Stop Thinking Small: The Real Way to Build Wealth with Multifamily Syndications | Adam Williams

47.759 - 63.467 Justin Colby

You're a doer, which we're going to talk about because I think there's a difference between why you've reached success and why others maybe haven't. But talk to me about the general idea behind single family assets and apartments and why you've chosen to essentially move into a different direction.

63.852 - 85.172 Adam Williams

Yeah. I mean, when I found this game, like I grew up around real estate. Right. My dad had a couple like single family rental homes. Not a lot. He was not like super successful in the game. But from being a tiny little kid, I remember he had a couple of rental homes, maybe three or four little shitty rental homes and a little five unit building that he had had since he was like a late teenager.

85.212 - 106.34 Adam Williams

He kind of got in the game early. And so I went in and I remember like helping him move furniture out and helping him go collect rents and all those things as a little kid. But it was very, very lower class, like D class type properties, right? Really like slumlord almost. Yeah. And so with that comes a very dirty and gross.

106.36 - 121.332 Adam Williams

And like, I remember like moving a chair out of a place and cockroaches scattering anywhere as a kid. Right. And it's just freaks you out. So I was really turned off from real estate as a kid. And he kept telling me as I was a teenager and getting into my early twenties, you got to get into real estate. You got to get into real estate. I was always an entrepreneur. Yeah.

121.312 - 136.688 Adam Williams

But I was struggling trying to figure out like what business I could generate real income at. And my dad would always tell me, you got to get into real estate. You got to get into real estate. I was like, Dad, I don't want to deal with cockroaches and going at 2 a.m. to collect rent because that's the only time they have it and all the things.

199.067 - 217.946 Adam Williams

We did 252 single-family residences in just under three years. But what I realized was about a year and a half into that, I'm like you, man. I don't want to do anything super small or take 100 years to get there. Yeah. And I was looking at like, OK, this is cool. We're making money. But how can how do the guys get 10,000 units? Yeah. Right.

218.026 - 252.028 Adam Williams

It's taken me a year and a half to get, you know, 100, 150. Yeah. I'm never going to get to 10,000. I'm going to be 100 years old. Right. And so I started studying apartments and multifamily and how the whole game worked and what I found that was so brilliant about it and why, to answer your question, I quickly moved from single to multi. Mm-hmm.

252.633 - 268.794 Adam Williams

A single family residence, there's a lot of emotion tied to it. You've got renters, you know, you've got a lot of risk. With multifamily, it's all operated as a business. It's just numbers. That's it. It's how much cash flow is that asset spitting off every single month. And that's how you value what it's worth. That's right.

269.295 - 293.351 Adam Williams

And so I quickly found that instead of flipping one house at a time or two houses at a time, we could go flip 200 at a time. And now I could get there. Yeah. Was just very lucky, fast forward, lucky enough to partner with an amazing operator. My wife and I started our own private equity firm, LFS Capital, partnered with an amazing operator. And now, I mean, with them, we have over 11,000 doors.

293.752 - 294.373 Adam Williams

That's incredible.

677.002 - 685.353 Justin Colby

Let's talk about what we're doing with Ellevest, what your mission is, but then also that iteration and how you had to find that within yourself along business trajectory.

685.493 - 704.698 Adam Williams

A hundred percent. Yeah. With Ellevest, which look, we're a relatively new company. We started this just under three years ago. So although I've been investing in the real estate. What have you been able to do in three years? A decent amount. I've been investing in real estate for nearly 21 years. I'd been investing in other people's syndications.

704.759 - 722.638 Adam Williams

I'd been investing in other operators and sponsors. So I've known this business for two decades. Right. And been in it. But I started to see, like, what did I like about the things I was investing in? How did I feel they were doing a great job? How did I feel they could do a better job? What were the things I just hated? Because, you know, every operator is different. Every fund is different.

723.399 - 744.924 Adam Williams

And so I felt like we could build what my ultimate vehicle would be. And, and when we set out to build it, I think the biggest thing, and you talk about evolution of like ideas and stuff, and we're still in our infancy stage. That's why I preface with that. But we've already iterated a dozen times in just under three years. Right.

745.585 - 768.118 Adam Williams

And now my big, what I wake up every single morning and I come into this office and I do is I focus on how can I educate more people on how to build wealth with this multifamily investment syndication vehicle. Yeah. That's it. If I focus on that and that alone, everything else seems to fall into place and I don't charge for it. I'm not, you know, none of that.

902.72 - 903.1 Adam Williams

Yeah.

903.248 - 921.542 Justin Colby

And what I appreciate about what you've done is you and I have done deals more in the single family space, an apartment already. And you just said, dude, I have a different vision of what I want to be doing. And I'm going. And as recent as two weeks ago, you were with me in Miami. You iterated again. You brought to me, like, here's this new way. We're going to do this new thing.

921.943 - 929.333 Justin Colby

I mean, there's these iterations, but you go. Yeah. You don't wait around. You don't perfect. You don't make sure everything is perfect before you move. You start running.

