Why Real Estate Investing Is a Relationship Business | Building Trust,Capital & Multifamily Deals

William Liu (00:00)
I think like you bring up like an excellent point like it’s this relationship, right? So whether it’s relationship like with your with your with your tenants and residents or like with your, you know, maintenance person or even definitely your your partners, right? So whether they’re limited partners, whether they’re general partners, ⁓ like this is this entire space, not just real estate investing, but like private capital is all real estate like

based meaning or relationship based meaning

Quentin Edmonds (01:34)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds, and I am excited to be here today. I am excited about my guest. I was talking to him a little bit backstage, and I just love everything that his company stands for. I love his alignment, his mentality. It aligns so much with my mentality. I love how he wants to talk to his community, the people who he walks with, who he’s helping.

And I love how he want to educate them and make sure that they are in a good position to thrive. And so I am so excited to introduce you all to Mr. Lue. Mr. William, how are doing today,

William Liu (02:13)
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Quentin.

Quentin Edmonds (02:16)
Absolutely, thank you so much for being here, man. And I kind of want to dive in. I would love for you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you can give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to where you are now. We love origin stories. And then tell them where you are in the world, man. People love to know where people are geographically, just if they like, hey, I can connect with this person, reach out to this person. And so, man, what you’re doing, origin story and where you are. Mr. William, you have the floor, sir.

William Liu (02:27)
Sure.

Absolutely. So I have a little bit of a non-traditional background, but currently I’m the Chief Investment Officer for Give Rice Capital. That’s ⁓ a real estate investing company that my wife and I founded a few years ago. Coincidentally, we started it when we had our first kid about two years ago as well. So she just turned two. So that’s usually how I know how long the company has been around. ⁓ But I started out as a marketer.

And my marketing journey actually started out in the army. So I tell people that I started out as a psychological operations specialist, served in the US Army from 2003 to 2007. And Psyop, if you look at the definition, it’s basically the same thing as marketing, right? So you’re trying to influence the actions and behaviors of other people.

That started off me on a marketing career path. Basically did that for about another 20 years and then my last gig was as a chief marketing officer at an online ⁓ higher education institution. So I think the real reason why I kind of transitioned was just I had a forced exit event around the time when my wife was pregnant with her first kid around like

six months pregnant and ⁓ really just kind of a gut punch and was kind of dealing with a lot of, I guess, trauma, pain, it also ⁓ just euphoria and joy like with the birth of my first daughter. And I think it just ended up being that this was like green lights, green lights in terms of managing our real estate portfolio, starting transition to multifamily rather than trying to go back to the W-2 just kind of felt like a

like a square peg going into a round hole. just didn’t really make sense for where I was in that season of life anymore.

Quentin Edmonds (04:33)
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you Will, man. Thank you for walking us through how you got started to where you are now and what you’re doing. Just listening to you talk, you know, said the chief investment officer at Give Rise Capital. Did I hear that right? ⁓ Rise Capital, I love that. We probably going to talk more about the name later because I love that name. But I love how you start out in the army. said PsyOps. Did I hear you? Did I hear that correct? PsyOps. And then

William Liu (04:49)
That’s right, yes.

That’s great.

Quentin Edmonds (05:03)
had your kids, had the little transition from the W-2 to where you are now. You even mentioned the words trauma and pain. you told us a lot and I thank you for the gift of your vulnerability. And so William, I have a saying, I say probably once every podcast, is that destiny has no wasted moments. No matter what you go through in life, destiny has a way of building the person who we see in front of us now.

and we borrow from different parts of our life and it kind of makes the person that we see now. And so I would love to know William, through this journey, what has destiny, what has these moments taught you about yourself? Has it taught you discipline, resiliency? Has it taught you humility? Like what is these moments, these transitions taught you about you, Will?

William Liu (06:40)
think like in this last transition, like I would equate it to a little bit like a midlife crisis. I think it started to kind of go from this mentality of ⁓ I am taking care of my family because I have a job and then that job then pays the bills. But it was kind of like indirectly take care of my family. I think what I learned was that there was always an eagle portion of it. Like now what I do is like whether it’s for my kids or whether it’s for the family business.

it is directly for my family, right? So like one hand and the other hand, they’re both kind of connected. So I think a lot of it was revisiting why I wanted to pursue things the way I used to want to pursue it. And I think there was a component of wanting to feel good and just wanting that ego stroke, wanting to kind of climb the corporate ladder. And I think that season of life, it was painful because I refused to let go.

And I think it was like transitioning from one season to another season, just understanding that there’s joys and ⁓ pain in every season and just be able to kind of embrace that. really embracing my role as a father. And I think that’s also kind of, it’s given me an opportunity to also explore my faith a little bit more because like I tell people now it’s like about, how do you explain what God is? I’m like, God is a father. It’s like, and.

