Russ Whitney (Real Estate) Research
(photo credit Russ Whitney website. www.russwhitney.com You can click the picture to go to his official page.)
This was a slippery slope investigation for me. The web is extremely polarized on who Russ Whitney is…who he was and what he is all about. After days of research, I have been able to come up with a picture that makes sense of it all….at least for me.
Maybe it will for you too. I am the Real Estate Spy. My goal is to get to the bottom of the gurus and the hype and come out on the other side with great information that helps you. I have done it all in real estate…bought it all, lost it all, bought it all again. You can read more about me here.
But the purpose of this post is to tell you the good, the bad and the ugly, and I’ve got a doozy for you.
Who is Russ Whitney?
Russ Whitney has been around for 30 years. You can learn a lot from him. He is pretty active online and has run an infomercials for years.
When he got started in real estate investing, he worked in a slaughterhouse. At the time he was making around $5-6/hour. There’s a little bit of controversy surrounding whether he was making $5.00 or $6.50.
Who cares… Right? It doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that he wasn’t making much money.
He was married at 20 and had his first baby at 21.
While he worked for the slaughterhouse, Russ wasn’t content with the status quo. He knew he had to breakout of what he was doing. He began sending off for information from get rich quick schemes that he found in the back of magazines. You know, this is how it all starts. If you were here then that means you’re kind of like him at that point. You’re researching and you’re ready to make a change in your life.
(Uhhhh…not gonna judge here. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t tried a couple of these things myself. But I guess I wasn’t born to be dishonest or sleezy, since nothing that was supposed to be quick ever worked out. As a matter of fact, most things I thought would work, didn’t work. Sometimes, I feel like I got wealthy despite myself. I was stuck in a corporate job. I hated it. I was away from my family all the time.
When I walked through airports doing business, I’d stop in the bookstores and see what I could learn about becoming independently wealthy so I didn’t have to work for someone else. The idea of being smart enough to figure out a way not to go have to punch a time clock or show up somewhere because somebody else told me that I had to be there, was my passion. Russ isn’t any different. He was tired of the daily grind and wanted a better life.
But, nothing really worked out for the guy. That was up until he found a book that he paid $10 for on real estate investing.
He says it wasn’t a magical formula or anything. It was simply a good sound concept.
The concept is simple. It suggested that all he needed to do was go to a good area and look for “cosmetically distressed” properties, buy them and improve them.
The book provided him some nuts and bolts on how to calculate whether it would be profitable or not. The formula presented in the book basically was a quick and dirty income versus expenses calculation. It was simple math and it made sense to Russ.
So! I guess we’re back to the concept that we hear over and over again in real estate. It’s all about the cash flow, cashflow, cashflow.
This cash flow formula made sense to him, and he was one step closer to owning his own riding lawnmower. Seriously give the man a riding lawnmower. I love what motivates us to try to succeed in life. It is often not exactly what everybody else would guess.
One of the key factors that makes Russ unique in his real estate investing course is that he talks about a six sense. He talks about the inner voice.
He suggests that it is that part of you that moves you, or at least wants to. It is what resonates deep within and comes in alignment with the concept of I can do this that makes things that seem impossible, possible.
It’s the voice that says….This is meant for me. It is part of my destiny. If I don’t do this I will be off center.
So Russ ran with this concept called the seller subordination technique. Armed with a $10 book no money and no credit and a minimum wage job, he was ready to jump into the real estate investment market, and he succeeded. So, what was behind his success?
Was mindset the key?
Was a it mystical force?
Now before you go all hocus pocus barf mode on me, let me share another story with you that will drive home what I am getting at.
Have you ever heard the story of Rudy Ruettiger (that’s the story I was alluding to). He was 5′ 7″ tall and 160 pounds, but for that, he wasn’t even fast. LOL He grew up in Joliet, Illinois. His dad worked three jobs and he had the dream of going to Notre Dame. He credits his success to his mentors. He said his mentors were simply the people that said, “You can do it.” He seemed to tune out the negative and hone in on the positive. One of the most instrumental people in his life was actually a janitor who told him to chase down his dreams. Rudy was known as a dreamer and he was committed to finding a way to play football for Notre Dame.
Maybe you saw the movie “Rudy.” It was wildly inspiring and it smacks a little of the Russ Whitney mentality. In an ultra dramatic finale Rudy finally makes his dreams come true against all odds. It was the last game of the season and the last chance for him (in his senior year) to actually get on the field. All he wanted to do was get to run through the tunnel onto the field. He hadn’t been allowed to do it up until then because of game rule. But that day was different. Other players offered up their spots so he could get his shot.
At the very end of the game people started chanting for Rudy to be part of the game. He went out onto the field for the first time ever and in the last few seconds of the game, he made the final tackle. It was his final day in the final moment the last opportunity for him to see his dream fulfilled. But it was fulfilled.
That’s who Russ reminds me of when he tells the story about how determined he was to make it in the real estate game.
Russ Whitney Wealth Intelligence Academy
Russ created one of the biggest training companies in the world. It reported to have had over 60,000 people coming through his training a month. As far as I can tell he did business with Robert Kiyosaki as well who shares some of the same vision. However I have no idea for sure if these guys get along.
Russ’ primary goal was to show people how to become financially independent.
Throughout his real estate training he really focused on circumstance and opportunistic real estate investing. He centers the concepts around the idea that you need to look for a distressed property with a motivated seller.
