EP 447 – Creating And Working Your Business Plan

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 Nutclose Show. I'm Scott Carson. Excited to be here today and want to thank all of our listeners. All of our people are watching the live stream YouTube channels. Big Shout out to Rowdy Cowboy. Thanks for the comment. One of our podcast episodes on YouTube and thanks to all those that are leaving reviews out there. I also want to give a big shout out to all of our listeners on the different AM FM radio stations across the country. But anyway, gotta love Facebook. Always gives a little issues. Every once in a while the algorithm changes, which I think just changed yesterday. Something I see other people struggling with the Facebook live stream. So we're going to just go stream it straight to YouTube, throw the link into Facebook and let people watch that way. But today's topic, I kind of made it a multiple choice between two topics. I threw it up on a Facebook kind of poll. Hey, do you want to learn about a either building your business plan or diving into what to do when something happens? What happens to your business if something happens to you? And it's actually pretty kind of a close poll across the way. So obviously the next episode I'll do is what to do if you something happens to do or what to do when everything hits the fan. But today's all gonna be about kind of creating and working your business plan when it comes to your note business or honestly a lot of things we're gonna discuss can also be on your real estate plan. And we're gonna come from the point of view working this as a side hustle because I know a lot of you are looking for things to do in your 7pm to 2am or on the weekends or things like that. And so that's kind of the way we're going to structure this because I by no means want to tell you, hey, go tell your job to take this job and shove it by Johnny paycheck at all. That's not at all what I teach. It's not how I want what you have to do first and foremost when you're really looking to do something, you want to make something full time, you want to be successful at something you really have to come with a plan. I'll give you an example. Tiger woods from the Masters this past weekend, that guy has struggled the last couple years. Three back surgeries and broken legs, divorced cwi, losing sponsors, gaining them back. And then he was by far not the longest hitter on the Masters at Augusta. And Dustin Johnson, a few of those other guys are really nailing the long ball. So he had to work within his tools and his plan. And he was the most accurate guy on and off the greens throughout the weekend to really win the Masters. And as he said, he had to play his game, not dive into other people's games to do it. And that's the thing I want you all to realize here. You all have your own games that you're playing. Just because somebody else is off running and doing 50 notes in their first year, 50 properties, that doesn't mean that has to be you, okay? Only you know what you need and what your goals are. And so that's the thing, a business plan. So I have kind of broken down, if you go into some of our previous videos or some of my previous episodes, we talk about some different things like making 250k in your first 12 months and how that kind of breaks down to 20 deals you're doing using the money yourself. Also includes with you obviously taking the notes when getting them worked out, keeping for cash flow, then sell them off at a performance. That's one way. We've done another one we did a while back called your first 10 deals. Alright, in America, we broke down, okay, if you got three to modify, reinstate, that you had to foreclose on and the others or three that you got deed and lose on, the other four you had to foreclose on. I think that's exactly how the numbers work. But anyway, those are some great things to look at, some great videos. I highly recommend you go over to note night in America podcast, listen to those or go over to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com we close notes, subscribe and be able to listen and watch those episodes. But if you're a real estate entrepreneur or wantrepreneur is where most of us start off with, there are things you have to really put in place. Otherwise you're just gonna be out there shooting from the hip, trying to make some things happen and it's gonna get a little wild. Crazy and like the wild west out there. And you obviously wanna make some money, which is important to each and everybody, but you don't wanna end up having your dreams become your nightmare and you know, run Home screaming on things like that. So here's what I would recommend. Here's the kind of ARC process I would recommend. And we've taught this in the past. We dive into this quite a bit with our mastermind students when they come in, our fast track students. And we've got our next fast track kicking off in a couple days here. So here's kind of the golden rule that I would recommend that you do. First and foremost, just be honest with yourself. You can only chase really one rabbit. Okay? If you are one of these people has to go out and do try to do everything, you're going to struggle a lot longer and you're going to be upset and really your friends, your family are going to get kind of annoyed with you because you're probably going to end up being a Debbie Downer because you're not having success. So try to focus on one thing. Now I'm a big believer education is important. Obviously we have our training classes and things like that are not buying blueprint. But once you identify, once you get educated, once you start learning about the focus you want to go into, then I would give a lot of your energy to it. I would spend most of your focus on that aspect. I would sit down with somebody in your local market or somebody you can get on the phone, drop an email to or jump on Facebook, send a message to. We've got our amazing WCN crew Facebook page. It's just a wealth of information and great people and say, hey, what did you do your first year? What's realistic? Okay. And I like to set a goal. I don't want it just to be a realistic goal. I want something that's going to stretch myself, something that's really going to work to make me be focused on account. Now if you've got a full time job, you're working 60 hours a week or more, you may not have a lot of time. So you've got to pick and choose what you were able to focus on. You've got young kids or you're in the process of other things moving. You've got some things that are going to kick you in the shins or kick you in the teeth that you're going to have to be focused on. Okay? So don't get down on yourself if you haven't closed your first deal in your first 30 days, your first 60 days. Sometimes it just takes time in life as its way of dealing with things. Just keep moving forward, keep working towards the goal. We'll get to some of the things that you'll be working on help you out with it. But basically a business plan. Let's talk about your business plan for your real estate or side hustle. Talk with somebody about what a realistic number is. Okay? Now if you're trying to go out, I'll give you an example here in Austin, Texas. Oh, I'm going to go out and buy rehab 20 properties my first year in business. That's not going to happen. You're not going to rehab 20 properties. You're lucky to probably rehab a couple, right? Wholesaling, only going to rehab a hundred deals. Are you in a market like Columbus or are you in a market like