I know that more now because of how I treat my children and wanting to be able to be a good steward, be a good, to have intentionality in terms of like how we create our life together. Because there’s no promise for tomorrow and trying to be the best husband and father I can be and also, you know, also like being. ⁓

Stewarding like our investor capital as well too and being a good operator like those things are important But it’s not like the most important thing like my mother-in-law said something to me when I asked for my wife’s hand in marriage She said basically it’s it’s God family and then work, right? So and I think now I feel my priorities are a bit more aligned and it’s helped me to be even more productive like real estate investor

to again to steward or investors capital like it just it’s it’s giving me more purpose and then I think that’s kind of the season I’m kind of in life right now is purpose and significance rather than just trying to chase things for my own ego so

Quentin Edmonds (09:14)
of so much of what you said. And it brings so many thoughts to mind. I’m not going to try, of course, know, faith is big to you and I. I’m not going to try to make this a theological show. This is about real estate and business. But what you said, there’s a scripture that says, we make our plans, but the Lord determines the outcome, right? So we make our plans. We chugging along thinking this is what we’re going to do. And then sometimes the Lord comes and change the outcome of what we’re doing, right?

William Liu (09:24)
you

Quentin Edmonds (09:43)
And I love how you said, you know, some of your outcomes have put you in a place of recognizing him as a father. Because one of my mentors told me, when you know who you are, you know what to do, right? When you know who you are, you know what to do. So when I identify myself as a child of God, I identify that sometimes I make my plans, but he determines the outcome. When I understand that and that sets well with me and my soul, it can determine my next steps. It can make it easier.

for me to be flexible and bend instead of being unflexible and break. You know what I’m saying? It allows me to kind of bend and know that, okay, if I’m his son and he cares for me, then I got to believe that he’s working this out for my good. And it allows me to be a little bit more flexible, learn a little bit more, create a little bit more skill set, let these hard things kind of sharpen me a little bit, strengthen me. And it makes me understand that, okay, the outcome probably…

William Liu (10:17)
Yeah.

Quentin Edmonds (10:41)
and will be in my favor, I just got to figure out kind of, okay, what’s the next step? What is it that you want me to do? And so I love how you said, you know, not hanging on too tight, learning when to let go allowed you to be able to be more malleable. So I love that, man. Yeah.

William Liu (11:31)
And you know, I think real estate is, it’s not the easiest thing to do. There’s a lot of hard components of it. It’s like, think like on a daily basis, we’re dealing with tenant issues or maybe there’s like an eviction thing or maybe there’s like a water line that kind of breaks or I have to replace, have to buy more refrigerators and more washers and dryers for whatever reason, right? So, and we have a variety of multifamily properties now in Dallas. we have.

a 76 unit class C in Irving and then we have 82 unit in Richardson and so but that’s one of the class A. So a little bit different like vintages within their different sets of problems, different sets of demographics like when the current administration started implementing a lot of their ICE policies and immigration policies like that really had a huge impact on our Latino demographic and one of our properties.

You’re still kind of seeing the the spillover of it and then you kind of add in all the things I’ve kind of been happening in in Dallas Suns the Sun’s Sunbelt area Basically with the oversupply, know, it’s just it’s created a little bit ⁓ kind of difficulty But you know, I think that’s part of it. Like you just kind of

There’s going be some difficult moments. It’s just more a matter of how you kind of deal with it, having that right mentality that just focus on this and focus on what you can’t control. There are things that we can’t control. And then just trying to put yourself in a good position where you’re at least not making things worse.

Quentin Edmonds (13:07)
Yeah. No, I love, man. And I love how you talked about just real things that’s going on in the community, right? Real things that’s going on that’s affecting business. And so I want to talk about Give Rise Capital to our question. One, I would love for you to tell me more about the name, like where does the idea of the name come from? And then also like, what are you guys, what is the next goal? What are you looking to solve a scale next?

William Liu (13:23)
Mm.

Yeah, so Give Rise. I’ll give credit to my wife on this one. This is definitely her her idea. Like I always tell people like I’m more back of house and she’s more front of house. Right. So ⁓ definitely more more personable, more more extroverted for sure. But I think the idea behind Give Rise is that like it’s like a time that’s all boats kind of thing. And especially with serving our more of our community, more Asian American, that’s kind of what what we see. So right now, like

⁓ I’m even kind of helping a subset of our community with capital raising because I equate marketing, capital raising, like very similar principles and fundamentals within there because there was a gap. ⁓ My wife’s kind of serving more on, she has a podcast called the Sarah Ladies Podcast. stands for South Asian Real Estate Ladies because she sees like a gap in terms of her gender in terms of the real estate investing. ⁓

kind of like space, Especially from an Asian American lens, like just not necessarily ⁓ having as much of a presence as maybe other demographics. So wanting to kind of empower women ⁓ to be able to ⁓ pursue this.

