did this. It doesn’t really matter, you know if they did it. As they were preparing to sell the property. It was a 2012 vintage. It wasn’t that old. Right. So it’s relatively new. The idea was, or the intent was that it’s not going to require a lot of maintenance. It’s not going to require rentals for a period of time. But we did find that we had some tenant, lower quality tenant issues. So I’m using the word stuff to the property just to keep occupancy up, tenant base up. But they were doing things like zero security deposits or $99 security deposits, I think, just to get people in. So we cycled through that. We started doing the customary, you know, you need three times income and you got to have a month, you know, security deposit at least. And that helped. We didn’t know, of course, Covid was going to happen and what that was going to mean to our economy. But that position does pretty well when that happened. So during Covid, we were 100% collection and we had a couple of people that got used to slow-paying instead of paying by the 5th, they were paying on the 20th, 25th of the month. They made it good. We couldn’t charge late fees and of course, we had eviction moratoriums going on, but we never got into a situation with evictions that we had to fight that. We had 100% actually owe than normal terms and we were able to re-pop– you know, put fuel in the property and we were raising rents. I don’t mean to laugh, but it was an unusually, well-performing property during Covid. And at the end of the day, we sold it in 2021. We had it for 30 months and we ended up with a 2.9 equity multiple on it.
Rod
Nice. Nice. Nice. So three times your money. That’s better than a sharp stick in the eye. Love it.
William
Yeah. And ironically, the day I closed, I gave notice that the W2 position that I had that– so the day that we closed was actually my last day at my W2 position as well.
Rod
Congratulations.
William
So, I retire to work on real estate full-time now.
Rod
No, I love it.
Mark
Let’s talk about that.
William
It’s your point. You said this before, Rod, and in my case, it was true. You know, one good deal can change your life. It could be life-changing.
Rod
Yeah.
William
It was, for me
Rod
Sure, it was. You know, I know since then you’ve done a couple of deals. Where did I write that down? A 72 and an 84 unit you know, as a general partner with warriors. Correct?
William
Correct.
Rod
Which is fantastic. Love it.
Mark
Yeah. I was going to say you’re now one of the many warriors that have been able to leave their job. I don’t know if you want to call it retirement or whatever you want to call it, but what was your mindset going into that? Whether it be a number of doors, passive income, age maybe, I don’t know. What was your mindset going into leaving your job? And now, doing real estate full-time.
William
I needed to be able to. And my wife is still working her W2 position. Well, I can show you my vision board, but on my vision board, I’ve got to get my wife retired is next. It’s one of my next goals. In addition to–
Mark
Does she like that?
William
She loves that. She asked me about it often.
Rod
No, I love it. I love it. And guys, I hope you just heard what he said. He’s got a freaking vision board. Okay. You know, you start to hear a pattern in these interviews with amazing successful warriors that we’ve got in our group. And they all know what they want. They know why they want it. And they have pictures of them around them to motivate them to make them happen. So absolutely love that.
William
I can finish answering Mark’s question, which is like, what was my mindset and what I need, I needed to replace plus my income. And I had to at least replace the income that I had through past income. And by the way, those LP investments I’m doing through my solo case, the money is just continuing to stay in the solo case. I’m not pulling any of that out. So those investments are continuing to grow. What I’m able to retire right now is the proceeds from the investment that I did in the 37 that I’ve since rolled into 72 and 84. And then the cash flow that those are producing. And it’s more than covering the W2 income that I had.
Rod
Fantastic.
Mark
You don’t need 1,000 doors to reach your financial goals. Right. You were able to do it by just acquiring some of those, I don’t know, medium-sized, I guess what you call them.
William
Yeah, absolutely.
Rod
So in these latest deals that you’ve done with warriors, what role have you played on the team? You know, we talk about the team and how they’re different roles. You find the deals, you underwrite the deals, you asset manage, you do investor relations. You know, what pieces of that have you contributed to the team or teams? Plural. I don’t know if it’s one or two teams that you’ve done those last two deals with.
William
Yeah. So in both of those, I also brought a significant amount of, you know, the funds to it. Right. Okay. I’m a KP on the deal as well. In addition to GP. Okay, some acronyms, Key Principal is KP, GP is a General Partner. I’m not sure who is our audience is, but let’s, you know, keep them up to speed. Okay. But anyway, so one of those is actually in my back door. So in both of those, I participate in due diligence. I’m keeping an eye on the property and the property manager. And the one in my back door, my hometown, the other one is in another state. It’s out of state, but I’m continuing to stay involved and work with the property management side of each of those properties.
Rod
So the asset management, then. You’re involved in the asset management, ongoing asset management, which is frankly the biggest piece of the whole thing because, yeah, you can close on the deal. But then the work starts and we’re talking years of, you know, oversight. I mean, it’s not like it’s debilitating or overwhelming. You know, in most cases, it’s one or two phone calls a week with a management company and some visits, site visits, of course, if you’re doing some big CapEx projects. But let me ask you this. As you are going through this evolution, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time to describe what you did. I didn’t want to stop you because it was very interesting. But did you have any aha moments? And anywhere like, okay, now I get it. This is what I need to be doing. You alluded to him. But if you would, speak to that.
