EP 529 – Building Your Network With BNI

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This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host, CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the no Closure show. As always, Scott Carson, your host, excited to be here today with you guys. And I think I've got some really great content that I think is going to save you all a lot of toil, stress, things like that out there with some things that we've just developed here recently. Well, I won't say we developed. We just basically came to an understanding on some things and it actually came from me being invited out to a networking event. Got a friend here locally in town who's a mortgage broker and he asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with him to his networking event. And I'm like, yeah, sure, be glad to go with. So I go with him. He brings me as a guest to his BNI networking event, which is Business Networkers International, talking about the real estate and talking about the podcasting stuff that we do. And so I go and kind of surprised for a couple of reasons. I get there, great group, it's over lunch, roughly 40 people, 45 people there, and everybody's going around introducing themselves and as a guest I get up and introduce, kind of talk about what I do. And what was amazing is my friend hand me this placement and I flipped the placement over and it had everybody's contact information, their name, company, their focus or their niche inside the club, their email address and their phone number. And I'm kind of sitting there cracking up. And it's been years since I've been to a BNI event or I used to go to wine over a decade ago here in Austin. But with obviously the travel doing things more so outside of Texas, it didn't really make sense for me to join a local group that I was going to miss more than six times in six months because they allow you to basically miss once every once a month and then or have guests represent you. Once within a six month period, it's three misses and three people sit in your place, but they want you to go too. So I found out. But anyway, and I'm like, wait a second, so what's the cost like? Basically it's about $700 to join, about $800 199 and 599 for the first year. And then, of course, you're paying for lunches or I think some of the BNI groups. I was talking to the person that runs it, which things. It's somewhere between 15 and 25 bucks for lunch, basically, or breakfast, if you're going. I think they only meet Tuesday through Fridays. But anyway, one of the great things is inside this group, they had the rehab guy, the professional contractor, they had the H Vac, they had the inspector, obviously, Realtor, which is pretty easy to come by for a lot of us. But a lot of the professionals that we're using not only in traditional real estate, but we're also using a note investing, hey, I need a Realtor. Pull some comps or I need stuff. And they're meeting every week, either in the mornings or the afternoons, weekly. So they're meeting four times a week and they're sharing preferences. And I had the big light go off in my head because the lady asked me so, well, how did you. You know, you were invited? Who invited you? And I said, my buddy boy. And then I go, oh, great. We didn't know if you saw the website. I was like, wait a second, what do you mean, the website? She goes, oh, yeah. If you wanted to go to other. You can go to the website and find where all the chapters are and see all the members that they have. And I was like, ding, ding, ding. All right. I was like. And then one of the guys said they got 5,000 chapters. I was like, that makes so much sense in joining a group like this. If I was doing more stuff here locally, I would be joining a group here to find people to help me with my local real estate stuff. My handyman, my contractors, plumbing, H Vac, all those vendors in roughly one spot. Now, why is that different than just talking to some local person out there? Some people like, well, I don't want to hire a contractor who is, you know, has time to lunch one day a week. I wanted to be working like that. That makes sense. But it also. There's a little bit of the word I'm looking for here. I guess you say it's professionalism because they are paying for referrals. They're part of a group and they're referring business back and forth. They're inviting people. And so I think that's probably a better group than just reaching to any Tom, Dick or Harry out there or Susan, let's be politically correct with both sexes there, either guy or gals, for any Vendors that you're using in your note or real estate investing business. You know, if you need something that's I would probably say might be a better spot. Now we've always talked about using meetup groups is a great place or going to your local real estate investing club. I still think that's a very valuable aspect of things. But one thing I would do is if you're in an area or you're buying in an area if you had a note in an area because I've already reached out and done this the last two days is in areas where I needed help with. I just went on BNI and looked for a BNI networking club in that market and then I reached out to the president or the person in charge of the event or I looked to see because all the B and I groups will give you the full contact or the member list those paid members in a specific area and allow you to reach out with a phone number or email address directly that member to reach out for new business. And these are people looking for business looking to referral stuff. So they know like I'll give an