Quentin Edmonds (14:50)
Yeah, I love it, man. I love how you talked about your demographic, your wife’s demographic, and how your wife are empowering women, right? Because before you and I got on, I mentioned the word community. And I believe all of us should be inspiring to create community. And community is common unity, people who are of common unity doing things together, right? And your body

William Liu (15:03)
Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Quentin Edmonds (15:18)
has your physical body has different parts. have ears, nose, mouth, hands, all these different parts, right? Each part is important. And we can’t say one is more important than the other because we need it all, right? And so that’s how it is like within this space. There’s a big body within real estate, but they are different parts, different community. have wholesale, you have investors

William Liu (15:23)
Thank

Quentin Edmonds (15:42)
Some may think, but no one is more important than the other. It’s all a community, right? So sometimes like all the hands got to get together to communicate with each other, know? And all the ears got to get together to communicate with each other, but it still serves the bigger purpose of us, know, US citizens, our community, family people. Like we all serve a same kind of focus, but it’s important to cultivate your community at the same time.

It’s important for the hands to have support of the other hands because hands know what hands go through. Feet people know what feet people go through, you know, and sometimes feet people don’t understand the hand people, but it don’t mean one is better than the other. It just means you’re with your community and you’re still serving a bigger overall purpose. Does that make sense?

William Liu (17:10)
My wife often I have this debate around like, well, the right hand can’t be the left hand, the left hand can’t be the right foot. like everyone has their different roles and functions and different personalities and their strengths and weaknesses. it’s, I think we’re each given like certain gifts, right? So I think it’s like important to kind of use those gifts, not just for yourselves or for your family, but also for your community. And I think that’s the same thing we’re trying to teach too.

our children. ⁓ I definitely learned when having children that it takes a village. And so like, I’m not the person that enjoys asking people for help. But when you have to because you are running on two hours of sleep, then you lean into like your tribe, your village, like the people around you to go to help you because it’s just, or else it’s just very difficult to, to live life together or live life.

like in a way where it’s more isolated, so.

Quentin Edmonds (18:06)
Yeah, absolutely. And some people that listen, they may be like, what in the world has got to do with real estate? mean, if you’re paying attention, it has a lot to do. Because even in the world of real estate, if you are purchasing a house, you still got to rely on plumbers. You still had to rely on inspectors, HVAC people, even the agriculture people, landscape people. Again, this is showing the community aspect. Nobody’s in this thing by themselves. And I think.

what we’re trying to show is the mindset of a community-based ⁓ ecosystem. Even when you’re in real estate, you’re doing partnerships. And sometimes owners, operators, they are in their own way. Sometimes they are their biggest bottleneck because they’re trying to do something that they need to maybe pay somebody to do or bring somebody else in to do. And so I’m just saying, I just want people to have the mindset to know you’re never in this by yourself.

And if we’re all living in the same USA, if we all have families and communities, that yes, we are trying to take care of our family, but also we’re trying to create a healthy space where every family can thrive. And I know some people don’t think about it like that, but honestly, that’s a good way to think about it because we’re kind of all in this together.

yeah, please. Yes, sir.

William Liu (19:28)
Yeah, it’s

and I think like you bring up like an excellent point like it’s this relationship, right? So whether it’s relationship like with your with your with your tenants and residents or like with your, you know, maintenance person or even definitely your your partners, right? So whether they’re limited partners, whether they’re general partners, ⁓ like this is this entire space, not just real estate investing, but like private capital is all real estate like

based meaning or relationship based meaning

that it’s if you don’t have access to someone that has access to that person that has a deal, then you won’t be able to get that deal right so and it’s it’s unless like maybe you go to like a large institutional fund like a BlackRock but then you know is that some like

that’s just going to be some person like pushing papers in the background that doesn’t really care about you. And if you have questions, like who are you going to ask the questions to? Right. So when my investors like reach out to me, like I always try to make a rule that I get back to them, text, email, whatever it is in a few hours, as long as I’m capable of being able to do it. So if I’m in the middle of like, you know, Costa Rica somewhere, then maybe, maybe not. I’ll get back to them when I get my land side. But, you know, that’s

Quentin Edmonds (20:43)
See?

