Cracking the Code of Note Investing with Scott Carson: Inspire Wealth Podcast with Professor M

Foreign welcome to the Inspire wealth podcast with Profm, where we dive into the world of real estate investing and wealth building strategies. I'm your host, Mallory Meehan. I'm a real estate professor, attorney and seasoned investor here to guide you through the ins and outs of creating wealth through real estate. If you're looking to take your real estate knowledge to the next level, don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date with our latest episodes and offerings. Welcome back to another episode of Inspire Wealth. I am your host, Profm. And today I'm joined by the coach himself, Coach Scott Carson. Scott, how are you doing?

I am doing great. Honored to be here. It's been too long too. Lots of things going on here. Congratulations as well to you. I, you know, we were joking about college football is about a month and a half, two months away. We're both pretty excited about that, aren't we?

We are, we are. We're probably going to have some banter going on later in the season, I feel.

I think. So. I, maybe we should put a little, you know, maybe put a little wager on which team does better, you know, something like that.

We'll put a friendly wager on things. I'm down for that. I'm down.

All right, Cool, Cool. Awesome.

All right. So Scott, I met you years ago now. I think it's been like two or three years coming on.

Three years now.

Three years. Yeah. So I want you to give an introduction about you, kind of how you got into the real estate space, what things you're dealing with, and then we're going to dive right in.

Sounds good. Yeah. So I'm out of Austin, Texas, home of the 2026 national champion team, the Texas Longhorns and the MVP Archman. But anyway, anyway. But yeah, no, I'm known across the country as the note guy because I focus on buying and investing in distressed mortgage notes direct from banks and hedge funds. And so for over 15, I mean, I'm a real estate investor for over 24 years now. It's hard to believe that, but for the last 15, I focused on this niche of buying this distressed debt directly from banks and hedge funds. And our biggest goal is to buy this distressed debt at a discount because they're non paying and there's a lot of people not paying right now. So we're seeing more distress than we've seen in a long time. And we buy that debt not to take on the property. I mean, sometimes we do that, but most of the time, 70% of the time we're Buying that debt and becoming the lender and then trying to work it out with the homeowners through some sort of payment plan modification, you know, whatever we can do to keep them in the house if we can. Otherwise, we do a liquidation, a short sale, cash for keys. And then, of course, about 30% of the time, you're just going to deal with somebody who doesn't want help, and you're going to have to foreclose. And then we can either sell that note at the auction as a foreclosure or take the property back. And now we own the real estate, but been doing this for a while. Bought over $1 billion in debt on residential and commercial notes and very fortunate to get started. Probably not too much different from like, you, Mallory. You know, you start hanging around with investors and stuff like that, you end up learning a lot of stuff. And so I was very fortunate. After a flop as a real estate investor originally back in 2001, and licking my wounds, I started a mortgage company, the buddy of mine, and we got hooked up with a couple investors that were traveling the country teaching creative financing, teaching note investing, how to buy on terms a lot of times. And, you know, for four years, I had this amazing apprenticeship with a guy, Bob Leonetti and Jamie Kayla, who were going around to the Ron Legrand, you know, work workshop. We kind of both come from that tree a little bit. With your relationship with Chris Pre, and, you know, when everything hit The Fan In 2008, I left the mortgage side and started buying notes direct from banks and hedge funds. And that's what I've been doing ever since then.

Love it.

Love it.

So let's start out with this. So people who are watching this podcast or listening to this podcast have probably heard me talk about, you know, buy and hold creative financing, other things like that, and, you know, the ownership of real estate. Now, note buying is a little bit different, and I'm sure you have to look at notes a little bit differently than you would look at a property. So let's start at the beginning. How would somebody go about finding some of these note opportunities and what should they be looking for?

Great question, is one of the top questions we get all the time. How do you find notes? Well, there is no MLS listing, you know, that's listing your distressed debt. But you could go to a foreclosure list. A foreclosure list is going to be a list of people that aren't paying on their mortgage. Right. And you're not going to call the bank's customer service line to say, hey, I want to buy notes. You're not going to walk into your local, like Wells Fargo or Bank of America say, hey, I want to buy your notes. They're going to like, no, we don't sell. Every bank sells. But bank of America is going to sell stuff at like a $50 million portfolio. Now if you can write a $50 million check, we need to log off and we need to talk immediately. All right, because we've got some deals for you. Yeah, but most people aren't going to be able to stroke that kind of thing, you know, I mean, Penn State's probably struck that for a lot of the cupcake teams they played over the years, you know what I mean? To, to boost their ego, you know, stuff like that. But we'll digress. Like that. I mean, ut's done that too. Let's just face it, okay? Everybody does that.

But anyway, you know, you have to build up the confidence, gotta build up the cupcakes, gotta make like that's, that's all we're doing.

