How to Become A Note Investor in 2025

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. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Hey, welcome this episode of the Nut Closure Show. As always, Scott Carson, the Note Guy. Happy to be with you. Happy New Year's. We've got a lot of great stuff to cover here on the first money Monday of 2025 or as we like to say, our first episode of the note closure shows. We repurpose these two but we host these live our WCN crew members or monthly or WCN members and we're just really excited at the amount of growth that those students have really excited amount of growth that our one on one coaching students had last year. And so we decided because I've been getting a lot of questions especially in the last two weeks and this is comes from our marketing our podcast, looking back at our YouTube comments, emails and especially as people phone calls on my calendar@talkwithscottcarson.com One of the biggest overwhelming things hey, how do I become a note investor? I've been in real estate for a while or I've been I'm new to real estate or I want to get started in the new year. We all got those New Year's resolutions that we want to accomplish and so I thought today's episode would be a great way to talk about that. How to become a Note Investor in 2025 by going through some of the things that you really need to take to heart. And we'll cover some of these things will be common sense that if you've been around me for a little while, you've heard me say this before. Others if you're new, maybe you haven't heard it before or maybe you just need somebody to tell you without blowing smoke up your tail because there's a lot of people out there talking about note investing, but not necessarily are not investors. They're in theory because they have some knowledge about it, but they haven't closed on a deal or haven't closed on thousands of no deals. It's hard to take them at their word because listen, you learn a lot by doing and this is not bashing anybody. But you got to take action. You've got to pull the trigger and get rock and roll. If you didn't do it last year. Guess what? This year is going to be amazing. I'm really over overjoyed at what I think 2025 is going to be. I really believe it's going to be a huge opportunity for a lot of folks that take action. That's the biggest thing is action. Not talking about taking action, but actually getting off the keister and doing it. So let's get into today's episode. I've opened up the live stream for you guys here so that you can ask questions along the way. Just keep them relevant to the slide and always we keep time at the very end for answering any off the wall questions. But keep your questions, don't tap in the chat real little. Distract me until we get to the very end. All right, everybody. Hey, good to see you. Happy New Year, everybody. For those that are joining us live here, if you're listening to us, hey, type in the chat roll, shoot me a message. Glad to hear that you're here. Very, very proud of the fact that you guys come in. It's hard to believe we're going to be hitting the 1000 episode mark here and probably the next by the end of the first quarter, which is just kind of crazy to me. But anyway, let's get rock and roll. Let's have some fun today. All right, so how to be. How do you become a Note Investor in 2025? Well, the first and foremost, note investing has a variety of different niches. You got to pick a note niche. Okay. When people think about note investing, they think about most of the time, oh, I'm gonna go buy an owner finance note. Especially if you see some of these, a lot of these Facebook groups, people are selling their newly originated owner finance and trying to sell it at par at full value or they've got something that they finance and now the bar is not paying. You don't see a lot of people talking about institutional debt. We'll get to that. But pick a note niche. You either need to focus on performing notes. That's where the borrower is paying on time. It could be a new note that's been newly originated or could be one that was once non performing. That's where the borrower hadn't paid or hasn't paid in a while, you know, 90 days plus. We usually target six months at least as a minimum non performer because we bear discounts up to a couple of years. But pick a note that you're comfortable with. If you don't have a lot of time and you're doing this really as A side hustle or a part time addition to your portfolio then probably stick to performing or re performing. That's where it was non performing. An investor like me came in, worked with a homeowner, bargain back on track and now it's reperforming. Okay. You can also look at institutional versus owner finance debt. Now owner finance is like somebody who sells their house on terms. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just not a big fan of buying a one off note from an owner. I'd rather buy institutional debt because the paper is usually cleaner. In the paper we mean the note I can usually get at a bigger discount because the bank is not emotionally involved with the deal. Especially I buy non performing. I get a bigger discount if it's owner finance. Usually the person owner finance that either owed too much of the property had owner finance or they're too emotionally connected to the property rehab, stuff like that. And it's tough deal with emotions. You can focus on residential or commercial notes. Yes, you can buy notes in just about any type of residential asset class or even commercial asset class out there. Okay. And then you need to focus on first, you know, which is senior lien versus like junior lien, second liens. And I'm just going to tell you I'm not a fan of second lien or junior liens for the most