How To Invest In Notes Like A Bank? With Scott Carson From Thinking Like a Bank With Sarry Ibrahim

Hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of Thinking Like a Bank where we show you how to think like a bank using the same strategies and principles that banks use to help you find more financial freedom in your life. I'm your host, Sarah Ibrahim. I have with us today a very special guest. His name is Scott Carson. He's an active real estate investor and entrepreneur since 2002, focusing on the niche of distressed mortgage notes. Since 2008, he has purchased over $1 billion in distressed notes on residential and commercial properties all across the country. He has helped thousands of real estate investors and entrepreneurs create wealth through his debt buying tactics and classes, helping his students close thousands of deals. He also hosts a nationally syndicated radio and podcast, Note Closer show, podcast with millions of listeners each month. An avid sports fan, he spends his free time traveling, gardening and making memories. He calls Austin, Texas home with his better half, Stephanie and his four kids.

Four legged kids. I don't have four legged kids.

Welcome to the show, Scott.

Hey, Zeri. Honored to be here today. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited you're with us. You know, I love what you do in that no investing. I think it aligns really well with kind of the principles of the show of like you're thinking like a bank. You're not just going out and actively purchasing real estate. You're more so on the back end dealing with the notes. Kind of like what banks use. Well, banks do. Before we jump into that, tell us a little bit more about your background, how you got into the special niche.

Yeah, it's definitely a niche within the greater real estate niche. I guess you could say I'm just one of a few guys, a few people in the country that actually teaches this niche investing. But I've been doing it for over 15 years now. It's hard to believe that, but previously I was a financial advisor, actually worked with the Citibank and Smith Barney back in the day, but got out of that when they closed their office down here in Austin, Texas and kind of did a few different things but ended up getting back into banking. Actually was a mortgage banker for Bank One and JPMorgan Chase. Did that for a couple years, was a top banker and then a buddy of mine started a mortgage company back in 2004. So I left banking to actually originate loans and had the good fortune for about four years to travel the country working with investors of all sizes, big and small, learning a lot of creative real estate investing strategies out there and had the good fortune for basically have a four year apprenticeship with One of the top investors and another top marketing mind in the world out there. And when everything hit the fan in 2008, they told me like, listen, instead of virginating, it's time to start buying this bad debt. We hadn't seen the likes of what happened in 2008, 9, 10 since the savings and trust scandals during the Resolution Trust Corporation day. So I sold my half the mortgage company for a buck and instead of calling banks to see what type of loans or mortgage companies see what kind of loans that they were originating, I was calling to see what kind of bad debt they had, what kind of loans that they had in their books that the borrowers had defaulted on. Not just subprime borrowers, but also a paper borrowers out there and literally dialing for dollars, making 50 to 100 phone calls a day. I felt like Will Smith from the Pursuit of Happiness a lot of times. A little bit like boiler kind of thing too.

Yes.

And you know, fast Forward now since 2008, you know, been the note educator the year once and run up twice or two. Helped thousands of real estate investors tap in the world of becoming the bank and buying the debt direct from the banks at a big discounts and then working really to kind of work with the existing borrowers in place through modifications, forbearance agreements deemed lose cash for key short sales, reduced payoffs. There's a whole variety of different strategies, but that's kind of what I've been known across the country is the note guy, because we do market a ton on YouTube and video and we have the podcast and note closure show as well too. But that's kind of a little bit of a nutshell. I mean, I've bought debt in just about every type of asset class you could think of. And really we get the biggest bang for the buck as an investor actually working to keep people in their houses. Most people that are in real estate, they're used to the AG or A&E TV or HGTV to flip this house or flip or Flop. I'm not a big fan of those fictional TV shows for the most part because they don't show it exactly. It is. So we work to buy that debt from banks and then I'm buying primarily debt where the borrowers are in the house, still haven't paid in usually six months or greater, six months to six years. And we make our money by actually working, as I like to say, to make America great again. One default to borrower at a time.

Awesome. So essentially investing in notes or buying notes pretty Much means that they're in default right now with their lender. And then you're going in and you're stepping in and you're buying that bad debt from the bank.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, borrower still owes what they owe. It's just that the banks and lending institutions would rather sell that debt off at a discount, get that money back in and then turn around and rank and repeat it. You know, you've heard, you may have heard the velocity of capital.