example. In the one I went the guy local realtor referred rehab crew out. They referred out the H Vac, they referred out to the general contractor or the person you go do specially small tile work versus the big contract in size one get at and people were working together to share business. I was like oh that makes so much more sense than trying to hunt and peck and try to find individual people. Now if you were on note night in America, if you listen to the newer episodes that we've released. A few weeks ago we had Dicky Ball Baldwin on from Baldwin Advisory Group about how to find realtors and some other things in there. And I still believe that's a very valuable asset providing Realtors, especially investor friendly Realtors because not all realtors are created equal. That's the one thing I would maybe say most of your B and I realtors are probably your normal transactions, single family homes, buying, selling and going that route. So they may have referral to somebody. But still though might be an opportunity for you to find somebody locally at least have a contact and or have somebody they could refer it out to. So that's allowing them to refer business out and really be a win win across the board for everybody involved. So that's one thing I think is a valuable tool to use in your markets. Like I'll give you an example I jumped on and being here in Austin, Texas I wanted to see how many groups were available when I looked at that stuff. And so I jumped on, took a look at. Give me a second here. I have the thing pulled up. There's over 28 groups in Austin alone. Austin's obviously a pretty big market. I don't think there'd be 28 groups in every city. There is actually exactly 28 groups and anywhere from 12 members to over 60. Because they only allow one person of one niche inside each group. If you don't know how B and I works. So that's the thing. They meet weekly. They're tracking referrals, tracking business closed across the place. They encourage you to visit once or twice. You're usually going to pay a fee at the door for breakfast or lunch for the meeting space. Actually found out weird that there's a BNI group that meets in my office complex here. Didn't know about it, but they've been meeting for six months here, which is kind of a surprise. So lo and behold, might be joined that group. But anyway, I have yet to visit that. But anyway, what I want to get at is if you're in a bigger city or you're invested in a bigger city that might make something that you might want a VA to do, and you might want to have an assistant jump online and pull that information for you in those markets, because now you've got people you reach out to. Like I'll give you an example. Roughly here in the Austin, Texas market, there's roughly just about 800 people that are part of the BNI clubs, 28, 29 clubs here, and a substantial good list of people to network with. It's a substantial list of people here locally to build a network or wherever your network is going to be at. If you're investing in an area that you're not at, might be an easy way for you to reach out to and go from there. So I just thought it was a valuable tool. I thought it was a valuable lead, a valuable asset for you guys that are listening out there in notenation. You can attend you. Doesn't mean you have to sign up for things. But I probably won't. I won't be joining any because the fact is I travel too much with what we got going on and especially with the different things we want on buying and marketing. Things like that probably will not make sense. Although you got to think about, you know, hey, maybe I'll find a group, maybe I'll join a group. Maybe I'll go to some of these other bigger groups and see how they are. It might make. Might make it worth it for referral business in some sort of fashion. Investors. There was bankers there, there was mortgage officers there, loan originators, title people were also there. You name it, they were there. So that's what I was like, man. It's been, like I said, a long time since I've been to a BNI club and I have not been to a B and I group since I started doing the podcast or the videos even before that. So it's well over three, four years, but thought it was a valuable tool for you all for what some of us are paying for different things out there. It might actually be a more effective marketing piece. If you're gonna drop 7, 800 bucks or a thousand bucks, it's all you need is now you've got a Rolodex, business cards or list of those that do what you do or do what you need to be done. And who knows whether they can refer other things for you out there as well. Of course, there's other people in the groups. There was a Mary Kay lady there, There was an essential oils person. There was a wine, wine boy, as he called himself tasting. There was an executive business coach there. There's a variety of different people there as well that you may not be referring to business back and forth, but you never know when you might need somebody go from there. So I thought it valuable, I thought it worth enough to bring it up on this episode of the Note Closure Show. Now what would I do? Well, the first thing I would do is I would go to bni.com and they'll type in an area. If I type in Austin, Texas, and it pulls up a full list clubs that are available out there for you. Okay, Totally full list of clubs. And then it gives you. When you type in, you hit on a specific club. You can click on that club saying. And then it pulls up the website for all the contacts that are there. And so a pretty relatively easy thing to do is to look at some. So let's do something. Let's