Diversifying Your Passive Investing with Whitney Elkins-Hutton

Foreign.

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property For Panties on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host CEO of We Close Nodes, Scott Carson.

Hey Real estate investors, this is Scott Carson. I'm known across the country as the.

Note Guy and I've been an active.

Note investor focused primarily on the niche of non performing notes, distressed mortgage notes on residential commercial properties for almost 20 years now. My company is we close notes.com and I know there's a lot of different things when it comes to the note world. Are you buying performing notes? Are you buying owner finance notes? Are you buying institutional debt? Like I would focus on Are you buying first seconds contract for each There's a lot of questions and it can be very confusing about what you can or cannot do. So one of the great things that we've hosted for the last couple of years that we do on just about a regular monthly basis is we host our one day class called Note Weekend. If you go to noteweekend.com you can register for our free three and a half hour class. We'll talk to you and share with you how you find fun and flip non performing notes. And yes, you can buy non performing notes from banks, hedge funds and a variety of different hard money lenders out there for your own portfolio. No, you don't have to have millions of dollars to dive into the non performing note game. We've got students that have bought plenty of deals with 2530 grand getting their ball rolling using their self directed IRA who are tired of dealing with toilets, tennis trash desks, tired of battling contractors and GCs to get properties rehabbed. We all know the market is changing and while it may not be like 2008, 9 and 10 again, it we do see a lot of distressed debt out there on both the residential and the commercial side. So if you're thinking about diving into the note game, becoming a note investor, a lean lord as you'd like to say, versus the landlord. Or you just want to figure out what it is about the sexy side of real estate in the note space. Well, check it out. Noteweekend.com doesn't cost you anything. We host it live usually the first or second Saturday of each month. You can go today. Register at the website noteweeking.com Register for the next live class we host. You'll get sent A replay to the previous class so you can start learning about the note business today. No questions asked, no credit card needed. This is a great way for you to dip your toes in the water and see if it's warm because I guarantee going through art three one day class, you want to dive into the deep end and become a note investor. So check it out noteweekend.com you can also go to our website. We close notes.com. check out our podcast, check out our YouTube number one YouTube channel. We are here to help support you. Whether you're experienced investor or you're brand new investing Note weekend is a great place for you to get the ball rolling. People often say we cover more in our three hour class than most people cover in their three day class. So check it out. Love to have you be part of our note family but get signed up today@noteweekend.com thanks and have a great day.

Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure show. As always, Scott Carson jacked up to have you here today and will it be the new year. I thought we would start kind of things off with somebody who's making a big bam in the industry. Somebody who's done just about a billion B, $4 billion in roughly in real estate. This lady has done it all. She's got her hands in proverbial multiple real estate pies from single family to multifamily to car washes to assisted living. She is self storage. He's also done about oh 5 million in residential real estate flips. And somebody who's got a new book coming up by biggerpockets here in just a few weeks. And so who are we talking about? We're talking about the rock star, the host of the passive investing passiveinvesting.com. she's the director of investor education there. And then she's, like I said, just the book has a bestseller about resilient women in life and business. Just an amazing person. Who am I talking about? Well, if you don't know who Whitney Elkins hunting is, then you definitely want to take some notes and tune in today's episode. Whitney, we are honored to have you here on the Nutcluser show today. How you doing today?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. You're welcome. You've been a bit of a busy, busy year for you.

Oh, slightly, very slightly.

