430. Everyone Has a Plan Until a Bus Falls Through Your Ceiling

Nikki Miller:

Hey, everyone. And welcome back to The ONE Thing podcast. I'm Nikki Miller.

Chris Dixon:

And I'm Chris Dixon.

Nikki Miller:

And today we are meeting Whitney Elkins Hutten, who is the Director of Investor Education at passiveinvesting.com, the coauthor of the international number one bestseller Resilient Women in Life and Business, host of the Passive Investing Made Simple and Multifamily Investor Nation YouTube shows and podcast, and a partner in an 800 million plus real estate portfolio, including over 6,500 residential units, 15 express car washes, and more than 2,200 self-storage units across 11 states, and an experienced flipper of over $5 million in residential real estate.

Chris, this was such a cool example of The ONE Thing in real time, like real life action. I loved this conversation.

Chris Dixon:

Yeah. And all of those accolades, all be it very extensive. You forgot one that's very important. She, at one point, owned a home with a bus stuck sticking out of the top of it. So that's been interesting. But I agree with you, I think she really did have like a great way of connecting her investment strategy to simple tools. And also, it aligns perfectly with what we believe in The ONE Thing philosophy.

Nikki Miller:

Absolutely. And she was talking to us about her book money for tomorrow, which is really simplified step by step guide to not only growing your wealth, but also passing that wealth on and maximizing the wealth that you have. And I thought her strategy around this was really simple, really actionable. And I can't wait for everyone to get to listen to this.

Chris Dixon:

Yeah. No matter where you are, if you're just getting a little spark of interest in investing and setting yourself up for success in the future, or you're well down that path, there's a lot you can take away from this conversation.

Nikki Miller:

All right. Let's go listen to Whitney.

Hey everyone. And welcome back to The ONE Thing podcast. I'm so excited to have Whitney Elkins Hutten here who I got the pleasure of beating at a recent in person goal setting retreat. She is a best-selling author. She's a speaker. She's an investor, a business owner, and she is here to talk to us about her story and her newest book coming out in February, Money for Tomorrow. Welcome Whitney.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Thank you so much for having me here. This is such a pleasure.

Nikki Miller:

Thank you for being here. We're so excited to get to share you with our audience because like I said, I already got the pleasure of hearing a lot about your story and I know some of what you're going to talk to us about today and this is just going to be such a gift for everyone. So tell those that haven't gotten to hear it, who didn't join us at the in person Goal Setting Retreat, tell us your story.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. Well, I'll start where I'm at today. Today, I am the owner of Ash Wealth which is an education company. We focus on teaching people how to become financially independent and capable through various types of investment, mostly backed by real estate. I'm also the Director of Investor Education at passiveinvesting.com. And so here I get to work with those investors carry them through, like, how do we design your plan all the way? Let's execute on some investments passively. We're going to -- if you have a higher and better use of your time in your job, you can certainly like put your money to use and do what you were meant to do that either lights you up or lights up the world.

Well, this is not where I started off my journey. I actually -- we could go way back, but actually just kind of going back to the beginning of my real estate journey. 2002, I bought my first house with a significant other, relationship fell apart about a month later, and I had everything under my name, the mortgage, utilities, everything. And it made things smooth as far as like who gets what on the house, but it also made it very difficult because I thought this is -- I already, for me, the financial crisis was already happening, and I thought I was going to get just completely bid.

So I stepped up with roommates and 11 months later, I sold the property. Learned several things on my own because remember YouTube didn't exist back then so I had to learn things out of a book. How to do plumbing? How to do drywall?

Nikki Miller:

Imagine that, Whitney.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Right? I'm beating myself here, but long story short, 11 months later, I sold the house because I thought surely this is going to sink me. How can a house be an investment? I was cultivated to invest in stocks bonds and mutual funds, stuff as much money as you possibly can into your retirement accounts, because that's the way we do it, especially here as Americans.

And anyways, 11 months later, sold the property, walked away with a $52,000 check. I'm sitting there filling out on my forms with the IRS, trying to figure out how much I have to pay in taxes because I was moving for my job.

It was a big goose egg, zero in taxes on this money. I'm like, huh. And then I was like, okay, I wonder how much this thing cost me to hold. And sure enough, I'd actually been making money every single month. And I'm like, wait a second, I just wiped out my entire housing bill. Made more than I was making in my day job that had me traveling almost 80 hours a week sometimes. And I don't have to pay any taxes on it. I'm like, what is this that I just stumbled on?