just say I am buying something. Let's say, let's say Chicago, Chicago, Illinois. Even though I don't like Chirac, but let's say I'm gonna find this chapter. So if you're not watching this video, I would go back in, watch the video, listen to this because this is going to be on YouTube for us. And so I've shared my screen. I'm on bni.com, pretty simple, says find a chapter. So I'll click on finding a chapter here, give it A second interlocation or postal close. So I'm just going to type in Chicago hit search. All right, so it pulls up. What's it doing here? Okay, I was Chicago, not Austin. There we go. So based on this 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. So 1, 2, 6, 25 groups. Okay, 25 groups of B and I network in there. So if I click on one chapter detail here, BNI second city they say and it's got 15 members. If I hit the visit the chapter hope I can see the leaders. Actually I can see all the members here. So I can see the real estate. There's a real estate attorney here in Chicago. Damage restoration. There's a sales coach, mortgage broker, chiropractor, event planner, handyman, property casualty insurance, a banker, web design attorney for litigation, accounting, personal injury litigation and then residential real estate as a member of this group right there. And the beautiful thing, if I click on one of these, let's just say the real estate attorney, it takes me over as it gives me here. Does not give me. I guess I have to join the website to take a look at. Let me go back here and see if it pulls this up. Find a chapter. Lisa gave me a name, doesn't give me an email contact at least gives me a name that I can type in. Gives me their name and contract so that it's a good thing. You can google and find them and go from there. So pretty relatively easy website to work through. It does give you the leaders so that might be something to work at. If I click on the chapter website. Oh, here we go. Easy. It does actually. Here's their name, phone number. It does give me. Oh nice, look at that. Fifteen members. If I click on send an email it allows me to send an email message through the actual portal. Just kind of a cool thing. It won't let you scrub information but it allows us any through the website which is pretty freaking cool. So there you go, everybody. That's another resource for you guys to use to leverage besides meetup groups, besides local real estate investment clubs. I think this actually might be a better quality tool for finding professionals because if they're paying marketing, they're paying. They understand the value of networking. They turn to the value of repeat business. They're also going to want to make sure especially on the contractor side or we know that people can be sometimes shady, try to cut cores and stuff. They're probably going to be a little bit more expensive but they're also probably going to be a higher value for what they do because they are constantly doing business. And hey, cheap does not always mean equal the best. I think as we all know out there, if you ever contracted with somebody for different things. So I would check this out pretty much being I grew up in pretty much every city for the most part that I saw where I've looked at even some smaller areas. But I think this would be a very valuable tool for you to use or add to your due diligence to your repertoire for assets that you take back. Actually, you know what? I've got a deal that I just took back. Just took back literally today. I just got. Literally just got back. Wow, that's a pretty good idea. Let me try that. Find a chapter Kiwani, Illinois. So let me do that. Let me see if there's one in that area. Now Kiwani is a smaller area in Illinois. Okay so boom. It's not one directly in Kiwaunee but the nearest one is we look at what's this one as I'm looking through this. Peoria. Peoria. Moline. Moline would be the early, the closest one. So there we go. That's perfect. Oh, visit chapter. No, I don't want to visit the chapter. I want to look for new website. Oh, there's November's. No, no members. Not November for that one. But that's okay. We can go back here and look at the other ones that were in that neck of the woods. Okay, so that's a great thing to do. Ilo Kewaunee, Illinois. And that's near that. Let's look at the red dot chapter details. 25. All right, that will work. 25 members. That'll work. Let's see if there's a real estate. Residential real estate. Donna Arnold. That is awesome. I'm going to click on here. Give my email address. Subject Kawani looking for a realtor to help me with a REO that my company taken back in Kewaunee, Illinois. Three bedroom, one bath, 1300 square foot online values in the mid-30s. I don't know if you know, investor someone who might be interested in the mid teens rent rate is in the 700800 range. So that's the thing. I'm gonna put that there. Give my phone number. Boom boom shakalaka boom. Done. That's all submitted. I'm not a robot and send a message and I just found a realtor there. Hopefully you can find somebody for me, refer it all out and that's easier. In the past we've talked about using Active Rain is a great place that's not as easy to use as this as I found out to be. So I'm really kind of liking this aspect of things. So there you go everybody. Great way for you to use this tool website to help you out and maybe, just maybe it can help save you some time money or help you make some time and money back by being able to use stuff in one stop shop like that for the most part. So go out, check it out, make sure to use it and we'll see you all at the top everybody. Enjoy. Bye. It.