EP 650 - It’s Never Too Late To Be A Note Investor With Patrick Franz

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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 panties 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 Nodes, Scott Carson.

Hey, this is Patrick Franz, and I'm so happy to be on this episode of the Note Closer show today with Scott Carson. You know, today we share quite a bit this way and that. We go up, we go down, we go crooked, we go sideways. But the key is we share why note investing is important, why financial intelligence is important, how you can better your life financially and leave a better financial legacy.

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be with you here today. I've got a special guest on here today, somebody who's got over 20 years as an entrepreneur and has been turned all of his entrepreneurial attention, raising capital, doing amazing things to the note business and been doing it for a couple years now. And so I see him doing some things online and I've known him, we've got some similar connections and stuff like that. And I thought, let me have him.

Come on.

Let me have him.

Come on.

So I'm excited to have Patrick Franz on this episode of the nuclear show. What's going on? Patrick, good morning to you.

Hey, Scott, thanks. Good morning. Thanks for having me on your show. And yes, we have a sort of connection from way back because I'm a student of a student.

Yeah, no, exactly. We're talking. And we actually had a couple other folks on last week. We're talking about Desi Arnaz. Actually. Desi does such a great job. An ex realtor who's out in San Diego. And you call sunny Southern California home as well for you, don't you?

Yes, yes, absolutely. And yeah, like I said, you know, it's funny the way the note world works. It's a small world, but, like, I'm a student of a student. And then you had one of our students on your podcast just a couple weeks ago or a couple days ago or whatever it was. But it's really cool to see people succeeding in the notes space, that's for sure.

Yeah, that's the beauty that a lot of people talk about how they're, oh, you can't find any deals. There's too many note investors out there. And I have to just kind of chuckle at that. What that usually tells me when somebody says that, first off, there's no deals, they don't know how to market. And B, we as note investors are such a smaller minority when it comes to real estate investing compared to your fix and flip your landlords and all that stuff out there. And there's so much distressed debt out there. I just always find it kind of humorous. Do you ever find it kind of funny?

Yeah, I mean, it's with anything. It's like, why you or Desi or anybody who's a mentor in any space, not let alone notes, but it's why gurus, so to speak, are willing to give up all their information and tell people all their secrets. And people say, why would you do that? You know, the 8020 rule? Or it's even worse than that. But, you know, about 5% of people that learn about what we do will actually put in the work to do it because, well, as you know, you know, it's. People hear about, it's like a shiny object. People hear about notes and they go, my God. But it's not a get rich quick scheme. And it's not. And it's not easy. Right? People need to understand that it's hard work and, you know, it's the lesser of two evils. You're either gonna, you're either gonna work really, really hard for the rest of your life for a little bit of money, or you're gonna learn how you can get money working for you on your behalf. And there's a ton of ways people can do that. We know that. Right. But guys like you, maybe me, Desi, turned me onto it. But it's like I found Notes and I thought, well, Notes has really got all of the components that investors look for. I mean, I was used to the high risk, high reward world of venture capital for startup.com companies. I mean, this is where I come from. So it's like 5% of those companies actually succeeded, 95% of them went under, and all the investors lost all their money. I've seen people lose their butts in the stock market and that. And so all these stories of people succeeding in those avenues. Yes, but are there equally as many or more stories of people failing and losing money in all those avenues? So, you know, long story short, that's when we found Notes. And, you know, I gravitated towards them because of the, you know, all the factors that notes bring as an investment.

So, yeah, that's the beautiful thing is that when you think about notes in real estate, compared to the rest of the world. You're actually investing something tangible versus something that's a, a theory or an idea or hoping on the venture capital that's going to work out for you, right?

Yeah. It's not a pie in the sky dream. It's just numbers, you know, it's numbers and relationships. That's it. And if you have the numbers and you have the relationships, you can build a business out of it. Or, or you can just be a personal investor if that's all you want to do. You don't want to do any type of business in notes. You just want to make your money work for you. Well, with safety, cash flow, collateral, upside, I mean, all of these things that happen with note investing, it's like it becomes silly that it's almost why would you invest in anything else unless this runs out someday?