part because especially right now they're overpriced. There's not the amount of inventory that there used to be. It's also much more expensive to buy a junior lien used to be able to buy it, you know. And you should be able to buy first liens at a bigger discount than they were at right now. But I'm all about the bigger the check. I would rather yes, you can maybe buy a non performing note at a discount. It can be a small balance second and you only have to hold on for two to five years. There was somebody posted a thing that they wait it took them basically I think about 10 years to foreclose on your junior lien in New York state which they should have never bought to begin with. So I like to stick to first. I buy a mix of residential and commercial. I like institutional debt and I actually prefer non performing that I can work to turn into either performing assets or that I can foreclose and take the asset back and sell it off by buying it. Noted a discount well below what most people are buying. That's my cup of tea. Whether you like it or not. That's totally up to you. But I like to focus in the Bigger pools where there's plenty of opportunity for as a, I guess you could say as a small, medium fish like me. Okay, here's one of the big things. Wholesaling notes is not becoming a note investor. All right? If you're going to flip a piece of property, flip a note or flip a property, that's wholesale. That's not investing. Investing is having an investment in the deal in time, working through the deal, you're going to make the most amount of money. Actually being an investor. If you're wholesaling, you really don't have that much invested in the deal. Yes, a lot. People like, oh, I don't have money, so I want to be a wholesaler. Well, guess what? Wholesaling is not the easiest thing. You've got to have a good list. You've got to know what the deal holds, you've got to do some due diligence, and then you're going to make the short end of the stick. Okay? I would rather do all the due diligence. If I'm going to do the marketing to find a wholesale buyer, why not do it either? Find a funding source for me. So that's my big thing. It's not saying we don't wholesale. Yes, we'll wholesale from time to time as we get different list of notes in the database off what we buy. But if you're just trying to wholesale notes, you're going to be frustrated because you're probably not as committed as you need to be. So if you're going to do all the work to be wholesaling, and I get people all the time. Oh, why you try to. I tried to wholesale real estate. I go, well, what didn't work for you? Well, I didn't have a database. Well, did you market? No, I didn't market. Well, how do you expect to market? How do you expect to make money if you're not gonna market? So if you're gonna market, just wholesale it. Okay. Should be the last, last aspect that you think. Focus on buying for your own portfolio first. Buying for your own portfolio. When sellers find out that you're trying to flip or wholesale enough, they're gonna get upset and they're usually not gonna do business with you. So don't do that. Just go buy for your own portfolio. Okay. You also decide if you're going to be using your own capital or using opm, other people's money. Now, if you don't have your own capital, that's fine. It doesn't preclude you or eliminate you from being a note investor, you just got to hustle. You need to go out and raise private money and use opm. And I'll get to this later on, but one of the mistakes I see a lot of investors making is that you just use their own capital with 50 grand or 100 grand or 500 grand, and that's all that they focus on using. And then when they use that up and they see a good deal, they pass in that good deal because they no longer have their own capital. They've not taken the time to raise money. I get fixing flippers. I get people. This is probably the number one thing I get questions from people. How do you find opm? Well, it's not that hard. You have to market. We'll talk about some of the steps that we do later on. Okay? But you have to start doing that. Start marketing for OPM immediately. Don't stick around and wait. The biggest mistake is that people just use their own capital or limited by what's in their bank or savings accounts or retirement accounts, and that's all they focus on. So don't make that mistake. Okay? Big mistake I see a lot of people making is they don't know their buy box. I get people, oh, I want to buy everything. Send me everything. Like, no, true note buyers don't buy everything. They buy in their buy box. And what does that mean? Well, if you need to, you need to identify your buy box. That means which states are you going to buy in and which states are you not going to buy in? How is the legal status, the foreclosure status, the default status of those notes? How is it different in Illinois versus Indiana? Quite a bit of difference, judicial versus non judicial. I'm also opposed to just buying straight in non judicial states. Some people want to do that and that's fine, but it's going to limit them their opportunities. And I'm saying I'm not going to buy in all judicial states. I'm not going to buy in New York, New Jersey and a few others. But I'm not opposed to buying in states like South Carolina, Indiana, Ohio. You know, we see some really great deals that turn into great cash flow there. If you know how to leverage and understand the process and you're committed to understand, like this deal is going to take me a year to, to foreclose on or a year and a half to foreclose on. It just is what it is. Okay, Speaking of foreclosing, you need to know your exit strategies. What's your strategy? Is it to primarily get people back on, on the track and performing. Then you're probably