I’ve noticed a curious paradox among many high-performers new to passive investing:
They say they want to be hands-off, but can’t actually take their hands off the wheel.
I can understand why. If you’re like most high-performing, successful professionals reading this, you’ve built your career or business on diving deep, spotting problems early, and course-correcting fast.
Now you’re supposed to write a check and...just do nothing?
Your problem-solving brain screams that doing nothing is wrong. Dangerous, even. The more complex the situation, the more you need to stay close to it. That’s how you’ve always won in the past.
And while passive investing does generally mean giving up control, it doesn’t mean you give up control of everything. You just have to learn to concentrate your control at a specific spot.
Why high performers struggle with passive investing
In passive real estate investing, you (as a passive investor / LP) can’t course-correct a wayward or struggling investment.
You’re not in the building. You’re not seeing the maintenance issues. You’re not interviewing tenants, negotiating vendor contracts, or talking to the bank about the refinance.
You essentially have two choices: accept that you can’t control the deal’s operations, or don’t invest passively at all.
Most high-performers I talk to land somewhere in the middle. They invest passively, then spend mental energy worrying about things they can’t actually manage. That’s the worst of both worlds.
The trade-off nobody talks about
Reclaiming your time is one of the big advantages to passive investing.
But here’s the honest truth: you cannot simultaneously get back hours per week and maintain operational control over your investments. Full stop.
If you want to be involved in day-to-day decisions, it’s simply best to go buy a property yourself.
Hire a property manager, get your hands dirty. That’s active investing, and it’s a perfectly valid path.
But if you want true passivity (the kind where you actually get your time back) you have to let go of operational control.
Where your high-performer energy belongs
That said, passive investing still requires work. Just different work.
Your energy should go into two areas: deal evaluation and sponsor evaluation. This is where your analytical skills actually add value – and you have 100% control over both.
So instead of thinking “I don’t have any control in passive investing,” think “I will focus all of my control before and up to the investment decision point.”
Can the sponsor execute? Do they have a track record? Are their assumptions conservative or aggressive? Does the deal structure align their incentives with yours?
Then, once you’ve made a good investment decision, your ongoing “control” energy can go toward other adjacent areas that you also fully control:
Building relationships with quality sponsors
Thinking about overall portfolio strategy
Making more money to deploy
What it should not go toward: second-guessing operational decisions you can’t actually influence.
Active investors spread their control across hundreds of small decisions over 5+ years. Passive investors concentrate their control into one big decision upfront, then trust that decision.
Where this leaves you
If you’ve been hesitant to invest passively because it feels like you’re giving up control, you now have a different POV. You’re not powerless. You concentrate your control at the evaluation stage, then let the investment run.
If you’ve already invested but find yourself second-guessing operational decisions from the sidelines, you have permission to stop, knowing that that energy doesn’t improve outcomes. Redirect it toward finding, evaluating, and funding your next opportunity.
Either way, you get to stop fighting a battle you were never meant to win.