How Important Is Your Faith as an Entrepreneur?

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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 Real estate investors, this is Scott Carson. I'm known across the country as the Note Guy and I've been an active note investor focused primarily on the niche of non performing notes, distressed mortgage notes on residential commercial properties for almost 20 years now. My company is we close notes.com and I know there's a lot of different things when it comes to the note world. Are you buying performing notes? Are you buying owner finance notes? Are you buying institutional debt? Like I would focus on Are you buying first seconds contract for each There's a lot of questions and it can be very confusing about what you can or cannot do. So one of the great things that we've hosted for the last couple of years that we do on just about a regular monthly basis is we host our one day class called Note Weekend. If you go to noteweekend.com you can register for our free three and a half hour class. We'll talk to you and share with you how you find fun and flip non performing notes. And yes, you can buy non performing notes from banks, hedge funds and a variety of different hard money lenders out there for your own portfolio. No, you don't have to have millions of dollars to dive into the non performing note game. We've got students that have bought plenty of deals with 2530 grand getting their ball rolling using their self directed IRA who are tired of dealing with toilets, tennis trash desks, tired of battling contractors and GCs to get properties rehabbed. We all know the market is changing and while it may not be like 2008, 9 and 10 again, it we do see a lot of distressed debt out there on both the residential and the commercial side. So if you're thinking about diving into the note game, becoming a note investor, a lean lord as you'd like to say, versus the landlord. Or you just want to figure out what it is about the sexy side of real estate in the note space. Well, check it out. Noteweekend.com doesn't cost you anything. We host it live usually the first or second Saturday of each month. You can go today. Register at the website noteweeking.com Register for the next live class we host. You'll get sent A replay to the previous class so you can start learning about the note business today. No questions asked, no credit card needed. This is a great way for you to dip your toes in the water and see if it's warm because I guarantee going through Art three one day class. You want to dive into the deep end and become a note investor. So check it out noteweekend.com you can also go to our website. We close notes.com check out our podcast. Check out our YouTube number one YouTube channel. We are here to help support you. Whether you're experienced investor or you're brand new investing, Note weekend is a great place for you to get the ball rolling. People often say we cover more in our three hour class than most people cover in their three day class. So check it out. Love to have you be part of our note family but get signed up today@noteweekend.com thanks and have a great day. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody. Hey, welcome to this episode of the Note Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson Excited to be here today and I have to take a second and first of all say, continue to say thank you for helping us stay and be the number one podcast, the number one YouTube channel and the number one source for education when it comes to note investing. So thank you so much for you guys that listening and share our message. We are here to continue to deliver for you and I really do appreciate all those that make book times on my schedule or shoot a message to me or whatever asking for advice or counsel. Nobody wants advice. We want counsel. And always appreciate the kind words that everybody says. That being said, I was, I've been kind of floored the last couple of days because you know how LinkedIn likes to alert you if you've got a birthday. We all get bombarded with those birthday requests. But I've been bombarded with the anniversary, 15 year anniversary of me basically starting we closed notes and being around WCN for 15 years and I was really kind of, wow, time flies when you're having fun, I guess you can say. But it really dawned on me that this week, in the later part of last week was my 20 year anniversary of being an entrepreneur. That's right. 20 years as an entrepreneur. 