COVID-19: Business Goes Virtual With Scott Carson From Stories of Change & Creativity With Judy Oskam

Welcome to Stories of Change and Creativity. I'm Judy Oscom, a professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Texas State University. Throughout my career as a television journalist, video producer, PR professional and educator, I've always been drawn to stories. Stories about people and how they deal with change and embrace creativity. Hope you enjoy listening. On this episode, I talk with Scott Carson. Scott is president and CEO of We Close Notes, a Texas based real estate investment company. He's a marketing thought leader, entrepreneur, business coach and podcaster.

For the last, I guess you say almost 15 years, I've kind of been the go to guy in the distressed debt space when it comes to for real estate investors buying and selling and investing in distressed debt. A company called weclosenotes.com that we've we bought over a half a billion dollars in distressed mortgages after the last recession. I guess we're gonna be busy again here before too long. But done that the last three and a half years. Started a podcast in that field and done well with that done virtual events for the last five years of teaching thousands of real estate investors across the country how to dive into our little niche. Then we've actually transferred that into our podcasting space and helping podcasters with marketing and monetization skills and helping them expand, stretch their audience out across the country and doing some simple things that most people, I think is more difficult than it actually is and we try to simplify that, make it easy for everybody. So that's me in a nutshell. I'm called the note guy is kind of my nickname across the country.

Scott Carson understands why and how business needs to change and evolve. We're teaching, shopping, working and meeting online. And with the current global health crisis, business and life as we know it is going virtual in a big way.

I have seen a big change in people avoided doing online events because like, oh, it doesn't work that way. They have different, you know, falsehoods they think are, as we like to say, myths about virtual events. And it is a totally different system of having business, an online business versus a brick and mortar business. I mean, of course now some businesses aren't going to be able to like a restaurant can't virtually serve you drinks or virtually serve you the Chinese food that you want to get. But I mean, but there are things that you can do to still get the word out. And it's easier than ever to do that. I mean this technology that we're using and all the different social media tools are basically free for the most part. You just got to spend a little time. There's plenty of online tutorials or videos or experts that you can spend 30 minutes to an hour with, really kind of go through and say, oh, how can I apply this? And it's making some adjustments. I think everybody's making adjustments. You know who doesn't like the face to face, hey, let's have a handshake or a beer or something like that to network. But you know, we've been busy doing more events. We've worked, reached out to a couple events that were going to be canceled and we're able to get them to understand, like, hey, we'll come in and help you out with that. And here's how simple it is. And I just got email from a lady who had an event scheduled for Vine California 400 registrants was gonna cancel the event on a Saturday and now she has had double the speakers reach back out to her because she said she reached out to her, hey, are you comfortable doing a virtual event? She's like, oh my God, she just emailed me, Scott, can we take this from a one day to a two day event? I'm like, yeah, easy, done. Let me hit a couple buttons. Okay, now we have a two day event. Let's fill that. You know, let's get people networking and get people in, get the information because that's really what it comes out to. The online event space or the online virtual meeting space is still all about getting that message out to people. And when you have people hold up or quarantine their house or on lockdown, we can either sit and binge Netflix or we can still be productive and do something informational, educational.

Why is the concept of change so difficult, do you think?

Nobody likes change. It's like the same thing. I mean, we get stuck in. And honestly what it comes down to is people will not change or business won't change as long as they're in a comfort zone. And we see that all across country, people aren't going to change until something really affects their comfort zone that comes from either time or money. Yeah, they may get talked about it, but until something happens that moves them off the rock or moves them on that uncomfortable edge, like, hey, I got to do something different, I'm going to be broke because I'm not making any money or I'm being downsized or what I used to do doesn't work anymore, is non existent. That's where the change comes from. People don't want to change unless they absolutely have to. For the most part. I used to be the same way when I got to. And it took a $25,000 deficit on an event that I was running for me to decide, okay, let's give this a try. You know, my significant other, Stephanie, has been with me for years. She's like, well, why don't you do an online event? I was like, nobody's going to show up. Nobody's going to sign up for anything. And then we were going to do this. We were going to do this in person event in Houston. You know, we dropped $25,000 in marketing. We had like 25,000 in food and beverage and AV costs, and nobody signed up for the event. We had an amazing lineup, amazing concept, amazing thing. Nobody signed up, and I canceled it. So I was out like 25, 30 grand. And I was like, okay, that hurt. I mean, I was literally. We were talking about this morning how I was literally thinking I was gonna have a stroke or heart attack, like the week going up to it, because it was like all this money was on the line. I wouldn't have changed unless that happened. And so we said, okay, let's give it a try with a virtual event. And the first time we tried it, yeah, we didn't have 300 people show up, but we had 75 people. And it was so much easier because it was just a lot less moving parts. People that showed up were there, they interacted, and it still did well in sales wise, in our monetization side of things. So you've got to tweak some things, but it's the change. And getting outside that comfort zone is really why people and businesses don't change. They get used to, well, we've done it like this for years. Or that's not the way we've done it before. Well, you know what? Before is behind us. This is the new reality that we're in. So you can either evolve or you can go extinct. And, you know, a lot of times businesses is like the dinosaurs. They're used to doing the same thing for the millions of years and you don't want to change, but we're ever evolving. And I think if anything, that's the thing. You've got to evolve in today's markets with everything that's going on, or you are going to be extinct and out of business and working for somebody else.

