EP 389 – The Tale of Two Decades

Foreign. This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the no Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with the day. First of all, I want to say thank you for watching. I want to thank you for listening to absolutely love all our fans and friends and extended hashtag note family out there. Just literally been thinking about this episode for the last two days. I think we had a great episode yesterday with an amazing speaker with Dan talking about his upcoming multifamily investor event in January. We've got a great guest for an extra bonus like afternoon episode today with the founder of Podfest, our buddy Christosis. But today's topic is something I've been thinking about since really Saturday night. And what do I mean by Saturday night? Well, Saturday night I had the good fortune of going down to one of my old stomping grounds, my old college stomping grounds and New Braunfels and specifically the Gristmill restaurant and Green Hall. Now, if you guys don't know who Green hall, what Green hall is, it's spelled green, not groon. Had a T shirt on this morning. Green hall is Texas oldest operating dance hall. Okay. And the Grist Mill restaurant, where I worked at for basically three years in Green hall, which I hung around and did some special events at, is this little historic district outside of New Braunfels on the north side of New Braunfels, which New Braunfels is north of San Antonio. It's all just, just almost midway between Austin and San Antonio. And you have San Marcos and New Braunfels are the big areas. I went to school at Texas State State, which is what it's now called with Southwest Texas State and San Marcos. And it was like a 20 minute drive south to New Braunfels, which is a little German community. It's growing like leaps and bounds. And San Antonio and Austin kind of get closer and closer together for the most part. But it's been three years. Great time. Absolutely. I don't think there's a better college experience than going to school at San Marcos. It was a teacher school. I studied business there, got a business degree. It's a small town feel to it. All right. It was once known as one of the top 10 party schools out there for years ago. That's not obviously considering LSU in there, but great place girls that number the guys usually three to one. So it's a high target rich environment actually if you're a single guy. But this last Saturday we went down, Steph and I took some friends down to Green hall, we had dinner at Gristmill and we were able to listen to one of my favorite country music stars, Pat Green. You know, his famous three time Emmy award nominee is probably as big as his Wave Upon Wave. One of my favorite songs. I got a chance to see him there years ago, obviously 20 plus years ago when I first started there at the Grist Mill. And the Gristmill is this big open air restaurant. It's in the remains of an old grist mill where they go out and grind their corn. It's on the side of the Guadalupe river. So you see tubers going by. It's open air. So just freaking 100 degrees in the middle of summer. So no air condition, but one of the best margaritas. It was just a great time working there and made a lot of money, you know. Made a lot of money as Barton's. Been a lot of great friends there. About 12 couples that while I was working there all dated and married and stuff like that, divorced, all that stuff, kids growing on. But it was always interesting to go back to that place. And I hadn't been back in a couple years, maybe two years since I had dinner there. I always like to go by, it was always funny. I end up running to somebody who's still working there after 20 years. And it's kind of sad the way I look at it. I mean if they love what they do, great. But I don't think anybody really loves working 20 years in the restaurant industry, especially when you work such tough hours. Ran to a buddy of mine at Green hall who's still popping tops at Green Hall. I think he's more of a manager role there now at Green Hall. And it's a rough life to think about. Working weekends, working holidays, working late nights. And it made me start thinking back, wow, 20 years goes by from when I first started there. When you think about the evolution of things and one of the big things is if you're at the Gristmill, they don't really talk to you until you get through training, until the week or two weeks you get through training because there's such, such turnover. Like I was one of 20 people in my training class there. I was the only one Survived my training class after six months. Yes, one of five survived the first week. But I made great money. It was a lot of fun. Probably one of the best paying college I've ever had. And it had a lot of perks of going over and drinking cold beer at Green hall, hanging out with great people, seeing. I mean, I waited on some amazing people. Willie Nelson, the Dixie Chicks. Pat Green. Met Vince Vaughn, Center Bullock. Matthew McConaugh. Hey, hey, hey. All right, all right, all right. Just to name a few. Merle Hagger, A little richer. Jaylee Lewis. I did some interesting jobs in the town, but I started thinking back with my man. 20 years has gone by since I worked at that restaurant in the. In the hall. And I think we all feel younger than we actually are. And we've been being now 41. The last 20 years has flown by. You think it goes by pretty slow, but looking back now, it really does go by pretty fast. And I start thinking of all the two decades because it's the two decades, the 10 years when I first there. Yeah, 