Unlocking Real Estate Investment Secrets with Ray Hightower | ROIClear Insights

RayHightower.com (00:00)
one very important line that he has in that speech that ties in what you just said, Destiny Has No Wasted Moments is, we cannot connect the dots of our lives in advance. We’re doing things right now.

We don’t know how it’s gonna help us a year from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

Quentin (01:50)
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host Q Edmonds and I’m excited to be here today. I have a guy that’s persistent. He will make sure we get this podcast. We will get this episode going. He’s been working with me, moving around, making sure that he proves himself to be available. So I’m excited and I cannot wait for him to dive in and tell you everything that he does. I know it’s going to be very insightful for you and it’s going to be helpful for some.

And so I want to introduce to some, present to some, introduce to others Mr. Ray Hightower. Mr. Ray, how you doing today,

RayHightower.com (02:25)
Wonderful. So glad that you’re having me here. I’m grateful to be here in your space, man.

Quentin (02:32)
man, I’m so glad to have you in this space. And this is our space today, right? So we’re going to have this conversation, man. And I want to, I’m gonna type, I want to dive in, man. I want you to tell the people what your main focus is these days. Give us a little bit of an origin story, kind of how you got to where you are, man. And then tell them what part of the world you in. People love to know where people are geographically. And so Ray, I want you to, again, tell them what you’re doing, your origin story and where you are.

RayHightower.com (02:36)
There we go.

Yes.

⁓

Quentin (03:01)
Sir, you have the floor.

RayHightower.com (03:03)
thank you so much. All right. What I do, my origin story and where I am. So what I do, I buy real estate. My partners and I, we are multifamily real estate investment syndicators. Big fancy word. We buy apartment properties, we fix them up, we give people a great place to live. And while we’re doing that, we invite investors to be part of our deals. The investors get capital preservation, tax advantages and return on investment.

So we structure our deal so that everybody wins. The residents win because they get a great place to live. The investors win because they get capital preservation, tax advantages and return on investment. And then we win as operators because, know, there’s, you know, we invest in the deals alongside of our investors and their, their speeds. And there’s just the joy of doing something great. I mean, you, you, as a fellow entrepreneur, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The joy of producing results and doing something great.

So yeah, that’s what I do right now. My origin story, my background is in tech. I started and ran a technology company for over 20 years, really 21 years, over 21 years. That was in Chicago. I built that company up from scratch. After that time, I sold that company and then I went on board and spent a few years with the company that I sold my company to. So my background is in tech.

We started off building local area networks using something called Novell Network. Some of your listeners will remember Novell Network from way back in the 80s and 90s. It was the dominant network operating system back then. We started the company in 94, just as this tiny company called Microsoft was starting to emerge on the networking stage. And we were one of those companies. became a Microsoft certified solution provider.

I was a Microsoft certified systems engineer and we were one of those that would go in and we would use our skills on the Microsoft platform to really displace Novell NetWare. Microsoft was a genius in recruiting small companies like ours to be ⁓ essentially their foot soldiers in wiping out their competitors. And if you want to talk about that brilliant business strategy by Microsoft, so if you want to get in a business strategy, we can talk about that.

And then after doing networking for about the first 10 years of the company, we shifted into doing development for the web and for mobile using open source tools. were on the Linux operating system, and we were using an open source framework called Ruby on Rails, a language called Ruby and a framework called Ruby on Rails. And we built web applications and mobile applications on the iPhone and Android.

And through all of that, we ran a conference called Windy City Rails in Chicago. We created that conference from conference from scratch, ran that for 10 years. What was so cool about running that conference, I could travel, you know, I’ve been all over the world speaking about technology and business. I could be in a room anywhere on the planet. If there’s software people there, they’d say, Hey, you’re that Windy City Rails guy. I don’t care if they don’t know my name. They knew the brand. That’s what’s important. So, ⁓

Quentin (07:04)
Mm. Yeah.

RayHightower.com (07:08)
Yes, we did that.

Quentin (07:09)
Mm.

