How to Get Started as a Real Estate Investor in 2025

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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.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody. Hey, welcome to this episode of the Nut Closer show. As always, Scott Carson. Excited to be here with the day and today's episode. I want to talk about things you need to do. I know we get a lot of people that listen to podcast episode. You know, we got over a million, million and a half downloads of it. We've. We're coming up on a million views on our YouTube channel. Thank you for us making both of those. Number one in the industry, by the way. But I get a lot of phone calls from people that are brand new to real estate. And I, when I was brand new to become an investor, I was like that happy puppy, right? Running around wanting to lick everybody's knees, wanting to jump up on everybody, see what's going on. I'm so excited. I want to be a real estate investor. I didn't know where to begin. And this episode is dedicated to a guy who called yesterday, Louie. He's a local guy here in Round Rock. Nice guy. Very nice guy. We had a nice chat. He booked a phone call this late last week on my calendar. So he was looking for notes, information. So I called him yesterday and he's like, oh, hey, yeah, Are you that note subject to guy? Which are two different strategies, right? It's like, well, I'm on the non performing no side, not a subject to guy. He goes, oh, okay, yeah. I go, where do you live? He goes, I live in Round Rock, Texas. I'm like, that's awesome. You're just 10 minutes away from me here. I used to live in Round Rock. He's like, yeah, yeah, I want. I'm. And I'm asking, I said, what are you, what are you currently investing? Oh, I'm brand new to investing. I'm bad. I'm brand new to being a real estate investor. He does something else on his 9 to 5, but he realizes it's not going to help him accomplish his dreams of what he wants accomplished. And he's not, you know, he's not too old, he's not young, somewhere in his late 30s, early 40s. But from what I could tell on the phone and I said, okay, because I don't want to go into somebody's brand new real estate. Basically, trying to explain notes to them is kind of like trying to teach somebody how to speak Spanish for the first time if they're not fluent in it. Right? And the guy I asked, I said, well, as I was trying to explain what note investing is briefly to him, he told me, first thing I always ask is, hey, well, do you own a house? He's like, no, I don't own a house. Okay, you've never owned a house. It's hard to explain what a mortgage note is or note buying and selling if you've never been on the end of a bar receiving a note being sold. So it's a little harder that way. But I asked him, I started asking some questions about what he's doing as a real estate investor and he's very green and I thought, what a great episode. For those of you out there that come across my channel, come across our YouTube about how to get started as a real estate investor because I know it's overwhelming, all right? Traveling this week, I would talk with people next to me or people at the table or people in the airplane, other things. Like they were talking, they're asking what you do and I tell a real estate investor and they're all, you fix and flip from like, no, not really fix, flipper. And on flip properties, I flip debt. And you know what I mean? So let's take it back. Let's literally take it back to how to get started as a real estate investor. And I've spoken on this topic on multiple other podcast episodes. You know, and there's things to do if you're wanting to get started, especially in 2025. It's a different market than it was when I started. Hard to believe. 21 year anniversary on 4th of July of leaving my last W2. Yeah, when I left Chase, I gave my initial 4th of July and I was out the door or I was gone. Two weeks later they actually let me stay. But that's two 21 years as a real estate investor and I know I totally screwed up before that. I tried to be a real estate investor back in 2002 and just fell flat in my face. I just had a phone call with another investor out of Dallas who hasn't taken a class at not invest. He's trying to figure it all out through YouTube University and he's fallen flat in his face as well. A couple things and you don't know what you don't know. So this is not meant to be difficult. It's not meant to be demeaning. I want you guys to learn and what you don't know, you don't know. You don't know the opportunities. And that was obvious. When I was talking to Louie, I asked him, okay, you live in Round Rock. Have you started attending or going to your local real estate clubs? And as a brand new real estate investor, if you want to get educated, yes, YouTube's great, podcasts are great to listen to, but you need to go start connecting with local real estate investors, especially when you're brand new. The reason you want to go to your local real estate club, and there are some good clubs and there are some downright awful clubs. Okay, here in Austin, we've got some good clubs. We have some. The main real estate club