I know. Busy, not busy exactly. It's always good to be busy. And it's, it's funny, you know, we're but we both know you know Dan pretty well. I know Dan pretty well too, back Dan Hanford and stuff like that. But kind of can you, can you share with folks a little bit kind about how you got interested? I know you've done a lot of stuff yourself, but you're also part of multifamily investor nation and stuff like that going on there. But how did you kind of get started into what you're doing and talk about your journey a little bit there?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, thank you again for having me on. I am the director of Investor Education and PassiveInvesting.com. we focus on multifamily self storage and express car wash private equity. And then we also have our real estate debt fund. You know, our main thesis is helping investors invest for cash flow, equity growth, capital preservation, and then also balance tax benefits. I didn't start off, I don't have a degree, a business degree or you know, I didn't go to school for real estate. Matter of fact, I went to school for public health. But yeah, my real estate journey really started back in 2002 completely by accident. I, you know, bought a house with a significant other and about a month later the relationship fell apart and everything was under my name, the house, the utilities, everything. So, you know, I panicked slightly and stuffed it full of roommates. And also this house was in a dire need of a rehab. And long story short, I paid my friends in sushi, beer, pizza and got the Home Depot 123 book. Guys, YouTube did not exist back in 2002. There was no like googling videos at night. Like how do you like put together drywall? Like no, that didn't, that didn't exist. I had to learn everything from a book and put the house back together, sold it 11 months later. And then that's when it dawned on me. Not only did I get a healthy paycheck at the closing table, you know, as far as capital gains, but that's when I was like, oh wait, I haven't been paying for any of my housing expenses, you know, mortgage, utilities, nothing like that for 11 months. I'm like, oh, how many more of these projects could I possibly do? And so, you know, to take a very long story, you know, 22 year journey and compress it into about a minute and did several more of these, you know, live in flips and house hacks individually and then also with my husband. And then it dawned on us that we were good at building equity but really bad at building cash flow. And then one of our friends was like, well, why don't you rent out the property? We're like, oh, genius idea. So we, you know, started, started in Colorado buying single family homes, realized they didn't cash flow. It was going to take us forever to hit our financial numbers that we wanted to hit. So we started investing out of state and scaled 36 single family rentals, still doing several flips on the side to replenish our capital. But then we had our next ceiling of achievement. We had our baby girl at home and I was taking care of some family members at a distance and it just, and still working. We had to scale and go further faster. So that's when I forayed into multifamily real estate and then was general partner on several deals and then really realized what I wanted from real estate wasn't actually to be in real estate. What I wanted was the cash flow, the growth, the freedom that it gives you. So I wanted choice on how I spend my time and that's what I get to do today. I'm super excited. I've pretty much, I feel like I've done so many things in private equity real estate. But where I'm at today is helping investors understand what private equity investment is, how it can be a part of their portfolio and just really how it can really amplify their goals as, you know, whether they're in active real estate or totally passive, and how it can help them achieve those five freedoms in life.

Now I got to ask a question. There's 36 rentals that you had out of state. Where were they located?

Yeah, several of them, you know, probably like six or seven of them were in Indianapolis area and the other bulk of them were in Kansas City metro area.

Yeah, not bad. Yeah, fast evictions. 14 days in Indy if somebody's not paying, which is also really nice. And we like to invest those, those two areas for the debt side of things. But let's talk a little about private equity. When somebody's hearing that for the first time, you know, they may think it's one thing. What's your definition of that?

Yeah, so really what we're focused Here@ passiveinvesting.com is group investment. So we work largely with retail investors. So, you know, if you're listening to this, you have a job, you're probably like, you know, you know, could qualify as a retail investor. So we're not working with large REITs or insurance companies or institutional money. We're working with the everyday person who has a higher and better use for their time. You know, maybe they're a high tech income tech worker or doctor or a lawyer or business owner and they, they want to be invested in real estate, but they don't, don't have the time to do figure this all out on their own or even if they figured it out on their own, they're like, man, I, I don't have the time to scale. Like I got other things that I need to do. So they can still get all the advantages of real estate, but real estate by coming together and investing as a group to take down like, you know, right now we have an 82 million dollar project, multifamily project that we are raising capital for. So we're bringing hundreds of investors together in order to bring down this property or invest in this property.

You've been doing this for a while. Have you guys seen the market change a little bit with interest rates increasing and projects? I, I've started to see a lot of distressed. I'm not saying your guys stuff is, but you see people that really overpaid or didn't finance things properly back in the. I think that I want, I know there's opportunity that. And are you starting to see some of those opportunities come across your desk and stuff like that? Projects.

