The Silicon Review
In recent years, modern technology has empowered the real estate industry, offering advantages through efficient and convenient tools like online listing websites, virtual tours, and e-signatures on sale documents. In other words, technology has started to figure out the services side of the real estate business by providing more efficient solutions for property owners.
In light of the preceding, we’re pleased to present Real Estate IQ — a company that offers a suite of lead generation, analytics, and automation tools for real estate investors. The company’s advanced technology—big data and intelligence augmentation—helps new and experienced investors succeed and grow their real estate business.
Real Estate IQ was incorporated in 2013 and is headquartered in Dallas, Texas.
Steve Liang and Juan Carlos Cruz, Real Estate IQ CEO and COO respectively, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.
Making an Impressive Impact
Real estate is an extremely lucrative industry; around 90 percent of the world’s millionaires create their wealth through this industry.
Real Estate IQ, a technology and data company, focuses on serving the real estate investment community. By offering a unique solution that creates deal flow for real estate professionals, the company has built successful entrepreneurs who are doing well in business and working for the community for its greater good.
“Many real estate professionals struggle with lacking up-to-date information to find, analyze, and win deals. This is where we come into play.” — Steve Liang
From a tender age, Steve Liang had understood the tremendous wealth generation power in real estate. Besides growing up in the dotcom era, he was always fascinated by new technology and how it can significantly improve life quality. Indeed, there are many inefficiencies in the real estate industry, and technology can be the answer to bridge those inefficiencies.
“My great grandfather became a top 20 wealthiest man in his city in China through real estate investing.” — Steve Liang
Shaping the Right Talent
The popular notion that capital is essential in building a successful company does not make much sense without hiring the right talent. The abundance of capital alone does not guarantee success; in other words. Besides, having the right culture is critical.
“We have built a great people funnel to bring in the best talent and have put together a robust structure with goals, incentives, and a strong purpose for each individual in the organization. In addition to this, we take our culture seriously; we hire based on our core values.” — Juan Carlos Cruz
Logically, synergy in work, life, and everything that employees do make a significant impact on a company's performance. Besides, this framework allows everyone to work hard and find joy in work.
“We have been investing in the training and development of our key employees and high potentials, so they can continue to grow and find success within our company. Moreover, we provide them with a positive environment to improve work-life balance.” — Juan Carlos Cruz
Braving the Storm, Head-on
With the uncertainty of how the economy would behave, Steve Liang had to make a quick and painful decision to reduce 30 percent of its payroll when COVID-19 hit early this year.
“We shared this news with our employees and asked everyone which outcome they preferred: we could either let go of 30 percent of the workforce, or we could all take a 30 percent pay cut and weather the storm together. Thankfully, everyone decided to weather the storm together.” — Steve Liang
As a result of this decision, the Real Estate IQ team confronted the crisis with courage while pushing the company forward.
“This experience united us, and everyone gave their 200 percent to address what was blocking us. Subsequently, we experienced record sales; 56 percent of the growth on the third-quarter revenue.” — Steve Liang
Fine-Tuning Entrepreneurship Education
Following many successful entrepreneurs who have made it big, Steve Liang leaves no stone unturned in taking the company forward.
“Jack Welch, GE CEO, wrote a couple of books, and I read them during the initial stages of my career. The lessons I learned from the books shaped my entrepreneurial spirit.” — Steve Liang
“I also look up to Elon Musk and Richard Branson. They are advancing us to the space age, and I would love to catch up with them and compete with them. We need to have a lot of competition for an efficient market and keep driving the cause to go into space; I think that is our future.” — Steve Liang
“We have built a great people funnel to bring in the best talent and have put together a robust structure with goals, incentives, and a strong purpose for each individual in the organization.” — Juan Carlos Cruz
The Leaders at the Helm of Real Estate IQ
Steve Liang: Steve Liang, Co-founder, serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Real Estate IQ. He is a renowned Spiritual Capitalist who believes in doing well in business while doing good for humanity.
Recognized in 2020 as one of the ‘30 Best CEOs of the Year’, Steve is a national speaker on PropTech and Spiritual Capitalism. His life’s work is to challenge and empower the next generation of entrepreneurs to take massive action and positively impact the world.
A voracious reader, Steve enjoys creating and experimenting with combining unconventional ideas inspired by business, government, philosophy, history, religion, psychology, and physics. In his family time, Steve enjoys traveling with his family to experience different cultures through food.
Juan Carlos Cruz: Juan Carlos Cruz, Co-founder, serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Real Estate IQ. An authority in computer science, Juan Carlos is known for his extensive expertise in harnessing the power of innovations in technology and investment tools. He embodies a visionary and successful entrepreneur. His initiatives revolutionized new and innovative processes that have improved residential investments. He developed and introduced software that produces technological advances, big data, intelligence augmentation, and predictive analytics into the real estate investing industry. As his colleagues fondly call him, JC enjoys engaging with his constituents and spending time with his family despite his busy schedule. JC is an inspirational leader in the real estate industry, integrating the Real Estate IQ's vision: "Empower your journey to freedom and success.”