Yes, of course.

Depending on what's going on with the borrower, depending on what state it's in, how far along the foreclosure processes or how the bank's portfolio looks like.

Yes.

You know, some people ask, well, why would the bank sell the discount and just work it out themselves? Well, they try to work it out, but sometimes they can't. Or they're more focused on better assets or bigger assets, you know, as far as balances or asset class. And so they often sell a lot of their smaller balance stuff off to funds or investors like me.

So what if, for example, let's just say somebody there's a house, the market value is like $500,000. The person living in it has already paid off like half of it. So they have 250,000 in equity or they paid down to the balance of $250,000, but now they're in default and it's been about six months. How much would you typically pay for something like this to take?

Yeah, I wouldn't go after that because there's all that equity. So they're not really in default. I mean, they are because they haven't paid. But with all that equity above what's owed, the bank's not going to take a big discount. On that note.

Okay, gotcha.

And the buyer can, you know, if the bank forecloses, they're for sure going to get paid in full at the foreclosure auction. Because most properties are selling at 60, 70, 80, 90 cents at the foreclosure auction.

Yes.

So let's flip the numbers. Let's say that their house is worth 400, but they owe 500. Okay. They haven't paid the last year because of COVID everything else or then they get defaults and stuff like that. Now that's something I would chase, something where they owe more than the property's worth because first and foremost, there's no equity there. The borrowers aren't going to fight you because they're upside down. They know they're upside down. If there is equity the borrower is going to fight you, they're going to drag out the foreclosure process. I mean, we're dealing with that with a couple of cases right now. So we have much more flexibility. And plus the bank is now motivated to sell more because they, whoever wrote the one for bond direct from the originator, they're upside down on it. It's not worth what the paper it's written on. Right. So on something like that, we would come in and offer somewhere between 50 cents on the dollar of market value and work our way up from there. And I wouldn't go above 70%, so I'd pay somewhere between 200 and 280 for that.

Okay. And then you would become the lender.

Then I become the bank. And then we reach out to the borrower, see what's going on. And we would know a lot what was going on with the borrower beforehand because we get, we have a lot of due diligence. We're able to talk with the lender is going to share the servicing notes, that the bar has been responsive and calling in or told the banker, whoever's called them, to go, you know, pound sand. We're going to look at the collateral file, you know, seeing what's going on, if there have been any hardship documents filed or other servicing notes. We're going to look at the property value itself. We're not going to be able to get inside because somebody's living the property. We can still tell a lot about that bar by the exterior view. Is it in good shape? Is there some emotional equity like kid toys, landscaping, you know, flag out on the mask, stuff like that that tells. And then of course we do a little bit of social sleuthing by jumping on Facebook and LinkedIn and other things and seeing if the ball was on there, what they're sharing, what they're not sharing and go on there. You know, you gotta realize we get, we literally get the whole loan file before and get that to view before we ever end up bidding so we can see, you know, what happened, you know, what were they doing when they originated the loan. And then we can often tell online, you know, about verification of employment or making a few phone calls to see if they're occupied, you know, they're still working or not working. And that gives us a good idea if they're going to be a good borrower or they're going to be a borrower. That's not helpful. Yeah. If the bank, existing banks already started the foreclosure process, we usually Know that they've exhausted a lot of their borrower outreach. It doesn't mean we haven't had borrowers come to the table and we've modified. It also doesn't mean we haven't had borrowers that we thought we would modify who ended up going to foreclosure because they just went silent on us.

Okay, I see that. So you would then stay as the lender for how long? How long would you stay as a lender then?

