The Property Perspective
From hidden gems to billion-dollar deals, this is The Property Perspective - where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss, and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate.
The Property Perspective
From Detroit to Real Estate Mogul: Adam Whitney's Journey of Resilience and Impact
Adam Whitney, CEO of Seven Figure Flipping, joins us to share his inspiring journey from a challenging upbringing in Detroit to becoming a leader in real estate. His story is a testament to the power of resilience and the transformative impact of community. From facing legal troubles to finding discipline and purpose in the Marine Corps, Adam's experiences have shaped his relentless pursuit of self-improvement and success. He opens up about how the structured environment of the military guided his personal development and fueled his ambition to thrive in the real estate industry.
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00:00 - Hope (Announcement)
What if your biggest disadvantage in life could become your greatest advantage in real estate? In this episode of the Property Perspective, host Preston Zeller speaks with seven-figure flipping CEO, Adam Whitney, about using the advantages of your environment, community and mindset to find real estate success, from hidden gems to billion-dollar deals. This is the Property Perspective, where seasoned real estate pros reveal how they spot value others miss and industry disruptors share the unconventional strategies reshaping real estate.
00:29
Now here are your hosts
00:30 - Preston Zeller (Host)
hey everyone, my name is Preston Zeller, I'm the Chief Growth Officer at Back Service and I have Adam Whitney here today on the Property Perspective. Adam Whitney, with Seven Figure Flipping, how are you, sir?
00:43 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Preston man, I'm great. I really appreciate you having me on.
00:47 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yes, sir, I've been looking forward to this, especially since we got to meet out in Tennessee, so why don't you give the listeners just a brief on where you are at today in your career in real estate?
01:03 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yeah, thanks for asking. In your career in real estate? Yeah, thanks for asking Today. Currently I have a very active off-market real estate business. We will probably do between 1.5 and 2 million in top line with 40 to 50% net margin. Nice, which I think is important to delineate because top line means nothing. We're operating on about a 50% net margin right now. I also own a rental portfolio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We do our active deals in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia and then I own three apartment complexes about 334 units out in North Carolina. So I do some multifamily syndication stuff as well.
01:53 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Awesome. Well, let's go back in time then. Let's just start at parent situation, sibling situation. What did your parents do growing up? Do you have any siblings? How many?
02:09 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, after my dad graduated from Yale and passed away and left me $5 million, I just started. I'm just kidding man. I grew up in Detroit area, just outside of Detroit. I grew up on this uh city called ecourse Michigan. My house I grew up in was on 12 ridge street in ecourse um, absolute ghetto, absolute ghetto I was. I was uh, I was the minority at my school, which was fine. But like I can remember, in I think it was first grade or kindergarten, I got chased home by these two twins and there was, like you know, it's like we got alleys and stuff.
02:55
So they chased me home. I ran through the alleyway and I remember my stepmom was outside and they were trying to jump me and my mom told them they could only fight me one-on-one, so they had to come to the backyard and each fight me one-on-one and this was in. This was like in first grade. My dad my dad was nobody in my family, especially on my dad's side had graduated from high school Pretty illiterate. My dad was illiterate and I actually did pretty well in grade school. My dad was an abusive guy. I have seven siblings he had. None of us had the same two parents. Some of them I talked to. Some of them I don't talk to. I think I talk to like two of them really on a regular basis. My dad was a woman beater. He was an abusive guy. My mom grew up and had a really rough upbringing some serious mental health issues, addicted to drugs the worst kind was in and out of my life. She died when I was 17. She had real bad heart problems. She was addicted to pills and probably did everything from crack to cocaine, those kind of things. And then my dad died in 2020 from COVID. So that was like my. You got to imagine that's like.
04:24
You know, not the most ideal upbringing, but here's what changed for me when I was 18, I did well up until about ninth and tenth grade and I kind of went off the deep end doing all the things you're not supposed to do as a human, had no real good like example of what right look like values, those kind of things, principles. So I'm in trouble all the time. I basically quit going to school. I end up graduating. I mean, I'm into drugs, I'm doing all the dumb stuff. I end up graduating with a 1.954 GPA. I was fourth from the bottom. I can remember how I got graduated. I was in this class, a marketing class, and I hadn't been going and I was failing it. And I remember the teacher said Adam, I really don't want to see you here next year. If you write these 20 definitions, I'll give you the D you need to graduate. I was like cool, say less. And so I'm 18. Graduate high school, no real prospects. I'm like driving up. I'm driving parts for Napa Auto Parts.
05:38
You know, probably making like nine bucks an hour and obviously not going to go to college. I was out with a girlfriend at the time doing nefarious activities and my ex-girlfriend calls me. I'm in the store and my phone's in my car. Girlfriend answers it, those two start spatting and we end up going to my ex-girlfriend's house because those two were going to fight, I guess. And what actually ends up happening is she closes the door on the girlfriend who's trying to fight her and I end up going through her bedroom window and unlocking the front door. What I didn't know is she had a boyfriend there, so him and I got into a physical altercation. Didn't go well for him.
06:26
I made it to about the end of the block before the cops arrested me. I was intoxicated and under the influence of things and I was being charged with a 20-year felony for home invasion and assault and battery. Oh my gosh, I'm 18 years old. And assault and battery? Oh my gosh, I'm 18 years old. Mind you, up until about like 10th grade, I was a you know, like a 3.5 GPA kid, like I was pretty smart. I just, um, just went down the wrong path. So what ends up happening is a Marine Corps recruiter catches me and says, hey, are you interested? And I said, well, I got this thing going on. If you could help me get out of it, I'd be interested. He goes I'll help you get out of it, but you have to leave for boot camp in two weeks.
