The Money Myths Keeping Investors Broke: Real Estate Syndications, Taxes & Retirement Planning

Holly Williams (00:00)
We’re not taught any of this in school. I thought that, well, everybody else went to these Ivy League schools, so they know more than I do and they don’t. And they were like, what? You’re investing in real estate? I lost money on a land deal not too long ago. They didn’t understand any of this. We don’t learn it.

Quentin Edmonds (00:15)
Yeah,

Hello, everyone. Hello, hello. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds. Y’all know what I’m saying, because it’s true. I’m excited to be here today. Super excited to be here, excited about my guest. I have another fantastic guest. And she’s going to talk to you probably a little bit about passive income. She’s definitely going to tell you about her experience in life for sure. And she has wrote a book. And so she has a lot of experience that she’s going to share. And you know.

That’s my highlight, to be able to hear other people’s experience and learn about what it is they do and apply their lessons to my life. So I’m absolutely excited to introduce to you all, Ms. Holly Williams. Holly, how you doing today?

Holly Williams (02:35)
I’m doing great. How are you doing, sir?

Quentin Edmonds (02:37)
⁓

I’m doing great. I’m so glad that you’re here. And listen, I’m the type, I like to dive right in. yeah, absolutely. So listen, I would love for you to tell the people, what’s your main focus these days? Give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to the place where you are. We love Heroes Journey, right? And then also tell us what part of the world you’re in. People love to know where you are geographically.

Holly Williams (02:44)
Die, baby.

Quentin Edmonds (03:03)
And so Holly, you have the floor.

Holly Williams (03:07)
Well, thank you. So I’m thrilled to be here and I’m thrilled to be in back in Florida where I am geographically. I spent 30 years in New York. I met my New Yorker husband there after I’d been there five or six years. It was great until it wasn’t. And so through the course of moving up the corporate ladder, so to speak,

Quentin Edmonds (03:26)
Mmm.

Holly Williams (03:33)
I discovered, you know, I was paying 50 % of everything I made in taxes. And I had a friend that, um, that was investing in commercial real estate, specifically multifamily in 2013. And I invested, I gave him some money, you know, mostly to help him out. didn’t even know what I was doing. And I had, you know, I knew about real estate. had actually some investment properties.

Quentin Edmonds (03:52)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (03:58)
And we had some real estate passive income, if you call it that. And when I got the K-1 at the end of the year with this big loss on it, I was like, wait minute, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we can use, I didn’t do anything. I didn’t do all this work that I usually do. And I can offset that income. And so that was a real, real eye-opener.

Quentin Edmonds (04:25)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (04:26)
At the same time, this was 2013 and 2011, 18 months apart, 10 and 11, I lost both my parents. And you know, they had a nice life and everything. They did everything right. Everything right. They did the 401k, they did the long-term care insurance. my God, they did the, all of that.

Quentin Edmonds (04:37)
you

Yeah.

Holly Williams (04:54)
And, and they were pretty much running out of money. Um, you know, their retirement did not go the way they had planned. And it was heartbreaking actually, when I started going through their, their things and, really seeing what was going on. And I was able to help them. And, and I was, really grateful. had a family that was super supportive because they were 90 miles north of New Orleans and they knew me on the jet flew flight to New Orleans on the running mornings.

Quentin Edmonds (05:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Holly Williams (06:08)
So that happened and through the course of that, I learned a few key things. One, IRAs are not tax free and you pay those taxes like crazy. Number two, they’re going to get you no matter what with required minimum distributions, all of that. Number three, number two, know, long-term care insurance and insurances can be a scam. It can be wonderful if you know what to do.

Quentin Edmonds (06:16)
Mmm.

Holly Williams (06:35)
how to do it, but if you listen to the salespeople, chances are you’re not gonna know that. So I really started understanding more about how money works. And all of a sudden I was paying less than 50 % of taxes. And the more I learned about this and the more I took advantage of things,

I kept discovering all con there is an entire world. I learned that the stock market was a secondary market. We’re getting the leftovers kids. We’re good. They’ve already taken the, taken the first pet pass at it and we’re getting the leftovers and those Vanguard funds are not free. And, you know, I’m in all of those things. want to preface that. But, ⁓

You know, you gotta know, understand what you’re doing and what you’re investing in. And this whole thing about diversifying is so true because when one thing goes up, the other thing is gonna go down and you’re not gonna win at every one of them. And so anyway, so I wrote this book about three years ago ⁓ called Hidden Investing and it really goes through the 10 myths of money.