If we're going to foreclose, then we, you know, if it's six to 12 months to foreclose with a lender, then we foreclose and either sell the. Sell the property at the auction. So back to our case study. If we bought it at 280 and we sell it at the auction somewhere at, you know, 90 cents on the dollar, so somewhere between 360 and 400,000. So we'd make our profit of 120, 130,000 between what we bought the debt for and what the value of the property is. But let's say they hadn't started foreclosure when we bought it. We would try to reach the borrower to get them to modify, reinstate, do a forbearance agreement. And then that's what we like better, because then if we get them paying in 90 days, we're only at 280. So it gives us a lot more flexibility than the bank that financed at 500. You know what I mean? So it gives us a lot of flexibility to incentivize the borrower. Like, listen, I know you're upside down. Hey, start making your existing payments every month. Now, can you reinstate that? Can you pay a little bit extra? You know, you haven't paid it, made a payment in 12 or 24 months. You get your tax return in, or you got some money, you can bring, you know, a couple months to the table. And then for every $100 extra you pay, we'll forgive $200. Or if you'll pay on time for 12 months and make a little bit extra at the end of 12 months, we'll forgive what you're upside down on and readjust the balance. And so with a performing out, we have less outgoing because we're not paying attorney fees or foreclosure costs if we have to foreclose or repair costs. We need that. We immediately start getting the bar to pay on time. And then if they pay on time for 12 months, it's considered a reperforming note. And then we could sell that note back to the secondary market for 80, 90 cents on the dollar without having to foreclose, without having to do any heavy lifting or anything. So we've got cash flow along the way, a big paycheck on the front. The back end.

We're.

You also get some money on the front end by having the bar bring some skin to the table to stay in their house.

Okay. So it's really like, if it's a good deal to start with, really, it doesn't really matter which way they go. Whether they pay or they foreclose on, you're still kind of making money in either direction.

I call it kind of the choose your own adventure. And if it takes a lot of foreclose. But we also, if a bar can't, you know, we really want to work with them. If they can't stay, well, do they have somebody can take over payments or. Let's list it, you know, and we'll be glad to, you know, approve a short sale. You know, if it's worth 400, let's list and get it sold for 390 or 380 and make it a win win and not come after them for any deficiency judgments. Or we won't report any pays. But if they won't work with us, then we'll take you to the full extent of the foreclosure. But yeah, I mean, we'll even give them cash to walk. You know, you can't pay your existing payment, you need to move out, or you. You've gone through divorce or something where you don't have both incomes from family members or something like that. So, hey, let's give you a couple of grand a walk. Because if it goes through a foreclosure, it's going to affect your credit derogatorily for seven years. Late pays will just be two years and you can be back in a better situation.

So what's the deal now with COVID Like, what's going on with that? Like, as far as foreclosures are going and things like that. Talk to us more about that.

Yeah, so it's been a bit of a. Been an interesting time in the last 18 months. But now that the foreclosure and eviction moratoriums are pretty much over across the country. Every. Every state's a little bit different. I mean, Texas, we've been foreclosing since April. Vegas won't start foreclosures till January. They just made it mandatory. They won't do. So you've got to know what's going on in that market.

Yes.

That leads to with it being the fourth quarter. I don't know when this is come up but the fourth quarter is always our busiest time and the first quarter is the second business because banks are looking to get bad stuff off their books at the end of the year. Okay so we're seeing more portfolios coming in, we're seeing more defaults especially now that the eviction of foreclosure more terms of any we can actually proceed if the borrowers aren't performing. So at least a lot of, you know, we were pretty lucky we had most of our portfolio. The borrowers kept paying on time. Along the way we gave a few forbearance agreements for nine to 120 days. Of course you're always going to have those bad apples that take a, take an inch and try to get a mile out of it and that's going to happen. I mean but for the most part there are other options for borrowers out there. I mean there's a lot of different funds and third party organizations. I mean, you know, there's $49 billion in funds allocated by the government to try to help people stay in their houses through either eviction help or foreclosure help or something like that. But obviously the states are very slow to roll that out and only 9,9 billion of the 49 billion has been allocated so far. So there's a lot of funds out there that you know, we're glad to work with the borrowers if there's, if they'll meet us halfway and delay foreclosures, help to keep them keeping their houses if they work with us, but they won't work with us and as we like to say, you know, pay, you know, stay, you got to work with as means halfway. We can be your best friend but then if you won't work with us and tell us to go pound saying hey, we're just going to kick the file to our attorneys and let them deal with it.

And that makes sense, right, because you're giving them a chance to like work with them. And I think that, you know, this brings me to my next question is that let's say you take over this distressed property. Is it you, Scott, like your face, your name, that's you're dealing with the borrower now or is it like your LLC and like a separate company that comes in and talks to the borrower?