07:15 - Preston Zeller (Host)
And what do you mean by catches you Just like you were out somewhere and he flagged you?
07:20 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I was literally driving into the Napa Auto Parts store where I worked and there was a Marine recruiting office across the street Pulls into the parking lot the same time as me and goes hey, are you, Adam Whitney? Do you play football at John F Kennedy High School? I'm like, yes, and that's when that conversation started. And what year is this? This is 2003-2004 timeframe.
07:49 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Okay.
07:52 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yes, this is probably like early to mid-2004. So I go to the arraignment. The Marine recruiter comes, talks to the judge, judge, shows me some grace, puts it under this program called HIDA H-Y-T-A, which was like an expunging thing for youth, where you know if you did good for some amount of time that would wipe away from your record. And I left and went to the Marine Corps. Two weeks later I spent my next 20 years of life being the absolute best Marine I could be changed my entire life. I got around insanely, insanely talented leaders, the best the whole world has to offer, which completely raised my game. I excelled immensely. I got selected for a highly competitive program to go from Marine Corps enlisted infantry. They sent me to college to get my commissioning.
08:50
I became an intelligence officer the top secret clearance and did about 12 years of intelligence work for the government, and so that was kind of like the thing that changed my life, where I actually, for the first time, was surrounded by people who were incredible.
09:15
They had values, they had principles, they had a insatiable desire to learn and get better every day, and that's basically the path that I ended up following.
09:21
I became obsessed with being the best and I did really well in the Marine Corps over my 20 years and while I was in the Marine Corps I, like many, stumbled across like this financial freedom stuff, this financial independence stuff, and I'm like gosh man, like I need to do that, I need to figure out how to do that.
09:45
And you know, I started to see there were other people doing real estate and I decided that was the vehicle I wanted to use because of how powerful I thought it was, and, uh, started off just buying a couple of turnkey rentals and investing in a few syndications and at some point I figured, you know, to go faster, to do more, I needed to learn some skills that I didn't yet have, which was finding off market deals at a discount and raising private capital for my deals. So I went on that journey. I joined a community at the time, it was seven figure flipping joined a community at the time, it was seven figure flipping, um and as a member, and then went from not doing any off-market deals to doing, you know, four or five hundred off-market deals in a pretty short amount of time. You know, basically just doing what the people before me told me to do nothing, nothing exuberant, nothing special, just taking the playbook and executing aggressively.
10:49 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, let's, let's. I want to put a pin in that and go back to, like, the military stuff Cause you, first of all, thanks for sharing about your, your upbringing and my, my, my dad went through a similar experience with his upbringing, just a lot of dysfunction. Of course, we connected on, uh, how I lost my brother as well, so I still have, of course, this. So, yes, the challenge coin, seven figure flipping challenge coin. I got that on my desk, so thank you for that. Yeah, uh, uh, it's good, good reminder of that, uh, this relationship. But, um, you know, so, going from this really kind of crazy uh environment growing up, getting out of high school, I mean what. I'm curious what that transition was like. This two weeks where you go from like I may be facing 20 years in prison to now I'm going to the Marines what was going through your brain? Do you remember at that time?
11:54 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Oh man, Probably nothing good. I mean, I was really just. I was good at the things that I did. I just was doing the wrong things. I'm running the streets, I'm doing street type things with people that are doing street type things. Yeah, I probably didn't have any good thoughts or really any expectation At that point. My dad had kicked me out of my house. My mom and my dad got divorced when I was two years old and my mom was pretty absent. She was in and out of my life. Um, my dad had remarried my step-mom who raised me. Actually, she was probably the only like real steady thing I ever had in my life and, uh, until she wasn't, she left my dad because he was an abusive, terrible person, terrible husband, not a good father, those kind of things. I mean.
12:53
Obviously, the guy modeled what he had got as a kid and did the best he could, I'm sure, but she left him and then it was just me and him left at this house and his life was falling apart and I was left basically to my own devices. I was doing, I was so bad that he kicked me out. I was like living on um a buddy's couch. Uh, so I didn't you know, I had a little apartment for a time and I was like living on a buddy's couch. So, like this was like hey man, I'm getting what we call three hots in a cot meaning three meals a day in a place to sleep.
13:30
How bad can this be? And then I, you know, I leave for 13 weeks to go to a Marine Corps bootcamp, which is a completely transformative event, completely Like it's a life-changing event for anybody who goes.
13:45 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Like it's a life changing event for anybody who goes. Yeah, and what so? You, I mean you went into, you know, marine Corps bootcamp, just as you were kind of explained just now, kind of troubled kid it sounds like. And then how are you at the end of that?
14:00 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yeah, I just I had this like clarity of direct. I was still a little misguided. You know, don't get me wrong, I got into some trouble in the beginning of my time in service but I was a high performer for a couple months. And then you go to the, the operation. You're like operational, and I go to my first unit, an infantry unit, out in 29 palms, California, which, if you don't know where that's at, it's by Joshua tree. It's probably the worst military base to be at. If you care about civilization, yeah, um but all you can do there's area.