20 years of my income being solely reliant on my activities. And that really kind of hit me. That hit me more so than the 15 years at WCN. And I think back to that time, you know, I was the number one banker for chasing an area I put my notice in. My two week notice lets me leaving in most sales positions, especially banking, if you were going to be leaving, they escort you from the building immediately. Well, they were like, can you please stay and fill your full two weeks? I'm like, I'd be glad to. I mean we were understaffed and is that valuable to the bank here? And it was nice. I was like, yeah, I mean I'm glad to help. I mean I knew most my clients anyway because we were so, so good at that. And I think back to that. Where would I be today if I'd stayed? What would I have missed out on if I, you know, hadn't gone the entrepreneur route? If I stayed at Chickpea Morgan Chase, I probably would have moved up. They were already looking to move me into either a business banker, branch managership, maybe a district manager is probably where I'd be at. I've got some friends are still on the banking side and they're like, you know, vice president in charge of a bank and they're making, you know, they're making decent money. Six figures, you know, that first year I left banking I made six figures pretty easy for a couple years in the mortgage business and then also in the real estate side of things. I had a couple down years obviously, but I, I've accomplished so, so much. That just crazy of the things that I've been able to do and the people I've helped and the people I've met, amazing people, mentors, people that were I never thought I would meet and have a chance that they're in my phone, I can communicate with them. The amazing places I've traveled here, not only in the United States, but world. I have to give a big shout out and a big thanks to staff for 12 years being, being with me and, and dealing with all my crazy for the past 12 years. And that's not always been ups. There's been some down years there and some backups, stuff like that. But I wouldn't be where I'm at today without her. The last 12 years. But somebody asked me my secret as an entrepreneur and there is no secret. I think you have to have a work ethic. But work ethic isn't just enough. I mean many people that work for companies have a great work ethic, right? Work ethic is. While it may not be common like common sense is these days or you know, the lack of common sense out there, it seems in the world work ethic is still a four letter word for a lot of people. People don't like to work, but I think it's, it's honestly, it's my faith and I don't talk about faith very much here. I mean I talk about one's faith in oneself. And I gotta give big shout out to my buddy Will Rodriguez at Crow Conversations. He launched a new podcast to talk about his faith, which is great and 24, 000 views and stuff like that. I was like, that's awesome, congratulations. But I think faith, everybody can do well in a good time, right? Everybody does well, things are going well, keep things get rock and rolling. It's what happens when you get in those little spots, those bad times when the world seems against you, when deals don't close, when you're tight on capital, those dark hours, you know, and I've had a few of those. I'm not going to lie here and say everything is rosy, everything is Instagram amazing. That's not the case. But my faith in myself, which comes from my faith in God, I don't talk about this a lot was instilled in me at a very early age. My dad and my mom, and my mom to this day is one of the most is literally an angel on earth walking. Okay. I've yeah, I really enjoyed spending a week with her up and traveling here a couple weeks ago. And I'm always in awe of how amazing she is. I'll give you a bit of example. I saw my mom, basically there was seven of us in the household. Me, my younger sister Tracy, my younger brother Mike. And then my parents adopted my two, my eldest half brothers, two kids. And so there were seven of us in the household and we, my dad and mom were entrepreneurs. My dad owned a hardware store. I get a lot of that entrepreneurship bug from them, but I saw how they struggled. Good feast or famine, good ups and downs, stuff like that. I think a lot of people, like, I don't want to go that route. It was entrepreneurship, you know. But I saw how hard my parents worked and how much they believed that things would work itself out. And there was always enough on the table. There was always amazing. I'm very blessed at how I was raised. I have a very great, great parents. Married for 35 years and then my mom is still around, thank goodness, and just an absolutely amazing woman. And seeing her as I was going through high school and seeing her going back to college after 20 years out to get become a nurse to take care of his kids because my dad's health was going bad. He was diabetic and couldn't see. He was dealing with eye surgeries and seeing my mom work her ass off. Going to school at nights and then coming home and going to the hardware store, then going to school and then working nights as a nurse and to make sure everything was going well. And I think about that, and I think the faith and seeing that things will. Things will provide, and that comes from, from that. I mean, we weren't the richest of kids. Many of my friends, when they were off going to the beach or having fun, I was mowing yards and working on the weekends or working the hardware store, doing odd jobs around town to make money. And that work ethic built the faith that, hey, I can rely on myself. I know what I'm capable of, that I'm pretty confident. And if I have faith, as long as I have faith myself, there's nothing that can stop me. We were watching a show