EP 532 – Are You Cut Out To Be A Note Investor?

Foreign this is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now here's your host, CEO of We Close Notes, Scott Carson. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the no Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here today. On today's episode, I thought I'd ask the question because I got this from a realtor that I was talking to somebody I've been networking with recently. I kind of had to chuckle a little bit because she asked me particularly who's the right type of person to be a note investor or a real estate investor. That because she's an investor friendly realtor, she be a future guest on the podcast. I really like working with new investors, new real estate investors. And I went, well, there's a couple caveats there when it comes to people that are real estate investors or note investors. Now, as a note investor, really kind of the next evolution or in some cases mutation, I guess you could say, of people evolving into who they are as real estate investors. And I'm a big believer that not everybody is cut out to be a note investor. Now let's start off with some of the caveats here. I've worked with a lot of real estate people, coached a lot of people from wholesaling to door knocking, to yell letters to fix and flipping hard money lending into the known aspect of things. And I think there's a gradual, as I say, maturity growth of real estate investors as we get educated, as we move up, I guess you could say the chain or the food chain definitely into different aspects of real estate investing because a lot of times we all have very similar starts. So let's go that route before I start talking about who's a good fit, who's not a good fit, because some of the characteristics that are of good note investors. First one is most people, when they start off, they get excited. They've read Rich Dad, Poor dad, they watch Flip this House, they watch A&E TV, you know, something like that. That's a very common thing. Why do I know that? Because that was my way. And as I've talked to people and I bring that up at different places where I speak at, that's always a common denominator in a group. Now there's also the second part of people who have come from a real estate investing background and by that I mean they come from a family who's done that from the get go. Those are two different animals. One that comes from a real estate investing background, but their parents did it or their relative or they worked in that aspect of things is different than somebody who's coming from an outside niche, outside job, outside career into real estate. How is it different? One big thing, and this is a big big thing, is education. And those coming from a real estate background where they've been educated by family or friends or people that share some things, that's a beautiful thing. They're probably very well educated in their niche of things, but they may not be fully educated on the all the aspects. So if they've got from common aspect they understand the basics of comparables and rehabs or repairs or after repair value or hard money. That's a big great thing for somebody who's coming into a real estate investing side versus because they've got some background. Now what's different about those that are coming in from a different career that have no experience, as I said, as a education, because they don't know what a lot of stuff that means. They don't know after pair value, they don't know fix and flips. And that's why the education aspect, whether it's an intro workshop or going to, I don't know, the local investment club and learning that stuff on a regular basis, read some books is a great way to get started with stuff. But you know, you learn a lot of stuff by watching a lot of videos in YouTube online. So basically people coming in, I guess you could say in the evolution of men, people started off kind of like the chimpanzee. They're learning or they've got a posable thumb can wrap around the hammer. They get like the idea of doing, they go out and drive for dollars. They like the tangible aspect of things that they can touch and feel because that means that they're actually seeing some results. By seeing results, I mean literally seeing driving by looking at another property, mailing out letters or using foreclosure list to start off with. That's always a big thing of tangible accident because they feel like they're doing something by walking to the post office and depositing those postcards or they're driving around looking at things. That's the big thing. Now the first niche of investing that a lot of people dive into oftentimes is they get into the aspect wholesaling or being a bird dog. Let's take it for being A bird dog. Okay, Bird dogs are people that will go around, drive, they'll see distressed assets, they may find leads and they'll forward them to somebody who will determine if they're a good lead. They will determine if it makes sense. So bird dog is going to make 500,000 bucks, maybe more per lead. That's closed. For actual good lead. You only get 10 properties, only one may end up closing. That's only one lead, truly, that closes. That's all they get paid on bird dogs. A very quick transition should be into converting from a bird dog to a wholesaler. Now a wholesaler is somebody who's going around getting leads. As I say, it's the spaghetti kind of investor. They throw spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. They get these lists, they get these leads, they try to get under contract, they try to get the numbers behind it and they try to blast it out to their database to get somebody to buy. Like I've got three emails this morning from wholesalers that I've