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Show Summary
In this conversation, Ian Williams shares insights into the real estate industry, discussing the importance of networking, the challenges faced, and the future trends in real estate and technology. He emphasizes the significance of building relationships and diversifying asset classes to ensure stability in business. Ian also highlights the value of learning through experience and the necessity of having a plan for every situation.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Ian Williams (00:00)
a lot of how, why I’ve been able to scale the network as quickly as I have been is because we’re relationship first, not like a software platform. ⁓ So a lot of it comes withdoing favors and that was one of the biggest things that I had to tell my guys when we first started was there’s going to be times where we do stuff now and don’t get paid, but it’s going to be for people who have access to doors that we don’t.
Quentin Edmonds (02:00)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. And I have another fantastic guest and you know what I say, I love when I have guests who I can just peek through their lens. Good to see life in real estate through their lens and what they do. They are the expert for today. Nobody can do them like them. So I’m so happy today to have the expert here, Mr. Ian Williams. Mr. Ian, how you doing today, sir?Ian Williams (02:28)
Good, how are you?Quentin Edmonds (02:30)
man, doing good, man. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your stick to it of this. Thank you for your adjustments. I appreciate you. I know the crowd don’t know it all, but you and I know how appreciate you. So listen, man, I want to dive in. ⁓ I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. If you can give us a little bit of an origin story of kind of how you got into real estate. We love origin stories. Then man, tell us what part of the world you’re in, man. So you have the floor, sir.Ian Williams (02:59)
Yeah, I am in New Hudson, Michigan, which is basically middle of nowhere. ⁓ Anybody who knows Michigan, I would say that the closest ⁓ areas were to that. A lot of people know would be probably Ann Arbor about 25 minutes from there. ⁓ Origin story, though. ⁓Probably from a real young age, honestly. All those house flipping shows, flipping Vegas, zombie flipping, stuff like that. ⁓ You know, just growing up watching those and then talking to some family members who were in this ⁓ industry, whether it’s, you know, owning rentals all the way to, you know, real estate attorney. Kind of just picking their brains, seeing who I can get in contact with via them. And after that, just, you know.
calling, texting, making as many connections as possible.
Quentin Edmonds (04:00)
Got you. So tell me a little bit about what you do now and a lot of time you got in in the real estate. You see base kind of the middle of nowhere, but I’m sure it’s some stuff going on there. But tell me about tell me a little bit about what you’re doing now, man. What’s the main focus?Ian Williams (04:14)
A lot of what we’ve been doing now is ⁓ deal brokering and taking equity stakes in new development projects, whether it’s with custom and speccom builders or big name development firms that do, you know, big single family and mixed use projects and all that stuff.Quentin Edmonds (04:35)
I love it, man. So talk to different family members, pick their brain, got to know a little bit of the game from them. And so I have a saying where I say destiny has no wasted moments, right? No matter what we’ve been through in life, know, whatever stop, whatever journey got us here, we picked up things that kind of made us who we are today. So man, in this journey in real estate, what has it revealed about you to you? Like what has it shown you in this journey to real estate?Ian Williams (05:54)
With success comes a lot of stress. you know, there’s the whole industry, you know, even going down to just basic, you know, agents, which don’t want it to sound bad, but, know, just, you know, regular real estate transactions, there’s always stuff that goes wrong at any given moment. And you’re going to have to be able to figure things out on the fly. So.A lot of it is, you know, just for me personally, knowing the right people. think one of the biggest things that people confuse when they first get in the industry is that they need to know everything and they don’t. I knew very little when I first started. A lot of it was just, okay, what can you tell me about this? Making calls, you know, basic research with YouTube and now ⁓ even AI.
that can dumb stuff down and whatnot. So it’s not about knowing everything. It’s just learning as you go along and whatnot and being able to kind of problem solve a little bit.
Quentin Edmonds (07:08)
Got you man. Now I love I appreciate that. Thank you for showing you know how to reveal to you. And so I know as we grow as we become successful. There are times when we have to pivot. There’s things when stuff sometimes don’t go our way deals don’t go the way we expect. So you had to pivot. You mind telling us the story of when you had to pivot a time maybe when the deal didn’t go to where you expected it to go.Ian Williams (07:30)
Yeah, it was actually ⁓ kind of recent. There’s a buddy of mine who had a couple of VAs ⁓ do their magic with calling to get some off-market wholesale deals. And there was one in Florida in particular where he liked it, but he didn’t know anybody who would pick it up because the overall condition was well and it wouldn’t have made sense for a flip. we couldn’tfind anybody that wanted to use it as a rental. ⁓ So me, because like I mentioned in the conversation, just you and I earlier,
a lot of how, why I’ve been able to scale the network as quickly as I have been is because we’re relationship first, not like a software platform. ⁓ So a lot of it comes with
doing favors and that was one of the biggest things that I had to tell my guys when we first started was there’s going to be times where we do stuff now and don’t get paid, but it’s going to be for people who have access to doors that we don’t.
