Five Actions Every Investor Must Take in 2023

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 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. All right everybody. Hey. Welcome to Night in America. We are excited to be back again for the 12th year now. Hard to believe we've been doing this for a long time. As always, you can always catch the replays to all of our Paste Night in America and this current episode will be available on any place that you listen to podcasts by midnight tonight. And just just honored we had our actually best month download month actually this last month of December for our Night in America podcast. So thank you for listening, thank you for sharing and we're honored the guys for you to join us in if you're watching this, hey great. Watch this live on Zoom. Join us in Zoom Great or any other process. But you can always go and watch the replays to all the past videos by going to Weclose Notes TV. That's our YouTube channel. Make sure you subscribe while you're there. But do you have a couple events I want to let you guys know about? We have our Note weekend, our one day note training taking place January 21st. It's a Saturday. Get signed up for that@noteweekend.com and then our first three day workshop of 2023 is will be the last weekend of January 27th through the 29th and you get signed up at Note Buying for Dummies.com we were running a nice special which ended at New Year's but we are running a good special still 23 off of your ticket up to the day of the class because it is 2023 so you get signed up for that Note buying for dummies.com the discount is automatically taken care of so you don't have to worry about entering a discount code or anything. So it's automatically applied at checkout. Anyway, you want to do something a little bit different. Looking to really dive into Note investing in 2023 then you probably want to check out our WC membership. It's $97 a month. It gets you access to all of our online classes, access to workshops, access to our special one day classes, access to tape our WCN membership yet list of 195 notes I uploaded today for them to take a look at already had starting to get bids in on those 195 assets. First Liens non performing all across the country proposed to take a look at it. So lots of great stuff. It is worth a whole lot more than 97amonth. If I can't make you or save you 97amonth, I'm doing something wrong. So you can get signed up for that@noteumbrella.com it does include a ticket to Note Weekend also includes a ticket to the virtual workshop for you plus other classes we host throughout the year. So anyway, let's get to the meat and potatoes. Tonight's call, five things every investor must do in 23 and by investor, I'm talking about somebody who's active, somebody who's looking for more deals, looking to close more deals, looking to make more money, but also ultimately looking to raise more capital as well too. Can I get a show of hands A yes. If you fall into one of those three categories, looking to make more money, looking at close more deals and find more deals and also to raise more capital, everybody should be raising their hand. Thanks Jim. Thanks. For those that are online, yes, I am monitoring the the YouTube comments as we do this. So and that's a dumb question, but everybody should be raising their hands when it comes to those three questions. We're all, that's what we're looking for. That's why we're investor, right? Well, the way of investing or the way of acting, the way of doing the things that we used to do has changed. It's not the same way of going out, knocking on doors, not going out and sending thousands of postcards or yellow letters, putting tons of band signs. Don't be wrong. Those things still work. But you have to work smarter, not hard. Especially with the cost of things going with inflation as recession looming, you got to work smarter than just harder. Because if you just work harder, yes, you could do it, but you're not going to out work the smarter people. And that's what these five things that my peers have talked to me about, things I've been looking at. These are the things that we're doing on a day in, day out basis to make sure that 2023 is more fruitful than last year. If you're doing the same things you were doing in 2022, you can expect the same results. This is why you've got to tweak what you're doing in your business practices to dive in and be more successful in 23. And I think everybody wants to be more successful in 2023. But the first, first five things very simple. Number five, something you guys have probably seen a trend on if you've been on any social media platform or any platform that is, is you have to market more with video. You've got to start sharing on video more often now. It doesn't always have to be you on the screen but sharing more with video. And you've seen that, we've seen that. With an increase across the board with every social media platform we really taking a major focus for video. That's why we're on here, that's why we're live streaming to YouTube. That's why you see all these live stream videos videos everywhere. But guess what? It's easier than ever before if you're dealing with a, you got a smartphone, guess what? You have everything you need in your hand to put this to work. Ladies and gentlemen. Every channel is embracing video. Twitter is allowing to put up to a minute long video. Tick tock is doing 10 minutes. LinkedIn will let you do a 10 minute video. Facebook will let you do longer. You can upload it directly from your phone. I mean there's so many ways that you upload a video or share a link videos where it is at and you have to stop worrying about what you look like and just share your knowledge, share your content. You know like I did a video Christmas Eve, a walkthrough of a property of a mobile home in Kennedy, Texas. I did. It took me three and a half minutes to walk around. It took longer for it upload because the crappy WI fi in Kennedy, Texas. But I got 1700 hits views on one of the videos, another 1700 and a second