going to buy owner occupied or occupied assets because that gives you the most of my next strategies. If you just want to own a property which I wouldn't recommend, or just want to foreclose on everything, it's going to take you longer. And that's a mistake I made in my first two years is trying to foreclose on everything. Don't make that mistake. We'll talk about kind of where your primary strategy should be, but really you're going to have the best bang for your buck and getting either borrowers back on track and offering up some sort of loan mod payment plan. Now, let's just be realistic. Not everybody's going to qualify, not everybody should be that. But that should be your number one priority in a lot of cases to take that. And that's the thing. Look at your. What kind of values are you looking at? What kind of property values, what kind of payment are you looking at? There are some specifics that you should probably avoid. Low, you know, payments, monthly payments, if it's below 250, if you're using anybody else's money to fund it, there's just not any room after servicing costs for using your own, it's different, you know, what are you trying to make? Are you trying to make 500 bucks? Are you trying to make 50,000? All right, and one of the upcoming episodes we'll do, we'll talk about how you can make six figures in your first 12 and 24 months as a note investor, if you put your plan together. So know your buy box, you're not going to buy everything. Like I like I say I prefer to buy residential assets that are occupied between 100k and 300k in value. I'll go above that. But I like to occupy stuff that I potentially work out with the homeowners on that. That's my best cash flow. Anything really above 300,000. If bar isn't paid in a while, I'm going to probably have to foreclose is what's going to end up happening. And that's okay. It is what it is. We're just going to buy it at a price that makes sense if we have to foreclose and our holding costs. And also depending on what state it's in and how far along that bank is. So there's some, you know, some moving figures with that that you have to understand and you're not going to know right off the bat coming from the fix and flip space or coming from a landlord space, there is a lot to know. Okay, here's the one big thing I want people to understand. Note investing is not get rich quick. It is a marathon. All right? If you come to me and tell me, oh, I need to make money in the next 30 days, I'm sorry, go get a job, go start driving for Uber, Doordash or Amazon. Okay. Note investing is not get rich quick. I don't care what people tell you. We if it's a non judicial state, yes, we still budget in about 12 months to foreclose and market the property. If it's beyond a judicial state, we try to do two to three years of what we plan on deals taking especially if it gets re performing and we need to hold onto it for 12 to 18 months for good cash flow to revalue or re classify that asset. It's a marathon. If you're trying to make money in the next 30 days, you can do that. It's just going to take you having money to do it and pulling some triggers. If you don't have any money, then you got to spend that time marketing and it's not going to be a get rich quick. If it was easy, everybody doing it and that's okay. This is why note investing is such a profitable niche. It is profitable because not everybody wants to do it. Not everybody wants to market, not everybody wants to make offers to hedge funds. Most people are extremely freaking lazy when it comes to investing. All right? Now I'm not saying lazy in that they don't have the time. No, I'm saying lazy is they have the time but they choose to focus on other things and they don't want to do the work. The W O R K define deals to raise capital, make above average return. That's why note investing is definitely a niche. Okay. All right. And no, I'm not going to sit here and talk to you about going and finding tired landlords or the brrrr strategy and then converting that to notes. That's a lot of work. I like to work in bulk with banks and hedge funds and have a lot more opportunities versus trying to deal with the emotions of a one off investor. Okay. Your main strategy as a note investor should be cash flow here. That's the number one strategy. Yeah. And it also the next one would be big checks. Okay. And then you're adding assets to your portfolio is really kind of the third way. Now if you're trying to get into note investing because you think it's to be a great source for you to take property back. That's, that's not going to be a reality. You're going to have to foreclose to take the property back. And the property sells at auction. You don't end up with a property, you end up with a big check. Okay? I don't necessarily want to add real estate to my portfolio to hold it because it locks up and it's actually the least least valuable. ROI comes out. The slowest ROI is taking that property back, ties up equity. When I could buy one note, get them reperforming, hold it for 12 months cash flow, then either a, sell that note off at a profit and double down, go buy two now and then turn those into performing cash flow. It's a little bit different mindset, but you have to understand it. Being a note investor, you have to think like a banker, not like a fix and flipper, not like a landlord. Okay? You're looking for opportunities to take more fix and flips and more foreclosures. You need to change your mindset. I, I, I posted one thing and I like 10 people, I'll buy those foreclosures from you. I'm like, if I'm going to foreclose, I'm going to sell it myself. Not going to give you 30% profit when that's a big chunk of profit for me. Okay? People don't seem to realize that one guy got all mad and even like