unsubscribed from who keep sending the same type of stuff. Oh, here's a deal. You can pay about 60%. They may not always get the numbers. That's the most frustrating thing is there's two evolutions of a wholesaler. Brand new wholesaler just tries to throw everything against the wall. And the more mature wholesaler, who understands the real numbers, the real repairs, real exit strategy, really numbers that need to be. If it's a skinny deal or a good deal, there's the two things. A good wholesaler is hard to find if you're a new investor. For the most part, bad wholesalers are really easy to find because they will just throw crap against the wall and try to get you overpay or squeeze much profit out of it. Or they'll often put in their required profit amounts which will kill the deal because there may not be that room for a $5,000 wholesale fee. It may be only room for a thousand dollar wholesale fee. If the end investors buying the asset, they've got to do a lot of work and rehab costs and things like that, foreclosure costs, if we're using wholesaling notes aspect of things, longer timeframe for foreclosure, it needs more work or you know, those kind of things. So bird dog to wholesaler usually happens with wholesalers. Then you get to the light rehabs, the people that don't have a lot of investment. That's why a lot of people get scared and want to be a wholesaler because then you don't have to go out and raise capital. You can just hold something in quick bucks. So then the next evolution is somebody usually takes over subject to deals, owner finance deals which are still viable out there. Especially when we have a downturn, you'll see a lot more subject to deals. Owner financing is still viable. In every city there are still people trying to sell on their terms, which is totally fine. But light rehabbers is often the next thing up there. Wholesalers, people take over subject to or then you get into the light rehab. We're talking like paint and carpet, very minimal new appliances and landscaping. That's what they want to do. They don't want anything heavy. Light fixing flippers. Then you get into the heavy thing that people that love to take out the burnouts, they like to strip it down to the studs. Do heavy rehab, add a room, add a floor. Okay. Do some major add square footage. You've had a lot of happen here in Austin, Texas the last decade. People taking shacks on the east side of Austin and then converting them to a 900 square foot house, to a 2,000 square foot house and two stories versus one story. So that's the kind of next evolution stuff. But what happens a lot of times along the way is people start making money. They get tired of doing the work, so they move into the money side of the business. Now what I mean by the money side, well, a become a private lender and lending money out, a hard money lender or the true evolution is they get into the paper side and become the banker and they like the paper side. Because if a hard money lenders letting money out, private money lenders lending money out, they're literally in the paper game. They're lending money out, they're lending paper out, they're working the paper side. That's why a lot of people want you to be the banker. So the banks are always the biggest. They're the one making the most amount of money, making points. They're making spreads. If they have to, they have ability to take the property back via foreclosure or dean loans. There's a whole lot of different extras. That's why it's awesome to be the banker, as we like to say, be the man in charge of paper and the deal and going from there. So one of the things that I always love to see too, which is kind of night, okay is people transmission. Oftentimes people will have their fingers in a couple different buckets. They do a little bit of wholesaling, they do a little of landlording landlording would be really between those that do light rehabs to put a renter in versus the heavier rehabs. A lot of people don't want to do multiple things. Or also some people like to do other things. They want to try to be a jack of all trades. And they often, as I say, they limit their earring possibility because they're trying to run all over trying to do things. Like, I only say this because I experienced this myself. There's experience too. They're trying to be a landlord, they want to do some fix and flippers, they're going to wholesale. I mean, I've been in big masterminds of people that were literally running themselves to death because they were trying to do too many things at once. And that's probably the first sign that you probably would not be a good note investor. Okay, is you can't be a jack of all trades in this business. You can't try to do everything yourself. You've got to put systems in place and you really need to be focused. Now, I'm not saying that when we buy notes, does that end up with REOs? Does that end up with some people that think, yes, you may be able to do two strategies. Okay, that's not something you want to do occasionally here and there, dabble in stuff. But to be a really good note investor, you have to really be focused. More than anything else, you need to be focused on one inch of buying debt or the one thing of buying performing notes. That's the people make the most, the happiest people that can be focused on one thing, they got enough money coming in and they go that route of being happy. If you're happy, you know what? Clap your hands. All right? Is that the focus people? All right, they're the evolution. Like the realtor's talking about her dad who buys and invests in mobile home lots. And that's all he wants. He's got 13 to 20 mobile home lots. Not the land on, not the home on top of it, but basically the