William Liu (20:46)
But it is a relationship game, right? So, and I think that’s what we’ve started to kind of realize and started to put more effort into ⁓ like brokers, lenders, ⁓ more like in the Dallas ⁓ metro area, since that’s where most of our properties are, I think we have two. We’re going to pursue another one this year, another acquisition and continue to kind of scale our portfolio.

Quentin Edmonds (21:12)
I love it, man. I love everything that you’re doing. I love your outlook. Is there anything, a topic that I have not brought up that you would like to bring up, or is there any other word of motivation, inspiration, education that you would like to leave? I just kind of want to just open the floor up to maybe anything that’s on your heart or your mind that you feel like listeners could benefit from.

William Liu (21:28)
Yeah. Sure.

Yeah, I think, you know, I mentioned earlier, it’s like, have more of a non-traditional kind of corporate background. And so I think that part of it even goes into life. I think how we’re trying to raise our family, like we’re blessed with our own money too. So a lot of what we’re doing right now is managing our own wealth. And so right now we’re pursuing more actively on the multifamily space, but we also have skin in the game, right? So like I raised private capital from investors, but I also have my own money.

my own family’s money like in these deals too. So I also have an incentive for it to you know to do well right so but we’ve also been reallocating from our single-family properties to our multifamily properties but we’re also kind of looking through other asset classes right so maybe with within real estate outside of real estate so looking at you know cover call ETFs like debt funds like things that can help us with you know better yields like maybe looking at it from an income.

versus growth aspects, since a lot of our stuff’s in growth. But also since we don’t have a W-2, we need to pay the bills and make sure there’s a pay the baby formula and everything else, keep the lights on, as I say. ⁓ But also looking through how do we raise that next generation too with our kids, right? So I think we wanna make sure that we raise. ⁓

good stewards ⁓ of money. think money is like a tool, like it could be good for good or for not so good. And so like we do have provisions in our trust for like if our kids like, you know, do certain things and then they won’t be able to get access to that. But, you know, it’s our intent to be present with them to, you know, model ⁓ what we believe in, what our values are to them so that, you know, hopefully they can have that.

have that safety net because I think with where their generation is kind of going with AI, with just overall like traditional K-12 education, higher education, like I have no idea whether they’ll be able to get jobs or not. So my intent is hopefully like we can continue to scale the business, have something that they can kind of be an apprentice and intern and learn from a mom and dad.

and also be able to know how to be able to use spreadsheets and have financial literacy, like be able to understand like how do I do asset allocation and diversification within there? How do I model this through for the next few years? Like I want them to learn those types of like skill sets as well as like negotiations, like, you know, kind of public speaking and like the things that more of the soft skills, right? So ⁓ like, and then we can, you know.

teach on history and stuff like that by maybe visiting museums around the world, right? So I think there’s a way to just be able to lean a little bit more on what we feel makes sense for our family rather than just kind of like, here’s the standard curriculum. And then you have to be there at like 7, 30 AM for class. And then you have to wait on giant line to pick up the kids. it doesn’t have that flexibility that my wife and I really enjoy right now that we have in our lives.

Quentin Edmonds (24:48)
William, I love it, man. We as human beings, we are given powerful tools every day. The internet is a tool. Education is a tool. The cars we drive is a tool. Money is a tool. And I love how you want to treat, I teach your kids how to use and wield their tools, their powerful tools in a healthy way.

They’re going to have tools that they can use, the money, education, but you’re teaching them that these are tools and how to yield these tools in a powerful way. So I love what you’re doing with your family. love, that’s been your through line, talking about your family, to raise your kids right. And so I applaud you, man. You’re doing a phenomenal job and I appreciate you being here. If someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you, William?

William Liu (25:40)
I’ll provide the link to Quentin from my LinkedIn, but you can also just email me at [email protected]. So pretty easy, [email protected].

Quentin Edmonds (25:52)
Love it, love it. So William, let me say three things to you sincerely. One, thank you for your time. Could have been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with us. So I thank you for your time. Time is our most precious commodity. So thank you for your time. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for the gift, what I call the gift of your transparency and the gift of your vulnerability. You shared things with us today that you did not have to share, but you chose to. And I believe that those stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may never see the growth, but it plants a seed.

and later on somebody making come and water that seed. And then all of a sudden they got this harvest that’s springing forward all because of the seeds that our story’s planted. So thank you. Lastly, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think. Thank you for your years of experience thinking the way you think when it comes to marketing and investment and different things. Thank you for bringing that mindset to this platform. I greatly appreciate you, William.

William Liu (26:46)
Thank you, thank you for having me.

Quentin Edmonds (26:48)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. William check the show notes. Please get in contact with him because he’s going to help you out. So definitely check him out, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. William. So sir, thank you again and everyone else. Have a fantastic day.