Austin? Are you in Austin, Minnesota, where it's cold half the year versus Austin, Texas, where you got a tough market. So you have to know what really is feasible in your market. So talk to your local experts. This is one of the biggest things I could recommend. The best way to do that is go to your local real estate club, talk with the people that are closing deals. Not somebody who's a re club that's focused on education and training and where it's the guy that runs the group is all about that or the gal that runs the group is all buying training from them. I would talk with somebody else, find out somebody else. Okay, so here's the thing. Let's put some things. Let's say we all got jobs, all right, You've got jobs and you may only have 10 hours a week to do it. So here is what I would focus on that 10 weeks and look at it in a long term timeframe. Give yourself 12 months. Give yourself 24 months. Even if you get sidetracked with wealth or other life events. So be realistic with yourself and just be focused. Be focused. So whatever your one thing is, let's say it's a note investing because that's our flavor here. Say you want to make 60 grand in a year. Say that's what it's going to take you to leave your job. Well, here's what you want to do. I'm a big believer and I get people that are wholesalers come to me all the time. And I talked with somebody the other day about we're going to wholesale a lot of assets. Well, you're only going to make a little bit of money and you're going to have no wealth that's built along with it. The best way to build wealth and then no business is to work on assets that can potentially turn into performing notes or cash flow that comes in to you on a monthly Basis. That's a great way to really build cash flow. Because if you're only making a grand or two grand in wholesale fees, that means you've got to flip 30 deals, make 60 grand and you got to do it all over again every year. Nobody wants to work that hard. The thing that separates wholesalers is having a good database and finding good deals and also breaking down the deals. If you're going to do all that work just to sell it to somebody else for a flat fee, you might as well do the same amount of work to break down the deal and talk with people, talk with your warm market, build relationships and then have them fund the deal or partner with you on the deal where you're splitting it, whatever. So 10 hours a week, what are the things you're going to do? Well, we'll go Back to my 250k in 2019 webinar. If you need to make 60k, that's five grand a month. Let's say you're getting in. Let's say you're using other people's money and you're splitting cash flow and you're gonna see $250 on your split of the cash flow side. Let's say you're getting borrowers on mortgages where they're paying $500 a month is what either their modified amount is or their existing amount is $500 roughly. If it's 400, you're in a lower value there, that's fine, no problem. I wouldn't go really below $200 coming to you. Hard to make money when you're paying a servicing fee, especially it's non performing right off the bat. So try to stay above that 200, 250amonth phase for the month part to you. So let's say 500. Well, 500amonth divided by six by five grand is ten deals. Well, if you're having to split that, then that's 20 deals. So 20 deals, you can work to get 20 deals performing in 12 months. That comes out to like what, one and a half deals roughly just under that, one and two thirds deals monthly. Or if you figure that's one deal every two and a half weeks, roughly 50 weeks, 40 deals, how many offers are you going to have to make to get that number? And the reason I'm going through this on the front end side, so it has a bit of a foundation for we're going the next aspect of things because this is the whole idea of putting a plan together. You have to know your numbers. You can't just throw it, oh, I want to make 100 grand, slap it against the wall, hope that Jack Canfield Fairey shows up and writes you a six figure check with your first deal. Because that's not going to happen. What's going to happen is if you don't plan out what your actions are, don't plan out what your goals are, you're going to sit here floundering, you're going to say, oh, I want to lose weight. But if you never go to the gym, you don't change your diet or you don't sleep better or don't eat, nothing's going to change. You don't change your diet, you've got to change the activities that go, but you have to know where you want to go. Like as an example, our buddy Adam Schubel over at our PhD, a previously heavy Dude Million Pound Mission podcast talks about being you got to know your numbers. Well, a pound of fat weighs or is basically 3,500 calories. To burn a pound, you've got to burden 3,500 calories. That means you have to have a deficit. If you're constantly eating 5,000 plus calories a day, then you're basically, oh, you're adding a little bit. Unless you're expelling that calorie while you're walking, working out, doing other things, riding a bike or whatever. And a lot of people like, well, I'm going to diet. Well, you're going to starve yourself. That's not necessarily the best way to do that. So I'm not going to talk about starving yourself when it comes to business. Pick a number. When you look at what you got to make, you're making 60 grand a year now and you're living comfortably. Great, 60 grand a year. Maybe it's 100 grand, maybe it's 80 grand. I don't know. Just adjust the numbers for whatever it is. So take that annual income. We're just gonna say gross. We're not gonna say net. 60 grand divided by 12 is 5 grand a month. You get 5 grand a month in cash flow coming in. Divide that by 250. All right, what's that come to? It comes to 40 deals. 40 deals feasible. That's basically about one a week or working towards that one a week aspect. Did I get that right? 500. Yes, that's right. Because 40 times 250 is 10 grand coming in. Basically, that's half to your funding partners, half to you. That's five grand. Okay, that's feasible. Now, how Many offers do you have to make if you're going to do that? Well, I am a big believer that as new real estate investors, new note investors, you're not going to have a high closing rate. You're not going to make 20 offers and get 20 offers accepted. Everybody will agree to. This is why for years, traditional marketing suggested, oh, blast out, mail out a thousand postcards. Mail out a thousand yellow letters, go knock on a thousand doors. Right. Mail it to foreclosure list. Yeah. That process will result in deals or yield in responses. But it's not going to be a lot of great stuff if you get a 1 to 4% response rate. I like the note side of the game because it does alleviate a lot of the marketing that we have to do while we don't spend drop a thousand postcards. There are other ways to market out that. So I take you're gonna have a 10% closing ratio. If you need to close on 40 deals, 40 deals, then what you have to look at is, okay, 40 deals times 10% closing range. That means you need to make 400 offers. That comes out to about one a day. Now, the more you close, the better you're getting at your closing ratio. But you're really never going to get beyond what I say, like the major leagues, you're never really going to get beyond 30, 40%. Now, if you do have a higher closing ratio, it's either a, you're not making a bunch of offers, you're being very good in your due diligence, or maybe you're overbidding on assets, too overpaying, and then you don't want to do