Yeah, and that's exactly right. We don't see debt investing running out in any fashion, especially in the residential side, especially what we had going on in 2020 and the amount of defaults and forbearance agreements. And so I really believe 2021 is going to be a very prosperous year for note investors if they know where to invest. What's your thoughts on that?

I always come up with this and I don't want anybody to seem like I'm being a wise guy or it's derogatory, but it's kind of like my statement I came up with. But here's the statement. The worst case scenarios for the borrowers usually become the best case scenarios for the lenders. We all know that because we've, or most people I grew up with. Right. We weren't taught financial intelligence in school and how to invest and how to grow money and all that. So we've all been on the borrower's side of the fence. And so we understand. We've always been on the borrower side of the fence. And so we've been afraid of repossession if we didn't make our car payment. We've been afraid of foreclosure if we didn't make our mortgage payment. We've been afraid of getting our credit bashed because we didn't pay our credit card bills. We've been afraid of all that our whole lives. Most people, unfortunately, that's how most people live. And so when you look at how we can form a passive income through note investing and you can get something to where you don't feel as if you're going to be losing your money. Right. You can protect yourself with due diligence in essence that if you're making the purchase right in the beginning, at least you can protect your losses. Protect your losses, be the bank, be on the lender side of things. And what I mean by that statement of course is that when you're the lender, unfortunately when bad scenarios happen like are happening now, right, with all the forbearances and all the people that can't pay their mortgage payments on time right now and all that horrible situation. So don't like to relish in the fact that that's great for us. But look, the fact is the worst positions for borrowers is the best positions for lenders. And it's always been that way. It's just again, we haven't been used to being in the bank.

Well and the nice thing is that's where we make the most amount of money as note investors actually working with the borrowers to kind of keep them their house. The biggest bang for the buck comes from us really keeping people in their house. It's not that the bank wants to take the property back because that's actually the non banks don't want to own property, they want to own cash flow. And it's the same mentality, I don't want to own real estate all across the country. Now I love owning performing notes or even non performing, we turn into performing. But banks aren't in the fix and flip business. They're not in the landlording business. They don't like that stuff. They want to be in the debt space. And that's really one of the easiest ways for us to make capital and make money fast is to work with the homeowners, get back on track, some down payment, getting back started and then moving down and kind of getting through that nightmare of an issue that allowed for the originating bank or the bank holding the debt to discount it so we could pick it up at a discount and then, you know, as we say, ride in on our white debt horse, the saving grace to help them out. You know what I mean?

It's the facts. If everybody saw that movie, the Big Short, it explains the market fallout, right? It's a great movie anyway. But see the Big Short, if you haven't seen it, but the market fallout, you know, when the market crashed in 2007 and 8 and why it happened and it was all because of the loans, it was all because of the debt industry and debt market, but you said it, we don't really want the house. It's better to work with the homeowner to keep them in the house if we can. That's what's cool about being a smaller note investor and not a big corporate bank. These folks are not just a number on a spreadsheet to us. We can kind of pay more individual attention to each note. We can do better workouts for people. So it's all about helping the homeowner. In the end, it's the best scenario. And you know that. We don't want to take the property over. Why do we know that? Because you had to see all of the biggest hedge funds and banks in the world in 2008 sell off big portions, if not all of their asset pools at pennies on the dollar. Because why? They had cash flow, performing assets. They owned the notes, they owned the paper. But you see, when 40 or 50 or 60% of your portfolio becomes non performing, people walk away literally from the physical real estate. Now it's yours. Well, look at you now. If you're a portfolio that had a million notes in it, now you have 680,000 houses that are vacant, that are dilapidating, that the weeds are growing, and now you're in possession of it. No, that's why it's like, no, that's a big scale. But we don't want the house, really. We don't want the house, really. I don't want to be a landlord right now. That's not my focus. I don't want to flip houses either. Like, we invest in notes nationwide. I'm not going to fly to North Carolina to get my tool belt on. So that's not the point. So like you said, if we could help the homeowners because we're not a big bank and they're not just a number on a spreadsheet and we can understand someone's story, we can work with them. There's so many options that if you wanted to be corny and say, right in on the white horse, but it's like, look, we can save people from foreclosure. We can save people from having their families out on the streets or going from living in a beautiful house into a little apartment or whatever it may be, that would be a detriment to their lives. We can help them work through it so they don't have to go through that.