Yeah, exactly. You can't pay, you can't play Ohio University as your win of over, the only win over Ohio based college football team. But anyway, you know, so what we do is we reach out to banks and there's specific departments inside of banks that handle this distressed debt. And you can literally jump on LinkedIn. One of our big resources is LinkedIn and we reach out to people who have the job titles of special asset manager, secondary marketing manager, whole loan traders. You can even look like for note investors, there's a bunch of different Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups that say note investing and stuff like that too for you. And so what happens is when you reach out to the right department at the bank and you say the right things, they send you what's called a tape, which is just an Excel spreadsheet. And it's going to be like 40 columns wide, anywhere from the loan number and the borrower's name and their 12 to 24 months of payment history and all the details of the note when they last paid, what's the value of the property, that kind of stuff, the details of it. And our goal is to cherry pick it. And you know, a lot of people, they get caught up in like, hey, it's a property, right? I'm like, no, no, no, you're not technically buying the property. You are buying this. This is what you're technically buying. And that's why I always say the pin is mightier than the hammer, because this is a Loan file. And this is a non performing loan file. And a property was in Kankakee, Illinois. They hadn't paid in two years. They owed, they owed 75,000. Property was maybe only worth about 65 when we bought it back in the day, but they were making a 570amonth. $578 a month payment. Right. We bought this note for 25,000. Now they still owed the full amount. And so we reached out to the borrower, got them back on track and they just started making their 578amonth payment plus a little bit extra. But you ain't got to be a rocket science to say, okay, 578amonth times 12, what's that come to? Oh, about 6,500 and some change. 6,500 on a $25,000 investment. That's a pretty good yield, you know, on that stuff. Now if they don't pay, then we go the process of foreclosing. Since I'm only into it for 25, this is in Illinois, it's about 3500 to foreclose. I'm sitting at with some other expenses and stuff, like at 30. Well, if I foreclose and sell at the auction for just say $0.70 of the $70,000 rough value, maybe I may not sell for 49. Well, I'm in it 30. That's a pretty good ROI for, for it taking me six months to foreclose. If I don't and it doesn't sell, then I now own the property that's worth 80, 85. And I can kind of go from there, you know, in a lot of cases. So that's kind of layman's terms. And what we do, we're buying the debt, working it out with a homeowner as best we can. We don't do all the work out yourself. There's the great thing about this is there's third party companies called servicing companies that collect the payments, do the borrower outreach. If we have to foreclose, we just kick it to an attorney that's licensed to foreclose in that state and, and go that route. I'm not going out and having to collect or knock on doors or stuff like that. I mean, I'm buying in about 30 different states at any given time and sending realtors out to, you know, to give me valuations and condition reports and then pulling title because we're really, besides just the property, we're evaluating the borrower, the collateral file that I just showed you and then also looking at what's on title, making sure it's a, it's a first lien. We're not buying second liens or stuff like that. Buying. So first lien, we have all the right to foreclose, if that makes sense.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So when you are looking at a property, tell me what some of the kind of key things that really pique your interest. If you're getting a list you know, 40 columns wide by a bank and you know, what are some of those things that people should be looking for that are going to say this is likely to be a good opportunity.

Let's, let's, let's first talk about what I kill right off the bat. The do nots.

Okay, that's great. Let's start with the do nots.

So I don't look at the properties first. I don't pull them up on Google Maps and fall in love and get what we call OTSC syndrome. Oh, that's so cute. You know what I mean? Oh, I want that little property. I'm going to own that apartment. No, no, I run numbers first. Excel is my best friend. Okay. So the first thing to do is I get rid of states like New York which takes three years to foreclose. New and not lender friendly New Jersey, which can take two years. I look at the monthly P and I payments as well. Like I don't want to buy something that's under really 250, $300 a month in principal interest payments because if it's non performing, it's going to cost me like 90 bucks to service that. So I'm not gonna make hardly any money on that. All it's gonna be worth my time. I prefer to see cash flow in the $500 range or greater, which is what we kind of target, if that makes sense. So I'll get rid of properties in small little cities I don't recognize where the population's under $50,000 with a stroke of a couple formulas in Excel. And then I also get rid of small balances if it's like under 20 grand as a balance. Unless I've got money in my ira, I don't really want to spend time with that same thing if it's, oh, if it's, if the value of the property is under like $50,000 for the most part I don't really want to waste my time with that. So this allows me to narrow down and get rid of cities like Chicago, which is just horrible to foreclose in. Not lender friendly. We call it chirac and it's in Crook county. I mean, literally takes you forever to foreclose there unless you live there. Kudos if you don't stay the hell out of Chicago. Trust me. You know, and then I look at my like preferred states, like I like Texas. Texas, a fast foreclosure state, you know, but it's also, since it's fast foreclosure, the banks sell the stuff here at a higher rate because it's a 21 day foreclosure process. You know, fast highways, fast and foreclosures and fast executions. You know what I mean? And so that's the thing, we kind of narrow the list down. We run some formulas. Okay, what's if. Oh, occupancy is a big thing too. I prefer occupied assets and it's more likely for me to get a bar back on track if they're occupied. Right. If it's vacant, I know I'm going to have to do some rehab depending on how long it's been vacant for, you know, so I don't want to have to do a lot of heavy rehabs. I like occupied. And then we also look, besides this spreadsheet, what's the last date of what they call right party contact? When was the last time that either the lender, the servicing company or the borrower reached out to make contact? You know, if it's been in the last 90 days, then we have a pretty good feel that a maybe that we can get that borrower back on track if they haven't communicated in six plus months or they're, you know, we look at the notes in the servicing stuff and see that the bar like, hey, go pound sand. You know, you're a Michigan fan, I don't want to talk to you. That kind of stuff, you know, you know, you know, I'm buying it. I'm a Texas fan. The guy's an Oklahoma Sooner fan. Oh, we're going to foreclose on that guy all day long, you know what I mean? You know, but so that, so that's what we look at and that allows us to narrow it down. After we run our formulas then, then we look at it. Okay, what's the property look like? Obviously if we've got details like bed baths, we like to stick in kind of your, you know, your cookie cutter. Two twos, three ones, three twos, four two, stuff like that. We have a tendency to. Our Best Buy box is really that, you know, $50,000 asset up to about 300,000. You know, those are the ones that were more likely to get back on track with payments. And if the bar does modify or reinstate, it's going to be good yield anything above that. And if there's equity there, the bars are going to usually fight you for that because the equity doesn't belong to you. Since you're only the lender and don't own the property, you, you're only going off really the legal balance of what's owed. And so once we do that, then we look at photos and then the number one Cardinal law office, if you don't want to own that property, never buy a note on a property you don't want to end up owning, you know.