is all focused on what the owners are doing. I'm not going to name names. If you're here local, you know what I'm talking about. They all focus on what they want to do. And they seem to be like, oh, we're the experts in flipping commercial or we're the experts in assignments. We're experts in all this stuff. Like really? No, you're expert basically for what you focus on. And they don't like to teach outside things that doesn't, that they don't do. So they're very niched down on what they focus on. And I get it, hey, some, some real estate clubs are like that. It's all central focus for me. Me versus the wee wee wee aspect of side. That's why a lot of folks we, we all the way home. Okay, couldn't help it but a bum, bum dad joke there. But anyway, what I'm trying to get at is the reason you want to start going and connecting with local real estate investors. Going to real estate clubs, going on to the national RIA website to find a local investing club is that's going to help you give direct access to local folks who are doing stuff. And that's what you want to do. You want to go out and start talking to investors investing in your market, people that are closing deals. Now, I'll give you a little bit of a tip from a speaker standpoint because I've spoken at hundreds of real estate clubs across the country in the last 20 years and conference stuff like that. If you go to a local real estate club, your, your first time's usually free. Sometimes they make you sign up, sometimes it's 20 bucks, sometimes it's free, sometimes it's at a restaurant, whatever it might be, pay go ahead and Pay, buy dinner, go for free. Sign up for it. The thing about our local real estate club, it's all about network. You cannot be a wallflower. You can't be sitting on the side not talking to people. Now the great thing you can do is pay attention to who's sitting on the back row, especially the back right. If you're the speaker facing the audience, it's going to be the back right rows. If you're facing the stage, it's going to be the back behind you, the left rows. Okay, but those are usually the most experienced people. They probably come in right before it gets started or they, they probably leave early because they like. Oh, this subject I already know. Now also here's another good thing. Talk to. Look, talk to the people running the event. Talk to the people with the organizement and tell them it's okay. We all got to start somewhere. So don't be embarrassed that you're new to real estate. All right, Maybe a lot of people read Rich Dad, Poor dad or they read Flip or Hold or any number of are. They're big fans of, you know, flip this house or whatever it might be out there. You know, you can't base your investing education on an infomercial on a. Definitely not on like HGTV or any of those. Those are all fiction. They're not that you got to realize that's set up to be ideal for who's speaking it and it's tailored to that because a lot of these strategies and we see that here in Austin, Texas because Austin can be a difficult market. It is a very competitive market. Now you see these big win, you know, bandwagons of people coming through and hosting free two hour sessions. One night it's down at the airport, one night it's up, you know, North Austin, next one's in Round Rock and they rotate these things through. They're just a cattle call to get people to sign up to get on mailing list to sell them high end coaching. There's nothing wrong with high. Hey, I sell high end coaching. I know mine's valuable. Heck, we did a whole episode about it. But they're just trying to ram people through a pro program and they're trying to get you off. Started off. Okay, yeah, you're start off wholesaling. You're going to try to start doing light flips. And yes, those are things you can do. But it may not what you're taking as a class may not work in what you're trying to do. So the first thing you gotta do besides going to the local real estate club is kind of figure out what you want to focus on, what excites you. And that may very well change. I will tell you right now, that will very well change depending on once you get in and get your hands dirty, get in the weeds of doing wholesaling or light rehabbing or Airbnb or whatever it may be ADUs, okay? But the most important thing you do is get educated, educated, smart. But here's the thing. The biggest mistake and the biggest fallacy of real estate investing clubs and meetup groups is that they focus oftentimes on so many different niches. Okay? There might be a different subject every month or every two weeks as they meet. Find out who's closing on deals in that group. And that's why the back row of folks are using the most senior or talking to the local, the president, the organizers, I mean, group. Find out who's closing deals and then speak with those people. Go up and talk to them, okay? The most successful investors I know are often the most willing to say, hey, don't do that or do this or focus on it. Some people are not going to want to give away resources or share some of their like you're not going to share their private money lenders. They may share who their hard money lenders