Great question. This is a. I consider myself the general manager. If you think of the Dallas Cowboys, which I'm a big fan of yeah, I'm like the Jerry Jones. I'm not the guy down there, you know, selling beers or flipping hot dogs. The stands are trying to coach. Even though Jerry Jones wants to be the head coach, we all know that, right. I'm basically controlling and directing my vendors. It's a very vendor driven. So you should not be the investor talking to the borrowers. There's a lot of states that you need to have a debt collection license.

Yes. Okay.

Or be a debt buyer in a few situations. So they're servicing companies. Like we have a third party servicer who's handling most of the borrower outreach. And then you know, when they talk to a bar, they send us an email. We get on the phone, you know, every two weeks, hey, what's going on with our portfolio? What's going on with this lender or this borrower? This borrower. And like I just got yesterday, I got an email in, hey, the borrower wants to do this type of low mod on their file. Do you approve it? I'm looking through the numbers. I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Let's, let's, let's approve it. They're bringing five months to the table. They're going to increase their payment from 400 to $500 a month to get caught up for the next six months. I'm cool keeping that person, that property in Indiana, It's a win, win across the board then.

Okay, how do you so like for example, like in the state of Texas, do you need a debt collection license?

No. Texas is one of the states that does not require you to have a debt collector's license.

Okay.

You should because you can screw stuff up. There's the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, cfpb that kind of governs personal debt like this. And you can screw stuff up. And honestly, most, I love most people have a great heart. Most people are really good and they get this, I don't want to say sob story, but a story from the bars. Oh, I lost my job or my grandmother passed away, I can't pay. And most investors will think with their heart versus thinking black and white with a bottom line.

Yeah.

And this is one thing we have that we really kind of bang into our students out there. Like, listen, you are not the person should be negotiating. You should have a third party that's there to do it. They can cut through the black and white because otherwise you'll have bars like, oh, my grandmother for the eighth time has passed. You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Or they'll play you against the servicing company. Oh, you said this and that. So it's best just to step away appear from a black. That doesn't mean you can't help people. I mean, there's plenty of ways to help people, but you'll have people that will, oh, I can't pay this month. Well, you know, and we see this every month that a mortgage is not paid, it really costs you an extra 8 to 10% of return on your investment because you're letting people slide for a month.

And this is why I think banks are successful is because they thought of these.

Right.

Banks are owned by humans, but they have these functions in place to take away so that you can't really tell your lender, hey, I'm having all these personal issues. It's like you have to pay. You know, they have their system set up so that way it's corporately ran. That could be positive or negative in the business world.

Right.

It could be good because things move accordingly. They're logical, they move in a systematic way. It could also be bad because there's really no room to work with people unless you know, you, you want to, you know, you have the leniency to work with people if you want to. Which is like the, one of the advantages of doing this is like you can make up your own kind of standards of how you want to help people rather than relying on a board of telling you what to do. So I'm sensing there's really like, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's two ways to do this. Like, one way is you could probably go through your courses, your podcast, your training, learn how to do this, learn how to find the notes, invest in them, buy them, take care of them, go through the third party services or possibly even invest in somebody else that does this. And then you would just be like a limited partner. You would just be putting money into it. They would be going out, finding the notes, negotiating, talking to the third party servicers. Am I right about that?

Yeah, there's basically, you have, if you want to do it yourself, a DIY or DFY is like we said, where if you want to learn how to do it, we teach people how to because there's thousands of banks and institutions out there. There's plenty of notes, if you know where to look and how to look, that I can't reach them all. But then we also have a, you know, we have a fund that we're finishing up on where people can invest passively, make a better return than a certificate of disappointment. Or their, you know, their 401ks now 101k. You know, it's, you know, stuff like that that gives them pretty decent return, you know, versus what they not making or negative stuff. So yeah, we've got that, that aspect as well for people to invest passively, but it's always good one. I think the, one of the most important things when it comes to investing, no matter what it is, whether it's notes or tiddlywinks or annuities or insurance, is you need to know the product.

Yes.

