How to Get on the Right Side of the Payment Stream with Scott Carson in Rejuvenaging with Dr. Ron Kaiser

Foreign.

Welcome to rejuvenating with Dr. Ron Kaiser. This is the podcast designed to help you live your life enthusiastically today, tomorrow and every other day. I am your host Ron Kaiser. I'm a positive health psychologist and also author of the award winning and best selling book Rejuvenating the Art and Science of Growing Older With Enthusiasm. My website is www.thementalhealthgym.com. it's your source of all kinds of information about positive psychology, wellness, rejuvenating and all kinds of good things to help you live your life enthusiastically. As you know, our podcasts typically feature individuals who not only lead their lives enthusiastically, but have something interesting and important to say that can help us be better versions of ourselves in a positive and more enthusiastic way. And I am especially happy to present this Scott Carson to you today, who I actually have been hoping to get on this podcast for quite a while. I have to admit, I met Scott at the New Media Summit a year and a half ago and he talked about a topic that I thought would never be a fit for my podcast. Things like note closing distressed mortgages and so on. I have somehow over time learned that some of my friends are involved in this, that people find it as a beneficial full or part time source of income and a way of maintaining interest in the real world. And it's just something that as time went on I knew I had to get Scott on here. He his enthusiasm is really palpable. I always figured if I could get that enthusiasm with a topic that fit, I would want him on here. So now we have it. So let me tell you about Scott. Scott Carson is a nationally syndicated radio and podcast host of the popular Note Closers show podcast with millions of listeners each month. He has been an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002, focused on the niche of distressed mortgage investing. For the past 10 years he has been helping real estate investors and entrepreneurs create wealth through his teachings and strategies. He is a highly sought after speaker and podcast guest with thousands of speaking appearances at events across the country. Scott has been featured in many media outlets including Investors Business Daily, the Wall street journal and inc.com. he spends his free time traveling to new places and making memories. He calls Austin, Texas his home. I have to say as somebody who tries to turn out one podcast a week. Currently Scott has I think eight going every week. And in addition that's kind of a slowdown because another area of interest for Scott has been kind of advocacy and training and development of other podcasters. So those of you who are listening in and have podcasts of your own. I know he's on hiatus from that part of his work, but he will soon be back at it. And I've learned a whole lot from listening to Scott in all of the different areas. He just is really great. Talks fast though. You shouldn't have any trouble deciding who's talking when because I think we may have a little difference in talking style. But Scott, I'm so thrilled to have you with us. Welcome to rejuvenating aging with Dr. Ron Kaiser.

I am honored to be here, Dr. Ron. And I owe any apology that I missed those emails early on. You reached out to beforehand to have me on because I love love being a podcast guest, love spreading the word and just try to help anybody as best I can out there, whether it is in the real estate space or the motivation or like you said, how we met originally at New Media Summit and then through our Mass Media Mastermind conference calls that we have been doing for a while. Like you said, you know, cutting back a couple months because we are busy with everything going on in the real estate market right now and really focusing on that for the last month or two.

Okay, well, real estate is obviously a very big all encompassing field. How about we start out by having you tell us a little bit about the space in which you operate. Distressed mortgages, note closings, things that for some of us may be kind of a foreign language.

Yeah, let's definitely. I'm glad to do that. So everybody in the world, or everybody at least in the United States, I would say is in the note space. Whether you believe me or not. If you've got a mortgage on your house, a car payment, credit card debt, medical debt, student loans, if you're listening out there, if you've got a loan that you're paying on, you're in the note space, you're just on the wrong side of the payment stream. So the niche that I focus on is residential and commercial notes. And what we do is we buy that debt from the banks on borrowers who are behind on their mortgages, behind with their payments, where that that note is distressed. As they say it, you know, a borrower hasn't paid in six months or something like that, and we'll buy that debt from the banks and the lending institutions, become the lender and then we make our money by reaching back out to that borrower to try to modify the loan to get them reback started back up on payments. We've been doing this for over 12 years. Our biggest goal is really to keep People in their houses, if we can, we buy the debt at a big discount. So that gives us a lot of flexibility when it comes to working with the homeowners who have gone through some sort of financial hiccup. You know, job loss, sick, had a death in the family, you know, whatever it might have been. We all know that good people go through financial hiccups from time to time. And so we actually love keeping people their houses waiting on to modify the loan or start paying back again. It really becomes a win win for us and for the borrowers out there by keeping ask. You know, financial difficulties is one of the biggest causes of stress out there. Whether it's you're married or you're single or whatever it is. And a lot of people obviously are struggling right now because they've been laid off or furloughed or been unemployed or struggling with what's going on with all this pandemic out there. So we pride ourselves by really trying to keep people in the houses. I was once a distress borrower back years ago, before I got started in real estate. And so I empathize with people that are, you know, facing foreclosure or don't know what's going to happen because the bank wants the last six months of payments and they don't have six months. So there's a lot of different moving parts to it. But it's also something that's very rewarding because we help a lot of people stay in their houses.

