EP 500 – The 500th Episode with Stephanie Goodman

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 Nook Closure show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here today, and today's a very special day out there for the show. It is our kind of magic number, as I guess you could say. It is our 500th episode of the podcast and I am honored to have a special guest on today who hasn't made a regular occurrence, but she is always there behind the scenes keeping me out of trouble, being my sounding board. As they always say, behind every good man is a even more powerful and amazing woman. That is really the case with our special guest today, and we're honored to have her on here today. Been a guest on some of the very early Facebook lives that we've done in different parts of the country with the first 150 episodes, but she has not been on a true podcast episode from episode 150 going forward. So without further ado, we want to give a big, big warm welcome to Stephanie Goodman. So come on in here, Steph. Come on over here. For those that can't or only listen to here, we're sharing the screen here. She's here in the office today. Welcome, Steph.

Hi. Thank you.

You're okay. I'm not gonna throw you under the bus or anything like that.

Nicest introduction ever.

Well, you're great. You do a great job. I think everybody would consider that Steph is a much nicer person than I am.

I appreciate that.

Yes, exactly. We'll leave it at that.

We'll leave it at that.

We'll leave it at there. But it's hard to believe. 500 episodes, huh?

Yes. I can't believe it's at 500.

I know, right? And then one of the biggest things I want to say, thanks for those that are joining us live here, Walker, we got some people that are joining us. So big kudos to you guys. Walker, my. Here, Laura. Thank you so much. It's just been nice seeing so many people. Hey, Leah, Griggs. Good to see you guys out there. 500 episodes. There's been a lot of work that goes into this, but I think you can remember. I don't. Was it the event in there's an event in Vegas that we attended. Was it Thrive event or was another event we attended where the Shark got there? Was talking about videos and YouTube. It may have been. I was just in the audience for that one. And you were at a different one.

I really want to say. Was it Thrive?

Actually, yeah. Was it Thrive event put on by Cole Hatter?

Yeah.

And Shark comes out. Oh, my God. Kevin Harrington comes out and talks about video and all the stuff he was using on QMC or QVC and selling products, how video was the way. Now this is going back to 2016 because the first. No, no, it's 2016 because we started the first Facebook Live was November 1st, 2016. And I. I know, right? Three almost. It's not quite three years yet, but, you know, when you think that we've cranked out 500 episodes in less than three years, that's a lot of stuff. And then, like, this month marks the second year of True Podcast. August 20th is when we had our first episode go live in 2017. So it's been crazy. We talk about some of the numbers here. First and foremost, 380,000 downloads with our basically 350 podcast episodes total, 500 across the board. But just basically day in, day out, we average about three and a half to four episodes a week. Steph's not always like, especially when we're on vacation, she's like, what the heck are you doing? I got smart this last time. Right.

We've done podcasts in some really interesting locales and fun places.

Right. And then we've also had some great people that came on that were guest hosts for us two years ago when we were traveling. First thing, we got to give a big shout out to our sponsors. Right. People have sponsored the podcast with Quest Trust Co. Being a major sponsor, Laughlin Associates being a major sponsor, Merrill and the folks over at Credit since being a big sponsor. Kudos to all them. For real.

Thank you to all of them as well.

Exactly. Thank you to all them there. That's why they're on here regularly, have been on with regular episodes. And we've got a few new sponsors that are coming aboard here in the next couple weeks, too. We're pretty excited about, too. But the thing I want to kind of throw this at you. If those that don't know your background, why don't you share a little bit about your background and talk a little bit about kind of how you got into real estate before you got into the notes? I don't think a lot of people have heard that story.

Well, you know, the short of it was I was fortunate to have a really good friend who was an accounting position and said friend was always about the markets, the stock market, real estate rentals, things like that. And as we got to be better and better friends, he would share these tidbits and tips and points of view and things like that. And so I ended up taking some classes back then with a different outfit. And it was super intriguing and it made sense, all of it made sense. So it was very exciting and it was something that I wanted to get into doing aside from what my job was at the time back then. And I loved my job. But real estate was something that was long term. So if I ever wanted to change jobs or move or do something different, then that was something that would be a good foundation for myself, my family, and everybody else in my circle. So that's really the short of it. Before you came and Scott actually came in 2011, spoke to one of our local real estate groups here in Austin. And I had heard mention of notes, but a little bit, not very much. And it was always something that instructors and teachers started over. They really didn't spend a great deal of time on it, and he did. So when he came and he spoke to our real estate group, it was like a massive light bulb went off. My companion at the time and said, why didn't we hear about this sooner? So the love for notes grew. Yes, it did, and it went from there. But notes really made sense to me and it was something that I wish I had found before in the beginning, because you could. Everything that we had learned how to do, you could do on the front end or the back end of a note. And it was really different back then. Most people didn't know what you were talking about when you spoke about it or when you would call banks or things like that. You want to talk to who to what. And now I think it's really cool because it's still such a tiny niche, but it's grown quite a bit so that there's more discussion about it and there's more attention about it across the country. And there's more people that not just we've been able to help with our sphere and influence, but other people have gone out and a lot of you guys have helped dozens of families in different borrowers and communities. And I think that's a great thing for us.

It's a beautiful thing.

It really is.

Steph kind of brushes over her experience because she's dealt with negotiating short sales.

I Did.

You've done some wholesaling. You've bought some individual notes and done this. So she's got experience. Besides just being the VP of operations of we close notes, one of the things that you prided yourself on earlier on was actually calling asset managers.

Yeah, I thought it was fun.

So talk about why, how you made it fun. Because a lot of people like, oh, I don't want to call the bank.

