Since 2011, Will has co-founded two multi-family investment firms in Texas. Will has transacted over $350MM as deal sponsor / syndicator, totaling over 7,000 units. Every deal to date has returned over 100% profit to the investment group with a typical hold time of 2 years.
In 2010, Will established and operated a multifamily-specific materials import company that greatly reduced the cost and logistical headaches of renovating multi-family projects. He routinely visited sourcing factories until he sold the company in 2018.
Will is licensed and registered as a real estate broker in the State of Texas. He has formally held the SEC / FINRA Series 7 and 66 licenses, and worked with TD Ameritrade and Fidelity as a stock broker.
Will enjoys international travel for business and adventure, and is obsessed with cars and music. He is a Dance Club DJ throughout the Philippines. He regularly organizes and sponsors children’s medical / surgical outreaches in South East Asia. Will is on the Board of Directors of the Ruel Foundation, and founder of Angel Capitalist. Both provide vital medical care to needy children as well as economic investments in the Philippines with more than 500 children treated to date.
Website: www.angelcapitalist.com
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Transcription:
Hello. Again, welcome back to the Jason and PLE project. Super excited to be here with you today. Of course, we love you. Checking in with us. Love you, giving us all this great feedback. You'd be like, wait here, go over. Give us a ratings review. Doesn't have to be five stars. Just has to be, we want to hear from you. We want you to dive in, tell us what we're doing. Tell us what else we can bring you. And today we have will Crozier on the show. He will. How you doing? Hey Jason. Great. How are you? Good. Good. So excited to have well on the show, he's actually in Texas with living full time in the Philippines came back of course, with COVID, but he's got such a tremendous track record here, and we'd love to have him on the show since 2011. He's co-founded two multi-family investment firms in Texas with transacting over 350 million as a deal sponsor, syndicator totalling over 7,000 units.
And on average, over a hundred percent profit to the investment group with a tickle whole time two years. And if that wasn't enough in 2010, he established a multifamily specifically cereals import company that greatly reduced the cost and logistical headaches of renovating multifamily product projects. And he sold the company in 2018. He's also has a number of licenses, series seven series 66, working as a broker. And to add that on top, he's got many passions in terms of international travel for business and adventure, obsessed with cars and music, and some of the awesome things he's doing. He's on the board of directors for the rural foundation and founder of angel capitalist, both which provide vital medical care to needy children, as well as economic investments in the Philippines with more than 500 children treated to date. I mean, that's super cool, man. So excited to have you on the show.
I'll jump in. Cause you know, a lot of people right now, small business owners, we're investors, they're listening to this and they hear a lot of things that you're doing to, you know, continue to give back. One thing you've done to, to find an additional layer to the multifamily area was to produce or start the import company. What was the thought track there was that that was pre doing the investments and, or was it second to the investments? And then from there you decided this was a good track to add onto. Yeah, it was sort of concurrent. I mean, we had an issues actually sourcing the materials we needed to renovate fast enough. We started taking on bigger and bigger, bigger projects and the big box stores couldn't even keep up with our demand. It sounds weird, but they would start delivering the wrong fan or the long, the wrong light or their own faucet. And the prices would be all over the place. And just like, ah, this is messing everything up. We guys standing up guys standing around with the hands in the pocket and you know, wasting everyone's time and money. So kind of took it into our own hands. Flew over to China, started meeting the, uh, the factory owners and they started pulling containers in and it sounds real easy, but I'll tell you it was a headache, but once I got going, it was definitely it.
That's
Awesome. And what were some of the, the key lessons learned one from a business standpoint where two, from a logistical standpoint, bringing on an additional line to your multifamily investment firms? Well, everyone talks about real estate, sort of like multiple streams of income thing jumping into this firm. It was a multiple streams of expense. Like it was just money, money out everywhere. It was this money out and it was, it was, it was a headache, but, uh, once, once we stabilized and um, our investments stabilized and we started picking up a reputation for good product bucks, you know, we were selling at a good price and it was exactly what other owners needed. It was what we needed. So it's what everyone needed. And it was on time and it was delivered for, you know, B and C projects, a multifamily project. So it kind of just took off and, uh, it was managing cashflow, I think was the number one thing.