He explains that this can come in all kinds of shapes and forms, but this is really what you were looking for. You’re not necessarily looking for a foreclosure/pre-foreclosure per se. Rather, you’re looking for the perfect circumstance to pick up the property from a seller who is ready and willing to make a deal.
This type a motivated seller enables you to create a win-win strategy. The goal is to create cash flow.
Since starting out in real estate it seems like Russ Whitney’s has changed his focus. He really has shifted from the real estate investor to somewhat of a holistic/spiritual/life coach mentor.
He really seems to specialize in mindset marketing.
I have really struggled to put him in the real estate investing category. To be honest with you it seems that his focus now is really teaching you to develop the innate voice that guides you and challenges you to win. In a nutshell, it seems that once he can show you how to follow that voice, then you will come alive to your passions interests and whatnot and become wildly successful.
This kind of information actually reminds me a lot of the book I recently read called “Outwitting the Devil” by Napoleon Hill. Apparently it was written in 1938 and the manuscript stayed in the family was never published until somewhere around 2011. But one of the core messages that Napoleon Hill talks about is the concept of the “other self”.
He explains in the book that the “Other Self” represents the true you. Napoleon Hill tells the story of how he went from broke to making tons of money by following this other self. Russ Whitney has recently written a book called the Inner Voice.
Millionaire U Conference:
At the Millionaire U conference he leads with real estate investing but goes into all aspects of life and self development.
I even noticed his YouTube channel regarding investing in real estate seems to perpetually flow into the area of self development. His strategy seems to be to lay out some key concepts, and then question whether or not your mind is right. He asks whether your mindset is ready and able to follow the advice that he’s giving you.
Truth be told it makes me feel a little bit on the fence about doing this review. On the one hand people need hard facts to know and understand to be successful in real estate. However, all of the great gurus seem to have one thing in common. Their mindset is different than everybody else’s. There is a core creativity at work that stands on its own. At the end of the day, you need both to succeed.
I’ve thought that many people would not be successful in real estate investing because they would lack the creativity needed in order to negotiate properly with the buyers and sellers. This is always the underlying question in the back of my head every time I do review.
Can the average person do this business the way that the guru tells them to?
Many times there is so much effort that is required in order to be successful, that I believe that it’s too hard for the average guy. It is definitely too hard for the average person if they are not substantially motivated. This is why it seems to me that Russ goes straight for the jugular on this.
He wants to get into your mindset and change the mindset so that your substantially motivated in order to achieve the goals that you are setting forth for yourself. I believe that he’s understood this principle and that is why he shifted his focus to it. If you can awaken the sleeping giant within, there’s really nothing that they can’t accomplish.
Let me be straight up here. I really just can’t find a whole lot of information on this particular event. I mean it’s clear where it’s going to be held in South Florida and what not. But the entrance fee and those types of things are a mystery.
I have scanned all over the Internet looking for this information and cannot find it.
I have checked out the Better Business Bureau, the pissed consumer reports, consumer critics, and other sites looking for any potential information where people have complained.
What I found was that Russ Whitney seems to have a pretty squeaky clean record as of late. All of the complaints that I found have been from years ago. Some even over a decade. What that tells me is that either his seminars are not being sold out or people are getting what they’re paying for. I just don’t see any reason to say this guy doesn’t do what he says he’s going to do.
The New York Times had a pretty intense review about the amount of money that gets thrown around at the hand of Russ Whitney’s team, however, it dates back to 2007. I know I am not the same guy I was in 2007. (I mean in that a good way. I was kind’a stupid… bankrupt by 2009. Thank God I was able to rebuild everything)
I love his story and I like how he is a go-getter and achiever. I believe that he might’ve had one of those “come to Jesus” moments and now he’s made his life about helping others achieve greatness and success wherever they are.
I have attended many motivational events. What I found is that so many of them are designed to keep you coming back.
It always comes down to one thing. How motivated are you to take the information that you learned and implement it. How motivated are you to come back and read your notes every day. Most people go to an event. They feel good. They come home with lots of hope and virtually no action and forget everything that they have learned.
I have discovered that there’s a huge difference between exposure and learning. The worst thing that you can get is this false sense of understanding because you’ve been exposed to concepts.
Sometimes I think it would be better to get one concept and then come back and live it for a year and then go back and get another concept and come back and live it for another year. It is sort of the martial arts/ninja way to learn right?
Russ Whitney Summary:
I am simply going to leave it at this. Russ Whitney has demonstrated the unique ability to move from poverty to the super wealthy. I would highly doubt that anyone could ever spend time with him and not learn something. He definitely focuses a lot on mindset. That’s why I coin him the mindset marketing master. However mindset reminds me of other gurus that specialize in motivation like Tony Robbins.
We all need great mentors in our lives. For many that may be Russ Whitney. I don’t know that he is equipping people with the business skills that he used to, however, I could be wrong. Information on the web is extremely polarized. He is the first Guru I have researched where there is really bad information and then a time gap and then really good information.
If you’re looking for a no money down/bad credit core concept to investing in real estate, I think that you may have to do some more digging when it comes to Russ to see if he is the right fit.
If you’re looking for a life coach that gives you serious strategies to win and have success with, then you probably can glean a lot from what he is teaching these days. I’d highly recommend you read his book before you attend a seminar and make your own decision.
Signing off – the Real Estate Spy