blocked me on LinkedIn. I said, well, I'm not going to sell you my REO as a disc. Why not? I'm like, because if I'm going to take it all the way to foreclosure and then take it back, I'm going to list it for sale. I'm a price it or I'm a price to move at the foreclosure auction. I'm not going to just give you a deal because you reached out to me on LinkedIn. It's funny, some people just, you know, they called me rude. I was like, I didn't. Was it rude? I'm trying to answer a question. You're getting all mad anyway, moving on. But cash flow should be your number one priority so you don't have to work so damn hard all your life. Okay? But here's the thing that a lot of people screw up on you. To be a successful note investor, you have to understand that marketing is number one, pure. In fact, that's where you're going to spend a huge chunk of your time in marketing. To find deals from a variety of sources. We'll give you some of our top sources here in a few seconds. Finding funding and marketing to your network, your, you know, your email database, getting out and then sharing on social media and building a referral network of people. You have to work smarter and as I say, cheaper. Okay? A lot of real estate investors and if you go to all these workshops, there's a lot of people talking about how they drop, you know, thousands of dollars a month in direct mail and postcards and letters or bandit signs or billboards to find distressed real estate. And there's nothing wrong with door knocking, whatever, spending a lot of time driving for dollars. Okay, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. But what I have found is that I would rather work smarter. So if I get a foreclosure list, instead of me sending postcards out to those 50 to 500 people, let me look at the banks, let me look at the lenders on this and I can reach out to the lenders directly. And now I have a much bigger list when they resend me their whole list in the state or their whole list of non performing notes across the country that I can share a pick from versus targeting that one or two properties is going to foreclosures this month and it doesn't take a lot of money do. I'm not spending any direct mail costs, I'm spending money. Yes, I have an email service, a CRM that we use. Yes, we do some, we have a upgraded LinkedIn. And yes, I'm down for dollars and spend some time but I'm looking smarter and cheaper and doing things that anybody can do in a couple ways. And yes, you can, you can delegate some of this stuff with a VA and some other things to expedite some of these things. But yes, work smarter and cheaper, not harder. Okay? It's one thing, marketing is number one. If you don't understand that in 2025, you're in the old school. Okay, you got it. Update and get on the bandwagon that marketing is key for. And there's some great tools, things that you can use chat GPT to help you out with that. Okay? Now when it comes to finding notes, these are really our four favorite places. Okay? Yes, we reach out to banks and hedge funds directly. We leverage LinkedIn like crazy in contacting the right departments, the people with the right department names on LinkedIn to see what they have available on their list. And still something that we do to this day besides reaching out to them on LinkedIn, we send them an email blast. We also Reach out to them via phone. Okay. And we've got our lists of banks and hedge funds that send us lists on a regular basis. Once you're into these guys and gals at these banks, they will send you something on a pretty regular basis. Some are good about automating the process, others you got to pick up the phone and call them. Hey, what do you have on your books this month? Okay, foreclosure list. If you're an investor chasing distressed assets, you're probably familiar with your foreclosure list. But what I want you to do now is instead of looking at the actual property, I want you to go over the mortgage. Mortgage or you know, the bank. Look at the lender who's foreclosing and imagine that lender probably has more than one deal on it and probably has more than once a month. I think about that as a great referral source to get deals sentient. They're not performing notes. I'm not chasing the asset. The property foreclose. I'm not looking for reo, so I'm looking for their distress notes. Okay. Number three is referral network. Get out there and leverage social media. Talk about that. You're a note investor. You know, hey, what am I looking for? I'm looking for notes. I'm looking for performing and non performing. We've got our, our coaching students do a really great job of this posting on a regular basis. Hey, telling people exactly what they're looking for and you'll get stuff sent to you. It's kind of amazing that way. Our fourth, fourth source that we do, it's, it's we, you know, you can find these by going to like auction.com paper stack. You look at some of these different note listing platforms. I don't really target the notes on there. I look to see who the lender is or the seller of this. And then we'll target those guys directly like auction.com's foreclosing. I'm not going to bid against 20 other people. I'm gonna look to see who the lender is and reach out to lender and say hey, what else do you have in your portfolio? Okay, same thing. Hey, I see that you're selling one note on paper stack. What else do you have on your portfolio that you aren't listing? And get a much bigger list. And sometimes we can build referral sources that just stop posting them. They start sending to us directly first. It gives us a much better pricing point and a better, much more valuable relationship. Okay. And that's the Great thing. But the thing with finding notes, you got to market. You spend some time each week, a