14:39
Basically right, yeah, palm springs area which is an hour and 10 away from 29 Palms, but nonetheless that's good, because I don't have a car, I don't have money, I can't go get in trouble. All I can do is train and get better. So it really just put me in an environment to get focused on some of the right things. And then I go out to this unit and now I'm at the bottom of the food chain. I've got to prove myself, which I spent most of my life trying to do, and that boded well for me. I went to combat. I didn't get dead, which was good, but I did get some valor awards while I was there, did a couple deployments to the Middle East doing that, and then I had kind of started to feel like I had purpose and what I?
15:28
What changed for me was that like you're, you're it's called service. People say thank you for your service. Right, like you are serving your country, it's not. It then becomes not about you, it's never about you.
15:43
When you're in the military you don't get paid enough. You do the hardest, shittiest things there are to possibly do. Like why else would you do it other than a bigger purpose than yourself? Like I was probably making I think I made like 13 grand the first year I was in and I did the hardest, most terrible stuff Right. So I got this like this purpose.
16:07
And then, if you know this, the military services they're really big on core values. The Marine Corps values are honor, courage and commitment and what you find. What then, when you take a kid and you put them into combat and you give them the responsibility of life and death, that will change you completely. Uh, that will change you completely. You know you're, you're 19 years old and you're fighting in combat.
16:35
You, you have the responsibility to either uh, to take people's lives, uh, on behalf of your country, and or to do the right things to make sure your brothers to your left and right come home with you and they don't all uh, that's a, that's about the highest responsibility you could get in this country. So that was life changing and I felt just it was a calling for me at that time, like obviously I had nothing else to go to, so it's like, what else am I going to do? This is, this is who I am now, and it was for the better. And then I, along my career, I got to like just continue to level up, and the better I did, then more opportunities I got to do harder things to learn more things.
17:20
They sent me to every school. I was um, I was selected for all of the like. In the corporate ladder of the military there are selections and things you get along the way. I mean I got all of them and because I did well and got all those things, every time the service I would get new training, new education and I was just so thirsty to get better. I was so, like, driven to get better. So it was just like for 20 straight years I was just leveling up the entire time, not just as a Marine, but intellectually, as a person, as a leader, um, and eventually, in 2010 or 11, I get selected for a commissioning program to go to college and it's extremely competitive. Very few people get selected. In fact, I even got all my tattoos removed to make myself more competitive. That's how bad.
18:15 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I was. That's crazy.
18:17 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Because I had all the other things. I had the physical acumen, I had the intellectual acumen, I had all the things needed, except for I had tattoos which, at the time in the service, believe it or not, it made me less competitive. So, I literally went and paid out of my pocket. I was probably making 45 grand a year pay on my pocket.
18:37 - Preston Zeller (Host)
It's like 600 bucks a session, to go through pain to have it removed, like these were under shirt tattoos.
18:40 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I mean, you're touching your shoulder so sleeve from like the top of my triceps all the way down my arm and across my back gone oh wow, why?
18:50 - Preston Zeller (Host)
why would that? I mean I, I, I could surmise maybe what, why that matter, but is that like to prepare to go into no?
18:57 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
it's no good reason somebody in charge decided that tattoos weren't perfect because, like, if you know the marine corps, you see a lot of marines with sleeves especially the secretary of defense has sleeves now yeah, but yeah different yeah different right at the time, the guy in charge of the Marine Corps it was a pilot, by the way, first time a pilot has ever been in charge of the Marine Corps a guy named general Amos he.
19:24
he just had a wild hair up his rear end and was like hey, tattoos are unprofessional, especially officers. You will not have, okay, okay.
19:31 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, it's kind of old school by today's standards. Yeah, so I did, I did, I did that, Preston.
19:39 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I got selected for it. They sent me up to the university of Michigan's NRO TC program to finish my college degree and get commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps. Which is it? Uh, it's a. It's a different responsibility. It's it's like, uh, it's. It's not an easy thing to do. It's very competitive to get in because now you, as an officer, you're, you're really responsible for the development, safety, all this stuff from these young men and women that their parents are handing them over to the service. And you, it is your job to do the best, be the best leader in the world. When I got commissioned, I wrote the judge a letter this is eight years later telling her like thank you for the second chance. I didn't throw it away. In fact, here's what I've been doing over the last eight years. And I just got commissioned as an officer after finishing the program at.
20:32
U of N.
20:33
Wow yeah.
20:33 - Preston Zeller (Host)
That original judge who oversaw your the, the original charge you had against you.
20:39 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yes, sir, and she wrote me back. It was a really cool point in my career. I felt compelled. I imagine that lady never hears good news.
20:51 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, or even someone takes time to write her a letter. You know, even if they are doing well, you just go. I want to forget it. Forget about that part of my life, yeah, yeah, so I'm uh, so I'm curious. I'm going to hop a bit back and forth here Cause, uh, I know for you, uh, your military careers is just like it's you, it's this, but it's you know, so intriguing to hear about some of these experiences to what you know, to what degree you care to talk about any of them. But, um, I know, going overseas, um, how quickly did that happen? Obviously we got you know what 20, we started going into Middle East. I think it was 2002.
21:37 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
So you probably went out pretty quickly after your infantry training seven and ten months and kind of to paint a picture, at that time you're in the marine corps.
21:55
Infantry for the service is like these are the guys who are like on the ground kicking in the doors or you would think at least the movies would tell you. And um, they're, they're living in the most austere, brutal conditions, those kind of things. But what you don't really see is what it takes to get to combat. So when you're wrote, when everybody's like in you, so the marine units of call, unit of battalion, that's a thousand marines, they're going over with other people and they go for seven months at a time. So you might train for seven to twelve months and then go on deployment and then come back, have a month off and then train for seven to 12 months and then go on deployment and the training itself. You're gone all the time Like you. It's not like nine to five, like you're out training for weeks at a time and you come back for a few days and you're out training for weeks at a time. You're always gone like I.