Nikki Miller:

Sign me up for this magic.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

I'll play that slot machine every day of the week. But long story short, I was completely bitten by the real estate bug, but also that set off some other, set me on a different path as far as like personal development. Like, how do I like -- I know nothing about real estate. How do I like figure all this out? How do I -- why on earth would I take my portfolio in my own hands? Like we're supposed to invest it with somebody else. That means I have to take personal accountability.

Anyways, over the course of several years, I did several things. I live in flipped in Halifax, several projects, take that equity, invested in 36 single family units. Continuing to flipping 10 properties a year on the side. Then eventually, I decided that, hey, we've got a little girl at home. I'm taking care of some family members. I need my time back, like really need my time back. So decided to go in on larger properties as a general partner, as well as divert a lot of our equity and cash flow into passive investments, like multifamily self-storage, express car washes and stuff like that.

And at the end of the day, my husband and I, we've scaled over 800 million of real estate in partnership. Thousands of units, and multifamily self-storage, express car washes, a myriad of other investments. But really what my passion is today is helping people understand that there is an avenue for you to take charge of your own wealth building. And you don't have to do it actively. You don't have to be an active landlord if you don't want to.

Nikki Miller:

Whitney, I love so much about your story, but the thing I would say, I love the most is that you explain it so eloquently to how you got to where you are today. And I think you do a great job of not missing any steps because so often we see someone like you. And if I'm early on in my journey and I don't even like know what a savings account is, I might look at you and say like, oh my gosh, I literally can't imagine bridging the gap between where I am and where I want to be in the future.

But you can really follow the small dominoes that you lined up in your entire story. Like you can really see how you sequentially grew. You didn't just start at being able to scale 800 million dollars of real estate, you sort of started house hacking before you even knew that you were house hacking by getting all those roommates, kind of out of necessity. So can you tell me a little bit about where that came from?

I always say that constraints are the mother of ingenuity. And I don't know if you did this naturally or if you knew you were doing it, but tell me that part about your story, because I think it's a really, really beautiful sort of escalation and evolution in your story.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Well, I'm not one that ever took the word no to actually mean no. It always meant for me, not now. And then two, just in my household, resiliency was huge. Like we were -- my parents always taught me how can, if you get knocked down, how do you get back up? Like always get back up. This is not going to be the thing that knocks you down, right? Like there's a lesson to be learned here.

And so I really, for lack of better words and a better answer, it was just kind of how I was -- what was instilled in me like as I grew up. Now, here's the thing is a lot of people were like, those values weren't taught to me. Like my parents didn't teach me that, or I didn't have parents, I grew up with another family member. Like this is just not how my family ran.

The thing is these things, resiliency can be trained. And even if somebody is naturally resilient, they're constantly reminding themselves, butting up against obstacles. And every single time they hit an obstacle, they have to make a choice. Is this obstacle conspiring against me or conspiring for me?

Like, am I supposed to take a lesson away from here? And so, it goes back to things that I always talk about, you have to cultivate the mindset. Just because some people might actually have it, it might be easier for them. But just because you're just like, man, I don't have that kind of mindset, don't write it off. That is something that can be cultivated and learned.

Chris Dixon:

Beyond the mindset, which makes perfect sense, you know how we approach goal setting. We ask people to gain some clarity first to zoom out into the future. Like, what do you really want? What are your values and let that inform how you begin to work, take action. Do you approach it the same way as people are getting clarity about their wealth journey and how do you get them to move from maybe a place where they haven't taken any action to directionally knowing where they want to go?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so it starts with the question, what do you want?

Right. And so I'm a big fan of The ONE Thing, right. We were -- Jane and I were like laughing about it on stage. Like I bought -- I was probably like the second person in line to buy the book. I was like, this thing just resonates with me. My husband and I just went through the process together ourselves. Again, this is like going to be our seventh year, eighth year doing this.

So I love the process The ONE Thing lays out. Of course, guys, go get the book, lay it out there. But if you're looking for an abridged version, you have to understand what do you want, and really sit down and answer that question. Most people when they say what do they want, they're probably running away from something. Like I went out of my job. Like I wanted to not have all these bills hanging over my head.

But I really encourage people to sit down with it, kind of like what the one thing says, think out to someday, think out into the future because that's going to be your north star. It's going to be your guiding light. There is going to be that -- that pain will keep you motivated on a day-to-day basis to continue to take action but really getting clear of what you might be painting out in the future. It’s what's going to keep you aligned with your decisions that you're making.