It was fun because my background was in Medical for 16 years, and so I spent an inordinate amount of time as one of my duties, calling insurance companies to argue for patients to get approved for surgeries that they really needed. And I used to work with spine surgeons. And so there's a lot of insurance companies out there. They're like, no, unless they're falling over, we're not going to approve this. Yeah, you are. So I had to argue with them and send in documentation. And really it was more of a lateral jump, so it wasn't that big of a difference. And I was nervous at first because I don't enjoy being put on the spot, and I was afraid I would forget what I needed to say. But after I made like, 50 calls. They're just normal people. They're no different. So after that, it was easy to do and it didn't bother me. And I had fun with it.

You had fun with it so much, you got really good at it. That one mastermind I did, yeah.

God, that was a while ago.

One of our first big masterminds in San Diego, we had what, like 40 people at it? We were at the Country Inn in Suites in Mira Mesa.

Yep, yep, yep.

And we divided everybody into teams, and you had a team of five. It was you and Terry and Sandy and Tarek Garner and Leah Ott was on there, I think maybe Tracy Mays or Wend Rafini. And you girls went out and you made phone calls and you kicked ass. Can we agree to that?

I did, but I had done it before, but I had learned how to get emails when they weren't readily present. So it was just something that I'd figured out when I would call and I would talk to somebody or I would call and get their voicemail or whatnot, and then I would call back. So I learned how to get through the door. And if once I could figure out one email back, then I had all of them. It wasn't hard to do. It really wasn't.

But it was just the asking.

It was the asking and it was the following up. So I would call and I Would email and I would do all these things. And so we got a lot of context that way. But I'm glad you remember that. I forget a lot of these things.

Well, that's because you're busy doing a variety of different things and keeping my ass out of trouble for the half of the time.

Right?

I try full time job. You got some fans online. Jeff Wolf saying, yes, you are a nicer person than me, which I'm not gonna argue with. And then Drake saying, yay, hey, Stephanie Goodman, Scott Carson. Good stuff there. So you've made phone calls, you've done some wholesaling, done some flips. I mean, you always know that. I've been doing these webinars going back to 2011. When we started doing these Facebook lives. Did you think it was going to last?

I was a believer that video was going to be something that became a larger tool in business. And I was intrigued by the fact that, and Scott will say this a lot, that video is probably like, these are probably the last real channel that we have in freedom of speech and to say what we want to say and get across the things we want to talk about without being overly censored or cut off or whatnot. And I think that's really cool because no buyers are a niche. So I thought the Facebook were cool. They were definitely better than what was the old one that was on Twitter, the Periscopes.

Yes, it's still around.

Nothing against Periscope, but it was better than Periscope. And it seemed like it would have a more of a lasting presence because everybody we knew was. Was on Facebook and a lot of our older friends are on Facebook as well. So I thought it would last. The jump from the Facebook lives into the podcast was almost a natural transition, but he'd done the webinars for so long that it really wasn't anything that different.

Yeah, I was actually hesitant. I was actually very hesitant to do a podcast.

Yeah, well, he didn't want to have the extra work. And I do remember telling him, you're going to do what and how much time is that going to take? And you don't do those things on the back end.

No, no, no. Let's. Let's be realistic. She didn't ask that first. She's like, what's it going to cost? You know, what's it going to cost you? How much extra work are you going to do? I was hesitant, but we were both in, you know, we're hesitant to do a podcast because we had a lot of respect for Robbie and Chase doing an NBA podcast, and they were out kicking butt, taking names. We were proud of that. We did some stuff to help promot shows and stuff like that. And proud of where they came. You know, we talked to Robbie last week actually on a couple things, and we were both headed like, ah, we don't want to steal their thunder. And then when we were in Punta Cana, the Dominican Republic, with Jack Crippy for his wedding, when Robbie said that he wasn't going to do the podcast anymore, and I had Tom Hazard and we got to give a big shout out to Tom. Tom Hazard, Tracy Hazard, Alexander Hazard, their whole team over@pottitized.com they do all the production for episodes. Saves me a lot of time and makes me look really good for the show. We would not be where we're at without them.

Have a show with.

Yeah, no, it's a YouTuber, a Facebook Live show. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that.

No, there's not.

But big kudos to those guys. Big thanks. Cause they were like, hey, you should do a show. I'm like, oh, no. And then the fact that they were able to teach us, show us that literally what we're doing anyway on Monday nights for Note Night in America would easily transition to a podcast and that we could do this on a daily basis. And it's really kind of grown because a lot of times when I was looking, leading up to today, I was asking around a lot of the Facebook groups I'm a part of and podcasts, like, how many people out there, how many shows have hit 500 episodes? All right, let alone just say 300 episodes. Because actually it becomes before 500, 300, and it's all down to less than 1%. It's like 1/10 of 1% of podcasters make it to 300 episodes or greater. Okay. And I'm like, wow. So we're in. The 1% of podcasters are just stuck with it. And a lot of people are always asking us, like, man, you crank out a lot of episodes, a lot of contests. Well, it's a lot of the same things that we discuss on a daily basis when I get questions or emails from clients or students or we're covering a topic either from up night in America, or I'm getting, like I said, feedback from our listeners. And I encourage feedback, hugely encourage feedback. Especially if you're listening on our different radio stations across the country. We'll get to the you guys in a second because it helps me come up with content. There are days I walk in the office, I'm going to do a podcast. I'm like, what the heck am I going to talk about? Right? I'll ask her, what should I be talking before I leave the house? What else should I talk about today? She's like, what? But it's exciting is we've had so many guests on here and I want to thank all of our guests, everybody that's been a guest on our show. Thank you so much for taking time on your schedule. And we've had a good mix of obviously real estate investors, students of ours, vendors, and then a good mix in of entrepreneurship and business leaders too, have come in. And we like to try to keep that, spice it up a little bit and keep it different. Because it's not just all about notes, notes, notes, notes, right. It's all about the vendors. It's also about the mindset because we all deal with things that speaking wise or business wise, there are good days, there are bad days. We'll have ups and downs. And we try, best I can try to help you find for those listening out there or watching people that you can turn to that are also experiencing the same things that can help uplift you, coach you through that things. Because I know I might be your note coach, but I may not be a coach to help you with your life. And we both have coaches that help us out with that on a regular basis. Right, Steph?