It's really interesting, but haven't the banks figured this out? In other words, if you can do it, why don't they do it themselves?

I'm so glad you asked that question because people would say, why would the bank sell you a note versus them do it themselves? And here's the biggest thing banks do do. This. This is why when you're late seven days, your phone starts blowing up with phone calls from the bank or the mailbox guy starts coming by and dropping off certified letters. If you get default, they do try to keep you. But since they originated that loan, they're on the hook for the full amount. And over time, especially depending on the state that you're in, like you're in Pennsylvania there has a little bit longer foreclosure timeframe than say Texas does. So the bank would rather, if they can't get the bar back on track after six months, a lot of times they would rather sell it to somebody like me, get 50 cents on the dollar of what's owed, let me deal with it, let Me go through the legal aspect of things and they can get that 50% in and then go out and lend it out 10 times to make up with their loss. You also have to realize that the banks are so big, they're in the origination side. They're not meant to really run a big operation for a lot of defaults. And we saw that back 10 years ago, 12 years ago, where the banks really struggled with their distressed debt. We're reaching levels and defaults. I think the most recent numbers came out where like an 8 and a quarter percent of all mortgages or all borrowers are at least 90 days behind of their mortgage in default. And so that is a lot. Exactly. Roughly about 4.2 million Americans are struggling right now. It's more struggling, but literally behind on their mortgage 90 days greater. So the banks would like to try to modify, try to do something with you, but the people that they have working are hourly employees. They don't care one way or another. You're just another number on that bank's portfolio. And so the banks do offer some opportunities, but they want you to try to get caught back up. If you're behind by six months, they bring the full six months to the table. But most people don't have that. So while they do try to work it out, a lot of people, you know, just basically stop answering their door, stop answering their phones, quit checking their mail because they know what's in there and they kind of give up. And with what we do, it gives us kind of a, kind of a fresh start, a fresh footing with that bar. There's been a lot of times when we bought mortgages and we reached out to the bar. Since it came from a new person, it was kind of a new start. Like, listen, I know you're behind by 12 months or six months or whatever. Could you start making your existing payment? What you go through with being a lot of work or death or sick, could you start making that existing payment again? And we'll worry about the year by putting on the face amount of the loan, or if you can pay 100 or $200 extra per month on top of your existing payment towards the back payments at the end of the year, we'll forgive what you're behind on. So we get flexible. It's a new start. The fact that we have bought the debt at a big discount, I mean, the borrower still owes that amount, but it gives us a lot of flexibility to really create a win win. I'll give you an example. Let's say somebody owes 120 grand on $100,000 house because the market values dropped or things are they just behind. Well, I bought that note at 50 grand. I have a lot of flexibility to bring the borrower back to the table. Most people want to stay in their houses, especially if they got kids or they've been in it for a while. They just need somebody to kind of give them some options that really make sense. And so while their house may be only worth a hundred, it makes sense for me to try to keep them in the house so I'm not having to foreclose. I don't have to try to go and go the legal route and spend money on that. I don't have to try to fix the property up. I want somebody that's living in it to take care of it. And at the end of the year, if that borrower is paid back on time again for me, I may forgive 20 grand, I may forgive 10 grand because I'm not going to collect on it anyway. If I were to foreclose and sell the house because it's really kind of just gone. Value is kind of disappeared in the wind like smoke rings in the dark, you know. So that's what we do. We're constantly kind of looking at assets, looking at borrowers. I had a borrower today who just completed her one year trial payment plan. So we're dropping her interest rate a couple points. We're going to forgive her roughly about $25,000 in debt that she owed because the property's not worth that anymore. And she's been a really great borrower, paying on time her $400 a month payment and paying an additional 100 to $200 a month as she can. So. And what we paid for the debt, we got it at such a big discount. It works well for us to get a good return on investment as well for us and our investors. Great.