little bit time each day to reach out and find notes. Now the next thing we do have upcoming tonight on our Note Night in America podcast or webinar, we're going to talk about how to find non performing notes in 2025. Simple strategies with big results. We'll talk about kind of breaking down exactly how we're. There are top three or four places to find non performing ads this year. Stuff that you can actually tap into and start looking at deals immediately or leveraging some of the things we just talked about to help put you in the right spot to really capitalize on what the market has to register for that it's very simple. Just go to notenight in America.com it's free. That's notenightinamerica.com and you can join us on the web. I think there's 390 people registered for the webinar so get signed up for that. I think it caps out at 500 so get signed up for that. And that'll be tonight at 7pm Central. We'll do that live on Zoom, but we'll also rebroadcast it on Tuesday across our network as well for you guys. Okay, moving on. Now finding funds. This is what scares a lot of people. Remember we talked about how people will limit themselves license and not market for money. Look, raising capital is not that difficult in that you all are capable, everybody watching this is capable of raising a million dollars in private capital in the next 90 days. Okay, we'll talk about that in a later episode. But how do you find funds? Well, our favorite source is targeting self directed IRA property owners. People who have used their IRA to buy a piece of property or have lent money on their ira. All you got to do is go to the appraisal districts and the county recorder's offices in your county and search by the different self directed IRA custodian names. Okay. Some states are better than others, but go and search it's free list. It's, it's literally an amazing way to reach out to people who have an IRA who are looking for deals and they have money to invest. And the great thing about an ira, it's got to be passive. Which is perfect for performing and non performing note investing. Okay, this time of year, first quarter, you're going to see a big turnout in your local real estate investment clubs, different networking events, bni, you know, business Networkers International, all the different real estate media groups across the country are probably going to see a big influx in January, February and March. So go attend those, start making connections. Are you going to raise capital the first time you go? Probably not, because you need to show up on a consistent basis. And 80% sales are made at the fifth context. If you go grab business cards, make connections, follow up with an email, follow up with a phone call, just to touch base with people, connect with people on their socials. It's an important thing. One of our friends in the industry east targets almost exclusively CEO and CEO groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, other networking events. Because these individuals are serious about what they're doing, a career, they make usually pretty good money, but they don't have the time to find deals. So he leverages their money with his time and experience to go find deals and have them find and give them a good return. Okay. And last but not least is marketing. Just sharing what you're doing, posting a LinkedIn, posting a bigger pockets, connected investors, shooting an email blast out, going to some of these virtual meetup groups. You just got to market on an almost daily basis a little bit and get in a habit of doing on a weekly basis, sharing that you're an expert in what you're doing and going from there. Okay, no network, no problem. As I like to say, because we get people that are new to note investing, they've invested before, but they've never had to market before because nobody ever taught them how to market. Okay, you know what, don't worry about it. If you don't have a network, don't have an email list, don't worry about it. You can build a list. It might take you a little bit longer, but guess what, there's some ways to build. LinkedIn is the easiest spot to start with. There's some services like Octopus Sales Navigator and things like that you can use to build that list. That's really the first place you know you're going to spend, you know, 20 to $30 extra per month on this. But it's, it's a much valuable, very valuable tool because you're going to be an investor for a long time. So building your network, building your list is one of the most important things you can do. That's your lifeblood of your business. Long term, of course, leverage social media, go to some of the good groups, hell, and some of these note business groups, people are posting their name and email and phone number all across the network. I'm like, well, I'll use that, add that to my database. Okay. You can also target industry events if there's an event, a conference taking place that's not too far from you, you don't necessarily need to go if it's a fifteen hundred dollar ticket, but you if it's close to you go hang out in the lobby, go hang out in the the bar nearest the hotel for a couple hours and look like you belong and network with people. Okay. But you gotta also go in and getting these business cards or contacts are great, but you need to follow up with them on a regular basis using a CRM tool we use Keep REI Blackbook, even mailchimp is something is better than nothing. You have to follow up with these people or have their contact information in a place that you can drop an email to when you have a deal that needs funding or have a potential portfolio of notes. You don't want to take them all down, but you maybe want do want to flip a couple after you're buying for your own investment portfolio. Okay. Or