Now, here's the thing for somebody who's never flexed that muscle before, that what do you want, they might only be able to see like one year or two or three years into the future, but asking them to go 5, 10, 15, 20 is going to be like deer in headlights. Start with where you're at because as you prove the model to yourself, as you start experiencing success in this type of thinking, you'll be able to project out further, right? You'll be able to establish some other things.

How many times do you talk to somebody, Nikki and Chris, and they'd be like, you ask them whatever they want and you're like, do you want to travel the world or like set up a foundation and be like, oh, who am I to do that? Right? If you come back to them like three or four years later, they might have a totally different answer for you because they've started flexing that muscle.

Nikki Miller:

I'm so glad that you said that Whitney because I think this is a really important point and I would guess that you didn't start with the day that you sold the house or right before that when you were struggling financially to yes, someday in the future, I'm going to be the type of person who manages 800 million worth of real estate. I don't think that that was the future you saw for yourself at that point.

So can you walk us through some of the stages that you sort of leveled up? Because I think sometimes people say, well, if I can't see that far, maybe it's not in the cards for me. And I'll tell them, no, it's certainly not a natural evolution. You keep seeing a little bit further as you climb that mountain.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. So initially, whenever I bought that first house, I had no intentions on ever investing or accumulating a portfolio. It was just what I thought was a natural evolution in my American dream, right? Go to school, get a job, get married, have kids, buy a house, right? Maybe buy a house and have kids, right? Like we're going to put the traditional narrative steps in order.

So I didn't really see that, but after I got through that experience of that first property, I'm like, huh, this is kind of cool. I wonder if I could do it again or if it was a fluke. Now, the second time actually did not go nearly as well. Well, let's just sum up the story that it ended with a bus falling into the roof of the property, me not getting sued and breaking barely even on the property after it came on the market for over 12 months. So anyway,

Chris Dixon:

Wow.

Nikki Miller:

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Go backwards. A bus?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yes, a bus. Yeah.

Nikki Miller:

How does a bus fall through the roof of a property?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. So the property was built into the side of a hill and my neighbor above me had a tenant living in a school bus that was parked on top of the retaining wall behind my house. And when the retaining wall -- my retaining wall was doing okay. It was cracked a little bit, but when the buyer who wanted to buy the property, wanted a whole new retaining wall put in, my realtor was amazing and just said, if I brought 6$,000 to closing, everything would be taken care of, all the other expenses fell on the buyer.

Well, this retaining wall, by the time it was all said and done, inflated up to like $28,000 to $30,000. I, still to this day, have no idea who paid for the retaining wall. I only brought $6,000 to closing, right? But anyways, this supposedly bond proof retaining wall that all the city inspectors, everybody's signed off on, can't collapse, can withstand the weight of the bus, should my neighbor who's so inclined, move her tenant back into place on the property. Less than 24 hours -- 72 hours of it being completed, 24 hours after the property actually closing, it tumbled into the roof of the property. Unfortunately, the tenant in it, everybody was okay. Everybody was fine.

Nikki Miller:

This is the stuff that you can't make up in real estate investing. And you still broke even. They're pretty amazing.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Well, apparently. And that's taken into account, all the tax savings and everything like that. But, long story short, even then, I was together with my husband and he was like oh, that is so wonderful that you're out from under that property. Let's look forward to the future. And I'm like, I think I got this real estate thing figured out. He was like, on what planet do you think you have this figured out? I'm like, well, I had a lot of obstacles here, lessons and learnings that I can take into the new property. I think I got it figured out. Let's do another project. Let's see if we can, maybe not in the mountains, but maybe like closer in town with no, like –

Nikki Miller:

No buses inside.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

No buses behind the property, no terrain features, away from all waterways. Like maybe we can figure this out. So as far as like incremental steps, I think it was, one, that mindset. Like even if you butt up against an obstacle, what can I learn that I can take into the next situation? Two, for me, it took me 10 years, guys.

This is what -- we always talk about when you see an iceberg, there's just like, what, 10 or 20 percent of it above water. The rest is underwater. It took me 10 years to transition from living flipping to house hacking to actually buying my first rental. But when I did that, when I understood how to buy the first rental and I proved myself, the tenants actually do pay rent and I actually do get to put money in my pocket. Can I do this again? You need to take another step. And then I'm like, can I do it 10 more times? What if I bought a multifamily, like a duplex or a quadplex? Did I, well, everybody there. Okay, great. They'll do that. What if I go buy a small, like 52 unit building with some partners? Oh, that works too. Right.