chattel aspect of things where he's renting the land sometimes for 10 years to the people they're putting their mobile home on. If they don't pay, he hauls it off and lets somebody else come and move in it. That's what he likes, is the cash flow from it. Pretty easy. Not a lot of repairs, not a lot of work done to it. Just able to work through that aspect of things. And it's a nice little cash flow. That's what he wants for retirement. So That's a brilliant strategy. He focuses on one thing, he's happy and that's why it makes him happy. He's not trying to do too many things at once. He's in the paper game just a little bit different. He buys the notes, takes the property back on the lots and then turns around and rents out the land to mobile home people. Now I did this episode with the idea so you think you could be characteristics of a good note investor. And I almost want to say characteristics of a bad note or real estate investor. That's kind of what I'm trying to get at here is there's things, signs that people aren't cut out to be in the space. Here's the first sign when somebody is not cut out to be a note or a real estate investor is they are going to everything they can possibly go to. And this is the thing that frustrates me the most when I've had people come in who have fallen into this where they're constantly going to everything to be the educated idiot. And I say educated idiot because I say that comes from the place of love, that I want them to focus on something. When people are constantly going to the trust thing, going to the special assets thing, the note dealer, then they're running off to the rental thing or they're running off to self directed IRA thing. They're constantly going to all these different things. Apartments, self storage, mobile home parks, long term care. You will never be successful trying to major in 12 things. You think about it, they go to school, they tell you to pick a major, right? And the only time they tell you to pick a double major is usually when it's accounting. Okay? The finance does they go very well together. Other times when you're trying to do different things, you would never graduate. And that's one of the things that you have to focus on. In the school of real estate, you got to pick your major. You can be undeclared for a while as you're learning and going from there. And that's great. But at some point got to plant your flag inside you're going a direction. You keep trying to change your majors, you're never going to graduate into a true note or real estate investor. That's why I tell people like, listen, notes are great. If you have a full time job, great. Then notes need to be your side hustle. If you're trying to do too many things and notes are not going to work for you, you're gonna be frustrated because you're not gonna focus on One thing, you're gonna be all over the place. Shiny object syndrome. Oh, what was that? And move around. Okay, so that's the big thing. If you find that you're one of these people that signed up for a master's program in real estate that takes you to 10, 20 things, or you find yourself attending something on real estate every weekend, that's different. Not the same thing. They're different niches. You aren't cut out to be a successful notary real estate investor. You aren't cut out to be because you're one of those people that's going to waste time and waste money and never implement anything because you never have time to put the things you learn at those workshops or those conventions into actionable items. Okay? That's one of the most important things I could tell you that you have to do. Be focused and give yourself time to be successful. Now, another characteristic of person or characters of people that aren't going to succeed is I'm going to say this. It's good to have attention to detail. But if you're anal, I mean, overly anal, and have to be a perfectionist in everything you do, every marketing piece, you're not cut out to be a real estate or not investor. You may want to go into staging. You may want to be a mortgage broker. You may then want to be a real estate agent. And I don't count those people as investors. They're vendors that work in real estate. They are not true real estate investors. Because if they have to be perfect about the sign or perfect about diagonal T crossing every eye. I'm sorry, every deal in real estate investing, whether it's notes, fix and flips, whatever, there's going to be issues. There's going to be mold in a house, there's going to be an AC that gets ripped off. You're going to have a garage burnt down. Like just happened at one of my properties. One of my notes kid was out in the garage playing with matches, burning the garage down. Okay? If I was a perfectionist, I'd be flipping out. Oh, my God, it doesn't work. Can't be in your marketing. It can't be, oh my, I gotta get everything perfect. No, delivered is better than perfected anytime. Okay, the biggest analogy, best analogy I've ever heard is if you have an Apple iPhone. The iPhone software is on version what, 14 now. They didn't wait around to get perfect. They went and delivered it and they sent updates out. So that's what I tell people, is like, listen, if you're marketing. Don't worry about everything being perfect. Get at least the email out. And then if you mess up, hey, welcome to the club. Give you an opportunity to grow. You'll see people that oh hey, your first emails were looking kind of ugly. But hey, your second round emails look better or your marketing pieces or the deals that you're working on look a lot better because you're honing in on your skills. You're spending time going that right direction, passing the economics, passing the business, passing the