Yeah. So, you know, has the, the first part of the question, has the market changed? Absolutely. Right. Back in 2017. 18, you know, 16, 17 and 18, everybody looked like a genius. Money was cheap, you know, equity, you know, equity was, you know, easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel to take to capture on a property. You know, about 2019, that's whenever we started seeing, you know, I wouldn't say cracks, but the market's starting to sh. Right. You know that especially in multifamily real estate, the value started topping out. And so, you know, you could have a value add project, you know, much like a rehab project on single family property and a class A property that needed no rehab. They were going trading at almost the same cap rate. And so we saw an immense amount of cap rate compression there and then, and then, you know, we experienced a few bumps in there. One of them called Covid. And then, you know, when you inject that much money into the monetary system, you know, you have more money chasing the exact same amount of product and possibly even less product. So that's why inflation occurs. Like we see the, the cost go up. So we saw rampant appreciation on properties, which is fantastic. If you were able to sell or reposition your Property in late 2020, early 2021 and maybe into end of 20, 21. And then the tide started shifting. The said, okay, great, we're, we're coming out of the pandemic. We need to start pulling back some of these dollars out of the monetary system. Well, how do they do that? That one of the ways that they do that quantitative tightening now is through raising interest rates. And that's when you really started to see the cracks. Which of these operators during that exuberance had overpaid for property, over leveraged themselves? Maybe we're using adjustable rate loans, didn't put a rate cap on them. And so we really started to see a lot of cracks in this systems. And that's, you know, you know, what we've been struggling with for the better part of like a year. I remember sitting on a phone call, Paul slo with I'm gonna butcher his company name, Green Drake Advisors. I'm not endorsing him by any stretch of the imagination, but I remember I'm part of the mastermind group where he's in there. And it was right after the war with Ukraine broke out. And he did, he did this whole webinar on like, what does this war in, you know, Eastern Europe mean for us here in the United States? And I remember sitting here on this call and he was like, we're going to see rampant inflation. We're going to see interest rates rise like they've never before as quickly as they did in the 1970s. Guys, hang on for this ride. And I'm like, this guy's nuts. No way. And guess what, right? This is, you know, are we at 13, 14, 15 rates? No. But, you know, that trajectory was there, right? Like, we saw, you know, things go from, you know, essentially zero percent lending. Now it's 7% as your base rate. Like, holy cow, that's huge.

Yeah, it's definitely a big difference in taking a hit to your cash flow and pricing. It literally affects everything. And then, of course, repair costs, you know, goods, you know, cost of goods to go in and Regentrify project or rehab, it versus walking something that's, that's cash flowing. Definitely a big difference out there in a variety of things. We see that too on the debt side, you know, with a higher interest rate, it's not, it's. That's actually a little better for us. You know, on the mortgage investing side, low interest rates. We weren't buying a lot of those low interest rates because, you know, for us to buy and we had to buy them at a huge, huge discount. But it's definitely, you've Got to keep your eye in the markets and you got to, you got to really kind of stress test your deals before pulling the trigger on a lot of times too, right, Whitney?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I have a single short term midterm rental property and I'm actually, you know, probably six months late getting it listed and trying to get it sold. However, I'm, I stress tested my cash flow. I knew how far my rents on that property could drop and I still break even on the property. So, you know, the property is still viable. And you know, we actually have built in equity gains. A lot of things are working well for us, but a lot of people don't have that position, right? They, they couldn't afford to take a 30% haircut on their, their rents. They couldn't afford to, to have that amount of competition, entertainment, all at the same time. They can't weed through like some, you know, especially like with short term rentals, all the legal changes that are happening, you know, licensure, stuff like that. So we're seeing essentially, what is the quote? Like when the tide goes out, you figure out who's swimming naked, right? We're seeing a lot of, a lot of this happening, right? There's, there's a perfect storm that's converging. You got high interest rates, you got low cash flow, and then you have high, you know, inflation on top of that. And so asset prices aren't coming down like they should be. We're just now starting to kind of see the crack in that system. So, yeah, this is, you know, really a really challenging time for people. However, this is what in you, you know, being in the note business, this is why lenders underwrite cash reserves. This is why everybody should have ample reserves so they don't have to sell an asset during this time. They can hold, hold on to that asset and get to the other side of the situation.

Well, that's, that's the biggest thing is, you know, people don't often realize when it, and that's the thing is so many people, when the market's going up, everybody can make money. I mean, you could literally be a blind squirrel and get it right half the time. You know, when it's when things are going up, it's when that market changes in the downturn. It really separates those that have the systems, the stress tests, who've been around for a period of time to understand that, hey, just because it's, it's good now doesn't mean it's always going to be that way. You know, we see that in a lot of different areas. I remember being on calls with, you know, mortgage brokers and bankers. I'm like, listen, the things I'm seeing happen now took place back in 2007, 2008 and similar things. That things are going to change here. You need to be like, putting some money aside, socking some reserves aside, because when that market turns, there's going to be a whole lot of realtors, a whole lot of mortgage brokers that'll work. And sure enough, that's what happened. And you also had a lot of investors that, you know, like, oh my gosh, this isn't as easy as it makes it out to be. Like that YouTube video or those HGTV shows, shows thing to be. You know what I mean? I'm like, come on now.