that. Okay, somewhere in that 10% closing ratio. So you make 20 offers, you get two offers you end up closing on. That doesn't mean you won't get them accepted initially if you made 10 offers. But through your due diligence, you're probably gonna end up eliminating some stuff. Either taxes, foreclosures, it's trashed out assets, it's not occupied. There's a variety of things that can eliminate that stuff. But knowing those numbers right there, okay, I need to close on 40 deals, 40 deals that are bringing me 250 to get to 10 grand, or 20 deals bringing me 500. So it's either 20, 40, whatever number you're looking, if you're 5 grand a month is great, or 10 grand a month is what you want. There you go. Just take whatever that number is, number of deals. So divided by 250 or 500, that's the number of deals you need to get to, to get to where at the end of 12 months, you basically hopefully have that many deals that they're starting to perform now. Some are gonna perform faster. Sometimes you get building up, are gonna start cashing in. So you're gonna start getting those bars on track with your vendor. So that's the first part, is knowing your numbers. Now, the thing is, then, how many hours a week do you have? What are the marketing activities you're doing in your business plan? Now, keep in mind that that's a great thing. We'll come back to that, though. Just hang on a second. In those activities, one of the most important things about your business plan is knowing your team. That means you need good Realtors. You need to know the markets you're investing in. So you have foreclosure attorneys in those states. You have a servicing company. If I didn't say this, Realtors already, or people in neck of the woods that can drive by the assets for you, those are all integral parts of your team. You know, like we did a note night in America episode a few weeks back on the Perfect Pitchbook. That's a great way to look at, to see what kind of teammates you have, who's dealing with it, whether it's Madison Management, who's your insurance company, like Ross Diversified, whether you're using Franco Burrell or Singer Law Group on your attorneys. You know, there's a variety of different things. Who are you using for collateral storage? Whether it's Orion or the company out of West Branson, Missouri, Richmond, Monroe, There's a variety of different teammates you want to have. Maybe you're only going to start off in two states. That's another thing to look at, too, is look, I like these five states. These are the five states I like. But I'm probably going to focus the most on two or three states to begin with. That's the thing I talk about. You can't try to buy everything in every state initially because you're going to really burn out. Like Texas. If I see something in Texas gray, I'll jump onto it. But it's not one of my top five. I'm considering my top five because it's my top five are the states I see in most amount of inventory coming in. So here's the states that we see in the most amount of inventory. Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, South Carolina, North Carolina, Missouri, Tennessee, in some cases Kansas. But those are primarily the states that we see the most amount. Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia. Throw those in there as well, too. So if you're in one of the states, great. Like in Ohio, Michigan, you're in the land of milk and honey. You could probably buy enough in Ohio to loan satisfy your needs. Or in Michigan as well, or Pennsylvania or Maryland for sure. But obviously develop one state, develop one market and then go from there. So you've picked your state. Okay, what state is it? We're going to focus on Ohio. Okay, what are the bigger markets in Ohio? And this is the thing about breaking down. These are things in your business plan you need to know. Well, Columbus, right. Should I go to Cleveland? It's got some iffy issues. Okay, let's avoid Cleveland. But Akron, Dayton, Canton, Cincinnati, if you're a Bengals or a Bungles fan, there are some good markets in Ohio. I like that area. But those are the areas you need to know. And what's the next phase of that? Well, in your business plan, you need to find a local real estate club either through meetup.com and then also find a realtor. That neck of the woods. Maybe you need to find a title company. Maybe you need to find somebody that can help you out with that stuff. So that's breaking it down. You see, if you did that for one area, then if you're into Michigan, do the same thing. What are the big areas in Michigan? And then a lot of this stuff can really identify things. The more you dive in your business plan, the more focused you're going to be and the happier you're going to be because you're not going to be chasing so many freaking wild turkeys out there. You're not going to be chasing every remote deal. Oh, it's in Ohio. Well, it's in a small town. Oh, so that's what I'm trying to get at is the more focused you can be on two states, pick your cities that have over 25,000, over 50,000, or the cities that have the major universities in those areas. Those are great. Some great filters to help you focus on some things. Wise education, wise college. Worst case, you turn into a college rental if you're within five miles of university. Ran out by bedrooms. But then that takes me into what are you going to do with these assets? What's your biggest focus? Is it going to be a wholesale? Okay, then it's not the cash flow thing. And you have to look at how much you're going to make in a wholesale deal. Is it one grand? Is it two grand? Is it five grand? That means if you're buying five grand, it means a good wholesaler needs to be buying at 50 cents on the dollar or below that really leave plenty of meat on the bone for the final investor. So knowing what your focus is, hey, it's to buy owner occupied assets that I can modify where the borrowers hopefully have paid something in the last 12 to 24 months or I'm buying assets between say 40 grand and 150 grand in these markets that in either faster foreclosure and like judicial or non judicial. That's all the things that go into your business plan. So the more you identify know exactly kind of ideal avatar is, you know, ideal asset that you're looking at, the easier it's going to be. It's easier for you to do your due diligence, it's easier for you to run through. And as you're looking at assets, oh, I don't want to buy anything other than 900 square foot. Okay, boom. This house, oh, I don't want to buy just a two one, okay, boom. I want some at least two bedrooms or two baths. Boom. And it helps you filter those things down. The more specific you can be and what your target focus is, the better it is going to be. Now that's all about kind of getting focused. Now let's go back to how do you reach out to find these deals? What's your focus going to be? What are you going to spend your time on if you've only got 10 hours a week to do it Right? Now that you're focused now you know the states that you're in that you're looking to, then you want to build you a list of asset managers or banks that are lending in those states. That's where like Lane Guide will come in handy. Lane G U I D E. Lane Guide comes in handy. That way you can pull some easy lists off of there worth 160 bucks a year, whatever it is. Now you could jump on to different state licensing websites and see if they've got servicers or licensed mortgage bankers in a specific area. And then you have to decide what are you going to do with your 