Becoming the Bank with Scott Carson in The Professional Investor with David Dawkins

Welcome to the Professional Investor Podcast where you'll find out how investors become full time real estate pros. We'll interview experienced investors to hear their stories and industry experts to provide you with the critical insights to help you be successful. I'll also cover a variety of topics related to real estate to help with your transition into real estate investing. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the welcome to the Professional Investor Podcast. This is your host, David Dawkins, along with my co host, Matt Roberts. And today we have a great guest, Scott Carson with us, going to talk all about note investing and the paper side, the lending side of the business. So it's one I'm looking forward to. How about you, Matt?

Yeah, I can't wait, to be completely honest. You know, I know about notes. I know a lot of our listeners know about notes, but they don't know the depths of them, how to find them, where to find them, how to finance them. So I think Scott will really give us a huge insight into that.

So I'm excited. Yeah, no, me too. Absolutely. So with that, we will get to it with Scott Carson. All right, well, thanks, Scott, for joining us. We're excited to have you here today. How are you doing, man?

I'm doing great. It is another wonderful day here in Austin, Texas. But excited to be on here. Thankful. Hey, I guess I'm in the first note guy in your podcast, which is always exciting, always going to be the first.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you definitely are. And that's something we're excited about, to kind of dig into this side of the business and really get your, you know, insight into it because it's something that, you know, me and Matt both know a little bit about, but definitely not high level. And then obviously most of our listeners won't either. So I think this will be a good, good episode for everybody. So first off, before we even get into kind of where you're at in your, you know, company, can you first just explain, you know, what a note is and you know, how it relates to investing and how kind of just the basics of it before we dive into.

No, that's a good question. A great starting point, I think. So everybody is in the note game, whether they believe it or not. It's just that unfortunately most of us are on the wrong side of the payment streams. If you're a homeowner with a mortgage, got a car loan, credit cards, medical bills, student loan debt, an IOU to your buddy Billy Bob down the road, you're in the mortgage business or the note business. I Should say, but you're just, like I said, on the wrong side of the payment stream. So, so what a note is, is basically it's a mortgage that we focus on or a note, an iou and we focus on the first lien space. So we are buying these mortgages from banks and lending institutions and you know, REITs out there where it's the first mortgage on residential properties. We also do commercial notes as well. First liens only. There's first. Second, you can go third if you want to, but I stick to the first lien space. And we're buying this stuff directly from the banks, not to technically take control of the real estate behind it. I mean, that's the collateral that securitizes our notes. But our goal honestly is, as I like to say, we're trying to make America great again one mortgage at a time by working to rehab the borrower on those notes. Because we're buying non performing notes where the borrower hasn't made a payment in six months to six years. And the banks will heavily discount those when they're non performing like that. And they can be non performing for a variety of reasons. It's not just that the borrower's refusing to pay. They could have lost their job, there could have been a downturn in their community, foreclosures or short sales, they could be sick, divorce, whatever. There's a whole variety of reasons that somebody won't, you know, a mortgage will become non performing. And our goal is once we buy that note at a discount, that gives us all the flexibility that we need since we're buying the note at a discount, to go back into Billy Bob. We'll use Billy Bob as his name here. Billy Bob borrowed and say, hey Billy Bob, you know, we understand you had your own country western song. You know, Grandma got run over by a Reindeer, whatever. What happened? Can you start making your existing payment on time? I know you're three years behind. Let's not worry about the three years right now. But can you start making your existing payment? If we take the three years and put it on the face of the matter, can you bring a little bit extra to the table? So the fact that we buy it at a discount doesn't discount what the borrower owes. And so the beautiful thing is that we are able to get creative and try to work out a true win win scenario. Really a win, win, win, win for the banks. Because they get these notes off their books, they're really dragging their portfolio down. It's a win for the borrower because we can kind of help them get out of a nightmare. And of course it's a win for us. Cause it's a pretty good return on investment.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's awesome.

Well, good deal. And then so now with your company today, can you just kind of describe kind of your operation, you know, how many people you have working and then two, you know, when you talk about buying these notes from the banks, like how are y' all buying bulks of notes or individual notes or how can you kind of touch on that too?

Yeah. So I'll start first with Eric. So we, you know, we start off buying just one off notes. I mean, I've been doing this for over 12 years now. 13 years since the, you know, from the mortgage industry. As a mortgage banker. We own a mortgage company and transitioned. With everything hitting the fan for a lot of people, I just jumped ship and started, you know, dialing for dollars instead of originating mortgages back in the day. But we bought individual notes, we bought large Portfolios, up to 250 assets in one trade. You know, the beautiful thing is most investors will start off not investing, buying one, two or three, kind of getting their feet wet. And then once they get their systems down, they can grow their team or grow their list vendors and the areas that they're buying in. Currently, we're buying in about 30 different states across the country. We don't buy in every state. Not every state is desirable for either the price point or the foreclosure. Timeframes can take forever. So as far as staff wise, we run a pretty lean ship. The beautiful thing is that in the note space, there's vendors that can handle a lot of the heavy lifting. If you're a new note investor, you should not be calling the borrowers. You should not be doing your own workouts because you don't have a lot of experience. And there's also a lot of state lending rules that go in to loans and, you know, debt and stuff like that, like the cfpb, the Dodd Frank act and things like that. So there are vendors that handle it. Iva, my servicing company is out of Reno, Nevada. They handle a lot of the, guess you'd say the paperwork, the statements, the handling, the phone calls from the borrowers, the collecting the payments, the dispersing of funds. I have a, you know, we have attorneys in every state that we've either hired ourselves to help with the foreclosure. The legal side, if the borrowers won't work with us, or servicing companies will have their own in A specific area that they'll recommend it or use as a vendor. We also, I have a full time dedicated asset manager who used to work for a servicing company. She handles a lot more of my, you know, negotiations with a bar since we've been doing this for a while and she's got a lot of experience. She does a lot of the individual workouts with the bars that, you know, the direct phone calls when the bar calls a servicing company, you know, for the phone calls to her. She knows exactly what I want to do with the assets. Whether it's a hey, let's try to get the bar to do this type of, you know, trial payment plan or they need to bring this much to the table. And she kind of massages the deal, make sure it fits for what we want. It also is affordable and something that can be a success with a borrower as well. Then I've got a part time assistant in Orlando who works remotely. I have my VP of operations for our educational business. Stephanie is my significant other. She obviously works here locally and then I use a variety of VAs for marketing and other things across the country. You know, international VAs for other things.

Gotcha.

That's great.

So you keep it very efficient. It sounds like just the right amount.