is. They may share who the title company stuff is, but they're not going to give away a lot of stuff. And don't do this where hey, can I take you to lunch? People don't like that. People don't want to have their minds picked for free for lunch at Whataburger. Okay? I don't do that. I don't do lunch meetings. If you want, I'll give you 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, I got my own time to do. That's why it's important for you a if you find a nature too that you like, a find a group locally, there may be a group. If you're interested in self storage, there may be a group in Airbnb. Go get general information and then find out who's doing the different niches, what's working in today's market versus working another's market because every market's different. What works here in Austin may not work there. If you're in Florida, you know, the New York Times came out and just documented that Cape Coral is the worst real estate market in the country right now because of all the vacant homes, the Airbnb rentals up there. You know, and then there's an investor buddy of mine A Realtor. Larson, Michael, Matt, Mike Larson. Talk about, hey, there's an opportunity in kick world. There is opportunities in Cape Coral because values are end up and what is Florida rebound. So you got to know what is going to work and then when you pick a niche, then get educated. Spend the 500 bucks or a thousand bucks or 2,000 bucks to go to a workshop. Get educated. I never understand people who bash workshops because workshops is where you're going to really drink from a fire hydrant for two days, three days. Obviously you want to talk to people have been to that thing. You don't want to go where it's just a pitch fest. Some of my competitors, it's a two day class and it's just a pitch fest. Non stop sign up for our 30, $50,000 program. You're not smart enough. Well look, if there are other sources out there, one of my biggest competitors and peers in the industry, like Scott, your generation likes to give away too much stuff. We like to charge like, well, you can do that, but you can hoard everything back behind a paywall. But you gotta realize it's the 21st century. People are gonna find out what they need to find out through Google and YouTube and stuff like that. So you might as well give them some stuff and add value to people by giving them information so that they understand that hey, what is given in your free stuff will be blown away by what's in the paid stuff. You know what I mean? So go take a workshop for two or three days, start networking with people in your area. There are some representatives of people you need to add to your team to help you get the ball. Rock and roll. First, the thing you're gonna need if you're going to focus on a, a sole location and make sure that strategy works in a location. So like if somebody comes to me, I only want to buy notes in Austin, Texas. I'm like, well, I'm sorry, go do something else. I've literally told people that I'm sorry, go do something else. If you just want to focus on Austin, Texas, that's great. You're gonna have a harder time, especially buying banknotes. It's just that things don't. We don't see a lot of stuff here in Austin and we're seeing more. But if I had to just focus on Austin, Texas 20 years ago, I'd have been bankrupt and broken out of business. Okay, so focus on the strategies working in your market or look at the markets that you are interested in. Maybe you know, buying in Austin isn't for you, but San Antonio is an option. Or maybe up Temple, Colleen or Houston or Dallas or stuff like that. You're local. Look at the bigger markets around you. Okay? Just have to be Texas and find out what's working in those markets. Maybe it makes sense for you to drive up and attend a local real estate club in a, you know, a bigger city to see what's going on. I've done a lot of that in my day, you know, going to gone to a city for either coaching myself and find out when the local real estate club was meeting and going on and attended the meeting just to be more educated. What's going on? The great thing about when you go to these meetup groups, besides the investors is look at who the vendors are. Okay. There are some people you're going to definitely need to add to your team that you can often find there at their local real estate club. A, you need to find, if you're gonna be local, find a local real estate agent that you could reach out to who doesn't mind working with new investors. That can save you some time. Look to see if there's any hard money lenders or private lenders there. Sometimes you'll see those people. And yes, you may not use hard money lenders to buy notes, but I'm talking about generic stuff. It's good to find those kind of people. Third thing, you're going to need a local real estate attorney. Now, one of the most important things that comes along with the real estate attorney is helping you with closings and paperwork and contracts, stuff like that. But also you're going to need to set up an LLC for your real estate investing. Now, if you have an LLC for a business that's not real estate, don't use that same llc. You're going to be co