business law aspect of your career or your education when it comes to or your major in your niche of real estate. Because there's learning curve along the way with everybody with experience. And the first six months of any type of focus is going to be the longest, sometimes the most frustrating. Some people will find deals immediately, sometimes it takes some time for things to kick in. I mean it took me weeks, I made so many phone calls over three weeks to find the right person at Capital One before I got the right person there to send me a list of stuff I could have given up many times. It took me 53nos before I got my first yes and dialing for dollars to asset managers the first time around. I kept track of it. That's a lot of no's. Most people giving up after 5 or 10 and not done anything and moved on to something else or try to do something things. So that's the next phase. People that aren't patient aren't really cut out to be a noted real estate investor. If you're getting huffy or puffy about little things. Yeah, you kind of need to build a thick skin when it comes to note investing. You definitely need to build a thick skin if you're dealing with contractors and vendors and things like that and realize that things don't always happen as fast as you want. If you have a problem with somebody taking longer than 12 minutes, returning an email or a phone call or text message, you probably don't have the patience to be a note investor. Okay, I see this happening all the time. People get all excited, they want to get something set up, they send an email, they don't get a response back by the end of the day. They don't think about how that other person, that vendor, other person may be busy. Your email is not the top priority. Maybe they're dealing with a fire burning garage or maybe they're dealing with boarding things or stuff like that because that's one of the things. You always have to give your vendors a little bit of leeway because you're not their only job. But unfortunately a lot of times, especially new investors, they think that their job is the only one around do it. So you got to give a little bit of weed. There's a good mix there. And you're going to learn that as you go through some things. Okay, what's another aspect of things over analyst paralysis? Now we've talked about perfectionists. Everything's made perfect. Send the damn email. Delivered is better than perfect every time. The first to market is better every time than being a better. You could build them in our mousetrap. But if it's never gets the market, you're going to lose out in the market share immediately. Same thing in type of real estate stuff. You wait around to be perfect, your deals are going to go the way the door to the bird or go to somebody else. Now people that suffer from overanalyst paralysis are not good in the note space or real estate investing space. What I mean by this, well, these are the people that have a spreadsheet that's 12 pages deep. They overanalyze, they worry about every major single issue doesn't end up happening. Now I wish our best case examples happened every time. It's not, it's always somewhere in the middle. Rarely is it a worst case example. Sometimes it is, but most of the time it's somewhere in the middle. But if you are over analyzed, if you rely on your spreadsheet for everything and you have all your exit strategies and they've all got a lineup before they pull the trigger, you are killing the deal before it ever gets a chance, before you ever make a bid on it. And this was one of the hardest things that we found out for note investors. A lot of times is we taught and I still do this day. If you're going to tape in, make a big offer. Don't just make one or two offers. Make a big offer and worry about the due diligence after you get kind of pricing and stuff. And you can make some general bids based on what they give you. But you're going to pull values, you're going to check taxes, you're going to check title. All that stuff is all built into the due diligence period. If you've got to have your exact number on the front end time, I guarantee you're going to over add expenses, often twice. If it's an occupied asset, it's probably going to be a reperforming loan for the most part or foreclosure. It will go one of 12 different ways. It's not going to go all 12 ways. And you have to kind of weigh what you're looking at, see what the most likelihood. If it's a vacant property, it's not going to be reperformed. Okay. Let's just put it that way. So that's the thing. A lot of people I see struggle when they get in the note space because they get overwhelmed by a couple things. One, they're not focused enough on markets. Don't try to do 12 markets. Focus on one or two markets. And those could be deals in states or cities. When they try to evaluate everything. And I see this extremely. This happens a lot of times when people come into note investing space, especially if they're a realtor, a mortgage broker, for the most part, they come in the real estate space basing especially their knowledge of real estate, tangible assets that will offer overvalue regular assets. I'll give you a great example. We had a realtor working with us a couple years back. Nice guy. He was not coachable. He's going to work with us, do some stuff. Okay. You need to watch this training. Well, you can tell he never watched all the training because when he got to the point making bids, he was overbidding assets. He pulled values on some of these assets that were at say $200,000 value, but they only had $75,000 payment. He was bidding in at 150. I'm like, why are you bidding this at 150 when they only owe 75? Because it's worth 200 and we should make an offer at 70, 75 