Well, you're going to have to tolerate some dumb questions because.

No dumb questions.

I'm talking about a space that I know next to nothing about. But how does this thing end? In other words, what happens at the end of the mortgage period or whatever? Whose house is it? How have you made money?

So here's the thing. So we'll go back to the same examples that we just mentioned. Borrows 120 house, maybe we worked 100. There's a mortgage on it for 30 years. We bought the debt at 50 grand. If we get them to start paying again, great debt. Mortgage payment's like 600, $700. A month? Well, if you figure to say $600 a month. 600 times 12 is 7200. 7200. Over a $50,000 investment on our parts. About a 14% cash and cash return, which is pretty good. Now I can hold that note forever, I mean, until she, he or she pays that mortgage off. At the end of the mortgage, they pay us off. Great. We've made a ton of money as the bank, they got the house. I mean, they still own the house. Maybe we get them back on track and then in 12 months, maybe I. It's now what's considered a reperforming note, Ron, because they paid on time for 12 months. I could sell that mortgage, not the house. She still lived here. She's still living in a house. Let's sell that mortgage to another investment company or another bank. Let's say 85, 90 cents on the dollar. So now I've gotten a year of cash flow, 7,200 bucks. I sell this, let's just say 85 cents on the dollar. That means $35,000 above what I paid for the note. So I made $42,000 on a $50,000 investment in 12 month time frame, roughly. That's a pretty good cash and cash return without having to fix the property, without having to try to rehab or anything. It's just a cash flow base. This is what banks basically do. That's why they love the note business, not the fix and flip, not the rental business. They like the aspect of being able to arbitrage their people's funds and then make good money and stuff. So that's kind of how we make our money is buy it, get them reperforming, and then sell it off or hold it for cash flow. I still have to say about 40% of the cases. If the borrowers won't work with us, Ron, then we do go the legal route and have to proceed with foreclosure or offering cash for keys for them to walk without having to go through a foreclosure process. And then we just sell the real estate on the open market as a property and make money that way. Does that make sense for you?

Yeah, definitely. Which leads me to kind of another question, which is what are the risks involved? I think you mentioned one of them is that the borrower may not pay you, just like they haven't been paying the bank.

