EP 539 – Fix The Flow

This is the no Closers 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. And today I want to talk about something that I call fixing the flow. All right? And I just spent a couple days in Orlando with some of our mastermind students going through a couple days of hanging out, working on each other's business. And one of the things that came to mind is that obviously people want to make income. They want to make money, whether it's buying non performing notes and turning them into performing notes or buying performing notes and keeping them performing for cash flow, or 3, buying non performing, foreclosing at the borrowers or taking the property back of some sort and then either a keeping as a rental owner, financing Airbnb it, or selling it off as an REO for larger checks. Now, the thing that always concerns me is when, you know, we talk to so many students and talk to so many people out there and people call me all the time or email say, hey, Scott, I'm looking for deals. How do I turn the flow, the deal flow on how do I find more deals? Or the opposite is I want more deals. How do I turn on more sources? And the first thing that you have to realize, you gotta put some numbers into perspective here. Okay? And that's what we did this weekend. I had a couple people that are realtors and I was talking with them and they were like, listen, I'm a realtor. I hate really being a realtor. It's okay. But I hate being a realtor. I want to be an investor. I want to do things different. And I'm like, okay, how far, how long do you want it to take to get where you need to be? Or let's take it the other way. What's the numbers need to be for you to hit your goals on where you can say, I don't want to be a realtor anymore. Unless you really want to do something listed for yourself or just use it for yourself first? I'm going to rely on that sweat equity that a lot of realtors are doing. Going out, finding your houses, are having to find people that are selling or buying houses out there. So let's talk about what needs to come out of the faucet. The flow that comes out of the faucet. Well, people were saying if I want to make five grand a month, that will replace what I got coming in at 60 grand a year. Okay, that falls in line with a lot, with our making a quarter million in a year aspect of things. So let's just be simple math, okay? If you want to make five grand in cash flow and your average mortgage note that you're buying is $500 a month in cash flow on that stuff. And guess what, how many deals is that? Well, if you need to make five grand and you've got 500amonth coming in, that's only 10 deals. Now if you're using other people's money, we say let's double that number to 20 deals. 20 deals is very feasible in your first 12 months. That flow is feasible. I'm going to end up like effing alliteration the entire time on this episode. That flow is possible. But what is scary is when people don't believe in themselves. They don't believe in the aspect of things. They think that's unachievable. Even though several of the people we were talking with, they've already bought four deals this month or four deals this last year on a really limited part time basis. Two they bought with their own funds and two they partnered with other people on their own funds. They were the funding behind it. And two they went and bought. So they bought four deals. I'm like, well, what's that bringing in to you? They're bringing this roughly between us. Four is bringing us $1,000 a month in cash. I'm like, that's great. That's phenomenal. All right, what's that? What are you doing for marketing? Like, well, we're only looking at two sources. I'm like, that's okay. Two sources, not bad. But how many offers you made? Well, I haven't made any offers in a while. I'm like, well, why is that? Are you reaching out to new sources? And they're like, no, because we've gotten sources from these two. I said, well, you probably haven't gotten any in a while. And they're like, yeah, I have not gotten any from the sources. Like, well, what are you doing? Let's go back in, let's pull up your market. Sure enough, we log into the marketing. You know what? Zero marketing is going out. Zero workflow is going out. That's the other flow. Work is a four letter word for most People. And I'm like, what happened to the list of asset managers you have on here? What happened to your list of private sellers that may some of the smaller funds that we dealt with? Well, I removed them because I didn't want to send emails. I didn't want to pay the $60 per month for Mailchimp. And I literally. My heart broke. I felt like I got kicked in the huevos. Okay. I was like, what? I go, wait a second. Are you sending emails out in your regular job, Those that are mortgage brokers or those that are doing other things? You're like, yeah, we send emails out to them. I said, why don't you send it out for you want to accomplish long term? And that's what was the hardest thing. It's like, oh, I'm comfortable with what I'm doing. I'm like, wait a second. You just told me that you want to be not a realtor in 24 months or 36 months or 12 months even. And I just sat there and told you that the numbers that you want to achieve can be achieved in 12 to 24 months. But you've got to start working. You got to turn that faucet and yeah, I know sometimes when you come up to a faucet, it's kind of tough to get it turned to turn on that flow. You've got to sit there and grab it with him. Sometimes you got to get a wrench and leverage it to break it open so that that water starts to trickle out. It starts to come out and starts going. Because literally, that's what marketing is. That's what the flow is. You can't get water out without putting some effort in. Because for most people, the deal flow is off. Most people that's cranked closed and you don't know what to do. I see this happening time and time and time again from people that want to accomplish