mingling assets. And that's not a smart thing when it comes to asset protection. So unfortunately, bite the bullet. Pay for an LLC here in Texas, 300. California, you're going to pay $800 per year. You know, Jackson, Mississippi are going to pay 30 bucks. It just varies. But go ahead and set up an llc. It's just part of doing business. Register it, do your meds, that kind of stuff. There's a company called Law Fund Associates that can help our clients out there. They do it all across the country. They're phenomenal. They're doing it for 50, 50 years. But start you an LLC, okay. And then dedicate your time to the strategies that are working in the market you're living or the markets you're interested in and make a little mental note, you know, what other markets do you have family that you trust or friends, you know, that you could reach out to? All right, hey, what's working in that markets? Would they be willing to drive by a property for you? Now, a lot of people want to get into wholesaling, and I get that that's the kind of the first tangible aspect of going out or driving for dollars. And I've done that. We've gone out, looked at ugly properties. My, my first ugly property was literally right around the corner from my house in Austin in Round Rock. I connected with the owner, sent a letter to him, called, and he moved to Houston. His wife owned the house, but he held the mortgage that has been vacant for a year. And, and my first meeting, I got a hundred dollar bill from the keys of the house and had the ability to flip it, you know, and that was good. That was great. But get, learn, learn. Start talking to people. Learn talking to rehabbers. Rehabbers are a good source to figure out what they're budgeting these days for paint and carpet. Okay. Or for a new roof locally. That's why your local real estate club is one of the most valuable things, because all your vendors are going to be there if you're doing something locally. And it's good to get those people's names. But also don't slouch on the people that are sitting next to. If you're sitting next to somebody, talk to him. Hey, how's it going? My name's Scott. What's your name? What are you focused on? Have you been coming for a while? A lot of people want to see you coming to local real estate clubs for more than just the first time. Okay. And if it's once a month that they meet, come six months, come five months, give yourself some chance. Pay for the membership. Ask where else are they going? What other clubs are they interested in going to? Because that's one of the most valuable things. Most of your major cities are going to have two, three, four or five different investment clubs that either meet at night, sometimes they meet in the weekend, sometimes they meet in the mornings or lunches. It just varies. But get out and start networking. That's one of the most things. But also start collecting information. Take some business cards. Oh, business cards. Oh my God, you're from the 19th century. Look, business cards are still one of the most facet because most people aren't going to market for. Okay? Most people can't market themselves out of a wet paper Bag. The reason you take a business card is twofold. One, take a white business card you get made at, you know, FedEx office. Easy enough when you're with your information on one side, the other side, leave bank blank. Because then if they don't have a business card, these people can write their name, email and phone number on it and you just follow up with them. Start building a buyer's list. Start building an investor's list. That's one thing that people really slack off. Now I'm not talking about go to social media and Facebook or LinkedIn. Yes, that's gravy. But we all know those portals don't allow you to really broadcast anything that your whole database will see. So that one thing that you really own, that's really the most valuable real estate is your email database. So start building that from the get go. I've always found that most real estate investors never retire. Yet some give it up for a little while, but they always end up coming back to it because they realize it's the one spot they can go. All right, so do that. Start building a database. Now I get it. Some of you guys are bootstrapping your real estate business. It may be too expensive to go to a workshop. Find out if the workshop offers a, you know, two for one and then split that price. You know, I did a lot of that early when we'd go to a workshop and I would either volunteer so I could learn to host it, or I would split the room, split the registration with somebody because they would allow a second guess to come at a discounted price and we just split it 50. 