10 hours a day. If you're working full time, you're probably not going to have a lot of time for making asset phone calls or calling asset manager banks. Okay, it's just not going to happen. That's a two hour, three hour a day thing you got to focus on. Can't make 10 phone calls in 30 minutes and say I called banks. That's just not an effective time. I'm sorry. And to say that you're going to do it during your lunch break, no offense. It's probably not going to happen. You might do it for a couple days, but you're probably not going to do that. So this comes back to how do you market effectively? And this is what you have to look at in your 10 hours because you only got 10 hours to do some stuff. So you need to build a list like a wholesaler going to buy a good investors list. You want to buy a bank list or not buy, create a bank list. And this is something you can do at time, at different times of night. Don't do it during the day. So you can do this at home or after dinner, the kids are in bed or whatever. You knock a couple hours out. That's what I would say to do too. You have to look at your schedule with your plan, how many hours you realistically have. You're not going to probably spend all 7pm to 2am after you get off of work. So you're probably going to spend say from eight to ten, two hours. Do that four nights a week because Friday night is the ladies night or the guys night. So spend some time with your family and friends. And you're not going to spend all weekend. You might spend two to four hours on a Saturday or three hours on a Saturday and then maybe an hour or two on Sunday. So that's what I'm saying. You could do two hours a day or two hours Monday through Thursday. There's some things that you have to keep in mind that you're probably going to get to like if you go to your local real estate club, if you're an area there, that's an important thing to do. Go network, build relationships. That's a part of your marketing. So look at your calendar. I'm going to go the first Wednesday and the first Thursday. Those are the two nights of the month that my local real estate clubs meet. Great. Mark that down on your calendar and that's your two to three hours they're going and networking. It's a good thing, but you have to be effective. Get business cards, take their information, put them in your database. Valuable. They give you a business card. Take the email, the phone number, the address, who they are, their name, and put in your database is potentially your database. Okay, Potential buyers, funders, whatever. And that comes down to where do you put them? Well, obviously if you're getting started with a business plan, you need to have some sort of email service provider or a CRM of some sort. Mailchimp Great is an easy one to use infusionsoft aweber. There's a variety of different ones out there. I like mailchimp infusionsoft the best. All right. Easiest to use mailchimp is it's had a lot of newer cool features to it when you're starting off. It's a great place to start off if you've got a small database, pretty easy and expensive and just going to use it. What's that mean? It means you're building a database of either investors you're meeting or building a list of asset managers off of like Lane Guide like I said or Scotsman Guide or the Texas Mortgage and Savings and Lending Department where you play list. Those are lists. You got to put those lists in something. You're not going to send an email out via Gmail or Yahoo or AOL like some of you guys are using the dark ages. Realize that hey, that becomes your next thing. So that's your 7pm to 2am activity. Write an email or sending an email up on Sunday so that your emails go out throughout the week. I would be sending an email out to your database at least once a week. Database. I'm talking about investors or people you meet at real estate clubs. It's like once a week. Honestly, it's not a bad thing to do at least once every two weeks. Okay. Send an email out to your database and then follow up the same email through mailchimp of those that didn't open the first round at a different time. And I like Sunday nights at 7pm is a great time to send emails out. The next thing you'll look at besides sending emails out then I would also spend time how much time would you spend on LinkedIn? And this LinkedIn is a great way to find asset managers. Find secondary marketing professionals, go out and spend some time and send in messages or connect with different people on LinkedIn. Now if you have a brand new LinkedIn account that's be a little harder to do. Initially you don't allow connections because LinkedIn will only allow add so many percentage compared to how many connections you have. So you may need to spend some time on your smartphone your LinkedIn app on your smartphone adding new connections that way versus your computer. But it's easy to do while you're sitting there doing it. I wouldn't do it at table. Don't do that. Your husband or wife will get mad that you're not paying attention. So put the phone away so you spend some time on it. But that's the thing. Send emails asset managers and to your contacts and Then also spend some time on LinkedIn reaching out to asset managers that way. Those are three great ways to do it. Now the next thing you can do is you can reach out and type in like a real estate hedge funds and start tracking, send out some of the sources that have it. Because especially if you're working during the day, you're not going to have time eventually as you start getting listed to do a lot of due diligence through the day so you can do that at night. So this is why you want to set up your systems initially at first with your marketing, so that stuff can kind of get off cranking for you on a regular basis so you're not sitting there doing one thing. And what do I do now? Because if you start doing this, you're going to start seeing some lists coming, whether it's from fellow note investors that you see and meet or other some brokers, or you're getting some direct lists from banks and asset managers. I mean, I'll give you an example. I made phone calls to banks today actually for about an hour and a half tracking down some asset managers for short sale agents here in Texas that we're working with on a couple smaller institutions. And you got some good luck coming. So I'm pretty stoked about that. That's the thing. If you're working full time, you don't have time to maximize that. So that's why you want to reach out via LinkedIn or you want to send an email blast out to asset managers the day and using mailchimp to be able to do that. So you can pre schedule it and send it out at 11am While you're in the middle of typing on the phone or doing your job. Now when you can start getting deals in, it's important, start getting deals and start breaking down the due diligence. That's when you want to jump in and spend some time on your due diligence. Hey, look what I found. Look what you see. Start diving into that stuff. Another important thing to do is communicate what you're having success with. Maybe share your journey in your email blast out to your regular database. Hey, hey guys. Here's what I'm focused on this week. Here's my journey as a real estate investor. You know, people love to follow along, people love to comment, people love to see actually people doing something and failing. Like one of the most valuable videos I ever did initially was calling banks for like two hours and getting hung up on. People love that. Love seeing people fail. That's