So it's just those incremental steps that you start to like layer on top of each other. And one thing that I really like Brandon Turner put out a post, this is years ago when he was still at Bigger Pockets and he called it the doubling effect. Like if you buy one house one year, two houses are a duplex the next year. The next year, four unit, and then an eight unit. And then in four years, you're up to 32 unit and you keep holding onto all these properties. Now, you had a 32-unit building. I think you have over 80 units by the time you add it all up in just four years, but you started off with just that one little step.

Like The ONE Thing says, what is that domino that if you lined up and just push it over, could push over a domino more than like what, one and a half or twice its size. Right. So it's just the little step. Like, what is the smallest thing that you can do that if you did that, that you'd proved yourself, I can do something bigger.

Chris Dixon:

I’ll bring you on the podcast more often. You're ready to facilitate for us. What is something that is in your experience, in your teachings, now that you're, fast forward to today, and you've got a bunch of experience in your belt helping people move along, what do you see is a common, we call it lead domino or smaller domino that somebody could take, it's listening, that's like, all right, I'm in, I want to set up for the double hockey stick experience. Like where do they go first in your experience to knock a domino over what's common?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. So if you're talking about just actually investing in real estate, maybe you're doing it actively, you want to scale your own portfolio, find that first property and that first single family home, even if you broke even or made out just a little bit ahead on cashflow, if you're in a solid area, risk mitigated as much as possible. You're going to learn so much more from that one transaction than you would if you never got started.

Same thing if you were investing in a passive deal, you're going to learn so much more by placing $25,000 or $50,000 into one passive investment than you would if you never got started, right? Because you're going to, one, start trusting yourself. Two, start trusting other people and trusting the process. For some people, they're just starting out on how do I organize my finances to be able to do all those things? And that's what I teach in Money for Tomorrow.

What would it have been that education that we all should have got in high school that taught us how to win the wealth game? Well, let's back it up. Let's learn the objective of winning the wealth game. Let's learn all those fundamental strategies, those four fundamental strategies. And then let's talk about all the different tactics that you, in principles, you need to learn in order to actually win the game. So I equate this to like, if you ever Played Monopoly or my family's really big on Catan and Seven Wonders.

Chris Dixon:

I love that game.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. We always won.

Chris Dixon:

Catan.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Catan. I don't know. Like Chris, you remember the first time you played Catan? Did you get it? Did you understand how to win the game?

Chris Dixon:

It took me a little while and I completely got my butt kicked, I think by all of my friends who are far more experienced.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Right. Yeah. You might have gone –

Chris Dixon:

They took all my weed.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Right, that darn robber, right? Well, so here, that's a perfect example. You probably academically understood, okay, great, I have to get to 10 victory points in order to win the game. Okay, anybody here? You just, in the game, you have to get to 10 victory points, you win, right? How you get there is entirely different, right? There's like four main strategies in the game in order to get to 10 victory points, okay?

Even if you understand that, there's still all these tactics that you have to, in principles, you have to master in there to execute on the strategy, to execute on the objective. And so, Nikki, I deviated from your question just a little bit. What is like kind of the lead domino in this situation? It's putting yourself in an environment where you can learn the objective, the strategy and then the principles in order to win at finances. And that goes with finances. It goes real estate. It goes with passive investing. You have to put yourself in that environment to actually know what it is.

We can consume information all day long. We can consume all the podcasts, read all the articles, but we're actually in the environment where somebody has handed us a blueprint and we can shortcut our path, that's what's going to get you moving faster.

Nikki Miller:

Well, I think that's such an important call out, Whitney, because at the end of the day, you're right. We can know for knowing sake, which leads us to nowhere, or we can know for doing sake. And ultimately, we have to know for doing sake and then go out and actually do something about it. Because I think so many people, especially when it comes to things with money, because they're nervous about losing, they're nervous about doing it wrong or making the wrong decision or losing their money. And so they'll try to come up with the perfect plan and they might research their flip to death and never do it because they're trying to come up with the perfect way and know all the variables to which I'll often say, you quite simply can't.

Chris and I always say everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face, the Mike Tyson quote. But now, for you, like you're new to -- I'm going to make you a shirt, Whitney. That's everybody's got a plan until bus falls through the roof of their house. There are just things that you cannot plan for. And so it's ultimately like we find the best path forward by implementing that imperfect plan. And you are an amazing example of somebody who did that.