I mean, sure, you know, that's one of the things that we started teaching was just to help people understand the product, understand this asset class. Because it's not the same thing as going out and buying an REO or a rental property. You got to know all the ins and outs and it's, you know, it's got some tips and turns. But it's, it is such a niche that we are excited about for a couple of reasons. One, we see deals usually 12 to 24 months ahead of most real retail buyers or retail investors are waiting for the foreclosure auction. We see deals before it ever hits the auction. Second thing is that it's no direct mail. We're not having to mail out postcards and yellow letters. We're dealing direct with banks and asset managers. So they send us lists on a regular basis. It's not one deal from one bar and that's it. It's 100, 300, 1,000 every month, every quarter, a year from these different banks. So it feeds us continuously. And the pricing, we're paying a lot better than what most people are paying. The market's hot out there. We're paying a substantial discount below what most people are paying in retail for it. So it gives us. Those are the three biggest things that I love that are different, that really help people. But it's ins and outs. I see people who've bought a note without understanding or just trying to learn from a podcast and they end up losing because they overpaying or they miss out, they do something wrong.

Yes.

And I mean that's anything. If you don't understand what you're doing, you're going to end up getting burned. And this is, this isn't a hobby. This is buying debt. It's federal, you know, federal government, you know, CFPB and Dodd Frank and other things you got to know about before you, you dive into the deep end.

Yeah, of course. I mean, you're dealing with shark, essentially. You deal with the banks, financial Institutions, you know, like the big boys, you know, it's definitely something you need to be trained on and you know, and back to, you know, thinking like a bank part, you know, it's got me thinking and I think you're kind of familiar with like bank on yourself and infinite banking, the use of like cash value whole life insurance. I'm just seeing this go together so nicely and so smoothly because like you have, for example, your whole life insurance policy, you're paying into it, you have the cash value building up. You come across these deals either as a passive investor in your fund or the do it yourself part. But either way, you could leverage the policy, borrow against that use to invest in these notes, and then use the proceeds from the notes to pay back the loan. And then when you do that, you have two assets, you have your whole life policy compounding and you have the interest earned from the notes and the profits from that, and then you have them cycling together. Also to take a step further, you have your cash value life insurance policy building and sheltered, almost tax free income, tax free wealth there, plus protection from outside creditors and outside things like that. So really you can kind of spin this around and do many things with it when you combine it with other investment opportunities like investing in notes.

Well, that's the beautiful thing is the fact that when somebody can invest in one of your policies and get the cash back in, what is it, 30 days or something like that, mine's a little bit that still gives you the flexibility to really kind of insure yourself. If you've got $100,000 policy and $50,000 cash, pull that 50 out, go invest it and making a double digit return or an 8 to 10% return on a performing note and use it to leverage that. You've got the best of both worlds. I totally agree with that, Sarah. Yeah, it's a great strategy and I love it. I think it's one of the smartest things that most people need to know about because a couple things, lawsuit proof, you can go through insurance policy for lawsuits and stuff like that. And it also kind of works as a key man policy for using other people's money for it as well. So if something happens to you, the investment, the investor is paid back and then your entity or your estate handles the asset after that.

Yeah, exactly. It's a good point. Yeah. It could be used for different types of different layers of protections. That's awesome. Now I want to talk more, I want to go back to about the COVID part. So do you see an uptick coming up in terms of foreclosures. In other words, you see like that number increasing in the next few months because of the moratoriums coming to an end.

Yeah, I mean don't the moratoriums have a love hate relationship? I think it was good that the government did something to help so many people out. Totally agree. When things happen back, you know, two February they go height like hey, this is a 90, 120 day, maybe longer thing to solve everything as everything shut down. That's fine. I didn't like the fact that they kept extending, except extending and kept extending. When we, when we see such huge amount of people out of work. Yeah, but then so many job openings, something doesn't make sense there. If somebody wants to work, they need to be working. And we saw borrowers take advantage of that, say oh, I'm not working. And then we would do some simple research on our end and find oh, they've been working, they haven't stopped working.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So yeah, we've seen an uptick in foreclosures across the country as each state has done a different, has a different timeframe, seen an increase in foreclosures. We've seen a lot of what you're going to see mostly of is non government backed loans. You know the government insured. Most of those lenders have just basically done a forbearance agreement and pushed out. Okay. Your 30 year loan that you were in 27 years is now 28 years. We're just going to take that year of payments and put it on the face amount. That's fine. But what you are seeing more so in the market is our second homes investor loans, non government backed loans that are what's coming to foreclosure as there's not the safety or the federal bailout I guess you could say on those types of loans.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. I interviewed, I don't know if you know Sean yesterday, who's an attorney, bankruptcy attorney, I interviewed him, he mentioned this.