50. Those are great ways to do it. But that's going to learn the most in such a time frame. Then you're going to learn more about the ins and outs and the marketing aspect of things. And you know, one of the most important things you can talk to is always understand the lending side of the business. So find out. Hard money lenders, go talk to them, what's their policies, how do they calculate value, what the percentages are doing? Go find a title company locally that works with investors and go take the closer out to lunch. They like that. They like wine and whiskey. Okay. Some of my best investments has been a case of red wine or case of white wine and taking into different title companies and giving it to the closers and say, hey, can I pick your brain for a few minutes or can I take you out to lunch? Or heck, a lot of these title reps have a budget to take you out to lunch. Because they're wanting to get business. So talk to them. Hey, what's it like in the market? So many title companies have so much information about values. Some will pull foreclosure lists, some can pull title searches or do county record searches to pull investor lists for you from nominal price. A lot of these provide different fees or different services for a small fee. That's really work with. That's one thing I used to do when I would go traveling out when I was first coaching for Bob Lee and Eddie, who was coaching with Lee Arnold back in days, we would go meet with people, hey, let's put your team together. Be in a city for five days, four to five days with somebody. And I say, okay, do you have a hard money lender? No, let's go find one. You have a title rep, you got a realtor. Get a hard money lender, you got a local real estate club. Those are like the five big key things. And understanding what's going to work in your market now the next thing you got to look at is figure out, like I said, besides the niche that you want to focus on is how do you find those leads for that niche. If it's wanting to do fix and flips, then a really good sign would be the foreclosure list or vacant property list or the code enforcement list. Okay, those are all some great lists. And those all cost a variety of different things. There are also lead sources for stuff that you could buy from different things. And every city, every camp is a little bit different. The foreclosure side. Foreclosures.com is usually the easiest one from Texas. It's the Roddy list we've had. If you like probates. Micah Nichols. We had them on a previous episode talking about probates, which I think is a great, great list for if you're looking for distressed properties that you can kind of target. Tax deeds, tax investing. Find out who the expert, truly the expert is and talk to two or three people. Hey, who else is you doing it? If you're in an area where there's a foreclosure auction, that's a great thing to show up to when. Find out when the foreclosure auction is here in Texas is the first Tuesday of the month. So go to Williamson county or Travis county and start connecting with people there. Just be a sponge and if somebody is telling you something, don't argue with them, listen to them. Okay, why did that happen or how did that work out for you? Just go network with people like crazy. Be A sponge. Try to connect with many people as you possibly can. And then like I said, start building some online assets by online assets besides your email database. Start posting on LinkedIn, post on social, Start sharing what you're learning. People love the journey. The Hero's Journey is a great book. If you can get a chance to read it. Start sharing here. Here's what I'm doing and one of the most most valuable things I ever did years ago was doing this 100k and 100 day challenge where I started documenting what I was doing on a day in, day out basis. Every night I write a little blog through some photos from the day and that build momentum, that built people understand, hey, I'm just a normal guy. He's just like me, let me see if I can't help him. Hey, I got 25k in an IRA or I got a potential lot for sale. All that stuff coming in is going to help you not only talk with people, but looking at deals. And that's what you want to be, is really be a deal engineer initially. Now, if you like a niche that doesn't work in your area, but you can do it remotely like notes, you know, and you've got some money, got some money set aside performing, you know, in your IRA or retirement accounts, then do some stuff passive, that's totally fine. But become an expert and then reach out to people. Yes. You know, you're not going to learn everything through YouTube, university or podcast, but hey, reach out to the host of your favorite show if they got a time to book a phone call. Like you can book a call with me at talkwithscottcarson.com Great. Reach out to them, talk to them. I know, I'm glad to give everybody 30 minutes to ask questions or help them figure out their path when it comes to it. Just like Louie did. He reached out to me, booked a phone call off LinkedIn, came across, was watching videos of me and he's like, I'm gonna book a phone call with him. Same thing with Jazz out of California did that yesterday as he's getting started as a note investing. Same thing with Brian, he bought a note and he's kind of up a creek in a couple things because he didn't take a class, he tried to do it all himself. And that's one thing you're going to learn more about doing your first deal than anything. But also don't, don't be shared. If you're up a creek, pick up the phone and call somebody. I can't tell you how many times people have made deals worse by