Of people you need. Yeah, well, that's the thing is, you know, I've been in the fix and flip business, you know, did that years ago. That's obviously a very labor driven. You got to worry about contractors and showing up on time and cost. I didn't want to do that. And the fact that we buy loans in a variety of states, it doesn't make it very effective to try to have, you know, five, six different rehabs and running in different states at the same time. Time too. So. And I think, I think you guys will agree to this. As real estate investors, the more streamlined you can be in what type of deals you're going after, what kind of deals and exit strategy you're doing, the more successful you're going to be. I think we as real estate investors get sidetracked with the shiny object or the squirrel syndrome. And that leads to a lot of issues, a lot of time because we're not doing the same in, same out. So our organization is all about the increasing the velocity of capital as fast as we can. A note deal is usually gonna be a longer timeframe than your traditional fix and flip. Our note deals will take six to 24 months sometimes if we can get them re performing. Sometimes we've had deals that have happened Fast in less than six months with foreclosures, where we bought the note and the bank had already started the foreclosure process, or the borrower went and got a loan or cashed out their 401 to pay us off. But for the most part, this is a longer term cash flow play. For the most part is if we buy a note, we try to get the borrower to do some sort of resolution. The first 60 days. I prefer that they start making payments on time, because that's the biggest bang for our buck. If they start paying on time and they make six to 12 payments on time, I can then either look at selling that note off as a re performer to somebody who's looking for a performing note, sell it to the secondary market, because there's all sorts of funds that are looking for reperforming paper, or I look to keep it for good cash flow in my own portfolio.

That's great. So you can really evaluate that and figure out what the best option is.

Yeah, I mean, I wish I knew which way every deal was gonna go when I bought it, but it's kind of like a choose your own adventure. Sometimes I only buy occupied assets for the most part. Unless it's in like two markets, because that gives me the most amount of exit strategies. Anytime you end up buying a vacant property, you know you're gonna have to foreclose most of the time and then have to put some work into it about 90% of the time. And it's gonna have to replace something. Depending on how vacant that property has been for how long. You know, if it's sitting vacant. The air conditioner has usually gone on vacation and gone away. The copper goblins have showed up. You know, let's go somewhere else if you got, you know, when they leave. You have often have a wonderful indoor water feature sometimes happen. You know, if it's in the upper north, you know, north states, you'll have sometimes an inside skating rink in the basement, you know, so occupied assets work well for us. Cause there's usually somebody living in, they may not be paying me, they're usually taking care of the property. And that's an important thing. Right.

That's good.

Well, this touching on, you know, you just kind of said a little bit that you used to do fix and flips and other real estate, you know, assets and investments. So going back to, I guess you growing up and getting involved. We know, where did you grow up? How did you get into, you know, real estate investments to begin with? What led you towards that.

Well, I was born on a cold night. May 28, 1977. No, I grew up in South Texas, down by Corpus Christi, Texas. My parents owned the local hardware store in a small town called Ingleside. Most people drive through Ingleside on the way to Port Aransas or South padre. Small town, 3,500 people. But I was like. I say it was the indentured servant because I was the kid in the hardware store that had to put everything together. You know, displays and stuff like that. So I grew up with the entrepreneurship bug quite a bit. My parents ran the store, did other things, and so on the weekends when I was in school, I was always working for somebody else as well, too, like the electrician. You know, wire or digging ditches or doing stuff, whatever I could as a kid to make money. So I always grew up and then later on graduated, played college football for a couple years, went on and graduated with a business degree. You know, went into business and, you know, I guess you could say I was working for somebody. I wasn't quite happy, of course, got married, and one of our favorite shows was obviously that fictional show, Flip this House, where everything magical happens there.

Everything magical happens completely according to plan.

Yeah, exactly. And we bought our first house. This goes back to 2002, our first house. And our realtor's like, hey, you got great credit. It's a great time to buy. Why don't you become a real estate investor? I'm like, yes, let's do that. I can fix anything in a house. And sure, I'll be your Tim the Tool man tailor, and let's do it. So we bought two investment properties. I was making good money as a financial advisor at the time. Six figures at school was good at what I do. But then a couple things happened. Dell Computers, which is the. Was the primary employer for my two investment properties, laid off a bunch of people as they moved their operations to Memphis, which let me. My tenants became deadbeat. Couldn't pay their rent to me, and then I got laid off. I walked into my financial advising job, and they sent everybody to the boardroom and said, hey, thanks for working for us, but we're closing the location down. Yeah, that was not very good. So then we were trying to make six mortgage payments. Three first three seconds on a private school teacher salary. So not fun. I mean, I've shipped the cushions in my couch looking for enough change to put together, to put. To buy a gallon of gas to drive somewhere so that hopefully I get paid. So we took it in the teeth for a little bit. But we got our assets out of a sling. I went to work back in finance and banking, did that for a couple years, was a great banker here in Austin and opened up a bunch of branches throughout Central Texas here, but still had the bug. And a buddy of mine that I worked with beforehand, he was starting a mortgage company with a couple real estate investors that were traveling the country teaching note investing, teaching creative financing, wrap around fix and flipping. And so I went and met with them. I said that's what I wanted to do. So I can remember July 4, 2004, jumping on a plane and going to Los Angeles with my buddy and his other investors, going to Big Ron LeGrand Expo at the Marriott and being a mortgage broker in the back of the room. And I basically for the next four years I had kind of an apprenticeship. We were doing mortgages and have killing it between 2004 and 2008. It was a great time to be a mortgage broker. But I sat through so many workshops and so many classes and took so many copious amount of notes and learned from my, I guess you could say, well, the investors, Bob and Jamie, he and she just did an amazing job of teaching me a lot of stuff. So I started going out and applying what I was learning with options and wholesaling and subject to deals and some light flips and doing a little bit of private money lending. So that when the, the market turned in 2008, I kind of saw the writing on the wall and sold my part of the mortgage company, went out and started buying notes on my own. Start dialing for dollars. Yeah, you know, and you know, we were getting stuff done and this is the age when Facebook was, had been around a few years. LinkedIn was kind of new, but I really leveraged those two things and was just sharing what I was doing. You know, I flipped one note, made six grand, I flipped another one, an apartment note, and made 35 grand in 24 hours. And then another flip the portfolio of notes and made 50 grand in a week. And so, okay, started building this. And then I was getting so many deals in and I didn't have the bandwidth to take them all down. Still this case, there's still plenty of inventory out there for everybody as long as you're on the market. And so I got divorced at this time and was sitting here in Austin. Austin, great market here to live in. It's just overpriced real estate for the most part. I said I need to do something different, need to shake it up. And it was around the start of. Actually, it was about this time of the year back then in 2010, and I'm a big baseball fan. And I said, well, what would it be like for me to travel the country to go to all 30 Major League Baseball parks? Because one of those stupid Visa commercials came on. You know, $6 beer, $8 hot dogs, seeing all the ballparks we send. Priceless.