It took 10 years off my life in those five years. So I know from working in a, having a number of businesses and working with family business, that that's one of the parts as you grow, right? It's that cashflow because it's that, it's that beauty of you're growing, but you're trying to anticipate the growing going forward and you're trying not to cut your knees off and you're trying to be optimistic, but optimistic sometimes you're not even as optimistic and as it gets bigger, you're trying to basically catch a rolling ball is rolling down a Hill. You're trying to catch up with it. And as you look at an analogy, as you're looking at an environment today, if you were to start over right now in 2020, with all you've done, you know, you came back 2011 where we had not December, but it wasn't as optimistic as maybe six months ago, you know, in 2011, how are you looking at your investment opportunities today?
I had a long call just yes, yesterday. Uh, the people who kind of came up to five years behind me or whatever. Um, if I was going to start all over again, it's a great time to start over. I mean, don't, don't necessarily jump in right now, not this second, but you know, wait, watch the dust to settle there's opportunities coming our way. There's a lot of sloppy handlers, a distant absentee owners there. They're going to fumble it. There's going to be opportunities back in the market. And that's really cool. And I'm positioning myself to be able to, to back those people, to back those sponsors, to invest with them, to guarantee loans and things like that. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a team sport and everyone's getting ready for the next round. I think that that's the key word team sport. And sometimes when people start out, they try and do everything in themselves and they forget that the ability to grow, these are, these are really businesses that you're going to narrow and correcting them.
And the more you put on an infrastructure, the more you can grow and you can do, like you did grow to 350 million, 7,000 units in a quick fashion and have a good turnover. What you did here now to two was the objective from the beginning, always to it traveled international. It was just the goal of, of doing multimillion. Do what you're doing is to find a different perspective on how you want to handle life, or it's just always been built into your life. And you found businesses that fit your life. Yeah. It wasn't the goal for sure. I think my goal was, uh, yeah, big houses, fancy light cars, you know, that, that was the goal. It really was. Um, I was born really early poor and that just always amazed me and seemed really cool. And I did that for awhile and then I got really bored of it.
And like two or three years is all it took and I'm like, okay, glad I did it and need to probably do it just to satisfy that itch. And then it kind of just sold everything and moved forward with something else. And you moved over to the Philippines, was Sammy from there, or w w what was the, what was the choice to, to move to the Philippines? Uh, as quickly as I can, when I was in China, a lot on this import company, all the coolest people I met in China were all Filipino. So they're like, come on over, come on over. And, you know, English was strong and there's a lot of cultural bond between Americans and Filipinos and it just fit really naturally. I love the people, the culture, the weather. It's. It's great. It's home now. Oh, that's so cool. So cool.
So are you still actively investing in multifamily? Why they're here in the States or now are you pushing into your other passions or your focus on angel capitalist? I'm certainly pushing forward with angel Apolis and we can talk about that for a bit, but, you know, it's always best to earn dollars, especially when you've got the team and the network, the infrastructure in place. So I'm still deal sponsoring a couple of the larger deals here in Texas. Uh, I'm investing, as I'd mentioned as kind of a key principle guarantor on a lot of other people's projects. So I'm a passive investor more and more as I can be, or just kind of a semi passive, just try to help out where I can to, to get the deals done, to get better loan terms, lend the balance sheet and these kinds of things to, to make it go around a little bit better, but, but more and more, my emphasis moves over to angel capitalist in the Philippines.
I love it. And you talked about, you know, the, the big house, the cars and how that just got tired. And, and I think a lot of people have that same thing, right? They start out making, you know, when you do you, you have that approach. That that's the first thing. When you grow eyes that your, your choice and your objectives were, were bigger than this. And it does that lead to where angel capitalist really started from it. Did. I can remember the exact moment when I was, uh, I was jogging in the morning near my big fancy house, and I was just amazed by it. It was just beautiful, everything about it was just like, you know, I did it like, I was so excited about it and almost that second, my mind flipped over and started thinking about, okay, in my garage, I've got a Bentley, I got my old 69 Camaro.