William
Well, I’ll tell you my biggest angst during this whole thing and almost– I’m not going to say almost. I considered if I made the right decision. Right. So after we bought that 37 and we’re pretty much all in and we’re working with the property manager and we start to have a flurry of issues, why would a 2012 property in 2019 start to have HVAC units go out left and right? Right. And I did not do due diligence mistake. Rod will tell you not to do this, and I won’t ever do it again. I didn’t walk all the units, and I didn’t have all the right people on-site during due diligence. I sat, it was across five different buildings, and we sampled a couple of units in each building. We’d hit each one. We did not have an HVAC guy come on-site to look at the HVAC units. And it turns out what I think happened was that the previous ownership group, they did have on-site management, they owned another property, literally around the corner.
Rod
Okay, then you’re able to do that if you’ve got enough infrastructure. Let me guess. They didn’t change filters.
William
They didn’t change filters regularly. And I’m using the word butchered. They kind of butchered systems to keep them running. Right.
Rod
Okay. Yeah, got it.
William
They were townhomes, and they had like an upper zone for upstairs, a zone for downstairs, a zone control board to go out, and they would just like crosswire. Just running off one thermostat. Stuff like that.
Rod
Incompetent. Incompetent help, and it’s called organ transplant. We see it in our complexes all the time. You’ll see a unit that’s sitting there with the cover off, and it’s been decimated to try to bring other units. That’s a downward spiral, actually. And we saw that in the Louisiana asset that William, you’re an investor in with us as well. And it’s just what a nightmare. And it’s a downwards. It’s one of the indicators of a downward spiral. Anyway, I don’t know if you want to–
William
That’s a lesson learned. And I’m starting to think, you know, six months into this, have I made the right decision? Have I bitten off more than I can chew? Did I do it by myself when I shouldn’t have? Do I have the right people together? And that actually goes about the time that it started to turn right. So I had all the units, I put them all under a service agreement with a local HVAC company. They’re invested twice a year. We ended up implementing– it’s called something else now, but it used to be called Filter Easy, where it was a monthly subscription service where they would– we added to the rent. Right. It was an admin fee. And we signed up all the new tenants for filter drops. Right. They got filters every 30 days. They were barcoded. You know, what unit they were for. That didn’t mean to put them in. But if we ever walked in the unit and did an inspection, we could tell– they could stick them in the closet with them in the trash. But we would know, right.
Rod
You know, it’s funny, that Louisiana asset, you know very well, and I won’t get into the detail of it, but I have pictures of units that we went through where the filters were black. That had not been monitored at all, which, by the way, guys, when you have an air filter that doesn’t get changed on the HVAC unit, you will kill that HVAC unit. Okay? You kill it. That’s how you kill it. And I’ve got numerous examples of that from the previous management. That was just so frustrating. But anyway, I just wanted to share that.
William
Yeah. I’ve seen something during– I’m helping some other buddies out doing due diligence on their deals. And you go through, that’s one of the things I look at, and probably because I’ve gotten burned on it and open that grate. And sometimes it’s just–literally, cat hair, dust. There’s no way any air is moving through that filter. There’s no way.
Mark
And just real quick for the listeners, if you could relive that pain, what’s like a dollar amount that ended up costing you by not walking all the units because you didn’t know that.
William
So we ended up replacing elements at 37 in the first six months, we replaced about nine units at about $4,500 a pop.
Mark
30 plus thousand dollars mistake right there.
Rod
Yeah.
William
And, you know, that’s coming out of you know, we have made sure we put the money away for you know, CapEx reserves and operating reserves. You know, we preferred not to have had to touch it. But, you know, you’ve got to do it, right.
Rod
You got to do it. No, that’s one of those things that people need air conditioning, so there’s no getting around that. Now, like I said, I know you did these last two deals that you’ve done with warriors, which is fantastic. One of the biggest advantages of being in the program. You know, by the way, guys, if you have an interest in the warrior program, to apply, you text the word “CRUSH” to “72345”, and, you know, you get a chance to check us out, and we check you out. We don’t take everybody, but, you know, I’m proud to say that our warriors, I’ve been teaching a little over four years now, and I think we’ve exceeded 55,000 units owned. We’re going to do a real search of all of our warriors and just see where they’re at. But I’m really proud of that. I’m probably one of the things I’m most proud of next to my kids. Let me ask you this, William. You know, you know we have a lot of aspiring investors that listen to my show. Like, you were back in 2018, 2019 that haven’t taken action, that are in a job, and they don’t want to be in a job. J-O-B. They want to leave their W2. They want to spend more time with their family. They want freedom. And maybe they’re analytical so they could be in a little bit of analysis paralysis. Can you speak to that group? What would you say to that group about this business? And just answer it any way you like.