RayHightower.com (07:09)
And then that’s origin story. That’s what I do origin story. Final thing, where am I? I’m in the state of Arizona. My company’s in the state of Arizona. I’m really enthusiastic about the state of Arizona.

Quentin (07:24)
Yeah. Man. Yes, Ray. Thank you, sir, man. Thank you for walking us through what you do now. Thank you for taking us through the origin story, man. And as you was talking, I’m writing things down, right? Now I’m going to intentionally reiterate some stuff that you said, right? So Tech Guy, you know, Tech Guy, over 21 years, ran a tech company. think Novell NetWear, you know, in 1994.

RayHightower.com (07:28)
Okay.

Yeah.

Yes sir. Yes sir.

Yes.

Yeah.

Quentin (07:53)
And then, you know, partnered up with Microsoft, became a Microsoft certified provider. you started developing for the web. got Ruby, Ruby rails. I believe I saying that right. ⁓ Wendy city rails conference. it again. Yeah. When you say, yeah. So I, I, I reiterate those things because I have a saying, Mr. Ray, where I say destiny has no wasted moments. Right.

RayHightower.com (08:03)
Okay, Ruben, yes. Wendy City Rails, yeah, you got it. You got the important stuff, man, yeah, yeah.

Quentin (08:22)
meaning no matter what we’ve been through in life,

it’s been building us to the moments where we are now. And we borrow from moments, we borrow mindsets, we borrow strategies, and it fires our passion and purpose of where we are now. So the question is, Mr. Ray, what has these moments, this journey, what has it taught you about yourself? Has it taught you resilience, discipline? What has these moments taught you about you, Mr. Ray?

RayHightower.com (08:37)
Yes.

Well, number one, sir, the one thing it’s taught me is make sure I write, write things down when I hear some wisdom. Cause when you said destiny has no wasted moments, that’s something I need to meditate on and ponder about. I just wrote that down. Cause that, that resonates with me. But what you just said right there, ⁓ what this has taught me is, you know, the one who, who summarized it best was Steve jobs. If you’ve probably seen the speech.

He gave, I believe he only gave one graduation speech in his life and it was at Stanford University. And he talks about many things. The highlight of his speech was, stay hungry, stay foolish, right? You know, that’s the line that everybody remembers.

But one very important line that he has in that speech that ties in what you just said, Destiny Has No Wasted Moments is, we cannot connect the dots of our lives in advance. We’re doing things right now.

We don’t know how it’s gonna help us a year from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now.

And he gave multiple examples of that during his speech. One example he gave is during college, he wandered into a course on calligraphy, know, and type, you know, fancy lettering, all that stuff. And he was just interested in, he was a college freshman, just wandered into that class because he took that class.

He knew enough about fonts and kern and letting and all the things you need to know about fonts to make sure that the fonts were available on the Apple Macintosh.

And it was the first personal computer to have that. It was one of the differentiating features of the Apple Macintosh personal computer. So there we go. and as Steve mentioned, he never could have imagined that taking a one semester calligraphy class

would lead to massive success with a computer that he and Steve Wozniak would design together years later. So yeah, I would say that the big thing that I’ve learned is we never know how what we’re doing today will be tied into what we’re doing in the future. And as my man Q says, destiny has no wasted moments. That’s why I wrote it down. I didn’t want to miss any words.

I get this wisdom from you, man. So there we go.

Quentin (11:52)
Yeah. ⁓ man, so well said, sir. And listen, you and I, we read a book every day and that book says it like this, all things work together for our good. And so, yeah, man, everything that we doing is working together for us. thank you for answering that question. Thank you for answering it with reflection and with self-awareness because I tell people all the time, one constant in our business is us.

RayHightower.com (12:03)
Yes, yes.

Yes!

Quentin (12:22)
Like, you know, no matter what goes wrong, we’re at the root of it. And sometimes we have to look back at our journey and realize why we are where we are. And that right then will humble us and it will center us to be able to react to anything going on around us. Whether it’s, you know, we taking a dip in finance or we got a pivot, it will center us because if we made it then we’re going to make it now. And sometimes just challenging the mindset to reflect is a great thing.