So what made you dive into the notes space two and a half years ago? I mean, how did that work out for you, Patrick? How'd that come about?

Well, some people in the space know the story of me already, but I'm pretty much Desi's son in Law. So, in essence, I kind of was. I got a chance to hang out with Desi a lot, whether I liked it or not. But it's been a long time since that's gone down. But we took a liking to one another. I have an extensive background of, you know, and this is when I tell people, Scott, you know, it's like, don't compare your chapter one or your chapter five to someone else's chapter.

Exactly.

Yeah, we've heard this before, but it's like when somebody climbs into the note space, it seems like it's such a small world that there's a bump in the system. It's a new person came in, and it's like, oh. And it's like, look, just because somebody doesn't have 12 or 15 years of experience in the notes space doesn't mean they can't become very, very good at testing and notes quickly, because depending on their background. So, like, what I tell people is this. I'm like, I have 25 years of sales coaching. I have years and years and years of public speaking. I've already raised millions of dollars for companies. I see. That's my. I bring all this experience to the plate. And then someone taught me about note investing, the intricacies of notes and how it works, and that then I can take off and become me with notes. Right. And so whether you've been doing notes for a year and a half or three years or 10 years, we have to look up to the people that have been in the space 10 years. Because guess what, Scott? Is that who we learned from you? Eddie Speed, Donna Bauer, all these great people in the business. Listen, a lot of us wouldn't be in the space without these people, without you guys. And so look up. Look up to them. But if you're new to the space and you're growing and you're doing really well, don't get put down by the people that have been in this space looking down on you, too. Like, don't tread on my territory. It's like, look, we all should be working together. It's such a small space still that we should all be learning to work together and we should learn how to collaborate because more deals can be made and we could all make money together versus thinking that we have any type of opposition to each other.

I love that.

All relationships. And that's just the facts.

Well, I agree with that. That's why we've coined the term over the last few years with our help of Joel Markovitz, the term called coopetition we're all competitive, all working towards adding to our bottom line. But we all. I'm a big believer there's always more than enough to go around and cooperating, selling assets back and forth, working on deal flow, vendors to use attorneys, all that stuff is, can be very. And that's one of the things that I love and what I've kind of tailored my business. Originally when I got started was a book called what would Google Do? You know, you think about how Google shared their platform open to create applications and people to go to use so their platform got used. I've always been a big advocate of that. And like here, here's how you go find deals. You don't have to rely just on the person training. Here's how you go raise capital. You know, there's just, there's a lot of things that aren't being taught in the industry on a regular basis and I get very frustrated with that because like look, it's not that hard raising capital. If it's a number, it makes sense. It makes sense, right? It doesn't have to be difficult. If the deal makes sense, hey, jump in. It's just a different type of asset class. And yeah, there's plenty of ways to learn it. And these days, especially with the use of social media, other things, banks will sell one off deals, not maybe not the big top five or ten banks, but a lot of banks are selling smaller tranches, smaller pools. You don't need to have 2 million or 5 million in your bank account to go play, right? Yeah.

No, I mean when we looked at it, you've done this too, I know you have. But when we looked at it, we tried to figure out what are all the ways people could make money in notes. We classify and usually people start off as a broker. If you can collect enough money to become an investor, then you buy a note, you kind of get your feet wet there. If you buy notes and you get notes and you understand notes and then you run out of money, then you need to other people's money. So we call that a professional investor where you can help others invest in notes and work your portfolio that way and then you can become a dealer. We call it a dealer, right, A dealer where you're actually owning a large sum of notes in your portfolio and then helping facilitate purchasing and sales, maybe buying by the case and selling by the model that way. Buying the little tranches and then selling one offs. Right. And then you can go to a fund, you know, where you can try to graduate to be in the tippy top of the business and have a 20, 50, $100 million fund or whatever you want to do with it. But with all those avenues, anybody can get into notes. You don't really necessarily need to have your own money. You don't need to have huge goals to be a fund manager. If somebody just wants to better their 50k retirement, you know, somebody's got 50k in an IRA, it's earning 3%. What if they could get 8 or 10%? I mean, how would that change their retirement if they had 20 years left before they retired? Look at that compounding in an ira. And it's like, dude, you can either end up with 100 grand in your bank account or 700 grand in your bank account when you retire, what do you want? And it's just if notes could do that to change people's lives. We're helping the homeowners, we're helping the investors, we're helping our friends and family. At the same time, we get to help ourselves. That's what attracted me to Notes, because you don't have to step on anybody to get what you want. You're helping others get what they want, therefore getting what you want. That's how it should be.