I remember that one.

Yeah, me too.

And they always talk about my mental coaches or my mindset coaches, like, say, if you want something to happen, write it down. So I pulled out a piece of paper, pulled up espn.com and I started plotting the days on this fictional journey of Traveling to all 30 Major League Baseball parks, what it'd be like to be fun. Well, true. Divine intervention. I believe this. And my hair still stands at my neck every time I tell a story. Over the next four weeks, I had real estate investment clubs that were seeing the blogs that I was writing, the videos that I was doing on the deals, and they reached out to me and said, hey, could you come speak at our investment club? And I'm like, yeah, sure. What dates? And the dates they asked me lined up perfectly with the dates on the calendar of this fictional baseball team. And so I was like, okay, great. And that's a sign from God. So I sold everything in Austin, sold my last house, wrote a check at the closing because I was upside down at the time, sold everything except my dog in my truck. And actually the truck I owned, I bought the note on and repoed the truck. That's another story.

Back to a country song there.

So me and my white Ford F150 pickup and my dog Princess and I jumped in the truck and what we thought would be like 30 weeks traveling across the country, turning into three and a half years of non stop travel and teaching. And we, you know, we'd spend some time in Miami or Florida and go door knocking really kind of door to door on some banks and found some assets. We bought a bunch of stuff and it just really blossomed. I became known as the guy because I was one of the few guys putting stuff on YouTube and just teaching people, hey, here's what you do, here's what you say, here's what you don't do. Here's how you break down a deal. Here's how you find these assets. And people like, why are you sharing that stuff? I'm like, listen, there's more deals than I can buy. I mean, in 2010, we had 15 million homeowners underwater. Like, there's plenty. So I kind of, I think of all these elections and this, you know, these buses going, you know, city to city, people shaking hands and kissing babies and stuff like that. Kind of a little, it's kind of like I did what I did. I did kind of a grassroots city by city kind of tour of just going out and meeting people at the local real estate clubs and speaking about half the time, teaching classes and then looking at assets and kind of building a grassroots effort. And we look back now over the last 10 years and we've helped educate thousands of people. The thing I'm most proud of is my students have closed on thousands and thousands of notes and then really helped, you know, helped a lot of borrowers out by keeping them in their house and saving neighborhoods and things like that and avoiding foreclosure and really create win win scenarios for it. So it's, that's kind of my journey and kind of how I got here and Austin's home. I kind of settled back in here a couple years ago. I love this place. What's nice and convenient about here is I'm about a two and a half hour Southwest Airlines Airlines flight from about 90% of the country. So if I need to jump on a plane, I can, you know, I don't go out and look at my assets. There's vendors that do that for me most of the time. But occasionally I'll. I'll jump on a plane like to fly to Ohio and drive around for a couple days and look at assets. Or I flew to Michigan and drove around, you know, a couple of the cities where we had stuff and then look at this stuff. That's always educational. But I'm here at home and we teach how to do this virtually, so.

Gotcha. Well, good deal.

And it came honestly full circle for you, right? Because you started out of college in the finance industry and then obviously you're still kind of in the finance industry, just on a different side of things.

Yeah, that's the thing is being a mortgage banker and a financial advisor and a banker have all helped me. I mean, you don't have to have that background. We got plenty of people that do other things that are in this, but it obviously helps. Mortgage people do really good in the note space. Finance guys are really good in the space. Those that struggle a little bit are engineers a little bit. Because most people suffer from over analyst paralysis. Let's face engineers are over analyst paralysis freaks. When we buy a note, you know, there's a variety of exit strategies that can happen and that's the thing that bogs a lot of people down. Like, well, what if it does this and what if it does this one? If it does this, I'm like, you know, it's gonna happen one of three ways. You buy a note, they're either gonna reperform or you're gonna modify or you're gonna go to a liquidation strategy, either a deed and lieu, cash for keys, short sale, or you're gonna go the foreclosure route, have to foreclose and go that route if you need to. I mean, that's, you know, it still happens about 60% of the time with foreclosures out there across the country. And that's not a bad thing because now you take the asset back, keep it, rent it, sell it, whatever you want to do with it. But I just don't want to own rentals. I like owning the notes where I get paid in zeros and ones. And I can do these deals from wherever I'm at in the country or in the world.

Yeah, it's like a bank. You're the bank. That's all the banks. Yeah. They have your property. They can take it back, but they don't want it. They're not in that business.

The bank always wins. That's why they're the biggest companies out there.

Yeah, it's true. And so. And you touched on it, the difference. So basically, when you buy the note, to kind of walk through that again. I mean, there is multiple ways it can go, but. But also too. That's just like in all real estate. You mentioned the engineers being a little hesitant of that. But that's. I kind of just initially, I mean, that to me seems as a positive because you have multiple exit strategies. It's not dependent on the buyer, you know, re performing, you know, you. If they don't, you have other options and you just take it whichever way it goes.

Yeah. And that's the thing is you have to. I mean, here, if I could have everything happen where I buy a note and they get re performing in 60 days, that would be ideal. Not gonna happen the entire time. So that's what you. There's borrowers I thought were shoo in based on our due diligence and everything we saw on the front end. Oh, they're gonna modify or reinstate for sure. No, they didn't. I did drag out foreclosure or assets that borrowers started paying, and then they fell off the cliff. And then I had to foreclose and go that route. So when you buy a note or when you're looking at buying out, I'll just run through the little exit strategies, if that's helpful.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be great.