using the CRM to market to your hedge fund context banking contacts to see what they have in their books this month or this quarter. Very, very important digital assets you need to have. And that's the thing is people like oh I'll just have a business card. Well that's great. I just have a logo. That's great. It's not investing. You're going to be dealing especially if you're dealing with institutional assets, with bankers, asset managers, hedge fund. You need to actually look like you pass a smell test, Tom. So what do you need to have? Well, guess what? You probably need to put together an executive summary, outlines who you are, what you're looking looking for and your potential experience. It's pretty simple to put together. Next thing you need to have is a pitch deck that's going to help you in raising private capital, attracting people to tell to tell them exactly what you do in 10 to 15 minutes. Anything longer that is too long winded. But a pitch deck is one of the most critical tools when it comes to raising capital and sharing with investors of who you are, your track record, who your team is and what you're focused on. Okay, you need to have an llc. It's also good to have a self directed IRA that you're contributing to an llc. Yes, you're buying notes in an llc. I wouldn't necessarily use an LLC that you already have for a business if it's not real estate related. You're going to have multiple llc. Some people like trust, that's fine. But you got to go get an LLC to begin with. This Just is what it is for your own asset protection. Okay, you need to have a website these days. Yes. You can use your LinkedIn profile temporarily. While you're building your website, you want to have something that's a little better. A WIX website is not necessarily the greatest. Okay, it's free, but you can get a landing page if you're, you know, using KEEP or REI blackbook or something that looks more professional and is a little bit more enabled, that can be looked at on a cell phone and looks normal instead of out of whack. Okay. And then finally, you gotta have some sort of case studies. Videos, flyers, images, graphics, talking about you and your story, deals that you're buying, what are you looking for? These things add more credibility than anything else. And if you haven't closed on a deal, that's okay. You can use somebody else's deal and say, these are the types of deals that we're looking for. Okay? The great thing about being a note investor is leverage your network, leveraging your vendors, your servicing company, your attorneys, your coach, your due diligence companies, the title company, stuff like that. This is one of the great things that if you don't have a lot of experience, guess what? You're not going out and doing all like you would if you're fixing, flipping or being a landlord. We rely heavily on servicing companies and attorneys to handle our heavy lifting. All you've got to be responsible for is making sure it's a deal, doing your due diligence, and then making sure that you direct your vendors in the right way for which you want. Okay, great. Your plan. This is the thing. If you haven't put together your game plan for 20, 25, guess what? You're behind the eight ball. All right? Now we're not talking about putting 40 hours in a week. I know that many of you are still working. You're nine to five or you have a career. That's fine if you love what you do and you make enough money. This is just a side hustle. You don't have to take all these things for granted, but this is something that you want to do. Whether you're looking to retire and do this full time because you have the time, or you're wanting to replace your job, or you're wanting to do more of this and other things because you can't find deals in your backyard for different things and you need to expand your horizon, then guess what? Put 5 to 10 hours in per week. Most of the time, you'll be spending that time in Finding deals, finding funding, and then marketing your business. Those are the three big keys that you're going to do in five to ten hours per week. Yes, you're going to get to tape in and you're going to be looking at those deals. But you have to realize every week you need to be marketing your business. Need to focus a little bit time and energy. Whether it's like sending out 50 postcards to IRA investors or sending an email blast out to your database, something you do on a week in, week out basis. To touch base with your network, to touch base with your sellers, to touch base to help you grow your business and grow your plan. Because 2025, your success is only limited by your limited beliefs, okay? It's only limited. Your success is only limited by your limited beliefs. Okay? You can do it, all right? You don't have to have a ton of money, you can raise a lot of money. You don't have to close on a lot of notes in the past. Great thing is guys, that you can actually have a team that helps surround you, that gets paid when you get paid. Okay? The biggest mistakes, I think it's very important to know biggest mistakes that we've made is, and that we see investors making is one trying to be a jack of all trades. Okay, There's a really Great guy in LinkedIn. Known him for a little while. He's been a known investor for about two years and he's talking about he's got this 30 day thing he's trying to do to raise capital. Well, he's not really talking about in the case studies, people don't necessarily want to see your talking mug. They want to see a deal. He would be so much better off if he recorded a short little video talking about his couple of his deals that he bought. Pictures, say a thousand words, you know what I mean? But he's also trying to do two, three, four other things. A mobile home park. I'm also in the