We do. One thing I would add to that is most people who come into the note business that I've seen, you guys have all had other jobs, other positions, things like that, not all of you have been managers or leaders or CEOs, so it is quite a jump. And some people have said if you suddenly, when you go from being an employee to an employer or running your own business, even aside from learning the ins and outs of the business, you have to learn marketing. And a lot of us have to learn how to get up and even just speak to people in front of people and be assertive or confident. And that is a thing. So some of the other guests that come on the podcast come on to talk about leadership and how they've evolved and things that they've learned and obstacles they've overcome because all of us have it. So leadership and management and mindset, because you have good days and you have really, really crappy days. And some of those can be very demoralizing. So you have to find that place in yourself to come back from a support level to where you can keep Doing what you're doing and do it better and do it well. What is the thing where you're not so afraid to fail? Because everybody does fail, but you learn something from it and then you do it better the next time. So a lot of the other guests that come on, not a lot of them, but at least maybe a third of the guests, those are focused on those other pieces of having a business, a podcast, growing in the node industry.

It totally makes sense. Me here, Alan. Thank you, buddy. Noam Mahir, as one of the guys behind the Distressed Mortgage Expo takes place in California, New Jersey. We've spoken a few times. A buddy of ours making the second liens, also doing some first lien. Thanks, Mehir. He goes, hey, just wanted to jump on and say you're awesome. Thanks, man. You're constantly reinventing yourself and happy you've already knocked out 500 episodes. That's amazing. Thanks, Mehir. You're doing some great stuff out there as well, providing great content and doing some stuff there as well. So keep up the good work. It's good seeing you grow as well. Compared to the guy that was just speaking at the first. Actually, his first speaking spot was actually when we did the New Jersey Noteworthy back years ago, Noteworthy East a few years ago, we gave him his first speaking spot and he's done amazing stuff with that. Thanks, mayor. Appreciate it. One of the things that we want to open it up to is if you guys are watching, feel free to ask questions. Feel free. Things that you're struggling with. I mean, Walker, Laura, Mehir, Sherry, everybody else that's out there, people that are watching this online would love to hear your feedback if you have a favorite episode that you can think of. Because we're going to dive into our top 10 episodes most downloaded here in just seconds out there as well for you. But this has evolved. One of the biggest things I've seen evolve is we've grown. One of the things that I wanted early on when I was doing the podcast is to figure out, hey, are we actually on par? Are we doing good? Are we doing bad? And so the first PodFest Expo that I went to, when I've been in the business for six months, I think we did podcast starting in August of 2017, and Podfest was six months later, March and February was going to figure out, hey, how are we doing? What are we doing? We're at 50,000 downloads at that point. Things are rock and rolling. It was wild. I mean, we'll exceed 200,000 downloads in year two. Yeah. And people are like you're doing.

It's really cool, actually.

Yep. Question here from Walker. He goes, when you first started in your podcast, what would you say was your most difficult part to start? That's a great question, Steph. You want to throw an answer to that or no, you want to take a guess at that?

I think he doesn't ramble, but getting him to stay on a topic and deciding which topic for which day, and da, da, da, da, da. But really kind of, I think the production of it was the hardest part. It was sort of, who's gonna do this and what do you have to do, and where does it go after that, and what's the next step beyond that to get it out where it's up on itunes and on the other platforms.

That was the biggest thing. I didn't know where to go.

No.

So that was Black hole. Yeah, that was black hole. Because I thought I had to do all that individually. And a lot of podcasters are struggling with that. They're really, really struggling with that. Actually, you'll have Tom Hazard on our podcast livestream tomorrow night or Wednesday night with podcast or something that we've been. We started doing the last few months. But I was very fortunate that I had somebody that came in and took over that aspect of me. So I think the biggest thing that most people struggle is what to talk about. Like, I've had conversations with some people that are watching right now and other students, other friends who wanted to do a podcast. And the question overwhelmingly is, well, what am I going to talk about? And I might just talk, you know, if you're in the known industry, you close some deals, and it doesn't be no deals. It can be fixing flips. It could be wholesale deals. Start sharing those resources, start sharing those stories, because everybody loves stories. And that's really what podcast is all about. It's storytelling. You know, that's why it's totally different than what we do with Note Night in America. We try to get on and tell stories and have speakers on here that are going to share some insights, things like that. Yeah, there's a lot of content, but the whole idea is just map out your content. Like, I'm working with Thomas Knee. He's kind of. Thomas is our trainer, and he's looking to start a podcast for what he is doing in personal training. So plotting out those first 10 to 15 episodes. Because you know what? The first episode I did is nowhere near what we do now. Okay. So basically, what I like doing is, look, I tell everybody, hey, write out your first 10, 15, 20 episodes. I mean, when Steph got the podcast bug, you wrote out how many episodes in an evening?

I literally wrote out a list of 150 topics. And the podcast that I have is about animals.