You can wholesale notes. I mean, I wholesale notes all the time where we'll put some under contract to buy and I'll flip a couple off to other students or other investors and take 5 down and wholesale 5. The banks and the investment companies don't really give a rat's ass whose name's on the contract as long as that money shows up in their account. Okay, so wholesaling. You buy a note, you can either turn around and sell it immediately for a little bit. If you've done due diligence, like if the borrower starts to give you trouble, you know, you've done some work on it, you've got it with a servicing company, now you know which way it's gonna go. You've added value by understanding where that story really is with that borrower. You know, if you don't want to take the property back with her being an ass and trouble, you still can flip that note up for a profit if you buy it. Right. But our goal is to always try to get them to reinstate. That means just start paying the existing mortgage on time. If that doesn't work, then we try to go some sort of trial payment plan or a loan modification. We usually do a trial payment plan for six to 12 months before we do a permanent loan modification. Because then if you do a loan mod, you're restructuring the loan and then you can't go back and foreclose for the full amount. So trial payment plans, try to get under mod. If that won't work, then we try to see if they have somebody that can assume the loan. You know, they got a borrower, a family member, friend, nobody wants to buy the house. We'll allow them to come in and assume the loan payments. That's always a good thing. If they won't do that, then we'll start talking about a short sale. You know, is the market good enough to sell? You know, we like to hire our own real estate agents for that versus let the borrowers do that. Because we all know if you've got a friend, they can drag a short sale out. Yeah, you know, we don't want to do that. We want to try to get it sold. But we're, we, we get short sales approved in 24 hours or less here. No way. That's amazing because I'm the bank man. I'm like, hang on let's get around here. You're approved. Okay. Deed lose cash for keys. If that's not a, you know, thing, if there, if it's gonna be a longer foreclosure timeframe, we always try to do that because it expedites us taking the property back. If that doesn't work, then we look to maybe a cash payoff as a small balance. You know, we've had some people cash us out or doing a short payoff. I have one right now that I'm doing in Miami where The guy owes 80. I've agreed to a 70, $75,000 short pay. I paid very cheap for the note, okay? Very cheap. So that's a win. House is worth like 120. So it's a good thing. So that doesn't work. Then you go to the foreclosure side, you know, and sometimes foreclosure can be fast. Like here In Texas it's 21 days. Georgia it's 30 days. But then it's in states like New York you take three years. So I don't buy in New York, I don't buy New Jersey. You know, I like, I like Florida. Florida can be a little bit longer sometimes. It was bad in the past, you know, God's waiting room and all, but now it's gotten, it's expedited. Chicago, Illinois is not a bad state. About a year to foreclose. But Chicago is so damn corrupt. Don't buy in Chirac, it's Crooked County. It's horrible. Real estate investing, okay, but note investing, it's not fun at all. So. And there's a few other states that we don't buy in. I mean we don't buy a lot in the west coast because it's just overpriced out there. The banks want too much for it. Some states require you to have a license specific like debt collector's license. Like Chicago, once you have a debt collector's license, which is about 750 bucks every two years, Georgia wants you to be a licensed mortgage broker there. Unless you're funding the deal with your self directed ira, then that's the waiver. So we don't buy much stuff there just because it's a little bit extra cost. And it's also a fast foreclosure state. So the price is usually higher than it would make sense. So we buy a lot. And like I said, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana is a great state. The Carolinas, Missouri, Florida. I love South Carolina. So there's, I always tell people start off with like Two or three states. Look at those states and learn. You know, focus on the bigger cities in those states. For the most part, avoid the rural assets because it's gonna take harder, longer to foreclose, harder to find vendors that'll help you out in the rehab if you've got to take it that far. Or then ultimate less buyers as well too for you. So.

And then, so you mentioned, because earlier, before the call to, we talked about the different strategies there, you mentioned and you already that you, you know, focus on first position notes. So I guess can you kind of explain that, you know, first position, second position and why maybe someone else would what the strategy is if you have the second position.

Yeah, no, that's good. I mean, I bought some seconds, but they were always behind my first that we owned the note on and we were working with the borrower who's working with us. So first liens, you're in the first lien position. Really the only thing that can wipe you out would be taxes. So you've always got to double check your taxes. Now, first lien, you're going to go off a percentage of value or percentage of the upb, whichever balance is less for the most part as your offering price and pricing will vary state by state and foreclosure timeframes and how far along they are and if they're upside down or how far behind they are. Now, seconds is a SEC is a different ballgame. That game has changed the last decade. Now it used to be when we had all these properties drop in value, you had all these seconds that were way underwater. There was no coverage. Okay, the borrower owed a lot more than what the property is worth. So seconds you could usually buy really, really cheap. But any second investor would tell you you needed to buy four or five because two might pay off immediately and the other two to three you got to put in a drawer for three to five years until that property value comes back up or the borrower decides to sell the house. Now you can foreclose from a second lien position subject to the first lien, but then you've got to start paying the first lien off and go from there. There's some people that will do that, especially if you got a big second. If somebody's done a cash out or put a second mortgage to pull equity out of their house, that will sometimes work, but it's the same thing. Seconds, the balances are smaller than the first now that the values have increased back up to the 10 years. Seconds are pretty expensive these days. Because they've got full coverage when it comes to the value compared to what's owed on the note. And they're also harder to find because there's a lot less seconds that were originated than first liens. Yeah, we don't see that many second lien companies out there right now at all for the last 10 years. Before that, there was a lot people refinancing, doing some things. I mean, you've seen an increase, but still seconds haven't become. A lot of the seconds guys have gone into either going back to traditional real estate. Kind of like Dave Van Horn, we're talking about him beforehand. Great guy. I'm more into traditional real estate. Or they come over the dark side, the first side, and start going there. We see a lot of happy second liens, usually been really cheap. I mean, you pick them up for just a few thousand bucks. So a lot of people were using their own money to fund those deals.

Yeah.

And they don't want to go out and raise other people's money. So that's why they may not buy a lot. And first liens, you're gonna have to use either your own funds or opm. You're not gonna go out and get a loan to buy a non performing note. Hard money lenders aren't gonna lend on the note because it's a note, which I don't get that card money lenders are creating notes. They should understand funding, but they don't. It's weird. So we use a lot of IRA money OPM to fund these deals. A lot of people use their self directed IRAs to fund these or partner up with other IRAs. Notes are actually one of the biggest percentages of a self directed IRA company's portfolio most of the time.

Okay.

Using it for either performing notes or their lending and stuff like that. So hopefully that answers the question along with that.

Yeah, no, that does. I think it did give some insight into the second position. And that's. Yeah. For everyone. Listen, obviously when you're saying second position on your home equity loan, you know, heloc, that has a balance out, obviously just a second mortgage. A second owed amount is still collateralized by the house.

Well, and that's the thing too. When everything that happened, a lot of the seconds, if somebody filed bankruptcy and they didn't have the value of the house to cover the second, a lot of times those seconds were being stripped off and turned into unsecured loans that they couldn't come back and capitalize on. So that was a scary thing for a Lot of second lien investors, like, oh crap, am I gonna get wiped out in a bankruptcy trial that I've got to then try to collect, you know, and go that route.

So now, so that's, yeah, I mean that's obviously just a lot of things to think about as you get into this. And that kind of leads me to the next question that I was gonna ask. So, you know, how does someone you just mentioned as far as, you know, some of the ways people are funding these. So if you're just starting out, you know, learned this, you've got, you've learned from you, you kind of, you're bought in, you want to go buy a note. Like where do you go? Like what does and how do you buy, like what is the process? People know how to go buy a fixer upper, you know, they know how to buy an apartment complex usually. But how do you buy these?