cents a dollar. I'm like, that would make sense. But the debt's only 75 grand. It's like 30 cents of the dollar. You should be way below that. You didn't read or didn't listen to the workshops. You don't do that. And so we see that happen. People come look at. They have to understand the numbers are different on the notes space versus the fix and flip space. So that's the thing. People overanalyze things without understanding, hey, there's going this way. You can cut a lot of this crap out. You cut a lot of these expenses out because it doesn't fall into that thing. But people will overanalyze because they come from a scarcity mentality. Scarcity and scared, oh my God mentality. Afraid something's gonna go wrong. You can't do that. You've got to take a deep breath, quit overanalyzing. Maybe you need to write it on a dry erase board. And this Is what I say for fix and flipping or MySpace. One of the most valuable things in my first two years of the notes space is that I spent evening lady means being a single guy in my office at a dry erase boards on three and a half of the walls. And I would just work through the deals. What happens with this? What happens with this? What happens with this? And it's still one of my favorite activities to do when we have our coaching students in as they go through, hey, what happens with this? What happens with this? And that's the thing that you have to look at more anything else is that how many deals are you working through? That's a big facet of people that are over analysts is how many deals are you really working through or are you just relying on a spreadsheet? And that's the thing that most people struggle with is we talked about their ROI calculator, double bills, the expenses or they're looking at a formula versus using common sense looking. They may build in rehab costs. Well, house doesn't need to be rehabbed. Somebody's living in it right now. Well, what if I have to? I said, well no, they made payments of eight months straight here and they're paying extra. I doubt they're going to default. Okay, not going to happen. So that's the thing you have to look at. You have to look at some kind of common sense underwriting when you're looking at deals versus the perfectionist stuff or the over analysts kind of fall in the same category overanalyst more so than anything else. Okay, Lazy people don't do good as real estate investors or not investors. And I mean by lazy people that are looking for the least amount of work to do. If people would rather watch TV than do things, people would rather not do marketing, they'd rather do other things, hanging out, drinking. And you see this, people call me all the time and they're like, hey, I'm having trouble finding deals. And the first thing I do when I'm talking on the phone is I'll jump on their social media and take a look at what they did. Oh, looks like you celebrated a weekend in the golf course. Oh, hey, you're out in the boat for the last four weeks straight. What are you doing for your no business? Nothing. Well, it shows. And I get people that call me all the time like, hey, I need no deals. And yes, I know I should be sending more emails. I haven't sent email out in two months. And like then if you already know this then go ahead and do It. Okay, I don't want to do that. Okay, then you're telling me you don't want to do more of what needs to be done. We talked about an episode earlier about doing the or a little bit more lazy people just need to stick to being at job. If you want to get ahead in life, you've got to do extra. You've got to go out and attend those workshops initially. You've got to be show up to class on time on your major, you've got to do the things you've got to market, you've got to build these digital assets. What do I mean by digital assets? That's you got to have a website, you got to build social media presence, do some videos. Okay, those are the things you got to do. And now that kind of takes me to the next phase that's really becoming more a reality in this world of high tech is those that struggle with technology or social media or fighting marketing don't need to be in real estate, not investing. Whether you believe it or not, we're all in the media space these days, we're all in marketing. And you've got to endorse those things. Otherwise you're just a laborer or you're going to be working for somebody else. And I see this especially when it says but with elderly people, elderly, let's just say a little more seasoned people that aren't donor dance social media, they don't want to do it. They've fought it for years. They're not going to find the same deals that you or I are going to do. They should be doing something that just makes sense for them. All right, Maybe they just need to be a landlord and have their rentals or stick the fix and flip stuff that they've got. Because if you're doing something I want to do something different, you've got to involve and embrace the technology aspects of going on today so that you can get in front of asset managers, you can do some marketing pieces that work on it. Because you're not marketing, you're not using video these days. You're definitely behind. And those real estate investors, those note investors that are using video and other marketing are really doing a kick ass job of finding deals and really taking their businesses to that whole next level and really evolving. They're going from a landlord to a female lender, they're getting more deals sent to them, they're building a bigger online profile. You know, as we talked about building those digital assets, that's a bigger thing. Okay, so if you're not interested in doing that, and you don't want to do that. You hate Facebook, you hate