So when you're walking somebody through how to get started, I heard you said like purchase your first single family. And then you talked about four strategies that you have, the four fundamental strategies in Money for Tomorrow, will you share those? Like if I'm someone who wants to know, okay, I need to know the strategy so I can go execute them. Will you share the strategies and then maybe how I get out of my head and into action?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. So in knowing the strategy and then being able to execute the strategy are two different things. But when you're trying to build multigenerational wealth, you need to understand how to create money, keep money, right, grow money and then be able to pass it on. Now, how many people – okay. If I were in a room full of people, I'd have them raise their hand, but how many people go, okay, I'm going to earn as much as I can in my day job. And then I'm going to go invest. They go from step one strategy, the create. Okay. Maybe they don't do that well. Maybe they don't do that well. Okay. That's a question mark. And then they go right to executing on all these tactics for growing their wealth.

There's a whole continuum in here that they haven't mastered. So creating wealth, like we have to understand how to move our wealth from active income to residual income. How can we -- what do we trade our time for dollars for in either our job, our self-employment job, if you're a doctor or a lawyer or something like that, you own your own company, or if you have your own business, how can we take those chips off the table as quickly as possible and put them into a passive environment assets that are going to kick off income that require zero time from you.

Okay. Maybe you had to underwrite the deal, but other than that, they require zero time from you to maintain. That's why I love passive deals so much. Active real estate, like the fix and flipping and you being a single-family landlord, or even small multifamily landlord, you're kind of in that hybrid. Like you're creating money, a little bit is residual, but you're passive with your income, but you're not passive with your time. So we can master that piece all day long.

And there's other things in the book that help you understand how to align it with your happiness, how to align, how you create money with your values, how do we like -- I hate the word budget. I actually kill the word budget in the book, but how do we like actually create a money plan that will work for us and keep you motivated to move forward.

Then in the keep section, like we talk about the six different ways that your wealth is being eroded. It happens to everybody, but you get to limit that erosion as much as possible. So many people, especially in real estate, focus on the taxes. That is just one of the six ways that you can lose your wealth. Now, whether you went into real estate or not, you can execute on the other five.

And then, then we get into the growth stage. Okay, great, we figured out how to maximize our earning potential, whether it's active or passive or both, we understand how to keep our money, right, that gives us more money to reinvest into our plan. And then we can get to the part where we can actually invest based on principles, not headlines, not tactics. That's probably one of the number one tripping points that I see investors make is that they want to start growing the money. They're impatient. They want the next best stock bet or the next hottest market to invest in. Right. But that's not principles. It doesn't prove out over time. Tactics change. Okay. They change based on Congress passing new laws. They change based on the market.

And then we need to figure out how to pass that on. Like if we win the wealth game for ourselves and we fail to pass that on to the next generation, be it our personal heirs or if you're leaving your wealth to foundation, if we fail to pass that on, then all that work just kind of evaporates and goes away. And then the next generation's starting over.

So then I go through some tangible tactics, three step process on how to fundamentally pass that wealth on to where your heirs aren't going shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations. That's kind of like a well-known Chinese quote that people, families tend to lose their wealth inside three generations.

Chris Dixon:

You said something at the event that I thought was interesting when you talked about passive income. And stop me if this is something that makes more sense to talk about later. But you said there's passive income and then there's passive income. And I think maybe for somebody listening that there's a distinction there that's important when you think about what you may have in your mind is passive income.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. So you do a perfect point. What we do here at passiveinvesting.com, we help people invest in passive-passive income. Now, that's not a marketing term you're going to see anywhere in any of our offering memorandums or on our website. But what does that mean? Well, so how you earn your income can be deemed earned income or unearned income. Okay. We call that unearned income, passive income.

Here's the thing. You have a house, and you have a renter in it. That's considered unearned income. Okay. So he gets taxed differently. Now, if you're managing -- properly managing that house, you're getting all the calls, you're having -- well, for one, sourcing the deal, getting the lending on the deal, you're placing the tenant, you're managing everything about the tenant, you're doing all the repairs, and then when you go to sell, you're having to figure out how to sell, when to sell, all of that. That doesn't sound very passive with your time. Right. But you got passive income off of that from the IRS.