Yeah, that makes sense. So give me an idea of what people would need to get started in buying notes. Like what? Maybe like softwares or what system systems, how much cash or equity should they have ready? Like what does that whole process look like?

So the way we teach is we teach you how to raise capital as well. All right, so a lot of people, you know, they used to think oh I need to have $5 million to buy notes. That's not the case at all. 95% of the students that we teach are starting off and using like their IRA funds from their self directed IRA to buy stuff or they're using OPM, other people's money to buy notes with and given an 8 to 10% to somebody when they're making 20 on a deal. And so it's a win win across the board there. So let's take the I don't have money out of the picture because that usually stops most people from doing anything. And don't be wrong, it's good to have some money. You're going to have marketing costs for the most part in today's world. It's a 21st century in 2025. Here if you don't have a website, you're really not going to pass a smell test. You got to have a LinkedIn profile and talk about what you're doing and being some sort of real estate investing because that's the first place banks are going to go. Are asset managers that you need to have a CRM, some sort of email service provider like it's KEEP or REI blackbook. I know you and I are both friends with Damon Ramey from over there. That's a great source, something to communicate on a regular basis that's easier to asset managers at banks or to your investor or warm market. So that's some of the things that you need to have. There are some different servicing Softwares. Most people are going to use Excel right off the bat. So it helps to have a little bit of idea how to use creative, a formula in Excel. Nothing too fancy. You don't need like be a master Jedi master like Vlookup tables or anything like that, but do and then just I couldn't kind of a knowledge of real estate investing a little bit helps. It always helps to be a lender because then you understand you're approaching this as a banker's mindset, not a fix and flippers. That's one mistake that we see happening quite a bit. People come from the fix and flip side and they over overbid and I'm like why are you bidding above the legal balance? Oh, because I want to make an offer at sunny sense of Mao. I'm like, well maximum allowable offer is great or ARV is great, but you wouldn't. ARV doesn't exist in the note business. It's all about as is values and going from there. So just getting a good fit and stuff like that. Being once willing to ask questions is important. You know, for every note you're going to buy, you're going to want to order a broker price opinion or have a realtor pull comps. You're also going to order an updated title report, not a full title report, just like a two owner report. So there's going to be some costs along the way to making sure that it's actually a good deal and not a dud. That makes sense. Valerie.

Yeah. So do you typically see people buying these notes on like a 50 cent on the $70 cent? Like what's kind of that sweet spot where people are likely to, to really make, make a good run at it.