something, but they're not willing to put the crank and they're not really to tighten up and muscle it up a little bit to turn that false on. And yes, that's the hardest part of marketing in anything. I don't care if you're marketing tiddlywinks or wholesale deals or notes or apartments or whatever the heck you're trying to do to turn that flow on, you've got to put a little bit of grunt work into it and do it. And she's like, well, I'm pretty good. I don't need a thousand sources. I'm like, yeah, I know you don't need a Thousand sources. I reached out to another Mastermind member. So, okay, you've closed on 75 deals in your two years. How many unique sources has that come from? And he goes, 20 different sources. Now, 50 of them have come from one source, all right? But the other 25 are over 19 or 20 sources. And what's more important to keep in mind is that 50. That source is dried up. And that's. We see that a lot of markets out there, a lot of people are used to buying assets in one area. They don't have to do any work because they're getting enough lists in from the sources out there. You know what you have to do? You gotta roll your sleeves up, gotta spit on your hands and go to work marketing. Now, you may not want to do that before you go typing, but that's the thing. $60 a month, $720 a year was standing between a she and her goal. She didn't have to prove concept. This is another thing that aggravates me is when people say, well, I want to do it myself because I want to prove concept. You don't have to prove concept. Things have been. This has been taking place for decades a year. What you want to do is prove that you can do it and everybody can do it. It's a matter of, are you going to take the time? Are you going to stop playing video games for three hours? Are you going to stop playing? I don't know. What is it? World of Warcraft or Sonic the Hedgehog or whatever the big one that's out there right now that's turned off? I don't know. I don't play video games, so I'm the one thing to do. But people are putting their flow, their workflow, they would rather put that into something else. Something that's not going to generate any type of return, any type of income. Now, if you're doing something else and it's generating income, by all means, you're selling stuff on ebay or Etsy or whatever. Great, I can understand that. Hey, you've got cash flow. That's the other flow coming in. You want to have multiple streams of income from multiple sources. So if one does dry up, you're not sitting there. Wait a second. There's nothing coming out of the spigot. And that can happen. That happens in real estate as markets change. A lot of people got caught 10 years ago getting fat and happy on doing limited work because there's plenty of REOs, there's plenty of distressed foreclosures out there. They could mail out and do something simple. I mean, everybody can do a postcard. You print it, slap it on and send it all out. Everybody can do a yellow letter, pretty simple, write it and send it out. The advanced of your marketing, the more advanced technological actually the easier it gets. In a lot of cases, the cheaper it gets. And they're like, what do you mean cheaper? Well, would you rather pay 60 bucks a month to send an email blast out to 3,000 or would you rather go out and knock on doors or put out a hundred bandit signs or mail out a thousand postcards or a thousand yellow letters? $60 to send out to 3,000 banks once a month, maybe twice a month for two hours of your time a month to have lists that come in. The flow is there. You just have to turn it on. You have to get beyond that 4, 6, 8 inch hurdle between your years. And a lot of people struggle with that. And I know that, I see that all the time. People just overthink, they're like, oh, you know, I feel guilty. I haven't sent an email out in the last 90 days. And I get people all the time call me, I'm looking for more deals and the first thing they say is why haven't sent an email out? I'm like, well that's the first thing that's literally like the basis of everybody's marketing these days is you gotta have an email list and you have to market to that email list. I mean, I know we talk about using text message opt ins and if you're watching this video, see down here in the bottom, your right hand of the screen, basically you're looking at or the left hand side of the screen, text notes to 72,000. That's a mobit opt in. That's great. But that's getting them opt in so I can mark it out to them. I'm building a list by sponsoring events. I'm building a list by doing webinars on Monday night where people opt into. I'm posting to Facebook and YouTube videos and sharing to all the podcasting platforms out there to get people to opt into a variety of things. So a they learn how to buy notes. And honestly, turning the flow, the deal flow on just takes a little bit of time. But once you stop, yes, that deal flow can turn off automatically because you stop marketing. But you have to keep doing and there are basic things that you can do to get the flow rolling. It is not complicated, it's not difficult. It's setting precedence and setting, making it a priority. In your schedule to get it done, to do it. And honestly, the hardest time to turn that flow on is when you need to first crank it on. Yes, it's difficult writing an email. Yes, it's difficult building a list. Yes, it's difficult created a template. But honestly, you know what, it's more difficult in your mind than is actually doing it. There's so many easy ways to set templates up. There are people you can even hire for four bucks an hour to log in and create a template for you. Like their email services that provide cool templates. You just gotta plug and play your logo and then upload the list and send it out. And then they're like, well, what do I say? Well, you know what? One of the great things that we're doing is we're putting together 12 months of emails for people to send out to their