video, a shorter video about that asset. I mean that blew me away. Look at what people are doing. I'm not talking about you've got a dance around a lingerie or dance around in bathing suits. That's, I mean I, that's full of that stuff on TikTok. But there's other places out there to share amazing thing and you can share short videos doing really well on YouTube. It's all doing good on Tick Tock, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Today's video alone took me one take a little practice. It's not perfect. No editing of the video, one minute long video and I uploaded it to all the spots in a matter of five minutes. It's working for me to market. It's already led to people responding, commenting, reaching out to me, just touching base there. And they're consuming more video than ever before. So if you're not providing any type of video. A great video walkthrough of your rehabs before and after photos, just talking about you driving by an acid. You're your marketing tactics. Happy holidays. You can literally record with your smartphone. When you got an Android or an iPhone, it doesn't matter. Let's do it in a quiet space and then hit the upload key. Type in a short title, little description, some tags or whatever and just share it. You're going to get better as you do more of this. If you don't, you're getting left behind. Okay. If you're going to be losing out to the people that are actually sharing more video, sharing more content. Why? Because they're building rapport faster. They're casting that net to a bigger audience. That's how they're finding more deals, raising more capital and hopefully making more money. And for those of you that raised your hands and answered yes to any of those three questions, if not all of them, it's time to start doing it. There's no excuses anymore not to expect what you want. I mean not. No excuses not to accept that, that you will want is that you want to fail. Basically, if you don't do this, you are just saying, yeah, I give up. Look, you can't. There's no excuses for that anymore. It's pretty simple. You're not gonna have to be gq. You worry about your makeup, be done, your hair being perfect. Sometimes, unless it's not perfect, it adds to video gold. So share it more. That's number one thing. Share a video once a week on something you're working on past deal. Deal. You're making an offer on drive by walking. Those things do really, really well in the real estate investing space. Okay, just your. What, what did you work on this week? What you accomplished this week? Your big goals, what's your resolutions? Happy holidays, going to meet a group, what you learned to meet a group. That kind of stuff. Okay, number four, something I just mentioned. We have to get out and get networking more. So you can't stay behind your computer, hide because of COVID Hide behind a mask anymore. Yes, I know we've kind of seasoned ourselves not to leave the sanctity of our home or office. I get that. Oh my God. I don't want to go out in public. I get it. Scary. There are a lot of crazy people out there. I get it. But we've got to get networking. And the reason I bring this up now is the first quarter is essential because more people are going to different meetup groups and everybody's working towards their New Year's goals. Right? That's why the gyms are all full of people tonight. Well, they're probably not going to be full of people by, you know, the 4th or 5th of January because it'd be too sore from working out crazy the first day. But networking events, meetup groups, those are the great places to go to them. If you're a member of your local real estate investing club, go to it. If you're not, go to it anyway. Visit, go to your networking events, join a BNI group, or go visit BNI groups in your area. All your meetup groups, real estate clubs, they're all gonna be the busiest in January and February than they are wrestling because people are actually showing up and learning, starting to find a network with things. It's a great way for you to build your network, Grow your network. And you do it one night a week or at least one night a month at a minimum. Get out and network with people. Grow your network. You never know who you're going to run into if you don't know where to look. Go to Eventbrite and look for events in your area. Go to meetup.com, go to events.com or go to bni.com and take a look at what's in your area that would fall into your interest. Doesn't always have to be real estate. Maybe it's a business networking, maybe it's an entrepreneur's network, maybe it's a Facebook group, Maybe it's a LinkedIn group. If you're in a rural area, all right, if you still can't get out because you're scared of people, then at least leverage LinkedIn. Start connecting with people on LinkedIn. Use Octopus CRM IO. That's what I use on a daily basis. Connect with at least 50 to 100 new people each day. It's a start. You've got to expand your network because, guys, people don't know what you your power is. They don't know your superpower, what your focus is. The more people, more of you that share your story and your focus and what you're focused on will lead to more people responding, more people connecting, and more people thinking of you when they come across something that's in your wheelhouse. Okay? And honestly, people do want to connect with action takers, doers, not Debbie Downers, not wallflowers. If you're sharing and taking action, sharing the good, the bad, the ugly, guess what? That builds rapport. And people will want and are attracted to that. They want to Be around people that are taking action, not people that aren't. Especially right now to share what your focus is. Share what you're going to it's never been easier before because we've been sharing about Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's. Share what your focus. Share what your New Year's goals are. Share what your deal is. Past case studies, before and ever. Seriously, get it out and share it to your network. Get out and network with people. And look, if you can't find a group that meets your needs, start one. Start a group on meetup.com I think it's 35 bucks a year for something like that. Start a group, get out network or look at old groups that haven't met in a while and breathe some life into them. That's an easy thing to do on Meetup or LinkedIn, stuff like that. There's a lot of groups that don't have people really doing anything. There's a couple groups here in Austin that hadn't had a live meeting in two years that I rejuvenated in November and December. So that's one of the great things you can do. Look at your groups, look in your area and get the hell out of your house and go network at least one night a month. Put on some clean clothes, take a shower, brush your hair, brush your teeth, take some business cards and go out and network with people. But most importantly, besides just networking and showing up, make sure you collect cards and then you follow up with people. It's one of the most important things is this. The second half is the follow up and adding people, your database, just going and attending and grabbing some business cards is great, but it's not going to be helpful unless you do something else. And that leads to number three is market smarter. Yes, video is important, networking is important. But learn to market like it's 2023, not like it's 1993. Okay? Marketing is not rocket science, everybody. You don't have to be an expert, you don't have to be Einstein to get things done. And just realize you're going to market where your audience is at. Well, your audience is primarily going to be on LinkedIn and Twitter. If that's your only social platforms, I wouldn't spend some time on Twitter. Maybe some of you guys are going to share on Nextdoor. Maybe some of you will share in Craigslist because that's around. Maybe somebody will share on Facebook because you're part of some groups. But you got to market where your audience is and you got to share on a consistent basis and build your market counter. Maybe sharing one video a week, or maybe you're sharing an article once a week. You just have to share on a regular basis and stay consistent with it. Okay, now I know you're busy throughout the day, your week, your job, your boss is a pain in the ass. Ask you to come in on the weekend if you can. When you don't have a lot of time during the week because of the 9 to 5. Use buffer.com, use hootsuite, use social media jukebox. You can help automate your posts. Or sit down one day and figure out what you're going to post for five days. Pictures of property, pictures of a tape. Pull your articles, read about real estate and just start sharing those on a regular basis. It will go a long way. Whatever interests you is probably going to be some interest to your audience, to your network. So sharing articles, videos, interest is a very valuable thing. And another thing about marketing is just not posting social, it's actually emailing your audience. So get you a CRM tool like keep somebody that you can email to your database and see who opens, see what emails are good. And you gotta send an email out to your network at least once a week. Not once a month, not once in a blue moon, once a week. You'd be surprised. We find that 80% of folks out there never email to their audience not even once a month, which is sad. Once a week is the bare minimum. Because what guess, what if you don't? Somebody else is going to guess where their money, guess where their deal is going to go. It's going to be going to the person, the guy or the gal that's actually marketing, sharing them what they're doing. Okay, so you can share what you're doing to get people to work with you or not and let somebody else steal your thunder. The more you share, the faster you will grow, the more rapport you'll build, the more capital you raise and stuff like that. More market equals more deals, which equals more money. And that's what comes down. Market smarter, not harder. Marketing is not just sending out 5,000 postcards or sending out 5,000 door knockers. It's marketing where people are telling people what you're looking for. I'm looking for foreclosures, I'm looking for fix and flips. I'm looking for subject to deals, looking for non performing notes. We've seen our students do a tremendous job sharing what their focus and what they're looking for on LinkedIn and other places. And guess what it leads to. People sending them tapes, send them deals, send them capital. Work smarter, not harder, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, number two, pretty simple. Get you a coach. Every successful person that I know, CEO, entrepreneur, sports figure, heck, you can even say politician. Want to guess what they have? Everyone gets a coach of some sort and you aren't the expert, I'll tell you that now. Yes, you may be the coach in one niche, but if you're trying to do something different, you probably need to get a coach to help you out. I've got multiple coaches. Coaches for my podcast, coaching for my public speaking, coaching for my marketing. I've had coaches for my note business. We all need people to get us to the next level. And one coach that takes you to one spot may not be the right coach to take you to the next spot. All right, so find you somebody who is doing and where you want to be. When I was starting off as an investor, I had somebody taught me a little bit about wholesaling. When I got beyond wholesaling, they taught me the fix and flip business. When I got beyond flicks and flip, they got me. I got in the note business. I figured things out properly. The biggest mistakes I've made is when I tried to figure it out myself. And it cost me a whole lot more than in time and money than if I'd hired a coach from the get go. And actually having a coach will push you beyond your comfort levels. It'll also increase the speed of your learning curve because they'll be teaching you things that you may not have known about or things that you would miss and cause you to step into potholes. And you don't want that. I've never regretted paying for coaching because it's always helped me get to where I want to go a whole lot faster because I had an expert, I had a guide, somebody who could correct my course along the way and keep me from doing stupid things and being my safety net. So get you coach. Whatever you're focused on, it's worth it. And there's a variety of different things out there. Yes, YouTube University is great. Yes, there's plenty of free information out there podcast. But it's not the same as being able to pick up the phone and call somebody or sit down on a zoom call or meet them and look them in the eye and ask them some questions. It'll also a good coach will get you through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, of real estate investing. My coaches, and more so than anything else, have earned their money when something has gone wrong. What do I do? How do I turn this lemon into lemonade? And that's one of the most important things. If you were by yourself, you may not know what the hell to do when things turn the tide. And as we see, there's a lot of upheaval, a lot of uncertainty out there in the world these days. You need somebody who's been through the ropes and can teach you what to do and what to avoid, how to steer your course, steer your ship through from the sea, from the turbulent seas into calm seas. And a. A good sailor was never made in calm water. Okay. You can either try and figure it out and waste time and money or get a coach and reach your goals a whole lot faster. That's really what it comes out to. If you want to focus on subject to deals, get your subject to go. You want to focus on notes, hey, I'm your guy. If you want to focus on raising capital, get you somebody who's a great capital raiser who can walk you through that. Want to do a great podcast? I got a great podcast schedule. Want to market. Hey, got great folks out there for you. You aren't the expert, even though you think you're badass. And that's. Sometimes our ego gets us making mistakes that we shouldn't be making because we were just too stubborn. When you think about it, some of your best athletes out there, they've all got coaches and when they screwed up is when they didn't have a coach being a part of their life to direct them on the way. You know, there's an article, somebody was watching something about Tiger woods and I looked on guys made billions of dollars and happy is right. Not a really good ethical guy. Unhappy, divorced, deal with drugs and, you know, alcohol. When he had his coaches, his dad, his dad really helped guide him, keep him through that. When he had his, his first couple swing coaches when he is caddy, you know, fluff, you know, those were great guys to help him out things when he's thought he could do it himself is when he's running the most amount of issues. So keep that in mind, ladies and gentlemen. Get your coach to reach your goals. And you also, if you're going to hire a coach, be coachable. Listen to what they say. They're not there for their own ego. They're there to help you. If you, if you are going to coach, it's just all about them. That's not the right coach. You need to find a coach who's there to help you on your track. We'll listen to where you're at, we'll see where you're at and actually give you the God's honest truth. You may not like it, but if they're telling you to do something, it's probably because you need to do it. All right? It's not this he and a haw. It's not like going to the doctor and doctor telling hey, you need to do something or you're going to die and say, well I don't want to do that. No. If you went to the doctor and said that you, they gave you six weeks to live or six months or six years, but you had to do specific things, what would you do? You'd listen to your, your doctor, listen to your coaches, be coachable, number one, make more offers. I am always surprised when I talk to investors. When I get people that schedule phone calls with me, I see when I ask them what their experiences background is, oh yeah, I did a deal three years ago or I paid 50 grand or 100 grand to be part of a platinum group or a high end coaching. That's great. How many offers you've made and they haven't made any offers in a year. Oh, that kills me. Number one thing that I am so proud of my students is that they're making offers. If they're not making offers, they're getting their attitude. Because that's the way that you get more deals done is make more offers. And that's the question I want to ask you. If you look at what you did last year, how many offers did you make in 20, 22 versus accepted. And if you didn't have many offers accepted last year because guess what, you didn't make as many offers as you should. So you have to look at this year and look at last year's number. Say hey, how am I going to get my numbers to exponentially grow? Well, if you want to close twice the amount of deals last year, guess what, you gotta make twice the amount of the offers or more. And honestly, if you're getting started off, you really need to multiply that number by 10. You close on one deal. Look at the number of offers. The, the old saying, if you made 20 offers and REOs or distressed properties, you get probably one accepted. It's about right as a note investor. If you get 10 offers accepted, you're probably gonna end up closing on one at some point. So keep that in mind. The only way to close more deals is to make more offers. The only way to get better at what you do is to make those offers, get stuff accepted. It will force you to market your deals. Will also help you raise private capital more. Because now you're under the gun. Most people don't want to get up talk about raising deals or they just want to look at deals. They won't do any of the marketing until they're behind the eight ball and then it's almost too late unless you can got 30 days or more to close. That gives you a little bit time to market. But the best thing to do is like we talked about beforehand, start the marketing side first. That way when you're making offers, you've got that stuff set ready to rock and roll. And that's the thing I always ask you. You're going to be around for a long time. Would you rather accomplish your goals in one year, ten years or never? Well, that's a stupid question. We want to accomplish our goals in one year, not 10 years. So if you want to do that, okay, is make 10 times amount more offers. And somebody asks you how do you figure out how to find a deal before I can make an offer Then you've been to our classes. You've got to market, reach out to link. If you're looking for note deals, reach out on LinkedIn to asset managers. Go to your local rea clubs, your networking events and ask people there. That's what it comes after. You want to find deals, you got to start marketing, you got to start talking to people. That's what it comes down to. Make more than anything else and listen to people that tell you where to find deals. Call banks, jump on LinkedIn, use a foreclosure list. There's so many different ways to start looking at stuff and evaluating deals and start working through skills. If you're on this call, you're smart enough to figure out if a deal what's the price point? Are you buying it? $0.70 of the dollar less is a good ROI. If you get re performing, they don't get reproforming. Can you foreclose? You get understand if it's a deal by working through due diligence on more offers and understanding as you go through that process. That's what it comes down to more than anything else is the more deals that you get, the more offers that you make, more knowledge it will be and thing. If you make offers and they come back, you know, track Your numbers, make 10 offers and 10 are accepted. Reach out to the you know who is a seller. Hey, can you tell me was my offer high or low or where did it come in at that will tell you if you're bidding too low or bidding too high. And the ones that you do get accepted, you may even end up killing because you find out maybe you offer too much. This is a process of working through deals. There is no perfect deal. If you're waiting for the perfect deal, go do something, keep working at your job, making minimum wage or whatever you're making and stay unhappy. You have to change your activity and your actions to have different results. And when we live in the United States like we had, I don't care what political party, what you call yourself, he, she, they, whatever, don't care what color of skin, what race you are. We are still in the best country for entrepreneurs and capitalism. So get out network. I don't care if you work day, night, midnight. There are networking events, there's places to go with, there's plenty of information out there. If you ever take one of our workshops, we show you how to find the deals, we show you how to break down the deals. You just have to work through the stuff and be coachable, okay? And that's the thing make working through your first couple deals, you're going to learn more about due diligence, more about marketing you ever would than book learning. And you can't wait for everything to be perfect. You can't worry about knowing everything from A to Z before you pull the trigger because you'll never get around to pulling the trigger, okay? That's why experience is greater than book learning. Get you a coach, use video to share what you're focused on. Get out, start networking, market smarter and make more offers. And that's what it comes down to, guys, is those five things. As everybody I've talked to people closing hundreds of deals a year to people raising millions of dollars a capital year. What are they doing? They're using video to share their message more. They're networking like crazy, getting out and meeting as many people as they can and expanding. If they're in a meeting, a group that doesn't meet their needs, they're going out and finding higher end groups, capital raising groups mastermind, starting their own mastermind, stuff like that market, smarter market, like the 21st century, not the 19th century, okay? Get a coach, be coachable, hire a coach if you need to. And then guess what? That coach is gonna make you force to make more offers. So any questions, comments, concerns? I am monitoring the YouTube chat if you have a question on there for those that are watching on there, those are the five things. Once again, recap. Use video in your marketing. You have your smartphone. You have everything you need right here to take a video. Talk about your focus on sharing everywhere. Okay? If you don't think you do, it's probably because you aren't doing a good job. It's probably more so you and what you put out and the energy you put out. Have a positive image. Have a positive attitude. Look at what you're sharing. Would you, would you invest with you? Would you work with you? If not, then you need to change your image. Number four, what's that? Network. Three. Market smarter. Use the tools out there to auto post or pre post. Number two, get you a coach to help you get over the hump. And number one, make more offers. There's only other questions, comments or concerns. Guys and gals, I want to say thank you for listening here Once again. Our next note weekend class or one day class is the third Saturday of January. Our next three day workshop is January 27th 28th 29th and you can find all that information at we close notes.com or you need some help? Get signed up for our note umbrella WCN membership at $97 a month. That's really a great spot for you guys to get started. If you need a coach to help you out with note investing because we have coaching calls every Monday, get access to all of our online workshops, save you some money and be able to reach out to me anytime that you have assets. All right? Or questions. All right everybody, that will wrap it up. Have a great evening. Once again, Happy New Year's to each and every one of you. Love you all. Nothing but love and respect for each and everybody. I know you can accomplish your goals and dreams of 2023 if you take action and you don't take no for an answer. Keep at it. Keep rocking, keep rolling and we'll see you all at the top. Everybody by.