Quentin Edmonds (07:33)
Mm.

Holly Williams (07:49)
And I need to do a lot of things. So need to do a video series. I need to do a lot of things, but I’m having such a great time in Florida. might have been a mistake. I don’t know. But anyway, but I’m, we’re, I’m enjoying my life. Right. And, but anyway, so I do have, ⁓ I’ve done over 20 multifamily syndications. I have wonderful partners.

Quentin Edmonds (07:57)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Holly Williams (08:16)
You know, I bring my experience. bring, you know, I bring some capital. I manage the management company as much as I can. Then that’s the biggest challenge. They’re all terrible. That’s the biggest thing I’ve learned over the last couple of years. Don’t believe in trust, but verify is a very good advice. But anyway, so what happened was I was able to leave my…

Quentin Edmonds (08:32)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm

Holly Williams (08:42)
corporate job in 2018 and I’ve been doing real estate syndications ever since. we mostly in multifamily and I’ll tell you, have had, now I’ve got the downside. We have had the, probably the last three years have been, whoa, navigate. I haven’t done like one deal, I think. I’ve probably bought one thing. So mostly what I’m doing now is,

Quentin Edmonds (08:45)
Wow. Yeah.

Holly Williams (09:12)
is navigating lenders and navigating management companies and squeezing, and the difference between what we do and a commercial REIT that you buy on the stock market is that these people are getting paid no matter what. I’m not getting paid until we all make money, right? So,

Quentin Edmonds (09:35)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (09:38)
It’s all good because I, I planned for, you you can’t, you can’t win them all, but you also can’t go, you know, trust a financial advisor that’s getting commissions and put your whole life savings in. don’t care how safe they say it is. And honestly, the, the, I, I, I’m working on a new book. We plan, you know, I’m conservative already says that, but I really am. And.

Quentin Edmonds (09:49)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (10:05)
You know, we plan in our models to for costs to double or interest rates to double interest rates went up four or five X for commercial real estate. Most the average person doesn’t know that they don’t really know what what’s what’s been happening and lenders are taking what they call spreads like huge and they’re making lots of money and because their business is down.

Transactions aren’t happening,

you can’t blame them really, but they’re working with operators that are in trouble. So if I’m about to foreclose or something, they might go and take a couple million bucks off the principal of the loan. They’ll take a little haircut to save it later. If I’m just not…

paying the distributions I was and I’m just not making the money I was. They’ll go and say, yeah, we’ll refinance this thing, but you need to come to the table with two or $3 million to pay down the principal. They have to hedge their, they have to look at their entire portfolio and go, wait a minute. So I’ve had difficult conversations. I spend a lot of time.

Quentin Edmonds (11:52)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (11:59)
You know, and, and, and I think my mental health has done much better down here in the sunshine. I’ll tell you that. and, ⁓ and that, that wasn’t the reason, but it was certainly a byproduct that I didn’t, didn’t anticipate. And, so yeah, so, so I have a new home in the last couple of years. I have a new, ⁓ Outlook on what conservative really means. Right.

Quentin Edmonds (12:13)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (12:25)
And no one could have planned for that. is the, they never has the, in the history of the federal rules, have they raised interest rates so fast and with such a magnitude in such a short collapse period of time and with no warning. And 2021, they were telling us that, I mean, and I quote Jerome Powell was like, I don’t, we’re not even thinking about raising interest rates and

later that year, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I mean, it was crazy and inflation is transitory. I mean, let’s just think back to all this. And so there’s a lot of things that happen always that are just out of our control. can’t control what’s happening in Iran. We can’t control anything but how we mitigate risk.

So you can’t, anything that you invest in, you can’t rely on just that. If anybody tells you anything’s guaranteed, run as fast as you can. That’s the other thing. So yeah, so that’s my story in a nutshell. I’ve lived a little bit. I grew up in Texas in 1990. I was in my early 20s, moved to New York.

Quentin Edmonds (13:26)
Yeah, so.

Come on, soldier. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Holly Williams (13:46)
Got it. And I was in advertising. I went to school at Texas Tech, Guns Up, Wreck-Em. And we had a good football season last year, but just didn’t show up in Miami. was, we’re going to do better this year. And so, yeah. So, I was waiting 40 years for that. So that was exciting. so I have a wonderful life today and wonderful friends. And I just got back from visiting New York and had a great time.

