EP 592 – Setting Goals And The New Moneyball

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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 Nut Closer Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with you today. Hopefully you guys are doing well in quarantine. If you're listening to this or out of quarantine, today's episode, I'm calling it the New Money Ball. Now I kind of want to throw this into two different facets. Not only the Moneyball, if you've never read the book, is a phenomenal book. It's also written by the guy who wrote the Big Short, which I think is very relevant. It also starred Brad Pitt in both Moneyball and the Big Short. But basically what Moneyball talks about is how Major League Baseball is going to saber metrics identifying your trans algorithms out there and how kind of the Oakland Athletics a few years back was able to use I don't want to say scrap heap players, but gametize the system to be able to field the winning team that went to the playoffs at 120 games straight as well through the league, but eventually lost to the New York Yankees in the division around the series. But hopefully if you've listened to this show or you followed me for a while, you know I'm a huge baseball fan. Baseball, I believe actually saved my life and helped skyrocket me to different places. Ten years ago as the story as I've told it before is sitting in South Austin was roughly about actually a month ago. 10 years ago we celebrate the 10 year anniversary, come up with this idea is that I wanted to travel the country to see all the Major League Baseball teams. I wanted to go out and I actually created this journey by jumping on ESPN and tracking how many weeks it would take for me to hit all 30 Major League Baseball parks across the country by traveling, wrote it down, I put the goal down and lo and behold, over the next four weeks I had four investment clubs reach out to me to ask me if they could use not only my articles, some of the blogs I was writing about the note business, but also I could come speak and when I asked them what days they had available, the days they had lined up almost exactly when I would have been in that town on this fictional Baseball journey. And so what I thought would be 30 weeks turned into three plus years, four years of traveling nonstop for the most part. But I absolutely love baseball. There's just something about baseball that just is as American as apple pie. I mean, it is American pastime. I enjoyed playing baseball in high school, wasn't good enough to play in college. I was a much better football player than I was a baseball player. But I really enjoyed just the tossing the ball, the glove, the smell, the familiarity. I love going to games. I mean, I think I've probably attended about 100 baseball games over the last 10 years. There are a few parks I have not made it to yet. And I am one is I'm a huge Minnesota Twins fan. Most people don't know that. I was born in Minnesota, grew up in South Texas, though. But I grew up being a fan of Gary Gayetti, Kirby Puckett, Dan Gladden, Jack Morris, and that amazing 91 team that went from worst to first to beat the Braves in seven games in 91, which is I consider one of the best series out there, as a lot of people do out there. But I've not been to Target Field in Minneapolis. And so if you're watching the video, you can see the background here and I'm wearing my Twins dirty here. But what I wanted to focus about today, I was thinking about this morning as I was preparing for this episode. And life is an interesting thing. Life is a game. And what I love about baseball and why I think it adds so much to is when you have everybody doing their part. You have the first baseman playing first, baseball pitcher, the catcher, the outfielder, second, third, first, whatever, shortstop. Everybody's doing their part to win as a team. And sometimes being baseball is one of the games where if you fail 70% of the time, you're still going to get the hall of fame on.300 batting average. You're successful three out of 10 times. That's basically a great season for the most part. And also baseball is one of the few there where if you sacrifice yourself like a sacrifice fly, sacrifice bunt, you're not penalized for it. And that's. It's just a great game. I absolutely love it. Some people say it's boring to watch. I think it's great. I think it's much better in person than it is on tv. I usually don't watch much baseball on TV until we get to the playoffs, but I have been feeding baseball. You have the Round Rock Express local team here of the Astros, which is another favorite team of mine. My Three favorite teams, Astros, I mean Twins, San Francisco Giants and the Astros. And one of the things I was thinking about, we've got a signed Tim Lincecombe jersey, hangs our bedroom because Stephanie's a big Tim Lincent fan, is very lucky back in the day when the Giants were doing well to be able to go to several playoffs games in each of those three years that the Giants won 10, 12 and 14 that they won or 12, 14 and 16 that they won, not back to back but three in five years with the biggest thing being in 2000 was 16. We made it to San Francisco and watched the Giants clinch their playoff ticket to the World Series and watched Travis Ishikawa who was a outfielder that they picked up from the Pirates, who's been in the Triple A, who hit a walk off game winning home run at the bottom of the ninth. And if you want to talk about atmosphere, it's now called Oracle Stadium, I believe it, versus AT&T Park. But it is absolutely magical. One of the best places to watch a game and I assume Target Field is also one of those things from everything I hear. So what I'm trying to get at everybody here is we've all been through things, we're all going through things. This has been one of the craziest month, month and a half out there. It's continued to be a crazy month. And what I want everybody to think about is what are you going to do