Okay. So that's fantastic. I call that kind of a leveraged approach, but how can we truly be passive? Not only with their income status with IRS, but also with their time. And that is, maybe you start scaling a large company, right? And you yourself, that company can run without you for a year or longer. That's passive income. Maybe you scale a real estate portfolio that’s sizable enough that you can hire a COO underneath you.

And again, you can step out, you can go travel the world. You can do whatever you're going to do. That's passive income. It doesn't require your time. Or in the case of what we help people do is invest in what we call group investing or syndicated investments to where you do your due diligence to make sure that investment, the operators sound, the market sound and the investments, the sound investment for your portfolio, but your hands off for the whole rest of the whole period. That's passive, passive-passive income.

Nikki Miller:

Whitney, when did you make this evolution? Cause I think this is a really important point. So many people, to your point, there's passive income that looks a whole lot like another job. And I see a lot of people in their wealth building journey get stuck here where we all signed up to get passive income. And then we look up and say, this feels a lot like more work for me, and this is not free.

And when did you make this distinction of, I'm working really hard for all of this passive income? I have to have -- imagine you had a moment there where you wanted to get to the next level, which is how do I create now passive-passive?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Well, I had a moment and then I made a wrong turn. But that's the thing, that's the beautiful thing about decisions is it's most important to make a decision and take action. Rarely can you -- is there not an opportunity for you to unwind that decision and make a different decision, right? Hopefully, that makes sense to people. So I'll illustrate it with a story.

We had 36 single family properties in our portfolio. We were doing about 10 flips a year. And I had a property, I had a couple of property managers. I had a construction manager. I had a team, but I was still managing the team. So yes, technically, I own the LLC. I was technically a business owner, but guys, I was self-employed. If I took a vacation, there was nobody else that was going to step into the role.

Well, my husband had a major mountain biking accident, broke his neck. A couple of weeks later, we found out that my mom had passed away. And so it was like, wham, wham. And I'm like, I was originally going to be out just like three or four weeks to take care of my husband. No big deal. My property manager can kind of keep things afloat. When my mom, we found out my mom passed away, I had a whole other can of worms to deal with her estate. It was in shambles.

And so I was like, I'm going to be out for months. And so I had to figure out really quickly how to level up my team to where I could step out and they could take over manning the process. Now, it worked, but it was out of necessity. So long story short, at the same time – well, when I come back from this experience, I'm like, okay, single family houses, I think I need to like level up into larger deals. I need to go in general partnership.

Okay. These 36, they're kind of annoying. Maybe I just get one big building. Well, how do I do that? So do I do it actively? Do I do it passively? Again, I fell in the same trap. I like, I'm going to take the bet on myself because surely going in partnership on a building, that's going to be easier than owning 36 by yourself. Not necessarily guys.

So I went into partnership. It was amazing experience. I learned so much from that experience. But at the end of the day, what I thought was going to be a nice leveling up, freeing up of my time ended up to be one of the -- put me right back in the same position where I was burning the candle at both ends and five times in the middle. And that's when I was like, okay, COVID hit. I was like, timeout. I need to be at largely passive holdings because I need my -- that was what was important to me. For me, I have a young child at home. She's not so young anymore. She's almost a teenager, but I need to be here. I need to be with her. I need to be focused on our own investments. And so really it was by trial by fire. That's how kind of I learned that process.

Nikki Miller:

And Whitney, now, you talked about earlier your passion is really helping other people understand their money, how to build wealth, how to grow this, how did that evolve? Because you went from, I'm sort of feeling like I've got this whole job and I'm imploding. And then you went to, I'm going to just sort of focus on figuring this out for myself. And then you expanded to now, I'm going to figure this out for other people. What was that evolution for you?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. So I did a podcast several years ago, actually one of my first podcast was Bigger Pockets. And then all of a sudden I had all these people reaching out to me and I was like, okay, I'm just -- and this is right about the time that I found the book, The ONE Thing, because I had a hard time saying no. I wanted to be so helpful with people. I was like, of course, I want you to have the same thing that I have. Like, there's plenty to go around. Let me teach you how to do it.

And that was a really hard lesson learned for me on how to one, scale the coaching practice and mentoring practice and keep my boundaries and keep my time. And that's where it didn't take me long. It took me about two and a half, three months to be like whoo. And now, I got myself a third job. I didn't sign up for this. And so, but I want to help people. How can I figure out a way that remained true to me and what my needs are to be able to leverage my time, but also at the same time, honor what people need and wishes to learn this, that there's tons of information out there, but there's the system, is not easily laid out for people.