great. Hey you learn more by failure than you do by success. So taking back and looking at your schedule, how much of your 10 hours a week, 30 minutes should be set up Once you've got your email template and stuff done, 30, 45 minutes about how long it's going to take you to set up your emails that go out once a week. 30, 45 minutes going out to asset managers, you're going to spend a lot of time connecting with people and sending out LinkedIn messages. I think that's a great way to do it. Contacts, great, great thing to do. You might want to use Lead Views leadfuse is a cool service that you can use to export contacts directly from LinkedIn. It's kind of a cool thing that we've just stumbled upon recently and are pretty excited about. For some things, you're going to want to spend some time building your social media profiles, maybe join a few real estate groups, maybe joining a couple of your meetup groups on Facebook or join some like the real estate DFW real estate investors or Columbus real estate investors. Especially in the markets where you're buying at, you may want to join those groups on there to network with people to find other people in the area. That way when you come across something, especially if it's not in your backyard, you may be able to reach out if you don't have a realtor already. But reach out, hey, I've got a deal I'm working through here. Can I have somebody can help me drive by and pull a CMA for you? These are free resources. Really the only thing that we've talked about that costs anything so far is what lane guide Mailchimp is going to cost you. Once you go beyond 2,000 contacts, that's be pretty easy for you to do. Just got to use those things, make them a good use of your time. Of course cell phone, if you're doing that or Internet, I'm not telling you to go out and spend money on an expensive LinkedIn Pro. Use the free version, it works fine. Start getting beyond 2,000, 3,000 contacts in there, it's going to get easier to add and just share what's going on in your deal. Hey, I made offers this week or I contacted banks. One of the most important thing about an effective business plan and like we talked about going back with the numbers is for you to start tracking your numbers. When I was a banker at JPMorgan Chase, one of the things that they gave us was basically a scorecard every day and you probably want to have a scorecard Somewhere where you're tracking. How many asset managers did you contact? Did you send an email blast out? When did you reach out on LinkedIn? What did your LinkedIn connections increase to? What emails did you send? What was your open rates? Start tracking that stuff. How many assets did you have come in? How many offers you make? Start tracking those things so that you're effective in your day in, day out activities. That way you can really track things. Some of you really enjoyed the 3030 matrix that we've put together. You may want to check out that from a previous Note Night in America podcast or YouTube video, the 3030 Matrix, where it's basically 30 days and 30 marketing activities you can do across the top of a spreadsheet. And you just basically check off a couple a day and you're rocking and rolling. One of the things you might want to do as well is you may want to find an accountability partner. I think it's important. Maybe you find one at your local real estate club, or maybe you meet somebody at note camp, or maybe you meet somebody at the paper source convention, the note symposium. Find somebody to be accountable with who's probably in the same neck of the woods you are. And you guys can hold each other accountable because there are times, let's face it, that we'll flake on that person appearing back at us in the mirror. But we've got somebody to hold us accountable to. We'll do it. That's the whole reason I have a trainer come by. Because you know what, like, chilling, I'll keep working. But I have that accountability because I'm paying them daily. I'm not going to blow that money. I'm going to go get my money's worth that day, get my workout in. So do yourself a favor. If you flake off, you start seeing things. You're spending a little time excited because Game of Thrones is on. You're going to binge watch Game of Thrones? Okay. Get it done, check it off and go back to work. The beautiful thing, I think, is that in this day and age as entrepreneurs, there's no excuse not to get started. Now, there is a great book I would recommend, written by my buddy Dan Fleischman, basically talks about how to start a business for under a thousand bucks and gets all sorts of great resources. Their marketing and success helps. I would highly recommend you download that. It's a phenomenal book. How to Start a Business for Under a Thousand Bucks. Now, the thing is, a lot of people get into is, oh, do I need a website? So Do I really need social handles? Do I need an llc? And those are important things that are not killers. To get started doing this. Some of this other stuff we talked about. Yes, you need an LLC to do this. And before you go, pick some fancy name that you think is cool to you. Go to namecheck.com n a, m e c h k.com, namecheck.com, see if the.com is available. See if the social media handles for that business are available. Last thing you want, some cool name. And then the LLC is not available or the website's not available, or the social handles aren't available. Be smart, check that out. And then I'd reach out. Yeah, you need an LLC that should be start looking at some of your initial expenses along the way you're going to pay for an llc. Probably need to have a website and so you don't have to have anything too fancy for a lot of times people especially working a. This is your side gig. A lot of people will utilize their LinkedIn profile as their website initially. That's great. Just make sure it's completely filled out. Some people start it and never finish it. Never put a profile photo and that's difficult initially. Get your LinkedIn profile, get a Facebook profile up there, start one for your business, start doing those things and then go to a website. You know, we've got some friends that do pretty inexpensive website creation. So if you need one, reach out to me. Scottclose notes.com, hey, I need some help with website development. We'll forward you over to our buddy JD who helps out with a lot of things. I would recommend you not do a WIX website. Do a WordPress website. Use something that because it's got so many different plugins that can make it look a lot fancier. Whereas WIX is not the easiest thing. Doing something, you start it there, build something that's initially okay, but you're better off doing something else. You might want to check out leadpages. You might want to check out click Funnels. There's a variety of different things that you can do for your website and depending on what you're planning on doing long term. But keep it simple, keep it clean. Yes, you need a logo. You can jump on fiverr.com, find a couple examples or go to like 99designs and have a lot more examples to choose from. Or just jump in canva canva.com once you find out the entity names available and create your own logo. If you needed to that's pretty inexpensive. Those are things that you can figure out. You should not say, oh, I'm going to spend five days on creating canva. If you spend five hours, you're in the wrong, wrong line of work. But spending a little bit of time there, working through that stuff is a great tool. Or better yet, learn to start delegating some