22:50
I probably was home like maybe a few months of a four-year period because I was either training to go to combat or going to combat and uh, you know, when you go to combat you think you see the movies and you're like it's just a bunch of running and gunning and craziness and it's actually about 90 percent of just straight up boredom, like there's like nothing happening. Of a seven month period, there's nothing happening. And of a 10, the 10 percent where things are happening maybe a gunfight or get mortared or whatever it might be are they really wreck your nervous system? Because it's like you know you go into what's called fighter flight. So the whole seven months your nervous system is at that heightened peak. You never know if you're going to drive somewhere and get blown up or someone's going to shoot at you.
23:47
Like you're just your, your senses are running red, redlining for seven straight months and you're, you know your sleep pattern is completely destroyed because you're doing things at night and in the day and you're sleeping when you can. But a lot of it's just boredom, man, a lot of it is is sitting around staring off into the desert. Um, you know, doing missions where they're not fruitful there's no bad there, but you just did a whole thing for a few days and every once in a while there's bad guys there and then it's a thing, a little dance with those guys for a while. But you know it's like we're fighting in the Middle East and we're this like billions of dollars military. You know we've got the most exquisite stuff and we're fighting.
24:37 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Dudes and flip flops and dresses like yeah, AKs and Sams and stuff like yeah, I mean they are.
24:46 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
they're innovative, they put bombs in the road and IEDs and provides explosive devices. And that's the biggest threat, because you don't know where they're at or when they're coming and you can't always find them and defeat them, and you hit them every now and then and it's just, I don't know, it's just, it's a little different.
25:04 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Wow, so how many tours did you do?
25:10 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
So in the first four years at the early onset well, really, the first three years, the early onset of the war in the early 2000s I did two combat deployments specifically, and then I got into the officer training pipeline and we do this thing where you do an operational tour for four years and then your next tour is typically what we call a supporting tour, where I went out and I was an instructor, so I was teaching you about you, do you develop the skills, you become an expert, you, you prove it in combat and then you come back and you teach the next wave of folks who are going to do the same thing. And then Afghanistan starts to kick and I ended up in the officer pipeline for a while and I didn't go back to a combat deployment, to a Connecticut deployment, until like 2015 or 2016. Totally different mission, same place. Then we were defeating Al Qaeda and then later, a decade later, same place. Now we're fighting ISIS. So, uh, and my position was different, what I was doing was different. But yeah, what?
26:15
was it about, like the three, three kinetic um, I guess, deployments that I did.
26:23 - Preston Zeller (Host)
What was it? What is it about that Like when you were, as you reflected on it, in different periods of time other than just being a hard worker, dedicated, what was it specifically you think you did that made you stand out for selection to these different programs?
26:42 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I don't. I never felt like I was ever doing anything special, or, in fact, even most of the time, I was always surprised when I was selected, because I always had this sense of like I'm not doing enough, um, so I don't know, I don't know what it is. I think if I, I think, if you just kind of, if I were to reflect on that which you know you're asking me to do, it's like I just cared so deeply about winning and about making my team better and about, um, you know, being just being the best version that I could be, like that was so important to me and I was unwilling to compromise that.
27:30 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I was unwilling to compromise that. Yeah, it's an interesting answer because you know, I'm sure there were, you know, a number of people who probably they did their job and check boxes and stuff, but which you know is kind of like anywhere. But even what you just said about the mentality, people see that, especially experienced people, they can tell the difference of like okay, this person's just kind of getting the job done, and then someone who just thinks differently, which is hard to train. That I think there's some innateness in people that makes them kind of wired a certain way that can make them more conducive to being like that. That or maybe life circumstance just flips you into this whole different mode and they're able to tap into that. But, um, I it's a very candid response because I mean you could have been like, yeah, it was the best, you know I was the best soldier out there and they wanted me to be the best and um, yeah, well, I never felt like I was, though that was the thing, and that you know what's interesting about this?
28:35 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I I've not talked about any of this stuff until very recently with anybody, and, um, you know, it's like you. You compartmentalize and keep moving forward for a long time in your life, but uh, the it's just like some. There's something else. It's, it's not. It's not just a, it's about a purpose like what? What are you here for? It starts with a tangible thing like I need to achieve something. You learn what that means and you're like oh, I want to achieve something. Then it becomes like. It just becomes bigger than you.
29:14
So I never felt like I was doing enough. And if I thought about why that is why did I never feel like I was enough? It would probably go back to the stuff we talked about in my childhood no acceptance from my dad, who was a piece of work, and my mom had abandoned me. So it's like why does nobody want? Me, and then you get this like. Okay, fine, I'll show you attitude um I'll be undeniable you know,
29:42 - Preston Zeller (Host)
yeah, I mean, it creates that, creates that drive, uh, for sure, and you know it's, it's interesting because that drive can man come from so many places. But that, this is why I start these episodes with people going back to their childhood, because it's, you know, sometimes it's easy to write off, even if it's a seemingly normal childhood, like that's fine, you know, but it's, it shapes you in one way or another. So you're, so you go, you got into the more of the intelligence side of it at some point. What were the skill sets you were learning there?