when we get back to normal? What are some of the things that you can look forward to as an investor, as a person as we get through all this crap? I mean it has been chaotic. I mean the markets are an upheaval. Everybody's still stressed out about things health wise. So many people are out of work, companies are filed bankruptcy. And I'll tell you right now, I don't think it's going to get any better. I think we're going to see a good six month stretch year of just company after company after company, especially some of the ones that were struggling before all this hit go out of business. I think we'll see a lot of the retail companies, we've seen needless markup filed bankruptcy already. We're going to see probably JCPenney, Sears, all your bigger department stores that don't have an online presence as much as they should really struggle. We've already seen that in parts of the country where like Simon Malls, I think they're going to be one of the big companies ends up filing bankruptcy actually too. They don't. All this mall real estate so what I want you to focus is today is to think about some of the things that you would like to do. And I want you to almost sit there and visualize it a little bit. Because that's what I did this morning as I'm sitting here, here at my cup of coffee in the morning, sitting out on the back patio listening to the Chinese and the birds and just enjoying a little bit of wind. We got kind of a, I don't want to say dojo, but a very nice peaceful backyard that is very nice to sit out in the mornings and the evenings or throughout the day too is what are some of the things you miss the most? And right now I miss baseball. I miss going to the park. I miss anxiety going the crowd, the noise, the energy that comes with everybody coming together to enjoy and root on their favorite team. The smells, the smell of the burgers or the hot dogs, taste of cotton candy, taste of a good burger with mustard on it, mustard and ketchup. Or a corn dog with mustard on it. Oh, it's one of my favorite things. Do make myself hungry. A good cold beer or really good cold iced lemonade. Because that's usually what I'll do. I have one beer at a game, sometimes two. But I really like lemonade and I'm not talking that Minute Maid stuff. I'm talking like fresh squeezed lemonade that a lot of the parks have. And I could sit there and I could just watch a game and I be intense. I can, I love all aspects of it of both teams and one of the big things that I'm big a fan of is if I'm traveling, if I'm traveling, I always root for the home team. You gotta root for the home team in a few situations. If I've already been there and root for the home team and my favorite team, either a Twins, Giants or Astros are playing, then I root for my favorite team. But if neither one of those there, I always root for the home team. Grab a cap, grab a shirt or something like that. Support. That's just one of the things that I want to accomplish on my bucket list. I want to accomplish hitting all 30 major league parks. I'm just a few five or six shy. Twins, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toronto, Detroit, Milwaukee are the last. And Seattle. Sorry I'm like six short but I will hit that and that is going to be my goal for the next 12 months is to accomplish that 30 park tour in some form of fashion. And we are going to do that with the help of the podcast. We are going to do that with some live events, getting out and meeting people and bringing people together. Once we get through all this stuff, I think it's one of the biggest things that we need to do is come together as investors, come together as people and just share and identify opportunities. There's going to be a lot of opportunity out there. Even with all the craziness of the market right now, there is a lot of opportunity. We just don't know exactly where it's at. We don't know. We're not sure of exactly what markets, what asset classes are going to be hit or sacrificed because there's going to be some banks, some lenders that get sacrificed and others that get bailed out. It's just going to be the way that it is. There's no doubt in my mind that's gonna happen. And you just have to be prepared for that because you never know when life will throw you a curveball and you can pick up a decent asset which you think might be for others. May think it'd be a junk asset, might be a great base hit for you or double. Yes, I'm using baseball analogy today, but that's what I'm trying to get is that in a note business, life is. Deals are full of a lot of base hits. If I can buy a note, you get re performing, have the borrowers start paying me on time and cash flow each month. That's a good base hit. And my goal is out of the 10 that I make offers on that I end up closing about three to four out of the 10. And that's pretty good. That's what you're gonna see as a note investor. New Nova investors, you're new to this part. You may only be getting one out of ten initially. That's okay. You're gonna get better. As you hone your craft, as you work on your skills, you can become a five tool player. You think about what tools would be. One would be obviously marketing. That would be the first tool. Due diligence would be the second tool. Identifying markets would probably be three. Four would be raising capital and five would be the workouts. Those are probably the five tools of a good note investor. Maybe I'll label that this episode. The five tools of a good note investor. That's exactly what I'm going to do now. But anyway, what I'm trying to get at everybody is do yourself a favor. If you can make a list right now of the things that you would like to do. Doesn't have to be baseball. If you hate baseball, you Hate baseball. Maybe it's going to the opera, maybe it's going to the arts. Maybe it's going to a concert. Maybe just getting out and going to the movies. God knows we miss movies, I think, at least once a day. Steph says, I miss Alamo. I miss Alamo