Yeah. So that's the thing. It's just right now there's no wrong answer and there's no precede time length that it could be five minutes, it could be 15 minutes. Like what Tommy Demas does. He does 15 minute episodes. It could be an hour. Like our average episodes is somewhere between around 45 minutes. Because that's what it takes to get the episode out. That's what it takes to share the content. Now, we've had shorter episodes and we've had longer episodes, but we try. We found that that's somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour time slot as far as content, because that's really two, three little bits of stories and sharing a little bit what's going on. It's not hard to do. So walk her back to that. Just if you're thinking about starting, just jot down 20 episodes. You'll figure out how your podcast is going to work by your 10th episode. It's going to tweak it. You're going to change what you like, what you dislike. But the idea is with 20 episodes, if you can get those under your belt, recorded now, you've got a nice amount that you can release all at once to give people the opportunity to binge to it. So that was the biggest thing. Figure out what you're gonna talk about and just start recording. Just start recording episodes. Just start sharing that stuff and go from there. Mehir asks another question here. You wanna read the question?

Mehir says, I know you're a Gary Vee guy. How did you build out the multifacetes? Taking the video, audio and blogs and getting it out to your audience? That's a fun one.

That's a fun one. So I love Gary Vee, but one of the things I did November of 2016, stopped watching Gary Vee. I would come to the office and I would spend the first hour when the AskGaryVee YouTube series was up or Facebook series. Okay. And I realized I was spending an hour time watching Gary Vee not getting anything done. All right. In the morning, it's too vibe. So that's why we started doing all these episodes in the morning. It's be my marketing hour in the morning. So what I did as far as building up the facets is I'm a big fan of Buffer and I actually was just on the phone 20 minutes before with one of the head PR of buffer about having them on the podcast or on an open night in America or having on a virtual summit at some point in the near future. And they're all excited about that. So I've walked in. So one of the big things is putting the systems in place so that if you create one piece of content, whether it's a thumbnail or a video, you can share it across the board. So with Zoom, we use Zoom, we use the video, we upload it to YouTube, we upload to Vimeo. Why do I have both? You don't want to lose your videos if YouTube shuts your account down overnight like I've had happen in the past. So we use both those as a backup. Okay. But the same thing, when you create an image, a thumbnail for the show, that makes it look better than the stroke face that I'm guilty of seeing on Facebook or YouTube is that thumbnail becomes a very valuable thing that you can share to your blogs, you can share to Instagram, you can share it to Twitter, you can share it to Facebook, because it's all about the visual side of things. So just taking some of those things now. A lot of people like to cut up their episodes in a minute chunks or 2 minute chunks or 10 minute chunks. I don't do that just because I don't want to take the time. I just like to take the video or the audio via Zoom and then I share the link straight to. I upload it to the potitage platform that Tom and Tracy Hazard have for us. Tell them what the episode's about, what the label is, brief description, email links to the guests. There is a guest and they run with it all and they edit it. They clean it up, they rid the us, the dead space. If I need to cut something out, they cut it out and then they throw it up on itunes and all the other different podcast platforms. They also take the transcription, which they do a full transcription, which you can use Rev.com for this for getting started. And they log on to my WordPress, my main website, and create a full article about it. And they also create their VAs. Create a couple infographics, if I haven't created one that are different, which I like. They have a different infographic for the episode and the podcast and it's a different link that we or image that we use on YouTube and Vimeo. So it's a little bit different aspect there, but just create that stuff. And I have to give a Big shout out to Shannon in our office. Shannon does a great job of managing the Buffer account and really she's what she's done in the last. She's almost worked with us for almost a year, has done a great job of really taking what some of our previous employees were doing. And she's really taken it and really put it into overdrive. Finding good people that are gonna help promote your podcast. If you have a part time assistant or part time VA can be great and it can really save you a lot of time. So I'd highly encourage that you can jump on upwork.com and find a VA who's got some social media experience to help you with that sharing. What does that mean? It means you're giving the passwords. Shannon's got my password to my LinkedIn account and my YouTube account and my social media account. So she can log in as she needs to or use buffer.com to log in and then edit it and schedule it and go from there. So hopefully that answers your question here. Like kind of how we built out the multifaceted stuff like this, just getting it and sharing it. Share it everywhere. I talked to a lot of podcasters that want to just do the audio side. They don't want to do the video side. And honestly what happens is the video is the backup. Worst case, why do I share it to Facebook? Because that's the backup to the backup. Because there have been times I've shared it to Facebook and I forgot to hit the record button and if I hadn't shared it to Facebook, I would have not had that backup. So some people, oh, I don't want to go live. Well, it helps to go live. Not gonna go live to YouTube and keep it private on YouTube if you don't want to go live to Facebook. But you gotta realize you need to have that backup to the backup just in case. Cause I see so many people like, oh, I recorded, I had a great episode, but then I didn't hit the record button. Oh, that sucks. So I never wanted to do that. I only did that once. I'm never gonna do that again.

Did you not delete one?

You did accidentally, but I was able to go back and download it anyway from Facebook and live stream it. So that's the thing. You want to back at the backup. Because last they totally do. You get crazy fingers and they delete by things there for you. So thanks so much for that. Question me here. It's not as hard as you think. I know. It's like we rattle through A few things on there. But if anybody's interested in our kind of our podcast production where we share it, I've got a video I've done on this and also a written outline that I'm glad to share with anybody. All you just got to do is email me@scottclosenotes.com and I'll gladly send out that link to that video that actually I walk through a PowerPoint because I was actually spoke at Podfest this last year and Chris asked me to speak on it and so I was like it was a 30 minute spot but I got through a lot.

You were really excited about that.