30:15 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Oh man, lots of skill sets. There's some fundamental basic stuff. Number one communication. If you're in the intelligence community, you're typically responsible to present information in a way that people can easily understand it and make decisions usually people who are far above you in the food chain. So, uh, the ability to communicate effectively and to drive decision making through, um, through effective communication is like a skill set that you don't really realize you need or you're getting in that community. The other part of this is you have to be able to make assessments. You have to be able to manage resources, take data, organize data, make sense of the data and then make sense of the data and then make decisions based on the data. Right? So I'll give you an example. Right, and this is like right up your world in batch services right.
31:20
But I'll give you an example. Like we in the intelligence community might have five different types of collection assets that would be gathering information. They could be imagery, they could be imagery, they could be audio, they could be some other unique sensor and they all tell a different piece of the story and none of them give you the full picture. So your job is to collect the information from multiple sources, organize it, put it together and tell the story and be able to make a decision with that information that you feel really confident in. For me, like, those were invaluable skill sets, not just at the time and doing the work on behalf of our country, but have proven to be valuable skill sets in everything that we do. I mean in business in general. How many people do you know running a business who don't have a good understanding of key performance indicators or OKRs? A lot of people. Those are a necessity to make good decisions.
32:26 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking I really like military movies, probably because it's a world I never got to be in. It's a little bit of escape, but I was thinking of the Jack Ryan show with John Krasinski as you were talking about that in the there were financial crimes aspect of it or whatever, whatever that department is called. But so you were you. How long were you in the, like, you know, top secret, intelligent side of it?
33:02 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Basically my last 12 years. And one thing to kind of know about the military is you never really do the same thing twice. You're there's, there's a lot, there's a big, it's a hierarchical organization, is always upward movement. You're always being put into because it's like an up or out organization, like if you're not moving up you have to leave. But if you're moving up you're always in a new position or a new job role and you're constantly having to learn something new.
33:32
So I used to kind of start intelligence, very tactical intelligence, like ground level stuff and then you move up to a higher level organization where you have you're resourced a little differently, you have different assets, and then you go back and you teach right Cause we always have a. We always have like a what I would consider a give-back tour. I got to do that multiple times in my career where I would teach a acquisitions portfolio. So I think the people who go out and say we have a requirement to be able to do a thing and then we get, we write those requirements and then we get industry to get us the capabilities we need. So at the time when I left, I had about a $1.5 billion portfolio of intelligence collection equipment for the Marine Corps that I was managing.
34:32 - Preston Zeller (Host)
What does that mean? Intelligence collection equipment? We playing just, or?
34:37 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
what could be anything. Could be planes, could be stuff in outer space, could be stuff in the ground, could be computer systems and softwares. It could be the intelligence version of batch leads which we have, you know, right, right, it could be, it could be the intelligence version of batch leads which we have.
34:50
You know it could be the intelligence version of chatgpt. We have a lot of those capable a lot of stuff like you know that that is current, like think about the internet. The internet comes on board what people don't know. This is like late nineties, early two thousands, when the internet blows up, Darpa was doing the internet and 10, 15 years before, right. So like DARPA is a government is like building the stuff for the government and then we're seeing it in real life 10 years later. So you know, look, 10 years from now you'll probably have a good idea of, like, what kind of stuff we were working on.
35:32 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, yeah, no, it's. There's a couple of things that remind me of that as you're talking. Like, I definitely believe, like the technology, disclosure is a real thing. You know just that in that, like you were just saying, military has stuff that is so far ahead of whatever the public gets access to. I mean, I'm pretty sure the military, too, still runs on a totally separate internet that's secure and whatnot, um.
36:01
But also, you know, I remember talking to another guy this is out in Texas when I lived there, um, and he did something with the plane program, but he was talking about the f-22s when they started working on that, and I think it's like a 15-year cycle or something for these planes to get developed. And so you know it's like that plane got released in like the mid 90s or something like that, and it's that plane was bonkers in terms of technology. And you're like wait, I'm saying in the early 80s they started working on the f-22. So anyone who's listening knows anything about planes. Um, it's just, it's a crazy thing to think about all, like what potentially exists out there, and then you know as a normal, you know civilian, what we get access to.
36:45 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
It's just like a fraction of that, I think so yeah, and I don't think it's that we don't have access. This is a unique application of things when you get all the best engineers from across the world and then think about the places who have these engineers the Lockheed Martins, the, the, the Booz Allen, Hamilton so these big companies that are heavily resourced and have all these big government contracts are getting funded by them. You know, people are going to work their PhDs and Johns Hopkins and everybody is working on the front end development of unique applications of technology, some that exist, some that will exist, some that are kind of in beta. So, yeah, it's a fascinating world. I kind of ended at that. That was the end of my career, which I just retired last year.
37:38 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Wow, Because you do reserve for a little while, or did you? Or you just got out of what you were, okay.
37:44 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Active duty the whole time. I built my real estate business while active duty Yep Active duty the whole time. I'm like a full-on retiree.
37:55 - Preston Zeller (Host)
At what point? Because you're married, right yeah 20 years this year. Yeah point because you're married right, yeah, 20 years this year. Yeah, so, um, very patient wife with probably the stuff you had to go through. I'm sure you guys both had to go through with the um, just deployments and stuff. How'd you guys meet?
38:15 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
uh, yeah, that's also just. You know, I have the quintessential story of the young service member that I did exactly what they tell you not to do, which was my wife now. Jenny was one of my good friends as I was doing all the dumb stuff. She didn't partake much, but she was still a good friend of mine. That was kind of it. I was in the friend zone for a long time and we went to high school together and we just kind of did our own thing.