William
Yeah. And it kind of goes to what Mark, you know, I think, Mark was alluding to, which is, what does that retirement mean to you? And for me, it’s freedom. Right. And the days that I want to work on multifamily or real estate investments, I can. It’s an instrumental amount of freedom. If I need to do something with kids, I can do that, right? I just got to get my wife there so we can do it together all the time, but we’ll get there. But to your point was, you know, I knew what I wanted to do. And do you have the courage? And do you have the courage muscle yet to be able to pull the trigger on it? I got to the point where I knew what I wanted, and I’d done all this analysis. I told you, my wife, that she lost me for six months while I’m watching videos and reading books. Okay, well, I’m educated. What are you going to do with that knowledge? Right. So I put an action plan together. It’s like, okay, well, we’re going to invest as a limited partner. Let’s pull the trigger. That was the easier decision until I really started having to fill out the forms for Wells Fargo. And some of these guys like, okay, let’s move this account and tell the broker I’m going to invest in real estate instead of the stock market, right?
Rod
Yeah. Because he makes no money on that. They make money in the stock market. Yeah. That’s painful.
William
Once I got through that, that was good. But when it came time to buy this property, we had to do some soul searching. And you use this from the stage, too. And in personal conversations. And I’m probably going to butcher the quote, but its long lines of “success is on the other side of fear and comfort”.
Rod
You got to be uncomfortable.
William
You know you got to get out of your comfort zone. You know what you want, you want to get there, put an action plan together, and then start executing on it. And some of those steps may be uncomfortable, but continue to push, push through.
Rod
Love it.
Mark
So last one for me then, William, what do you think your biggest “success” has been? Whether it’s the first deal, maybe it’s the last deal that you’ve done as a GP. What do you think your biggest success has been looking back on all of it?
William
Around multifamily would definitely be that first deal. Having the courage to do that, position me for everything else that I’ve been able to do.
Rod
Yeah. Good for you.
William
I would not be where I am today if I had not had the courage to do it.
Rod
Yes. No, I love it. I love it. So let me ask you this. Any favorite quotes or sayings or thought processes that have helped motivate you in your career so far? Does anything come to mind? Any books or quotes or anything like that? Anything motivational.
William
So a lot of the snippets that I get from you and your program, I continue to remember, obviously, the one about “success is on the other side of courage”. You know, Grant Cardone, you know, he’s got a personality, but you know, there’s a lot of wisdom there, too. Right.
Rod
Oh, sure. I got two of his things on my wall right here. I’ve got “Comfort Kills”. No, I’m sorry. His “focus, grind now, play later”, and “I am success”. Or maybe “Comfort kills”, too. I’m not sure. I think that one, too, actually. Yes.
William
But for me, there’s a couple of books I’ll just mention, that were influential to me. Right. And we’re all at different stages of life, and I was looking for certain specific things. And so a couple of books are influential for me during that period of time. Right. And I read a lot. But, you know, there’s a book, “Tax-Free Wealth”.
Rod
Yeah. Wheelwright?
William
Wheelwright. Yeah.
Rod
Yeah. I had him talk to my mastermind. Okay. Yeah. Good one.
William
You know, that helped frame how this can work and help protect your assets. Right. Of course, the proverbial “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.
Rod
Of course.
William
That’s on everybody’s list. “ABCs of Real Estate Investing”, I think. Ken McElroy.
Rod
Yeah, Kenny. Kenny does a really nice job. He and I were on a panel together a few months ago about on an upcoming looming crash, possibly.
William
And the about lifetime cash flow. There’s this book, “How to Create Lifetime Cash Flow Through Multifamily Properties” book.
Rod
Yeah. Real deadbeat, but the book is not bad. Yeah, I know. Well, listen, brother, I appreciate you coming on the show. It’s great to see you and catch up a little bit. I don’t know if you’re going to make the Warrior event coming up on April 1st and 2nd, but if you are it would be great.
William
I’ll be there in Sarasota.
Rod
Fantastic. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Anyway, I appreciate you coming on, brother and look forward to shaking your hand at the event. Mark, I’ll see you later, buddy.
William
Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Rod.
Outro
Rod, I know a lot of our listeners are wanting to take their multifamily investing business to the next level. Now, I know you’ve been hard at work helping our warrior students do just that using our “ACT” methodology which is Awareness, Close, and Transform. Can you explain to the listeners how they can get our help?
Rod
You bet. Guys, we’ve been going nonstop for three years building an amazing community of like-minded people, and our coaching students which we call our warriors have had extraordinary results. They’ve purchased thousands and thousands of units and last year we did over 1000 units with our students. And we’re looking to grow this group and take it to the next level. We’re looking for people who want to follow a proven framework that’s really step by step and then leverage our systems and network to raise equity, to find and close deals, and to build partnerships nationwide. Now our warrior community is finding success in any market cycle. So if you’re interested in finding out more about how you can become more of our incredible network and take advantage of the incredible opportunities that are coming very soon, apply to work with us at “MentorWithRod.com” or text “CRUSH” to “72345” and we’ll set up a call so you can check us out and we can check you out. That’s “MentorWithRod.com” or text “CRUSH” to “72345”.