So yeah, there's no, there's no note mls out here out there. You're going to buy most of these directly from banks or in lending institutions for the most part, or other investors like me. And so networking is a big thing. A big tool that we use is LinkedIn actually. Now I've built a database over 5,000 lenders over, you know, in internal numbers over the last 10 plus years. But these, the guys and gals inside the lending institutions that handle this go by a couple different names. Now let me make clarification. You're not going to walk into your local Wells Fargo and say I want to buy your notes or your bank of America, they'll call security and escort you out. Yeah, exactly. When I was a banker for Chase, I didn't know about this. They don't tell you it's internal. A lot of times these departments are internal in different buildings, different states a lot of times. So if you go by three, four primary departments and maybe any writes anything down, this would be the gold right here for you. They go by the special assets department, special assets department, the secondary marketing department, the chief credit risk desk, or the whole loan sales desk. So Those are the four names apartments. So you can jump on LinkedIn and do a search for people with those titles, Special asset manager. Pull up like 100,000 people on LinkedIn and we just, you know, when I first got started 10 years ago, I would just start sending internal messages, you know, connect with them. You have a free LinkedIn account, say, hey, what do you have on your books that you're looking to get rid of? I've been, I'm buying from My own portfolio, you know, and just do that. I mean, I was sending like a hundred of those direct messages a night to LinkedIn would shut me down for the day and I'd get two or three responses. You know, that's how I got into Quicken Loans and getting on their, their sales desk that I could cherry pick from. It's also I got into Synovus bank, which is out of like Georgia and Tennessee and the Southeast. You know, contacting their special asset manager, sent me a list. And that's the thing is they'll send you lists. You don't have to buy them all. You know, you take a look at and say, okay, start doing some due diligence, going through them. But most of them are like, just buy something, you know, now they'll tell you if they want the whole portfolio. So but for the most part it's hey, buy one, buy two, buy three, whatever, and go that route. And there are some websites you can use. Like Lane Guide is a research resource, has been around for like 40 years. It tracks what bank bought which bank. And they'll often have internal numbers. That's Lane Guide, like stay in your lane.

Yeah.

And then there's other states out there that will publicize who's like licensed mortgage bankers in that state. And then we reach out to mortgage bankers as well too, because they usually have like a warehouse line with a bigger bank that they maybe have a loan they've had to take back because the borrower stopped paying or was a scratching debt loan that they're looking to get off their books so they can get that capital back so they can lend it out 10 or 12 times a year. So those are the primary places that go. I mean, talking with other note investors, I mean, most people don't want to give away their private sources. Okay. Because it's a source. And that's the beautiful thing about note investing that I've always loved, is once you make contact with the asset manager, they're going to feed you. As long as you stay on them or close stuff on occasion, they're going to feed you on a regular basis. So it's not for those that are starting off. Most investors are really trying to bootstrap their marketing. They don't have the money to put a billboard up or mail out 10,000 mail pieces two times a month, or yellow letters or go door knocking and get shot at like I have in the past.

And that's why I love, I love that you, you know, took it to that next level and through LinkedIn like, thought about that ahead of time, figured out the departments because that, that just scales you from your door knocking, from phone calls, from trying to show up somewhere to get that relationship, to literally.

Direct messaging them to them.

I'll tell you a funny story. Back in 2011, I was in Florida, was actually spending some time in Naples and Marco island area because I was kind of traveling and staying with some friends. And we made a connection at the local bank, the bank of Naples. And we went in and met with the president. This is a smaller bank. And the guy that I was with was older than me. Jim was in his 50s at the time. And I was, you know, early 30s. And I got short haircut, you know, I got a buzz cut basically at the time. And Jim had set the appointment with a guy the bank and said, hey, would you like it? You know, the president of the company that I'm working with is coming in town. You want to meet me? He's like, yeah, y in. And the president, 76 year old guy, is like 6 foot 2. He walks up to Jim and says, hi, Mr. Carson, and shakes his hand. Jim's like, no, no, no, this is Mr. Carson over here. And the guy just looks at me, he's like, what do you know, you young punk? I said, well, you know, we'd love to talk about your $78 million in residential debt that you have upside down, and Then also the 25 million in multifamily loans that you're currently needing to move off your books. And he was like, hang on a second.

You did your homework?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The beautiful thing is like, if you go to fdic.gov, the banks will file their quarterly reports publicly and you can see what they have on their books. It's all public knowledge on the FDIC.

Okay.

Banker comes back 10 minutes later, walks us into a boardroom, a long board room, and stacked from the floor to the ceiling was loan files. And they're like, okay, here you go, take a look at it. My assistant will copy anything you need. And I said, okay, great, thanks, man. And then I got finished. There he goes. We were leaving for the day. If we were looking at some files, we were gonna come back because, hey, I got 12 more of my buddies that we meet for coffee once a month. They'd like for you to stop by here if you've got time to stop by and talk to them about their portfolio as well. Like, okay, we'd be glad to do that.

Yeah, that's awesome. And it's A lot like, you know too. It's similar, you know, with multifamily. Once you get in with a few brokers, it's kind of that similar, you know, once you prove that, hey, I am serious, I am a buyer and you're always going to be there, then they will continue to. You'll be on the short list, you know, and they'll feed you the deals as they come across.

It is now, I'll tell you this, I haven't bought multifamily loan in a couple years because it's. They're overpriced. The banks know what they have. You know what I mean? We all know it's the most expensive asset class out there. But I tell you what, I bought a lot when I first started off and I'm licking my chops at what some people are paying for notes right now. And I'm tracking every multifamily finance company out there because I know when the market turns south and when people can't get, you know, can't refinance out in two years or three years because the banks have started to dry up, there's gonna be a lot of opportunity. On the multifamily stuff, I was buying apartment loans like for 30 cents on the dollar of value. You know, we bought anywhere from a six unit in San Diego to a 300 unit in Indianapolis. You know, we bought regentrified. And that's the people think about commercial notes too. Once you take over that once you're the bank and they stop paying, you have the right to collect rents. And we've done that and took it over, got it regentrified and sold it off at the foreclosure, off in eight months later for close to what it was worth at that time, because we got it regentrified, New rents, new rent rolls and made it much more attractive. So.

And that's something too. So since you started this even before, you know, the recession, 2008, 9, and then obviously we're, you know, beyond 10 years past now. What have you seen, you know, change, like, because I would imagine, obviously you already alluded to it. I mean, 2,000, I mean, you probably. There were just more distressed notes than you know what to do with. And even though you said there's a ton now, but how have you seen the market change over the past 10 years?