Well, I mean, two things, two things really like stand out to me there. I know whenever I was, you know, in the middle of my fix and flipping days, I could have like four or five projects going in my name and in my husband's name. And, you know, the lender saw our reserves, we were able to demonstrate reserves. And here's the thing, I was the same pile of reserves for all of those properties, right? And so yes, I was able to, you know, check that box with the lender. But like, you know, if I had to tap into those reserves across all of those properties, like that would. I don't, you know, there were several times that I was like, I don't think I can do that now. I've taken a much more conservative approach. You know, set aside, you know, any project we do or sitting aside, you know, a year's worth of expenses, all of our insurance deductibles. And you know, again, you know, now I'm creating quote, unquote drag in my portfolio. But you know what, I get to sleep well at night also. Guess what? I have a war chest of money for times like these. Like, we could go buy assets right now. We could take advantage. You know, I hate saying the word take advantage, but we can, you know, see the opportunity in today's environment and create 1:1 situations for people.

I don't think it's bad of taking advantage because I think you feel bad because you're taking advantage. You might be taking somebody's downfall along the case. I think it's the being able to act quickly, being agile, mobile and hostile maybe a little bit to, to make some things happen. But that's, you know, that's the thing is there'll be more wealth created now in the downturn than there was in the upturn. If you know how to, to act and you have that war chest ready, that dry powder sitting on the sidelines ready to act upon a deal on a price, you know, probably not going to see some prices like you haven't seen on stuff in quite a few years because things are looking. I got an email from a bank the other day on a 250 unit multifamily that the borrower is 110 days late, but the bank's already foreclosing. The bank is literally, instead of trying to work it out, trying to. They're like, we're going to go ahead and foreclose. I'm like, man, most of these banks were like kicking the can down the road to try to make things work. I'm like, that's a surprise turn in the market in a lot of cases that, you know, well, we have our.

Preferred equity fund open. And I will tell you, you know, you know, in that fund, what we're looking to do is help multifamily operators. You know, for anybody listening here, what we're helping them do is, you know, if they have a high quality asset, that is the NOI is still there. Right. It has to still be performing. But really what they lack is the ability to either refinance the property to get better rate terms or debt terms or you know, put, you know, purchase that next interest rate cap. You know, that's what this fund is designed for. Well, one, it's been challenging to, you know, find quality properties. There's a lot of, you know, you know, properties that are not performing because of NOI has decreased on them. Either they're not able to achieve their rent increases or in some cases the vacancy has actually expanded or the occupancy is actually dropped. But there's a handful of properties that actually do check all the boxes except for one thing. The lender, the current lender on that property is challenging to work with. You know, we are, you know, looking to work with lenders that understand, you know, that it's not in their best interest to take back a 252 unit property like Wahudu. What do they know about operating a property?

Amen to that, sister. Amen to that. Yeah, they're in the note space, not the operation space.

Yeah. So but that is on our due diligence list. Right. And it's the only way that we can help, you know, preserve our investors capital. Because I would say it's few and far between. But there are lenders out that, you know, out there like that, that I, I, I don't see the benefit to their balance sheet by doing that, you know. But, you know, I don't know all the specifics of the, you know, the particular scenario you put out there, but I can't that I, I would think that's a lesson that we all learned in 2008, 9 and 11, right. Like lenders don't need to have all that on their balance sheet.

Well, that's, that's the biggest thing too, if it's a, you know, and it could be that they've been, they've worked with the borrower already in a variety of fashions and maybe they just realize that there's no reserves in what's going on too. But I was just very surprised seeing that from that lender of like that's, you know, that's kind of surprising. I mean, just a little over three.

Months and they're going to, you know, foreclose, right?