I love that. And I agree 100% with that, Patrick. It's a beautiful thing. And of course, sometimes the bars aren't gonna play ball with you. You know, pay, you know, stay. You've gotta take the route. Cause you don't run a charity. We donate to charities, but we don't aren't running one on things like that. What in the different years of experience you have, I mean, you've got a wealth of background, wealth of knowledge and stuff like that. Somebody's listening here to the podcast, which they are, or watching the replay on YouTube or Facebook, stuff like that. What bit of advice would you give somebody out there who's looking at the note investing side? Maybe they don't have their own capital. We not talk about brokerage stuff like that. But because a lot of people come into the space, they've got some their own funds and they're scared to start raising capital. And you've raised millions of dollars for other investments and stuff like that. You've raised millions of dollars too, for your note business stuff. What bit of advice and counsel would you get somebody out there about raising capital for your note business?

I mean, look, first off, you want to be a professional first before you go and invite other people into the space. I mean, you got to know what you're talking about, you know, and that's. I digress from that a little bit, right? Where are you? Where are you in your learning process? I got lucky, right? I got lucky. Desi has 37 years of real estate investing experience, ran mortgage companies, flipped houses, owned 21 rental homes at a time and done all this stuff in his life. Got into notes seven and a half years ago, you know, and he's trained from all the best in the industry. So it's like, I'm lucky, guys. I got to be tootled by somebody that gave me 37 years of real estate investing knowledge along with seven and a half years of note investing knowledge and dumped it all on me at a one on one basis. I got lucky there and I didn't have to pay to get it to have it done. I got it for free. All that training, that's luck. So I was able to advance my knowledge base. Probably like I got 10 years of note investing experience in a year because every day with Desi Arnaz, I got lucky there. Not everybody has that unfair advantage. So first of all, digressing back to how long you've been in the space doesn't really matter. But how much have you learned? Okay, Whether it be by book and study, whether it be by other people's mistakes, because you can learn from other people's mistakes and not repeat them, or your own experiences. But have you really wrapped your mind around all that it takes to be a good note investor yourself? In that case, then you can feel confident to go and tell other people about it. If it changed your life for the better, it can change their life for the better. That's just the fact. So your story becomes the pitch. You're not selling, you're telling. Okay, so you're going to tell somebody your story. When I tell somebody my story of how I got into note investing, everybody who used to know me knows that I used to work 12 hour days, Monday through Saturday, and my phone, I'd be on my phone all day long because I had 25 and 30 sales representatives underneath me that I was the manager for. And I had to create a million dollars of sales a month for this company I worked for. And there was a lot of pressure. So I had a great job and I had a great life and I loved it. But I didn't have any time to spend the money that I was making. I was always at work. So when I found notes, that's my story, I tell them, look, I had a great six figure a year job that I was able to Quit when I got full time into note investing, and now I've got time to take my family to Disney World. Thank goodness. My daughter's 22 months old now. So it's like I get to actually spend time with my family. I get to play golf. When I want to play golf, I don't have to ask the boss permission. Okay, so that's what my story gets people into the notes space. That's how I attract capital. Maybe they want what you've got. Maybe they want free time. Maybe somebody wants to retire better. Maybe somebody wants to retire faster. Maybe somebody wants a yacht. Depends on what somebody else wants. But that's how you raise capital. That's how you attract capital. Can notes get someone else what they want? If you can answer that question and help them solve that issue and they get what they want, it's easy to raise the capital. That's pretty simple. So, I mean, that's how do you raise money. You start telling people your story about notes, your story that attracts people. It intrigues people trying to educate somebody on notes in a first conversation to see if they'll give you 50k to do a note. You're done. Stop it. And that's the problem, I think, with a lot of the amateur investors getting into the space that don't really have a good mentor to show them what to do or how to act. And it's like, man, relax a bit. You can't just go online and say notes and all of a sudden become successful. So I think getting a good mentor, having the knowledge base, having the comfort level, and being able to share your story with other people that may want to get into notes because they want something different and better for their lives, period. That's why if somebody wants something different, better for their life, and you can help facilitate that with note investing, it's pretty simple to attract capital. Is your heart in it for the right reason? Are you going out to get other people's money because you think you want to get rich off other people's money, or are you going out because you want to help other people get rich? That's the question. Are you inviting people into a gold mine or are you trying to sell somebody a used car? What approach do you have in the notes space, that's a big deal.