38:47
But when I came back from boot camp she had clearly saw that there was a change in me and basically I just said why don't you come out to California and let's get married? And so I had a and I joined in 04 and by November of 05, we do this big celebration every year in the Marine Corps, called the Marine Corps birthday ball. Uh, it's a big formal thing. We get all dressed up and when you're out in 29 Palms we would do it in Vegas. So I invited her out. I said why don't you come to the ball with me? I think we should just get married, you know as my best clothes ever.
39:26
So she did agree. She did come out to Vegas. We got married by Elvis at the Little White Chapel, didn't tell her parents, just kind of went off and eloped and you know, the rest is history. She's, she's probably the, the, she's the, the. The stability in my life that has probably contributed to most of my success. Yeah, it's hard to. It's hard to do this kind of stuff alone, and it's also because she married into the marine corps and kind of knew I was crazy before the Marine Corps, all of that life kind of prepared her for this entrepreneur life.
40:07
That's busy and nonstandard and we travel a lot and kind of all that.
40:16 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, in the in. Like how many years were you into your military career before you started really like taking seriously the potential that real estate had for you?
40:28 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I think probably right around 13, 14 years. And now here's the thing by 2008 I was making like so I joined in 04,. By 2008, I was making like 40 grand a year. 2009, really 10,. Up until about 2011, I was making like less than 50 grand a year. And I actually found Dave Ramsey first right. And her and my wife and I, like in 2008, decided we were going to like work on our finances. Before then, we were, just like you know, falling on a budget right.
41:06 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah.
41:08 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Debt spending and we did the total money makeover. We put money in envelopes and we paid for stuff with cash and we started to really get an understanding of what it meant to manage money in an effective way get an understanding of what it meant to manage money in an effective way. And then, 2009, I started like seeing real estate and, like gosh, I got to get into it by 2011,. I tried to buy my first house. It was a short sale. I went back up to Michigan, which was my home state, for the education program they sent me to, and that didn't work out. I wish I would have bought that house, though, because it sold for four times the amount I would have bought it for later on. I just didn't know what I didn't know.
41:48
And then I was really busy, really from 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15. I started to like open my eyes back up, you know, some podcasts. Probably wasn't really until 2017, 18 that I just went down the rabbit hole deep Newbie investor style read every book available, listened to thousands of podcasts like this one, bought a house in 2017. Then, 2018, I think, I lent some money to a house flipper. 2019, I bought a couple of rentals, invested some money in a syndication. Because what happened was when I became an officer, I went from making 50 grand a year to 70 grand a year and I was loaded.
42:39
But, here's the thing, man I was only spending 50% of my income. I was saving 50% of my income, yeah, nice. And then over time, the longer you're, in, the more money you make. So by the end I was making like 160 a year and I had got my finances in order and got my savings up and had some investments rolling and I was responsible spending.
43:05 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, that's awesome. So I mean, I think, to play that back to some degree. You know people who are been listening so far. You know you come from this very rough, broken home, broken family life, basically on the verge of, you know, facing a prison sentence, uh, and then get in the military, turn your life around, do well in the military and then start to get interested in real estate. But there was no, there's no pedigree in there that screams, uh, Adam's destined for real estate. It's just, um, well, you could have, you could have gone a lot of directions with that.
43:50
And I say all that to say you know the people who get hung up on ah, my background's not for real estate, or I'm not a real estate person, or just the excuses people make. This is why I love doing this. Everyone's story is so different and has its own challenges. Some of them certainly seem heavier than others, but you get into it and start doing it, which is the important thing. And I want to talk about, of course, what you do through seven-figure flipping. So you start getting some rentals and whatnot. Are you getting these just through friends? Are you doing cash-out refis? What are you doing?
44:37 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
The first house I bought in 2017, I was in California, Camp Pendleton, which is just north of San Diego and I got told I was getting moved.
44:49
I got selected to go to a school called the Expeditionary Warfare School in Quantico, Virginia. So I'm moving over there and it's only a 10-month tour. And now, at this point I'd been like down the rabbit hole. I knew I needed rentals. I knew the power of real estate and depreciation and cash flow and equity and all this stuff. I didn't know exactly how to do it. But we decided well, the easy button is to leverage our VA loan, which is unique to the military, and buy a house in this area, which is a great area, and then when we leave 10 months later, we'll rent it out and then we'll come back and live in it next time we're here. So we did that. We bought a house, basically for $0. And then I was like, oh man, this is so easy, this is way easier than I thought it would be. Like I bought it on the MLS. It was super simple, it was a normal transaction. And then I was like, well, how do I get more rentals? And then I went to a turnkey company who would buy houses, fix them up, sell them to. It was mostly for service members. This guy was doing this for a while and really great turnkey company. By the way, these guys did such a great job. These were great rentals and I buy them at market value.
46:01
First I get this single family house that's got a net cash flow of 400 bucks a month, like net, net, right, and I'm like, oh man, all I need is like 30 more of these and I'll, I'll be good to go. So then, like, shortly after, I get a duplex so I had to save up $33,000 to close on that, which we got the money and closed on it. Remember, I'm not bloated, I don't have a bunch of money. And then the next one was a duplex. Within the next 12 months that I think I had to bring about $55,000 to close. I paid $195,000 for it.