I just picked up my car, Rory. And it was just like, I gotta go buy another one. And it was just like that moment. I caught myself when I'm like, is the next sporadic the thing that satisfies that itch, not, not even close, not even close. And that's like, I started on unraveling it at that point, just putting it all behind me. And, uh, and, uh, the amazing work that you can do with small amounts of money in so many parts of the world, or even here in the U S it's just amazing what a little bit done with care, you know, uh, micro, um, humanitarian micro charities where it's at. And if you just note in you're with the people, and you're talking to the people and day by day, you're with these people, you can identify with the needs are and efficiently help them to become healthy,
To advance their life, to feed their children, to grow a business. And I became addicted to that very, very quickly. Uh, how can I do more of that instead of buying the a hundred dollar bottle of wine at my stick dinner, you know, let's divert those funds to do something much, much better. You know, when people think about giving back, lots of times they think that that means they have to have a lot of money, right? They have to have this big fund set aside. So I I'll do it, you know, in a couple of years when I started to have this nest egg and other points, and you talked about just finding these causes, even though micro causes, how did, what was the first thing that stood out to you in terms of identifying the causes that were really hugely
Impactful to you, and you want to make a difference on, yeah, it was children's surgeries and that's what I'm mostly addicted to, because it's hard to find things that are pure, like a hundred percent pure that someone's not going to monkey with. There's not some agenda, there's not some huge overhead or issue with what you're doing or it's political or something. I've found that that children who have done nothing wrong, they cannot help themselves. And then you do a life changing surgery that one day they go into the surgery and the next day they come out and their entire future has changed. I became addicted to that, and it was actually a, an eyesight of cataract surgery. That was my very, very first one. I was just being a lazy tourist, a bump, like drinking, hanging out on the beach. And, and, uh, I heard about this girl who needed about a $180 surgery, so she could see, you know, and I just thrown that amount of oil on lunch and a couple of parties the night before.
And I'm like, you know, I'm slow, I'm very slow to figure this stuff out, but eventually I figure it out. And I'm like, that is what I want to do. And we did it and now she sees, and, and then it started spiraling. I started building infrastructure and all the lessons I've learned here in business, in the United States about scaling, about growing about trusted advisors, about handling money, about trust. I don't, I spend a lot of my own money on this, but really it's key. I do a lot of crowdsourcing. I throw up a new case that we find, I throw it up on social media. I'm like, you know, who wants to get in on this with me? Cause most people do. Most people are like, that's really cool. I want to do that too. And so it's really just cooperative and everything I've learned in business translates so well into what we're doing now over there,
In terms of the scaling aspect of your business, what's been the best growth factor you've taken from your business and put it into this right here.
Hi, I'm a syndicator, you know, I didn't have any money to do these big apartment projects. Uh, so, so it was about convincing a few people to trust in me. And then once you get the ball rolling and you have a track record and you have trust built up and a reputation and a network, you lend that to much, much bigger projects. And that's what I'm working on now. And basically starting to syndicate larger and larger humanitarian projects in the Philippines. And this is the same people. It's literally the same people that I just made, you know, hundreds or millions of dollars for in the past few years. And they're there, same trust in me, the same reputation did they, if anyone else wants to participate, they'll be like, yeah. You know, I trust him with them. He's over there. He's spending his own money to make this stuff happen. So let's jump in there. So it's, it's all teams it's in its reputation and it's building those relationships of trust.
Yeah. And you're right, right. So, and I think that goes back to a lot of people's perception, Yvonne buying multi-families that you have to have this large bank roll ahead of you, but it's really just making sure that what you say is what you do, having the right terminology. When you talk to people that you can make sure that they understand that you're going to go out there and times are not going to be easy. There, there things are going to happen, but you're going to put in the work and make sure that you're there every step of the way to make it happen. And the cool thing about this is you talk about the cataract surgery. It's something apartment buildings may take a while to turn around, right? It's not like a flip where you can be in and out in a month. You may have two years, three years to see that see the after effect, but the surgery, you can, you could see how that changes so quickly. Right? So you get that immediate point when you had that first one happened, what was, what was the, the internal response? What was your first thought or your emotion from it?