So that's a really good question, David. Glad you asked that. As the markets rebounded and values have started to come back, pricing has increased on our side. You know, we're not buying stuff at 5 cents on the dollar anymore. I paid for some notes with my debit card over the phone to a banker one time. Okay, it's crazy. These days you've got to really do your due diligence. I mean there have been some of the, some names out there, companies that made a name for this a few years ago that had stuff like the Condor Capital. They're still in business, but they don't really sell that much. A few other companies were buying and gone. You really have to do your homework more so and get creative in marketing these days. A lot of people have gone to like there's a servicing company called FCI that had a page, a trading plate, you know, page where you could pick up assets you want to. They're cherry picked over. And that's the thing is it's gotten more attractive because it's been harder to find good REO deals. So you had already your REO investors that couldn't find stuff anymore have come into the note space and trying to buy that way. The biggest, biggest mistake I have seen though is that when people come into the note space, they start evaluating deals like they're a fix and flipper instead of a banker. And there's a whole different mindset. Like I don't buy, you know, most real estate investors. If I could come across like a distressed property where there's a lot of equity, I got excited, right?

Yeah.

I don't get excited when there's equity in a deal because that equity, that borrower's gonna fight me as the bank, you know, and if I'm looking at that note from another banker, they're not gonna sell it at a big discount. They're gonna sell it pretty close to full unpaid balance, 80, 85, 90 of what is owed. Knowing that I can get paid off in the foreclosure auction if need to. It doesn't leave for a lot of profit on the back end unless I can negotiate with that bar to walk away. And they're usually gonna fight me for that equity. So I like underwater notes, you know, where they owe more than what the house is worth because it takes away that emotional equity that they think they have. But the markets change. There's more people obviously in this game than there what there was a few years ago. But you've got to really hone in your marketing. You've got to set your systems in place. Like every morning I walk in, I put LinkedIn to work. 100, 150 new connections. Vast majors reach out on a regular basis. Not everybody has something Every day. But banks will have something at least once a year. And I want to be the guy that they know to reach out to you. So I have, you know, we do email blast out the first Tuesday of the month. We followed up with another email to those that didn't open up a couple days later. And what is funny is I've had at banks and asset managers send me lists that I've been mailing to for four years. I finally have something or they're like, hey, I got something in my books. I was looking for that green email know to send it to. So you have to brand yourself. You got to market, you know, and people don't aren't always comfortable in that aspect of things. You know, a lot of people like to touchy feely. They want to go out and pick out paint and carpet.

Yeah.

And you know, love on and hump that house. I'm like, I don't want to touch the house. I want everything to be on spreadsheets for me for the most part. So that's the big difference. The markets are changing. You know, Florida used to be a great market a few years back. Now everybody's in there, it's overpriced now. Michigan and Ohio, great markets. And you know, you just got to know and be flexible because markets will change and you know, things will change. And if I had been trying just to buy notes in my backyard here in Austin, Texas, I would have gone bankrupt and broke a long time ago because there's just not a lot of distressed debt here in Austin. So that's why I had to get creative and start looking at stuff outside of the Lone Star State.

Good deal.

And that's the benefit of working, you know, with someone like yourself as well, because you've done the due diligence. The markets rather than someone who wants to get involved, they don't have a team. They really don't know what they're looking for. Making mistakes, right?

Yeah, I mean it's not. I mean that's the thing is we're so good. We used to call our workshop Note Buying for Dummies back in the day. Because you just don't know what you don't know. And so a lot of people, you know, I tell them, like, listen, don't be scared to buy in St. Louis. If you're here in Austin, Texas, you can jump on a plane. Southwest flies there's. And you know what, there's a tool called Google. You know, it's an impressive tool. Do you need a realtor? Go On Google, go to realtor.com you need an investor. Go to the investment club, go to meetup groups online and join those there. Set up appointments that way. I mean heck you there's. Even if you're looking for investors in cities you can literally jump on like the county records. Here's the thing. And we raise capital like this all the time. We'll jump on the appraisal districts and start searching for self directed IRA custodians. So like Equity Trust is one of the biggest ones out there. So we'll go in and look for the homeowner's name. Somebody who's bought a house using their IRA, has money, is looking for deals and is not afraid to pull the trigger. So we'll go on, type in like equity Trust, request trust as the owner and it'll pull up a whole list of people who use their IRA to purchase a piece of property. Or if you go to the county clerk can do the same thing. It'll pull up a lot. People have used their IRA to fund deals. Ding, ding, ding. Those are great people. To fund your deals, your transactions and whether locally or other places.

Yeah, that's a good strategy. Some good creative ways to think outside the box to find what you're looking for. Yeah.

Don'T get me wrong, we all want to work with our friends and family, but if they've not been through workshops or meetup groups or gotten educated, then you've got to educate them on all the ins and outs. And a confused mind is a mind that says no. Right. But if you can find somebody who's like minded who has a self directed IRA is usually somebody who's been through some workshops right there. They don't usually have one just for.

The heck of it.

So that's a great way that you don't have to really dive in and re educate and reinvent the wheel with them. In their mind, they understand deals, they understand cash flow and understand that it may take some time to foreclose. But if the numbers make sense, the deal makes sense. Perfect.

And that's on that, on the numbers of a deal. Before we get to the end here and kind of wrap up with some last final questions, can you just walk us through? I know you, you know, we talked about how to find, how to find these notes, but then say, you know, like in that room when you walked in there and you were pulling out file by file, like what were you looking at when you talk about underwriting or doing due diligence, you know, on a deal like on the bar. What specific are you looking for to make sure the note makes sense? And what do you look for at the borrower and et cetera?

That's a really great question, David. So most of the time we get a spreadsheet sent to us. And the spreadsheet will have like loan number, address, mailing address, borrower's name, borrower's Social Security number, borrows, FICO score, you know, LTV payment streams, you know, when their last payment was made, you know, when it was originated, all that. All that information. Basically the full, like, 1003 loan application beyond spreadsheet. So what we do is, you know, property type, occupancy. So I'll take a look at the states that I like to invest with and I'll just eliminate the rest of the states I'll look at. Usually what we've been doing is if somebody has made a payment in the last two years or is behind, we'll look at somebody who's made a payment at least in the last six to 12 months. At least one payment of some sort.

Okay.

That's usually a sign like, hey, I'm trying to help. I'm trying to stay. Another thing David and Matt is that we get access to the servicing notes so we can see if the borrower has tried to call in to do a loan model.

We could pay.

So that helps us out there as well. And we can also see the borrowers called in and cussed out the servicer. So we're like, yeah, we're not gonna deal with that person.

Yeah.