46:37
So I did that and then that was like, all right, how do I do this faster? Cause I can't just keep saving up 50 grand, making a hundred grand a year. I got kids, right, kids cost money. Um, so, like, things just changed. And that's when I um, that was when I joined I to Flip Hacking Live in 2020, I joined that mastermind community as a member and, like, then this whole world of off-market deals gets opened up to me. I start running the play from that these guys had been running. You know they're doing 200 houses a year, 100 houses a year, 250 a year and I'm goodness, I just need to do like 10, you know, Um, so I get, I go down that train.
47:25
I started doing off market deals. I ended up doing a merger and acquisition my off market company and Bill Allen's off market company, um, in 2021. And you know we're doing um at least 40, 50 deals a year. Every year we scaled it down. I'm happy to talk about why doing less is often better.
47:49 - Hope (Announcement)
Yeah, I think that would be helpful.
47:50 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
We scaled it down to a smaller scale, worked on efficiency and I mean that just changed the game. That gave me some skills, like some sales-type skills, some marketing skills. I mean I could pretty much go anywhere and find a good deal, yeah. And then along the way I started making a lot of money and then I started investing in syndications. Then I started doing syndications with my syndication team. So now I'm buying apartments and I'm in seven-figure, flipping the whole time. Then in 2023, I got an opportunity to buy equity in seven figure, flipping the whole time. Then in 2023, I got an opportunity to buy equity in the company and become one of the owners. I got all this money. Now I invest in the company, I become an owner and then, July of 2024, get asked to be the CEO of the company.
48:38 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, amazing, I mean, and the uh 40, 50 homes you guys are doing a year, are these? It's kind of a mix of models. Um, like what. What are you doing with those homes primarily?
48:52 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yeah, single family residential wholesale flips in Florida primarily, primarily, and then of recent time in Georgia and Tennessee okay, cool.
49:04 - Preston Zeller (Host)
I mean you know, I think one of the things that stood out to me, uh, so much, I mean you know that was my first seven figure flipping event, um, in in January, but the, I think the emphasis on service, and it's funny because what that September prior I went to clever summit, which is like this totally different vibe, right, a lot of peacocking and you know stuff like that. And you guys were so much more about like hey, like we're, we're, we do well in life financially to be able to give back and to help others. And I know you have your Mexico mission trip and other things you guys do. I'm kind of curious, was that always in the sort of fabric of seven figure flipping or was that? Is that a more recent thing or yeah?
49:58 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I think you know bill, my partner and the primary owner of seven figure flipping is also a military guy and frankly you know it's like you do good, so you, you do good so that you can give, like you just genuinely has a attracts a go-giver type person. I know that's like super cliche and most people would say that, but like you've been in the room- you know you get a really mature person in there.
50:28
It's not. It's not about ego man. It's never about ego. It's never. Nobody cares how many deals you did. I'd like to help you get more efficient, more profitable, and it's so good that, out of the mastermind, in 2021 they started the seven figure foundation. So this was just like members right. This is like nobody's getting salaries out of this. It's like members start this 506 or uh, what is it?
50:57 - Preston Zeller (Host)
503c or whatever 503c, yeah, 503c, it's a seven figure C or whatever.
51:00 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
503C yeah, 503C, it's a seven-figure foundation. Before that, we had been supporting Operation Underground Railroad, which is fighting human trafficking, which is great. But if you know about nonprofits, the problem with that is we can't go on missions with them and fight human trafficking.
51:15
So, we wanted to have a nonprofit. The community, the people in the community, like where can I give my money, but not just my money. Where can I give my time? What are we great at? We're great at building houses, we're great at real estate. So how can we make all this come together? So they start this seven figure foundation where, both domestically and abroad they, you know, obviously don't money donations that are going all to this stuff and, uh, you can go on the trips and help build the houses. So, for example, like to have a house built in Mexico, we partner with homes of hope and, um, it's like 24 grand. So, like in our business, Lindsay and I, our goal this year is to buy at least one house. So we're donating 20. We've committed to donating $24,000. And in September 5th and 6th I think we're going to Tijuana to build the houses.
52:12
So I don't just get to donate my money Like that's cool and that's. I totally appreciate that. But I want to go. I want it to mean more. I want to go. I want it to mean more. I want to go down there, I want to build the house, I want to see the family that gets it, I want to be a part of their life in a meaningful way. So yeah, and you know, like our people, like we got a guy, joe Druther, does a lot of new construction near Fort Bragg area in North Carolina and basically for every house they build, they buy a house, they pay for the house to be built in Mexico.
52:51
Because, like, what are we doing, man? Like it's actually not that hard to make a bunch of money doing this stuff If you take some time. You got to put in the work, you got to have the skill development, of course, over time, but once you crack the code on it, it's really good to you. So, like, why not be really good to others who don't have the same opportunity?
53:13 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, no, I think it's a fantastic missional purpose. And then seven figure flipping Tell us more about that. That was also awesome to see. I mean you have the missional purpose and then seven-figure flipping Tell us more about that. That was also awesome to see.
53:30 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
I mean you have the missional element, but really it's people looking to grow their real estate operation. Right yeah, it's a real estate mastermind Been around for a decade. Some great investors have come through here and built their business in this mastermind. People have been in this mastermind for eight, eight plus years so, like you know, they don't just come for a year, figure it out and leave Um the, it's the whole playbook. You know it's like we. There's nothing held back, it's complete abundance. There's no flashy, it's just flat out how to build the business, how to have the community around it.
54:03
We all know entrepreneurship can be a challenge at times with so many people quit. They don't have the community. We got resources for days. People come to our community. They get the multiple hard money lenders who do a hundred percent financing on purchase and rehab. Global home Depot account. Like.