And I know this because it took me years to figure out the system that I teach in Money for Tomorrow book. Okay. And so I was like, okay, how can I do this like interesting little dance, teach people the system, but at the same time, keep myself, like honor myself and my time barriers, my time boundaries and keep my oxygen mask on so I can serve others. And so for four or five years, I did a lot of like private practice, coaching, consulting. I still do. I still help people scale their portfolios.

But then I was like, okay, how can I help more people? It's not necessarily building a larger coaching practice or taking on more one-on-one clients. For me, it was like, okay, I could write a book that would help the most amount of people, but it was also something like a little breadcrumb I could leave for my family. Okay. Right. That's one of the things I talk about in Money for Tomorrow. One of the reasons why people fail and passing wealth on is they fail to pass on the knowledge.

And I was like, okay, if I'm going to create the most leveraged product I can, what does my daughter need to know in order to succeed? Because I guarantee, if I'm writing a book for my daughter, hundreds of thousands of other people need this book. Millions of people need this book. So that's kind of where I landed and like how those books came to fruition.

Chris Dixon:

As a coach of many people now I'm sure, did you ever have the experience that you, that I've experienced in coaching, that you naturally get better at things as you have to teach them. You have certain awarenesses you never would have had as you have had to teach them. And if that's true, what part of your game leveled up as you got to the opportunity to, to go deeper and, and learn how to show people the path?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Oh, I love that question. I firmly believe like as coaches, you attract what you need to work on in your life. And I know funny as that sounds, right, you figure you would attract the people that you need to help the most, but sometimes those people reflect back what you need to work on the most.

Chris Dixon:

A hundred percent.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

And like, so for me, that experience was going through COVID. I had a massive coaching practice. And then when COVID hit, everybody was like, there's no houses to buy. There's no lending. And for me, I'm like a go, go, go person. I'm a ready fire E type person. And so I really felt for my clients during this period, I was like, okay, hold on. We all just need to take a big breath. We need to practice patience. Okay. This is the long game, not the short game, right? Okay. I know you wanted to have this cashflow in a year and maybe what if the cashflow doesn't come to year two or year three, right? Like this is we're setting ourselves up for long-term wealth, not like to get out of our jobs tomorrow.

So I think for me, the biggest things that I like learned were patience really, truly, and embodying that this is a long-term game. Even though I have wanted to help people achieve their goals really as quickly as they were willing to work or they could invest capital, really at the end of the day, this is very much a long-term game when it comes to investing.

Nikki Miller:

Whitney, I think that's an important call out because so many people, I think when they start investing, don't really understand what they're signing up for in terms of the amount of time it takes, the length of time it takes in order to grow their wealth in a meaningful way. And I think a lot of people get discouraged because it doesn't happen what feels like fast because no one taught them the right way.

And you mentioned this at the Goal Setting Retreat, that this was really the long-term wealth strategy, growing wealth over time. How do you advise people there? Cause I have to imagine this comes up in coaching. Like I'm getting frustrated because it's not happening fast enough or I thought that by executing X many units, I'd be able to quit my job and be a multimillionaire. And we often look up and just say, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't happen overnight, even if it feels like it did for somebody else.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Well, and that goes back to the iceberg analogy, right? So if you go back and Google me, like I technically landed on the scene in I guess like 2017, 2018. Guys, I started investing 15 years beforehand in real estate. So there's a whole wealth of that journey. And that is technically not like not found online or like you have to dig to find it in another arena. So again, I think I've heard it called the 20-year overnight success, right?

And so I think maintaining that expectation, and that's one thing as a coach, I think it's our job to help our clients, the people we're coaching to not play small, but maintain their expectations that over time, if they take consistent and persistent action that they will get there, right. There are going to be obstacles. There's going to be bumps in the road. I mean, heck, anybody getting in, somebody started investing at the beginning in 2020, and you lived in Texas, let's just, or your assets were in Texas, you had COVID, you had the power grid go down, you had a couple of hurricanes happen, right. Like, and now you have like a recession possibly on your hands.

That person would probably be thinking investing is not for me, I'm going to get out of the game, saying doesn't work. Right. But no, it's taking a consistent and persistent action over time. That is what needs to result. And Chris, you said it best earlier, it's eventually hockey stick growth, right? You continue to knock down a domino just slightly bigger than the one that you knocked down before. It's compounding growth. It's not linear growth. That's compounding growth over time.

