Highest and Best Use with Whitney Elkins-Hutten

george grombacher 0:02
Life with this George G. And the time is right. welcome today’s guest strong, a powerful Whitney health consultant. Whitney, are you ready to do this?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 0:08
Yeah, let’s do it.

george grombacher 0:10
All right, let’s go, where he is a real estate investor, consultant and mentor. She’s helping busy professionals transform their lives through passive real estate investing, as the director of investor education with passive investing.com. Whitney excited to have you on tell us a little about your personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 0:32
Yeah, so as you mentioned, I’m the director of Investor Education here at passive investing.com. But that’s not where I started out, I didn’t go to school for real estate, I actually studied public health. I have my master’s in public health and a PhD in community health and nutrition. And anyways, when we, when we talked about why I do what I do is I firmly believe the lack of financial capability is a public health issue. And what do I mean by that it’s not just financial literacy, it’s being able to take action upon that literacy. And so you know, anybody can pick up a book and read about all the how money works, and how they can use money to build their wealth and investments. But it’s actually putting that into action and finding sound investments, right? Like I not not uncorrelated to the stock, market stocks, bonds and mutual fund things that you can actually control that are hard assets, like real estate, like businesses, to take charge of your financial future and to grow your wealth. And there’s a myriad of other reasons why you’d want to do that to for cashflow, appreciation, tax benefits, tax diversification, but anyways, when you’re talking about why I do what I do is because I, you know, my background is in public health, and I’m really trying to, there’s a myriad of ways that we can solve, you know, people’s, you know, the fundamental crises in the world. And one of them is like, what if everybody had access to, to fund their lives, the way that they wanted to fund them had freedom like that is why how much better of a world we live in. And so you know, that’s why I do what I do here at passive investing.com is to help people untangle the 20 years of ups and downs and obstacles and trials that I’ve been to been through as a real estate investor, and you know, access those investments, you know, stand on the shoulders of giants, if you will access those investments and build wealth for themselves.

george grombacher 2:30
I love it. And I think that that is a really, really important thing. And really, really, really challenging. Just like just like nutrition, financial, financial literacy and financial wellness, nutrition literacy and actual wellness. There’s a big gap that exists between those two things. And the trick, and success is helping people to actually close that gap.

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 2:56
Yeah, I mean, I think I studied Latin for eight years. And you know, a lot of people under know the quote, scan that scan Thea Oct. S, which is knowledge is power. And that’s actually not true. Knowledge is potential power. It’s what we do with that knowledge. So

george grombacher 3:13
eight years of Latin. Yeah, I

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 3:15
was a glutton for punishment. Remember, I was going into medical school. So I’m also I didn’t have any desire as a high school student to take conversational Spanish. I was a little embarrassed getting up and speaking in front of me. So last changed in the past few years. I’m not going to say how many? Yeah,

george grombacher 3:32
fair enough. Fair enough. So the actual Latin version of knowledge is power is what?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 3:40
You Anthea, October this is and it’s, it’s hard to say if that’s the exact pronunciation because Latin is not a conversational language. So

george grombacher 3:52
sort of like that. Anyway. Exactly. Close. All right. So you worked on closing that behavior gap when it comes to nutrition, and now helping people and I totally agree. Will, having financial freedom and financial peace of mind solve a lot of the problems that we’re facing? Who knows? But I’d like to try. So I think that the work that you’re doing is very much aligned with what I’m interested in doing. How do we get people to take and apply knowledge? How do we get them to take and apply literacy?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 4:24
Well, part of it is actually that internal exploration, right, you know, having people understand what you know, if we’re talking about it from a, helping somebody invest into an asset like multifamily self storage, express car washes, you know, some of the first questions I ask are, what are your goals? What are your timeline? What’s your risk tolerance, but really what this underlying questions are trying to get at and this is something that anybody here can take and apply to their life, whether it’s in real estate and investing or something else. It’s what do you want? Why do you want it? And who do you have to become to get it? And whenever you ask that question, Who do you have to become to get it? It’s fundamentally addressing what skills do you need? Or excuse me, actually, first, what kind of mindset? Do you need to have the world working for you or against you? You know, do you believe that there’s scarcity or abundance, right? Being very important in today’s society, divided society right now? And then what skills do you need to have? Do you have to have those skills? Or can you hire out those skills and bring them into your world? And then what kind of networks do you have to have? And those are the same questions that I help our investors, you know, apply, you know, in kind of a more micro environment, when they look at their portfolios is, you know, what do you want? Do you need cash flow, equity, tax benefits, diversification? Like why? What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to achieve financial independence? Location, independence, choice, independence, choice, freedom, or impact? Freedom, right? What are you trying to achieve here? And then, you know, who do you have to become to get it? Like, do you have to kind of reorient? You know, ditch the traditional merican narrative we’ve all grown up with? What skill do you need to put in place? Do you need to learn how to evaluate operators, markets deals? And then you know, what kind of networks do you need to have? Do you know, who are the best operators are in the space? And how can you tell if you’re working with somebody who’s reputable or not?