spa space. It's, it's, it's, it really sends a mixed message. It's also like when you go to local real estate clubs and somebody hands you like five cards about what they do. But what do you really do? Okay, what do you, what is your focus? Okay? And here's the thing, another big mistake. We talked about this early on. Get beyond what balances in your checking out, checking account or Savings account or IRA when it comes to buying. If you make 10 offers, guess what? And you get 10 offers accepted, guess what? If you don't have that money enough that's okay. Go out, start marketing to raise capital. Start doing that. So important. I've seen so many investors. They have 50 grand. They buy two notes with 50 grand. They sit around and wait for six to 12 months until those deals are done before they go and do anything else. They're just wasting time. If you just start raising capital and marketing for money, you'll find investors. Because good deals find money. Okay? That's what number three is. Not marketing to your list. Not taking the time to grow your LinkedIn. I understand social media is a bit of a dumpster fire in specific places like Facebook and bigger pockets and even LinkedIn some cases. But you got to start marketing. The great thing about when you deal with trolls and stuff like that is guess what? You can hit the unsubscribe button or you can do the block or unfollow. You're going to get some people that are ugly or nasty or just rude. Just go block them. It's the easiest thing to do. Not hard anybody that's not contributing to your bottom line, okay? It's not your boss. You can go block them. Okay? But another one mistake I see is people not making any offers or they highlight the lowest balance note and that's what they make their offer on. Or they see some decent deals and they do a way, way, way, way low ball offer. That just doesn't make any sense. That's not setting you up for success. Yes, the reason you make lowball offers is you want something to be a traditional deal. But these days you have to understand what the deal is going to hold. Making a lowball offer is like sending out 20 letters to REO agents and saying you're an offering like 60 cents the dollar. That just doesn't work these days. If you want to build faith in yourself, making an offer that's outside your comfort level, go make. You have to raise 200 grand in private capital. That'll help you make half the market. Okay, make 10 offers to get one accepted. Our most recent coaching student, Sterling, he made what, 10 offers, got five, five accepted two, and then he ended up kicking four of them out because the due diligence, the values came back. But he's got one when he's going to close and it's a good thing. And then another hedge fund sent him a list that we worked through this last week is like eight deals and he made an offer on four. I don't know where they stand. We probably get a response back today or tomorrow on those, but I think he's probably get another one or two accepted out of that. Make offers. Start marketing immediately, guys. Don't sit around and wait and say, oh, I'll get to it later. Take the time. If this is important to you, this, if your future is important to you, start marketing now. We do a lot of things. You're not competing with us. Okay? We have our podcast, we have a ton of videos, all right, we have a big email database, but those have all come from doing a little bit each time. But those are some of our marketing tools. That's how we find deals, how we find funding, all right, is by marketing and being constantly out in front of potential people for deals. Okay? Now the next 90 days, we talk about making goals in next 90 days. While you are all watching this, listening to this live with me on here, you're all capable of a couple things in the next 90 days. First and foremost, you're all capable of buying your first note. You're all capable of doing that. We'll talk about how you'll be able to find more notes tonight on note night in America. Okay, two, you're all capable, as I say, raising a million dollars in, in your first private capital. But for some of you, that scares the shit out of you and that's okay. But you're all capable of landing your first funder in the next 90 days or sooner. So maybe it'd be in the next week, next couple days. We just did an email blast out. All right, three, third thing, you're buying your first note. You're all going to be capable of making cash flow, building cash flow for your business, cash flow for your investments into your IRA or into your bottom line. You're all capable of doing that. Whether it's your own money or using a funder to fund a deal. And you're getting a split of the cash flow. You're all capable to the next 90 days. And here's another number four thing. You're all capable of connecting with 10 note sellers right now. Not individual, one off owner finance sellers. You could do that by going to Facebook and then you'll be disappointed by them. But you're all capable of connecting with at least 10 institutional sellers sources in the next 90 days. Okay? I know that you're capable of this because we've done it, we've seen it done so many times. We've helped thousands of people do this. Hundreds of coaching students go on and achieve amazing success making six figures and beyond, some in the seven figure range. We're here to help you guys and you are all capable of doing that. You need an extra kick in the butt. We do have an upcoming workshop here. February 14th, 15th, 16th. Yes. That's Valentine's weekend. Bring your spouse. They can fall in love with notes with you here in Austin, Texas. This is a live in person workshop here in Austin, Texas. Get signed up today by going to Note buying for dummies.com Note buying for dummies.com and