RayHightower.com (12:22)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Absolutely.

Quentin (12:52)
Yeah, man, ROIClear, man. You have to tell me what is the next goal for you guys? What are you looking to solve or scale next, Mr. Ray?

RayHightower.com (13:02)
Yeah, yeah, here we go. Well, the name ROIClear and thank you for bringing it up. ROI as in return on investment clear because it’s very important for us to communicate clearly with all of our stakeholders. We communicate clearly with our investors, with the sellers of the properties that we’re buying, with the buyers that we happen to be selling a property. know, whenever everybody’s communicating with each other clearly, we can all move together and achieve together. And as you know, in business, nobody achieves anything great by themselves.

We have to work together and encourage each other and help each other and communicate with each other with a level of clarity so that we can all march in the same direction together. And that’s what we do. So there’s so much I’m excited about in 2026. I’ll tell you what’s happened so far. Like we’re just a few months in where we just finished the first quarter of the year, right? a big thing that we’re excited about is acquisitions.

many opportunities for acquisitions this year. And you and I were talking about this a little bit before we jumped on this podcast. There are large multifamily properties right in our area of expertise and the areas that we acquire. And as you know, we have over $41 million of assets right now in the state of Arizona. We’re looking to increase that, right? There are large multifamily properties that for whatever reason are going back to the bank or they’re distressed or they’re in trouble.

or whoever is running them as having some type of issues that they can’t resolve. And the one path they see to getting out of trouble is to sell that property. And we’re there to buy it from them, right? And what we do is we go in, we put together a team of, you know, not only our team of, you know, acquisition specialists and asset managers and investors and day-to-day property managers, and then all the contractors and vendors and…

people we need, architects, lawyers, CPAs, all those people, and we go in and we’ll acquire that property. And what I’m finding now, I moved to Arizona in the year 2020, right? So I’m seeing more opportunity for acquisitions now than I’ve seen in all the time, you know, in the five, five and a half years that I’ve been here in Arizona. And that’s something that we’re really excited about this year, because we’ll be able to acquire at prices that are

not as high as they may have been a few years ago, a little bit lower in the market cycle, which is very good for us. The whole idea in business, buy low, sell high.

And so that’s just exciting that we’re going to be able to do that. And we’re doing it now. We’ve got so many offers out on properties. We just closed down a property. Normally, we acquire 75 units or larger. We just closed down a 56 unit property here in Arizona just a few months back.

So we’ll go a little bit lower if all of the other bullet points in our checkbox are in line. We may go a little bit lower, but yeah, we’re seeing so many opportunities. We’re walking a lot of properties. We are underwriting a lot of properties and we’re doing a lot of analysis and team building and all of that. Now, let me ask you, sir. I spent a lot of time just talking then. In any of those sentences, did I answer your question?

Quentin (17:07)
Absolutely did man. mean the question was what are you guys looking to solve a scale? Like what’s the next direction and you absolutely answered them? Yeah, because you definitely told me the direction you guys were going. So yes, yeah, yeah, you absolutely answered sir. And I wrote down actually when you started saying one of the things you said was communicating clearly. know communicating with your investors, communicating with people clearly and I’m not sure if you heard of Brene Brown. She’s I love Brene Brown.

RayHightower.com (17:08)
Thanks.

Yes. Okay.

Yes.

Yes.

yes.

Yes.

Quentin (17:37)
So

she has a saying, right? She says, clear is kind, unclear is unkind. So I love the thing, your structure is communicating clearly. And that lets me know the type of character and integrity that you guys are running with. Like you’re crystal clear about what it is that you’re trying to do. that’s in the integration and the interworkings of what you do is communicating clearly. So, man, I love hearing that, Absolutely. Absolutely.

RayHightower.com (17:43)
Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, wow. I

love that. And I do admire Brene Brown. read one of her books maybe five years ago and I’m trying to remember the title right now. Anyway, yeah, I really have a lot of respect for her and the way she does clear communication. She coaches a lot of corporate leaders, as you know, and yeah, she’s a remarkable author, a remarkable thinker.