Drafthouse 2. It's our movie theater here in Austin, Texas. She's not always like Alamo, but anyway, what I'm trying to get at, everybody, is take the time and make a list of the things that you're going to enjoy when everything kind of gets back to normal, when you're allowed to leave your house, when people start going back to work, because it's the little things that you can do. One of the things, too, we have happening here, our housing kind of butts up. Not our house, but the area we're in. There's a high school on a couple streets over, and they've got their baseball. The softball and baseball field that you can see at nights when the lights are on, when they're playing games. It's a crack of the ball on the aluminum bat and the crowd sharing, stuff like that. So that's always kind of fun to go through and walk through. It's unfortunate that a lot of those programs, obviously were canceled. College seasons canceled, even some college programs. I saw that here in Austin, St. Edwards University has canceled their baseball and track and golf programs to make up with all the turmoil. And so instead of focusing on the negatives of things going out of business, I think it's better to put together a list of things that you want to accomplish, things that you want to see, places that you want to travel to. I think travel is going to be very cheap for quite a while and might be a little limited in what's offered, but there's still some opportunities. I think that's one of the things that Steph and I talked about, too. It's like, where do we want to go? Where do we want to escape to for three or four days? Still be working, but where can we escape to? To just kind of get out of the house? Because I think a lot of people need that get out of the house kind of trip. Maybe it's a road trip somewhere. Maybe it's a flight somewhere. It's more domestic. Maybe it's internationally, maybe just not to Italy. Maybe it's not on a cruise ship immediately. I know that our friend Maya Mahoney's looking forward to doing that at some point on a Disney cruise, but they're going to be cheaper here. For a while. But those are the things that I think are important. I'm not trying to trivialize anybody's feelings or opinions or scarcity, because I think we still live in one of the greatest places out there. Yes, there's going to be some change, and there is already change going on, quite a bit of it. But what I want everybody out there is we can all use a little hope. We can all take some time, write down some of the biggest things that we want to accomplish here in 2020. Things you want to attend, things you want to go to that maybe we took for granted just a few days ago. So I would challenge you to write that down. Talk with your family, talk with your kids, talk with your spouse. Hey, what's a place that you would like to go? What would you like to accomplish? And for those of you that are listening, that are struggling, I get it. It's tough. But it's still good to have a goal. Maybe it doesn't need to be something fancy. Maybe it's just going across town. Maybe it's a night out away from your kids. Because I think there's gonna be some hotels get booked pretty rapidly, quickly, and babysitting is gonna be on the rise. Some parents just needed an escape for a night or two or a day or two to get away. I think you're gonna see a lot of spas, especially haircuts and salons, are gonna do well here for the next few weeks once they kind of release things as people get back to it. I know I've got some friends that are dying for a manicure and a pedicure, too. Just make a list of the things that you want to accomplish. What are the things you'd like to do the first week of the first month? Give yourself something to focus on that's good, not so bad. Focus on. Give yourself something to focus on that you can look forward to. It's very easy to dive in and read USA Today or CNN or Fox News or the local news and really get bogged down on the negativity that there are going to be some big things happen, good and bad, probably a few more, a little bit more bad begin with than good. But that's what we have to do, is we have to have our hopes and dreams and goals that guide us through this, that get us through this crap that we're dealing with to help us move on in the right direction. And so I just wanted to take some time to have you guys focus on that out there. I know I need to do this, too. We've got goals up. I usually take a laminated sheet and post it. Just need to print it out and take a look at it and post it in some places, yes, you can look at what your New Year's resolutions. But I guarantee everybody's New Year's resolutions, January 1st have all gone to crap. With the way things have gone here. Some people say, hey, can we have 2019 back? Or can we just fast forward to 2021? It's going to be a year. A year of change. A year of awakenings, I think is another way to look at things. A new year of opportunity, okay? Opportunity exists around us. You just got to know how to pivot. You've got to know how to take advantage of the opportunities. I know for some people. I was talking to a guy in the oil industry today. He's like, yeah, I think it'd be a little different here. We're on a project that's not shut down yet. But I'm learning and learning when I can remotely, so that when that does happen, because I know it's going to happen, I'm going to be ready for the other things in the next 45 to 60 days. So take advice. Take me out to a ball game. Take me out to the crowds. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. I don't care if I ever get back. Cause it's root, root, root for the home team. If they don't win, it's a shame. Cause it's one, two, three strikes you're out. At the old ball game. All right, everybody, go out, take some action. Put some goals up. Write down some things that you want to accomplish. And I apologize for my singing, but go out and do that, and we'll see you all at the top, everybody. Bye, Sam.