Can you. Can you give people a couple of simple strategies for, you know, there they are sitting, you know, maybe there's a major meeting coming up. What should they be doing now to think ahead, because this is not going away for a while.

Yeah, that's a great question, Judy. I'm glad you asked it. The best thing you can do is just to start doing stuff online, letting your clients, your customers know, hey, we're still here. We're still going to have an event. You know, I saw another event that got canceled for six months. I'm like, why just do it online for those speakers. That would be a part of it. Hey, you're still going to speak. You know, just get in the habit. Reach out to somebody. Reach out to somebody who's doing this. And it's a lot easier than most people think. And that's the biggest thing I think is the ignorance. People like to think, oh, I can't do that. My event will work that way. Well, yes. 90% of what you do in person can be done online through an online summit or online event. And so just start doing things, start putting things together, start communicating, sharing with your audience, getting online. Tell them, hey, we're transitioning because everybody knows what's going on. There's no hiding it. You still have them rather learning from you versus canceling and then probably not showing up in six months because they got that information from somebody else who was online, who did evolve. And it's all, you know, I'm a big believer that you have to stay in front of your clients. So whoever has the loudest voice is really going to get the business. Most of the time you don't have to be perfect. Perfection equals broke. In my business, in online events, people were still able to tie in. They were happy not having to buy hotels, take time away from their family and kids. Now everybody's stuck home. So now they can save that money that they would have spent in travel and put it towards your products, your services, or future business with you.

You know, the issue of money and cost, the cost that they would have put on the. The in person event can go right into technology, correct?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we're so familiar with a lot, especially if you have a hotel event, you're going to be paying like 96 to $100 for a gallon of coffee. Okay, one gallon of coffee from a hotel for food and Bev is basically about what cost you for a month of to set it all up. Or I think I have $150 a month. That gives the ability to live stream with zoom with the software using record this $150 and you could have up to five, you know, 500 people joining in, listening. You can have up to 100 people, you bring on to talk at the same time. I mean, we've done events throughout a two day where we had 30 speakers on over two days. And for the less, I mean you gotta have good Internet, gotta have a good mic. A webcam is helpful as well. So you know, if you pay a hundred bucks for a Logitech webcam, you could use headphones like you're using or even like a Yeti blue, which might be 100 bucks or ATR Mike was like 60 bucks. For really less than 200 bucks. You can have all that you need for an online event. You don't need fancy video equipment, you don't need fancy. If you got a laptop with good Internet and the zoom, you could put an online virtual event basically together. If you don't have to spend eight grand on a food and beverage minimum or room reserves, I mean, that's a huge overhead that you've got to sign on when you're doing events. So that's a huge difference not having a 10 to $15,000, being in the hole in the red before you even start an event and you still sell tickets to it. Hey, say hey, we're doing it online. We're gonna cut the cost in half since we don't have as much overhead.

Still make it more as far as, you know, change. You know, we always look at on this podcast we talk about change and creativity and there's no better time to have both right now with all of this climate. But looking ahead, do you think this is gonna change how business is done moving forward?

I think it definitely is gon. I think you're gonna see, I think we've been in that space anyway over the last year, two years more people going as they get more comfortable with online events or online networking. I think it's really a big thing especially, especially over the next few months. Because I'm not gonna lie and say, hey, a virtual event is gonna save your budget or immediately replace everything. It's a starting point. And so as you see people coming back to work or companies rebounding as we kind of get out of this quarantine, kind of get back to normal, there's going to be a period probably at least six months to a year before we get close to where we need to be again. And that means you're still going to have to tighten up on your budget. That means no travel, you know, no hotel expenses, travel allowances, stuff like that. Because you can do the stuff online and people are going to take advantage of that. I think it's going to realize how easy that is. They're still going to have some travel, in person stuff and it's still a great thing to do, but I think you're gonna see a lot less. I actually believe that probably 50% of the event space of the event companies or the people putting on big conferences or events are gonna be out of business because they don't know how to evolve. And that's a sad thing. But with companies and work and if you evolve it, making 50 cents on the dollar right now is still better than making a whole lot of nothing if you've got to work from home. I mean, I think there's been a big push in bigger companies to have people working remotely anyway. I like, I've got friends that work at Buffer, you know, one of the big social media platforms. 100% of their staff works remotely. They don't have an office space. Everybody works remotely. And you see that, you've seen it kind of that push for people to, you know, only work two to three or four days in an office, especially if they're in high tech. You can do that for the most part. You just gotta learn. You just gotta learn how to evolve and give you some, give you some time for the learning curve. It may not be perfect, but if you can get 60, 70% of your productivity initially back by at least having people work and communicate in a way, hey, that's a great start. That's a totally a great start. And you can evolve and get better as you evolve.