I was addicted. I mean, there was nothing else to say, but that, and you know, when you're doing this kind of business, it's nice to have that external affirmation from everyone. Oh, well, you're a good guy. You're doing all this good stuff and on and on. And it feels good to hear that I liked that, but actually it's, for me, it's my own selfish reasons. Like it makes me happier and more excited than anything else that I'm doing. So I'm doing it for myself. So it's not as selfless and altruistic because it sounds, it's just, it's the coolest thing that I can do in my life. So that's why I'm doing it.
Yeah. I love that. And just the effect of, of person, right. Just imagine, I'm just thinking of my mind, like it, you, you, you vision the vision, right? That just to be able to see something, it gives you such a whole different perspective, right? Just like they say, a picture can create a thousand words. And so for someone to go from not seeing to have an at first sight, you can just imagine the visual, just all the things that must come to mind when someone has that effect. And it's just cool that you could, and it's, it's daunting, right? Because we think of everything on unmasked capacity. Like maybe that surgery here would be like 10,000 hours, but somewhere else, it's a hundred, $180 and you're able to go and just change them in the future. And I love that. What is the, the next steps, which the future with angel capitalist.
So I haven't even been released this yet. You know, you're the first one I'm, I'm really working, uh, to put out a game plan that everyone can watch. Everyone can see that soon. I'm going to move from, I'm asking for a hundred bucks, I'm asking you to match my 500 or a thousand dollars for this next surgical outreach. I'm going to start hunting whales similar to what we did in, uh, in, in multifamily investing. And by that, we're not going to go get a harpoon in a big boat. I'm going to talk, I'm talking more to build the relationship and the bridges with people who, who have huge amounts of money and don't know where to put it. Cause that's actually what we always face in the apartment world with investors. They have a lot of money. They want to deploy it all. They need to get it invested. They just don't know who they can trust. They don't know the right market cycles or whatever. I want to be one of the people that they trust that I've, that I publicly aired
What we're doing publicly shown that track record the portfolio, the resume of what we've done for humans and how tiny, tiny bits of money it can help so much. And I wanted to do that on a much larger scale form. I would like to say, Hey, give me your million. Who do you have? Where's your auntie? Is she, is she unwinding? Her life wants to put her money to good care. Now in good hands, fly over and meet with me, meet with my team. Let's really start scaling this up. Cause there's so many more people we can help. There's there's, there's never going to be enough. And I'm just going to try and do my best with them. If there's a person listening to it, doesn't have the track record, right. It hasn't done a project hasn't hasn't had the impact, uh, but they love this and they want to get involved.
They're just not sure how to get started with what are some suggestions for someone to, to build character, build trust as they continue to grow in what they want to do. You know, I think a lot of us hate social media because of all of the woes that it brings to us, but just sort of putting your profiles on public and being transparent about your failures, showing all the terrible days that you have just showing when there's a success, really enjoy it with everybody. It just, I've had to be a lot more transparent. It's caused me a lot of problems. I'll tell you it's caused a lot of stressful days and nights and just attacks and weird threats and stuff. But the goal is worth it. Whether you're building that business or trying to do something great on like the humanitarian charity side, you will have that trust.
And no matter what I throw on social media, it always gets funded now. And it's, it's people give me 20 bucks, you know, like here's 20, but it gets funded because we built that in. And I think that that's been, been key is being transparent. And also just like you said, do what you say you're going to do except the plan and do it. Yeah. And it it's, it's funny. Cause social media, you do, you have to get out there and talk about what you want to do. It's just the idea of having a resume. Right. And showing people, your resumes as long gone, and the future of it is going to be that someone just going to Google you and just see what you're doing. Cause that's an easier fix. And we always look for the easy, right. And there's a lot of people out there that, that use that to, to attack people just because maybe they're dealing with their own, whatever right behind, behind the curtain where it just it's, it's so easy to type something.