Yeah, and that's gonna happen. I mean, some people will just hide their head in the sand and not respond to anything. I would love. I actually make more money by keeping people in their houses than foreclosing. But it is what it is and some people just really are bad situation. They need to walk away from the house or they got into a loan and originally they should never have gotten into a loan because they didn't have any skin in the game. And we see that happening right now. A lot of first time home buyers using FHA loans. That's actually the highest defaulted mortgage product out there. Roughly about 16% of all FHA borrowers are in default right now. It's the biggest percentage across the country. But the biggest dangers is a you don't do your homework by checking out the value of the property, doing your due diligence on the loan files, that we're looking at the borrower itself by looking at the loan document, making sure you've got the right to foreclose, making sure that you're checking the taxes on the property that they're paid up to date or if they're not, they don't go to a tax foreclosure and wipe you out. So there's a lot of moving parts. As far as due diligence. It's a different mindset than flip this house or buying a property and turn it into a rental because we don't technically own the property, we own the note that is secured by the property. That's the collateral for the property. Being the bank, we have a lot of the same options, but being an investor, it gives us flexibility to try to work with borrowers as best we can. So you always run the risk of a bar being upset. Like I had a borrower basically light their house on fire. They were all pissed off because we were having to foreclose and I just kind of chuckled. I'm like, thank you. We'll just file insurance on it now. And you're going to go to jail for arson, which is stupid. You know what I mean? We've had people that broke down crying on the phone with us because we kept them in their house. They did think they had people that cussed us out because you know, we're trying to adjust things for them, but they want it for free money. Now look, I don't run a charity, I run a business. And I'm trying to help you here. But here's your options. You're not going to live for free. I mean, I know you haven't paid on your mortgage for 12 months. And one risk that a lot of investors face is that they want to talk to the borrowers. And I'm like, no, you do not. You want to hire third party, like vendors or servicing companies or professionals to handle that, kind of be that buffer, because we've all got big hearts. If somebody says, oh, I lost my dog, my grandmother died, and you hear that for the fourth or fifth time, like, how many grandmothers do you have? That's a big risk, is that you let borrowers kind of drag things out. You've got to be very kind of firm. There are some great vendors out there you may foreclose. Gotta hire attorneys in each state that you're buying this stuff. And you need realtors in each state to give you values. It's not the easiest thing because there are a lot of moving parts to it. It's a little different mindset than just going out and looking at a property and I'm going to rehab it there. But if you're tired of dealing with toilets, tenants and trash outs, or you're tired dealing with trying to show up for contractors or. What I love more than anything, Ron, is I don't have to spend a lot of money finding deals. You know, like a lot of investors are mailing out postcards and yellow letters and doing all these sorts of like marketing, you know, dropping thousands of dollars each month in marketing costs. When what we do to find deals, it's not direct marketing, we're actually contacting the banks directly. And the banks are literally sending us lists each quarter each month on what they're, I guess you say their problem children are, and those are the ones we target. And so one source, like one bank will lead to usually hundreds of deals that we can cherry pick from. That makes sense for us for years to come, for the most part. So always got to check your property, you got to check your borrower, then you got to have your systems and vendors in place to really maximize your results.

Well, that leads to the obvious question of what do you need to get started, in other words? I mean, banks don't send me lists of things. So presumably you're doing either some contacting or do you need to be licensed like a realtor or what?

Now that's a really great question. And in most states, if you have a servicing company that's handling the borrower outreach for you, you're usually covered. You don't need a real estate license to buy notes. In a couple states like Illinois, they want you to have a debt collector's license, which is a couple hundred bucks. States like Georgia, Washington state, Oregon, and I think even Pennsylvania is trying to pass this law where they want you to be a licensed mortgage broker to do that. In that case, I usually buy in about, in other states, they don't require those licenses out there. So to get these deals sent to you, you're not gonna walk into your local Wells Fargo and say, hey, I want to buy your notes. When I was a previous banker at Chase, I had guys walk in and ask me that, like, I don't know what the heck you're talking about. So it's internal departments at the bank. Couple departments go buy special assets, Secondary marketing, chief, credit risk. These are the individuals behind the bank, inside internal departments that are evaluating the bank's loan portfolio. And you know where it's looking at and what's distressing because every loan that's in default costs the bank about 10 times that in fees that they could be collecting in interest. So what we do is we do massive outreach via email blasts, or we'll jump on the phone and dial for dollars to call banks to get transferred to the right departments. There's a couple websites that we can pull information from, give us names or contact numbers for these internal departments that we reach out to. So, like tomorrow I'm actually going to be spending like 5 hours making 100 phone calls to asset managers at different banks to get into the right department, to get the list sent to me on a monthly quarterly basis that I can cherry pick from. So it's just a matter of marketing a little bit differently. It's all, if you've got a computer and Internet and a cell phone, you can do this. If you can have a LinkedIn profile, you can jump on LinkedIn and type in special asset managers and find all sorts of thousands of people in that business. So we contact them that way too. But money to get started, I mean, you need to have a little bit money for your marketing costs. Not thousands of dollars each month, a little bit. You need to have a LinkedIn profile, which is important. You need to understand being able to send an email blast out like mailchimp is something that's easy to use. It's a matter of just kind of building momentum with marketing, with email blast out once a month. When it comes to buying these deals, a lot of people are like, well, I don't have 5 million, or I tried to do this 12 years ago and I needed to have 2 million or 10 million to do that at that point. And that's not the case. We have a lot of investors that get started like 50 to 100,000 at a time. They're not even using their own money. They're networking with other real estate investors at different investment clubs across the country, or using friends and family money to go out and buy this debt, or even using their own retirement funds in like a self directed IRA to go out and buy this debt and then work it out with a borrower to try to keep them if they can. If not, then like I said, they.