So that's a great question. And it varies state by state, asset by asset. You know what's going on. Like I use. I'll give you example. Back in 2008 I was buying condos on Miami beach for five to ten grand a pop, knowing it was gonna take me like 18 months to foreclose and the values would rebound back. You know, everybody was way underwater there. You know they owed $250,000 on the asset. Was only like $30,000 when I buy the note, but it would double in the 18 months. So that's not the case these days. I wish it wasn't. Don't be wrong. We still get stuff at really great prices. We got 52 offers approved at 48 cents of the legal balance and at 52% of as is value just the other day. That we're working through due diligence on and then multifamily. I'm looking at a couple apartment complexes that we're getting. We have bids accepted at somewhere between 75 and 80% of the legal balance and there's at least 25% equity above what the loan balance was and the value of the property. All right, so somewhere in there it varies a little bit. It may be closer to, you know, 70 cents on the dollar if you figure that out, depending on cash flows. And those can vary quite a bit right now, depending on what we end up seeing in due diligence as far as rent rates and stuff like that. So if you're buying performing notes, let's just make it simple. If you're buying like a performing note, you could probably buy at par, that's all depending on what the interest rate is. Some investors like to buy reperforming notes and that's a note where somebody wasn't paying for a while. An investor like me came in, bought it, got the borrower back on track, had to make 12 months of on time payments and now we're turn around selling it at 75, 80 cents on the dollar. So it's allowing, depending the interest rate, the note buyer, the note investor to get a double digit return on their money without having to do a lot of work and they still buy it at a discount. I don't like to buy above $0.70 of the dollar for the most part, unless there's just a ton of equity and it's in a fast foreclosure state. Most of our deals, especially on the residential stuff, unless it's just Texas or Georgia, which are the two fastest states, are going to take at least a year to work out, if not two years, depending on where you're at in the foreclosure process. That's. Now that's. I'm going to put a big disclaimer there. You know, you never know what's going to happen. Like what happened with COVID where foreclosures got stopped for like two years too. That was a bit of a tricky time with things. But you know, for the most part, you know, it's not like a 90 day quick flip thing. You're buying and take some time to work it out with a borrower and then. But the nice thing is if the lenders already started for the foreclosure process, you just step into the, you know, shoes of that lender and finish it out. If they haven't started, then you got to start it and it'll vary state by state on those timeframes.

So tell me this, if I were to find a note that I wanted to buy and I, you know, do my due diligence and run title check, everything, how long does it typically take to then close on that note? From that point until the bank were to release it.

So there's not a traditional like closing at a title company with no deals because there's no title being transferred. Right, right. So, so we're buying a note from a bank. It may be 7 days to 30 days for closings in due diligence. So like I'm, you know, like these 52, I got 60 days of due diligence, period. At the end of 60 days I got two weeks to fund, you know what I mean? So we're already raising capital for. Because out of these 52, 31 of them are basically performing and generating a 19% cash and cash return for the whole portfolio right now. So it's a pretty good deal. I don't have a problem with funding on this one because I'm like, whoa, yeah, you know what I mean? But it's seven days. I mean we've gotten as long as six months before for a big portfolio. But if you're buying a one off note, if you're happy with the due diligence you're going to probably fund in seven days. The important thing, very big important thing here that can put monkey wrench in the machine is if you're using your self directed IRA with like Equity Trust or Inspira or something like that, it may take them an additional seven days to approve your paperwork and send the wire out and stuff like that. If you're using somebody's money and they're moving it to a self directed IRA account, you really need to be on top of them making sure that they've pulled money out of their funds, you know, with a Schwab and then it's wired into the IRA account and that could take, you know, it takes three days minimum for people to trade out of funds to move into cash before they can wire it out. So that can be about a two week period. Just keep that in mind. Disclose that to the seller. Hey, I'm buying, I'm funding this with my IRA money. Or somebody's IRA may be a little bit of a delay and go from there. But you know, most banks, if they've approved it and you're gonna fund, they would rather, okay, we'll give you another couple days for this to go through versus Canceling the deal and going on and trying to remarket the other nice thing too. Some people like, oh my God, you made offers on 52, but we actually made offers on 79. Got 52 accepted. We'll probably close on 30, which is great, but I have no earnest money tied up in this. Okay. If my bid is accepted, and this is one of the greatest things I've always loved about note investing. I make offers just, you know, like I do a little bit online due diligence. We make offers. If my offers are accepted, great. Then we dive into the deeper due diligence, the paid stuff. If something pops up, value condition, the collateral files a message, the lender is telling me it's a performing note. It's actually a non performing. These are all reasons for me to cancel that bid and walk away scot free, no penalty, stuff like that. So that's something to keep in mind.

Yeah, yeah. You don't have the legality of having to have some sort of, you know, cash in hand or, you know, obligation moving forward. So that is awesome.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's really nice that it's not like hiring a head coach and having to pay him five years if you fired them in year two, you know.

Okay, so Scott, let me ask you this. If you were to pick your top states that you are currently buying notes in, what states are you seeing to be kind of like the cream of the crop or, okay, like, like the Penn State of the football world. Like which ones are, are we looking.

At Penn State cream of the crop? Don't. That doesn't equate. It's kind of like military intelligence, you know what I mean?

Oh, my gosh.

Well, look, if I was wanting to hire, you know, draft a linebacker, I would go to Penn State U for linebacker. You definitely, you know, and a good running back. Obviously Quan Barkley is the best running back in the league and was, you know, he deserved the Heisman Trophy, was there at Penn State. Let's just, let's just be honest with that. But anyway, my favorite states right now. And I'm in Texas. All right. I'm in Austin, Texas. People say Austin, Texas is not in my top five.

Okay.