last night, actually, we were watching that Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders series on Netflix. And there was a scene in it where one of the ministers, there's the churches that the girls go to, talk about how you have to have a vision. And I was thinking about that on that show last night and how my vision, where I'm at today is not whatever I thought I would do 20 years ago. Now, 20 years ago, I can remember sitting at my desk in my cubicle at the William Cannon branch office that I helped open and sitting there and drawing out these, like, four squares and connecting them, what I wanted to do, because they always talked about goal setting. And I highly encourage you guys to have some sort of goal. I mean, we talk about why we. We do it for our kids, we do it for our family. We do it because we don't want to work at the job anymore. But what is your vision? And I think back to that, that little piece of paper that I wrote when I went to this. Four squares at four squares. Like, okay, I'm in banking. I like finance. It was something with finance, with mortgages, and then maybe a realtor in real estate, maybe have insurance and investments. I thought I'd have this one stop shop. And I came across that piece of paper. I don't know, maybe it was five years later. And I was blown away because I was already doing the investing in the mortgage notes and some other private stuff. I was like, wow, if you put something down, it really does come true if you, if you stick to it. But my faith, you know, I think is what's really kept me in the game. There's been a few times along the way where my faith was questioned. I mean, I can remember in 2010, actually, going back into Chase for job interview because things were so bad. I was literally renting a house. I deeded the property over on a rehab back to the investor. And I was living in a house that I was having a hard time paying the rent for. I was sharing, I was paying, splitting an office. I had freaking margarita pink walls that we were paying 400amonth when I was paying 200. I had a hard time making that payment because things were so tight. Was just a lot of people were hurting, you know, at that time. A lot of people are hurting right now. And it makes me think about going through that. And I remember walking on that interview and throwing my tie down and then understanding that people didn't value me for what I valued myself at that point and realized it was the kick in the ass that I needed, that I was worth more than the 35 grand a year, 36 grand they were going to start me back off of. And I was like, I was the number one banker and you're going to put me in this? You're going to give me this crappy ass thing? No, never mind. I'll move on. I can do more if I just buckle down and I have faith in myself. And literally a deal closed like a week later that put 35 grand in my pocket. And I think that's what a lot of people struggle with. It's not. It's hard to have faith if we're constantly bombarded with negative image. And social media, the trolls out there, all the chaotic news, I mean, our government and social media is really good at keeping us distracted. And I have to constantly go like, listen, that's great, I understand, that's good, bad. What can I focus on? What can I accomplish? What can I control? And I can only control what I can control and I need to focus on that. And I think that's. That's hard for a lot of folks. We, especially if you're trans transitioning, not going through a sex transition or anything like that, but transitioning from a employer employee to a business owner or an entrepreneur. There's a lot of things that we people don't understand. And that's why I say you can't. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you can't have somebody who works for a job teach you how to be an entrepreneur. It just does not work. They have a security cushion of a salary. Whether they show up or not, you don't. You have to go make your cushion. And I can remember times literally, yeah, I don't talk about this a lot. But I can remember getting down on my knees and praying, God, help me get through this. Just help me get through this. Help me find a way. You know, I'm a big believer that God does not give us anything more than we can handle when sometimes he has bigger plans for us than what we have plans for ourselves. In. In another analogy, man plans and God laughs, right? And there's been times that I'm like, I don't know what you've got in plan for me, but it must be something big if I'm having to go through this. If I'm facing eviction, I'm about to be homeless, or deals have gone south and there's been backlash from that. And I look back at this and there are bigger things, and sometimes we have to go through bad things to toughen up our skin, get a little thicker skin. Because, let's face it, most entrepreneurs, they fail in the first year. Business Businesses, new businesses, have like a, what, a 95, 98 failure rate in the first year and then even a higher rate in five years. The fact I've been doing this for 20 years now, I mean, wrong. I've had some iterations, changes in what