21 to 31 and then 31 to 41. I look back at all the changes have taken place, the mistakes that I made, and then I look forward in the next 20 years. We always wonder what the next 20 years holds. And I think many of us get so bogged down in the day in, day out monotony, we often forget that, hey, we're going to be around a long time. We're going to be around for a while. And I have a lot more gray hair now. I was gonna go get a haircut this morning, but I decided to wait for this episode just for the gray hair side of things. And I still have a baby face. I get it, okay? I don't look my age. It's just fine. But I think back to what has happened last 20 years. I think we've all been through ups and downs, obviously the last 10 years. A lot of people have gone through ups and downs with house and short sales and foreclosures and the note market. We've all had to reinvent ourselves. Whether it's been through divorce, bankruptcy, short sales, sickness and death. We all have gone through some things. And the biggest thing I would like to say out there is it's okay if you're going through a tough time. It's okay if you are struggling. The biggest thing I can tell you is the years that I spent the three. I only spent three years there. It got me through college. I did not want to wait tables after I graduated and I've done that once in a short term period when things are really struggling. In 2008, no, I'm sorry, not 2008, I didn't do that. 2008, 2004, 2005, I was going through a bit of a difficult time. But I look back and yes, I think you have a big. When you, when you've been in the service industry, I think you have the utmost respect for your waiters, your staff, stuff like that. I think everybody should be in the service industry at least once. It gives you much more respect. And if you don't never been through that and you're rude to your waiter and they're not rude to you, you have to be very. If they haven't done something you, you got a place in hell. What I'm trying to get at here is everybody is. If you look back at the last 10 years, last 20 years of your life, what did you accomplish? Now for some of us, that is cool. We're like, hey, we've done some big things. For others, we haven't accomplished anything. We're still trying to find ourselves, okay? And we're drifting, we're drifting from one thing to another. Like I saw something last night when I said home. Somebody's all talking about another part of their real estate business that they're doing. I'm like, you're pitching some multi level thing. Why don't you focus on the note business? The don't miss this has made you a million. You found a million dollar deal with your note business and it's paying you on a monthly basis. Why are you wasting time on something else? Because I don't see you at other things. I don't see you making offers. I don't see you on webinars because I know you're not doing deals. And I look back and the last 10 years has been an amazing roller coaster ride. You know, I think back to where I was this time of year 10 years ago. I was a couple months out of a divorce. I was living in Pflugerville, if I remember correctly, figuring out what the heck I was gonna do. I remember exactly. I was figuring out what the heck I was gonna do. I just bought a house out there with me, the dog and a cat. And I was still in the mortgage business, or I was getting out of the mortgage business at that time because everything was starting to hit the fan and I was basically a full time real estate investor. And I remember literally that Christmas, I hosted Christmas for my family. But I knew I was Going through a bit of transition of, okay, what am I doing? Am I, you know, the mortgage business has been good, but I'm gonna be full time real estate investor. What's going to happen with the market? And I was doing like a lot of people were doing. I was trying to figure out multiple things, doing multiple things, four, five, six things at once. Trying to figure out what my column was. And as Aaron Young, Good morning Aaron, says, the tough times can be the greatest times. In retrospect, it totally can be the greatest times because I think you learn the most when you're going through a tough time. If things are good, you're not learning as much, you're not pushing yourself forward and good morning, Robert Baines. Robert Baines out here says, what does he say? Here I was working through your blueprint training and looking forward to moving forward. Awesome. Good stuff, Robert. And I look back and I think a lot of times when we get so bogged down on where we're at right now, we can stop thinking about where we're going to be in a few years. Years, five years, 10 years, 20 years. And in 20 years it'll be 20, 38, I'll be turning 60, 61. What do I want my next 20 years to look like? And I look back at the last. I take retrospective of the last 20 years. It's been up and down. The last 10 years have been an amazing, crazy roller coaster ride. And I will be in the notes space. I hope so. I know I'll be some sort of real estate investing for sure. I'll probably. Who knows what will be going on at that point. We have podcasting, will we have YouTube videos. It'll be crazy. Look at the technology that's come around. You know, Facebook will be a thing of the past. I believe in 20 years. Okay. I think what we see on social media websites is fading off, especially some of the things that they're doing. I think with there'll be so much technology we have is going to be instantaneous with our phones and our phones get smarter and smarter and they're starting