I know Sean. Yes, Sean and I are good friends. Oh wow. Okay. Breaking the Bank, I think is his.

Podcast, Crushing Debt Podcast.

Crushing Debt podcast, yeah, he's got a book. I got his book sitting around here somewhere actually. I was actually gave it to a friend of mine yesterday. Sean's a great guy and Sean's got such a great. Because he's been on both sides of the equation before.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Small world. Yeah, he mentioned that. Yeah. If like for example, if you own if you're living in a home that's being backed by like a hard money lender, a private money lender, it's not going to have the same protection as it would. It was a federally, Federally backed loan. Yeah. That's awesome.

Yeah, he knows his stuff, man. So what else that leads to opportunities. That's opportunities. So like, that's where we come in. And you know, those type of lenders or those banks that have that, they're looking to move that stuff because they may not necessarily want to own the asset.

Yes.

And so hard money lenders usually have a higher interest rate of 12% or so. So they're not usually taking a big discount. They're usually only at 70% of value at the greatest or less. So they've got all this equity. You know, we've bought hard money loans from a lender before and worked them out. What you have to realize, if you're a borrower that's facing that, the best thing you can do is, is contact your bank early, contact it and share what's going on and go from there. You know, this doesn't mean call me to buy your note. You know, there are specific. I get to happen all the time. Oh, can you call my bank and buy my note and just let me be into it? I'm like, well, I'm out for, I'm out to buy a prop, make a profit. I'm not just gonna let you stay for free. I donate to charities. But that's the thing is, you know, we're not buying from bank of America, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, those big guys, those top five or ten. They're selling stuff in $50 million portfolios. Yeah, yeah, they're not taking a bigger discount. We see the biggest bang for the buck that sub $200,000 valued house, that second home, that investor home, that. You know, I hate to say it, but it's the landlords, the small mom and pop landlords have been hit very hard because the loans aren't insured. And then many of them are trying to survive on that profit between what they paid on their mortgage and the rent rates, and that dried up for them. So, you know, if you're finding yourself in a situation, talk to your lender. You may don't let it go to foreclosure. It may, it makes more sense for you, especially if you've got late pays, just to deed the property back to your lender and walk away and start over, start afresh again, or maybe even be able to negotiate just have them remove the bad hiccups on your credit and just need the property over in a friendly foreclosure in a lot of cases and then rebuild or cash out if you've got equity, Sell the property if it's in the market. Selling life fast. The worst thing that most people do is it's inaction and somebody makes a decision for you and it's usually not the right decision.

Yeah, I think the worst thing is just avoiding the lender, avoiding all communication and then just waiting until like it's just too late to do anything. That's probably the worst thing.

Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. I mean, talk with a borrower. I mean one of the things that's very beneficial is that with these programs that have been rolled out, you know, find out what's going on in your state. I mean Texas gives. I'll give you a great. Texas has a $1 billion rental assistance fund. One billion. Wow. And so if you've got renters that aren't paying, it pays for you to figure that out. Download the paperwork, go fill it out, incentivize them. Hey, just try to do that. Because a lot of the lenders, we don't want to be bad guys. I mean, there's been people like, listen, I understand what's going on, that's fine. But you got to do something. If we don't have any action from you in the next 30 or 60 days, we're going to take the action and it's not going to. You're not going to like it unless it's fine.

Exactly. So kind of just to recap, what do you do to help people in this niche?

So are you talking borrowers? Are you talking investors? Which way do you want to go anyway?

So like, so in other words, if I were to reach out to you, what could you potentially help with?