It's always nice to speak and not be the smartest person in the room. I love that. So one of the things I wanted to share with you guys is talk about some of our top 10 episodes and these are top downloads of things that kind of surprised me a little bit. So we've run our top 10 episodes here and you guys can see 380,526 all time downloads if those that are watching this on YouTube video stuff like this. So yeah, 380,000 downloads. We're averaging just over 1,000 downloads. Basically about 1,000 subscribers. Okay, so the 10th most downloaded episode, which one is episode 175. And this is the episode where it's starting over, starting from ground zero. And this is an episode that I talked about. What would happen if I had to start the business all over again? Where would I begin? What would I do? What would I focus on? And that really doesn't surprise me. It's the top 10. I thought it might rank a little bit higher, but it is a great episode of kind of for somebody who's starting off from ground zero, what would I do? If you're brand new to the business and don't have any real estate or marketing experience, it's a great place to start to show you. I go talk about building lists and leveraging LinkedIn and Meetups.com. number nine is our buddies from Steve Olsher. Give Steve a big shout out. Steve's the guy that runs the New Media Summit, asked me to come speak as an icon of influence when we hit our 100,000, which I was really excited about. Steve's become a good friend on some things and especially in the podcasting place and marketing stuff. And so I like bouncing ideas off him and vice versa. But his episode Reinvention Radio with Steve Ulcer. And Steve has a podcast called Reinvention Radio and then beyond eight figures and he's got A couple other ones out there he's done. But he's been around podcasting for almost 10 plus years. Remember correctly, he's got a real estate development background in Chicago too. So that's why we hit it off as well. But great show. Talking about kind of how we all have to kind of reinvent ourselves like Mahir said. Well, I've had to reinvent myself a few times as the market has changed. So that's a really great episode. That's number nine actually as the Darth Allen number eight is not really surprise. Closing on bank assets. That was the episode that I interviewed Adam Adams from AJ Investments, Joe Bayarina and Jimmy Kubiak. Three of our mastermind members, Jamie and Joe were business partners and Joe was able to get a list of assets from a San Antonio bank sent to him performing non performing and Adam helped them, brought in the finance and they were able to take the thing down. So it was a discussion of how Joe used a distressed pro, how they evaluated it, how they raised capital and kind of their exit strategies before. It was really good. So number seven is the third episode. What was a true podcast episode? Creating your entity fortress with Aaron Young. Gotta give a big shout out to our brother from another mother. Aaron Young been a guest on here a regular time. Been one of the first, was one of the first sponsors and absolutely love hanging out with him and him and Michelle. Michelle had a minor procedure done. We wish her well get healthy. But not only are they great friends and people that we can bounce ideas of too. I mean both being entrepreneurs are great people that we look forward to talking to and it's a back and forth, a lot of hey, what are you focused on? Hey, what are you struggling with? How can we help you overcome that thing? That's a big thing. And so it's good seeing Michelle really blossom in the last couple years with her coaching and stuff and she's been a guest, both of them have been guests on the show as well. So it's a great thing. Number six is Due Diligence for Dummies part one. This was the first of a two part series of breaking down step by step due diligence. No surprise, That's a top six episode. Number five is the first episode. Welcome to the Nook Closure show podcast. Episode 150. Yeah, that was slower actually. But as it's grown people have gone back and listened to the first one. Probably our worst episode ever. Probably because I did was very short talking about the show and what we were going to focus on and we got a whole different staff with us now, but that's top five. Number four. One thing that you're going to see more of over the next episodes. The next hundred episodes. A lot of note case studies going from start to finish. What do we buy it at? What do we see it at? What happened with the deal? What's the rear turn on investment? What's kind of the strategy? So I've been spending a lot of time on that the last couple weeks because I know we wanted to get back to doing a lot of that stuff here after we hit the 500th episode. So no case study. Episode 153. 151 business models for your note business. This is where I spend time talking about the different levels and different areas or different niches. Whether it's non performing is one level you want to go to. Performing notes first versus seconds, residential versus commercial. So it's a great episode. And that's number three. I really kind of surprised that that ranks so high. But what it tells you is that a lot of people are going back and listening the first few episodes before they dive into later ones. Number two, which was the number one episode for almost the first full year was episode 195 launching your business. We just talk about what are the simple things that you got to keep in mind when you're becoming a note investor. How you what you have got to roll out, what entities do you need, what are you things you need to consider, how to put your team together. So that was the number two episode. So 195 launching your business now. The number one episode. Well that would be great anyway. But that's the wrong button. I missed. Excited about that. The drum roll please. And it's the. The kiss method. The kiss for those that missed. I tried to give Steph a kiss in the cheek. She didn't want anything. Part of it. She's like, we're on air. No. Anyway, the kiss method means to keep it simple, stupid or silly.

Keep it simple, silly.

Keep it simple, silly. And over 3600 downloads for an individual episode. So almost all of our top 10 average over 2,000 actually over 2,500 for the most part when you figure it across the the board. But that one. Don't know why it became number one download. Just excited that it did. Did really well for one day. It was one of those weird episodes where we had over three, actually 6,000 downloads in a day.

We thought it was a fluke. Yeah, we thought something was wrong.

But it was Actually, it's not any fake downloads.

No, it wasn't.

It's actually. And I got it up here, right here. It's on this day. So it was basically March 6th. We had our biggest download data, 6200 downloads. Half. It was that one episode, for the most part, so I still got traction. But somebody really liked the kiss method.

Somebody really did.

And it wasn't Valentine's Day.

No. And we were joking. Was it a full moon? Did something happen? It's true.

Yeah. So those are the top 10 episodes we've had. Different people that have toyed in the top 10 in the first year. Some things like that people have shared their episode and done a great job. Like I said, big kudos to everybody that shared the episode who's been a guest on and done a great job and sharing our episode. So I know that a lot of our guests. What are you laughing at?