YouTube. Great. You're going to hate real estate because you're not going to have as much success because it's not the same thing of just dropping 10,000 postcards or 10,000 yellow letters. That's what used to work. Posting 100 bandit signs out, not saying those things don't work great. It's just. It's a lot. You got to do a lot of work to get a few results. And everybody I talk to my friends. We've got Jason Bible on here from Mr. Texas Real Estate, talking about how when he was running Houston house buyers, they would drop 30. I mean, their budget monthly was 35,000 for marketing. Okay? That's a lot that most people don't have. Most people have extra to drop 50 letters or 100 letters with stamps, you know, that's an extra 50, 100 bucks. Most people are bootstrapping their real estate. They don't have the time or the ability to compete with the big boys that are dropping thousands and thousands of marketing pieces. They might get a deal here, there, but it's gonna be frustrating. If you really want to evolve and do some big things, you've got to do stuff on a regular basis. How do you do that? One of the best way to do it is via the media these days as we talk about whether it's a podcast or whether it's a YouTube series or video or Facebook or TikTok these days, Twitter, whatever it might be, Instagram stories. Pick the niche that works well for you and share it out there. I mean, LinkedIn is obviously blown up right now. That's a huge aspect things. Learn to leverage your resources, learn to leverage your digital footprint, and you'll see things a lot clearer when it comes down to it. So let's recap. Overanalytic. People aren't good. Perfectionists aren't good. Lazy people aren't cut out to do this jack of all trades. People that run around, try to do everything aren't good. I'm gonna throw something out there. Engineers struggle with this. They kind of fall into that over perfectionist, over analytics paralysis thing. Engineers struggle with the note business. Now, they may be good in fix and flips or rentals because they have very specific exit strategies once they take the asset back. But they often struggle with the note business because there's so many different exit strategies. And it's not all engineers. Some engineers do really, really well because they have that common sense but when we see a lot of people that struggle with it because they. Especially engineering, because they're like, I don't know which way to go and they have a brain aneurysm and can't understand how everything can't make sense on the front end before they pull the trigger, that there's a lot of moving parts and there's different time frames of your due diligence, stuff like that. So engineers don't do really well. They kind of struggle. And when I talk to an engineer, I kind of chuckle a little bit because you can talk to them for me in 10 minutes. I can pick out whether they're going to be good or not, things like that. Who else is not cut out to be a real estate investor or not investor people. And I'm going to be honest with this, really. People that are young people out there that suffer from. They would either go out or they're not focused on where they want to go in life yet. They're in struggle with their careers, they struggle with a variety of things. They're going to bounce around till they figure out what they want to do. We've seen that Most people over 35, 35 to 65 is where 80% of our audience is roughly at 85 maybe or so. But those are more the serious part where they're looking to put some money away and they're looking to start making some money and they're looking to make some more money and they want it. They've been sold on the rat race, which they know is a lie, and they. So they want to go a different route and that's what it comes down to. So they're focused, they're smart, they're educated, they understand social media, they understand digital assets. They're saying it's a business process and they get rocking and rolling and go their merry way and they're off and going and gradually growing. Now I've talked to people, I've been out and spoken to people and offered things to people. Like I talked to wholesalers. I'm like, hey man, you should really talk to your people that are buying your deals and having fun your deals and split the deals with you versus being a wholesaler, make a whole lot more money. And they're oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they never get around to taking the next step. So they're always a wholesaler for the next five, six years and leaves so much money on the table. So kind of going back to the one thing is you got to be coachable. Who do we Find that do really well. We talked about realtors, we talked about mortgage brokers. Mortgage brokers do really well. Realtors do really well if they understand the fix and flip side of things. They've got that real estate background, not a traditional agent because most agents can't understand that they're pretty cheap when it comes to marketing. Most of them are living commission to commission. Okay, What I'm trying to get at is people that are coachable. Usually what we have found have come from some, some sort of team philosophy. And what I mean by team philosophy, they're an ex athlete, they were in the band, they understand the team concept of things and that they can't do it all themselves. All right? They understand that there's a camaraderie and they're able to delegate. They do their job, they put other people into doing their job or they understand and set clearly defined goals that they work through. They work through KPIs, they work through. And KPIs are key performance indicators. They set goals for themselves and they work a plan. Okay. Those people