Quentin (18:27)
Yeah, yep, absolutely. And so what you said definitely sparked that thought. And I’m not surprised that you aware her. I’m not surprised that the way that you train your mind, the way you are constantly feeding your mind, because we talked a little bit backstage in some of the books that you read. That’s I was wanting to reason why I’m excited about this podcast is because a big thing for me is, yes, we’re going to talk about real estate. We’re going to talk about selling. We’re going to talk about buying.

RayHightower.com (18:46)
Okay.

Quentin (18:57)
But we’re going to talk about mindset at the same time, because like I said, the, I’m telling you the one constant, like I said, at any business for any entrepreneur is them. They are at the center of it. And so I want to, yeah, listen. So I want to ask you this word because you have talked about investors. You’ve talked about helping people, giving people places to live. So I’m going to throw a word out there and I want to hear your perspective on this word.

RayHightower.com (18:59)
Yes, yes.

Yes!

Yes.

Okay.

Quentin (19:27)
Mr.

Ray, when you hear the word relationship, what comes to mind to you?

RayHightower.com (19:32)
⁓ yeah, yeah, yep. First word that comes to mind when I hear relationship is collaboration.

All right, because a good relationship, it can be a personal relationship, it can be relationship between, all of us have relationships with our parents of some form because we came in, we’re here because of a mother and a father who had a relationship that produced us. So our first relationships really are with our parents, certainly. Our relationship with God, whatever that may be, you know. ⁓

a relationship with relationship with other people. They can be romantic relationships, business relationships, friendship relationships. You have a relationship with somebody that, you know, I’m sitting in a parking lot and ⁓ if I meet eyes with somebody, there’s some form of relationship because there’s some sort of communication. But I immediately think of collaboration because I enjoy. It took me a while to notice this about myself. I was actually someone who pointed this out about me about 20 years ago. I didn’t notice that I was doing this.

I really enjoy bringing people together and introducing people to each other who can help each other. And I just do it. I just do it. I didn’t realize that I had built up a skill in that area, but someone pointed that out to me and I didn’t realize I was doing it. know? So, but I think of collaboration. Collaboration is the first thing I think of when I think of relationship. Yeah.

Quentin (21:05)
Yeah. I love it. We are here. I realized that’s one of my superpowers. So much so that I tell people when they ask me like what my purpose is, I say my purpose is to unite and my passion is through storytelling. One of my purposes is bringing two things together, two people together, two thoughts together, ⁓ more than a lot of thoughts together and having them come together like amalgamate.

RayHightower.com (21:21)
Whoa.

Quentin (21:34)
those things together where recognition is possible, right? When you recognize

RayHightower.com (21:38)
Yes.

Quentin (21:39)
the story or you recognize the purpose or you recognize yourself or you recognize the relationship, the connection. So I am with you, man. That’s part of my passion as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Listen, Mr. Ray, we’re coming up on time, but I gotta do this, especially when I’m talking to someone like you. I need to open up the floor a little bit.

RayHightower.com (21:51)
Yes. Yes, sir.

Quentin (22:03)
So is there any topic that I have not thought of that or talked about that you would like to speak on? Or is there any other words of inspiration, education, motivation? Like if you came in here with something like these viewers need to know this, I want to open up the floor so you can deliver that message.

RayHightower.com (22:22)
Dude, yeah, there’s so many ⁓ one that’s really on my mind right now is the idea of business and Capitalism as tools that we can use to help each other All right

So that has been on my mind a lot. In fact, I’m writing a book about that right now. I finished it in December. I didn’t like it. And so I’m rewriting a whole lot about it, but I’m writing a book about that right now. My book is a celebration of capitalism. And I had someone very close to me read one of the chapters early on. said, it sounds like in this chapter you’re defending capitalism. I said, no, I’m not defending capitalism. I’m celebrating capitalism.

He says, well, if you want to defend capitalism, you need to do this. I said, stop. If you are celebrating somebody’s birthday, you don’t defend their birthday, you celebrate the birthday. I’m celebrating capitalism in this book because through capitalism, there are so many things we can put in place so that we can help each other. And yeah, there are aspects of capitalism that are terrible. There are aspects of capitalism that are absolutely terrible.