george grombacher 6:30
Powerful questions? What do you ask people? What do you want? Why do you want it? Who do you have to become to get that? Is that easier for people to answer? Is it really very?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 6:44
Well, you know, what do you want? Oftentimes, you knew somebody, it’s easier for somebody say, what they don’t want in life. Right? What are they in really, that’s generally an indication of kind of, like what they’re running from, or a pain in their life, right, so somebody who’s just now studying studying out on their financial freedom journey, they’re gonna be like, maybe I want to take my family on vacation, or I don’t want to work in a cubicle for 40 years, or I’m tired of traveling, you know, 80 hours a week, right? So they’ll tell you what they don’t want. But you, that’s fine. Because that pain is going to keep you unfortunately, motivated, more often than not, and going for what you truly want in life, right, the thorn in the side, that’s gonna get you to make changes in your life. But you really have to do orient to what you truly want. Otherwise, you’re going to, you know, any path will get you there. So, we need to understand what kind of business that you want. And this is how, when, especially when it pertains to real estate, if I asked many, what do you want, you know, they’ll be like, oh, I want cash flow coming in, I want net worth, I want these things, you know, pertaining to money. But then they might go after invest in the right, wrong asset. So it doesn’t meet their goals. Maybe they start flipping, they’re attracted to the dollar amount when they should, they don’t want to be that time active in their investment. So they really should be doing something more passive. And then you know, you know, digging into the other pieces, you know, really stems off of what do you want? So you have to really get extreme clarity there. But yeah, the answer your question more directly to people? Is that an easy question to answer? No. But I’ll tell you this, once you sit down and really think about this question, your want will probably change, especially after you hit different milestones on your journey, kind of kick the goalposts down the road, so to speak, milepost down the road, you’ll level up your goal, but your y rarely will change. Once you finally understand which of those freedoms in life you’re trying to achieve. And what you value in this that will very rarely change.

george grombacher 8:57
That makes a lot of sense. And I also am grateful and appreciative of doing that work upfront, and how you want to help people to go through that process of self exploration and knowing full well that more often than not people haven’t started that process, or at least a more formal process. We have passing ideas of what we do want, we probably know better what we don’t want. But what is that? How does that actually line up? And if you’re doing a good job, you want to be able to match people up with the appropriate opportunity based on the answer to lots of questions, not just, oh, I can make money flipping a house.

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 9:34
Yeah, otherwise you get somebody into the space that’s drawn by numbers, right. So is talking very specifically about situations that I deal with on a daily basis. I’ll talk to investors that have had held their own personal portfolios. So they’re their operator, they chose their market and so they’re very attuned to looking at numbers. Maybe it could be somebody that is then investing in stocks. Some bonds and mutual funds through the 401k. They’re very used to looking at numbers, but you can’t bring that same operational mindset into, or that orientation into passive investing. Because otherwise, you’ll just be looking at who has the prettiest numbers on the paper, right? You know, anybody can put those numbers on a pro forma. But how many of those teams can actually execute to achieve those returns? So that’s where you know, you really have to help people reorient to what’s real. In the space and what they were they should be truly focused on.

george grombacher 10:34
Yeah, well, I think that that’s certainly it makes sense. How many different? I mean, the term passive investing, that’s that’s a big term, there’s lots of different opportunities. There’s a question in there somewhere