of that stuff out. Learn to start delegating some of your marketing out. If you can find an assistant, you can find somebody on fiverr or upwork.com to delegate some of the things that you shouldn't be doing, especially working full time. One of the biggest things that I see a lot of note investors struggle with is they try to do everything themselves in the first 20 or 30 episodes because they're like, oh, I can't afford this. It's to going. But you can't really afford none. Now that's not saying you need to hire somebody at 40 hours a week to start off with. Hire somebody after 10 hours a week, a virtual assistant to help you with your due diligence. Hire somebody to help you with your marketing. Hire somebody to help you with your social media presence. Heck, there's a lot of people out there that will actually write free articles for you. I get bombarded once or twice a week with somebody wanting to write articles for our website. Well, you have to realize everybody, you have to treat this like a business. Now if you want to just treat this as a hobby. Oh, I don't want to have a Facebook account. I don't need that. I don't want to have that now. Well, that's fine. The treat is a hobby. You may close a fraction of what you would do. But if you got serious about this, you have to treat it as a business. What's that mean? You have a logo. You've got business cards that are not printed home. Rank it off. It means you're one person doing one thing, not 20 million. Jack of all trades, jackasses. Okay? Be focused on where you're going and start doing that. And here's the thing to going back to your plan. Basically, let me talk about the numbers, like the first 12 months, okay? Do this. If you figured what your number was for 12 months that you wanted to hit, say 20 notes, well then increase that by 150% the second year. What's that mean? Second year I'm going to do 30 notes. Or if I only got 10 notes in the first year, I'm going to try to go to 20 or I'm going to go to 15 the second year. Saying you're going to close on 100 deals is just not feasible to start off with. Just the truth of it. Unless you're independently wealthy or you've just got something lucky spoon up your. You know what I mean? Be smart and realize. Give yourself permission to do some different things. Give yourself permission that it's okay for you if you didn't hit your goals. One of my few arch nemeses when I was growing up, unfortunately, was my sophomore geometry teacher. Okay, my sophomore geometry teacher, Mrs. Crawford. Mrs. Crawford did not like athletes. Okay, Just a true story. She did not like athletes at all. And I was an athlete. Capped my football team. I got along fine with everybody, but she didn't like athletes. It's unfortunate. And I had a lot of friends in my honors geography class. And me, I'm the kind of guy like, hey, if I give you the right answer, great, let's get the right answer. But if you're going to sit here and make me jump back and forth, jump through hoops, try to close one way your way, we're probably not going to see eye to eye. That's what happened. We didn't get along. We didn't see eye to eye. So it was one of the classes I struggled with the most. I made decent grades on the stuff, but I didn't do so well the second semester my sophomore year. Why? Because we just didn't go. There was other things we had to do and I just didn't take it that serious. One of the things I did not like is that Mrs. Crawford, what she said about goals was. She said to a goal should be something that you're never able to accomplish. And I dislike that. I don't believe that. I think a goal is something that you should be able to accomplish. Yeah, you want to stretch yourself, but to never be able to accomplish your biggest goal, why would you do it anyway, then? A lot of us have big goals out there, big dreams that we want to accomplish. You may not get there the first 12 months, but it just takes time to get there. And if you have things along the way, distract you, sickness, family issues, work issues, it's okay. Put down your goal for a little bit, rest, but then go back to it and pick it back up. You are the only person whose goals and opinions you need to worry about. Please, for the love of your business, if you're serious about it, then be serious about it. We had some investors like, hey, Scott, I love my job. I just do this on the side. That's Totally fine. That's totally a. Okay, we're fine with that. That's a great thing. Or hey, I only got 10 hours a week or 5 hours a week to do this. Okay, great. Stretch it out. Or I'm happy with my job. I only want to do this with my IRAs. That's great. There's no wrong answer to that. Or I just had a baby, I don't have the time. Oh, we understand that. Maybe you need to figure out how to do due diligence while you're rocking the kid at 3am who knows? But it's okay to do that. All right. And this is why Community, especially in the note business I love so much, is much different than your fix and flip side, your wholesale side. Most people cut your throat in other sides, the note business. A lot of times if you're so busy, it's good to find a county partner so you got the money and you can partner other people or they'll do the deals or vice versa. You have the time but don't have the money. Hey, go out, find some deals and partner up with some of the other people out there that don't have the time but have the money to do that. That's a feasible thing to do. And how you structure, we'll get to that in a different episode. So coming back to your business plan, let's talk back. Take a little bit of a recap here. Focus on what your numbers need to be. Realize you've only had about 10% closing ratios and then work your numbers that way. Okay? Take your month, whatever monthly you want to come in. I need five grand myself. You're going to see probably 250 to 500. What's that come down to? 20 deals? 20 deals times a 10% closing ratio means you need to make 200 offers. That's one every two days, basically, or that's eight a month on a roughly basis to get your deals done, to make your offers and to get the deals closed to get that done. That also means we need to close on 20 deals and they're roughly going to be 50 to 75 grand. That gives you a number to raise capital for. Okay, 20 deals at 50 grand. That's a million dollar portfolio, basically. All right, that's great. That's what you need to look at. And that's also something you need to look at. That's why it's important to network. That's also why it's important to know your deals. Everything's structured. This is also why you need to have an llc. This is also why you need to probably put a little bit time and budget into your business plan to seek counsel for your attorneys. Have them set up entities that make sure your LLC is compliant with like the corporate veil protection that Laughlin and since he says that we had Aaron Young on a few episodes ago, those are such important things that you need to put in place now and not wait later on. A lot of us, I only say this voice of experience, we get started with the band aid budget, we get started putting things together. Well, we'll get to that later on. We never get to that later on. If you've got the time, put more time into your systems, put more time into your asset protection on the front end side, it will pay volumes in the long run for you. So it's 20 start networking. You don't have to attend to everything in the notes space. I actually highly I'm against attaining everything because I think a lot of