So I want to bring that up there because you said something along the way there that I think a lot of people dig into. So you were working 12 hours a day on the phone all the time. Can't imagine the fun that was because I'VE been there. I've been down that road before. When your phone is permanently attached or you have two phones that you've got to answer to, it's not a fun thing. So you started discovering us with Desi. What kind of plan did you make that? Did you say, okay, let me work on starting to buy part time to get to the point to replace my income here. What kind of planning did you put in place? Because as we, as is the new, you know, the new year right here for us, a lot of people are thinking, well, what am I going to do 20, 20, 21? And I'm a big proponent of planning. I'm sure you are. You've got to set a goal. You've got to put some things in place, because failing to plan is planning to fail, as they always say. What kind of plans did you put in place? And talk a little about that. Talk about transition. How many hours were you working on the part time on the note business and stuff like that till you were able to go full time?

Patrick well, when I give you, most people think this is wild, but if you see something really, really good and you know it's really, really good, and then you don't jump in with both feet and really commit, then that's your fault. Shame on you. And so what I did is I had purchased a home in 2010 in San Diego at the bottom of the market, and then it had some equity in that. So to be honest with you, Scott, people wouldn't believe this, but I put my entire life on the line. In the very beginning, in the very beginning, I learned a little bit. I studied from Desi for about six months to understand it and add it. I ended up doing my own house flip. Basically, I spent hands and knees and nails and did tile floors and replaced balconies and did all this stuff to up the value of my property. And literally, with a new baby, with a brand new newborn baby, sold my house, put a hundred percent of the money in notes. So my butt was all in, literally my chips. My life moved down to a different community and went 100% all in into notes. And you learn quick. You learn quick. When you do that, when you've got that kind of skin in the game, you have to learn pretty fast. So not only was it a good thing because I sped up my education level, but I had all my skin in the game. And here's my experiences already coming true because I bought like three notes, four notes. I'm already learning how to turn on performers. I'm learning how to collect the cash flow from performers and the whole nine, Right. I learned it all very, very quickly with my own money in the game. So those of the people watching this will understand, right? I had to learn quick, okay? So when that happens, you tend to learn. And I went all in. Now, when was I able to quit my job? Not. It's not because I bought three or four notes with my money and I'm churning my capital that does not afford me my lifestyle or the monthly income that I need. Right? But I'm able to take. And I was able to channel my skills with a good mentor. Okay, let me just set that straight. With a good mentor and good coaching, good ethical coaching, which is number one, I was able to use my talents from the past. My public speaking skills, my presentation skills, my closing skills, dealing with investors, knowing how to ask for money, knowing how to ask for the order, understanding IRAs and 401ks, understanding private placements, understanding how investments work. I had all of that priority. So for me, it was a simple transition for me to see that I could create enough of a business with notes with Desi, and we could create a little bit of a business together where I could at least supplement my income from the sales management job, at least where I didn't have to go to that office or work 12 hours a day. And that had to do with starting to attract other people's money. And let me tell you, when I put my money in, I had some quick successes. Thank God. Some people have gotten in the notes space, and the first couple of notes not been so great. Other people got in and had some home runs right away, and it's like, whoa. Right? So I had a couple of deals that I put some money into that went real well. Thank God. Right? Thank God. But there's my story. So now once I go to, like, anybody, right? You get excited. I mean, geez, we. Sometimes you go see a great movie and you're excited. You tell people you