do really well. Patient people do well as note and real estate investors because oftentimes people want a quick hit on any success in the first 30 days. Otherwise I'll move on to something else that's not always the case. Alright, Those are some of the things, Other things that I see people struggle with. People that are looking, they're broke. I hate to say this in derogatory fashion that they're looking for money just to pay the bills. Look, if you're looking for money just to pay the bills, you need to get something solid underneath you. Real estate investing can make a lot of money. Notes can make you a lot of money. But it's not a get rich quick aspect of things. So sometimes people just need to have a job, make sure that their bills are paid, make sure the ship isn't sinking and then spend time in the side hustle. Learning real estate investing, learning the note business. You've got especially got a spouse and kids. I quit my job today. I'm like, no, what are you doing? I hate my job. I got no way I can do this. Did you have to quit? No. I could have quit the end of the year in three months or six months. Well then build yourself a bit of a Runway with savings and systems. Build that first because you're going to fall flat in your face. You're going to hurt. I only say it because I've been there. I fell flat in my face hard. Not all my own fault being laid off But I was like, oh, I don't need to get another job, I'll just do this. And boom. No, nine months later, I'm a deadbeat borrower. That's the thing. If you're trying to make a lot of money quickly in real estate and you're brand new to it, get a job, get a job, take some time, learn on the side, build you a Runway, six 12 months savings, get some experience, understand where you're really going, and be coachable. Get yourself a mentor. People that think they know everything struggle. People don't reach out for help aren't cut out to be a real estate or not investor. Those are the people that will end up failing because they think they know everything. They won't ask for permission or ask for guidance or counsel or they ask opinions of idiots out there that have no experience in it. So that's one of the big keys of people that I see. They're coachable, they're not afraid to ask questions. Those are the characteristics of people that are going to make it not only in the short term, but also the long term. And by the long term, I mean longer than like two weeks. Okay. One of the key things when I'm talking to people before they come into our coaching program, I say, what have you done? What are you focused on? What's your goals? What do you want to accomplish? And they're all over the place. I'm like, it's not good. I had a guy call me Eugene just the other day. He's like, oh, I want to be in your coaching. I'm like, wait a second. This does. When you're brand new to stuff, you opted into something. You just need to get educated first. You need to watch some videos, listen to podcasts. You need to understand what you're on. If you don't know what AOM is or ARV is, then you're going to struggle. That's not a good place to be in because you're not gonna know what the hell to do. So you don't need to be spending 15, 20 grand on a coaching program. You need to take some time and maybe spend 500 bucks on a class or watch some videos. Get your feet understood and then take a class or two day or three day workshop and go from there. That's the biggest thing. I think mentors are a good thing. Some people say, oh, you all this free information out there. Yeah, but free information is just free. It doesn't give you the experience. And people bash on mentors. Bashing people are Charging for their time and their experience. Really need to take a look at themselves. Yeah, people have been burned. I'm not gonna. There's people selling out there other crap out there that's not workable. It doesn't work in this industry. It doesn't work this year from three years ago. I agree with that. But if people are closing deals, look, my 10 years of experience, 10 plus years experience in that space is worth something. You wanna come in and sit down and get my list and my leads and learn how I do things, it's worth something. That's the thing you gotta keep in mind. Hey, my experience, me scrapes me. My mistakes are worth something to help save you making a big mistake. So free has no value anyway way. So be careful of people out there spouting off, oh, I don't know, I gotta pay for Metro. That's great. Then you can deal with taking six years, but you could be doing in six months. Okay. That's the big thing that you don't want to do. Okay. So that's what I mean when it comes down to are you cut out to be this. Do you have the cloth? Do you have the same cloth that's successful? Because there have been plenty of investors who've screwed up in the past. I mean, so many real estate investors a decade ago with a downfall and then mortgage and banking debacle in the RTC days in the end of 2009, 10 went through shit. I know investors that have lost millions and millions of dollars, okay, they lost it. They just waited, they licked their wounds, they put down their goal for a little while, got their feet back up underneath of them doing something and then went out and started building something up again. It's going to happen. Success is not an overnight experience and not an overnight thing. It takes years of experience. It takes years of going through things. It takes success. If people say, I want to get rich in the next, I want to close on 50, 100 deals the first year. And you've been closing your first one. So let's get you closed on your first one. This is some realistic expectations talked before earlier. Know your