As far as we deal with a lot of investors who come from the fix and flip side who can't find deals or their landlords who are worn out and exhausted from dealing with toilets, tenants and trash outs. They would rather be the bank because nobody calls the bank when little Timmy's rubber ducky gets flushed down the toilet at 2am or the air conditioner stops working. You know what I mean? Nobody calls the bank. And that's a beautiful thing. Another thing is you can do this business from anywhere. So a lot of people like to invest in their own backyard. And I'm like, eh, I live in Austin, it's one of the hottest markets in the country. I haven't bought anything here in over a decade because I found better deals elsewhere. So the beautiful thing is you've got Internet and phone and are you can do this business from anywhere and you're not just relegated to your backyard or state. And it's also the starting out of it is a lot cheaper than most other tactics. Cause you're not having to come up with rehab costs. We're using 95%, usually other people's money to take these deals down and leveraging retirement accounts and stuff like that. So that helps. That's the facet as far as the borrower side. If we're buying a note, we're reaching out to them. Hey, we want them to stay in their house. That's our, actually number one strategy is try to keep them in their houses. But it's got to, it's got to make sense. If they can only afford $800 a month, but the market rent of the property is 1200 and their mortgage payment is more than the 800. And sometimes you got to have that conversation. Listen, you know, I get, I get it. You've been through a financial hiccup. Let's get you out, get your reset. Let's take away this big albatross over you or this big nightmare and turn the, you know, the turn, turn it back into a dream of homeownership versus Freddy Krueger stalking you when you're upside down. You're worried about, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to meet the, the mailman face to face with another certified letter. I hear the court proceedings. So we like to, you know, help people out. I mean, I've got people that we modified their own. They've been paying on for three, four years. And it's a, it's a good date, you know, or settling their debt at a big discount. So it's a win, win. You know, that's, that's always the highlight of it. But the biggest thing, and I know that this is something that's very impactful to you, is really seeing people accomplish things or take a step forward toward their dreams, Whether it's retirement or paying off their debt or retiring their spouse or saying, hey boss, take this job and shove it. I'm doing well on my own. That's the biggest impact that we make, I think, is helping entrepreneurs really identify a niche that's out there. It's a niche within a niche. Does take some work, but it can be very valuable without all the heavy costs of rehab overhead, of fix and Flipping and a lot more, I like to say, rewarding in a lot of ways and helping neighborhoods survive and retain value in neighborhoods versus a foreclosure.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean it's good. Yeah. Ultimately this is a business that you could start and I think the only cost you'll need, correct me if I'm wrong, it's really more of the marketing parts. You know, the phone, Internet, the ability to communicate with people, the time needed to put into it, similar to other types of professional services where you're not. You don't need actual physical. But you could have a physical office if you wanted to, but it's not probably needed in the beginning.

You don't even need to do that. I mean I've had an office before, which is great. But for the last two years I've worked from home.

Yeah.

Prior to that I was traveling the country basically non stop working from hotels or working, traveling on vacation and working wherever I had Internet service. So that's, that's a. Most of our students start off part time. You know, they're doing it nine, you know, from 7pm to 2am or on the weekends. They don't have to do it nine to five because they've got a normal career. So got.

Okay, that makes sense. And Scott, how can listeners connect with you and learn more about you?

It's really easy. If you go to my. Our main website we close notes dot com. That's close notes dot com. Pretty simple. Check out the podcast and it closed show. I would love to give your audience a gift though, if they're interested, please. Yeah, we have a one day class that we teach usually every month called Note Weekend. If you go to noteweekend.com and enter the code SARI S A R R Y all caps it will give you that one day class for free. It's a $49 class, usually with over $1,000 in bonuses. You can get it for free by using the code SARI and you'll get it for free.

Oh, awesome. Thank you for the. I'll include those instructions in the show notes below so that way you can just click and go to that. Both of your websites. Yeah. Awesome.

Scott.

Well, thank you so much, man. I really enjoyed our conversation and I look forward to having you back on the show.

Hey man, it's a small world, you know what I mean? Get smaller every day. And honored to be here as well with you, man. Looking forward to having you on my show as well here in the future.

Thank you. To learn more about what we do and how we can help you grow more wealth, please visit www.finasset protection.com. that's Fin Asset Protection Protection Calm the topics presented in this podcast are for general information only and not for the purposes of providing legal, accounting or investment advice. On such matters. Please consult a professional who knows your specific situation.