it's overkill. Pick out a couple events, maybe add a new event to you that you go to in the new year. All right, you go to one event this year. Okay, it was great. Maybe you're going to get to it next year. Maybe you swap it out and go to a different event. Maybe as you growing deals, maybe you're looking for more area focused events. Maybe you're looking for more marketing help. Thing you want to put into it is you're never going to go wrong with two things putting money into your marketing because it's going to work volumes across the way across everything marketing. Whether you're wholesaling, note investing, fix and flipping, selling tiddlywinks or old Nissan, Honda Acuras or whatever. To Jason Bible over Mr. Right Path real Estate. Whatever it is, your marketing is always going to pay off for you. When you see a lot of businesses or companies that are struggling, they pull back in their marketing budget and that's usually the sign of death. So don't do that. If you've been ahead of busy week and you need to make some offers, don't get down on yourself. Hey, talk about what went on market, about what you're going on in your life. Let people start building that rapport with you. Getting the chance to know you. That's the biggest thing. And the thing is I would tell you this too. Take a little bit of time, take a little bit of money. A couple hundred bucks. Invest in a good microphone and a good Logitech webcam. Maybe use zoom. It doesn't hurt to start talking about you doing a webinar on the weekend or something like that? Something to market yourself. Market the deals that you're working through. Do a little lunch and learn or a little week and learn. Okay, a PowerPoint. Talking about what you're doing. Like we did the perfect pitch like I talked about in that webinar. Hey, take 20, 30 minutes and create a little perfect pitch video. And you can upload that to YouTube or Vimeo and then go out and spend some time. Maybe it's either on bigger pockets or connected investors and connecting with other investors. Had some great connections happen across both of those platforms. And it's just a great way to say, hey, here's what I do. Here's what I do as a note or real estate investor. And that's one great solid piece of advice I'd give you. Spend more time on that in the front end. Create some good 4, 5, 6 assets. And by assets, I mean videos, your stories or case studies that you're talking about. And that's one of the big things I would focus on. If you're struggling, you don't have any deals or any case for yourself, reach out. Hey, do you have any deals that you've closed that you'd like to be interviewed on to talk about case studies or any sample numbers that we go through? One of the great highlights of what we do at our Note Mastermind that's upcoming is we spend a lot of time going through different case studies. What deals have you closed lately? What have you done for me lately? Note closing. My best Pahla Abdul impression. But anyway, what I'm trying to get back is if you focus on your business plan, don't get so bogged down that I got to plan out 10 years, focus on the first year, break that down as real estate goals for the first 90 days. Your first six months. Your first 12 months. And then like I said, double that number or increase it by 150%. Make it a reachable goal. But nothing so crazy like you even closed on five. Even close on a deal in your first 12 months. Make that your goal for the first 90 days or your first six months. And if you get delayed, okay, I want to have to give a big shout out to Kathryn Brennan in Chicago Note Exchange. You may recognize the name on their stuff. She's closing on her first Note deal, which is great. I think it's six months after she's been around. But I also know that Katherine's a very busy and very successful realtor in Chicago. But kudos to her she closed on her first deal, took a little bit longer than expected, but that's okay. She's going to be off and running and doing some great things out there. But start spending time, start networking. Don't be a lone wolf. I mean, yes, as investors we have our own companies, but don't be afraid to reach out and ask for help. It's one of the most important things you can do because those that are most successful are successful because they have overcome the most amount of obstacles. Those that are successful, not those because they've just had success after success after success. What you don't see is a lot of mistakes. They've been along with a lot of good deals or also a lot of bad deals or a lot of deals that didn't go the right way that they were able to overcome because that's half of what real estate is investing. Yeah, we all love to think that the best thing's going to happen and that's not always the case. You always have to have a plan B or plan C. So make that numbers, put that into your case study. Your case study is like, I'm going to buy 10 assets a year. Five I'm looking to get reperforming at $500 a month. The other five, I'm hoping to make five to 10 grand and fees when we sell the assets either through deed loom or foreclosure. Hey, that's great. Not every deal is going to be a home run. You're getting some singles and doubles, five grand, ten grand to your pocket. It's not bad, especially if you don't have to go out and do some heavy lifting to fork rehab it and things like that. I know a lot of people. I heard buddy Chad north of the border was just talking about recently about a deal he was glad to get rid of. It was a nightmare. He's making some money on it, but he was glad to be done with it. The last big rehab. So try to systemize your thing. The biggest thing that we see people struggle with is they try to be everything or I'm going to do all that and they build all these little half finished bridges and they never end up completing everything. The more focused your business plan can be, the more focused you're going to be, the happier you're going to be and the really happier your family is going to be because you're not running over like a chicken with their head cut off, acting all crazy. And you can be more focused and have more time for your family because the last thing you want to do is replace one job with something that's shackled to you. That's the last thing that you would ever want to do is do that is you want to make sure that you want to be smart, be efficient and be able to, hey, have some wins. You're going to have some hiccups going to happen, you're going to have some investors walk, they're going to have some deals get pulled from you. That a, you're all excited about and like not quite what you expected there. But take a look. You know, that's the thing. Look at your servicing company, look at the states they're licensed in, look at lenders in those states, mortgage company bankers. Like I said earlier, I made a few phone calls to asset managers that are lending in Texas and some other states, getting some lists in. It's all about the activity. And if some things aren't paying off, I mean, there's a variety of different things you can do to market your business. Go back and do something else. Change it up a little bit. Change it up, as they like to say in bingo. Shake it up, Betty. Shake up your business. Tweak it up. If you're not getting anything out of your local meetup group because it's a pitch fest all the time, hey, go to another one, all right? Maybe jump on an online group if you need some coaching. Hey, get some coaching, all right? Reach out to people that are doing some things. You