Foreclose to some extent. You're making it sound fairly well, easy is the wrong term. But I'm sure that there is a requirement, if not legal and just generally for certain amount of training to know what you're doing. How does somebody decide, hey, this sounds good, but still seems a little overwhelming.

I can agree to that 100%. Is that you've got to be, you got to get trained in any type of thing. I would not recommend, oh, I'm just gonna start calling banks if you have no real estate experience, you know, or you don't understand numbers. And that's why, honestly, why we started our podcast, the no closer show three years ago and we've got 620 episodes. It's a variety of us sharing content on specific subjects, but then also bringing on experts. But part of what's great to protect your assets, okay, cya, cover your ass. Is the real estate attorneys. They're the ones that are foreclosing, the servicing companies, they're the ones that are doing borrower outreach because there are some national organizations like the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, if you're dealing with consumer debt in the public. But you can't like be calling somebody at 9:00 at night, hey, pay me now or I'm gonna send over Bubba with a bat. You know what I mean? There's things that you can do and things that you can't do. You've got to get trained. And I mean, we've been teaching investors for 10 years how to tap into this with different workshops and things like that and videos. Like we do a webinar every Monday night. Like we did a webinar last night on three simple steps to kind of marketing and finding banks and contacting. There's other things to raising capital. So it's, it is not, hey, I'm going to be in the no business today and get rich quick at all. It does take time, it does take training. Like anything else out there. It is not for everybody. Some people that it's not for. I would say if you have a hard time with systems and being consistent, it may not be the best for you. If you are an individual that Likes chasing shiny objects, shiny object syndrome or chasing squirrels. This is not for you. Save your money and go do something else for the most part. And also who do real well. People love numbers. We have a lot of engineers that do well because we're dealing with a lot of spreadsheets and identifying things and working through spreadsheets of, of deals and looking at payment streams. Ex mortgage brokers, loan officers do really well. Those that have the hardest amount of time are people that come kind of from the fix and flip space, or realtors that haven't really invested in a lot of real estate. They get so used looking at like, oh, future deals or a hundred. Oh, these are 100 assets that are all deals. I'm like, no, they're not. List of hundred. I may end up just making offers on 10 because of the due diligence breakdown. So it just takes time, takes training. Like anything else. You kind of have to learn how to walk again as a note investor versus a traditional real estate investor.

And how about your own journey? How did you get into this? I mean, out of all kinds of directions that you could have gone.