Because since it's a fast foreclosure state, we don't see that much inventory. So I want to buy stuff that I can buy in inventory. And it's going to be a good bang for my buck in a lot of cases. So don't be offended. Don't be switching out. I Like Ohio, I like Michigan, I like Indiana. Those are three of my favorite states right now because we see most amount of inventory in there. You know, Ohio is a judicial state. Takes about nine months to foreclosing. But if I'm buying occupied stuff there, I'm usually having great returns there because the property values are lesser than they are. And say, you know, Miami, Ohio is a lot cheaper than Miami, Florida, you.

Know what I mean?

Michigan, anything outside of like where Eminem's hanging out in eight Mile Road, I'm pretty good with for the most part of Detroit. Well, Detroit's got some nice areas too, but it's got some crap too, you know what I mean? My first note, I bought in Michigan, in Detroit for 500 bucks and flipped it for scrap metal for 1500 the next day, you know what I mean? Going back, I mean it was like the Chernobyl aspect of distressed debt back originally back in the day. But anyway, Michigan, Indiana, I like, I like the Hoosier state. You can evict in 14 days as well too. And it's got about a nine month foreclosure process. But the thing is, if I'm buying an occupied asset, I know I can usually ahead of time know if I can get that bar back on track before I ever buy the buy that note. In a lot of cases, not I can't reach out to the bar, but I buy based on servicing notes and how they've corresponded and what I'm buying it at. I like the states. North, North Carolina, the Tar Heel State's pretty good. South Carolina is actually a good state as well. South Carolina takes a year to foreclose. South Carolina is also number four, the most amount of delinquencies right now.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. Florida is also Florida. I call it God's waiting room. I mean, bought a lot of stuff down in the Sunshine State. I'm not liking Florida right now because insurance costs are driving things up. Taxes have doubled basically the last five years have doubled by. Increased by 50%. I don't look there but like coral down in southwest Florida. I mean I owned hundreds of properties down in southwest Florida back in the day. I think the market's got a ways to fall and then I, then I'll be back into it because I could buy it at the price that makes sense for me to hold it and ride that wave back up again. But those are kind of the states. I mean, you know, a lot of people make the mistake of just targeting like the fastest foreclosure states, Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia. And that's great. But the banks also know they're the fastest foreclosure states too out there. And so you're going to pay a premium, premium penalty. You know, if I see something Texas, great, it's a cherry on top of the banana split. But otherwise, you know, I don't. If I just focus on Texas, I would have been in the no business as long as.

Yeah, for sure. Okay. So, Scott, you teach courses on how people can get into this. So I want to understand more about what you're teaching your students, how long it's maybe taking them to kind of ramp up things that you're seeing, like people maybe do wrong, like you said, maybe looking at those foreclosure states, the faster foreclosure states first, like, give me, give me kind of like the, the overall of what your student population is learning and then executing.

So biggest thing is we teach stuff that works in today's world, unfortunately, there's a lot of people out there still marketing like it's 1995 to the 2025. Okay. When people think about note investing, they often think about buying on terms or buying and owner financed them. And there's nothing wrong with that. That's a great niche. But buying direct for the banks, I've always liked it because it made more sense for me to get a list from a bank once a month with 100 notes versus sending out a thousand postcards or letters trying to track down an owner, finance seller who might have just one note available. All right? And then there's no emotion with the banks. There's a lot of emotion with dealing with a homeowner or somebody who's bought or sold on owner financing. So we teach how to go direct to the banks. We teach how to find these deals, what to say, what not to say. We teach how to build a list of asset managers, how to, how and when to market to those asset managers. If you're, you know, picking up the phone or dropping an email blast or reaching out LinkedIn, it's, it's all about that multiple touch approach. Look, 80% of sales happens after the fifth contact. That's what you think you have to realize. And I come from a sales background. If you understand that you've got to reach out multiple times to talk to people, you'll have a lot bigger success rate versus like, well, I made 50 phone calls one time and it didn't work. Well, that's one day. That's one touch. Got to realize it's a process. And if you're going to be around for a long time. Just systematize your marketing. That's one of the biggest things we teach is like how to market smart and effectively in today's world using social media and other things I even right now. But then we also dive in. Okay, how to do this due diligence. Let's do some case studies, let's pull up a new spreadsheet or tape that we got and dive into these and show you how to cut these things up. Slice and dice to find the real meat and the real deals, depending on what you want to focus on. And then also how to raise the capital, how to find hundreds and hundreds of IRA investors who have pulled the trigger on rental properties or lent money. And how does find those people? By simply going to like the county appraisal districts to pull their names and addresses and and then what to say to them to get them to fund your deal as well. So that's all kind of why we call it note buying for dummies or our quarterly workshop that we teach. It's three days, yours truly teaching, not pitch fest or anything like that. I literally it's done online. We do it via Zoom. There we go. And love, love, love helping people. I mean we've got students all across the world, not just here in the United States too. We've got people in Israel and Spain and in England and the Philippines and Australia. Mate, put another non performing shrimp on the barbie, please. And it's and for success. It varies. It completely varies. But we get a lot of students. I mean we literally show you like, okay, go buy your first home for like less than 20, $25,000. Let's learn more by doing. And there are some websites you can go to look at assets where there's other lists that we bring in and show you. Okay, hey, you can cherry pick this, you know, pay us a $500,000 fee for helping you broker the dealer buy it and go from there. So my goal is somebody asked me the other day, like if there's all this opportunity, why are you sharing it versus trying to hoard it all for yourself? I'm a big believer that there's plenty of opportunities to go around. I come from a know abundance mentality in a lot of cases and I kick it back to like there was a time where I was a distressed borrower back in the day. In 2002, we bought our first house, bought two investment properties traditionally and I was behind in all six mortgages. I was laid off and I was distressed about as Distressed can be. And my faith got me through that. And I also think God gave, helped me get through that in a lot of cases. So I'm always like, God, if you help me get through this, I guarantee I'll help anybody I can along the way. And that's my biggest thing. There's plenty of deals out there. I can't buy them all. And the reason we started teaching people how to do this niche is just it's different than going out and buying a property or flipping a property or buying a rental. Much easier. I think in a lot of cases, a lot more rewarding. Because we all worry about return on investment roi, but a lot of people forget to think about rot. That's return on time. Yeah. You know, and that's one of the things I like. You can do this from anywhere. I've bought notes traveling the world because we rely on teams and third parties to help you out with that. And that's one of the things I like the most about it.