Quentin Edmonds (13:57)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (14:12)
Got back last night.

Quentin Edmonds (14:13)
Last night, wow, so you, listen, you fresh off your New York trip. Well, yeah.

Holly Williams (14:17)
I am fresh off. I’m going to have a sip

of water because I’ve been on a plane.

Quentin Edmonds (14:22)
Absolutely.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Holly, for walking us through your journey. Let us know what you do now, but how you got to knowing what you do. And I love the fact you back in Florida getting that sun, that vitamin D, because it is indeed good for your health, good for your mental health. Come on. Come on. It’s so rejuvenating. And so listen, I was actively listening to you as you was talking. I was writing some things now.

Holly Williams (14:38)
83 degrees yesterday when I landed.

Hmm.

Quentin Edmonds (14:49)
And so I want to regurgitate some things back to you because I want to make a statement and I want to ask you a question. And so, ⁓ back in Florida, ⁓ after, know, ⁓ growing up in New York, ⁓ and I got that right. Grew up in Texas. I’m sorry. Grew up in Texas, New York for a little bit. Then now you’re back in Florida. ⁓ okay. ⁓ yeah. yeah.

Holly Williams (14:54)
Okay.

I grew up in Texas, New York, Texas.

Yeah, grew in Houston. all that. So I remember the housing crisis. I remember the oil thing. I

remember people were buying condos on their MX cards. They were so cheap. I remember geologists working for McDonald’s. mean, I…

Quentin Edmonds (15:15)
for me.

Wow. Yeah.

Yes, indeed.

So now this is what I want to say. You met your husband in New York. You met your husband in New York and you said you climbed the corporate ladder and then realized you were spending 50 % in taxes. And so you was like, you know, it to be a different way, right? So you gave a friend some money just to help him out. Little did you know if you were actually investing. And then you found out the way money can work for you. Right. And that was like in, I think,

Holly Williams (15:28)
I did.

Yeah.

just that you could invest in this in a multifamily, you could invest in real estate without having to worry about the plumbing and on all of that, but yet get the tax benefits from it.

Quentin Edmonds (15:52)
around 2017.

Absolutely. I love how you talked about your parents, know, you talked about in 2011, you lost them, but you also talked about how when you was just going through just their records and stuff, you realize they did everything right and still was running out of money. And you, know, and that’s when it hits you them IRAs, listen, they are not tax free. And so that started you learning how money works.

Holly Williams (17:01)
telling you.

Quentin Edmonds (17:12)
You was able to leave your job in 2018. And so just all these different journeys that you’ve been through. And so Ms. Holly, often say destiny has no wasted moments. mean, as we go through the journey, we are building momentum and there is no wasted moments along the journey. We learn from our failures. We learn from pains. We learn from hurt. We learn who we are now and be able to walk into the fullness of who we are now. So I would love to know Ms. Holly.

Holly Williams (17:18)
Mm-hmm.

Quentin Edmonds (17:39)
What has the journey taught you about yourself? What has it revealed to you? Has it revealed discipline? Has it revealed courage? Like what has the journey revealed to you about yourself?

Holly Williams (17:50)
That is a great question. The first thing is honesty is an authenticity are the most important things in my life. Right? If somebody, you know, I’ve had to deliver bad news. I’ve delivered good news. ⁓ but if, if, you know, what you see is what you get.

If somebody is, that’s I hate politics. Cause you see it and they’re all, mean, most of them just, they say something and you know, they’re just getting the vote. It’s just so sickening. And so, so yeah, so authenticity is, is key and you know it when you see it typically. The other thing is, so I tell my daughter, say, I tell her, I say, you know, don’t ever lie.

Quentin Edmonds (18:27)
Yeah, it’s a facade. ⁓

Holly Williams (18:42)
Because once you lie, it’s over, baby. It’s over. That’s why I keep, it blows my mind we keep running our country like this. They’re all lying to us. They’re all like, they all want us to hate each other and they wanna, I mean, I’m telling you, you can’t listen to this noise.

Quentin Edmonds (18:56)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Holly Williams (19:06)
Um,

and if you listen to the noise, you’re going to be depressed and you know, all you can do is all you can do. And, and, and, know, and then the, the, the other thing I’ve really learned is that everybody is pretty much the same. We’re all trying to, you know, muddle through this thing called life, right. And, uh, and nobody really has the answers. And so you really have to have to have some people in your life.