got to see that movie. So here's my livelihood. I invested and went all in and trusted in these notes. When I'm a new guy and I had a couple wins and it cured my nervousness about notes. It made me super ultra confident, and I understood how to do that. I've been through the process. So of course, what do I do? I go to, like, my friends and family, right? Sisters, moms, uncles, everybody. And I'm like, uncle John, you're not going to believe this, man. I got to tell you about. And it was just. I'M not trying. I wasn't trying to sell anybody any notes. I was excited to tell my story and that I had found notes and it was working and that my nervousness went away and I'm like, oh, it's working. Thank God I believe in it now. And because I had that experience level and been coached like crazy and knew all the intricacies, I was able to go tell my story. And when you start telling that kind of story to people that are making two and a half percent in an ira, they don't even know where it's invested. Okay, Those people, and they go, well, could I use my IRA money to do something like that? Well, yes, you can. Can you show me how to do that? Sure. Yes, I can. Let me show you. And it came from that piece of me to go out and tell other people that they could change their lives financially. I wasn't looking at anything for me. I could be a sales manager and make 10 or 15 grand a month, live just fine life here in San Diego, okay, Drive a BMW if I want. Big deal. But that's not the. The money's not the big deal. The money comes, right? Money's money. But seeing a bunch of people change their lives financially because you brought them something awesome is way cooler than any paycheck you can get. And so when I had that attitude and I started spreading the word, that's how I started attracting investors and investor partner. It's all friends and family first in the beginning. And once you grow, you know, once you start to grow and you're really good at it and people actually start to look up to you as a good coach, maybe you earn your wings there and you get those testimonials. Then you have people that are finding you, right? So people are finding Desi and I now organically, right? Like online, wherever we speak, at like noteworthy or YouTube channel or whatever. And then all of a sudden it just grows, man. All of a sudden now you have people that are not your friends and family and not in your crew, strangers that are reaching out to you. Can you help me change my life?

So coming back to the same. The question I asked you, though, I get that, get the journey and use that stuff, but our listeners out here are going to be curious when you've decided how long was it till you left your full time job back to that?

I get it.

It was a year. There we go. So that's what I'm trying to get at because it's. A lot of people are like, hey, they hate what they do out there right now and they get into investing, whether it's notes or fix and flip, stuff like that. And I tell people, like, listen, it is not a get rich quick. We all know that. You've mentioned that before. It takes time. It takes skill, planning time out there and working the numbers backwards. If you've got to replace 10 grand a month to replace your income, what's the average payment on a note? And dividing that backwards to figure out how many notes you've got to buy. And if you obviously don't have the capital yourself, if you do great. If you don't, then you got to do like you just said, you got to get the story out. What's your bit of advice out there? Because I love what you're doing online, sharing your story, talking about note, that's talking about the values of it and stuff like that. But there's a lot of people that are scared to share their story. You know what I mean? They're scared to get in front of the camera. And whether we're in notes or fix and flips or property, we're not really in the real estate business these days. More so we're more so in the media and the marketing business a lot of times. And I would be willing to bet you agree with that because that's helped you by embracing, it's helped you raise capital and close more deals and make a lot more income and help a lot more people. Right, Patrick?

Yeah. I mean, if no one knows who you are or what you do, how are you going to help anyone? And that's the facts. But there's ways around it these days. I mean, look, here's what I, what I hope people understand about the point I'm making about not comparing. You know, don't have comparitis.

Right?

