Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Austin Whitney. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Austin, appreciate you joining us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard

What I do differently is help you gain access to your funds BEFORE the typical retirement age to start building wealth and fuel other investments. My focus is on the Triforce of Wealth which is Life Insurance, Owning Businesses, and Real Estate. These three things when used correctly will help you grow your cash flow and protect the money that you make. My company, Mero Financial Agency, prides itself in being a “one stop shop” for business resources. We have and are gaining new partnerships that can help you grow your business and find resources to help you.

Austin, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started out in Real Estate Investing, then of course started researching other opportunities to invest. There are obviously thousands of different ways to begin but I got familiar with 3 specifics that all work in harmony and helped me with my investment goals. Real Estate, Owning Business, and Life Insurance. I’ve studied and experienced first hand how these three strategies build wealth and are so effective at it, that I started my own financial agency to help others begin investing using the same methods as well!

I became a registered Life Insurance Agent so I can personally structure a policy for my clients. I did this so I can structure their policy the right way that won’t benefit me with a huge commission, but instead set them up for success building wealth now through Life Insurance. Because if a life insurance policy is structured the correct way, your policy can grow tax free, then can be used to fuel other investments like purchasing real estate and other businesses. I also offer opportunities to my clients to begin investing into ownership into businesses and soon an opportunity to invest into a Real Estate fund that will give them monthly cashflow and equity without having to learn all the ins and outs of Real Estate on their own.

What I want all of my clients and people reading this to know is investing is definitely NOT a get rich quick type of trade, but it can be done earlier than retirement age when you’re too old to use it anyways.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

Yes, both my wife and I started to flip houses on the side while we were both working full time. The first house we did was about 1 mile away from us and to save money we tried doing a lot of the work ourselves. We would go to work at our normal hours, come home for a quick dinner, then spend the rest of our evening over at that house doing all of the work until about 10 or 11 at night. We did this for 3 months! We swore the next house would be different.

We learned to be a little smarter in the next house we purchased and actually bought out of state. Eventually, my wife and I both felt like we were at a point where I could leave my job 3 years later after that first flip! 1 year later she quit hers too!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This past year as most-likely been the most difficult year of both my wife’s and my life. In August 2021 we decided to follow our business from Utah to Texas where we both had lived prior but had no family that lived close. The day before we were about to leave, car packed and ready to hit the road, my wife came to me and we found out we were expecting our 2nd baby!

We had booked our move with a 3rd party broker (unknown they were a 3rd party at the time) and were underquoted in our moving costs. Which, they only told us when all of our stuff was on the truck. Nothing we could do at that point, so we hit the road and got to our new house. Arriving after the 1300 mile drive, we found the previous owners had left the home very unclean (like fingernails and beard trimmings in the drawers still, unclean). But we were resilient!

All of our belongings were delayed further and further with the moving company. When they showed up 7:30am to unpack our stuff, then held everything hostage and said they wouldn’t begin until we paid in-full and signed paperwork claiming everything was there. So, I scrambled to come up with almost $8,000 because they would only take cash or a wire and my bank wouldn’t be open for another few hours.

A few months later, I had my truck stolen from a gym parking lot at 9pm leaving us with one car for a while.

Meanwhile, I was experience the worst Real Estate investment we had worked on so far. We had to let go of one contractor after purchasing the property then just seemed to have delay after delay. This property took us 9 months to flip! Which we typically could complete in 4-5.

Our daughter was shifted around daycares since she was part time and most providers wanted full time students.

During this whole experience, honestly it was great friends that we had their who pulled us through it.

Even though we had ALL of this stuff happening to us during this time, we made some HUGE leaps in our goals. I had just quit my full time job, we purchased our first rental property, purchased and Amazon business, and my wife even started her own business! If we hadn’t had gone through it all, I don’t think we would have been where we are today in our businesses but that experience also helped us realize a lot about ourselves.

If we hadn’t just pushed through and quit, we wouldn’t be where we are now. If anyone is going through a difficult time KEEP GOING! You may feel alone or feel like it’s never going to end but find a way to keep going!

Contact Info:

• Website: merofinancialagency.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_austinmwhitney/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-whitney-49296a111/