database to their asset managers. Yes, it's got some, it's kind of basic topics. Yes, it's some basic information, but it leaves you the opportunity to switch things up, to change it up a little bit. I mean, I've already pre written six months of emails to my bank asset managers. It's just a matter of scheduling the emails that go out. And you know what? That's already done. I've already got my flow set to a monthly basis to get lists in. I've always got my flow set in where it's automatically taken care of. Am I, do I go in and tweak it? Yes. Do I increase it or I turn it down a little bit, depending on what's coming through the spigot. That's right. I fix my flow because I adjust it, but I'm constantly keeping it open because I'm sitting there working. I'm constantly doing things that are going out. If you stop doing activities, you stop holding that spigot open, it's going to turn off because nobody's there to monitor it. Nobody's there to either get the deals or they'll go somewhere else because you're not there. And that was one of the biggest things I've been this weekend that hurt the most is seeing somebody who did a really great job of setting something up, not use it. After once or twice, they just stopped using it. And I'm like, were you getting comments? Were you getting people to opt into your list? And they're like, yes. And I was like, why'd you stop? Well, because I couldn't think of anything. And after 90 days and not doing anything, I didn't want to pay the $60 per month for it. And I just. It hurt. It still hurts to this day. I don't think they listen to the podcast, but that's the thing, is that listen, you can start it up, you can start up again. You don't have to wait to the beginning of the year, which many people out there listening to it is going to wait till the beginning of the year to start something. And that's the worst case. Start taking action right now. Start working towards your goal. If you want to have success in January, means you need to start now, in November. December, get rock and roll. It means that you need to start before the first year. Otherwise you've got that 60 days to get things rock and rolling to build a habit. Now, come February, you're probably giving up on your goals. March, you're giving up on your goals because you haven't seen that type of success because you're starting over. It's the hardest crank is getting there. You know what gets harder is that everybody else in January wants to do it. Everybody else wants to run to the gym and jump on the treadmill. Well, now you don't have the wide open treadmill you want to get. You don't have your favorite spot. You got to wait on others because you waited. All right, the best time is now. The best time to do anything is now. If deal flow slow down from some of the bigger sources. Yeah, you had the Condors, the grants, the direct sources, some of the those companies that had stuff on a regular basis. Well, Condor hardly has anything. Granite's out of business, thank goodness. Those crooks. And then you also have direct sources. Just didn't have much left to built his primary business on dealing with Harbor Portfolio. So what does that mean? Means you got to go out to other sources. It means you got to go find other sources. You can either up your game by creating a fund, which is still going to take a lot of marketing to do, or you change your marketing and start going and dialing for dollars, calling banks and asset managers. You reach out on LinkedIn. You turn the flow on. You've got to learn to market. If you're trying to do the same old same old, same old and think that this year is going to be different from last year and you keep doing the same things, you are highly mistaken, my friends. If you want the cash flow, you've got to increase the workflow. Okay? And I know many of you are working, listening to this at the job or after doing something else, increase your workflow. I'm not talking you don't have to drop 60, 80 hours into the no business or whatever your focus. Add 5, add 10, add an hour a day Monday through Thursday and a week or an hour or two on the weekend to market simple marketing. To keep the flow up is the most critical point you can do. Sending an email blast out once a week to your asset manager, I mean once a week to your contacts and then once every two weeks or once a month a minimum, to your banks. Set those up, pre write them, get it done. I challenge you, for those that are listening, that if those of you here's a challenge, we're gonna do a contest here right now. Contest on this episode is if you are going online and pre writing your emails and you could do at least six months of pre writes or it's scheduled in your mailchimp or your infusionsoft, contact me. All right, I have a special surprise for you. For those of you that are gonna take action and do that, we're gonna pre write at least six emails that go out to your asset managers. All right, six emails. Six emails. That means six months of emails, asset manager. Or we could talk about 6 weeks of content to your warm database. So 6 emails pre written and then you'll get rocket and rolling. I think I'm gonna have a special contest, special giveaway for those of you I think you're gonna really like it. Definitely gonna like it. So take the opportunity to go out and do it. Make it Happen. Contact me scottclosenotes.com we'll schedule a phone call. Jump online if you do it. I got something big for that you're really gonna enjoy. So anyway guys, if you want to turn the flow on, you've got to market, you've got to take things to a different level than we did last year. It doesn't mean it'll have to be a lot. It can be a little bit extra and a little bit goes a long way. We're talking an hour a day for five days out of the week, five days out of seven days for an hour. Such a small amount of time out there to go do it. So go out, please, take some action everybody, and we'll see you all at the top. Bye.