Quentin Edmonds (19:26)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (19:33)
that are smarter than you, which is, you know, it’s a pretty low bar for me. No, no, no. You know, I find people that I would like to emulate, you know, that have what I want or whatever, not necessarily material things, but just have that presence that are authentic, that are…

Quentin Edmonds (19:56)
Yeah.

Holly Williams (19:59)
you know, smart people and I try to attach myself, you know, I try to learn from them and surround myself. And if somebody’s exhausting, get rid of them. And it’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that I don’t have a lot of time for high maintenance people that get their feelings hurt over some stupid things. So just, you know, I think be honest and authentic.

and I don’t know what I’m doing and neither does anybody else. And if they tell you that they do, they’re lying. I really do believe that. I think we’re all learning. All we have is our experience. That’s right. That’s exactly right. So that would be my takeaway in the whole 64 years I’ve been on the planet. Can you believe that? I look 30. I know it’s

Quentin Edmonds (20:37)
That’s it. That’s Mm. Mm. Yeah.

No, I cannot. I would not listen.

Holly Williams (20:52)
You would not believe I ride my bike 20, 30 miles on. Life is good. I do.

Quentin Edmonds (20:57)
no, I definitely would not

have said 64. ⁓ my goodness. Thank you for that reflection. And those are words that I see a lot here is honesty and integrity. And so thank you for highlighting that. know, one of my guests, he said, everybody has a brand and that brand is their character. That’s your brand. That’s everybody’s brand. It’s your character. And so when you leave an honesty and authenticity, it strengthens your brand.

And so, um, I appreciate you. What’s next for you, Holly? Like what, what is the next goals? What are you looking to solve a scale next?

Holly Williams (21:32)
Well, think I’m writing another book. think I’m as soon as I can get it. I’ve got an outline. I’ve got the first chapter. ⁓ So the working title is like plan for triple plan for things to triple instead of double or quadruple or five time. mean, they’re that, you know, and, just kind of what I’ve learned a little bit about. You can’t have too much diversification and don’t depend on.

Yes. So it’s those kinds of things. Everything in hidden investing is true today. I will, I have found. what the biggest shocker for me when I first got into multifamily real estate was I thought I was the only one, you know, I, I was schooled Texas tech. I’m, I remember I got up to New York for first, my first job up there. I had started working in Dallas and I got, I called a friend. said, man, everybody here went to an Ivy league school.

You know, and they’re like, you know, and my friend was like, well, you ended up at the same place, didn’t you? So just, you know, keep plugging, right? And that was good advice, but, but you know, it, ⁓ so I’ve done a lot of things right and a lot of, made a lot of mistakes. And that’s just what’s going to happen.

Quentin Edmonds (22:48)
Holly, I appreciate you being here so much. Listen, 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?

Holly Williams (22:58)
So my email is holly, H-O-L-L-Y, @keepmore.com. So I have a whole website, keepmore.com and my book is called Hidden Investing, and it all kind of connects. But yeah, so holly at keepmore.com is probably the best way to get in touch with me.

Quentin Edmonds (23:20)
Yeah, absolutely. Well, Holly, I want to say three things to you sincerely. First, thank you for your time. I mean, you’re just getting back and you gave us your time. So thank you for your time. I greatly appreciate it. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for your authenticity. Thank you for your honesty. Also, thank you for the gift of your vulnerability. I believe stories have a way of planting seeds in people. We may never see the growth.

But the seed is there and that seed can grow at any minute. It could be two weeks from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. And so thank you for the gift of your story in planting seeds. Lastly, thank you for your mindset, the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform. I agree. I really appreciate you,

Holly Williams (24:06)
People

don’t know. We’re not taught any of this in school. I thought that, well, everybody else went to these Ivy League schools, so they know more than I do and they don’t. And they were like, what? You’re investing in real estate? I lost money on a land deal not too long ago. They didn’t understand any of this. We don’t learn it.

Quentin Edmonds (24:23)
Yeah,

don’t mind it. Experience is a heck of a teacher. ⁓ again, thank you so much. And listen, y’all heard Ms. Look into the show notes. Her contact information is there. Connect with her. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here, because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people. Y’all heard?

Holly Williams (24:41)
You are fantastic and thank you

all so much. Enjoyed it. I’ve had a good time.

Quentin Edmonds (24:49)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all have a fantastic day, all right? Appreciate y’all.