Scott, I think you do such a great job at building community online. And you know, I joined your St Patrick's Day celebration with my beer. That's important for businesses to do as well, correct?

I think so. I think I probably get five to ten emails a day from companies like, you know, the whole. The coronavirus email. Hey, we're reducing our hours or anything wants to be safe or hey, we're gonna be closing our doors for a while. And I get that. But sometimes people are all in the same thing. And that's if you listen to the news or and spend your time getting your news from fake book, as I like to say, it's negative. It's a lot of negative Nancy's out there. Okay, so the more you can communicate and try to have some sort of fun or just touch base with everybody, let people vent. Communicate. Yeah. Hey, it's St. Patrick's Day. We can't get in person to have a green beard, but we can get it online and just talk about what's going on. And crack jokes and everybody's going through the same thing. So we can all either sit around and whine and moan or we can be something positive and be fun and goofy and just be yourselves and have comics. I mean, we're working with a couple comics up in New York right now, trying to put on online April Fool's Comic Festival comics over Corona. You know, I had this, I'm not joking. I had this idea about two hours ago and I've already got five comics involved. And we're like, okay, how are we gonna put this? Like, just get everybody together. I'll handle the technology and we'll get it shared and live stream it. And, you know, if we have one person show up, it's better than none. You know, Gary Vaynerchuk is famous for saying that. The big social media guru, one person is greater than zero. You know, my trainer I've been working with four years in person, you know, two, three, five times a week. We started doing online workouts. When I would travel, he would jump online, we'd do a zoom call. You know, he'd tell me he watched me go through, give me the workout and guide me through it. Today we did that. You know, he's impacted because he can't meet with people in person and he's got an older family member that lives with him. So he's really being cautious about that aspect of things. So we jumped online, we live streamed it. Say, hey, if you want to go through a workout, hey, you can watch, maybe apply it. Or he does online trainings, he can do one on one. Just got to get creative with this. It's not going to be perfect at first, but like I said, just everybody's going through the same thing. And so if there's a way for you to serve a need or be able to solve a problem, then you've got something there. And I think that's the beautiful thing about online things. Summit live streams. If you're, you're answering an issue, solving a problem, even if it's for one person, you're doing some good. And you never know who needs to hear you laugh or you need to have a drink, a sift drink at the end of the day as well.

I think that's great. And I love how you always kind of share such personality. Scott, and tell us something. And I always ask my guests this. What's a little known fact that we don't know about Scott Carson that you wouldn't mind sharing with the listeners?

A little known fact is that I actually Have I got ordained as a minister about a decade ago. My father went to seminary school. Never was a minister. He was always a beacon of the church. And when he passed, I went online, I don't know, the Church of the Rose or something like that, and got ordained. And I just did it as a way to kind of respect my father. Well, then I went and posted some ad on Craigslist and I probably got 20 people responded and asked me to come out and officiate their wedding. So over the last 10 years, I have officiated roughly about 22 dozen weddings. A lot of us people on their third wedding or second wedding or something like that, or I had a buddy who was getting married in the Dominican Republic and I, you know, I got invited to his wedding, so I officiated it for him. We've had service members that were getting ready to go off to Iraq or Afghanistan or things like that. They wanted to have a ceremony really quick. So I did that for him. You know, it's a fun thing to help serve an issue for people. If they can't, they don't have a church they go to on a regular basis. So that's the thing. Ordain. And as I joke around, I've performed two dozen funerals. I mean, I mean weddings, not funerals. I love it. I love it. No funerals yet.

We'll try and avoid that. That's good.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, Scott, thanks for talking with me today. And again, I'm gonna put some of your links in the show notes so people can find you. And you just do a great job with connecting people. And I think that's a real, that's a real talent and very innovative during this time.

Well, I appreciate it. I've had the good fortune over the years to have some really great people that have helped me connect, who've been just amazing people that have helped me and mentored me along the way. So I always said if I can help anybody in the future with anything, I've been very blessed. My friends and mentors that are not really good friends to help me on there on my journey. And so if I can help anybody on their journey, I'm glad. Thanks for having me. And by the way, everybody, do Judy a favor. Gone over it. She does a great job with this podcast, you know she does. So go on over. You're listening to this. Hit the subscribe button and hit leave a five star review for Judy. She does an amazing job. So do that for you. I know she loves it. We all as podcasters love hearing that stuff. It's fast. That's not solicited. Just do it for me. All right.

A lot of fun. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate it.

Thanks, Judy.

Thank you for listening to stories of Change and creativity. Check out the show notes for more information about this episode. And please subscribe and share this podcast with a friend. If you have a story to tell or know someone who does, please let me know. I'm Judy Oscom. Thanks for listening.