And so I think that that's something you have to take to heart. There's another book called the gap in the game. I think so many people, by Dan Sullivan, so many people are focused on what am I going to do that they failed to look back. They don't pause to say, if I look back over the last five years, how far have I come? Right. And you would amaze yourself when you started taking action. It feels like you're taking teeny tiny steps in the process, but they accumulate over time.

That's why I love the power of the Goal Setting Retreat, because you get to, there's a whole section of it where you get to look back. Like, what did I do this last year and how can I build upon that?

Chris Dixon:

So I think it's so important to have milestones, right? If you're looking really far in the future and seeing the gap and not recognizing the gain, it's discouraging. You just see where you are and the distance between where you want to be, some picture of what that is. Hopefully, it's specific, but if you don't have clarity on the shorter-term milestones, you've worked your way back to you, then you're not going to see those small increments and be able to make small changes and see small growth. You'll just continue to see this huge distance. And that's very discouraging.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Well, and you have to trust the process, right? I just went through this one myself. One of my someday goals, for health, I put down I want to climb the seven tallest peaks in the world. I'm like, do I want to really want to do that? I'm actually still trying to figure out, do I really want to do that or not? And I'm like, it sounds cool. So I'm going to put it on my paper. If that's what I want to do, like, how do I back this up? And I want to do it after my daughter graduates in seven years. So not exactly a 10-year plan, but how do I back this up to like year one?

And or even like today, like my year one for the school starts in 2024. But like, I'm like, hey, let's get a head start. I've got a couple more months left in 2023. Like my first step is literally recovering from my knee surgery. And for most of us, we think of that like as an obstacle, but for me, it's something that I -- a milestone I have to accomplish in order to achieve that larger goal. Next year, it's rerunning the high-altitude race that I ran this year. I ran 17 miles from URA to Telluride over a 13,000-foot path.

Chris Dixon:

Nice work.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

And no small feet guys, but it was beautiful, beautiful run. Loved every second of it, but I didn't really race it because my knee was hurting. I'm like, okay, next year I'm actually going to race it. Okay. Now, that's only going up over a 13,000-foot path. How am I going to do seven peaks in like one year? Right. I just have to trust the process. That little milestone, again, that's a -- I'm going to call it a little domino in the grand scheme of things. For some people, they might be like, Whitney, you're crazy. I need to like run a, do a mile walk around the block. But that for me, that's a small domino. And each year I get to build on top of it.

Nikki Miller:

It's a great point though, Whitney, because what you're saying is that everyone's domino is different. And whatever small is to you might not be small enough for someone else. It's where you are at in your journey. And now that you told me this, I'm totally going to recruit you to do the Everest Challenge with me next year.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

29029ers? Heck yeah. I'm down. Let's do it.

Nikki Miller:

All right. I'll send you the info. At the end of this podcast, Whitney, I wish we could keep you here all day because I want to pick your brain on even more tactics and I'm going to encourage everyone to go and get the book. But at the end of this podcast, we always ask what's the one thing, someone's listening to this and you can leave them with one piece of advice, one tactic, one tool, what's the one thing you would want them to take away?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Imperfect action. Take action even if it's scary or imperfect. When you get down to that one thing, just take action because you can always change the action you take or the outcome of that action.

Chris Dixo:

Well said. People want to check out the book or check out Passive Investing or your school, like where can they find you?

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Yeah. You can find a Passive Investing. You can register at passiveinvestingwithwhitney.com. I've got some free goodies there for everybody, ebook on Passive Investing Made Simple, you can get access to my calendar where we can talk all things passive real estate and some other educational materials. And if you're interested in more one-on-one help or in the book Money for Tomorrow, we'll put the link to the book in the show notes. And so that will probably be the easiest place. It's getbiggerpockets.co/Whitney. That will be available February 22nd. And you can also reach out to me on ashwealth.com if you're looking for more one-on-one help. And that’s A-S-Hwealth.com.

Chris Dixon:

All right.

Nikki Miller:

Thank you so much for being here with us today. This was awesome. We appreciate you so much.

Whitney Elkins Hutten:

Thank you. This has been amazing.

Chris Dixon:

Thanks, Whitney.

Outro:

Thanks for listening to The ONE Thing podcast. If you're a bold risk taker who wants to dream big and achieve a higher level of success in your life or business, visit the1thing.com. There, you'll find information on one-on-one coaching, our exclusive community membership program, and customized workshops that will help you get your team or organization aligned and rowing in the same direction.

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