I really believe in divine intervention. It's going to sound weird. I started off like many real estate investors. I bought my first primary house out of college. And my realtor was like, you know, it's a great time to buy and you guys got great credit scores, you know. So we ended up buying two more investment properties, basically 100% financing. And then I lost my job six months later. So we were trying to make six mortgage payments, three first mortgages, three seconds on a private school teacher salary of 35 grand a year because our two tenants also got laid off by the company that was there. So I mentioned I was a distressed borrower. Yeah, I was distressed back in 2002, trying to avoid foreclosure in my primary residence. Luckily for us, I was able to get our assets out of the sling, get rid of our two investment properties without owning anything, and kept our primary. So I was kind of licking my chops for about a year or two, my wounds from that aspect of trying to be an investor. And lucky for me, a buddy of mine was starting a mortgage company here in Austin, Texas. We'd worked together before, so I joined him. We started this mortgage company. It was connected with a couple real estate investors here in Austin that were teaching creative financing, creative real estate investing. They were traveling the country, speaking at seminars and workshops. And so I would come along to pitch doing mortgages. Hey, I'm the mortgage guy in the Back we're doing in front of 500 to 1500 investors in a weekend. And this goes back to 2004 to 2008, which was really prime time for the mortgage industry. So we did well. But for me, Ron, I would sit in the back of the room and listen to all these real estate investors get up there and talk about their tactics and their tools and what they did. So I would always go home with a new course or a new training program that I would start to apply. Well, Fast forward to 2008. We know what happened in 2008 with the meltdown and the great recession and the mortgage business kind of stopped. So I left the mortgage company and was very blessed that the two investors, I really basically had a four year apprenticeship of learning distressed debt investing or note investing. So I just started dialing for dollars in 2008 to track down calling the banks that I was originating for to get lists of their non performing borrowers. I did that, make 50 to 100 phone calls a day back then and was doing well and flipping a deal here, there. And then in 2010 I came up with this crazy idea that just to get out of Austin. I mean, I love Austin, it's been home. But I was like, I really need to kind of get out. I gone through divorce at a business partnership that we've gone our separate ways. And so I'm sitting there watching baseball, watching preseason, you know, major league baseball. I'm a big baseball fan. And they had these commercials pop up about, you know, $7 for a hot dog, $5 for a beer. Seeing all 30 major league teams with your son, priceless. I was like, oh, that'd be really cool. I've always wanted to do that. So I literally, Ron, I wrote down my goal. I'd love to go and see all 30 Major League Baseball parks. And I took it a step further. I got on the schedule on ESPN.com I said, okay, if I start off with in Dallas with the Rangers and go to Houston and try to plan this trip out, how long would it take for me to hit all 30? So I was like 33, 34 weeks of travel. In the meantime, I'd been marketing videos and deal flow that I was doing and kind of sharing that on social medias and a blog. In a matter of two weeks, I had four or five investment clubs literally reach out to me and say, hey, would you like to come speak at our club? Would you like to come talk about the deals you're doing? I'm like, when do you want me to come speak. And the dates that they wanted me to come speak lined up perfectly with this fictional journey. My hair always goes up when I tell a story. So I'm like, okay, God. Divine intervention telling me I got to do something now. So I sold everything I own over the course of the next month, including the house I was living in, all our furnishings, except for my truck and my dog. And then the first of April, back in 2010, we jumped in the truck and what we thought would be 35, 36 weeks of travel turned into three and a half years. We met all sorts of amazing people across the country, spoke at all these investment clubs, built really a grassroots effort. I met with a lot of bankers at banks in Florida and North Carolina, Texas and Pennsylvania, looking at their portfolios, and we ended up buying a lot. And that's kind of what started and caused me to be known across the country as the note guy. We've had our ups and downs since then, of course, with different things going on, but still just an amazing.

Oh, that's wonderful. And certainly for those who may not be interested in notes, we got to get you back to hear about the visits to all the baseball parks. That's very intriguing given the ups and downs that you've talked about. I would think that this is, I mean, I hate to put it in terms because other people are suffering miseries in this regard, but I would think that this is really a kind of a busy time for people in your line.

It is. I mean, we've been kind of sitting here waiting to see what the government's going to do and the banks are going to do. But as we get closer here as a six month forbearance window that the government did, which ends roughly about a week. Yeah, there's a lot of people out there that are hurting. I mean, and we have been very busy reaching out to banks. I think a lot of the banks are going to end up giving people a second chance with another forbearance agreement for six months. Some will start the foreclosure process on investment loans. The commercial properties. Commercial mortgage market is what's been really impacted more than anything else. They expect over half of small businesses to fail. One in four hotel loans is in serious default. Really, I could pick up a hotel loan at like 20 cents of what's owed right now. It's that cheap. America's on sale, especially the commercial markets. So yeah, it's a very busy time. As we're getting ready, we've seen more deals kind of come across our desk in the last 90 days than we've really seen the last two to three years. On the commercial side, the residential is a little bit slower because of, I hate to say this, but the government's kind of kicking the can down the road. Six months. Let's give everybody six months to get back on track with forbearance agreements and we'll kind of reestablish it. I've been on some conference calls with some industry insiders knowing that when this thing ends here in the next week, the government's willing to go ahead and give people a second six month forbearance time frame on their primary residence if it's exactly government backed security or government backed loan. But it's an interesting time because if jobs don't bounce back, you know, we've got, you know, 50 million people have filed for unemployment, not working and it's taking forever to get their unemployment and then businesses don't rebound or don't start back up again. It's going to be a rough time out there. And banks are really kind of expecting their bracing for us to see close to 15 million homeowners underwater stress again. One of the things that we track is quarterly reports with different banks. And you look at the big four, bank of America, Chase, Citibank and Wells Fargo, what they filed with the FDIC about a month and a half ago. They're expecting over 150 some odd billion dollars in distressed debt, if not losses on both commercial and residential loans across the country. So we are going to be busy, like I said, trying to work with homeowners or business owners, trying to keep them in their houses if we can, or in their the business we can. But it's going to be an interesting time the next 24 to 36 months to see what's going on.