Yeah, I mean literally. They mean they were the, they were, they were calling for bids to start coming in off, off of that. And I was just like, that just doesn't make any sense. But you know, you're, you're going to end up owning. If you think you're going to sell that the auction, that's, that's great, but you're probably going to take it back and then management's going to struggle. You're going to have probably increased occupancy, which drops your noi and then you're not going to be sitting very good at all. You know, one of the, the things we have seen is more, more lenders when, when they get, when you talk to somebody there that understands versus just the, a regular person, you know, that's not, that doesn't, isn't on their job title is not the line versus just like a loan officer, an asset manager is that if you come with a creative situation or work with that bank and you really get it to go up the line either to the loan committee or like that. I've seen some amazing things happen. Especially we saw a lot happen back, back in 2008, 9 and 10, but started to see that hey, they're starting to waken up that hey, we need to get creative here versus just being black and white on the, on the deal scenario, you know, and it makes for an opportunity for funds like what you guys are working on.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean distress is going to happen, right, that there's no way around that, you know, because not everybody like, you know, even on the operator side of things, not all operators are really, even today fully understanding what they need to do in order to reposition their asset. And there's so many things that they can do like engage like a fund like ours before they have to like do capital calls or even hand the keys back over. Right. There's a, there's like a, you know, six item punch list that they can do. But you know, some operators are trying to hold on for dear Live knit may not be the best situation for them either.

Well, and that's the thing too is when you're in a stress situation like that, you don't think right. In a lot of cases, your ego gets in the way, you know, you know, that's, that's, that can be a killer. You know, ego can definitely kill. Like, oh, I don't want to look like I'm, I'm losing the face here. Well, you need to lose face before you lose everything, you know, on that asset and work out with folks to figure out some sort of, it may not be a true win win, but it's a survive and survive in, in some cases, you know.

Yeah, I heard Johnny Chain with Marcus and Miller Champ say, and this was a year ago, almost a year ago, like the survive until 2025.

I, I, you know what, I tell you that that's so true. I mean I always find it interesting, you know, because we do a lot of outreach to banks and hey, what do you have on your books you can get rid of? But it's always interesting. We started to see this six months ago, which is, I was like, it's going to get interesting. Hang on. When banks are reaching out to me. Orlanders, hey, what are you buying? I'm like, whoa, you don't return my phone calls, but now you're calling me. You must be really hurting. Course looking at their portfolio, like, oh, I see you are hurting. You know, let's, let's figure out something. There's still been that big gap, but that gap is getting narrower and narrower by the, by the day. And I really expect us to see more stuff once we get through Christmas here and get into Q1 of 2024. I think it's going to be it. I don't say a free for all, but if you've got dry powder and you can step up and take on some deals, I think it's going to, you know, really lead to make building and creating those relationships now so that you're on that short call list when, hey, when this hits the fan like we know it is for a lot of folks.

Absolutely.

Now when you talked about folks out there looking to invest in private equity, let's talk a little about some more of the things that you guys are looking for. Do these folks need to be accredited, sophisticated, what kind of investment can they get started with? What, what are, what are some of those requirements for those that are listening?

Yeah, I mean if somebody's looking to get, you know, you know, started in private passive investing or private syndication in general, there's opportunities out there for everybody like, you know, sophisticated accredited investors. You know, for us particularly@ passiveinvesting.com we work with the accredited investor. So you know, somebody who has a million in net worth, you know, either themselves or combined with a spousal partner and then, and, or they have $200,000, you know, income coming in for the past two years, reasonable expectations going forward, or $300,000 jointly for the past two years, reasonable Expectations going forward. So. And there's a couple other, you know, ways that somebody can be accredited, you know, if they have a particular licensure or something like that.

Sure.

But that's, you know, we work largely with a retail investor and our minimum investments, it depends like on our multifamily investments. We tend to do single asset entities. So those minimum investments start at 75,000 and then go up from there, depending on what type of tranche you're trying to access in that deal. And then for our self storage and our express car washes, we acquire small portfolios of assets. It's just, it's kind of like buying single family homes or doing notes. Right. Like it's just as much work to do one as it is to do two. 10. Right time. So we, you know, we, we close those things self storage and express car washes and small portfolios. We have currently a car wash open for with three assets in it right now. And those investments, since you're immediately diversified over markets and deals, Those start at $100,000. And then we have our debt fund too. And you know, that starts at 25k investment.

Very nice to get started, dip their toes in the water and get rock and roll that way. Right now you've got a book coming out here very shortly too. You want to, want to blow your horn a little bit, talk about that and what's what folks can expect of that.