never know because we're all really one contact away from our business changing. Maybe it's one contact in an asset manager, maybe it's one at a bank, maybe it's a servicing company, maybe it's a vendor. You never know who's going to reach out to you or the sources that you want to go to. Now if you're looking one of the great things you could do as well too. If you're looking for case studies or things like that, hey, jump on some of the exchanges, look at some of the deals that they have. Work through some of the numbers. Hey, if I offered this, would this make sense? Or if I offered this, what's the route? And work through those numbers. Those are great learning things. And then talk about that, hey, here's a deal that we're working through. Numbers don't make sense because of this. Here's why. Show that you're educated. Because it will build rapport not only with you, it'll build confidence with you, but it'll also build rapport with those that are watching or listening. And honestly, sometimes it's the family too. They'll start believing and seeing all change taking place. So coming back to your business plan, let's kind of get the point where we're almost recapping. Know your numbers work your numbers. Know the time that you really have to put into it. Be effective in those 10 hours, all right? Don't do little things. You can delegate little things off. Do it. If you want to make six figures, hire an assistant. Dead honest truth, you're not making six figures in a business. Hire an assistant to go do that. Hire somebody can run and do all the stuff that you don't need to do. Look at what your hourly rate is. So you think about that. That's another important number for you. If you want to make 60 grand a year. Here's the number, here's the thing. Say you want to make 60 grand in a year, okay? That's what you got to do and you're working. Divide that by 50 weeks, that means $1,200 a week. Well, if you're only putting in 10 hours a week initially to build this extra 60 grand, that means your hour should be worth 120 bucks an hour. Anything that is less than 120 bucks an hour, you should be delegating that off to somebody. Like a $15 an hour job should be delegated out to somebody to go do that. What I mean by that, it means you're washing your clothes, you're doing your oil changes, you're mowing your yard. Now I get some of you guys enjoy that. And if you've got your other stuff done, great, do that. Otherwise, give it to somebody else. Have somebody else go make a bank deposit. Have somebody else go check your mail if you can. While you're focused on the 10 hour, I mean the 120 hour job, what's that come raising capital, finding deals and marketing. Those are the three biggest things that are going to help you grow your business and help you accomplish things in your business plan. Whether it's notes, whether it's wholesaling, fix and flips, whatever it might be. Being dedicated and focused on getting things done. Alright? That's what it comes down to. Know your business. Don't try to be a jack of all trades. Please, please, please, please stop trying to be everything. And honestly, you probably need to take a little time, get a little education along the way. Education could be reading books, it could be going to workshops, it could be going to mastermind, be hiring a coach. There's a whole many different things you can do to Help that. But you need to put that into your plan as well, too. My marketing plan is I'm going to go two meetup groups in these areas in my hometown. If you're a big area like dfw, there's something every night. If you're in a smaller town, I got one meeting once a week, and then maybe I need to jump on something else. Maybe I need to drive one night a month, an hour, to a bigger city and go to that event. If you can get your spouse included, great. That's helpful. If you have an accountability partner that will help you with the ups and downs of this business. Because every business has ups and downs. Every business has hurdles. Everything has potholes out there. The idea is the more accountability, the more understanding you can get, the better you are at avoiding those potholes and hurdles that are going to fall in front of us all. Because they all do. All right? They all do. Share what's going on. Share what you're struggling with. And don't be afraid to say, hey, I need some help. The worst mistakes you can make. The worst mistakes I've ever made is on premise. And when I didn't reach out and said, hey, I need some help, and I sat there and thought I knew it all, and I goofed up and messed up things. So those are some of the biggest things working your business plan. Hey, go back to it. Use your plan. It's going to guide you. Those that have a plan at least have goals written down, are 50% more likely to achieve those goals. Why wouldn't you take the time? So many people start a business, but they never put a plan in action of how they want to accomplish things, how they want to get to where they want to go, what they need to be doing, what they need to be marketing on a regular basis to get things done. And that's a shame. The downright dirty shame. You don't take the hour, two hours or a couple hours to go through a business plan and have somebody review it. Have somebody look it over for you. I mean, look it online. I mean, actually, every town usually has a small business administration. Go to where they've got retired executives. Score is the name of the department of Score. I can't remember the sc, but it's of retired executives. Let's get some time, guys. Retired in business for years, hey, take them out to lunch or take them out for dinner or happy hour. Try to expand your network. But it all comes down to my buddy Gregory likes to say, in five years from now, we'll be the same except for the people we meet in the books that we read. So maybe you need to read some books or listen to some books, listen to some podcasts. Thank you for listening to this podcast, by the way, or watching it or sharing it. I would really appreciate that. If you're listening out there, guys, and you don't know where you're going or you're in real estate and you're struggling, take some time. Hey, have you ever spent time putting a business plan together? You don't need anything that's like 40 million pages. Some of those things are overkill. We're not talking about a business plan together so you can go get bank financing. Some of my best business plans have been one pages, one, two pages. Here what I'm focused on, here's what I need to do and here's where I want to go. And those are the things that I post, I keep, I share it. Here's my business plan, here's what I'm going for. And hopefully I'll get there and see you at the top. That's all I've got for this episode today. Hopefully it was helpful for many of you out there. The thing you got to realize, guys, you're not in this alone. Take some time. Pick up the phone, drop me an email, shoot me a text message and go from there. If you'd like to get some more information on note investing, I'm going to give you. You can always go to download my free book@noteblueprint.com freebook that's noteblueprint.com freebook 19.99 on Amazon. You can get it for a buck. We're giving away for free. If you're listening to this so noteblueprint.com freebook we drop the dollar off, get a downloaded PDF of the 73 page book and show how we were able to do what we did in under eight years. So go out, make something happen. Everybody have a great day and we'll see the top everybody by.