Kind of one more area I'd like to focus on. As you know, I'm old enough to be retired, but I'm still working. Many of my peers have a lot of time on their hands. I'm wondering is this, you know, just in terms of what has to be done and energy involved and so on, is this a young person's game or is it something that you might encourage people who are close to retirement or retirement age to look into?

That's the beautiful thing, Dr. Ryan, is depending on what your goals and what you want to achieve. We have a lot of investors, a lot of our students are part time. You know, they're putting in five or ten hours a week doing this on the side. They're looking at a couple assets here and there. They're making some offers. It's like a hobby for them. And then we also have others that are like, oh, I don't have enough to retire on. That's gonna be hard for me to go and find $5 million for me to retire on. I can't make that overnight. So they kind of start looking at what they need to bring in. And I really, when somebody's motivated to, okay, I want either a quit my job or I need to really build some cash flow. It's not hard to do by putting some systems in place, figuring out what the numbers are, and then kind of reverse engineering what we need to do on a weekly or monthly basis to help you get to where you want to be. I mean, we got a lot of people that are. They're buying one or two assets a month. Then we have other people that are trying to buy five or 10amonth as well, a week if they can. It just depends on what your goals. We got plenty of people that do this on a semi tire. Actually. Our network is actually a little bit of an older generation or older age group than your traditional fix and flip markets or your landlords a lot of sites. So we actually have, I guess you could say our Avatar is like 45 to 65 for the most part and beyond. They're depending on what people are looking for. So you don't have to do 40 hours a week. You know, we got some people, I guess at 5 to 10 hours a week to kind of. To market and evaluate things and kind of go from there. It all depends on what you want to focus on, what your goals are long term.

Well, I can tell you from personal experience, having listened to your podcasts, that it's kind of a painless way to learn about whether this might be something that you're interested in. I mean, you're very educational, informative, you have some great guests, and you've actually got this series where you're talking about individual markets. Really interesting when you talk about Philadelphia, but also other ones. So it's something that I would really encourage because people can kind of get their toes wet without any commitment, but also, if it's exciting, it gives some guidelines. So I think what I'd like to kind of conclude with is, number one, letting people know how they can get in touch with you and what things you have to offer. You know, just virtually. I mean, you're on. Every. Every time I turn around, I'm getting an email. So I know that you won't be hard to find. And we'll include this in the show notes too.

But so there's a lot of great ways to find information on what we do is a great way to get started. So yeah, you can check out the Note Closer show podcast. You can listen to that on any, any place that you download or listen to podcasts. We're on every basically podcasting platform. And then you can also go to our YouTube channel. We've got over a thousand videos on YouTube of webinars and like you said, we're doing this kind of 40 city tour called the Note Nation Top 40. So you can go to Weclose Notes TV that'll take you directly to our YouTube channel. And then you can also go to our main website. We close Notes and we've got a variety of trainings. I mean we do a one day Saturday livestream training. It's online. It's kind of the people call it the Cliff Notes of note investing where it goes through eight or nine hours of the basics of kind of getting started, what note investing is. And we teach that once a month. And it's really a very affordable $49 not only to be a part of, but get the replays and some other bonuses that we throw into it as well. So noteweekend.com wonderful.

Well, I don't know that I've had a guest on where I've learned as much from during the course of the podcast. So Scott, I'm really, really grateful that we finally got together and I know my listeners are going to be very appreciative of what you've had to say and I suspect some of them will be followers of yours and be moving into this field too. So again, I just am very grateful. Thank you for being with us. This has been another really informative and for me exciting episode of rejuvenating with Dr. Ron Kaiser. Our guest has been Scott Carson, the key person in the world of note closing. We're really grateful. I hope that if you have enjoyed it that you'll tell others to listen to subscribe, download so on and of course please Visit our website www.thementalhealthgym.com and be back next week for another interesting and informative episode. Thanks again, Scott.

Thank you Dr. Ryan. I appreciate SA.