we've done, but I would like to say it's, it's. It's adapted to what the market has given me and seeing the opportunity. My mom would always joke that, whatever, when I went from one job to a different job, it was always going to step up the ladder. But that previous job prepared me for that next step, that next rung on that ladder up. And for years, mom didn't know what the hell I did. All right. She's like, when are you at a real job? I'm like, I have a real job. It's me. I make more in a day on a deal than you did as a year. You know what I mean? And that's hard if your family. Most of our families want to protect us, right? They want us to do well. They want to protect us. And a lot of that stinking thinking or limited beliefs comes from their need to try to protect us. And thank you, but I know what I'm doing. And that's the thing is you have to have faith in yourself. You have to have a faith in a higher power. I think a lot of people are lost out there because they don't have any vision. They float. One of my favorite books is Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill and kind of readapted by Sharon Lecter, who co wrote Rich Dad, Poor dad, talking about how the devil likes to throw things in front of us, distract us, keep us confused, give it constantly giving us a shiny, you know, a squirrel syndrome and that shiny object syndrome. And I've been very good about eliminating shiny objects. I think that's part of my success. Like, no, this is what I focus on. This is what I focus on. I'm not a jack of all trades. I had a coaching call with one of my coaching students. He's like, I'm going to do that. I'm like, you got, you don't have the time for that. You don't have the energy for that. You can adapt a little bit of it, but stick in your lane. Stay in your lane. What's your vision? What do you want to accomplish? Well, what you want to accomplish, you're on that path. Quit trying to try to get the cheat code. There is no cheat code to success. I will tell you that. The only cheat code I have is showing it consistently. And you got to believe in yourself. I mean, if you think about, you know, we could talk, we could sit here and talk inspirational stories like the story of Ray Kroc being turned down so many times or Walt Disney being turned down hundreds of times and all that stuff. And Damon John, you know, from the, the Shark Tank and Fubi, talking about how his overnight success took eight years and how he was waiting tables at Red Lobster and coming home at night and sleeping on the floor. There are things like that. I think everybody, you know, we always talk those rags to riches stories. And by far, I'm not rags to riches, but I look at my life and I'm very, very, very happy in my life, very content. I love what I do. I love the ability, I love the people I surround myself with. I love helping my students. I love helping investors. Love closing deals. I love where I'm at. Love our animals. I don't have kids. And I love our four legged furries. I love Steph. She's a big thing. I love my family. And I think that's, that's hard sometimes, but faith, faith takes time. Faith, faith. Having faith in the face of fear and failure is probably one of the most difficult things that you will ever go through. And I know fear is different for some folks. I know we have some students out there. They're, they're dealing with fear on a health level, overcoming cancer or sickness. Some people are overcoming job loss. Some, I've got some friends are dealing with the market changing. They're caught on the wrong end of this shifting market. Fear is like what Am I going to do? What am I going to do? And the thing I'm going to tell you like this is if you have faith in yourself, go do it. So many people have put themselves in this box of what they think they're capable of and they don't move from that. And that's a, that's a problem. I mean people, there's a lot of people out there struggling to make ends meet, are struggling to get by, but because they've only see themselves in this limit box. Well, I can only do this. No, you can go do this. That's only 40 hours a week. Guess what? You got a whole lot of other hours a week to do it. Or if you don't like what you're going on, guess what? Get off your ass and move somewhere. One of the things that really a defining moment, I will tell you this was when I did sell everything here in Austin and I hit the road for what I thought would be six, you know, six weeks, six months turned into three and a half years and it was just an amazing journey. And there are times along that way, you know, on the highway, have a blowout or down the highway and the credit, the, you know, the hotel charges my card for 10 times the amount was supposed to, you know, or deals that get delayed. I'm like, ah, I'm really kind of, we're getting tight here. But the thing that's always, always happened and always come through so out of the surprise is God provides. And I, I'm sorry if you find this offensive if that's the case. Hey, you know, bless your heart, I wish you well. There are no atheists and foxholes. And we all go through foxholes at some point. And