Yeah, I'm super excited for this book. I wrote a book in partnership with bigger pockets. It's called Money for Tomorrow. A Sensible Guide for Building wealth. That Lasts. And really, in this book, it. I put in everything with my work that I do at Ashwell with my private consulting clients. But this book is really designed to help anybody, you know, whether they're investing in notes or real estate or business or whatever, understand how to win the wealth game. So if wealth is a game, especially generational wealth, you have to understand the objective, the true objective of the rule of the game, right? Then you have to understand the rules, right? If anybody's, like, sat down and tried to play Catan before or Seven Wonders or even Monopoly, right? Like, you have to understand, like, you're like, great, I can buy property, but why would I do that? Right? You have to understand the objective and all the rules, and then you have to understand the strategy. So many times investors I work with are so attached to tactics that they forget that there's a whole rule book out here and there's a whole strategy book. And then they don't have to worry about the tactic. They don't have to worry about the headlines that they're reading. They need to go back to basics. And so that's what this book is designed to do, is bring people back to basics on how to create wealth, keep wealth guarded. Like, don't let it erode. I mean, taxes are. Saving on taxes is great, but that's only one of six ways that you can save your money, save your wealth. And I'm not talking about budgeting guys. And then we talk about how to grow it through real estate businesses and the like. And then we talk about how to pass it on. And I'm not talking about wills and trusts. We talk a little bit about that in there. But those. There's two other things that you need to do to ensure that your wealth passes correctly to either your heirs, your beneficiary, or even, you know, maybe it's not money at all, but just the knowledge that you're passing on to the next generation.

Well, that's one thing we definitely need to. Because our society is so financially uneducated. And you look at folks that don't understand it, you know, the rules of investing, I mean, and the game that you can play with it, they're just, you know, obtuse to it. I'm just like, there's. There's so many opportunities for you to do things, but you got to understand just, you know, one plus one doesn't always equal two. Sometimes it equals three. But you got to figure that out when. When it. When it applies to that to make things happen. And that's the, that's the thing that kind of scares me the most, more than anything else out there is what's going on and with our generational and, and what's that next generational hold for us? I mean, I don't want to say this, but that sounds like, hey, we're going to be doing a lot of work and carrying the next couple of generations to, for out there with. When it comes to wealth building.

Well, I mean, the whole, the old Chinese proverb is, you know, shirts sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations, one generation builds it, one spends it, and the other one is like, they don't have any. Right. But, you know, this book is meant to sidestep that whole cycle, break that cycle. And it's not about financial knowledge. I mean, that's fantastic. But I wanted to make it actionable, something that anybody can do, because it's really about capability. Right. We, I mean, financial. Everything that somebody that needs to know in order to become financially independent, financially free, it's out there and probably for free on the Internet.

Right.

However, how do you find it? How do you put all those pieces together? Like what, what's, what's true, what's noise, what applies to you, what doesn't. Right. And then like I said, this is where I really try to bring people out of the tactics and back to the, the principles that they need to understand. And then, and then we can, once they understand, you know, the objective, the rules and the strategy, then we get to have fun. Like, do you want to do notes? Fantastic. Do you want to do like, fix and flip real estate? Amazing. Like, do you want to do private syndication? Awesome. Like, but those are all tactics. How do we come back to the principles?

Well, that's the thing. It all starts with a good, good principles. It's like in football, it's all about blocking and tackling. If you can't block and tackle, you're not going to be throwing touchdown passes and dancing in the end zone.

I actually quote George Washington, who's often misquoted, you know, the best offense is a good defense. And actually the quote is the other way around. The best defense is a good offense. Right. Like, so you know that I can really relate to the sports analogy here.

Sure. Definitely now with it being the new year and obviously book coming out and that's exciting. Definitely excited. Especially when you're partnering up with bigger pockets for that. But what are two or three things out there that you're, you're looking for or keeping an eye on as you're for Your investment strategy, things that you're, you know, keep an eye out looking for or maybe things you've tweaked up a little bit, depending on what goes on in the market in the next six months.