to get bigger and bigger again. They'll probably be back down smaller. Song will probably be back to flip floors again. Who knows, right? You know, tell me indicators from the Star Trek for days. But if you're struggling right now, what I want you to think about is where you want to be in 20 years. Because 20 years can change your life. You can start right now. I don't care if you're in your 40s or your 50s, even your 60s. All right, even in your 60s right now, you can change your life. If you're earlier than that, you have no excuse. You can change your life. There could be a variety of things. Maybe you don't like what you're doing, Great. Then go back to school. If you want to go get a job, that's fine. Go to school. We still live in one of the easiest ways to find information and educate ourselves through all the things that are online. The Khan Academy. Lynda.com there's so many ways to learn so many things to take yourself to the next level. I don't think many of us want to work for a job, I will tell you that. But I think a lot of us want to be entrepreneurs and then we struggle with what we need to be doing on a daily basis. And Aaron, thank you so much again for popping on here. And Aaron Young is such a, a good friend. Congratulations. Now becoming, I think, a grandfather for the third time. Congratulations, Bud. This last weekend, 20 years from now, where will you be? And I love it that Aaron likes to say to start with the end in mind. I know 10 years from now, 20 years from now sounds a little scary. What will we be doing? Will we working? Will we be broke? Will we be rich? Will we have real estate? Where will we be living? All right. I've been around a lot of places. You know, Central Texas has been home for a while, obviously 20 plus years. And I love this area. But I. Oh, four time. Aaron Young for the fourth time. My apology, brother. Four time. Congratulations. But anyway, I'm trying to get at is start painting that picture. What do you want that picture to look like? And for a few months now, I've been talking about the things that I want to accomplish to friends, to family members, the things I want to accomplish. Like I see myself somewhere tropical. I paint that picture. Okay, I know it won't be Hawaii, but I know it'll be somewhere on the water here probably in the next couple years is the plan. And then so what I do is think of your mind can achieve if you just think about it. Put it out there. So I look back at the last two years. I would never have thought I'm at where I'm at today. My goal 20 years ago was I was gonna be the next ESPN sportscaster. Welcome to the Sports center with Scott Carson and Stuart Scott. He's in fuego. I'm cooler than the other side of the pillow. But anyway, and I joke with it, in the last six months, Steph and I have Joked about that this has become my podcast, these daily videos has become my sports center. Been my itching of being in journalism as a speaker. And I would agree to that to some extent, definitely. But what I would think you have to look at is what do you want to accomplish ultimately, if you had to do something that you loved, that would pay the bills. Okay. Not something that's going to cause you strife. And maybe you have to sit down. Your dream to get to accomplish it. Maybe you've got to sit down trying to be the best, I don't know, wixit maker right now to pay your bills or maybe to learn a skill. Because there was a lot there that I jumped kind of from job to job for a little bit in that first 10 years to get to where I wanted to be, where I was constantly moving up, climbing that ladder personally for a variety of reasons. And I don't really talk about this aspect of it in the first 10 years. Like, I graduated from college, first job I had right out of school was working for Enterprise Rent a car that lasted 90 days. That was not fun. I knew that's not where I wanted to be. Want to go back to school. So I started going back to school. Aterno University here in Austin for about a year, worked as my mba. That didn't work well because I left Enterprise Rent a Car and started working for Verizon Wireless for a little while. Started working in the financial industry about a year, year and a half later with my buddy Boyd. You know, that worked for a little while. Then I got into. We had a tough time there. God, we're not working for that. I worked for a little while at Cirrus Logic here in town as a tech chip company. Six months foot underneath and back into banking at JP Morgan Chase. I moved to the mortgage company. So basically, a lot of the things that I did along the way, I worked for like a month at Palm Harbor Homes selling mobile homes. I don't talk about a lot of those things because they were small little blips. Little small blips on things. But I learned something from each place that I went. And I knew that, okay, this is something I'm going to learn from. It's probably where I'm going to be. But it's going to be a paycheck for a while. It's going to be a paycheck for a while. It's going to help me get to where I need to be. And we all go through those. We all. If you're going through that right now, hey, do not. Do not stop. Keep on going. Okay. Yeah, I know. Keith Baker, Palm Harbor Homes, actually worked for their modular division. It was Presentation Homes. Yeah. But it's a division of Palm Harbor Homes Mobile homes. I worked for them for a while. Yeah, exactly. Back in the day. Learned the ins and outs of the mobile home industry during my short stint there. Christina Flor says tough times smooth out the edges. I'm thinking