not calling, including yours truly, in the past, all right, we. Our ego or what we don't do or what we didn't do, we know we should have done that. That's your sixth sense telling you, okay, just say, hey, I screwed up. I know I screwed up. How do I fix this? I'm always glad I'm not gonna sit there and browbeat somebody, oh, you should have taken my class. The guy already admitted it, okay? He totally screwed up. Let's find a solution. Let's find a way to fix this deal. And sometimes making some money is better than making no money. And I've been apart deals where I was just glad to get rid of it. Made 500 bucks instead of the 50,000 I was going to make. I've also had deals that with an extra phone call or two, I made 50 grand versus 500 bucks. Okay? The one important thing, too, and I see this happen, and this is a mistake of many people, is you partner up with friends to do the same thing. And not everybody is pulling their weight. Now, I get it. Some people are more passionate about things. But keep that in mind. Don't hire. Don't bring somebody that has the same energy as you or doesn't have the same energy as you. Okay? You want to try to find people that have different skill sets. So, like, if you're good at talking to people and somebody's introverted, have them make sure they're good at the accounting or the online marketing side where they're. Yeah, we've had times where we had people come in, and we end up spending, like, hours doing, like, marriage counseling or couples counseling. We had one time three ladies from Florida come in. One lady was all gung ho. The other two ladies were like, and this is a good. And the one lady is all gung ho. Kept getting mad, the other two ladies, because they weren't doing exactly what they needed to do in the timeliness fashion. But she wasn't communicating what she was expecting. You know, one of the. The things I did early on, I didn't have a lot of money when I was investing, but I brought in a partner, my friend, and he wrote some checks for some escrow stuff. And. And we got involved in a couple deals, and eventually I was doing 80 of the work. He was only doing 20 of the work. And I said, listen, man, we got. I need you to pull your weight a little bit more or we need to go in a different direction. And we did. And that was okay. But he's my friend, still my friend. To this day we still refer business to him. So you can do everything yourself. And that was one of the things that Bob Leonardi and Jimmy can't tell. You don't need partners. You can do most everything yourself in the way driving your business. But you also can't be controlling, trying to do everything yourself. Okay, you don't want to go try to pull title yourself. You won't want to try to self service a note, leverage your network, leverage your meetup groups, and that's going to help you get a whole lot further along faster versus trying to be, oh, I know everything because I listen to the podcast episode or I listen to one hour video and everything. Don't be that asshole, don't be that ignorant idiot who doesn't say, and that's the thing too. You will run into people who are time vampires out there, people who will waste your time left and right who haven't done anything. So that's what I always think I ask is like, okay, where are you from? What are you doing? How many deals have you closed on that? Because you'll get a lot of educated to go to real estate clubs that never pull the trigger or anything. Okay, I can think. I mean, honestly, real estate clubs are filled with 50 of people who've never pulled the trigger. Okay? Now some of those have money, which are good to be partners or passive partners. When it comes down doing the nitty gritty, pulling the work, they're just not going to do it. And the most important thing, you got to be patient. You know, you've heard the rule of 10,000 hours to become an expert. Well, if you're starting off, you've got a ways to go. Okay, Be patient. Give a niche that you're working on. 90 days, give it six months, depending on what you put into it, because you're going to get out of what you put into it. So if you don't put into something, you're not going to get anything out of it. And that's the thing I always see when people get in the note business, I always ask them, well, how many offers have you made? How many banks have you called? And they're like, oh, I haven't made any phone calls, the banks. Well, how many emails you sent to your data? But none. Well, you're putting nothing in. You're, you're expecting a magical egg to come out, a golden egg to come out when you've done anything. It doesn't work that way. So be patient and give yourself a little grace, all right? Be patient. Do the things that people tell you to do. Don't go against them just because you think better. There's a reason that an expert is telling you not to do something because it doesn't work or it doesn't work effectively. Now, of course, it was five years ago, 10 years ago, yeah, I get it. The markets change. But if somebody said, hey, I did that six months ago and it didn't work, you might try to go a different direction. That person has given you knowledge, they've given