that's the thing I think that gets more people through is hey, there's a faith. You gotta understand that, hey, things will happen and things will happen not at when you need it to sometimes. I mean, a great example is my buddy Greg Reed, who's the author of Thing Grow. It's three Feet from Gold talking about the story of Darby the, the gold miner who bought this, bought this gold mine in San Francisco from another miner for basically, I don't know, 500 bucks just for scrap. And the miner given up on the mine. And Darby went down and he found where the miner had hit gold initially, where he punched through the vein. He went and talked to geologists and said, well, just wherever that gold was, just turn 90 degrees, you'll find it. So Darby did that. He dug 3ft to the left or 3ft at a 90 degree angle and hit the biggest gold mine strike in San Francisco, which led to the California gold rush. You are all three feet from gold. If you have faith in yourself. The most frustrating thing I get when I talk to people and when people call me, oh, I want a wholesale notes, I just want a wholesale. Is this is they want to wholesale because it's a lack in faith. I can't raise capital. I don't want. I'm like, why? You have a huge lack of confidence and lack of faith in accomplishing things. If other people are doing this, guess what? Just following the footprints of those in front of you. You know, Ralph Waldo Emerson has that saying, I'm going to butcher it. But it's like one of my favorite, do not go where there is a path. Go where there is no path and leave a trail. And that's one of the most interesting things that has stuck with me. That was actually in my email signature for years was that saying from Emerson, because back in 2008, 9 and 10, there was no trail to follow. You had to go figure this out in yourself. And it's great. There is a path I've left, let up, left, led many people down that create a path for many people to follow. And I hope you enjoy that here with this podcast and the YouTube channel, everything that we teach for you. But the thing that you have to keep in mind is ask yourself, what's my vision? Where do I want to go, what I want it to look like? And then realize that if you have faith in yourself, you'll get there. It may not be your time, it may be a whole lot of curves, left, right, turns, circles. But if that is powerful enough for you and important enough to you, your family, your kids, your spouse, whoever is in your foxhole with you, then you'll get there. At some point, some will be faster than others. But you gotta gotta believe. You gotta believe in yourself and you gotta have faith in a higher power. Because sometimes when you don't have faith in yourself, you need that higher power to come into you. And that maybe it's just your, you know, your internal dialogue, your conscience. Maybe it's not God. That's okay. Maybe you call it Muhammad, maybe you call it the sun God, whatever it might be, it's literally it's all a higher power. All right? And that's the thing I said, if you're looking here, starting off and you're like, what am I going to be in five years? Where are you going to be in 10 years? We're going to be in 20 years. When I think, look back now, where am I going to be in the next 20 years? I don't know. But I am ready for the ride. And I look back these past 20 years and it's been an amazing ride. And the peaks, the valleys right now, the valleys right now are so much higher than the peaks were beforehand. I'm pretty blessed. I'm pretty lucky. And if I've helped you along the way or in any form fashion, thank you. Yes, thank you for allowing me that opportunity. Thank you for being around. Thank you for the well wishes and even those out there rooting against me. Thank you. You motivate me to prove you wrong. You motivate me to get up in the morning and say, no, you don't know me. And for my ex jobs, ex employees, hey, I was worth, I'm worth a whole lot more. You can't afford me. I am unemployable because I'm unaffordable to you. And that's the thing. Everybody has to have. Realize that you determine your value, you determine your worth in the actions you take daily, hourly, weekly, monthly. And success is not a hundred percent correct all the time. We, those that are most successful have made the most amount of mistakes. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way and learned from most of them. And that's the thing. You'll learn more from mistakes. But you can't be afraid to make mistakes. So many people are afraid to make mistakes. And you'll never accomplish what you truly want to accomplish by holding on to safety handles. You got to lower the bumper, you know, the bumper bowler down so that you can actually play full tilt. And I challenge you to go do that. Have vision, have faith, and you'll surprise yourself. And I've surprised myself in the places I've gone, the people we've talked to, the people who've helped, the deals we've done, and the amazing life I have right now. So thank you for all the well wishes. Thank you everybody, and God bless you. Go out and take some action, everybody. And we will see at the top. Sam.