So we look at assets, we wanna make sure they're underwater. We look at. We look at basically property value. We usually stay above assets that are 30, 40 grand or more. We're usually looking for balances that are higher than 30 grand or more. Depends on the area. You know, that might be a mansion in Cleveland in a doghouse in la. So you gotta be careful where you're at. We, you know, eliminate the states. Longer foreclosures, we eliminate the rural properties. We'll map them real quick to see where they're at. If it's in a smaller rural area, we'll eliminate them. And then we start running numbers. You know, what are they? How far behind are they? What are they? What's the pricing point that they're looking for? Approximately. And we'll run some numbers down and then we run some scenarios. Like, okay, if I get them to start making their principal and interest payment again, I'll take their P and I times 12 and divide that by what our initial bid is going to be at. And we try to make sure that that number is initially 20 to 25% on the front end. Now, we haven't looked at the property, I haven't sit on a doorknob, gone out and looked at the property. It's all online. And so we get a spreadsheet in like that. We'll make an initial round of bids knowing that they'll probably come back and counter decline a big chunk of them, which is fine, but the fact that we put in a bigger bid means they're willing to work with us more than, you know, we'll make a bid on 60 with one person is a lot more effective than 60 individual bids, you know what I mean? So we'll get off and get a bulk discount because we're buying in bulk. And then once we identify kind of the, you know, the sweet spots, they come back and counter or accept or client or bids, then we'll, we'll do a much deeper dive. Then that's when we get into, okay, let's double check, you know, let's make sure we have a realtor, pull values, pull CMA or do a drive by bpo. We always check the taxes. Always, always got to check the taxes to make sure that they haven't been through a tax sale and got wiped out. You also are going to pull title. We're going to do what's called an OE report, ownership and encumbrance report, to see what's on the property as far as liens, any liens that would affect us if we take a de balloon and things like that. And then, of course, eyes on the property, people driving by, see what it looks like. We'll jump online and start doing some social sleuthing, AKA Facebook stalking to see what the bars doing. I mean, I'll give an example. Found out one bar was going through a transition and it was gonna pay for his breast implants versus pay his mortgage one month. So we, you know.

Where the priorities were.

Yeah, priorities. Another one had made a payment, but she was excited because she had this big festival, made all this money, enough to buy a new car, Facebook. So that made for an interesting phone call when we called her and said, listen, hey, oh, I can't make the port. Well, on Facebook, you just bought a brand new Lincoln Town Car.

That's amazing.

That's a come to Jesus meeting really fast, you know what I mean? We bought an 8 Plex in North Carolina as part of a bulk offering and found out it was A working brothel a few years ago. It was zone commercial, so it was cash flowing.

You could write a book on these, huh?

I got all sorts of stories. We bought a book portfolio with a property in Dayton, Ohio, that the borrower made a payment three year, three, four years. Didn't respond. So we sent over, thought it was vacant. Sent over a realtor with a locksmith. Because as the bank, I'm allowed to protect my assets. So I changed locks and winterized property. And we found the guy dead in his closet. Oh my gosh. Yeah, yeah. I bought a note in Salt Lake City. This is an interesting story. Where the bar would pass away and her son had some mental issues. He was working, but he wasn't checking the mail. He was coming home at night and they had a basement and what he was doing is the water was turned off, so he was defecating into trash bags and peeing into milk cartons. We came into the house, it stunk. Basement was full of trash bags. He was like, to stay warm, he was starting a fire down in the basement each night. Oh my gosh. And there's all these yellow colored milk jugs all around on these shelves. We're like, what the hell is that? And you know that milk jugs get a little brittle after they've been out for a while, right? Yeah, yeah. We filled up like three dumpsters full of fecal matter and stuff like that. With that stuff, you got that note really sane. Yeah.

That'S what I'm thinking. I'm like, man, you better be getting some discounts on these notes.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing too. I mean if it's. That's the thing about vacant properties. Vacant properties, if they need work, the banks will let it go. I had dealing with Capital One was one of the first bigger banks that I've dealt with. And they sent me a list. I mean it was a 33 page PDF with all their million loans of million balance or less. And it was all in six point font. I mean it was packed on these three pages. And so there's a 72 unit apartment complex in Miami. I got all excited about it. My. Ooh, Miami. Viva la. Yeah, viva la Miami. And so I sent a realtor out to take photos of. Was a crack house, you know. You know they were hiding behind mattress, peeking out. They were like posing like gq. Yeah, My realtor wouldn't really get out of the car, you know. And so I sent that info because the lady was in New York state and she only had the appraisal from, like, four years ago. Okay. And so I sent her these photos, and I said, yeah, I think I'm gonna pass on this one. And I get. My phone rings about 10 minutes later, and I can hear laughter on there. Immediately, they're laughing as they're looking at these photos. And she's like, so what will I have to pay you to take this off our hand? And, you know, that's the thing, is asset managers are busy. They got a lot of things. You know, you don't want to have a long pitch if you're talking to these guys or gals because they're busy. Want to get straight to the point?

Yeah.

Either. Have some. They don't. They don't mind if you follow back up with them, but once you make a relationship, they will feed you over and over again because they know that you can close and take things down. And I still talk to some. Some of them have moved on. I still talk to them on a regular basis with. Just for the hell of it. But that's. You know, you see some good stuff, you see some ugly stuff. You know, that's not saying I haven't been sued. I've had bars that sue me in federal court. I'm like, you're not. You know, I offered you this. Why did you want to do this? You know, I had a tenant on a triplex. We bought. This is Chicago, but we bought the note. We foreclosed. We went back to the tenants and offered up to, hey, extend your leases. Let's go here. Have you signed a new lease with me? This one guy didn't want to do anything, so we went to evict. The cops showed up to file that, and he pulled a gun on the process server. He then denounced that it was not a state of the United States, was a state of Allah. His condo was the way to go a longer foreclosure route. Took 12 cops to show up to finally evict him, like, a year later. Wow. That was a deal we didn't make any money on. All right. Yeah, I think he was. We had another unit. We were going in, rehabbing, and then they would leave for the night, and then they come back the next day, and all the copper was gone. You know, it happened like, three times. I was like, it's got to be that tenant because he's not working. And I guarantee the only way you get in is if he did this weird thing. And sure enough, we found out that he was. So. But you. It's. It's. It's we do a lot of the same things in and out on a daily basis, but every, every story has a different story to it, I should say so.

Keeps it interesting for you.

Yeah, never a dull day, I'll tell you that. It's never golden, never gold.

It's good to hear all those too because, you know, and just obviously once you, you know, if that's the route, you know, any of the listeners decide to go on to notes as you're doing your due diligence. That's why just like in any investment, but I think especially, you know, in the, you know, the field you're in with, you really need to stress your due diligence because these are possible outcomes. So you need to make sure that everything's, you know, lining up and that again, the discount you're getting kind of at least accounts for most of these variables. I'm sure, like you said, there's some that you're not going to make money on. But for the most, it's a numbers game.