for all the tough times I face over the years, a thankful heart also keeps you young. I know that these current times of struggle will bring great results as well. I see success on the horizon. There we go. Thank you, Christina. That's awesome. And we see that, too, for you as well. And that. That kind of leads me to. The thing is, you're going to. No shame in the hustle. Amen to that, brother. No shame in the hustle. Hustle long. I have always been a hustler. I will outwork anybody. They're not afraid of hard work. I have to thank my. My dad for that and my mom as well. But what I want to get at is talking about is look at where you want to be in 20 years. What are the things that you want to accomplish? Like, if you want to have a podcast, like Keith Baker, myself, or our guest this afternoon, Chris Christosis, what do you want to accomplish now? It doesn't mean maybe dropping everything cold turkey, what you're doing, but maybe start the evolution to get where you want to be. Start speaking, start practicing in front of the camera. I look back to when I had my first YouTube account, and some of the videos on there were just downright horrible, but they were videos. It helped me hone my craft. I was not by far. Well, I won't say I'm polished now, but Steph gives me a hard time sometimes, like, oh, I can't do my podcast, the Furbies podcast, because I can't be you. I'm like, you don't have to be me. Nobody wants to see me be you. Your audience wants you out there. And we all have an audience. Every one of us has an audience, from Christina Fuller, the Keith Baker, to Aaron Young, to Dagmar on there, to Robert Baines, to Shane and Flynn, all those that are watching out there that I can see, we all have our own audience. You don't have to be Scott Carson. You're not competing with me. And I just. I think that's the biggest thing I think I could tell you guys. I, as a sales guy, I was. You always have numbers. You always have KPIs you always have numbers to accomplish things. And I've talked about that on some of our previous shows. What are your KPIs, what are your numbers? If you don't have your numbers, you never know how you grow from one month to the next or one year to the next year. And I look at our numbers now, where we were at last year, I looked at our downloads, I look at all that stuff, profitability, what we sold, number of students. I look at those things so I can help me chart where I want this next year to go. It helps me lead to my schedule. And then your schedule then leads you to be where you're going to be. So at the end of the year of 2019, you look at your schedule, was your schedule full? And I look at my schedule, my schedule been pretty damn full, all right. But it's also leading me to where I want to go. I look at you look at some things out there. What is the, the future hold? And things can change like that. Things can change in six months, it can change in a year, can change in six weeks if you do the things you need to do. And I will tell you this one thing that is going to increase dramatically. I was watching a documentary last night, hbo, which kind of into what you're talking about how the, the killer robots documentary, talking about all these automation and AI, how important that is. It all comes down to marketing, all right? It all going to come down to marketing your skills, marketing your experiences, marketing your expertise and whatever niche that you want to choose. If you have a niche of loving red wines and talking about red wines and sharing that, great. Just make sure you drink plenty of water, okay? If you have a, a niche for helping private investors, keep sharing it, keep going to things that they're going to look at where you want to be in 12, 24, 36 months and start working towards it. When I started doing what I did 10 years ago, I was just, I saw an opportunity and dove into the notes based a decade ago and started buying and selling, buying and selling, wholesaling, flipping. And that has changed dramatically, especially in the last six years since I started teaching and traveling, especially all across the country. And what I want you all to do is take some time between now and the end of the year, think about where you want to be, think about where you want to go. Share that with your spouse, share that with your children. Where do you want to go? And for some of us that have kids or have family or spouses, maybe it takes a little longer to get there than you expect, but still keep working towards it. Okay? Keep working. Just keep working. You're gonna have twists and turns along the way. And I've had my share twists and turns last 20 years, but I am damn glad that I stepped out from the comfort of popping tops and two stepping at the gristmill 20 years ago, or actually now 17 years ago, to be where I'm at now. The gentleman that owns the grist mill in Greenhall, Pat Molak, oh my God, he made a kill. And he bought those two things basically in 1977 for $25,000. Now, the grist mill does that on a Saturday night in the summer. You have to look at those things and realize whatever you're investing in yourself will pay off long term. Okay, we are all not flash the pans. If you want instantaneous success and you don't have the patience for this, I'm sorry, you're going to have to develop some patience. Okay? Things don't always happen on your speed. They happen on the speed of which you put it. That and plant the seeds and feed them water, and give it water and feed it fertilizer and give it air and give it sunlight. Don't let those seeds go unplanted because