Tis you trying to get the kiss on?

The kiss method foiled? No, no, no. Exactly. No. One more for.

I had a call.

I got the Heisman pose there. Good stuff there. But anyway. Oh, my gosh, yes. That's why I went for the cheek and not your lips. But anyway, I'm just seeing if there's any other comments online on here. People are watching. Awesome. Thank you so much for those that are watching out there. Corey Walker, Leah, Jeff, Crystal, Justin, Laura Bullock, and Joseph Fabbitz. Thank you guys all out there. We see you guys, most of you, on a regular basis watching, so we'll keep cranking out episodes as long as you keep watching and keep sharing and stuff like that. So one of the biggest lessons that I have learned is how powerful this platform is. And it's kind of been surprising, especially beginning of this year when I told Steph that we were going to change some things up because we were starting to see a lot of people come in from the podcast. Right. And you would talk with people, specifically a lot of people, those that don't know if you're interested in being in a Fast Tracker mastermind. Steph handles the onboarding process for that. Right, Steph?

Yep.

You love it. You have a lot of great conversations with them. Right.

I'm actually able to really get in and get to know a lot of people when they come in. And so it's not just answering questions about what's coming up for what's going to happen, but you get to know a lot about their family and their pets and their kids and what they're doing and really why they want to get in. Do Notes and what kind of jobs they're leaving. So I love that. It's a lot of fun and really get to see how notes and how real estate will make a difference for them.

Yeah. You find out the why you see.

Further down the line than they do. Sometimes they. They know where they want to go, but they see a wall in front. You're like, no, that's seen that you can get past it, and this is how you do it. So that's really fun.

Yeah. You find out what the why is.

What their focus is, what they're afraid of, what they're worried about, what they're good at.

And I like that fact because Steph will come. People will tell Steph stuff that they won't tell me sometimes, you know, they may just think I'm an asshole. I'm gonna yell at them. But that's not the case. The idea is just to. Basically, it's nice to hear two people. A lot of people approach it from the business, and they hear her. I mean, this is not just people coming. It's everywhere you go, people end up talking to you. Right.

I've had that happen a lot, and most of the time it's fine. And sometimes it's been very strange because I'll meet people and I might know them for five minutes, and they're telling me things about their life that at that point, I'm like, what can I do to help? This is not good. So it's a good trait, and I'm grateful for it, and I'm grateful for the people that do that. Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense. You get a lot of people all over the. And you connect a lot. People on animals and your passion for your kitties and dogs and dogs and stuff like that. That's why you've got the fur babies podcast that you're rocking out there. But that's the thing. It's just. You want. Sometimes people just need to listen. They just need an ear that they can talk and vent and go from there. Right. So got a couple questions, a couple comments here. Jeff Wolf says you two have lots of chemistry. You should host Good Day Austin together. That's funny. Yeah.

What's Good Day Austin?

You don't know Good Day Austin, man. It's like the morning show here for the networks. They like Good Day, San Diego. Crystal Signs, who was just the recent winner of our sneak peek from the Note camp commercial. She asked a question. When you feel like you're running out of content to talk about in your podcast, where do you get your inspiration from note deals? Case studies. One of the biggest things, like I.

Said earlier, if somebody's having a problem.

Yeah, I like getting. When I get emails and questions from students, you'll post on different Facebook groups, topics, you know, jump on bigger pockets and see what people are kind of asking there. But mostly comes from students. Now, when I see students struggling with something, sometimes some of the topics I see come when I see students struggling with things that they just need to get out of their own way. Yeah, okay. It's a normal thing, but it's what it comes down to. We go to a lot of movies. We do crazy thing. When you walk in the movie theater, they know you almost on a first name basis.

We're kind of boring that way.

They're like, what are you watching tonight? We're catching John Wick 3 for the fourth time. Whatever. But anyway, all the Marvel movies. Yeah. So it's taking things that we enjoy honestly, being a little corny sometimes. What are we focused on this week and how can that affect other things? You know, like the whole Avengers Endgame. When I did A Night in America about that, we talked about what was the end game, what's our big focus. And that came straight from me sitting through Endgame. Paperstack.com When I did note Night in America last night with those guys, just because I'm friends with him, I talked to him and actually I talked to him when I was in Orlando a few months ago. I plan to do it and just had not gotten around to it with our travel. So Crystal, basically it's just figuring out all the different things. There's so many different facets of the no business and there's so many great people like yourself and others it's easy to talk to. So that's one thing is I always love. You know, we've had guests on here before that were students of ours and those that weren't students who are still going out and doing amazing things. So that's one thing that we've always liked is, okay, let's do something big thing and. Or someone we hadn't talked to in forever, like Desi Arnaz. Desi did a great job on his episode a few weeks ago. Highly encourage you to listen to it. How he's leveraging video at his age to help raise capital and get no deals done in San Diego. And then eck of the woods. So that's it.

He has great hats.

He wears the same like white fedora the entire time. Perfectly nice brown round head.

That doesn't have a hat appreciation.

Okay.

But that's one thing I know about Desi. He always has a sound.

Yeah. All right. Good stuff. Good stuff. Steph.

You know, one thing, though, when you talked about the movies, the other part of that is, as far as content goes, like, we don't talk about religion, we don't talk about politics, because everybody else, it's just not on the podcast. But pop culture and movies and music and things like that, that are events that are happening, they influence how we show up for business, whether we know it or not or whether we admit it or whether we like it sometimes. So sometimes seeing those things, like, everybody and their brother almost either sat down and watched the end of Game of Thrones or Endgame in the Marvel Universe, or they went out, you know, three weeks ago and sat in a theater packed with a bunch of other adults who were all kids in the 90s and watched the Lion King. And so we have.