So that brings me to my next question, Scott, how much time would you say somebody needs to have in order to get into this?

Yeah, that's a great question. I get that a lot. Probably 95% of our students are still working a full time job. They're still working 40 hours a week, 50 hours a week. And they're doing this to help them supplement their income or start building a ladder or a Runway so they can leave their job or whatever they're into. So that's the thing. Ten hours a week, you know, that's a couple hours a day, one to two hours a day. Looking at assets or marketing and then going from there and just building the system so you don't need to put in 40, 50 hours. Don't be wrong. We have some people that are doing that, but that's not, I wouldn't tell you. Oh, just quit your job to go do that? No, no. Let's start you off. 10 hours a week. There's some things to look at, things you can do, and we can hold your hand through the rest of the way.

Okay, so if somebody is like, okay, Coach Carson, I want to sign up, I want to learn more about notes. What exactly would you say? So they sign up for your class? Is there like a certain amount of money they should be setting aside for this marketing for all of these tools that are going to help it, you know, generate these leads and help them get through that? Like, what would somebody need to have if they're looking at free cash flow on their, on their Side.

So the first thing I would do is don't pay a penny yet. Take our one day class. It's a class we call Note Weekend. Basically it's about a three hour class that you can watch. We host it live once a Saturday a month. You can always get to the replay. Go watch that. That doesn't cost anything. That'll talk about. I kind of call it the Cliff Notes of our three day workshop. But it'll give you an idea. Well, okay, this makes sense. I understand this makes sense. Okay? Now it helps you dip your toe in the water without having any type of investment. And then you may not like me because I'm a UT fan. I don't care. It's fine. You don't like me. That's fine. You can learn something and move away. But you'll see if I'm your cup of tea because I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass or anything. And you know, I'm gonna tell you like it is. This works. This doesn't work. Don't do this, do this. This is why this works. And versus that. And then, then if you're, you know, happy with our note Weekend once Again, that website's noteweekend. Com, then sign up for a three day class. That's to cost you 500 to 1,000 bucks for that. And then you really need to have, like I said, about $5,000 for marketing on stuff like that. You know, you're going to need an llc. You know, if you don't have an llc, you need to get one that'll vary state by state a little bit. You're going to need to, you know, eventually buy a CRM like we talked about. That could be, you know, start off with like a free account like Mailchimp or pay $97 a month for Blackbook. REI is a good one. And you know, if you got $5,000. But if you're completely broke and don't have any money and you're trying to get things done on your prepaid cellular phone, you probably need a job to pay the bills to start off with. But you can actually, you can broker in wholesale notes just like you broker real estate too. So that's a different facet as well. But you got to understand marketing to do that. So take the class. We'll teach you that. And we offer. I don't think a lot of people. I know Chris does because he's, you know, solid. But it's like you're going to sign up for a class of ours at the end of the first day, like, I don't like this. This is not for me. I refund people's money back, no questions asked. I don't want to spend your money. I don't want your money. We want you to be a smarty and a note investor for the simple reason that'll help you buy assets from us. Or when you become a note investor and start getting tapes and listen to you that you can't dig down, hopefully pick up the phone and call me or Mallory to buy those notes, and that's the whole reason we do what we do.

No, absolutely. I love that. Yeah. I'm all about education first. And, you know, once you're informed, that's when you take the action, which is, you know, another reason why I started this podcast is to try to get the education out to people. Okay, so, Scott, I take your course, and I'm like, I'm having a second baby. I have no time to go out and find all of these things. Is there a way that people can invest in deals that you find so that it's more of a streamline where they're like, look, I got capital, but I just don't want to put in the time. What do you got for me?