But if I, you know, if I'm sitting there face to face with you, I would never say that. Right know, like right there, funny, but in effect is so easy. If you just say, Hey listen, you know, I'm so sorry. You feel that when you get back to them, it's crazy. But it's the world that we've all grown into is going to continue to be that way. And what's cool is that you can create and track what you're doing for your legacy. You know, you can go and show no other family, other, other friends, you know, 30 years from now, you know, this is what we were doing at this point in this hour, you're using this impact and it, and like it creates our own, like, I, I will say like history books, right. In a weird way. It's like, it's becoming like the new history book, like using social media is. And so it's almost, it's almost like it's almost hurting you if you don't put your stuff up because it gives the rest of your family for generations, the ability to see where it was. Cause the pictures we don't take, we don't like relish. Those pictures are on the phone. And then that people's phones get erased. You don't have pictures where like you find
Them in the attic anymore and say, Hey, here's the, all my grandma from like 60 years ago, here's this picture. And it just, it's amazing how it continues to transform and how those steps go forward. As you, as you look into your next steps and you've gone over to the Philippines and talk to us about what you're doing as a DJ is just as something that you just love. Don't, you've always had a passion for
Rock band since I was 13 or whatever. And then rock kind of died. I don't know, 10 years, I don't know where it is. It's hiding someday somewhere. I'm a rocket, I'm a drummer and a guitarist, but you know, I want, I love music. I wanted to participate. And before when I was in business, I always felt guilty. I always felt guilty to like take an hour and like strum on my guitar or whatever. And now it's also that I have that twinge of guilt. Sometimes I'll be like trying to remix something and I just like invested three hours in it. And it's like, wow, the, the best use of my time. But at the end of the day, we're here to be happy. We're here to pursue our interests and our talents. And it's something I'm passionate about. So I try to do it all. I try to do it both or everything
Going forward. How do you identify the best use of your time? I think we all feel that we're, we're overwhelmed with these, these tasks and maybe have a hard time identifying what's important for me to do right now.
Yeah. I have, I guess, two answers to that sort of the, the logical side of me. I was just listening to Elon Musk on a podcast the other day. And, uh, he, he left, he wanted to build his own house. He wanted to like design it and he says, he's an OCD guy. I think that's pretty obvious. And he was going to like map out every detail of it. And he's like, I could spend a few years doing that or it could get our assets to Mars. You know, she's like, I should probably focus on going to Mars. Right. So, um, you know, me, I guess that's sort of the same thing. I, I need to put a lot of priority on, on helping people's lives, changing, changing their life, their future, giving them an opportunity of health, of wellbeing, of an economic opportunity to feed their family.
But on the flip side of that, I think that we can work ourselves to death into the dirt and never take a moment to enjoy our life. And I think we're here to be happy. I think that's the number one thing. So if you put a priority on being happy yourself, personally, I think that good things will fall into place where you're actually happy just helping people are growing your business or being an advocate for better change. So I would say, how do you allocate your time and doing those things that make you happy is probably the other answer.
Yeah. I love that heard the same podcast on Joe Rogan and it was, it struck me too. It was the same thing. It was like, yeah, I was going to buy it, you know, build this like a Ironman house or Ironman house, or I guess the Mars kind of think the Mars thing might be more important on these projects, you know, but that's, that's funny and it gives it an even on the highest scale, it still makes sense for your life, right. And what you can do on your level, wherever you are in your life, that you get to put those in place. And so I've absolutely enjoyed this. This has been awesome. Super appreciate what you're doing. I'm going to definitely continue follow up and see what you're doing
More and just be involved and for others, uh, angel capitalist.com, where else is the best way for them to connect with you? I'm very much active on Facebook. So they'll we'll Crozier. Uh, angel capitalist has got a page there. Angel capitalist.com. Cap ex ventures is my other business. That's more multifamily centric. So you can reach me there too. But any one of those will get to me happy to talk to anyone who is interested in the same things. Yeah. Business real estate growth. Love it. Well, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time.
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