I have not done one for Lion King. Maybe I should do one where I'm holding up, hold up a note file.

Yeah, I can't play it. Well, we can. We can sing along to ourselves. But my point in that is that most people will have a connection on that. And so if you see a movie and it really gets you amped up and you're like, you know what? I didn't think I could persevere through this, but actually, yeah, I can. I'm gonna do the pop culture side of it and different things that he brings in. Marketing wise. That's part of it. It is a little piece, but it's a fun piece.

That's the thing.

It's kinda cool.

Yeah. Things are going on in the movies, in the news.

Yeah.

You know, if I do politics, I make fun of both parties. Like I've done a couple years ago, stuff got mad. Oh, my God, you can't do that. With the Hillary. I'm like, hey, I got one for Trump too.

She's like, okay, he made fun of everybody.

You know, that's the whole goal with that aspect of it. The thing too has been nice is going to events, going like the Distressed Mortgage Expo or going to the Noteworthy Investor Summit or going to the Note Expo that Eddie puts on or other things, the Quest Expo, things. Going to those events can often be great ways for you to find topics because there's vendors there, there's other people you meet talking about their businesses. So that's a great facet, too, to help you build content and talk about, like, one of the things we've done before is when we were at the. We had our Note Mastermind, I just believe recorded like seven episodes that day with mastermind students. You know, 20 to 40 minutes with each one. You know, I want to get it out because everybody's got their own story to tell. Everybody comes from a different background. Seth's with 16 years in back and Spine, me in the banking, finance industry, people in sales and things like that. So everybody's got a different facet. And sometimes it's all about hearing somebody else's opinion and view. Maybe they view something a little bit different than you, and it takes on a whole different realm of how to be able to market and reach out to somebody with other content. So thanks for asking that, Crystal. Appreciate it. Hopefully it was. Answered your short question with a long answer.

Hopefully it was helpful.

Hopefully it was helpful.

Hopefully.

I guarantee it was helpful.

What are you talking about? Just how you connect.

So one of the things, too, you know, we're looking. We've tweaked up some of the things we do on our Mastermind event. Because of the podcast. We've gone from three Mastermind events in a year to two. When's the next one slated for Steph?

November.

When in November?

The 15th through the 17th.

So should we call it notevember? No. Is that too corny?

We're still working on it.

Okay.

We're trying to think of a fun thing.

November 15th, 16th and 17th. And what's the big thing with that one?

Orlando.

So it's in Orlando, Florida. Where at?

In Disney.

We're at. In Disney.

It will be at the Coronado Springs and Resort on Walt Disney World property at their convention center.

Convention center at the Coronado. We've done one there before. A couple years back we did.

And a lot of you reached out and have continued to reach out over the last few years.

Speak up in the mic. They can't hear whispering.

A lot of them have come out and said, we want to go back to Florida. We'd like to go back to Disney. And can we do that again? That was so much fun, and we got a lot of work done, but it was also a lot of fun, too. And it's not blazing hot and it's not insanely crowded.

So how many people were gonna have room for at that one? 50, 100 people.

We grow it under a hundred. Under a hundred.

Last time we did only at 85 people there and 125 total with their.

Families because people brought their families, and that was actually something that we encouraged them to do because while we were working in the daytime, you know, people would bring down their wives or kids, whatever, because it's over the weekend. And so they were able to go out and enjoy the parks or go do something in Orlando or even just hang out at the resort. Some of them did that and we.

Broke a little bit early too, so.

They could go out. We'll stop around 4 or 5 o' clock and then we'll be able to have dinner. We divvied up into different groups and they're still large. It was fantastic. But we would go have dinner with each other and then we'd get to see a show or something at Disney. And at the time when we did the last one, it was three weeks before the Christmas holiday. So the parks were all decked out with holiday decorations and it was really fun. So this time they'll actually. Holiday decorations will be up again, but it'll be coming in on the tail end. They have their food and wine festival every year. And for those of you who follow Disney news on both coasts, Star wars is opening August 29th. So we'll miss the mad bum rush of that from the beginning. But it's gonna be there.

I foresee.

I had some people. I'm going to Star wars land.

I foresee a notewars T shirt being released that weekend.

I think that would be fun.

The last Skywalker, basically. Because that's the last Skywalker. Whatever.

Yeah. How many people came up, like random strangers would come up to me when I would wear that shirt because when I'm not here, I'll wear T shirts all the time. And so I'd go to the grocery store. Hey, I'm sorry. Pardon me. I'm not a creeper. What's that? No horse thing? Oh, I am wearing an oat or shirt. Okay. We get into a discussion about it, but I think that's happened with some of the other ones.

But J.R. hubbard, J.R. raised a couple hundred thousand dollars on the beach in.

Fort Myers sleeping a cocktail.