numbers and live by those numbers. People want to argue me with me all the time like, oh, I'm gonna close 100 deals this year. Great. How many hours a week are you working on your job? 80. I'm like, it's not gonna happen this year. What do you mean? I'm like, you don't have 10 hours a week to do. Yeah, you can like you're married with Kids, you don't have 10 hours. You might have two to five. You have to do the two to five activities. That's what your goal is, to get maybe five or 10 deals done. If you can get one a month done, that's a great start to your first year. That's all I'm trying to get at everybody. There's exceptions to every rule. I've always said this, okay, there's exceptions to every rule. So I'm not bashing on people and things like that. People can learn, People can evolve. Everybody does. All right? But what I'm trying to get at is if you find yourself falling in one of those niches we talked about before, uncoachable, perfectionist, over analytical. Especially in those things, okay, I'm gonna send this out. I'm get this done, and I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get better, I'm gonna get better, I'm gonna get better. That all leads to, really the ultimate thing. If you want to do something big, you can't do it all by yourself. I see people out there, and I've made this mistake in the past is I try to do a lot more than I could do with myself. The minute I hired assistants, then I hired asset manager. When I hired vas, it suddenly helped me get better at what I was doing. It helped me evolve. It helped me do more and be more effectively and efficient at what I was doing. Anyway, you're going to have people come and go for your business. You're going to have to hire. You're going to have to fire people. I mean, good people are hard to come by. The thing is, if you want to do big, you've got to hire people. It can't all be you and your spouse. And I see speakers and educators out there, and I just get to the point where I just start blocking them because they talk about things and their stuff. And I'm like, I know you. It's only you and your wife. There's no way you could be doing that. No physical way. You'd be doing what you're doing, because I know you're not. I know you're traveling. You're not an expert at all this. Even though you say you are, you're not. And that's the big thing you don't want to deal with, is talking heads. I will be the first one to tell you that we had our issues that we have worked at overcoming and getting to overcome and move on. You're not in this business for 10 years with everything Going hunky dory, everything. You also have to also learn that people that only been around are flashing the pans, have been around a year or two years, that haven't done a ton of deals can't guide you through those tough times because they've not been there. You also realize that an employee, somebody who's an employee who has a salary cannot teach an entrepreneur how to be successful if they don't have the same stresses, the same things. My bills are paid every month because I have a salary. That's great. You can't teach an entrepreneur who's 100% of a real estate investor entrepreneur how to be successful because you're not doing it yourself. If you're involved in a coaching program where you get to call a 1-800number and talk to somebody who's making 18 bucks an hour, 20 bucks an hour on a call line and they're flipping through a handbook to answer your questions, that's not good. A lot of training and coaching programs are that way. Not a good thing to do. So guys and gals out there, I encourage you all, especially as we're coming to the end of a decade in the start of a new 10 years in 2020 here and it's just a short few weeks. Look at where you're at if you really want to dive. You're new to real estate investing, great. Are you struggling in real estate investing and you've maybe have touched a few nerves on this episode, what you're listening to or watching. First of all, don't be pissy. Grow thick skin, grow a pair and realize I'm here just to try to help you if you have issues and are looking for help. Hey, feel free. Drop me an email skyclothesnotes.com shoot me a text message, share a message on Facebook or YouTube and I'm glad to schedule a phone call to try to help you overcome those obstacles or give you some options and give you some counsel to what helped me overcome it or put you point in the right direction of somebody you need to talk to. It doesn't even be about notes. This guy I really want to be doing on this. I want to go this route. Who's a great person to reach out for this and that. And I'll be the first one to tell you, hey, that's not me. It may be this guy. One apartment's called Corey, called Corey Peterson. All you want to do wholesaling, Sean Terry is probably a good one. There's a whole variety of different people out there that are experts in their specific niches. They have majored or They've gotten a PhD in their major section of real estate. They're focused and they're often happier because they're focused on that one specific niche. So I wish you all best of luck everybody go out, make something happen, take a look at see if you can cut out be another real estate investor. You need to do it just as a passive thing on the side maybe syndications or you know, being a private lender at 12% or you know, investing in I don't know, a crowdfunding thing or something like that. Hey great, let's just look doing a much better return than you're doing nothing. Your money sitting in a 0% or IRA account. It's not doing anything that's actually losing. Go out, take some action everybody reach out to me if you can and have a great day. We'll see you all at the top everybody. Bye.