Okay. Don't compare yourself to other people. You are who you are. If you're not good on camera, don't get on camera, okay? You're going to mess it up, okay. And you're going to not look good or whatever. It's true. Look, I hate to be hard. Some people are not cut out to be on camera, okay? And some people never will have the comfort level to get on camera. That's fine. Can they do a voiceover and have somebody do a doodly drawing and it explains exactly what they're going over so people get it. You don't have to be on camera. There's ways around stuff. Okay, here's the bottom line. Like I told people, if you were a hockey player, your Whole life growing up and you sat down next to a bar next to this guy and you said, hey, I know nothing about hockey. Can you inform me a little bit about it? And this guy's been playing hockey his whole life, since he was a kid. He's going to have so much comfort level talking about hockey because he's so experienced, he knows what he's talking about, that he's going to go yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, yada and talk your ear off. And any question you ask about hockey, he's going to have the answer. And it's easy. It's natural, right? You have to get your education and comfort level with note investing to that point first before you go trying to talk about it. And once you have your comfort level and education level to a certain point, then you can talk to anybody about it.

You know what, I'm actually going to argue with you on this one. I don't believe you need to have 10 years of experience or two years of experience to talk about what you're doing. I think what you said early on, yeah, you've got to get a bit comfort of the deal that you're working out and the deal that you're working. But if you wait to be an expert on everything, the A to Z aspect of it, I think you'll never get there. Because I think a lot of people, the most amount of growth we have as entrepreneurs is getting outside of our comfort zone. And I think you've got to, you know, you don't need to be. One of the biggest things I tell people these days is it's so much easier for video or email and stuff like that. But a lot of people won't do the simple things they need to do. And we know the 5% rule. We talked about that already. I believe it's a 5 to 95% rule. 95% of people would like to be educated, but they're not going to pull the trigger around. Think 5% will do. I'm a big believer the 5% that are doers are the ones that get outside their comfort zone. You know what I mean? And it's, you know, yes, you've got sales experience and years of stuff, but a lot of people don't have that. And we've seen it. If you just get out and share your journey, whether it's a camera selfie that you're doing a camera shaking on bad audio. I look back to some of my first videos I did years ago and I think that's the biggest thing is you just. I think you become across as more believable versus having such a polished video or a polished image because you're just pure. You're just sharing your story. You're getting the word out there and you know, you have to embrace the suck. You know what I mean?

We all suck. Yeah, we all suck. It's okay. We all suck. You're your own worst critic. I don't care. There you go. Listen, no one gives a crap about how you're. If your hair is perfect or anything else. I mean, look at me. Nothing is perfect. I was putting up this little decorative wall before we got recording and my square fell off. I said, look you there, pro, right? Pro stuff here. So it's like you will attract your tribe with your story. End of story. That's the fact. There's going to be a ton of people that would rather work with Desi because if anybody knows Desi, right, he looks different, he talks different, he has a different demeanor. There's a whole lot of people that, when they meet both Desi and I together, would rather work with desi.

100% normal. Yeah.

There's other people, when they meet us, they'd rather work with me. A hundred percent. It's. They gravitate towards you. We're not worried about the haters. We're going to attract a lot of them if we're out there doing the right thing. But we're not worried about the haters. We want to put our attention on the people that are in our tribe. The people that like your vibe. Right? Not to be corny, but that's the truth.

It is the truth. And with social media being like these days, and I love what you're doing. I love the videos, I love the flip charts you're doing, talking, breaking down the note stuff online, I absolutely love it. That's why I reached out to you to have you on here a few months ago, because I think that's. There's not enough of people doing that these days. There's not enough people sharing the journey and educating people via Facebook Live or YouTube videos and podcasts out there that need to be out there because we have such a growing market and I really believe it's up to us, really, as note investors. Whether you're buying onesie twosies here, you're buying 10 at a time or 20 or whatever, I really believe it's up to us to really change what happens this next year. And so I'll make a lot of good solutions out of a Lot of as are a lot of lemonade out, a lot of lemons. What's your thought on that, Patrick?