if it's not the most impactful class that you've ever taken, we'll give you a full refund. If you come to the first day and realize this is not what I want to do, don't worry about, we'll give you a full refund. That's one of the things we have a no BS satisfaction guaranteed refund policy if it's not the best class you've ever taken. Okay. Here in Austin, Texas. February 14th, 15th and 16th. Note buying for dummies.com you go there, there should be some sort of discount. Knock it down a little bit and we're just, it's hard to believe we're six weeks out from that. So get signed up today for that. Note buying for dummies.com if you're wanting to find deals and raise capital. That's why we focus on the find, the fun, the flip and the flow. Those are four most important things for you when it comes to note investing and that's we'll show you how to do that at Note Buying for Dummies here in Austin. It's the first live in person workshop we've taught in about two years and so we're really excited about that. We do them online virtual all the time, but we want to do one in person for a few of you folks that want to come and joint learning. So get signed up today. Tickets are going fast for this Note buying for dummies.com Guys, I want to open up now for questions if you guys have any questions. Welcome to 2025 Dale Y'. All. That's right. It's a little chilly here in Austin, Texas. Morning. It was 26 degrees when I got up this morning. Needless to say, I didn't make my long walk us around the block. I got up and walked outside and came back. It's too damn cold. I'll be riding the bike later today towards my goal. But what questions, what comments? The chat roll should be open. Yeah, it's a little chilly compared to where you're at Dale's in Minnesota. So you've got what, some feet. Feet of Snow on the ground a it's going to freeze your loose fisk off. But I'd love to hear from you guys that are in here live right now. What's your number one goal when it comes to real estate investing? What's your number one goal here in the next 90 days? In 20, 25 before I let you guys go to get rock and roll on stuff like I'll tell you my big goal. I'm going to be buying. I'm going to be buying 100 notes that are turned into reperformers this year. That means I'll be buying more than 100 notes obviously, but I'm going to be buying more than 100 notes out of that 100 notes. They're going to turn into cash flow, okay, Cash flow to me. And they're going to be giving my investors an 8 to 12% cash and cash return. And that starts. So if I got to, if I got to buy 12, I'm sorry, if I'm going to buy 100, most people have it when you start off, you have about 10% close ratio. So we'll just throw that. So if you want to do that, it means you need to make 100, I mean 1,000 offers. Okay. And to divide that by 12 months, that means. It means you make about 85, 88 offers. That's right. Per month. That's 20 a week. It's capable of getting done. It's going to take quite a bit of capital. Hey, we're planned for that and getting ready. Rock and roll. So that's our big goal. If you've not closed on your first deal, it should be closing your first note deal in the next 90 days, raising your first funding. If not anything, maybe it's coming in. Spend some couple days with me here in Austin. Love to have you. We will have some offers that you guys can bid on here. We'll have a tape or two exclusively. We'll do a lot of case studies breaking down individual deals, making offers, showing you how to help you all raise your game plan. Let's see here. Dale is keep working on building my LinkedIn network for NPL sellers and telling my story to local investors in my network and maybe becoming a coach student in the first half. Maybe. Okay. Nobody ever got anywhere being maybe. Well, the big thing here, Dale, like I said, I know we talked before. If you need some case studies, let's. Let's talk about some case studies. Let's go through some scenarios. We talked about that before Christmas and glad to help you out with it. And I know we'll see you here in Austin. You already signed up, so. All right, everybody. Well, if that's it, you guys aren't going to share what your focus is, that's fine. We are here to help you guys succeed. If you always want to book a phone call, pick my brain, talk about the glass, talk about something, go to talkwithscottcarson.com that's your best place to book a phone call with me. Yes, you can exchange messages with me in LinkedIn or Facebook, but that's gonna be the best place to actually pick my brain for 30 minutes. And anybody's entitled to 30 minutes there for you. But we're here to help you. We want to help you guys be successful. It's one of the things I'm very passionate about is helping note investors succeed in the near and beyond. So this year marks my 24th year as a real estate investor. Okay. And 20th year as a note investor. Yeah, hard to believe that. So, all right, well, hey, go out, take some action. We love you all and we'll see top. Happy New year. God bless and hook them horns. All right, see y' all later, everybody. Bye. 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 weclose 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 deeds? 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 years 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 25, 30 grand getting their ball rolling using their self directed IRA who are tired of dealing with toilets, tenants, 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, we'll check it out noteweekin.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 note weekend.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 our 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 weclosenotes.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. Sam Sa.