Yeah, we've got a couple things where you can invest alongside us, depending what you put together, depending on the preferred rate that we give it. We also have a program for folks have got some money sitting in an IRA and they want to put it to work passively and stuff like that. We can go find them a noted deal to put in that ira, they pay us a little fee and go from there. So we got a couple different opportunities, and one of the things that we always do for folks that are, you know, buying their first or stuff like that, if something happens along the way, you can pick up the phone and give me a phone call, and we'll help assist you along the way. We had a investor buddy of ours out of Houston, had a portfolio of 12 notes, and unfortunately, he just passed recently, and his wife didn't know what's going on with the portfolio. And so we're helping assist her. First of all, like, okay, let's get these transferred over to you. Let's. If you need them moved, you know, you know, helping kind of her hold her hand through this process so that she's just not getting fleece. Selling it at, you know, 20 cents of the dollar. Like, no, no, this is a good deal. Sell it at 70, 75. Or if you want to dump it, this Would make the one sense to dump if you need quick cash, you know, to pay some bills and hold the rest for cash flow. So, you know, I always encourage you, if you got questions, you can always book a call with me@talkwithscottcarson.com that's Lily, my calendar. Go there, pick a phone call, pick my brain for 30 seconds or 30 seconds. I mean, you know, that's like the fleeting hopes of Penn State, you know, after week one. But anyway, or 30 minutes with me, you know what I mean? 30 minutes. TalkwithScottGarsen.com Got it.

That's great. All right, Scott, so if you could sum everything up about note buying and why people should, should take the move to learn more about it. Take your weekend, you know, course. Take your three day course. Like, what would you say is kind of like the main reason that drives a lot of people to getting into note investing versus maybe like the active real estate investing.

So here's the thing. The bank always gets paid when you buy notes. You become the bank. You become the. You're literally on the sexy side of real estate. And you know, we, I talked to a lot of fix and flippers who are holding rentals hoping they get a $200 to $300 a month cash flow basis. You know, that's way too skinny for me and doing all that work and property management sucks. No, no, no, I don't want to do that much work. And everybody has always says like it's. Oh, it always seems that the older investors have been around for all end up becoming the lender. They all become note investing. Whether a they're lending their own money or they're buying notes and created cash. Because this would all come down cash flow, non appreciation. I mean that's great, but it's all about cash flow. And this is a cash flow business. That's why the banks are always the biggest, tallest buildings out there. They understand that. And you can do the same thing too. And you don't need millions of dollars to get started. If this ingle dink from Ingleside can do it, you guys can do it as well. All right. Even if you are a Penn State football fan. I'm sorry.

Oh my God. Begin with this. I can't wait to win this bet that I'm gonna have with you. And I could just say, Scott, suck it.

So let's do this. Let's talk about this. Because this is important. This is important. We got a few minutes left here.

We want to record recorded so that it is recorded.

So what's your. I know that you've got a little bundle on the way. Do you have a favorite libation that you like? Wine, whiskey, you know, crack cocaine? Probably not. But anyway, anything that you like, your poison.

So I would say my go to is typically tequila.

Okay. Okay.

That would be like. I love margaritas. I also like champagne and mimosas. So that would be my second. What about you, what's your vice?

I'm a whiskey kind of guy. You know, we've got a lot of.

Great Texas, so I got that. Okay.

Okay, so why don't we do this? Why don't we say the team that has the better outcome for the year, okay. Not. Not who ends up higher ranked at the end of the year, okay. Penn State or Texas. And the loser buys the winner a hundred dollar bottle of either tequila or whiskey. Something unique or something like. You like that. Easy worker, right?

Okay, let's do it.

Okay. Done right here, baby. So you know, I will make sure and send you. We want some good, you know, Crown Royal Reserve or even like some Blanton's, you know what I mean?

Pretty good right there. I see it. We got some Woodford up here.

Woodford's good. There you go.

My husband for his bachelor party went to Kentucky and he went to the derby and they did some of those like bourbon trails and whatnot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really fun time.

So he'll. He'll be able to find a. I don't think I'll need to but you know, if that.

Yeah, you know, I would say yeah, you know, if it was champagne, I mean we've, you know, you know, Don perianza don't. Or 1492 I think is a better tequila than Don Julio actually was patrons. John. John de Jong. De Jo was actually his banker back in college here in Austin, Texas. Yeah, yeah, he was. He would bring me a bottle of Patron for Christmas for the three years I worked at Chase bank because he would come in and deal with. And we always took care of him. So it was kind of a cool thing. But that's it. You heard it here, guys. So we'll make sure and keep his bet running. You know. Are there preseason polls out already yet for college football?

Yes, there are.