929.914 - 952.442 Adam Williams

Well, you have to because, you know, this whole, and I know it's cliche, this paralysis analysis, it's a real deal. Oh, yeah. People will sit there and run this idea they have through their brain a million times and never do it. What does that do for you? They're wasting your time. I heard a guy say, we're going to try some shit. We're going to learn some shit. We're going to try some new shit.

952.574 - 969.655 Adam Williams

Yeah. And that's it. But if you don't try some shit, if you just think about shit, you ain't getting shit. You're doing nothing. No doubt. Right? You got to try. You got to go out and try. When we started Ellevest, I had known by being an investor what I thought I wanted this world to look like. Right. But when you go become...

1122.418 - 1141.302 Justin Colby

No. Well, and people need to know how to invest. And that's why like these, even the apartment we're talking about today, tonight we're having an event. You guys will hear this afterwards, but we're having like small little get together. I think 30, 40 people will be here in the office. We're talking about a 248 door property in Dallas. Yep. Massive discount. This thing sold in 2022.

1141.362 - 1152.602 Justin Colby

We're buying it 2025 at a 30% discount from their price. Yep. But people need to understand how to invest because if life is getting more expensive, they need to know how to take their money and make their money work for them.

1152.622 - 1176.971 Adam Williams

Well, and that's what happened to me. So I, you know, over and above the real estate stuff, I'm just an entrepreneur. I've been building businesses since I could crawl, right? Like, I built a ton of businesses, a lot in the marketing space, the call center space, you name it, we did it in that arena for about a good 20 years. And what I found was a lot of those I failed at, right?

1177.051 - 1196.974 Adam Williams

A lot of those I failed at. But when I had success, which I did, for some reason every seven years I'd knock one out of the park. When I had success and made a bunch of money... We're about seven years right now, right? Okay. When I had success and made a bunch of money in those businesses... I needed a vehicle to take that active income and put it into so that money could start working for me.

1197.454 - 1216.333 Adam Williams

That's right. And what I what I where I made a lot of mistakes early on in my like my first success where I was like, oh, my God, I went and made, you know, a couple million bucks. And I thought that was all the money in the world, which it is not. Because if you don't keep making it, that shit goes fast. What what happened was I went and I found like my buddy had an idea for a business.

1278.576 - 1297.468 Adam Williams

Whatever's left over, you should be shoving into these multifamily real estate deals, these multifamily real estate syndications. And the reason is I call it I'm going to talk about this tonight at our event. I call it the fuel and the gas tank. Your active income that you're going to work to earn every single day or running your business to earn every day is the fuel. That's the gas.

1297.685 - 1315.505 Adam Williams

This is the gas tank and you need the fuel to fill up the gas tank. But once you get that gas tank really, really full and you're able to do this and shove that couple hundred grand, two, three, four, five hundred grand every single year, year over year over year into this gas tank and watch these things start to compound.

1315.785 - 1338.232 Adam Williams

We're talking about syndicating and being a part of an equity owner in 150 doors, 250 doors, 350 doors at a time. And then we we get in. We have a very strict business model where we get in, we acquire the property. We execute our business plan and renovate all the units, increase the rents up to market rent for the new Class A units that we've now created for the workforce housing.

1338.573 - 1357.621 Adam Williams

And then we're selling off that deal. That's why I say flipping apartments instead of flipping houses. We're in and out of these as fast as we can. Our average hold time right now is 17.7 months. So we do not hang on to these deals. We get in, we do the business plan, we get out, right? Take a property we bought for 33, 34 million bucks, put about 8, 10 million into it.

1357.821 - 1369.996 Adam Williams

We're looking to sell it for 65 million. It's wild. Quick, right? You can't do that in single family. But... As a one guy, I'm not going to go write a $30 million check and then another $10 million to renovate. Like, that's just, I'm not going to do that.

1934.305 - 1942.836 Adam Williams

Would you like us to send that to you, to your bank account? Or would you like us to send that to a qualified intermediary so you can 1031 into the next deal we're going to do? And oh, by the way, here's the next deal.

1942.816 - 1952.611 Justin Colby

It's really brilliant. That's the difference. I mean, being a part of these, right, it's something that... I think you got to treat it like a business, I don't think, but people need to treat this like a business, right?

1952.671 - 1970.049 Justin Colby

So if you don't have to work in your business and you can just be an investor in your business, almost an angel investor, but it's your business because it's run like that, it removes the frustration, removes the headaches. And that's where I think people think they need to start small. And it's not necessarily true, right?

1970.149 - 1985.532 Justin Colby

And by the way, one of the things that people think is I don't have enough money. You think that because you just don't know. Right. You actually don't know the reality of it. Right. And that's where I would tell people, make sure you're reaching out to Adam. Make sure you're reaching out to me. Get some clarity behind this because a confused mind can't make a decision.

1985.552 - 1995.85 Justin Colby

But what's even worse is someone who just doesn't know anything and won't give themselves a chance. Right. They don't make a choice. They don't give themselves a chance to make the change that you really deserve.