So it is totally. I mean, you're not going to see the inside of these, these assets for the most part. And that's a hard thing for a lot of fix and flippers to figure out. But you can often tell, I mean, if you're buying a note at 50% of value, I know I'm going to put paint and carpet in every one of these. If I have to take it back. Yeah, I know I'm probably going to put appliances. So I just figured that in my budget for the most part. And if it needs a new roof, well, I better make sure I'm getting it at a super discount or if there's a lot of back taxes owed, need to get a bit, you know, take my bid minus taxes out. So this is why it's important. It's a whole different due diligence aspect. This is also too, why you need to have professionals. A lot of people get in this game because they want to deal with the borrowers. I'm like, no, you don't. You give them an inch. You hear their stop story about how their sixth grandmother passed away, you know, yeah, they'll try to take you for a mile. And so you've got to be, hey, here, I want, you want to help people, you want to keep all their houses. But you have to be very. I don't run a charity. You gotta be very strict sometimes to listen. This is your one opportunity. If you don't fall through this, you're gonna be talking to my attorneys and they're not as friendly as I am. So that's, that's the biggest thing. It's just usually it's best use your delegating duties, you make a whole lot more money and you sleep a whole lot better at night too.

Yeah, yeah. Like I said, you know, the emotional wear and tear on that that can. Wouldn't want to be doing that day in and day out, just having those conversations over and over.

Yep. So.

All right, well, thanks. Now we're gonna hit a couple last questions before and then we'll let you share everything. You know, let listeners find out how they can get ahold of you. But you mentioned earlier, you know, when you get in, you hit the marketing like with LinkedIn every morning. But is there any other, you know, habit or daily routine or anything you've done consistently, you think that has led to your success?

Yes. Early on I approached my business as I'm in the media business and I think everybody has to realize that we're all in fix and flips, apartments, notes, wholesaling. We're all in the media business these days and you're all on the marketing side of things. So the more you can do about marketing, the better off you're going to be. That's the big thing that we've always prided ourselves on is that I think we lead our niche in marketing. We've got the podcast that does well, we do it. We've got thousands of videos online. We get creative with our marketing. And that's the biggest thing is you can learn marketing, you can sell anything. And so that's the thing I think that separated myself is that we just learned how to market. We follow up. We've got systems in place for that so you can streamline things. I know that most people that get into real estate are doing starting from somewhere else and they're not a marketer. Learn marketing. It is one of the critical keys. So you could either sell a six unit apartment complex or tiddlywinks. Learn marketing. Learn your social media stuff and how to implement it and just get in a habit of doing it on a daily basis. I always say I use the analogy of planting a forest. A lot of us want to walk in and have a forest grown already for us. Well, it doesn't work that way. You've got to plant a seed every day and realize that seed is going to blossom. And maybe immediately, it may be a week from now, maybe a month, it may be years from now that it finally blossoms to start planting the seeds, start doing video in some sort of fashion. Talking about what you're going in day in, day out, you know, your failures. Feel free to share that. The good, the bad, the ugly. You know, I've had good days, I've had bad days. You're in real estate, that's gonna happen. You know, you're gonna get sued at some point because the deal is gonna last longer. Somebody's get upset. It just happens. And so don't be afraid of that. But the more you learn how to market, the more you can overcome those obstacles, the more you can expedite and increase the velocity of deal flow. To you?

Yeah, absolutely.

That's great information.

I think so.

A lot of people don't think of it quite like that, but you know, when you put it in blatant terms, I mean, that's really all it is. And that's what you've got to do.

Yep, that's great. Cool.

And another question for you. Is there a book that you'd recommend and just one in general. But then I'm just curious too. Is there any other, you know, other books out there on specific on this topic? But the question. You don't have to. You can ask for something else as well.

Yeah, there is. I'm a big fan of Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. And Sharon Leichter is one of my favorite books. It talks about how the devil is able to succeed in the world. Napoleon Hill is having a conversation with him. It was written back in 1938 and didn't come out two years ago. But it's a great book that talks about how when we drift, we're not nearly as successful as if we were able to put blinders on and be focused. So try to focus on one thing. I know a lot of investors want to put different tools and strategies in their tool belt. Find something that's working in today's market and stick to it. And don't listen to your Billy Bob, your neighbor or your uncle who's never done anything. Talk to the people that are doing it. Reach up to somebody who's been doing it for years in a place that you want to be and I guarantee you they'll often give you some good advice because they'll want to usually help. Most of the. Sometimes. Well, actually most of the time the most successful people are the most giving of their time. And then another book is my book. I have a book called how to Buy Real Estate.

There you go.

It's a simple 73 page book. Basically I just wrote it as kind of A great way for people to kind of get started to get their feet wet. It's not advanced, but it's at least a kind of a good start for you. You can pick it up noteblueprint.com free book or you can go over to Amazon and order it as well too for you. So it's perfect. NoteBlueprint.com free book. You'll be able to download a PDF copy of it for free.

Good deal. And we'll, we'll put a link to that, all that information in the show, notes for everybody. And then lastly, yeah, kind of perfectly segues. So can you just let the listeners know, you know how they can get ahold of you, share your podcast, all that, all that information so they can learn more about note investing if they're interested.

Yeah. So we've got our website, we close notes.com. you'll find our different training schedules, you know, different things we offer up there. I'm on YouTube. If you go to YouTube.com weclosenauts you'll find close to a thousand different videos and podcast episodes on there. We've got the podcast, the Note Closures show. We've been around for three and a half years. I recorded episode 570 yesterday. We're syndicated across the United States, the 17am and from radio stations across the country. So we get a couple million hits there each month with episodes. But hey, just Google I am not the soccer player, okay? There's another Scott Carson out there. He's a soccer player. Only in England, the note guy. So we close notes is the best way to go and find it really where everything. We kind of remain mothership of a website for everything.

Yeah, well, awesome. Well, we certainly appreciate you joining us again today and thanks for everything you shared with us. I think, you know, I know myself and I think the listeners will enjoy it and we'll get out of here and we'll catch you next time, Scott.

Sounds good. Hey guys, before you, before you log off this, go on over and hit the subscribe button and leave these guys a five star review. They're doing great stuff on their podcast that is unsolicited. I'll say.

I really appreciate that.

Yeah, no problem, man. That's the thing. I know we all love getting reviews. We love getting good reviews. And that's the thing. I think you guys are doing a great job and you know, hey, you may need to reward it. I love what you guys are doing. Keep it up. And I'm honored to be on here with you guys. Being your first note.

We appreciate it very much, Scott. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Awesome.

Yeah. Good deal. Thanks again, Scott.

Thanks, Sam.