Yeah, I mean, you know, really it's the same thing that I've been, the same journey that I've been on for like the past, the past like probably three years, honestly, but definitely really been paying attention for the last year. It's the operator, right? Like if I'm going to invest passively in the asset, you know, or if I'm going to do it actively, you have to be knowledgeable, you have to be the expert, you have to be the expert in the strategy, you have to be the expert in the asset class. You have to have that know how to surround yourself with experts. So, you know, for passive investment, it's all about the operator. It's the jockey riding that horse. And, and I've had operators, you know, you know, I, I do a lot of investing in passive investing, dot com, you know, I mean, it's my home turf. But also like I diversify my portfolio too with other operators because as a passive investor I can, you know, diversify operator market and deal. Right. That's really all I can control. But you know, I feel like the last three years, all of my operators, essentially how they've handled the environment, they've been re interviewing for their position in my portfolio. And I really encourage everybody to think like that too. I'm paying attention to the debt markets. What's happening in the debt market. How can I, like, you know, create opportunity for myself before interest rates start dropping again? And I don't, I think it's going to be a while before we see, you know, 0% interest rates, you know, so. But you know, I remember I scaled my oldest 36 single family properties. I mean I think I was holding notes between five and a half to seven and a half percent. Right. Like even if we see a little nudge down, you can still generate immense wealth.

That's that, that's the thing is an ex mortgage broker because we ran a mortgage company, we're doing stuff in 30 states and yes, it's been great to have a 1%, 2% interest rate on a mortgage. Love it. That's great. Free money, basically, you know, I mean, but I laugh when people are like, oh, this guy's a follower. I got a 6% interest rate. I'm like, that was pretty good back in 2007, 2008. I mean it wasn't you know, it's great. But yes, you can cash flow. You just got to adjust your numbers a little bit and tweak what you do. Maybe not over rehab the property, but really look at, you know, it's like you said, a good seaworthy captain was not made in a coma harbor in a lot of cases out there.

I love it. Yeah.

You know, I probably butchered the hell out of that quote, but you get what I'm talking about.

I mean, it sounds great to me. Dash. Scott Carson.

Yeah, there you go. Exactly. Misquoted, blank, blank. Anyway, but you know, I mean, you're so right about that. Is that. I mean, we're expecting to see some rates increases based on what the Fed's doing a little bit there. Hopefully we don't see a run up on there. You know, the markets are. It's always interesting when the Dow's up or the Dow's down and especially with what's going on overseas with the. So the war still going to be going on there. Are we getting to another one? You know, it's just as a. It's. It's a chaotic world. The best thing you can do is understand the operator, understand the asset class. Is one of my, My best advice I can give you is understand what you're investing in first and foremost.

Absolutely.

You know, get educated on it. Doesn't mean you need to be the one pulling the trigger, but that way, you know, the person pulling the trigger knows exactly what they're doing and not, you know, being the blind. Blind mice down the road there. In a lot of cases.

Yeah. Hope is not a strategy. And you know, that is a huge, huge thing that I see investors do. Like if there was an investing mistake, I mean, you know, you know, to piggyback on what you said, I mean, not understanding what they're investing in, but you know, hey, my buddy invested in private equity and he likes that guy. I'm going to invest along with him. I has a great formula for losing money.

Yep, exactly. You've seen a lot of that. We've seen that a lot out there. Definitely. Oh, it's just gonna be great. And this and this and no research. And then, hey, that's just like gambling. You might as well go on over to Vegas and put everything on the black or red and on the roulette wheel and see what's going on with that.

So what, what day does the book.

Come out again, Whitney?

February 22nd.

February 22nd. There you go. You can pre order this now, guys. Maybe make it a great Little late valentine's gift for your loved one or loved ones. You know, they can fall in love with real estate investing by reading Whitney's book out there for you. So what's the best way for our listeners and audience out there to connect with you, to follow with you? But you see what all the good things that you're up to?

Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you're interested in passive investing, you can reach out to me at Passive investing with Whitney.com and if you're on this financial journey, you know, just starting out or want to actually fortify your be the best investor that you possibly can, you know, fortify your situation, you can reach out to me@ashwealth.com A S H Wealth.com Awesome.

Good stuff. Well, thank you so much for coming on and share your time. We look forward to your continued success. I'm looking for that that book to turn another bestseller for you there.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Scott.

Thank you. All right, guys and gals, take Witty up on that opportunity. Get that book order today. It's a great way for you to learn. Share the love, share the knowledge. Because that's one of the best ways, too, is to help your fellow man human out there. Maybe you know, somebody around the water cooler or somebody that wants to get started. This is a great way to get things rocking and rolling for you. So go out, take some action, everybody, and we'll see you all at the top. Bye.

Sam. Sa.