in 20 years, in 10 years, in five years, those seeds of what are those seeds are for you to market, to buy assets, to speak more, to have an amazing podcast, to be rich, to be living somewhere else, to making what you want to make. Start with you planting the seeds on a daily basis and nurturing those seeds, nurturing those seats. And that's one thing I always kept in mind, especially this last decade, is finding the opportunity and looking at long term. Okay, maybe things didn't immediately work out as I thought it would, but long term worked out well. Long term, it worked out well. May not have instantaneous success at an event, May not had people sign up, may not have people opt in, may not have investors come up to me in specific events. But long term, three, six months, it paid out. And so I had to rephrase my mind expectations to okay, when I'm somewhere, I have to look at the people that I'm talking to, everybody that I'm talking to, speaking, people listening here on the podcast, people listening or watching the video replays or on the note night in Americas or watching this right now. Some of you I've known for years, some of you have barely met. Who knows where you're going to be? What changes are you going to see take place? What changes are you going to see on our side take place, I don't know. But I know it's gonna be interesting because we all, if we keep working and keep hustling toward that final goal. And one of that final goal for you is that's your goal. Whatever it is, be proud of it. Don't ever be embarrassed of what your goal is because there's opportunities everywhere. So this day, don't care what religion, don't care what political party, don't care, male, female, age, sex, don't care what it is. There's opportunities everywhere. And if you start putting actions in place, maybe not a lot, but if you work to get 1% better, a little bit better every day, not every day. Sometimes you're going to lose a little bit. Like, oh, you took it on once, but you allow you to come back stronger. Okay. It's like a muscle. Okay, you work that muscle. How do you build muscle? Well, you got to tear that muscle down. I pulled a muscle Wednesday night in the gym here right before I was wrapping up for the day, right at noon, last set with my trainer. Boom. Pull the muscle in my hip. So I've been hobbling around the last couple days. Yesterday got to feeling a little better. It's feeling more better today. I'll be back fun and be stronger in the long run because what you, how do you build muscle? How do you get muscle? You have to work those muscles. You got to tear them down a little bit and then feed good stuff into them, food, vitamins, and they come back stronger as you continue to use them. Many of us are trying to be bodybuilders without ever doing any workouts. Okay. Many of us are trying to do big deeds without having to do ain't without trying to do. I'm gonna go set a world record and push ups without ever doing a beginning push up. That's not the way the world works. You've got to put in your work a little bit. The gym, in front of the mic, in front of the camera, in front of your audience, in front of your email spaces, in front of your social media. You got to put in a little bit of work in each day to get where you want to be. Even those that are successful, all right, Even those are most successful people I know struggle with things they want to do, but they don't want to put the little work in. And I understand that you've got to put the work in a little bit at a time each day to get where you want to be long term wise in business or if you're evolving out of something or evolving into something. It's even more so to take time away from your downtime to be able. We all talk about the 7pm to 2am hustle. You know, I'm talking about doing that for five hours or seven hours each day. But taking an hour, basically an hour is 5% of your day. And put it towards your future, but towards your dreams. And I'm willing to bet if your dreams and goals are big enough or worth it to you, 5% is a small drop in the bucket each week, each day to help you get where you want to be. And who knows where you're going to be in 20 years? Okay, who knows where you're going to be in 20 years? I just hope you're not in the same spot that you are today in 20 years from now. And that's one of the biggest things that I look back from this last weekend, going down the green hall, getting my green on. And green is looking at the people that I used to work with and seeing them still doing the same monotonous things that they did not like 20 years ago. And it could be a variety of reasons. One has kids. I get that one person may not have marketable skills like a lot of the people, but the whole point comes down, what do they want to do? Are they settling? Are they? Or can I go out and do some amazing things? I know everybody is capable of something amazing. It's whether or not you take the action. That's the first a in amazing is taking action. And without action, there is nothing that can happen out there. So go out, keep your hustle rock and rolling. I know that you're all capable doing amazing things if you just keep doing it one step forward, one step forward, one step forward. If you look at what your last 10 years have been, it's just a precursor to help you get where you want to be these next 10 years. So that's all I've got for you today, everybody, on this episode of the Nutcliffe Show. Hopefully that was helpful. Go out, make something happen, and we'll see you off the top, everybody. Thanks for listening, Sam.