you experience that can save you thousands of dollars, okay? Not signing up for a class or a workshop might save you 400 or $500,000 in the short term, but it'll end up costing a whole lot more in the long run. When you end up buying a bad deal and don't do due diligence, you can't rehab the property, you can't foreclose. There's things you got to realize. Somebody's telling you these things not because A, they just want to make a buck off you, but B, they don't want you to make a mistake most of the time. Now, there are people there all will tell you you're too small. Lenders won't deal with you, banks won't deal with you. We all know that's a bunch of bs, okay? There's plenty of people out there that a lot smarter than me, done a lot better. There's also a lot of people out there, dumber me, that have done well, and that's fine. That's the great thing about real estate investing. You know, tomorrow on the podcast, we've got somebody out of Wisconsin who's a smart guy. He's focused on one part of Wisconsin. He's leveraged every aspect of. He's doing a great job. If that's what you want to be, great. If you want to be buying 20 notes across the country or 20 different states, you can do that, too. Just be smart, get your first deal done, and focus on getting your second or third deal done. You're going to learn more on that education basis. And get a coach. Don't be afraid to get a coach. If you've got the money, can afford it, it's going to expedite your success so much faster than trying to figure it out yourself. That's the difference between getting success in 60 days versus six months or six years. And if you're one of those real estate investors out there, that's not closed on a deal, it's not that These systems don't work. It's that you probably don't work it. You don't have the patience. You're not putting the marketing in. And that's one thing that always used to just bug the heck out of me. When I was traveling on the Ronald grand circuit with Bob and Jamie and Ron was doing his big events, we would get people that would sign up for his MBA of real estate investing. It was like eight classes. He became an expert. And I see these people from one event to another because we would go as the, you know, mortgage company, and Bob would go. And Jimmy could talk about his note investing and creative financing experts, stuff like that. I would see people going from one class to another class and be like, about a month out. I said, hey, I saw you last month at such and such class. Maybe it's the wholesaling class. Right? How did. How did the class go? It's great. I'm like, did you have success? Oh, yeah. We sent out marketing. We're getting a ton of leads. I'm great. Have the list go. Oh, I don't know. I haven't called any of them. I'm too busy going to the next class. That's, like, heartbreaking. Okay, don't do that. If you're getting leads in. If somebody calls you, don't put it off to Friday. Don't put it off to next week. Call that lead. Return that phone call, answer your text messages, phone call. That's one thing that I'm so proud of, is that I answer my text messages, I answer my emails, because guess what? You're not going to get my competition on the phone most of the time because they don't want to talk to you. All right, Grouchy, that's fine. I'll talk to you. I'll go ahead and answer your question as best I can for a certain, you know, amount of time. After that, yes, you are gonna have to sign up for something, membership a class or something like that. But we want you to find success. Look, there's plenty of opportunities out there in every market. Yes. Is the market changing? The market evolving? Is what used to work two years ago working in markets now? No, it's not. There is. We have people that can't find fix and flips. They can't find Airbnbs that make sense or they're being, you know, legislated out of an area or the Airbnb debacle or insurance costs are killing deals or taxes and insurance. The great thing. We'll realize everybody, if you're in an area that's very difficult invest, guess what? You can invest in other markets. There are realtors, there are people that help you in other markets. You can do a lot of stuff online. And guess what? It made me work for you. Jump on a Southwest Airlines flight one day and spend two days out there learning the market, talking to people and building your team remotely to help you take it. I mean, we've rehabbed properties in Florida, Indiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, Georgia, you know, Illinois, stuff like that, all remotely because we understood the team aspect of it. And once you do it once in local, guess what, you can set up your little franchises across the country to do that as well by doing the same thing and talking to the same people and leveraging your relationships with people in those markets to make things happen. You know, you, if you go to an investment club or go to a conference and you meet somebody there, you double down. That's a great thing. I've seen people, we had students that were going to like an apartment complex or a RV park or mobile home thing. And with two people went and they were, they barely talked to each other. Like, I mean, maybe you don't like each other, but I knew they liked each other. I'm like, why don't you talk to different people and then combine your lists. Divide and conquer. That's an easy thing to do. But alas, they didn't. And now they're still stuck doing their dead end job that they hate, they're upset about and not finding success. So we are all a product of the decisions that we make on a day in, day out basis. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't care where you're at, what you've done, what you haven't done, what trouble you've been through, divorce or DWI or bankruptcy or health issues or whatever, you can either choose to take action or you can continue to be a victim. And by continuing to be a victim, you're not going to get anywhere in life, okay? You have to say, hey, bad things happen to good people, all right? You're going to have deals that go south. You have deals that knock it out. That's why it's called investing. Not guaranteed. All right? The more deals you do, the better at you're going to be. And this, yes, things will change and knock you on your ass sometimes. But guess what? Go do the next deal. Go do the next deal. Go, go do the next deal. Make that phone call, send the damn email, post the thing on there. Do a little bit extra and every little bit extra you can do speeds up. You getting to the summit of whatever that success looks like for you today. All right? So don't be a chump. Don't be sitting on the sidelines. This doesn't work. Don't be that asshole. Don't go. This doesn't work. No, no, no, no. Don't do that. Don't be that person. Because then you deserve all the issues out there. But go out there and realize, be honest with yourself. Hey, this didn't work because I didn't market it. Or this didn't work because I didn't make any offers. Or this didn't work because I didn't send out any letters or postcards. I mean, look what I like about the no business. We don't do a lot of direct mail. We still do some to IRA investors. We do some with probate stuff. Different things. But the thing is, ladies and gentlemen, there's a ton of different opportunities if you'll just be humble and go start learning. And the great thing is when you're that puppy dog as a new real estate investor, just like Lewis was, guess what? It's exciting. It can be also intimidating. But take the time, get educated, pick up the phone and call and talk to somebody and go network and start your investing journey. So go out there, take some action. Once again, I hope these things helped. Go to your local real estate club, build your team, get educated, take a class, get a coach, but take action. You know, sometimes we've heard of all the thing, ready, aim, fire. Well, a lot of people are ready, aim, ready, aim there, pull the trigger. And some people are like, I'm gonna fire. And then already aim. You gotta do ready, aim, fire. Learn it, get coached on it, pull the trigger. And the great thing about having a coach, if somebody there that can bounce ideas off, you're not left alone trying to search and get answers out of a YouTube video that's two years or three years old. Okay, the market's changing wholesalers, it's becoming more difficult for you subject to deals. It's become more difficult states out there. So don't be doing something that may not be working in market. Go network, go find out and we'll see the top everybody. Thanks everybody. Bye. Hey, real estate investors. If you have ever wanted to dive into the sexy side of real estate and become a note investor. And not just somebody that owner finances properties or buys and sells on terms, but somebody who's actually buying debt from lenders, mortgage bankers, hedge funds on distressed real estate on both residential and commercial properties. Now is the perfect time. And guess what? We have our upcoming three day workshop here in just a few days on July 25th, 26th and 27th. That's right, that's a Friday. Saturday, Sunday. You can join me live on Zoom and our Note Buying for Dummies workshop. We'll go through the Fs of how to find fund and flip non performing notes at huge discounts without having to use your own money. And we'll show you all the different ways that you can make money being a note investor. Day one's all about how we find these deals from banks, hedge funds and and how you can automate the process of connecting with these people and get tapes and listen to you over and over again. Day two is all about raising capital and marketing and we'll show you how to tap into thousands of IRA investors who are looking for deals to fund and how to communicate and how to contact them and get them to fund your deals. And day three is all about the flip the exit strategies putting deals together. We'll mix in due diligence. We'll mix in the marketing side along with the structure side. So much stuff in three days live on Zoom with yours truly, the Note guy, Scott Carson. Make sure you get signed up by going to Note buying for dummies.com or click on the three day workshop tab on our Workshop. Get signed up today as we're still running discounts and you too can soon become a no buyer. Sam Sa.