Garrison Gilbert raised a couple hundred thousand dollars in an airplane flight home. Sitting in first class and people asking about the shirt. He talked about that on Camp Commercial out there. One of the things that we're going to see happening too is you're going to start seeing some more guests from some of these different events that we've been to. Join us on the Note Closure Show. Obviously a lot of case studies, especially going to dive back in a lot of the nuts and bolts. There was some requests from People Mastermind members and really wanting us to dive back into. So we're glad to do that. We encourage you, if you have a topic, you have something that you'd like for us to focus on going forward on an episode, hey, let us know. We'll gladly reach out. You know, there's some people that requested information on accounting stuff. That's why I brought on Thomas Castelli. People ask for bookkeeping. We have reached out to Debbie Mullins a couple times. So the thing I want you guys to realize is that, hey, the no Closer show here is great for us, but honestly, we started it for our listeners. We started listening for our note family. Not only the people that are existing students, but future students. For those of you that are listening on the different AMFM radio stations across the country, hey, you are a new surprise that's happened in the last four months since March 1st of us adding that network to our network of stuff. And we're excited at the response and the downloads of the radio stations that we're part of have noticed an increase on our show episodes becoming one of the most popular shows on their network, which is really exciting and we're really lovely getting the feedback from you guys that are listening out there. As always, if you're looking for more information, you're easy to opt in to get on our network. So you're alerted of when new podcasts or new trainings happen. All you got to do is text the word notes. N o T E S. N o T e S. That's capital lowercase, doesn't matter to the phone number. 7, 2, triple 0 or 72,000. 72,000 is the phone number. One word notes. Send it in. You'll be in our system. You'll get access to over 80 hours of training videos and some other good stuff out there for you to be able to learn the note business. PowerPoint, kind of the basics of note investing. But the 80 hours of training is really where it's at for most people. A lot of our Note Night in America webinars and coaching calls are available there. But that's free. There's no cost. And then you'll be alerted. Other things are popping up along the way. So any other questions from our listeners out there, our extended family and note nation? Thank you guys so much. Crystal signs says yes. May the notes be with you.

May the notes be with you.

May the notes be that with you. That might have to be on the back of the shirt. May the notes be with you. I love it. Crystal signs. Hang on. I love that one. Yay. Yeah, baby. Yeah, baby. I love that. So anyway, anyone else watching here, they want to ask a question on here. Thank you guys for being patient, being across the board, all of you, so proud of people that are taking things and also doing. Hey, if you guys are thinking about a podcast, I'd love to visit with you. I think there's plenty of room out there. It's still such a very niche aspect of things. Big kudos to Chris Sevigna and Gail Greenberg with their good deeds Note Investing podcast. I know Paul Cooper's looking at starting one. I know Garrison Gilbert's looking at starting one. I know that Laura Bullock is looking at starting one there too, for you guys for doing some good stuff. Just stick with it, you know, 500 episodes. There's been times I've gone through pod fade emotionally. What they call now.

What is pod fade?

Pod fade is where what happens. Like, majority of people that start a podcast don't ever get to 12 episodes.

Why?

Because podfade, they just stop doing it. But what, because they can't keep up, come up with ideas to talk about?

That's the thing.

Or maybe now they have ideas, they just don't do it.

Or they get tired.

They get tired. Or they let it intimidate them when they realize they have good, great stuff out there. So, Steph, you've experienced that before, though?

Yeah. My biggest obstacle was I loathed video with a blazing passion of a sun.

You're great at it, though.

It's better. But it's far too easy for me. I've got so much going on on this side that, like, oh, I'll do it next week or I'll do it tomorrow. And then, like, we have podcast movement coming up next weekend or next week. And I'm like, how has it already been? Five months?

Yeah, goodness gracious for one event, another one.

So, yeah, podcasters are a nice group of people. And so far it's been interesting because there's the node closure show and then there's the stuff that I wanted to work on. Two totally different things. It encompassed the same people because y' all are doing the same thing. But walking into Note events, most note investors are nice people. And likewise for most podcasters, most people in the podcast community are like, hey, I might just want to do video or I want to do audio by itself.

Okay, I have to give a big shout out to everybody that's had me on as a guest on their podcast as well, too. For our members of our private podcast group, for people that have either had on the podcast or I've been on their podcast. Thank you to the almost a hundred people that had me on their podcast. I set a goal for myself beginning this year to hit 100 interviews and we're on our way to do that, but I think 75. I still got quite a few months left. So you're doing pretty good. Doing pretty well.

Pretty good.

But it's been a big thing is traffic is not only being on our show but also being having others that have been on their shows or vice versa. That's a pod swap basically episode swap thing. But anyway, great group of people like, just like our listeners out there in notenation. And before we wrap this up, like I said, I want to say one final thank you to everybody that's listened out there, everybody who's watched an episode, everybody who shared an episode. Thank you so much for being and showing up consistently. Thank you for being our extended family. And a final big thank you to Stephanie. Thank you so much for your support and keeping me in line as best you can when that's a full time job. But I think we all know Steph does, if you're around us, you know that Steph does a lot of stuff, lot of stuff that necessarily we don't always like to do or see or see.

That's fine.

She does a great job. We're gonna try to get her on the podcast more often because people would much rather look at her versus look at me. You know what I mean? Who would not rather look at that pretty girl versus looking at this guy. So some other questions, comments here from people we wrap up. Thank you. Casey Lang. Thanks for listening brother. Keep up the good work there up in Greeley, Colorado out there. So. All right guys, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode. Close the show. Once again, thank you, thank you to everybody that's been on, shared, watched, listened or heard one of our episodes out there. To the millions of listeners, thank you. Keep sharing, keep listening and we'll keep delivering great content as best we can for you. And as always, if you have a question, have an issue, feel free to drop us an email scottclosenotes.com or you can text us in as well or go to the website and just leave a message on the website here. We're glad to help you there at anything we do on weclosenotes.com once again, on behalf of Stephanie Goodman, my significant half here, who's just a rock star in her own mind. She does not know it, but she is amazing. One of the great things about it is when you have people support you in what you're endeavoring, it makes life a whole lot easier. Except been nothing but supportive.

So. So are you.

I try to. Try to be, Definitely. All right, guys. God makes it happen, everybody, and we'll see you all at the top.

Thank you.