Oh, so where. Where is it in. Let's see. College football preseason rankings. Okay, let's see here. Power. Not power rankings. Where is the rankings? 25, 26. Okay, so. Oh, let's see. Oregon's ranked number one. Or oh, Oregon, Georgia, Texas is at number three. Well that's playoff rankings. Top 25. Texas is number four and Penn State is number five. Oh, so we're right there. AP top 25. Yeah, we are right there.

It's going to be a good season.

Yes, it is. I think both teams will have a phenomenal year. Unfortunately, our team, I think, is just going to have a little bit better season, but we'll see, you know, are you going to be in, are you going to be in Boston here in a month or so?

No, I'm not going to be able to travel from east here on out just given this status.

I can understand that. That's all right though. But that's good stuff. So we'll have to do another episode when the season's over and do that there for you. And if you ever need, oh, if you need a guest professor to teach about n your real estate class or.

Something like that, hey, I might put, yeah, I might put you on the, on the horn for, you know, when I need to be out in November. Like let's. We can do a live one. We could do a recording one. This is the kind of stuff that I want my students to learn.

And we could talk about investing, getting started. I mean, you've probably already done that, but there's a whole variety of things. Raising capital, ways to find capital, all sorts of good stuff for folks out there. But you're so honored to be here. And if you're listening to this podcast, ladies and gentlemen, which I know you are because Mallory's kicking ass and taking names, okay, make sure you hit the subscribe button and make sure you go leave a five star review for her. All right. We as podcasters love to see that and so make sure you go do that as your one action to help out, support her here today.

All right, thanks for that. All right, Scott, it's been a pleasure. We will definitely have a follow up with this and I'm gonna start putting out my recommended tequilas and champagnes that I want you to send me come January.

There we go. And we might need to meet somewhere in the middle to enjoy them. That might be something to think about too.

Whatever it is, that's exactly what we'll have to do.

You know, we took 125 people to Napa one time and had champagne or sparkling wine tasting on Domain Carneris wine tasting thing in Napa. I might need to check that out for you. Of course, that's a pretty cool thing we've done in the past, but we're gonna be drinking bourbon so Maybe somewhere.

Back in the Bourbon Trail you want to go.

This is good stuff. Thank you so much for having me on. Mel. It's been a pleasure as always. Great stuff. Congratulations again.

Thank you. Okay guys, that wraps up another episode of Inspire Wealth. Like Coach Carson said. Subscribe give us a review. 5 stars. I would love to hear if there are topics that you're interested in learning more about. And again, this is the Inspire Wealth Podcast Profm out. And for those who want a more hands on learning experience, check out our online courses@inspirewealtheducation.com whether you're just starting out or looking to expand your investment portfolio, I've created step by step guides and resources to help you achieve your financial goals. So hit that subscribe button and let's start building your wealth one episode at a time.

Hey real estate investors, this is Scott Carson. I'm known across the country as the Note Guy and I've been an active note investor focused primarily on the niche of non performing notes, distressed mortgage notes on residential commercial properties for almost 20 years now. My company is weclose notes.com and I know there's a lot of different things when it comes to the note world. Are you buying performing notes? Are you buying owner finance notes? Are you buying institutional debt? Like I would focus on? Are you buying first seconds Contract for needs? There's a lot of questions and it can be very confusing about what you can or cannot do. So one of the great things that we've hosted for the last couple years that we do on just about a regular monthly basis is we host our one day class called Note Weekend. If you go to noteweekend.com you can register for our free three and a half hour class. We'll talk to you and share with you how you find fun and flip non performing notes. And yes, you can buy non performing notes from banks, help, hedge funds and a variety of different hard money lenders out there for your own portfolio. No, you don't have to have millions of dollars to dive into the non performing note game. We've got students that have bought plenty of deals with 2530 grand getting their ball rolling using their self directed IRA who are tired of dealing with toilets, tenants, trash desks, tired of battling contractors and GCs to get properties rehabbed. We all know the market is changing and while it may not be like 2008, 9 and 10 again, it we do see a lot of distressed debt out there on both the residential and the commercial side. So if you're thinking about diving into the Note game Becoming a note investor. A lean lord, as you'd like to say, versus a landlord. Or you just want to figure out what it is about the sexy side of real estate in the note space? We'll check it out. Note Weekend.com doesn't cost you anything. We host it live usually the first or second Saturday of each month. You can go today. Register at the website noteweeking.com Register for the next live class we host. You'll get sent a replay to the previous class so you can start learning about the note business today. No questions asked. No credit card needed. This is a great way for you to dip your toes in the water and see if it's warm because I guarantee going through our three one day class you want to dive into the deep end and become a note investor. So check it out noteweekend.com you can also go to our website weclosenotes.com check out our podcast. Check out our YouTube number one YouTube channel. We are here to help support you. Whether you're experienced investor or you're brand new investing. Note weekend is a great place for you to get the ball rolling. People often say we cover more in our three hour class and most people cover in their three day class so check it out. Love to have you be part of our note family but get signed up today@noteweekend.com thanks and have a great day.