Yeah, of course. This is the time. This is the time. Like we said, the space is still small. There's room for people to grow. There's gonna be plenty of more inventory as we know, hitting the market. And there's always the key, I think, the understanding, financing, financial intelligence. That's what we're teaching people, right? On a big scale, it's financial intelligence that's the key. And notes just happen to be a great place to use that financial intelligence because notes are processed. But financial intelligence is what we're teaching people. We're just teaching people one of the bank's oldest games in the book, which is long term amortized loans that are collateralized by actual physical real estate. This is great, right? But it's financial intelligence we're trying to spread. And if people can get out of the 9 to 5 like I did, or 9 to 10 like I did, if you can get out of that, if you can get out of debt, if you can get out of a broke mindset, all these different things, it depends on who you are and what you want to change in your life. But notes can do it for you. It's just an investment vehicle. That's spectacular. That's all people are right now going off on bitcoin, right? Bitcoin's hitting all new time, highs and this and that and the other. And I'm going, go, go, go, go. And I have no money in it. I don't have any bitcoins. And I'm going, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, it's funny that I'm rooting it like it's a football team. I have no money in the game and I'm not on the field playing the football game. But I go, go Chargers or whatever, right? So I'm going, go bitcoin. But it's crazy if bitcoin took a dump and people put a bunch of money in there. That's the crazy part. Everybody likes to smile and ride the highs of stuff. Just like people rode the real estate market in 2005. Okay, smile and ride the highs. But you know what? If you're not hedging yourself against the lows, if you're not protecting your capital against downturns in either real estate, bitcoin or whatever market. See, notes can do that.

That's the truth. That's solely the truth. And I love, I totally agree that unfortunately we live in such a financially uneducated society out there that people don't know the opportunities that are available to them without researching, spending time getting to know the ins and outs of that specific asset class, Bitcoin notes, whatever it might be. And that's one of the beautiful things that I love. What you're doing is sharing that knowledge on a regular basis and sharing it with students and sharing it with investors and helping make America great. One defaulted borrower at a time, right?

Well, you know, Scott, listen. Somebody told me a long time ago, and I always take it to heart, I was a young kid, and I was fascinated by the wealth that this person had. You know, they had a bunch of Ducatis and race boats, and they were just like, whoa, this guy's got a lot of wealth. I said, man, I really want to be like you someday. You know, I was a young kid, teenager, I really want to be like you someday. And he just looked at me and said, kid, when you really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really want to be success. And so the lesson out there to everybody is if you really want to understand notes, do it. Get off your butt. Find a mentor. Start reading books, do whatever. Contact a guy like me on the telephone. Ask questions. There's people like us willing to help you try to change your life. But are you willing to get off your butt and put in the work? Learn something new. Step outside your comfort zone. Like you said, Scott, step outside your comfort zone. Learn something new. Be brave and change your life for the better. If you're willing to do all that, there's guys like us, right, Scott, that'll help you.

Exactly. We're here to help out because it's truly a win win. We can't buy it all, ladies and gentlemen. We need others to go out there, and you mentioned it before, the Sam's model. We like to buy in bulk. If you want to buy ones off, that's great. We'll buy your ones off from us and go from there. So, Patrick, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your insight, your wealth of knowledge. What's the best way for people to connect with you?

For those that are interested, my website is thenotementor.com and schedule an appointment with me. If you'd like to talk, if you have any questions or anything like that, there's a little calendar link and you can schedule a time in my calendar to speak. We have our coaching group too, Scott. You know that we do that. But if anybody takes a look at our coaching group, great it's on my website, but not the point of the matter for today. But here's the key. What I want people to get out of today. There are people like us willing to help you. Notes have really changed some of our lives for the better. That's our real story. Some of us have been in it longer than others. Some of us have more experience than others. The bottom line is, if you want to get good at this, you attach yourself to a good ethical mentor, you learn as much as you possibly can, as quick as you possibly can, and you change your life for the better. That's just it. That's just it. So welcome to reach out to me if anybody has any questions about note investing. I'll help you with whatever you need.

Awesome. Good stuff. All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's gonna wrap it up for this episode of the Nook Closures show. Go out, take some action. Learn as best you can. Follow in the footsteps of people that have gone down that path in front of you. They're willing to share their counsel, their lessons, their lumps. And go out and take some action, everybody. So you learn more from pulling that trigger in that first deal than you will than anything else, ladies and gentlemen. So go out, take action, and we'll see at the top by.