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 10:51
in there somewhere? Well, so you know, who, I I’m happy to feel the nebulous questionnaire, right. So a lot of people are jumping into real estate, you know, in, they’re like, oh, it’s passively investing. But there’s a scale, there’s a sliding scale here. So if you’re buying, you know, if you just start flipping, let’s start there, you start flipping your own houses, that’s very active, okay, active income active with your time. But then a lot of people get into buy and hold real estate, and maybe they move out of their primary residence and turn that into a rental, or they just specifically go buy a rental property. And they’re like, Yes, I’m passively invested. I’m like, Are you like the IRS says, Yes, you are, the income you earn is passive, we’re going to treat it differently. But think about how your time is being spent, you’re probably searching for the, you know, the lender, the deal, the lending, you’re managing the manager, if there’s any rehab, that needs to happen on the property property, you’re handling all this decision, you’re deciding when it’s getting a reposition. But then, like I said, at the sliding scale, you can outsource more of those things, you know, or you can invest in somebody else’s business that already has those things going, they find the deal underwrite the deal. They know the market, they can acquire lending, they can perform the day to day operations on the deal. And those are the deals that I look into. And that’s what we do here at passive investing.com is really make it true passive income for in every sense of the word according to the IRS, but also for an investor’s time. So it’s really hands off.

george grombacher 12:29
I like it. And that’s something that again, maybe we haven’t thought that all the way through is this passive, am I investing my time, my attention, my energy, my money, because that’s really when you actually drill down and say, Okay, on a day to day, how much of these important resources of mine are going into the management of this passive investment.

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 12:51
I, I’m guilty of doing that myself, I, my husband, and I scaled over 30 single family units and, you know, had enough income to replace most all of my income, and most of his, but I just had another job is really all I did between, you know, sourcing the deals, performing the rehab, tenant placement, managing the manager, you know, even though I had property management, I was still very heavily involved in some of the management decisions. You know, heaven forbid, something happened on the property, and there was an insurance claim, the property manager didn’t handle that. I got to handle that. That was their gift to me. So, you know, you know, and there’s ways to deal with that. Right? But you have to understand are, is that what you’re in this for, to build your own business, some people are cut off for that, more power to them. Most people aren’t, they have a higher and better use in their day job, maybe they’re a lawyer or a doctor or an engineer, tech worker. And so they probably could put their energy into their day job earning that active income there, and then deploying it into a truly passive investment.

george grombacher 14:03
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. What an important thing to consider is what is the highest and best use of my resources, my time my attention, my money, my energy. And if it’s handling insurance claim, well, then by all means, do that, but might be just doing your doctor and or your attorney, attorney in or whatever it is that you’re doing. So being able to figure that out. How do I know if I’m ready to start investing in for lack of a better term and an alternative asset class aside from my 401k in the stock market?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 14:37
Well, if you’re invested in a 401k, and the stock market are ready, you’re ready to invest. Now, I think the deeper question is there. Do you believe in real estate, right? If you don’t believe in real estate as an investment class, then no this is not for you. Then I would most people truly under sand, the majority of the millionaires and billionaires in the United States and I daresay the world have a good chunk of their wealth and resources in real estate. So there’s a lot of power there. This isn’t just, you know, a new investment class that’s popped up in the past 100 years, I mean, real estate’s been around, you know, 1000s of yours. So nothing about this is new. But if you can check that box to say, Do I believe in real estate, perfect, now we’re ready to have a conversation. And then we get down to like, what, how do you want to use your time? What do you want? Why do you want it, and then it’s a matter of like, you know, under where you fall on that continuum, with how active you want to be with the investment. And those people, you know, they get lured in by the numbers. So they feel they’re trading that that, you know, some of their time to earn some of the dollars, they feel that that feels right, because that’s what we’ve all been conditioned to do. But the more somebody gets experienced in the game, they the light bulb kind of comes on, they’re like, oh, wait a second, I’m actually going to earn more, more than likely going into a well vetted, passive deal with an amazing operator, because that’s one, quote unquote, heavy lift up front, and then you know, can pay dividends on the back end.

george grombacher 16:19
Makes a lot of sense. Well, Whitney, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? And how can they engage with passive investing.com?

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 16:28
Yeah, absolutely. You can find me at passive investing with whitney.com. And that’s a one stop shop. I’ve got a free ebook there for everybody to download. And that goes through some of the ins and outs of what we discussed here today on how to get launched into a passive investment. And that is what you want to do. And then you can also get access to my calendar and we can talk all things real estate.

george grombacher 16:51
Love it. Well, if you enjoyed the switches, I did show Whitney your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to passive investing with Whitney whi T and ey.com. And pick up your copy of the ebook will go deeper into what we’ve been talking about today. And if it piques your interest, grab some Whitney’s time and answer these questions for yourself. Which are Whitney, if I could find it on my notes. What do you want? Why do you want it and who do you have to be to actually make that happen? So I love it. Thanks again, Whitney.

Whitney Elkins-Hutten 17:27
Thank you.

george grombacher 17:29
And until next time, remember, do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai