Get What You Want by Growing Your Network with Scott Carson

Hey, it's Shirley. Thank you for joining me on the get what you want podcast, where getting what you want isn't always what you think it is. My wish for you is that this show will create an awareness within yourself of what you really want and the possibility of getting it. Let's go create. My guest today is Scott Carson. Scott is the host of the popular Note Closer show podcast and a nationally syndicated radio host. He has been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002. Focused on the niche of distressed mortgage and no industry since 2008. He is a highly sought after speaker and podcast guest with hundreds of speaking appearances and conferences at conferences, real estate clubs and networking events across the country. He's also been featured in many media outlets, including, but not limited to Investors Business Daily, the Wall Street Journal, and inc dot com. He sends his free time attending sporting events, concerts, and traveling to new places. And he lives in Austin, Texas. Hey, Scott.

What is going on? Shirley, I'm honored to be here today. Congrats on all the success you're having with get what you want.

Thank you. I'm honored that you would be here with me because I know you are really highly sought after. So I'm excited to have you. And I love that you love sporting events, I think. Well, we met at the new media summit and it was a podcast event, but I think that we kind of talked and bonded over baseball. So that was. That was kind of fun to be able to do that.

That's exactly what we did. I mean, we were talking about podcasts and I asked what you did. You're talking about baseball and Arizona and spring training, and I was like, oh, I just came off, you know, hitting 22 to 30 baseball parks in a year two years ago, and just a huge baseball fan. So, yeah, definitely. Let's knock it out of the park today, though.

Let's do it. Okay, so I want you to tell me a little bit, like, we're in the first quarter of the year and there's been a lot of talk about, you know, businesses and entrepreneurs. And I want you to tell me just like a little bit about who you are in the business world, what you do and some of the things that you're having coming up and, you know, just talk about you for a little bit.

Sure. I think that's a hard thing for a lot of people, but not too bad. I can get through it.

Awesome. Awesome.

So I've been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002. Previous mortgage banker, Austin, Texas. Home. What I've done is and made a name for myself for the last decade plus years now is I'm kind of known across country as the note guy. What does that mean? I buy and sell distressed debt. I buy mortgages from banks and investment companies and our goal is we buy this debt and then become the bank. And then our goal since we buy mostly non performing mortgages where people are behind on their mortgage payments, is we try to rehab the borrower, we try to keep them in their home through loan modifications or payment plans or we let them walk or we'll do a short sale. We want the borrower to work with us as best we can. Unfortunately, about half the time we still end up having to foreclose because they've either walked away or won't work with us. But one of just a handful of people that have been teaching that niche of real estate investing for the last decade. I was the educator of the year a few years back. And I think one of the biggest things is I think in business things are constantly changing trends. We've been in a great run up for the last couple years. There's talk about a recession around the thing. We're all entrepreneurs of some sort. We're all pitching something. Whether we work for somebody, we work for ourselves. And so I've always taken the approach that with the way the media today and social media and all this other stuff that we're really all in the media business and you have to kind of keep that in mind when promoting yourself. And you're doing, I mean we were just talking about beforehand, you're doing a lot of stuff with, you know, with the media and articles and newspaper and video and stuff like that out there as well. So I've done a really good job of leveraging my marketing expertise and media prowess with what we do to really promote our little small niche inside the ever big world of real estate investing. So you have a company called weclosenotes.com, we bought billions of dollars in debt. What I'm most proud of is the fact that we've helped a lot of our students really do some great things. We have an educational plan, but we've had so many students go out and change their lives, change lives of borrowers out there and really start to leave a legacy and build kind of a movement out there. Hence why I'm known across the country as the note guy for the most part.

I love it. I love it. So obviously we're on the get what you want podcast and so like I love the Idea of talking about business. I'm an entrepreneur as well, and sometimes I tell people, I don't know, just follow some other path. Like, I do not recommend this because it is hard and it is, you know, an interesting life because we're not the people creating the path. I mean, we are the ones creating the path. We're not just following some book on how to do something. We're like, we're the writer, the creator, the follower, the student, all of it. And so I know there are a lot of people out there that want to start businesses and they have obstacles on, you know, getting it started. And so I thought, I love how you just have kind of, well, I'm going to start this and this is going to go great and I'm going to start this and this is going to go great. And I know, I know you've also had some fails in business. And so maybe you talk a little bit about that, like, give some tips on how we can. Those people that are listening, that are who really would love to kind of step out of the box and start something, but they have a fear. They don't know where to start.

Yeah, I'm glad to do that. And I'll share with one of my biggest failures the last few years. Five years ago, I was traveling the country as an entrepreneur, speaking in a lot of investment clubs. I spent like 36 weeks on the road traveling nonstop.

Wow.

I was divorced, so I could get away with that. No kids, you know, living like a rock star, having a lot of fun. But it gets old. You know, that's not a fun thing. And I wanted to do something different. And it know my VP of operations, who's my significant other now, Stephanie, she was like, you're going to kill yourself being this crazy man. Traveling all the place. You're not sleeping. You can do something more. And so we were like, well, let's do something different because we've been putting on hotel workshops. And so let's put on something different. Let's talk about leaving a legacy. So we came up with this idea to put this event on called build your own build you'd legacy summit, Houston, Texas. We dropped $15,000 on postcards. We reserved a hotel room. We had a great all star lineup. We expected to have like 300 people tickets there. And we sold seven tickets.

Oh, wow.

And this is. I've never been more stressed out. I thought I was gonna have a heart attack because I was so stressed out. So I finally said, screw it. Enough is enough. We're canceling this event. And so I called all the speakers and said, listen, I'm sorry, we're canceling this event. Nobody's showing up. Enjoy the weekend. And they're like, oh, that's great. I said, let me make it up to you. Let me have you on a webinar. Because I've been doing webinars just like this, like we're doing for years, as a way to communicate with my tribe or my audience or how I've built my tribe, I guess you could say, through just doing webinars starting off with four people, up to 400 people in a given time.

That's awesome.

And the speakers were all like, oh, no problem. That's great. Yeah, have me on a webinar. I gotta travel. That'd be perfect. And so I can remember writing that check to the hotel, which was not fun. $25,000 check that the guy got nothing out of being depressed and driving from Austin to Dallas to go to another event. And Stephanie's like, well, why don't you just do an online. You know, why don't you just do a webinar series or do something like that? You do them already. Why not? I was like, oh, no, because everybody wants to show up in person. Everyone wants to network.

No, not anymore, Right?

And I was like, well, let's give it a try. So we did it. We're doing workshops. And so let's do one workshop where it's just online. We had 75 people sign up for it. Our overhead obviously went way out the way below because we only paid a thousand bucks because we did it remote with zoom like this. And everybody just raved about it. We had speakers that would have come on if they were at a hotel. They came on remotely. They liked it because they get to stay home. The vendors liked it because they didn't have to pay $5,000 to ship stuff back and forth. And so we found something that we. Yeah. And we're like, okay, I think we're onto something. So we canceled all our live hotel events, all our trains. We went to online stuff, and it really worked out. And I tell entrepreneurs that oftentimes we have a passion, something we're passionate about, a subject, book, relationships, woo woo. Whatever it might be. Or real estate. We may not be initially the expert, but that doesn't mean you can't bring experts together. And if you're around experts, you become looked at as an expert because we're the average of the five people that we hang out the most with. This quote kind of has popped up in my mind a lot lately. Charlie Tremendous Jones, who's a motivational speaker and life coach for a lot of people, used to say, in five years, you're going to be the same person, except for the people that you meet and the books that you read. So go out and buy. Get what you want from your man book right now. All right.

Yes, please.

So that's always stuck with me. I said, okay, let's do something different. You know, instead of doing an online summit or an online convention, because our industry is small, we only have, like two or three conventions, let's do our own event, but we'll do it online. That way people don't have to travel. It'll be more affordable in cost. We won't have the overhead. And we did one summit, and it went, you know, it was a more of a convention versus just me. And we had 350 paid attendees. Wow. The next time we did it, six months later, we had over a thousand. Yeah. And we'd have 30 speakers coming in to tune in for an hour and record it. And it became so easy to do. That's what we've done. And as we've done well and built a name there, I wanted to do something very similar in the podcasting industry because we started this podcast three years ago, and we traveled to different events, and we didn't see really anything that was online that wasn't just focused on, like, the main coordinator being like a pitch fest just for that coordinator or the person putting on the event. So we're putting on our own podcast and event where it's going to be for those speakers and for the audience. I'm the most. I'm the least important guy at our event. But we're really, really excited about that.

While you say that, but I'm sure nobody else thinks that, so.

Nobody else thinks that. But that's what I booked mine. My speaking spot at the worst possible time. I just changed it for another, bigger speaker to come in to take my spot. I'm at the worst possible time, which I don't care because everybody knows me. It's going to be on there. I'm learning. And that's what I want to tell people here today is it's gotten so much easier with technology and booking. I mean, I was just talking to a podcaster right before we jumped on here, and he's here in Austin, Texas, and he's an indie film guy, and he's like, well, I would really love to do a summit, but I don't know where to begin, it must be chaotic. I'm like, well, now if you can use Zoom, use Calendly or some sort of meeting thing, you can book your speakers and have. The deliverable side of things is a lot easier. You don't have to have a $10,000 budget with PSAV from the hotel. You're not gonna pay $96 for a gallon of crappy coffee that each hotel is charging for your guests. You can do it from your home, your audience. Heck, even the pool, if you want.

I love it. Yeah. You and I were talking about that before is, you know, like, for me, starting a podcast, I thought it was gonna be easy at first, and then I realized all the stuff to do, but once you get that stuff down and you just do it like, I'm. I'm a beer. Like I always talk about. I'm a beer. You know, I. I haven't been a doer my whole life, and. But it's been great to learn how to just do things. And once you learn how to do it, you can set up something like this so simply. And I do know that trying to get a thousand people in a room versus online is a completely different game. For sure.

Yeah. I mean, there's a big event that we go to in San Diego every year called Traffic and Conversion Summit, and it's largest North American marketing convention in the country. And they'll have 6,000, 8,000. I think they're gonna have 10,000 people this year. They're taking over the San Diego Convention Center.

Wow.

And the lady that puts it on is a friend of mine, Deanna Rogers, and she was actually my first ever real estate assistant over a decade ago, and I've talked with her about that, and there's sponsors and booths, and it's such a huge thing, and it can be very complicated, and you gotta be very careful. You can lose your shirt or backside if you don't know what you're doing. She just does a tremendous job for them. I'm like, well, I'd rather do an event where it cost me a thousand bucks and I can still do tickets and sponsorships and make it easier for me without the overhead for everybody. And it may be a smaller event, but it's growing, and people really like that. As long as you really. As long as you've got a good heart and you're delivering great content to people and you're getting the word out. I mean, we all have a message. We've all, you know, we've all got a book inside of us. You know, one of my favorite speakers and writers is Seth Godin, and one of the books that I think everybody should raise called Tribes. I mean, everybody's looking for leader, and we all should be that voice that's leading people down that road in some sort of fashion. And that's, you know, that's why an honor to be on your show. Get what you want. Hey, just either start talking about it and start networking with people. What you want is your one relationship, one conversation from exponentially growing your income, your influence, or helping you get what you want more than anything else.

I agree. I met you at a networking event. You and I have kept in touch. I feel like a lot of people kind of live in this box and they really don't know how to just step outside and do something uncomfortable. You know, I've always been one to step into some uncomfortable zone, but this definitely was a huge thing for me. And so we've talked about this online and your podcast events. And let's talk a little bit, like, about real estate, because I feel like I can cover a bunch of different subjects with you today. So I'd love to talk about, like. So I have a niece who just started in real estate. In fact, she just helped us get a home. And someone going into something like that, that's pretty scary, right? You take your license and you're. You're ready to go, and there's. You are competing against 10, 20. I don't even know. Like, I think there's a real estate agent on three or four on every street in Arizona anyway. It's just crazy here. So what is something that, like, maybe you could do it online? Like you say, what is something that even possibly in the podcast world or in the online summit world or whatever? Do you have any advice you could give for someone like that is just starting out as a real estate agent that wants to set theirselves above the other hundred thousand that are in the same city.

Yeah, so that's the thing. We have that here in Austin, too. Like when at the peak over a decade ago, we had 11,000 agents. And then when everything was hitting the fan in 2010, there's like half that number. And we've seen, you know, you can't overturn a rock without uncovering two agents here, too, locally. So what I would tell somebody who is interested in real estate, you know, what are they wanting to do? They want to be an agent or they want to be an investor? Do they want to, you know, do the Fix or Flop or the Joanna Gaines kind of thing. What do you ultimately, what's your motivation for it? Because to be in real estate, you don't have to be an agent. Yeah, I'm not a licensed agent. I'm not even a licensed mortgage broker. There's a lot of places you can tap in for great content. YouTube, there's so many videos on training and podcasts. I mean, real estate is a big niche out there. But the best way for you to figure out is there's usually. My gosh, especially in Phoenix. Phoenix is one of the best real estate investing clubs in the country. There's about 15,000 members of that it used to be. Anyway, I spoke there years ago. Go to meetup.com and type in real estate and look for investment clubs in your neck of the woods. You know, that's a free source, doesn't cost you anything. Oftentimes these clubs will let you come once or twice and they do a different topic every month. And a lot of them will have different interest groups. Some people that want to deal with landlords of being renters or some people that want to do quick flips. There's networking events and I mean all sorts of educational stuff out there for if you want to be a realtor as well. But if you really want to set yourself apart from everybody, it comes down to doing 5% more each day. You don't have to do a lot extra, but do 5% more each day. The best agents that I know, if they're making dialing for dollars, is there when everybody's running home, they're waiting around and doing five more phone calls.

I love that.

Or they're going out and networking. They're getting and going to other networking events in the area, or they're going out and door knocking in an area that they want to target as being an expert at. So they're going out and literally knocking on doors, leaving cards, delivering newsletters on the neighborhoods that they're wanting to be an expert in. You know, they're prospecting in multitudes of ways. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't have patience for marketing. And you have to realize that 80% of sales are made after the fifth contact. So if you're emailing people, you're really only going to have about a 2% close ratio the first time you email somebody into your database. I mean, let alone you're only going to get about a 20% open rate even if you have a database.

Right.

You've got to keep that in mind. Instead of doing like one thing once a month, maybe do it once a week, because that'll speed up your success ratios to five weeks versus five months. I mean, I know a lot of agents can't go five months without a closing. You know what I mean?

Yeah. So it's really just that, like, doing again, it's like the extra doing.

Yeah, you know, just get on, do a little bit extra get up and do you mean the beautiful thing with our smartphones these days is that people can go live. You could stand in front of a house listing, talk about the listing. You do a virtual walkthrough when a lot of people do. One of the things that I did, I had an agent that I partnered with years ago in Austin. We get a lot of California people moving here on a basis. So what we would do, and this still would work, is go find the oldest agents at your brokerage. Okay, Go find the oldest agents at your brokerage. And then. Because they're gonna be the least expertise when it comes to marketing.

All right.

So what we did is we found all the Betty Blue hairs here in Austin. We went out with a little flip camera, you know, little flip phones that they had, and we did a virtual walkthrough outside. We talked about the house. We uploaded that video to YouTube. We. And then since we had so many people were moving here from California, we went to Craigslist in San Francisco, Louisiana. San Diego, Orange county, and we posted, hey, here's a property for sale if you're looking to Upgrade, you know, three bedroom, four bath, 3,500 square foot for a third of what it's in California. Contact me now if you're looking to move to Austin. And that resulted in almost one new closing every month. Because we use Craigslist, we use YouTube. Those videos stayed up and worked as 24 hour, seven day a week advertising for her. So people would see a video and then reach out to her. Hey, I'd like something similar to that. So she built this huge database of California and Arizona and Nevada people moving to Austin from just going out and using somebody else's listing.

That's such a great idea.

And so these people would contact her and she would become their buyer's rep, you know, helping them buy a house. And then she would just go to the person that she took the video, who was a seller, the seller's rep. And they could. She'd make her 3% and not have to do a lot of work besides going out, spend an afternoon just marketing to the people in that price range in other areas. Are you feeling stuck in your relationship do you feel you need more? Whether it be more time, attention, security, gifts, intimacy or companionship, your partner is likely experiencing something similar. Yet both of you are not sure how to fix it. In Shirley Baldwin's best selling book, get what yout Want from youm Man, She Will show youw how to Get all of this and more. Get what yout Want from youm man is available nationwide through all major bookstores, Amazon.com and through her website, www.getwhatyouwantguru.com.

That'S awesome. I am certain that I have plenty of real estate agents or want to be real estate agents listening to this. So that's such great. That's. And you know, it's with anything. It's not just with real estate. I think the lives are great. That's something that I need to do more of. I have a Show coming up February 13th. We're doing a. It's actually a live show, but I'm doing it with one of the hosts of a morning show that I did here and she's a comedian. So we have a club and we're doing this whole Valentine's kind of couple singles. It's called the 2020 Vision of Love Tour. And we're doing our first show at this comedy club.

Is that with Danielle Williams?

Yes, it's with Daniel Williams.

Oh my gosh, that's so awesome.

Yeah, so she's awesome and I don't even know what I'm doing. I've never done it before. But she's like, oh yeah, you're just all you're going to be there to do is answer questions and solve people's issues. And so. But it's kind of that same thing. It's like she was just telling me the other night, you need to do lives. We need to get to the club, we need to do some lives there. And I think with any business, anything that you have, hop on and do Facebook lives, Instagram lives, I'm not as good at this. And so now after the show I have to go do it because I'm promoting it with you. So shoot.

Here's what I had a friend who here in Austin, we have 6th street, okay, big bar scene, live music scene. And their lowest time of performance is basically from like 4, you know, 5 o' clock when they open to 7, 8 o' clock at night. So what she did, she found a bar called Cuba Libre. It's no longer open, but a nice bar had nice. So she turned it into Monday Martinis and Manicures.

Awesome.

So she went out and went to her nail salon and got the nail salon to sponsor. So they brought out the booths or the chairs. And then she made admission, the cost of a pedicure plus a drink at the bar. And then it was a networking meeting. And she would have like 40 or 50 spots, was a limited thing. It would sell out every week. And then of course the people stay around and drink more and she would get a cut off of that or whatever they did with this stuff. But it was a win, win across the board that, that she had going for. Golly, I think it was almost a year. And she stopped doing it because she got so much business out of it. Doing some things like that.

That's so exciting. I love this because we're kind of covering different ideas and I think that each idea can go with any business, with anything. So entrepreneurs out there, hopefully they're listening into this.

Yeah, just set yourself apart. I mean, if you have something fun like baseball. You know, we've toyed with the idea of getting back on the road a little bit more this year and going around to different baseball parks and doing a live podcast for the note closure show at the ballpark or outside the ballpark.

Yeah, I need to join you on that one.

Definitely. Trust me. Yes. Especially now that Bum Gardner's playing in Arizona.

You gotta come to Arizona for sure.

Oh, yeah, exactly. I mean, Chase Field's a great place to watch a game too. This is not a 120 degrees outside. They got the roof closed.

But, well, and if we want to talk about like baseball players, you know, I watch these guys work and work and work to get to where they are. Right. That was my job. Still is my job. And a lot of. In some fields, as I coach players to be able to handle the obstacles and, and what they need to get through to be in that MLB place. And one of the things I hear all the time is moxie. Like, that's kind of our like baseball word, moxie that a player has to have that. And that is that hustle, hustle on the field, hustle off the field. You know, the firm handshake, the yes or no, sir. Just all the different things that it takes to set themselves apart. Because there are a lot of really good players out there, Right. That will never see MLB Field. And there, there are a lot of them that are better than the guys that are playing right now. But. But they had to set themselves apart. And so I think in anything that we do, we have to set ourselves apart or, you know, we're not going to be seen. We're not going to be. We're not going to be the one that just is on top of the other a hundred thousand people.

So it's such a truth. It's. I call it like the running on the ground ball play. You know, you think about so many ground balls and you think about who just happened recently. Was it last season to Acuna, the rookie for the Braves who didn't run out, you know, a ground ball in a playoff game and he got benched immediately.

Yeah.

So many of us out there, we're hitting ground balls and we just have to make the routine play we gotta run through to get to there. And what's gonna happen? An overthrow or somebody's not gonna show up.

Right.

And opportunities will show up like that. Some people just give up before they ever take action. And that's why I always make the comment, if we had to learn how to walk as adults, we'd all be in wheelchairs.

For sure. Oh my gosh. Yeah. If we could have the energy and the free mindset that children have, life would be a little different, right?

Exactly. Nobody tells them no. I mean, they're strapping on cardboard wings and jumping off the rooftops out there. You know, sometimes we as entrepreneurs might. Well, we don't want to break a leg. But still though, sometimes we need to do some silly things like that just to get noticed, to do something a little bit differently. I mean, we were doing an event one time in Las Vegas at an event and a guy wanted. I was working with this. This goes, this goes back a couple years ago. This is 2013, 14, with 800 people. Like we're in Vegas and these people are gonna be cooped up inside the Tropicana for three days. So I went out and hired two Las Vegas showgirls with the big, you know, the big, the boa things, the headdresses and the fancy thing. And I got an Elvis impersonator to come in. And for 1500 bucks, for three hours, I had these showgirls there take pictures with everybody. I mean, they were wearing thongs, they were dressed appropriately, but still beautiful women. Elvis sang three songs to the crowd. The crowd was like, what the hell they don't expect. But the end, they all appreciate because now they had a souvenir. Now they had a photo with Elvis or a photo with two really nice professional looking Vegas showgirls versus the people out on in front of the Hollywood Casino. You know what I mean?

Right? Yeah. Just something I know, like At New Media Summit. None of us left out of there. You know, you're there the whole time. And that is a. I love it. I love. We did some dancing and had some entertainment that was fun. But yeah, I do. I love just any little thing that you can do to set yourself up a little bit higher than. So on top of all of this, like, if I was to ask you what one thing. So we've covered a lot of different subjects and kind of been all over the place, but really touching on some ideas for people to really get something different or start setting something. If you could think of one thing, one word of advice that any listener that's hearing this today could start with today. Like, what would that be? One thing. If you are a listener, you. Whether you're in your business already or you're wanting to start one, what would be your word of advice to something that's applicable that they could actually start physically doing today?

So networking. I mean, and it's. You don't. And some people are like, well, I live remotely. I don't have a big network. A big stuff. Jump on LinkedIn. LinkedIn and just jump on there. The beautiful thing about LinkedIn is you can find just about anybody. I mean.

Oh, yeah.

And fill out your full profile. Put a good photo, a relevant new photo on there, but just go on there. So, like, if you're a. Let's just, like, let's do something. Let's pick out somebody. I'm on LinkedIn right now here. Let's say give me a job title and we'll pick a weird city or something like that. Give me a job title. Give me somebody title.

Well, let's just do real estate. Real estate in Indiana or I don't know.

So we'll type in Realtor in Indianapolis.

Mm.

All right, so if we type in Realtor in Indianapolis, that's gonna pull up companies it's running. There'll be a lot there.

This makes me want to look on mine too. Cause I have such a huge network.

So right now it shows 6400 results for realtors in Indianapolis. Okay. So start connecting with them. Start reaching out. Hey, I'm a new Realtor in Indianapolis. I'm looking to be an agent. Or you could type in if you wanted to find clients, maybe you want to deal with real estate investors, real estate as potential clients for real estate investor Indianapolis. Because other people investors are going to be doing and buying and selling. So now there's 2034 results for real estate investors in Indianapolis. And you could connect with them all, you could send them a message and.

You can go even smaller.

Yes.

So I love it. I agree. Network is huge. It's everything. And for me, I feel like I wouldn't have anything that I have right now if it wasn't for my network. I haven't even touched into my baseball network. And, you know, I probably have a really good 50,000 person following where I can reach out and for just about anything.

Right.

You know, and I'm always there for them too, and so they know that. But I think it's super important. I love that.

I really love that, you know, and just provide value. I mean, it's okay to ask for things like, oh, hey, I've got it, you know, but so many people come across like, pitch, pitch, pitch right off the bat.

Right.

Just add value. Hey, I'm, you know, I'm in the local area. If you ever need comps pulled as an investor, which is a big thing, or if you're ever looking for a good vendor, a good roofer, a good inspection company or a good title company, you know, that's the beautiful thing that I love about what you're doing than others out there. It's like, hey, I've got a great network. Hey, leverage my network. If you need somebody that's good, reach out to me. I may have somebody I can refer to you. And then it's a true win win, where your person that's reaching out to you is excited because you've got a resource. But then your referral network is excited because now they're getting you referring them business. And it's a win for both parts. And that's how a network could become strong, is by people really providing content. And then after you've done that for a couple times, then it's okay, hey, I'm looking for something, or hey, here's what I'm doing this quarter or this month, or hey, I've got a goal for the new year. Can anybody help me out? Like example, like one of the things we put out. I was on 100 podcasts plus podcasts last year, and I put out a goal at the beginning of 2019 that I wanted to be on 100. Well, I ended up at 110 podcasts last year.

Yeah. Wow.

This year I want to be on 125. And I mentioned that on one posting somewhere and I had people start referring me. I've had six referrals today alone in the last 24 hours. People like, hey, we'd love to have you on the Podcast love to help you get closer to your goal. So don't be afraid to share. It's the same thing like with weight loss or people wanting to get fit. Share that with your audience. Have a great goal. Share it. And you'd be surprised that your network that loves you will often come to your aid or help you accomplish it a whole lot faster than you think you might be able to get it done.

Yeah, I think I've hooked up several people in the last month, and I think three of them are writing books with my publisher. And, like, I love that. Well, I love people. That's just kind of my. Who I am. I love people I love and like, you and I connected through one little thing. And we've, you know, I just sent your link to your event coming up that we're going to talk about, too, to a couple people. And I think that when you have a network and everyone's working together and you're, like you said, you're offering value, they see your value and they're sending it back at you. And I think I've interviewed maybe three people out of my 20. People that I've interviewed for my podcast so far have even been people that I know. Like, I haven't even tapped into my own personal network yet. It's all been just, you know, people referring to other people. And I love it. I just. I love the business of networking. It's just such a great. I mean, it's everything. So thank you for that. That's great information. So I ask every person that I interview, if you had one regret, what would it be? Man, you can only pick one regret.

What would it be? Wow. One regret. I'm a big believer that we're where we're at today because of all the decisions we made along the way. It's nobody else's fault, but regrets. One regret today. My goodness.

Or if you could choose something that you would do differently.

So maybe here's what I would say. Something I could do differently. Going back, I would have probably bought more when everything was hitting the fan. I mean, 2008 was rough for a lot of people. It was rough for me as well. With the downturn. I probably would have bought more assets at the time when I had a lot of opportunities to buy cheaper real estate at that point. And I was nervous because I had gone through a rough time and I didn't reach out to my network to raise capital. At points, I was probably that a little bit. Probably. I hate to say this, but it's sad because I probably wouldn't gotten married right out of college. Yeah, we were married for seven years, college sweethearts, but probably shouldn't have gotten married right out of college. Should have let it slide a little bit longer and gone from there. I think the sign, when you're taking a nap before you get married and she's having a stress attack and barely gets through the vows, that's probably a sign from God that you probably shouldn't have gotten.

We never see those signs until afterwards.

Exactly. Exactly. Well, you know, it is what it is.

Yeah.

You know, we are. I'm a stronger person for going through that. I mean, I've been, as I say, divorced for over a decade now. Steph and I aren't married. We're happy as we joke about. But congratulations to you. You just got married, what, over a year?

Yeah, it's been over a year.

Yeah.

Great. I figured it out. It's great.

That's right. We all have to have our start, definitely.

Right? Not out or not right out of college.

So we all got to have our starter weddings.

Yeah, right. Oh my gosh. That's a whole nother show we might need to do. Yeah. But it's funny because I asked this question a lot and it seems like everyone, they can kind of find something, but really we're all who we are today, right from what we went through. So it's almost like I don't know that I want to do it all over again because it helped me to learn where I am today.

So that's the truth. That is the truth. We learn more from our mistakes and our victories all the time.

Okay, so tell me about your event that's coming up like it's in two weeks, right?

Three weeks actually.

Three weeks?

Yeah, three plus weeks. It's called the Mass Media Summit, MassMediaSummit Live, or Mass Media Podcast Summit. It's a three day, actually, kinda three and a half day. We're gonna do something cool on the Thursday, but it's a three day live online podcasting summit where we brought in 20 plus experts on different ways of marketing and monetizing and growing your podcast or your business too. We got a lot the topics are going to cover. We'll work for just about any business too out there. Just some really great speakers who all have a big heart and want to help other entrepreneurs and podcasters out there. We'll be doing it live via Zoom. We're going to be doing a special thing on the Thursday before anybody who's assigned who signs up for a ticket ends up getting a 10 minute pitch spot to pitch their podcast. So if you're a podcaster and looking to pitch your podcast to other podcasters out there, we'll give you a 10 minute spot for those that are signed up. And we've got different ticket levels from.

That's huge too, by the way.

Yeah.

I mean, being able to pitch. I've done it. It's great. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's what we thought. We'd give it. Instead of just doing a link or a quick pitch to be on a podcast, let's talk. Have people talk about their shows, you know, and that's the whole idea for this event. Make it a great networking event on the front end. People get a chance to learn a little about those that are there who are going through things. And we've got a whole kind of ramp thing. Once we get done with the event, we're going to turn it into a podcast. A month down the road, we're going to live stream it. I'm going to transcribe the full event and turn into its own ebook for tips and suggestions and things like that. So I'm pretty stoked about it. You know, I've been toying with the idea of putting a podcasting event together for honestly, six months. I was going to do it at the end of last year and then getting around to do it, I was going to do it in December, delayed it. Finally Christmas Eve, I'm like, I just need to go ahead and do this. So Christmas Eve, I decided we're gonna do it. I had the website up, the lead page up on the 27th. We're set for the 24th. And we've got over 100 signups right now. We've got everybody scheduled. The schedule's complete. You can find out more information at massmediasummit Live. And if you use the code, here's what you're gonna like. You use the code, Shirley will give you a 50% off all ticket prices.

Wow. Does that include me too?

I will comp you in. How's that sound?

That's awesome. I'm going to put this link on my page because I do think this is like what you and I talked about today is like a hundredth of what's going to happen on that weekend. And can you tell me the exact dates again?

Yes. It is January 24, 25 and 26. So it's a Friday, Saturday, Sunday in January of this year. Special half day on the 23rd. You can't make it all. Don't worry about it, we'll record it. Record each session and put it up on YouTube later on. But it's literally, we're gonna take the live stream, we're gonna take the audio, we're gonna take the written word, we're gonna do a lot of social media sharing. I mean, we've got experts, some of the best experts in monetizing your lists or using LinkedIn or how to avoid pod fade or podcast production or how to pivot your podcast or using chatbots to grow your business in Facebook, YouTube, self publishing, man, we just got. I'm just so honored. We just set such a great list. How to use gamification in your business and your podcast to grow your audience. We got the hall of Famer, Dave Jackson from the podcast hall of fame and the school of podcasting. And our keynote on the Saturday night there. He's always got some amazing stuff to go along there. How to use LinkedIn in your podcast. I'll be talking about that. But we've just got a rock star from branding to ending, just really excited about it.

That is exciting. Okay, well, that's going to be on my page, attached to this conversation of ours and it'll be on my website, which is www.getwhatyouantguru.com. and I think this is going to be great. I know some of your speakers and it just looks like an amazing event. So I can't wait to be a part of it. And thanks so much for being here. This has been a fun conversation and I can't wait to get to be on your show in a couple weeks.

I can't wait for it either. I think you're booked, aren't you?

I am, I think two weeks from now. So I'm excited.

I'm excited about that, too. We're talking baseball and getting what you want.

Yeah, I can't wait. All right. You're awesome, Scott. Thanks so much.

You too. Sure. Hey, guys and gals out there, do Shirley a favor. If you love what she's doing, go on over to itunes, hit the subscribe button and leave her a Rockstar five star review. She's done a great job. We know you'll love it. So go show her a little bit of love back.

You're the best. Thanks.

Thanks.

Thanks so much for listening to the get what you want podcast. If you loved it, please subscribe, share it with others and leave me a review on Apple Podcast. You can also visit me on my website@www.getwhatyouwantguru.com. would love to hear from you. Now go create.