54:24
Just the resources alone for being a member of our community are like business changing for most businesses getting that kind of liquidity in your business. It can really fuel growth. But it's really it's about community man. It's about being surrounded by other givers and growth-oriented people who want to make a difference. It's not about 500 deals. I don't care who's on stage. I love the guy in our community who does 12 deals a year, super profitable lifestyle business. As much as I love the guy doing 250 deals a year, like you know, those numbers mean nothing. Our industry has all the marketing going on in our industry to attract people to communities is, you know, it kind of drives me nuts. If I'm being honest with you. It's like what are we here for? Like, what's the purpose of what we're doing? Create that financial freedom for your family so that you can make an impact in the world. That's what we're about and honestly, you kind of see that is reflected in the people in our community, like the people that we attract.
55:35 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, well, I think that you hit it on that well, Because, yeah, I mean, I see somehow more communities popping up now and but I, you know who, what kind of person are you attracted to that's telling you about this group, you know? And there's just more of these niches where it's like, yeah, if you're, you want to go after the person that's promising you, you know, bajillions of deals and yeah, then you're going to go see what that's like.
56:09 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
This is what I tell people all the time. You know they'll expect, like some like hard sales pitch from me, Like, oh, why should I join your community? I'm like I don't know if you should.
56:17
Yeah, like what you should do, though, is, whatever communities you're considering is, you should go look at who's in the community. Yeah, are those your people? The how-to? Like no community has got some corner on elite information about how to do this stuff. Like the ones who've been around for a while all have good information. To me, it's like what room do you want to be in if you've got a? There are rooms with people who have egos, and you know it's all about me, that's fine, I'm not hating on them. Those people are fine too. Like if that's what you want, go to that room. That's not me, that's not us. Like we're we would be the wrong fit for you, and I would tell people that I sometimes I do, and I just say you know, we're probably not the right room. Go look at these guys. I think those guys are a better fit for you.
57:11 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Yeah, no, I think it's a. That's a really good point. Um what? What are your um future plans with where you're at now, or what are you striving towards?
57:23 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Um, well, I got a couple priorities. Like one, I still run my real estate business with Lindsay uh, who you know works in this office with me. So we're doing uh man, we've already closed, we're closing a couple hundred grand a month with a 50% net margin. I'm loving the business. We've got it really dialed in right now, so we're keeping that thing efficient. It's really important to us to not get too crazy and be great at what we're great at. And then seven-figure flipping is where I spend a lot of my time helping other people build their business and also I'm like the head recruiter, attracting the right fit people to come be a part of our community. So I'm always on the hunt for that.
58:08
And then my big goal this year is championing our nonprofit. It's not technically Seven Figure Flipping's nonprofit, it was just born out of our community. Any community is welcome to participate. In fact, we have people who just did the Costa Rica trip from other communities. It's totally awesome. We want as many people as possible. So the Seven Figure Foundation is really important to me and our goal is to raise about 230 grand because that will allow us to do a lot of houses, build some wells. It's interesting when you look at the nonprofit space, like well building in other countries has been around forever. We did this in Afghanistan in the military. When you build a well, if you don't teach the local community how to maintain, secure and do all these things with a well, they're usually gone within a few years. So we've got this. We're partnering with this organization that will help to maintain it for 30 years, providing clean water to places who've never seen it literally have never seen it.
59:10
And even when we go down. We just went to Costa Rica and built three houses. We're going to go down to Tijuana in September and build a couple of houses Like these. People sleep in outside on the ground trash piles cooking over an open flame. They've never had a house before. Not only do we build the house, but we furnish the house like, just like donating 500 bucks to an organization like this could be. This one or others could be the difference between some kid having a bed for the first time in their life and not it's insane to think about it Like I spend 500 bucks on dumb stuff all the time. I'm like there's no way I can't do more. Yeah, so the foundation's a really big priority for me this year Um, helping to be a good steward of that and champion it and make sure people know about it.
01:00:02 - Preston Zeller (Host)
Well, that's awesome. I'm looking forward to seeing more of just seven figure flipping what you guys do there, of course, the seven you call it seven figure foundation, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you'd like someone listening to know about you, or something that you're flipping, or just in general?
01:00:24 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Probably, but I don't know. Off the top of my head, that's okay. I'm just grateful that you're doing this podcast, Preston. I like your approach to it. I like the more personal conversations rather than you know, tell me how you did more deals or tell me you know like we're batch. We use batch in our business, right? We can be on here talking about how we use batch leads and how we use it to enrich our data and all this other stuff, but we didn't even talk about it.
01:00:55 - Preston Zeller (Host)
No, yeah Well, I mean, you know there's enough of that out there and I hope people listening to this, you know, not only got to know you, right, I hope they can see you at an event and be like Adam. I heard your story, you know I connect with that because that's really. I don't think anyone walks up to anyone else and be like you're doing 50 deals too. So am I, you know maybe they do, I don't know, but it's the personal stuff, right?
01:01:24
So, um, yeah, I'm just uh really happy you came on here. Um, yeah, I'm looking forward to just again seeing how you guys continue to evolve and, uh, do more in the community and helping out, and it's great to see.
01:01:41 - Adam Whitney (Guest)
Yeah, I appreciate you, man, and I appreciate you for having me on and I appreciate it. It was great meeting you in person. You've got a great story and um kind of your, your military uh story with the people that are close to you was really um, was really good to connect that man.
01:01:57 - Hope (Announcement)
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