It’s probably the worst system that humans have ever had for economics and stuff for all of the other systems I stole that from Winston Churchill, but you know, mean captain it’s about capitalism and how we Capitalism business business how we use capitalism and business to help each other a book and and you and I talked about this briefly You know backstage There’s a book by this rabbi rabbi Daniel Lapan and the book is called

Thou shall prosper. And what it’s about is how we use business to help each other. And I think we as business leaders, I think all of us who are running businesses could be even more prosperous if we were, dare I say, you know, I’m going to use the word, if we were more proud or more enthusiastic about what we do, because somebody is going to get in your face, oh, you’re just a greedy capitalist. Oh, you’re a greedy business owner or whatever.

No, I want to be of service to my customers, to my customers, to my investors, to my clients, to my employees, to my contractors, to my vendors. I want to be of service to all the people around me because I as a business owner, you as a business owner, our listeners and viewers as business owners, the more we are of service to the people around us, the more we create win-win.

situations, the more everybody wins and just blows up in a positive way for everybody. So if there’s one thought that I’ve been thinking about a lot, especially in the past few years, you know, the economy does that, right? The one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot, and especially since I’ve had people approach me and say, oh, you’re just a greedy capitalist and all this stuff, know, buying this real estate and all this thing. I’m not a greedy capitalist. I’m very enthusiastic about serving the stakeholders that are

benefiting from what we create at ROIClear ⁓ And you know what your your viewers and listeners can learn more they can go to ROIClear comm or they can go to ray high tower comm Both of those sites point to all of our of all of the other sites in our ecosystem and if they don’t remember anything else they just remember ray high tower comm and you connect everything in and

We can talk about that. We can connect and we can, ⁓ you’ll get more information about the book when that’s out. I’m targeting May, we’re close to rewriting it. know, someone once said, never really finish a book, you just abandon it. Cause I keep getting more ideas. I keep getting more ideas to add to it, but what I’m trying to do to just make sure I wordsmith it right. So that’s where we are. So yeah, that’s what I’m excited about this year.

Quentin (26:16)
Yeah. Yeah, I love it,

RayHightower.com (26:21)
capitalism, business, tools to help people achieve because the more we get that, the more everybody can win.

Quentin (26:32)
Man, there he is. Listen, Ray, I want to say three things to you, sir. First, thank you for your time, right? Our time is our most precious commodity. So definitely thank you for your time. I know, you know, we did the part, but you didn’t have to be here, but you’re here. So thank you. Secondly, man, yeah, absolutely. Secondly, thank you for your story. Thank you for your narrative. I believe stories have a way of planting seeds inside of people and

RayHightower.com (26:39)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you.

Quentin (27:00)
that we never know when the seed is going to grow, we’re just going to sprout up. But you put the seed there that way when it’s time for somebody to water it, when it’s time for somebody to water it. And also, I can’t think of another word, but when that thing starts to germinate, that seed was put there with something that we said, right? So thank you for your story. And lastly, man, thank you for your mindset. Thank you for the way you think and bringing that mindset to this platform.

RayHightower.com (27:18)
Yes, yeah.

Yes.

Quentin (27:30)
I greatly appreciate you, sir, coming through.

RayHightower.com (27:33)
Man, I’m grateful to you for your questions and your platform. You’ve stimulated a lot of thinking in me. So I’m grateful to you for having me here. Thank you.

Quentin (27:43)
Absolutely. Thank you, man. Well, listen, y’all heard Mr. Ray. He told you how to get in contact with him. And you can see RayHighTower.com. You see that right on the screen. Also check in the show notes. How to get in contact with him is in the show notes. Get in contact with Ray. ROIClear. But definitely make sure you are subscribed here because I promise you we’re going to continue to bring up amazing people just like Mr. Ray who will make sure that they are available.

They will move some things around. They will move themselves around to make sure that they are available to give you this good, good information. So Mr. Ray, thank you again. And everyone else, listen, y’all have a fantastic day.