So tying that back into the story, know, he there was really nothing that we could do about it. So I ended up giving a call to one of the biggest names in the real estate industry out in Florida, Joseph Bograd.
You know, basically just said, here’s, you know, the, this warm lead. We can’t really do anything with it. ⁓ give them a call, see what you can do, et cetera. And one, my buddy asked why we didn’t, charge a referral fee, which we sometimes do of we’ll, know, something that we can’t get, we just say, here’s all this pay us X amount and it’s up to you. that way it’s, it’s not like tied to success space and it can’t get dragged anywhere.
But yeah, when I asked why didn’t you do that, I was like, well, because we’re not in the Florida market really heavy right now and he is. So having him owe us a favor, whether it be now or five years from now is worth a lot more than a quick little fee.
Quentin Edmonds (09:45)
I love it. I love your forward thinking, man. I love what I call putting seeds in the ground, right? Put little seeds in the ground because when you put that down in the ground, you never know when it’s going to come back and reap your harvest, right? And you’re going to that, man. And I absolutely love that forward thinking, that leadership style, man. So let me ask you, Ian, what is your next real goal? Like, what are you looking to solve at Scale Next,Ian Williams (10:46)
The biggest thing on our agenda right now is to scale into other asset classes, ⁓ whether it be acquiring businesses or just connecting somebody who has an appetite with a specific deal, whether that be somebody starting to make an AI company ⁓ and needs financing or whatever the case may be. So a lot of it isThe overall goal ⁓ is basically just to become a high level intermediate across many different asset classes so that way we can kind of selectively touch many things. So even if we have a slow month or even year in real estate, for example, we can always make up for it in some other way.
Quentin Edmonds (11:34)
I love it, man. I love it. So you talk about going across SFLA classes. I love how you lead your team like, that’s put these seeds in the ground. Talk about even a relationship with people that you know, family members. So I want to talk just about that relationship. So, I would love to know, I would love to know what’s your perspective when it comes to relationship building. ⁓ Has it served you well?Do you put a premium on building relationships? Like how does relationship building look within what you do?
Ian Williams (12:08)
It’s the, in my opinion, I say it’s probably the most important part of how the whole business works because without it, we wouldn’t be where we are, right? Our end goal is to know somebody for everything. And if we directly don’t, then we know somebody who does, right? And you don’t get that by, you know, being rude to people or not.reaching out or not doing favors without looking for anything in return. So it’s…
Yeah, for me it’s the biggest thing by far.
Quentin Edmonds (12:50)
I love it, man. love it. So, Ian, man, let me ask you this. Is there a topic that I have not brought up that you want to talk about when it comes to real estate? Or is there any kind of motivation, inspiration, education that maybe you want to give people? If there’s anything, you know, again, topic or that kind of inspiration that you want to leave, man, I love to hear it,Ian Williams (13:12)
⁓pertains to real estate, but I feel like it pertains to pretty much any business as a whole. Back to earlier where I said that you don’t need to know everything about everything. A lot of it is trial and error, right? But a big part of how I was able to get to the stage where I’m at now with being able to make a phone call to somebody who is…
fairly important, whether it’s somebody inside of a development firm or the owner of a custom building company, whatever it may be, is having access and knowledge that other people are willing to pay for. And a lot of my knowledge didn’t come from, you know, researching every little thing and every terminology word about real estate. was reaching out to, for example, city and township zoning and planning.
or architects or people in private money so that way I can solve problems when they come. So that way, you know, if something is zoned weird or the density is off or whatever for something that a firm had in mind for a project, I can make a couple calls, see what I can do and hopefully get something done.
Quentin Edmonds (14:26)
Yeah, I love it, man. So again, man, when you talk about relationship building, that’s not like that’s your three line, man. That’s that’s your superpower, man. That’s why you can weave in and out these different places because you build in these relationships that are sustainable, man. And so I actually love it, man. I appreciate you so much for being here, man. Hey, listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, collaborate with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can I get in contact with you, sir?Ian Williams (15:36)
You can DM me on Instagram at official Ian Williams. You can also reach me via email at [email protected].Quentin Edmonds (15:48)
And listen, I appreciate you, sir. One, definitely thank you for coming through. Again, you your perseverance, your patience, and making sure this thing happen. I appreciate that. But I want to say, one, definitely thank you for your time, because our time is precious, right? We can put a premium on our time. So thank you for giving us some of your time. Man, definitely thank you for your story. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for meeting with honesty and really just talking abouthow to build really, really healthy relationships. appreciate that, your story and you telling that. And man, thank you for your perspective and your mindset and bringing that mindset to this platform. Man, I greatly appreciate it.
Ian Williams (16:27)
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.Quentin Edmonds (16:30)
Absolutely. Listen, y’all heard Mr. Ian you know, he gave the value, he gave you the nuggets. So definitely look into the show notes, check them out, get in contact with him, but definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I keep telling you we’re going to keep bringing up just incredible people just like Mr. Ian. So sir, I just want to say thank you again and to everyone else. Y’all have a fantastic day.
